| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| muir |
Posted - 30 Mar 2022 : 05:04:30
Browsing Serpent Kingdoms, my attention was caught by the following: "At least one Ormpurian noble family is actually a group of beholder mages employing magic to appear in human form."
Soooo, how many of a given city's nobility should be human, if there is no magical/divine oversight? Beholders, dragons, maybe illithids, doppelgangers...many monsters can appear human, or take human form. I wonder at the likelihood of a city where all those in power are monsters, pretending to be human, unaware of some of the others? |
| 7 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| TBeholder |
Posted - 12 Apr 2022 : 03:37:37
There is no such thing as "too many plots" in FR.
From How Many Hidden Cults is Too Many:
quote:
This is one of those questions with many correct answers, depending on who's trying to answer it.
Let me narrow it a trifle. I really mean: "How many hidden cults is too many within your campaign?"
In my Realms campaign, the short answer is that there's no such thing as too many hidden cults. I LOVE hidden cults.
And that's just one subcategory of plot generators.
The real question is how many actors can try to do something in a given context (area and time) without either turning it into complete chaos or looking silly enough to break suspension of disbelief too much.
Looking at published advice from Good Ol' Ed:
The background level consists of:
- Personal intrigues (rivalries, adulteries, etc).
- Scalable types of intrigues (near-omnipresent, but the amount and scale depends on the local money flow or people): merchants, aristocrats and criminals messing around; religious rivalries, local sects, minor heresies, hidden shrines of locally "undesirable" deities (see How Many Hidden Cults is Too Many, etc).
- Occasional glimpses of mysteries (which may turn out to be short plot hooks, long plot hooks or red herring later - A Dark and Stormy Knight, The Teleporting Oddity, etc).
- A single disruptive mystery (haunting or The Mushroom Man) may displace some of the actors (which is perfectly justified in-Universe, of course: it can observably neutralize them by chasing off or distracting) or make a plot centered on itself.
Plots for which the places are not equal:
- For a modest plot arc in a backwater (i.e. a place that could be feasibly used by the non-clownish secret society exactly because it has enough of people to blend in, but no presence of serious enemies) it's fine to have about 3 secret societies, 2 of them low-end.
- An important crossroad town (like Hill's Edge or Iriaebor) has multiple major hidden actors, trying to control the place or undermine each other, and minor hidden actors mostly spying on them and each other.
- The capitals of large kingdoms and great trade cities (Waterdeep, Ravens Bluff, Calimport, etc) are another major tier above that, of course. Presence of every widespread organization is mandatory if at all feasible (even if minor and most will only observe). Quoth Laeral, "Other places grow corn, or barley, but here in hard-paved Waterdeep, we have healthy crops too. We grow conspiracies."
Beyond background noise, it's simply a matter of "how much power (including money flows) is there to harvest or contest?"
Naturally, a "gold rush" type situation (artifact hunts, etc) can create enough of popularity among the power players and rent seekers of all sorts to temporarily elevate a place to the next tier (backwater to major trade town), which is going to annoy the locals, but may create a boom ("don't dig for gold, sell shovels").
If you want to go all out, use some faction model (e.g. from Worlds Without Numbers) to run your background actors. In which case, note that they can and should refrain from non-trivial activities most of the time, as they quietly accumulate funds before the next move, etc. So you may have a dozen of locally relevant factions from the government down, but only 2-4 of them do anything. |
| Kelcimer |
Posted - 06 Apr 2022 : 07:54:10
quote:
Originally posted by muir
Soooo, how many of a given city's nobility should be human, if there is no magical/divine oversight? Beholders, dragons, maybe illithids, doppelgangers...many monsters can appear human, or take human form. I wonder at the likelihood of a city where all those in power are monsters, pretending to be human, unaware of some of the others?
I think this needs to be done sparingly. If you are going to have a family be shapeshifters, then just do the one. Or have two rival groups of shapeshifters that are aware of each other and are in a bit of a feud.
My thought on it is that I want my players to be able to grasp what is going on in the world and make rational decisions. You can only pull the rug out from under the players so many times before they don't take your game seriously anymore. You can break player trust, like with Lord Karsus's example of NPC's in the wilds. You don't want the players to get to a reveal that these nobles over hear are ALSO shapeshifters and have them eye roll. |
| Lord Karsus |
Posted - 02 Apr 2022 : 15:43:34
-I generally enjoy the "ABC is actually secretly really an XYZ" concept, but I hate when it's overdone. Not saying it is here, but in general. It reminds me of an issue with a DM in my group (and maybe a problem overall?) where basically any time we encountered random NPCs on the side of the road who claimed to need assistance, they were always attacked us/backstabbed us/whatever, to the point that in meta, we knew to never associate with NPCs who seemed to take an interest in the party out in the wilds of the world. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 31 Mar 2022 : 18:01:41
This topic reminds me of something I was writing up for some "back history" of Luneira (the renamed Netherese enclave of Doubloon that I put in orbit). I had this idea that some greater doppelgangers had infiltrated the people living there and taken over positions of leadership. However, I THEN had half-illithid greater doppelgangers directed by spelljamming illithids infiltrate the doppelgangers. The normal inhabitants of the city were also very into Leira. The story I had written up was that these doppelgangers had also kidnapped the ruler of the people inhabiting Selune and were seeking to expand their influence. I then have some Thayan illusionists, led by Zulkir Mythrell'aa herself, infiltrate the floating enclave and start playing the various groups against one another by revealing the various groups to each other publicly (while keeping themselves hidden and striking from the shadows). Near the end Mythrell'aa starts revealing who she is to the common folk (but not the shapechangers) so that THEY can see how she's helping them and earn their trust. She also uncovered the plot against the elf from the moon and freed her, gaining an ally.
It was all a story, nothing played through, but it sounded like it would have been a fun game. |
| Eldacar |
Posted - 30 Mar 2022 : 21:53:02
quote:
Originally posted by muir
Soooo, how many of a given city's nobility should be human, if there is no magical/divine oversight? Beholders, dragons, maybe illithids, doppelgangers...many monsters can appear human, or take human form. I wonder at the likelihood of a city where all those in power are monsters, pretending to be human, unaware of some of the others?
This actually reminds me of a joke from a webcomic I read years ago:
https://media.oglaf.com/comic/kingshaped.jpg
To answer the question more seriously, I feel like if the city is a heavily metropolitan one, particularly for a campaign based primarily in the city or involving intrigue, then expecting different groups of shapechangers is reasonable. But if you’re going to be spending your time crawling through dungeons killing things for money, it isn’t likely to be necessary or come up. In short, it depends on the style of the campaign, though for my own I like to have perhaps 2-3 “shapechanger” plots ready to go at the drop of a hat. |
| TheIriaeban |
Posted - 30 Mar 2022 : 17:00:47
Cities have been dealing with shapechangers for centuries so I would suppose that different cities deal with it in different ways. As an example in my campaign, the High Moonmaiden of the Temple of Selune in Iriaebor had warded the main council chamber with magic that will reveal the true form of anyone who steps in there (this was done centuries ago in 534 in response to a malagrym and dopplegangers being discovered as part of the Iriaeben government). Even though the highest members of the government are protected, there are still shapechangers in other positions in the government (most of these in Iriaebor are members of the Night Parade).
As for plots, you have over 10 groups operating in Iriaebor at the same time. It is not uncommon for their plots to interfere with each other. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 30 Mar 2022 : 05:12:12
All of those in power being monsters in disguise is unlikely -- the more their numbers grow, the greater the odds of being discovered. The smarter option is to find ways to control those in power -- magic, coercion, etc. There's less chance of discovery that way, and a degree of separation of the person in power winds up falling for some reason. |
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