DMs: Have you ever done this?

[catsclaw227]

Have you ever… ? Hmmmmm.

What have you done “outside the rules” of your system?

[Edit: See disclaimer below**]

I am running a 3.x/Pathfinder super-module and adventure under the 4e ruleset. It is by award winning, top notch writers and publishers of the 3.x era. We’re having an awesome time, but the hyper-sandbox nature of the adventure in question has created some issues.

There is a lot of incredible background that I want to provide to the players as hints and rumors. I would love to just provide some of it as reward for job-well-done so far. (As XP, but ad-hoc.).

Maybe at the meta-game level, Players can trade “GP value” costs for info and they can get special information in game. This would be background info for later parts of the adventure, or clues.
[Note: These modules are cut-throat. 1e feel, but 3.x adventures. I am running them tough. We’ve had PCs go down a lot, a near TPK in the two of the most recent mini-boss adventures, and they WERE NOT level appropriate.]

The party attacked a group that was a good 6-8 levels higher than them. They got some light clues, but didn’t act on them. Even the enemies didn’t want to die. (I mean, who does? In all my long years as an (A)D&D DM, these “fight to the death” monsters and NPC parties in D&D never made sense to me.)
After finally escaping, maybe they’ll go back to base, to collect new information and cash in newly aquired treasure. They need to. They are straggling. They are isolated, I need to give some clues.

Here’s where I want to give them some history, some purpose - mabe a lot, more than a PC would know, but a player should know so to help steer story. [And here’s the rub.] Is that bad? And how can I steer players so that it isn’t so obvious.

If my player aer totally stumped, I am totally comfortable with… “Hey guys, here’s some meta data you have but your PCs don’t. Play accordingly, but I know you want to continue this plotline.”

They want this campaign to flesh out. It will. Players all said they love what and how everything is setting up. They feel in control and loving it. But I need to feed them more clues about the long history of The Sleeping Tsar, Temple-City State of Orcus.

[** I don’t care about editions, versions, settings, or any warring between them. I love D&D and I don’t give a s**t if it’s 3rd edition scarred lands or 1st edition homebrew Lands of Aladorn.]

 

[Mark CMG]

Let them stumble on a library and if they don't have much time in it (maybe the building is buring down), you can just give them a quick overview of the fews books they can flip through. They could even hang on to a few random tomes, perhaps journals of esoteric information, that they could peruse form time to time. Heck they could even pick up the setting equivalent of a bodice ripper that just happens to have useful marginalia from some competent sage with a romance novel fetish who carried it around and used the blank spaces to record trivia and geographical notes. If that all happens to line up with the info you want them to have, then so be it.


PC: Now what?

GM: Oddly, Stanley was flipping through that crappy novel you found and noticed a doodle that looks a bit like the local countryside. There's a cave marked to the south with the word "[whatever it is]" scribbled underneath . . .

 

[S'mon]

Friendly info-dump NPCs are good - sages, talkative barmen, priests, wizards, etc.

 

[innerdude]

Since I'm running a bit of an "intrigue and infiltrate" campaign the past month, I've actually discovered that simply pausing the action for 3-4 minutes, and saying, "Okay, total meta-game here--your character would definitely know X and Y about this location, and has at least heard rumors of Z. So--play your characters accordingly."

It works even better if the "meta-game" element has some connection to a character trait--"Karn, your father used to work the mines years ago, and you remember hearing blah blah about the phantom that haunt its warrens."

Also, S'Mon's suggestion of a "chatty"/drunk informer NPC is always fun RP too (sailors are great for this).

If it's presented well, and in the context of the story, you can get away with a lot without it feeling like "spoon feeding" the players.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I use 4E monster design for hit points for huge solo creatures like dragons, hydras, and such in Pathfinder. I give them a huge old massive pile of hit points. I go beyond 4E sometimes. I have a 12 headed hydra 1200 hit points so it would be an epic fight.

I use GURPS situational stealth rules for Pathfinder. I use natural 1 and natural 20 rule for skills.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I think you answered your own question with one of your desired elements - hints and rumors.

Depending upon the extra time you have between game sessions, print a "newspaper" for the players to read. The "Town name Times" or whatever.

Not everything has to be detailed like a real newspaper, but just some juicy tid-bits, with a few catchy lines of print and then some garbledy-gook to represent further inconsequential information, you don't have to come right out either, put want ads or classifieds in to not only advertise upcoming adventure locations, but hide information in the "margins" as well (ie an article about land transactions is actually showing how a major NPC is legally obtaining land for nefarious purposes.)

It's kitschy and sort of gauche but, it is a way to drop info without having to kick the players in the teeth with it. If they don't read it, it's their own fault. (I actually did this and had a player keep them and annotate them by information class - needless to say, her character was very aware and well informed.)

 

[The Shaman]

Maybe at the meta-game level, Players can trade “GP value” costs for info . . .

This was a regular feature of the D&D games I ran over the years. Only it wasn't metagame.

It was called "hiring a sage."

 

[ExploderWizard]

This was a regular feature of the D&D games I ran over the years. Only it wasn't metagame.

It was called "hiring a sage."

This is the right idea but it doesn't have to be a professional sage at all. If your players are not the type that like to dig for information on thier own then perhaps they can hear about various people that " know things". If they have no interest in learning the information by any means then let the dice fall where they may and perhaps the next group of PCs might have more of a survival instinct.

 

[The Shaman]

This is the right idea but it doesn't have to be a professional sage at all.

Absolutely - what I like about the sage is that it costs the adventurers coin - so does buying drinks to pick up rumors and bribing officials for information.

If your players are not the type that like to dig for information on thier own then perhaps they can hear about various people that " know things".

If my players are not the type to dig for information, then they're not going to get very far - rumors rarely just show up on their doorstep.

I do make this clear to them, however - it's not like I expect them to play, "Guess what I'm thinking?!" when it comes to understanding how I run things.

If they have no interest in learning the information by any means then let the dice fall where they may and perhaps the next group of PCs might have more of a survival instinct.

Definitely.

 

[Corathon]

If you want them to be able to trade GP for information, no need to metagame anything. Let them consult a sage, who will (for a fee) give them the info that you want them to have.

Edit:OK, I should've read the thread first, the Shaman beat me to it.