Setting Victory Conditions

[Deleted]

I might be running a campaign fairly soon for a group of players who have little to no experience with D&D. I had an idea that might help things start off more smoothly, and I wanted to hear other people's opinions of it.

What do you think of setting an individual goal or "victory condition" for each PC at the start of the game? Specifically, picture a megadungeon campaign (although it could also work in a sandbox). After the players have rolled up their characters, but before play begins, the DM gives each player a card with a short goal written on it. These would be drawn from a table based on character class, and each would reference something specific inside the megadungeon.

For example, a thief's goal might read something roughly like:

"A famous thief stole a huge ruby and fled into the dungeon. He was never seen again. Recover the ruby."

... in more or less detail. Somewhere within the dungeon would be a room holding the thief's remains and the ruby, and elsewhere would be clues pointing towards it. If the thief player finds the ruby, she earns a fat XP bonus. A cleric might want to find and reconsecrate an old shrine of a famous saint inside the dungeon, a fighter might want to kill the monster that ravaged his lands, and so on. The goals would be kept brief and vague so that the players could interpret their own motivations and backgrounds, but the actual objective would always be concrete and exist somewhere in the dungeon.

The idea is that players new to D&D often take a while to get comfortable with the game, partly because it's so different from "traditional" games. Giving each player a defined goal, a way to "win" the game, should help ease them into play and provide added interest during the first sessions, and maybe foster a sense of friendly competition which would be a helpful motivator. Since the objectives would be scattered across multiple levels of the dungeon, by the time all the goals are achieved the players should be well experienced, used to the game, and capable of developing goals on their own. And in the meantime, they'll have their shared goal of collecting treasure to gain levels, so the actual play experience should be mostly unchanged.

Does anyone have any thoughts, suggestions or criticisms?

[jjarvis]

I've done it, it worked well. It served to help players zero in on what was different in the campaign and what I as Dm expected. I gave everyone 2 goals, one fairly easy to accomplish in a few sessions the second was more obscure and difficult.

[blackbarn]

I think it's a great idea! I may borrow it sometime.

[zeraser]

Good call. We usually do it collaboratively in character creation; I've never prepared goals in advance and handed them down, but with new players especially I can see why you might want to do some of the heavy lifting in advance.

[Ynas Midgard]

A fellow DM in our group has almost always given us some quest, which we could follow (for a small reward) or ignore completely. It was kind of nice, especially at the beginning. It introduced the dungeon in a way it made sense, plus we were given a bit more motivation (although we would have explored the place for gold only).

What I would have liked to try in my forthcoming campaign is giving a backstory to the players. Something which explains why they are together and what information they know about the surrounding areas.

Your goal-oriented approach sounds also cool; I consider opting for that.

[Deleted]

"Gary has this cool new game called Greyhawk. You're a bunch of guys exploring an abandoned wizard's castle full of monsters and treasure and stuff."

That's how Rob introduced D&D to me. I think you underestimate your players. Tell them it's a game about exploring, and let them explore. You can come up with goals if you need to, but in 40 years I've NEVER had trouble with somebody understanding what the game is about, and I've introduced a HELL of a lot of non gamers to D&D.

[riftstone]

If the thief player finds the ruby, she earns a fat XP bonus.

Hmm, seems to me if you use gp=xp, then the XP bonus is inherent to finding (and retrieving) the ruby.

[Deleted]

Dec 10, 2012 15:25:23 GMT -6 riftstone said:

If the thief player finds the ruby, she earns a fat XP bonus.

Hmm, seems to me if you use gp=xp, then the XP bonus is inherent to finding (and retrieving) the ruby.

In other words, "playing the game as it was written."

[riftstone]

Dec 10, 2012 15:27:00 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

In other words, "playing the game as it was written."

Funny how that works out.

[Deleted]

Dec 10, 2012 15:27:00 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

Dec 10, 2012 15:25:23 GMT -6 riftstone said:

Hmm, seems to me if you use gp=xp, then the XP bonus is inherent to finding (and retrieving) the ruby.

In other words, "playing the game as it was written."

It's irrelevant whether the XP comes from the gem value or as an award. What's significant is that the player is being given a specific goal before the adventure begins. I could accomplish something similar with just a table of rumours, except that in this case the goal is made explicit for each player.

I believe you when you say you've had no trouble with introducing new groups, but unfortunately that simply doesn't match my experiences. Things have always settled after a couple of sessions, but given how infrequently we'll be able to play, making those first sessions run smoothly is a priority for me. If you think setting the players goals will make the game less fun or create problems, then I'm inclined to ditch the idea. But if the only problem with it is that it's unnecessary, I'd rather at least make the experiment and see how it shakes out. Do you think it's likely to cause problems?

[inkmeister]

I'm probably one of the least experienced folks on the boards, but I don't see your idea hurting anything.

I played in a D&D 4e group. The experience was very poor, not really even because of the edition (though I never did appreciate that edition - personal taste; it was way too heavy and just didn't feel like D&D to me), but sometimes the group would take a break so another guy could run some Call of Cthulu. These were always one shot games with a good degree of focus, and I loved em (even though I think that fellow pretty much always planned for us to fail, which is kind of unfortunate). It got me thinking I should run occasional one shot oldschool D&D sessions with a strong focus or goal (locate and extract such and such treasure). I liked this idea because the group I played with was exceedingly immature and foolish in their play decisions, and the game itself was meandering and nonsensical, but when we would play the CoC games, things would be more focused and interesting and exciting. Also, in a short game, it was a lot easier to kill PC's (our DM wouldn't let PC's die no matter how incredibly stupid and awful their gameplay was - and it was very stupid and awful, let me tell you), and thus give the idea that how one plays the game is important.

Anyway, I never did run the game (I left the group instead). But I still think that was a good idea.

Delta did something similar at a convention game, using the Outdoor Survival board and setting some kind of monetary goal for the players to achieve within a single session (150,000 silver - the equivalent of gold in his campaign - if memory serves). I thought it sounded very fun.

Part of me thinks your approach lends itself very well to more of a oneshot type of deal. I also think that style of game can be a lot of fun if you can't meet regularly (a campaign would seem to benefit more from regularity and a strong sense of continuity which might otherwise fade with less frequent gaming). I also think a one shot style of game would allow one to do a lot of cool experimentation and run deadlier/crazier dungeons than one might otherwise be inclined to do, at all different party levels, and allow PC's to try a lot of different character types.

A question: why give a unique goal to each player; why not set a goal for the entire party?

Anyway, I think it's a fine idea - nothing wrong with it. I think as a player I would respond better if the group shared the same goal, and also as a player I don't think I would feel the need to be rewarded with additional experience beyond what would otherwise be earned, but either way is good.

[runequester]

It isn't a bad idea at all. It really depends on the players. Some players will make their own goals.

It's worth noting that many players will tend to shy away from that, because they will think there's a big story waiting. So they can get frustrated in a more sandbox'y game, because they keep waiting for "the plot". So for those, giving a broad goal early on is fine. By the time the game is underway, they'll get used to things.