RangerWickett
Legend
To put it briefly, I've got a very free-form element of my campaign I need to figure out, where the party wants to pit various temples against each other. How do I fit that into a D&D game?
Inspiration: Lately there has been a 'beef' between two musicians - Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I'll include the synopsis as I understand at the bottom of the post, but the TL;DR is that they traded songs insulting each other, and after a few months the public has mostly embraced Kendrick as the winner, and Drake's credibility has taken a big hit.
I want to draw inspiration from this recent beef for my campaign.
Setting: It's a Bronze Age world, inspired by Sumeria and Babylon, where a pantheon of different gods and their temples all are led by a high priest (called a Logos) whose power is focused on a great ziggurat in the main city, No-Ostalin. The party's long-term antagonist is that Logos, who is abusing her power like a tyrant, rewarding loyalty, punishing those who won't help her, and basically threatening to bring the whole nation down due to her ego. But before the party can go up against her directly, they need to erode her support from among the various temples (and then ideally find someone who can step in to run things who won't suck).
Her main base of support comes from 5 temples whose gods are respected and influential.
Beshel - goddess of the sea, also seen as an arbiter of law
Abgal - god of the wastes, also a protector of trade and travel
Allatu - god of war, whose temple has a lot of 'prisoners with jobs' which they took from conquered enemies
Ngasis - god/goddess of the sun and the moon, also an architect protecting the city with strong walls
Regkel - god of the dead, who ensures each family's ancestors are honored in the afterlife; the Logos primarily serves this god, and the implicit threat is that if you oppose her, she can punish the souls of your ancestors
There are many other minor gods with less political power (and I could invent some if you want), but I have established two temples which are powerful but aren't pledged to support the Logos.
Chebas - goddess of the river, also patron of agriculture, and thus revered by perhaps the greatest number of people, though most of them are farmers in rural areas, not in the city
Melendiel - god of hedonism and good fortune, like the 'cool uncle' who lets you drink beer before you're old enough and tells you not to trust your elders
Plot: The campaign's medium-term goal is stopping the Logos from getting her hands on what, basically, is Noah's ark - a big boat that was stranded in the mountains after a great flood, and which if she possesses it will let her conjure fantastical beasts to serve her. She's a few months away from assembling the manpower to get the thing out of the mountains, and once she does, the boat will be transported to No-Ostalin on the waters of the river that is named after the goddess Chebas. Before she transports her precious cargo down the river, the Logos wants the temple of Chebas on her side.
To that end, the Logos has taken a priestess of Chebas as an 'honored guest' (i.e., hostage) and is trying to figure out what she could offer the Chebasans.
The PCs already stole an artifact out from under the noses of the temple of Beshel (sea goddess) which will help them seize the boat while it's in transit down the river, and during that mission they learned that, oof, the Beshelans are still secretly practicing human sacrifices (which are officially forbidden), and all their high ranking priests gradually transform into fish-y people like something out of Lovecraft, which is why they have such fancy full-body robes.
The players have said that what they want to do is help the Chebasans get out from under the threat the Logos poses, and to get them on the party's side. They also want to pit the temples against each other so the Logos's supporters are fractious.
Sounds good, and if I were writing a novel I could figure this out. But how to do it in a game?
Designing Adventures That Amount to Political Intrigue: I recently played Ghost of Tsushima, which had four allied NPCs whom you could recruit for 'the big climax' if you helped them with their personal quests. Each of those quests had a handful of discrete objectives which you could achieve by doing all your samurai combat stuff.
One character would want you to rescue her blacksmith brother from the Mongol invaders, so you'd start by raiding a Mongol camp for information, then recruiting a sake merchant who had permission to travel in Mongol territory, then hiding in his wagon to infiltrate a Mongol fort, then busting out the brother, then liberating a forge so the brother could use his blacksmithing skills to make you a weapon you needed to breach the defenses of a castle.
Each stage was easy to wrap your head around, whereas if the game had just told the players, "Go find a way to break into the castle," you'd probably wander around confused.
So if the PCs want to provoke a rivalry between temples, what are some stages they could undertake?
1. They have an NPC ally who is a disgraced priest of Jetwan, a minor god of secrets, who can at least put them on the right track for where to start each of the plot lines. Maybe for each temple, there's one quest line, with 4 steps. Obviously I'll need to tweak things based on player choices, but having a framework would help get things rolling.
2. First they need to meet some of the key characters of each of the temples, and you don't want it to get boring, so those scenes should be a mix of action and mystery and socializing. Some might need help with legitimate goals, some might want help with crime, some might be traveling and in danger, some might be trying to investigate the party's activities.
3. I can't have everything be in the city, because dropping bodies will attract too much attention, and fighting only humans gets boring. So the stuff each temple is involved in needs to be a mix of local and rural, with some reason for there to be monsters involved.
4. It'd be nice to have some, like, mini-bosses established whom the party can see the danger of from afar at first, and eventually one plot arc or other will pit the party against them.
5. And maybe have one instance where the resolution of two temple's plots intersect in the same climax.
---
So, Kendrick vs Drake:
So maybe at least one of these temple vs temple plots should literally just involve performers in taverns or whatever performing songs that insult each other.
Inspiration: Lately there has been a 'beef' between two musicians - Kendrick Lamar and Drake. I'll include the synopsis as I understand at the bottom of the post, but the TL;DR is that they traded songs insulting each other, and after a few months the public has mostly embraced Kendrick as the winner, and Drake's credibility has taken a big hit.
I want to draw inspiration from this recent beef for my campaign.
Setting: It's a Bronze Age world, inspired by Sumeria and Babylon, where a pantheon of different gods and their temples all are led by a high priest (called a Logos) whose power is focused on a great ziggurat in the main city, No-Ostalin. The party's long-term antagonist is that Logos, who is abusing her power like a tyrant, rewarding loyalty, punishing those who won't help her, and basically threatening to bring the whole nation down due to her ego. But before the party can go up against her directly, they need to erode her support from among the various temples (and then ideally find someone who can step in to run things who won't suck).
Her main base of support comes from 5 temples whose gods are respected and influential.
Beshel - goddess of the sea, also seen as an arbiter of law
Abgal - god of the wastes, also a protector of trade and travel
Allatu - god of war, whose temple has a lot of 'prisoners with jobs' which they took from conquered enemies
Ngasis - god/goddess of the sun and the moon, also an architect protecting the city with strong walls
Regkel - god of the dead, who ensures each family's ancestors are honored in the afterlife; the Logos primarily serves this god, and the implicit threat is that if you oppose her, she can punish the souls of your ancestors
There are many other minor gods with less political power (and I could invent some if you want), but I have established two temples which are powerful but aren't pledged to support the Logos.
Chebas - goddess of the river, also patron of agriculture, and thus revered by perhaps the greatest number of people, though most of them are farmers in rural areas, not in the city
Melendiel - god of hedonism and good fortune, like the 'cool uncle' who lets you drink beer before you're old enough and tells you not to trust your elders
Plot: The campaign's medium-term goal is stopping the Logos from getting her hands on what, basically, is Noah's ark - a big boat that was stranded in the mountains after a great flood, and which if she possesses it will let her conjure fantastical beasts to serve her. She's a few months away from assembling the manpower to get the thing out of the mountains, and once she does, the boat will be transported to No-Ostalin on the waters of the river that is named after the goddess Chebas. Before she transports her precious cargo down the river, the Logos wants the temple of Chebas on her side.
To that end, the Logos has taken a priestess of Chebas as an 'honored guest' (i.e., hostage) and is trying to figure out what she could offer the Chebasans.
The PCs already stole an artifact out from under the noses of the temple of Beshel (sea goddess) which will help them seize the boat while it's in transit down the river, and during that mission they learned that, oof, the Beshelans are still secretly practicing human sacrifices (which are officially forbidden), and all their high ranking priests gradually transform into fish-y people like something out of Lovecraft, which is why they have such fancy full-body robes.
The players have said that what they want to do is help the Chebasans get out from under the threat the Logos poses, and to get them on the party's side. They also want to pit the temples against each other so the Logos's supporters are fractious.
Sounds good, and if I were writing a novel I could figure this out. But how to do it in a game?
Designing Adventures That Amount to Political Intrigue: I recently played Ghost of Tsushima, which had four allied NPCs whom you could recruit for 'the big climax' if you helped them with their personal quests. Each of those quests had a handful of discrete objectives which you could achieve by doing all your samurai combat stuff.
One character would want you to rescue her blacksmith brother from the Mongol invaders, so you'd start by raiding a Mongol camp for information, then recruiting a sake merchant who had permission to travel in Mongol territory, then hiding in his wagon to infiltrate a Mongol fort, then busting out the brother, then liberating a forge so the brother could use his blacksmithing skills to make you a weapon you needed to breach the defenses of a castle.
Each stage was easy to wrap your head around, whereas if the game had just told the players, "Go find a way to break into the castle," you'd probably wander around confused.
So if the PCs want to provoke a rivalry between temples, what are some stages they could undertake?
1. They have an NPC ally who is a disgraced priest of Jetwan, a minor god of secrets, who can at least put them on the right track for where to start each of the plot lines. Maybe for each temple, there's one quest line, with 4 steps. Obviously I'll need to tweak things based on player choices, but having a framework would help get things rolling.
2. First they need to meet some of the key characters of each of the temples, and you don't want it to get boring, so those scenes should be a mix of action and mystery and socializing. Some might need help with legitimate goals, some might want help with crime, some might be traveling and in danger, some might be trying to investigate the party's activities.
3. I can't have everything be in the city, because dropping bodies will attract too much attention, and fighting only humans gets boring. So the stuff each temple is involved in needs to be a mix of local and rural, with some reason for there to be monsters involved.
4. It'd be nice to have some, like, mini-bosses established whom the party can see the danger of from afar at first, and eventually one plot arc or other will pit the party against them.
5. And maybe have one instance where the resolution of two temple's plots intersect in the same climax.
---
So, Kendrick vs Drake:
I had to be brought up to speed by my wife, because I don't normally listen to either of them, but the synopsis as I understand it:
1) many in the rap fan community were talking about Kendrick, Drake, and another artist (Cole) as being the current 'top three' in rap music.
2) Drake released a song where he said he was number 1 and scoffed at the idea that Kendrick or Cole deserved to be compared to him.
3) this kicked off a series of back and forth songs, released by Kendrick and Drake in the span of a few months, that contained lyrics denigrating each other.
3a) a few other artists joined in.
3b) Drake mostly made generic insults and proclaimed how cool he was.
3c) the verses targeting Drake were much more cutting and personal - accusing Drake of having a secret kid he wasn't raising, saying Drake was merely playing at being a 'gangster' whereas other rap artists actually had legitimately been criminals, other critiques of Drake's persona being illegitimate like pointing out he was Canadian and had grown up with an easy life, and - um, - accusing Drake of being a pedophile.
4) the community seemed to find Kendrick's disses were much more impressive and persuasive, and so collectively it was agreed he was the winner.
5) on July 4, Kendrick took a sort of victory lap by releasing a music video of his final diss track, which was well-received.
1) many in the rap fan community were talking about Kendrick, Drake, and another artist (Cole) as being the current 'top three' in rap music.
2) Drake released a song where he said he was number 1 and scoffed at the idea that Kendrick or Cole deserved to be compared to him.
3) this kicked off a series of back and forth songs, released by Kendrick and Drake in the span of a few months, that contained lyrics denigrating each other.
3a) a few other artists joined in.
3b) Drake mostly made generic insults and proclaimed how cool he was.
3c) the verses targeting Drake were much more cutting and personal - accusing Drake of having a secret kid he wasn't raising, saying Drake was merely playing at being a 'gangster' whereas other rap artists actually had legitimately been criminals, other critiques of Drake's persona being illegitimate like pointing out he was Canadian and had grown up with an easy life, and - um, - accusing Drake of being a pedophile.
4) the community seemed to find Kendrick's disses were much more impressive and persuasive, and so collectively it was agreed he was the winner.
5) on July 4, Kendrick took a sort of victory lap by releasing a music video of his final diss track, which was well-received.
So maybe at least one of these temple vs temple plots should literally just involve performers in taverns or whatever performing songs that insult each other.