Encouraging Domain-Level Play from the Beginning of the Campaign
Today we’ll talk about how a couple tweaks in the rules and a lot of communication with the players got them interested in setting long-term projects and investing time and resources in changing the world around them. If you want the TLDR, just jump to the end!
About a year ago, I ran a a fantasy open table campaign (think West Marches, but the super lazy, half-assed version of it) at my local RPG club for any player that wanted to drop in for the week. The details of how that worked out and the many things I learned from it will have to be a post for another day, though.
Today I want to focus on how unexpectedly well it encouraged players to getting invested on the setting, using their resources and energy to alter it, as well as jumping straight into politics, business, and building strongholds, all of their own volition!
An Engineered Problem
One of the things I wanted to experiment with in this campaign was a way to prevent players from hoarding wealth and stuff.
Because I was high on the OSR kool-aid (still kinda are, although I won’t get into what is OSR anyway arguments today), I wanted to make them very mindful of what they were carrying. I added some simple encumbrance rules to Baremetal, my own ruleset for fantasy RPG games, so they had a limited amount of inventory spaces, and 100 coins consumed a slot. I was really hoping for a moment where they debated if it was better to grab more gold, or to have enough rations for the trip back to town.
As soon as they arrived from their first expedition, they suddenly became aware of the problem of having to carry around their wealth, and started asking if they could put their hard-earned stolen booty in a bank. I told them that banks may exist in the capital, but that here, at the edge of civilisation, that would not be a possibility.
This created an interesting problem:
- They could not spend it on many items because, again, they had a limited amount of slots
- In this campaign, magic items and potions were things to be found, earned, or stolen, not bought
- Hoarding gold was complicated, because they could not just carry around thousands of coins, and they did not think they could trust leaving the coins stashed in their HQ or buried somewhere
What were they supposed to do with all this treasure then?
I told them that they could exchange them for gems if they wanted (some of them did), but that they’d lose 10% of the value with the trade, and that if at some point they needed to trade a ruby for a stew, that would be a tough but interesting conversation. Some players took me up on this offering, but others were not satisfied.
What were they supposed to do with all this treasure then?
Adventuring Moguls
I proposed to them that, maybe, their characters had aspirations they could build towards in future sessions. Someone wants to be a nobleman some day? They can buy the land now, and slowly start building their fortifications.
Immediately, one player told me he wanted to build a wizard tower, and another one said he wished to establish a gambling operation. After the game, the three of us sat together to see how we could make this happen.
Taking a page from Blades in the Dark and its clocks, I decided that each project would take some time and resources, creating a “progress bar” where each block could be filled with 1000 gold coins. Here’s a rough sketch of what that looked like.
Note: The prices listed below are cumulative, so this “progress bar” can be seen a bit better. It’s worth noting that we never got to complete all the milestones, but it didn’t matter. They were hooked and invested in their new ventures.
The Wizardry Tower
Location
Chaos energy doesn’t flow evenly. In order to build a proper research facility, a location where Chaos is abundant would be necessary. Looking for it yourself would kill all of your adventuring time and drain you of resources, but you could easily pay a few crews of explorers to look for telling signs of suitable places. 2000 gold pieces.
Refuge
Even after the building is finished, it will take a lot of specialised equipment to transform it into a proper laboratory for the study of magic. However, after the tower is in place, you could start using it as an additional base of operations, which could save time and resources, not having to go all the way back to town after an expedition. 5000 gold pieces.
Research
Now the lab is fully equipped, and your character can start looking into creating new spells, potions, scrolls, and delving deeper into the dark arts of magic. 8000 gold pieces.
Students
Your fame precedes you now, for every student you admit, you need to pay an initial fee for tuition in materials and cost of living, but more lines of research will open up, and the cost of creating magic items will be reduced. 1000 gold pieces per student.
Gambling Parlour
The player managed to secure a place for free, so that was not included in the project. Clever play must always be rewarded!
Extra Rumours
Each player had the option to spend 100 gold coins to carouse, socialise and pay informants to either update an existing rumour from the rumour table, or to get a new one. As the parlour started gaining traction, gamblers would start bringing more and more stories to the establishment, increasing the flow of information. For every 4 rumours bought by the group, they would get one for free. 2000 gold pieces.
Free Rumour Weekly Update
The player loved the idea of becoming a trader of secrets, so we agreed that this would be the main function of the parlour. Aside from very interesting roleplaying situations, we pushed harder on the idea that information would come more and more handy as people kept coming to play to the gambling den. Every week, they would get a free status update on an old rumour. 6000 gold pieces.
Revenue
At some point, the gambling den should start yielding some monetary benefits too. Every in-game week, the den would generate 100 gold pieces. 8000 gold pieces. An additional 100 gold coins would be added for every 1000 pieces invested.
Drivers of Adventure
I haven’t even told you the coolest part yet. Those milestones you just saw? They worked like a charm as adventure hooks:
After they found the ideal location for the tower, it happened to be in the middle of some strange ruins they needed to clear out first.
The success of the gambling parlour called the attention of the local thieves guild. Several sessions included beats on the turf war that ensued, which climaxed on an all-out confrontation in the public baths (which, for some unknown reason, are now a pile of rubble).
All while this was happening, even players that did not have a personal long project of their own, got invested in these players’ goals. One of them ended up as a bouncer in the parlour, and another magic-user that joined the table later associated with the first one and started building the tower together…
Potential Future Developments
Sadly, we never saw the wizardry tower or the gambling parlour acting in full swing, as the campaign was short-lived due to the nature of the RPG club. Still, we could all see how they greatly influenced the dynamic of the group, the adventure threads they generated, and the impact it was having on the setting.
Should this have been a longer campaign, I have no doubt these two troublemakers would have ended up taking over half of the land, one by the sheer wielding of the powers of Chaos, and the other through subtle political influence at times, and with the blunt force of extortion and blackmailing as a backup. And this, obviously, would have generated lots of interesting conflicts and adventures.
Conclusions
It was a great experience, and one that was not even planned from the beginning. We just started playing and it emerged naturally. It was pretty low-effort on my side, and totally relied on players’ initiative to make things happen.
I cannot say what we did would work at every table, as I believe it requires a particular kind of player to engage with this dynamic (certainly, some players at my table didn’t get much involved in this), as well as a GM really invested in emerging narratives and sandbox-style campaigns.
To summarise, here’s what worked for me to encourage players to set up long term projects they were excited to work on:
- Forbidding banks and minimising hoarding whenever possible
- Asking them about their characters’ motivations
- Working with them to set up the projects and deciding together what their benefits would be
- Set up clear milestones they can work towards, with benefits along the line
- Making the next step of the project an interesting side quest when reasonable
- Having NPCs and factions react to the developments of their projects
- Openly communicating with them to find out what made them tick
