My party is about to enter a forest where an ancient civilization Awakened many of the trees and plants within it. The trees used to be friendly for the most part, but since mortals recently built a major road (recently for the trees, who have a different sense of time-- for mortals it was about 300 years ago) near their forest, many of the trees have turned suspicious and believe this encroachment on their territory is an act of aggression.
The trees have broken into two factions: One that believes they should let events take their course and is confident that in a few quick millenia the human civilization will crumble of its own accord just like the last one, and that the trees will have their land back if they're just patient.
The other faction is made up of younger trees who don't understand the mortals' perspective as well, and believe that the Road was an active overture of aggression, and assume that humans are amassing forces to invade the forest at this very moment. They have been growing the forest at such an alarming rate that the nearby city has taken notice, which is how the players heard about it. The faction's warlike sentiment has only been exasperated by a recent bandit attack, as bandits unaware of the forest's nature outside of a spooky reputation tried to clear away a segment to use as a base of operations. The bandits were taken prisoner by the warlike trees and the bandit leader might give them information on the nearby city in exchange for his freedom, rightly guessing that 1) the trees didn't know about the city and how many mortals were amassing so close by and 2) that if the warlike trees found out, they would find their worst fears confirmed and attempt to destroy it.
I have a few encounters set up to take place as the players explore the woods before getting the full picture or meeting any of the major players-- some combat, some skill encounters, and some roleplay encounters-- but the big thing I'm looking for advice on is what to do after the party meets either of the faction heads. I'd like this to be more than just a video game style choice like "this guy says 'do this' but this guy says 'do that'" and would like to try and create some actual intrigue, so that's what I'm looking for advice on.
Eventually I'm going to write up an underground dungeon the players can go through to cleanse some of the warlike tree leader's experiments to Awaken more trees faster from the spring that's the source of their power, but I'd like to put more meat on the adventure than just "Here's a tree, here's a bad tree, here's a dungeon with a thing to stop him."
Any advice?
TL;DR: looking for advice on creating intrigue between factions of trees in an enchanted forest. How can I give my players more of an actionable, active role in an intrigue?
What opinion do the older trees have of the younger warlike trees, and vice versa?
If the party are overpowered by the warlike trees, would the older trees prevent their destruction?
Are the older trees trying to hamper the "fast growing" forest in any way? Would the PCs come across any of this type of forest-reducing activity?
Why would the PCs be taken to the head of the warlike faction? Wouldn't the warlike faction just try to destroy any humanoids that enter the forest?
What would the leader of the older trees tell the PC? Why would it want to talk to them, if they just see them as something equivalent to how humans think of short-lived insects?
(No answers for you, I'm afraid, but more questions to get more information about the behaviour of the two factions.)
I can’t help but think of the song The Trees by Rush reading this.
On to helpful advice.
The key with setting up politics in a game is thinking about both the macro and micro levels of motivations. Macro level motivations are your factions - the young and old trees, for example. Micro level motivations are individuals within those factions, who might have motivations that are congruent or even contrary to their particular faction.
It is really easy to fall into the trap of just focusing on the macro and having all members of the faction working toward the same macro goal. But you are going to want to add some more complex NPCs as well to make everything seem alive. I like three-to-four NPCs per faction that are more fleshed out - that’s enough that you can cover a wide range of types of individual motivation, without being so many that you lose track of the characters. Think about why they are in the faction, what they want that is different from the faction, how they relate to the other fleshed-out NPCs in both their faction and the opposing, etc.
By doing that, you have changed your politics from having two facets interacting with one another (faction and faction) to having ten facets (faction and faction and the eight more fleshed our NPCs). That’s where intrigue lies - not just playing the factions off one another, but also the power struggles within the factions themselves.
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My party is about to enter a forest where an ancient civilization Awakened many of the trees and plants within it. The trees used to be friendly for the most part, but since mortals recently built a major road (recently for the trees, who have a different sense of time-- for mortals it was about 300 years ago) near their forest, many of the trees have turned suspicious and believe this encroachment on their territory is an act of aggression.
The trees have broken into two factions: One that believes they should let events take their course and is confident that in a few quick millenia the human civilization will crumble of its own accord just like the last one, and that the trees will have their land back if they're just patient.
The other faction is made up of younger trees who don't understand the mortals' perspective as well, and believe that the Road was an active overture of aggression, and assume that humans are amassing forces to invade the forest at this very moment. They have been growing the forest at such an alarming rate that the nearby city has taken notice, which is how the players heard about it. The faction's warlike sentiment has only been exasperated by a recent bandit attack, as bandits unaware of the forest's nature outside of a spooky reputation tried to clear away a segment to use as a base of operations. The bandits were taken prisoner by the warlike trees and the bandit leader might give them information on the nearby city in exchange for his freedom, rightly guessing that 1) the trees didn't know about the city and how many mortals were amassing so close by and 2) that if the warlike trees found out, they would find their worst fears confirmed and attempt to destroy it.
I have a few encounters set up to take place as the players explore the woods before getting the full picture or meeting any of the major players-- some combat, some skill encounters, and some roleplay encounters-- but the big thing I'm looking for advice on is what to do after the party meets either of the faction heads. I'd like this to be more than just a video game style choice like "this guy says 'do this' but this guy says 'do that'" and would like to try and create some actual intrigue, so that's what I'm looking for advice on.
Eventually I'm going to write up an underground dungeon the players can go through to cleanse some of the warlike tree leader's experiments to Awaken more trees faster from the spring that's the source of their power, but I'd like to put more meat on the adventure than just "Here's a tree, here's a bad tree, here's a dungeon with a thing to stop him."
Any advice?
TL;DR: looking for advice on creating intrigue between factions of trees in an enchanted forest. How can I give my players more of an actionable, active role in an intrigue?
What opinion do the older trees have of the younger warlike trees, and vice versa?
If the party are overpowered by the warlike trees, would the older trees prevent their destruction?
Are the older trees trying to hamper the "fast growing" forest in any way? Would the PCs come across any of this type of forest-reducing activity?
Why would the PCs be taken to the head of the warlike faction? Wouldn't the warlike faction just try to destroy any humanoids that enter the forest?
What would the leader of the older trees tell the PC? Why would it want to talk to them, if they just see them as something equivalent to how humans think of short-lived insects?
(No answers for you, I'm afraid, but more questions to get more information about the behaviour of the two factions.)
I can’t help but think of the song The Trees by Rush reading this.
On to helpful advice.
The key with setting up politics in a game is thinking about both the macro and micro levels of motivations. Macro level motivations are your factions - the young and old trees, for example. Micro level motivations are individuals within those factions, who might have motivations that are congruent or even contrary to their particular faction.
It is really easy to fall into the trap of just focusing on the macro and having all members of the faction working toward the same macro goal. But you are going to want to add some more complex NPCs as well to make everything seem alive. I like three-to-four NPCs per faction that are more fleshed out - that’s enough that you can cover a wide range of types of individual motivation, without being so many that you lose track of the characters. Think about why they are in the faction, what they want that is different from the faction, how they relate to the other fleshed-out NPCs in both their faction and the opposing, etc.
By doing that, you have changed your politics from having two facets interacting with one another (faction and faction) to having ten facets (faction and faction and the eight more fleshed our NPCs). That’s where intrigue lies - not just playing the factions off one another, but also the power struggles within the factions themselves.