Recently I was fortunate to have a super interesting discussion ad-hoc adventure design workshop with S.John Ross, who has some very interesting ideas about adventure design, called High-Trust Trad. Trad meaning non-D&D, non-storygames, which is my sweet spot too (though I'm less purist); high-trust is a bit harder to explain, and I won't be able to do it justice here, but it focuses on the characters and how they approach the problems they encounter, the choices they make, how they interest with the various NPCs, etc. It should be roleplay-heavy, driven by in-game motivation, not by predetermined plot, mechanics or meta-game considerations.

A good HTT adventure is non-presumptive, which means it has no expectations about how the PCs will approach the various aspects of the problem. The adventure is made up of a cluster of problems, and for each problem, it should be trivial to come up with 6 different ways to approach it, and 6 more with a bit of thought. A limited list of options is not good enough.

From how I understand it, an HTT adventure is like a complex machine that's already in motion and will cause suffering unless the PCs can stop it. Which may involve discovering what the problem is in the first place.

S. John Ross's Toast of the Town is a great (and free) one-shot adventure that's a great example of HTT design.

He has a bunch of tools to help him flesh out the problems in his adventures. And he tried to explain them to me, and while I doubt I fully grasp them, I figured I'm going to try to apply them to my campaign ideas. Let's see how far I get.

#HTTRPG #httkingmaker

My basic idea is this: A town, a former trade hub, now at the edge of a swampy wilderness. Trade routes have dwindled and died over the years, crime is rising. The town is ruled by a baron looking to strengthen his position against an ambitious marquess who is looking to expand his power and territory. This offers room for political stuff, but won't be the primary focus of the campaign.

The baron would love to revitalize the trade in his city, want would like to reopen the old trade routes. But the last caravan, already some time ago, hasn't been heard from. There's reports of bandits, monsters, and weirder things. So he hires some adventures to explore the place and see what they can do to make it safe again. This is the exploration/hexcrawl part that we're going to start out with.

Of course there are bandits and monsters, but they're only a symptom. What's really going on is that elves that were driven from these lands, are trying to reassert themselves, by disrupting trade between humans and dwarves, by creating problems, and hopefully, by driving humans away. And to do that, they've tapped into some really old magic they discovered here, stemming from a far more ancient civilization that disappeared (vanished, collapsed, destroyed) when the elves were young. Or possible even before there were elves.

And this ancient magic helps them cause chaos and disrupt human and dwarven society, but it's more dangerous than they realize (or maybe they don't care anymore), and it may grow far larger than they can handle. Think ancient undead coming back to life, corrupting and enslaving everybody. Unless the PCs can figure out what's going on, and stop it.

#httkingmaker

Some of the problems in this scenario, and a stab at the half dozen ways they can be approached:

Bandits: kill them, bring them to justice, protect their victims to make banditry unprofitable, bribe them, recruit them, convince them to make trouble somewhere else. Obviously this needs a lot more development: who are they? Where do they come from? What do they really want?

Monsters: this one is a lot harder to find other solutions for than to just kill them, or at least protect their victims. I need to think more about what to do with this. The problem with monsters is that they're ultimately kinda boring. More obstacles than problems. But maybe I can come up with some more interesting ones.

Other weirdness: needs to get a lot more specific. So how about: an old outpost that used to protect the trade route has been literally swallowed by the land. In itself more a clue than a problem, but the lack of control and security is a problem. Will the PCs set up new outposts? Dig out the old ones? Come to some arrangement with bandits or other locals to provide security? I need a lot more to get to 6 here.

Elves: it will be a while before they get into contact with the elves, or even before they discover their involvement. A big thing is: what are the elves doing exactly? How do they cause these problems? Which problems are them, and which are intended effects from the ancient magic they can't control?

And how may the PCs handle the elves? War? Sympathize with them? Things might be getting a bit bigger than what a single group of adventurers can handle, but that may be where politics and/or kingdom building comes in.

#httkingmaker

I'm currently digging through my lengthy conversation with him looking for the right approach and the right tools to go about this, but it was a very long and wordy conversation where we touch on every topic related to RPGs, occasionally getting back on track again. So it's not easy to find.

He can be critical about stuff that doesn't appeal to him, but I did just come across this:

There are a couple of ways I like to do problems but there's no WRONG way. Whatever gets you to one is good. I sometimes start LTT style, with a goal. I often start with a victim (but I run a lot of heroic games). There's no wrong starting place.

So wherever I start is fine, just refine until we get there. Let's give this a try.

One hint for how start that he gave was:

pick a problem or a victim or a goal or something like that. Something they'd care about.

Not having started the campaign, it's hard to tell what they care about, but I think part of the campaign, especially the start, is getting to know people, so they'll care about them. People do live in the wilderness. There will be some isolated farms, maybe even a small village, eking out a living under harsh circumstances. These are likely early victims of monsters and banditry.

And maybe I'm going to give them some hints for helpful character backgrounds. Like someone's relative disappeared disappeared, and the PC wants to find out what happened. Maybe even save them.

#httrpg #httkingmaker

Every problem boils down to harm, impending harm, or a hybrid.

Identify a victim and a problem. Victims are often fruitful. Because that taps right into what the PCs care about helping, preserving, augmenting, etc.

By his design method, victims don't have to be people. Anything can be a victim. So I guess the trade routes that died are also a victim. But it's also important that it's something the PCs care about, and they're a lot more likely to care about people than about a trade route. Until they start building their own little fiefdom, I suppose; then they might care a lot about that trade route.

So a list of potential victims for them to care about:

A relative who disappeared (with the last trade caravan or otherwise). If they're with the caravan, that makes the relative a better stand-in for the dead trade route.

Farmers and other people living in the area suffering from bandit or monster attacks. (I need to figure out some ways for the PCs to get to know these people, help them, build a relationship.)

The town itself of course; it's caught between the expansionist marquess on one side, and rising banditry and monsters on the other.

In the longer run, the victims may include:

The elves, who have after all been pushed out of their original lands, albeit a long time ago by now. But they're still resentful about it.

Everybody in this part of the world, once that ancient magic breaks loose. I guess this is a fight to save the world after all, but it's going to take time to figure that out. (Is it? Why am I saying that? That sounds very presumptive. Can the PCs discover this early on? Am I going to actively keep this info from them? That doesn't sound very HTT.)

#httkingmaker

S. John Ross identifies 5 basic forms or root shapes that problems can have: Harmful, Imperiled, Misplaced, Failing, or Incompatible.

I feel a bit like everybody here is Imperiled. That may be a bit one-sided. The bandits pose a threat, the monsters pose a threat, the elves are a threat, and the ancient magic is a threat.

The only one with obvious other elements are the elves: they are themselves also victims of past events, and might be open to other solutions than simply violence. They might be Incompatible or Misplaced as well.

Also, the town is perhaps more Failing than Imperiled.

Then again, maybe the monsters are also Misplaced. What's driving them? I mean, the elves are, but how? Stopping the monsters doesn't have to involve killing them all; it could involve getting the elves to stop whatever they are doing.

So that's something I need to figure out: what are the elves doing? That's the thing that connects everything else: driving the monsters, destroying old outposts creating a power vacuum for the bandits to move into, and of course it's unleashing the ancient magic threat. And the elves might not be aware of that last one. Or maybe not all of them. Some elves might be so consumed by revenge that they're fine with it, but others might not. So there's different factions within the elves, and figuring that out might be the real heart of this campaign.

#httkingmaker

He also talks about Rounding, Balancing and Complexifying.

Complexifying means ensuring there are at least 12 viable approaches to every problem. Rounding and Balancing means ensuring that none of those 12 stand out as the obvious or optimal one, so the PCs are free to pick any one of them, or even a 13th that I didn't think of.

The goal here is rich tactical complexity. If there's one obviously optimal approach, they're going to pick that one. If there's two, they just have to decide between those two. But if there's a dozen, and none of them stand out, they have the freedom to create their own solution instead of just following whatever I thought of.

And that, I think, might be the core goal of HTT: giving the characters (not the players!) the freedom to create. To create their own solutions, their own plans. Which could be anything.

Let me know if any of this rambling makes sense. I'm talking more about S. John Ross's ideas about HTT adventure design than about my own campaign here. Is it interesting that I share that process and my thoughts about it? Or should I just focus on the campaign itself and keep the rest private?

#httkingmaker