A few months back I wrote about how conspiracies fit into my game. Little mysteries sprinkled into the background, obfuscated to the point where they’re really just something I do for myself. Within a week or two of posting that, I found myself in a relevant conversation with John Bell. He argued that it was better to develop campaigns around a central problem, rather than a central mystery.
That dichotomy has been bouncing around in my head ever since. It feels true to me. It’s not necessarily in conflict with the way I run conspiracies, but when I look back over the many campaigns I’ve run in the past, mysteries are consistently more central than problems are. Dungeon Moon is the only exception to this, where the clearly stated central problem was “How do we get off of Dungeon Moon?”
Players understand how to engage with problems. Problem solving is what the game is built on. It only makes sense that the room-to-room or hex-to-hex problems they encounter while adventuring exist in the shadow of some great looming problem that lends a suggested direction to play.
In particular, what is great about problems compared to mysteries (this was John’s main point), is that they allow for a healthier flow of information. With a mystery, the referee has to be a little anxious about how much they give away. If the players get too much information, the mystery is ruined. Almost by necessity, the referee has to err on the side withholding too much, rather than revealing too much. Much as I enjoy weaving a mystery into the game here and there, this stifled information flow is anathema to my general principles. I’m the guy who got rid of the search roll because I don’t like withholding information from players that I feel they’ve earned.
A central problem allows for the opposite approach. The referee can err on the side of giving the players too much information, because understanding a problem is no guarantee of being able to solve that problem.
In pondering the relative merits of mysteries and problems, my thoughts keep drifting to John’s old Necrocarserous campaign. Playing in that campaign was pivotally educational for me, and directly inspired way more of my blog posts than I’ve ever openly admitted. That campaign had a number of big, ‘central’ problems, but the one that stands out to me the most is the issue of Nepenthe.
Without digressing into a full explanation of the campaign world, I’ll just say that it’s a well known fact that every person in that world has had their memories stolen from them. These stolen memories are distilled into a liquid, called Nepenthe. Finding and reclaiming your own Nepenthe would be a huge boost to any character. We decided this was something we wanted to pursue.
There was some initial mystery in discovering where our Nepenthe was, but we actually solved that pretty quick. We knew what Nepenthe was, and that ours existed somewhere in the world, so we knew what questions to ask. The larger problem was getting to each of our Nepenthes (they weren’t all in the same place), and recovering them from whatever barriers might protect them.
We never accomplished that goal, but the struggle is something I remember fondly, and I’m sincerely proud of the clever solutions we employed along the way. In contrast, I don’t know that any of my players have ever really been aware of the mysteries going on around them in my campaigns. They’re fun for me, certainly, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having them. But I do think that failing to include some central problem has been a major failing of mine, and it’s something I’d like to remedy.
As an exercise, here are 12 potential central problems. Some of them include a bit of initial mystery. But, like Nepenthe, those mysteries can be presented frankly to the player, and solving them does not in itself overcome the problem.
- A powerful government spy agency is constantly ferreting out everybody’s secrets. Even private conversations in your own home may lead to finding one of their dreaded blue envelopes in your pocket the next day. Public shaming and fines for improper thoughts are common.
- The undermen–creatures of the deep earth–have reclaimed all metals and ores stolen from their lands by human invaders. Humanity has been forced to fall back on tools of wood and stone. The undermen occasionally burrow up for “surprise inspections.”
- A titanic beast wanders the campaign world, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Its feet are the size of castles. Fighting it in any conventional sense is an absurd notion. Its body is crawling with otherworldly parasites that are themselves massive and dangerous beasts. The most noble and revered vocation is as the creature’s herald. Brave men and women ride ahead of the creature, evacuating settlements with as much advance warning as they can manage. The world has no great cities, no settlements older than a few decades.
- An army of conquest is sweeping forward through the land. Wherever they go is changed, permanently. They impost strict laws, and harsh punishments. They gradually transform lighthearted D&D adventure land into a grueling, grimdark police state.
- A virulent disease passes over the world in waves. Most who contract it are killed, and those who survive are mutated into horrible creatures which ought to be killed. The disease has rampaged for so long that no one now living can remember a time without it. The population of the human race has been dangerously reduced by its ravages. Any NPC the players encounter has a 1-in-6 chance to have contracted it if the players wish to go back and see them again.
- At birth, every child’s soul is extracted by the Priests of the Only God. These souls are carefully stored and catalogued by the Divine Bureaucracy, held hostage to ensure everyone’s continued faith, and obedience to the traditional interpretations of the Only God’s Law. A select caste of nobility are allowed to retain their souls, which in turn makes those nobles stronger and more capable than their subject peoples.
- Humanity is dominated by an alien force from another world. They use their advanced technology to keep humanity trapped in a perpetual middle age.
- The world is wracked by endless conflicts between rival wizards. No community–however remote–lasts long before half their population is drafted into some wizard’s army, or rounded up to serve as test subjects for some vile experiment.
- The sea god never wanted humans anywhere near her domain. She tolerated swimming, that wasn’t too bad. But she views the invention of ships as an insult. Humans are exploiting an unintended loophole in physics to trespass where they are not wanted, and so she has put a stop to it. As of 1 year ago, nothing is buoyant. Anything of the land placed upon the water sinks instantaneously, as if it were falling through thin air. This has completely cut off the player’s society from the rest of the world.
- The rapid advance of technology has made many traditional jobs obsolete, forcing people into ever more menial and demeaning professions. They work longer hours, for less pay than their parents did, while a small group of oligarchs profit off the surplus value created by their labor.
- A drunk god has granted human level intelligence to every creature with a brain. Domestic animals have revolted against their enslavement, game animals have united to form mutual protection pacts, parasites and large predators employ advanced tactics to feed on humans. Society is breaking down from every side, and it seems almost certain that humanity will become extinct within a generation.
- The orphan nation needs a new roof.
In closing, I’d like to say that I am intensely proud my topbanner choice for this post. Like, you get it, right? Goddamn I am such a clever lil’ boi.