Preparing For Gardmore
11July 11, 2012 by Jeff
My 4 year 1-30 Forgotten Realms campaign is over and now it’s time to move on to our next adventure, Madness At Gardmore Abbey. After 4 years of running one campaign our group decided it would be nice to use this opportunity to try out some new things before D&D Next becomes developed enough that we can feel good about using it as our main system (assuming it is that good). And after 4 years of making my own adventures, encounters, and story lines the options that I put up for a vote amongst my players for this first post-1-30 round was published adventures (note, I wasn’t the only person in my group offering to run something).
The most popular choice was Gardmore Abbey. So we’re sticking with 4e for the time being, but going back to heroic tier where we haven’t played in several years. As soon as I saw that Gardmore was starting to pull ahead in the voting I pulled it out and started reading. I’ve now read through the whole thing and have a good idea of what I’m doing with it. That said, just because I’m running a published adventure doesn’t mean I don’t care about the players feeling connected to the story and feeling like it has a dynamic pace.
So there are some things I’m thinking about as I do my prep and some things I’m attempting to do to help the players feel more connected to the game and get more enjoyment out of the story and role-playing.
First, I am making restrictions on character creation. Well, not many, not since we decided to keep the adventure in the Nentir Vale (rather than move it to another setting) but I did create some character creation preferences as well. Some bonus, 1st level, feats if you choose a class or race that best evokes the story and setting. I’m not too worried about imbalancing things with a few bonus feats, they’re 1st level, so they’re only “so” powerful and the players won’t be using these PCs beyond 3 levels.
Second, I’m asking my players to look at the background information about the setting and trying to find inspiration from that to make their characters, rather than make a character and then see if you can fit it into the setting. I’ve told them that making a character you want to play is the number one priority…but see if you can do it by getting ideas from the setting.
Along with that I’ve asked them to contact me regularly and talk to me as they work on their characters so that I can help them fit what their doing into my vision of the Nentir Vale (which I have limited knowledge of anyway).
While character creation starts to wrap up I also am planning to give the PCs different quests (the adventure has 21 quests listed, about half a dozen of which can act as initial adventure hooks). This could create some interesting role-playing (“hey, we found a cool sword”, “uh, yeah, I need to take that and give it to someone, actually”) and connect them personally to the story (and in some cases each other).
All those different quests will hopefully act as a way of bringing them together at the right time and place to start the adventure and form a party.
Likewise, I’m interested in trying to keep things dynamic in the adventure…luckily, the adventure has a lot of that built in. It specifically says, “if you kill a lot of those and then leave, this is how things change while you’re gone”. That’s awesome, I don’t have to worry about it.
I’ve also used leveling as a way to highlight what the PCs were doing was important and when. I abandoned experience points a long time ago. I’m glad for it and don’t miss them at all. Good riddance, I say. But now I’m running a campaign of 3 levels in a published sandbox-style, dynamic adventure…it’s hard to know when/how to level the PCs using the same method. They could, after all, hit all the high points of the adventure right at the end…I can’t justify giving them two levels right after another after weeks of no leveling.
I mentioned that there were 21 quests in the game, I created a spreadsheet to track them all, and I considered just splitting them up. Complete 8 quests, get a level. This does feel a little like a compromise between what I want to do (level them when it feels right with the story) and experience points.
So those are the things I’m contemplating as I work on running Gardmore Abbey. I like the general direction I’m going, although I’ve had some blowback. I have some players who seem to be struggling with restrictions and being given guidelines on building characters. They just aren’t used to it, they’ve never dealt with it before, and I’m afraid it’s going to lead to some of them just not investing at all about their characters.
Likewise, quest-based leveling could feel just as uncompromising, uninspiring, and mechanical as experience points, so I’m even less sure on that idea than I am on the others.
What do you think? Am I being too limiting on my character creation ideals? Is quest-based leveling just experience points with easier math to track, but otherwise has all the same baggage? If it is, is that all bad?
Yay for completing a campaign, Jeff! Will you be talking about it on Behind the DM Screen, or can you do a finale write up for Temp HP? I really would love to read a player’s perspective on the last crescendo of your campaign, having heard you give the DM’s side in the BtDMS podcast. So one question on finishing the campaign: great feeling, or greatest feeling? ;]
What do you think? Am I being too limiting on my character creation ideals? Is quest-based leveling just experience points with easier math to track, but otherwise has all the same baggage? If it is, is that all bad?
I think you should stick to your guns on the character creation. I know it’ll be hard for those few players to work with it, but I think the experience would be good for them.
I think quest-based leveling is a good ideal, but I think you’ll slip back into leveling when you think it’s appropriate. It needs to be there to give you a rough framework, which you can then modify on the fly. It’s not bad if that dynamic modification doesn’t happen, though.
@Tom: There will be things that come out here resulting from the end of the campaign as well as likely discussion on things like Behind the DM Screen. Keep you eyes/ears peeled.
@TriskalJM: I’ve been in situations where character generation guidelines helped boost my creativity as a player…I’ve also been in situations where it killed my ideas and left me very “meh” about the whole game. It’s a fine line to walk and I’m afraid that I’ve slipped too much into my “teacher-tude” in presenting this to my players. It’s all very new many of them, but at the same time I don’t want to treat them like they’re my students…they’re my friends and we play games together. We’ll see how it goes. So far it’s been almost a week and only one player has mentioned any character creating going on, which leaves me fearful that they won’t have PCs until the last minute and I won’t have a chance to help them integrate the PC into the campaign at all…and it will all be for moot. But we’ll see…we are taking an extra week off between games this month, so they still have a couple weeks to get on it.
Might I suggest something, then? I’d talk to each one in turn and be honest with them. Ask them if there’s some concept that they’re really wanting to play that is “disallowed.” My guess (not knowing any of them) is that they won’t have one. They’re uncomfortable with the idea of restriction, although it’s not really restricting them. Walking through it with them might help resolve the issue.
Hopefully that makes sense.
I agree…and now that you say it, I’m gonna give it a shot. Trouble is, some of my crew are hardish to get a hold of prior to game day…but can’t hut to try.
Let us know how it goes.
The player who was most likely to raise issues has been been the most responsive to the messages I’ve sent out. I continued to feel like he was a bit resistant for a while, but then all of a sudden I got a message that he had an idea for a character and started asking me about ways to fit them into the game well. Score.
It’s not a success yet, but it’s a move in a good direction. I still have the player that is hard to engage generally, the rest of the players haven’t responded at all yet (although some of them haven’t had much chance to, having just been contacted tonight), and nothing has been played yet…but there is positive movement.
Thanks for the update! Sounds like it’s going okay so far…
I saw Andy’s tweet about reading Mark of Nerath for Nentir Vale inspiration. While an adequate book and nice attempt to flesh out the Vale, it wasn’t until the James bros. published MV2: Threats of the Nentir Vale did it become a place that felt real. The Vale got a real shot in the arm in both current affairs and threats but also some rich history. I only wish this amount of flavor had been ready at the launch of 4e.
If you can get it, the DNDENC adventure “March of the Phantom Brigade” introduces the Vale to the Shadowplague but, again, this is even better covered in MV2.
Good luck in the Abbey.
I meant Abyssal Plague
I have learned to appreciate restrictions in character creation and I think your players will as well. Having restrictions can allow you to craft a more finely tuned story which is what matters in my opinion.
I guess it really depends on your group. In a tactical game I let people play any combo that is legal (sometimes ones that are not) but since most of my games are story based we set up creation rules to fit within the lore of our world. (such as some races not being able to play any divine or others any arcane source)
I have never used any real xp system and have always leveled when I wanted too. That being said I have never run a pregen adventure (but I have stolen from them heavily) and thus I had the group level when I wanted.
I think dividing up the missions into groupings and doing your xp evenly to match sounds good