Running a campaign centred on being under seige

[Rysto]

The other day I was suddenly struck by the idea to run a campaign in one of my favourite fictional settings. The setting is similar to Attack on Titan: humanity survives behind a massive wall that keeps out monsters, but there are periodic breaches that have to be beaten back. I was fairly excited about the idea until I looked at it from the player's perspective, and I realized that what I envisioned didn't offer much by the way of agency to the PCs.

Early in the campaign, the monsters (and therefore me, as the DM) have total control over the cadence of the siege. Leaving the wall to try to take the fight to the invaders would be both suicidal and pointless. There's really not a lot for the PCs to do other than sit around and wait for an attack. It strikes me that going from battle to battle would get pretty boring for the players pretty quickly just due to the lack of variety. Worse, the monsters are so alien that trying to set up a social encounter with them isn't really plausible. In the long term, I have some vague ideas on how the PCs could break the siege, but I think it could take a while for the story to get there. Until the campaign shifts from defence to offence, I need to keep the players engaged.

Writing this out has given me a couple of ideas for things I could do to mix things up for the players, but I could definitely use more. So playgrounders, what can I throw at them to break up the monotony of "Sector A-2 has been breached. Stop them."?

[CaptainSarathai]

I intended to run an AoT campaign a while ago, but I didn't get far in, it didn't get off the ground, and I ended up cannibalizing it for much better idea (Tiger and Bunny theme)

For you, my biggest suggestion is the same suggestion I give to authors and wish someone, anyone, had given to GRR Martin:
Pick the most interesting part of your story. Start there

If you don't want to kill time with a bunch of lame sitting around and waiting, then skip all that noise. Need the characters leveled? Start them at that level. I don't care. If your players are bored by the end of the second session, you've failed - you've lost them, they'll hate it, they'll tune you out even when you get to the good bits. Grab them, throw them right into the good stuff.
Your homes have been under siege since before you were born. The Wall, is all that stands between you and a savage, violent world. All of you have done your military service. Some have stayed in, or are still too young to have gotten out. Others are 'retired', your debt repaid and now you eke out survival as a farmer or merchant. All of you have lost close friends to the Savages. Many of you have lost immediate family - brothers, sisters.
As the midday sun rises over the Wall, you are all called to meet in the office of the High Lord Commander.
The war has changed...

Boom, right into the bit where they can go on the offensive. Or run them like the Scout Corps - an outright offensive over the walls is suicide, but small surgical and proving strikes are a tactical necessity.

Failing that, if you must kill time waiting, think of the logistics of a siege.
Under siege, cities fall under martial law, and everything is strictly rationed. A '1984' situation becomes almost unavoidable, it's communism by necessity, and there's still not enough to go around. Obviously, crime, theft, corruption, black marketeering - all of that is going to skyrocket almost overnight. When the wine stocks get low, government officials horde the last casks for themselves. When food gets scarce, people murder each other over soup vouchers so that they can feed their children. Black marketeers sell bread cut with sawdust for exorbitant fees. Protection rackets spring up. Prostitution runs rampant as people who were once well-off now stoop to any level to feed themselves. The populace is pushed beyond just "poor morale" all the way to a boiling point. You're always a literal stone's-throw away from a riot breaking out. There are voices of dissent, people who believe the enemy is really just a government conspiracy, people on the brink of mutiny and revolt against the leadership, and nihilists who would rather just see everyone dead than go on suffering indefinitely like this. In desperation, people call out to strange gods and wierd cults take root in the darkest corners of society.
The PCs aren't just fighting the monsters on the outside. The greatest threats will come from within. Just imagine every dystopia you've ever seen. Now, your PCs are soldiers or police, and instead of being Katniss and "saving the world," they are tasked with the thankless and almost impossible job of making sure that as many people as possible live to see the next dawn.

[MrFahrenheit]

Agreed with the previous poster on nearly all points. If you don't want to have the party go outside between sieges just yet, focus on politics of being on the inside:

Where is the supply coming for the black market? Who's holding out? Does the party side with the city government to root out the smugglers, or with the smugglers? And how are they bringing the goods in if it's nothing but monsters outside the wall?

[Rysto]

Pick the most interesting part of your story. Start there

Thanks for the advice. I may not follow it to the letter, but it got me questioning some of my initial assumptions about how the campaign would look. The question that I'm mulling over now instead of "how to make a defensive war interesting?" is "what am I trying to accomplish in the defensive component of the campaign?" If the answer is nothing then you're absolutely right, I need to just axe it. If there is something, then that needs to guide the design of that portion of the campaign.

As for the logistics suggestion, that's interesting but unfortunately doesn't apply to the setting. Sorry, I just didn't describe the setting well enough. It's like AoT before the outer wall fell: the wall protects not just a single castle or city but a huge, self-sufficient area, and people have been living behind it somewhat peacefully for generations.

[CaptainSarathai]

Well then, what kind of enemies are you facing? Actual Titans, or could it be something a little different. I mean, regular Hobgoblins might be a little boring, but I could see that if they were your beseiging force, maybe having some little tribes of goblins inside the walls.
Even if there aren't goblinoids on the outside, have some "pest" quality monsters inside. The PCs are sent to hunt them down and keep their numbers low.

You could actually have some fun with this. Set up expectations that it's going to be a fairly normal campaign.
Station them in an interior city, so they think that they're "outside the walls" whenever they go and hunt goblins or whatever. Don't even have them realize that there is a much larger, more important wall further away.
Show the military growing fat, lazy, and complacent. Have a few of the "hardcore" guys stupidly wishing that something big would happen, just to break up the monotony of killing pest-monsters and patrolling. Show that the walls are going somewhat neglected.
Kind of like the dragons in Skyrim - nobody has even seen one of the big-bads in a lifetime, they're almost fading into legend now. People could even be venturing outside the walls - never far, always within sight and such, but actually thinking, "wow, this is okay - maybe they just disappeared."

Use this time to set up how unprepared people are for a massive attack and siege of the inner walls. If you want the true AoT feeling, create relationships with several NPCs that the players actually like and enjoy, and then kill them all off during the major attack.
Drop hints to the party that something is wrong. Tell them directly,
"The goblins are acting erratically, as though something big is coming."
Foreshadow the attack heavily but have the PCs be the only ones who see/believe it, and let them either investigate alone (way over their heads) or try to convince the higher brass that they need to be prepared (which only gets them laughed at). This puts them in the perfect position to be heroes when the main portion of the campaign really starts.

I also use the 'milestone' XP system, where the players just level up as I tell them to. It allows me to map the campaign plot by level. Do the same with your campaign. Map out the big events by rough level.

Level 1-2: goblin patrols and hints
Level 3: discovering outer wall was breached, BBEG reveal
Level 4-5: massive attack and defensive siege
Level 6-10: reclaiming outer wall
Level 10+: venturing beyond outer wall to end threat forever (AoT season 2)

[MrBig]

The 'walled garden' idea is actually a pretty common one. An island of civilization/humanity, surrounded by a big, bad world.

H.G. Wells 'The Time Machine' - an idyllic society without any cares, but it actually turns out to be a world run by the baddies.

Logan's Run - an idyllic society, except that everyone is killed at the age of 30 because it's fixed-size city, and resources are constrained. Big bad world outside.

The 100 (US TV Series) - Earth is ravaged, and an island of civilization escapes and lives on satellites orbiting the planet. They are high-tech, but extremely resource constrained. Population and resource pressures eventually force them back down the planet, where they struggle against the big bad world.

The Divergent movie series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant) - a walled city struggling with power struggles and inequality.

Defiance - US TV sci-fi series. Walled city, dangerous landscape. Expeditions into the badlands to forage for supplies, rare items, etc.

Dominion - US TV show where angels have destroyed most of the earth, and humanity has holed up in walled cities to fight them.

The City of Ember - Sci-fi book/film - underground city escaping devastation.

So, I don't think that the premise is too limiting - there are million stories you can pull inspiration from, if you want.
There are a _lot_ of levers you can pull to change how you want this world to feel.


- How big is the 'known world'?
- How resource-constrained are they?
- Are there other cities? How are they connected? Tunnels? Teleportation pads? Flight? Overland trips?
- What do the players know about the situation?

Are they completely lied to about the state of the world (ala Logan's Run / Time Machine)?
Is it somewhat known, but not well understood? (ala The 100, Divergent)
Is it a daily part of life? Venturing beyond the walls for supplies, scavenging, etc.