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GM / Player style conflicts
Nerissa
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Well, I'm about to start a new campaign. (D&D 3.0 in my case, but could be nearly anything) I've got the basics of the world set up, although I still need lots of names and NPCs, as well as some refinement. I have 3 players -- my husband and two friends of his/ours. Hubby created his character last night, the other two haven't yet been introduced to my world, so haven't yet created characters.
Hubby and I are more role-playing types, while the other two guys role play a bit, but are more roll-players. I MUCH prefer starting at level 1 and actually developing a character with a story rather than jumping in at level 5 because "you can actually do stuff" (my players' preference). I'd love to run a game filled with intrigue and politics, where the vast majority of their conflict is with other people rather than monsters. They prefer dungeon crawling and monster slaying.
So... I need to resolve the conflict in such a way that we all have fun. So far, I've said they WILL be starting at level 1, but I'm considering bumping that up to 2 to allow dual-class character concepts to have a level in each class. If someone wants to multi more than 2 classes, they'll just have to start with 2 and add the rest later, although I don't see any of these guys going with 3+ classes.
I'm mulling over ways to put them in catacombs and castle cellar dungeons, where they can have their dungeon crawl but I can tie it into an overall political storyline. I'm also considering throwing in some "haunted" ruins for them to investigate, where they would find some history that might throw doubt on the legitimacy of some noble's claim to their family title, or something of the sort. And of course, there's always "a local noble hires you to retrieve X artifact" which can put them into the wilderness for a while, but could also take them to the "urban jungle" in the process.
How do you resolve these types of conflicts? Any ideas on how I can integrate their styles with mine so that we all end up enjoying the game?
Hubby and I are more role-playing types, while the other two guys role play a bit, but are more roll-players. I MUCH prefer starting at level 1 and actually developing a character with a story rather than jumping in at level 5 because "you can actually do stuff" (my players' preference). I'd love to run a game filled with intrigue and politics, where the vast majority of their conflict is with other people rather than monsters. They prefer dungeon crawling and monster slaying.
So... I need to resolve the conflict in such a way that we all have fun. So far, I've said they WILL be starting at level 1, but I'm considering bumping that up to 2 to allow dual-class character concepts to have a level in each class. If someone wants to multi more than 2 classes, they'll just have to start with 2 and add the rest later, although I don't see any of these guys going with 3+ classes.
I'm mulling over ways to put them in catacombs and castle cellar dungeons, where they can have their dungeon crawl but I can tie it into an overall political storyline. I'm also considering throwing in some "haunted" ruins for them to investigate, where they would find some history that might throw doubt on the legitimacy of some noble's claim to their family title, or something of the sort. And of course, there's always "a local noble hires you to retrieve X artifact" which can put them into the wilderness for a while, but could also take them to the "urban jungle" in the process.
How do you resolve these types of conflicts? Any ideas on how I can integrate their styles with mine so that we all end up enjoying the game?
Nerissa on
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I'd consider making a few of those intriguing NPC's that constantly reappear over several adventures, the kind that twirl their mustaches and say, "Curses! Foiled again!" Using those NPC's as your starting villains and keeping them alive with near misses and lucky saves can give the players motivation to keep dungeon delving; as a side bonus, you'll also avoid that trap of becoming bored to tears.
As for specifics, in an urban setting you'd be hard pressed to find a better set of starting villains than wererats; a small group of ECL 2 goes a long way. If nothing in the Monster Manual jumps out at you, I say go with human degenerates of the Undercity, kind of the Brotherhood of Mutants without the sexy spandex. With this kind of scenario, you can customize as you go along. If your players like intrigue, go with the angle that the muties are the result of a mad wizards tinkering and are his personal freak army. If your people like sheer horror, work in a Cthulhu-like angle where the muties willingly turned themselves into abominations.
All of these have the potential to be long running campaigns, but only if the players dig into the meat behind the combat. Plus, they're quick to generate bad guys if you need to in a crunch.
It just means that a single enemy with a 2h weapon won't be able to destroy the entire party.
PC's are employed by the local authorities (crown, constable, city, chicken traders....) to investigate problems and crack skulls.
As they complete jobs for their clients, they move up the food chain; allegiances change and sometimes the players are pitted against a former employer and friend. There you go; christmas for everyone.
Or, you could do what I did with my hack-and-slash buddies in high school: make them the Navy SEALS of the D&D world. You get to create a world with persistence, they get to slit throats...for the guv'ment.
But only if they set it up all tactical-like. If they start to deviate from the program, congrats, suckers! You're now mercenaries with a bounty on your heads. Good times. :twisted:
Already more story than I've ever seen in a D&D campaign. I'm just speculating hee, but if you give them way too much story before they get to fight something, you could end up with a really bored group of adventurers. How much context do you intend to give them to start with, and how much (any) of their own character's backstory are you letting them write?
I might suggest asking them for things they'd want in a character's backstory (general things), and then you write that backstory and hand it off before you play. Why they are all in the same party might be a good place to start.
That's also a part of the problem I have with starting at later levels, actually. If I thought they would bother to come up with a back story that explains how they acquired 5 levels (or whatever) worth of skills, I'd probably have less of a problem with it. As it is, it'll be like pulling teeth to get much of a history from them at all.
I'm kinda thinking that their first adventure will be some form of "spend the night at the haunted ruins on a dare / bet" type thing, which will probably include killing a few low-level undead, other little ruins-type critters, and maybe some forest predators (or desert, depending on which side of the region they start). They should never actually go past the ground floor (maybe the door is blocked by a cave-in), so I can make the rest of the place a bigger challenge for later.
Tentatively, in a few levels I can get a local noble hiring them to retrieve something, which takes them back to the same ruins (now excavated a bit), where they find the interesting historical information. It's all still pretty rough, and I don't want to plan too far in advance because predicting what PCs will do is most definitely NOT an exact science, so I think I can manage not to overload them too much with story at first.
Assuming that's not an option, you can always try starting off with a hack-and-slash campaign and just introducing story/intrigue elements bit by bit. They might become interested in that aspect of the game over time, but even if they don't, at least they'll keep coming back to sessions.
Okay, as far as a backstory that explains 5 levels of experience, you can always have it that there was a war between several kingdoms, principalities, whatever it is you have...City-States... and say that the characters have gained their experience from being in those wars. It may not work for a character concept like a Druid or even some Rogues, but they can have their experience explained in other ways.
As far as getting them to write their backstories, don't expect too much. I've been trying to do the backstory thing since 1993, and nine times out of ten, you get "Uh, he's just...you know...a Fighter. Guy. Thing." Not everyone has that kind of creative streak in them. However, I did find a partial solution while running Amber.
Let them play their characters for a session or two. After they get more of a feel for the characters, you can either ask them to work on the backstory then, OR you can give them each a sheet of paper with 20 questions. Tell them that everyone gets X amount of XP for answering each question, but it can't be just one word. And the 20 questions should mix between the poigniant and the frivolous. And tell everyone to answer the questions in character. You'll be surprised at the results. Most people need a little coaxing to get this sort of thing out of them. Let me give you some sample questions:
I find that the 20 questions bit works a lot better than just chargng people with what most of them feel is ostensibly "homework." Espedcially if you toss a little XP their way. Or you can even make it a competition where the one with the best answers (by vote of course) gets a magic item (of your choosing, like a Rod of Healing or a +1 Dagger or something minor like that).
I will now 'splain.
The group you have (by your own admission) is there for the opening of many cans of whup-ass upon the monster baddies and the gathering of "phat lewts." Fine, let them have their cake but make them bake it; give them the hook of fine rewards with some generic bad-guy cannon fodder but leave a clue to greater treasure with the bodies. When they start thinking about the rewards of the next set of bad guys, then they'll become interested in the plot so they can score more gear.
(Sadly, I think this situation may be the result of excessive grinding in video games; I do it all the time, but when I've got a twenty-sider in hand, I'm not grinding, Ah'm ah role-playin'!)
Now that I'm off the soapbox, I'll ask the question: would you consider role-playing individually with each one of the players? It might be a great opportunity for you to pry into their minds while building a character background; slowly pull them along until you work them into the character class that they want to play, and then when you get everyone together, you'll have a diverse crew rather than a handful of rangers that wield a longsword and a shortsword each.
If you think that the "work them in solo" plan won't work, hand them a bunch of generic character sheets and tell them to pick and then customize; the trick will be to limit the players to no more than one duplicate archetype (two tanks, two casters, etc. etc.) within the group. Unfortunately, this may be harder than it sounds; it all depends upon how friendly everyone is.
I had exactly the same problem with my D&D group. I have to agree with some of the other posters and say you have to ease them in. If thier after "phat lootz" give it to them, but incoperate Rp elements with it. Early on in my campaign i gave the player an amulet, which showed a enchantment with detect magic. Now in the area they were in, they had no way of finding out what it did. Now being powergamers, and having no other magic objects yet, i managed to make them engage with the storyline, as they tried to find out what it did. By the time they did work it out (it was a glorified ID badge) they had become much better RP'rs.
*blink* ok, that works... politics, here we come. But now I've got to get my capital city mapped out, figure out the dynamics of the thieves' guild, figure out the cost for temple healing, potions, and herbal healers since they probably won't have a cleric, and fill in the nobility a bit better than I had though I would need at first... oh, and come up with an adventure hook to get them started, since abandoned ruins probably aren't very common within the capital city, so my prior plan needs to be modified. I probabably should have at least an idea of how the thieves' guild operates before they make their chraacters (looking like tomorrow night)
If you happen to have access to the AD&D 2nd Edition TSR Thieves' Handbook or whatever they called it, that has a great section on Thieves' guilds.
Depending on the kind of characters/guild you wind up with:You could have them either staking a new claim or countinuing enforcement of an old one. Could cover everything from racketeering to making sure the pickpockets aren't skimping on paying their dues. Decent chances for roleplaying there.
They could be ordered to sneak into a noble's home and steal some item, either as repayment for debt owed or as a job requested by another noble. The item could be anything from a fabrege egg to blackmail material against either of the nobles.
For something a bit more noble, you could have the party commit highway robbery on a greedy merchant's caravan.
This is genius.
In my D&D group, we have basically sworn off of starting at level 1. We had a poor week where every night we played, our characters died, being level 1 just sucked, and felt like we were horribly restricted to "find a wandering orc and hope he doesn't crit."
We always start characters between level 3-5, so that we have a good pool of options in every situation. This has always felt especially important for casters, as having several spells to cast right away makes it truely fun.
However, we always make strong efforts to have our characters tied together, and strong motives for the campaign. The best campaign we ever had (we actually will just sit around and talk about it, and often wonder why we can't recreate the awesomeness), we were all in a gang together. I owned a tavern that wew were based out of, one person was my hitman, another my bodyguard, one of them was the sort of the negotiator, and etc. It gave us a reason to all be playing together, and a reason for us to have already gained levels.
We also never started out with magical equipment. It was always just whatever we picked out from the player's book. Actually, we very rarely even got magical items in our campaigns, something we're trying to fix in our next campaign...
I expect that, at least at first, they'll be spending most of their time in the city. I've got the basic structure of the thieves' guild set down, but it could still use some refinement and internal politics (since I expect that to provide some of my adventure hooks). I've also got the basics of city politics in place, with some potential for hooks thrown in there, either as hirelings or in trying to stop other hirelings. This might end up being a D&D version of Shadowrun in some ways.
I'm starting them at level 2 so that they can have one level in each class. Everywhere I turn, I see people complaining that level 1 characters are too easy to kill or whatever. Honestly, I just don't get it. I have no problem creating good, challenging adventures for level 1-3 characters that aren't overwhelming, it just takes a bit of creativity. Yeah, one lucky roll by an enemy can kill them. That's why I hide my dice, and keep track of their hit points. Natural 20's and max damage rolls don't HAVE to be acknowledged.
Of course, it helps that I'll probably use a house rule on hp based on what my husband does when he runs a game, which tends to provide a few more base hp in the beginning without getting silly later on. In a nutshell, you get your constitution in physical hp, no matter what your level. The hp you roll are virtual hp, he calls them luck points, and represent you using experience to narrowly avoid what would otherwise be a hit. Luck point "damage" represents exhaustion rather than physical damage, and luck points come back on their own much faster than physical hp -- I think it's 1 per hour. Once the virtual hp run out, you start taking physical damage -- you're basically too tired to avoid the attacks. Crits bypass luck points and go straight to the physical damage.