Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Inspiration from The Defenders and Site News


First, a bit of site news. You may have noticed that the ROFLInitiative URL reverted to its original Blogspot path. Unfortunately, due to some credit card updates, my domain payment failed, and I neglected to update my license until a week after the domain was dropped. In that week, someone snatched up www.roflinitiative.com and repurposed it for some poorly organized Florida-based law blog? Hopefully they enjoy questions and comments about D&D.

My wife and I finished watching Marvel's The Defenders on Netflix last night. Though the quality felt like it was down from Daredevil, Jessica Jones, or Luke Cage, I personally still really enjoyed my time with it. I found it especially inspiring as a GM. The structure of the first few episodes felt like an almost perfectly executed D&D campaign introduction. The writers did a great job of weaving the motivations of each hero into the main storyline, and in establishing existing relationships between different pairs of the heroes (PCs) and several of the supporting characters (NPCs.)

Be warned, thar be spoilers below:
To break down the story in D&D terms, I will refer to the four protagonists as PCs and the supporting characters as NPCs throughout.

The central storyline revolves around the Hand's machinations in New York, in particular an attempt to access a substance that will provide them with continued access to immortality.

The PCs each have their own personal backstory/side quest weaved into this central story at a different level.
  • Luke Cage is a protector of the people who is investigating the use of local use as grunts in service of the Hand.
  • Jessica Jones is an investigator who has been hired to track down a specialist hired by the hand (before that attempt goes horribly wrong.)
  • Daredevil has previous direct experience with the Hand, but is brought in as Jones's attorney
  • Daredevil's ex girlfriend is now the Hand's secret weapon.
  • Iron Fist is being pursued by the Hand as part of their plot.
Iron Fist's connection is one point where the translation from TV to D&D becomes problematic. He is basically a sort of human Macguffin. This can be dangerous for a game group, because if the player in charge of a Macguffin PC has to drop out, or even miss a few key sessions of an ongoing campaign, the whole game can potentially unravel. Converting the character into an NPC is also problematic as it pulls the focus of the game away from the PCs and potentially reduces player agency.

The way the characters are each woven into a different aspect/level of the master storyline is brilliant, and something I hope to emulate in my future games. When establishing an antagonist, don't just think about direct connections with the PCs, but broaden the story to connect via the antagonist's hirelings who were just doing ordinary jobs, low level recruits who might not understand the dangers, etc.

The Defenders also does a great job of connecting the PCs together from the outset (through their connections in their individual shows).
  • Luke and Jessica have past romantic/professional involvement
  • Daredevil and Iron Fist are both connected to the Chaste, enemies of the Hand
  • Daredevil is hired as Jessica's attorney by her old contact, Hogarth
  • Jones' client is killed by Daredevil's ex-girlfriend who is now tasked with capturing Iron Fist.
  • All four know Claire (though not as an employer, which is often the default relationship in establishing common D&D connections.)
  • Luke and Iron Fist have an early pre-team-up encounter at a Hand Warehouse. Iron Fist investigating the Hand, and Luke trying to rescue one of the neighborhood youth.
This interweaving of character backstories helps to overcome early PC group awkwardness when players might struggle to justify why their character would choose to adventure with this particular group. Often players will default to the metagame in such a case, and just not think too hard about it.

Of course, The Defenders had four full TV series prior to the team up to establish all of these links, so how might you accelerate the process for a tabletop setting? In a home brew game, establishing the PCs well in advance of writing the campaign might allow you to connect their character stories into the plot. Connecting PCs to PCs can be done during the initial character roll-up. The Fate-based game Spirit of the Century has players establish past team-ups with other members of the group as part of the character generation exercise. A simpler option might be to ask each player to come up with two other characters in the group that share a common connection, and to describe that connection.

One other thing I really found inspiring in The Defenders was the backstory behind the Hand. I love the idea of part of an order of mystical healers who become corrupted by a search for immortality. Charting that progression from a cause that begins as something noble but falls into darkness is a great way to establish complex antagonists, individuals or factions in conflict. In the base D&D world, the Hand could easily be translated as a group of fallen Pelorian clerics/monks who turned to necromancy and lichdom.

As I've mentioned in the past, I love the idea of mashups, and that extends to drawing fantasy RPG inspiration from non-fantasy sources. While the overall quality of The Defenders doesn't reach that of several of its predecessors, that's a high bar to reach, and the content is a wonderful template for adventure ideas.

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