New Dungeoncraft: The Dungeons of Greenbrier Chasm

[hong]

And what if he has forgotten to bring his dice?

You ask, what if? I answer, what if he forgot to bring... HIS MOM?

HAW HAW!

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Coming at this issue as a player, I fully expectsome railroading when it's the first session of a new campaign, not to mention the first campaign in a new setting. If there is nothing screaming Plot Hook! for the first session players are just going to look at eachother until someone says 'I go hunt orcs.'

In this case I would expect my DM to tell me ahead of time that my character is just about to go through a rite-of-passage by spending the night near a creepy crevase that blah blah blah.

I think as a DM, especially for a first session, they have the right to say 'This is what the adventure is.' If someone asks about issues with the birth rate and generational survival don't view it as an attack on the setting but use those questions for plot hooks.

Player: But why are the girls sent there as well?
DM: Women are seen as capable warriors like the men are. (Hmmm... Local uprising over tradition - future plot hook)

Player: Wouldn't the deaths here reduce the future birth rate?
DM: Maybe a little but not by much. Hmmm... There is the "Resident Wierd Guy" who has complained about this to the elders but they haven't changed anything as of yet. (Leader of resident uprising - future plot hook)

Player: I'm sure my character would think this is a stupid tradition.
DM: As I'm sure most of the local teens would. Your parents are making you go. There's some character background for you. (Must add parents to future session - plot hook!)

 

[Klaus]

Coming at this issue as a player, I fully expectsome railroading when it's the first session of a new campaign, not to mention the first campaign in a new setting. If there is nothing screaming Plot Hook! for the first session players are just going to look at eachother until someone says 'I go hunt orcs.'

In this case I would expect my DM to tell me ahead of time that my character is just about to go through a rite-of-passage by spending the night near a creepy crevase that blah blah blah.

I think as a DM, especially for a first session, they have the right to say 'This is what the adventure is.' If someone asks about issues with the birth rate and generational survival don't view it as an attack on the setting but use those questions for plot hooks.

Player: But why are the girls sent there as well?
DM: Women are seen as capable warriors like the men are. (Hmmm... Local uprising over tradition - future plot hook)

Player: Wouldn't the deaths here reduce the future birth rate?
DM: Maybe a little but not by much. Hmmm... There is the "Resident Wierd Guy" who has complained about this to the elders but they haven't changed anything as of yet. (Leader of resident uprising - future plot hook)

Player: I'm sure my character would think this is a stupid tradition.
DM: As I'm sure most of the local teens would. Your parents are making you go. There's some character background for you. (Must add parents to future session - plot hook!)

I fully endorse this post.

The way I see it, the DM doesn't need to convince the player to have his character go on an adventure. The player is there to play. If he doesn't want to go on that adventure, he's welcome to go home. I think it falls to the *player* to explain why the character is going on that adventure. The fact that he's going is a given.

DM: You all head to Greenbriar Chasm to spend the night as your coming-of-age rite.
Player1: My character goes because he wants to impress a girl in the village.
Player2: My character goes because she wants to make her father stop wishing he had a son instead.
Player3: My character goes because even though he thinks this is a stupid ritual.
Player4: My character goes beacuse everyone else is going.

 

[Dragonblade]

The way I see it, the DM doesn't need to convince the player to have his character go on an adventure. The player is there to play. If he doesn't want to go on that adventure, he's welcome to go home. I think it falls to the *player* to explain why the character is going on that adventure. The fact that he's going is a given.

Indeed. I agree completely.

 

[Moochava]

Exactly: the "hook" has long been viewed as a DM problem. It's not: it's an issue for the players to resolve. "This campaign will begin with everyone on a pilgrimage to a druid shrine in a coastal town. Everyone come up with a reason why you're on the pilgrimage." It's my job, as a DM, to convince players that they want to play, not to convince characters that they want to participate. If a player wants to play, he can come up with a reason for why his character would participate. As long as the campaign hook isn't too narrow or ridiculous ("you're a group of serial puppy-molesters on trial for Crimes Against Nature; please come up with a reason for why your character is attracted to puppies and small dogs"), it's not burdensome for the players.

"There is a dungeon full of aberrations next to your home village. Come up with a reason for why your characters would go in there. I'm willing to provide options."

 

[Stoat]

I concur. Particularly for the first adventure in a campaign, the players should be prepared to either (a) take the DM's hook and play or (b) address the issue out of character and out of game.

It's also best for the DM to give the players some idea of what to expect before they sit down to play. To some extent, it seems that D&D has a tradition of giving players adventure hooks at the beginning of a game session and then expecting them to figure out what to do from there. This is, in my opinion, a bad tradition. When I sit down to play, I want to know what the PC's are going to do. I don't want to spend 45 minutes making that decision.

I give out potential adventure hooks at the end of each session, and my group uses email and a messageboard to discuss what to do next. If the players don't want to take a hook, they say so (in character or not) and I don't waste time writing an adventure that they won't play.

 

[JohnSnow]

No. So you'd not communicate with your players, even if one of them said that he wants to know *why* they're using this 'Coming of Age' ritual in Greenbrier? (i.e. he thinks that this hook is illogical). Would you say: "Just because they do -- don't ask if you want to play!"? Or would you try to come up logical reasons that would satisfy him?

Emphasis mine.

The problem here isn't actually that you have a player who thinks this hook is illogical. The problem is that YOU think this hook is illogical. So fine, don't use it. There are plenty of perfectly logical explanations for this hook, except that you have arbitrarily decided that they don't fit with YOUR conception of how the Points of Light setting works.

Oh, I'm definitely not arguing that, but I don't think you can directly compare the "pseudomedieval" society of D&D (and this 'Points of Light' concept) with any historical Real World era or society.

Well, here are some quotes from the Design & Development article on 'Points of Light':

{Design & Development: Points of Light quotes snipped}

I don't know about you, but seems pretty dangerous and grim to me. Of course, you can "adjust" the "Danger Level" in your own 4E setting, yet unless Rich Baker has misinterpreted the concept I guess that this Design & Development article is an indication of how things will be presented in the Core Books and published adventures.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. People are reading WAY too much into the Points of Light concept. For longtime players, it's so intuitive at the base level that when you call it out (as they're doing in 4E), people start seeing a much darker setting. They don't understand that the entire idea is to evoke the Greek City States as portrayed in the Heroic Sagas, Iron Age Ireland, and dark ages Europe (especially as it's presented in Arthurian and Carolingian myth). Those are all good examples of settings that roughly follow "Points of Light."

Consider some of the quotes you highlighted:

"Civilized folk live in small, isolated points of light scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world...Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between..."

The Grecian City States, like Athens and Sparta were miles apart. They warred with each other, and the notion of a nation of "Greece" was almost non-existent. And the greeks believed, and behaved as if, the world was monster-haunted wilderness. Wandering in the wilderness was something sensible people just didn't do.

"...if you stray from them you quickly find yourself immersed in goblin-infested forests, haunted barrowfields, desolate hills and marshes, and monster-hunted badlands...Roads are often closed by bandits, marauders such as goblins or gnolls, or hungry monsters such as griffons or dragons."

In pre-modern Europe, they believed that dark things lived in the woods. They knew the woods hid bandits and the like, and they believed they hid faeries, trolls, giants and worse things. Smart people just didn't go into the woods. If you had to travel, you stuck to well-traveled roads.

Even during Elizabethan times (the late Renaissance!), merchants were referred to as "Merchant Adventurers" because traveling to other parts of the world was dangerous. Most people didn't make it back. But the rewards were considered worth the risk.

"Since towns and villages do not stay in close contact, it’s easy for all sorts of evils to befall a settlement without anyone noticing for a long time...Many small settlements and strongholds are founded, flourish for a time, and then fall into darkness."

Think of the American Old West, another classic "Points of Light" setting. If there's a corrupt sheriff in town, or a powerful cattle baron who's throwing his weight around, who is there to stand up to him?

The classic example I can give is the situation that faced the Earp brothers in Tombstone Arizona. There was no law to speak of, and even when there eventually was, it sided with the cowboys. Now, we can argue all day about who was "right" in that case, but the townspeople pretty much had to settle it on their own. The U.S. Cavalry, although it existed, wasn't about to ride into town and take care of things.

It happened in medieval times too, where the powerful oppressed the weak. And we tell folk tales about men who stood up for the people when nobody else would. Thus are legends born - men like Hereward, Fulke, Robin Hood, William Wallace and Rob Roy.

And do I even need to mention the number of Old West ghost towns lost to bad economics, or Indian attacks? Or the Medieval settlements that were abandoned after the plague hit? And that's in less than a century. Remember that in a world as ancient as the D&D one, "for a time" could be 200 years - just shy of the lifespan of the United States.

And those are examples of the "Points of Light" concept applying fairly well even when a large and powerful nation state DID exist.

"The common folk of the world look upon the wild lands with dread. Few people are widely traveled — even the most ambitious merchant is careful to stick to better-known roads. The lands between towns or homesteads are wide and empty...It might be safe enough within a day’s ride of a city or an hour’s walk of a village, but go beyond that and you are taking your life into your hands. People are scared of what might be waiting in the old forest or beyond the barren hills at the far end of the valley, because whatever is out there is most likely hungry and hostile. Striking off into untraveled lands is something only heroes and adventurers do."

But in a pre-modern society, that's all true. The common folk do look on the wild lands with dread. Maybe the PCs come from one of the few communities where they still keep the old ways. Maybe that explains why they're "different."

Going off to face danger is something people often do as part of a coming of age ceremony. In Africa, there are "monsters" (or near enough) in the wilderness in the forms of predatory animals, like Lions. Certain tribal societies require boys to face a lion before he's considered a man.

In Celtic-Age Ireland, the first "test" of manhood often came when a boy went on a hunt. You might think it's unusual to put life at risk that way, but in pre-modern societies, life is ALWAYS at risk. And it's not just your life, but the life of everyone in your village, that depends on your ability to contribute. If you can't hunt or farm, you can't feed yourself. So you'd better be able to do SOMETHING that benefits others, or they have no reason to make sure you have enough to eat.

The weak aren't needed by any society. To modern sensibilities, the infant mortality rate in pre-modern times was stupefying. Even small children were considered "expendable," as they could be easily replaced. Until you were able to work, you were considered a liability. In England, for example, when people took baths, the father and his working-age sons bathed first. The mother and her working-age daughters went next, followed by the non-working children in descending order of age. The youngest bathed LAST. By the time they got to the babies, the water was often so filthy that you could lose a child in it, hence the expression "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

In a society like that, you need to find out if someone is a liability or an asset. If you can't take care yourself, you're no good to anyone. And it's much better to discover that before the rest of the village has to care for the family you leave behind.

So how's that for the "logic" behind a coming-of-age ceremony in a Points of Light setting?

Just remember: "Points of Light" doesn't mean you WILL get killed and/or eaten by something horrible if you leave the safety of your village, it just means there's a serious risk of that happening.

How serious that risk is should be up to the DM. If you want super-dark, it's near-certain. But even 1 chance in 10 would be enough to stop most people. And 1 chance in 2?

Put it in modern terms. Would you go skydiving if there was a 10 to 50 percent chance your chute wouldn't open? I thought not.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Player: I'm sure my character would think this is a stupid tradition.
DM: As I'm sure most of the local teens would. Your parents are making you go. There's some character background for you. (Must add parents to future session - plot hook!)

Best plot hook ever.

PC 1: What made you decide to become an adventurer?
PC 2: Oh, my mom made me. When I was a kid she really obsessed about getting me into rogue lessons. Then she got me fixed up with an adventuring group when I was 15. What could I do? I was only 15, and she's my mom. Anyway, now that I've been doing it for a while, she keeps asking me when I'm going to rescue a nice girl from the clutches of an evil cult and settle down.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I fully endorse this post.

The way I see it, the DM doesn't need to convince the player to have his character go on an adventure. The player is there to play. If he doesn't want to go on that adventure, he's welcome to go home. I think it falls to the *player* to explain why the character is going on that adventure. The fact that he's going is a given.

Yes. Exactly. Why should the DM do all the work? There's crunch work, and there's fluff work, and both of those can be offloaded onto your ungrateful players so that you have less prep, and they feel more involved to boot. As an added bonus, they're not going to argue about their own motivations if they're allowed to write them.

 

[WyzardWhately]

I fully endorse this post.

The way I see it, the DM doesn't need to convince the player to have his character go on an adventure. The player is there to play. If he doesn't want to go on that adventure, he's welcome to go home. I think it falls to the *player* to explain why the character is going on that adventure. The fact that he's going is a given.

DM: You all head to Greenbriar Chasm to spend the night as your coming-of-age rite.
Player1: My character goes because he wants to impress a girl in the village.
Player2: My character goes because she wants to make her father stop wishing he had a son instead.
Player3: My character goes because even though he thinks this is a stupid ritual.
Player4: My character goes beacuse everyone else is going.

Bolding mine, because it stands out as especially brilliant. It took me way too long to learn this. Don't hide what the damn game is about and then pull the rabbit out of your hat. TELL the players what the game is going to be about, negotiate it with them. Let them invest in it.

Also, LOL.