Elements of a realistic campaign

[Celebrim]

I find myself asking, "If most campaign settings don't hold up to scrutiny, do more rigorously and realistically detailed ones hold up to actual play?

It's a good list Cel, but the trick is implementing it. Care to give any thoughts on how to do it?

I think that's really a world building question, and is probably at least as broad as the question of what makes a realistic campaign.

There are basically two approaches to world building, and neither of them works. You can either go top down, in which case you'll never have the time to detail anything sufficiently to run adventurers. Or, you can go bottom up, in which case your world will tend to run off the rails from time to time. I think the realistic approach to creating realism is 'bottom up' with just enough top down to insure you aren't building things blindly.

As for actual play, I know from experience that they can hold up in actual play just fine, but it really depends on the skill and interests of your players how much it is going to profit you. You need to know what your players want from a game. Often, in my experience, they don't really know what they like, they just like what they know. So give them something familiar and dangle enough detail ou there to get some ideas as to what they are going to bite on. In one of his prologues, Tolkien talks about how the little details he gives of flora, fauna, histories, architecture, anthropology, and so forth prompted fans with a naturalist bent to request more information about the flowers, those with a muscical bent to ask for tunes, and so forth. He was half amused and half horrified by this taking of his story as some sort of elaborate game, but as a DM I think that's exactly what you want to have happen.

The only reason to build anything is because your players are going to interact with it at some point, or at least interact with something that is impacted by it. There is no reason for a vast cosmology if religion isn't going to play a role in your campaign. No reason for a detailed history if history doesn't meaningfully impact the way characters interact with the artifacts of that history. If your players are going to interact with an ancient sword exactly the same as any other sword +1, more than a sentence of history is probably excessive. I personally like to have the item's age and a minimal description, just in case I need to invent some other details later on the fly, but even that can probably be invented on the fly in most cases.

As a bottom up approach, I tend to start campaigns in areas which are deliberately chosen to be familiar to modern sensibilities in at least some fashion. They don't need to be fully modern, but they can sample from say a half dozen modernisms if you can figure out what's unique about this places history that's given rise to say plentiful coin, abhorence of slavery, or a somewhat classless society. Then have your players come to understand that these things are this region's 'hat', and that everywhere else in the world considers them wierd and perhaps a little immoral for it.

But there is a level of thoughtful detail that is somewhat removed from world building that I think can benefit your campaign regardless of your characters, and help produce what I feel is a more mature play. That's things like rolling randomly to determine the days weather, making sure that encounter locations have complex terrains when appropriate, rooms have architectural features and odors and sounds, that people that the characters enter agreements with want written contracts (especially if they are the sort that wants written contracts), that NPC's show evidence of being part of larger bureacracies and societies, and that these larger societies tries to impose themselves on the PC's as societies are wont to do. I don't think you can go wrong with that sort of light-weight, off the cuff, casual thoughfulness. It's far better than a world full of 20'x30' rooms with no other feature but a pile of coins, and where every NPC is either Santa Claus, a non-descript shopkeeper, or there to be killed - which is what IME games evolve to if the DM only builds things according to the needs of the game. Just don't bog the game down in your exposition. The PC's don't have to encounter every detail you want to put into the game in one session.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

It is a good list there, Celebrim.
And much more succinct than my my endless waffle.

Implementing isn't that hard. Realising the issues is the main thing. That way you can think of the likely problems BEFORE your players encounter them.

Now I wouldn't suggest that anyone work out a thorough economic system for their world, complete with Keynsian models and inflationary spirals. Not much fun in that.

But lets look at implementing a bit economic verisimiltude. Consider first: big local economy or small? An economy's recction to stimuli is relative: a small economy will react much more violently than a large one.

PC hero swaggers into a small town branch of Generic Magic Shoppe (tm).

PC "I want to spend 100 000gp on magic items."
Shopkeeper: "And I want to let you!!!!!"

This is not say the shop has 100 000gp worth of merchandise in it. But the shopkeeper will cheerfully bump up the prices to accomodate the PC. On the spot inflation. Job done.

If you want to develop the ramifications further you can judge the prices of everything in the area go up 50%. And the shopkeeper becomes a major player in the local guild politics. Of course with everything being so much more expensive the common folk demand wage increases in order to meet the increased cost of living. Civil unrest follows the guilds refusal to increase wages. Many folk turn to crime and lots of bandits begin plaguing the highways. PC returns and slaughters a hundred bandits, collects reward. Reduced workforce (ie: the commoners who went bandit are no longer available to work) makes guilds offer higher wages to attract workers from neighbouring town.

And so on.

Of course there's no reason to do anything from the If paragraph. Or maybe just take a couple of those elements. (say the shopkeeper's sudden rise to prominence.)

God, I can't give a short answer to anything.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh and what was implicit in that example above is that social and economic spheres are interdependant. And the interdepedancy is the thing that starts creating versiimiltude.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

No kidding! I just went there and downloaded Goffin manorial fief. Talk about a timesaver! And the production values of the downloads I've seen so far are very good. Although not 100% game system neutral or agnostic. Terms like "half-vilein" and Size 6 have no meaning for me.

The last two pages of the artivle are, as you point out, rules based. They give HârnManor information for the settlement.

Villeins are unfree & hold more than 20 acres
Half-Villeins are unfree & hold less than 20 acres
Cottars are unfree and hold less than 5 acres
Anyone else is a freeman.
And Size is simply the number of residents in the building.

Glad you like the stuff. There are a lot more manors like Goffin, plus several keeps, available for free download.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

One thing I think everyone has been overlooking in this discussion is the possible ramifications of not just magic being part and parcel of the setting, but also monsters and sentient non-human races, which can go a long way towards explaining the various anomalies, if you want to go in that direction.

Gary Gygax mentioned something along these lines in the 1E DMG-it turns out that there are some species of plants that grow extremely fast, and are the food supply of a superabundant species of animal that is a major link in the food chain. Its presence helps to explain why there can be so many large predators, but none of them ever seem to go hungry. It's a twist in the natural food chain in our real world-sometimes, if those large predators didn't exist, the population of (insert species here) would explode!

In real life, anthropologists and sociologists have written millions of pages of research on things like cultural influence, exchange, and evolution. Who's to say that humans didn't get their concepts of individualism from the elves, or their organized states from dwarves, or their notions of gender equality from halflings? What kind of cultural influences do the elves, orcs and humans have on each other?

Humans might motivate elves to become more martial, and might teach them metalworking, which they learned from the dwarves. It might explain why the fantasy counterparts of real-world cultures that did not have metalworking-African kingdoms, the First Nations of the Americas, for instance-have things like the wheel or steel swords-they learned it from the dwarves, or the gnomes, or whichever fantasy race you substitute.

Similarly, the presence of sorcery and non-human creatures can explain why things have not developed the way they logically would in the real world.

Why are there no firearms, and no internal combustion engines, despite thousands of years of history? Simple: Gunpowder and gasoline simply don't work the same way they do in real life. Given that magic routinely violates the laws of physics, and these same physics are violated in other ways (logically, the skeletons of giant monsters should be crushed under their own weight ala King Kong, and yet they are not), energy is constantly being created and destroyed, I think we can tinker with science to get the results we want.

And you can also vary the power levels to explain just why or why not there are certain tropes in your world.

"There are magic shops because there are enough mages of high enough level around to be able to produce and manufacture these goods; magic isn't necessarily that hard to learn. If most people aren't super-powered archmages, it's still relatively possible to learn enough to create and sell some basic devices."

"No one has mass-produced continual light devices because to do so would be sheer lunacy. Where are you going to find more than three or four wizards of high enough level to cast these things? 4th/5th/6th level actually stands out a fair bit, you know! And besides, those wizards probably have better things to do with their time than cast the same spell over and over again...there aren't enough wizards of that level to cast the spells you need. And as for magic shops, it's the same thing. How many wizards make it to 7th level, much less 16th/18th, the level you need to create a permanent item?"

On the one hand, you have the power level of something like Eberron, and on the other you have the power level of a setting like mine, where magic items are an incredible pain in the neck to make, and you should consider yourself blessed by the gods if you have a +1 hand axe.

Again, these can make convienient explanations if your players ask why they can't spend any money on magical items, or why there are people selling continual light devices on street corners.

 

[RFisher]

Gary Gygax mentioned something along these lines in the 1E DMG-it turns out that there are some species of plants that grow extremely fast, and are the food supply of a superabundant species of animal that is a major link in the food chain. Its presence helps to explain why there can be so many large predators, but none of them ever seem to go hungry. It's a twist in the natural food chain in our real world-sometimes, if those large predators didn't exist, the population of (insert species here) would explode!

Seems a lot simpler to say that--in a world in which heraldric-style dragons can fly--dragons don't have to eat.

 

[Rothe]

It is a good list there, Celebrim.
And much more succinct than my my endless waffle.

Exactly what DrunkonDuty and Celebrim said. I love campaigns like that.

Implementing isn't that hard. Realising the issues is the main thing. That way you can think of the likely problems BEFORE your players encounter them.

So true. Need some dungeon ecology, throw in some fungus and rats, problem solved. You can also do the old school challenge the players, e.g., the underground stream has trout in it. If they paid attention in class they'll realize this means the stream connects or connected to above ground very recently, and thus a potential escape route with the aid of magic.

....But lets look at implementing a bit economic verisimiltude. Consider first: big local economy or small? An economy's recction to stimuli is relative: a small economy will react much more violently than a large one.

PC hero swaggers into a small town branch of Generic Magic Shoppe (tm).

PC "I want to spend 100 000gp on magic items."
Shopkeeper: "And I want to let you!!!!!"

This is not say the shop has 100 000gp worth of merchandise in it. But the shopkeeper will cheerfully bump up the prices to accomodate the PC. On the spot inflation. Job done.

Or if your lazy, like me, one price for the rich out-of-towner and one for locals.

Beers for adventurer: 1gp; locals: 1cp. When the PCs complain, the barkeep says "he runs a tab," "he's my cousin, you aint," "he trades me chickens, you got any chickens?" The idea of fixed and listed prices is pretty recent one IIRC.

....

God, I can't give a short answer to anything.

Ahh but they are good ones and well worth the read.

 

[Treebore]

Just want to say I have really enjoyed this thread. Great ideas and perspectives to consider.

Oh, and the Harn material RAWKS!! I've been in love with it since about 1989. The free stuff on Lythia.com is awesome too.

 

[Rabelais]

Personally, when I say "I want to run a realistic campaign." What I really mean is "I want your actions to have consequences". By that I mean that the actions the players take mean something later on in the campaign. While additionally, the players are asked to take actions that WILL have an effect on the game. If the players have to kill the Evil Sheriff, and free the peasants from opression, some good things will happen, some bad things.

The players should be forced to make decisions that potentially WILL have an effect on the campaign world. Serial based adventuring, where the actions you take today will fundamentally change the actions you have available to you tomorrow seems more realistic to me. Episodic adventures where you solve today's problem, but wake up tomorrow with the kind of options you had yesterday seems less realistic to me, but may acutally give the players a sense of security in the campaign world that is more attractive to a more casual style game.

The first examples that popped into my head about what I mean are the differences between the modern Battlestar Gallactica and Star Trek: The Next Deep Space Voyager.

Modern BG has the characters take actions that have consequences. Main characters can die, become maimed, hate one another. While in ST:TNDSV, the characters move on to the next planet without sense of time or place changing. I love me some Star Trek, but it's fundamentally non-realistic in that way. It sure makes it easier on the casual viewer to walk into the middle of the season and pick up the thread of what's going on though.


Well, that's my 2cp anyway. I hope I've made a positive impact on the discussion.

 

[Wraith Form]

There is a difference between verisimilitude and reality. Verisimilitude is only having the appearance of reality. This is an important distinction for me.

* * SNIP * *

I just need to flash the occasional world-building clues to my players to make it feel immersive.

I'm going to just say that Mr. Savage took the words right outta my brain and excited electrons in such a way that you can see those words on screen. I really couldn't have typed it better myself!