Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

That's still a mafia family.  A mafia family is a guild family specializing in crime, and criminality. They dont allow outsiders to operate in their territory.

The formation of a rival guild is the inevitable outcome, and which will create conflict within the family.  That seed of conflict will produce bitterness inside the family along the lines of "favored family members", and ultimately you can end up with a hatfeilds and mccoys outcome.

EG something like this:

We have a family specializing in creating enchanted forge equipment. They are not blacksmiths themselves, they just make and sell enchanted anvils, hammers, and tongs to magic oriented blacksmiths.  Their family gets to be pretty big--- So big that some parts of the family just never even meet each other.  A member of this family decides that they ware going to set up shop, without permission, someplace outside the family's territory.  They do so, and are not immediately found out.  They make enchanted anvils, hammers, and tongs, since that is their family legacy.  However, their products ultimately end up competing in the market with the rest of the family. The banhammer gets dropped on them.  By this time, that migrant family member (now rouge) has had kids of their own, and have a full fledged business operation running in their area, with stable clients. The banhammering from the rest of the family is pretty impotent, since they are outside the family's operating territory.  Instead, they get disowned, since that is about all the main family can do about it, short of sending in a goon squad mafia style. 

Hooray-- split in the family!

etc.


None of this really addresses the real pathology I mentioned earlier though-- psychopath demigods, and family tensions.

Let's say we have a fairly well respected family of demigods-- and they have the cliche evil nephew born.  He likes to torture animals as a child-- turning them into unholy monsters that suffer terribly until they die-- etc.  The family tries to correct his behavior, but it is no use-- he is a genuine psychopath, and just gets off on hurting people.  They try to keep him locked up, but it does not work-- he's a demigod, and more powerful than mundane prison cells. His escape and subsequent rampage are inevitable.  Despite this, his mother still loves him, etc, which tempers the kind of severity his containment has.

He escapes, and goes on a wild bloodthirsty rampage burning down whole districts of housing held by non-demigods, who are simply not up to the task of defeating him, being common peasants.  He murders hundreds of them in an afternoon. There's no covering this shit up. There's fire rising on the edge of the emaculate city they live in.  There is no correcting his destructive temperment-- he is a true psychopath, and cares ONLY about himself and his own pleasures.

In addition to apprehending and restraining him, the family now must also deal with the political aftermath of his rampage-- all the people who survived his onslaught and lost family, investors who lost capital and property, and the general public of the region demanding increased safety in the face of this menace.

This creates powerful tension and distrust between the normal humanoid population and the demigod population, which can spill over as violence elsewhere in the form of violent uprisings (a la, Los Angeles after the rodney king beating, and a la baltimore just recently.)

This can, and eventually WOULD, lead to something like the magna carta being jammed down the demigod's throats, if enough violent upheval happens.

[Frumple]

That last bit isn't really a demigod sort of problem, though... that's something inherent to any D&D-style setting, if you're running towards that sort of realism. You don't have to have divine blood in those scenarios to rampage around and slaughter arbitrarily large numbers of "mortals" (i.e. NPC classed fodder) -- pretty much anything with a handful of levels in a core class can do that, template toting or not. A psycho godling going on a rampage would get the local PC classed characters called in just like any other threat on that scale would.

[wierd]

The deal here, is that "Family politics" would lead to "Little Jimmy" getting a wrist slap, and getting tucked back into his asylum. (because mommy just cant bare to see him punished for his crimes properly, etc.  This is VERY common with this kind of 'justice system'-- Recent examples can be seen with the pedophile priest issue in the catholic church, and historic examples can be found all over European heraldry.)

A human mage going on a rampage like that would probably get sentenced to death, in comparison.

The lack of equal treatment under the law would culminate in long-fermenting civil unrest and resentment within the community. Even if the demigods themselves did not create tools to empower the masses, or depower the elite, the common rabble eventually would. There would be incentive and motive to do so.

[Solifuge]

I like the idea of a setting full of political units lead by literal god-avatars. That's a pretty neat backdrop for a campaign. I'm having trouble understanding what your troubles are with making the campaign, though. Are you looking for plot advice, or help with world-building, or looking for a new way to structure a campaign, or what?

If the trouble is less "what should my setting be like" and more "how should I turn this idea into a game", there's two major philosophies I've seen when it comes to building a campaign. Which one works best for you depends on how you want to run the game, and the players you have:

Spoiler: 1) Fully Emergent Story: (click to show/hide)

This sounds closest to what you did before, with your characters contributing to the setting, and building a plot based on them and their interests. The last GM I played D&D with did something like this; he'd created an interesting setting full of different characters/factions with certain goals that put them at odds with one another. He started by building a few fantasy kingdom factions with traditional kingdom politics going on, added an unimaginably huge intergalactic space wizard hegemony with an interest in the planet these kingdoms resided in, and a godlike Big Bad Evil Guy who had the same interest as the space wizards. Our backstories were loosely tied into different kingdom factions as well. There were some timed events he was tracking, as the factions were pursuing their own goals in a way that would end in disaster without our intervention, but we couldn't do everything, so we had to pick and choose what to do. Basically, the story wasn't planned out in arcs, but instead emerged by our decisions as players, and which factions we sided with; he'd presented us with a big Planet-wide Sci-Fi style crisis with no good solution that our GM could see, and gave us only fantasy-setting tools and technology to use. The whole campaign was about us inventing a solution as players; it was hard, sometimes tragic, and some of the GM's favorite plot-important characters died prematurely, but we had the right players for it and it was a very good campaign.

Advantages: Tells a highly modular and adaptive story, without the need for plot rails or heavily scripted and pre-planned events. Though it benefits from predicting where the story's going, you can get away without much planning once you've assembled enough encounters/locations/other content to plug in wherever the plot is going. Also, it's easy to add or remove players, and when the players have ties to the factions (or build ties during gameplay) it creates a strong stake in the story as well, and creates some cool Role Playing moments.

Challenges: This works far better with players who are more interested in contributing to the story and solving abstract challenges with creativity (and who can deal with possibly unwinnable scenarios through planning/running away/etc.) We had a few players who were more about the Hack And Slash Until The Story Advances thing, which was a drag sometimes. With greater player freedom comes the possibility for unexpected shenanigans that can be hard to plan for or thwart. This style of storytelling also benefits strongly from planning some content that's generic enough to be able to adapt to the player's choices; generic and interesting dungeon-crawls that could go wherever, or small story arcs or events which could be strung together to create a game session on the fly, or whatever. Our GM was constantly building up a binder full of dungeons, encounters, mini-plots, and important NPCs, and he still sometimes had to come up with stuff on the fly, or call a session early when we went totally off-rails. Again, due to the relative freeform nature of the campaign, we actually stumbled into an end-game location really early on and nearly died from plot-important wards and traps, and later ran afoul of the Big Bad Evil Guy and got involved with him too early (and let too much information slip without knowing what he was after)... which resulted in a thorough TPK that necessitated literal Divine Intervention to bring us back.

Spoiler: 2) Scripted Story: (click to show/hide)

Reminiscent of "Sandbox" adventure games like Skyrim; basically, the campaign is a planned story broken up into arcs, featuring optional branching paths the players determine based on their actions/successes/choices. Another GM I played with had a style, like that; he'd planned out a vague overall plot based around a central Bad Event we were trying to prevent, as well as a few watershed events that would introduce the crisis to us as players. Each session was planned as a short episode that advanced the plot toward the next watershed event; at each watershed, there were a few obvious choices, with room for us to create our own path as players, which would set the tone for the next series of sessions/plot arc. Though it's not necessary to scripted story, this GM got away with only a vaguely defined setting; most locations, factions, NPCs, and antagonists were introduced as needed to drop hints or direct us back toward the plot, thought they often became persistent elements of the world.

Advantages: With a highly-predictable episodic story, you always know what to plan for wherever your players are going, which can reduce pre-session planning. If you leave enough room in the plot, you can also plug in single-session side quests when your players are in the mood for something different. Also, because of it's predictability, things tend to run more smoothly, and it's easier to keep the game challenges level-appropriate, and keep the action flowing like a good movie.

Challenges: Though it's a great fit for people who are more about gameplay challenges than fluff, having creative or roleplay-focused players in a heavily scripted story tends to make them antsy, or complain about the rails. Scripting the plot ahead of time also ends up leaving most of the weight of storytelling on you, rather than opening it up for more group collaboration; this can be a -lot- of work, and sometimes might cause the plot or experience to miss out on what other players could've brought to it. With lower player-agency, it can also be harder to keep the players engaged, so the narrative or gameplay have to be good enough to pull more weight.

Also, just as a footnote, maybe take a look at the Minimus system for some inspiration. It's described in just a few pages, but it's got a really great and lightweight structure for building a campaign collaboratively with your players, while still giving you a lot of authorial control over the setting and such. It's best suited toward a more modular, emergent storytelling structure, like the first example above.

Link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/228660036/Minimus-pdf#scribd

[Neonivek]

Sounds like what you are suggesting is I take what I have...

And advance time so that all these plots come together at some sort of boiling point...

So the Heroes are starting to lose control and the "less favored" and mortals are starting to become uppity for social change. Where the favored are just trying to "fix" things without giving up any power.

The Gods of Destruction are starting to become angry and their violent outbursts more frequent as the sacrifices mean less and less... With even a few going "feral" and causing trouble.

Possibly with the Druids taking the conflict as an excuse to exacerbate it by offering themselves as mercenaries, assassins, and bandits.

And the Stewards removing themselves from the conflict but so much so that their own children are starting to get concerned.

The lack of equal treatment under the law would culminate in long-fermenting civil unrest and resentment within the community

Usually people end up feeling disenfranchised or content with what little they have. It is why the idea of laws that treat everyone equally pop up here and there but aren't universal throughout history.

---

So take those conflicts and have it all focused on one small region that is about... 1-3 cities close together with some small towns (a neutral territory)... Throw the players in... and...

Well here is kind of the thing. Political plots SUCK for roleplay xD

But forget this I think the important thing is to start out a game as typically and cardboard as possible. Give them a good designated villain and have them be the big damn heroes... and then hit them with political intrigue... but that is hard to pull off.

Because they are never EVER very happy for the players. "So we were promise a reward right GM?" "Yes" "And... we just defeated the enemy... right?" "Yes" "So... we should get the reward right?" "Yes" "So why didn't we get the reward?" "because you were screwed over" "By you, your just picking on us!"

[Solifuge]

Here's a few possibly relevant excerpts from the Minimus system. In my opinion, you don't want to or need to plan out events too heavily, since collaborating on plot as much as possivle tends to engage players more. Just stick with a setting idea and a theme, and get started playing and running the game quickly. Let it grow and iterate over time; it's easier on you, and more fun for a lot of players.

Spoiler: Minimus Plot/Character Creation Excerpts (click to show/hide)

Character Creation:

Once the game master has revealed the theme, players should choose roles, preferably ones that work together. “Mercenary”, “Detective”, “Thief” and “Wizard” are all examples of roles. Now, write five life changing events from your character’s past. Pick an event from childhood, adolescence, full adulthood, and two tied to the game’s theme. Most events end up as “After event X, I did action Y”. Talk to other players if you’re stuck; you can share events.

...

Relationships, Goals & Secrets

Your character will know other people, and those people will have attitudes towards your character. Name three people tied to your character - ties are blood, romance and association. Two of them like your character, one dislikes your character. Each person can do something useful that your character can’t; they’ll ask for something in return. If you’re stuck, work from your “five events” list, asking “Who did I do these things with? How do they feel about me?”

Pick two goals to develop over several sessions. Goals change over time, and should force you to action. Completed goals result in life-changing events, like the five you started with. Sample goals can be “Avenge the insult done to me by person X” or “Liberate my home-land” or “Marry person Y”.

Write a secret your character would go to great lengths to keep, or one that involves them that they’re unaware of. The game master will assign a second secret that will show up during play. Write your character’s name and goals in the middle of a sheet of paper; then place your relationships around them, with what they can do for you, and room to draw lines. Thick lines are ties of blood, medium lines are romance, thin lines are ties of affiliation. Like and dislike are colored arrows. Blue arrows mean liking the target, red arrows mean dislike. Draw colored arrows between all the names on the sheet. Once everyone’s done that, put the character sheets in the middle of the table, and draw arrows between your relationships and theirs. This builds a social network. The game master assigns starting equipment based on skills and backstory.

Your character’s goals and relationships are important. If you don’t care about them, nobody else will!

At the start of a plot, players write introductions giving their character a problem. Raiders of the Lost Ark introduces Indy with a hat, a whip and a gun— trying to get an idol out of a tomb.

[Neonivek]

I guess since I'd HAVE to... if I used a political plot... is let the players play Demigods... which means I need to whip out the Mythic Adventures rules.

So going by this Solifuge I need to do a lot more writing... and create a lot more deities for this game and have it be a bit more freeform?

So I need to have a city down packed NOW and have several deities and important demigods down NOW.

[Solifuge]

This is a big old post about dramatic structure, and some notes on plotting stories for tabletop games. I got wordy, but hopefully it's helpful? :Y

I don't think you need demigods, do you? You could just roll mortal players, and attach them to factions as a way to drive the quests and action of the game; the players are given jobs/quests that further the goals of the faction they're given quests by, like getting macguffins, finding missing persons, assassinating rivals, making wildernesses safe, maybe eventually doing things for the deities that the deities themselves can't do (say, for fear of the repercussions of violating whatever Prime Directive sort of treaty they may have with other deities)?

As a GM, you probably do want to set up enough of a pantheon to structure the setting, and maybe create some non-divine factions (guilds, rebels, acting troups with shady dealings, whatever), or factions that have members who bridge multiple other factions, each with their own goals in mind. They don't have to be Epic Plot Goals or Politics either; just things that could cause them to butt heads with some people and work with others. Maybe they're competing over resources, plotting personal revenge using their faction or allies, pursuing love, resolving an old rivalry, or whatever else. Good, meaty, basic human drama stuff remains some of the most exciting and relatable for people, and is always good.

And yeah, you'll eventually need general ideas for settlements or locations, maybe a handful of NPCs who will be driving the early plot (early plot is for teaching the players about the setting, getting a feel for their party, and letting them get their feet wet). That could possibly wait until after character creation, though, once you know what sort of game your players want to play, too.

If it's something you'd like to try, I think a lot of the structure for the setting and plot can come from the character creation process. You'd want to introduce the setting and some of the major figures to your players first, and then you can answer questions and create characters with them as a group. Players could affiliate themselves with existing deitites, or you could let them create their own rough concept for a new deity (you will probably want to build most of the details and secret goals of said deities/factions yourself though), or you could even let them start as independants somehow. But yeah... players building personal histories, creating various social ties between their characters and other players, and between their personal rivals and allies, is something that can provide a lot of fuel for the plot and setting you're building. You can connect those rivals and allies to more NPCs/factions of your own design through ties of friendship, rivalry, love, blood or whatever.

Resolving personal stories and goals for your players is good fodder for plot, but if you want a backdrop of a Big Damn Heroic Story to support it, you probably want to come up with a major conflict that they're trying to avoid or overcome. Sleeping gods or climate change or whatever. If you're looking for more of a Central Antagonist story, you can eventually connect NPCs the same way players connect to them (blood, love, revenge, whatever), and trace a web of various associations leading to a main antagonist, or an antagonist faction; death gods or a sick-and-tired Mortal trying to overthrow the whole deity/avatar system, or something less Traditional Epic Fantasy like surviving and rebuilding after a cataclysm or fall-of-an-empire scenario, leading a revolution, or whatever. And you can build a plot that traces the characters along those social connections, revenge plots, etc. from character to character, until they discover the big conflict or villain, or the shit hits the proverbial fan with the big crisis, and then they have to resolve things. Whatever would create a game and theme you'd find interesting to run, and the players would find interesting to play.

A few last things; you could take some notes from traditional plot structure too, to shape your story once you have a feel for the players and the story you want to be telling. Speaking generally, there's the traditional Three-Act Structure often talked about when looking at stories and dramas, though some people break it into 4 acts:

Four Acts In Point Form

Act One (first 25%)
- The inciting incident occurs (/the hook).
- Establish the (initial) stakes.
- The lock in: something happens to up the stakes just before we break into Act Two.

Act Two (25% to 49%)
- The hero comes up with a plan, a way to solve the problem or a way to approach the problem. If this is a murder mystery, it is a way to find out who is the murderer.
- Put the plan into action.
- The plan fails. Everything the hero and his companions thought they knew was wrong. Back to square one.

Act Three (50% to 74%)
- The hero and his/her companions tries to recover from the calamitous events of Act Two. They try to come up with a new approach.
- Everything keeps getting worse for the hero and his companions. The opposing force increases.
- The stakes are raised.
- By the end of Act Three it seems as though the hero has lost.

Act Four (75% on)
- New plan
- Solve the problem.
- Attain the goal.
- By the end of Act Four equilibrium is restored and we're back to the Ordinary World of Act One, ready for another adventure.

P.S. Heroic Stories and the Batman Reboot Trilogy:

Heroic stories are often done in trilogies that roughly trace 1) the creation of a hero, 2) the fall of said hero, and 3) the redemption of that hero. If you look at the recent Batman reboot trilogy, you have a film about Bruce Wayne swearing vigilante revenge against the rampant murderers and criminals in his city, training in martial arts, gathering tools and resources and allies, and becoming a hero by saving everyone from some megalomaniacs. Then, we have a film about him meeting the Joker, who tried and failed to subvert who he was (trying to engineer his heroic fall); on realizing he couldn't do that, the Joker instead corrupted one of his best public allies into a villain (the lawyer Harvy Dent), and Bruce ended up having to sacrifice his reputation to protect his legacy by taking the blame, falling from grace, and becoming "the real villain" in the public eye. The last film saw a fallen and tired Bruce getting bested by a villain who was his match physically, mentally, and charismatically, such that he was too injured and emotionally tired to continue crime-fighting; after running away and some plot happens, and he has a cathartic moment of reawakening, he gets back in the saddle, and fights a last desperate fight to save the people who hate him, and defeat another megalomaniac, redeeming himself in the public eye, securing a safer future, and finding a protege to take over the fight for him and allow him to retire. Heroic creation, fall, and redemption.

[Neonivek]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150993.msg6255375#msg6255375

Is this enough to start a game with? >_<

I cry thinking about doing more but I might have no choice.

---

Ohh well made a recruitment topic anyhow... no real bites.

Part of it is because the "Forum Games" section isn't for that...