How to Be a Good Game Master, Lesson 2: How to Assault Your Players' Stronghold

One criticism I received about my last “How to Be a Good Game Master” post was that it was too focused on combat and not enough on role-playing. This is true and I will attempt to do better in this post. Like most game masters, I tend to be a little heavy on the combat side, but also I would like to have more role-playing in my games. I think the reason why we tend to drift over to the combat side is that it’s easier for us to run. Most pen and paper RPG systems are written with plenty of support for combat. Mean while, the rules for a social engagement often boil down to “make some sort of skill roll.” This isn't much help for game master’s trying to come up with interesting social encounters for our players. Fortunately, much of the advice I’m giving in this blog for combat can be adapted for social encounters. The reason is that in social encounters the players have some goal they have to obtain and various obstacles, often including people who try to stop them, just as in physical encounters. I will attempt to make these correlations explicit later on.

In a lot of RPGs, the PCs' (Player Characters') are essentially nomads; they move from one location to another, over come whatever challenges you’ve prepared, and collect the loot. Other times, whether through your design, or because an enterprising player decides to stake a claim to some dungeon the PCs' just cleared of monsters (assuming they can get the blood out of the carpets…), the players have a strong hold to call their own. In either case, it is entirely logical for one of the PCs' enemies to try to take it away from them. This is a substantially different scenario than what game masters are use to running and, since the players have so much at stake, one that you have to make sure you do a good job with. In this post I will look at best practices when designing assaults against a stronghold belonging to the PCs.

Assaulting Your Player’s Strong Hold the Combat Way:

Having the PCs' enemies attack their strong hold can be a very interesting scenario, since it essentially reverses the roles of players and the game master. That is, the players get to set up the location and the game master gets to invade it.

Step One: Make sure you know the defenses the PCs have put into place. This is important for two reasons. One reason is that if you forget some defense and the enemies walk straight through it, the PCs are going to whine like hell. The second reason is that each of those defenses represents an investment of game time, the PCs resourses, and the players' imaginations. It really sucks for players not to get to see their creations go off. For this reason, you should make an effort to have the players get to see each of their defenses effect the encounter in a meaningful way. Each time you do so, you deliver a dose of satisfaction to the players, which is the business that we, as game masters, are in.

Remember, players are markedly less willing to suspend their disbelief when it’s against their best interest to do so.

That all said, it doesn’t mean that their defenses need to be effective in stopping the attack. There need to be some points during the attack where the players sweat. One simple trick is to add in additional enemies, just to compensate for whatever defenses the PCs have. The automated machine gun turret that the PCs dragged home from some other adventure might take down five guys; if that machine gun turret hadn’t been there, neither would those five guys, but the players don’t need to know that and it produces great imagery.

It’s also more than likely that the PCs strong hold will have some flaw in its defenses. This is an excuse to ignore all the PCs defenses, but you should be cautious about taking it. Remember, not giving those defenses screen time is negating player investment and satisfaction, though there may be times were this is alright. Use your judgment. Additionally, there are two ways to use a flaw in conjunction with the player’s defenses to greater effect. One: use the flaw now, use the defenses later. How this works is to send in a burglar, assassin or saboteur. After the PCs have dealt with this encounter, you’ll have highlighted that flaw in their defenses and they’ll have an opportunity to fix them before the next assault, where the rest of their defenses will come into play. This is especially appropriate with the assassin or saboteur, since one generally sends one of those in immediately before starting the main attack. The second method is to use the defenses and the flaw at the same time. For instance, your PCs enemies might launch a frontal assault on the strong hold while, at the same time, an elite team using the flaw circles around back and takes the PCs in the rear. The defenses might allow the PCs, or a subgroup of them, to withstand the main attack for some number of rounds before having to deal with the elite team. Then, if you wish, you can theatrically have the main force break through the defenses as soon as the PCs finish dealing with the intruders.

If you don’t remember what defenses your players have added to their base, just ask them. They’ll probably be able to talk your ear off about what they've done. If they don’t remember, then you don’t have to worry about it. If you don’t want to tip your hand about being about to attack with in the next couple sessions, you could just say that you’re updating your notes.

Finally, make sure you know how the enemies get to the strong hold. Not into the strong hold, though that is important too, just how they get up to the door. Did they walk, drive, ride the train, ride horses, fly, teleport, use invisibility? This is important because the PCs should always get some chance to detect an on coming assault. Maybe the PCs have security cameras; maybe one of them just happens to look out the window at the right moment. Always make a roll to see if the players see the attack coming, even if the chances of it are slim. Even if the chances of the PCs succeeding on that check are close to zero, the fact that you gave them a chance will cut down a lot on player whining.

The Non-Combat Way to Assault Your Player’s Strong Hold

In this section we will look at how to translate the above advice into "how to assault your players' stronghold in a non-combat scenario."

This assault can come in several forms. One way your PCs' opponents might try to remove them from a stronghold is to have them evicted. Perhaps, particularly if the players took their stronghold by force in the first place, their enemies might be able to establish, to whatever legal authority, that they have the better claim to the stronghold. Alternatively, the PCs enemies might stage a foreclosure on the property, either legitimately or otherwise. If the PCs need access to some resource to hold on to a stronghold, such as an income of money or access to fuel for a mobile base, this provides their enemies with another route to strike at them. They might conspire to have a PC loose a job or disrupt the market for whatever else the PCs need. Finally, they could try to disrupt the reason why the PCs are holding that strong hold in the first place. If the stronghold is the castle that lets them charge a tax on trade over an important route, their enemies might attempt to create another route that circumvents the PCs. If the stronghold is on top of a magical stream, their enemies might attempt to redirect the flow upstream. Any of these assaults will leave the players with a serious problem to solve.

Unlike the combat based approach, the players are unlikely to have spent a great deal of time explicitly preparing for this kind of assault. However, it is a great opportunity for you to bring back various NPCs and other things that the PCs have interacted with before. This will help give your game a sense of object permanency that so many pen and paper RPGs lack. In this scenario, a friend the PCs made or a NPC they were nice too might be the equivalent of a fortification wall or a perimeter alarm, slowing down the enemies shenanigans or passing the PCs a heads up days before they would have found out normally. Similarly, a pissed off bureaucrat that the PCs roughed up might take this opportunity for revenge, facilitating the adversary's plans. It might be a good idea to make a list of all the NPCs the PCs have encountered that might get involved in this action and how likely they are to help or hurt the PCs. This will help you plan out the adventure as well as be a good tool if you have to improvise during the game session.

Again, like in the combat assault, it is important the PCs see everything happen, even if it is after the fact, and have a chance to defend their stronghold. The goal here is to provide your players with an interesting narrative and meaningful ways to interact with it. If you have the PCs’ opponents stealthily manipulate the local officials without the players ever finding out about it, you’ve accomplished exactly nothing as far as the game goes. On the other hand, if you give the players a series of growing hints as to what’s going on, then you are building up the excitement toward the climax where the adversaries plans finally come to culmination or where they are defeated. The same goes for giving them a chance to defend their stronghold. You could just have the adversaries show up with the police, kick the PCs out, and change the locks. This accomplishes nothing. If, instead, a judge gives the PCs a week or two to build a legal defense, or there is a week before the hearing and the PCs have to find information to discredit their adversary before that date, things get exciting.

One last thought: While you should always give the PCs at least the perception of a chance to resist losing a stronghold, if the PCs actually do loose it, there might be an interesting further chapter of your game of them trying to take it back. In this case, the flaw in the strongholds defenses might be the back door that lets them launch their own assault. However, remember motivation: if you have their adversaries kick the PCs out of the stronghold too easily the first time, the players might decide that the stronghold is indefensible and decide to settle somewhere else. Also, if they decide that you, as game master, aren’t going to respect any defenses they put up, they might decide to go back to being nomadic.

I was going to talk about assassination attempts on PCs in this post, but I think this post is long enough as it is. I'll talk about assassination attempts some other time.