My Life as a Gamer Guy – Summer Camp (pt. 2)

This summer I had the opportunity to pilot a D&D summer camp for kids (ages 10-14) and it was an experience …

Time and time again I have fallen into the trap of world building where I didn’t need to, that I couldn’t even do a holiday themed one shot without creating an entire world and factions to go with them, completely ignoring the excellent of advice to start small and spiral out. It was tempting to start off in the long running Forgotten Realms setting that the kids would likely run into at home, but that comes loaded with lore that crosses generations of gamers and multiple editions of changes (check out the fan made wiki about it).

My original plans included introducing the players to simple world building ideas as we went along. It never did get into fully exploring those ideas but we did get into some surface exploration of them and the function they served.

• An Adventure needs someplace interesting to happen
  The first adventure took place in the Iron Peaks, a location defined as “once home to many dwarven cities before the War of Shadows, now a wild place of bandits and savage monsters” and that it was several days travel from the nearest town.
  Pick a distinctive feature, an evocative name, and a connection to the party and the world. Of all the things from the FATE RPG, I’d say it’s use of descriptors like that I try to use where I can.
  In this case, the party was following a quest to rescue a kidnapped prince who had been brought to the Wrought Iron Fortress, high atop a mountain and covered in fierce steel spikes to ward off attackers attempting to scale the walls – not impossible to climb but punishing for those who failed their roll.
  
• Players need a place to recover, restock, and find hooks
  Evergreen was where the party escorted the rescued prisoners, including one shopkeeper who promised to reward their rescuers with a 10% discount on adventuring gear (not weapons or armor).
  In practice, this looked like key places and associated NPCs written on the whiteboard. More NPCs were introduced as the party asked for a service or information not currently covered. Later, the final encounter was this town being besieged by minions and threatening these NPCs. As an added bonus, when a generic villager was rescued, as DM I asked who was rescued (with some leading options – man, woman, child, and what did they do in town).
  We minimized the dreaded shopping encounter to just enough to recognize the NPC with a description and a brief dialogue exchange.
  – Beryl Bronzebeard (female dwarf weaponsmith and armorer, a place to buy weapons and armor and to sell used ones for half the listed sale price; during the town siege offered access to magical items to help save the town)
  – Kala (female human priest, a place to buy holy water and healing potions (still limited to what was in stock, and a quest to investigate what happened to the missing herbalist who gathered the materials for the potions); during the town siege, could perform up to three cure wounds or bless)
  – Mortimer Sneed (male human merchant, seller of adventuring gear and willing to pay half list price for decent common loot; during the town siege he was primarily a ticking clock of urgency, with enemies about to break down his barricaded door in two rounds if they were not stopped)
  – Reg (male half elf, inn keeper to provide a place to rest, eat, and discover lore and rumors – used to be an adventurer until he lost his leg to an owlbear; during the town siege the inn was the site of the initial attack and he had two healing potions behind the bar if any of the party were taken down early)
  – Xenon (male gnome merchant of exotic items, a travelling resource for spell scrolls and potentially common and uncommon magic items; he did not appear in the town siege but appeared earlier for buying / selling)
  
• A world needs space for hooks and room to expand into
  We never drew a map of the region and kept things abstract for travel. Most of the locations were summed up in a single line of description as part of rumors. Compared to most of the games I have run, this was kept simple.
  – The initial adventure indicated that there was a king and a prince, so there had to be a capital somewhere, in this case over a week’s travel away.
  – The mysterious map they found led through the Midnight Forest to The Shrine of Shadows, just a few days travel from the town.
  – There was an elf and half elf in the party so there was also the distant Mistwood to have as a place of origin. We said nothing more of it beyond that but should question about it come up, we were going to trust the elf players to say yes or no to some of those details. And yes, I know that’s really close in name to several other popular fantasy forests but I’ve been using it since the 90s as a forest of mystery since a homebrew setting.
  – The dragonborn ranger was a fan of the Princess Bride so they wanted to have hunted monsters in a Fire Swamp so why not? I brainstormed on a few alternate names like maybe Scarlet Swamp or Ember Bog. Naturally it was said to have fiery dangers, large vermin, and the occasional giant-kin. Eventually the party did there looking for trouble and got a random encounter.

Next time, I’m going to see what I can do to set up a single page or pamphlet as a spiral world building guide and if room permits, a table for random exotic location generation.