Aegis Rejects: DM Insight

The campaign dubbed 'Aegis Recruits' successfully destroyed all traces of the Aegis Order on Highsword during their first mission for them (Ep9, Aegis Recruits). Here is some insight on the intent as a DM.

This isn't the campaign I planned for them from the beginning, but it became clear to me this would be the best way to move forward for a lot of reasons. When something this big happens there can be a lot of opinions about how things progressed, so I wanted to give some of my insight on why I deliberately put them in a situation where the most likely outcome was destroying the campaign I made for them. There is a lot more intent on my behalf than it might have seemed.

I think I've learned a lot about being a DM and how I'd like to handle things in the future, but as a result I realize I didn't initially handle things that way. I thought it would be nice to offer the players 4 different campaign choices as they made characters, but I think that really just made things more confusing for everyone. It didn't allow me to introduce what the campaign was to everyone with a lot of clarity, because I introduced several conflicting concepts. Several episodes in I don't believe many of the players were familiar with what the 'Aegis Order' really was or stood for. Their characters certainly did not display any motivation to why they even agreed to join them in the first place.

And the most important part is that every character is on the same page. I always have had one player (its usually Surefour) ask in character creation: "What if my character doesn't want to get on this boat to the campaign?". The answer is to not make that character and I really need to emphasize that more clearly. Chuck felt like he didn't really fit in with everyone else for this reason -- which I take responsibility for not guiding more properly. I didn't see this as clearly before, but If I don't take the initiative to help, PENTA doesn't want to disrupt the pace of things in a streamed environment by asking questions he thinks everyone else knows the answer to. He's in a group of experienced players who are used to playing with each other and have some experience with the Myriad setting and there is a lot I think I could've done to help smooth things out. There is a lot to do for setting the expectations of what they would be doing in the campaign and the multiple options that were not clearly defined didn't have the players discussing their characters with each other, but making them in a mechanical vacuum of what looked interesting.

I could have done more to rally character creation around a single clear idea of the group's cooperation around a goal. I believe "everyone make whatever character you want and we will start" is the wrong way to go about things for any campaign setting where the players are not immediately thrust into a scenario where they are forced to work together by circumstance. They made whatever they wanted, they had no reason for joining the Aegis Order, and they all sort of just went along with it because the DM is generally just offered a social courtesy where the players go along with whatever you're presenting them as they try and find how they fit in.

So, as I was creating a fairly simplistic dungeon within their basement with some rats... It just all felt really boring. Everything I thought of to put down there didn't seem like it'd be engaging to any character and they would all continue to passively agree to be somewhere. So I put a time bomb in the basement.

Once I decided there should be a way to destroy the entire castle in their basement, I also reintroduced Radiant Mike to increase the odds that it would lead to the castle being destroyed in the end. Radiant Mike is a countermeasure to what I mentioned earlier, players having social courtesy. His influence on Dick made it 'okay' to choose a different path. His obscurity and weirdness can lead them to believe there is a valid reason for letting the bomb 'just happen'. There will be no guilt when things go wrong because there is an in character reason for them to go wrong. Otherwise, it would take 1 of 5 people screwing up or telling everyone else to do something very disruptive.

But, why put the bomb there so this is all acceptable in the first place? I saw it as the final test for the players to actually choose their campaign. A re-do. It would either solidify that they are totally loyal to the Aegis Order and I can push things in that direction with their reignited passion for the organization -- or they can just be done with them and select a new direction that feels more natural. The discussion would be different if they rallied against Dick's desire to protect the filth here, but I think the outcome would be similar in improving cohesion in the group.

To boil everything down to a core concept:

5 players will be playing in a campaign where they are lawless Vikings who treat all outsiders brutally. One player creates a chaotic good Paladin who is not from the Viking tribe and is just sort of there (This was a campaign off stream, moonmoon was the Paladin). Everyone gets put in a tricky spot by this. 4 players are having their fun ruined by the person who wanted to be different, but that pesky social politeness interferes and the Vikings resentfully cooperate with somebody who disagrees with them on everything. The DM then may also have to exaggerate the reasons why we actually do need to work with this Paladin, which immediately makes him the main character due to the extra attention required to make exceptions for them.

A campaign where the majority of players were excited about being Vikings turns into the complete opposite because your virtuous paladin is chosen by your gods instead of you. I did not want to make Chuck the main character so even he was unhappy because the roleplay rarely involved his character who shared no interests with anyone else. That is a really important point; the character who doesn't fit in is still having less fun despite getting to make the character they wanted.

Letting things blow up is a chance to let Chuck 'realign' within the group dynamic and the intention of the campaign. While it is also sad for Gilliard to leave and characters be switched, this is also completely necessary so that we can have 5 Vikings. 

In the end, I think I have learned a lot and we be a lot more careful to avoid that in future character creation sessions. It can be hard to tell players 'no' when they are making a character as you want to fully accept their fantasy, but I have seen things like this happen enough times now to be completely confident that a DM who says 'no' in character creation can be one of the healthiest things for the future of a game. If you are allowing anything you need a campaign hook that forces the players to cooperate despite their differences. I personally really dislike the types of stories that creates so I probably wont be doing much of that unless the campaign is intended to be short. There will always be a player who wants to be the 'different' one who doesn't fit the mold, but try and compromise and guide them that fitting into the group will actually be more fun for them as well.