I was discouraged after the second session. We had a lot of people show up, and that’s often not good for moving things along. I think there are 13 people with characters, and 10 or 11 showed up for session 2. The party went to clear out the kobold lair (from H1: Keep on the Shadowfell) and that meant scaling up the resistance numbers to a point where it was hard to keep track of all the monsters. The 4E concept of minions did make it less difficult than it could have been …
Minions are in most ways identical to other monsters of their type as far as defenses, weapons, etc., but they have only one hit point. If you hit them, they’re done. They’re the shock troops, cannon fodder, red shirts … they might hit you first, of course. I can see it now: taunting someone because their character was killed by a minion …
When you have a lot of teens playing D&D, the focus can be hard to maintain. And the fact that the D&D rules deal in large part with combat can railroad you, the gamemaster, into believing that that is what your game should be about. I fell into that trap, and ended up with a lot of disinterested players.
The second session was so discouraging, in fact, that I realized that I needed to make a major shift in the middle of the summer campaign. What the game should be about is conflict – not just combat. And the place to aim for when designing the conflict is “how do I promise them power and then make them work to get it?”
So in session three, I said “remember how we were right in the middle of a big battle at the kobold lair? Forget that. Here’s the new situation.” And I gave them the very basic outline of what they were doing: Albert’s character Miku, a female Dragonborn warlock, was travelling to a great council of Dragonborn nobles in order to help choose the next Dragonchief (a somewhat nebulous office at this point, but important sounding). Albert is about average in terms of how well he focuses on the game, but having his character be the center of attention definitely improved that.
Then I said: “Now – it’s up to you individually, and us as a group, to begin to create a story worth telling. Why is your character with the group?” This nearly crashed and burned. I don’t think it was that they didn’t care … it was that most of them didn’t have any experience with this kind of thing. I was saved by Johnny, who not only came up with something fairly compelling for his own character, but started throwing out ideas for everyone else as well. He was also instrumental in streamlining the basic idea for the whole campaign. The other players responded to his suggestions and changed or improved them in ways that they liked.
We also played through an encounter as they were talking about these concepts. They were delayed in getting to the meeting by a mysterious robed figure. One of the characters had heard that a powerful wizard of the Order of Vazantik was going to be at the council, so suspicion immediately fell on that order. When they finally arrived, they were met with a scene of blood and death: in a cowardly sneak attack, the Dragonborn nobles had been cut down – seemingly every last one. Even as they rode down to investigate, they saw a Dragonborn warrior surge up from where he had fallen and attack some orcs who were lingering on the battlefield. The party rushed to his aid, but not before he had taken a mortal wound.
In his dying moments, that Dragonborn noble, Lord Gorlach, became a pivotal element of the campaign. Johnny had said that his rogue Deyereth had been caught trying to steal something from a Dragonborn noble. Instead of putting him to death, he had allowed Deyereth to take an oath of service to him. His first assignment was to go and find Miku and bring her back to the council meeting. So during the death scene, I said “This is the guy.” Which got all kinds of interesting in-character responses from Johnny – “my lord, I’ve failed you” (because he was late getting to the council), etc.
Then it was decided that Sam’s character Hadarai knew the secret of Miku’s birth – which was not only that she had been adopted by her noble family, therefore casting doubt onto her status as a noble, but also that she was in fact the daughter of Lord Gorlach himself, whom Hadarai had secreted away because of a prophecy written by a member of the Order of Vazantik, which had to do with the downfall of their order, or the prevention of that, at least.
The rest of the characters who where there now have some kind of connection to Miku, from “friend of the family for several generations” (an Elf) to “Lord Gorlach transferred my service to Miku in his dying moments” to “has knowledge of the Order of Vazantik” to “a paladin sent along with Deyereth to make sure he doesn’t fall into temptation”. The best backgrounds create relationships between the characters or between non-player characters who are common to the characters’ backgrounds. Those relationships start to create interest and buy-in in the way a set of stats, powers, skills and feats cannot.
Lord Gorlach’s final act, as the only remaining member of the council, was to appoint Miku as the next Dragonchief. Of course, this entails some minor details like getting the approval of the Dragonborn Elders who live in the ruined capital of the fallen Dragonborn Empire of Arkhosia and overcoming Lord Gorlach’s family’s objections – not to mention the objections of the Order of Vazantik. It should be interesting to see where they take it.
