Last time I finished by saying that I’d focus on how I plan to weave the campaign materials published by Free League with the drives, desires and aims of the players. My Mum didn’t raise a liar, so please read on.
So, if we regard the players’ aims as the warp of the campaign…..
Sorry, I’ll knock that off right now.
Our previous long campaign was Mercy of the Icons for the Coriolis RPG, also by Free League. That was a tightly plotted story that left little room for the PCs to explore their own agendas. As I started planning the Symbaroum campaign I knew that I wanted the players to have a lot of agency, and do some goal-oriented roleplaying, as described in the Symbaroum Gamemaster’s Guide (GMG). Equally, the published campaign, The Throne of Thorns, is so jam-packed with fantastic material that I want to use as much of it as possible. This presents a considerable planning challenge, especially when we all know that no plans survive contact with the players.
THE PLAN
- Run The Promised Land, which is the tutorial scenario in the core rulebook.
- From there run The Howling of Damned Gods from the Adventure Collection (AC). This goes against the perceived wisdom of the order in which to run scenarios, as outlined in the AC. My thinking here is that the PCs are already in the Titans (a mountain range separating the new land of Ambria from the dead realm of Alberetor, humanity’s previous home) and must visit the main location of the scenario en route to their new lives. This adventure allows me to drop tidbits of lore about the wider world, and provide hooks for the players to pick up on in setting their own goals.
- The Curse of the River Goddess and Blight Night are two solid, short scenarios for breaking up a journey across Ambria to the the great forest, Davokar.
- Mark of the Beast, again from the AC, after a period of settling into Thistle Hold, a haven for treasure hunters right on the edge of Davokar. This location is likely to be the players’ base for a while. Plenty of opportunities to explore their characters’ aims, whilst I drop adventure hooks like anvils from the sky.
- Tomb of Dying Dreams (in the AC) is a follow on adventure from Mark of the Beast.
- Wrath of the Warden is the first installment of The Throne of Thorns campaign. As written, it needs some work to tailor it to the tastes of our group, and I imagine this is the case for all groups. I’ll use the material as a selection box of locations, NPCs and adventure hooks that will be interconnected with the player’s goals and activities up to this point.
- From this point on, I’ll use the five subsequent parts of the campaign in much the same fashion. Any significant, world-affecting events that the PCs aren’t directly involved with, due to pursuing their own business, will inform a series of off-screen narratives.
I’m under no illusion that I’m undertaking a great deal of work by not simply running the published campaign as written. Masochist that I am, I’m massively excited by this, and believe we will have a game that will live long in our memories.
Next time, I’ll post about some of the early challenges I’ve faced in the set-up and initial sessions. Until then, game on!
Nerdtropolis 
Thanks for the write-up, Alexis!
“A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel” lol 😆
The order of adventures that you laid out makes sense in terms of the physical path the players would take through Ambria on their way to Davokar. I wonder though – if the plan is to present the players with a goal linked to one of the themes presented in the Goal-Oriented Roleplaying section of the GMG (Establish Outpost, Conquest, Holy Mission, Monster Hunt, Staging an Expedition), then would the adventures of the AC and the other small adventures make sense in terms of pursuing those goals? If the players are supposed to be conquering barbarian tribes or hunting down dangerous monsters, these adventures might feel more like narrative speed bumps than part of a cohesive story.
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(Continued)
The way that I’ve been running my game at the moment is very similar to what you have planned for yours. I’m ostensibly running them through Tomb of Dying Dreams, but I decided to make a journey out of travelling from Thistle Hold to the tomb. We’ve spent about seven real-world months playing out adventures the players have encountered along the way (foiling a sorcerous insurrection lead by Ambrian nobles, negotiating passage upriver in Kurun in the midst of a violent crackdown on dockworkers, and now a murder mystery aboard the boat to Jakaar). It’s been a cool journey, but I have to admit, the feeling of narrative drive gets a bit lost. Chasing down Odako and pursuing the events of Tomb of Dying Dreams is a good excuse to rally the player characters together, and gives them a common purpose. But I would just caution you that if you present a prompt to the players saying that their motivation is to do one of the things the GMG recommends (Conquest, Monster Hunt, etc.) and then they spend all their time doing other adventures, then just be aware that the feeling of story, of narrative drive, may be difficult to maintain.
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You make a great point, and this is certainly one of the biggest challenges I’m facing. At the moment I don’t plan on presenting the themes from the GMG, but rather I want to respond to the players’ wishes, in a more organic and flexible way. I don’t intend to shoehorn them into adventures that patently don’t fit with the narrative they’ve created for themselves. If they don’t directly experience specific events from the campaign, they will hear about them at least. Hearing about certain events may pique their interest and thus drive them towards particular elements of the campaign.
It’s difficult for me to be too specific here because the players read my ramblings 😄.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment, it’s massively appreciated.
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