Have Them Find Something

After talking about introducing a new player to the game, I have in mind a series of posts for running 1st to 3rd level characters without a module.  These ideas lend themselves to a campaign game, naturally.  For each, I have an example from the last online campaign I ran; the title of this post tells the DM what to do.

The described goal here is to have them find something that's virtually unknown to the game world.  In the Juvenis campaign, the players expressed a desire to check out one of the many ancient Celtic sites located around them in Norway ... which led to the players "discovering" Mimmarudla.  In the present day, this actual place is a low hill covered with farms, adjacent to a large Norwegian town.  There's no sign of the hill having any significance at all — it would be easy to stand on top of it without recognising anything out of place.  Whatever historic significance the place had has been effaced entirely.  The page that designated it as a "Celtic site" has vanished.

I supposed the area was uninhabited and covered by forest; the players found a large stone-paved circle atop the hill in the shape with the center slightly higher than the outer rim.  When the party investigated, I explained that one of the stones appeared to be a "key stone" ... the one that holds the dome together.  They removed the stone and found the pavement concealed an hollow dome beneath them.  They climbed down, met a small fire beetle nest and three of them were killed.  More caution and cooperation in the fight would have increased their survival.

Uncovering something previously undiscovered has been a heavily utilised trope that I probably first stepped into reading Hardy Boys books.  Those stories went back to the 1920s and 30s and often featured Joe, Frank and Chet poking into one hollow or another that revealed the beginning of a mystery.  In that series, it usually took a page from Tom and Huck finding Dr. Robinson, Muff Potter and Injun Joe robbing a grave in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.  It's a great tactic to have the players go somewhere they don't know, where they see someone do something that's a secret, and bad to boot.  The situation has the potential to create a dilemma for a party ... which is what's dearly wanted.

For those who haven't investigated the idea, a dilemma is an unsolved problem that seems to have two or more equally viable solutions — neither of which are desirable.  This is sometimes described as the "horns" of the matter, as our choice is to decide by which horn we'd rather be gored.  Obviously neither, but that's not a choice.

Take the Tom Sawyer example.  I assume you've all read the book, if not, spoilers follow.  As Tom and Huck watch, they see Injun Joe get into a fight with the doctor, murdering him.  Horn one, the boys realise that if they tell, it would give good reason for Joe to murder them next.  On the other and, the boys have a good relationship with Muff Potter; he's a friend to the boys.  When Joe pins the murder of the doctor on Muff, Tom recognises the other horn is to let Muff take the rap.

Unable to abandon his friend, Tom appears in court to defend Muff, naming Joe as the killer; and nearly gets a knife in the face for his trouble.  You can see the scene from the 1973 film here, if you like; the knife flies at 02:09 and young Johnny Whitaker does a good job reacting to the throw.

I was nine when I first saw that scene in the theatre, five years younger than Whitaker; he'd be about 13 when the scene was filmed.  I don't know how they did the knife.  No modern film trickery was available.  I wouldn't discount the possibility of an expert knife thrower doing the trick.  IMDb doesn't say.

The effect of building a dilemma is simple: the players see the horns ahead of time, and whichever they choose, they recognise there will be consequences.  The players discovery of Mimmarudla's secret entrance creates a very small dilemma, one that's essentially the life's blood of virtually all D&D.  "If we enter, we might get killed; but if we don't enter, we won't get any treasure."

Of course, the players always enter!  This doesn't make it less of a horn ... and in the case of three characters dying on the first attempt, going back was certainly a question on the table.  Not a hard question; after all, if Mimmarudla doesn't kill your character, surely whatever else you might plunge into will ... so it might as well be the devil you know.

It helps to understand, however, what's going on in the player's mind, even if the player doesn't understand.  There is a hesitation, especially if the player's been burned a few times.  I remember that as kids we didn't care much, because death lacks a sting when there's no real hurt.  True enough, our characters used to die in those early campaigns I played like the sea rolling up on the sand, hurtling itself forward only to vanish.

The difference for my players that day — something I didn't understand then but which I appreciate now — was a sense of not wanting to let me down.  Years of reading my posts, seeing the work I put forward, sensing they were being judged on their ability to play ... never entered my head.  We didn't care about character deaths in those old days because we weren't that impressed by the worlds we played in.  No more so than we were impressed at losing Tetris.  But ... if you make your game world impressive, if you win the hearts and minds of your players through the ambition and aestetic you've created in your game world, you raise the bar.

This makes the players really consider what it means to go into that undiscovered dark hole in the ground.  And the harder we make the access to that hole, the more tense the entry becomes.  To climb into Mimmarudla, the players had to lower themselves from a hole in the ceiling by a rope.  There were no convenient stairs, no level passage though a wide open cave.  Once they removed that keystone, they knew that no one had been here for ages.  That paints a very different motif.  Whatever's down there has been shut off from the world for a long, long time.  It won't be a bunch of bandits or goblins down there.  It won't be anything ordinary.  It's bound to be something dangerous, scary and new.  Very new.  And we the players are the first to find it.

Gawd help us.