The Campaign Trail (2023)

One of the ideas that I’ve been conceptualizing behind the scenes is how to randomly generate a campaign, from scratch. I decided to start with a standard deck of cards (52 + 2 jokers) since I felt that something so ubiquitous would lend itself to the overall ethos behind TNP. One benefit of doing it this way, is that you have a definite end point -- a campaign consists of 54 encounters, of various types. (This addresses something I hear from people new to D&D; they often ask, "So, how do you win?" or, "When is the game over?" or some variation of those questions.)

The basic idea with using a deck of cards is that the suit would determine a type of encounter:

• Combat ♣
• Exploration ♦ 
• Social ♥ 
• Subterfuge ♠ 

Face cards would be the exception to this; all face cards would be combat encounters (regardless of suit) with each card type corresponding to a different enemy type. For example, Jacks would represent "standard" monsters. The Jokers are meant to represent campaign-level threats ("archenemy") and one would be shuffled into the deck before dealing the encounters for level 2, and the other shuffled in for level 4 -- alternatively, these cards could potentially be inserted directly into the "hands" for levels 2 and 5.

Dealing the Deck
If we take the 54 cards and split them into levels of progression, we end up with something like this:

• 4 encounters at level 0
• 6 encounters at level 1
• 8 encounters at level 2
• 10 encounters at level 3
• 12 encounters at level 4
• 14 encounters at level 5

Now, the idea is that non-combat encounters would be handled as "skill challenges" -- requiring a certain number of checks before continuing onward. Since we'd only be using the numbered cards for these types of encounters, we can also use them to help scale the "DC" of the challenge. My idea is that either the face value of the card, or the number of encounters for that level (whichever is lower) would be the DC.

So, for example, if you were dealt a 10 of diamonds at level 0, instead of having a DC10 Exploration skill challenge, it would be a DC4.

This would work similarly for combat encounters resulting from being dealt a club; effectively these numbered cards would be "Minions or Swarms."

In the previous draft of the monster-building guidelines, minions would have between 1 and 4 hit dice, whereas swarms would have between 5 and 15 hit dice. Since the numbers of encounters per level range between 4 and 14, I'm inclined to use those numbers as the "maximum number of hit dice" which can be used when building swarms and/or minions into combat encounters, at each level. This would mean that swarms could appear in combat as early as level 1, so some other limitation might need to be implemented, as well.

What is an "Adventuring Day"?
Another thing that I immediately start to notice is that the number of encounters very closely maps to the number range of reserves that the PCs will have -- between 6 and 12, to be specific. If reserves are assumed to be a per-day resource, then this begs the further question: Should you gain a level after each adventuring day? If so, then clearly, an "adventuring day" (if it is to be called that) would likely last multiple days of in-game time.

Let’s go back to the cards for a moment; the basic idea would be that each type of face card would represent a different enemy type, but otherwise the suit would determine the type of encounter (with clubs being combat encounters, as touched on earlier.) This would mean that the cards 2 through 10 of the remaining three suits would be non-combat encounters -- 27 cards out of 54, exactly half.

Now, translating that information back into the schema for reserves, if we’re assuming you’ll need 1 reserve to heal up from each combat encounter, then a class with 12 reserves would (on average) be using 7 reserves to heal up, through their 5th level “adventuring day” (consisting of 14 encounters, in total.) This means they would have about 5 reserves available for other uses, even at the most difficult stages of the game.

This begs a question of how to "win" or "keep score" when it comes to non-combat encounters. Should there be a reserve cost, to failing at a skill challenge? Or, instead, do you simply create a "failure" pile and a "success" pile with your non-combat cards, and tabulate whether the overall campaign was a success, once all's said and done? If non-combat encounters are NOT meant to burn reserves, this means that there is more design space left open within character classes for in-combat, reserve-burning mechanics.

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Next post is due up by January 31st, so check back then!