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View Full Version : DM Help Supernatural Emergency Response as a campaign structure



Yora
2019-05-30, 03:11 PM
When it comes to planning new campaigns, I have always been struggling the most with finding a concept for what player characters are supposed to be within the world of the game. Wandering vigilantes who look for opportunities to fight the good fight like questing knights always strike me as somewhat unbelievable, while treasure hunting swords for hire are difficult to get invested in. I also feel that both approaches don't encourage the players to be proactive much.
I also got pretty bored by preparing adventures about fighting goblins and bandits.

One type of adventuring character that I can fully get invested in is the supernatural emergency responder. Like in The Witcher and Mushishi, and you actually also get it with Indiana Jones, whose actual goals are neither riches nor research. It's characters who are educated about supernatural things and skilled in dealing with them, and the physical and mental fortitude to go in and set things right when things have litterally gone to hell. Not to slay everything that moves and burn the whole place down, but to actually fix things and calm down the situation. Occasionally this includes destroying the source of supernatural disruption, but more often violence makes dangerous situations worse instead of better, because people are acting out of fear, anger, or ignorance of what they are doing. Often knowing when to be diplomatic and when to use force is key to solving situations with a minimum of further damage. Frequently, the way people react to supernatural disruptions are even worse than the damage caused by the disruptions themselves.

My idea is that parties are centered around some scholars, shamans, and exorcists, with the other PCs being guards and assistants. Or the other way around with two or three tough warriors with their retinue of supernatural specialists. Either way, players who want to take a leading role in the party should make highly educated characters. NPCs will know the PCs as people capable of dealing with supernatural threats, and often they will come the the PCs or send for them by message, instead of sitting the situation out in hope that some day somebody might pass through their village who feel like risking their lives for strangers they've never seen before.
While very informal and unorganized, these curse breakers are a cultural institution. The people with the means to deal with supernatural threats have a social obligation to do so, even when the means of the people in need mean that there barely will be any reward. But it is also socially mandatory that the burden has to be carried by everyone, and it can't be left up to these volunteers to travel and get magical ingredients at their own expense, otherwise they would soon disappear.

For my own campaign, my plan is to have a world that is sparsely populated with towns being widely disperses but very well connected with each other. Messages might take a few weeks to arrive, but settlements are in regular contact, with people having relatives in many different places. I also plan to handle adventures very sandboxy. The players get the initial plea for help, but only very vague details about the actual nature of the threat, or how it could be dealt with. Most people don't know anythign about these things, that's why they ask for help from someone who does.

I intend to only give the players calls for actual supernatural problems. No guard jobs, bandit hunts, artifact searches, military assignments, or political objectives. It might turn out that any of these things set in motion the supernatural events and it might become neccessary to understand them to find a solution to the problem, but it won't be expected of the players to solve them. If the players feel invested in the NPCs, it's certainly their option, though.

So far, I've come up with four basic types of tasks that the party might be asked to perform:
Rescue: Someone has gone missing in a supernatural place, or is assumed to have been taken by supernatural beings, and they players are asked to find the people and when possible bring them back.
Reconnaisance: There have been numerous bad omens pointing at some supernatural threat coming from the wilderness and the players are asked to find out what is going on and prevent disaster striking the settlements.
Negotiation: The spirits of the wilderness are expressing their anger over something or have started making changes to the environment. The players are asked to somehow convince the spirits to return things to normal.
Curses: Someone is suffering from some kind of curse or supernatural disease or poison and the players are asked to identify the source and find a way to end it.

I think in a way, all of these include some significant degree of investigation. So I probably should freshen up on how to handle those in a campaign. Another thing that I see as probably working very well is to have large numbers of very talktive creatures and a variety of eccentric NPCs. But combined with the setting I am aiming at, I also see plenty of room for mid-distance wilderness travel and dungeon crawling. Just with lower frequencies of hostile monsters and treasures to collect. Instead they are places visited to find information from a creature or from objects, and to get items that will be tools needed to accomplish the task.

Do you have any additional ideas or suggestions for what kinds of things might be asked of the players, and what elements would be good to have included in such adventures.

Spamotron
2019-05-30, 07:17 PM
I'm fond of supernatural beings having their own form of civilization and customs like the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Fae. It makes political intrigue and diplomacy possible in this kind of game.

RNightstalker
2019-06-02, 12:39 AM
It almost seems like you want to do Ghostbusters or VanHelsing as a campaign...instead of doing the "I roll a Knowledge:Religion check, what do I remember about a vampire-looking guy from my undead 101 class at the adventuring school", the PCs have to roleplay learning what does and doesn't work on certain monsters; roleplaying try, fail, adjust. Maybe they get their first break by "spilling" holy water on a bad guy, so the next town calls on them to help with their "same" problem.

Mechalich
2019-06-02, 12:52 AM
One type of adventuring character that I can fully get invested in is the supernatural emergency responder. Like in The Witcher and Mushishi, and you actually also get it with Indiana Jones, whose actual goals are neither riches nor research. It's characters who are educated about supernatural things and skilled in dealing with them, and the physical and mental fortitude to go in and set things right when things have litterally gone to hell. Not to slay everything that moves and burn the whole place down, but to actually fix things and calm down the situation. Occasionally this includes destroying the source of supernatural disruption, but more often violence makes dangerous situations worse instead of better, because people are acting out of fear, anger, or ignorance of what they are doing. Often knowing when to be diplomatic and when to use force is key to solving situations with a minimum of further damage. Frequently, the way people react to supernatural disruptions are even worse than the damage caused by the disruptions themselves.

One thing that I would note along these lines is that if supernatural incursions happen on a regular basis, societies will learn how to react to them properly, and their reactions will evolve toward the appropriate response over time. That's what happens when a society deals with a repeated real problem (as opposed to real world supernatural response that deals with one that's made up and is about managing human psychology). So the part about people's reactions being even worse than the actual damage caused by the entity would only hold true in the case of new or rare instigators.


My idea is that parties are centered around some scholars, shamans, and exorcists, with the other PCs being guards and assistants. Or the other way around with two or three tough warriors with their retinue of supernatural specialists. Either way, players who want to take a leading role in the party should make highly educated characters. NPCs will know the PCs as people capable of dealing with supernatural threats, and often they will come the the PCs or send for them by message, instead of sitting the situation out in hope that some day somebody might pass through their village who feel like risking their lives for strangers they've never seen before.
While very informal and unorganized, these curse breakers are a cultural institution. The people with the means to deal with supernatural threats have a social obligation to do so, even when the means of the people in need mean that there barely will be any reward. But it is also socially mandatory that the burden has to be carried by everyone, and it can't be left up to these volunteers to travel and get magical ingredients at their own expense, otherwise they would soon disappear.

Why would they be informal? If supernatural issues are consistent enough to require regular response, then the issue becomes an official matter, and a bureaucracy will develop. It would only remain informal if supernatural issues are rare enough and sufficiently low grade in difficulty that they remain a freak occurrence and stay on the fringe of society.


Do you have any additional ideas or suggestions for what kinds of things might be asked of the players, and what elements would be good to have included in such adventures.

You need to watch the 2006 anime Ghost Hunt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ghost_Hunt_episodes) though set in the modern world, it represents exactly what you describe (and also happens to be an excellent series in its own right).