Go to Part 1

GM: So now, at last, Minas Tirith is besieged, enclosed in a ring of foes. The Rammas has been broken, and all Pelennor abandoned to the Enemy. All night the watchmen on the walls hear rumors of the enemy that roam outside, burning field and tree, and hewing any man they find abroad, living or dead. The numbers that have already passed over the River cannot be guessed in the darkness, but when morning, or its dim shadow, stole over the plain, you can see that the plain is dark with their marching companies, and as far as your eyes can strain in the mirk there sprout, like a foul fungus-growth, all about the beleaguered city great camps of tents, black or somber red.

Gandalf: Hmm… can I use my Fireworks skill to whip up a nuclear bomb?

GM: Sure.

Always Say Yes is a bit of GMing advice that gets circulated quite a bit. The example above takes it to a silly extreme, but it illustrates the central problem: There clearly is a point where the GM needs to say no, but the simplistic “Always Say Yes” not only doesn’t help them figure out what that is, it’s more likely to mislead them. Its sole saving grace is that Always Say Yes is at least preferable, in my opinion, to Always Say No, which is where railroading will often take GMs.

Always Say Yes comes from theatrical improv games. And the reason it’s bad advice for an RPG is that improv and RPGs have fundamentally different narrative structures.

In improv, the performers are collaborating to create a world. You always accept new facts about the world because negation doesn’t take you anywhere creatively:

Actor 1: Here we are at Disney World!

Actor 2: No, we’re at the White House.

But even in improv it can mislead performers, because Always Say Yes only applies to the worldbuilding (i.e., stated facts about the world). It doesn’t mean that your character can’t oppose or say no to another character. If the maxim is misapplied in this way, it becomes impossible for improv scenes to have any conflict, draining them of interest.

Note: This is also why Always Say Yes actually can be useful in certain storytelling games based around narrative control mechanics. Many of those games, although not all, feature collaborative world-building.

In RPGs, on the other hand, the GM creates the world and the players take on the roles of characters who live in that world. The players, therefore, are primarily playing a role, not worldbuilding, while the GM’s primary duty is being an arbiter of the fictional reality those characters inhabit. From a game perspective, this is much more like 20 Questions than it is an improv theater game: There’s a “truth” (e.g., the object selected in 20 Questions) that the GM knows to be true and which is being communicated to the players.

Imagine for a moment playing 20 Questions while always saying Yes: It’s technically possible. In fact, just like Gandalf setting off tactical nukes on the Fields of Pelennor, you’re almost guaranteed to “win” every time. And yet you’ve fundamentally broken the game.

So the improv-style Always Say Yes to Worldbuilding doesn’t work in an RPG.

What if we change the target to something like Always Say Yes to Player Plans? This is probably getting us closer to something useful, but it still doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. For a simple example, consider someone saying, “I cast a spell and teleport back to Dweredell!” Okay… but does your character actually have a spell that does that? RPGs have rules that mechanically define characters and what they can (and, importantly, can’t) do.

In addition to a character mechanically lacking the ability to do something, you’ve also got world state (e.g., there’s a teleport interdiction field there) and NPC actions (e.g., someone counterspells the teleport) that can – and at least some of the time should! – negate player intention.

At this point we can easily glide over into another common maxim: Say yes or roll the dice.

This can probably be more accurately understood as “say yes unless the mechanics say no” (since not all mechanics use diced outcomes), but even that’s still misleading because there can, once again, be non-mechanical reasons why a player’s proposed action won’t work (e.g., they want to go the local mage’s guild, but the GM knows there’s no mage’s guild in this village).

DEFAULT TO YES

All of which is why I prefer to use Default to Yes as my maxim of choice here.

Its meaning expands to, “When the players say they want to do something, you should default to letting them do it unless you have a specific and interesting reason not to.” It fulfills the same crucial function of steering the GM away from contrarianism, but also provides a clear standard they can use to figure out when they should be saying No.

Furthermore, if it turns out that there is, in fact, a reason not to Default to Yes, then you can also use the Spectrum of GM Fiat to find the appropriate response:

• Yes, and…
• Yes, but…
• No, but…
• No

And, if those aren’t right, you can always shift to, “Maybe, let’s roll the dice and find out…”

The underlying principle here is the players will generally propose doing things that they would enjoy and outcomes that they desire. So, generally speaking, letting them do and achieve those things will make for happy players.

So why not go back to Always Say Yes, then?

Largely because there’s other stuff that he players also enjoy. That might be challenge (e.g., knowing that they’ve actually earned their victories), simulation (e.g., they want to know that they’re exploring a “real” place), or drama (e.g., struggle is narratively interesting). To generalize, failure is interesting.

GM DON’T #20.1: PREP IS ALL, PREP IS LAW

If we return to our example of the PCs looking for a mage’s guild in a village where the GM knows no mage’s guild exists, however, there’s another pitfall you can stumble into while trying to enforce the fictional reality of the game world.

Imagine that the PCs have come to a large city, perhaps one with half a million people living in it. A player says, “Okay, I want to find a blacksmith who can repair my sword.” You check your description of the city, but it turns out that you didn’t include any smithies in your notes.

This is just like the mage’s guild, right? Your notes for the village didn’t include a mage’s guild, so there was no mage’s guild. Your notes for the city don’t include a blacksmith, so there are no blacksmiths.

… right?

Probably not.

Obviously a large medieval fantasy city is almost certainly going to have at least one smithy. The key insight here is that even if you have hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes detailing your city, you still won’t have recorded every single person, place, and thing. It would be a mistake to believe that the only things that exist in the game world are the things you’ve explicitly written down. Instead, when confronted with a situation like this, the question you should ask yourself is, “Given everything I know about the game world, would it make sense for this to exist? And, if so, what form would it take?”

And, once again, you want to Default to Yes.

If you know that there are no Ivy League schools in Kentucky, then it’s fine to say No if the players want to go looking for one in Paducah. But if they’re just looking for a university with an archaeology department somewhere in the state where they could ask some questions of an expert, then they should be able to find one somewhere in the state!

Once you’ve grokked that principle, the next thing to understand is that this extends beyond cities and states. It scales to almost every level of the game world.

For example, let’s zoom all the way in on a dungeon room. Here’s one from So You Want to Be a Game Master:

AREA 15: CRYPTIC LIBRARY

The room is of crimson and dark wood beneath a vaulted ceiling. A set of tall double doors, matching the ones you entered through, faces you on the opposite side of the room. A large pentagonal mahogany table stands in the center of the chamber. There are five large bookcases stuffed full of tomes and scrolls along the paneled walls. Sunlight streams in through bay windows with a built-in bench. The windows are leaded stained glass depicting a subtle pattern of golden florets.

Consider those bookcases. In our key, we might even include additional details about the books:

BOOKCASES

The books and other documents here are all of an occult nature. There is a focus on Natharran mythology, particularly an enigmatic figure known as Basp-Attu. A DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana) check identifies Basp-Attu as a dual-bodied demon said to have been born from the mixed ichor of two dead gods during the War of Falling Stars.

But even with all of this detail, we still haven’t completely detailed the bookcase.

• What if a PC wants to grab the heaviest book off the shelf and use it to bludgeon the cloaker that’s just ambushed them? How big is the biggest book? Is it big enough to do serious damage?
• “Are there are any books with a green cover? Maybe I can fool the goblins into thinking it’s a copy of the Verdigris Bible.”
• “I want to tip the bookcase over on top of the cloaker!” Have the bookcases been fastened to the wall?
• “What’s the single most useful book about Basp-Attu here?”
• “Are there volumes here that would be useful additions to the collection at the libram at my kolledzh?”

To be clear, the point isn’t that you should be prepping answers for all of these questions. The point is to recognize that you can never prep the entire world. The players will always have a question you don’t know the answer to and you will always be performing acts of creative closure at the table.

Unless, of course, you make the mistake of believing that you have prepped everything and that your prep is absolute and immutable law. If you do that, then you’ll have started walking down one of the many paths to pixelbitching — aka, playing a game of Guess What the GM Prepped.

Feng Shui, the roleplaying game of Hong Kong action films, actually pushes this concept of the uncertain game world and creative closure one step further by specifically giving the players unilateral narrative authority to simply declare that a prop they want is present in any fight scene. Want to fight with a ladder like Jackie Chan in First Strike? Bring a rolled up magazine to a knife fight like Jason Bourne? Throw your jacket over a support cable and zipline to the ground? You don’t need to ask the GM if there’s a ladder at the construction site, a magazine on the coffee table, or a cable attached to the building.

This works because when the GM says, “The elevator doors open to reveal a floor full of cubicles,” everyone at the table is, in fact, picturing a different place. There are some details — like the fact there are computer monitors on the desks — that are shared in all of our imagined spaces, but there are other details that aren’t. As we interact with and explore the space together, though, our visions adapt and converge. This mostly happens without friction and often without us ever really consciously thinking about how our mental image of the cubicle farm is morphing and changing.

While in my experience the GM’s vision of the space probably morphs less than the other players (because they are, in fact, the arbiter of the world), it’s important for them to understand that their imperfect vision will, in fact, also be adapting and becoming more fleshed out: I didn’t know there was a smithy in this town, but now I do. I had not specifically pictured staplers on those desks, but once Aaron snagged one I can clearly see them. I had no idea that The Two-Faced Demon by Attansea Millieu was a rare tome, but apparently there’s a copy sitting on this bookshelf.

Discovery is the great joy of collaboration, and if you can truly open yourself to that collaboration, who knows what exciting adventures those discoveries may take you on?

Out of Body, Out of Mind fails to think things through to their logical conclusions. A poorly conceived premise, killer traps, and an irrational set-up seriously undermine this module’s positive qualities.

Review Originally Appeared May 21st, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Out of Body, Out of Mind. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

The plot of Out of Body, Out of Mind, in brief: Six hundred years ago this area of the world was a turbulent mass of fighting warlords. Then, one of their own numbers – Tirna’gael – gained in sudden strength and struck out against his fellow warlords, quickly coming to dominate the entire region before his death. The newly formed Order of Garadon entombed the warlord in his citadel: A castle of stone which hangs over the simmering cauldron of a volcano.

Although it is believed that the source of Tirna’gael’s power was the ring he wore, the Order of Garadon had actually discovered that Tirna’gael had become the host of a nescent – an invisible and incorporeal demonic entity which exists by possessing mortal bodies. The Order trapped the nescent by slaying the Tirna’gael host body and imprisoning it within an antimagic field.

Rumors now fly that the tomb – which has long been secured by mystic guards – has been broken into. The PCs are dispatched to stop the robbers. Unknown to the PCs, however, is that there is no robbery in process – and it is very likely that they will break the ancient seals on the nescent’s prison through their carelessness.

WEAKNESSES

All right, where to begin?

Let’s start with the premise… which makes no sense. First off, why wouldn’t the Order of Garadon brief the PCs about the true situation? More importantly, why isn’t the Order of Garadon sent in the first place – rather than handing the job over to the clueless? Second, if rumors are already flying about the break-in, why are the PCs dispatched to go to the prison in order to prevent the robbery that’s already happened from taking place?

Once the PCs reach the prison, these illogical premises continue unabated. For example, the mephits which were set to guard the prison don’t wake up until after the tomb has been opened and the nescent released. Apparently the author never understood the irony behind the saying “closing the coop after the chickens have flown.”

Nor is this the only variety of flaw in Out of Body, Out of Mind: Area 7, for example, has a killer trap. That trap can be avoided if a couple of die rolls are successfully made – otherwise it will most likely wipe out the entire party. The trap in area 9 is similarly designed so that escape is nearly impossible.

Out of Body, Out of Mind also uses the technique of keying multiple areas to a single set of text. I appreciate this technique when it is used appropriately. Unfortunately, it is not used so here.

STRENGTHS

Although outweighed by the adventure’s flaws, Out of Body, Out of Mind does have a few notable strengths:

First, Kapera creates the nescent by using the template rules. This idea of using the template as the monster is intriguing, and an interesting design point. I’m not quite sure if it works, but it’s noteworthy.

Second, although it is illogical for the mephit guardians to wake up only after the damage is done, once that happens Kapera introduces a rather interesting dynamic: The nescent will attempt to possess one of the mephits and control as many of the others as possible through its command lesser creatures ability – creating two factions within the fortress. This creates an interesting dynamic for the second half of the adventure (with the PCs trapped in a fortress full of fighting mephits), and if it had been more fully developed could have resulted in a truly fascinating adventure.

Of course, as interesting as it is, it only introduces a new problem into the adventure: Why would you set guardians over the nescent who can be controlled by the nescent? That’s like manning a prison with guards you know have been bribed by the prisoners.

And, at the end of the day, that’s the biggest problem Out of Body, Out of Mind has: The strengths it has are immediately undermined by the faulty foundation on which they have been built.

There are some salvageable elements to be found here, but they are deeply buried beneath the chaff.

Style: 3
Substance: 3

Author: Patrick Kapera
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group
Line: Adventure Boosters
Price: $2.49
Product Code: 8306
Pages: 16

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

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

SESSION 45B: UPON A HILL OF CORPSE FLOWERS

October 31st, 2009
The 25th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

HOMUNCULI OF THE CITY

They wanted to get an early start the next day, but Elestra was still immersed in her meditations. And Tor had his training at the Godskeep. On the way there, Tor spontaneously decided to stop and purchase a bull whip. He had a few ideas for how it might come in useful.

While they waited for Tor to return, Tee grabbed the morning newssheets. The Columned Row Killer had struck again, but this time it had been seen in the act: A “tall, muscular creature with blue-black skin, glowing yellow eyes, and lanky black hair” had attacked a merchant passing through the Old City Gate. The creature had been driven off by the city guard, but not before leaving its victim in paralytic coma.

With a sinking feeling in their hearts, they recognized the description: It was the troll-spawn that had been freed from the Banewarrens. An evil that had been locked away for centuries now walked the streets of Ptolus.

Agnarr was also able to pick up the mage-touched chain that Hirus had been working on for Seeaeti. While the others discussed the troll-spawn, he took Seeaeti out near the Minstel’s stables and spent some time training him in the wearing of the mail.

Around noon, Tor returned to the Ghostly Minstrel and they went upstairs to check on Elestra. They found her missing: Her communion with the Spirit of the City had taken her on a walk-about through the streets of Ptolus, collecting bits of brick and rough cast which she eventually took to the heart of Midtown and there assembled into a geometrically fractal cairn. This final act of symbolic linkage complete, the cairn had risen up as the animated extrusion of the Spirit itself: A homunculi of the city.

Elestra returned to the Ghostly Minstrel and introduced the others to her new companion. They gathered in the common room for lunch and then left for the Necropolis.

POLLEN PLAGUE

With the information Ranthir had retrieved from the Administration Building on the 22^nd they found the tomb easily enough. Near the apex of a gently sloping hill (which Ranthir’s papers named Darklock Hill) they spotted several stone sarsens jutting 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.

Before they could actually enter the circle, however, Agnarr spotted dark scales slithering through the grass – marking the passage of a massive, coal-black serpent with scales that glimmered like black ice beneath the stars. In its wake, it left a thin veil of frost upon the grass. At nearly twenty feet in muscle-rippled length, it must have been wrapped around one of the sarsens to escape their notice. Now it reared up, gaping a mouth from which issued faint plumes of glittering, icy mist.

Tor and Agnarr moved forward to meet the serpent, but as they did so a sudden nausea settled over the group. The serpent must have been exuding some sort of disquieting aura or perhaps noxious fumes. The effect only seemed to intensify as it focused the gaze of its coal-black eyes upon Nasira, locking her in a paralytic gaze that stopped her stone cold.

The nausea, which sent Tor reeling, disrupted their concerted attack and Agnarr – although largely unaffected – found himself getting bound in its icy, limb-numbing coils. Before the serpents’ tightening curves could draw tight, however, Agnarr was able to stretch his mighty thews and break free, sending the serpent spasming away.

But then the real panic set in as Tor started coughing up black blood and oozing black blood from his eyes. The symptoms of the others were beginning to worsen as well, and with only Agnarr fit to face the serpent, it seemed unlikely that its threat would be ended before they were all unconscious or dead or worse.

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.

Ranthir and Elestra, meanwhile, managed to retreat to a safe distance. Near the foot of the hill they discovered that they were beyond the plague-pollen of the flowers. With her lungs almost immediately alleviated, Elestra sent her homunculi to start hauling people to a safe distance.

Then Agnarr managed to finally plunge his flaming sword down the icy throat of the ebon snake. Wrenching his blade free he swung it towards the nearest corpse flower, but as he hacked it apart the flower exploded in a massive cloud of poisonous vapor and pollen – a visible blackening of the air that seemed to cling to skin and eyes, clawing its way through mouth and nose and down into the lungs.

Agnarr (at the heart of the explosion) and Ranthir (caught unexpectedly in its edge) collapsed. Elestra, in a panic, rushed in to heal the badly wounded Agnarr… and promptly collapsed from the pervasive pollen of the remaining flowers.

Thus all of them were unconscious upon the flanks of the hill, their bodies being slowly consumed by the plague pollen.

Fortunately, the homunculi continued carrying out its last orders: To carry the unconscious to the base of the hill and out of the pollen cloud. Several of those who were hopelessly ill before managed to recover once they were taken far enough away from the flowers and they were able to tend to the rest.

Once everyone had been restored to at least a semblance of health, they backed off to an even safer distance and then sent the homunculi to kill the rest of the flowers.

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

Look, the robbers are living right next door to the man-eating ghouls! The Crypt of St. Bethesda is a textbook example of how not to write an adventure.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Let me just cut to the chase on this one: The Crypt of St. Bethesda strains credulity beyond the boundaries of sanity.

You’ve got a band of robbers living right next door to man-eating ghouls. Man-eating ghouls who wander through the lair of a giant spider. Giant rats which compete with a carrion crawler over the food provided by an inn’s garbage dump. And all of them live within shouting distance of a pseudo-undead on a killing spree to replace its decaying host.

And all of them live in the basement of an abandoned church!

Ummmm….

(Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds like a bad premise for a sitcom.)

Add in the dash of an illogical adventure hook (which the author knows is illogical because he spends nearly two pages discussing exactly how to force your players to swallow this ridiculous pill – and only succeeds in making it more ridiculous), and you’ve got a truly… ummm… memorable experience.

This one’s a very big dud, folks. Pass it by.

Style: 3
Substance: 1

Title: The Crypt of St. Bethesda
Author: James Macduff
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group
Line: Adventure Keep
Price: $2.49
Product Code: 8307
Pages: 16

Because these adventures are so short, the reviews are also short. When I started reviewing them, I actually grouped multiple reviews together to give them a little more bulk. But it turned out that messed with people’s ability to find them through RPGNet’s search function, so as I continued my reviews of the series I started doing them one at a time. Even if they were brief.

Next AEG Booster Review: Out of Body, Out of Mind

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.