The d4 Caltrops Blog Challenge - [blog100] pt. 1, q. 92

d4 Caltrops is a fantastic resource. They're well-known for their d100 tables. They posted this table of 100 topics to inspire burgeoning blogs.

Fuck it, let's do them all.

Here's how the challenge works:

1. Roll a d100 on the table linked above.
2. Blog about that question.
3. Set your own schedule. Post once a week, once a month, whatever. Don't fret if this slows down later either.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you've written 100 posts about all 100 topics. Reroll repeated results, you may want to use smaller dice toward the tail end of the challenge.
5. Tell me about it! I'll link to your post at the bottom of the next one.

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92. What was one Major Conflict/War that has occurred within Recent Memory?

For the first entry I've rolled a 92, which is a difficult question for me to answer. My running campaign world is one that is being built from the bottom up, around the players as they adventure. I began with The Portal Under the Stars and the rest of the campaign so far has expanded from there. It's been a good few adventures now and they're still following the hook from the end of that very funnel.

So as for history, the only thing that is currently set in stone is the implied ancient battle from the "war room" in the dungeon that started the game, and a couple of ruins that they've run into while crossing the surrounding world. Those could still be from any time and involve any peoples. Other modules I've included in the world provide either recent local events or ancient history as a background (or both), which can fit into the world without interrupting anything. This is to be expected (modules are modular!) but what it does mean is that I haven't actually had to think about this so far. It hasn't been relevant to my players' journey.

It feels like a copout answer to just say "it isn't necessary", so I am going to actually answer the question properly as well, but this feels like a good opportunity to repeat something that has been repeated many times in the past, and yet cannot be repeated enough: prepare only what you need to play.

Realizing that your players don't care about the world as much as you do is a tough pill to swallow, but man is it good medicine. They will care! But they don't yet. Players only care about the game, so when they're invested in the game is also when they will begin to care about the world. Your players aren't interested in hearing about the decades-long history of two warring families disputing each others' claim to the throne until one family says "hey go get us that thing" and the other family goes "noooo you can't take our thing" and now your players have a side they like and a side they hate. Suddenly, information about the conflict might be useful, and that makes it compelling.

Quick sidebar: Alternatively, you can have players be a part of building the world like in Dungeon World or this activity by Judge Toast. That's a surefire way to make them care before you've even begun playing, but it means you have to hand over the reins.

What I'm saying is: don't prepare too much history because it doesn't matter until you get there and until it matters nobody cares. However, the corollary to prepare only what you need to play is that once you have prepared what you need, prepare what you want. That's where you can do your deep dives into history that isn't relevant to the game yet (or ever). That's where I can have the lonely fun of making up my own world and history - but I must remember that this part is for me, not for my players. I have to be prepared for them to never see it.

One of these things I've done extra-curricular prep for is the conflict between the Lords of the elemental planes.

DCC RPG lists Ithha, Prince of Elemental Wind as a wizardly patron, and gives him a nemesis: Grom, Lord of Stone. To further steal take inspiration from other authors, I took the reasonable assumption that there would be Lords of fire and water too. I thought the names Krakaal and Splaasha were a bit on-the-nose, though I did like how they sound like the elemental they represent. I ended up with Rulf, King of Elemental Flame and Ocea, Princess of Elemental Water. It's a matter of opinion whether that's any less on-the-nose.

I also deviated slightly from the source material with the relationships between these Lords. I went with the simpler model of elements being at war with their "opposite" (air hates earth, fire hates water) and allied with the other two. To put a twist in this, I stole yet again from this same source and threw in Azi Dahaka, another "Prince" patron, but allied him with Air and made Water his enemy, simply because it seemed to fit thematically.

And why do my players care?

Well, currently, they aren't privy to any of this. They have, however, thwarted the plans of some gnolls. In DCC RPG p. 416 gnolls are said to worship "the wicked elemental deities" and have the ability to invoke Ithha, so that's exactly what the gnolls were doing. Presumably, there are other gnolls elsewhere that worship the other Lords, so this may influence future relations between the party and potential Patrons. Furthermore, any random gnoll encounters in the future may worship different Lords and already have a reason to like or dislike the party, or it may become relevant to future endeavours into the elemental planes (should the party choose to go plane-hopping).

And all I had to do was prep the bare minimum and start playing, then fill in the blanks with other materials I stole from was inspired by. I've deviated from the original premise of this post quite a bit, but I think that's perfectly fine given that d4 Caltrops' table was intended as inspiration. It did inspire me, and I let this post go wherever that inspiration took me.

To round out this meandering post, it turns out that by doing only what I need and adding onto that only what I want, I've developed a history of interdimensional conflict that my players care about without even realizing it. Hell, toward the start of this post I even said there wasn't one, but there clearly is. The details just aren't worked out yet, and that's good. It'll get more nuanced as my players get themselves involved in it and we all - including myself - can discover the history along the way.

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Let's aim for next week for the next randomly selected post. Here is where I'll link to other participants' posts next time.