D&D Kids: Campaign Settings or “No, you can’t just bump into Orcus!”

A Few (More) Words on the Author…

It seems there has been some confusion among my reader regarding what is it exactly that I do. Others have asked me for tips on how to organize D&D after-school groups in their area. To both groups, here is a brief reply:

I’m working in a small company (4-7 folks at any given moment) that offers D&D programs for schools and community centers. After-school groups are extremely common in Israel – most kids attend two or three and some attend as much as six such groups. You have electronics, chess, painting, model aircraft, judo, creative writing, puzzle craft and a lot of other stuff which is not D&D and hence not interesting.

Fortunately, D&D is very popular in Israel and a good percentage of schools work with one or other D&D company. At the moment I’m personally running 13 groups in three cities (yes, it’s a full-time job). We also organize LARPs, workshops and summer activities that can engage as many as 200 kids and 20 instructors at a time. I will write about those two in future articles. Some kids take this very seriously – one group in Shoham drew a 5’X10’ map of their realm and update it after each adventure, another group developed a unique race and class for each player and yet another group regularly updates all other groups on world events via Facebook. I encourage each player to be a little bit of a DM by creating races, monsters, locations and so forth. I reward such additions to the world both with XP and the opportunity to influence the universe.

Sweet deal, no?

In the previous installments we’ve talked about how to run the game. This month I want to talk about what to run. But first, there are two suggestions (or rather warnings) I would like to make for anyone planning to design their own campaign:

Less is More

Don’t waste time on detailed cosmology, history, socioeconomic analysis or theory of currency inflation due to increased purchase capacity of populace due to redistribution of wealth via means of dragon liquidation by semi-professional adventurers.

No one cares about this stuff.

Kids care about whether they’re in a desert or in a forest, whether they’re fighting with shiny metal blades or crude bone spears, whether they’re protecting the world from an ogre invasion or must find the key to stopping the clockwork dragon from waking up and cannibalizing their mechanic city. By over-detailing your setting, you’ll kill your own enthusiasm very quickly and bore your audience to death.

Just don’t do it.

Carpe Diem

Is a grand quest unifying the campaign necessary? Certainly not! Let’s take a look at a character history written by one of my third-grade students:

We are three brothers. Our parents were killed. We went to the forest to look for food. In the woods we met a shadar-kai named Moskomish. We made friends but then Cyclopes captured us. They brought us to an orphanage. We lived there for several weeks. We made several friends. One day we heard a scream. We saw the principle whipping a boy. The boy feinted and died. The principle saw us and put us in a faraway jail. We found out our big brother joined the principle. Our Shadar-Kai friend sent himself into the shadow world and returned outside the cage. He opened it (you can do it from the outside). We ran as quickly as we could with the principle and our brother chasing us. We managed to escape into the forest and there we met the group with which we travel now. This is the story of our life.

I like this story. It’s not a random collection of events, but a solid narrative with a beginning, middle and an end. It’s clear, concise and internally consistent.

Now I want to draw your attention to two features. First, note there isn’t a single description – this text is almost biblical in its bareness. There is no “setting” per se; we know the story takes place in the woods but that’s it. Secondly, there is no quest or great purpose in this story – the characters just live. They have many marvelous adventures but these serve no narrative purpose. And this is one of the better stories; most are just random jumbles of flashy events and excuses for superpowers at first level or ludicrous starting wealth.

This leads us to our first campaign…

Improvisation

Let me tell you a little secret – there is no such thing as improvisation. People who actually make up original plots and monsters on the fly are extremely rare. Instead, most good improvisers create this little database of encounters, stock characters, cool quotes, witty comebacks, landscapes and so forth inside their head and learn how to retrieve the needed items quickly and elegantly.

Basically, being a good improviser means being erudite in the field you work in and having enough self-confidence to do so without losing face. While I can’t help you to increase your chutzpah ability (it’s a class feature actually), only practice, practice and practice can, I can certainly give you a tip that will help with the former: Read. Read outside the genre so you could steal ideas no one would suspect, read history so you could make your stories more believable, read the news to make the players feel more connected to recent events (“so the sorcerer-king is like Gaddafi?”), read inside the genre because the classics are never wrong… just read (and also watch, listen and observe).

Generic Sandbox

A group can spend a year having the most pleasurable game without any purposes other than gaining levels and getting cool loot. If you’re a good improviser, every encounter is going to be fun and exciting. Just prepare a good random encounter table (which doesn’t have to be all that random…) some colorful, over-the-top recurring NPCs, good treasures [link to rewards article], at least one town where the PCs can trade, rest, make friends and enemies and you’re good to go!

Of course, combat after combat is just plain boring; you also need puzzles, moral dilemmas and patron encounters. Also, you need a theme and a recurring villain. It’s very important to have a good recurring villain, making the PCs’ life slightly less comfortable with his machinations. Along with the theme, this is what makes players emotionally vested in the game.

Consider such different shows as Samurai Jack, Care Bears, ThunderCats and of course the excellent Dungeons and Dragon cartoon– most episodes were essentially extended random encounters. However, there was always the same impressive but distant villain occasionally crossing swords (or energy beams) with the heroes and a common theme serving more as flavor than proper motivation. Let’s be fair, how many of the adventures the lost kids of Dungeons and Dragon had actually had anything to do with their quest of returning home?

That’s about as much preparation as you need. Trust me – no third-grader is going to ask you “who founded this town?” or even “what is the name of the state we’re playing in?” Older kids are a different story; they do ask tough questions and make decisions based on world history. With them it’s best to use one of the below campaigns.

Eventually, this will get old. The PCs will decide to call it a day, invest their money in a profitable venture and live their days in comfort and safety (it’s amazing how often kids do that). Next year you’ll have to come up with something new, but for now you may safely rest, knowing that you served as a fine guide for a bunch of warlike young tourists making their first steps in a fantastic world you built together.

The Marriage Game

The strangest campaign I ever ran organically grew from what was supposed to be a generic sandbox game. One of the kids decided he wanted to marry and settle down. Being a true paladin, our young hero would settle for nothing less than a princess. Her father demanded that the paladin went on a quest to prove himself worthy of the girl’s hand. Before you knew it, all the PCs wanted to marry… to a drow priestess, to a copper dragon, to the daughter of a halfling industrialist, to a simple girl dying of a rare disease…

Thus my strangest ever campaign began.

Traditional Quest

These are the classic fantasy narratives we all know and love. Note that classic doesn’t mean banal, it means meeting the players’ fantasy expectations without undermining any genre rules.

Forgotten Realms is a traditional fantasy setting. Against the Giants is a traditional fantasy adventure.

Below are a couple of examples I’ve successfully used over the years:

A Dying World

The world is dying. Once luscious woods are turning into lifeless deserts, animals are weak and listless, fields take much and yield little and hope rapidly leaves the hearts of men and women. Either on their own or ushered by a mysterious patron, the PCs go on an epic journey across the world looking for ancient artifacts and secrets that could help them reverse the withering or, failing that, save their people from the impending disaster. This campaign is less battle-oriented and includes more exploration of exciting new locations, puzzles and cooperation with NPCs and exotic cultures. There are two twists I like to use with this scenario:

• The benefactor is the cause of the withering. He sent the PCs on this quest in the hopes of them finding anything that could stop him and destroying it. A good climatic ending could be the PCs finally facing their former patron and using the powers they discovered during their adventures to defeat him.
• The process is irreversible. However, there is still hope; deep in the primordial wilderness of the east their lies an ancient spaceship (see below) that will allow the PCs to flee the dying planet with their people and search for a new home among the stars. However, the ship’s parts are scattered all over the world and there is fierce competition for each component…

NPC: Excuse me sir, are you a minotaur?

Kid: No, I’m just a hairy man with horns– OF COURSE I’M A BLEEDING MINOTAUR!

A Distressed Exile

The player characters encounter a strange person who asks them to help him return to his faraway home. The person is mysterious and gives the group strange side quests along the way. At the same time, equally mysterious forces try to hurt this person. This constant state of curiosity will promote the PCs to conduct their own investigations and display initiative, a trait you definitely want to encourage. To give more freedom to the PCs, include many stops in various cities, during which the exile goes to conduct his matters while the PCs are free to trade, catch killers, fight at the arena (every kid dreams to be a gladiator, didn’t you know?), get in trouble and so forth.

But who is this exile?

• An aspect of a goddess shattered in a divine war. She needs the PCs’ help to gather all her shards, which are scattered across the world, to regain full godhood. Once whole, she makes the PCs her emissaries in this world and bestows them with truly epic powers. Of course, rivaling religions will do anything in their power to stop her from reclaiming her place in the divine pantheon…
• An exiled monarch looking for assistance in reclaiming his throne. The usurper and the returned kind may or may not be villains, depending on whether you’re interested in introducing moral dilemmas with no singe “right” answer into your game. Few kids will want to reinstate a tyrant, but if they traveled and fought alongside this tyrant for many months, they may choose personal loyalty over values. In any case, expect some heated debate!
• An assassin with an extensive hit-list. The PCs serve both as his bodyguards and, later, as scapegoats for the murders. I recommend using this one only with older groups as younger kids could easily get killed fighting the world instead of trying to clear their names and catch the killer via more subtle means.

Freedom and Necessity

Players are going to surprise you, either with their ingenuity or randomness. Improvisation is usually the best answer to players thinking outside the box. Sometimes, however, thinking outside the box threatens to break the box and bring a whole lot of timber and sand tumbling down on the PCs’ heads. Several “cheats” can be used to limit player freedom without breaking their suspension of disbelief.

Side Treks: Always keep a few subplots in case players ignore all hooks and just wander off to a random direction. They provide entertainment to the players while giving you time to rethink the adventure and come up with new ways to draw the players back into your story or maybe just scrap the whole deal and come up with a new adventure. When designing side treks, choose hooks that are impossible to ignore, such as a strange woodland being repeatedly attacking the group, a friendly NPCs getting kidnapped, one of the PCs starting to slowly turn into a duck and so forth…

Invisible Borders: An impenetrable mountain range, an ocean surrounding a barren island from all directions, toxic wastelands where colossal mutants lumber melancholically – all these can be used to limit the player characters’ mobility to your chosen sector without resorting to heavy-handed methods… at least until the PCs outsmart you and set sail to new adventures in unmapped lands.

Doom Inevitable: The PCs will get drawn into your story no matter what they do or where they go. This shouldn’t be abused because freedom of choice is the main attraction of tabletop RPGs. If you do choose to use this radical mean, make sure it’s consistent with the logic of the game, otherwise you’ll be playing with yourself since no player, child or adult, will enjoy a game he was rudely forced into. Also…

do not introduce an all powerful NPC babysitter! Nothing kills a player’s motivation more then literarily being bullied into an adventure. The spirit rebels and the steel shines; either your pet NPC dies or the joy of the game dies. If the invincible babysitter doesn’t die then you’re faced with a question:  if your NPC is so powerful, why can’t he just deal with the threat himself? Why indeed. This solution is lazy, patronizing and uncreative. Do this and your DM license will be revoked on the spot.

Surprising

This is your typical fantasy setting but with a twist. The twist can be obvious, such as a fantasy world being invaded by a modern day army, crossing magic against technology, or it can be hidden at first, such as trolls being the noble and misunderstood protectors of the earth while the paladins are vile cultists deliberately delivering the “goodly” races into evil. In any case, this is still a fantasy world and with the exception of the aspects you have subverted, it still follows genre rules.

Ravenloft is a surprising fantasy campaign because it’s a world where evil is always victorious. Reverse Dungeon is a surprising fantasy adventure because it takes places in a traditional D&D setting but allows players to play the monsters.

A couple of examples:

Against the Aliens

Advanced aliens invade a quite fantasy world and the PCs must stop them. The main shtick of this campaign is the opportunity to gain access to increasingly more futuristic weapons and armor, so a great amount of preparation is required to insure game balance is maintained. This campaign works well with the kids who ask “when do we start playing” if more than five minutes pass without fighting. It delivers copious amounts of combat encounters with cool enemies and cool “treasure.”

An excellent way to end this campaign is to let the PCs gain control of a spaceship (see below) and defeat the invader’s fleet in an epic cosmic battle mixing magic and technology.

ORCS!

It’s not easy being green. Heroes kill you on sight, dark lords use you as cannon fodder or as test subjects and your “friends” are more than willing to kill you for a few coins or just for kicks. Nevertheless, this is exactly the PCs’ fate now.

From a lowly beginning – a rejected teenage orc, a goblin sent on a suicide mission, a gnoll with rabies – the PCs must grow to crush those who oppose them, bully their people into submission and rise to fame and power. Perhaps on the way they will discover morality and become the Drizzet of their species… but I wouldn’t count on it.

This premise is best used for a short and semi-humorous campaign with mature players who can clearly tell the difference between reality and fiction. Also, regardless of how evil the PCs are, don’t allow PvP… this never ends well!

Since I played Orcs only with my best groups, I had rarely bothered to plan a storyline. This game just screams for a sandbox. Whenever the action came to a halt, I revivified it by throwing in a rumor of some artifact or legendry treasure hidden not far away. And when this didn’t work, a rival questioning the PCs’ honor did the trick…

Steel and Sail

Something one rarely gets to do in D&D is to operate powerful vehicles such as magic submarines, steam-powered tanks or alien spaceships. This is a shame because I’ve seen few things that kids covet more than powerful vehicles, especially of the flying variety. An opportunity to command one of these is a rare pleasure. An opportunity to own one is something worth undertaking a grand adventure for.

Although it sounds complicated, vehicle combat can be in fact quite simple. Below is an example from a game I had to run once for thirty kids. Each group of ten kids played the crew of a boat and together they had to defeat a devious alliance of Moby Dick and the Kraken. This is the sheet I placed on each table:

The Ocean Lance

Your ship has 1000 hp, AC 20 and speed 10.

Each player chooses one of the below roles:

Helmsman

• Ram (standard; at will) Navigation vs. AC, 40 damage and the target is stunned until the end of its next round.
• Dodge (immediate interrupt, when an enemy melee attack hits the ship) enemy re-rolls attack. This ability can only be used once per round.

Gunner

• Magic torpedo (standard; at will) Artillery vs. AC, Before firing declare how much damage you want to cause, for each 10 points over 100 you suffer a -1 attack penalty, for each 10 points under 100, you gain a +1 attack bonus.
• Self destruct (minor action; daily) Automatic hit, 1000 damage in a 20 square radius.

Engineer

• Repair (standard; at will) make an Engineering check, for each point you score over 20, the ship regains 5 hp.
• Upgrade (standard; encounter) make an Engineering check, if you roll above 20 you get a minor bonus, if your roll above 25 you get a major bonus.

Healer

• First Aid (standard; at will) make a Heal check, for each point you score over 20, each crew member regains 2 hp.
• Prayer (standard; encounter) the ship either gains +2 to attack rolls or +2 to AC for the reminder of the encounter.

Wacky

This setting is crazy, strange and defies all genre rules. If it were fiction, it would be described as slipstream or even surreal. Unless you’re willing to put a lot of effort into creating a strange and yet balanced and believable world, use it only for short adventures or it will all start falling apart very soon as contradictory improvisations start derailing your campaign. With fantasy you have a century of literature and many millennia of mythology and folklore to rely on to bail you out when you have to improvise an aspect of the setting. In a wacky campaign all you have is your wacky self.

That being said, my most memorable and fun adventures were wacky and absurd games that allowed young gamers to flex their imagination and experience something truly new and exciting, so I think this is worth the effort, even if only as an occasional routine breaker. Gamma World is a wacky setting and The Great Modron March is a wacky adventure (most good Planescape adventures are…)

Oh Youth!

Every adventurer was a kid once. What did he do at this tender age, sat at home all day and did his homework? Hell no! He had wonderful adventures, slew monsters and divided their loot while making sure mommy and daddy didn’t know a thing!

A single-session scenario I especially like to run is a fantasy version of Home Alone, where resourceful but physically undeveloped PCs have to fend off a goblin warband that entered the house while the PCs’ parents were away adventuring. Just bring some PC strips and a map of a normal house and the rest of the adventure will take care of itself itself!

If some kids are unhappy about not playing their usual PCs this session, you can tell them that these are their PCs twenty years ago and that any reward they now gain for cleverness or courage will be transferred to their regular adult PCs next session.

Below are a few quick PC examples:

Ruffian

11 hp, AC 10, Fort 11, Ref 8, Will 11
STR +1 DEX -2 CON +1 INT -3 WIS +0 CHA +1
Athletics +6, Intimidate +6
Stop Hitting Yourself! (standard; encounter) an adjacent enemy makes basic melee attack against itself. If it hits, add your Charisma modifier to the damage.
Get Lost! (standard; encounter) Charisma vs. Will. an enemy within 10 or less squares moves its full speed away from you and is stunned (save ends)
Equipment: Leather jerkin, club, random object belonging to a different class

Wizard’s Apprentice

7 hp, AC 13, Fort 9, Ref 13, Will 11
STR -3 DEX -2 CON -1 INT +3 WIS +1 CHA -2
Arcane +10, History +10
I Think I Get It… (full round; daily) you receive a clue from the DM.
Fast Talker (standard; encounter) Charisma vs. Will. Your enemy is stunned for one round (save ends).
Equipment: Hefty tome, magic wand

Young Knight

8 hp, AC 14, Fort 9, Ref 13, Will 11
STR -2 DEX 0 CON -1 INT +3 WIS +1 CHA +1
Strange stuff +8
This Is Nothing, Now Sir Lancelot… (standard; encounter) an ally restores 1d6+4 hp and punches you in the nose.
The Great Caesar, in 55 BC… (standard; daily)  an ally receives +2 to attack rolls or +4 to damage or skill roll until the end of the encounter. He then asks you to shut up.
Equipment: Storybook, training armor, wooden sword
Ne’er-Do-Well (8 hp)
8 hp, AC 13, Fort 9, Ref 13, Will 11
STR -2 DEX 0 CON -1 INT +3 WIS +1 CHA +1
Stealth +5, Thievery +8
Leave me alone! (minor action; daily) you become invisible until the end of your next round.
I don’t need you! (minor action; encounter) You gain +10 to your next skill check. This check may not be assisted by other party members.
Equipment: Pocket knife, outrageous makeup

Animals

One of the most memorable games I ever ran was improvised on the spot. I had to DM a game for 15 kids (a nightmare into itself) with zero preparation time and no resources except my dice and some 3e D&D books. Now if you remember, the old Monster Manual had an extensive Animals section, which gave me an idea – animals against poachers! I gave each kid a random animal of CR 2 or 3 and set them on a quest – to defeat the poachers who killed so many of their brothers and sisters. I even made up a twist on the fly – the obese wolf they rescued at the start of the adventure was actually helping the poachers – he led animals to the poachers’ lair to be killed and skinned and in return he got meat (the lazy bastard couldn’t be bothered to hunt by himself!) The game was an absolute blast and I’m told that kids talk about it to this day.

The cooperation in that game was also amazing. For example, the snake coiled around the boar’s head and spat at its enemies to blind them before the boar charged. In short, while this is hardly “proper” D&D, playing animals is something you must try at least once in your DMing career.

If you’re in a hurry, you may just photocopy some of the animals from the Monster Manual. The most suitable animals for this kind of play are: Cacklefiend Hyena (without Acid Bloodspurt), Cave Bear, Crushgrip Constrictor, Deathrattle Viper, Dire Boar, Dire Wolf, Fey Panther (without fey step), and Visejaw Crocodile. With older groups you might also use various birds, which are weaker but make great spies and emissaries. You may want to halve the animals’ hp and decrease their bonuses by -2 to -4 to make them feel less epic and more like normal woodland beasts. Just like with young PCs, if you have time to prepare, I recommend designing PC strips.

Garbage

This campaign relies heavily on improvisation and may not be suitable for groups full of rules lawyers. Strange as it may sound, this game of filth and ferrum was especially popular among young girls. Possibly because they weren’t bothered by the freeform gaming style but enjoyed the possibility to design a unique character from an infinite selection of spare parts… even if it was all just recycled trash.

This is how it went: after some cosmic holocaust, nothing but colossal amounts of garbage remained on a planet now devoid of all life. Slowly, various broken appliances connect to form unlikely heroes made from broken toasters (to shoot heat-beams), lawn mowers (to move around and slice enemies), Ipads (to think and sense) and so forth. As the game progresses, the PCs gathered more spare parts, creating truly unique characters.

Players had the option to connect with each other to form a juggernaut, a huge creature controlled by a several players, or stay small and independent. Curiously, all the boys ended up being part of some huge lumbering monstrosity, while girls were willing to sacrifice power in return for maintaining their individual characters.

Typical adventures revolved around fighting other animated garbage over control of power plants and supplies, fending off schizoid juggernauts and technomancers commanding hordes of formatted “zombies.” The climax was an encounter with a crashed spaceship and its surviving biological crew – a treasure coveted by many.

RATS!

I love murderous talking rats! The kids… eh… they like them too I guess. Actually younger kids love it too, older kids are skeptical and teens love it again. The basic premise of this game is rats discovering they are God’s chosen people and deciding to embark on a Furry Jihad to reclaim the world the humans had stolen from them thousands of years ago. If you want to learn more, just hop in to my blog and feast your eyes on some furry goodness…

Emergency Games, or When a Strip is Better than a Sheet

Sometimes you have to run a game with literally no time to prepare. Perhaps only three out of ten kids came and you can’t continue your normal campaign, perhaps each kid brought 1d6+1 friends and you find yourself facing a platoon of curious but clueless future gamers. This is a bad place to be in… unless you have PC strips. Then it will be fun and unusual.The PC strips are a powerful weapon in the improvisation wars. I suggest doing three or four strips per page (see Oh Youth above) and to fill the empty spot with a nice character illustration. Their size makes them easy to store and also makes a statement of “today will be a one-time extraordinary adventure – enjoy it but don’t get used to fit!”When you’re truly pressed, there is always the monster manual. You give each kid, or group of kids, something huge to play, something they could not ordinarily dream of encountering, let along playing, and start a grand melee. At these power levels, battles take so long and offer such a wide choice of exciting powers, that a single encounter can easily make for a fun session. The best candidates for these games are ancient dragons of various colors and “big names” such as Orcus, Demogorgon, Lolth, the Tarrasque and so forth. These games are also fun for DMs as they help settle the eternal question of “who will win” in a lively and fun fashion.