Interconnected Storytelling in D&D

hey hey dungeon master you you come over when is the last time you thought about the tears of play the tear of play are a simple guideline at the beginning of the phb that let DMS and players alike know the general power level that PCS will be at and what kinds of conflicts to expect that was three initialisms in one sentence we're deep in nerd territory now but the tears of play are just that a line and nothing really happens when you advance from one tier to the next in a literal mechanical way so it wouldn't surprise me if most players have only looked at this section of the book one time and moved on with their life but I didn't I didn't move on because from a storytelling perspective this concept has stuck with me from the very beginning the tears of play are not simply a tool for figuring out what kinds of threats to throw at your player in terms of combat they are a guideline for structuring the entire world of your camp pain for layering conflict in a way that feels believable and complex and engaging for making stories that feel like they don't exist solely for the party and will continue to exist in our imaginations once the campaign is wrapped up it's a way to make the world feel like it isn't bending to them and taking it easy on them by only throwing things that they're ready to handle at them but rather a living breathing thing when thought of this way the tears of play can be used to guide how we create the stories of our campaigns and to set up situations where all four tiers of conflict are present whether it's a longer campaign that we can use to generate milestones and breadcrumb the conflict that there's always something to look forward to or a shorter campaign where we can make the concise events of that story feel complicated and rich and full of decisions and danger So today we're just going to take a bit of a closer look at this part of the book and what it can offer us not from a balancing or rules or crunch aspect but from a storytelling aspect how can we use these four little paragraphs in the book that explain the tears of play in order to create worlds that feel more alive and stories that feel more realized so let's dive right into it and let's start with a simple refresher of what these four tiers of play are prologue a refresher across the 20 levels that PCS can achieve there are four tiers of play and while the boundaries between them are somewhat arbitrary give or take a level or two they do give guidelines on what kinds of conflicts we can expect and very importantly as a DM what kinds of conflicts will be needed in order to actually challenge the party at their level they do not just describe enemies however they describe circumstances and how big and heroic they are and how much of the world will be changed by the heroic Deeds of your party and they do not just describe enemies they also describe the scale of the the conflict and how much the world may change based on the actions of your party and their heroics the higher tier they are the more likely they are to change the entire world with the threats that they take down let's go over them real quick the first tier of play can be thought of as the Local Hero tier and it spans levels 1 through four death is more likely circumstances are usually more personal and they're simply saving a village or a Farmstead at most this is the tier in which your players feel most like normal people and at most they will Ascend to the ranks of a Fulk hero in most circumstances levels 5 through 10 or the heroes of the realm tier is when things start to get a little more serious your party will likely be gaining Fame and notoriety anywhere they go for their particularly gifted abilities and serious magical items or ancient mythical beings will be needed to actually pose a challenge to them their exploits will likely result in them saving an entire city or perhaps even an entire nation levels 11 to 16 can be thought of as the masters of the realm tier this is where your players are basically superheroes they're capable of superhuman Feats and death defying acts of magic their exploits will usually involve traveling the entire world and perhaps even the Realms and the Multiverse itself they are not only saving the world but changing it and and they are taking on threats that are as big as armies or countries as opposed to small faction and finally from levels 17 to 20 your players are in the Masters of the Realms tier their exploits are going to involve defending the very fabric of time and space itself they are basically Beyond mortal capabilities and they will be remembered by BS for centuries to come they are living legends pretty much everywhere they go and it might be up to them and them alone to save the entire realm with all that said we can imagine the types of stories that would Naturally Fit in each tier and what we should be coming to the table with as a DM and the things we should expect from our players things at tier one we might have to be careful not to kill our players and expect things to be more gritty whereas all the way up in tier 4 things will basically feel like an epic poem an odyssey of sorts where the players can do almost anything that they can think of and killing them is probably not going to happen most campaigns aren't going to span all four tiers and most if they're just in one are going to be in the second tier to play levels 5 to 10 this tends to be the spot of the game that people find most balanced and fun and I think it's the most popular for a reason but let me know down below what you think if there are other tiers that are more fun than that or if this really is where the game excels the most but whatever tier your campaign is in in and whether or not it's going to cross from one tier to the next before it's over we can use these four types of conflict and think about what kind of world they would create for your story we can find ways for all four to exist in the narrative and for all of them to apply pressure to the players whether or not they are capable of truly confronting it in traditional combat so let's start talking about that what can we do in our campaigns to make all four layers present let's start with longer campaigns longer campaigns the forest and the trees it's a long road from Level 1 to 20 in level one you're protecting a few sheep from perhaps a handful of goblins and in level 20 you are slaying the very Gods but if you happen to be running a campaign that spans 10 15 or even 20 levels the tiers of play might be your best friend for breadcrumbing conflict setting things up in advance and giving your players the satisfaction of achieving them at the end when running a campaign of this length it is best to think of the ti of play as the forest and the trees we can zoom out and set up a tier three conflict make our low-level party aware of what's out there put them in a situation where they have no choice but to flee and save who they can and then we can zoom back into the tier one conflict with greater context this also sets them on the path of eventually reaching that tier 3 conflict and having the Glorious feeling of finally being able to face this thing that has been haunting them once and for all the best example I can think of this is from the salamander Coast Campaign which Joe actually runs on this channel and over on our twitch if you're interested in checking that out we started at level one tier one mercenaries just doing some basic low-level adventuring stuff adventuring adventuring keep it keep the clip we're moving on we're moving on but as our load level adventuring progressed we learned about the cult of the dark one and one particular member of The Cult of the dark one named daku became our primary antagonist we slowly worked up to eventually being able to fight him and that was our threshold of tier one we slowly came to realize that he was just one of many many cultists and there were many of his power level and many even farther Beyond tier 2 was going to lead us into fighting the many factions that had Allied themselves with the dark one tier three we would be fighting the 13 forsaken his most powerful and trusted allies and by the time we get to tier four we're going to be facing off against the dark one himself one of the very the Brilliance of this is that all of these layers of conflict have been present since the very beginning Joe knew that we would have the satisfaction in this very long campaign of eventually facing down these things but for now they were being used to make us feel the weight and the gravity of what we were up against to make us question if we truly were the heroes that were ready to take on Darkness itself the world did not wait for us to be ready to handle its threats we have been running away from The Forsaken and talking our way through city-wide conflicts since the very beginning of the campaign but now that cultist that we fought at the end of tier one well he's just one of many and we can often take out several people of his power level in a single combat encounter they're often just serving as minions against whoever we're actually fighting too prong to satisfaction of finally confronting things that we had to flee from at the higher tiers and stomping things that used to almost kill us at the lower tiers so at the start of a long campaign no matter what tier of play you are beginning in consider how all four layers can comment on this and consider how breadcrumbs can be laid for your players to eventually get to confront something much bigger than what they started with these could be traditional boss fights that you build up to for later on in your campaign but keep in mind that your players can feel the pressure of all four tiers of play without it being a traditional fight they can feel the gravity of high tier type activities such as cities falling to the enemy or the very Gods intervening on the activities of the enemies and the heroes alike bring in higher tier conflict whenever your players need to be reminded of the gravity of the situation and bring in lower tier conflict whenever they need to be reminded how far they've come but always Zoom back in from the forest to the tree deal with what is happening immediately in their current tier while reminding them of the World At Large secondly consider thresholds or progress Gates that can thrust your player from one tier to the next bring the campaign to an entirely new level every time they ascend from one tier to another maybe in your dragon themed campaign your tier one players aren't ready for tier 2 until they defeat their first dragon or maybe in your Undead Army campaign The Awakening of a 4,000-year-old lich who then starts to wage war on the entire country is what brings the campaign from tier 2 to tier three as long as we're using these layers as a guide for our storytelling it can be very fun to be thrust into one level of conflict into the next to suddenly feel like the thing that you're involved in just got 10 times bigger in the same way that a player only levels up when they've pushed themselves to the absolute limit of their current level your campaign only moves from one tier to the next when the stakes and heroic response necessary to save the world has gone up tfold so you can use these as sort of benchmarks to bring your campaign into the next level and make those breadcrumbs that you set up all the more real but that's just how to handle longer campaigns how can we make all four layers present in a shorter one shorter campaigns layers in the sandwich campaigns that last only a few sessions are likely only going to be in one tier of play but we can still apply pressure on the party with all four tiers to make the world feel rich and layered and to successfully engage them in a variety of ways not all of which can just be handled by blunt force unlike with longer campaigns our goal here is not long-term satisfaction so much as it is complex situations that cannot be handled simply so we don't want to set up unbeatable villains for later we want to create situations that can be resolved in some way but we want to create big and small situations that the players have to confront in a variety of ways not just with traditional combat let's assume that our party is a tier 2 party probably the most common tier of play as we mentioned our big bad is probably going to be a tier 2 level threat but we can sprinkle conflict all around them in different ways there can be tier one situations happening around them that aren't really a threat to their lives but offer lore and information and different kinds of fail conditions other than death on the other side there can be some tier three conflict brewing in the area that they won't be able to handle all on their own and they'll have to use strategy allies and carefully choosing their battles in order to get through it and there might even be some tier four conflict a Divine or powerful or ancient being that is invested in how this conflict goes and the party can have some sort of meaningful interaction with even though a fight would definitely result in their death so let's come up with an example let's say our main tier 2 conflict is an aboth it is underneath the sewer systems of the city it is already starting to pollute the water and mind control some of the key politicians so our party's main tier 2 goal is going to be to find this aboth find its layer figure out how to defeat it and then we're going to end with some sort of water themed dungeon that ends up in a boss fight in the abalith's own layer cool makes perfect sense now let's layer our sandwich in tier one we have cultists that have already fallen to the abalith's will who are trying to help along his agenda in the city these cultists are probably not going to be power ful enough to really threaten a party that's from Level 5 to 10 but there might be secondary objectives that still make the players be smart and give it their all whenever they're encountered perhaps they have documents that they might destroy Vital Information that the players can't get to if they're not fast enough or perhaps they even have hostages and the players need to be smart so that none of them are killed by the cultists as they deescalate the situation and if secondary objectives in combat is a New Concept to you you can go ahead and check out out Joe's video from a couple of months ago on that topic the point is even though this tier one conflict is probably not going to kill the party we can still offer conflict and fail States in a variety of ways they can get an upper hand on their primary conflict if they handle this tier one threat properly they can get information or Allies that will benefit them greatly and perhaps weaken the main villain now let's go up to tier three perhaps this abalith's Corruption of the city has the attention of many powerful people and factions and it threatens to cause a Citywide conflict perhaps there's a rogue political group or a bandit group that wants to seize power once this power vacuum is created perhaps there's a another evil magical entity like a vampire or a lich that wants the sabath to have power whatever it may be a massive fight is going to be brewing in the city and the party knows that they can't handle it all on their own if they were tier three players perhaps they could with blunt force and raw magical prowess take control of the city and make sure that none of these other groups gained power but since they can't do that and this is out of their hands they're going to need to be smart make allies decide which groups they want to support and which groups they want to cut off they might need to get secret information that will give them an upper hand on the situation rather than just going into straightforward combat there are all sorts of ways that they can handle it without handling it super directly as simply as they would handle something in tier 2 perhaps even when this battle does break out in some shape or form at the end of your campaign your players have to run through it they have to survive the streets before they can get to their main target of the aboth in the dungeon and they have to pick their battles strategically so they don't run out of steam before they get to that by introducing this layer we can let the players know that they are powerful enough to save the city but not without being smart about it not entirely on their own and finally in tier four we can introduce some sort of entity that is above the aboth something that is not directly involved in the situation but wants to see how the conflict will play out for whatever goal they may have this should be a person or creature or Divine entity of some sort that the players have zero chance of directly confronting and surviving perhaps it's an evil aligned deity that wants the aboth to ascend to power and the party can Stave it off or convince it to not get involved in some way Perhaps it is a simpleminded but terrifying preacher like a teras that the aboth might be able to control into running rampant on the entire city and the party needs to prevent this rather than defeat the Tas directly or perhaps it's even a good aligned deity or benevolent magical creature of some kind that will offer to help the party defeat the ab left but only under certain conditions forcing the party to interact with and appease them in some way whatever it is this tier 4 conflict can be something that truly humbles the party and fills them with a sense of awe makes the entire story feel older and grander than them that they are simply small pieces that might just have what it takes to influence the bigger picture here now we have a situation where all four tiers are present in one conflict this party does need to fight the aboth but they also need to keep an eye on the activities of the cultists and try to get as much information leverage and sway as they can out of that situation while also minimizing the damage they do they also will need to smartly work their way around the Brewing conflict in the city knowing that they cannot fight everybody and they're going to interact with perhaps a being from a different plane or a very powerful ancient entity in order to get vital power or information in order to finally wrap up this conflict when thinking this way we can turn any story no matter the length into a conflict sandwich a bunch of layers that are going to affect what the players do things that comment on the primary conflict with secondary conflicts big and small immediate and longlasting all around them they're things that make the world feel like it was lived in previously and it will continue to be lived in once the heroes have finished what they're doing and this can work in every every single tier all the way from 1 to four is there some reason that your tier one players are the only people that know where A's felter is well all the more reason to make some very powerful allies and to throw them in terribly dangerous situations where they are a true Fish Out of Water helping very powerful entities to seal this deal once and for all or is your tier four party starting to feel invincible and like nothing can really stand up to them well perhaps they can Rec connect with their Humanity by engaging in some tier one conflict and hey any party will be threatened by a bandit Chief holding a knife to a loved one's neck there are many ways to fail in DN D that don't just involve death and those can happen in any tier so there you have it no matter the length of your campaign the tiers of play are there to guide you in making every layer of your story matter we can make longer campaigns have a sense of cohesion and always have a milestone to look forward to using this guideline and we can also make shorter campaigns feel complex and lived in even if we're not there for a very long time by making all four layers of conflict present no matter what level your players currently are you make worlds that feel bigger than them conflicts that feel incredibly layered and like they will last into our imaginations after the story is over and situations that can never just be handled by Brute Force alone so whether you're protecting a Farmstead or unraveling time itself the tears of play can be used to make all levels of conflict big and small have a stake in your story to make that world feel rich and layered and complete to show your players the forest and the trees and if this is a part of the game that you haven't thought about in years I hope I've offered some new insight let me know what you think about this down below or if there's any other insights or storytelling advice related to this that you would like everybody to know and I will see you next month with another weird take

Channel: Roll With Advantage!

Views: 2,987

Keywords: Dungeons and Dragons, Critical Role, Adventure, Fun, Improv, Story Telling, 5e, education, inkarnate, world anvil, TTRPG, Role Playing, RPG, liveplay, twitch, music, art, DnD, D&D, Dimension 20, Matt Mercer, Dnd Shorts, Wizards of the Coast, Campaign

Id: nm7JQVU7VMM

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2024