Laying Some Groundwork

While I had some free time last week, I put a significant amount of that time into planning the upcoming campaign. One part of that was to review the available source material, and notably the official maps of Lamordia.

Unfortunately, my conclusion was that that official map is, to put not to fine a point on it, pretty lousy. And while there are a few fan-made alternatives out there, none of them really filled me with any great confidence.

This did provide me with an opportunity - about eighteen months ago I invested in a Wacom graphics tablet, and have been looking for a good project on which to use it since then. Crafting a new map of Lamordia was just the opportunity that I needed! I'm reasonably pleased with the result - if we accept that I'm not, and won't ever be, a professional cartographer, and if we accept that my artistic abilities are hugely limited, it does at least reach the standards of "not bad" and "functional". Which is probably enough.

Here it is:

Of course, there's another factor in that: constructing that map took the vast majority of the time I had available, and therefore constitutes the overwhelming majority of the preparation I'll be getting done for the campaign. Which is far from ideal. On the other hand, the absence of a good map was a glaring weakness, so I'm inclined to call this a step in the right direction.

The Mists of Lamordia

The next campaign has been chosen, and the group have gone for "The Mists of Lamordia". Our plucky band of heroes are smuggling themselves into Luskan for purposes unknown, when a thick mist springs up. As the mist rises, they find the world is not as it should be - the terrain has changed, the moon is far larger (and the Tears of Selune are entirely absent), and they find themselves coming into a port that should not be there.

My next challenge is to flesh out the campaign. Fortunately I have lots of source material to lean on, courtesy of the Ravenloft books, so it's mostly just a case of pulling those sources into a coherent whole.

And I have three weeks in which to do it.

Latest 5e House Rules

These are mostly aimed at the next work game, but they're what I think I'm going to be using for the foreseeable future anyway...

General
These apply to all three of the proposed campaigns:

• No options outside of the PHB may be selected. (Note: if and when I run a campaign in Eberron, or other published setting, any options that are considered iconic to the setting will also be permitted.)
  
• Ignore alignment, traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. These don't really attach to anything, so the player can give them exactly as much, or as little, attention as he or she sees fit.
  
• Each time a level is gained, the PC will gain an Inspiration token. This can be used on any one d20 roll, at which point it will cancel disadvantage (if applicable) and then grant advantage on the roll. The token can be used at any time, even after the die has been rolled and failure declared, and can be given to another player if desired. If it is not used by the time the character gains another level, however, it is lost.
  
• Feats are permitted, multiclassing is not.
  
• All characters must use fixed hit points per level.
  
• Clerics may choose any Domain, regardless of their patron deity. Ideally, the selection should make at least tangential sense, but even the extreme case will be permitted.
  
• Starting equipment is as granted by class and background, plus one randomly-rolled trinket. Players may not opt to take the starting money instead. However they may choose to spend some or all of the money granted by their background.
  
• Characters can carry ten 'things'. Multiple identical items count as a single 'thing', but they do need to be identical. However, rations and water, torches and lantern oil, and treasure do not count as 'things' - these will be tracked separately on a whole-party basis.
  
• XP will be granted immediately after it is earned. Levels are gained at the end of the session. All PCs will gain the same amount of XP, regardless of actions, whether the player is present, and indeed whether the character is present.
  
• XP is not granted by slaying monsters. Instead, it is granted for completion of goals. The exact nature of the goals, and the specific awards will be campaign dependent (see below).
  
• The Tension Pool will be used for tracking various things.

Quest for Memory

• Factions will be ignored.
  
• Each PC will be assigned a personal quest. It is up to the party whether, and when, to pursue these quests.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests (including a PC's personal quest). The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.
  
• In addition, a quarter award will be granted for finding an unattended cache of treasure. PCs are therefore encouraged to explore!

Mists of Lamordia

• Factions will be ignored.
  
• Each player will be tasked with devising a personal secret that their PC does not want to see revealed.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests. The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.
  
• In addition, a quarter award will be granted for learning secrets. This includes the revelation of each PC's personal secret.

Blades in the Desert

• Each player will be tasked with devising an anchor NPC associated with their PC. The nature of that character is largely up to the player.
  
• XP will be granted for completing encounters and completing quests. The award granted will be per the 'Medium' encounter budget for the PCs' level, with a half award granted for only partial success. Note that how the encounter or quest is completed is not considered.

Factions

I'm surprised that I haven't really talked about 5e's use of Factions previously. So, here it is...

To it's credit, 5e at least tries to build some roleplaying elements into characters - they have Traits, Bonds, and Flaws that tie into the Inspiration system, and there's a space on the character sheet for a Faction. "Lost Mind of Phandelver" then introduces representatives of five factions which PCs can then either join or not (and later adventures then use those factions to a greater or lesser extent).

Unfortunately, almost all of those roleplaying aspects don't really go anywhere in the game - the Inspiration system really depends on the DM paying attention to five unique elements for each of the 4-6 players at the table and remember to actually award Inspiration (yeah, right...), while the Factions mostly don't actually do anything in the game - they just kind of sit there once introduced.

Which is all rather unfortunate, as it's really quite a neat idea.

Building Better Factions

My inclination with Factions is to largely ignore them for most campaigns, but for campaigns where they are important to put in the effort to make them really important. For example, my proposed "The Quest for Memory" campaign doesn't really have a place for Factions. They'd just be taking up headspace that could be better used for other things, so I'll just ignore them. By contrast "Blades in the Desert" puts Factions front-and-centre, so I want them to actually matter.

With factions, my feeling is that less is more - I think a small number of well-detailed factions is better than many shallow ones. Additionally, all factions need to be somewhat ambiguous in their motives. That is, you probably don't want a clearly 'good' faction or a clearly 'evil' faction, as then the players will find themselves guided by what they 'should' do, which rather negates choice.

In fact, I'm inclined to think that the ideal number of factions is five. And, as the diagram below shows, each faction should be allied with two other factions (the blue arrows) and opposed to two others (the red arrows).

This means that the factions are inherently in an unstable balance, which is rife for generating adventures - no faction can become dominant alone, due to the two opposed factions, and if two factions together become too powerful then a fragile alliance of the other three will move to oppose them. But as soon as the need ceases to be desperate, that fragile alliance will break up due to inherent tensions, and the status quo will be resumed. (Of course, the PCs are a wild card in this - by their efforts they may be able to secure outright victory for their faction(s)).

Of course, each faction then needs goals - what do they want to happen? What do they want to not happen? (Of course, putting the goals at odds is an easy way of generating opposition, though not the only one.)

Factions also need an internal structure, be it a loose collection of cells, a formal hierarchy, or whatever. There needs to be a way for PCs to get involved, and there probably need to be some ranks within the faction, and ways of rising through those ranks. And, ideally, there need to be some sort of benefits associated with rank, so that the PCs want to actually rise through them. That's especially true if there are obligations associated with being in a faction; the benefits need to outweigh the costs or PCs will just walk away.

My gut feeling as regards Factions, at least in a normal campaign, is that they are probably best left in the sidelines for most of the early levels. By level 4 you probably want to have introduced all the factions and have most PCs formally joined to one of them (not necessarily the same one throughout the group, but be wary of conflicts).

The majority of play with Factions probably takes place in levels 5 - 10 (the second tier). In these levels, I would expect the PCs to fairly rapidly rise through the ranks within their Faction, perhaps as often as one rank per level. By 10th level, they should probably be amongst the movers and shakers within their faction. As they move into the third tier, then, one of two things can happen: either the PCs become the leaders of their faction, or the PCs simply transcend their factions as they move on to bigger and better things. Either is valid; it really depends on the needs of the campaign.

And that, I think, is that. In a later post I'll flesh out the five factions in the "Blades in the Desert" campaign... unless those cease to be relevant.

The Side Dishes

An age ago, I posted to the effect that a good campaign really should have something more than just "orc and pie" searches for things to kill and stuff to take. I referred to this "something more" as the side dish.

Given that I'm now prepping the next campaign for the work game (actually, three such campaigns), I find myself in need of those side dishes. So, here they are:

Blades in the Desert: This campaign focuses on interaction and the five factions. Therefore I will prepare five factions (two merchant houses, the local lord and his men, a hostile foreign power, and the criminal underworld) that PCs can join or oppose. In addition, each player will be challenged to come up with an "anchor NPC" tied to their character; said character will also be tied somehow to one or more of the five factions, thus immediately involving the PCs in the events of the campaign.

The Mists of Lamordia: This campaign focuses on the finding and keeping of secrets. As such, each major element, be that a key NPC, a faction, and indeed each PC, will have a secret to be found and/or kept. At character creation, each player will be challenged to come up with a secret about their character - at a key time they may then choose to reveal that secret to the group, with the corresponding award of XP.

The Quest for Memory: This campaign is the most classic D&D experience, and as such will focus on the completion of quests. The environment will therefore be studded with quests, major and minor, that the players can choose to follow up on or not. In addition, I will prepare a dozen quests prior to character creation, and at the outset of the campaign each player will roll a die to determine their character's individual quest - these can be followed or ignored as the party wishes, and will grant XP as for any other quest.