Lord of Wyrmsholt
First Post
One idea that I've had for a few years now, but haven't had the opportunity to implement is to recruit players to help me breathe life into a campaign world by having them 'play' the various NPC decision makers in the world and then force the actual PCs to deal with the changing landscape that emerges.
For example, I can envision placing a campaign along the border region of a typical pseudo-medieval world, say placed between two countries and humanoid regions. I would then give each of the character one of the factions to command:
* an orcish warlord who commands vast numbers of tribes and has to figure out how to feed them or lose his head
* a duke with feudal ties to both countries whose kings are about to declare war on each other
* other dukes with clear ties to one of the countries but have a free hand as the royal forces have annihilated each other leaving the monarchies weak and potentially vulnerable to ambitious players
* other policy makers such as bishops commanded by the church to establish a new territory with a mercenary army.
Each player would be given a number of turns (each lasting a season or year or so) to make decisions, respond to internal and external pressures generated by the DM and pressures from the actions of each other. As DM, I would still 'rule' what are the results of particular decisions, battles, etc. At the end of a certain number of turns, the resulting situation would then be the setting in which the players find their PCs.
With the right players, I think this could work well. All of the 'pre-game' could be run via e-mail in preparation for the new game. This would also help familiarize the players with the local geography and politics (since the players helped create it) that their real PCs will deal with. Birthright or the new Kingmaker adventure path from Paizo, for example, could be mined for lots of local and realm-level problems to throw at the players in the 'pre-game', particularly if the players don't take the initiative to liven things up on their own.
I think that two features would be critical to make this work. (1) The threat faced by the PCs should never be under the player's control in the pre-game or the threat should be fairly flexible--simply to prevent the players from inadvertantly bypassing the designed adventure. (2) The NPCs that the players control in the 'pre-game' should still be run by the DM if the NPCs are met by the PC during the normal game.
So has anyone tried anything like this? Was it successful? Or was it just another headache for an overworked DM?
For example, I can envision placing a campaign along the border region of a typical pseudo-medieval world, say placed between two countries and humanoid regions. I would then give each of the character one of the factions to command:
* an orcish warlord who commands vast numbers of tribes and has to figure out how to feed them or lose his head
* a duke with feudal ties to both countries whose kings are about to declare war on each other
* other dukes with clear ties to one of the countries but have a free hand as the royal forces have annihilated each other leaving the monarchies weak and potentially vulnerable to ambitious players
* other policy makers such as bishops commanded by the church to establish a new territory with a mercenary army.
Each player would be given a number of turns (each lasting a season or year or so) to make decisions, respond to internal and external pressures generated by the DM and pressures from the actions of each other. As DM, I would still 'rule' what are the results of particular decisions, battles, etc. At the end of a certain number of turns, the resulting situation would then be the setting in which the players find their PCs.
With the right players, I think this could work well. All of the 'pre-game' could be run via e-mail in preparation for the new game. This would also help familiarize the players with the local geography and politics (since the players helped create it) that their real PCs will deal with. Birthright or the new Kingmaker adventure path from Paizo, for example, could be mined for lots of local and realm-level problems to throw at the players in the 'pre-game', particularly if the players don't take the initiative to liven things up on their own.
I think that two features would be critical to make this work. (1) The threat faced by the PCs should never be under the player's control in the pre-game or the threat should be fairly flexible--simply to prevent the players from inadvertantly bypassing the designed adventure. (2) The NPCs that the players control in the 'pre-game' should still be run by the DM if the NPCs are met by the PC during the normal game.
So has anyone tried anything like this? Was it successful? Or was it just another headache for an overworked DM?
