By: Max & Dave
“The Dread Juggernautilus has been sighted off the Coast of Jade. If it is allowed to reach land, it will surely lay waste to our kingdom. I humbly beseech you, the Chosen Ones, to save us from this dire threat.”
“Uh huh. How much will you pay us?”
“Oh? Er, we can offer you a reward of 1,000 gold pieces for undertaking this task.”
“What about magic items? What have you got?”
“The chancellor has compiled a list of what potions and scrolls we can provide, as well as a map showing the best route to confront the Dread Juggernautilus before it reaches our shores.”
“I’ll take that. Let’s see… Water-walking, water-breathing, swimming… Cool, we’ll take them all. What else have you got? What about magic weapons?”
“Oh, well… The rest of our magic arsenal is, um… being used by our brave soldiers to defend the borders.”
“Yeah, sure they are. What about him? His sword looks magical, and he’s not defending the border.”
“Roderick is a royal bodyguard to the king. Each of the six royal guards wields a blessed silver saber forged by the great arch-smith.”
“They’ve all got one? Sweet, we’ll take three.”
“What?!”
“Just in case we… lose the first two?”
“Absolutely not!”
“What, you can’t spare a couple of magic swords for the Chosen Ones? Do you want to save your kingdom or not?”
“Hey, this map shows our route cutting way South to the Turtle Isles. Isn’t that where the Pirates of the Black Trident hang out?”
“Yes, our spies have learned that they stole an artifact from the enemy and have hidden it in the island ruins. With its power, you will be able to access the Dread–”
“Nope. We’ve fought those Black Trident guys before. They suck. You’ve got a navy, don’t you? Just send some warships and soldiers to get it. We’ve got better stuff to do than dungeon-crawling and dodging traps and pirates.”
“Like what?”
“Like saving the kingdom and defeating the Dread Jugg-thing. You know, Chosen One stuff!”
“Can I roll Persuasion to convince the king to give me the swords?”
“Seriously, what the heck do you want three swords for?”
“Anything made by the arch-smith is automatically worth, like, five times as much. I can keep one and sell the other two.”
“Hey, I want to get a royal writ or something that says we’re allowed to commandeer ships and stuff.”
“You guys already have a ship.”
“Yeah, but it’s only a little sailboat. I want to keep an eye out for a sweet caravel or something.”
“Ooh, let’s commandeer a crew, too. Then we could get a big one with lots of cannons.”
A ragtag group of unlikely heroes is called by destiny to fight against the odds and save the day from a terrible threat. But by the third or fourth or twelfth time they’re called up by the king to kill the monster or defeat the scourge, players might be forgiven for wondering, ‘Hey, the DM just spent three minutes describing all the gold and silver decorations in the throne room and the glowing magic weapons wielded by each of the guards. Why is he only giving us five hundred gold coins and three healing potions to risk our lives to save the kingdom?’ It could also be that the DM assumed that the players would be so eager for a new challenge that they would ignore opportunities to skip the more difficult or potentially deadly challenges so they could move straight on to the treasure.
▶(DAVE) I’ll happily admit that I bear a grudging respect for players who find ways to go all Alexander the Great on my carefully tied Gordian knots. But it’s incredibly frustrating to spend hours prepping an adventure path, only to have the players spend all their time actively searching for ways to either sidestep obstacles or to avoid the path entirely. As much as I appreciate clever solutions to difficult challenges, there are times when I just want to ask, “Look, do you want to go on an adventure or not?”
▶(MAX) All fine and fair, to be sure, but as our good buddy, Nick, was fond of saying. “The players don’t know your [the DM’s] plans and therefore cannot be relied upon to follow them.” Next time you’re frustrated – don’t wait to ask – ask. There’s nothing wrong with a little above-table talk to smooth out a game session.
While a paycheck is a nice, straightforward way to draw PCs into an adventure, you’d be hard-pressed to find a published adventure where whatever monetary reward the PCs were offered to complete a mission made up even a tenth of the total value of treasure and items looted from monster hoards and the corpses of bad guys. That’s because one of the most basic staples of an adventuring life is loot. Ask an adventurer why they expect to find a stash of treasure in a monster lair out in the wilderness, and they’ll look at you as if you had asked why they expected to find apples under an apple tree.
▶(MAX) But to what ends? That’s the question I like to ask the other players in my party. What do you want all this money for? So you can do what exactly?
It’s a lot easier on both the DM and the players if the PCs have their own reasons to risk their lives beyond just a bag of gold coins. If any of the PCs are members of an organization, they could receive orders to investigate strange happenings or areas of interest. A request to intervene could also take the form of a favor for an NPC ally who is in trouble or concerned about recent events. One or more PCs might even have a personal stake in what’s happening and will get involved no matter what anyone says. It certainly helps if the PCs are a bunch of meddling do-gooders who can’t help but get involved when they see conflict. Even simple curiosity can be enough to get adventurers drawn into larger events.
▶(DAVE) As I pour over monster books and devise challenges for the next adventure, I do believe that I sometimes bank a little too hard on the players’ curiosity and enthusiasm for a new challenge. It doesn’t occur to me that interest may be flagging, and it’s always a shock to hear someone mutter, “Great, another riddle,” or “Ugh, I’m so sick of fighting these cultist guys.”
▶(MAX) Pacing and variety are important to maintain interest and novelty. Just like it’s on the players to bring a willingness to sit down and have fun playing this game together.
‘The Chosen Ones’ is another easy storytelling device to use for putting the PCs on the “correct” road to adventure. It also helps to explain why a ruler is willing to bet the future of their people on a small group of individuals instead of their own subordinates and subjects. But if the queen has the resources of a whole kingdom at her disposal, it’s fair to ask why she isn’t willing to make them available to those who are fighting to save said kingdom. It’s not necessary to plot out the logistics and inventory of the whole royal court and all its subjects, but there should be a good reason why she isn’t just throwing open the doors to the treasury and ordering her subjects to do whatever the PCs say to give the Chosen Ones every chance to succeed.
▶(MAX) There’s also doubt. Maybe the queen doesn’t believe you are the Chosen Ones or thinks the Chosen Ones should have their own resources. Plus, I’m guessing it costs a lot to keep a kingdom running, and ‘Chosen One’s Expense Account’ isn’t a line item in most budgets.
It’s helpful to keep in mind that in most governments and organizations, there’s no such thing as a true autocracy. There are scores of court advisors, military commanders, and spiritual/magical representatives, all of whom have their own opinions on how things should be run. The queen might have complete faith in the PCs’ abilities, and the rest of the government would probably even be willing to go along with their leader to a point. But repeated orders to give a group of irregulars, even famous ones, whatever goods and services they want for free will start to meet resistance before long.
▶(MAX) What?! It’s the bureaucrats who actually make the government work? How dare you!
▶(DAVE) I never said they had helpful opinions…
Valuable/powerful resources are rarely kept in stockpiles. While governments and large organizations would likely have access to the resources needed to acquire or create truly powerful magic, it still requires a huge investment of time, effort, and money. They might have even invested in creating a few of them already, but each one was likely meant for a specific purpose. There’d be plenty of powerful people who might not want to give them away just because they might come in handy to a group of outsiders.
▶(MAX) Plus, if the threat is truly that dire, then it stands to reason the kingdom has already deployed its resources in its own attempts to handle it before looking to outside help. Now – this might mean these “already used resources” are also now part of the aforementioned loot pile.
▶(DAVE) In my campaigns, no NPC vendor ever has a back room stocked with magic items on the off chance that an adventuring party might roll into town flush with cash. More than once, I’ve had players try to hire an NPC to be the party’s dedicated potion/scroll/magic supplier. I reflexively push back against those ideas, but I’ll usually work with them on it if they’re willing to roleplay it out and don’t treat the NPC like their personal potion-dispenser.
Using NPCs as hirelings is nothing new. Most PCs aren’t so callous as to use their hired help as monster bait or force them to walk in front to trigger traps, but after a while, it’s not uncommon for adventurers to start seeing NPCs as something of a disposable resource. Someone to risk their lives instead of the heroes. It’s one thing to send a hireling or summoned creature to scout ahead and look for danger, and it’s another to call them up specifically to set off a dangerous trap while the PC watches from a safe distance.
▶(MAX) Hiring people as fodder has its roots in the earliest editions of the game. It might not be couth. It might not be classy. And it’s certainly not Good. But it is legacy… just sayin’.
▶(DAVE) I had a player once whose warlock was granted an impish familiar by her patron. She knew that if he died, she could just summon him up again the next day, and it wasn’t long before the PC didn’t even bother searching for traps; she just let the imp lead the way through the dungeon. I had the imp become resentful and start complaining, even demanding recompense for her constant mistreatment. Eventually, they reached an understanding, and she agreed to stop using him as cannon fodder if he would stop demanding payment for his help in the middle of a fight. (For hilarious examples of extreme hireling exploitation and abuse, I recommend the webcomic Nodwick.)
▶(MAX) I think that’s a great way to handle that, Dave! Fine work!
In most long-term campaigns, there comes a point when the PCs become powerful enough that overland travel is no longer necessary. There are any number of ways to shave days and weeks off of a journey, from portals and aerial mounts to simple flight and teleportation spells. A treacherously deep gorge, haunted by shadows and monsters, becomes little more than a speed bump in the heroes’ journey as they magically zip across the vast gulf. Similarly, ascending a tower filled with traps and monsters to rescue the princess at the top just seems like pointless busy-work to a PC with a magic carpet or potion of flight in their inventory.
▶(MAX) Quick show of hands – who here takes the stairs when there’s an escalator available? You can’t reasonably expect the players to nerf themselves. I think this is part of the reason why so few groups are willing to play high-level adventures. It’s easier to not deal with game-breaking spells than to deal with them. This might be the thing I appreciate about you the most, Dave. You’re willing to face that challenge instead of running from it.
It’s important for a DM to be aware of what resources the PCs have at their disposal, and be ready with appropriate challenges or at least plausible reasons why those resources can’t be used to skip those challenges. It’s also worth noting that longer adventure paths rarely involve conflicts and problems that can be solved by an in-and-out ‘grab the treasure and run’ strategy. Players should keep in mind that there might be valuable information and useful items to be found in those overland journeys and dungeon levels that they’re so eager to skip.
▶(DAVE) All too often, I’ve had an overly clever player declare that they’ve worked out a way to use a portal or teleport spell to skip all the annoying encounters and roleplaying of an overland journey (so much for all that planning on my part). Once there was a near-TPK because the players worked out a way to teleport directly to their destination, bypassing all the encounters I’d planned where NPCs along the way would have given them helpful info and warnings about the uber-dragon that was currently lairing in the hidden cavern.
▶(MAX) Hahahaha! I laugh because you know we literally just did this in our weekly game. Whoops. I guess in our defense, we thought we were under a deadline and it goes back to the escalators/stairs things. I can take 20 hours to drive to Ohio or 6 hours to fly. I haven’t driven in 20 years.
In the end – there are takeaways for both players and DMs. And as with so much in life, most problems can be resolved with a little grace, forgiveness, and communication. For the players, this means bringing an awareness to the table that the person running the game spent literal hours of their lives creating these scenarios for you to play through. Holding up your end of the TTRPG bargain means meeting them at least halfway.
For game masters, it means understanding: there’s a good chance your players are greedy, and there’s a great chance they’re lazy. Gameplanning for these things might not be as sexy as finding new monsters or designing treacherous dungeons, but it’s the rolling-silverware-side-work of the job.
Lastly, to all you DMs out there – please, please, please – speak up and speak out! Do not be afraid to press pause and address the table out-of-game. “Look, I appreciate what you are trying to do here, but I spent <insert number hours/amount of energy/etc.> designing this 3-month journey through the woods. Can you please not teleport to the castle? It’ll be fun, I promise!”
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