I originally wrote this for it to be in video format. Since I just don’t have time to record I’ll post it here as a blog.
Dungeons and Dragons; the game of swords, sorcery, and an overabundance of multi-coloured tiefling, dragonborn, and goblin player characters.
Before you click away, let me explain;
A few years ago I was a dungeon master for a short campaign for my usual group. Short campaigns for me are about a year long.
The group was entitled ‘the Bravo Company’ and consisted of some very zany characters.
There was my wife’s character. Wynn, the charismatic cowboy Ranger tiefling, another tiefling called Kane who was a Warlock, a golden dragonborn sorcerer that hated the colour green called Tirnaal, a short and fluffy tabaxi bard called Curly, an eladrin druid called Thorn that really lived up to being a fae, and a frankenstien’s monster character called, um, Junior. He was a fighter.
Now I had not intended this campaign to be the ‘meme’ campaign, but it very quickly became the meme campaign.
Shan, the lass that played Curly, is quite the artist and boy oh boy did she draw some pretty funny things based on the antics of the Bravo Company. From Curly riding a mine cart with a sling shot shooting kobolds, to a vs splash screen of the company about to fight the green dragon boss of the story.
Now you might be wandering what the problem is, as I’ve just made the campaign sound very exciting.
The problem, friends, is that the characters were all exceptionally one note. Each one a meme and, as entertaining as they were in the moment, they had no emotional impact on the party whatsoever. The green dragon was killed and the campaign sort of just stopped there. The jokes had been made and that was that. Fond memories and chuckles, but little more.
Now, let me paint you a far more compelling picture. The same players, save for one, played through their very first campaign with me as DM just a few years prior to the Bravo Company.
The Reprobates, as they called themselves, consisted of a Half-Elf Paladin of Helm called Varic, a Halfling Cleric of Pelor called Talvor (don’t mind the mixture of pantheons), a half-orc fighter played by my wife called Sable, a Halfling Wizard called Isobel, though she was affectionately referred to as Big Mamma, and an elven ranger called Snake Eyes.
They were tasked with defending a small town from a hobgoblin army that was gathering in the woods to the north. They went on daring missions behind enemy lines to sabotage the monster’s efforts and to procure relics from tombs that might help in their fight.
One particular Hobgoblin Commander by the name of Shognor was quite the foe and Varic the Paladin had to duel him, one on one, surrounded by his friends and Shognor’s goblinoid soldiers. The monster was not ready to fight fairly and so Sable the Half Orc had to step in to finish the thing before an all out brawl for their camp ensued.
By the time they fought their way back to town, they found it in flames. They chased down the enemy responsible and found to their dismay that he had slain a Priest called Veronica that had helped the party a lot.
They took their revenge, fighting an undead Shognor and a horde of skeletal goblins before finally reclaiming the body of their friend and returning to the ruined town.
The next set of adventures were a long, long journey to track down the right spell components to use in a resurrection ritual for Veronica, whose body was being kept fresh by her lover casting Gentle Repose over and over again.
That arc took months, travelling, fighting, side questing, all in the aid of finding a diamond to bring back one NPC that the players had grown very attached to.
Now there are several key reasons as to why the Reprobates had more of an emotional impact on my players than the Bravo Company.
One, I stipulated in the Reprobates campaign that each character must have a reason as to why they were in the town. A few of them lived there, some were frequent guests, and one was in hiding there. This gave each character roots within the world and more deeply connected their players to them.
Two, I stipulated that the players must be good aligned characters and races. No goblins or bugbears, no evil humans. Just good people doing their best against an evil threatening to destroy them and their home.
Three, I took their back stories and changed them to slot them into the world. In Talvor’s case, I asked his player if she would like to be the town’s priest and she agreed that would be good. Her character knew the NPC Veronica very well and it was her character that made that link for the rest of the party later on. Each of my players felt as if the world was their world, their home, their responsibility. And that is why it hurt all the more when I took that home away from them, and felt all the more satisfying when they not only took their revenge on the ones responsible but succeeded in resurrecting Veronica months later.
Four, during the Bravo Company campaign, there were no hard and fast rules for the setting I had come up with. It was a do whatever you want game and, whislt wacky and fun, had no grounding in anything greater than ‘for the lols’.
The key to real story pay offs is to ground the players. Restrict them mightily, so that they may shine all the brighter.
I still play with that same group years later and now they play in my own homebrew setting, with my own lore, gods, histories, and genealogies. I was not going to allow this setting, that I’d spent a decade or more creating, to be turned into a meme. At least not all the time.
And, since I trust my players and they trust me, I hope, I started handing down decrees.
Their race must be consistent with the peoples and cultures of the country and surrounding countries they are playing in. They must tie their character to a location and to a god. They can provide details on family and I shall create NPCs for said family in the area. The majority of players must play a martial class, and more besides.
You may think that such rulings are draconian and uncalled for. Yet the result so far, having been nearly two years into the campaign and only hitting level three recently, have been quite remarkable.
The world I have crafted is not an amusement park for them to visit in fancy dress, but a real and breathing society that they are a part of. Perhaps in due time I shall share some of their adventures, though in truth they have been so lost in the small minutia of their fantastical lives that they have only recently left the first city to do a proper dungeon, with proper treasure, and proper danger.
Next time you are planning out a campaign consider drawing strict boundaries for your players. Insist on deeper creativity over and above the shallow breadth of brightly coloured scales and celestial or demonic ancestries. Make the party live and breathe the world.
You might find the game of your life.
Lost Lore Library 