For ten years, starting in the summer of
1995, I ran a “Medieval Vampire” game, one very detailed and somewhat
exhausting campaign à la Anne Rice, with two unrelated groups of players, and
constant references to the books. This is when I first came up with the concept
of the player’s wish list, around 97 or
98. At first, I expected to find the same idea somewhere else, already invented
and exploited in some supplement. Over the years, I kept looking, but didn’t
find anything like it anywhere. So, maybe I really invented this, after all. Hard
to believe... but there it is.
Whenever I was out of breath or inspiration,
or both, I created a few of these Lists and passed them along to my players, to
keep them happy – and it worked extremely well, mainly because, as you
are about to see, this thing allows players to (temporarily)
become their own Dungeon Master.
Basically, it is just like the spending of
good old experience points, except that these
“wish lists” can impact both the storyline and campaign
setting directly, whereas ordinary XP only
impact the player characters themselves. Some of the stuff you put on a List will
have implications well outside the scope of mere character sheets, and when the player’s choices are finally turned
in, as a Dungeon Master, your hands are tied,
and you have to implement whichever and
whatever option you hinted at on paper.
Here’s how it works.
Let’s say you have four players in a classic
medieval fantasy campaign. There is one Half-elf mage, one thief, one Human fighter, and one
Dwarf fighter. Presently, they have just
concluded a lengthy adventure module, and all
return together to the human fighter’s modest estate. That’s when you hand out
your Lists. Each player gets his or her own.
This is the Half-elf’s
List:
30 POINTS TO SPEND
10
POINTS
Identification of the gelatinous contents
of the two mysterious urns found in the priest’s subterranean temple (end of last
adventure).
5 POINTS
Increased control over that tiny Ghost Bird
that’s been following you since your Astral Travel of two adventures ago (one
precise task, weekly).
10 POINTS
Have your Master remove the curse on your
newfound magical weapon, thus making it an ordinary +3 dagger.
5 POINTS
Receive
a letter from your friend Lord Ochtar, with fresh news about Sorcerer Island,
and the pact you made over there in your very first adventure.
5 POINTS
Near the river, find a beryl wand that
could very well belong to one of Prince Bresh’s apprentices, providing a permanent
+1 bonus in casting any Illusion spells.
15 POINTS
An old travelling
witch sells you her eerie Vellum Tablet, on which you can write any
magic-related question you want – and an answer to that question will appear on
the same page, three minutes later. Who (or what) is the author of those “answers”?
The witch doesn’t know. (12 pages / charges left in the Tablet).
Now, the Human fighter’s List may look like
this:
30 POINTS TO SPEND
10 POINTS
Focusing every last moment of your free
time on the study of royal proclamations and various Court documents, you learn
the crests of every Lord and Knight in a fifty miles radius. You acquire the Heraldry skill, first level.
15 POINTS
Add fortifications and a watch tower to
your estate, with no extra costs in gold.
10 POINTS
The antique tapestry you just brought
back from the subterranean temple of Enhuyr, slowly turns into a bizarre map
over the course of the next ten days! It appears to show the path towards
another temple of the same evil cult, with two marked secret doors.
5 POINTS
A village boy brings you back four of the
precious +1 arrows you lost six months ago in Krick’s Wood, during that midnight
ambush by the Goblins.
5 POINTS
Your dog is gnawing on a human femur. Following it the next day, you discover the
overgrown forest barrow of a monk. Collect 19 copper pieces, 3 silver pieces,
and a mysterious clay amulet (possibly magic).
5 POINTS
Blacksmith Oswen helps you increase your
crossbow’s maximum range by 12 feet.
Of course, the thief and the Dwarf would also
get very different Lists. You really share your Dungeon Master job with them
individually: open a few doors here and there, make these suggestions, and let
your players mull them over and come up with a choice.
Expect the players to be quite excited, and
maybe ask each other: “What do you have?” Secretive players won’t tell. Collaborative
players will put everything out in the open, every option, and try to make
strategic decisions for the common good. Secretive or not – it’s all fine. This
is their moment. Give them time to scratch their heads and ponder.
You can set a timer on the table, if you
prefer to add urgency to this process. If you find a vintage alarm clock, even
better: that ticking will drive them crazy.
I have never seen a player turn in his or
her List within the first five minutes; they are always torn, unable to pick
and choose. Even if you go into the next room for coffee, you’ll hear various
groans and hisses, fumbling with the pencils
and the eraser, nervous scribbling sounds, and then more fumbling with the eraser...
Group Lists
Another type of List is the Group List.
The Dungeon Master comes up with but one set of options, and the players all
get the same sheet of paper. So, the secretive aspect is not applicable in this
case; the group has to come to an agreement,
and spend their points together. It’s a different experience, but very
interesting.
Imagine this next List being presented to a space opera group of three: Humanoid female pilot,
Alien gunner, and Hologram scientist (why not).
20 POINTS TO SPEND
10 POINTS
A chance encounter with a crippled android
soldier provides you with a critical piece of information: the exact coordinates of Warlord Huwyd’s invisible asteroid.
For the first time ever, you could have the upper hand in an ongoing conflict
with this nasty arch-enemy of yours...
5 POINTS
Skirting the Qëlyth Nebula, you came
across the remains of a blown-up shuttle, and found a small container floating
about in the void, with a +2 plasma cannon clip inside, compatible with your
own ship’s armament.
15 POINTS
Midway between Tolstar VI and the Herring
System, you receive a distress signal from the Zip-N-Orbit spaceclub.
Being so close, you decide to respond, only to find the club’s staff shot, and
nineteen patrons dead or dying in the main
room. “Umokh Raiders,” they say. One dying
explorer gives you the access code to his base
on a remote moon – a rather large compound
with comfortable living quarters for six, plus
a landing bay!
10 POINTS
You get a rare audience with the Ozone
Mutants headquartered on the Flat Moon, and they expertly upgrade every single
one of your weapons (add +1 to any and all existing bonuses).
5 POINTS
Brand new RHP (Remote Holographic Probe) allowing
Xynt the Hologram to operate in outer space up to 500 yards away from the ship.
Needless to say, a big powerful item
alongside crappy ones, with nothing else in between, doesn’t make for a very
challenging List. Always aim towards those painstaking dilemmas. You put at
least two major prizes on any given List, but you also want minor items. These
things have to be flexible. Granted, the +1 arrows lost in Krick’s Wood are not
that important – but you still have to include “small” stuff, in order for the
players to adequately complete and adjust their spending. (If you get 30
points, you sure don’t want to spend only 25.)
For example,
on a 30-points List, you should have one big
20-points item, one 15-points item, two 10-points items, and two or maybe even
three little 5-points items. Your goal is for players to shop around and be
conflicted: that is where the fun begins. With 30 points to spend, they could
either go 20 + 5 + 5 or 15 + 10 + 5 or 10 + 10 + 5 + 5 or any other permutation.
So, our Alien gunner will love that plasma
clip; Xynt the Hologram will want the RHP; both pilot and gunner would appreciate
that upgraded weaponry (but not the Hologram – he is unarmed); all three would
love a home base to stay at... What will the group decide?
Assuredly, you will hear many speculations.
“Can we attain the very same result through normal gaming?” Players are ever so
practical, and they will think of grabbing the useful / powerful items first...
and then, maybe, try to learn about that major villain’s abode through
ordinary in-game investigation. Question is: will it work? Really, it’s your
call. You allow it, or you don’t. Not allowing it is an interesting move; when
the next Group List comes, they sure will think twice about just collecting the cool stuff. (“Yes, maybe that lucky
break, on the previous List, was indeed our only chance to ever locate
Warlord Huwyd’s invisible asteroid!”)
Campaign Lists
The most daring and complicated type of List
is the Campaign List. This is where you truly relinquish your DM powers
and let the players steer the game in a direction of their own choosing. You
simply put forward a diverse array of compatible scenarios and NPC elements,
and let your DM-players shape the future for themselves.
Let’s go back to our first example: Half-elf
mage, the two fighters, and the thief. The Campaign List they’d get could look
like this:
5 POINTS TO SPEND
3 POINTS
An earthquake strikes the kingdom,
opening a gigantic fifty-mile-long rift and
revealing numerous long-lost subterranean settlements. Adventurers quickly go
down into that crevasse, enter some ancient ruins, and return with gold –
thus ushering in a new era of “rift explorations” and (of course) rivalries
amongst professional treasure seekers and ruthless looters.
2 POINTS
A bizarre vagrant tribe of jesters,
riddlers and puppeteers settle down along the river, offering perfunctory gifts
to every Knight and Lord in the vicinity. People soon find out strange things
about these “riddlers” and “jugglers”. They are, in fact, powerful priests of
an unknown religion, said to hunt down demons and evil spirits. Is that true?
Are they good guys, or bad guys?
2 POINTS
A dimensional altar materializes on top
of Aker Hill, with seven irregular holes in it. One big asymmetrical gem pulses
in the first socket, but the six others are still empty. According to scholars,
the locations of the six other gems are hinted at in ancestral
scrolls scattered in libraries, monasteries, and private collections across the
kingdom. But what exactly will that altar do if and when all seven gems are
gathered?
1 POINT
Deep underground, some sort of Elemental
War ended up with the banishment and random binding of the leaders: five Earth
elementals, eight Water elementals, and two Fire elementals. If a Human was to
find the exact binding place of any banished Elemental, that Elemental would
have to do his finder’s bidding for up to a week!
1 POINT
Count Enràug, a very rich old man, hired
an architect to build him a huge tomb on his own land, but inexplicable things keep happening on that site:
workers feel stronger, younger, and the sick ones even got healthy again. From
as far as two cities over, more and more workers come to the site, wanting to
get hired, while the architect keeps re-drawing that mausoleum,
making it ever bigger and bigger...
1 POINT
Ten years ago an abandoned child was
found on the steps of a temple. Raised by clerics and priests, that child now
begins to display some amazing abilities: he says he can “feel” the magical
things and places – and find them right away. He once walked straight into the
wilderness, and dug up an enchanted ground stone maul nobody knew about. Alas,
being close to that child also seems to trigger all sorts of eldritch
nightmares...
The List above is an example of variety.
That “rift” arc involves survival skills and lots of exploration in deep
inhospitable tunnels. The “vagrant tribe” arc involves social skills and
old-school techniques of investigation. The “altar” arc will test knowledge
skills, library use, and maybe demand some puzzle solving. So, the players
really make an important decision here – one that is going to impact their
adventures for quite a while – and they indeed become their own Dungeon Master,
objectively, if not subjectively.
Could an Elemental War cause an earthquake?
If the group end up selecting those items
together... possibly! Exploring that “rift” with the help of a bound Earth
elemental would be nice. But having both “vagrant tribe” and “altar” could also
prove very interesting... Or maybe an ominous
“rift” plus “tribe” combo? And this gifted child, was he abandoned by that same
vagrant tribe, ten years ago, and if so, why?
Once the players have chosen the parts, you
take over and put them together as you see fit. If they picked “altar” and “mausoleum”,
then maybe that mysterious architect is in fact the dimensional guardian of the
altar... Feel free to mix it up. Lists are not mini CYOA books in that the
details are still up to a real-life DM. You get the onions, beef, and celery –
but will you serve a stew, or a meatloaf?
It’s fun to know what your players crave –
so that you can go and write it for them, but still surprise them. Custom-made
campaigns are the best.
Group / Campaign mixes
After playing for a few years, you come to a
point where the characters are intricately linked to the world they live in.
This is when the Lists you create can contain both Group and Campaign elements.
An example:
Reports of Umokh raids have more than
doubled in the last eighteen months, and there are not nearly enough military
ships to patrol every route. On the Flat Moon, government officials have come
to a decision: they selected a hundred independent starships, and “deputized”
them for two years. Your own ship is among the chosen! But who are the other
ninety-nine – and what if some of these crews abuse their new powers and try to
make a profit while “enforcing the law”?
Finally, never be afraid to change the
delivery system. Individual Lists can be handed over at the beginning of a game
session instead of at the end. Or you can wait until the day after a game, and
send each player his or her List via email.
For a Group or Campaign List, you can print
the options separately on a series of cards, and give each one a title. The “rift”
arc could then be called “What Lies Below”, and the “vagrant tribe” arc could
be called “Unexpected Guests”.
I’m sure imaginative Dungeon Masters out
there will find new twists and alternative ways to use this tool and have fun
with it.
This is a small contribution to the RPG
universe, but writing it and putting it out there was actually an item on my
bucket list!
