Running a Endhaven Campaign (Endhaven Supplement)
Running an Endhaven Campaign
No Nameless Enemies
In Endhaven, your enemies should have names. Each enemy does not need a name, but they do need a name. Fighting goblins and cultists is one thing, but fighting Feral Nation infiltrators and Transgressor Guerrillas is another. By naming them and giving them goals, you create a way for your players to remember them. When your players meet Feral Nation troops, they know that these are aggressive expansionists.
Everywhere Is Someplace
Avoid generic places. Generic places have little flavor. Even a minute story sheds great texture upon a place. "We settled here after we fled the Psychotic Assembly." With that little story, we now know some way to play these folks.
Once a place is someplace, it gets easy to create plots for that place. Who killed the psychic warrior and hid the body? Did they leave something in their homeland? Does something need to return to their homeland?
Once you know the tenor of a place, you know something of its people. A mountain town has a different feel than a river town. A crossroads has a different feel than a remote hamlet. The economy, terrain, and challenges of their environment shape their settlement differently, and so gives them a unique flavor.
Every Organization Is Both Good and Bad
Organizations are no better and no worse than the people who run them. An organization need not be evil to do bad things, nor good to do good things. Many organizations do both.
Organizations give play a way to encounter a villain multiple times without fighting the same villain. Campaigns against organizations can have many twists, turns, and many encounters. In many ways, organizations are the best monsters in a game.
There Is No Certain Knowledge
Many details of Endhaven have been left vague. This is a purposeful choice. The people of the world simply do not have a perfect understanding of the world that they live in. They believe conflicting things and are unable to dilineate fact from fiction.
Villains Have Achievable Goals
In many games, the villain has some world-shattering goal. This should not be true of Endhaven. In this setting, a villain should have an achievable goal. Grand goals are inherently remote to the players. The players inherently know that they will arrive in time to stop the villain at level 20, so there is no drive to the game. Compare this to a game where the players learn early that that "executed at dawn" really happens. If time matters, they will value time more appropriately.
Do note that too much rush causes players to get frustrated. The players need enough rush to keep them sprightly, but not so much rush as to remove discretion. Just like music, you need to vary the tempo to keep things interesting.
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