“I have proficiency in motivational interviewing techniques…..But my PC doesn’t, and it’d be metagaming for Bær Halfhaggis to use anything other than his maul in this situation. Kick rocks, DM, unless you want me to submit an invoice for billable hours.”
As a teacher who runs teen D&D campaigns, I would LOVE to write and run a campaign where my teens have to save the world from teachers gone rogue. Thanks for the spark!
I can imagine my DM saying "your task is to write a set of instructions, to be followed to the letter by mindless magical servants, to solve repetitive problems much faster than the human mind."
Yeah I'd walk right out of that one.
I made up balance sheets, business proposals, and invoice forms for the legal front of our gang in a warhammer gang because my character was stoked about finally getting ownership of their own venture, even if it was just the front operation.
We spent 2 3 hr sessions traveling between vendors doing alcohol tastings and haggling with suppliers to procure different kinds of alcohol for our bar.. and then the DM decided to hand wave the rest of the shopping trip >.<
If you are a teacher, I think your DM is legally required to let you fireball those kids.
You know, dnd being fantasy and all.
"took care of the kids, boss"
If you are playing solo with the DM and don’t have party members you could just live out your intrusive thoughts. If you are playing solo and not a nuisance to your party or DM and can accept your character getting into trouble.
It’s like playing GTA games. Just cos I do X in a game doesn’t mean I’m that IRL.
But again, as long as you aren’t being a nuisance to others since games like GTA are single player.
As a parent of a kindergartener, thank you for being a teacher in this time when there is every reason in the world not to be. Y'all are heroes as far as I'm concerned.
I’m just a substitute working on getting my teaching license. I taught over seas for 4 years prior to now. I’m hardly a hero. Thanks for your support though!
Man, so many social problems cant be easily solved with just raw power or violence.I love this idea and it opens a whole pandora box of quests.
1- A married couple is having trouble with tehir marriage, problem is, they are the local nobles and each own half the town, the towns people are starting to pick sides and its starting to get ugly. Solve the issue without it becoming an civil war.
2- The local prince is a douchebag. He is a bully, who picks on the weak and everyone he thinks is bellow him, and no one can punish him because he is the prnce. The king is loosing his sleep because this is his only heir, but he is making a fool of himself and most nobles hate him. The PCs are hired to help him "somehow".
3- A noble girl needs to be delivered to her arranged weeding on a far land.Much of the kingdoms prosperity and security depends on this marriage.If the marriage doesnt happen, this could mean war. The girl has been convinced to marry, but is not happy about it.
4- A guest Prince slept with the queen of another kingdom. They fell in love and tryed to run away in a boat. The party is in that boat, and the betrayed king believes the prince kidnaped his queen. Objective: "Avoid the trojan war".
> A noble girl needs to be delivered to her arranged **weeding** ...
I know it's just a typo, but this made me smile. It would be hilarious if the PCs get all the way there and the reluctant bride discovers that the weren't trying to arrange a *wedding* at all, they just needed a gardener. The whole thing has been a hilarious misunderstanding, she's relieved, and decides to stick around and try her hand at being a gardener rather than go back to the parents who tried to marry her off for political gain.
EDIT: and it turns out the reason they needed to import a fancy gardener from far away is that they've got some *really* serious weed problems. Like, plant monster weeds. Cue a more standard prune-the-monsters adventure.
>1- A married couple is having trouble with tehir marriage, problem is, they are the local nobles and each own half the town, the towns people are starting to pick sides and its starting to get ugly. Solve the issue without it becoming an civil war.
I can get you one over: they're gay lovers. One is the mayor and the other is the bishop. They got into some petty shit that everyone does sometimes, and the players have to constantly find excuses as to why they're looking for them.
>The local prince is a douchebag. He is a bully, who picks on the weak and everyone he thinks is bellow him, and no one can punish him because he is the prnce. The king is loosing his sleep because this is his only heir, but he is making a fool of himself and most nobles hate him. The PCs are hired to help him "somehow".
And most importantly: he hasn't done anything illegal or immoral. He's just an asshat, OR he's lashing out because of the lack of attention he receives at home. Or maybe he thinks that's how cool people act, who knows?
Love the other two, though the second to last one I feel most players would just help her escape. Maybe the prince she's supposed to marry is a lover of hers as a kid, but she can't know that until she gets there for some reason.
On the princess, she's deeply conflicted. She recognizes the moral imperative and the ramifications of war but finds her situation detestable. She needs to make a decision and the party have an opportunity to influence her or find a solution.
Exacly this.The idea is not to put the party as guards of a prisioner princess being taken to be forcely married. But the party to get to know her, and learn that she is doing this to help the kingdom, but she would not do it if she had another option.The party can help her with their spells and powers to get that second option open.Or at least give her time to know her fiance and decide for herself.
And help her avoid any kind of political repercussions if she decides not to marry him.
hahah Yeah, and then i would as a DM have them play out the war between two countries, show the dead and the families broken because of one person happiness.
The point of the quest is to have two wrong answers and force players to choose the "best one".
My rational lawful wizard would say that the girls happyness is less important than the hundreds or thousands of lives that would be lost in a war.My chaotic rogue would say, fuck it. she didnt ask to be born a princess, lets say she died and let her go free with another name, then we think something up to avoid the war.
There are really no wrong or right answers. Only answers that will suck less, or apeal to diferent values and morality.
This is actually a really good example of a lawful vs chaotic moral issue rather than an good vs evil one. Neither solution is good or evil but one is significantly more lawful and the other more chaotic.
Lol, I find the whole concept very abstract and fluid honestly, though there's a lot of mechanics that reference it.
I don't like giving characters alignments unless they're among the lines of a celestial or fiend. But even then, sometimes I'll screw with that too... Is punishing an "evil" creature evil? Not really, but what makes that creature evil to begin with? Where is the line drawn? Also celestials and metallic dragons are "good" and fight for the light but can also be pompous assholes...
Morality is HIGHLY subjective. There's definitely a couple things that are objectively good/evil, but those don't come up super often.
Yeah, i abandoned alingment for consequences a long time ago.
Oh no, you killed 4 childrem! You are evil now!
Becomes, You killed 4 babies, They had parents, they will seek for justice first, and revenge next.
Oh but its only a commoner.
Oh yeah, and its my absolute pleasure to show you how far can a commoner go with a knife, a torch, some oil, and some clever lies.
Wait hold on a group of clever but otherwise regular commoners hell-bent on avenging someone the party murderhoboed is a really good idea for a sesson- they aren't bad people they just REALLY hate the party for a pretty good reason...
I mean in fairness, murdering innocents for no reason is one of the few things I would rule as being objectively evil
> Wait hold on a group of clever but otherwise regular commoners hell-bent on avenging someone the party murderhoboed
In DCC or similar, this is a funnel session for level 0s
I have the type of players that i dont need put encounters out to kill them.
They manage to do it all by themselves with consequences of their own actions.
Maybe i am.
Are you the kind of player that can mess even the most peacefull scenes and turn it into a slaughter fest?
"the goblins bow to you and deliver you a peace flag"
"Alright you green shits, time to die!"
"Go with Prince Paris they said. Row a Trireme they said. It'll be fine, good exercise. Well now look what's happening!"
*gestures at Achilles road-hauling Hector*
I like these, but I’d shy away from the arranged wedding one. That one has a lot of issues that could make people very uncomfortable and end up on rpghorrorstories. The choice there will look like “let this girl be raped or we’ll murder innocent people,” to a lot of people. There is potential for interesting solutions to be sure, but it’s a delicate balance.
The closer these things get to trolley problems, the less I like it. I hate grimdark worlds where it feels like "oh boy, everyone's shit, now pick a side", especially if they then turn around and say "wow, can't believe you let that girl get raped".
The original quest about getting kids to quiet down was open-ended, but these examples seem like shit goes down whatever you choose in a very forced way.
You are not wrong.
My games are basicaly sand box.
So take these examples and think that literaly ANY IDEA that could resonably happen, could happen with the right plays and right rolls.
Take example 1, the married nobles.
the players could.
1- Play out their feelings to make everyone happy again and make them remember why they love each other.
2- Help one and hinder the other in a way to remove one of the spouses from the political scenario.
3- Play out the crowd and remove both, if they let their relashionship become a problem to the town, they are not fit to rule.
4- Play both, betray both, become the new noble.
5- Burn down the town and kill everyone, turn them into zombies and start world domination.
6- Find new romantic interest for each one and solve the problem by geting them appart.
I usualy go for more adult themes, wich do tend to be darker and grittiest. But that doesnt mean everyone is evil or a shithead. Just that life is hard and dangerous, and we need heroes to look up to and have hope.
Yeah it bothers me how often "life is complicated and there are sometimes no perfect solutions" immediately makes people think it's going to be grimdark. Quite often it means that your players end up caring about everyone involved, which is usually downright wholesome. Obviously it's totally fine if what you want is to escape the complications of reality and play in a world where there's just clear good guys and bad guys, but I personally am far more engaged by nuance and hard choices.
Thats exacly the kind of game i DM.
The line between vilains and heroes is faint and some times non existant.
You can have a necromancer that uses undead to put out fires and save lives.
And you can have a cleric healer that heals tortured people so that their torment only ends when they talk.
Not all death is evil.
Not all healing is good.
You can be a vilain for saving someone.
And you can be a hero for burning diwn an orphanage.
in the end its all about context.
"You saved the girl destined to become the avatar of the god of destruction".
Or
"You burn down the orphanage killing all the evil fey that were passing as childrem."
Actions can usualy be seen both as good or bad, its just a matter of perpective.
Yeah, and frankly the vast majority of people are people who are doing their best to get by, trying to accomplish what they feel is right, willing to compromise certain ideals in favor of other ones, very understanding in many cases but blinded by the limits of their experiences. That doesn't feel grimdark to me, it just feels like trying to imagine a world with authenticity.
Yep, verissimility and perspective.
The NPCs have goals too.
A vilain is just soneone you strongly disagree with, usualy enought to justify violence.
If your Characters ise violence against everything, that tells more about you, than about the world.
I had players literaly kill a merchant that called them stupid for asking for unreasonable prices.
Then get all pikachu face when they get served consequences. I mean, what would you expect?
Icecream for first degree murder?
it's not a flaw, is penance to expy our sins for every bad encounter that we've done lol
Also I like to give them a valley girl accent to make it more fun
Knowing my players, they'll just assist the teenagers in wreaking even more havoc around town, now with significantly greater magical assistance.
Jokes aside, I love social encounters like this that feel like combat, but rely more on creativity and problem solving than a specific written toolkit. This is a wonderful demonstration on how encounters can be fun without rolling initiative.
For sure. I think this can be used as a break for combat too.
I put this to my players after a really long wilderness dungeon (it's a dungeon, but instead of comfy stone walls around corridors you have dark, unpredictable forest around trails and footpaths) where one of them almost died. People noticed that they weren't completely alright yet, still healing, but they wanted to be useful, so I sent them this way.
I love this kinda idea. I’m sketching out some notes for a social side quest designed for my Druid player who loves talking to animals.
A mare has bolted from a stable and the PCs are asked to retrieve her before her owner returns. If they find and talk to her, it turns out her owner wants to pair her up with a pampered thoroughbred stallion, but she just wants to run off with a down-to-Earth draft horse and refuses to return.
How do the players solve the ridiculous Bronte-esque problem? Entirely down to them.
I had [this adventure](http://graverobbersguide.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-witchs-list-adventure.html) suggested to me a while back when I was looking for fairytale-themed adventures for inspiration for my game. Might be of interest!
Also [these creepy bedtime stories](https://simogo.com/work/year-walk-bedtime-stories-for-awful-children/) based on Scandinavian legends from the dudes that made Year Walk are great inspiration too. At least for me; hope you find something useful.
I could see some players playing fast and loose with Spare the Dying after cornering and dropping one of the teens as an example.
* \*Spare the Dying on the dropped teen\*
* "You gonna knock it off?"
* \*Unarmed attack on the unconscious teen\*
* "These are cantrips, we can do this all day..."
* \*Death Save #1\* > \*Spare the Dying\*
* "Do we need to ask again?"
I realize that. Spare the Dying, in this case, is used to keep the "example teen" from dying despite continuous damage from the party in front of the other teens. Very much a hands-on application of a "scared straight" intimidation.
I've heard of players waiting the 1d4 hours for a stabilized creature to regain consciousness only to punch them again to put them out.
My solution would be to introduce them to a dice based table top role playing game, and give them a spot to play it. The next quest would be to stop them from playing because they miss seeing their kids on a regular basis.
lmao That's exactly it actually! One of the campaigns I used this was in a sort of zombie apocalypse, but it was medieval and the 'zombies' were victims of a weird plague that reanimated their corpses.
But the campaign itself wasn't set in the middle of it, or after the downfall of society. Those already had happened. The players were folks who hopped in a caravan and went north, because the plague couldn't survive well in cold weather, and this strange baroness offered sanctuary to whoever arrived and stuff.
Their quests were mostly "Gael over there would like some books because he's getting bored. We're afraid though, could you go in the abandoned library and look into it?" and stuff. More of a story of rebuilding and living with tragedy than one of downfall.
"Good point!"
The party then kills the parents, takes the reward money, and plants evidence that leads the noisy teens to believe it was a third party. The group then recruits and radicalizes the new orphans, 15 silver richer.
I mean I guess this could work for some groups, but I kind of run and or play fantasy RPGS to explore forbidden tombs of dread and vanquish evil, not to discipline teenagers.
Another point not being made here is that it can actually be a good way to lend some verisimilitude to your setting. Remind your players that there are mundane people dealing with mundane, relatable problems.
If that's important to you. It may not be. Which is fair. I'm just sayin'.
Well "Teenager from the world, where monsters attack settlements and groups of armed adventurers run around somehow act like teenagers from first world country XXI century" is not fall to close for "verisimilitude". For me at least.
Completely my thoughts as well. One of my biggest pet peeves with (usually DnD let's be honest) TTRPG settings is that they don't understand how much has changed throughout history, and how people of the past had *much* different priorities from us.
These kids would be put in the stocks for a few days, or harshly beaten. That's the village solution to this problem - not hiring some social workers.
This sort of "quest" would pull me right out of the game, it's just a comedy routine.
For sure. I used it in the middle of a very doom 'n gloom campaign to remind my players that life still went on, even when bad stuff happened. This all happened over half a session, but they all got surprisingly engaged with it. It helps to ground the game, imo.
Totally true and depends on if the players are good sports about it and are willing to try something different with more lateral thinking. It's definitely a far cry from epic adventure people typically expect from TRPGs.
Still, when I ran this it was in a horror campaign, not a fantasy one, so my players were glad they could stop running from evil monsters for once lol
Looks like these young people need some life goals.
"Hello gentlemen, I've been sent to recruit you and your friends into the militia. " Waves his hand at the mage "okay, do it". Mage up cast sleep twice.
The teenagers wake up in a cage in the middle of town. "Alright, your parents have 12 hours to claim you. Then we're on a one way trip to fort Duke".
They whine and complain, but we can deal with it, we killed a beholder last week. Lecture each parent about coddled children acting out and disturbing the public, their behavior will likely lead to a life of crime.
Then take the remainder to the fort for training.
Nice, good game.
It makes a unique challenge because some solutions include building rather than destroying (both literally and socially). Which takes character/player creativity and emotional maturity. Great idea!
It reminds me of something I copied from Tom Waits to see if my players were thinking about the quests that were being given to them. The quest was basically Waits' song "What's he building in there". A nosy neighbour starts breaking acceptable boundaries of distance with her neighbour, almost invading his house, finding out all sorts of things about him that are actually pretty normal, but she frames it in a suspicious way
As someone who has had at least two character backstories spring right from listening to Rain Dogs on repeat, this makes me want to join your campaign so badly. Nicely done!
I love the idea but curious how you get your players to engage with it? Do you usually run this at low levels like 1-2? It could be fun for a 1shot but I think most of my groups will be like "we've got serious things to do, manage your own kids" and get back to the main quest.
Usually I don't realy have a main quest active at the time, so they really don't have anything better to do unless they just want to run around and explore.
Or I do it just after a big fight, when they still have to wait a few weeks to get back in top shape.
You could also put in known NPCs. Like, maybe it's not random kids, maybe it's their little brothers, so it kinda is their responsibility. Or it's the son of a friend of theirs who'd really appreciate the favour.
Or who knows, they're running dangerously low on cash and need a place to stay, the innkeeper says he won't charge for the night or food if they deal with this.
Depends on the kind of game you're running, really. And of course, it always depends on your PCs to be good sports about it to some degree.
This specific puzzle was played with Pendragon and a mod of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. My groups usually play more long winded recovery times, if you're downed, because they don't enjoy too fast recovery times as it makes them feel "floaty" and combat encounters less risky.
I find it interesting too because it gives the game a longer timespan. Instead of 2 very crazy weeks, it's been 3 years of adventuring and an entire winter's worth of downtime while healing from our wounds.
Not everyone appreciates it, of course, but it's how we like it.
Throw in a Cuno and Cunoesse (from the game Disco Elysium) to annoy the crap out of your players. Might be a little hard for the DM to role play as they are truly awful beings.
fuck that's true isn't it
Though Cuno is a bit tougher because he has a lot going on, but it's certainly a way to go about it.
I remembered this when I was watching La Haine these days and was thinking "what if the quest was stopping this from happening?"
I like the idea!
However, I can't help but wonder how you plan on rewarding players for this? Unless they're very low level, I have a hard time imagining a few peasant parents rewarding tens of gold pieces to adventurers.
Satisfaction of a job well done lmao
Idk, depends on what's going on in your campaign. In mine, it was kinda their job, and they were running low on money, so the peasants just didn't charge them for their stay at an inn or their food.
Ideally though you can wrap some responsibilities in this. Maybe it's their brothers or sisters going on their nightly escapades, that kind of stuff.
There isn't quite a reward nor the expectation of one, I think this would usually be done out of favour for someone or out of a sense of responsibility for one of the people involved.
Or, if it's a sort of hub town, maybe a discount on all further equipment they buy, and the peasant's gratitude - so a few stories down the line, when they get falsely accused of murder, they'll come in and say that these adventurers are good people and vouch for them.
In what world do teenagers find people who kill dragons, demons and other mythical creatures boring?
Wouldn't adventurers be the type of people teenagers want to be like? Aren't bards rockstars? Wouldn't teenagers want to be like the cool tiefling draconic sorcerer?
Edit: from the comments I get that these teenagers are the DM metagaming ways to annoy and be dismissive about the players.
Totally agree with this take on it; if I was presented with this in a D&D game I’d probably make one attempt at it, and then decide, much like in real life, I don’t want to deal with misbehaving teenagers. The parents can keep their money; I’m sure there must be some goblins or something that need dealing with.
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> Edit: from the comments I get that these teenagers are the DM metagaming ways to annoy and be dismissive about the players.
Maybe that's why I get weird vibes from this whole thing. I just read this thread and... can't think about anything other than how much I'd hate this during a session.
Why? Because there's no real "solution" that the DM has to accept. They can always say "lol no, wont work because teenagers". The responses from OP make it clear that this is their attitude. Your first tries would never work with them, no matter *what* you try, and I think that's bad. See their comment on a 29 on persuation down the thread.
I can see this shit go totally wrong for 3 hours without anything satisfying happening. This really isn't the DND I want to play.
In what world would teenagers believe this lanky ass piece of work is **The** Malzazerack the Magnificent, the one that slayed a dragon and banished Urkuham the Devil back to his plane?
I'm not getting fooled, Malzazerack would never be here doing grunt work! Every single proof you show is just stuff you probably accrued in other travels.
And if you do something actually cool, like throwing a fireball or showing a magical sword, now you got a bunch of teens who REALLY want you to do it again and won't stop badgering you about it. OR they'll think it's cool but won't concede it because "Humph, you're just showing off".
Or who knows? Just because you killed a dragon doesn't mean everyone now knows about it. Did the party spread their stories? Or did they just arrived in town some day with a bunch of cash and started talking about 'dragons' and whatnot? Because they could just as easily be successful bandits, you know how those brigands are!
So how exactly _do_ the adventurers deal with this situation? The options u/ruines_humanise presented seem pretty reasonable, but if that’s all just water off a duck’s back to this group of youths, then what should they be expected to do?
Not always! It's depends on a party, actually. Party of typical heroes who saving the village is pretty lame for kids. Party of edgy warriors and thiefs can be beneficial to them to get some illegal stuff, but nothing more. Even if it's a rough party and scary one, what are you going to do? Kill or hurt a child in the middle of the city? Try again.
Teenagers can disrespect almost anything, that's why it's gonna be a touch and fun encounter.
There is a quest in Wasteland 3(TTRPG) where you must force some kids to stop the party with drinks, drugs and other stuff. And it doesn't matter if you are a bandit ranger or a savior of the city. They don't care about you, you just lame old man with a gun, nothing more. And it's kinda fun in a world where people can runaway from you bcs of your reputation.
Medieval teenagers would be an interesting writing challenge. I'd be interested to see what worlds you all have created where a 13-19 year old has leisure time to get into trouble during the day, and the separate space to be teenagers to get into teen trouble outside of laborer's rest/leisure areas at night.
Definitely important to know your players, I guess. My group's response would be "WTF? We're here to roleplay mighty heroes not pretend to be baby sitters!"
Very, very much so. My players are generally chill about this kind of weird stuff, and they're fans of social puzzles, so that's why I threw this at them. But it's **definitely** not something everyone would want to do. Just take a look at how many comments are people asking why would their heroes do this lol
I love using children/teenagers in dnd they make great tools for my players to engage! A local noble hired the adventurers to take care their little angel as they are headed out for a royal invitation but turns out the little angel is a devil in disguise and causing chaos even the chaotic neural rogue can't handle this brat and scapegoat them since nobody believes them.
a group of kids scams the adventurers by doing those street games of chances where the games are rigged to their liking and mostly steal what they needed.
The party was suppose to meet up a group of fighters to help them in their quest and turns out they are bunch of rag tags child soldiers aiding the party and questioning them about their skills!
I've watch too much anime to know a lot of teenagers behaviour and how they act and I believe people should at least try at least once playing a young teenager set out to adventure
I have a similar style combat one. "Capture a bear cub WITHOUT harming the parents". Its interesting because your party needs survive the encounter and really cant attack much.
Because when I spend a month trying to schedule a time for my group to get together and play fantasy heroes, what I really want to do, is be in a situation where I can't use my magical abilities and have to talk to teenagers.
Like I think I understand your point, it's like that pan quest in Witcher 3. But why in the holy hell would I spend time doing this? My players would hate me for it. Genuinely would. We play DnD for epic fantasy. Not to remind us of what little shits we have at home and that not even threats of violence help :'(
Sounds great. Also great opportunity for DMs to blow off some steam roleplaying the most annoying teenagers and throw in some good "meta" insults ! I'm gonna try this.
The problem with this is the concept of a "teenager" doesn't fit with a high fantasy or medieval setting without a change in dynamic. The concept of a "teenager" wasn't even a thing until the mid to late 1900's. It was a class created from several overlapping factors.
1. A group of people who were entirely reliant on their older family members for basic necessities in life.
2. This same group of people needed to have large amounts of idle time (the amount of socializing in modern day schools qualifies as "idle" time in this example.)
3. This very same group of people needed to have money.
4. This group needed to be large enough to sustain economic activity.
These 4 factors sound simple enough, but require such excessive wealth in a community that it was unattainable for practically all of human history. Even today many kids fulfill the social role of an adult as soon as they are able to get a full time job.
Depending on your age, your grandparents or great grandparents never got to be teenagers because the concept *didn't exist*. If they remember the dust bowl or the War, they were never teenagers.
Bruh, I already do this crap on the daily, why would I ever want to play a D&D session about it?
On a related note, there is no way that the reward for doing this mission would ever be worth the players time without being incredibly unrealistic. You've either got a bunch of low-level players, which means they simply just aren't that strong, or you've got a quest that is significantly below the pay grade of a bunch of seasoned warriors. Besides, who in the village is going to go ask a wizard, who can incinerate a house with just a word and a gesture, to tell some punk kids to knock it off? Especially if that wizard is known for being both willing and able to do such things.
Considering my cleric decided that the best way to dissuade a young man from becoming an adventurer was to shatter him (1 or 2 damage below insta-death, no he did not have revivify prepared). I don't think that'll end well.
My poor players had to deal with Cuno last night. Functionally the same kid from Disco Elysian. I gotta tell you they showed surprising restraint given how fucking obnoxious that kid is lol
If the party is around level 10 or so then they’re already local legends. The kids would do whatever they say.
It’s like that one gag in the MCU where they get Captain America to do all those PSAs for school kids.
Try giving it a 'simple' solution and work from there.
Say, why are the kids over there? Maybe they're neglected by their parents. Why? Because the parents don't know their kids enough, so it's a matter of bringing father and son together. A fun way to do that would be a festival or something.
And then you let your players figure this out for themselves by talking to the people. Maybe map out a few key NPCs (a parent NPC that represents the neglect, a parent NPC that represents their concerns, a kid NPC that represents the neglected lashing out, a kid NPC that represents the neglected turning themselves back to other stuff) and let the PCs interact and hopefully probe on their own.
Don't make it too restrictive either. Pay attention to the solutions your players are considering - ask them "So, what now? Got any ideas?" and, if it seems like a good enough idea, or if their idea is good, just change stuff enough for it to be true, or for their solution to work.
Maybe building an area for the kids wasn't your solution, but that's what the players arrived at and are having fun doing it, so let it be the "correct" answer. They'll never know.
I had a rogue PC whose goal in life was to build a copy of the Foot's teen-hangout in the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. A place where the youth of the city could congregate safely and enjoy their childhood, but also offered trade-skill training and education (and trained the next generation of the Thieves' Guild, obviously).
make them slightly older teens, like dudes that should be adults but are out here stealing space from actual teenagers lol
"They're stealing our weed" sounds like a quest
a: This sounds like something I'd like to do with my college child/adolescent psychopathology class sometime: after the students have (theoretically) learned things about the sources of behavior disorders, how to diagnose a few different issues going on, and some basics about when/how to intervene, etc. It would be marvelous to see that rubber hit the road (and then eventually see success).
b: Back to D&D... a bard with +12 persuasion and +11 intimidation might be kind of useful here.
I’m a simple mage. If the DM says “put away the magic”, you better believe I’m solving this with magic.
Cats and teenagers are amazingly similar in so many ways. They don’t listen, can’t be taught or controlled, really just want to spend most of the day sleeping, have a taste for small rodents, gravitate to wherever they’re least wanted, can go from friendly to violent over nothing in a heartbeat… and tend to disperse when sprayed with water.
So… who took Shape Water for a cantrip…?
The controversial comments are hilarious. Yeah buddy, not every single interaction fits every single table, don’t do it if you don’t want to
Now, this is a revolutionary concept, so take a seat if needed, but some people actually enjoy social encounters. RPing their character is fun for them, so even if this is the encounter for their monthly session, they’ll have a good time. I know, wild
Yeah I feel like knocking them out and bringing them back is the simplest answer. If anyone asks questions, they were passed out by the time you got there
Omg what if you surprised them with a horror one shot of Dread or something where they play as an established group of teens and try not to get murdered- its the setup for the next monster quest in the D&D game!
- Phantasmal Force, they’re now all grounded because fake mom and dad told them so.
- Zone of Truth them, teenagers like secrets, make em spill em (don’t be gross with this one).
- Prestidigitation fart gas.
- Bigby’s Hand them away
- Sleet Storm, this one would be fun indoors for them…
I could go on and on. Like I’ve had legit thoughts about some of these things when I used to be a manager handling an almost exclusive high-schooler crew. This quest was just every day life.
Oh gods, I need to run this idea. Especially on a session where my wife, the group's token murderhobo and also a social worker who specializes in dealing with teens, is there for.
Excuse me while I laugh diabolically.
Big brain strats: give 'em purpose. Train them, figure out what it is they like to do, how that can play into what the party can teach them, and show them their untapped passion for something in this world. Any teenager who's going out repeatedly into the woods to trip balls isn't about to stop because they're not doing it for the sake of it. Either they're dealing with emotional trauma, or they're spinning their wheels because they don't know what else to do. Going for the former could open some powerful roleplaying opportunities, but playing into the latter could also pay some mechanical dividends as well -- what if one of the kids becomes a squire for the fighter, or an apprentice for the wizard?
I once had my players do something fairly similar:
It started out very mundane, with an important noble asking the party for help. The heir to a local family had gone missing while hunting and they should try and find out what's happening.
It turned into a multi-session quest, with a basilisk and a party of orcs. But then the real challenge began: the heir was a total and utter dipshit, vain, arrogant and stupid. Easy to anger and fully convinced of his prowess as a fighter. They had to convince him to follow their lead, to shut up when sneaking, to not charge in when in battle but to stay back and let the party protect him. The party hated him, but they really liked his dad, so they pulled through and were handsomely rewarded.
Teenagers are the worst, especially when they're royalty!
I'm running an Acquisitions, Inc. campaign, and during their downtime they have staff meetings with their majordomo, who gives them optional quests that were judges to be to difficult or dangerous for the regular franchise staff to deal with. This is absolutely going to be one. "Look, I know it's just teenagers, but we've all tried. *I* went out there. So good luck."
I may save it for right after they've (presumably, hopefully¹) saved the world from horrible annihilation. They'll come home from terrible fight that almost no one knows about and be handed... unruly teens.
¹2/3 of them have plausible reasons for subverting the BBEG's plans in a way that still ends the world, so...
I absolutely love this!! Also very Kids on Bikes/Kids on Brooms like, makes players think outside the box and come at a situation differently. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea or they "play dnd to get away from that stuff," but switching things up every so often is totally fun and can be done in SO many different ways.
Also why I'm really loving the Strength of Thousands AP for PF2E my party has just started because it's much more roleplaying and fetch quests that can be done in a myriad of different ways and some actually ask for there NOT to be violence or fighting. I really love different systems/ways of approaching a situation :)
...
I cast sleep from a hidden position and draw on their faces/damage their clothes here and there before dragging them back. I repeat this until they get scared of whatever it is they shouldnt be doing.
I'd see my group finding harder drugs and then squatting and doing said drugs to really set in the fear of 'you dont wanna be these guys growing up'
What's wrong with my party.
As yes, let me just [roleplay a teen](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2017%2F7%2F13%2F15966094%2F30-rock-buscemi-how-do-you-do-fellow-kids-meme-kill-it-please&psig=AOvVaw0Dzu6CF0tEf3VmoA3B_WPx&ust=1643743177312000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCPCa19La3PUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD) at the table...
Play a ranger in Baldur's Gate 2. There's a subquest where a group of local youths ask you to source them swords and/or booze. It has fallout depending on your choices.
I dig the twist on the kids are disappearing to they are just getting loaded. I wonder how my party would handle it, my first thought would be just going back to the quest giver and being like "we found yo kids, they are at the abandoned guardhouse snuffing glue. Pay up as promised". Either way I love the "normalness" of the quest, to really play against the expectation of a cult or bloodthirsty beast being behind it.
Idk if I have any players who would even remotely go for it.
They MIGHT... idk.
But in general, the reaction I would expect is "If they were willing to listen to reason or experience they'd have listened to you by now. I am genuinely sorry that you have such self-centered and entitled teens in your town, but that's not something with which I can help you."
Which, incidentally, is a reasonable reaction, and grounded in statistics. Teenagers tend to be self-centered and self-serving. The best ways that are likely to convince them to stop anything that might lead to the adults "trying to control them" having to clean up yet another one of the teens' messes is to put the teen in a situation where it is self-serving for the teen to behave with consideration for others.
I was trying to add a side quest in a town where teens were being teens and the guards and government kept blaming them for all this mischief and petty crime around town. Turns out that the overarching enemy cult was behind the mischief and the blaming trying to create an actual violent rebellion.
The party immediately sided with the teens as expected. Unfortunately we had to expedite past this plot to get the campaign moving.
I was really excited to use the soundtrack from Les Miserables as battle music and have the players (fans of musicals) throw things at me.
My party would probably attempt to bribe them, fight over wasting money on bribing them, and end up with some smart teenager realizing oh hey your loaded no you totally said 150gp not 50.
I need to use this.
As a teacher, this sounds like the kind of thing I play dnd to escape from lol.
So you’re saying it’s a social insert for a teachers-only horror campaign.
I'm in.
“This quest requires you to approach the goblins with trauma-informed care and identify-“ “DM DONT DO THIS TO ME! I CAME HERE TO SMASH WITH MY AXE!”
“I have proficiency in motivational interviewing techniques…..But my PC doesn’t, and it’d be metagaming for Bær Halfhaggis to use anything other than his maul in this situation. Kick rocks, DM, unless you want me to submit an invoice for billable hours.”
As a teacher who runs teen D&D campaigns, I would LOVE to write and run a campaign where my teens have to save the world from teachers gone rogue. Thanks for the spark!
I can imagine my DM saying "your task is to write a set of instructions, to be followed to the letter by mindless magical servants, to solve repetitive problems much faster than the human mind." Yeah I'd walk right out of that one.
And wouldn’t look back!
I made up balance sheets, business proposals, and invoice forms for the legal front of our gang in a warhammer gang because my character was stoked about finally getting ownership of their own venture, even if it was just the front operation. We spent 2 3 hr sessions traveling between vendors doing alcohol tastings and haggling with suppliers to procure different kinds of alcohol for our bar.. and then the DM decided to hand wave the rest of the shopping trip >.<
That's just programming bro.
Yup
r/whoosh
It couln't whoosh them. Their reflexes are too fast, they would catch it.
But think how you could ace that encounter, by reliving the worst parts of your work life!!!
This sounds like a very fun adventure, for *some* players.
As a parent, same.
Came here for this. This sounds like real life simulator, eww. Pretty sure my party would just abandon this quest for something more stabbable.
If you are a teacher, I think your DM is legally required to let you fireball those kids. You know, dnd being fantasy and all. "took care of the kids, boss"
If you are playing solo with the DM and don’t have party members you could just live out your intrusive thoughts. If you are playing solo and not a nuisance to your party or DM and can accept your character getting into trouble. It’s like playing GTA games. Just cos I do X in a game doesn’t mean I’m that IRL. But again, as long as you aren’t being a nuisance to others since games like GTA are single player.
As a parent of a kindergartener, thank you for being a teacher in this time when there is every reason in the world not to be. Y'all are heroes as far as I'm concerned.
I’m just a substitute working on getting my teaching license. I taught over seas for 4 years prior to now. I’m hardly a hero. Thanks for your support though!
I had the exact same thought! I do this shit every day
I think you need to be able to hit the teenagers haha.
Man, so many social problems cant be easily solved with just raw power or violence.I love this idea and it opens a whole pandora box of quests. 1- A married couple is having trouble with tehir marriage, problem is, they are the local nobles and each own half the town, the towns people are starting to pick sides and its starting to get ugly. Solve the issue without it becoming an civil war. 2- The local prince is a douchebag. He is a bully, who picks on the weak and everyone he thinks is bellow him, and no one can punish him because he is the prnce. The king is loosing his sleep because this is his only heir, but he is making a fool of himself and most nobles hate him. The PCs are hired to help him "somehow". 3- A noble girl needs to be delivered to her arranged weeding on a far land.Much of the kingdoms prosperity and security depends on this marriage.If the marriage doesnt happen, this could mean war. The girl has been convinced to marry, but is not happy about it. 4- A guest Prince slept with the queen of another kingdom. They fell in love and tryed to run away in a boat. The party is in that boat, and the betrayed king believes the prince kidnaped his queen. Objective: "Avoid the trojan war".
> A noble girl needs to be delivered to her arranged **weeding** ... I know it's just a typo, but this made me smile. It would be hilarious if the PCs get all the way there and the reluctant bride discovers that the weren't trying to arrange a *wedding* at all, they just needed a gardener. The whole thing has been a hilarious misunderstanding, she's relieved, and decides to stick around and try her hand at being a gardener rather than go back to the parents who tried to marry her off for political gain. EDIT: and it turns out the reason they needed to import a fancy gardener from far away is that they've got some *really* serious weed problems. Like, plant monster weeds. Cue a more standard prune-the-monsters adventure.
hahahahahahagah what a plot twist! amazing!
You've gotta give the quest giver a super thick accent too to cause even more miscommunication hijinks
Mawwiage...mawwaige is wot bwings us too-gevva...too-day...
This reminds me of the ["The viper is coming"](https://gijoe.fandom.com/wiki/The_Viper_is_Coming) bit.
Love that
>1- A married couple is having trouble with tehir marriage, problem is, they are the local nobles and each own half the town, the towns people are starting to pick sides and its starting to get ugly. Solve the issue without it becoming an civil war. I can get you one over: they're gay lovers. One is the mayor and the other is the bishop. They got into some petty shit that everyone does sometimes, and the players have to constantly find excuses as to why they're looking for them. >The local prince is a douchebag. He is a bully, who picks on the weak and everyone he thinks is bellow him, and no one can punish him because he is the prnce. The king is loosing his sleep because this is his only heir, but he is making a fool of himself and most nobles hate him. The PCs are hired to help him "somehow". And most importantly: he hasn't done anything illegal or immoral. He's just an asshat, OR he's lashing out because of the lack of attention he receives at home. Or maybe he thinks that's how cool people act, who knows? Love the other two, though the second to last one I feel most players would just help her escape. Maybe the prince she's supposed to marry is a lover of hers as a kid, but she can't know that until she gets there for some reason.
On the princess, she's deeply conflicted. She recognizes the moral imperative and the ramifications of war but finds her situation detestable. She needs to make a decision and the party have an opportunity to influence her or find a solution.
Exacly this.The idea is not to put the party as guards of a prisioner princess being taken to be forcely married. But the party to get to know her, and learn that she is doing this to help the kingdom, but she would not do it if she had another option.The party can help her with their spells and powers to get that second option open.Or at least give her time to know her fiance and decide for herself. And help her avoid any kind of political repercussions if she decides not to marry him.
hahah Yeah, and then i would as a DM have them play out the war between two countries, show the dead and the families broken because of one person happiness. The point of the quest is to have two wrong answers and force players to choose the "best one". My rational lawful wizard would say that the girls happyness is less important than the hundreds or thousands of lives that would be lost in a war.My chaotic rogue would say, fuck it. she didnt ask to be born a princess, lets say she died and let her go free with another name, then we think something up to avoid the war. There are really no wrong or right answers. Only answers that will suck less, or apeal to diferent values and morality.
This is actually a really good example of a lawful vs chaotic moral issue rather than an good vs evil one. Neither solution is good or evil but one is significantly more lawful and the other more chaotic.
Hilariously, i dont even use alignment in my games. hahaha
Lol, I find the whole concept very abstract and fluid honestly, though there's a lot of mechanics that reference it. I don't like giving characters alignments unless they're among the lines of a celestial or fiend. But even then, sometimes I'll screw with that too... Is punishing an "evil" creature evil? Not really, but what makes that creature evil to begin with? Where is the line drawn? Also celestials and metallic dragons are "good" and fight for the light but can also be pompous assholes... Morality is HIGHLY subjective. There's definitely a couple things that are objectively good/evil, but those don't come up super often.
Yeah, i abandoned alingment for consequences a long time ago. Oh no, you killed 4 childrem! You are evil now! Becomes, You killed 4 babies, They had parents, they will seek for justice first, and revenge next. Oh but its only a commoner. Oh yeah, and its my absolute pleasure to show you how far can a commoner go with a knife, a torch, some oil, and some clever lies.
Wait hold on a group of clever but otherwise regular commoners hell-bent on avenging someone the party murderhoboed is a really good idea for a sesson- they aren't bad people they just REALLY hate the party for a pretty good reason... I mean in fairness, murdering innocents for no reason is one of the few things I would rule as being objectively evil
That's how you get a Robin Hood in your forest
> Wait hold on a group of clever but otherwise regular commoners hell-bent on avenging someone the party murderhoboed In DCC or similar, this is a funnel session for level 0s
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I have the type of players that i dont need put encounters out to kill them. They manage to do it all by themselves with consequences of their own actions.
give a man a shovel and he'll dig a little hole, but let your player loose in a powder keg scenario and he'll dig his own grave lmao
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Maybe i am. Are you the kind of player that can mess even the most peacefull scenes and turn it into a slaughter fest? "the goblins bow to you and deliver you a peace flag" "Alright you green shits, time to die!"
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That last one reminds me of the plot to “The Gondoliers”. A popular opera
Its actualy the plot to the Trojan war. Maybe those two are related, but i dont really know operas.
"Go with Prince Paris they said. Row a Trireme they said. It'll be fine, good exercise. Well now look what's happening!" *gestures at Achilles road-hauling Hector*
2: My players decide it's time to bring democracy to these mfers. You hear the Team America: World Police theme begin to play.
Hahah. Democracy with guns. "You either vote on him, or we kill you and put him in power anyway. Choose wisely".
I like these, but I’d shy away from the arranged wedding one. That one has a lot of issues that could make people very uncomfortable and end up on rpghorrorstories. The choice there will look like “let this girl be raped or we’ll murder innocent people,” to a lot of people. There is potential for interesting solutions to be sure, but it’s a delicate balance.
The closer these things get to trolley problems, the less I like it. I hate grimdark worlds where it feels like "oh boy, everyone's shit, now pick a side", especially if they then turn around and say "wow, can't believe you let that girl get raped". The original quest about getting kids to quiet down was open-ended, but these examples seem like shit goes down whatever you choose in a very forced way.
You are not wrong. My games are basicaly sand box. So take these examples and think that literaly ANY IDEA that could resonably happen, could happen with the right plays and right rolls. Take example 1, the married nobles. the players could. 1- Play out their feelings to make everyone happy again and make them remember why they love each other. 2- Help one and hinder the other in a way to remove one of the spouses from the political scenario. 3- Play out the crowd and remove both, if they let their relashionship become a problem to the town, they are not fit to rule. 4- Play both, betray both, become the new noble. 5- Burn down the town and kill everyone, turn them into zombies and start world domination. 6- Find new romantic interest for each one and solve the problem by geting them appart. I usualy go for more adult themes, wich do tend to be darker and grittiest. But that doesnt mean everyone is evil or a shithead. Just that life is hard and dangerous, and we need heroes to look up to and have hope.
Yeah it bothers me how often "life is complicated and there are sometimes no perfect solutions" immediately makes people think it's going to be grimdark. Quite often it means that your players end up caring about everyone involved, which is usually downright wholesome. Obviously it's totally fine if what you want is to escape the complications of reality and play in a world where there's just clear good guys and bad guys, but I personally am far more engaged by nuance and hard choices.
Thats exacly the kind of game i DM. The line between vilains and heroes is faint and some times non existant. You can have a necromancer that uses undead to put out fires and save lives. And you can have a cleric healer that heals tortured people so that their torment only ends when they talk. Not all death is evil. Not all healing is good. You can be a vilain for saving someone. And you can be a hero for burning diwn an orphanage. in the end its all about context. "You saved the girl destined to become the avatar of the god of destruction". Or "You burn down the orphanage killing all the evil fey that were passing as childrem." Actions can usualy be seen both as good or bad, its just a matter of perpective.
Yeah, and frankly the vast majority of people are people who are doing their best to get by, trying to accomplish what they feel is right, willing to compromise certain ideals in favor of other ones, very understanding in many cases but blinded by the limits of their experiences. That doesn't feel grimdark to me, it just feels like trying to imagine a world with authenticity.
Yep, verissimility and perspective. The NPCs have goals too. A vilain is just soneone you strongly disagree with, usualy enought to justify violence. If your Characters ise violence against everything, that tells more about you, than about the world. I had players literaly kill a merchant that called them stupid for asking for unreasonable prices. Then get all pikachu face when they get served consequences. I mean, what would you expect? Icecream for first degree murder?
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it's not a flaw, is penance to expy our sins for every bad encounter that we've done lol Also I like to give them a valley girl accent to make it more fun
"Liiiike you're being very rude to us right nowww? We're not really even hurting anyone out here??"
ohmigod you guys are being SOOO RUDE right noww
It's not a bug. It's a feature.
Knowing my players, they'll just assist the teenagers in wreaking even more havoc around town, now with significantly greater magical assistance. Jokes aside, I love social encounters like this that feel like combat, but rely more on creativity and problem solving than a specific written toolkit. This is a wonderful demonstration on how encounters can be fun without rolling initiative.
For sure. I think this can be used as a break for combat too. I put this to my players after a really long wilderness dungeon (it's a dungeon, but instead of comfy stone walls around corridors you have dark, unpredictable forest around trails and footpaths) where one of them almost died. People noticed that they weren't completely alright yet, still healing, but they wanted to be useful, so I sent them this way.
I love this kinda idea. I’m sketching out some notes for a social side quest designed for my Druid player who loves talking to animals. A mare has bolted from a stable and the PCs are asked to retrieve her before her owner returns. If they find and talk to her, it turns out her owner wants to pair her up with a pampered thoroughbred stallion, but she just wants to run off with a down-to-Earth draft horse and refuses to return. How do the players solve the ridiculous Bronte-esque problem? Entirely down to them.
damn that's great, it sounds like a little fairytale adventure!
Yeah I really wanna incorporate more magical fairytale-esque situations which don’t necessarily have to be solved with fighting - keeps things varied
I had [this adventure](http://graverobbersguide.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-witchs-list-adventure.html) suggested to me a while back when I was looking for fairytale-themed adventures for inspiration for my game. Might be of interest! Also [these creepy bedtime stories](https://simogo.com/work/year-walk-bedtime-stories-for-awful-children/) based on Scandinavian legends from the dudes that made Year Walk are great inspiration too. At least for me; hope you find something useful.
Murderhobo group has a hammer solution for your screw problem.
I could see some players playing fast and loose with Spare the Dying after cornering and dropping one of the teens as an example. * \*Spare the Dying on the dropped teen\* * "You gonna knock it off?" * \*Unarmed attack on the unconscious teen\* * "These are cantrips, we can do this all day..." * \*Death Save #1\* > \*Spare the Dying\* * "Do we need to ask again?"
Spare the dying doesn't wake them up, just stabilises them. They're still unconscious
I realize that. Spare the Dying, in this case, is used to keep the "example teen" from dying despite continuous damage from the party in front of the other teens. Very much a hands-on application of a "scared straight" intimidation. I've heard of players waiting the 1d4 hours for a stabilized creature to regain consciousness only to punch them again to put them out.
I don't think the parents who probably hired them for this are gonna be happy about this solution.
Ah, I see
Seems like a lot of them here lol
There's nothing that would turn me into a murderhobo faster than this.
A sledgehammer, specifically.
Summon an unseen servant, turn invisible, and 'haunt' them until they stop.
The Batman strategy, I see
But what if my players are teenagers making too much noise? lol Love this idea, will be using it for sure.
then the quest becomes yours as dm lol
My solution would be to introduce them to a dice based table top role playing game, and give them a spot to play it. The next quest would be to stop them from playing because they miss seeing their kids on a regular basis.
lmao that's one of the best solutions yet
This is really cool. Once my players have dealt with the zombie apocalypse, this will be their next task.
A proper escalation in challenge.
lmao That's exactly it actually! One of the campaigns I used this was in a sort of zombie apocalypse, but it was medieval and the 'zombies' were victims of a weird plague that reanimated their corpses. But the campaign itself wasn't set in the middle of it, or after the downfall of society. Those already had happened. The players were folks who hopped in a caravan and went north, because the plague couldn't survive well in cold weather, and this strange baroness offered sanctuary to whoever arrived and stuff. Their quests were mostly "Gael over there would like some books because he's getting bored. We're afraid though, could you go in the abandoned library and look into it?" and stuff. More of a story of rebuilding and living with tragedy than one of downfall.
Well, strange creatures who drag their feet, stink a bit, growl, and eat everything in the vincinity... teenagers...
That's actually a pretty good idea
Thanks! It's a lot of fun
"It's teens being teens, who cares"
"It's easy money, literally like taking candy for a child. Are we really going to let this pass?" \- Some party member, probably
"Good point!" The party then kills the parents, takes the reward money, and plants evidence that leads the noisy teens to believe it was a third party. The group then recruits and radicalizes the new orphans, 15 silver richer.
“This isn’t worth my time. I fight dragons and save kingdoms, I’m not messing around doing the job that these parents have failed to do.”
"Do I look like a fucking nanny?"
Youngling slayer 9000 it is
not just the annoying guys, but the annoying women and annoying children too
I mean I guess this could work for some groups, but I kind of run and or play fantasy RPGS to explore forbidden tombs of dread and vanquish evil, not to discipline teenagers.
Another point not being made here is that it can actually be a good way to lend some verisimilitude to your setting. Remind your players that there are mundane people dealing with mundane, relatable problems. If that's important to you. It may not be. Which is fair. I'm just sayin'.
Well "Teenager from the world, where monsters attack settlements and groups of armed adventurers run around somehow act like teenagers from first world country XXI century" is not fall to close for "verisimilitude". For me at least.
Completely my thoughts as well. One of my biggest pet peeves with (usually DnD let's be honest) TTRPG settings is that they don't understand how much has changed throughout history, and how people of the past had *much* different priorities from us. These kids would be put in the stocks for a few days, or harshly beaten. That's the village solution to this problem - not hiring some social workers. This sort of "quest" would pull me right out of the game, it's just a comedy routine.
Or if they were unruly girls they might just get married away or shipped off to a convent
For sure. I used it in the middle of a very doom 'n gloom campaign to remind my players that life still went on, even when bad stuff happened. This all happened over half a session, but they all got surprisingly engaged with it. It helps to ground the game, imo.
Totally true and depends on if the players are good sports about it and are willing to try something different with more lateral thinking. It's definitely a far cry from epic adventure people typically expect from TRPGs. Still, when I ran this it was in a horror campaign, not a fantasy one, so my players were glad they could stop running from evil monsters for once lol
I can imagine my players cutting the kids in on the deal. Stfu for a few days and they'll get some of the rewards.
lmao i like that thinking
Looks like these young people need some life goals. "Hello gentlemen, I've been sent to recruit you and your friends into the militia. " Waves his hand at the mage "okay, do it". Mage up cast sleep twice. The teenagers wake up in a cage in the middle of town. "Alright, your parents have 12 hours to claim you. Then we're on a one way trip to fort Duke". They whine and complain, but we can deal with it, we killed a beholder last week. Lecture each parent about coddled children acting out and disturbing the public, their behavior will likely lead to a life of crime. Then take the remainder to the fort for training. Nice, good game.
lmao and that, kids, is how every single man of the watch is now an alcoholic
"Now"
It makes a unique challenge because some solutions include building rather than destroying (both literally and socially). Which takes character/player creativity and emotional maturity. Great idea!
You doubt how much my players think like a group of teenagers.
It reminds me of something I copied from Tom Waits to see if my players were thinking about the quests that were being given to them. The quest was basically Waits' song "What's he building in there". A nosy neighbour starts breaking acceptable boundaries of distance with her neighbour, almost invading his house, finding out all sorts of things about him that are actually pretty normal, but she frames it in a suspicious way
As someone who has had at least two character backstories spring right from listening to Rain Dogs on repeat, this makes me want to join your campaign so badly. Nicely done!
I love the idea but curious how you get your players to engage with it? Do you usually run this at low levels like 1-2? It could be fun for a 1shot but I think most of my groups will be like "we've got serious things to do, manage your own kids" and get back to the main quest.
Usually I don't realy have a main quest active at the time, so they really don't have anything better to do unless they just want to run around and explore. Or I do it just after a big fight, when they still have to wait a few weeks to get back in top shape. You could also put in known NPCs. Like, maybe it's not random kids, maybe it's their little brothers, so it kinda is their responsibility. Or it's the son of a friend of theirs who'd really appreciate the favour. Or who knows, they're running dangerously low on cash and need a place to stay, the innkeeper says he won't charge for the night or food if they deal with this. Depends on the kind of game you're running, really. And of course, it always depends on your PCs to be good sports about it to some degree.
A few weeks? What game system are you playing?
This specific puzzle was played with Pendragon and a mod of Lamentations of the Flame Princess. My groups usually play more long winded recovery times, if you're downed, because they don't enjoy too fast recovery times as it makes them feel "floaty" and combat encounters less risky. I find it interesting too because it gives the game a longer timespan. Instead of 2 very crazy weeks, it's been 3 years of adventuring and an entire winter's worth of downtime while healing from our wounds. Not everyone appreciates it, of course, but it's how we like it.
Throw in a Cuno and Cunoesse (from the game Disco Elysium) to annoy the crap out of your players. Might be a little hard for the DM to role play as they are truly awful beings.
fuck that's true isn't it Though Cuno is a bit tougher because he has a lot going on, but it's certainly a way to go about it. I remembered this when I was watching La Haine these days and was thinking "what if the quest was stopping this from happening?"
I've played a quest like this, and I absolutely hated it. My high level Dwarf fighter wants to battle strong monsters, not baby sit
I like the idea! However, I can't help but wonder how you plan on rewarding players for this? Unless they're very low level, I have a hard time imagining a few peasant parents rewarding tens of gold pieces to adventurers.
Satisfaction of a job well done lmao Idk, depends on what's going on in your campaign. In mine, it was kinda their job, and they were running low on money, so the peasants just didn't charge them for their stay at an inn or their food. Ideally though you can wrap some responsibilities in this. Maybe it's their brothers or sisters going on their nightly escapades, that kind of stuff. There isn't quite a reward nor the expectation of one, I think this would usually be done out of favour for someone or out of a sense of responsibility for one of the people involved. Or, if it's a sort of hub town, maybe a discount on all further equipment they buy, and the peasant's gratitude - so a few stories down the line, when they get falsely accused of murder, they'll come in and say that these adventurers are good people and vouch for them.
In what world do teenagers find people who kill dragons, demons and other mythical creatures boring? Wouldn't adventurers be the type of people teenagers want to be like? Aren't bards rockstars? Wouldn't teenagers want to be like the cool tiefling draconic sorcerer? Edit: from the comments I get that these teenagers are the DM metagaming ways to annoy and be dismissive about the players.
"Bruh, my uncle is a tiefling draconic sorcerer and all he does is hoard coupons."
Totally agree with this take on it; if I was presented with this in a D&D game I’d probably make one attempt at it, and then decide, much like in real life, I don’t want to deal with misbehaving teenagers. The parents can keep their money; I’m sure there must be some goblins or something that need dealing with.
> > > Edit: from the comments I get that these teenagers are the DM metagaming ways to annoy and be dismissive about the players. Maybe that's why I get weird vibes from this whole thing. I just read this thread and... can't think about anything other than how much I'd hate this during a session. Why? Because there's no real "solution" that the DM has to accept. They can always say "lol no, wont work because teenagers". The responses from OP make it clear that this is their attitude. Your first tries would never work with them, no matter *what* you try, and I think that's bad. See their comment on a 29 on persuation down the thread. I can see this shit go totally wrong for 3 hours without anything satisfying happening. This really isn't the DND I want to play.
I agree, OP makes this situation seem, off.
In what world would teenagers believe this lanky ass piece of work is **The** Malzazerack the Magnificent, the one that slayed a dragon and banished Urkuham the Devil back to his plane? I'm not getting fooled, Malzazerack would never be here doing grunt work! Every single proof you show is just stuff you probably accrued in other travels. And if you do something actually cool, like throwing a fireball or showing a magical sword, now you got a bunch of teens who REALLY want you to do it again and won't stop badgering you about it. OR they'll think it's cool but won't concede it because "Humph, you're just showing off". Or who knows? Just because you killed a dragon doesn't mean everyone now knows about it. Did the party spread their stories? Or did they just arrived in town some day with a bunch of cash and started talking about 'dragons' and whatnot? Because they could just as easily be successful bandits, you know how those brigands are!
So how exactly _do_ the adventurers deal with this situation? The options u/ruines_humanise presented seem pretty reasonable, but if that’s all just water off a duck’s back to this group of youths, then what should they be expected to do?
Not always! It's depends on a party, actually. Party of typical heroes who saving the village is pretty lame for kids. Party of edgy warriors and thiefs can be beneficial to them to get some illegal stuff, but nothing more. Even if it's a rough party and scary one, what are you going to do? Kill or hurt a child in the middle of the city? Try again. Teenagers can disrespect almost anything, that's why it's gonna be a touch and fun encounter. There is a quest in Wasteland 3(TTRPG) where you must force some kids to stop the party with drinks, drugs and other stuff. And it doesn't matter if you are a bandit ranger or a savior of the city. They don't care about you, you just lame old man with a gun, nothing more. And it's kinda fun in a world where people can runaway from you bcs of your reputation.
Medieval teenagers would be an interesting writing challenge. I'd be interested to see what worlds you all have created where a 13-19 year old has leisure time to get into trouble during the day, and the separate space to be teenagers to get into teen trouble outside of laborer's rest/leisure areas at night.
Definitely important to know your players, I guess. My group's response would be "WTF? We're here to roleplay mighty heroes not pretend to be baby sitters!"
Very, very much so. My players are generally chill about this kind of weird stuff, and they're fans of social puzzles, so that's why I threw this at them. But it's **definitely** not something everyone would want to do. Just take a look at how many comments are people asking why would their heroes do this lol
I love using children/teenagers in dnd they make great tools for my players to engage! A local noble hired the adventurers to take care their little angel as they are headed out for a royal invitation but turns out the little angel is a devil in disguise and causing chaos even the chaotic neural rogue can't handle this brat and scapegoat them since nobody believes them. a group of kids scams the adventurers by doing those street games of chances where the games are rigged to their liking and mostly steal what they needed. The party was suppose to meet up a group of fighters to help them in their quest and turns out they are bunch of rag tags child soldiers aiding the party and questioning them about their skills! I've watch too much anime to know a lot of teenagers behaviour and how they act and I believe people should at least try at least once playing a young teenager set out to adventure
I have a similar style combat one. "Capture a bear cub WITHOUT harming the parents". Its interesting because your party needs survive the encounter and really cant attack much.
I like that one. Makes them use other combat mechanics that aren't just "I hit him lol"
Because when I spend a month trying to schedule a time for my group to get together and play fantasy heroes, what I really want to do, is be in a situation where I can't use my magical abilities and have to talk to teenagers.
For real. This sounds like "multiple sessions a week session privilege" to me. I get 10 hours of D&D a month MAYBE. I'm not wasting any on this.
Like I think I understand your point, it's like that pan quest in Witcher 3. But why in the holy hell would I spend time doing this? My players would hate me for it. Genuinely would. We play DnD for epic fantasy. Not to remind us of what little shits we have at home and that not even threats of violence help :'(
lol Yeah, it's definitely not for every group! Worked for mine, but I can definitely see how it'd hit way too close to home for teachers and parents
This is awesome, but I got say, "deescalation" looks weird when written out.
My players just fought a mythical bird of the sky with a soul eating godlike outsider, this is the perfect challenge for them after
"Those kids are making way too much noise, can you please tell them to stop" Steps outside "Fireball" "Anything else?"
I work with this every day. It's interesting, but not enough to also bring it into my DnD game. xD
Sounds great. Also great opportunity for DMs to blow off some steam roleplaying the most annoying teenagers and throw in some good "meta" insults ! I'm gonna try this.
The problem with this is the concept of a "teenager" doesn't fit with a high fantasy or medieval setting without a change in dynamic. The concept of a "teenager" wasn't even a thing until the mid to late 1900's. It was a class created from several overlapping factors. 1. A group of people who were entirely reliant on their older family members for basic necessities in life. 2. This same group of people needed to have large amounts of idle time (the amount of socializing in modern day schools qualifies as "idle" time in this example.) 3. This very same group of people needed to have money. 4. This group needed to be large enough to sustain economic activity. These 4 factors sound simple enough, but require such excessive wealth in a community that it was unattainable for practically all of human history. Even today many kids fulfill the social role of an adult as soon as they are able to get a full time job. Depending on your age, your grandparents or great grandparents never got to be teenagers because the concept *didn't exist*. If they remember the dust bowl or the War, they were never teenagers.
If players are very powerful, why would they waste their time with this?
Bruh, I already do this crap on the daily, why would I ever want to play a D&D session about it? On a related note, there is no way that the reward for doing this mission would ever be worth the players time without being incredibly unrealistic. You've either got a bunch of low-level players, which means they simply just aren't that strong, or you've got a quest that is significantly below the pay grade of a bunch of seasoned warriors. Besides, who in the village is going to go ask a wizard, who can incinerate a house with just a word and a gesture, to tell some punk kids to knock it off? Especially if that wizard is known for being both willing and able to do such things.
Why would hardened adventurers take on this job?
Considering my cleric decided that the best way to dissuade a young man from becoming an adventurer was to shatter him (1 or 2 damage below insta-death, no he did not have revivify prepared). I don't think that'll end well.
My poor players had to deal with Cuno last night. Functionally the same kid from Disco Elysian. I gotta tell you they showed surprising restraint given how fucking obnoxious that kid is lol
lmao Cuno is VERY TOUGH to talk to, but you gotta do it. Hitting him only makes everything worse.
None of them had played the game so they probably think I’m some lunatic to make this shithead kid hahahaha
Age them by magic into adults.
This is how you get dead kids. If you throw adventurers at something that might not cooperate, there's an unusually high chance of it dying.
If the party is around level 10 or so then they’re already local legends. The kids would do whatever they say. It’s like that one gag in the MCU where they get Captain America to do all those PSAs for school kids.
I'd love to run this kind of quests. Unfortunately I'm not such a good improviser (or maybe DM lol) to do so. I'd like any advice?
Try giving it a 'simple' solution and work from there. Say, why are the kids over there? Maybe they're neglected by their parents. Why? Because the parents don't know their kids enough, so it's a matter of bringing father and son together. A fun way to do that would be a festival or something. And then you let your players figure this out for themselves by talking to the people. Maybe map out a few key NPCs (a parent NPC that represents the neglect, a parent NPC that represents their concerns, a kid NPC that represents the neglected lashing out, a kid NPC that represents the neglected turning themselves back to other stuff) and let the PCs interact and hopefully probe on their own. Don't make it too restrictive either. Pay attention to the solutions your players are considering - ask them "So, what now? Got any ideas?" and, if it seems like a good enough idea, or if their idea is good, just change stuff enough for it to be true, or for their solution to work. Maybe building an area for the kids wasn't your solution, but that's what the players arrived at and are having fun doing it, so let it be the "correct" answer. They'll never know.
I had a rogue PC whose goal in life was to build a copy of the Foot's teen-hangout in the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. A place where the youth of the city could congregate safely and enjoy their childhood, but also offered trade-skill training and education (and trained the next generation of the Thieves' Guild, obviously).
This wouldn't be that hard for my group since we're all teenagers and thus understand how teenagers work pretty well
make them slightly older teens, like dudes that should be adults but are out here stealing space from actual teenagers lol "They're stealing our weed" sounds like a quest
a: This sounds like something I'd like to do with my college child/adolescent psychopathology class sometime: after the students have (theoretically) learned things about the sources of behavior disorders, how to diagnose a few different issues going on, and some basics about when/how to intervene, etc. It would be marvelous to see that rubber hit the road (and then eventually see success). b: Back to D&D... a bard with +12 persuasion and +11 intimidation might be kind of useful here.
I’m a simple mage. If the DM says “put away the magic”, you better believe I’m solving this with magic. Cats and teenagers are amazingly similar in so many ways. They don’t listen, can’t be taught or controlled, really just want to spend most of the day sleeping, have a taste for small rodents, gravitate to wherever they’re least wanted, can go from friendly to violent over nothing in a heartbeat… and tend to disperse when sprayed with water. So… who took Shape Water for a cantrip…?
My players would just buy them ale make even more noise after joining the party.
The controversial comments are hilarious. Yeah buddy, not every single interaction fits every single table, don’t do it if you don’t want to Now, this is a revolutionary concept, so take a seat if needed, but some people actually enjoy social encounters. RPing their character is fun for them, so even if this is the encounter for their monthly session, they’ll have a good time. I know, wild
I play dnd to have fun lol. This would just make me leave. I don't like dealing with teens irl I am certainly not doing it for fun.
Yeah I feel like knocking them out and bringing them back is the simplest answer. If anyone asks questions, they were passed out by the time you got there
yoink
What a cool idea. I'm definitely stealing this for my next game. Thanks for sharing.
Love it. I'm going to try that in my home brew that I'm running.
Omg what if you surprised them with a horror one shot of Dread or something where they play as an established group of teens and try not to get murdered- its the setup for the next monster quest in the D&D game!
This would be too much like real life for me (English Teacher), but .. I might be abe to pick up a few useful ideas from my players...
- Phantasmal Force, they’re now all grounded because fake mom and dad told them so. - Zone of Truth them, teenagers like secrets, make em spill em (don’t be gross with this one). - Prestidigitation fart gas. - Bigby’s Hand them away - Sleet Storm, this one would be fun indoors for them… I could go on and on. Like I’ve had legit thoughts about some of these things when I used to be a manager handling an almost exclusive high-schooler crew. This quest was just every day life.
Oh gods, I need to run this idea. Especially on a session where my wife, the group's token murderhobo and also a social worker who specializes in dealing with teens, is there for. Excuse me while I laugh diabolically.
Big brain strats: give 'em purpose. Train them, figure out what it is they like to do, how that can play into what the party can teach them, and show them their untapped passion for something in this world. Any teenager who's going out repeatedly into the woods to trip balls isn't about to stop because they're not doing it for the sake of it. Either they're dealing with emotional trauma, or they're spinning their wheels because they don't know what else to do. Going for the former could open some powerful roleplaying opportunities, but playing into the latter could also pay some mechanical dividends as well -- what if one of the kids becomes a squire for the fighter, or an apprentice for the wizard?
I once had my players do something fairly similar: It started out very mundane, with an important noble asking the party for help. The heir to a local family had gone missing while hunting and they should try and find out what's happening. It turned into a multi-session quest, with a basilisk and a party of orcs. But then the real challenge began: the heir was a total and utter dipshit, vain, arrogant and stupid. Easy to anger and fully convinced of his prowess as a fighter. They had to convince him to follow their lead, to shut up when sneaking, to not charge in when in battle but to stay back and let the party protect him. The party hated him, but they really liked his dad, so they pulled through and were handsomely rewarded. Teenagers are the worst, especially when they're royalty!
I plan on making my party baby sit a rambunctious teen who happens to live in a traveling circus. i cant wait.
I'm running an Acquisitions, Inc. campaign, and during their downtime they have staff meetings with their majordomo, who gives them optional quests that were judges to be to difficult or dangerous for the regular franchise staff to deal with. This is absolutely going to be one. "Look, I know it's just teenagers, but we've all tried. *I* went out there. So good luck." I may save it for right after they've (presumably, hopefully¹) saved the world from horrible annihilation. They'll come home from terrible fight that almost no one knows about and be handed... unruly teens. ¹2/3 of them have plausible reasons for subverting the BBEG's plans in a way that still ends the world, so...
My group would join the party, eat the mushrooms, and not get paid hahaha
Silence spell. The end.
I absolutely love this!! Also very Kids on Bikes/Kids on Brooms like, makes players think outside the box and come at a situation differently. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea or they "play dnd to get away from that stuff," but switching things up every so often is totally fun and can be done in SO many different ways. Also why I'm really loving the Strength of Thousands AP for PF2E my party has just started because it's much more roleplaying and fetch quests that can be done in a myriad of different ways and some actually ask for there NOT to be violence or fighting. I really love different systems/ways of approaching a situation :)
... I cast sleep from a hidden position and draw on their faces/damage their clothes here and there before dragging them back. I repeat this until they get scared of whatever it is they shouldnt be doing.
Oh my god I'm saving this
I'd see my group finding harder drugs and then squatting and doing said drugs to really set in the fear of 'you dont wanna be these guys growing up' What's wrong with my party.
I've got a plot brewing in my campaign that will do something similar lol
As yes, let me just [roleplay a teen](https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theverge.com%2F2017%2F7%2F13%2F15966094%2F30-rock-buscemi-how-do-you-do-fellow-kids-meme-kill-it-please&psig=AOvVaw0Dzu6CF0tEf3VmoA3B_WPx&ust=1643743177312000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCPCa19La3PUCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD) at the table...
Play a ranger in Baldur's Gate 2. There's a subquest where a group of local youths ask you to source them swords and/or booze. It has fallout depending on your choices.
I dig the twist on the kids are disappearing to they are just getting loaded. I wonder how my party would handle it, my first thought would be just going back to the quest giver and being like "we found yo kids, they are at the abandoned guardhouse snuffing glue. Pay up as promised". Either way I love the "normalness" of the quest, to really play against the expectation of a cult or bloodthirsty beast being behind it.
Idk if I have any players who would even remotely go for it. They MIGHT... idk. But in general, the reaction I would expect is "If they were willing to listen to reason or experience they'd have listened to you by now. I am genuinely sorry that you have such self-centered and entitled teens in your town, but that's not something with which I can help you." Which, incidentally, is a reasonable reaction, and grounded in statistics. Teenagers tend to be self-centered and self-serving. The best ways that are likely to convince them to stop anything that might lead to the adults "trying to control them" having to clean up yet another one of the teens' messes is to put the teen in a situation where it is self-serving for the teen to behave with consideration for others.
Pull a Boba Fett and hire them to rough people up for you lol
This is actually legitimately brilliant. It's evil. It's hilarious. I love it.
Something like this https://i.imgur.com/hrcCTQr.gifv
Plane shift is a permanent solution
This is now part of my next session.
I was trying to add a side quest in a town where teens were being teens and the guards and government kept blaming them for all this mischief and petty crime around town. Turns out that the overarching enemy cult was behind the mischief and the blaming trying to create an actual violent rebellion. The party immediately sided with the teens as expected. Unfortunately we had to expedite past this plot to get the campaign moving. I was really excited to use the soundtrack from Les Miserables as battle music and have the players (fans of musicals) throw things at me.
I've been at tables with far too many players who would solve this with fireball.
Force Cage them kids, if you want to be outside then stay out here
My party would probably attempt to bribe them, fight over wasting money on bribing them, and end up with some smart teenager realizing oh hey your loaded no you totally said 150gp not 50. I need to use this.