The Bandit Game

If you are one of my players, go away

I have recently been running a D&D game in which the players are bandits; they are bad people who rob, cheat, lie, and steal. It is an idea that I have been thinking about for some time and I have finally been able to realize it.

Gather ’round and listen.

There are several classic modules that we have all played but those of you who have run them will know that there is a wealth of content rarely used. I speak of T1 Village of Hommlet, B2 Keep on the Borderlands, and L1 The Secret of Bone Hill. These three modules give us settlements for the PCs to operate in and what they have, un-beknownst to many players, is massive amounts of treasure in said settlements. Massive amounts of treasure hidden away in castles, keeps, and people’s homes. Gold and gems stashed in loose bricks in the fireplace, hidden in wells, under a pile of sawdust in the shed, etc. The titular Keep of B2 has shop-keepers and bankers with their cashboxes brimming with fully-detailed lists of treasure. What do we do with all of this? We make them all bad people so our players can rob them blind of course.

I have taken these three modules and glued them together in a small hexmap (each hex being roughly 3 miles) and grabbed some names throughout the various adventures to make it all fit into a nice little setting. The players are given free reign to explore the area, case out the different shops, suss out what villagers are squirrelling away their wealth.

The county of Verbobonc, lorded over Viscount Charles Verbobonc VI, a haughty and proud noble well past his prime, has allowed his lands to fall into ruin. Influence from the foreign Kerysia has made the native Avalonese weak. They have lost the true spirit of their blood. They have ceased worshipping the Old Gods. De-moralized by the loss of their culture, they have done little to stop the rise of bandit gangs in the area. South of Nulb are the Eyes in the Night. In the forests south-east of Hommlet, Rory’s Raiders prey across the Velverdyva to strike at caravans headed to the Keep. Lizard-men live in the central swamps. The hills surrounding Restenford crawl with the Bald Hill Boys, an orcish gang.

Now the players arrive. Why they are a bandit, a highwayman, a common scoundrel even is un-important. Their goal however? Very important. To reclaim the treasure that belongs to their people by right of blood. They will avoid murder when they can – it’ll only draw prying eyes and the taught rope of the noose.

How do we accomplish this though? There are mechanical considerations to be taken.
First, a note regarding system; I run a game built off of the Moldvay/Cook Basic & Expert sets but with liberal additions from AD&D, OD&D, Arcanum (Sechi Games), and whatever else I find that I like. A true franken-brew of a game.

With that being said, I have surprisingly done away with Thieves for this game. Instead everyone gets thief skills. I have a system that is not un-like LotFP’s d6-based system but one that I created before ever reading LotFP. For purposes of this campaign I have made two slight adjustments to that however; I have given players far more “points” to put into their skills and I have added several new skills; the former of course facilitates the latter. These new skills include “scrubbing evidence,” used for cleaning up a crime scene to make sure you didn’t leave any clues behind, “confidence & fencing,” used for selling hot items, acquiring black market goods, and even up-selling other items, “forgery,” and “disguise.” Might this lead to un-balanced characters? Perhaps. But so far we haven’t had any issues so I’m going to keep on keeping on.

Let us return to the map I posted above for a moment. Using paint.net (a program which I highly recommend) I have created several layers that I can turn on or off, including a ‘notes’ layer which has some extra details written in different hexes to remind me where things like the hermit’s shack is (from B2) as well as a ‘wandering monster zone layer’ where I’ve put a few different-coloured filters over the various hexes on a translucent layer. This way I can tailor wandering monster rolls based on the area. The rival bandit groups (which I’ll speak to in a moment) have influence in different regions – it is more likely to run into one of them and less likely guard patrols the closer to their ‘hideouts’ one is. Certain roads are still well-patrolled and therefore guards, peasants, and merchants are much more likely encounters. As bandit forces are whittled away, I can modify what groups control each area thus making a dynamic world that responds to the player’s actions with ease.

As I said, I have added other bandit groups into the area. This is important as it gives players some immediate rivals other than law-enforcement, but also a source of allies. When the leadership of each gang has been defeated, their followers will make morale saves – some of them may wish to join with the players. As of my writing this, the Bald Hill Boys are all but defeated and one of their lieutenants, Gorharg, has joined the player’s gang as an enforcer. These rival groups have so far allowed the players to defeat enemies of the various towns as a way to ingratiate themselves with local populace, making it easier to gain intelligence on marks.

To what end am I doing this? Long have people talked about running an ‘evil campaign.’ Yet you will notice very few actual examples of this being pulled off. Too often have people attempted such a game but it falls into one of two pitfalls.
The first being, players falling into what I call “KOTOR evil,” named for the old Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic video game. If you wanted to play a sith character, your dialogue options were always the most petty examples of evil imaginable. A beggar in the street? Your options were to give him some credits, ignore him, or spit on him and insult his family. It is not evil, it is the schoolyard bully’s idea of evil. A pestering nuisance cackling like Garglemel or Skeletor or whatever other ineffectual Saturday-morning-cartoon villain one can think of. This of course, does not lead to a rewarding game. Just nerds living out their deranged fantasies of being the bully.
The second is the players being edgy and graphic. Describing how the blood oozes out of every wound, how they twist the knife, etc. It gets extremely old extremely quick.

But this? This allows the players to play on the other side of the law. They can justify it however they want – maybe they’re taking on a Robin Hood type role. Maybe they are looting and stealing in an occupied territory a la Kelly’s Heroes.

I hope, like I hope with all of my works, that this has inspired you in some way. I will enjoy hearing how any of you might run something similar.