So I’m gonna start by saying that I think I already know the answer, but I want to double check myself. So, to the question!
My table is much, much more interested in RP than combat. We’re finishing LMoP soon, and I was wondering what the best RP heavy module would be to run next. Throw me your suggestions, please and thank you.
Okay so I know plenty of people have already basically said this, but to do heavy RP you either gotta modify the module or just run a homebrew campaign. Like instead of there being a combat encounter, you could modify it so that it could also be a RP encounter. Personally I always find RP easier and smoother in a homebrew campaign as a player or a DM. If you have RP in your homebrew campaign it will be smoother because you will know your world better than the module's because you made it, so you can know what the NPCs would be like. You can also really customize your NPCs as much as you want.
But anyways thats just what I think and what works for me. If you figure it out in other ways that's awesome! And let me know because I would be very interested to see what you came up with!
By RP I am assuming that you mean 'social interaction,' as technically combat can be full of RP - the barbarian's player saying "Gumf isn't sure what to do, the bright lights of the spells are confusing him. He sits on the ground and does nothing" is RP.
Read Candlekeep Mysteries. Some of the adventures in it are excellent and RP heavy: Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme is very good, as is The Price of Beauty. Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor has lots of RP possibility, and you can shorten the end dungeon crawl. The Curious Tale of Wysteria Vale begins RP heavy, though there ends up with a few fights that you could modify. Candlekeep Mysteries is quite hit and miss, though - the high level adventures are mostly very poor (Zikran's Zephyrean Tome is a horrible dungeon crawl where every room features one of the same monster and a rare magic item, baffling that this made it in, while Xanthoria is a dungeon crawl that feels erratically cobbled together in ten minutes). But the early ones are largely all quite fun and have more RP than most modules.
Outside of that and Rime of the Frost Maiden as mentioned above, you'll struggle to find a module that relies heavily on social interaction, or that feels satisfying if you do. What I suspect you're looking for is a kind of heist, mystery, or political adventure. What I'd recommend is that you take any existing module and then remove the more random combat elements (when it says things like "There is a Roc perched along the canyon") you can either remove it, or put in a more sociable creature.
RP heavy is going to be easier if you know the NPCs very well yourself, fully understand their motivations and so on.
Personally I only read modules because I find other people's adventures interesting, but in my view, homebrew is the way to go if you feel you have the time. It's not nearly as difficult as most people imagine! You could try designing a one-shot adventure yourself on this premise:
Two NPCs were deeply in love. One is from a family fallen on hard times, the other is from a poor but earnest family run business.
They have now been driven apart. The wealthier one simply got up and abandoned the other
There is one villainous NPC who caused it. Either they spread a malicious lie, they have Charmed one of the lovers, or they are blackmailing them
Create a motivation for the villain to have done this - they want to marry one of the lovers for their family fortune
The family is deeply in debt to someone else (not the villain)
Add in three NPCs who each hold a clue to working out who the villain is. Each knows something that when put together lead to the villain as the only possible culprit. Make one of the clues hard to find (you need the first 2 to find it) but it's quite specific so that they PCs don't get lost.
Add one NPC who is a red herring - a former jilted lover, perhaps
Add one NPC who is deliberately misleading the PCs - a lackey of the villain
Put all these characters together in a setting - a village, small town etc. Make it special in some way, e.g. it's all connected by rope bridges, or a community of sprites live in the garden in the centre of the village
Plan some steps the villain will take to stop the PCs - poisoning their wine, sending them on a fool's errand etc, to delay them
The PCs must try to resolve the misery of the lovers, restore the family fortune (maybe their mines have been overtaken by a couple of Owlbears - this is D&D, and you may find your players miss combat if it's gone entirely and a bit of danger is fun!)
Aim for the PCs to unveil the villain on the day of the wedding. Resolve with big speeches, combat, or whatever you think your players will enjoy most
This is probably about 4 hours of writing work. Use fast stat blocks for NPCs (everyone is a Commoner, a Noble, a Veteran, a Knight or a Scout. Throw in a spellcaster or two if you fancy it). Give them each one ideal, one bond, one flaw, and an alignment and they're ready in no time. Grab a map from one of the hundreds you can find online and then note down which building is which.
I wouldn't normally recommend "Do it with homebrew" when a module is requested, but modules typically don't have enough RP in them to satisfy RP heavy playstyles because the adventure assumes that what the players are really looking forward to is getting into dungeons or having showdowns.
The revised Curse of Strahd is also a great one to consider. The combat side of the encounters can be very nasty, but it's not the focus. There's a great story in there for the characters to get immersed in.
The revised Curse of Strahd is also a great one to consider. The combat side of the encounters can be very nasty, but it's not the focus. There's a great story in there for the characters to get immersed in.
I wouldn't personally go with Curse of Strahd for roleplay. There are some excellent characters and the story isn't bad, but there's little in the module that isn't intended to be resolved through combat. The overall aim is "level up enough to be able to fight Strahd," and most of the locations have "they attack immediately" written in somewhere or other.
That said, RP encompasses a lot and means different things to different people.
I think you really just need to understand what your players like and put stuff in the world for those players. Even if you use a module, I'd recommend homebrewing to some extent to customize the module for your players and player characters.
My players really like RPing as adventurers and want a world that feels unpredictable, big, and unexplored. During my first campaign, there was a reasonable amount of "in town" role playing. But when they left town, it was a lot of fighting and they got burned out on that.
For my second campaign I homebrewed a lot more for professions/tool proficiencies and it added so much to my world.
Using a crafting system that I largely stole from Skyrim, I could suddenly give them all kinds of mysterious items that they had to figure out how to use. This enriched not only their time out of town, where they happened across all kinds of interesting new things, but also gave them objectives once they got back in town (figuring out how to use them through experimentation, research, or seeking out experts).
As a dungeon master, catering to their interests is ultimately in your own interest. If you want to maintain any semblance of control without railroading them, putting stuff in their path that they will chase allows you to direct them where you want them to go.
You give them money... who knows what they will want to do with it. You give them some exotic leather though... you know they are going to visit the local leatherworker the next time they are in town.
So I’m gonna start by saying that I think I already know the answer, but I want to double check myself. So, to the question!
My table is much, much more interested in RP than combat. We’re finishing LMoP soon, and I was wondering what the best RP heavy module would be to run next. Throw me your suggestions, please and thank you.
As I understand it that most recent one, Wild Beyond the Witchlight isn’t super combat heavy.
But it might be time to try your hand at writing something just for them. 🤷♂️
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Wild Beyond the Witchlight is pretty awesome.
Dragon heist has some intrigue that could be fun.
And there’s always homebrew!
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Okay so I know plenty of people have already basically said this, but to do heavy RP you either gotta modify the module or just run a homebrew campaign. Like instead of there being a combat encounter, you could modify it so that it could also be a RP encounter. Personally I always find RP easier and smoother in a homebrew campaign as a player or a DM. If you have RP in your homebrew campaign it will be smoother because you will know your world better than the module's because you made it, so you can know what the NPCs would be like. You can also really customize your NPCs as much as you want.
But anyways thats just what I think and what works for me. If you figure it out in other ways that's awesome! And let me know because I would be very interested to see what you came up with!
By RP I am assuming that you mean 'social interaction,' as technically combat can be full of RP - the barbarian's player saying "Gumf isn't sure what to do, the bright lights of the spells are confusing him. He sits on the ground and does nothing" is RP.
Read Candlekeep Mysteries. Some of the adventures in it are excellent and RP heavy: Shemshime's Bedtime Rhyme is very good, as is The Price of Beauty. Sarah of Yellowcrest Manor has lots of RP possibility, and you can shorten the end dungeon crawl. The Curious Tale of Wysteria Vale begins RP heavy, though there ends up with a few fights that you could modify. Candlekeep Mysteries is quite hit and miss, though - the high level adventures are mostly very poor (Zikran's Zephyrean Tome is a horrible dungeon crawl where every room features one of the same monster and a rare magic item, baffling that this made it in, while Xanthoria is a dungeon crawl that feels erratically cobbled together in ten minutes). But the early ones are largely all quite fun and have more RP than most modules.
Outside of that and Rime of the Frost Maiden as mentioned above, you'll struggle to find a module that relies heavily on social interaction, or that feels satisfying if you do. What I suspect you're looking for is a kind of heist, mystery, or political adventure. What I'd recommend is that you take any existing module and then remove the more random combat elements (when it says things like "There is a Roc perched along the canyon") you can either remove it, or put in a more sociable creature.
RP heavy is going to be easier if you know the NPCs very well yourself, fully understand their motivations and so on.
Personally I only read modules because I find other people's adventures interesting, but in my view, homebrew is the way to go if you feel you have the time. It's not nearly as difficult as most people imagine! You could try designing a one-shot adventure yourself on this premise:
This is probably about 4 hours of writing work. Use fast stat blocks for NPCs (everyone is a Commoner, a Noble, a Veteran, a Knight or a Scout. Throw in a spellcaster or two if you fancy it). Give them each one ideal, one bond, one flaw, and an alignment and they're ready in no time. Grab a map from one of the hundreds you can find online and then note down which building is which.
I wouldn't normally recommend "Do it with homebrew" when a module is requested, but modules typically don't have enough RP in them to satisfy RP heavy playstyles because the adventure assumes that what the players are really looking forward to is getting into dungeons or having showdowns.
The revised Curse of Strahd is also a great one to consider. The combat side of the encounters can be very nasty, but it's not the focus. There's a great story in there for the characters to get immersed in.
I wouldn't personally go with Curse of Strahd for roleplay. There are some excellent characters and the story isn't bad, but there's little in the module that isn't intended to be resolved through combat. The overall aim is "level up enough to be able to fight Strahd," and most of the locations have "they attack immediately" written in somewhere or other.
Personally, I haven't seen many RP heavy modules.
That said, RP encompasses a lot and means different things to different people.
I think you really just need to understand what your players like and put stuff in the world for those players. Even if you use a module, I'd recommend homebrewing to some extent to customize the module for your players and player characters.
My players really like RPing as adventurers and want a world that feels unpredictable, big, and unexplored. During my first campaign, there was a reasonable amount of "in town" role playing. But when they left town, it was a lot of fighting and they got burned out on that.
For my second campaign I homebrewed a lot more for professions/tool proficiencies and it added so much to my world.
Using a crafting system that I largely stole from Skyrim, I could suddenly give them all kinds of mysterious items that they had to figure out how to use. This enriched not only their time out of town, where they happened across all kinds of interesting new things, but also gave them objectives once they got back in town (figuring out how to use them through experimentation, research, or seeking out experts).
As a dungeon master, catering to their interests is ultimately in your own interest. If you want to maintain any semblance of control without railroading them, putting stuff in their path that they will chase allows you to direct them where you want them to go.
You give them money... who knows what they will want to do with it. You give them some exotic leather though... you know they are going to visit the local leatherworker the next time they are in town.
I remember Dragon Heist to be more social/investigation than combat. I could be wrong though as I only played it, not GM it.
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