Has complexity every worked for you as a DM?

[fusangite]

Here's a question to really get your dice tales flowing:

Have you ever used complexity in a way that the players found satisfying? Mostly, I'm thinking of complex quests (intricate prophecies with multiple requirements and stages, a la Morrowind), complex locales (twisting and winding maze-temple-cities), or complex plots (the extremes of political intrigue). Heck, have you ever had success with characters who have complex motivations?

Yep. My most successful campaigns are the ones in which the entire world is one gigantic puzzle, where everything the characters see is actually a clue because the puzzle is woven into the very fabric of the universe. That's my style as a GM and I have been blessed to have a series of players who really like that style.

That stated, I do not run games in which players have to amass a very particular set of details. The advantage of weaving the puzzle into the structure of the world is that you can afford to have the PCs miss or misinterpret 90% of the clues because there will always be plenty more.

 

[Ry]

Fusangite, do you have a site or story hour about your world? Can you spare a few words on how you made the world as a puzzle from the outset, and how much info you were giving to the players at what points?

 

[el-remmen]

I start simple and get complex, as many here have already said - but sometimes I think I let things get too complex for the players to ever figure out without being there. . . if you know what I mean. . . that is, since there is a discontect between the imagined world and the players even in the most immersive game - sometimes I forget that clues that would be as subtle as they might be in real life are never going to be picked up on in-game unless I give a nudge or call for specific knowledge, sense motive checks, etc. . .to help point them out as something to work with.

 

[pawsplay]

Currently, my players are pondering whether the individual who impersonated their patron to tell them NOT to kill the bad guys or else risk disaster might have been telling the truth just to throw them off.

 

[robberbaron]

I try not to make stuff too complicated, for two reasons:
1. I'm likely to muck it up and confuse the players more than they already are.
2. Whatever I do, the players make it much more complicated by roleplaying (or being dumba**es. Or both.) or ignore it completely.

I do like a good puzzle, however, and get one in once in a while.

 

[Thunderfoot]

Yes...
My current campaign spans three years and currently includes:
A feud between two former nations that has recently been fixed by a marriage...
that interfered with the plans of two party members to hook up (one is a prince, the other a commoner)...
creating a bizarre love quadrangle...
that is currently being strained because both the prince and commoner are talking to the barbarians in the north...
in an attempt to "buy them off' in order to bolster the armies...
so that kingdom A (Prince) can rescue kingdom B (love interest #2) from the clutches of a tyrannical evil lizard empire...
that is trying to dominate the world...
and has been for 500 years...
but was stopped 400 years ago by a wizard (that is a long lost uncle of a current party member)...
who was trapped in a barrier with a red dragon when a spell went wrong...
and slowly went mad and was seduced by said dragon...
that used his power to concoct a series of events outside of their barrier through manipulation..
in order to be set free by the party...
from an old dwarven stronhold...
that was abondoned by the dwarves because it had been invaded...
by a duergar lich...
that they also set free...

Yeah, I'd say things are both complex and moving right along schedule....

 

[ThatGuyThere]

Simplified Complexity.

That is, there needs to be plotting and scheming aplenty, but you* need to remember that this is - ultimately - Epic Fantasy. Good is White (with the occasional light shading of grey), Evil is Black (with the occasional light shading of grey, and no racial insinuations except against those of pink skin and / or tusks), and Good and Evil are in an Epic Struggle. Have been since the Dawn of Time. Can't make villians you don't want to kill, or heroes that aren't really nice people; just messes with the 'standard expected values' too much.

But you can *hide* the villian, which I did in one of the most successful games I ever ran.

(The following story is immensely simplified.)

Early on, there was a near-total party wipeout, and the survivers hauled the corpses of the dead back to the High Temple of Pelor, where the Grand High Cleric, named Father Montessi, was able to raise them from the dead, in exchange for the party's assistance with some problems in a swamp. And then, if they had the time, could they lend him a hand with... ...and while you're here... ...and certainly, I'd be happy to remove that curse, if you could...

I spent a long time, developing a very trusting attitude between the Father and the party. They were very sorry when it came time to part ways with him, as they went off on a Heroic Quest.

And then they got jumped, by villians that knew all their weaknesses, that exploited every gap in their defenses. Through interrogations, questions, divinations, they determined the Cult of Tiamat was behind it; the Dark Queen (thanks, Dragonlance!) was rampant, and intending sinister fates for the world, at the hands of her darkest minion...

...it was the moment when my "lead player" - my fiancee - suddenly realized what was going on. The snarl with which she said, "Montessi!", the look of dawning comprehension and horror on the other faces assembled at the table, as they realized that all along, they had been helping to set the stage for a Great Wyrm Red Dragon, in a clever guise as a 'high cleric of Pelor', to suddenly overthrow (several!) Good-aligned kingdoms in a fell swoop, and gain control over the majority of the world...

We - myself, my fiancee, my other players - all still recognize that One Moment, and in particular the contempt, admiration, hatred, shock, fear, and horror with which she spoke his name, as one of the greatest moments in our game.

Planning intricacy and complexity - while making sure to dumb it down (because players, all players everywhere, including me when I play, and yes, you when you play) are phenominally dumb - while making sure that it doesn't *look* dumbed down - is taxing.

But when you get a "Montessi!"-moment, it's completely worth ever second.

*: By which, I clearly mean "me", and possibly certain values of "you".

 

[shilsen]

I like to have complexity in my games, but I also try to balance it by not making it more than the players/PCs can handle.

And I do love the "Aha!" moments. One of my most pleasurable DMing moments was for my first Eberron campaign (predating & overlapping with the current one in my sig), where the PCs had just made some interesting discoveries and were talking about it before going to bed. Eventually they did turn in, and then 30 seconds later (in real time), two of them sat up simultaneously and went, "Oh - crap!" as something fell into place. And then they mentioned it to the others, and discussed it, and started writing a letter to let someone know about it. And a couple minutes into the letter, someone else went, "Wait - remember the time when ...?" And another PC went, "Damn! Now that makes sense!" And they started rewriting the letter with the new realization. And then five minutes later, someone else went, "Oh my god! I just realized that...." They spent 45 minutes of real time just working through one thread after another, working all the way back to the first session of the campaign, and I just sat there without having to say a word, grinning from ear to ear (esp. when, once in a while, someone would stop, look at me, and go, "You bastard!" ). It was beautiful.

OK, this sounds too good to miss. Any chance of some more explanation?

Well, here goes:

I'd started the campaign off with "Ok - roll initiative", in a battle between the PCs and three NPCs in an abandoned warehouse in Sharn. One of the NPCs was a unique warforged with metal claws on its fingers and an arm-cannon that fired a blast of fire (mechanically, warforged with the half-dragon template). The PCs were there to recover something the NPCs had stolen from House Cannith, which was a schema that had to do with warforged construction.

Since I had intentionally started the campaign with no preplanned overarching arc but wanted one to arise out of PC choices and actions, I threw a bunch of plot hooks at them in the next session and the PCs chose to go to New Cyre, accept an offer by Prince Oargev to bring back important items from the Mournland, and did so. There, they were captured by forces belonging to the Lord of Blades, who took the items. By the time the PC escaped, they had discovered that the LoB was likely creating new warforged, and that he had probably created the one they killed at the start of the campaign.

After returning to Sharn, the PCs got involved with the warforged there, both trying to help improve their situation politically and aiding in tracking down someone who was murdering warforged in the Cogs. The murderer(s) were leaving signs threatening the warforged and many of the slain warforged had three holes in the backs of their necks. The PCs assumed that the murderers were people in Sharn opposed to warforged emancipation and worked hard to find them, but never did.

Eventually, the PCs ended up back in New Cyre planning to head back into the Mournland. They learned something about a couple of unusual warforged having been seen in the area heading southwards and figured they might have been created by the LoB. The big set of deductions was when they managed to work out that the claws on the first warforged they killed would have fit the holes they found in the murdered warforged, realized that the LoB was sending out warforged to secretly murder other warforged to create dissent and unhappiness among the warforged community and against them, that this was happening at various places around Breland and possibly elsewhere, and that some of the documents they had lost during their capture in the Mournland had actually expedited the LoB's plans.

I think the bit that was really shocking to them was the fact that it tied a significant amount of their past into one great, interlocking whole. As I mentioned, since there was no preplanned overarching campaign plan, the players knew that they were free to do anything and pick their own directions. There had been numerous times when I'd thrown out anywhere from 5-10 plot hooks at once and they'd gone after one which had no evident logical connection with what they'd done before. So there was both player surprise and PC surprise at finding that I'd managed to create an interlocking plot thread stretching all the way back to the beginning, and made all of their actions have a relevance and importance far beyond what they'd thought it had.

All in all, it was just one of the most satisfying moments I've had as a DM, and what made it especially good was that the players loved it and were talking of it all the way to the end of the campaign, over a year later.

 

[The Grackle]

One of the NPCs was a unique warforged with metal claws on its fingers and an arm-cannon that fired a blast of fire (mechanically, warforged with the half-dragon template).

I like this.

 

[diaglo]

Yes, but they were slow developing and grew complex as the players discovered they were complex

ditto.

i only referee what the players add to the game.