Long Term Survival Challenges || D&D & Dael Kingsmill

you never realized how well the grip on a shoe works until it stops you from closing a door hello humans my name is Dale Kingsmill we've talked about D&D today people who follow me over on Twitter likely already know that I had one idea that I was working on for a dude a new video but I don't think it's ready yet so instead I asked Twitter what you all have been trying to kind of solve D&D wise to try and get my you know brain working clearly it still isn't and the lovely Falcon I mentioned that in an upcoming session their party will be escorting about a hundred refugees across the plains and they didn't want it to become tedious or just like rolling through Oregon Trail and this caught my attention cuz I do have some ideas and the beginning point of them is would it be a garden trail be that bad hear me out hear me out because it would be dumb if we had some kind of a system in place that we could utilize for the sake of sort of sustained tests or endurance challenges I haven't settled on the term I'm gonna use for them now of course I've only been toying with this idea for a handful of days so let's call it a prototype if you want to spit ball with me in the comments add any ideas of your own that other people can sort of pluck from and build on top of that'd be neat feel free to do that so anyway thinking of this idea of like I wanted to implement some kind of a system that would be for specifically events where your party is kind of responsible for the welfare of a larger group over a long period of time so of course the hundred refugees traveling to a safe place across the plains but also situations like disaster relief or even possibly I think it could work for situations where your party is a ceej and they're trying to keep a bunch of people safe but specifically the kinds of sieges more like the Rats of Tobruk right well there's no hope of your side winning against the other army you just have to hold out until someone can come and save you or get you out of there so that's what that's what I'm kind of doing here the idea is for issues that are going to last probably a month at least in game time and in which the focus is on your characters keeping other people safe or alive or what-have-you so that's where scoring the hundred refugees for example would differ from something like overland travel overland travel I did a video on a while back you can check it out if you haven't seen it but the idea there is that it focuses a little bit more on the minutia because it's kind of it's your party looking after themselves mostly so it gets a little bit more into the nitty-gritty where is when they're kind of looking after a large group of people it becomes different because you know if you've got a hundred refugees you don't really have much of an option for stealthy travel you're also going to have a much harder time foraging effectively using very simple methods discussing overland travel and we also assume that your party is competent at basic survival things like navigating in order to get these hundred refugees across the plains so anyway what what were the things I wanted to include I absolutely wanted to make sure that player engagement it has to be active not passive I wanted it to be choices on choices and I wanted those choices to build over time to have that sensation of time moving and without it necessarily being something that becomes tedious still feeling that passage of time still feeling like it is an an endurance challenge so anyway an overall kind of idea of like long time engagements where hit points aren't so much the resource that you're worried about there's there's a thing in survival in the real world called the rule of three which basically comes down to the idea that you can last three minutes without air three hours without shelter three days without water and three weeks without food so basically that's the the priority sequence you might think it's important to go and find a source of water but if you don't have shelter to keep you from the elements at night then you're gonna die of exposure much faster than you will of thirst basically that's that's the idea so that's a useful jumping-off point but of course in D&D we can assume that most of the time trying to find air to breathe it's a given let's just assume for the sake of this unless you know doing it under water bit or in a sinking ship or something which isn't particularly prolonged that's not exactly a month-long engagement let's be real we can just skip over air and assume that's fine I wanted to take the emphasis off things like hit points and individual health so much and put more onto resources like managing food managing water managing shelter managing security for the group and to a certain degree perhaps replacing the idea of hip points with the idea of spirits how higher the spirits of the people yeah he is ready good I just tore half this page of my book got too enthusiastic in that page turned didn't I yes I did oh dear here's where you're gonna have to stick with me a little bit again I kind of thought it would be cool if to emphasize that this is a prolonged thing that you're dealing with it would be kind of cool if every session only covered like one week say so if this is a month long thing that your party is handling in-game every session is only get a couple one week of that thing so it takes four different sessions to get through it you might know what to do it that way and it also might not work depending on how frequently your group meets or how long you certain your specifications are but work with me here I think you'll you'll see my side of it as at least not inherently horrendous once we're done so I've got three different kinds of examples basically the ones that I mentioned earlier sort of a prolonged siege escorting the refugees and disaster relief of managing flood relief when a town has been flooded the way that I envisage this you come to your session prepared for two different eventualities basically you describe a lot of travel a lot of normal day-to-day steps and little things that happen I don't know basically just inform them of time traveling do lots of description I would even recommend writing out a full-on description just reading it to your plays if that's something you don't already do just to sort of emphasize that in time and space have moved around you and your group well maybe not space maybe you've Stood Still actually I'm just looking at the refugee page right now they are moving through space the final frontier so you come to your group that session and you say blah blah blah lots of hills everything's pretty but also harsh and by the end of the first week some things have gone wrong two things specifically each of these two things should challenge one of those categories that we mentioned as being important resources for survival the food the water the shelter the security in this case you tell your players that the refugees have noticed they've come to you and they've said one of the kids is missing well Helen he's run off we can't find him he must have slipped off into the woods but a bunny rabbit or whatever but also you inform your players that for the last three nights they've heard howling echoing across the wilderness and they know that they're entering wolf territory and they should really begin preparing some kind of a defense against wolves should they decide to attack during the night and your players have to make a decision because it's not that long before nightfall and they've got to choose one of these two things to dedicate that time towards personally do they go after they try to rescue this child in the woods who's gone missing or do they try to prevent the potential danger of the wolves something that threatens the whole of the refugee group that you're that you're escorting because you the DM have prepared basically two fairly simple straightforward adventures I would recommend even making them a little bit larger than life make them like classic one shots for your players and that's gonna fill up the bulk of your session all right so that's how we're gonna fill out all this time is that when basically skimming over the week as it happens and then giving your players one kind of huge choice that they have to make and then letting the rest of the session play out like a normal adventure they go off and they decide that they will save the child and so you give them the adventure where the child has been kidnapped by a witch in the forest and you have to go and deal with this witch or alternatively they decide that they've got to handle this wolf situation they can't waste time on little Wilhelm and so instead you give your players the adventure where they track the wolves to their cave their den and they have to take out the that's leading them waagh I always say wolf cause it's like wool with a gene I feel weird saying so they've made that choice they've played out the session they finish up and they go home next time they come to a session you used the decision that they made last time to build on and say all right well it's week two because you went off and you saved Wilhelm some people did get injured during the night no one was killed but some of the injuries that the refugees got during having to fend off wolves in the night by now a week later they're starting to festa the the people are getting sick also at the same time during the attack by the wolves because you hadn't set up any defenses against them a bunch of the dogs got into the food supplies and a ton of the food has been spoiled which severely limits the the amount that everyone will be able to eat for the rest of the trip what do they choose what do they choose they've got a handle something they've got to handle it now and you've prepared so that if they choose to sort the food issue they have to go hunting to replenish the supplies or if they decide to have to handle these sick refugees right away you set up an adventure where a bunch of traveling merchants come by who happen to have the medicine that you need but they want a favor in return what's that adventure gonna be that you have to bring them the eye of a chimera or something again they go on their adventure it fills up most of the session they go home they come back next week and you say all right well you handled that but because you went off to the Chimaera to get the medicine for the refugees now people are getting angry they're living off tiny little rations every day and this time to get real like touchy about everything you hear whispers that someone is being pushed to the brink and they're planning a murder but you don't know who's the murderer and you don't know who's the victim so their adventure if they chose that would be a little whodunit you can mix up the genre for these one shots and maybe at the same time the water has gotten low and so you find a well but you have to clear out the bublé's living in the cave with the underground whatever in order to actually get access to the clean water so it should roll on and on and it should take a couple of weeks but it shouldn't it's it's kind of like an overarching umbrella within which you couch these little sort of zoomed-in adventures that go well you've been handling all sorts of things but this is the part that we're gonna focus on this is something that your party is doing now and that's what you focus on for the session and then the next week you say well this has happened in the past week but this is what we're focusing on now they're like little crisis points for anyone who's familiar with the age system the crisis points in warfare for the age system kind of this big picture little picture system you have set up I'm not super sure about this next bit but I kind of wanted to have the idea in there that you have to keep the spirits of the people relatively like decent not high but like you got to keep them not hating you cos you're in charge and you can be put not in charge so I mean off the top of my head I'm thinking like they have three spirit points and four every time you ignore what the same thing twice in a row the thing goes down so like if you ignored the the food problem twice in a row then they would lose a spirit point and if you ignored it again later on you lose a spirit point not really much of an issue except on extremely low things that you would do like this but I don't know I just want there to be an element of like if you do ignore little Wilhelm's too many times the people will be like well clearly we can't trust you because you hate our children and keep feeding them to witches and so then they go you suck and we're not paying you or they say you suck and they all jump you and because there's a hundred of them no matter how weak a refugee is that's a lot of refugees to fight I mean less now that you've let so many Wilhelm's die meanwhile by the way on the other side of the thing if you'd chosen to go and hunt the wolves perhaps the the next week's issue is that it started to rain just a torrential downpour the refugees they weren't prepped with anything more than their ordinary clothes so they are getting soaked through to the bone and in the same downpour you find that flash flood has washed away the bridge that you were counting on for continuing on your path and so the next four is a week out of your way essentially adding an extra crisis that your party you're going to have to deal with to the end of this sequence so do they try to find shelter for the refugees now and you give them an adventure where you have to I don't know clear out an abandoned fort so that you can set up and wait out the rain what are you trying to secure passage across the river and a totally different adventure so that you don't have to risk the refugees for an extra week if you do decide to secure passage across the river then the refugees start getting ill you can use that idea for an adventure hook on the other branch the one from the the wolf attack injuries stick it on them being sick because they were stuck in the rain trying to cross this river or the same thing the food got spoiled because they were out in the rain while you were crossing the river and so now you have to deal with finding more food the problems should roll on they should build off each other they should continue and it should feel like an ongoing kind of what choice do we make because these choices matter real quick just covering like little bits of ideas of how it would work for something like flood relief so the first week you've got this big problem that you have to deal with in the first week people are without shelter because their homes have been destroyed but at the same time people are without clean drinking water for the first time and what are we going to do about that do you temporarily we house the people in the ghost town up the hill that they've long abandoned or do you have a heist session where you go and you come into your barrels of wine from a nearby a wealthy vineyard where you have to avoid the guards and you have to bring these big barrels and fill them up with water and bring them to the townspeople to keep them supplied if you didn't deal with the water and you did the ghost town thing people have been drinking unclean water now they're getting sick you can use the idea see that you're not gonna be doing these huge prolonged things that often in-game so you can kind of reuse some of these basic ideas people are getting sick you need to get them clean drinking water so you have an adventure where you have to defend shipment of clean drinking water from the next town over but at the same time bandits have been taking advantage scavengers have been taking advantage of the empty town and they've been coming in to try to steal stuff from from people's homes while they're left unattended so there's the other option of launching a counter-strike against the temporary bandit encampment if you stole the the barrels of wine from the vineyard then maybe now the the wealthy vineyard owner has recognized he's suspicious that that's where his property has gone and so he is harassing the people of the town for a toll a water toll basically and you have to fight off waves of his guards but at the same time the food that was left in the open because you haven't found out a quick shelter yet has begun to rut in all the all the water maybe this time you go hunting in the local area but it pisses off the local Rangers suddenly you've got them to contend with see how it still kind of works even though it's not like an overland travel kind of situation anymore you're staying in one place you're handling this one situation but because it's prolonged because you're looking after a group of people those are the same four things threatened again it's the food the water it's the shelter and it's the safety I do think that you could do it with like a prolonged siege as well so like you're trying to just keep the people within this keep safe until the king can send his army to wipe out the enemy or something you know but in the meantime the enemy have contaminated the main well that you that supplies this keep with water but the people you're defending show you a secret super the entrance into the underdog where you can hopefully find another water source and dig down to create a secondary well or at the same time the South gates being compromised by bad guys with battering rams you've got to basically pull that thing that Gillman gimli an hour ago and do in in helms deep where they go and they fight off the people the Orica is long enough so that they can reinforce the gate that thing have that be an adventure that music you got to work out how to keep supply lines going you go to work out how to safely keep exits free you know that sort of a thing so that's what I'm thinking it is a prototype but I think it could be a cool thing to have a system of like not everything has to be happening like right now in the moment I like that idea of stretching the time out doing it over multiple sessions but having those sessions be kind of micro focused on specific things that are happening during the the the elongated turmoil anyway those are my thoughts thank you to Falconer for getting my brain working again hopefully people and found some value in this even if it was just sparking ideas of your own and how you might handle this sort of a thing apart from that I do believe that's it I'm done email this to your grandma and I will see you some other time [Music] [Music] turmoil

Channel: MonarchsFactory

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Rating: 4.9793663 out of 5

Keywords: MonarchsFactory, Dael Kingsmill, Geek & Sundry, Geek & Sundry Vlogs, Geek and Sundry, Geek and Sundry Vlogs, Geek, nerd, australian, australia, vlogger, Greek mythology, myths, mythology, Dael, Kingsmill, Dale, Dale Kingsmill, story, storyteller, story teller, story time, funny, sustained, duration, long term, homebrew, house rule, home brew, D&D, Dungeons and dragons, wizards of the coast

Id: lygaQIenfd0

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019