This Thing Corners Like It's On Rails --

Predestination versus Free Will in a no-holds-barred ten-round exhibition.

Well, the Foxes just left "Wanderland".

Not that that's the name of the place... not by a longshot. But I like the cleverness of it, and I'm smiling to think that a thousand years from now players are going to be wondering, "Where the hell did that name come from?" when they see it on a map.

Wanderland represents one of the big paradoxes of running a campaign. It's a difficult challenge, one I didn't expect anyone to face for some time. But, it sits where it sits... and I knew at least subconsciously that THIS party would likely spot one of the structures from the water.

I did my best to keep the encounters non-lethal, trying to retain the feeling of the place without cutting the incidents out completely. For the most part the Foxes were suprisingly circumspect -- nobody tried to pee on the "wand", which was sparking with electrical energy, and most of the potential fights were passed by successfully. The only abberation was when the party picked a fight with a demon assassin, but they managed to work out a way to chase it off, so it ended well.

Surprising, too, how conservative they were in the Garden. This is Big Mystery stuff here, and they weren't tempted to do much. Well -- Stephen's premature discovery of the graves might have had something to do with that. Still, the Garden is the heart of the Island's mysteries, and as dangerous a place as it is it seemed likely that the Foxes were about to make a unexpected jump ahead in background information.

I tried to clue them in, by having the only NPC character show an unusual interest in staying (and reticence at departing) but the overshadowing sense of danger had the party hustling back to the beach.

I reduced the number of encounters on the return trip, to cut them some slack, but I wasn't done with them. Umbrion was waiting near the boats.

When the Foxes returned to consciousness, and realized the gravity of the situation, they elected to try to return to the Wand and the Garden and look for clues to resolving their problem. I had a momentary rush of excitement that we might be back on the previous track. That didn't last very long, though. Within sight of the Garden a couple of the party members decided that "God" didn't want the party to explore further. (Agggh!) Now I know how God comes across so differently in the sacred texts! :-)

Oh well.

This is the big paradox of campaign design. How much free will to allow?

My first campaign, back before Greyhawk was published, was simplistic. I had a sort of village, with a tavern. Nothing else really, just a tavern. The players would wander out of town a mile or two, have a randomly generated fight with something(s), and if they survived they'd crawl back to the bar and buy drinks. No attempt at realism was made.

Second campaign was about the time Blackmoor came out. Now I had a town (1) with a cast of characters I had down pat. I had mapped the local terrain out to a 10-mile radius of the one town, and in the middle of the forest stood the entrance to the one (1) dungeon. There were mountain and river barriers to travel, and the one road to the next city (a city which I never had to map) was so deadly with encounters that no one was willing to risk it. Within its restrictions, this was a very realistic campaign. Because I had every single person and creature detailed, I knew exactly how to respond to ANY hare-brained scheme the players came up with. There was a certain amount of plot, too... the campaign lasted until the party vanquished the evil overlord at the bottom of the dungeon.

The third campaign went in a very different direction. This time I created an entire continent. I didn't bother to do much detail work -- instead, I created large-scale maps, racial migrations, histories of warfare. Only when I felt I could wrap my mind around all the generalities did I pick a couple of obscure places and fill them in with detail. I gave the parties the illusion of free will by allowing them to go anywhere and do anything -- I ended up creating almost everything on the fly. Overall, the campaign was the most "realistic" in terms of freedom of action, but not in depth of detail, and it had little sense of being a story. The last phase of the campaign I attempted to alleviate these problems by creating a "war" which swept the players into pivotal roles in the devloping conflict. THAT worked amazingly well.

Fourth campaign took what I had learned in the third and integrated it with the style of the second. I created an entire Kingdom, and developed all the background material.... history and geography. Then I placed within it a single barony, and mapped in out in great detail. Unlike the second campaign, this time I had multiple dungeons and multiple small towns. I also mapped out the nearest "real" city, in case the party decided to travel out of the barony. I also set about creating a massive backstory, which moved along regardless of player involvement, and pulled the party into increasingly epic encounters. For many years I considered this campaign to be the most successful D&D game that I ran.

Following that was the "Time of Many Games". I ran several short and long campaigns within the same geographical setting as the fourth campaign. I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the D&D game mechanics. I ended up ref-ing a Palladium game set in my world.

Eventually I discovered DragonQuest, and set about integrating my world with the DQ setting.

This time around I made my design decisions early in the process. The story has priority this time. To facilitate that, I have the characters coming from a very specific background, and I've made sure that the story involves all of them. Players have free will this time, but I've tied them to a number of implicit events, which will drive the storyline forward. I've ensured that the events of the past campaigns will effect the Foxes, and set it up so that these events now will become part of the next campaign.

Now all there is to do is watch and see how it all comes out.

Somewhere in the future, Wanderland lies waiting.