Cut-Scenes and Minigames
At the start of a few sessions in my longest-running campaign I tried out a few experimental storytelling techniques. Each one was about 20 minutes long, so not a huge investment of time, and they provided some fun ways for my players to experience some aspect of the world or lore in an engaging way. Plus it's just nifty to shake things up sometimes! Here are some of the experiments I've tried:
History Lesson
The party took over an ancient Dwarfish stronghold under a mountain. They didn't know much about the fate of the dwarves there, but they knew a few names. So at the start of one encounter I ran a little session for them set during the final council of the dwarves at the end of the great war.
I made sure to treat it like a cut-scene. I described the audio cues, the camera pans, cuts, etc. (my schooling in film techniques helped here). Ten minutes before go-time I gave each player a cue-card with a name, and three important bits of info. For example (these are from memory and not accurate):
Salzerak
- You are the court wizard
- You truly believe studying necromancy is the only way to defeat Koschei the Deathless
- Your secret early tests have corrupted your hand, and it's slowly spreading up your arm.
King Brug
- The only hope to save your people is for your brother to make a treaty with the elves
- You've secretly begun construction of an underdark refuge in case the war is unwinnable
- You aren't sure which of your advisors to trust
Squire Nok
- Your war party found the elves dead and turned into zombies when you arrived
- Prince Belg, brother to the king, died in battle
- Shamefully, you ran before the battle ended. No one can know
There were others but I don't remember them anymore.
Then I played the court advisor and announced visitors, prompted the king to respond and make decisions. That character allowed me to steer the conversation so people could focus on improv when they were pointed at. It worked out pretty well. There was some inevitable awkwardness, but I think focusing on quickly setting the tone, and then giving the players easily digestible characters to run was what made it work. No lore dumps, no lists of forgettable names. We just examined the concerns facing the characters present at the time of the event.
Survive The Winter Minigame
I reasoned that the first winter my PCs and their new townsfolk spent in their Dwarfish Stronghold would be kind of rough. They didn't have sufficient supplies, and the city itself was ancient and decrepit.
I gave each of my four PCs a squad of commoners to command. I broke the winter into three chunks (a month each) and gave them six tasks to complete each month (gather food, reinforce the architecture, root out monsters, etc.).
Each player could dedicate their squad to one task per month, and rolled a check to see if it worked out. If it did, great! If not, their squad lost a couple commoners. Tasks that didn't have a squad assigned got a flat 1d20 roll, and if it failed, every squad lost a commoner.
It wasn't elaborate or especially inventive, but it helped paint a picture of the hardship of that period without me simply deciding what happened. It gave them a bit of agency, but with very low stakes. Mathematically it didn't matter much what the players chose, the odds were all pretty level. And truth be told, the number of commoners at the end of the winter had no bearing whatsoever on the health of the town. That isn't even something I tracked or modelled. It was just some procedural storytelling nonsense. But it worked!
The B-Team
My players are pretty high level now. This is a 1-20 campaign and they're closing in on the last couple of levels. I think it's easy to lose sight of just how powerful a high level 5th edition character is, so I started one session by giving each player a level 4 character sheet.
Two bits of context:
- I had established that the Dwarfish stronghold my players ran had attracted low-level adventurers who plumbed its unmapped regions looking for treasure and adventure.
- Our last session ended with the PCs visiting the Feywild, being attacked by a couple of beefed-up hydras, and deciding to plane shift home.
So, our level 4 characters had been in the Dwarfish stronghold's depths getting up to level 4 nonsense: they fought an ochre jelly for some treasure. They managed to wrap that up when they heard a strange sound from around the bend behind them - the sound of a portal opening up and a screeching, wounded hydra flopping through. They were trapped in a corner as the hydra began to bear down upon them. I gave them one initiative round to do what they could: some ineffective spells, arrows, and swords bounced off its hide, but it was looking grim.
The hydra attacked, dropping one character.
Then, the players' regular high-level characters came bounding through the portal. A hailstorm of arrows, fist blows, and fire made quick work of the wounded monster (in fact, it conveniently died once each PC landed an attack on it though I'll never admit that to them).
After the battle ended I took control of the low-level adventurers again and had them fawn over the heroes. It made them feel like huge badasses, and reminded them how far they had come.
More Stuff To Try
I think it would be fun to do another intro similar to the Dwarfish council, but let the players control some nasty villains performing a ritual. Give each one of them a role to play (one character has to wrestle the victim onto the sacrificial slab, one reads the incantation, another one lights the candles, etc.). Once the ritual is underway, drop the curtain.
The goal would be for the players to encounter this ritual later in the session. Obviously this only works if this is where the story is headed, so I haven't had the chance to work this in yet. But I think something along these lines could be fun.