DIMENSION SOCIAL 1 DEM OGRAFIA

by an evil king who burns a church to the ground because its priests worshiped an unpopular god. Issues give players who like to roleplay something to sink their teeth into.

Lessons LeaRned

I can’t assume that every Dungeon Master has a lot of experience running campaigns that tackle serious issues, but I’d be surprised to hear from a DM who ran a D&D game that didn’t, at some point, confront players with a moral dilemma, ethical conundrum, or similar happenstance. One classic example: The heroes slaughter a tribe of evil, rampaging goblins and find a cave containing several harmless goblin children. Suddenly the characters are faced with an ethical conundrum: Do they kill the goblin children, or do they let the children survive? Some DMs avoid the issue by removing the children from the equation, if for no other reason that not all players enjoy wres- tling with this kind of issue, and that’s perfectly cool. If you think your campaign needs issues, here’s some general advice that has served me well over the years.

Try not to beat the players over the head with an issue. A player isn’t going to get excited by a “very

special adventure” about the evils of racial intoler- ance, or a world in which his dwarf character is bad-mouthed by every non-dwarf NPC week after week. Better to present an issue in light brush strokes, and leave it to the players to make a big deal out of it (or not). If the players would rather turn a blind eye than confront an issue, let them. Some issues will resonate; others won’t.

Let the players make their own judgments. Most

players I know don’t want to be told how their char- acters should feel or how they should react to a given situation. They prefer to make those judgments on

their own, based on their understanding of what motivates and provokes their characters. If the char- acters happen upon a wounded monster, leave it to them to decide whether it’s better to slaughter or heal the creature. Imposing your own judgment on the situation doesn’t make the decision any more engag- ing or challenging for the players.

Present issues fairly and responsibly. Ye gods, if

you decide to present a controversial issue within the framework of your D&D campaign, be aware that an issue, by definition, can be seen from more than one point of view. If you intend to use religious fanatics as villains, for example, it would behoove you not to use them as tools to reflect your own personal misgiv- ings about organized religion or to cast all religion in a negative light. Better to show more than one side of religious devotion by including a few devotees who aren’t villainous and fanati- cal. Trust me when I say the party cleric will thank you.

Until the next encounter!

Player vs.

Player

12/22/2011

WEDNESDAY NIGHT.

Several sessions ago, the heroes learned the true name of the Raven Queen, the god of fate. The details of how this occurred aren’t important; what IS important is that the heroes have, over the course of the campaign, made enemies of Vecna and his followers. The god of secrets has been searching for clues to the Raven Queen’s true name for ages, hoping this knowledge would enable him to usurp her portfolio and become the undisputed Lord of Death. Obvi- ously, the Raven Queen doesn’t want her secret to fall into Vecna’s hand.

Rodney Thompson plays Vargas, a sworn servant of the Raven Queen. Recently, the Raven Queen contacted Vargas and declared that he was destined to become her eternal champion, but first he must keep her true name hidden from infidels who might use the knowledge against her. She tasked him with slaying everyone in possession of this knowledge, starting with his friends.

Last night, worshipers of the Raven Queen began to flock to Vargas’s side, keen to help him complete whatever tasks the Raven Queen sets before him. Meanwhile, Vargas has been searching for a way to protect the Raven Queen’s secret without turning on his fellow party members. The Vecnites are known to have rituals that can erase people’s memories. Perhaps he can use such a ritual on his com- panions and erase the Raven Queen’s true name from their minds, but that would mean confronting the servants of Vecna directly (a risky proposition, to say the least). So far, he’s declined to share the details of his “mission” with

the rest of the party. Will he find an end-around before the Raven Queen grows impatient, and is the party doomed to self-destruct?

What would drive a Dungeon Master, particularly an experienced one, to deliberately turn player charac- ters against one another? Seems like an act of sheer madness. D&D is supposed to encourage player coop- eration and teamwork, and frankly, players are quite capable of turning on one another without the DM’s assistance. Why provoke inter-party discord and distrust?

Maybe I am chaotic evil. Maybe I’m just plain crazy for putting Rodney’s character in the situation of choosing between his deity and his friends, but as a storyteller the predicament fascinates me on many levels. First and foremost, it’s a conundrum that isn’t solved by the simple casting of a spell, the spending of gold pieces, or the success of a skill check. Rodney isn’t going to buy or talk his way out of this one! I also love the notion that the Raven Queen’s command not only puts Vargas to the test but also puts Rodney’s play skill to the test. How much information should he share with the other players? How ready and will- ing is he to put his character in jeopardy? Can he figure out some “out of the box” way to protect the Raven Queen’s secret and still keep the party from imploding?

As a DM, I’m willing to risk party implosion for good drama. I’m enamored with the notion that good conflict doesn’t always come from without; sometimes it comes from within. A lot of television series rely on internal conflict to fuel the drama. I’m thinking now of Lee “Apollo” Adama and Kara “Starbuck” Thrace from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. Here we have two heroic charac- ters periodically at odds with one another as well as their commanding officers. In some cases, they make choices that fracture their “adventuring party,” fuel- ing much of the show’s drama. Yet somehow, they

always pull it together. In my campaign, I’ve adopted the mentality that whether the party survives or not is totally in the players’ hands. My job is to keep the campaign alive until such time as the players’ choices lead to a natural or sudden conclusion. As far as I can tell, my players enjoy getting together every Wednes- day night to play their characters. They’re not going to let themselves become the instruments of the cam- paign’s demise, and so they fight me at every turn to keep the party from disintegrating. How far will my players go to keep the game alive? Pretty damn far. They enable me to indulge my inner demon’s story- telling shenanigans.

Lessons LeaRned

The title of this article is a deliberate misnomer. Despite everything I’ve said up to this point, I’m not really talking about “player vs. player” conflict at all. It’s a silly DM who turns players against one another. What I’m really talking about is “character vs. charac- ter,” and an experienced DM who knows his players well can run a game in which the heroes occasionally find themselves at cross-purposes that could, under certain conditions, escalate into all-out conflict. It’s been my experience that you need three things to pull it off:

✦ Players who genuinely like each other and

enjoy a roleplaying challenge.

✦ A little foreshadowing, so the players can

steel themselves.

✦ Wiggle room, so that the players can consider

their alternatives.

My Wednesday night players are fond of inserting little “character vs. character” moments into the campaign that are usually played for laughs, so I felt pretty comfortable inciting a more serious inter- party conflict by testing Vargas’s loyalty to the Raven