In another article a few weeks ago, I mentioned the benefits of conflict and how to add it to your games. I described how one of the key elements in introducing conflict is having a faction or group (or even just one angry guy) want the same thing as the players, but for differing reasons.
You can read the full article below if you’re interested in the full process.
However, sometimes its not evil villains and cataclysmic events. Sometimes, you want something more grounded where the “villains” aren’t trying to kill you, they’re just trying to buy you out or cut off your trade lines for profit. In fact, they might not even be villains.
In other words, conflict without the explicit need for violence.
Enter: the Silk Road campaign.
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What is the Silk Road campaign?
Much like Ben Robbins with the West Marches1, the Silk Road is a name I’m calling this campaign style to describe a game that primarily focuses on the following four ideas:
The player characters have a goal of getting from one location to another, usually across a very large distance (we’re talking weeks at least, majority of the time much longer).
The player characters are all part of the same faction, or at the very least agree on a common goal (the Amarki Death Cult member isn’t working with the Life+ Corporation employee unless they both are needing to transport Saint Ilumar’s Skull to the Promised Plains).
The world at large is explored, settled, and/or routes between locations have been established, but are largely new to the PCs (note this doesn’t mean the places of the world aren’t dangerous—just because you can see the entirety of the Sahara from space doesn’t mean you want to be stuck in the middle of it).
The player characters are transmitting supplies, people, and ideas across the majority of their travel (thus requiring stops and frequent auditing of the supply).
I’ll describe each of these in greater detail momentarily, but I wanted to briefly talk about the why; as in, why is this it’s own type of campaign?
Recently, I’ve picked up running a game of Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec. I’ve always been fascinated with this setting and Luka’s perspective on “anti-canon worlds”. I may end up doing a sort of “response” to the wonderful article he wrote about that very topic someday, but I digress.
The setting of the UVG is explored and well-connected. You can count how many weeks it takes, by road or trail, to get from the “starting city” to the furthest destination at the edge of the known world. It’s also filled with absolutely batshit insane stuff that can fry your brain with antilogical memetic brain waves, cause you to split your personality / life force across a handful of polybody drones, or have you become enthralled to telepathy-using sociopathic cat lords. It’s a weird place!
But the common throughline across the multiple locations, factions, peoples, discoveries, etc. made across the UVG is that they’re well-defined and very different from each other. Turning to a new location’s spread in the book is a joy, specifically due to how vastly unique and strange (by our standards) the place is. To the people that live there though, this is presented as normal or even boring in some cases. That automatically allows the PCs to arrive, be dumbfounded and inevitably need a guide, and then slowly learn more about the culture of that location and either adapt or leave (or die).
In a world with fantasy RPGs rife with establishing strongholds, building armies, going to war, rooting through old ruins and tombs and vaults, and just generally mindless accounting of gold into and out of your accounts, it’s a breath of fresh air to have a setting that is pretty explicitly not that thing. You make money, sure, and you get up to some shady shit in the UVG but it’s not presented as your moral imperative to do so. You can make your mark on the UVG, but it sure as hell is going to make a bigger mark on you first.
In the UVG, your character will get closer and closer to trying to simply retire rather than take over god’s throne or anything ridiculous like that.
It’s exciting and I’ll likely have more to say on the matter the more we play.
Getting from A to B
In a Silk Road campaign, the journey becomes as central to the narrative as the destination. The characters traverse vast distances, encounter diverse environments, and overcome various challenges that test their resolve, ingenuity, and endurance.
But how do you make it so that we don’t have players saying “we’re going here because so-and-so told us to”? How do we make them care? How do we make them choose?
Each character in the party must have a reason for heading out on the journey. That being said, character motivations can vary widely—from seeking out lost arcane knowledge, to fulfilling an obligation to a mercantile guild, or even escaping a dark past that haunts them. For the Silk Road campaign to be compelling and, frankly, for it to work at all, these personal stakes should be clear, meaningful, and get them very far away from their comfort zone.
Encourage players to think about what drives their characters forward: is it glory, redemption, the thrill of the unknown, or something as simple as the promise of riches? Its important to tie these motivations towards locations that are far away or don’t bog the characters down in the starting area—we want them to hit the road.
The road from A to B should never be straightforward in a Silk Road campaign. Physical challenges like treacherous terrain, harsh weather conditions, and dangerous wildlife should be interspersed with human and supernatural obstacles. Bandits, rival explorers, or political envoys with conflicting interests can block paths or impose steep tolls. Cursed locales, mystical storms that mislead travelers, or ethereal beings whose help must be earned or whose wrath should be avoided are all examples of things you want along every leg of the journey.
Above all it’s important that these obstacles aren’t just beat-em-up challenges that go away when you throw enough damage at them. They should require the players to think critically and make strategic decisions.
For instance, choosing whether to …
Take a longer, safer route but through territory with high tolls and significant slowdowns
Take a shorter, riskier path that cuts right through disputed, warring territory
… can lead to interesting group dynamics and tough choices. Each decision should have potential consequences, shaping the journey and influencing the story in meaningful ways.
However, the consequences don’t have to be negative! Long journeys allow time for characters to share their backstories, invest in one another, cultivate relationships across vast distances, or even make a name for oneself.
Traveling through various settlements or outposts presents opportunities to interact with different NPCs as well, each with their own customs and stories. These interactions can offer valuable insights into the broader world and its history, while also allowing players to affect the world through their actions. Whether it’s helping a village fend off a band of raiders or negotiating passage rights through guarded lands, each interaction can further immerse the players in the world and enrich their experience of the journey.
One could imagine love or companionship blossoming along the long road! Really, the sky is the limit.
Working Together
As characters navigate the challenges of their journey, their ability to work together often determines their success. How do you ensure the dynamics within the party can evolve and grow alongside their progress? And again, how do you get them to instigate that rather than force it upon them?
Players will naturally explore how their characters' backgrounds and abilities can complement one another, potentially leading to unexpected and creative solutions to problems. A character skilled in diplomacy might smooth over a potential conflict with local traders, while another adept in survival skills ensures the group can safely traverse a hazardous environment.
As characters come to rely on each other’s skills and knowledge, the bonds between them strengthen—but why stop there?
In a Silk Road campaign, the impetus lies on challenging the party with scenarios that require slower accomplishments or a blending of many skills over many challenges, such as negotiating with a corporation of traders who are dotted all over the map or solving a mystery that spans multiple cities.
Potential conflicts should feel sprawling, much like the journeys the characters are actively pursuing. Moreover, these problems should feel human in nature. Some examples:
There’s not enough supply to get through the next few days, but the nearest trade town is intensely isolationist and famously violent with outsiders.
One of the beasts of burden becomes sick and/or dies, slowing travel immensely. You catch wind of a merchant who can replace them, but their stock is largely stolen.
You arrive in town to trade, but you don’t speak the local language and only the local criminal faction speaks yours.
By the time you get to a major destination along the journey, its been taken over by a rival merchant company; your supply’s value just got cut in half.
More than outside issues, the stressors on the relationships with each other should be just as important—if not more so.
Like any adventure-based game, a Silk Road campaign tests not just the party's physical capabilities but their interpersonal relationships as well. Conflicts may arise from clashing personalities, ethical dilemmas, or simply the stress of the journey. Someone may be in charge of the supplies and learns one day the rations have spoiled. Another may simply get irritated with someone’s cheery disposition in an otherwise difficult string of situations.
While the opportunities for such conflicts are endless, it’s also important to introduce scenarios that force the party to address these internal conflicts. Perhaps through a mediation by a neutral NPC or a situation that requires them to act in unison despite their disagreements can the party come out stronger. These moments can serve as turning points, where characters learn to appreciate their differences or find common ground in shared goals or threats.
However, if a character simply can’t find common ground with the party at large, finding a suitable replacement for them is thankfully much easier than in more traditional campaigns. Because the party is traveling through many different ports, towns, cities, and peoples, there’s suddenly a valid reason for the character to retire: they want to stay wherever they are.
When combined with the newness of the locations visited by the party, a player may decide that this particular location makes sense for the retirement of their current character—but more importantly, may offer up the exciting promise of a totally new type of character to join the party, themselves filled with knowledge and customs befitting the next leg of their journey.
New (To You)
So far, we’ve established that characters embark on a voyage through unknown territories, rich with cultural diversity and geographic wonders. However, the newness of the location and its people are not new to the world, only to the characters in the party. The discoveries made by the party should grant better insight as to what’s already here—not make the characters out to be some grand conquerors bringing order to perceived lawlessness.
This is the beating heart of the campaign: the characters themselves are not outwardly special and for all intents and purposes, their group would be given as much second thought as any other merchant, traveler, or common occurrence. Each new location should broaden the worldview of the characters, granting them better insight into how the larger world functions as a whole, rather than bending the larger world to the whims of the characters.
Speaking of bucking the norm, navigating through a political dispute between multiple major factions or trying to establish a stall in the grand market are experiences that should encourage players to think aside from their fists and swords and spells. These should involve mundane aspects that most games just gloss over: getting the correct paperwork, understanding the rituals necessary to lawfully do business, meeting with the right people to ensure your efforts don’t play out in vain, etc.
Every new region the party explores is an opportunity to encounter unique cultures with distinct customs, languages, and beliefs. These meetings are not just passing interactions but are pivotal experiences that drive the stories of the characters, therefore, the story of the campaign.
One of the easiest ways you can impress upon your players the vastness and excitement of these places is to highlight the small, often overlooked details that make each location unique—the way a meal is prepared, the etiquette of a greeting, the style of local architecture. These nuances contribute to a rich, immersive experience and showcase the depth of the world the characters are exploring. They also provide practical insights that can aid in their journey, such as knowing which local herbs are medicinal or which areas of the city are to be avoided after midnight.
To go a step further, these are fantastic opportunities to allow the players to also take the lead on worldbuilding—if your elf character is engaging with culturally elven peoples, allow them to tell the rest of the table what some of those rituals are. Ask them what kinds of smells, sounds, tastes, and sights are in the architecture, the people, and the culture itself.
Supplies & Syncretism
Managing supplies over long distances is a central, complex aspect to the Silk Road campaign. More so than really any other type of game, the players will need to keep track of their provisions, such as food, water, and equipment, while dealing with the realities of travel and more broad supplies as a whole (for example, anything being delivered, protected, or managed until arriving at the destination). This involves strategizing how to ration limited resources, finding or purchasing replacements, and planning for unexpected setbacks, such as spoilage or theft.
Over the long journey, maintaining essential equipment, from weapons to transportation, is strongly recommended. In many games, these are often handwaved as simple gold expenses, but in a Silk Road campaign there’s a lot of room to play in the space. Players may need to barter for repairs, purchase replacements, or improvise solutions from available materials.
Like mentioned in the previous section, traveling across diverse regions also facilitates cultural exchange. As players interact with different peoples, their characters encounter new ideas, beliefs, and practices, leading to a more syncretic character that feels real. This can manifest narratively, as characters adopt customs from the cultures they encounter, and mechanically, as they gain skills or insights that assist their journey.
One doesn’t have to look far for examples: perhaps most notably in Dune Part 1 and 2, the main character Paul Atreides undergoes a vastly complex transformation before even the third act simply by working alongside the Fremen. He begins to consume their diet, use their language, engage in their customs, and ultimately become something more than himself (though, I would highly recommend not necessarily making a player character in your game follow his footsteps to the end of that path).
But it isn’t just major cities, civilizations, or population centers that should get the lion’s share of focus. Traveling trade routes offer opportunities for economic and roleplaying engagement as well. Players may need to negotiate with merchants, barter goods, and navigate the supply and demand dynamics of different regions under vastly different rules and expectations. Learning how people trade in a new location is likely more difficult than getting a good deal or trading for what you need.
Going a step further, buying goods in one region to sell in another can yield significant profit, but only if players navigate the route's hazards and market fluctuations. This can also create tension, as they balance profit against their own personal needs for the survivability of the journey; if a cart can only carry one ton and two-thirds of that are gold bars, that doesn’t leave a lot of room for anything found along the way - or even the characters themselves!
Wrapping Up
The Silk Road campaign offers a unique blend of logistical challenges, cultural exchange, and economic considerations that I think are difficult to nail down in other games. The expectations of a Silk Road campaign are focused on exploration, learning, and communication—rather than killing, looting, and carousing.
For me, there’s something really beautiful about that. It feels a bit like a road trip (albeit with more danger, but I digress) where you’re not going out to discover things nobody has ever seen before—you’re going out to discover things you have never seen before.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
What do you think about this idea? Is the Silk Road a type of campaign you’ve run before? Is it one you’d like to see more of? Very interested in hearing everybody’s thoughts on this—please let me know what you think below!
The West Marches are a style of campaign known for plotless exploration, unexplored wilderness, and player-led organization / scheduling. For more information, read the blog article of Ben Robbins that discusses its merits.