Random Encounters Shaping Campaign Choices: Emergent Story
This is what you get when you open your game up and have no
expectations; what happens when you present a problem to the player characters
that can’t be solved by a skill check or a character ability; when the world is
rich enough and has enough moving parts that the adventuring party can invent
multiple possible solutions; they make a choice and change the campaign world,
not once but several times.
Is this the DM's version of "let me tell you about my character?"
This group isn’t in my megadungeon, but is in a different
part of the campaign world. It’s a swamp
with the southern portion occupied by the Barrow Maze (I call it the Swallowed
Cairns) and the northern portion is the hex crawl swamp of Dyson’s Challenge ofthe Frog Idol. The party needed a pilgrimage to clear a catastrophe effect, so they got a vision that the Alabaster Oracle
(an NPC in Dyson’s module) could tell them of a pilgrimage; she sent them to
the Frog God. (I gave the player that
wanted a pilgrimage to rid himself of his catastrophe a choice of 3 different
quests and he choose this one. We all
regret this.)
Quick Unnecessary Background Side Story: Integrating Challenge
of the Frog Idol and Barrowmaze
In Dyson’s module (CotFI), the Frog God is a remnant of an
ancient war of the swamp (including a Rain God and a Rage of Nature God) with
elven allies against some giants. I
changed it to a more general battle of life (with the Frog God, personifying
the mutability or chaos of life) against death (an Empire of Necormancers/Death
Worshippers). The Empire of the Dead built
the Barrowmaze (aka Swallowed Cairns) and a grand city in the swamp, and the decaying
causeway of CotFI’s became an imposing edifice of cyclopean stones. CotFI’s Necromancer on his floating island of
corpses was now a searcher of lost necromantic artifacts. The Rain God’s task in the war was to drown
the City of the Dead to create the swamp there today. The Frog God, though of Chaos, took to the
side of Life as he represented Mutability and Change opposed to the Finality
and Stagnation of Death, or as he said in the deepest and most stilted voice I
could muster, “COMPLETE OPPOSITIONAL PARADIGM!” Sorry, that really worked well at the table
and made all the players laugh.
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| Frog God gettin' fit |
End Side Story
The First, Obvious Choice: They Decided Against It
Immediately
The random events have several times now changed how they
have decided to handle the last part of the Frog God’s Challenge: recovering
his basket from a school (what do you call 36 nixies?) of nixies who are using this giant magic basket as a boat to entertain earth bound mortals.
The party decided they didn’t want to fight or steal from the nixies,
but to trade. The nixies weren’t opposed
to trading, but they needed a way to entertain air-breathing mortals; they
needed a boat in exchange. How then, was
the party to find a boat?
Their Second Choice
There certainly are boats within the world: the home city, a
few hexes away bordering the swamp has a river draining it and is an inland
port for a trading route. Purchasing, if
they saved up for it, would be an option though a difficult one (3,000gp for a
keel boat, plus more for nixie style comforts).
Swindling or stealing would be possible though it would have
repercussions. The players
deliberated. Once they had given up on
getting the boat/basket from the nixies directly, this is where I had
envisioned them going. In between
sessions, I began making notes on merchants and ship captains.
A Third Choice: Providence of the Random Tables
But then my random encounter table intruded. The table was heavily embellished from the
one provided in Challenge of the Frog God.
I included other swamp creatures, and derived a series of tables using
the Tome of Adventure Design and a few Raging Swan Products. As I do, I over complicated things with all
kinds of random flora and fauna, different creature activities and their random
disposition and plugged it in to a random table generator.
 |
| Thank you, inspiration pad pro for empowering my insanity. You can tell I was lazy and didn't properly program around the grammar of all the possible results. |
On the random encounter table I had included what every
swamp needs: A Green Hag. She arrived improbably with a friendly
disposition, albeit modified to neutral due to her nature of being a literal
evil witch. With some quick improvisation, I decided that her motivation,
besides eating children and halflings, was to be reunited with her 2 sisters to
reform their coven. Plenty of
foreshadowing provided by the swamplings they were temporarily camping with (backwoods
Cajun halflings who ran away from the Malee-co-cot, aka witch), lead the
players to understand that the Swamp Hag was dangerous business. They parleyed,
and when she asked the party gave her gifts.
She (I named her Haddo, mis-remembering the gender of a character from a Blood Ceremony song) decided not to eat them.
I didn’t know why she couldn’t find her sisters herself at
that moment, but she gave the party fetish bags which the party could give to
her sisters; in exchange the sisters wouldn’t attack the party and would be
able to be re-united. Not deciding
anything and just happy that they didn’t have to fight the random encounter,
the group parted ways with the witch.
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| In their defense, she didn't appear like this. |
So of course after another two weeks of trudging through the
swamp (did I mention we all thought this quest had gone on too long? Just like
this story) on their way back to the Frog God with another of his prizes, “monster
from nearest encounter location” shows up as a result on my table and the nearest encounter and the map shows the other sister, another Green Hag named Lyda. I’d somewhat
prepared with a name and a stereotyped found image for her house:
The encounter distance was enough that the players could
have skipped this if they had wanted. But
they had the fetish bags and I guess they wanted to use them: hammers and
nails. So they said hello as politely as
possible and introduced themselves as being on an errand from her sister and
here’s this fetish bag.
Two things get
improv’d here: I came up with a
preliminary answer to why the coven was separated, and the players tried to
shoot the moon with the favor the Hag offered in return for being
reunited. It made sense that the Hag
Coven had been separated with a curse decades ago; curses are in their idiom.
The players asked, since this Hag had such a nifty walking house, if the 3rd
sister had a boat. I hadn’t planned
anything for the 3rd witch yet, other than that her name was Treau
and that she was in a different swamp hex farther away. I picked up a 6 sided die and decided this
was a pretty ballsy request on the part of the players and gave them a 50%
chance. Yep, she had a boat. I let them do some talking and persuading and
even some uses of their character abilities and (old school DMs may judge me)
skill checks. The witch said yes, the 3rd
sister has a boat and I’ll make sure she gives it to you if you see us re-united. They’d given the witch gifts, and the witch
really did want to be reunited with her sisters.
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| Both Hags from the 5e Monster Manual |
After another stop by the Frog God, who being of chaos had little opinion
on the reunification of the Hag Coven, the party returned to the Oracle. They reasoned the Oracle could tell them the location of the 3rd Hag sister
(the eldest, a Night Hag this time).
With some warning now, I had a bit more back story that the Oracle could
provide: the Hag Coven’s separation was
the work decades ago of a Bishop of the Church of the Sun; She cursed the Hags
to lose each other in the swamp and never be able to find each other; It
stopped them from sending plagues and stealing children from the town. The players digested this and deliberated
some, but they decided they still wanted the most expedient way to end this
quest, and pressed the Oracle to tell them where the 3rd sister was
in this interminable swamp.
Dan-dan-daaaaaaan!
So now between sessions I planned how the Coven would wreck
their long desired revenge upon the new Bishop (well, actually there are two competing Bishops in
a Bishop War, but that’s a whole other campaign story) and the town. If reunited, the Hags will set about enslaving
the swampling village (Cajun Halflings, f’sho) and using them as carriers to
carry plague into the town, a plague that the Bishop’s couldn’t cure. Nasty consequences that the players will see
and decide themselves if they want to take responsibility for fixing.
The Almost 4th Choice
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| The Alabaster Oracle. She saw this one coming Doh! |
The Almost 4th Choice
Having left the Oracle and on their way to find the 3rd
Hag Sister, the players ran in to another situation from the random encounter
chart; a party of swamplings being attacked by Trogrims (from CotFI:
troll-goblin mutants, regenerating warty runts). Hating the trogrims, they decided to
intervene and save the swamplings, succeeding.
‘How can we help you?’ the swamplings asked. “You have a boat?” the players responded. I pondered.
The swamplings are off in the swamp, way off the feudal grid; they hide
whenever a lord tries to force them to be serfs on some manor. They’re poor, but resourceful and they really
do want to help. I decided that it would
be a smaller chance than the Hags: 25%.
I told the player that asked the odds and told him he could roll: if the
swamplings had a house boat good enough for the nixies, it was yours.
He was 4% off. Another player asked if he could use his luck (a reroll power) on the roll. The book says it’s only for your character, but I said, “Sure, go for it.”
But it was not to be.
In retrospect, I perhaps could have better said "Yes, but " to the failure. The swamplings might have known of a bandit captain with a hidden house boat. Or offered to help steal a noble's pleasure barge, because swamplings aren't above that. I need to put a "yes, but" post it note on my DM stuffs.
Another Random Chance: 5th Choice
Fast approaching the last known location of the 3rd
Hag, the random encounter table produced some very odd flora (cypress trees
with levitating seed pods, we’ll figure out that business later) and
foreshadows of a group of Dryads.
Hmm. “Okay, so past those cypress
and their funky seed pods, you hear the sound of singing in what the elf
recognizes as sylvan.” I ad-libbed the
dryad group to be 4 dryads and a satyr cavorting around a fairy ring, like they
do, albeit in as PG a fashion as dryads and satyrs can be together.
The blade dancing elf with performance skill (because that’s how they dance) decides to harmonize with the singing voices and he nat-20s the skill check, changing the wary fey creatures from a guarded neutral disposition to a friendly one. After the introductions and the satyr’s flirting, the players ask if they know where the 3rd witch sister could be found. It ended the party atmosphere of the encounter, and one of the players was trying to tell the others that they certainly didn’t want to let the dryads know WHY the players wanted to find the witch. I’m okay with table talk like that: others may not. But some party members persisted and the dryads and satyr were informed of the players’ intentions to reunite the Coven. Not wanting to come directly to blows, the fey asked and the party explained they needed to trade for the nixies’ boat for the Frog God, and this was the only boat that would do.
Distressed, the dryads considered what they could to stop this, and the players asked again: do you have a boat? Dryads certainly don’t want to part with wood (I think I missed a satyr pun here), but the Coven having a reunion tour would certainly do terrible things to the swamp and would hurt more wood than would be lost in making a boat. After marshaling some player skill checks and offering up some found expensive magical components, they succeeded in making their way to their 5th choice.
“No we don’t have one, but maybe we could make one, if you help.”
They’re still a few encounter checks of helping gather wood and guarding the dryads, but they could have their 5th choice made and on their way next session.
That is, as long as something random doesn’t occur.
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