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| Not THESE Legend4ry Journeys |
Recently, as in last Thursday, my group and I reconvened with our on-going campaign after a 10 month hiatus. I was out of the country and we left on a cliff-hanger. When I returned I had to write up their continuing journeys and we played various one-shots and other group members took their turn at the helm that is DMing. It was a nice break and it afforded me the opportunity to test out my Portal Under the Stars and Dyson's Delve conversions. I also got to test out a few different methods of adventure writing that I had never done before, namely rediscovering my love of the Skill Challenge.
I had a dilemma, though. The party needed to travel half-way across the map of the known region and I didn't want to gloss over travel and just say, "poof you are magically there." In addition to that, 10 years had passed during our hiatus and they needed to rediscover this new world around them. I'm not much of a hex-grid guy, so I tried to think of a way to do this creatively.
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| Click to ENLARGE!!! |
First off, I decided how long it would take to travel. The map is that of the Nentir Vale with some changes and added cities. I divided up the map into bits and determined that it would take close to 2 weeks to travel from Steinmere (far to the East) to Fallcrest (directly in the center.) This gave me some time to work in the atmosphere of this world which is now overrun by undead and demonic forces.
Long story short, huge climactic cliff-hangery battle at Steinmere before our 10 month hiatus. Two of the party entered the portal to rescue the third (small group.) I decided that they would have no memories of their time in the portal, but that they would all emerge together changed. Mechanically they each got a nice new custom power tied to their fluff. They emerged with no memories of their portal-time and a representative of an ancient order whom they had previously met was waiting for them, having been tasked to wait for the past decade. She was secretly infected with the zombie plague, but was steadfast in her resolve to fulfill her mission of getting them to Fallcrest. The soon-to-be zombie priestess was played by a new player for our group to give us 4 players ultimately. Her PC was to be introduced after the NPC had succumb to her wounds, which mechanically should have been soon.
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| BRAAAAINNNSSS! |
So they traveled. With the help of the priestess, they were able to avoid wandering undead and monsters (mechanically they only had a 1 in 6 chance of wandering monsters each day. Without her it increased to 2 in 6.) I had pre-planned set events every so often in their travels, and even some of the wandering monsters ended up being purely social with potential combat.
What I did to help give the players some buy in and understand how changed the world had changed was to pick one player and have them describe to me what they had seen in their travels that day, then later roll the wandering monster die. At first my players were shy, but after a few days of in-game travel they really got into it, describing the lands as an undead wasteland. It was awesome. They bought into the world they thought they knew and realized quickly how changed both they and the world was. New factions, new risks and challenges and dangers. I repeat that it was awesome.
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| By request: More Autolycus |
While this wasn't Legend4ry game advice by any means, I think it does serve as a good general gaming advice. Let your players describe what they see during their travels to encourage player buy-in to your world. This is superior in many ways to just hand-waving travel, and makes them really feel like they are journeying across your map discovering the world as they go.
You can follow my crew's adventures at our Obsidian Portal page; DORX: Heroes of the Nentir Vale!
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Until next time,
-blob
You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.
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