Month: December 2017

Campaign Hacking: Tomb of Annihilation

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Some posho’s flunky comes up to you and offers to strand you in a malarial jungle swamp, in which you must busk for enough money to outfit yourself for an expedition into a death-god’s lair and smash an artifact so the posho can have her hit points back. When you’re done, abase yourself before the merchant prince’s manor where she’s staying to let her know she’s good to go home.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an unfair summary of the framing device used to kickoff Tomb of Annihilation — but it’s not too far off course. For the record, I really like a lot of what ToA has to offer in terms of gameplay, but some of its setting assumptions rub me the wrong way. I’m planning to run it, but not stock out-of-the-book.

jungles-of-chult

It’s no secret that I love exploration campaigns.

When preparing a new campaign, perhaps the most important ingredient is the call to action. Your “elevator pitch” to the players should suggest to them exactly the sorts of adventures they’ll be having, and they’ll imagine characters they can project into that expectation of action. Everything in your preparations should point back to that question: How will the campaign use this detail?

Luckily, I recently ran across this tweet, which prodded me in the right direction, I think, for a game more in keeping with my tastes, and also that empowers the players more than making them thralls to a fantasy one-percenter.

Yes. Excellent. Flip the assumption.

With that principle in mind, I bashed together the campaign notes below. So how, then, can I frame the events of Tomb of Annihilation so that they can be used in the context of a reverse-grave-robber premise?

Anti-Imperialists

The PCs are members of a sociopolitical faction known as the Reclamationists. They can be native Chultans with an interest in protecting their own destiny, or they can come from abroad, acting against exploitative interests seeking colonial dominance of the jungle. The PCs are rebels, a resistance faction, heeding a moral mandate.

(GM Notes: I actually probably won’t set this in Chult, as I’m more attracted to other campaign worlds, but I leave it untouched here for the sake of clarity.)

blackpanther-lupita-3-1001932

Playable characters. Okay, maybe this is a still from Black Panther. You get the point.

Beliefs

  • An ecological interrelationship exists between humans and nature, acknowledging the inherent connections between people and their surroundings.
    • “True freedom lies where folk receive nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth.”
  • Economic value derived from land (including natural resources and natural opportunities) belongs equally to all members of society.
  • Cultures and communities make sovereign decisions for themselves, and outside influence intrudes upon that sovereignty.

(GM Notes: This is swiped almost whole cloth from the Wikipedia entry for the Diggers, which seemed like a good conceptual fit.)

History

The most commonly accepted origin of the Reclamationists is the unification of a druidic circle and a locality of tenant farmers. With the spiritual guidance of the druids, the land-workers rallied to a common cause, giving rise to the faction’s motto, “All who believe are together and have all things in common.” Reclamationism spread among numerous land-working classes, and various offshoots of it exist, from deity-aligned dominionists to secular humanists and everything in between. It is a form of agrarian populism and often finds antagonism from traditional feudalists, across numerous nations.

(GM Notes: This section is pretty weak. It needs more supportive, actionable detail. It does, however, indicate some potential conflict, whether internal to the Reclamationists or from external entities trying to hinder opposition.)

Objectives

  • Occupy! Reclaim public lands that have been privatized.
    • Dig them over, pull down hedges, fill in ditches, etc. to plant crops.
  • Return any items of cultural significance to the cultures that claim them, if such cultures are still extant
  • Ensure that any items taken for academic purposes are taken by reputable academics — none of this “sell it to a museum or private collector” nonsense
  • Harry the efforts of factions seeking to exploit the resources of Chult
    • Ex.: The Merchant Princes are speculators intending to profit from colonial interests plundering the resources of Chult
    • Ex.: The Flaming Fist at Fort Beluarian is a rent-seeking organization extracting revenues from those who would themselves explore and exploit the lost regions of the jungle
    • Ex.: The Order of the Gauntlet may have some admirable aims in opposing the undead, but it may have more imperialistic aims, and cannot be completely trusted until any other objectives have been discerned.
  • Act in opposition to those entities that extend their influence at the expense of others
undead-of-chult

Expect a great many undead foes. Undead are an inarguable call to action.

Opportunities for Action

  • Smash colonials, especially where they conflict with indigenous communities
  • Expand knowledge of indigenous entities
  • Recover items of cultural significance from those who would exploit that cultural significance for private gain
  • Explore the unknown

(GM Notes: Note the strong verbs in these last two sections, the calls to action. Most of them stand on their own, but some could use some touch-up. “Ensure,” “act,” and “return” can probably be replaced with more robust actions that are more engaging on their own.)

A Simple Narrative Model

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In my day job working on computer games, I’ve been looking into a number of games that have procedurally generated features. From algorithmically built worlds to randomized characters, the computer creates various components and turns the manipulation of them over to the players. The result is an emergent narrative of the players’ story. Consider this in contrast to a more heavily scripted game structure in which the narrative beats are specifically planned. In games with key procedurally generated components, the heaviest decision making and the consequences imposed on the world are driven by the players’ choice, as opposed to the narrative designer’s (or in this case, the GM’s). While the GM always arbitrates the rules, some amount of outcome is always dictated as a result of player choice — because interaction is what distinguishes a game from more traditionally consumed media.


Heat Signature features procedurally generated characters and game spaces, and this critical video posits that three questions form the basis of the player’s interactions with and investment in the game. A simple expression of these three questions translates into the medium of tabletop RPGs, as well (and isn’t contingent on procedural generation).

SimpSymm_06

Example procedurally generated 3D geometrical prints.

What do the players have?

In this case, “have” is a broad understanding of the characters’ capabilities. This can include everything from their equipment to their skills to unique powers or functions. D&D’s class features, Vampire’s Disciplines, Mutants & Masterminds’ Advantages: These are all under the umbrella of what the players have, and they go a long way toward satisfying the essential experience of the game. The players can have much or they can have very little — the story of the game is about using what they have to effect change.

What do the players want?

At its simplest, what the players want is their immediate objective. Save the princess. Slay the dragon. Intercept the shipment. Beyond that, the game grows in complexity and the story grows in meaning as the players layer their characters’ personal desires with the shared narrative goal. The archetypal adventuring party is the most common example of this, and Vampire made much of subverting common goals and interleaving them with conflicting personal goals. Most games build upon the relatedness of goals by constructing the players’ various aims that can be represented as Venn diagrams, and groups that have good dynamics often see player characters assisting each other in achieving their personal objectives.

Venn.001

An example of where a party’s interests and goals may overlap. Note that Limahl later went on to a musical career with Kajagoogoo.

What happens next?

This is up to you. This is the intersection of what the players have, what they want, and how the game systems model their attempts to achieve their goals with the tools at hand. This is where the verbs happen, this is where the static scene becomes a dynamic story. This is why everyone gathers around the tabletop.