Hooray, more stuff for this campaign I’ve been working on for way too long.
Over time I’ve been transitioning the original concept for this campaign from a very structured, traditional storyline into a more Mass Effect or Borderlands style almost sandbox progression. Due to a series of brainstorming sessions that popped up after finally getting to game again I’ve been contemplating turning the system into a more Elder Scrolls style of gameplay with a few hand rails to guide the players to the storyline.
This causes me an issue though. I like to make sure my encounters are well planned out in advance and appropriate to the setting/party. This obsession is what usually has caused my campaigns to break down into worthless heaps of garbage thrown together with a poor narrative structure. I don’t want that to happen anymore, but a sandbox style makes it far more difficult to maintain the level of organization I want for gaming sessions.
This dilemma has led me to think about it long and hard. The current game I get to play around in is a sandbox style campaign where we the players have completely derailed any of the plans the DM had in the beginning because we basically decided we would rather start our own feudal kingdom/colony. With that happening it makes it increasingly difficult for our DM to spontaneously create new content to set before us.
The DM does a good job at it, but we only play maybe once a month and take care of all of our Major role playing outside of the actual gaming sessions via email. (This game is really showing the great advantages of modern technology applied to tabletop gaming, which is making me hopeful for having a more robust gaming life again. More about that another time though.) My problem is that if I tried to do what he’s doing I know I’d be lazy and screw it up for my players if I didn’t plan it out. No one wants that. So I’ve figured out a few ways to get around this inherent lazy streak I have by developing a Bounty Board system that allows me to randomly generate encounters appropriate for the PCs. Add it in with the concept of the “Five Room Dungeon” (5RD) and you can infinitely generate new adventures for players on the fly with minimal effort expended.
I’m still working on the percentile charts for this but that’s the easy part of the system. The challenge is coming up with a way to generate these things while maintaining variety and not creating the same problems introduced by the core system’s random encounters tables (can you guess how I feel about DnD’s random encounters system? I’m known to whine about these types of things), namely the chance that you’ll make something out of character for the game you’re running. Either the encounter will be wildly outside of your ideal challenge rating, you’ll see something that doesn’t fit with your flavor showing up, or you’ll end up with things that just don’t feel right being shoehorned into your game.
For some people that works, but I don’t like it personally. So I worked out a way to randomly create missions for a bounty board type system for any new area that you would end up in. You start off with a randomly generated encounter level ranging from two levels below to two levels above current average party level. That’s easy enough to give you an idea of what you should be seeing the party fighting against. This of course will also help you more easily generate rewards appropriate for the encounter.
The next step is to determine the type of quest/bounty you’re after. Since this is a generic bounty board type quest I can be lazy with the general category of the quest you will be going after. In addition to storyline missions being on these boards there will also be randomly generated quests in the following categories; Monster (Notorious), Monster (group), NPC (Individual), NPC (Group), Fetch/Rescue, Escort.
Each of these quests is pretty straight forward in how they’re going to play out for the PCs, but I’ll lay them out below for clarity.
The Monster (Notorious) category will have an individual monster of some type that is either a bigger/meaner version of a local beasty (like an advanced Dire wolf, a vampire gorilla, or gargantuan spider, something you’d normally encounter, but advanced per the rules or that has a template applied) or a big unique monster that isn’t normally encountered in an area (like a Hydra, or a Medusa. Some type of mythical and mean thing that will give the players a challenge outside of the norm).
The Monster (Group) category will have the PCs hunting down a group/collection of monsters that are harassing an area. Pretty standard MMORPG fare at this point (kill these 10 gnolls/spiders/were-dire wombat ettins). Kill the monsters and/or remove their nest/base of operations. The monsters will be common ones for the area.
The NPC (Individual) is your typical bounty hunter operation. You hunt down a criminal or whatever using their wanted poster. They’ll usually have a small entourage but most of the EL rating is from the NPC you’re hunting. The character will be a PC class to ensure maximum challenge level.
The NPC (Group) is going to be NPC/PC classes acting as brigands or something similar.
Fetch/Rescue quests will be hunting down items from the nearby area or rescuing people who’ve been kidnapped.
Escort quests aren’t going to be your video game ones with retarded NPCs walking face first into enemy bullets. These are going to be some type of convoy or NPC escort into an nearby area where you’re either going to be fighting off waves of enemies or you’ll be ambushed along the way.
As I mentioned before I will be using the 5RD format for these bounty board quests. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a 5RD is a formula for making easy to run adventures that are likely to engage every member of your Player’s party. They consist of 5 “Rooms” (duh) that each have their own unique, single challenge for the characters to deal with. I use “rooms” in quotes because this isn’t about literally making a typical dungeon with only 5 rooms all in a row. Each room is just a concept for a new area with a single challenge in it. It could be those 5 literal rooms or it could be 5 different parts to a chase scene.
Room 1 is the entrance/guardian. You can make it a puzzle, a skill check of some type, or a combat encounter. Room 2 is a puzzle or Role Playing challenge. Room 3 is a trick and/or set back. Room 4 is the climax/big battle. Room 5 is the reward/revelation/twist.
So using a dungeon, you could have a Puzzle Door or a minotaur for room 1. Room 2 could be a statue on a floor switch type puzzle or an enchanted statue that requires you to solve a riddle to proceed. Room 3 could be the dungeon’s boss monster causing a cave-in that the players have to figure a way around. Room 4 would be facing the boss down while his minions swarm you. Room 5 would be raiding their hoard after finishing them all off.
Using the Chase example, room 1 would be encountering the fugitive you’re after and tracking him to the outskirts of the city you’re in. Room 2 would be convincing an NPC to point you in the direction they saw him go. Room 3 could be the NPC giving you bad info and leading you into an ambush, or the fugitive crossing a river and severing the only ferry across. Room 4 capture of the fugitive, whom you have to not kill. Room 5 would be bringing him back to the city for your reward.
So the things you can do with the 5RD are very diverse, but they allow you to use the format to give your players a very diverse set of challenges for a session without much extra effort. This makes them perfect for dealing with a random quest format like what I’m developing. The first 3 rooms also have the advantage of being interchangeable to fit with your particular format/feel in case you think something flows better when done in a different order than the standard format.
The challenge here is to make a random generation table for these 5RD formats that will allow for diverse options that reduce the chance of running the same things regularly. I think I’ll develop a table for each room type with sub tables for each condition. I’m not sure on the specifics, but that might be the best way. That’s if I even need to use a random content generator for these. Who knows, maybe the basics will be inspiring enough on their own.
Hopefully this entry isn’t as rambling as I think it is and you can make heads and tails of it. Let me know what you think. I need input otherwise I’m just in an echo chamber of my own self crapulence where all of my ideas are perfect. Which is a great world to live in until you try to actually apply it to reality.
Over time I’ve been transitioning the original concept for this campaign from a very structured, traditional storyline into a more Mass Effect or Borderlands style almost sandbox progression. Due to a series of brainstorming sessions that popped up after finally getting to game again I’ve been contemplating turning the system into a more Elder Scrolls style of gameplay with a few hand rails to guide the players to the storyline.
This causes me an issue though. I like to make sure my encounters are well planned out in advance and appropriate to the setting/party. This obsession is what usually has caused my campaigns to break down into worthless heaps of garbage thrown together with a poor narrative structure. I don’t want that to happen anymore, but a sandbox style makes it far more difficult to maintain the level of organization I want for gaming sessions.
This dilemma has led me to think about it long and hard. The current game I get to play around in is a sandbox style campaign where we the players have completely derailed any of the plans the DM had in the beginning because we basically decided we would rather start our own feudal kingdom/colony. With that happening it makes it increasingly difficult for our DM to spontaneously create new content to set before us.
The DM does a good job at it, but we only play maybe once a month and take care of all of our Major role playing outside of the actual gaming sessions via email. (This game is really showing the great advantages of modern technology applied to tabletop gaming, which is making me hopeful for having a more robust gaming life again. More about that another time though.) My problem is that if I tried to do what he’s doing I know I’d be lazy and screw it up for my players if I didn’t plan it out. No one wants that. So I’ve figured out a few ways to get around this inherent lazy streak I have by developing a Bounty Board system that allows me to randomly generate encounters appropriate for the PCs. Add it in with the concept of the “Five Room Dungeon” (5RD) and you can infinitely generate new adventures for players on the fly with minimal effort expended.
I’m still working on the percentile charts for this but that’s the easy part of the system. The challenge is coming up with a way to generate these things while maintaining variety and not creating the same problems introduced by the core system’s random encounters tables (can you guess how I feel about DnD’s random encounters system? I’m known to whine about these types of things), namely the chance that you’ll make something out of character for the game you’re running. Either the encounter will be wildly outside of your ideal challenge rating, you’ll see something that doesn’t fit with your flavor showing up, or you’ll end up with things that just don’t feel right being shoehorned into your game.
For some people that works, but I don’t like it personally. So I worked out a way to randomly create missions for a bounty board type system for any new area that you would end up in. You start off with a randomly generated encounter level ranging from two levels below to two levels above current average party level. That’s easy enough to give you an idea of what you should be seeing the party fighting against. This of course will also help you more easily generate rewards appropriate for the encounter.
The next step is to determine the type of quest/bounty you’re after. Since this is a generic bounty board type quest I can be lazy with the general category of the quest you will be going after. In addition to storyline missions being on these boards there will also be randomly generated quests in the following categories; Monster (Notorious), Monster (group), NPC (Individual), NPC (Group), Fetch/Rescue, Escort.
Each of these quests is pretty straight forward in how they’re going to play out for the PCs, but I’ll lay them out below for clarity.
The Monster (Notorious) category will have an individual monster of some type that is either a bigger/meaner version of a local beasty (like an advanced Dire wolf, a vampire gorilla, or gargantuan spider, something you’d normally encounter, but advanced per the rules or that has a template applied) or a big unique monster that isn’t normally encountered in an area (like a Hydra, or a Medusa. Some type of mythical and mean thing that will give the players a challenge outside of the norm).
The Monster (Group) category will have the PCs hunting down a group/collection of monsters that are harassing an area. Pretty standard MMORPG fare at this point (kill these 10 gnolls/spiders/were-dire wombat ettins). Kill the monsters and/or remove their nest/base of operations. The monsters will be common ones for the area.
The NPC (Individual) is your typical bounty hunter operation. You hunt down a criminal or whatever using their wanted poster. They’ll usually have a small entourage but most of the EL rating is from the NPC you’re hunting. The character will be a PC class to ensure maximum challenge level.
The NPC (Group) is going to be NPC/PC classes acting as brigands or something similar.
Fetch/Rescue quests will be hunting down items from the nearby area or rescuing people who’ve been kidnapped.
Escort quests aren’t going to be your video game ones with retarded NPCs walking face first into enemy bullets. These are going to be some type of convoy or NPC escort into an nearby area where you’re either going to be fighting off waves of enemies or you’ll be ambushed along the way.
As I mentioned before I will be using the 5RD format for these bounty board quests. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a 5RD is a formula for making easy to run adventures that are likely to engage every member of your Player’s party. They consist of 5 “Rooms” (duh) that each have their own unique, single challenge for the characters to deal with. I use “rooms” in quotes because this isn’t about literally making a typical dungeon with only 5 rooms all in a row. Each room is just a concept for a new area with a single challenge in it. It could be those 5 literal rooms or it could be 5 different parts to a chase scene.
Room 1 is the entrance/guardian. You can make it a puzzle, a skill check of some type, or a combat encounter. Room 2 is a puzzle or Role Playing challenge. Room 3 is a trick and/or set back. Room 4 is the climax/big battle. Room 5 is the reward/revelation/twist.
So using a dungeon, you could have a Puzzle Door or a minotaur for room 1. Room 2 could be a statue on a floor switch type puzzle or an enchanted statue that requires you to solve a riddle to proceed. Room 3 could be the dungeon’s boss monster causing a cave-in that the players have to figure a way around. Room 4 would be facing the boss down while his minions swarm you. Room 5 would be raiding their hoard after finishing them all off.
Using the Chase example, room 1 would be encountering the fugitive you’re after and tracking him to the outskirts of the city you’re in. Room 2 would be convincing an NPC to point you in the direction they saw him go. Room 3 could be the NPC giving you bad info and leading you into an ambush, or the fugitive crossing a river and severing the only ferry across. Room 4 capture of the fugitive, whom you have to not kill. Room 5 would be bringing him back to the city for your reward.
So the things you can do with the 5RD are very diverse, but they allow you to use the format to give your players a very diverse set of challenges for a session without much extra effort. This makes them perfect for dealing with a random quest format like what I’m developing. The first 3 rooms also have the advantage of being interchangeable to fit with your particular format/feel in case you think something flows better when done in a different order than the standard format.
The challenge here is to make a random generation table for these 5RD formats that will allow for diverse options that reduce the chance of running the same things regularly. I think I’ll develop a table for each room type with sub tables for each condition. I’m not sure on the specifics, but that might be the best way. That’s if I even need to use a random content generator for these. Who knows, maybe the basics will be inspiring enough on their own.
Hopefully this entry isn’t as rambling as I think it is and you can make heads and tails of it. Let me know what you think. I need input otherwise I’m just in an echo chamber of my own self crapulence where all of my ideas are perfect. Which is a great world to live in until you try to actually apply it to reality.
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