Smaller Scope, Sharper Stakes

Let’s compare two scenarios for a campaign or adventure.

Our party of adventurers must confront The Lich King, lest his foul undeath and disease drive the whole world to extinction. Along the way they will ally with kings and the greatest heroes of the land. Once the Lich King is vanquished, they will confront a planet-devouring hivemind of strange aliens, and finish their careers by defeating corrupted archwizard who is on the verge of usurping the gods themselves.

Our party of adventurers must set out and find long-forgotten medicines at the top of a haunted mountain, lest a wasting disease claim a young girl from their village. Once she’s cured, they will fend off a bandit company who seek to pillage a nearby town. They will finish their careers by working to expose the corruption of their Count, whose control of their valley is maintained through demonic pacts.

The stakes are clearly higher for our first party. It’s a sweeping, grand fantasy that is familiar to anyone who’s cracked open a fantasy novel since Lord of the Rings. But I’d argue those high stakes are… blunt? Let’s think about what failure looks like.

Let’s say our first set of intrepid heroes do fail, the All-Devouring Swarm of Space Worms get to do some all-devouring to the world, fin. The GM closes their book dramatically, campaign over with a “bad end.” This could be fun and subversive, once or twice! Though you can’t really do it more than once a campaign, given that the world has been devoured. You could resort to deus-ex machina and having Hera restore the world and Zeus himself beat back the invaders, though I’m not sure that would even be satisfying the first time. Certainly by the second, it would lose what little charm it has. If the stakes are world-rending and campaign-ending, I don’t think you can satisfyingly follow through on them.

Our second set of intrepid heroes, however, may fail all the time. In fact, each failure may point to more adventure! The young girl succumbs to her wasting disease, and they swear revenge on the county magistrate who refused to dispatch a healer. The nearby town is pillaged and they help build it back from rubble. The devious Count destroys the evidence of his crimes, so they hatch a plan to get the ear of his liege lord—the Duke of the High Mountains. By constraining the scope, the stakes can be sharp enough to draw blood (without killing the campaign).

Keeping your scope small also gives room for escalation. You’ve overthrown the yoke of your boss at the local mine? Well, the company has the ear of the police and they’re sending a unit to put down the “rebellion.” You’ve got enough evidence to bring down a dirty alderman? Better hope the mafiosi don’t catch wind of your activities. If you start at the broadest possible scope (kings, nations, worlds), there’s nowhere to go but into parodically cosmic stakes.