Zebulon Versus The Frost Giants

 In anticipation of #JULYGANTIC, I'm thinking of my own experiences with G1-2-3.  Such classic modules, so formative of what D&D was to become!  Back in the day I ran all three of them, but not in sequence.  At the time I was doing a lot of "module cannibalism" and yoinking parts of modules for parallel uses, or reskinning.  I know I used all three portions of them at various times - probably all with 2nd edition.  Yes, we ran 1e modules without trouble in 2e.

The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl saw use, uncoupled from the Against the Giants saga, in fairly true form - the icebound palace of a mighty frost giant.  I don't remember why the PCs at the time wanted to deal with these giants (and by "deal with", I mean fatally).  They definitely wanted to assassinate the Jarl, possibly for political reasons, and make off with some treasure.

Here's how it went down.

First, you need some context about the PCs.  The roster had changed a number of times throughout the campaign as PCs were killed, hung out on the shelf for a bit before rotating back in, or were retired for other reasons.  Only one PC was still alive from the very first session: the wizard Zebulon (later dubbed "Zebulon the Cruel" after the Basically Genocide Incident).  I don't remember what level he was at the time of the Glacial Rift, certainly 10th, possibly 11th or 12th.  Zebulon had been all over the world, visited other planes, got stuck in 20th-century America for a couple days, nearly died many times, quested to the center of the planet, and so forth.  He was a wizard's wizard - powerful, with a considerable selection of spells, a ring of flying, and he had an item called the Sunstaff which let him use charges to cast fireball, wall of fire, and so forth like a Staff of Fire, plus some light-related junk.  Zebulon was fiendishly clever and stupendously arrogant.  Lawful Neutral, but chiefly in the sense that he kept his word once given, and he hated to leave things feeling unfinished.

The PCs arrive in the environs of the glacial rift, and Zebulon - de facto leader by virtue of his level, adventuring experience, and volume of speech - suggests a bold plan.  He will enter the rift alone, invisible, flying, (possibly ethereal, I don't remember).  He will penetrate deep into the chambers, find the Jarl, slay him, and then high-tail it out of there, emptying his magazine of fireballs and other fire spells on the way out.  The other PCs were (rightly) skeptical.  It didn't sound possible, or practical, or prudent, and it would leave them on the sidelines.  "No no" said Zebulon, "you guys stay out here and take out any fleeing giants once the chaos starts, and waylay any returning hunting parties.  That sort of thing."  Eventually Zebulon convinced them to let him try ("we get all your stuff back in town if you die down there" may have been a factor).

So in he went, one wizard, alone, invisible.  Took him ages to find the Jarl's chamber, even though he could overhear and understand the conversations going on throughout the complex.  Once there, he took a look around to see if there was anything he wanted to grab on the way out, and then set about murdering the hell out of the Jarl and his wife.  The actual assassination wasn't that difficult, he had no problem pouring out appropriate damage.  Obviously the alarm was raised, and Zebulon set about throwing what he could see in the party's bag of holding (which of course had been handed to him prior to the excursion).

Then it was time to book it.  Zebulon flew back upward, hurling fire behind him periodically, or chucking a fireball down a side-passage.  We did not "narrate" this part - lots of dice were rolled.  Because it was important to know how many giants were around, and how near they were to Zebulon, and whether their attacks hit him, and MOST OF ALL did he kill any of them.  Sorry, frost giants in the barracks.  There were significant discussions about the volume of a fireball explosion.  You can imagine.  There were further discussions about the integrity of the tunnels.  Suffice it to say I was not convinced that the attacks would bring down the whole glacier (nice try, though) -- but lots of frost giants were killed by fireballs, trapped by wall of fire, and so forth.  Keep in mind that frost giants do not take double damage from fire or anything like that, they're just impervious to cold attacks.  I don't know how many kills he got on the way out, but it was a stack - the last couple spells on the way out, at the top level full of smaller-HD creatures, were particularly effective.

As he flew out of the entrance, bleeding badly and probably at one-quarter his normal hit points, the other PCs unloaded into anything that tried to come out for a number of rounds.  Eventually the frost giants stopped probing outward, and the PCs took their opportunity to depart.

Only a handful of loot made it out of there, but that wasn't the point - the goal was to snuff the Frost Giant Jarl.  At least, in-character.  Zebulon's player knew full well that he was going to reap significant benefit in the form of xp.  Yes, the other PCs got a share of it, but recall that in 2e a frost giant is worth something like 7000xp, and there were six players at this session, so with an even split every dead vanilla frost giant was worth over 1000xp to Zebulon.  Old-school magic-users must be constantly hungry for big xp scores by virtue of their crazy xp table.  The sortie was absolutely worth it.

"That was insane, I can't believe that worked, Zebulon.  You're [expletive] crazy."

"Perhaps I am.  But the Jarl is dead, and the rest of them will be in disarray and mourning.  Easy pickings for when we go back tomorrow."

Proposed: #JULYGANTIC

 Giants are great.  They're a huge part of D&D.

Dad jokes aside, giants of all sorts bring an important folkloric tradition to your D&D table.  Dragons get top billing in the game, but giants are just as important to the vibe of the game.

So we need more giants.  I mused about what to do...one of those fashionable game jams?  Probably not - those are focused on writing, not on running and playing games.  Thus, instead of a charge to create content, I offer a call to arms.

Hereby proposed: #JULYGANTIC.

In the month of July 2022, I want you to run adventures with giants in them.  Especially the classic Against The Giants.  I want you to run games with giants, and talk about them.  I'm bringing it up now so you can think ahead about what you want to do.

Any giants.  Any game, any edition.  Whatever floats your boat.  Against The Giants is the tip-top, but anything counts.  We're looking for nice mythic humanoid giants here, though, so be aware that kaiju and giant robots won't count for full credit (unless you run Glacial Rift as a nest of kaiju and the PCs are in mecha or something - if you do that, I definitely want to hear about it).  

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO

1. Run or play all or part of Against The Giants.  This is the pinnacle representation of #JULYGANTIC.  The old versions are best, but if you're in the middle of a 5e thing and want to run the 5e version, do that.

2. Run or play in something else featuring giants.  This could be another classic module with giants in it, Pathfinder's Giantslayer adventures, Storm King's Thunder (or That Dungeon Magazine Where They Did King Lear The First Time), DDAL stuff with giants in it (Season 5 or otherwise), or whatever.

3. Throw some giants into your home game.  Add them to your wilderness charts, even if it's a temporary bump.  In the month of #JULYGANTIC the Big Ones get frisky and incur into human lands.  Play a miniatures battle with giants in it.

THINGS YOU MIGHT DO

4. Review something with giants in it.

5. Create original content focused on giants.

6. Muse about previous sessions with Giant Stuff in it.

These things are all optional and sub-optimal because they don't involve PLAYING THE GAME.  Playing is our goal.

THING YOU MUST DO

Post about it somewhere, tagged with #JULYGANTIC.  Full session reports if you can manage it, because that's how we learn.

It's just that simple.

For my part, I look forward to not only blogging about Giant Stuff (less helpful), but also running some Giant Stuff (much more helpful, and precisely the point).

Who's with me?

Gno More Gnomes

There are no proper gnomes in Wampus Country. The last of them were massacred a century ago by a warband of Red Sky People led by their then-chieftain, Mokul (later Mokul Gnome-Kicker). Records indicate that the local gnomes were of the fairly tame, Lawful-leaning variety, with impressive moustaches and probably pointy hats. 

 There was, at one point, sufficient gnomish population in the woods around Shining Lake that gnomish graves are still sometimes liberated today by keen-eyed frontiersmen with convenient shovels. Gnomish tumuli inevitably contain multiple interments, typically with their arms and armor (roll as per Monster Manual and supplement with the knowledge and tables below if you like). 

 Things To Know About Gnomish Weaponry & Armor 

 …Gnomes are decent metalsmiths - not approaching what dwarves can do, of course - but rather than experiment with alloys that might increase the strength or sharpen the edge of a blade, gnome smiths tend to mess about with inclusions that will hold interesting colors, shimmer, glitter, or reflective qualities. There is a 20% chance that any gnomish metal item of quality bears a brilliant color or a swirl of gaudy glitter (this chance increases to 50% if the item is enchanted). 

 …Any weapon is 15% likely to have one or more semi-precious stones mounted in the haft, head, or pommel – likely worn flat or indented by a previous owner rubbing it for luck. 

 Decorations & Devices on Gnomish Martial Items 

1 stylized badger/wolverine pawprint 

2 leaping hare 

3 Escher-esque geometric designs 

4 heraldic badger, rampant and engorged (compare to Bern coat of arms) 

5 stylized representations of gemstones 

6 raccoon (armor or helm may feature tail)

7 autumn leaves (perhaps colored appropriately) 

8 mole (plain, star-nosed, or perhaps a naked mole rat) 

9 comedy and/or tragedy masks 

10 gnome knight riding a mastiff or giant rabbit 

 Assorted Things You Might Find On A Gnome You Have Waylaid

 1 copper medallion with septangle, a common gnomish luck symbol 

 2 small cork with “TOOT-NO-MORE” stamped on it, a fine example of gnomish humor 

 3 bubblegum-scented moustache wax in a little container 

 4 a small leather envelope labeled “in case of elves”, containing a single dose of ingestible poison in the form of a breath mint 

 5 dead ferret (if the gnome in question was recently alive, the ferret may merely be intoxicated (55% chance)). 

 6 sweat-stained hand towel bearing the embroidered mark of a fancy hotel in a distant city 

 7 small kid-leather bag containing enough red and blue marbles to play a regulation game of “That Baby Ain’t Mine”, a popular gnomish game of skill suitable for friendly wagers 

 8 treasure map, annoyingly tightly folded into stunningly-complex origami shape likely to rip when undone 

 9 petrified and moldy piece of hard cheese (no doubt saved from the gnome’s Wedding Cheese for good luck) 

 10 Zarbag At The Earth’s Surface, a thrilling dime novel by gnome author Nedgar Rhys Burrows. 

 11 one gnomish nose-harmonica, functional but in need of a slight tuning 

 12 perfumed slip of paper reading, in very fancy script, “IOU 10 gold pieces”, signed “Oliver Duckworth” 

13 small box of minty pine-scented Tunnel Stank brand deodorant powder “for clothing, creatures, and crevices” 

 14 pocket fitness manual, Bigger Arms Today. Rear-cover illustration shows a muscular dwarf kicking dirt in the face of a scrawny, nebbishy gnome. 

 15 small bottle of hot sauce 

 16 piece of rubber featuring the impression of someone else’s thumbprint 

 17 personal pocket collection of broken glass, somehow both wistfully beautiful and completely sad 

 18 gnomish religious tract The World Is An Illusion (But The Abyss Is F*cking Real) 

 19 five copper pieces glued together in a stack 

 20 gnomish “tijuana bible” depicting The Very Naughty Adventures of Dinkle Von Stinkle, A Gnome of Peculiar Habits Indeed.

Elephants!

I don't typically do "game jams" and I haven't done a "community project" in years, but when I saw the OSR Game Jam on Itch.io, for whatever reason I had a burst of energy. The result is Vague Elephant Project, which you can download now, free. It's short, but contains a variant B/X class, some elephant-themed spells, and general writeups on a couple of creatures that might be useful in your campaign.

The More The Merrier

 More players means more fun - not just "players at one time", but "players over time" as well.

Although I've run plenty of one-shot con games, twice I broke this pattern and ran more improvised sessions which were linked.  The Saturday session players stomped around an area, and then the Sunday session players were able to experience the influenced area.  The extra layer of organic, emergent gameplay made a big difference!

FIRST ATTEMPT, SESSION ONE

In the first experiment, I threw together some small hexes for players to explore.  I had a few things fixed on the map, including a starting point, and a random encounter table to use - that was it.  For that first session, I ended up with only two players.  All good!  It was important to me to explain to these guys what I was trying to do - first that they could go anywhere, do anything, engage with hooks or not, etc; and second that I had a second session the next day where they could play again or perhaps other players would have a similar experience.

In minutes, we had Philo the Mental Magician (magic-user) and his bodyguard Brute the Barbarous (fighter) ready to go.  I don't remember everything they did that day, but I recall three things.  By pure chance, they encountered the young green dragon on the encounter table - and rather than engage it in combat (smart choice) the PCs attempted to parley.  A young dragon might have an incomplete understanding of vernacular common...

"Who am I, you ask?  Foolish tiny bipeds, with your membrane-less eyes and backward walking-arms, I shall tell you who I am.  Know that none may withstand my power, none may suffer through it and survive!  Know also that my poisonous breath-clouds will squeeze the life from the lungs of even the mightiest with great expertise!  Therefore, among Man, I am to be known as The Insufferable Choke-Master!"

There was a lot of pandering to the dragon, of course.  I am very grateful that Philo's player did a whole line of Puss-In-Boots questioning about whether the dragon was mightier than This or could he kill That with his breath weapon, finally ending with Philo asking if the dragon were sufficiently mighty to kill himself with his own breath weapon...which allowed me to deliver the line "What an amusing philosophical question!  I confess it would give me great pleasure to choke myself!"  Philo fast-talked the hell out of that dragon - learning about a nearby giant in the process - and thankfully the Choke-Master flew off.  

Later there were some magical garden gnomes who the PCs turned on - the gnomes set to work building a magnificent garden with a brick wall around it.  Brute and Philo were content to leave them to their work.  

Finally, I remember they ended the session by locating the tower of Montalba the Giant, tussling with some of his Very Large Guard Dogs, and ending up having supper with the magical Rackham-styled giant and taking a job as his procurers, since he himself could not leave his castle lest he lose his powers.

All in all, a solid session - some laughs, weirdness, peril.  To prep for the second section, I removed the mountain lion they'd killed from the encounter table, and instead replaced it with an entry of "Philo & Brute on errand for giant".

Kneel before the Choke-Master!

FIRST ATTEMPT, SESSION TWO

The next day I had five fresh players, several of whom were kids - this was fine, I'm no stranger to running for kids.  This crew elected to take pregens rather than make their own characters, which was a good thing since none of them had played B/X before.  It didn't take long for us to have a pair of fighters, a dwarf, and a thief exploring the hexes.

I don't remember most of what they did that session - shame on me and my note-taking skills - but I do remember that the dice gave us the green dragon again.  This was unexpected but awesome - the dragon was willing to talk, but his opinions and goals were shaped by what Philo had told him (all lies of course) the previous session.

I charge you to quest for some rich, Corinthian leather

SECOND ATTEMPT, SESSION ONE

A couple years later I tried it again, this time for a pair of sessions which I'd advertised as "B/X for kids".  In this case I didn't use little hexes, I just had a small map with a village, forest, and river, and I ginned up a couple problems to solve seeded in the area, figuring very new players might benefit from something straightforwardly heroic.

My players for this session were three girls, all friends, who I think were eleven or twelve, or some combination of the two.  From the pregen stack, they ended up choosing two fighters and a thief; one of the fighters was definitely the stronger personality and became the de facto leader of the group.  Off they went!

One of the main things I remember them doing that session was dealing with a reputed monster (or maybe one NPC thought it was a haunting) that had been troubling the farms on the outskirts of the village for several days.  There were reports of a monstrous figure with an immense black head, bellowing as it thrashed through the woods, occasionally lurching onto farm property and breaking things.  The PCs interviewed a farmer, the usual stuff, then headed into the woods in pursuit of the thing.

Before long they found the creature bumbling about the woods, and they realized it was a stupid ogre with his head stuck in a cauldron.  They immediately fell to deciding what to do next.  Leader Girl wanted to engage the ogre and slay it for the glory and possible reward.   Second Fighter wondered if they could help the ogre, thorn-in-paw style, and maybe make friends with it.  And the thief reasoned that the ogre would probably starve to death in the next few days anyway, so why not follow it around at zero risk til it falls over dead, then claim credit?  Note carefully that all three of these are classic PC courses of action!  

In the end, they went with fighting the ogre.  Once it was slain, they removed the cauldron, saw some magical writing inside and realized the cauldron probably belonged to that witch the villagers had been talking about... so one thing led to another and returned the magic cauldron and did some work for the witch to round out the session.

Another possible ally brutally murdered

SECOND ATTEMPT, SESSION TWO

Based on what the girls had said the day before, I didn't expect them back for the Sunday session, but thank goodness I kept the characters, because they came back, and brought a fourth friend!  We were also joined by two boys, so the party now consisted of two fighters, two thieves, a cleric, and a dwarf.  Not too shabby - rolling deep and ready for adventure.

This time around, we saw how engaged PCs drive the action.  Leader Girl knew immediately what the group should do, and it was simple: take all of the cool stuff they'd seen in the witch's cottage, either by slaying the witch outright, or coming up with a plan to steal from her when she wasn't home.  A natural PC, this one.

What followed was a great improvised session involving casing a witch's cottage, trying to figure out her schedule, distracting a witch, and eventually six low-level PCs trying to rapidly loot a witch-cottage in which most of the utensils were animated, gravity was inverted if you walked up the wall confidently, and various weird but minimally-perilous critters were about (some in cages).  It was a Baby Yaga's Hut thing, you might say.

When all your players are 12, you can just steal Witch Hazel as the NPC and they will never know

As the witch returned from gathering potion-components, the players panicked.  They didn't really want to tangle with the witch -- so they tried to put things back the way they were (poorly).  The thief from the previous session remembered the witch mentioning that the writing in her cauldron was to protect her when mixing potions, so she very quickly messed with the writing - I can't remember if she added a stroke in paint or erased a stroke using the cleaning supplies they'd found in the witch-kitchen.

Anyway, the witch returns, the PCs play innocent, witch kicks them out for messing with her house.  The PCs pull back to a safe distance and watch, seeing the witch making her potion through the window...   but without the protective qualities of the cauldron, something goes wrong, there's a small explosion, and the PCs run in to find one dead witch with her face melted off.  The wishing-ring on her knobby hand seemed intact, though...

We ended the session talking about how they could use the three wishes in the ring in a way that would benefit all six PCs with relative equality.  Suffice it to say those characters are still around somewhere on the map, each with a magical mount and weapon.

FOUR YEARS LATER a different group of regular PCs come across the sprawling, topiary-filled garden built and maintained by animated clay garden gnomes.  They did not run into the giant Montalba or the green dragon, but they were around and encounterable.

The garden had become a fully-functional garden gnome-scale town, with a tavern, general store, barbershop, and surprisingly-classy bordello that the PCs refused to visit

LESSONS LEARNED

Don't stop running your campaign.  If you're doing a con game, it should be part of your campaign (even if it's a module), building on what you've already done, and then feed back into the ongoing campaign.  Run every session like it matters, and then LET IT MATTER.  Let the PCs affect the campaign and setting and put things on the map (or remove them).  That's a living world.

Considering Patrons

A living D&D campaign works better with multiple Factions and Patrons in it.  No, not Warlock Patrons.  We’ve alluded to a couple of those during the 5e Wampus sessions, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.

The Patrons are NPCs (or maybe not, as we shall see) who are the individual movers and shakers in the campaign world.  Monarchs, wizards and witches, barbarian chieftains, wealthy sponsors of expeditions, and so forth.  They keep the living game world moving around.

The Factions are the groups that interact and overlap within the campaign.  The Duchy of Whoopass, the slavering hordes of goblins on the western steppe, the thieves’ guild (shhh), the churches of note. 

Like wrestling, D&D works best with factions.  Maybe not this one.

 

Patrons may be people of rank in Factions, or they may be individual wild cards.  Regardless of their alignment (big-A or small-A), the Patrons and Factions have goals, and they must pursue them - that’s what keeps things moving and gives the world events for the PCs to stumble into, aid, thwart, or exploit.

Just one of many quest-givers

When I was regularly running Wampus Country sessions back in 2011-2015ish, there were definitely some factions and patrons in the game, but probably not as many as there should have been.  Or rather, they should’ve been more active.  There were plenty of NPC groups - various flavors of tribesmen, for example - that appeared occasionally but did not always have their own motivations and goals that existed and marched forward between on-camera sessions.  That was a mistake on my part, and I think it was driven somewhat by the narrower focus of the PC action much of the time, and just having too much going on to apply good discipline to each faction.  I was not diligent in saying each month “okay, what are the Black Eagle tribe up to right now?”  In part I was able to get by without doing this because I felt very comfortable improvising the answer to that question should a Black Eagle have shown up in the campaign the next week.  Improv is good for some things, but having an actual answer from actual faction actions would’ve been far better for the game, its verisimilitude, and the general “embrace the chaos” nature of better play.

In hindsight, that stretch of the campaign would’ve benefitted greatly from using Patrons in the “Chantisonian” mold (a cheeky portmanteau of Chanticleer, the guy who brought this up in the last year or so, and Dave Arneson, who was doing it Braunstein-style from the jump).  Check out this explanation of the concept over at BDubs And Dragons.  Bottom line is the Patron is an NPC, of whatever power level, that you don’t run yourself as DM, but instead hand off to a player - and probably not a player of a PC in your game to start, although it could be.  It's about recruiting some more players to play the movers and shakers of the region.

More players means more chaos.  More inputs you can’t predict.  There’s a fog of war, of course, since the patrons may not have perfect information (and shouldn’t).  There will be actions and counteractions, and friction will be generated that enhances the campaign world and the gameplay.  Plus, it’s a fine way to get some people involved in your campaign who otherwise might not have been able to play.

As PCs in your campaign rise in level, they start to seem more like the NPC Patrons - in addition to their own direct effects, they can farm tasks out to other PCs, pit people against one another, and so forth.  It sounds so fun, and although it could be argued it adds more DM work to adjudicate things, I suspect it alleviates a completely different kind of DM work, and in the end is a net gain in both efficiency and campaign fun.

One reason we may not have leaned into wide-scope faction play in that phase of Wampus Country was that the world at the time, while not exactly in stasis, certainly wasn’t on the cusp of war or anything like that.  Plenty of wilderness to explore, but it did feel too much like peacetimel  

IT'S A WARGAME

On returning to Wampus Country with a new group in late 2020, we placed the action in a different part of the map, where we could indeed be on the cusp of war.  Had I added embodied patrons at that point, the sessions would have looked very different than they did.  I’m still thinking about where I would add patron play to Wampus Country, but I’m definitely eager to throw some patron players into the mix when I run Gamma World in 2022.

Next time on the blog, we’ll get back to talking about stealing play structures from comic books, but some of this Patron stuff will play into it, so I wanted to be sure to discuss the concept and drop that link first.

Learning About D&D From Comic Books, Part One

 CAMPAIGN STRUCTURES BASED ON COMIC BOOKS

There are many different ways to structure a roleplaying campaign - number of players, frequency of play, flow of in-game time may all vary from table to table.  However, there are lessons to be learned regarding getting what you want from your campaign.  It may be helpful to look at models from outside of D&D to think about campaign structure in new ways.  For the purposes of this post, I’m using “campaign” in the modern sense - a series of game sessions - not in the classic “campaign = gameworld regardless of who’s playing in it today” sense.  We’ll come back to that later.

Let’s look at superhero comics.  Comic books run the gamut as far as genre and theme; some feature a single hero, others a large group of heroes.  If we break down “kinds of superhero comic” based on membership and flow-of-time, and look at it as a series of D&D adventures, some patterns emerge.

The categories:

TEAM BOOK, MINOR LEAGUE.  A group of PCs who only adventure together, never solo.  Membership may change over time, and the group might temporarily expand or contract.  The adventures are generally serial and without pause, as the heroes have nowhere else to be and don’t exist outside of the team adventures.

TEAM BOOK, MAJOR LEAGUE. (Avengers, Justice League, Fantastic Four)  A group of PCs who adventure together; some PCs may have solo adventures outside the group, others perhaps not.  Membership may change over time, and the group might temporarily expand or contract.  The adventures may be serial or more episodic, in part because some members may be elsewhere having separate adventures.

THE “NON-TEAM”. (Defenders) A group of PCs who each have their own solo adventures, but come together periodically to address a shared threat or mission greater than any one of them could tackle.  Guest stars may be common.  Adventures are typically episodic, and as one chapter ends, the PCs split up again, only to reunite again at a later date to address another issue.

THE SOLO. (Most superhero comics!) A single PC has adventures in serial or episodic format.  The solo nature of the narrative produced allows for more time spent on friendly NPCs, romantic entanglements, personal problems, and the like. 

THE DUO/PARTNERSHIP.  (Power Man & Iron Fist, Hawk & Dove, Cloak & Dagger) A pair of PCs work together.  If the PCs share a theme or origin, the majority of their adventures will be related to that theme.  If the PCs are themed to different subgenres, typically the adventures will sometimes favor the background or disposition of one PC over the other, and sometimes the adventures will be against a new/shared foe or threat.

THE TEAM-UP BOOK. (Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-In-One, The Brave & The Bold, etc)  Basically a rotating duo book.  A main PC teams up with different other PCs, usually one at a time.  Only the “main” PC is constant, although the “guest star” PCs may return periodically.  Adventures are typically episodic, and may be themed to a subgenre or location more appropriate to the guest star than to the main hero.  (ie when Spider-Man teams up with Doctor Strange, you’re getting a mystical adventure; Strange isn’t showing up just to help Spidey punch the Scorpion.)

THE CROSSOVER.  Two or more of the above structures overlap for a limited time, usually with a single goal or mission, or united against a single threat.  In many cases the PC groups will temporarily clash before uniting.  Often the PCs will be forced by circumstance to split up into smaller groups, each one combining members of the two different teams.

As we look at these structures, we have to ignore the relative power levels of the superheroes as we understand them, since we’re talking about D&D and not some narrative system where Superman and Robin have the same value.  However, as stand-ins for D&D PCs who may or may not have different kinds of adventures, they work if you squint. We'll look at a few of these more in depth in later installments on this blog, especially talking about using alternate campaign structures like the solo and duo, and thinking about crossovers.

Most D&D campaigns are, by this diagnostic system, “minor league team books”.  The PCs have adventures together, and are never adventuring apart.  Membership changes when a PC dies, a player leaves or arrives, or there’s a strong organic need for somebody to swap characters. This is certainly the way I played throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s - perhaps you did as well - and it has become the default playstyle.  It’s to the point now that this playstyle also seems to presume that the PCs all sit at the same power level and advance together, not only because they’re always playing together, but because the mechanics of the game ramp everyone up at the same rate more or less, and it’s become a goal of play to maintain that.  Remember that for a moment.

Most of these campaigns are not only closed in terms of participation, but sealed in time - once they’re over, they’re over.  Characters from this story may show up later in another story, but generally each campaign is considered separate, perhaps even taking place in a different world, or - because they are run by different DMs - considered to be not in continuity with one another.

Campaign setups with fewer players can and do work just fine - the duo, the solo hero, and so forth.  In most cases those campaigns are also closed and sealed, as above.  So long as these are the default playstyles - closed, sealed - campaigns exist in their own bubbles and rarely affect one another.   

Let’s return to the xp question.  In your “standard” team book campaign, everybody earns xp together.  Maybe somebody falls a little behind because they missed a session, or maybe everybody is marched forward by milestones regardless of participation.  These kinds of setups tend to have the assumption that everybody is the same power level, everybody shares the major goals, and everybody will advance (roughly) at the same rate.  Any other campaign structure will break that assumption, as PCs will definitely be gaining xp at different rates (Thor has his own comic, so he earns xp solo and when he’s doing Avengers stuff; the Black Knight doesn’t have a solo comic, so he’s only earning xp during Avengers comics).  You could do something different with this, and have Spider-Man gain xp at a greater or lesser rate depending on whether he’s teaming up, but let’s not go there today -- it’s needlessly complex and we’re only talking about some basic concepts here.

A classic old-school, or wargame-style, playstyle breaks all of this in a couple different ways.

First, the assumption that there will be many PCs/players, and they will not advance at the same rates.  The more you play, the faster your PC advances (presuming survival of course!).  The open table concept falls here - you’ll have players who only show up once, and that’s okay, and what their PC does that night is just as canon as anybody else’s actions.

Second, the assumption that the world moves on at a steady rate regardless of your participation.  In some cases this is down with “1:1 time” (the benefits and drawbacks of which are better explained elsewhere), or in some cases it’s just “we play on Fridays with or without you”.  The clock doesn’t stop because your players did, because you don’t just have these five players!

Third, player-driven action means that PCs can recruit one another for particular needs.  When Spider-Man needs help fighting vampires, he calls Blade, because even though they don’t regularly hang out, they know each other from a previous team-up (or a friend of a friend!).  Similarly, if there’s a temple full of undead that the regular PCs can’t crack, why can’t they call every cleric and paladin they know and ask them to show up for a special sortie?  In the classic campaign structure, they can, and they should!

The good news is that this kind of structure opens things up considerably.  Imagine if your world moves forward on its own and is not beholden to the whims of a single group of (fickle!) players.  Perhaps you have a regular Friday group (your Avengers), but also run on other nights...like so:

• Regular in-person game with PCs A, B, C, D, and E

• Online side-game (duo style) with PCs F and G

• Occasional online sessions with PCs B and E (the ranger and the druid, off doing elf-focused nonsense, let’s say)

• Solo in-person game with PC H

• That slow-moving play-by-post with PCs J, K, L, and M

• That con game you ran last week with PCs N, O, P, Q, and R.

• Don’t forget your previous regular game from five years back: PCs S, T, U, and V.

If all these games are in continuity with each other, and mapped meaningfully to a calendar, you’ve managed to be not only an exceptionally busy DM, but the master of a living world.  It doesn’t matter that most of these PCs may not interact with each other.  They could.  It’s allowed.  Nobody’s stopping you.

When that play-by-post is over, run another and invite a different mix of folks.  Invite the con players to bring their new convention PCs to your online game.  Invite the guy from the solo game (H) to sit in on the regular game for a couple sessions.  Mix and match.

The campaign is not ‘Avengers vol. 1’.  The campaign is ‘The Marvel Universe’.  A story ends, but the campaign doesn’t.  A group fizzles, but the campaign doesn’t.  A living world style of campaign is resilient and cannot be torpedoed or killed by a playgroup folding, a DM moving to another state, or the arrival of a time-dominating child.  The campaign continues on, so long as people are playing in it.  

More players = a more resilient campaign.  Actually, I’ll go one better - more players means an ANTIFRAGILE campaign, where stressing the system makes things BETTER because of things that emerge via real play.  If you’re not familiar with the various mappings of the social network of the Marvel universe, search ‘Marvel social network’ and check it out.  More players, more players.  If I were to give generic advice to spruce up any D&D campaign, it would be “play more, with more players”.  It’s just that simple.

As we move on through this series of posts, we might have a lot of "thoughts" and few "answers", but that's okay. Future installments will discuss solo & duo campaigns, running team-ups and crossovers, getting someone else to be your Doctor Doom, and beyond.