A String of Brigadoons

[drskull]

Currently I've been playing in a new-school campaign, and think I've found something that is particularly irksome. It seems that every week we find a new village 10-20 miles from the home-base city, that is being preyed upon by some threat. We clear up the threat and go back home.

The villages seem completely independent. We've never heard of them before, and after the threat, we'll never hear of them again. None of them seems to have a liege lord. They are just a series of Brigadoons, popping into existance once in a while to provide a plot hook and then vanishing again.

I mean, my first reaction is always "pity the poor landlords, losing peasant labor to these fiends" but said landlords never appear. There's never a consequence to the wider scheme of things for success or failure. I know the filthy peasants are grateful and all, but how long can that sustain an adventurer's ego?.

I know the younger crowd don't quite handle the whole sandbox thing, but is it too much to ask to have places that are permanent and attached?

[dwayanu]

Partly for practical reasons (free time and energy, size and consistency of player groups, frequency of play), there has been in my experience a tendency over at least the past decade and a half toward more "episodic" campaigns.

When (IMO) they work well, they are perhaps analogous to the old (pre- "Hill Street Blues"?) model of prime-time television dramas.

I personally prefer that over the "story arc" approach in which affairs are "railroaded" to fit a long-term plotline -- but neither suits me as well as a closer approximation of what I think is meant by "the whole sandbox thing."

[jjarvis]

One way to avoid the host of Brigadoons is to come up with a unique resource that will be available in each community as it comes to light. PCs want access to that resource they have to go to that community. If one is using published adventures also, don't be afraid to change the hapless threatened community into one that has already turned up in play. Sure there is some editing involved but the DM rolling up his sleeves and putting some work into keeps each place from being meaningless after the PCs romp about that first time.

[jensen]

Perhaps your GM is simply worried that his/her efforts in prepping an exciting location teeming with thoroughly fleshed-out NPCs will be wasted, if it turns out that you, the players, aren't interested in exploring the place. You could try telling your GM you'd like to get more involved in a single location; I like jjarvis' suggestion, but it requires some GM cooperation. Alternatively, you could try and turn the Brigadoons into recurring characters yourself; for example, if you need to buy some new gear, and remember a smithy or general store in one of the villages that you found (even remotely) interesting, take a return trip to the place and do your shopping there. Visit the inn and start a fight, get arrested and thrown in jail, or maybe just fish for plot hooks amongst the locals.

In fact, interacting with the NPCs is probably the best way of increasing the likelyhood that you'll get to adventure in the same area twice, because reassures the GM that all their work has not been wasted, you're not just trying to capsize the adventure etc., and give them some confidence that'll go a long way towards ensuring that the NPCs you've been chatting up will make a return appearance. Of course, there's always a risk that you might stress the GM by interacting with NPCs that haven't been defined yet (and if your GM ain't so hot on improvisational skills), so it's a fine line. Caveat emptor .