Problems/Encounters/Adventures in a Stable Kingdom/World...

[Zovc]

What kinds of things are there for adventurers to do in a stable society?

In the campaign setting I am working on, I imagine players starting off in a relatively stable world. Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, and Humans (all races on the continent) have all put their differences aside and formed a continent-spanning nation. Players find themselves starting in a coastal city of this nation that was one of the first to adopt shipping by sea from city to city.

Eventually, this society finds it to be of its interest to explore the open seas. They find another continent populated by unfamiliar races with unfamiliar traditions and magics. Players will essentially decide how the two continents interact for the plausible future, being the first representatives of the DGHH. Of course, this is the focus of the adventure, and I've thought about having players starting out on the boat, but that leaves little history between the characters (unless players collaborate before hand, which I don't expect).

What could the players do before getting on the boat; and what could a neat segway be for getting characters onto the boat, in spite of whether or not they want to?

If you want to respond in a "technical" manner, I am using Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 for this game.

[Thatguyoverther]

In a stable setting, I'd use more political intrigue, if the players are up to it. Espionage and counter espionage are fun.

Hunting down a serial killer could also be fun. Have the murder kill one or more important NPCs to the characters to make sure that they are emotionally invested. Then you could have them get word that the killer is on a ship to the new world. Then you get to have fun trying to find out who the killer is before he manages to slay the entire crew.

[Toric]

If the four races of the kingdom have put their differences aside, this could be reflected in all aspects of life: social events, trade, and organized crime. I could easily imagine an introduction adventure against a local crime syndicate that focuses on using the respective skills of gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and humans for their various heists. Humans for the most part are negotiators and cat-burglars, dwarves are thugs and lockpickers, gnomes are skilled in misdirection and getaways, and halflings are cutpurses and spies.

[Thatguyoverther]

If the four races of the kingdom have put their differences aside, this could be reflected in all aspects of life: social events, trade, and organized crime. I could easily imagine an introduction adventure against a local crime syndicate that focuses on using the respective skills of gnomes, dwarves, halflings, and humans for their various heists. Humans for the most part are negotiators and cat-burglars, dwarves are thugs and lockpickers, gnomes are skilled in misdirection and getaways, and halflings are cutpurses and spies.

I like this idea. Although I'd be tempted to make different racial crime families. Mostly so I could have a hafling NPC make an offer the PCs couldn't refuse.

[Zovc]

Racial Mafias don't work if the party consists of one member of each race, in most cases. If the party has all but one, they can work against the only racial mafia; or if everyone is one race, they can be a member of the mafia. I'd hate to assume players will be certain races when I haven't even got the campaign setting set.

[Zovc]

Information about the races that might help you sow adventure seeds...

Dwarves: Master craftsmen, rather law-aligned. I don't have very much in the line of their flavor decided. I imagine the Dwarves would respect the Gnomes talent (and devotion) with magic, they are interested in collaborating to make magic items. Dwarves are the longest lived of the four races.

Gnomes: Obsessive magicians, somewehat chaos-inclined. Pretty much all gnomes care about is magic, both arcane and divine--so they can be among the most pious. Gnomes often have one-track minds. Gnomes appreciate dwarven craftsmanship, and would happily benefit from it (help with facilities, magical focuses, etc). Gonomes live the second most lengthy lives of the four dominant races.

Humans: As with most fantasy settings, there is no definite role or alignment humans tend toward. Humans are usually people of professions and/or merchants, though many eagerly will join military ranks or enlist in militias. Humans are fairly apt in most tasks, they are usually praised for achievements in many fields or fall short for spreading themselves too thin. Humans get along best with halflings, whom they have the most in common with. Humans age the most quickly out of the four races.

Halflings: Almost as versatile as humans, halflings are quite athletic for their size. Halflings are anxious and competitive. In the military, halflings prefer to be in any sort of 'special forces' available, be it sniping, scouting, or frontlining. Halflings in society are usually merchants or farmers.

[Jack_Simth]

Racial Mafias don't work if the party consists of one member of each race, in most cases. If the party has all but one, they can work against the only racial mafia; or if everyone is one race, they can be a member of the mafia. I'd hate to assume players will be certain races when I haven't even got the campaign setting set.

Toric's idea hadn't been so much for a racial crime syndicate (all dwarves, for instance) so much as a crime syndicate that incorporated all the races for what they're good at (so Dwarven bruisers, halfling cutpurses, and so on... but they're all part of one Mob).

Let's see...

Open warfare is not allowed, so there are The Games.
Whenever there's a particularly strong disagreement among the Four Races, each set of participants selects a team of Champions, and sets them to a Task. Whoever's Champions complete the Task first is ceded the victory (the two Tasks may or may not be mutually exclusive, but they are always equal - and they're set up in such a way that nobody involved is ordering anyone involved to do anything illegal - so if the goal is to get a particular golden goblet, that particular golden goblet was specifically planted in that location for that purpose, and that golden goblet is on the lands of someone who has granted their permission for this event to take place; this does not, however, in and of itself prevent people from doing illegal things...).

Duel by Proxy:
Two nobles insult each other. Neither is particularly good with a sword. So they set up an arena, and select champions. Fight may be to the death, to surrender, to disablement, or to first blood. Whatever.

Mystery:
Who done it? Somebody broke a law (murder, theft, whatever) and needs to be caught.

Conspiracy Theory:
Somebody's conspiring against the peace and tranquility of the Four Races, and Must Be Stopped.

[Godskook]

There is really no such thing as 'stable'. There will always be unrest, just in kingdoms that we call 'stable', that unrest is negligible and short-lived relative to other things. Even in more stable countries, there's something going on. Ideas for finding unrest in 'stable' nations:

1.What's the major industries? These normally produce unrest that are largely ignored by those not in the industry. Remember the American Railroads? There were tons of train robberies, and the companies were creating economic tyrannies over their employees. How about the cattle industry? The time period that helped bring us the phrase 'cowboys and indians'. These times were great times of growth and stability, for those who lived on America's east coast. In the west, there was intrigue, heroes and villains galore. Plenty of material to work with if you wanted.

2.Behind the curtains - This has been done time and again. The 'heroes' work entirely behind the curtain, saving society from threats it doesn't know exists. There's MIB, Timecop, among others.

3.Terrorism - Just because your country is stable, doesn't mean that other countries are. Invariably, someone, somewhere, is going to be causing unrest, and if you've got a large and 'stable' country, chances are they hate you.

4.And then there's the possibility that 'stability' is the problem. Sure, the world is stable, but there's oppression that everyone accepts because its better than anarchy. A good reference for this style would be 1984, Judge Dredd* or Equilibrium. (*In that case, there's multiple tropes in the story, but the overarching world is a 'stable problem' variety)

5.Explorers. The known world may be 'stable' and 'safe', but there's still things that can be explored. This is even more effective if you spend time behind the curtains, getting your players to like the world they're protecting. Now, they start exploring the area beyond, exposing their precious homeland to dangers that didn't know they existed before. There's the Mummy trilogy, Stargate, Cuthulu, among others.

[Milskidasith]

Running a game in a 1984 dystopia is a fun idea, but probably not what he's thinking. Still a great idea.

[sadi]

Exploration/Colonization and new empire building, either as individuals or part of some game by the powers that be. I've actually wanted to do this for a while.

[Zovc]

I feel like this is somewhat off-topic, but not enough so to start a new thread.

Wizards are dangerous, there's no doubt about it--but they have a large amount of boons that can be provided to towns or cities. This is sort of like (then again, it's rather not like) how automobiles cause a massive number of deaths, but are legal because of their massive boon on commercial and civilian functions. I'd expect the practice of magic to be legal, especially considering how the deities themselves bestow magic upon their most devout. What are some ways to facilitate magic? How can you punish someone who is so much more powerful than you? Is there a guild of mages who specifically practice magic to defeat 'rogue' spellcasters?

Now, the world I'm talking about here is a small one, it's just a small continent (a country surrounded by water), so I wouldn't expect characters to reach past level 10 (6, really). Once the world outside of them becomes networked, ideas of magic (and other kinds of 'magic') can be refined on a much larger scale, druids can commune with many more locations, clerics may discover more deities, and warriors can encounter new tactics. Effectively, this nation is reaching stagnancy. This is what I want to evoke.

Back on topic...

I'm having a hard time seeing 'barbarians' in the society in my head, but maybe I just haven't thought about things enough. Ask me some questions about this nation to get me going, please!

[Sir_Elderberry]

Look around you, at the real world. There are no real threats on a global scale--terrorists threaten people's lives but rarely entire developed nations. Since the Cold War's over we don't tend to worry too much about surprise nuclear vaporization. What are we scared of?

Small madmen, serial killers--local threats.
Rogue groups who have power beyond their accountability, like terrorists.
Natural disasters, often aided by our own practices -- global warming, asteroid collision, H1N1

Think along those lines. Find a news magazine and add some wizards.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

What kinds of things are there for adventurers to do in a stable society?

Balancing the national deficit.

[Godskook]

Balancing the national deficit.

A challenge that could kill Pun-pun, the 1d2 Crusader, and Cindy!

[bosssmiley]

What kinds of things are there for adventurers to do in a stable society?

Gee, I don't know. Action Adventure suddenly grinds to a halt when the Renaissance starts.

It's a darn shame that no-one ever wrote any books about a trio of musketeers fighting for king and country; or about picarro rogues scamming and stealing their way across Europe; or about men who kidnap children to warp them into monsters for the entertainment of the courtly elite; or about weird and fanatical Templar Knight holdovers; or about discovering ancient lost cities and strange new cultures in the jungle; or about El Dorado and fountains of youth; or about pirates, privateers and swarthy-skinned corsair kings; or about exiled Dukes living on islands with their magical servitors; or about journeying to the moon using dew-filled balloons and endless ladders; or about being a big-nosed fighter who has to help some other guy get the girl he loves; or anything like that. Coz they would be handy...if they only existed.

"Curse you, oh 16th and 17th centuries, for being such models of social equilibrium and unrelenting tedium! 200 long, boring years of absolutely nothing happening."

Stable society? Ain't no such thing so long as someone has something another guy wants. We just take a less casual attitude to bodies in the street in recent times.

[Thrawn4]

"Curse you, oh 16th and 17th centuries, for being such models of social equilibrium and unrelenting tedium! 200 long, boring years of absolutely nothing happening."

Nice ^^

Well, of course it's much easier to make up a shadowy land of darkness with fiendish inhabitants.
But really, most good stories also feature such "ordinary" themes like friendship, love, faith and the sense of life.
Just give them some friends who help them, but also need help. This could lead to difficult situations when they can't support everyone of their friends and have to choose.
Might be that they are also very poor at the beginning and have to endure it or resort to some nasty things. Does a great injustice warrant an evil deed? In other words, make them feel like the victims of the society. Later on, if they might gain some power, they can see the other side. And they can also choose if they want to get revenge for their suppression, just enjoy themselves or to change things for better.
There could also be strange customs which still frighten the characters because they are not familiar with them, but are perfectly fine with the members of the society.
Just force them to make decisions occasionally.

[Artanis]

Of course, this is the focus of the adventure, and I've thought about having players starting out on the boat, but that leaves little history between the characters (unless players collaborate before hand, which I don't expect).

What could the players do before getting on the boat; and what could a neat segway be for getting characters onto the boat, in spite of whether or not they want to?

Since I haven't seen this answered yet...

One of the best RPG campaigns I've been in started with the party already on its first mission, with the awkward meet-up scenes assumed to have already happened. The players will have plenty of time to work out how those scenes went...basically, to retroactively collaborate as they go along.

Doing that gets you right to the adventure instead of trying to force your way through a session or two of trying to BS reasons for characters who don't know each other to work together.

[Ravens_cry]

A challenge that could kill Pun-pun, the 1d2 Crusader, and Cindy!

Whose Cindy?

[Eldariel]

Whose Cindy?

To quote Tippy's description:
"Cindy is a flighty 6 year old at heart. She does whatever strikes her fancy, whenever it strikes her fancy. Her only family is her father, she doesn't know who her mother is, and he is away most of the time.

Currently Cindy is living at Sigil Prep and has decided that its quite fun to pester the professors and students.

Her abilities come mostly from one of her fathers more questionable ideas, he Mind Raped her and gave her most of his knowledge when she was 5. He decided it was too much work to teach and raise a kid so he condensed over 500 years of accumulated knowledge into 6 seconds."


She's also a Wizard/Incantatrix who has persisted a bunch of relevant buffs and has the usual Incantatrix-empowered Arcane Thesised spells of ultimate destruction; I recall she uses Enervation though Orb of Fire is almost certainly superior.

It basically includes the Dark Chaos-shuffle on Gray Elf racials to generate a bunch of extra feats, along with all the tried-and-true Wizard stuff.


When Tippy used her in one campaign here, she had the following spells persisted:
Haste
Fly
Displacement
Detect Thoughts
Greater Blink
Dimension Jumper
Greater Anticipate Teleport
Ironguard
Mindblank
Dragonsight

Mind you, that's not the level 20 build and it had some restrictions placed on it. Still enough to profit.