Greetings...
dreaded_beast said:
How do you handle PCs changing aspects of your campaign world?
Well, like everyone else here. If I do use a pre-generated world, I let the chips fall where they may. If the players change the world setting/politics, they change it. Like most, I say 'forget the canon'.
But I also avoid canon for another completely different reason other than
'it's your world now'. I avoid it because frankly, unless your the writer himself, your not going to 100% agree with the setting or what future events take place in this world. The first time you run something in this world, it's going to change. Even if it's insigificant, it's a change. Sooner or later, the players are going to get to the level of experience where they do affect the world in sigificant ways. Now, this is going to lead you down paths of logic.
Case in point. One of my old DMs used to have a FR game where his players became so powerful that they were able to kill/banish Lolith on her own plane of existance. That's her name right? The spider-goddess. Now, of course it's been 500 years since then and I and some fellow gamers are encountering the drow in his game-world, and seeing the effects it has on their society. It was still a female-dominated society, but now males could become priests/clerics...they were trying to summon an evil elder god (ie Chuthulu), which thankfully we stopped, and incidently made my character #1 on the drow's top most wanted list.
Now, you can treat this changes to the drow society as an isolated occurance. That it doesn't much affect other societies. Personally, I rather enjoy thinking and wondering what effects actions have upon the world. Also, I like tweaking things here and there more to my liking.
But once your down these paths of logic, sooner or later...like when the next supplement comes out, you see where the writers have taken the meta-plot, and the game world, and see where it grossly conflicts with the changes you've made.
Either leaving you to go with what you've done, and try and shoe-horn or completely ignore what they've done. Or do a roll-back and ignore everything you've changed. Conducting a personal roll-back is something I find distasteful. Throwing away all the work you've done, just because someone else has taken a different path in this game world setting and it's somehow more 'important' because he's published.
Sooner or later your world is going to conflict with their world. This is why I haven't much liked meta-plots in supplements.
So, should my friend abandon his gaming world, and go back to the canon of FR when the new supplements came out? No. Why? Because ultimately, his changes are logical to him. He understands them, and the reasons behind them, and this makes for a better game all around. Not to mention, you don't have any players who know what's going to happen just because they also have the same supplement.
dreaded_beast said:
For example, my PCs have taken to exploring the sewers of Tilverton on an almost nightly basis. According to the old 2nd Ed. Forgotten Realms Adventures hard back book, there is a faction of trolls and ghouls that fight for control of the sewers.
While I have not actually come up with the exact amount of trolls and ghouls in the sewers, there may soon come a time when my players want to "rid" the sewers of the trolls and ghouls. I have not come up with an exact number of trolls and ghouls, but I guess they would consist of thinking up the exact amount of trolls/ghouls and having the PCs explore the sewers and fight them until either them or all the monsters are dead.
How many trolls and ghouls are down in those sewers? Well, since no one really addressed this question, I'll tell you. Come in closer...it's a secret...okay...ready?
As many as you want.
Now, what do I mean by that? Throw adventures at the players. Now, as long as you can come up with interesting ideas that keep your players entertained and excited about going into the sewers, your good. You don't need to do a body-count.
(Not to mention, they are happy to overlook the fact that by a few weeks the stench wouldn't been too much of a problem for them, they are used to it. But for everyone else, the stench is now a part of them, that no washing totally removes. The sewage has pretty much seeped into their being. *grins* )
When you start running out of new and interesting ideas, then allow them to affect one side or the other. They deal a critical blow to the trolls, however, it turns out that the trolls and ghouls have been pretty much keeping each other in check, and now the ghouls are able to gain sigificiant power now. Players are going to have to deal with that now.
But after your tired and bored of the sewers, then wrap things up, allowing the players to finally deal a fatal blow to one side, or the other, or both.
Also, the same sort of idea works well when your players are dealing with the BBEG. Generally, I never really watch my BBEG's hitpoints. Oh, when I stat him up I give him hitpoints. But in combat, I'll write down how much damage the player's do. But if the combat isn't very exciting/entertaining, I turn it up a notch and amazingly, the BBEG has more henchmen that the players weren't expecting, or he had more hitpoints than what I originally gave him. Then when I think things have gone on long enough, perhaps one or two characters are unconscious/down...with that one last blow that the fighter is able to deliver before he too bleeds his last few hitpoints away, the BBEG is defeated.
dreaded_beast said:
Also, while looking at the 3rd Ed. Lords of Darkness book, I noticed that many of the Evil Organizations give a number of members, such as Fire Knives have 47 or something like that. Anyways, do you keep track of this number when PCs kill members of that organization? Once they kill all the members from that organization, is it gone and dead? Of course the DM can always bring it back, but do you keep them "dead" to give the PCs a sense of being able to affect the campaign world?
Well, like others have mentioned. Let the players kill off the Fire Knives. I think it would be an interesting series of campaigns to hunt them down, let them retaliate and then go back and forth a few stories in an on-going campaign that occationally crops up here and there.
Also, as someone has mentioned, you can either allow another 'evil' to fill that vacuum, with existing evil organizations that grow to fill it, or a new evil. Or allow the players to occupy that vacuum so that no evil can fill it up. But then, as you've probably gathered from my other posts I'm a big fan of non-travelling adventuring parties who have responsibilities in a home-base location.
dreaded_beast said:
I am all for PCs changing and shaping the world, but I want to be sure that as a DM, I make it a fun and enjoyable experience for the PCs. If the PCs want to have some grand impact on FR, I want it to be meaningful. For example, if they want to burn down Shadowdale or turn the Stonelands into a habitable area by planting trees there (which they have expressed interest in doing since they have a keep there), I want it to be done in such a way that the PCs feel that they accomplished something. My fear is that I will make it "too easy" and the PCs may not feel like what they did was important.
Players are going to feel that they have accomplished something even if their successes are little ones. If there are a small but measureable change in the world, that players can say
'we did that!' they are going to take pride and pleasure in it. It doesn't have to epic and earth-shattering. That can come later, when they reach those epic levels.
