Bandit Campaign-How would you do it?

[Blackhawk748]

I was at work and i had a weird idea, a campaign where players are the bandits. Raiding caravans, robbing rich people, mugging drunk nobles in allies, sounds great right? Theres a hitch though. How do you figure out when a carvan is gonna go through and if one is what its carrying? It feels wrong to just arbitrarily say when one goes through, i feel there should be some sort of system.

Honestly ive sure theres more problems than just the ones i laid out, but seriously, how would you run a Bandit Campaign?

[madtinker]

Maybe they have a spy in town. Or they use divinations. If there is a spy, he may at some point betray them.

Edit:
Other adventure hooks include
1)they have attracted the unwanted attention of the guard
2) a rival gang tries to move in
3) they discover a mole is warning caravans
4) the forest has suddenly become much more dangerous (perhaps a druid moved in that doesn't like them)

[Eloel]

You'd need to get those Disguise checks working, either in-city to make sure you're not recognized as the bandits while you're gathering information, or while raiding to make sure they don't learn who you are. Most real-life thieves choose the latter.

[DodgerH2O]

You'd basically just turn the genre from Heroic Fantasy to a Heist Campaign.

Where are the players selling their ill-gotten loot? Is it a person or an organization? More than one of the above? The prospective buyers might have tips ahead of time, either via the rumormill or actually setting up a caravan for failure.

Alternately, maybe one of the players is a "Face" and goes into the city making discreet inquiries. Is the silk merchant expecting a shipment soon? Are there any seasonal trade fairs? Most caravan raids might be opportunistic, but reward in random and/or poor loot (the equivalent of random encounters in a dungeon) but every so often there will be a predictable factor.

Obviously if every midsummer the caravans bringing goods are raided, merchants will either stop taking that route or else hire more skilled guardsmen, which gives some believability to the idea of scaling encounters as the PCs level up. There are, as you said, other issues, but I think the campaign would be totally doable.

[daremetoidareyo]

You have a bunch of options.

1.) An in town merchant guild member on a payroll to the bandits who develops the info.

2.) PCs work for a mercenary protection guild, which pays rates to protect merchant caravans. They get to foil other raiders at first. Decide that they can do better, then become bandits.

3.) PCs work behind enemy lines, with the military feeding them info from double agents in the wealthy court (doppelgangers????) Who establish the targets.

4.) PCs blow up bridge on route A, leaving only route B (with bandits) and route C (chock full with fiendish half troll spell weavers).

[Blackhawk748]

Thanks guys, what im really having problems with is figuring out what should be in each caravan. I mean id have to freakin list out all the goods a cities merchants can make and then assemble a caravan out of that....actually thats not a terrible idea. List the biggest merchants in a city, roll a Craft check or something to determine when a caravan is ready, then send it on its way.

Oh god thats gonna be a lot of work lol

[Red Fel]

Honestly ive sure theres more problems than just the ones i laid out, but seriously, how would you run a Bandit Campaign?


"Oi! Oi, mate!"

"Yeah?"

"Did you always want to be a bandit?"

"... Wossat, then?"

"I said, did you always want to be a bandit?"

"What, you mean sleep on the ground, trees for a roof, bugs in my trousers, no stable income or retirement to speak of, entirely dependent on the combination of wealth and defenseless of passing travelers for my daily bread?"

"Yeah, that!"

"Are you bloody daft, mate? Who'd choose this life voluntarily? I wanted to be a bloody poet!"

"Well, then, why ain'cha?"

"As it happens, I'm a bit more gifted with the dirk than the pen."

"... Mate, you're rubbish with a knife."

"My point exactly."
I'd see it either turning into a satirical farce that examines societal and family pressures so great as to drive an otherwise moral person to perform acts of thievery which he consciously knows are against the law, or they'd stop being bandits at some point.

When the premise of the game is that, at some point, you're strong and well-armed enough to take on entire dungeons and/or dragons, sitting around on the side of the road waiting for a traveling shrubber to accost seems hardly an effective use of one's time.

[Blackhawk748]

I literally lol'ed at that, i can only hope my PCs are half as hilarious.

[Red Fel]

I literally lol'ed at that, i can only hope my PCs are half as hilarious.

And admittedly, I think it would make a great one-shot, a D&D alternative to Waiting for Godot or Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but as a proper campaign, you'd have to leave some room for career advancement. To wit, the PCs would need to either be recruited by some sort of criminal syndicate, or be arrested and forced to earn their freedom as double agents, or have a way to go from banditry to thievery to international jewel heists, or something beyond sitting on the side of the road and waiting for money to fall into your lap.

It, uh, kinda gets old.

But the one-shot? Loll away.

[Eloel]

To wit, the PCs would need to either be recruited by some sort of criminal syndicate, or be arrested and forced to earn their freedom as double agents, or have a way to go from banditry to thievery to international jewel heists, or something beyond sitting on the side of the road and waiting for money to fall into your lap.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Though not jewels, jewelry is dumb in D&D, go steal some artifacts.

[Blackhawk748]

And admittedly, I think it would make a great one-shot, a D&D alternative to Waiting for Godot or Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but as a proper campaign, you'd have to leave some room for career advancement. To wit, the PCs would need to either be recruited by some sort of criminal syndicate, or be arrested and forced to earn their freedom as double agents, or have a way to go from banditry to thievery to international jewel heists, or something beyond sitting on the side of the road and waiting for money to fall into your lap.

It, uh, kinda gets old.

But the one-shot? Loll away.

Oh ya, totally assumed they'd become Bandit Kings or something equally awesome as they advanced. Hell they may destabilize a small kingdom and take it over with their Bandit Army. I was leaving it open as i feel a game such as this should be somewhat sandboxy

[Geddy2112]

Basically your planning a Kingmaker where the PC's steal it instead of building it.

Certainly finding out about a lone caravan loaded with some nice spices or extra gold is gonna challenge low level parties, but at higher levels your going after major trade families, mass caravans, frigates and countries. Your pirates start with fishing boats but eventually you can have Spanish galleons and then all of Spain.

An aquatic campaign or water heavy might fit better due to boat travel being cheaper and larger than land travel, not that you can't have both(cargo from ships goes to trains to trucks etc). Plan out major trade routes of WHERE things come from and what villages/cities/countries have what. Is there one major trade faction ruling everything, or lots of smaller ones?

Piracy also lets you level party gear in two ways. The first is by handing over raw valuables and having expensive stuff for sale at sticker price, or simply put the cool weapons/armor/etc on the boats/caravans. Probably best to mix both. You can also have plenty of travel to new lands for strange baddies, languages and political/roleplay challenges.

If the party is evil, then typical looting, stealing, maybe even slavery. Perhaps they are good as privateers for a rival company, or striking out on their own for various reasons

Overall the triangular trade and Caribbean piracy years made into a campaign is how I would run it.

[Toilet Cobra]

First off, this is an excellent idea, I'm stealing it.

I'd just decide what the major industries are, set up a random table based on how often those goods leave the city, and let the players figure it out, either by setting up a spy network, divinations, or just ransacking randomly.

Time consuming goods (velvet cloth, refined spirits, fine crafted metal objects) may be what a city is known for, but these goods only leave in large caravans that travel... oh, let's say once a month. Other caravans move less valuable goods like food or raw materials and do so more often, and in larger amounts.

Just decide what one city has and make up examples for goods leaving the city! If it's expensive, it justifies a caravan, if not, it leaves in one or two wagons. Off the top of my head...

Port City with a Nearby Mine, outgoing shipments per month:
10 stone
2 iron ore
1 silk
2 metal odds & ends (horseshoes, nails, fish hooks, chains, etc)
1 misc weapons
0.5 masterwork weapons or armor
6 Salted fish
1 Exotic wine
2 Jewelry
5 Exotic goods (misc from far off lands)
3 Spices
1 Alchemical reagents

Add in caravans that aren't moving goods, but rather people and animals-- a string of ponies being delivered, a group of sailors who are looking for work elsewhere, an apprentice smith leaving with all his gear to start a shop elsewhere, a tax collector either going to collect or returning with his payload, shipping company profits moving about, and so on. Then take the incoming shipments from other nearby cities and add them to the route. Quite a busy road all of a sudden.

Of course, plenty of other bandits would haunt such a lucrative route.

[Blackhawk748]

*watches Toilet Cobra steal idea, steals Cobra's Chart* MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

[Toilet Cobra]

Well cooperative banditry is the name of the game!

[daremetoidareyo]

When it comes time, the PC s go into business for themselves. Stop banditting. Hire a wizard who sells the absolute best caravan protection in the world. He crafts ceramic chips which are given to caravan masters, who snap them in half at the first signs of trouble, which summons the PCs to fight off incoming raiders. The caravan masters pay high prices for these chips. Which funds PCs extravagant lifestyles.

[Blackhawk748]

When it comes time, the PC s go into business for themselves. Stop banditting. Hire a wizard who sells the absolute best caravan protection in the world. He crafts ceramic chips which are given to caravan masters, who snap them in half at the first signs of trouble, which summons the PCs to fight off incoming raiders. The caravan masters pay high prices for these chips. Which funds PCs extravagant lifestyles.

Thats freakin awesome. Im gonna use that someday.

[DrKerosene]

I imagine if you're going so far as to use the DMG rules for city sizes and gold limits, you can use the smaller city, of the two cities being travelled between, to figure item price limits. The PCs would eventually have to move on to bigger and better routes to raid for loot.

Considering how infrequently they're likely to see a caravan, they could get lots of use out of downtime, crafting, animal training, or maybe just have a route of caravans they raid.

Occasionally they may accidentally come to possess something that's the equivalent of dirt on someone way above the party in influential power level. You know, "Do we try to turn a profit, ot pretend we never found this?" kinda things.

[whisperwind1]

The issue with a bandit campaign has been touched on several times here, but the primary challenge that I see is how to segue into the bigger and better stuff. I mean let's assume they start as a group of guys squatting in thickets and waiting for caravans to rob. Once they've made enough money (and gained enough levels), they then move on the x, with x being the bigger, more lucrative activity.

Its probably my personal preference, but I don't like things staying at a petty and fairly mundane level, as a player (and GM), I would crave escalation.

For example, the PCs score yet another caravan heist, but things go horribly (and hilariously) wrong. One of the wagons contains an ancient artifact that an archmage in the capitol had paid to have smuggled to him. The artifact is cursed, and upon disturbing its container, the PCs are turned into human bombs thanks to an unknown pattern of explosive runes. Here's where things would get funny, because the curse has a loophole, the PCs can delay the runes activating by engaging in the very same activity that led them to disturb the artifact. Ergo they must steal more and more valuable stuff, braving more security to keep themselves from exploding. Cue a globe-trotting crime spree where the PCs have to also search for a method to break the curse (because inevitably they'll run out of stuff to steal). And on top of it all, the archmage finds out about their actions and becomes the pissed-off spellcasting Jacques Clouseau to the Group's Pink Panther.

[Dayaz]

One way to keep raiding just caravans and the such fun, it to make the campaign a E6 or E8 campaign. That way, they don't really get to the point of being able to nuke dragons and balors while trying to justify picking on merchants.

[Maglubiyet]

When the premise of the game is that, at some point, you're strong and well-armed enough to take on entire dungeons and/or dragons, sitting around on the side of the road waiting for a traveling shrubber to accost seems hardly an effective use of one's time.

Maybe they're behind-the-lines special ops guys, disrupting supply trains that are going to support of an advancing evil army?

[Barmoz]

At some point, I'd have them rob the wrong people, maybe a caravan of illegal drugs or stolen goods belonging to a local crime ring being shipped further away from their original owners for resale. It'd be hilarious to have them open a chest and see items that they had stolen and fenced the previous session, only to realize they had accidentally double crossed some really bad people, who had been financing their life of crime.

[Frozen_Feet]

I was at work and i had a weird idea, a campaign where players are the bandits. Raiding caravans, robbing rich people, mugging drunk nobles in allies, sounds great right? Theres a hitch though. How do you figure out when a carvan is gonna go through and if one is what its carrying? It feels wrong to just arbitrarily say when one goes through, i feel there should be some sort of system.

Honestly ive sure theres more problems than just the ones i laid out, but seriously, how would you run a Bandit Campaign?

You have a map of closest cities and roads between them, right? Plan a few commonly used trade routes between them (say, 7 or so) and assign them numbers so that the most used will come up most on some die roll (2d4, for example). Next, make a calendar (1 week or 1 month for starters), and roll for each day to see if a caravan departs (say, 1-in-6 chance), then roll for which route (aforementioned 2d4) and which direction they're coming from (whether they're going from city A to B or B to A). Whatever rules you're using probably already have rules for wilderness movement speed, so now you can know where each caravan is and when.

Next, make or find a randomized chart for what they're trading. D&D and the like come with random tresure charts, you could use those if you like. Roll to see what each caravan carries.

Now, you have a pool of information for the player characters to inquire about. They can gather information in appropriate cities to track specific caravans, or they can make an ambush along some known traderoute and hope for the best.

You can use a simpler random encounter mechanic if the PCs are just lying in wait, but it will make it impossible for the players to investigate their chances beforehand.

[Alikat]

I'm in what was supposed to be a neutral evil bandit campaign but our antagonist is the totalitarian government who recently took over our home city and the surrounding area. The slums we grew up in were forcefully 'gentrified' and all our childhood friends and family began disappearing in the night. Now our gang of cutthroats are reluctant freedom fighters and anti heroes being ruthlessly pursued.

It's funny, normally I have a hard time playing good characters, but now I'm on an evil one, the villain is so awful and hurt us in such a personal way that it felt impossible not to step up and do the right thing..

[daremetoidareyo]

I'm in what was supposed to be a neutral evil bandit campaign but our antagonist is the totalitarian government who recently took over our home city and the surrounding area. The slums we grew up in were forcefully 'gentrified' and all our childhood friends and family began disappearing in the night. Now our gang of cutthroats are reluctant freedom fighters and anti heroes being ruthlessly pursued.

It's funny, normally I have a hard time playing good characters, but now I'm on an evil one, the villain is so awful and hurt us in such a personal way that it felt impossible not to step up and do the right thing..

One mans terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

Actually, your alignment will become really interesting when people put forth a peaceful guy with huge influence to contrast your team against. Imagine what happens when you are being undermined by the actually good freedom fighters, whom the totalitarian establishment likes more (they don't kill their guys or foil them). Imagine how frustrated you'll be when those "good" guys get a little bit of real change to occur, wherein everyone is still oppressed, but it is just more manageable, just because the "good guy" is willing to ask his people to shoulder the indignity and that justice will eventually triumph. Willingness to settle for a half measure will steal all the wind from your "evil" freedom fighting sails and leave the tyrants in power.