On the Importance of Wasting Time
Yesterday's Pathfinder game was mostly about marking time than about adventuring... and I'm happy with that.
One of the important things about running a role playing game campaign, particularly when you're working with published adventures or adventure paths (interconnected adventures that advance a character through a significant adventuring career with a drawn out plot), is to allow for character down time, reflection, and exposition. I think these elements help build depth into the campaign so that players have more opportunities to embed their characters into the situation. If there are riots on the docks between noble houses trying to flee the city, the players can decide how their PCs feel about it which helps them develop their characters and their relationships with the game world. It also helps me foreshadow information to them, in this case, that there have been more murders of noble class offspring and heirs, sparking at least a couple of families' efforts to leave the city and a minor riot over who could get space on a ship leaving the port.
Campaign downtime also allows the calendar to advance. In the current situation, a moderately expensive magic item had been commissioned and required time to complete. They really wanted that in their possession before sparking any more trouble. So we came up with things for the PCs to do to chew up the time in a realistic manner. That allows the item to be completed, but it also allows me to report on other things going on in the background without compressing the timeline too much (something that happens a lot in campaigns). I always felt that Pendragon's wintering phase was always a nice way to handle things like this. You go on an adventure which is usually assumed to take the bulk of the good weather seasons and then spend the winter holed up in your home base recovering, expanding your skills, and spending time outside of the rush of the adventure.
Finally, the great thing about playing low-adventuring time is that you can have plenty of research and exposition. One subplot I've introduced to the Council of Thieves campaign is heavily inspired by a plot element in one of my friend's long term campaigns. In that one, a character had recovered an artifact when he was a low level adventurer - a purple gem that showed you a vision of yourself as ruler of your homeland when you looked into it. In that campaign, the gem was a lynch-piece of a greater artifact - a magical weapon known as the Helix. In the Council of Thieves, I drew some inspiration from the Ghost Tower of Inverness and called it a Soul Gem - the Imperial Soul Gem to be precise. Drawing more on the Golarion campaign setting for Pathfinder, I worked up a series of Soul Gems (one believe to have been in the possession of Galap-Dreidel of Ghost Tower of Inverness fame) that served as the inspiration of the ioun stones of D&D tradition. I related the notes recorded by a Pathfinder Society Venture Captain on the legend of the Soul Gems (all devised while I was out shoveling snow one day - physical home labor is a great time for thinking about this stuff) so they have some ideas to chew on. Ultimately, the Soul Gem subplot is tangential to the main plot of Council of Thieves, though any of the gems would be helpful if used by a PC to achieve the campaign's goals. This subplot, should they choose to pursue any of it, gives us things to do when the main plot of the adventure path is resolved (and being 2/3 of the way there at 9th level, they'll probably resolve the plot around 12th level).
The real trick with playing up the downtime and exposition without adventuring is to not do it too long for your players. And so next week, we're on with more of the main plot action as the PCs try to intervene in the Council sending a hushman to quiet an informer...
One of the important things about running a role playing game campaign, particularly when you're working with published adventures or adventure paths (interconnected adventures that advance a character through a significant adventuring career with a drawn out plot), is to allow for character down time, reflection, and exposition. I think these elements help build depth into the campaign so that players have more opportunities to embed their characters into the situation. If there are riots on the docks between noble houses trying to flee the city, the players can decide how their PCs feel about it which helps them develop their characters and their relationships with the game world. It also helps me foreshadow information to them, in this case, that there have been more murders of noble class offspring and heirs, sparking at least a couple of families' efforts to leave the city and a minor riot over who could get space on a ship leaving the port.
Campaign downtime also allows the calendar to advance. In the current situation, a moderately expensive magic item had been commissioned and required time to complete. They really wanted that in their possession before sparking any more trouble. So we came up with things for the PCs to do to chew up the time in a realistic manner. That allows the item to be completed, but it also allows me to report on other things going on in the background without compressing the timeline too much (something that happens a lot in campaigns). I always felt that Pendragon's wintering phase was always a nice way to handle things like this. You go on an adventure which is usually assumed to take the bulk of the good weather seasons and then spend the winter holed up in your home base recovering, expanding your skills, and spending time outside of the rush of the adventure.
Finally, the great thing about playing low-adventuring time is that you can have plenty of research and exposition. One subplot I've introduced to the Council of Thieves campaign is heavily inspired by a plot element in one of my friend's long term campaigns. In that one, a character had recovered an artifact when he was a low level adventurer - a purple gem that showed you a vision of yourself as ruler of your homeland when you looked into it. In that campaign, the gem was a lynch-piece of a greater artifact - a magical weapon known as the Helix. In the Council of Thieves, I drew some inspiration from the Ghost Tower of Inverness and called it a Soul Gem - the Imperial Soul Gem to be precise. Drawing more on the Golarion campaign setting for Pathfinder, I worked up a series of Soul Gems (one believe to have been in the possession of Galap-Dreidel of Ghost Tower of Inverness fame) that served as the inspiration of the ioun stones of D&D tradition. I related the notes recorded by a Pathfinder Society Venture Captain on the legend of the Soul Gems (all devised while I was out shoveling snow one day - physical home labor is a great time for thinking about this stuff) so they have some ideas to chew on. Ultimately, the Soul Gem subplot is tangential to the main plot of Council of Thieves, though any of the gems would be helpful if used by a PC to achieve the campaign's goals. This subplot, should they choose to pursue any of it, gives us things to do when the main plot of the adventure path is resolved (and being 2/3 of the way there at 9th level, they'll probably resolve the plot around 12th level).
The real trick with playing up the downtime and exposition without adventuring is to not do it too long for your players. And so next week, we're on with more of the main plot action as the PCs try to intervene in the Council sending a hushman to quiet an informer...
posted by Bill D91 at 8:23 AM
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