Help & Problem Solving

Imagine you're a homo sapiens about 40,000 years ago.  You come to a thick tree, where you can see, just beyond your reach, a bee hive with an evident build-up of honeycombs.  You lick your lips, because things like this are very rare and you'd very definitely like to get your hands on some of that sweet, sweet comb.

How do you get it?  The most obvious route is to shimmy up the tree just enough, stab your hand into the nest and grab as big a chunk as you can get.  Naturally, you've done this before and you remember the many, many stings that resulted from that plan last time.  Still, you survived and you DID get the honeycomb, so win win, right?

Hm.  You give it a think and you come up with a different plan.  Searching around, you find a log you can stand on, that will get you just high enough to reach the comb without having to move quickly.  You experiment a bit and discover that if you move very, very slowly, the bees will land on you but they won't sting you.  You can even put your hand on the comb, and gently break off a piece; whereupon you can climb down and eat your honey without being covered with beestings.  Still, it takes a lot of self-control.  The bees are landing on your face, around your eyes—and if you move too fast, just once, one of the bees might sting you ... whereupon you'll jump, or shout out, and then its bees all over you again and you might not get anything.  How awful is that?

Still, if you get some experience, and learn to hold steady even if you're stung, you'll always be able to get the comb out of similar places—and wow the jibby-jabbers out of your tribe every time you perform this trick right in front of them.  Won't that be great?

It's only after a chance observation, however, that you come up with still a better plan.  At the base of the tree, not rushing, you build up a small fire, just a hand's width across.  Then, when it's burning and the bees aren't panicking (a small fire makes little heat), you douse the fire with a pile of partially damp leaves.  A big smoke cloud results, engulfing the bee hive ... whereupon you climb up, and with the bees fast asleep, you patiently take out comb after comb without worry.  By the time the smoke has cleared, you're done.

Think of these three plans as "Act," "Prepare" and "Get Help," in the last case from the fire.  It takes no brains to act.

A party comes to a dungeon door and without listening, a player kicks the door in and Wham!  Everyone is in a fight with the monsters behind it.  Probably, the players will get out of the jam, but they'll expose themselves to more damage than was necessary, take more time readying their extra attacks and in some cases won't be able to use their full abilities under duress.

Preparation takes thinking.

Before kicking in the door, everyone lightens their load, the spellcasters ready magic, the party readies weapons, someone lights a flask of oil and one person is designated to kick in the door and then hit the floor.  The first volley hopefully stupefies the enemy to such a degree that they fold at once or they never mount a decent counterattack, so they can be mopped up easily.  Sometimes, it doesn't work; sometimes, everyone misses with their first shot or the spell is saved against, or the monster encountered is very different from what's expected.  Still, preparation allows everyone time to give it their best shot.

Getting help takes imagination.

Any player can look down their character sheet and see what's the best spell to throw if there's time to load it before opening the door.  The weapons to be used aren't guesswork and this is why we buy flasks of oil.  In the example above, it's hard to recognize that the fire is "help."  We see it as a tool, and it is that; but in this thought lesson, I want the reader to see how the fire is busy distracting the bees, so the players can do something else.

The third option with the door is to create a situation where the creatures beyond the door come out of their own free will—and, in making our plan, we set things up so there's no visible threat.  We knock on the door and then hide or use magic to disappear.  They come out, find a pile of goods in the hall.  This is a Trojan Horse.  Together, they come out to pick over the stuff and Bam!  Piece of the roof falls in and kills them all.  Or some other trap, whatever seems best.  It isn't always easy to set up, and one thing hardly ever works in another situation (most things cannot be overcome with a small fire).  My point is to propose that more power can always be found by adding resources outside your immediate possession.

Now, let's consider The Keep on the Borderlands.

The module is deliberately designed to offer a bunch of mini-adventures that can be met, with the Keep in the background when the party needs to recover.  It is all smash-and-grab; load up your gear, go to the caves, fight until you're low in hit points, retreat, recover, re-equip, return to smash and grab, over and over, until the caves are cleared.  The players have to keep friendly relations with the Keep so that they have a withdrawal point; and the module is built so that this is fairly the only tactic allowed the players.

But let's say that I'm running the module and not TSR.  Let's say that the denizens in the module are not stock characters, but intelligent beings—both the residents of the Keep and the Monsters.  If the players keep returning to the caves over a long time, the monsters are going to pull together and set additional traps, block off parts of the caves and agree to live with one another until the "danger" passes.

The players can reduce the time needed to return to the keep, recover and re-equip, by establishing a forward base, with fortification, plenty of supply and positions to defend themselves from watchtowers and palisades.  Thus, they can assault a cave, stir up one nest of bees, then draw them out to the players' base where they can be cut down and slaughtered out of their homes.  Additionally, they can cut logs and brush, bear them to the Caves of Chaos and plug up one or more open holes, setting them on fire if need be; in fact, the whole surface can be set aflame, to reveal the "hidden" caves.  There are plenty of strategies we can try without having to go underground more than a few dozen meters.

However, there is the Holy Grail, isn't there?  Get Help.  Spend all your time at the keep figuring out who needs what and how to get it for them, making friends, solving the problems that ought to beset the various members of the keep (who, remember, are rational persons in this scenario) and making arrangements for the future, based on one simple strategy:  organize the keep, motivate them and take everyone to the Caves of Chaos together and wipe the place off the map.  Then, the party takes their cut and moves on with their own adventure.

Most D&Ders would hate this idea.  It isn't "adventure" in their minds, they'd make the argument that it would mean they wouldn't get all the treasure, nor would they feel the pride at having taken the place by themselves.  It's not what they call "D&D."

Yet for those who tout the sacred practices of "role-play," is this not the more interesting option?  It's a mind-bender to figure out how to "buy" the members of the keep with promises and rational arguments, encouraging them to believe that it's in their best interest to help wipe out the Caves of Chaos, such that the party ends up befriending the crew and leading one of the major groups assaulting the dungeon.  The gruff corporal we spoke about with the last post might have become a close friend, offering a heart-wrenching moment when he fails to overcome some tight situation and ends up dying in the arms of his comrades (not that we should set that up to happen, it's only that in a fight, unexpected things DO happen and spontaneously, producing the most profound unexpected emotional reactions from a party).  Some minor functionary survives round after round, even as we're rolling the dice in the open, when it is obvious to everyone he should have died almost immediately.  Someone chance kills the minotaur with a ballista after its been lured to the surface and the Captain of the Guard unfortunately dies from disease caused by rats, after both the Curate and the Priest are trapped underground by a mass of orcs.  Like I said, weird things happen.

When it's over, the players have to make good on their promises, shipping in settlers, finding an even larger horde of wealth that has to be shared with the Castellan and maybe the Jewel Merchant, getting the place recognized by "The Realm" and turning the Keep on the Borderlands into a jumping off point for further forts and keeps that push the borderlands further away.  Sounds like a helluva an adventure to me ... a lot better than patting ourselves on the back because we cleared out every room personally due to our OCD.

None of which means a thing if there's no way to talk to all these people who run the place, because every one of them is an adventure cock-blocker of the first order.  Why shouldn't the keep's residents feel its worth their time to eliminate the Caves?  Isn't "keeping the peace" an issue competing with "make ourselves rich"—with both problems being directly solved by scouring the Caves with a wire brush?  Seems obvious ... to everyone except the designers, that is, who had a very deliberate idea of how this ought to be played out by lone wolf types, which every party member is assumed to be and which, being honest, IS what they usually are.

Nevertheless.  If we're speaking about how to talk to NPCs, it has to be clear why we should want to talk to them.  It breaks down to two principle aims:

1.  To get help.

2.  To give help.

What I've just described does both.

This series continues with Wait, Wait ... Isn't that Sherlock?