The core conflict of Ravenloft is the need to escape the hell of Ravenloft. The core conflict of Darksun is the fight against the sorcerer-kings. The core conflict of Dragonlance is the dragon war. And so on. Mind, you needn't agree with me on the specifics of what the core conflict is, merely understand the premis: Each game world or setting has a central theme that gives it substance*.
What I'm after here is: To which degree should the core conflict be part of your actual games?
And of course there's no single answer to this. I've played a lot of Darksun, and killing King Kalak was sort of a sidetrack - and we never messed with the core conflict again. On the other hand, in Dragonlance, we killed dragons and dragon knights without end.
I have a homebrew world, as yet unnamed, where the core conflict is this: As humanity seeks to expand, nature fights back, and does so succesfully. Why this happens is simple enough: The druid faith is the most widespread and most powerful religion in the world. This isn't actually known by pretty much anyone, but it so: Druids organise wild beasts and savage races, and stomp out any human settlements that grow too large for their liking. For this reason, there are only three major cities in the world.
For me personally that means I have this (to me, at least) interesting core conflict .... that my players are basically unaware of. I don't explain the mystery of how settlements keep getting wiped out, unless they put in the effort to search for the answers. To date, they haven't. The lazy slobs have just accepted that such is the case. Which, by the way, is fine.
But I'd like to hear opinions. Not particularly on my homebrew world, but in general: Is the core conflict something you necessarily need to make tangible, so to speak - or can it work just as well just providing background flavor?
* This is also why Forgotten Realms is the worst of all settings: It doesn't have this.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I would think that it wouldn't particularly matter which conflict is in the main theme of the adventure/campaign/one-shot, so long as there is one there.
If you use the main conflict of Szass Tam as your BBE, you may have to shift the entire world once they are defeated and a power vacuum is created. This could be considered a world-shaking event. Other city-states have interests, other entities in Thay have interests, Dragons might have interests maybe there is a Deity that has an interest in the machinations of the numerous humanoids on Faerun. Same thing happens when you fight Takhisis, or King Kalak. If the main theme is altered, does the setting blink out of existence or, does it develop into something more complex?
Using a smaller conflict for your planned shenanigans might be able to fit into the theme of the setting without drastically altering it. However, the party might attract the attention of who/whatever is causing the larger conflict in the world, and it may lead to a larger shake-up. If the party is aware of the larger "threats" of the world, and attempt to operate without gaining too much notoriety, they might not rattle the cage too much.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Very true - although, I don't agree that one BBE is the central conflict of a world. Of a campaign? Sure. But no, the world of Dragonlance is about the dragon war (or was, until the time I checked out). Planescape is about a nebulous factions/morality/afterlife/-thing. Darksun is about the fight against the sorcerer-kings and all the things they've done to poor, suffering Athas.
Regardless, you're perfectly right: What happens to Athas if you kill off all the sorcerer-kings? And that's really the epicenter of my question, because ... who says you ever will? My homebrew - which is sort of irrelevant to the larger discussion, but is also what prompted my interest - is a world in which settlements get nullified if the druids think they pose a threat to 'the wild'. The players in said world are happily unaware of this. Should I let them find out? If they did, would fighting the druids suddenly become the main theme of the campaign - or setting?
It also raises the question of leaving yourself room to grow. If yuo kill off all the sorcerer-kings - then what is the next thing to do in Athas? Of course you can always retire characters and start over (done that several times), but what if you just played around with the conflict - rather than necessarily ending it?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I like to use Ebberon as a good example of how to set up a central conflict for the world that interacts with the main conflict of the plot, without them being too intertwined.
The central conflict of Ebberon is basically, how long after the Great War can we hold onto peace? What caused the Mourning that ended the war? If people discover the cause, will the war reignite one people know whether they're safe from it happening again?? This central tension is broad enough that it might inform the motives of your main bad guy, whether they're a Cannith war profiteer who's dissatisfied with the opportunities of peace time, or a splinter cell of the Kaarnathi military who's convinced that they would've *won* the Great War and want to seize that opportunity, but the central tension of the world will still be there after you take down the bad guy. You're not going to *solve* the complex web of international tensions and anxieties resultant from the Mourning, but you are going to live in that world and continue to have to navigate them, probably forever.
That's why I would never run an Ebberon game where the main quest was to fix the Mournlands. They might discover the cause (I have a cause in mind that I've headcannoned for whenever it might come up in an Ebberon game), and then wrestle over what to do with that information knowing the hell it could unleash, but there's no going back to normal on this one.
I think the central conflict of a world needs to be world-sized like this example, with far-reaching complications, that's too big to attack head on even at the end of a long campaign. They should be systemic conflicts that can only be solved with systemic change, which the players can always work into their epilogue after treating the symptoms of this conflict in the adventure (if you're not looking to go back to that game world after the campaign). Something like "after the adventure, Karg the Barbarian hung up his axe and worked tirelessly to improve diplomatic relations throughout the continent, to strengthen the uneasy peace following the Last War..."
I don't know why I didn't think of Eberron as an example. Eberron is beautiful - basically WW1 Europe, whether before or after the war, and yes, it's a beautifully elegant centrol conflict: Everyone is at peace, at least officially, but no one particularly wants to be. All that tension, all those giant armies, not disbanded, merely waiting =)
And yea, there are so many minor problems arising from or related to this central theme, but none of them are straight up: Fix the peace.
Heh. Karg the Barbarian, using his great skill at Diplo*cough*Intimidate*cough*macy to iron out disarmament agreements.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I don't know why I didn't think of Eberron as an example. Eberron is beautiful - basically WW1 Europe, whether before or after the war, and yes, it's a beautifully elegant centrol conflict: Everyone is at peace, at least officially, but no one particularly wants to be. All that tension, all those giant armies, not disbanded, merely waiting =)
And yea, there are so many minor problems arising from or related to this central theme, but none of them are straight up: Fix the peace.
Heh. Karg the Barbarian, using his great skill at Diplo*cough*Intimidate*cough*macy to iron out disarmament agreements.
The core conflict of Ravenloft is the need to escape the hell of Ravenloft. The core conflict of Darksun is the fight against the sorcerer-kings. The core conflict of Dragonlance is the dragon war. And so on. Mind, you needn't agree with me on the specifics of what the core conflict is, merely understand the premis: Each game world or setting has a central theme that gives it substance*.
What I'm after here is: To which degree should the core conflict be part of your actual games?
And of course there's no single answer to this. I've played a lot of Darksun, and killing King Kalak was sort of a sidetrack - and we never messed with the core conflict again. On the other hand, in Dragonlance, we killed dragons and dragon knights without end.
I have a homebrew world, as yet unnamed, where the core conflict is this: As humanity seeks to expand, nature fights back, and does so succesfully. Why this happens is simple enough: The druid faith is the most widespread and most powerful religion in the world. This isn't actually known by pretty much anyone, but it so: Druids organise wild beasts and savage races, and stomp out any human settlements that grow too large for their liking. For this reason, there are only three major cities in the world.
For me personally that means I have this (to me, at least) interesting core conflict .... that my players are basically unaware of. I don't explain the mystery of how settlements keep getting wiped out, unless they put in the effort to search for the answers. To date, they haven't. The lazy slobs have just accepted that such is the case. Which, by the way, is fine.
But I'd like to hear opinions. Not particularly on my homebrew world, but in general: Is the core conflict something you necessarily need to make tangible, so to speak - or can it work just as well just providing background flavor?
* This is also why Forgotten Realms is the worst of all settings: It doesn't have this.
I know I'm a bit late to this thread, but let me give my thoughts anyway: Core conflicts are cool and important if you want to have them be an important part of a story. That being said, I think they can serve as distractions if your campaigns goal is not to explore them. This is why I like the Forgotten Realms: You can have adventures all over the place and you're campaign doesn't have to be dominated by a specific aspect of the setting, you and the DM can work to decide what that aspect will be and how it will work, if you decide to have one at all. So we should have both settings: settings with core conflicts, and setting without them. Because both are strongly enjoyed, just by different types and groups of players and DM's.
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He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
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The core conflict of Ravenloft is the need to escape the hell of Ravenloft. The core conflict of Darksun is the fight against the sorcerer-kings. The core conflict of Dragonlance is the dragon war. And so on. Mind, you needn't agree with me on the specifics of what the core conflict is, merely understand the premis: Each game world or setting has a central theme that gives it substance*.
What I'm after here is: To which degree should the core conflict be part of your actual games?
And of course there's no single answer to this. I've played a lot of Darksun, and killing King Kalak was sort of a sidetrack - and we never messed with the core conflict again. On the other hand, in Dragonlance, we killed dragons and dragon knights without end.
I have a homebrew world, as yet unnamed, where the core conflict is this: As humanity seeks to expand, nature fights back, and does so succesfully. Why this happens is simple enough: The druid faith is the most widespread and most powerful religion in the world. This isn't actually known by pretty much anyone, but it so: Druids organise wild beasts and savage races, and stomp out any human settlements that grow too large for their liking. For this reason, there are only three major cities in the world.
For me personally that means I have this (to me, at least) interesting core conflict .... that my players are basically unaware of. I don't explain the mystery of how settlements keep getting wiped out, unless they put in the effort to search for the answers. To date, they haven't. The lazy slobs have just accepted that such is the case. Which, by the way, is fine.
But I'd like to hear opinions. Not particularly on my homebrew world, but in general: Is the core conflict something you necessarily need to make tangible, so to speak - or can it work just as well just providing background flavor?
* This is also why Forgotten Realms is the worst of all settings: It doesn't have this.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I would think that it wouldn't particularly matter which conflict is in the main theme of the adventure/campaign/one-shot, so long as there is one there.
If you use the main conflict of Szass Tam as your BBE, you may have to shift the entire world once they are defeated and a power vacuum is created. This could be considered a world-shaking event. Other city-states have interests, other entities in Thay have interests, Dragons might have interests maybe there is a Deity that has an interest in the machinations of the numerous humanoids on Faerun. Same thing happens when you fight Takhisis, or King Kalak. If the main theme is altered, does the setting blink out of existence or, does it develop into something more complex?
Using a smaller conflict for your planned shenanigans might be able to fit into the theme of the setting without drastically altering it. However, the party might attract the attention of who/whatever is causing the larger conflict in the world, and it may lead to a larger shake-up. If the party is aware of the larger "threats" of the world, and attempt to operate without gaining too much notoriety, they might not rattle the cage too much.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Very true - although, I don't agree that one BBE is the central conflict of a world. Of a campaign? Sure. But no, the world of Dragonlance is about the dragon war (or was, until the time I checked out). Planescape is about a nebulous factions/morality/afterlife/-thing. Darksun is about the fight against the sorcerer-kings and all the things they've done to poor, suffering Athas.
Regardless, you're perfectly right: What happens to Athas if you kill off all the sorcerer-kings? And that's really the epicenter of my question, because ... who says you ever will? My homebrew - which is sort of irrelevant to the larger discussion, but is also what prompted my interest - is a world in which settlements get nullified if the druids think they pose a threat to 'the wild'. The players in said world are happily unaware of this. Should I let them find out? If they did, would fighting the druids suddenly become the main theme of the campaign - or setting?
It also raises the question of leaving yourself room to grow. If yuo kill off all the sorcerer-kings - then what is the next thing to do in Athas? Of course you can always retire characters and start over (done that several times), but what if you just played around with the conflict - rather than necessarily ending it?
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I like to use Ebberon as a good example of how to set up a central conflict for the world that interacts with the main conflict of the plot, without them being too intertwined.
The central conflict of Ebberon is basically, how long after the Great War can we hold onto peace? What caused the Mourning that ended the war? If people discover the cause, will the war reignite one people know whether they're safe from it happening again?? This central tension is broad enough that it might inform the motives of your main bad guy, whether they're a Cannith war profiteer who's dissatisfied with the opportunities of peace time, or a splinter cell of the Kaarnathi military who's convinced that they would've *won* the Great War and want to seize that opportunity, but the central tension of the world will still be there after you take down the bad guy. You're not going to *solve* the complex web of international tensions and anxieties resultant from the Mourning, but you are going to live in that world and continue to have to navigate them, probably forever.
That's why I would never run an Ebberon game where the main quest was to fix the Mournlands. They might discover the cause (I have a cause in mind that I've headcannoned for whenever it might come up in an Ebberon game), and then wrestle over what to do with that information knowing the hell it could unleash, but there's no going back to normal on this one.
I think the central conflict of a world needs to be world-sized like this example, with far-reaching complications, that's too big to attack head on even at the end of a long campaign. They should be systemic conflicts that can only be solved with systemic change, which the players can always work into their epilogue after treating the symptoms of this conflict in the adventure (if you're not looking to go back to that game world after the campaign). Something like "after the adventure, Karg the Barbarian hung up his axe and worked tirelessly to improve diplomatic relations throughout the continent, to strengthen the uneasy peace following the Last War..."
I don't know why I didn't think of Eberron as an example. Eberron is beautiful - basically WW1 Europe, whether before or after the war, and yes, it's a beautifully elegant centrol conflict: Everyone is at peace, at least officially, but no one particularly wants to be. All that tension, all those giant armies, not disbanded, merely waiting =)
And yea, there are so many minor problems arising from or related to this central theme, but none of them are straight up: Fix the peace.
Heh. Karg the Barbarian, using his great skill at Diplo*cough*Intimidate*cough*macy to iron out disarmament agreements.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
He's the MOST diplomatic
I know I'm a bit late to this thread, but let me give my thoughts anyway: Core conflicts are cool and important if you want to have them be an important part of a story. That being said, I think they can serve as distractions if your campaigns goal is not to explore them. This is why I like the Forgotten Realms: You can have adventures all over the place and you're campaign doesn't have to be dominated by a specific aspect of the setting, you and the DM can work to decide what that aspect will be and how it will work, if you decide to have one at all. So we should have both settings: settings with core conflicts, and setting without them. Because both are strongly enjoyed, just by different types and groups of players and DM's.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.