DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 30B: Golems & Ghouls
As Agnarr leapt into their midst, he could see one of them peeling flesh from its own arm and chewing on it.
“They’re eating themselves?!” Agnarr could hear Elestra’s horrified gasp from behind him, but he paid it little heed as he hacked his way through the ghouls.
For a moment it seemed as if Agnarr would dispatch them all – his flaming blade tore easily through their frail frames. But then the last of them leapt suddenly upon him and got its teeth into him.
This might be a little early to talk about this, but over the rest of this session and the next few sessions you’re going to see a lot of horrific beasties and strange curses get unleashed in the Banewarrens, by both the PCs and NPCs.
Something you’ll notice (albeit not with these ghouls), that most of these banes will either (a) attempt to flee after engaging the PCs or (b) target someone other than the PCs as their first (or subsequent) action. This, of course, creates long-running problems for the PCs, as they deal with the consequences of these ancient evils breaking loose into Ptolus or just wreaking havoc on their allies.
This is, of course, thematically appropriate for the Banewarrens, which were originally built to lock all of these banes away from the world; sealing them in a prison from which they were never meant to escape. Whether you agree with the Banelord’s belief that there’s a Principle of the Conservation of Evil that the universe abides by or not, there’s little question that mucking around down there not only risks releasing a whole bunch of evil stuff, but also a whole armada of ethical questions about your responsibility for having done so.
But this also reflects a broader GMing tenet I believe in: Spray your bullets.
What I mean by this is that when we think about releasing something into our campaign, we have a tendency to think about it strictly in terms of how it might intersect and affect the PCs: There’s a phase-shifting troll loose in the Banewarrens, when will it attack the party?
In other words, we aim it very precisely at the PCs.
This makes a lot of sense, because, of course, the other players are sitting at the table with us. Our entire focus is on continually generating and communicating the fictional game space for them to take their actions in. So there’s an obvious predilection, whenever something might happen in the game world, for us to aim it at the PCs. It’s target fixation.
What I’m suggesting is that, when we shoot stuff into the campaign, we should get a little sloppier with our aim: Don’t just hit the PCs. Start hitting stuff all around them. Their friends, their allies, innocent bystanders, even their enemies. To continue our metaphor, let stuff ricochet around a little bit and see what happens.
The ricochet is actually quite important, though, because if stuff happens and the players never learn about it (or its consequences), then it’s probably wasted prep. So you want to have stuff impact things around the PCs, but then you want the consequences of that to ricochet into the PCs: they read the newspaper headlines, they find the body, their friend calls them for help.
The benefit, of course, is that this makes the game feel more dynamic and believable: The PCs aren’t the only people who exist, moving through a world of shadow puppets. Instead, the world is filled with people who seem to be living lives of their own.
And this will also mean, when the bullets in question are being shot in response to the PCs’ actions, that their choices will become even more meaningful.
Campaign Journal: Session 30C – Running the Campaign: Honor Choice with Judo
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
