Handling behind the scenes events in your RPG game.

[Twilightorder]

I'm currently running a Forgotten Realms campaign with D&D 5e. The game is a more political game focusing on Scardale, following the heir of Lashan PC and his group of companions that are trying to help the people of the area and for him to claim the throne there eventually once he has enough support.

I have a good amount of NPC's developed from the various factions, along with their goals worked out, though it's not extremely detailed yet. I know there is another heir that has recently come out, and Zhentil Keep, Hillsfar, Sembia and other factions are constantly trying to gain power in the area, with the goals of having Scardale for themselves.

I was curious how other GM's handle big events that go on behind the scenes, to make the world believable and to show that things happen without the PC's involvement all the time. For example, assassins strike at the false heir, which makes his faction retaliate by killing people of that faction, or the false heir claims the throne eventually after getting enough power. How do I do this behind the scenes? Do I make a timeline and these things happen automatically? Do I play it by ear and just throw things in as information that they learn about eventually? I would love a system for this, like listing out goals and possible events and outcomes and randomly rolling for them to see when they happen, etc.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[pemerton]

I was curious how other GM's handle big events that go on behind the scenes, to make the world believable and to show that things happen without the PC's involvement all the time.

The method you use should probably reflect your GMing goal.

For instance, if you're just trying to create some colour - a sentence or two of narration you drop into other stuff, like "While you're out buying new arrows you hear people talking about the assassination attempt against the false heir" - then you just need a few notes about stuff like that that you might drop in, and mabye make a notation on the list of stuff when you actualy use it, to record both the real life session date and the ingame date when you used it.

If you're trying to create intricate backstory events that will actually affect the "on screen" action, then you'll probably wnat some more elaborate timelines and the like. For this stuff, though, I'd suggest having a good idea up front of what it is you're trying to do - eg some players may find it frustrating if they get a sense that many of the reasons for significant stuff that happens in the game aren't related to what they're seeing and doing, but are driven by stuff behind the screen that the GM is doing on his/her own. Also, if the players get a sense that this behind-the-screen stuff is some sort of puzzle for them to engage with and try and solve, then you might want to be ready for it to come out from behind the screen and be more of a focus of play.

Just some thoughts - good luck!

 

[John Out West]

I might suggest making a check list of events, as well as their ramifications. This way you can keep the important events near the characters. I generally prefer to use these events as obstacles for my players. They would get to understand the effects, so rather than hearing about the event, I would have them suffer the consequence of the event. The Town they are in is attacked, which they later learn is retaliation for the assassination. The Price of weapons are driven up by the trade embargo with the neighbors, and now they must sneak into the next province.

Regardless of where they are, they should generally feel the rippling effect of the event. I wouldn't plan anything that I didn't intend on having an effect on the players. Even if a king dies in a far kingdom, one of the players may be from that faction/faction race, and now be targeted by the locals or called a spy.

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? Alternatively, If a king dies in a neighboring kingdom and it doesn't effect the players, does it matter? In order to invoke responses from the player, I would generally ensure that each event has an effect, at least on one player. It might help to make each PC from a different kingdom in this case.

Edit: With the "Each Player from a different Kingdom" mindset, some players may be invested in certain characters, businesses, or places. Saying that "The Land of Daria is under attack" doesn't have to have an immediate effect on a player IF one of the players lived in Daria, or had a lover there, or planned to retire there. This kind of preplanning could help a lot to invoke some emotion in the players.

Hope this helps!