But I tend to split up character creation and some of the planning that goes into a campaign that the group can do together into a session 0, and then in session 1 is when the game play actually starts.

So what was our hook again?

Our Fighter, Cleric, and Wizard who all know the Paladin were helping defend the temple after the powerful Wizard in the town demanded that everyone gives him all their gems in order to prevent some unknown future disaster. The temple has several gems of great value, and now there is a mob outside the door that is fighting, some trying to break in and get the gems, and some trying to stop the other side from stealing things.

Okay, so what do I need to set-up for session 1 with the hook?

You might think about picking my monsters who will play the mob, and giving them hit points and weapons. But for me, I don’t think that’s extremely important. I tend to think that the mob will have a few key players and whatever side the players decide to go with, they will face off against the other sides keys. So I might go through and quickly grab a couple of bad guys, but that’s less important than other things to me.

What does the temple look like and where are the gems, that’s more important. The gems are likely kept in a back room, probably attached to some ancient relic. If the players want to protect it, they are going to have to go outside of the temple or deal with the people as they come crashing through the door. The main area of the temple has some chandeliers and some pews as well as an altar in the front.

Outside of the temple is the town square where there are a couple of other temples in other parts of the square. There are also some of the nicer and fancier shops, the best blacksmith in town, or the one who advertises himself as that. There’s also a “the best” woodworker and other such businesses. In the middle of what is generally a fairly open square there’s a stand where the local noble will give speeches.

You can start to see how the town is coming together for what the players need to know. The temples, while frequented by most of the people in the town are also in the nicer section or more expensive section of the town. In fact, it’s probably a mob of more commoners up against the city watch at this point, with some people who are worried about their businesses also with the watch.

The mob is going to be coming from off in the direction of the city bazaar where most of the common people shop to get their wares as compared to the town center. The mob will definitely have picked up some looters as well with the group who are going to be causing the city watch to have to split their attention which is why they aren’t driving back the common folk.

If the players want, they can probably turn the mob aside to a jewelry merchant, which might seem like a better place to go, but the jewelry shop is better secured, and the common people know more about the temple than they do about that shop.

At this point in time, I don’t know that I would flesh out too much more about the town or for session one. If things go quickly as they fight against the mob and try and get it turned, which it won’t because the players will spend some time planning, then I would have to move onto the next part of the story.

That would be skipping ahead a day and either having the Wizard or Grima Wormtongue character coming and thanking the players if they helped the jewels get stolen, or the noble for helping turn the tide of the mob, or the noble complaining about them not turning the tide of the mob. But whatever it would be, it would be some role playing for the players to do.

That’s a bit more free form and requires less planning. Just know what stat block you’re planning on using for the noble, wizard, and Wormtongue, just in case the players decide to attack. And if they do that, have the person do non-lethal damage to the characters. Unless you decide to have the players all play the B-Team.

And what’s how I’d create my first session and start building out the town. You can see that I left a lot of the town building blank. I’d start asking the players, if they start wondering, for shop ideas that the rich would want in the town center. The players can help you fill out the town and even come up with some of the physical characteristics of what the city watch might look like, what the noble or wizard could even look like as well. It means that you have to be ready to improvise and work with it on the fly, but it will give the players even more buy-in to the world and story.

What do you think of that session 1? Would you have planned out more of it in your game, or maybe less of it? How much input do the players have in world building?

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In the story that I’m creating, I started talking about what is going to lead into the hook. That’s the two opposing factions, that of the state sanctioned noble and the wizard who lives in the tower. This doesn’t mean that this is the whole plot, that will probably be the next article on the big bad, but it’s going to start leading into that.

Now, I don’t know what my players are leaning towards playing yet, again this is a hypothetical gaming example to show how it could worked and how I go about my process. Let’s assume that I have a pretty standard group of four or five players. In a four player game they suggest you have a party of a fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric so you got your basis covered. That’s a bit boring but not that outside of the normal.

I’d also have used a session zero for the players to determine how they know each other and how they are tied into the town. Let’s assume that the fighter and rogue go to the cleric fairly often for healing and to pay their respects to the deity that the cleric follows. The Wizard has worked with the rogue and fighter on some odd jobs, and knows the cleric in passing but doesn’t really agree with her, but also doesn’t just follow what the powerful wizard wants.

In the town there are tensions because the wizard has declared that people need to bring her gems and other items for some magical spell otherwise something bad will happen. The noble in the area is strongly disagreeing with that as that would cut into what the people would have to pay for taxes. So, what are the players going to do, a lot of the people in the town are not giving their gems tot he wizard who hasn’t said anything more than her vague threat. So now there’s a lot of struggles as to what is actually going to happen in the town, who will win out.

So how does this affect the players? Obviously there’s a line being drawn in the sand and riots happening and people are upset on both sides because some people don’t want the bad thing the wizard says is going to happen to happen, and others don’t want to lose their jewels. The temple itself has a number of jewels. The temple is now paying the fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric to defend against the riots and those on the wizards side who might want to steal the jewels. The riots have come to the church doors with the wizards side certainly trying to get the jewels, but the other side worked up and looting as well.

Which side do the players help? They are getting paid to help one side, but that side seems better equipped. They can’t fend off both sides as they push against the door of the temple, they are going to have to try and divert the riot one way or the other away from the temple, but by doing so, they are going to have to either help those who are more supporting the noble or those who are more supporting the wizard, or they can let the gems be taken.

So there’s the hook, the players have been tasked with something before the game started that is now actively going on. Even though the fighter, rogue, and wizard might not be directly invested in the conflict, though I’d probably give the wizard a gem of some sort to start the game, because you know the player will be greedy as well, since they have a pre-existing relationship with the cleric, they will want to help them.

What happens with the different ways that the players can take the hooks?

If they join forces with the wizards side, the wizard or some emissary will definitely come knocking on the door, thanking them for the help and demanding the jewels. The noble will be annoyed as well, as that will mean that more people’s jewels are in the hands of the wizard.

If they join forces with the nobles side, the wizard is going to be pissed off at them, but the noble would likely see that they are capable and level headed and give them more work.

If they decide to take on both, neither side is going to be all that happy with them, and the church won’t be happy with them, so they are going to have to figure out how to get back into the good graces of someone. In particular with the cleric, how is she going to get back into the good graces of the temple?

Now, I’ve given myself a whole lot more work now, because I don’t know what direction the players are going to go. I don’t think that this actually changes who the big bad will be in the story, but it will change up what sort of quests they have to go on surrounding that. And I haven’t actually changed up too much for the planning of the game. I’m mainly looking to create those big story points that are going to be consistent throughout the whole thing. It also works because the conflict and a little bit of immediate before and after makes up a solid first session. There’s going to be some fighting, there is going to be some role playing ahead of time, there is going to be some time for them to plan, and there is going to be that quick immediate fallout that happens in the game.

Alright, now we’re going to be moving onto the big bad. That’s probably going to be some of what is going on in the background, or maybe it is the wizard? We’ll find out in the next article.

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There are plenty of other classes though that could use the background, they give you a number of areas that you could have studied, but being a Dwarven metal work professor would be out of the ordinary and go against the normal teaching options that they give, or area of study options. It’s also a background that people will use to play a smarty pants character who is condescending or thinks they know more than everyone else, because they might actually  know more than most people. I’d say if you are going to go that route, be aware of two things, make sure that if you are going to be condescending in the game, have it be clearly between characters so it doesn’t seem like it might be above the table and directed at a player. Secondly, consider it being a character arc, maybe this is your characters first adventure and they think they know everything and don’t really need others to make decisions but then as the game progresses, they can come to the realization that they need others, and that book smarts are not the same as street smarts.

Beyond that, I do think that there are two main reasons that people go with this background. It gets two nice features in the Researcher, which means if you don’t know the answer, you know where to find it. Very powerful in a game, especially a city game where you can always go and research. That means that you are going to probably be able to find that information pretty quickly and without much travel. The other being that you get two languages. Might not seem like that big of a deal, but if you are in a port or if you are going to travel a lot in the game, you are going to run into races and places where they might not speak common, or at least will drop out of common when they are going to talk about you.

Now for some story ideas using the sage background:

You grew up on the rough side of the city and it was your goal to get away from that. When you were a teen, you ran away from home and found yourself on the doorstep of a temple in the nicer neighborhoods. Pretending that you weren’t from around the city and that you had been mugged wasn’t that difficult when you had nothing your whole life. The temple believed me, or if not took pity on me and took me in. They started training me, and gave me shelter and food. As part of our agreement, I was going to work for them and pay back, in work, what I had been given. I got a job in the city library as a librarian, turns out it was run by the temple. After I paid off my debt, I continued to work there and get more training through the temple, then one day, some people who I had known as kids came in before hours and killed a guest from out of town who had gotten special permissions to come in early. They were caught, but they implicated you in the crime, that you had let them in. You were kicked out of your job, but the head of the temple believed you. Now you have to track down who actually called in this hit and clear your name.

Class: Cleric
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Your time in the university was fascinating and you got a great love for people, races, and creatures out of it. In fact, you got so much love for them that you decided to leave any chance at a easy job or well paying job at the university to go out and research some of them. Finding a tribe to follow around and study wasn’t too difficult, but getting close to them and really learning about them was very difficult. The tribe of orcs didn’t let you in easily, but once they were used to you, they opened up. After spending years with them, you were starting to truly understand them like no one had before and they were teaching you their ways. Then a plague hit their village, but it didn’t affect you. You watched as those you had known died around you and you felt powerless to stop it. When the chief became ill, he asked you to help save what was left of his village, because they couldn’t seem to get away from the plague. You took off with a handful of hunters and those who had dealt with society before. Then you met a strange woman in the woods and she offered to help. You needed to save them, so you agreed to go with her, but when you saw her place, you quickly realized she was likely the cause of the plague. Calling her on that, she fled, and while a small bit of the tribe was saved because she left, you want to hunt her down and keep her from experimenting on others.

Class: Barbarian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Notes: This one I like because you are playing the dummies of the D&D world with a barbarian, but it’s something that you learned after you were a sage, so it makes a very uniquely flavored character.

Your family was poor and life was hard for you and your six siblings. Your parents had trouble keeping food on the table. When you were a young teen you told your parents that you’d drop out of school to go out and work at a farm to help make ends meet and to keep everyone fed, but they told you they wouldn’t let you throw away your chance at a better life. That night, you made up your mind, you didn’t want to work on a farm, but you didn’t want to be a burden to your parents and not help. Packing the little that you had, you snuck out of the house and made your way down the road for a week where you knew a wizard lived in a tower. You’d heard stories about them and how they sometimes used an apprentice. You knocked on the door and introduced yourself. It took some begging and testing to get the position. It didn’t make you much money, but you sent, anonymously, the little that you made home to your parents. It wasn’t until you had studied more under the wizard that you realized they were not a good person. They started to do experiments on you and run you through the ringer. One night a voice came to you offering to help and get you away, you took the chance and escaped. You went into hiding for almost a decade before the voice came back to you and told you that your parents had sold  your youngest sibling to the wizard and that it was time for you to act.

Class: Warlock
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral/Chaotic Good

Less backstories than normal, but some longer ones than normal. I hope that you’ve enjoyed them. There are three more backgrounds left to do after this.

Have you played someone with a sage background? Why did you choose that background and what was your backstory?

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