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Gamemastering advice on preparing adventures for Sword & Sorcery campaigns
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<blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8628716" data-attributes="member: 6670763"><p>Fascinating to come back to this thread one year later. Who was that idiot asking all these stupid questions? Oh, that's me.</p><p></p><p>At the end of the original discussion here, I had decided to shelve the whole idea of running a Sword & Sorcery campaign and went to seek my fortune on other shores, looking into Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number, without having Sword & Sorcery on my mind. But in the process I cam across the amazing site <a href="https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/the-classic-dungeon-crawl-theory.html" target="_blank">All Dead Generations</a>, which finally made me understand how dungeons are supposed to be fun to play in, and supposed to as a gameplay structure. (Specifically in the D&D editions of the 70s and early 80s.) Super condensed, it's all about XP for treasure, limited resources, and random encounters.</p><p>Another eye-opening experience was playing the videogame Kenshi, which isn't specifically Sword & Sorcery because it has no magic, but otherwise it's basically straight up Dark Sun. With wind and biodiesel generators for electic lights, and a touch of Clark Ashton Smith. This game has no plot or quests. Only a hunger meter and lots of bandits and monsters roaming the wastes.</p><p></p><p>My big problem with finding ways to make Sword & Sorcery work as a campaign has always been figuring out a way to approach character motivation in a way that feels true to the style and I trust to keep players engaged throghout a longer running campaign. I now think it's probably much better to approach this issue not from the perspective of a story, but as a game structure. And specifically looking at mechanical push and pull factors.</p><p></p><p>In Classic D&D (pre-Dragonlance), all the dungeon crawling and wilderness exploration revolves around the core mechanic "Making it out of a dungeon with loot gives you XP". PCs don't actually get stronger through the possession of gold like some kind of mystical dragon. The amount of treasure they carry out of a dungeon is merely a convenient unit to track the amount of dangers the characters overcame during the adventure. You can quantify the challenge of monsters that are fought and defeated by assigning them XP values, but it's not really possible to quantify any other challenges or puzzles that way, or monsters that are circumvented by means other than fighting. XP for the value of treasure carried out of the dungeon is very easy to quantify and enables players to have control over the speed of their characters' advancement without relying purely on the grace of the GM.</p><p>This is a pull factor. You're dangling a reward in front of the players in the form of XP for their characters with a very clear but also extremely open task: "Get treasure". No questions asked how and where they get it.</p><p></p><p>And on the other hand you have for example in Kenshi the need to constantly get more food for your characters while you're in an inescapeable wasteland where you can't forage for berries or mushrooms. A situation you also have in the Dark Sun setting for D&D, which I think is the best campaign setting ever made for D&D. In Dark Sun, you always need water. (Kenshi ignores water and only tracks food to not make the game excessively difficult.) And water in Dark Sun is only found in the city states of the sorcerer kings and in a few oases out in the wastes. But unfortunately, the city states are under the control of the sorcerer kings and full with their templar guards, who are both very powerful and also hostile to PCs. And if the oases out in the desert are not controlled by templars as well, they draw in all kinds of bandits, slavers, and monsters. Staying in the cities and oases for too long will mean getting found by very dangerous enemies. Stying out in the wastes means you'll die once your water runs out.</p><p>Which is fantastic game design. The PCs always have to move. They can't sit around on their butts waiting for some interesting plot hook to come their way. Water and enemies (or food and enemies in Kenshi) are both pull and push factors.</p><p></p><p>I think for ongoing campaigns, this might be a pretty important factor in creating a sustainable gameplay structure. There needs to be something the PCs can search for to get a reward that matters to the player. (XP matter to players, cash that can't be spend on anything practical does not.) And there needs to be something that makes idling around indecisively not an option.</p><p></p><p>In Sword & Sorcery fiction, we don't usually get any mentions of characters getting food. But very often we see stories starting with the protagonists realizing that they are dead broke and they have to get up their asses and do something to rectify the situation. Because otherwise they will starve.</p><p>The earliest incarnations of D&D are regularly being described as being heavily inspired by Sword & Sorcery, and occasionally even as being straight up Sword & Sorcery. (Though that's of course always controversial, as it is with calling anything Sword & Sorcery.) And I've come to think that it might possibly even be one of the best system for such campaigns, at least if you open yourself up to getting a bit more creative. "I give you XP for all the treasure you collect, I don't care where you get it." seems perfect to get players into a mindset that reflects Sword & Sorcery protagonists without directing them along any specific course of action. The task for the GM would be primarily to dress the world around the PCs up with sorcerers, demons, skulls, and volcanos, and your preferred quantities of evil princesses and wenches.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Yora, post: 8628716, member: 6670763"] Fascinating to come back to this thread one year later. Who was that idiot asking all these stupid questions? Oh, that's me. At the end of the original discussion here, I had decided to shelve the whole idea of running a Sword & Sorcery campaign and went to seek my fortune on other shores, looking into Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number, without having Sword & Sorcery on my mind. But in the process I cam across the amazing site [URL='https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/the-classic-dungeon-crawl-theory.html']All Dead Generations[/URL], which finally made me understand how dungeons are supposed to be fun to play in, and supposed to as a gameplay structure. (Specifically in the D&D editions of the 70s and early 80s.) Super condensed, it's all about XP for treasure, limited resources, and random encounters. Another eye-opening experience was playing the videogame Kenshi, which isn't specifically Sword & Sorcery because it has no magic, but otherwise it's basically straight up Dark Sun. With wind and biodiesel generators for electic lights, and a touch of Clark Ashton Smith. This game has no plot or quests. Only a hunger meter and lots of bandits and monsters roaming the wastes. My big problem with finding ways to make Sword & Sorcery work as a campaign has always been figuring out a way to approach character motivation in a way that feels true to the style and I trust to keep players engaged throghout a longer running campaign. I now think it's probably much better to approach this issue not from the perspective of a story, but as a game structure. And specifically looking at mechanical push and pull factors. In Classic D&D (pre-Dragonlance), all the dungeon crawling and wilderness exploration revolves around the core mechanic "Making it out of a dungeon with loot gives you XP". PCs don't actually get stronger through the possession of gold like some kind of mystical dragon. The amount of treasure they carry out of a dungeon is merely a convenient unit to track the amount of dangers the characters overcame during the adventure. You can quantify the challenge of monsters that are fought and defeated by assigning them XP values, but it's not really possible to quantify any other challenges or puzzles that way, or monsters that are circumvented by means other than fighting. XP for the value of treasure carried out of the dungeon is very easy to quantify and enables players to have control over the speed of their characters' advancement without relying purely on the grace of the GM. This is a pull factor. You're dangling a reward in front of the players in the form of XP for their characters with a very clear but also extremely open task: "Get treasure". No questions asked how and where they get it. And on the other hand you have for example in Kenshi the need to constantly get more food for your characters while you're in an inescapeable wasteland where you can't forage for berries or mushrooms. A situation you also have in the Dark Sun setting for D&D, which I think is the best campaign setting ever made for D&D. In Dark Sun, you always need water. (Kenshi ignores water and only tracks food to not make the game excessively difficult.) And water in Dark Sun is only found in the city states of the sorcerer kings and in a few oases out in the wastes. But unfortunately, the city states are under the control of the sorcerer kings and full with their templar guards, who are both very powerful and also hostile to PCs. And if the oases out in the desert are not controlled by templars as well, they draw in all kinds of bandits, slavers, and monsters. Staying in the cities and oases for too long will mean getting found by very dangerous enemies. Stying out in the wastes means you'll die once your water runs out. Which is fantastic game design. The PCs always have to move. They can't sit around on their butts waiting for some interesting plot hook to come their way. Water and enemies (or food and enemies in Kenshi) are both pull and push factors. I think for ongoing campaigns, this might be a pretty important factor in creating a sustainable gameplay structure. There needs to be something the PCs can search for to get a reward that matters to the player. (XP matter to players, cash that can't be spend on anything practical does not.) And there needs to be something that makes idling around indecisively not an option. In Sword & Sorcery fiction, we don't usually get any mentions of characters getting food. But very often we see stories starting with the protagonists realizing that they are dead broke and they have to get up their asses and do something to rectify the situation. Because otherwise they will starve. The earliest incarnations of D&D are regularly being described as being heavily inspired by Sword & Sorcery, and occasionally even as being straight up Sword & Sorcery. (Though that's of course always controversial, as it is with calling anything Sword & Sorcery.) And I've come to think that it might possibly even be one of the best system for such campaigns, at least if you open yourself up to getting a bit more creative. "I give you XP for all the treasure you collect, I don't care where you get it." seems perfect to get players into a mindset that reflects Sword & Sorcery protagonists without directing them along any specific course of action. The task for the GM would be primarily to dress the world around the PCs up with sorcerers, demons, skulls, and volcanos, and your preferred quantities of evil princesses and wenches. [/QUOTE]
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