This is part of a series of posts on advice for starting a campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: Introduction, or to Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 1
In short, they had been working together for a few months accompanying an assessor taking a population census and recording what various settlements needed, and that the last part of this job had placed them in the mountains. With that quick summary, here’s some of the offerings I provided the players. As you’ll see, these That Was Me! summaries need only be a few sentences long.
- While in the Tonder Alps accompanying an official taking a census of the mountain villages and watch towers, your camp was attacked by griffons one night. As the rest of the camp was preparing a response, you charged the griffons wielding only a big stick, and in doing so saved one of the pack mules.
- You got the party permanently banned from your group’s favorite tavern.
- Realizing you were in way over your head while confronting some cultists, the party chose to flee, running out of the building the cultists were in. You saved the party from pursuit by throwing a dagger and miraculously wedging a door shut as the dagger slid between the door and the doorjamb.
- While surveying a village in the Eelfens, you stumbled upon a wedding, and learned the groom had no living relatives, even extended family, so you stepped in to serve as the groom’s family during the wedding.
- You accidentally insulted an important official who now has it out for you.
- You won a barrel riding contest.
- You held your own in a game of Kobold Dice with a group of kobolds, and in doing so earned the respect of the town’s kobolds.
Benefit 1: Creating Shared Memories
The first benefit of this That Was Me! activity is, as I’ve said, in establishing a shared history amongst the player characters. As players chose That Was Me! summaries, the group would often spend a few minutes imagining the larger scene, both the player who chose the event and the others who witnessed it, sometimes negotiating what happened, and other times the larger narrative falling into place. In this way, these That Was Me! summaries became shared memories for the players and their PCs.
Benefit 2: Touchstones to Bring Up During the Campaign
Because these That Was Me! summaries became shared memories, they took on a second benefit for our group as role-play fodder for the group. Is the party in trouble? Or is the PC who made the miraculous knife throw rolling poorly during combat? Kind-hearted jokes about the miraculous knife throw would come up. The kobolds came into play as well. When the PCs were in the city that was their home base, the nearly seven-foot tall bearfolk barbarian would call upon his kobold friends to see if they had useful information. So too when they PCs were trying to lay a trap for a shadow fey assassin who had been using shadow goblins to lay traps for the PCs.
Benefit 3: Pre-made Campaign Themes Based in Character Backstories
A third benefit the That Was Me! activity came into play through the campaign was inspiration for future events that resonated with the players. Because a player chose the cultists/knife throwing summary, I decided to bring weave the cultists into our campaign. Our in medias res start was a revenge attack by the cultists as the party and the assessor they were accompanying were attacked the night before they would return to town. Once the PCs/players realized this wasn’t some random bandit attack but the cultists they’d already fought, they had an already established enemy and the players got a sense that the world would respond to their characters actions. And yes, those cultists did keep showing up from time to time. That That Was Me! moment I wrote to just be a cool moment grew into a major theme of the campaign.
Benefit 4: Player Agency to Shape the Campaign World
Finally, the fourth benefit the That Was Me! activity gave that D&D campaign was one of player agency in helping shape the world. The players created an important NPC: The pack mule Potato. Again, I wrote the attacking a griffon pack with a stick as a humorous but cool moment. The players, though, had another idea. Having saved the pack mule — property of the Adventurer’s Guild, technically — the players wanted that pack mule to accompany them on future missions. And having adopted that particular pack mule, they named it Potato because it needed a name if it was going to be an ongoing companion. (The party’s wizard never named his familiar, but he wanted the pack mule to have a name.)
Because Potato was the idea of the players rather than me — sure, I wrote the original That Was Me! summary, but Potato as an ongoing party NPC was thoroughly their decision — the players took ownership of Potato. They’d be off adventuring and someone would ask, “Wait, what is Potato doing? Is Potato safe?” and the adventure would stop while the players decided what Potato was doing and whether Potato was safe or if they needed to rush back as soon as they could or continue to check in on Potato. And if Potato was around combat, players announced that their character was protecting Potato. Quite honestly, most of the players in that campaign would rather have their own character die to save Potato rather than have Potato come to harm.
In the final two That Was Me! posts, I’ll talk about how I used That Was Me! with a Night’s Black Agents campaign.
Go to Forget the Tavern: That Was Me! Part 3