adventurers as professionals

[galan]

So, the classic d&d game - the party enter a dungeon, discover challanges, and either win or go back and try again.

but what if we assume differently? the characters are part of the army, or another organization, and as such they get information about what lays ahad. they have intelligence (as in, Military intelligence). The party *knows* about the troll at room 3, and can prepare beforhand. the rogue *knows* about the trap, and prepare to stop this exact trap.

so why is it fun? because when the players know about what they'll face, the DM can bring much more complex encounters without fearing a TPK. the trap? a single skill check won't be enough. it's an entire encounter by itself, and there are also monsters present so you don't have an easy time. There is an Allip in the dungeon, and it's fair because the players had time to response correctly (let's assume balance isn't an issue, and for example the fighter can change his feats each morning or something. "the wizard will be stronger than ever" is obvious but not important right now).

later of course we can add complications - the information is incomplete or just wrong. the enemy knows they have a mole, so they make a seemingly obvious trap with an unexpacted result. but thats the exception, not the rule

What do you think? is it a well-known way of playing and my friends and I just never heard of it? Does it sound fun at all? Got any ideas how to make those awesome traps and monsters with not-so-obvious solutions, and ways for the players to counter them with creative play?

[nothingforyou]

I've always wanted to run a campaign in the style of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or another Le Carre novel, except with more violence. So a mix of Dark Souls and Tinker Tailor.

The idea is a game that is harsh and unforgiving, as well as reliant on "realistic" premises (insofar as they apply to D&D) and ideas.

Unfortunately, doing so would require such a high standard of planning and thought from the DM that I cannot expect from anyone doing a leisurely activity such as D&D.

[Blackhawk748]

Heroes of Battle discussing something like this. Basically your not really adventurers anymore, you are Commandos, and its an entirely legitimate playstyle. Ive never played a game like since so i cant tell you how good it is, but if done right it can be a lot of fun.

As to the "intelligence" being wrong, i once played in a Dark Heresy game where the running joke was "Whatever is going on is the total opposite of what intelligence said" as our intelligence agents were apparently terrible at their jobs. We didnt mind as it led to a lot of jokes, and the few times they were right, thing got hairy quick.

[nedz]

I ran an entire campaign where the party was a Dwarf special forces unit. Basically the Dwarves where trying to recover an ancient mining complex (think Moria/Underdark — but not quite either) and the party got to scout out ahead of the main army. At higher levels they tended to get given the odd jobs which no one else could do. The style of the game was a mix between Cross of Iron and Sgt. Bilko.

[sktarq]

Party as unit of the Kings Citadel (in Eberron) worked wonders, and frankly I'd say Eberron is more set up for this kind of thing than your basic (killers/delvers for hire/opportunity). I've seen groups of writers for the Chronicle be a fun group. Also there is splat for how to run a war in 3.5 and basically how to turn your adventurers into a special ops team) Tome of Battle (not the casters with swords calling themselves "fighter" types one-different book).
Also professional assassins, security guards, temple unit of daemon hunters (much fun to watch them have to deal with illusionists making a political move, corruption with no daemon influence etc when they look for it everywhere) lots more professions than just military are available to a group of players willing to buy in and a creative DM.

[Psyren]

I've played in campaigns like this. In fact, this is pretty much what organizations like the Harpers are.

One of the dangers of intel is the same there as it is in the real world - you come to rely on it, so when the guy feeding it to you is misinformed, miscalculates the severity of a threat or the time limit you have, or just plain decides to betray you for some reason, the entire squad can easily get caught with their pants down.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

First, I would imagine that most adventurers are professionals. They're professional dungeon delvers, monster killers, trap disarmers, et cetera. They just don't get free intel from their affiliates all the time. And even then, a divination-using caster can be the party's intel, and it can be much more reliable than someone else.

Most games of D&D I played were not the traditional "go into underground lair filled with traps and baddies and get X," or at least mostly not that. They were "Go to X place, figure out Y problem, and solve the problem." What you're suggesting is to remove the figuring out part... which I think is a great idea. Too many times figuring things out is either a trivial case of getting the exposition from a local, or it's hard only because everyone's a jerk who won't talk to you when you're saving their behinds.

I experienced a more straightforward version of the intel idea a while back in a game where all the players were cultists of Erythnul. That church, along with all the evil and many neutral churches, was banned from a theocratic city. Any citizen who openly worshiped a banned god was converted by the sword if necessary. Our cult's solution? Burn down all the good aligned churches and systematically slaughter every good-aligned priest, deacon, and paragon of justice until there were no more. We couldn't take on the whole city, of course, so the key was to pick our targets, strike quickly, maximize collateral damage (Erythnul, remember) and then GTFO. We received ideas for good, soft targets - that is to say, intelligence - from the NPC cult leader, but we basically had free reign to go about things as we pleased. Better yet, in a game where the premise was "you're all psychopathic murderers," I've never experienced as much inter-party cooperation and cohesion. This taught me something: It can actually be freeing to players to give them all a strong, shared goal right at the beginning, since after that the DM doesn't really have to railroad anything.

[Gnome Alone]

Better yet, in a game where the premise was "you're all psychopathic murderers," I've never experienced as much inter-party cooperation and cohesion.

Well damn, all of that sounds hellza fun.


This taught me something: It can actually be freeing to players to give them all a strong, shared goal right at the beginning, since after that the DM doesn't really have to railroad anything.

You all start in a tavern. You desperately want to get out of the tavern, because you're all slaves there and can never leave it.

[Killer Angel]

First, I would imagine that most adventurers are professionals. They're professional dungeon delvers, monster killers, trap disarmers, et cetera. They just don't get free intel from their affiliates all the time. And even then, a divination-using caster can be the party's intel, and it can be much more reliable than someone else.

Another idea: the world's greates magic mart, got groups of adventurers that recover ancient magical objects around the world. The mart pays them and gives infos (by divination) and equipment for the mission.

[BWR]

Apparantly 'professional' means 'has support of large organization behind them' rather than 'does x for a living' or even 'does x competently'.
There are four basic
1. Initial intel. Someone needs to get it. Maybe you have diviners, maybe you have informants or spies, maybe you have scouts. PCs can do this job. "X reported something odd in this area. Check it out" or "see if there is anything dangerous here". The most important goal here is to report back to base that something is amiss. Don't take stupid chances trying to defeat something or get more info if there's a chance of you being killed or captured.

2. Deciding what to do. Similar to above. Most organizations have limited resources and trying to find out how to get things done reliably with the mimimum amount of resource expenditure is not always easy. Say you have reports about X, now you need a team of experts to determine the how accurate the initial assessment is, and recommend how to handle it. More detailed scouting, info gathering, divinations, etc. "We need detailed intel on [whatever] in this area". Take chances getting real intel. Sneak in, capture and interrogate people, maybe clear out if the threat is minor.

3. Handling it. Once you've decided what needs to be done, it has to get done. Traditional adventuring party with some basic intel on the situation. "Find and kidnap/kill/rescue X", "capture important geographical location Y", "sabotage/raid/reclaim supplies from Z", etc. Specific goals are the order of the day. If the job is to capture a castle, killing everyone and looting it isn't important or even desired. If the job is to capture the BBEG's lieutenant, wading through a dungeon and risking life and limb when you can just capture him easily is stupid.

4. Cleaning up. Once something has been handled, there is a lot of mess to clean up. A 'cleared out' dungeon might have new nasties try to move in, something unfortunate may have been let loose, the survivors from the first clearing may try to reclaim it, magical accidents may need to be taken care of, witnesses may need to be silenced (killed, bought off, whatever), refugees need to be relocated, wounded need to be healed, corpses taken care of to prevent rotting or reanimation, buildings need to be repaired, etc.

You can make lots of fun adventures out of every step. I've played a couple of games where the PCs were part of a larger military and you got all sorts of missions in all categories. Simple 'march and kill' moving on to more spec ops type stuff and later being able to make tactical and strategic decisions that affect entire countries. It can be a lot of fun to work your way up through an organization rather than being the loose canons PCs so often are. Good thing: you often have more back up and perhaps easier access to gear and support, and plot hooks aren't a problem ("the boss tells you to go to X and do Y"). Bad things: rather railroady, especially early on and some people don't like that. The more powerful and resourceful you are, the less specific your mission goals are. At low level it's along the lines of 'take that hill'. At higher levels it's more like 'stop this powerful enemy from terrorizing the countryside' - IOW traditional adventures.

[galan]

@BWR

Apparantly 'professional' means 'has support of large organization behind them' rather than 'does x for a living' or even 'does x competently'.

different association. My fault there, i don't even have the excuse of "in hebrew it means what i meant" in this case :smalltongue:
yea, my post is on the confusing side. sorry. Most of you got what i meant, which is a good thing


the rest of the post
ok, you added 2 steps i wasn't thinking about, so thank you!
i'm still not sure how to handle the "handling it" part, or more specifically - how is it different than normal adventure in a meaningful way? Indiana jones knows about every trap he sees, but bypassing those traps is more difficult than just knowing it's there. how can i translate it to game terms? how can the rogue switch the statue with a bag of sand in a way that will be fun for everyone?

@GoodbyeSoberDay
do you remember a specific take-down of a priest that was different from a "normal" take down because of that? it sounds like you played exactly what i meant, and experience will be more than welcome

@blackhawk748
yea i got heroes of battle, read most of it but never noticed the part you talked about. i'm re-reading the whole book now, and will be back with insights if i'll have any :smallsmile:

@Psyren
ohh yea, when the intel is wrong, everything is wrong. but I believe i can DM that, the question is about the part when everything is perfect but still fun

[Psyren]

@Psyren
ohh yea, when the intel is wrong, everything is wrong. but I believe i can DM that, the question is about the part when everything is perfect but still fun

That's easy - just because you know what's coming doesn't mean you can handle it. If you know ahead of time that Azathoth is sleeping in the next room, you're probably still dead if you open the door and stroll in. The idea therefore is to use your knowledge and surroundings to come up with an alternate solution.

[BWR]

i'm still not sure how to handle the "handling it" part, or more specifically - how is it different than normal adventure in a meaningful way? Indiana jones knows about every trap he sees, but bypassing those traps is more difficult than just knowing it's there. how can i translate it to game terms? how can the rogue switch the statue with a bag of sand in a way that will be fun for everyone?


Yes, this step is pretty much standard adventuring - it's why we play the game, right? In the case of traps you can always reduce it to skill rolls with no flavor but if you want to make it visceral and fun, make sure you know exactly how the trap is supposed to function. Once the players have identified how the trap works, they have to come up with a way to bypass it without resorting to rolls or only to a minimal degree. Let them use their minds to figure out how to bypass. If they can come up with a clever way of discovering, bypassing or disarming a trap, let them do so without rolls and full xp for overcoming the challenge.
If your players are the kind that insist on making everything bland die rolls, you can let them do so and provide the flavor for them ("I roll Disable Device, 30" "Ok, you identify the pressure plate trap and figure if you replace the idol with something of equivalent weight you should be fine. Some finicky and tense moments later and you have the golden idol"). You can also just tell them in advance that you want them to use their heads and say that clever ideas and good roleplaying will make the job easier, and relying entirely on dice without any attempt at explaining what you do will make things harder. I do the latter in my games and it works fine. Everybody tries to rp most situations but if the players are truly stuck they still have mechanics to fall back on so the PCs always have a chance to overcome a challenge.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

@GoodbyeSoberDay
do you remember a specific take-down of a priest that was different from a "normal" take down because of that? it sounds like you played exactly what i meant, and experience will be more than welcomeEssentially the intel took out the relatively long and boring step of actually finding a target. Otherwise the game actually tended to play a lot like a series of shadowruns - lots of leg work using magic and face skills to figure out schedules/defenses/weaknesses, all culminating into one quick run. Difference being we were out for slaughter and mayhem instead of corporate espionage.

Warning: Gaming Story Ahead

We actually did end up getting bad intel, starting shortly after we steamrolled a supposed Big Bad Good Guy*. Instead of upping the ante mechanically, the DM decided to target the group's greatest weakness - our tendency to metagame. Not for tactical advantage or anything cheesy, mind you - we had plenty of tactical advantage already - but metagaming for the sake of cohesive inter-party play. A mutual friend joined the game under suspicious in-game circumstances, but most of the players at the table, including myself, saw the big PC sign on his head and let him in our cult.

Needless to say he had been recruited as to be a traitor and a spy to the group, feeding the enemy intel and setting us up for bad jobs. It worked particularly well since the player was good at bluffing IRL. Normally I don't like PvP, but it was quite clever and almost completely my fault. I was a damn divination-focused cloistered cleric, who sometimes functioned as the party leader, and not only did I not magically try to check if he was legit, but I stifled another characters' concerns that he was a traitor on multiple occasions. The only thing I might blame the DM for was a slight plot-hole where one Sending spell from our NPC leader would have blown the traitor's cover, but that's really just a minor oversight (and I missed it too, at the time). Only when the entire town had surrounded us and the traitor and another PC was nowhere to be found did I realize my compounded error.

So, we were completely surrounded. Our NPC leader tells us we have to run, and we ask rhetorically, "Where?" as we prepare to fight. We proceeded to fight ~100 mooks, a dozen elite forces, and high level support casters. Fireball and Doomtide (the awesome CDiv version where you can make allies immune to the effects, as no one had access to SpC) pretty much controlled the mob and some of the elites, and the mundanes went and bashed/perforated the support casters. Flawless victory, once again baffling the DM.

We still had to leave town and prepare to burn the whole thing down from afar... and a few sessions after our ridiculous crowning achievements, the game fell apart due to scheduling. But it was good while it lasted.

*First of all, props to the DM for rolling with the punches. I had more optimization focus than other people in my gaming group by a good margin, mostly by nerding it up on forums like these. The party consisted of me, people who took my advice when building their characters, and people who didn't have time to build their characters, and I had to build them on the spot session 1 given their character background. Suffice to say the party was much more powerful and synergistic than usual. I also think the DM was expecting there to be more coordination issues due to our psychoses, but again we did things quite efficiently.