A Stranger Comes To Town: Designing RPG Adventures For Static Locations

Most role-playing game adventures depend on the player characters going out into the world seeking adventure. They leave their homes or bases of operation and travel to a dungeon, a wizard's tower or a newly discovered planet. But sometimes an adventure designer wants to take the story to the players' doorstep.

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Maybe your party built a permanent stronghold or all the characters live in the same village. Maybe they attend the same arcane university or work on a space station. Entire campaigns can revolve around a single static location. In those situations, adventure sometimes must find the players rather than the reverse.

Adventure designers and game masters trying to hit their players a little closer to home can find a wealth of solid advice in the Narrator's Toolkit for the Star Trek Deep Space Nine Roleplaying Game, published by Last Unicorn Games in 1999 and authored by Steven S. Long. The book features a chapter on how to build adventures in which a "visitor" – someone or something traveling to the player characters from an external location – ignites the story. While the product was written for starbases and outposts in the Star Trek universe, the advice can apply to virtually any static location in any game since so many stories, reduced to their essence, unfold when a stranger comes to town.

"Large or small, kind or cruel, helpless or aggressive, friendly or hostile, all visitors have stories to tell," according to the Narrator's Toolkit.

Designing adventures for static locations often has the automatic benefit of raising the stakes for the players. When the drama unfolds in their backyard, as opposed to some distant tomb, the action has a greater probability of affecting the party's friends, family and immediate surroundings. The player characters have more to lose in these scenarios.

The toolkit notes that the two most important considerations for "visitor stories" are the visitor's identity and intent. Who is this visitor, and what does he, she or it want? Basic stuff, right? But a deeper consideration of those questions can help to strengthen the adventure the visitor will initiate. Does the visitor have an existing relationship with the player characters, or is the visitor a blank slate? Does the visitor's plan involve the player characters directly or indirectly?

The game master may wish to defy the expectations of the players to provoke a response. For instance, perhaps the visitor is an accomplished warrior who arrives with a severe injury or a brilliant scholar in a fragile emotional state. The key lies in introducing a visitor designed to shake up the player characters' status quo and demand their response.

The toolkit urges game masters to consider how the visitor arrives in the player character's presence. The party is sure to respond differently to a new NPC who talks his way through the city gate than to one who strides through a magic gateway that suddenly ripples in a player character's living room. As the saying goes, you only get once chance to make a first impression, and designers should put some thought into how that introduction sets up events that follow.

These considerations may seem basic to experienced game masters and designers, but, with some careful thought, these elements can add up to a memorable experience that teaches players to expect a thrilling adventure whenever a stranger comes to town. What are some of your favorite adventures built around static locations, and who or what was the visitor that drove the story?

contributed by Fred Love

 

[MarkB]

That's a good concept. Of course, visiting acquaintances can often work very well too - if the PCs are in a known, static location, it's only a matter of time before friends, relations, business partners or enemies come calling.

The trick is making sure that the PCs don't 'trash the set' too much in a given campaign arc. For players who are used to their characters having no fixed abode, it can be difficult to adjust to the idea that they need to avoid completely alienating the locals, or ruining their livelihoods. It helps to give them a variety of long-term goals that can only be fulfilled within that location, whether it's establishing a stronghold, or rising through the ranks of an organisation, or ensuring the wellbeing of friends or family.

 

[Eltab]

The early chapters of Princes of the Apocalypse bring up this theme.

When I played through that adventure, I had a nagging suspicion that the PC group ought to clean out an adventure site just outside of town and set up our homebase there, not in the middle of town. (There is a convenient site that meets these requirements nicely.)
Because I was pretty sure that high-powered trouble would eventually come looking for us, and demolish the town during their search.

 

[fredlove]

It helps to give them a variety of long-term goals that can only be fulfilled within that location, whether it's establishing a stronghold, or rising through the ranks of an organisation, or ensuring the wellbeing of friends or family.

That's a great point! Tying the PCs' goals and quests to the long-term viability of the location is a great way to ensure the characters will invest in the location.

 

[Chad Hooper]

My campaign is just reaching a stage where I can do that sort of thing easily. Only one of the PCs is actually from the area they're working in/out of and has family there, but the rest have been in the area for a couple of months game-time and have become good friends with several of the locals. They've also already bought a couple of pieces of real estate, a fixer-upper fortress just outside the town they usually stay in and a tavern in the next town over.

They recently recovered some treasure items that they figured out were connected to the Assassin's Guild. The cleric (the lawful good cleric!) says they should try to return these items, in an effort to get in good graces with the Guild so it won't take any contracts against the PCs if they make the wrong sort of enemies.

Unbeknownst to the PCs, one of the magic items in this treasure is a homing device that allows the Guild Master's wizard ally to scry whoever is wearing it. This was originally a gift to the Guild Master's daughter, but she ended up becoming a victim of a different arm of the same kidnap/slaver ring the PCs have been working against. If someone starts wearing that jewelry, assassins are liable to show up looking for the daughter.