Adrift: Fantasy Boomtown

Coinflip introduced you to the idea of our Adrift posts recently: game ideas that we have in endless supply but for one reason or another may never get around to actually using.  If the piles of papers and notebooks filled with mad scribbling and idea fragments are any indication, I may have a few of these to share.  Ok, more than few.  Frankly, I could probably fill a book or two.  I'll start by sharing on this blog, though, and see how that goes.  If anyone out there actually uses one of these adrift ideas, let us know.  I would love to actually hear about one of these little orphan ideas finding life in someone's stories.

Fantasy Boomtown Sandbox

So that idea title sounds a bit like I grabbed three words out of a hat and threw them together.  Sorry about that, but one thing I am not is good at titles.  So bear with me on this one.  I promise it isn't quite as bad as it sounds.

This idea stems from a couple of places, but the biggest comes from a problem that I am encountering at this phase of my life:  lack of time.  My gaming groups are spread out in different locations, many folks are working odd shifts, or have families that make setting up a regular, meaty segment of game time almost impossible.  The result is that running any sort of continuous campaign with the same group of people in a time frame that keeps up momentum is extremely difficult at best.  Instead, we end up board gaming or playing the odd one shot RPG game (a game that only lasts one session, often with new characters designed for that game and rarely used again).  Though I enjoy both one-shots and board games, I am left with that desire to create a story and see it grow.  So how do I accomplish both accommodating schedules and shortened attention spans while still allowing for a more complex story to develop?

My thought was, instead of having a game centering around a particular group of heroes, traveling from place to place, solving mysteries and acting like the quintessential murder hobos, why not focus on a particular place?  How do you make players care about a place and not just themselves?  How do you build a story based on a place rather than a group of characters?  And why would that be better for an erratic gaming schedule?  The idea kept nagging me.  And then I began putting it together.  What if a particularly interesting dungeon showed up, so interesting that a town suddenly grew up around it?  What if groups arrived in this town, intent on making a name for themselves and in the process helped shape the town through their decisions and actions?  Thus the fantasy boomtown idea was born.

The meta idea for this town and dungeon is to have a central place that the players call home.  This is not a temporary location that the players inhabit only as long as they have an adventure to complete.  This is where they live and work.  This is a place that they can influence.  As a game master, you can set up a number of quests that the players can choose from, perhaps on a job board.  Success or failure can cause businesses to rise or fall, people to show up or leave, or any number of effects on the town and area.  This can create a living, breathing world around the characters, making them invested in not only their characters, but the world around them. 

The Dungeon

Everything in this idea hinges on the a reason for a town to suddenly appear, a reason to spur a spike in population.  The basic idea is that, for some mysterious reason a dungeon entrance appears in some relatively mundane and out-of-the-way place.  Initial exploration quickly turned up a potential wealth of treasure, be it precious metals and jewels, esoteric magics, or other items of value.  Of course, with great wealth comes great danger.  The truly interesting part of the dungeon, though, is that every set amount of time, the dungeon randomly resets in completely new and different ways, also resetting both the dangers and the rewards.  This potentially creates a never-ending supply of wealth in the eyes of many, so they flock to the dungeon in hopes of grabbing a piece for themselves.

In game terms, this essentially creates the space for procedurally generated dungeons.  An enterprising game master might sprinkle in clues as to the nature of the dungeon and what may be causing the randomization.  There is even space here to throw in wild ideas like portals to other dimensions or planes, giving you almost limitless options for dungeons to throw at the players

The Town

The town itself can be as big or small as you want.  Did people just discover the dungeon?  Then the town may be a collection of ramshackle tents and shelters, with one or two buildings on their way to completion.  Maybe the dungeon town has been around for a little while, but changes in the dungeon have caused renewed interest and an influx into the town.

Key ideas to build into the town could include:

• A loose set of laws and agreements on how to take turns delving into the dungeon.  Perhaps some sort of daily lottery (of course the "random" selection could be influenced by interested parties) to choose which groups can enter that day.
• A portion of wealth uncovered goes to the town for upkeep, policing, etc. Perhaps groups need to have an official charter to enter the lottery for the delve.
• Groups of adventurers formed into official groups, which can be hired not just to delve, but to take care of tasks for the town or interested parties.  A job board in town could offer these alternate ideas if the lottery doesn't favor a group.

The Players

The players arrive to join one of the official groups in the town.  Perhaps the group is newly formed, and the players get to help increase the wealth and fame of the group.  Maybe they are joining a group that has fallen on hard times and have to help pull it out of the muck before they can make a name for themselves.  Whatever the reason, they are part of an official group, so that they can delve or be hired, thus creating opportunities for the players to decide their fate.

In this method of partying, you could essentially rotate players and characters.  You explain it as other members of the group since the party is most likely not the only members of the official group.  That way you can set a game time and take anyone that shows up, form the party for the evening, and game.  In this scenario, game sessions would be best set at one to two per adventure so that keeping a cohesive party is not a must.  Despite the rotating cast, you would still have a common narrative as players influence each other, their group, and the town around them.

I could go on at length about this particular idea, but I have kept you long enough.  This is definitely one of my more fleshed out ideas.  I will try to make future adrift posts a little shorter.  Thanks for indulging me.  Again, if anyone takes this idea and runs with it let me know how it goes.