In an upcoming session my PCs will more than likely encounter/gain access to a very old, and slightly hidden, library. Just wondering if anyone here has ran something like this before, and if so what kind of strange or unexpected things did the party try to find information on in the library. I feel comfortable with general local and regional histories, but I would like to have a variety of info prepared as they will undoubtedly want to locate information on something that I have not even considered, that is if they even care about the library at all, which they might not.
It will probably be something relevant to your campaign, so without information about your campaign, I could only hazard a guess.
I guess they might ask for something random like books on herb lore, foraging, local flora/fauna or lore about certain monsters to gain a tactical advantage.
Something very spooky to throw in if you are running a more paranormal or planar game is to have mysterious books that say things about your party. Perhaps one character is hiding things and another character discovers a book that details something relating to this (not wanting to take away agency and force the revelation on them), or even the character with the secret can find the book and realize that they are at risk of being exposed. Having books that shouldn’t be there can create very intriguing books and plot lines. I’ve used this tactic once or twice before in two games, one with highly experienced players and the other with fairly new ones and they all enjoyed the stories that came out of these haunting tomes. Of course, this only works if your party has many characters with fleshed out histories.
I'm going to suggest the following which I have actively done.
1. Sit down and thoroughly review your player's character sheets.
2. Think about the different things that tempt or might be of interest to said characters.
3. As a bit of pre or post session stuff ask your players to write down and privately share one ambition the characters might have for the medium or long term.
Once you've done this you can start to assemble a list of book topics that could be of interest to the player characters. For example, if I've got a wizard who's getting very hungry for new spells or spell slots I know I could seed in a tome which when studied appears to contain the secret to gaining an extra spell slot or to allow a wizard to learn spells from a different class (give them the magic initiate feat of that class). Perhaps for a ranger it's a book on how different terrain can be studied and utilised by a savvy hunter (give an extra favoured terrain to said ranger once the book is studied). For a player of low INT and/or WIS who isn't interested in this book learning, perhaps they come across a book whose cover is guilded in gold and has heavy gold plated fixings.
Mix this in with the opportunity to find bestiaries, geographic (map) books, history or lore.
Finally, the cherry on top is the session or campaign specific literature that the character might find. This can take the form of biographies of the BBEG, legends about the mysterious mcguffin they party are after, the history of the mine that was built and is about to be explored, the legend of the archaeological site the party need to visit.
One thing I've had to deal with in libraries specifically, is a player saying, "I want to pull a random book off of the shelf. What's in it?"
It tends to leave the DM in a tough spot of either making it a meaningless book (like genealogy of a long-forgotten noble family or something), or having something useful simply fall into their hands, and both options have some issues. While a random book in a library is most likely something the party doesn't care about, players can get the mistaken idea that there's nothing interesting to find. At the same time you might not want to simply push the party along without any actual participation from them.
One option you have as DM, is to nudge the player in the direction of a Perception or Investigation roll, something like "you seem to be standing in front of a large collection of financial records, such as purchase logs and tax collection amounts... It's pretty meaningless now, maybe make a [skill] check to see if something more interesting catches your eye elsewhere?" The other option would be to come up with a half-dozen random book titles and summaries, like "Dining Etiquette for New Nobility" and "The Science of Nautical Navigation," and use them as needed (and the game Skyrim has a good collection of these for inspiration).
I agree with this mentality of random books. What I like to do is to have random tables set up with plenty of names of things. Taverns, books, NPCs (though I look down on random NPCs. I think a good GM will have prepared some damn fine NPCs for any situation, but I digress), and of course, silly words for monsters to yell. Setting up a table of 100 can be fun, but also having them set in another language can work because it motivates them to try to learn that or utilize another player’s abilities. If it drives the story forward to have the PCs working together then you can include useful information here, or you can just roll up one more book. I know my current character (I run games and I play) has 7 books of dwarven fairytales. This is because I did go and grab random books, so I got the unknown language one. However, in accordance with our current game, these could be very useful for tracking down one mysterious anvil and its deceased wielded. Or it’s nonsense! That’s the fun of D&D and other TTRPGs. You never know…
I put an ancient library in my last campaign, whose most sensitive scrolls were guarded by an androsphinx. The party went to the library specifically to find information on the thing the BBEG was trying to summon, but once they were there and went through a trial of worth, they were offered a deal: pay a dear price, and learn something true about the past, present or possible future in exchange. My players all had something personal or important they were trying to figure out, so most of them agreed.
I also had a wizard in the party, and he was definitely the type to do research since he was there. So I mostly just asked what kind of things he wanted to look for and had him roll investigation checks. He ended up wanting to find books on lost or specialized magic, and I let him add a couple spells to his spellbook as a result. On the other hand, the echo knight just wanted to mess around and find anything interesting, so I had him discover a copy of "Fiends & Fortresses - A Player's Handbook." It got a chuckle.
Random book pulls can be determined by tables of your own design, though I also imagine there's probably not a small number of "random book tables for D&D games" floating around in the wild over Google.
As for the general OP question, if I follow you're asking us to anticipate what you're players will ask for, DM is the best anticipator of that as no one knows anything about your game. Game to date, character back stories, etc. all that is fair game. By giving them a library you're kinda giving them a sorta infinite speak with the dead resource. All with one caveat:
How common our library skills in your world? There's a difference between typing something into a search engine and understanding and developing a facility with the organization and contents of a library, especially one that's physical. The characters may have access to literally all the recorded knowledge in the world, but may not know how truly access it. Wizards, clerics, and lore oriented Bards will be likely to have some facility with some sorts of research, but by no means no how to find _everything_. Other classes, again, how common are books and more important the sort of cross referencing skills a scholar would need to ascertain the "truth" of multiple accounts? A library could be an easy "gimme" knowledge or as challenging as you want it to be.
Another thing you can do is compartmentalize knowledge. There may be a "general collection" but there may be one or multiple "special" collection(s). And those could be hidden in secret rooms, guarded by a variety of mechanical and magical traps or various guardians.
Final word of advice, the library is a great place to assert the teaching point "don't believe everything you read." Part of the lost art of library skills is the evaluation of sources (something that the great bulk of contemporary "information users" dreadfully lack), your party could easily dig up misinformation they'd know to discard if they were familiar with the matter.
(Writing this, as libraries and "lost lore" is part of my ongoing campaign as McGuffins. It's complicated by the fact that there is a conspiracy that has a sort of led a mainstream "truth" being accepted across the multiverse. It's actually a lie, but to get at the "real truth" there are false paths leading to more lies along the way. Fraz Urb'luu plays a key role in the game worlds general understanding of itself, and none of the PCs know who he is.)
In addition to the above advice, if it were me, I’d expect characters with mysteries in their backstory to try and dig up information. Things about a macguffin or family or location histories. If some noble family plays a major role — good or bad — they may look for information about them.
Any strange phrases or symbols you may have mentioned that stuck out and they can’t quite figure what it meant.
And, of course, anything they can find about the BBEG.
I agree 100% that what is in the library should relate to one or more of you players' backstories, but only if it makes sense for the setting the library is in. For example, if it is an ancient elvish library sealed off from the world for the last 50 years, it would make no sense for it to contain the full history of a war between dwarves and ogres that occurred nowhere near the library only 10 years ago. However, if you know what information you want the library to contain first you can sculpt the library around that information also, so that there are no contradictions that will break immersion for your players.
As for specific books to have ready, I would look at including a few books about magic items/monsters (Things that players seem to love, but you can also use to create side quests or drop subtle hints about items they might need for an upcoming quest). I also think having a random table of books is great in case you have that one player that wants to pick up random books and make your life as a DM miserable.
The great thing about books to me, is that they take time to read. It's not like the player instantly gains all of the knowledge in the book when they pick it up. You can reveal different pieces of information as they spend time reading books during their downtime. Another consideration is whether this is an abandoned library where they can just take as many books as they want, or if their is some kind of librarian that makes the players sign for the books they take, or maybe even won't let them take them from the library at all and only allows them to read them in the library. This can drastically change how your encounter will go. If you make it where the players are not allowed to take books from the library, be prepared to have them try to steal some if your groups is anything like most of the groups I've run. Good luck and most of all remember to have fun with it.
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In an upcoming session my PCs will more than likely encounter/gain access to a very old, and slightly hidden, library. Just wondering if anyone here has ran something like this before, and if so what kind of strange or unexpected things did the party try to find information on in the library. I feel comfortable with general local and regional histories, but I would like to have a variety of info prepared as they will undoubtedly want to locate information on something that I have not even considered, that is if they even care about the library at all, which they might not.
Thanks
It will probably be something relevant to your campaign, so without information about your campaign, I could only hazard a guess.
I guess they might ask for something random like books on herb lore, foraging, local flora/fauna or lore about certain monsters to gain a tactical advantage.
Something very spooky to throw in if you are running a more paranormal or planar game is to have mysterious books that say things about your party. Perhaps one character is hiding things and another character discovers a book that details something relating to this (not wanting to take away agency and force the revelation on them), or even the character with the secret can find the book and realize that they are at risk of being exposed. Having books that shouldn’t be there can create very intriguing books and plot lines. I’ve used this tactic once or twice before in two games, one with highly experienced players and the other with fairly new ones and they all enjoyed the stories that came out of these haunting tomes. Of course, this only works if your party has many characters with fleshed out histories.
I'm going to suggest the following which I have actively done.
1. Sit down and thoroughly review your player's character sheets.
2. Think about the different things that tempt or might be of interest to said characters.
3. As a bit of pre or post session stuff ask your players to write down and privately share one ambition the characters might have for the medium or long term.
Once you've done this you can start to assemble a list of book topics that could be of interest to the player characters. For example, if I've got a wizard who's getting very hungry for new spells or spell slots I know I could seed in a tome which when studied appears to contain the secret to gaining an extra spell slot or to allow a wizard to learn spells from a different class (give them the magic initiate feat of that class). Perhaps for a ranger it's a book on how different terrain can be studied and utilised by a savvy hunter (give an extra favoured terrain to said ranger once the book is studied). For a player of low INT and/or WIS who isn't interested in this book learning, perhaps they come across a book whose cover is guilded in gold and has heavy gold plated fixings.
Mix this in with the opportunity to find bestiaries, geographic (map) books, history or lore.
Finally, the cherry on top is the session or campaign specific literature that the character might find. This can take the form of biographies of the BBEG, legends about the mysterious mcguffin they party are after, the history of the mine that was built and is about to be explored, the legend of the archaeological site the party need to visit.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
One thing I've had to deal with in libraries specifically, is a player saying, "I want to pull a random book off of the shelf. What's in it?"
It tends to leave the DM in a tough spot of either making it a meaningless book (like genealogy of a long-forgotten noble family or something), or having something useful simply fall into their hands, and both options have some issues. While a random book in a library is most likely something the party doesn't care about, players can get the mistaken idea that there's nothing interesting to find. At the same time you might not want to simply push the party along without any actual participation from them.
One option you have as DM, is to nudge the player in the direction of a Perception or Investigation roll, something like "you seem to be standing in front of a large collection of financial records, such as purchase logs and tax collection amounts... It's pretty meaningless now, maybe make a [skill] check to see if something more interesting catches your eye elsewhere?" The other option would be to come up with a half-dozen random book titles and summaries, like "Dining Etiquette for New Nobility" and "The Science of Nautical Navigation," and use them as needed (and the game Skyrim has a good collection of these for inspiration).
I agree with this mentality of random books. What I like to do is to have random tables set up with plenty of names of things. Taverns, books, NPCs (though I look down on random NPCs. I think a good GM will have prepared some damn fine NPCs for any situation, but I digress), and of course, silly words for monsters to yell. Setting up a table of 100 can be fun, but also having them set in another language can work because it motivates them to try to learn that or utilize another player’s abilities. If it drives the story forward to have the PCs working together then you can include useful information here, or you can just roll up one more book. I know my current character (I run games and I play) has 7 books of dwarven fairytales. This is because I did go and grab random books, so I got the unknown language one. However, in accordance with our current game, these could be very useful for tracking down one mysterious anvil and its deceased wielded. Or it’s nonsense! That’s the fun of D&D and other TTRPGs. You never know…
I put an ancient library in my last campaign, whose most sensitive scrolls were guarded by an androsphinx. The party went to the library specifically to find information on the thing the BBEG was trying to summon, but once they were there and went through a trial of worth, they were offered a deal: pay a dear price, and learn something true about the past, present or possible future in exchange. My players all had something personal or important they were trying to figure out, so most of them agreed.
I also had a wizard in the party, and he was definitely the type to do research since he was there. So I mostly just asked what kind of things he wanted to look for and had him roll investigation checks. He ended up wanting to find books on lost or specialized magic, and I let him add a couple spells to his spellbook as a result. On the other hand, the echo knight just wanted to mess around and find anything interesting, so I had him discover a copy of "Fiends & Fortresses - A Player's Handbook." It got a chuckle.
Random book pulls can be determined by tables of your own design, though I also imagine there's probably not a small number of "random book tables for D&D games" floating around in the wild over Google.
As for the general OP question, if I follow you're asking us to anticipate what you're players will ask for, DM is the best anticipator of that as no one knows anything about your game. Game to date, character back stories, etc. all that is fair game. By giving them a library you're kinda giving them a sorta infinite speak with the dead resource. All with one caveat:
How common our library skills in your world? There's a difference between typing something into a search engine and understanding and developing a facility with the organization and contents of a library, especially one that's physical. The characters may have access to literally all the recorded knowledge in the world, but may not know how truly access it. Wizards, clerics, and lore oriented Bards will be likely to have some facility with some sorts of research, but by no means no how to find _everything_. Other classes, again, how common are books and more important the sort of cross referencing skills a scholar would need to ascertain the "truth" of multiple accounts? A library could be an easy "gimme" knowledge or as challenging as you want it to be.
Another thing you can do is compartmentalize knowledge. There may be a "general collection" but there may be one or multiple "special" collection(s). And those could be hidden in secret rooms, guarded by a variety of mechanical and magical traps or various guardians.
Final word of advice, the library is a great place to assert the teaching point "don't believe everything you read." Part of the lost art of library skills is the evaluation of sources (something that the great bulk of contemporary "information users" dreadfully lack), your party could easily dig up misinformation they'd know to discard if they were familiar with the matter.
(Writing this, as libraries and "lost lore" is part of my ongoing campaign as McGuffins. It's complicated by the fact that there is a conspiracy that has a sort of led a mainstream "truth" being accepted across the multiverse. It's actually a lie, but to get at the "real truth" there are false paths leading to more lies along the way. Fraz Urb'luu plays a key role in the game worlds general understanding of itself, and none of the PCs know who he is.)
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
In addition to the above advice, if it were me, I’d expect characters with mysteries in their backstory to try and dig up information.
Things about a macguffin or family or location histories.
If some noble family plays a major role — good or bad — they may look for information about them.
Any strange phrases or symbols you may have mentioned that stuck out and they can’t quite figure what it meant.
And, of course, anything they can find about the BBEG.
I agree 100% that what is in the library should relate to one or more of you players' backstories, but only if it makes sense for the setting the library is in. For example, if it is an ancient elvish library sealed off from the world for the last 50 years, it would make no sense for it to contain the full history of a war between dwarves and ogres that occurred nowhere near the library only 10 years ago. However, if you know what information you want the library to contain first you can sculpt the library around that information also, so that there are no contradictions that will break immersion for your players.
As for specific books to have ready, I would look at including a few books about magic items/monsters (Things that players seem to love, but you can also use to create side quests or drop subtle hints about items they might need for an upcoming quest). I also think having a random table of books is great in case you have that one player that wants to pick up random books and make your life as a DM miserable.
The great thing about books to me, is that they take time to read. It's not like the player instantly gains all of the knowledge in the book when they pick it up. You can reveal different pieces of information as they spend time reading books during their downtime. Another consideration is whether this is an abandoned library where they can just take as many books as they want, or if their is some kind of librarian that makes the players sign for the books they take, or maybe even won't let them take them from the library at all and only allows them to read them in the library. This can drastically change how your encounter will go. If you make it where the players are not allowed to take books from the library, be prepared to have them try to steal some if your groups is anything like most of the groups I've run. Good luck and most of all remember to have fun with it.