PDA

View Full Version : Player Led Adventures?



jjordan
2020-03-28, 12:13 PM
Anyone done any work with player led adventures? I'm thinking about dumping an information pack and a motivator on a player character to see what they do with it. E.G. A cleric receives a letter indicating one of their deity's temples has been destroyed by servants of another deity and the cleric is the closest available resource. Please go clear out the temple and make the area safe for the priests that follow to rebuild. Or the brooding rogue receives a tip, in lieu of payment of a gambling debt, that his archnemisis is at a location doing things.

The idea is for the players to bring these adventures to the group and be responsible for organizing and leading them, not being the GM. Previously I've only ever brought these sorts of things before the whole group as the GM. Putting them in front of a player's character is new for me.

DeTess
2020-03-28, 12:24 PM
I've been in a position like that as a player, seemingly mostly by accident (though given how things ended up going, the DM might have planned things like that). In short, my character was a member of a small group of Scholars, and me and the other PC's had discovered a bit of a magical mystery, as well as managing to piss of the people that would have been our starting quest givers. So I suggested we go to our hometown to deliver the samples and news we had to my organisation. And everything else that happened seemed to follow from that decision, more or less.

However, if you do that, you need to be careful that the player you given the initial info dump to doesn't become the protagonist of the story, with everyone else becoming helpers. ideally, you should give everyone's stuff from their background or whatever that they can do stuff with, it just so happens that one players background is actively guiding the party to do a thing (and which player that is should ideally change around over time). For example, another member of my party in the campaign I mentioned above is a warlock who s currently trying to figure out how to properly communicate with his patron.

edit: that having been said, I do think it's worthwhile, especially if you're skilled enough to make these things appear organically. Like if a player can say 'hey guys, I know a thing, how about we do this' without any prompting or briefing from the DM it gives that player a far greater feeling of immersion in the world.

Quertus
2020-03-28, 01:26 PM
… not what I expected.

I had thought this was going to be more about the way that I prefer to run games, with lots of things going on, and the PCs are welcome to latch onto any of them. For example, the first campaign I ran, just the things that the party latched onto included a goblin incursion, goblin tech, 8 warring archimages, and their own history and politics; things that they mostly ignored included a sickness in a nearby village, evil gnomes enslaving the forest- and tinker gnomes, orcs, and the problem with dragons. And that's not even counting all the things that they didn't even really figure out that were also going on at the same time.

For things that are… "this one PCs plot"? There's a lot of ways that this can go wrong. For example, if a Cleric of The Burning Hate (especially one that I had never met) told me that his temple just got destroyed? I would encourage him to "go avenge their deaths" / help rectify the attackers' oversight in leaving him alive.

This kind of thing is only good a) in the right group, b) for a player/PC who needs more spotlight time, or c) with a player who knows how to make"their plot" into a good thing for the party.

DeTess
2020-03-28, 01:36 PM
For things that are… "this one PCs plot"? There's a lot of ways that this can go wrong. For example, if a Cleric of The Burning Hate (especially one that I had never met) told me that his temple just got destroyed? I would encourage him to "go avenge their deaths" / help rectify the attackers' oversight in leaving him alive.

I would expect this to be run not so much as 'this one PC's plot' but more like 'this one PC provides the initial impetus for the start of the adventure concerning all PC's'. So using the OP's example, the cleric might recruit the rest of the PC's to avenge the destroyed temple, but along the way they all discover it to be part of a greater plot by a lich to conquer the world, also the lich is the dude who killed the fighter's father (allowing the fighter PC to further push the group along as it's now personal for them) and the rogue learns that the lich has a fabulous treasure that'll allow her to restore her noble-house's fortune or something.

Quertus
2020-03-28, 08:43 PM
I would expect this to be run not so much as 'this one PC's plot' but more like 'this one PC provides the initial impetus for the start of the adventure concerning all PC's'. So using the OP's example, the cleric might recruit the rest of the PC's to avenge the destroyed temple, but along the way they all discover it to be part of a greater plot by a lich to conquer the world, also the lich is the dude who killed the fighter's father (allowing the fighter PC to further push the group along as it's now personal for them) and the rogue learns that the lich has a fabulous treasure that'll allow her to restore her noble-house's fortune or something.

*Shudders*

The contrivance! The contrivance!

*Backs slowly away*

-----

More seriously: it's fine if that's all part of the original setup: the Fighter wants to kill this guy because he's connected the Lich who killed his father; the Cleric wants to kill him because he burned down the temple; the Rogue because he made off with swag from the temple priests (who, being dead, won't need it any more). But having the Cleric happen to have hired the Fighter who has a vendetta against the Lich who, unbeknownst to them at the time, killed the Fighter's father? Let's file that under another reason why this can be a bad plan: the need to contrive reasons for everyone to be special.

Satinavian
2020-03-29, 02:04 AM
Anyone done any work with player led adventures? I'm thinking about dumping an information pack and a motivator on a player character to see what they do with it. E.G. A cleric receives a letter indicating one of their deity's temples has been destroyed by servants of another deity and the cleric is the closest available resource. Please go clear out the temple and make the area safe for the priests that follow to rebuild. Or the brooding rogue receives a tip, in lieu of payment of a gambling debt, that his archnemisis is at a location doing things.

The idea is for the players to bring these adventures to the group and be responsible for organizing and leading them, not being the GM. Previously I've only ever brought these sorts of things before the whole group as the GM. Putting them in front of a player's character is new for me.
That works well if the group already exists and is used to work together. Why would a PC [i]not[i] turn to his trusted allies when he has a personal problem ?


But it does not work as readily for a new group. In a new group every character needs his/her own motivation to join. If you want to use a single character hook for a new group, you need to bind everyone else to that singular character separately. That works well for theme groups or if that character hires the others, but there is hardly any chance to pull that off for a band of equals who also happen to a bunch of very diverse misfits.

Cluedrew
2020-03-29, 04:57 PM
Anyone done any work with player led adventures?Sure, just last week I did a campaign where the main (one of the two main?) conflict was on PC trying to convince the other PC they should abandon the base of operations they held. The entire campaign was decided by when that finally happened any would of played out differently if it had happened earlier, later or not at all. The only outside threat that the GM controlled was the passive monster threat which did escalate in response to some of the player's actions.

In terms of how we set it up it was a bit like Quertus's set up, present a lot of hooks and pick one (or more) that the players+ enjoy. The main difference is we did this before character creation so everyone could make a character that could fit into this scenario.


But it does not work as readily for a new group. In a new group every character needs his/her own motivation to join.Well here you can rely on the standard fallbacks (money, glory, etc.) for getting a PC involved in an NPCs quest. Really this just makes the quest giver come along with the group and give you one less motivation to decide.

I'm back.

Xuc Xac
2020-03-29, 07:08 PM
A cleric receives a letter indicating one of their deity's temples has been destroyed by servants of another deity and the cleric is the closest available resource. Please go clear out the temple and make the area safe for the priests that follow to rebuild.

This is not a player led adventure. This is a DM led adventure which has a player-specific hook.

If the DM has to tell the players what to do (i.e. "go clear out the temple"), then the players aren't leading. A player led adventure looks more like this :

DM: "While in the market, you hear the news that the temple of Mitra in the next town upriver has been ransacked and burned by followers of Set (that snake cult which has been growing rapidly over the past few years). Apparently, the priest and acolytes were killed by a group of Setite riders who torched the temple before heading east into the hills."
PC Cleric of Mitra: *goes to other PCs* "I need your help! We have to go upriver and investigate what happened to the Temple of Mitra. The clergy will need a proper burial and I need to salvage whatever I can from the rubble before scavengers loot it."

Or

"We must avenge my murdered brethren! If we leave immediately and strike northwest over land, we might be able to pick up their trail and catch up to them in the foothills before they disappear into the mountains."

Or

"While you guys are resting and resupplying here, I'm going to take a boat upriver to lay the murdered priests to rest and check on the villagers. I'll be back in 3 or 4 days."

Or

"Damn! Bad place to be a Mitran! Let's get our supplies together and get out of here!"

Or

"We've got to go take care of those frost giants raiding the coast. Stopping the giants before they get down to the port city of Imelas is more important right now than fighting some snake worshiping bandits up in the hills. I can only pray that they will be brought to justice before they hurt anyone else."

Quertus
2020-03-31, 09:33 AM
In terms of how we set it up it was a bit like Quertus's set up, present a lot of hooks and pick one (or more) that the players+ enjoy. The main difference is we did this before character creation so everyone could make a character that could fit into this scenario.

I'm back.

Welcome back!

Yeah, I find that it's often good to give the PCs a heads-up on the start point, and let them build/choose characters who fit that scenario, as you describe. Then provide them with multiple adventure seeds moving forward, and see if there's anything that they'd like to grow from there. If not, it's back to the "party creation" drawing board (or, if there's an odd man out, sometimes just the "character creation" drawing board).


This is not a player led adventure. This is a DM led adventure which has a player-specific hook.

If the DM has to tell the players what to do (i.e. "go clear out the temple"), then the players aren't leading. A player led adventure looks more like this :

DM: "While in the market, you hear the news that the temple of Mitra in the next town upriver has been ransacked and burned by followers of Set (that snake cult which has been growing rapidly over the past few years). Apparently, the priest and acolytes were killed by a group of Setite riders who torched the temple before heading east into the hills."
PC Cleric of Mitra: *goes to other PCs* "I need your help! We have to go upriver and investigate what happened to the Temple of Mitra. The clergy will need a proper burial and I need to salvage whatever I can from the rubble before scavengers loot it."

Or

"We must avenge my murdered brethren! If we leave immediately and strike northwest over land, we might be able to pick up their trail and catch up to them in the foothills before they disappear into the mountains."

Or

"While you guys are resting and resupplying here, I'm going to take a boat upriver to lay the murdered priests to rest and check on the villagers. I'll be back in 3 or 4 days."

Or

"Damn! Bad place to be a Mitran! Let's get our supplies together and get out of here!"

Or

"We've got to go take care of those frost giants raiding the coast. Stopping the giants before they get down to the port city of Imelas is more important right now than fighting some snake worshiping bandits up in the hills. I can only pray that they will be brought to justice before they hurt anyone else."

Very much this. Any element should not have just a single expected interpretation / response.

RazorChain
2020-03-31, 10:20 PM
Still most of this just sound like plot hooks that are presented to one PC that is supposed to bring others along.

Player led adventure for me is stuff that proactive players come up with. They decide they are going to clear out that keep and make it their HQ and rule over the lands around it. The Rogue in the party doesn't like the Thives's guild leader and decides to bump him off and replace him with an allied NPC.

Or like one of my players did after his character made some nasty enemies. He forged a treasure map about the lost treasure of the Black Templars on a far away Island and presented it to the party just to drag them away from his enemies. They went on a grand journey and had fun adventures on that Island but never found the lost treasure of the Black Templars.

farothel
2020-04-01, 09:09 AM
It's even more fun if you can manage to have two players get information or a request for help, but for opposing groups. I did this once in a Star Trek campaign I was GMing where two players had an obligation to different organisations which both came calling at the same time. That's a lot of fun, especially if you take players apart so they don't know it from each other what exactly they were asked and also to let them decide how to get the other players involved. This latter one you have to careful with as you need players who can do this believable (luckily, almost all my players are also GMs).

aglondier
2020-04-13, 12:09 AM
I've found that having a couple of dozen possible plot hooks to throw at the party works fine, as long as you keep track of the consequences of their lack of involvement. Say they ignore the rumor of evil cultists in favour of the ogre threat...well a month later they might have to deal with a better equipped, funded and entrenched cult...and if they still prioritise away from it, they might return to find the city council are cultists and the entire town are about to sacrifice themselves to raise great Cthulhu...