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Yora
2014-09-10, 06:53 AM
When it comes to fantasy, I much more love stories set in the wilderness than those dealing with politics and conspiracies in the cities. It's very common in adventures that the PCs go into the wilderness to find some dungeon or lair, but usually the reason they are doing it is because it somehow helps important people in the city to gain an advantage over their enemies.
But it turns out to be actually much harder to run a campaign in which the wilderness is the default environment and visits to cities an adventure into a strange place. Running an entire game centered around rangers, druids, barbarians, and similar characters is something I somehow can't seem to really get figured out.

Any ideas how to do this?

GorinichSerpant
2014-09-10, 08:16 AM
Survival, as in can the village survive the winter/sandstorms/drought/you name it.

Make the important people who want an advantage not in a city, like having dragons or nomadic tribes fight for power.

Caravans, and you don't go into the actual city for whatever reason. Alternatives include that traveling between villages.

Yora
2014-09-10, 08:27 AM
I think in a Wilderness campaign, wilderness survival should have both a greater and lesser degree of importance.
If you have to look for water, food, places to sleep, and paths to your destination every day you travel, it becomes so common and mundane you normally don't need to bother with paying it any special attention. Like cleaning your horses or buying food in a regular campaign. It's something that happens all the time and is not noteworthy, and usually there's not really much that could go wrong.
But when having a campaign about the wilderness, the PCs should have situations from time to time where things do get wrong. In an adventure about a group of knights traveling to a dragons lair, having a horse with supplies fall into a chasm is just an annoyance that takes time away from the real story everyone is interested in. Searching for new ways to get food or tents wouldn't be fun, so such situations usually don't show up. In a wilderness campaign, they have much more of a place.

Don't deal with survival rules when everything is going according to plan and is business as usual.

Kol Korran
2014-09-10, 09:34 AM
Tell the truth, I never quite thought of a mostly wilderness campaign, but Here are some thoughts:

Where the "City=>dungeon" campaign treats the wilderness as just something to traverse, (Other than maybe some thematic or random encounters on the way), a wilderness campaign's main strength I think is... exploration.Wilderness are vast, and a lot of the appeal on them is the ability to explore, go wide and "off track" (if there are tracks), and "boldly go whee no one of our village has gone before" sort of stuff.

Since I started with a sci-fi quite, I'd like to suggest a perspective on an old exploration game which I think worked great: Star control 2. If you haven't played the game, the basis of it is that you command a starship, go explore your corner of the universe, explore strange world, find ancient secrets, deal with other civilizations, and try to assemble a league to fight a great enemy. I think many of the principles of the game could be used in a wilderness campaign:

- Free roaming campaign and gathering resources for your home base: While there were plot specific locations and such (I'll discuss this later), a lot of the game involved going to some system, and checking it out. Some of this was for minerals and life forms, the two currencies of the campaign, but also in the hope of finding... something secret- the very ESSENCE of what drives exploration forward.

If I remember correctly, you are using a hex map and random generator for your world, right? So this is perfect. What you need is something to draw the PCs attention. Campaign important secrets and civilizations will be discussed later, but I think you can add things not directly tied to the main quest.

First thing is resources for the village/ home base, people in it and the party itself. Say that the shaman of the village can build them magical items, but they need certain materials, such as rare plants and crystals, or specific animals and such. But even bigger stuff- say they want to build better defenses for the village, they need soem place for a quarry and so on. Or maybe good grazing grounds and more. You don't need to turn this into a full Civilization mdoe, but it's enough for the party to know of some things that are needed, and how they can help, to drive investigation. Then either use a random generation, or place some things with some hints ("The traveler spoke of a hidden cave some days north west of here, near a great oak".) and you got some motivation. These leads to more motivations and complications later on.

The stories can be made quite interesting by adding some sort of a complication to the desired resource (There is a nymph near the oak, or there is a tribe of kobolds who gain sorcerers powers from it and so on).

But not just resources. All kinds of other things, be they random or planned. A flock of birds who'se song can deliver visions, or make you fall asleep. A fountain's spirit which try to posses people who drinks from it. A place where the sky seem... wrong, and the voices are softened, and so on. Not all have to make sense, or can be dealt with directly, but they can captivate the players' mind, draw them to explore, and later on you (Or the PCs) can tie them in.

The idea here is to make exploration motivational, beneficial to the party, and have surprising situations to explore.

I do suggest to put more things to occupy the players attention than the game did. They were quite... sparse on those.

- Campaign secrets: If you have an over arching campaign in mind (A situation to solve basically, with numerous ways to go about it, and complex problems), You can pepper the surroundings with all kinds of hints, challenges, benefits and hindrances to that affect. It works basically as above, just quite intended, less random, and with a greater chance that someone/ something/ some event will direct the party more to the matter.

In these events, the game is less about the random exploration, but about finding enough clues to direct to the location, the hazards on the way, and the location itself. In this way is is a bit similar to the usual games, but the travel en route should prove more important, and take up more of the time. More Lord of the rings journey, less Star wars. The wilderness aspect plays in the gradual travel, and the events on the way to the local.

- Other powers and their domains: "We are not alone in the world..." There are other people, other life forms, or other powers. Have them exert some influence, be it by forces patrolling some areas, affecting some areas (Lumber operations to start with?) and a clash of cultures, ideas, species and more. This for me was the most interesting part of exploration. Since this is a wilderness, chances are that most PCs haven't met the majority of the races (Or so I assume?) so meeting them, dealing with conflicting interests and such should be great fun. Have some resemble the PCs more (Humanoids?) Some less so, some bizarre and alien.

An important fact in this is to have the other power have a real impact, not just on the PCs, but also on exploration on travel, and possibly the PCs home. In the Starcon game the big enemy (The Ur Quan), occupied a big part of the map, so until you were strong enough- you had to travel around it (Which kept 2 races on the other side hidden till fairly late). One of your secretive allies (The Zoq Fot Pik) were stationed INSIDE the Ur Quan territory, which made excursions to go meet with them hazardous, but quite informative of your enemies.

- The problem with exploration: Well... it takes time. Unless you put enough thing to keep your players' attention occupied, you my get quite side tracked. If you're running a full sandbox, then that's ok, and it also means you have time to spare. If however you have less plying time, and it is precious, or if the players like to be set what to do, and are less of the "initiative taking" sort, then this works far less... If so, I'd suggest to ditch the "random exploration" bit entirely, and limti the other ides to form a more straightforward game. Focus still on the civilizations, and on the road to the destination, not the destination itself.

I hope this helps in any way, good luck
Kol.

Thinker
2014-09-10, 11:38 AM
Here are some brainstorming ideas:
Give characters a survival rating that determines how long they can stay in the wilderness without needing to replenish supplies. For groups, use the average and make some sort of modifier for which season it is. This gives the players some idea how long they can stay away from civilization without having to worry about rolling every day. Like you say, it is pretty mundane if they're doing it all the time.
As the GM, roll for weather each day. The weather becomes much more important when the players cannot huddle inside for a thunderstorm. Maybe you could add elementals or harbingers of the weather that can be opponents for the adventure. Trying to outrun the windstorm? You have to outrun the wind elementals. Trying to stop a typhoon? You have to defeat the Typhoon Harbinger at the center of the storm.
For tasks, they might not be performing favors for nobility in kingdoms, but there are still power brokers in the wild. There's the greedy farmer who is trying to get his grains back to civilization. There are druids who protect large areas of the wild. There are lost nobles who need saving. There are powerful fey who rule their domains (Lady of the Lake?). There's also the whole dynamic of human versus nature: these people are just trying to survive.
Character goals are a pretty handy way to build adventures. Ask your players for goals for their characters and build adventures around that.

Red Fel
2014-09-10, 11:58 AM
I think the biggest challenge is the purpose of the campaign, at least at the outset.

Lots of campaigns start someplace. You meet in a tavern. You're all trying to get out of prison. You all want to get rich. You wake up drunk and want to murder that no-good Rogue who stole your pants. Something motivating actions. Usually, what motivates the PCs is a force acting against them - an antagonist.

A true wilderness campaign is dangerously sandbox-y, in part because of one of the lack of antagonists. I don't mean a recurring BBEG, I mean a personified force which, for the moment, is acting against the party.

By way of refresher, there are several classic conflicts, among them: Man against Man Man against Nature Man against Society Man against Himself
When we remove society from the picture, Man against Society is gone. In a true wilderness campaign, Man against Man diminishes as well - encounters with sentient life will be less frequent. Not absent, but infrequent. Man against Himself doesn't work well in a tabletop campaign unless your players are truly consummate RPers.

And that leaves Man against Nature, or what is basically an unwinnable conflict. That means rolling for inclement weather, rolling for survival, foraging, getting lost, sickness and injury, and so forth. It becomes a campaign of attrition. It becomes the tabletop equivalent of Oregon Trail.

So you absolutely need a point to it. An initial motivator, a destination, an object. Why are your PCs wandering through the wilderness? Here are a few options: Searching for a Thing: The classic Maguffin device. The story is instigated by the Search for the Lost Thing; what results is a plot barely tangentially related to the Thing, and instead centering around various interpersonal conflicts. As a bonus, a Search for a Thing can have competition, which allows for Man against Man conflict even in the wilderness. Searching for a Place: This is basically your Indiana Jones-style search through deserts and jungles and what-have-you to find the Lost Place of Whatsit. It functions similarly to the Search for a Thing, with the added possibility of having a civilization involved (if the Place is occupied) or a fun dungeon adventure (if it isn't). Keeping the Path: Basically, the PCs are tasked with maintaining safety in the wilderness by preparing, clearing, and preserving the roads. That's basically it. It ain't all that glamorous. The Undiscovered Country: The PCs are Star Trek. Explore the wilderness, seek out new blah blah blah. It only works if your PCs get excited about discovery and exploration, and you can come up with new adventures every week to keep them tuned in.
As you can see, a lot of this requires a certain degree of self-motivation. If the players aren't excited about exploration and discovery - which admittedly boils down to a lot of traveling - this can get really old, really fast. It has truly unique potential, but only for those who really want it.

Yora
2014-09-10, 01:15 PM
That pretty much nails the main problem down very accurately, with elaborated explanations why that is the case.

Wilderness sandboxes come down to man versus nature, and there just are not that many reasons why a character should seek it out. It's a conflict that is forced on the characters by outside circumstances and there is nothing to gain other than making it out alive. But if the characters are at home in the wilds, there isn't a destination to reach, and it simply boils down to staying alive. That's hardly something worthy of adventure.

What I think is needed for a goal-oriented wilderness game is to find ways to make man versus man and man versus society work within a wilderness setting. Being in the wilds doesn't have to mean being alone and isolated. It just means that most of the time, nobody will hear you scream when you are in danger. If you are expected somewhere, someone might come looking for you. But otherwise you have to be only a mile away from the next settlement and noboy might ever find out what happened to you, or that you were ever there in the first place.
If something goes back, it won't be enough to get to the next road and get a farmer who is passing by to get you to a healer in his cart. When you find a danger in the wilds, you can't go to the town and get two dozen armed men, or in worse cases, send a messenger to the king to send an army. Every small village is entirely on its own.

I think a good wilderness setting would be something like "Points of Light Squared". No city states and not even fortified towns. Just isolated villages, homesteads, and hermits. Though that doesn't have to apply to monsters. An orc fortress or goblin town could be found in places that humans might consider uninhabited.

I think probably one of the best settings of this type is actually Middle-Earth. Not so much the south with Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor, or the Shire, but the rest of the lands between and beyond them. Everything North of the Shire and the lands around Mirkwood is barely inhabited and lacks any central authorities. There are a few strongholds like Bree, Rivendell, Thranduils Hall, and the Lonely Mountain, but they are portrayed as isolated fortresses, that don't control anything beyond their wall. Other than that, it appears like there isn't anything but primitive hill people living in family groups.

PrincessCupcake
2014-09-11, 02:27 AM
A lot of these are PvE, due to the nature of the beast, but there's *always* a way to sneak a human BBEG into the wilderness. An obvious one to me is having him start out helpful and turn out to be otherwise later.

-Founders of Civilization: Have the PCs be homesteaders, or part of a larger group that are doing just that. Instead of having the PCs needing to travel in and out of civilization, have them build it. Make them compete with local inhabitants (of both the sapient and non-sapient variety), as well as the weather, their own inner struggles, and the fact that if something goes horribly wrong help is a long ways away. (Bonus points if NPCs capable of casting magic are VERY rare, and of low level when you can find them. Double bonus points if they all start indebted to some civilized group because they had to buy the land in question and must find a way around that.)

-Corrupted Wilderness: Perhaps something is wrong with the land on a fundamental level, and the source of the problem is somewhere deep into the wilderness. Have them use all those neat wilderness-related skills to get clues to solve the mystery. Make going into town a thing they only do when absolutely necessary.

-First World/Feywild/Faerie Realm: Have players who like Politics? Get them roped into the goings-on of the Fair Folk. Have them deal with political intrigue and subplots surrounding these fickle and flighty schemers. (Bonus points if they start doing stuff for the Court of Seasons.)

-City of Gold: There is some big, mythical city of immense wealth and/or power supposedly out in the middle of nowhere. It is the life's work of the PCs to find it, and they have narrowed down a search area. During their expedition to bring this fabled city into the history books, they must thwart the weather, violent beasties, and hostile natives. When they return to civilization with indings, they have to deal with scheming intellectual rivals, black market artifact dealers stealing their stuff, and the aftermath of having to take out gratuitous loans or fickle patrons who want to see returns on their investments.

-Get Off My Lawn: The characters are all from the same tribe/settlement/gypsy camp/general area, and some a****** conquering lord is moving in and trying to chase the PCs and their whole society out. The PCs must figure out how to deal with the situation.

These ideas will make for great short adventures, but do not work well as a long campaign in and of themselves:
-Great Hunt: Give them some ridiculously powerful beastie to kill. Make them scour the wilderness and track it down. COuld work as a long campaign if said beastie was a) not properly identified by villagers, b) difficult to directly identify, and c) something like an elder dragon.

-Search and Rescue: someone important, or a group of people important to the PCs, have gone missing in the wild places. In addition to finding them and bringing them back alive, the PCs must sort out what happened and why.

-Reverse Search and Rescue: turn up the "stranger in a strange land" to eleven. Give the PCs barely enough know-how to scrape by until they either escape or are found. Bonus points if they must make their own supplies to do so. Double bonus points if they must navigate monstrous or "alien" societies while trying to get home (assuming they do).

-Missionary Work: The PCs are all devotees of a particular faith, and their mission is to bring said faith out into the world that does not yet know its name.

Yora
2014-09-13, 06:19 AM
I've been reading the One Ring RPG, and they got an interesting approach to society in a wilderness setting. Most settlements are build around a large central farm of a powerful patriarch, who is either a capable leader or has some supernatural abilities to protect the people living with him from monsters and bandits. People don't settle down where they can find good resources or trade, but where they can find a powerful protector. Since it's middle-earth, they are all pretty democratic and the patriarch humbly consults the other elders of the settlement before making a descision, but there's really no reason why they couldn't selfish dictators. All it takes is a threat that is bad enough that people still seek his protection.
The one possibly danger to really look out for when making such a setting is to avoid an excess of very-high-level-NPCs who outshine everyone else. If the patriarch is so powerful that he can deal with any threat all by himself, the PCs are only spectators or at best pawns, instead of the heroes of the campaign. But if done in moderation, there are lots of options that would have a great impact on the style of a settlement: A rich farmer whose wealth funds the settlements defenses and armory, a small veteran warrior and his band of loyal men, an expert weapon smith, a witch (and her apprentices), one or more druids, a friendly giant, a treant or nymph, or maybe even a magic tree or spring whose power keeps monsters at bay. These would be so important for the settlement that they could not afford to be leaving for two or three weaks, and the settlement couldn't risk losing them on some adventure. So they need someone else to do things for them.
The settlements are all spread out over a large area and often several days journey from each other, but they are trying to constantly keep in touch with each other. Both for a little trade, and primarily information about what's going on in the wilds.

That's an enviroment that is calling for adventurers. Their purpose would still be to protect their settlement, but this would mean a lot more than just fighting bandits and monsters that come within sight of the village. They have good reasons to go on long journeys that can take them far away from their home, but it'd be not simply for adventure, but because people depend on them being successful.
The PCs travel to another settlement to deliver packages with goods from their home and return with things they can't make themselves. On the way, something unexpected happens.
An allied settlement is under attack and they need help from their friends.
The warriors of an allied settlement are missing or sick, and they need warriors from another village to save them.
The PCs patriarch has heard rumors from other villages and his special knowledge of secret things makes him have a suspicion he wants the PCs to check out.
Something is plaguing the settlement and the patriarch wants the PCs to travel to one of his friends or a sage who lives in a far away settlement to seek his counsel.
A group of strangers is passing through the area and the local are uncertain what they might want and if they mean trouble.
One of the PCs people has not returned from a trip to another settlement and the PCs have to go find him.
Men from another settlement come to the PCs village and are looking for missing kinsmen (who might be escaped criminals). They need help from the locals to find them.
A criminal who has done harm to the PCs settlement is taking refuge in another settlement. The crime needs to be avenged, preferably without starting a blood feud.
Someone is betraying the settlement to its enemies, and the PCs have to find and deal with him.
Some kind of evil that was thought to have been dealt with might be escaping from its resting place.
An artifact that protects the settlement has been stolen and needs to be recovered.
An artifact that protects the settlement has been destroyed and needs to be replaced.
The local spirits are very upset about something. The PCs need to find out what it is and how to fix it, or their settlement might suffer draught, blight, flood, or plague.
Traveling traders who bring important goods from distant lands need protection/saving.

And of course the generic classics:
Find a rare plant to make a medicine.
A dangerous beast has been seen near the village.
Someone went missing in the forest.
There are rumors that could hint to the location of a lost artifact that could greatly help the village.
An army of raiders (evil men/orcs/and so on) is invading the region and threatens to destroy settlements.

That's really quite a good number of possible adventure ideas. Easily enough to last for several campaigns.
But what about antagonists? Do you have any good idea for what would make an interesting and memorable antagonist for such adventures, and most importantly what might motivate them?

cobaltstarfire
2014-09-13, 06:53 AM
The longest campaign I got to play in was a wilderness campaign (in a fantasyish post apocalyptic Canada, and for a little while in the American midwest). I can't remember what drove us forward, but I can remember bits of fluff for it. And I think the fluff helps a lot with keeping it from getting monotonous. Things like a rabid moose that was just following us for some reason (or later, demonic chickens...although that may be because I burnt a barn full of chickens down for some reason...). They didn't appear in every game, but they did from time to time.


Over the course of our quest we ended up traveling to several places that were linked together in some way or another. We had to search out a hermit to help our healer master her magic, and get information, we got captured by people who lived hidden in trees. On a couple of occasions we had to track and then infiltrate anthro camps to save humans who had been captured as slaves/sacrifices. Sometimes we did end up in two cities (if you could call them that) briefly but they were treated the same as wilderness because we were wanted in those cities.

Most of us were were's too so once every couple of sessions we'd have to deal with a night of having turned into our animal form...which was just about always very entertaining for everyone.

We did do herb gathering, foraging, and hunting on occasion as well. (and rolled cooking from time to time, sometimes we had really good food...and sometimes we had very...sad burnt food depending on who tried to cook). I think a lot of the things in the campaign that could have been monotonous were made really fun because of how the GM handled them. Stopping to camp was always the most fun part too because it was when all the role playing happened.

Yora
2014-09-13, 07:13 AM
Things like a rabid moose that was just following us for some reason (or later, demonic chickens...although that may be because I burnt a barn full of chickens down for some reason...). They didn't appear in every game, but they did from time to time.
This is amazing. :smallbiggrin:

But I think actually a great idea. Have the characters see things far in the distance, like smoke, light from a big fire at night, a large group of traveling people, swarms of circling birds, and so on. Something that indicates that there is something going that might or might not be related to what the PCs are doing. They could make a detour to check it out, but maybe they never find the place or whatever was there is long by the time they arrive. Or it might actually be really important.