Koibu's Corner: Be bold! (Patreon)

 This is the first of many Koibu's Corner posts I will be making here. Before we hop into the meat of the post, I want to introduce the Koibu's Corner concept to those that might be unfamiliar with it. Koibu's Corner is a opinion/advice blog post centered around TTRPG concepts that should apply universally to all TTRPGs, even if the examples given will be from AD&D 2e or D&D 5e. In the following post I will be talking about why players should take bold actions, even if they are dangerous or difficult, and I will be using Orcs vs Human fighters as the example, but this could equally apply to a sci-fi campaign, a modern campaign, an underwater campaign, etc.

The core idea I would like to espouse is: If you want to play an epic hero, you must take actions that back that up. If you are playing a risk adverse  wizard, a lazy cleric, or a thief who is just looking to get paid, this post might not apply to you - but if you're playing a hero type, someone that is out for glory, or a character trying to make a difference in the world, this is right up your ally.

As an example, let us take the setting of a party of heroes that have undertaken the quest to rid a village of an Orcish threat. The party has learned from the woodland creatures that the Orcs are holed up in an old mine, they've killed a scouting party, fought their way through a bridge guard over a river, and made it to the Orcish compound in the mines. The ultimate goal is to ride the area of the Orcs and there are many ways to achieve this end. A cautious party might sit outside the mines and wait to pick off the orcs one at a time. A clever party might try to collapse the mine and let the orcs starve/suffocate. A brave party might walk into the mines and clear them out chamber by chamber.

But if the goal of the party, or even just the party leader, is to be a big-goddamned-heroes, there's another course of action. One that might sound strategically unwise, but could lead the party to even greater heights: Call them out. The party leader could walk out into the open and call for the Orc leader to do battle for the fate of both groups. Should the Humans win, the Orcs would leave. Should the Orcs win, the Humans would leave. 

There are real risks here. The party would be giving the Orcs a chance to get their act together, the orcs could all exit the mines and surround the party, there might be some sort of trap they launch, or any number of other things; inevitably the party will have all sorts of fears run through their head about the dangers of this approach - and that's exactly why they should do it!

Grinding through the Orcs has challenging combat, but offers very little story wise. Assuming 3 encounters in the mines (door guard, pitched battle, final boss), we're looking at somewhere between 1 and 2 hours of game play with the rewards of XP, treasure, and quest completion. Not bad, but nothing special.

Fighting the Orc leader in single combat offers XP (maybe not as much? Maybe just as much. Maybe more! All depends on the DM/GM), the same amount of treasure, the same quest completion, and far greater story rewards. There are the stories that will spread through the countryside about the PC's heroism, there's a greater possibility the Orc leader will surrender (can't surrender when someone has killed every single one of your people - what would be the point?), there's the option that the same Orcs might come back again (who doesn't love reoccurring NPCs?), there's the option that the Orcs might cheat and engaged in an all out fight (making the PC's even greater for being heroic, getting betrayed, and still coming out on top; while making the Orcs even more evil and treacherous), or maybe the Orc leader wins and takes the PCs captive, giving a whole new storyline of escaping the clutches of the Orcs.

Sometimes, perhaps far too often, we as players fall into the trap of video game logic: Problem X exists and our job is to end problem X. Video games have clear objectives that lead to "winning". TTRPGs cannot be won. There's no 100% completion. Occasionally we run into a (video) game that is so good we try not to end it, we look around for every last side quest we can do, and put off finishing the game for as long as possible.

With TTRPGs, there is no end. There is always another quest. There's always another problem to overcome. The game is more about how the PCs overcome their problem than the problem they overcome. When we swap stories with other people it's pretty unsatisfying to say (or to hear), "We went into the mines and killed every last orc! It was great". There's not much of a story in that. But to swap the story of, "We were clearing out these Orcs so we challenged their leader to single combat, but they won and took us captive, so we had to wait until they were out raiding the town again so we could overpower the guards and rush to save the village that was under attack!" is so much better.

The story of how we do the things we do is the juicier part of the game. Players have the power to shape the story just as much as the DM does. When our characters are in dangerous situations, it is tempting to take the safest, most direct course of action that fulfills the goals set out at the start of the story - but we can take the story into our own hands. 

Some groups play the "Can you beat the DM" style of game, in which case the objective is to protect yourself from the dangers and the story is less important than survival, but that play style is not ubiquitous. I have had many players (and viewers) approach my games that way, thinking that I am playing to defeat them, when in reality I'm playing for whatever cool story we can come up with together. If you think your DM will "punish" (I hate the concept of DMs punishing PCs, but that's another post) the you for playing up the story rather than success, you might be surprised. It is a very pleasing thing for a DM when we have the chance to step out of the slaughter and engage in more detailed storytelling. 

Be bold. Take risks for story/character reasons. Play suboptimally. Remember that while the DM builds the world, it is your actions that build the story. A player that takes charge of their fate by choosing their course of action instead of following instructions shapes the story of the game and of their character. 

- Neal 'Koibu' Pass Erickson