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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    ElfRogueGirl

    Join Date
    Jun 2018

    Default Campaign concept derailing

    I've been GMing a long-running campaign (half because it's a long campaign itself, half because we've sometimes had months of no playing due to schedule conflicts) which started as a very political campaign set in an Empire on the verge of falling into a civil war and collapsing upon itself from the pressure of outside invaders. With one of the players being a noble owning a castle and the other players being his retainers and personal friends, the intention was that he would be thrust in a world of politics and backstabbing and managing his estate and army as war becomes inevitable and he has to carefully choose his alliances. Furthermore, there was a level cap of 5 to give the campaign a slightly more realistic and balanced feeling, so that there would always be a sense of danger involved (a level 5 character can be overwhelmed by a mob of peasants if there are enough of them). I wanted to give the campaign a Crusader Kings 2 kind of vibe.

    Unfortunately, the player who was elected to become that noble is a wizard shut-in with no social skills whatsoever. It's been a struggle to make him involved in politics, because he never had any projects, never tried to involve himself in the politics of the Empire, and generally focused on staying out of things. Which is understandable, there are neutral parties in many wars, and he was courted by the parties involved to try and gain his support. His family also had a rivalry with another noble which was intended to make for a long-running conflict between them.

    To make a long story short, I often had to force alliances on him through coercion and kidnapping of his family members to make him do anything, and have given up on the low fantasy concept by adding further outside threats to keep things engaging because he decided that he only wanted to focus on what was outside rather than inside the Empire (the main threat was an orc invasion, so he refused to participate in the political game under the justification that there were more important things to take care of first). In turn, I've added: The wood elves are being mind controlled into hating humans and desiring their destruction by a druidic artifact; barbarians from the north are invading; the undead are rising in the southern deserts; drows and duergars are attacking the dwarves; a dragon destroys the armies of several factions while they are locked in combat; demons have covertly taken over a city.

    So obviously, my initial concept was derailed pretty badly by my attempts to give my players something to do, and the low-fantasy world has turned into a high-fantasy world with low-capped characters. In my attempts to salvage things, I've given my players the option to play a second group at the same time, who would themselves be adventurers trying to do the things that a noble couldn't do. As such, the adventurers have become much more important to the campaign than the nobles themsleves, because the nobleman was disgraced when his inaction caused the entire population of his castle to be massacred and his position as head of the family was taken over by his younger brother. This means that he is no longer part of the political world and has become pretty much useless.
    I'm thinking of dropping the noble group entirely and focus on the adventurers and make them hunt down a single objective that will result in one of them ascending to godhood and breaking the level cap for the entire world.

    So, um, with all that ranting done, I kind of would like opinions of where I went wrong, how I could have kept things from devolving into such a mess, and if my objective at least has a chance of giving a satisfying end to my campaign. I understand that I might have gone rather confusing here and there, so if there are parts you guys would like me to elaborate on, please let me know.

    Edit: I just now realize I should have probably posted this in the meta forums rather than those specific to D20s. Should I repost it there and ask for this one to be deleted or some such or might as well just leave it here?
    Last edited by Resileaf; 2018-06-07 at 10:46 AM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Nov 2011

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    you can always report your own post and ask it to be moved.

    This sounds like a session 0 failure. The players simply weren't that interested in the actual concept you had, and didn't build something to work well with it, so it didn't work.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    ElfRogueGirl

    Join Date
    Jun 2018

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    Hmm. I wouldn't say they were uninterested, as we had talked at length about it beforehand. It was something we built together and worked on. And I let the players decide each their nobleman concept (to decide who would be the castle's owner), and they all voted for that guy. All in all, I think they were looking forward to it.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Ogre in the Playground
    Join Date
    Nov 2011

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    well, it sounds like they chose poorly then. A political campaign requires you to pay attention to politics; having the noble, who is necessarily the focus, be disinterested makes the whole politics thing not work. Was the player doing the noble truly interested?

    It might also not be the style of play they (or some of them) truly enjoy; sandboxy style play requires a lot of proactive behavior, some people are muhc more reactive.

    If you had to pressure him to do anything, then the concept wasn't working, and an OOC talk with the players was necessary to decide on an adjustment.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    SamuraiGuy

    Join Date
    Jan 2018
    Location
    Swamplandia

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    Agreed. The problem, as you describe it to us (bearing in mind there are several other viewpoints out there) is a lack of engagement in the fundamental story by the head player. It happens, god knows I've been in the position of trying to talk a character who out ranked mine socially into engaging the plot, or out of doing something that would get us all killed. It should have been dealt with by talking out of game to the player, or possibly the whole table.

    Although there is another possibility, which is that you may have set up enough moving parts that you gave the player analysis paralysis. If he couldn't tell what they biggest threats were, or judge the relative immediacy of the various threats, then inaction becomes an attractive choice, because if the problems come to you, they'll probably do so one at a time, and you won't have to worry about losing your castle to the Drow, while you were out fighting the Orcs.
    Last edited by Andor13; 2018-06-07 at 01:11 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    ElfRogueGirl

    Join Date
    Jun 2018

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    Quote Originally Posted by Andor13 View Post
    Agreed. The problem, as you describe it to us (bearing in mind there are several other viewpoints out there) is a lack of engagement in the fundamental story by the head player. It happens, god knows I've been in the position of trying to talk a character who out ranked mine socially into engaging the plot, or out of doing something that would get us all killed. It should have been dealt with by talking out of game to the player, or possibly the whole table.

    Although there is another possibility, which is that you may have set up enough moving parts that you gave the player analysis paralysis. If he couldn't tell what they biggest threats were, or judge the relative immediacy of the various threats, then inaction becomes an attractive choice, because if the problems come to you, they'll probably do so one at a time, and you won't have to worry about losing your castle to the Drow, while you were out fighting the Orcs.
    Alright, I see where the problem was in my GMing. Sounds like trying to talk out of game first would have been the first thing to do before things got out of hand. I let myself put too many moving parts at the same time and in the end, there's just nothing to focus on.
    Ironic then that in the end, what he lost his castle to was his own brother.

    At the very least, I hope my attempt to push in a different plot will salvage the game into something interesting and engaging. I'm thinking of using what will happen in the end to influence a future game of Starfinder, although that's most likely a subject for a different thread.

  7. - Top - End - #7

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    I will add that most often the players don't know what they want.

    So when you say ''political intrigue'' they think ''nothing'', so they say ''yes''. Really, you would need to stop and explain exactly what you mean for something like an hour. You can't just say a couple words and move on.

    And you really, really, really need to have the players ''get'' the game and understand the game and for everyone to be on the same page.

    Most political intrigue games require the players to have active characters IN politics...otherwise the game does not work. You can tell the players this, several times...but they still might not grasp the concept.

    Now, a good trick that I often use is to add a penalty to encourage (aka force) the player on the right path. One I have used is ''the curse is that for each day you do no politicking your character loses one hit point, permanently." Now, the player in question here did have his poor character loose five hit points permanently, before he finally ''got it'', but after that the game ran amazingly smoothly.

  8. - Top - End - #8
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    ElfRogueGirl

    Join Date
    Jun 2018

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    For what it's worth, one of the players is an avid player of Crusader Kings, and I brought the concept to him first (he's a GM too, in fact we alternate GMing different games every week) and he loved it.
    In retrospect, I should have pushed for him to be the nobleman instead.
    Last edited by Resileaf; 2018-06-07 at 03:24 PM.

  9. - Top - End - #9
    Ogre in the Playground
     
    OldWizardGuy

    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Frozen City
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Campaign concept derailing

    Generally speaking, players are more likely to want to get involved if the cataclysmic event is closer to home. "There is a heresy building strength in your demesne." "An usurper is rallying an army against your citadel." "Rebellious elements are gathering to demand a lowering of taxes in your demesne." Leading police forces to punish things is something I would do. Trying to save an empire that is collapsing around them is something the owner of a single castle should not be responsible for.

    Adding more fantastic threats does not make your game High Fantasy. The stakes are already high enough with the empire about to collapse and the known world about to be ruined. Adding more things doesn't change the fact that the world is ending. Low Fantasy is about smaller things like farmsteads, mines, trade routes or villages being in jeopardy. High Fantasy is about world-changing events. Adding in fantastic stuff doesn't change the stakes.
    "Movement speed is the most important statistic in this game."

    "Give them no mercy for they give no mercy to us."

    "I see one of those I kill it!"

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