DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 46B: Into the Asylum

Elestra reached out to the memories of Zairic’s corpse through the Spirit of the City. In a horrible, gurgling voice Zairic’s head spoke from it lay atop his corpse, attached by only a slim flap of flesh.

I love speak with dead almost as much as my players do. It’s an essential part of their toolkit whether they’re scouting a dungeon, unraveling a mystery, or probing the depths of a conspiracy. The In the Shadow of the Spire group actually keeps a “dead-icated bag” — a bag of holding for the important corpses they want to hold onto and question again after the one week waiting period has expired.

This means that I need to be prepared for all of their speak with dead antics, which is something I talk about in more detail in Random GM Tip: Speak With Dead Mysteries. (I also talk about how I keep track of the bodies in the dead-icated bag in Campaign Status Module: Trackers.)

But the fun part is figuring out all of the gruesome ways these mangled and half-rotten corpses speak under the influence of the spell.

Zairic, as seen here, is a fairly mundane example (although miming his head hanging on by a flap of skin had a pretty great effect on my players when combined with the gurgling voice), but I try to bring a little bit of flair to these, as seen with Silion back in Session 40:

“We can still ask her a few questions,” Elestra asked. “I can force her body’s memories to speak through the Spirit of the City. But we’ll only be allowed three questions, so we should choose them carefully.”

Tee nodded. “Let’s make sure we get it right.”

They debated the list of questions for the better part of half an hour and then Elestra wove her magic. Silion’s decapitated head rose into the air, its blood dripping in a sickly, coagulate gore down onto its own corpse below.

If speak with dead is a common part of your campaign, you could certainly prep a list of these to use as needed. Personally, I enjoy improvising them — taking into account the dead NPC, the circumstances of their death, their wounds, and even the surrounding scenery wherever the PCs are casting the spell.

A few things to think about in improvising your own speak with dead moments:

• How does their wound affect their voice?
• What unnatural position could the body be contorted into?
• How could the strangeness of the spell impact the surroundings (e.g., spattering blood, rattling bones, the corpse’s severed arm trying to crawl back to the torso from across the room)?
• Is there an overtly supernatural effect (e.g., the body floats into the air or an eery glow emanates from the corpse’s mouth)?

The goal is for the players to viscerally appreciate that what they’re doing is anything but natural or ordinary. (Is it evil? Morally grey? That depends on your morality. But, regardless, it shouldn’t be easy for them to feel comfortable about what they’re doing. It should feel like weird shit, and they probably wouldn’t want their mothers walking into the room while they’re doing it.)

There’s no need to overdo it, though. Just one or two key details are enough to bring the scene to vivid life. Less is more, and if you’ve got a really cool idea… well, there’s always the next corpse.

Campaign Journal: Session 47A – Running the Campaign: TBD
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 46A: Among Madmen

At the last possible moment, Zairic twisted aside so that the arrow lodged in his shoulder instead of his heart. Letting his book drop to the floor, Zairic vaulted over the high arm of his chair and jumped for cover. In mid-leap, he released a fireball through the window. Tee ducked down as the fiery inciting pellet passed over her head and avoided the brunt of it almost completely, but Elestra (standing in the open further down the alley) was caught by the edge of it.

Most of the others – clumped together across the street and still debating how they could (or would or should) use Elestra’s homunculi – missed the flash of the fireball. Fortunately, Ranthir – who was providing the daisy-chained camouflage near the mouth of the alley – recognized it for what it was. “Fireball!” he shouted, hurrying into the alley.

The fiction-mechanics cycle is arguably the heart of the roleplaying game experience: The ways in which we use mechanics to create fictional outcomes; declare fictional actions that are resolved mechanically; and use the outcome of either to feed back into the other form an intricate and interwoven dance at the gaming table.

A key component of this dance is how mechanical outcomes are explained in the fiction. For simple, straightforward intentions with unambiguous results, this is often so obvious that one can easily miss that something is actually happening: The player said they wanted to jump over the chasm; the dice said they succeeded; therefore, they land on the other side of the chasm.

Intriguingly, therefore, it is often true the failure requires more of an explanation than success: Success, after all, merely assumes that the stated intention which triggered the mechanical resolution was achieved. Failure, on the other hand, almost seems to demand an explanation for why the character wasn’t able to achieve their desired outcome.

(And this is before we even start considering advanced techniques like failing forward.)

There are a number of techniques you can use in creating these explanations, and different RPG rulesets will often help you in different ways. A universal technique I find useful is explicitly thinking about different factors in the game world that could affect outcome. It’s really useful for keeping things fresh and varied.

(One key insight from this is that you can often make the description of success more interesting by lightly spicing it with the same details and factors that we use to explain failure.)

Something else to consider is the often unexamined assumption of who at the table is responsible for providing these explanations. In my experience, this almost always falls on the GM in their role as adjudicator and world-describer. Every so often, though, the infectious spirit of communal improv will unleash itself and people all around the table will start collaborating on the answer. And another key insight is that, as the GM, you can prompt the players to get involved in explaining outcomes.

(Matthew Mercer, for example, has made, “How do you want to do this?” particularly famous.)

In fact, you can go further than that and create specific expectations for action resolution in which describing the fictional implications of mechanical results defaults to the players. (Storytelling games often do this because their mechanics revolve around determining which player is in control of a narrative outcome.)

But I digress.

What I’m particularly interested in talking about right now is a very specific slice of these table interactions: The moment where a mechanical outcome prompts a conversation between characters, which I’m going to refer to as ex post facto roleplaying. Here the character dialogue is being triggered by or being described as the key factor in an action’s resolution.

In this session, for example, most of the PCs failed a Spot check to notice the flash from a fireball spell going off around a corner.

Why call for this check at all? I mean, it’s a fireball spell, right? Shouldn’t it be really obvious? Well, to some extent this depends on how much noise you think a fireball creates — is it a huge detonation or a more ephemeral flash of flame? More importantly, what I was primarily concerned about here was how quickly they would react to the fireball: Would they be able to leap into action and immediately join the fight? Or get caught flat-footed and have to wait a round before being able to rush to Tee’s aid?

In this case, the players asked the same question in a breakdown that looked something like this:

• Why wouldn’t we immediately notice the fireball?
• We must have been distracted.
• What could we have been distracted by?
• We must have all been continuing our debate about using the homunculi!

And then they briefly acted out a few lines of that dialogue, giving Ranthir’s player (who had succeeded on his Spot check) an opportunity to interrupt by them by shouting, “Fireball!”

This is a good example of these ex post facto roleplaying moments, which are often played as kind of funny throw-away moments. But they can, of course, also be more protracted and/or take on a more serious tone, particularly if you make a more conscious effort to notice, prompt, and/or define these moments.

In fact, rather than just reacting to skill checks with dialogue, you can also deliberately frame skill checks to set up roleplaying interactions. Using mechanics as a roleplaying prompt like this is described in more detail in Rulings in Practice: Social Skills.

Campaign Journal: Session 46B – Running the Campaign: Speak with Dead SFX
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45C: Long Reign of the Sun

Ranthir was examining the magical guards laid upon the plug. Eventually he concluded that their initial suspicions had been correct: Only at night could the plug be opened. The spell was ancient, but still potent – only a powerful wish would remove the plug.

“So when we get the wish spell from Rehobath do we use it on the sealed door at the Banewarrens?” Elestra asked. “Or do we use it here?”

“I think we need to use it at the Banewarrens,” Tor said. “We know how to get through this plug. We just have to wait for dark. But there may not be any other way through the sealed door.”

“Except the key,” Tee said.

“A key that may not exist any more. Or that we may never find.”

They debated staying until nightfall and then going into the tomb. But there was trepidation about staying in the Necropolis after dark without proper preparations.

And then Tee realized that they couldn’t stay: The note they had discovered in the Temple of the Rat God describing some sort of shipment at Mahdoth’s Asylum was dated for midnight. They couldn’t afford to be trapped inside the Necropolis while that kind of known activity was happening.

A dynamic I’ve found it can be difficult to understand if you’re only familiar with linear forms of play is the mixture of pressure and opportunity created when the PCs are pursuing multiple agendas.

At the beginning of this session, for example, the PCs had just barely managed to escape from overwhelming opposition at Porphyry House. In a linear campaign or scenario, they would’ve needed to immediately turn around and attack Porphyry House again. If they were clever, they might find some new way of tackling the problem, but ultimately this would be the one and only thing available for them to do.

In this case, however, the PCs have a bunch of irons in the fire. To mix idioms a bit, they’re free to let Porphyry House simmer for a bit while they pull a different iron out of the fire. It’s a powerful dynamic because it prevents the campaign from slamming to a halt when it meets an unexpected roadblock. By exploring other options, maybe the PCs can find resources or opportunities that can remove the roadblock. Combined with something like node-based scenario design or xandered dungeons, the PCs might find some way of routing around the roadblock. When you’re playing in a system like D&D where the PCs can become much more powerful, they may just level up to a point where the roadblock ceases to be an impediment.

On the other hand, at the end of this session, the PCs are forced to put a pin in their plans to explore Alchestrin’s Tomb because they have other agendas that are demanding their attention. They need to prioritize their goals and figure out the most efficient way they can be pursued with the time and resources that they have.

Linear adventures and single-threaded campaigns, of course, can be designed to include some form of time pressure. (“You have to rescue the princess before the blood moon rises!”) What’s most notable about the multi-threaded campaign, though, is that the GM doesn’t actually have to plan this stuff. At no point in my prep, for example, did I ever say, “Ah! I’ll schedule the shipment to Mahdoth’s Asylum so that it arrives at the same time they’re checking out Alcehstrin’s Tomb!”

Because, among other reasons, I had no idea when the PCs might actually go and check out Alchestrin’s Tomb. There’s another version of reality where their assault on Porphyry House didn’t turn into a clusterfuck. In that other world, the PCs might have spent the whole afternoon burning through resources while clearing out the whorehouse, only to reach the evening and realize that they would need to deal with whatever was happening at Mahdoth’s while being severely depleted by the day’s events. Or maybe they’d realize they couldn’t shoot both barrels into Porphyry House and instead pull out early (puns intended) to conserve their resources for Mahdoth’s. Either way, those are also compelling strategic choices and consequences!

So if I’m not planning specific pressure points or forcing specific choices, what am I doing to make this happen?

1. Any time there’s an upcoming event in the campaign, whether the PCs know about it or not, I make sure to assign it a specific date and time.
2. I keep track of the passage of time.

That’s it.

When scheduling events, I notably don’t really think about how they interact with unrelated events in the campaign. I don’t need to. The various scheduled events and the actions of the PCs will naturally combine and interact with each other during play, and pressure will simply emerge organically from the mix.

This principle is a good example of how, in my experience, loosening your grip on the campaign, empowering the PCs, and actively playing the game world is actually a lot easier for the GM than trying to force a single-threaded chain of events. Partly because you don’t need to force it. Mostly because you’re no longer solely responsible for everything that happens.

The other effect of multi-threading like this, of course, is that stuff will tend to hang around. The PCs first learned of Alchestrin’s Tomb in Session 35. They tried to visit in Session 36, but got waylaid by a false crypt. Then they got waylaid by other pressing concerns for several days, only returning here in Session 45. And it won’t be until Session 48 that they can come back and actually get inside for the first time.

Can this be frustrating? Yes. But it’s a good frustration. It’s the frustration of solving a puzzle or plotting out the perfect turn in a board game. And, of course, it’s not like nothing was happening during those other sessions! During that time, the players were pursuing and achieving other goals that were important to them.

But even as they’re doing those other things, the sense of anticipation is building. Content isn’t being chewed up as soon as it’s introduced. It naturally endures, weaving its way into a more complicated narrative. It was a full year of time in the real world from when they heard about Alchestrin’s Tomb to when they actually entered into the tomb. Which meant that entering the tomb felt momentous.

Which, in turn means, that the feeling of reward when these long-lasting goals come to fruition is also greater.

This dynamic also has an interesting effect on things like the Principles of RPG Villainy. Extending the players’ relationships with villains over time just naturally gets them more deeply invested in that antagonism. The agenda pressure that naturally emerges from multi-threaded campaigns also means that truly memorable villains also just kind of naturally develop themselves. (As do relationships with faction, NPCs, and other facets of the campaign.)

Campaign Journal: Session 46A – Running the Campaign: Ex Post Facto Roleplaying
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45B: On a Hill of Corpse Flowers

Several stone sarsens jutted up from the ground, forming a rough and imperfect circle. Each of the sarsens bore the sigil of Alchestrin and were worn with age and crept-over with moss. The grass had grown tall around them, and here and there even taller plants had sprung up with broad, shiny leaves and brightly-colored flowers. More disturbingly, they could see the corpses of small animals scattered here and there around the sarsens.

A faint whiff of pungent decay wafted down the hill towards them, but they decided to brazenly ignore the animal carcasses and head straight up the hill towards the sarsens. As they drew near the circle, they could see in its center a large iron plug etched with bronze and set into the earth….

In my experience, it’s difficult to take a simple environmental hazard and turn it into compelling gameplay at the table. Not impossible. The same principles that make for compelling traps can also apply to natural hazards. I just find, without the element of human ingenuity behind the construction of a deliberate trap, that it’s harder to justify those principles.

With that being said, this session demonstrates a fundamental design principle that I find incredibly useful: If you have an environmental hazard, you can add almost literally any creature to the encounter and you’ll instantly make both the hazard and the creature more interesting.

If I had just added corpse flowers around the entrance to Alchestrin’s Tomb, it would have taken, at best, a trivial effort by the PCs to burn them away. Similarly, if they had found nothing except a coldsnake curled up on top of the iron plug, the result would have been a pretty perfunctory combat encounter. Either way, it would have been a pretty forgettable experience.

But put the two together and… Presto! You’ve got a unique experience.

This principle works, in part, because it can:

• Force target selection. Which problem are the PCs going to deal with first? (If they only have one target — or their targets are indistinguishable — then there’s no meaningful choice. As soon as you have multiple options, however, there’s an opportunity for tactical choice.)
• Create weird and unexpected interactions and/or synergies, potentially giving a fresh spin to even familiar abilities.
• Offer tactical opportunities that can be taken advantage of by either the bad guys, the PCs, or both.

You get similar results from combining multiple monsters of different types into the same encounter.

Fortunately, Tee – trying to suppress a cough that seemed as if it would rip out her lungs – spotted one of the tall, brightly-colored flowers turning towards them with an almost sadistic purpose. Making an intuitive leap she realized that the flowers – not the serpent – were the true source of the noisome plague. She shouted out a warning to the others while lurching towards the nearest flower, but her weakly-swung sword failed to produce any effect on its thick, armored stalk as she collapsed.

In this case, I hadn’t actually planned for the PCs not to realize the source of the poisonous malaise afflicting them, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that can just spontaneously emerge from encounters like this.

LOOTING BESTIARIES, REDUX

I’ve previously discussed how I’ll systematically loot bestiaries as part of the development cycle for a campaign. In this case, as I prepared Alchestrin’s Tomb, I went on a mid-campaign survey looking for stuff that would be cool to plug into the adventure:

• Corpse Flowers are from Creatures of Freeport.
• Coldsnakes are, unfortunately, from a disreputable publisher I won’t direct you towards because they scammed me.
• The iron plug and its riddling inscription is taken from the brief description of Alchestrin’s Tomb in the Ptolus)

I love RPGs with lots of high quality adventures, because those can be plugged directly into a campaign structure. But even better is an RPG with tons of modular material that can be plugged directly into scenario structures and scene structures (i.e., encounters). It’s just so much fun to go browsing through these toys, grabbing the coolest ones that catch your eye, and then seeing how they can be combined into cool stuff.

Campaign Journal: Session 45C – Running the Campaign: Agenda Pressure
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45A: By Commissar’s Decree

“I’m glad you could come here today,” Carrina said. “The Commissar appreciates all of the work and sacrifices you have made for this city.”

“Happy to oblige,” Tor said.

“As your recent actions in the Temple District suggest, you’re already familiar with the recent surge in cultist activities within the city,” Carrina continued.

“Intimately so,” Tee said.

“Just so,” Carrina smiled thinly. “That’s why the Commissar has chosen to deputize you to investigate the cultist activity.”

“We’re already doing that,” Elestra blurted.

“Then it should be no great hardship to do it in the Commissar’s name,” Carrina said. “You will each be paid 75 gold pieces a month, with additional bonuses to be paid at my discretion for tangible results.”

One of my favorite things to do as a GM is having powerful and important people – the people in charge – recognize and acknowledge what the PCs have been doing in the campaign. Sometimes this is a good thing. Sometimes it isn’t. Often it’s a little bit of both. But either way, this is almost always guaranteed to excite the players.

Focusing on just the good stuff for the moment, recognition in my games have resulted in the PCs being:

• Recruited to exclusive organizations
• Featured in news reports
• Invited to exclusive social events
• Deputized to solve a problem
• Given a spaceship
• Granted lucrative contracts
• Knighted
• Given noble titles

Sometimes this acts as a kind of reverse patronage: Instead of having someone rich and powerful offer them payment up front, they instead materialize after the fact and give the PCs a monetary or material reward for something they did for completely different reasons.

An earlier example of recognition as reward in this campaign was the Harvesttime party at Castle Shard. In that case, the social event reward also served as a way to advance several threads of the campaign, introduce new NPCs, and drop a number of clues.

Similarly, in this session, the PCs are getting deputized, giving them official recognition and a small stipend for doing the thing they’re already doing (investigating the chaos cults). Deputization is also an example of the techniques I talk about in Random GM Tips: Calling in the Little Guys, where the official response to the PCs calling the cops (or the local equivalent) is to say, “Wow! Yeah! That’s definitely a problem! Can’t wait to see how you resolve it!” So, in this case, I’m kind of preemptively taking “let’s go to the authorities!” off the table: Yes, the Commissar would definitely be interested in stopping the chaos cults. Rather than letting that potentially sideline the PCs, let’s instead seize the opportunity to put them in the spotlight!

In other words, delivering recognition as reward can often serve multiple purposes at the same time.

As such, no matter how positive the immediate recognition, it’s also almost always a double-edged sword: Being recognized as important also means painting a target on yourself. You’re an important superhero? Then supervillains may want to preemptively take you off the board. You’re known to have the ear of the crown prince? That makes you a target for grifters, conmen, and others who see the PCs as a means to their ends. (This is also what happened when Rehobath schismed the Imperial Church.)

To flip this one last time, though, the reason recognition attracts negative attention like moths to flame is specifically because the PCs are burning so bright! Even without a formal position (like becoming deputies), recognition can be as empowering as any magic item. Often moreso. Having the ear of the crown prince isn’t just really cool, it also lets you do things that would otherwise be impossible.

This not only enhances your current camapign. It’s also a signal that you’re ready for a new kind of adventure.

Campaign Journal: Session 45B – Running the Campaign: Monster + Environment
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index