An Innovative Use of Art in your D&D Campaign
or
A Better ‘Mechanic’ for a Subtle Charm Affect
How do you handle players being Charmed or otherwise magically influenced?
The default mechanism many DMs use seems to be a saving throw followed by telling players who fail “You have to treat the fox-woman as a friend”. This is not ideal. Even if you use a note, players aren’t world class actors, everyone at the table knows what's happening. The charmed player will only be friendly until they have the thinnest excuse not to be. And the non-charmed players won’t take the charmed player’s ‘opinion’ seriously.
In short this mechanic doesn't allow for any of the story telling potential of a Charmed character to actually come about. And it certainly does allow for the charmed character's player, or their companions to have a compelling experience at the table.
I think I came up with an interesting way to handle a 'charm affect' that could actually allow for a compelling charm-like affect at the table. It's a little outside the box, and isn't a generally replacement for the bog standard charms in your RPG. In fact its use case is tiny. But its fun and interesting and isn't actually a mechanic at all.
I was introducing a new humanoid monster to my campaign, an underdark dwelling salamander-humanoid that was making trouble on the surface. I’ll call them Dwellers.
The Dwellers have a special ability where if a nearby creature fails a check they will view the Dweller positively or as non-hostile. A minor pheromone base charm. This is where the art comes in. I commissioned an artist from Fiverr to draw two pictures of a Dweller, one where the Dweller seemed potentially hostile and one where it looked sort of innocent.
When the party first met the Dwellers I had them take their check, and described the Dweller, being careful to describe them in a flat, factual, manner. Then I said, “I have a picture of a Dweller, I’ll text it to you”, and I sent the players that passed their check the picture on the left, to the players that failed the check I sent the picture on the right.
The default mechanism many DMs use seems to be a saving throw followed by telling players who fail “You have to treat the fox-woman as a friend”. This is not ideal. Even if you use a note, players aren’t world class actors, everyone at the table knows what's happening. The charmed player will only be friendly until they have the thinnest excuse not to be. And the non-charmed players won’t take the charmed player’s ‘opinion’ seriously.
In short this mechanic doesn't allow for any of the story telling potential of a Charmed character to actually come about. And it certainly does allow for the charmed character's player, or their companions to have a compelling experience at the table.
I think I came up with an interesting way to handle a 'charm affect' that could actually allow for a compelling charm-like affect at the table. It's a little outside the box, and isn't a generally replacement for the bog standard charms in your RPG. In fact its use case is tiny. But its fun and interesting and isn't actually a mechanic at all.
I was introducing a new humanoid monster to my campaign, an underdark dwelling salamander-humanoid that was making trouble on the surface. I’ll call them Dwellers.
The Dwellers have a special ability where if a nearby creature fails a check they will view the Dweller positively or as non-hostile. A minor pheromone base charm. This is where the art comes in. I commissioned an artist from Fiverr to draw two pictures of a Dweller, one where the Dweller seemed potentially hostile and one where it looked sort of innocent.
When the party first met the Dwellers I had them take their check, and described the Dweller, being careful to describe them in a flat, factual, manner. Then I said, “I have a picture of a Dweller, I’ll text it to you”, and I sent the players that passed their check the picture on the left, to the players that failed the check I sent the picture on the right.
For what I was trying to do, it is very important that the differences in the pictures are very subtle. Neither makes the Dwellers look like horrible monsters with blood dripping from their mouths. If one player glanced at another’s phone they wouldn’t say “Hey Bob’s got a different picture than me”.
I was hoping seeing the different pictures would have a subtle subconscious affect on the players. Influencing how they viewed the Dwellers. It worked very well. All the players that got the ‘non-hostile’ picture gave the Dwellers the benefit of the doubt. All but one of the players that got the ‘hostile’ picture were immediately suspicious of them.
These salamander-men were one of the main antagonists of the campaign and my art-based mechanic helped make for dynamic PC to PC discussions with one group of PCs being much more suspicious of the Dweller's motives then the others.
And because the players, not the PCs were the ones that were influenced, we never had the influenced PC making half hearted arguments, or the other PCs being unreasonably dismissive because the players all knew someone was charmed.
Of course the main drawback to this idea is that it could simple not work. Some or all your players might be unmoved by the subtle innocence of the picture on the left. But if that happens I have the perfect solution. Actually its one of my secrets to being a great DM.
When you try to do something cool and it doesn't work, just don't tell your players you tried anything! Your players don't know that the Dwellers were supposed to have a pheromone charm ability. Just move along and play as normal.
I was hoping seeing the different pictures would have a subtle subconscious affect on the players. Influencing how they viewed the Dwellers. It worked very well. All the players that got the ‘non-hostile’ picture gave the Dwellers the benefit of the doubt. All but one of the players that got the ‘hostile’ picture were immediately suspicious of them.
These salamander-men were one of the main antagonists of the campaign and my art-based mechanic helped make for dynamic PC to PC discussions with one group of PCs being much more suspicious of the Dweller's motives then the others.
And because the players, not the PCs were the ones that were influenced, we never had the influenced PC making half hearted arguments, or the other PCs being unreasonably dismissive because the players all knew someone was charmed.
Of course the main drawback to this idea is that it could simple not work. Some or all your players might be unmoved by the subtle innocence of the picture on the left. But if that happens I have the perfect solution. Actually its one of my secrets to being a great DM.
When you try to do something cool and it doesn't work, just don't tell your players you tried anything! Your players don't know that the Dwellers were supposed to have a pheromone charm ability. Just move along and play as normal.