In Search Of… The Wendigo

So, I’ve always had a minor problem with D&D games: the only monsters that appear at any one time are monsters that you, the hero, are capable of handling. If you are a first level hero, you’ll get easy monsters. A fifth level hero will get other, more difficult monsters. A fifteenth level hero will get quite tough monsters. Once you get past the first level or two, rats no longer seem to inhabit the world. But while you’re in the first couple of levels, nothing truly dire will come your way.

This lessens the verisimilitude of the world. One would think that on this wild continent, any manner of creature might cross your path, and not just monsters that you could handle.

Of course, one can see why developers would do just this sort of thing. A game is most satisfying when it’s just at the right point in the difficulty curve: challenging, but not impossible.

And, of course, the very word “hero” implies something, doesn’t it? A hero has no call to cower in the darkness, unable to face the next monster. And, a hero has more important things to do than to rid basements of rats. At least after the opening scene, he does.

I’m attempting to do something just a bit different. The mod opens with the “hero” hiding behind a tree. A group of Slaad–much too difficult for the level five hero (a hero alone, at that)–have it trapped in a cliff-enclosed glade.

I don’t really intend the player to fight these monsters. I’m using them as a game device. They are intended to be a barrier, something to leave our hero looking for another way out of the situation he or she is in. I could just build a cliff wall there: a pretty solid way of telling the character “No, you can’t go here.” I’d rather leave the character wondering.

Of course, if you present a character with this sort of choice (face these impossible monsters, or look elsewhere for a way out) plenty will try, at least a time or two, to face the monsters. It’s a given that somebody out there will figure out a way to kill them or get past them, even though I steer the player away from them with a journal entry.

I don’t know right now if this is an intriguingly different way to begin, or if it’s just bad level design.

I am, however, coming up with a few ways to keep the player on track. I’ve barred the path through the forest, and put the key on a character deep within the cave where I want the character to go. So, even if they manage the impossible and kill those beasts (as someone out there surely will), they won’t miss the plot developments that come with taking the “official” path through the game.

It’s kinda cool, actually, how making one simple decision like this–to use monsters as a barrier–has affected lots of different aspects of the game world. It’s changed the area design, of course, but it’s also nudged me toward some plot choices. It makes the game world a little more nuanced, a little more mysterious.