How would you handle campaign Fronts in a Freebooters game?

How would you handle campaign Fronts in a Freebooters game?

How would you handle campaign Fronts in a Freebooters game?

Somehow it strikes me as a very different game as soon as you start to plan out any doom that the adventurers need to deal with. Stashing away coin might become less important if there is a town/country/world to save. It is my gut instinct just to skip campaign Fronts altogether.

Curious what you would all do with Fronts. Skip em, do em differently or do it the standard way?

Edit: unless of course saving that town yields a ton of coin!

28 thoughts on “How would you handle campaign Fronts in a Freebooters game?”

  5. Michael Sands That’s how I’d handle it. They’re also useful for player triggered dangers that lurk forgotten in the wilderness, darkly dreaming until awoken by greedy adventuring bastards (Death Frost Doom is my go to example).

    If regular Fronts are time bombs counting down, these are land mines itching to go off. 🙂

  6. Michael Sands That’s how I’d handle it. They’re also useful for player triggered dangers that lurk forgotten in the wilderness, darkly dreaming until awoken by greedy adventuring bastards (Death Frost Doom is my go to example).

    If regular Fronts are time bombs counting down, these are land mines itching to go off. 🙂

  9. Whelp, let’s see. Say you’ve got a evil warrior languishing in a forgotten tomb somewhere in the forest. He’s bound in place by old magic sigils and the like so he can’t get out to wreak havok and spread his influence. He was also buried with some nice treasure and while knowledge of the reasons why it’s a terrible idea to fuck with his grave have faded, rumors of the delightful shinies he holds are still very lively.

    So what happens when some dumbass (aka PC) disturbs his grave and takes his stuff? The Front starts counting down:

    THE FORGOTTEN TOMB

    Impulse : To spawn evil

    Grim Portents:

    – The Forgotten Tomb is robbed.

    – The Forest grows darker and more dangerous.

    – The town’s crops fail and its livestock becomes sickly.

    – The dead rise from their graves and gather in the corrupted forest.

    – The Dead King returns to lead his new undead army against the living.

    Impending Doom: The town is destroyed by the army of the dead.

    Interestingly, the Dead King doesn’t show up in the flesh until the very end. First his influence spreads, corrupting the forest he was buried in and then the nearby town, souring the very earth itself to the point where the cemetery eventually disgorges its corpses. The solution of course is to either redead the Dead King (good look with that pal, you’ll need it) or return the stolen treasures to his grave before he rises, down to the last golden trinket, in order to placate him. Hopefully that travelling merchant they sold them to hasn’t gotten very far.

    In short, take something bad and bait it with something the players might want. Don’t force them to get it, just leave tantalizing clues about such and such treasure or stash of arcane power along with the rest of your adventure hooks (this obviously works best with a sandbox play style). You’ve given your players the rope, now you can sit back and see what kind of noose they tie for themselves.

  10. Whelp, let’s see. Say you’ve got a evil warrior languishing in a forgotten tomb somewhere in the forest. He’s bound in place by old magic sigils and the like so he can’t get out to wreak havok and spread his influence. He was also buried with some nice treasure and while knowledge of the reasons why it’s a terrible idea to fuck with his grave have faded, rumors of the delightful shinies he holds are still very lively.

    So what happens when some dumbass (aka PC) disturbs his grave and takes his stuff? The Front starts counting down:

    THE FORGOTTEN TOMB

    Impulse : To spawn evil

    Grim Portents:

    – The Forgotten Tomb is robbed.

    – The Forest grows darker and more dangerous.

    – The town’s crops fail and its livestock becomes sickly.

    – The dead rise from their graves and gather in the corrupted forest.

    – The Dead King returns to lead his new undead army against the living.

    Impending Doom: The town is destroyed by the army of the dead.

    Interestingly, the Dead King doesn’t show up in the flesh until the very end. First his influence spreads, corrupting the forest he was buried in and then the nearby town, souring the very earth itself to the point where the cemetery eventually disgorges its corpses. The solution of course is to either redead the Dead King (good look with that pal, you’ll need it) or return the stolen treasures to his grave before he rises, down to the last golden trinket, in order to placate him. Hopefully that travelling merchant they sold them to hasn’t gotten very far.

    In short, take something bad and bait it with something the players might want. Don’t force them to get it, just leave tantalizing clues about such and such treasure or stash of arcane power along with the rest of your adventure hooks (this obviously works best with a sandbox play style). You’ve given your players the rope, now you can sit back and see what kind of noose they tie for themselves.

  13. Bingo. The trick is that the party has to be able to look at the situation you’ve presented and have the option to say “Nope, not touching that shit with a 10, 12 or any foot length of pole. Let’s go get filthy rich somewhere else.” Or if they figure out a clever way around the trap and get out with the goods without setting it off, all the better for them.

  14. Bingo. The trick is that the party has to be able to look at the situation you’ve presented and have the option to say “Nope, not touching that shit with a 10, 12 or any foot length of pole. Let’s go get filthy rich somewhere else.” Or if they figure out a clever way around the trap and get out with the goods without setting it off, all the better for them.

  15. Bastien gives a great example of one way to do a Front. In our own games, I mostly just allow things to develop organically from what the party discovers in the wilderness. With the ongoing goal of plunder they have enough to keep them motivated to get back out there. That being said, 3 things resembling Fronts have developed over time:

    They stole a sacred relic called the Necklace of the Dove from a forest temple in a ruined tree city. A miss on a “Get Lucky” roll determined that it was cursed, and I decided that a flock of doves would assault the holder each dawn. The holder can evade the doves by entering water, and control them by wearing the necklace (but they don’t know that, and they’re all afraid of putting on the necklace while they look for an unsuspecting buyer). There aren’t really any escalating Portents involved in this–it’s just an ongoing problem they need to solve–but it wouldn’t be hard to turn it into a Front culminating in direct vengeance by the god whose temple they violated.

    The Magic-User found a new spell called Cinnate’s Portal of Knowledge and has used it a few times to look into the spirit world. Unfortunately, he suffered an Arcane Affliction on the second casting and rolled “You suffer a permanent affliction in proportion to the spell’s effect.” This is turning into a Front where he himself has become an opening into the spirit world, which will cause trouble over time as restless souls try to find their way back into the world of the living through him. I haven’t written out the Portents yet, but the Impending Doom is him becoming possessed.

    In the course of exploring a mysterious mining operation, the party came across signs of another group of Freebooters. They haven’t met them face-to-face yet, but all of a sudden they have competition, and given the personalities involved I don’t imagine it’s going to end well. So I’m writing up Portents that culminate in this other group retrieving the best treasure in the mines, and ticking one off each time the party returns to town.

    In general though, I don’t think so much about Fronts in our Freebooters games. Stuff develops as we play, and I just fold it back into the game in ways that make sense. Fronts are a way of codifying or mechanizing the idea of a “living world,” and that was already part of my playstyle, so while Front-like things develop in our games, they don’t usually abide by the DW rules as written.

  16. Bastien gives a great example of one way to do a Front. In our own games, I mostly just allow things to develop organically from what the party discovers in the wilderness. With the ongoing goal of plunder they have enough to keep them motivated to get back out there. That being said, 3 things resembling Fronts have developed over time:

    They stole a sacred relic called the Necklace of the Dove from a forest temple in a ruined tree city. A miss on a “Get Lucky” roll determined that it was cursed, and I decided that a flock of doves would assault the holder each dawn. The holder can evade the doves by entering water, and control them by wearing the necklace (but they don’t know that, and they’re all afraid of putting on the necklace while they look for an unsuspecting buyer). There aren’t really any escalating Portents involved in this–it’s just an ongoing problem they need to solve–but it wouldn’t be hard to turn it into a Front culminating in direct vengeance by the god whose temple they violated.

    The Magic-User found a new spell called Cinnate’s Portal of Knowledge and has used it a few times to look into the spirit world. Unfortunately, he suffered an Arcane Affliction on the second casting and rolled “You suffer a permanent affliction in proportion to the spell’s effect.” This is turning into a Front where he himself has become an opening into the spirit world, which will cause trouble over time as restless souls try to find their way back into the world of the living through him. I haven’t written out the Portents yet, but the Impending Doom is him becoming possessed.

    In the course of exploring a mysterious mining operation, the party came across signs of another group of Freebooters. They haven’t met them face-to-face yet, but all of a sudden they have competition, and given the personalities involved I don’t imagine it’s going to end well. So I’m writing up Portents that culminate in this other group retrieving the best treasure in the mines, and ticking one off each time the party returns to town.

    In general though, I don’t think so much about Fronts in our Freebooters games. Stuff develops as we play, and I just fold it back into the game in ways that make sense. Fronts are a way of codifying or mechanizing the idea of a “living world,” and that was already part of my playstyle, so while Front-like things develop in our games, they don’t usually abide by the DW rules as written.

  19. I think I was more thinking about campaign fronts, rather than adventure fronts.

    The campaign front seems pretty straight forward and already set up in Freebooters: Get money. Fail to get money: don’t get money. I guess? Is this just a premise or a front?

    Adventure fronts I don’t see a problem with.

  20. I think I was more thinking about campaign fronts, rather than adventure fronts.

    The campaign front seems pretty straight forward and already set up in Freebooters: Get money. Fail to get money: don’t get money. I guess? Is this just a premise or a front?

    Adventure fronts I don’t see a problem with.

  21. John Love The usual campaign front (ie the plans and actions of whatever evil force or antagonist you’ve got set up) can be a bit harder to use in a setting focused more on exploration and treasure hunting. Instead, flip the script. All the money that the adventurers bring back into town will result in new businesses opening, new NPCs settling in. So rather than Grim Portents/Impending Dooms, you have Good Omens/Impending Boons. For example:

    The Old Fort that once guarded the trade road has long been abandoned and is currently full of slimy horrors.

    Good Omens:

    – The Old Fort is cleared of monsters by our intrepid heroes.

    – The local militia mans the Old Fort.

    – Merchant caravans return to the area.

    Impending Boon: Higher quality goods are available for purchase in town.

    That last bit would correspond somewhere on the Campaign Front, where the evolution of the small speck of civilization your players are based in grows along with their accomplishments. The Steading rules go hand in hand with this, taking your starting hamlet from backwater to fully equipped boom-town and all the adventure hooks such a place has to offer).

  22. John Love The usual campaign front (ie the plans and actions of whatever evil force or antagonist you’ve got set up) can be a bit harder to use in a setting focused more on exploration and treasure hunting. Instead, flip the script. All the money that the adventurers bring back into town will result in new businesses opening, new NPCs settling in. So rather than Grim Portents/Impending Dooms, you have Good Omens/Impending Boons. For example:

    The Old Fort that once guarded the trade road has long been abandoned and is currently full of slimy horrors.

    Good Omens:

    – The Old Fort is cleared of monsters by our intrepid heroes.

    – The local militia mans the Old Fort.

    – Merchant caravans return to the area.

    Impending Boon: Higher quality goods are available for purchase in town.

    That last bit would correspond somewhere on the Campaign Front, where the evolution of the small speck of civilization your players are based in grows along with their accomplishments. The Steading rules go hand in hand with this, taking your starting hamlet from backwater to fully equipped boom-town and all the adventure hooks such a place has to offer).

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