Adding Some Flavor

Monday February 21, 2011 at 7:26pm gaming, creativity Comments (0) »
Adding Some Flavor Image

In saturday's session of my current D&D campaign (Sandstorm), I encountered a small problem with believablilty vs something I wanted to do for the players.  These sorts of challenges present problems, but also opportunities to invent clever solutions which may be interesting in their own right.  Every once in a while I have a gaming idea I'm somewhat proud of.

This is going to involve a bit of gaming story.

In the game, Tony's character is a wizard.  Magic in the fictional world in which the game is set has been established as fairly uncommon.  The party also learned that there is a local group of magic users in their current city, and they expressed some interest in speaking with these people to see what they might be able to learn.

So here was my problem.  I introduced the wizards of the Sandstone Tower to the game because I, as the GM, wanted to give Tony the opportunity for his character to learn some stuff in-game.  New spells maybe, or other information about magic that would appeal to his character.  I also wanted to give them a resource where they might be able to research certain plot-applicable topics.  The problem, however, comes because such knowledge is not given away freely in any believable setting.  Further, Tony's character isn't of an incredible power level nor is his magical knowledge of surpassing quantity or quality.  What would he have to offer a centuries-old cabal of magical scholars?  The typical "4,000 gp for a 2nd level spell" is boring and doesn't do much of anything for the story.  Plus, that kind of exchange doesn't make much sense in a low-magic, low-commerce setting like this one.

So here was how I decided to make this work:

The wizards of the Sandstone Tower are interested in knowledge above all else, particularly knowledge of the arcane.  This pursuit has also enlightened them to the fact that what knowledge is valuable is not always immediately apparent.  Also, while experience is often the greatest teacher, experience is also frequently dangerous - and so they don't actually do much in this capacity.  To this end, the scholars of the Sandstone Tower developed a magical ritual wherein a person could draw information both from their subconscious and from the very strands of fate and time to write their entire life experiences (past and future) as well as all thoughts, theories and observations into text (of course, the book cannot be opened and read until the author's death).  Since Tony's character had been through a lot in the party's adventures - and will go through quite a bit more as the game continues - his accounts would be very valuable to these scholars.  This gives him something interesting that they might want from him, something to facilitate a believeable exchange to give the party what I wanted to give them, and a little bit of a plot device for me to work with on top of it all.  I thought this was interesting, believable and added just a little more flavor to the story and the setting.

~PS