Multi-character/large party play: Thorin and Company

[Arandur]

Hey all, seeking some help brainstorming possibilities and implications of attempting to run a game at a non-standard scale.

Concept: Think of Middle-Earth and its histories and time scales, and how whether in the legends of Men or the living memory of the longer-lived races, many great events took place. What if you could experience a greater chunk of history and events in the world, like that? Live the tales?

Consider particularly, for instance, what we learn in The Hobbit of the Dwarves of Erebor, driven from their kingdom by Smaug, wandering for years, fighting the War of Dwarves and Orcs after the murder of Thror, eventually leading to the attempt of a small company to reclaim Erebor. Even before that, Durin's folk lived for centuries in the Grey Mountains of the North, being driven south by dragons (War of Dwarves and Dragons).

In fact, as an experiment that I would like to try to play out, I'm wondering how to build just that: a game play experience focused on Dwarves of Middle Earth from the time in the Grey Mountains of the north, starting just before the onset of the War of Dwarves and Dragons, and proceeding up to and possibly including the events of The Hobbit. This era has so many of fantasy tropes: great battles with dragons and other fell beasts, lost kingdoms, ancient ruins, desperate wars, great treasure, noble deeds, adventurer-kings, wilderness wandering, etc.

Goals:
1. Players get to move among scales, but typically broader than the control of a single PC; there may be a primary character, but also control of several others, such that the player party can control a Company rather than just a Party -- and may move in and out of a stable of characters.

To support this, I'm thinking possibly of some of making use of some mechanics like "squad" or "swarm" or "group" rules. Individual characters would receive less stat detail than is typical to rpgs, and the goal would be to have the Players have a similar complexity at the table as with single PCs, though they control a few characters.

2. Modest engagement at a kingdom scale. I'm a great fan of the old AD&D Birthright system and can adapt this to the setting to capture some of what goes on among clans and kingdoms and armies. There would be modifications to be made there, as well, particularly to time scales.

3. Play over decades and even centuries. Virtually all rulesets are geared toward very short periods of time. Challenges in breaching that include:
a feeling of fits and starts and jumping around; ideally there would be some experience of intervening time to make it feel more smooth, with some action during that period, like Pendragon's "Winter" phase
potential loss of player commitment to character and story; if you get invested in either, crossing time can dilute that commitment, though I think long-lived characters, descendants, and Tolkien's style of continuity of peoples and sagas, if done right, could be the antidote
difficulty gaining consensus among players wanting to do or focus on different things, if this impacts when and where you move in the story across time -- cater to one and you may lose others


To get even more ambitious, the "holy grails" of family-oriented-adult-gaming, as my friends have discovered, includes also the ideals of:
A. Episodic play -- each relatively short game session can be fairly self-contained in story, or be interruptible, so that longer periods between gaming don't make the game suffer
B. Variable participants -- ease of still holding the game session when different people are available each time (not having continuity of players); episodic play would help tremendously with this
C. Minimal GM prep and bandwidth after initial game establishment; even All-Player Cooperative (no GM necessary) or rotating GM, scaling appropriate for number of players. This is typically the realm only of board/card game adventures, or things like Expedition RPG. It's obviously extremely difficult to have a great Tabletop RPG session without a GM, or with minimal GM work. But it is nevertheless a heavenly dream for a gaming group where no one has much time.


One of my reasons for interest in the different play scales I've proposed is that I think, once the admittedly quite hard work of figuring it out is done, A,B, and C might actually be more achievable in such an approach. Aside from that, I'm reading The Hobbit to my young boys and I think they would love to get immersed in a world and play style that resonates with the Tolkien (and Lewis--they loved Narnia, too) story approach.


Laying aside the probably-insurmountable hurdles of these ambitions, imagine that it's theoretically possible to achieve and hit me with any of your thoughts on the subject. If it grabs your interest of course.

I'll elaborate as the discussion goes on.

Thanks!

[Argothair]

Well, one way to allow for a flexible cast of players/characters in the setting you describe is to setup a 'home base' in the Grey Mountains, and then imagine that 'adventuring parties' of dwarves sally forth from the home base from time to time to achieve different goals. Especially if you're willing to say that each player controls more than one character, you could multi-thread those adventures as needed.

E.g., at your March gaming session, Frederico controls Thorin and Javier controls Gloin, and the two of them (together with a swarm of NPC dwarves) go visit Bree looking for news of Thorin's father. Later, at your April gaming session, Frederico can't make it, but Maria is in town. Maria plays Gimli, and Javier plays Dwalin, and the two of them go on a trading mission to sell the last year's worth of metalwork in exchange for food and gems. In May, you've got Frederico, Javier, and Maria all ready to play, so maybe you resume the adventure about Bree and give Maria one or two of the formerly-NPC dwarves to play. If everyone shows up again in June, maybe that's a good time to have the dwarves driven out of the Grey Mountains and forced to go into exile looking for a new home.

Over the course of 20 or so sessions, you could plausibly work your way through much of the history of the Dwarves in the Third Age, fast-forwarding through parts where nothing special was happening, with just a few scenarios here and there to lend flavor and texture to the idea that the Dwarves were living in a place before they got driven out of it.

I think it's probably too ambitious to try to *also* combine this with extensive rules for running multiple characters in the same session, and commanding hordes of dwarves in battle, and so on. Like yes, you can have the occasional mass-combat scene as needed for dramatic effect, but if you want your game to be primarily made up of diplomacy and national politics then D&D (any version) is probably the wrong vehicle for that. It's not that it *can't* work, it's just that there are better systems out there that are more specifically suited for that task.

[Arandur]

Thanks for the reply!

I like the flexible cast/adventuring party idea, moving out from a home base. Thanks for some adventure hooks, too!

The kingdom-level aspect I'm familiar with from the 2nd edition Birthright game and the fan community's later refinements. It would probably be DM backdrop for helping organize the world, though; unfortunately, I have not found many players interested in that genre of play. :(

I think part of the challenge is getting player commitment to characters -- the investment people have in their PCs is often one of the main drivers of D&D. Perhaps the key is to let them develop a key character or two, and provide a more minimal framework for several others who can accompany or be involved. Keep the stats lighter on them, but ready to step in as player attendance changes (stats would need to be kept as community chest, at least for the larger stable of characters).

To keep table play from bogging down, I need some means of taking those more minimal stats and letting them convert to "group attacks" and "group defense," perhaps with some of the squad, group, or swarm rules that lurk among editions. Examples:

1. Thorin is the commander, with his nephews Fili and Kili "stacked" or supporting him; they take the same initiative, generally moving as one, and Fili and Kili mostly give Thorin bonuses to attack and defense, soak some damage, and provide secondary attacks or automatic follow-up damage (if Thorin hits, add +1d8 damage to any opponent they can engage; maybe even doing that damage to someone even if he misses by 5 or less). So you're just adding dice to your handful when you're conducting your actions, and these effectively represent Fili and Kili.

A crit might disable one (temporarily or otherwise), or one might split off to use a special skill (maybe Fili is comparatively stealthy and Kili has a keen eye for guarding or seeking).

2. Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur attack as a group, taking up space like a Large creature, threatening all the squares around, doing "splash damage" when they attack. Skill uses or character interactions requiring rolls may have 2 or 3 dice, with one chosen as the lead/main action, and "botches" or high successes (mins or maxes) representing penalties or boosts based on what the others are doing. Like Bofur defusing a tense situation with some empathic charm and a dwarf song -- but Bombur's obese stumbling or uncouth table habits turning a promising social interaction into merely an awkward conversation.


Regarding character growth and intervening time, Tolkien's histories and dwarven lifespans and creative proclivities lend themselves well to skipping around years at a time with the players choosing productive things in the extended "down time," even achieving what otherwise might be minor adventure goals with some rapid high level interactions (that merchant quest and securing safe passage to settle unclaimed hills for some fellow exiles).