DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45A: By Commissar’s Decree
“I’m glad you could come here today,” Carrina said. “The Commissar appreciates all of the work and sacrifices you have made for this city.”
“Happy to oblige,” Tor said.
“As your recent actions in the Temple District suggest, you’re already familiar with the recent surge in cultist activities within the city,” Carrina continued.
“Intimately so,” Tee said.
“Just so,” Carrina smiled thinly. “That’s why the Commissar has chosen to deputize you to investigate the cultist activity.”
“We’re already doing that,” Elestra blurted.
“Then it should be no great hardship to do it in the Commissar’s name,” Carrina said. “You will each be paid 75 gold pieces a month, with additional bonuses to be paid at my discretion for tangible results.”
One of my favorite things to do as a GM is having powerful and important people – the people in charge – recognize and acknowledge what the PCs have been doing in the campaign. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it isn’t. Often it’s a little bit of both. But either way, this is almost always guaranteed to excite the players.
Focusing on just the good stuff for the moment, recognition in my games have resulted in the PCs being:
- Recruited to exclusive organizations
- Featured in news reports
- Invited to exclusive social events
- Deputized to solve a problem
- Given a spaceship
- Granted lucrative contracts
- Knighted
- Given noble titles
Sometimes this acts as a kind of reverse patronage: Instead of having someone rich and powerful offer them payment up front, they instead materialize after the fact and give the PCs a monetary or material reward for something they did for completely different reasons.
An earlier example of recognition as reward in this campaign was the Harvesttime party at Castle Shard. In that case, the social event reward also served as a way to advance several threads of the campaign, introduce new NPCs, and drop a number of clues.
Similarly, in this session, the PCs are getting deputized, giving them official recognition and a small stipend for doing the thing they’re already doing (investigating the chaos cults). Deputization is also an example of the techniques I talk about in Random GM Tips: Calling in the Little Guys, where the official response to the PCs calling the cops (or the local equivalent) is to say, “Wow! Yeah! That’s definitely a problem! Can’t wait to see how you resolve it!” So, in this case, I’m kind of preemptively taking “let’s go to the authorities!” off the table: Yes, the Commissar would definitely be interested in stopping the chaos cults. Rather than letting that potentially sideline the PCs, let’s instead seize the opportunity to put them in the spotlight!
In other words, delivering recognition as reward can often serve multiple purposes at the same time.
As such, no matter how positive the immediate recognition, it’s also almost always a double-edged sword: Being recognized as important also means painting a target on yourself. You’re an important superhero? Then supervillains may want to preemptively take you off the board. You’re known to have the ear of the crown prince? That makes you a target for grifters, conmen, and others who see the PCs as a means to their ends. (This is also what happened when Rehobath schismed the Imperial Church.)
To flip this one last time, though, the reason recognition attracts negative attention like moths to flame is specifically because the PCs are burning so bright! Even without a formal position (like becoming deputies), recognition can be as empowering as any magic item. Often moreso. Having the ear of the crown prince isn’t just really cool, it also lets you do things that would otherwise be impossible.
This not only enhances your current camapign. It’s also a signal that you’re ready for a new kind of adventure.
Campaign Journal: Session 45B – Running the Campaign: Monster + Environment
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
I’ve had good success with this, specially trying out the bastion system for the new d&d stuff, and also having them be in front of a number of important NPCs. It’s a very real world parallel “if we could just be in the same room as we could clear up a LOT of this…” and that’s been a huge method of letting them connect with NPCs, cut their roleplay chops a bit for the combat-leaning folks getting to meet key NPCs for their stories, and just overall varying up the “loot.”
In my example for a say, bastion, maybe they meet a noble who likes the idea of there being a little more competition in the smithing in town because one time he was snubbed by the local blacksmith (fault irrelevant) so he offers to upgrade that facility to a larger one to give them “the best competition possible” out of spite for the other guy — but that only comes up if the players use what was put in front of them. If they talked with the smith enough to know some noble had beef with him, or otherwise found that bringing up that topic was the clue for that reward.
When i put players in these social situations (and this is getting away from the topic) i try to make various triggers for unlocks in them, and recognition is still dependent on them leveraging that power. What i find is players have a harder time remembering all the nuanced conversations that might set something like this up, but they absolutely remember their gold sherrif’s badge, so to speak. So yes, this is an excellent idea.
I’ll also never forget one of my player’s reactions that nearly made me spit my drink laughing.
“I hereby declare you protectors of the realm!”
“Wait … so, you’re paying us in exposure?”
“It’ll look good on your resume.”
[ conversation nearly turns sour as i have an NPC coming up behind them with a trunk of gold that they only see as they turn around ready to insult the king and leave the kingdom forever… ]
So, lesson learned if you’ve put them through the ringer, “get to the f***ing monkey” fast in the pitch so they dont plot to snub your reward before you get it to them. Unless that’s the game you’re running, then go wild. xD it -was- hilarious.