Reavers! A Wolves Upon the Coast Campaign

The PC Power Curve and Closure.

Wolves is a game that can make a few bold characters grow rapidly in power. This is both a blessing and a curse. These bold characters will often find themselves at the center of everything the party does for several sessions as people want to see them accomplish the cool things they want to do. That then leads to them succeeding boasts even more quickly even at higher levels and then suddenly you have the one PC who is sitting at 6-8 boasts and everyone else is sitting at 1-3. Every session becomes warped around "what does x want to do?"

This has happened with my original PC Lirann, Patrick's PC Shepherd, and now is kind of happening with Druisten played by Lewis.

This of course can lead to table dynamics where one PC feels like the main character and others feel relatively left out. This isn't intentional and players often in my experience actively work to avoid that mentality but it tends to happen especially in open table games. So thus we need to find a way that allows that amazing stories to be built where players do those epic things that a high boast PC can do but not make the game entirely about them.

The best way to handle this in my opinion is three fold.

  1. Talk to your players. This is always at the core of everything good GMing in my experience. Players are awesome and generally they don't want to hog the limelight all the time even if what they are doing is awesome. Speaking to them alleviates the problem and kind of sets a stage for what is likely to come in the future.

  2. Retirement of PCs. I honestly believe that having a goal for a PC and a point where they are happy to stop wandering the roads is important. In Wolves specifically this has often included establishing a domaine. Lirann reclaimed Dorbogh as it's lord, Shepherd rules the village of Contin as the prophet of Onthloug. It doesn't always have to. Gravey was a PC that had a player who didn't quite mesh with Wolves as a system and when he left the campaign he told the GM that he wanted Gravey to become a monster. Thus Gravey is now an Ogre that leads the Orcs of Ruislip and collects shoes. It isn't the end of the PC when they retire but it puts them on the back burner. Those players then often get new PCs. I went from Lirann to Kip the sorcerer (after a shortlived fighter I played got eaten by a Horse) and Patrick moved from Shepherd to William the Gardner who is now married to a princess of Rhus. Retirement to domaine play also lets these PCs become important in the world. New players get quests from Lirann and Shepherd to do tasks for them they may not know they where once PCs and they may even act against them. It is all fun.

  3. Upkeep costs. Upkeep costs are a weekly cost it takes to take a PC out to adventure. As you make more boasts the costs keep going ever upwards and there is steep penalties for not paying them (thegns may rebel and stuff like that). It gets exponentially more expensive and it justifies a ton of the regular things of becoming important adventurers like nicer lodging, nicer clothes, boarding animals and men, etc. However at 5-8 boasts it rapidly becomes a struggle to pay these costs and players rapidly realize that they can't afford to take out their expensive PC. This encourages retiring them so that they can live off their domain they have built/claimed.

In the end after retiring the PC still exists, they touch the world and they still belong to the player that made them. If a dragon is spotted or an undead army threatens the land you can absolutely haul great heroes out of their holds to fight them like the elderly Beowulf going to fight and die against his dragon. But in the meantime the player makes a new character and can try out different things. Maybe now they want to make someone who is a Catholic and not a druid? Maybe they want to do magic? Maybe they want to be a thegn of their old PC going out to make their touch on the world?

The end of a PCs lifespan in a gameplay sense is bittersweet you do great things with them but at the same time it is good in a hobby that has so many incomplete tales to have closure for a PC for once.

#Thoughts #Wolves-Upon-the-Coast