The PCs kick in a dungeon door.

Description #1:

With the sharp crack of splintering wood, the door smashes open, revealing a room about forty feet across. The high, curved walls are lined with built-in shelves of cherry wood filled with books and warmly lit by a crystal chandelier that hangs from the middle of the domed ceiling. Five goblins are ripping books off the shelves, but their heads whip in your direction.

Description #2:

With the sharp crack of splintering wood, the door smashes open, revealing five goblins who whip their heads in your direction. The room is about forty feet across. The high, curved walls are lined with built-in shelves of cherry wood filled with books and warmly lit by a crystal chandelier that hangs from the middle of the domed ceiling. The goblins have been ripping books off the shelves.

Which description is more effective?

What we’re broadly looking at is whether it’s better to describe the monsters in a room FIRST or LAST.

(Disclaimer: Descriptions are an artistic expression and the given circumstances of any particular moment at the game table are limitless. So there will be a bajillion-and-one hypothetical exceptions to any general principles we might discuss. Think of anything I advocate here in the same way you’d interpret “don’t cross the line when shooting reverse angles” in film or “sentence fragments are bad” when writing fiction. Know the rules so you can break the rules.)

The argument for Monsters First is that it mirrors the crisis perception of the characters: If you opened a door and saw a slavering beast, all of your attention would be immediately focused on the monster. You wouldn’t take your time inspecting the rest of the environment and only THEN look at the monster!

It seems like a logical argument. The problem is that it ignores the actual experience of the characters: If you opened a door and saw a slavering beast, you would immediately want to REACT to that slavering beast. That’s the adrenaline-pumping crisis response (fight or flight!), and it’s why Monster Last is the correct technique. You want the player to be able to immediately react to the monster just like their character would. You don’t want to blunt that reaction by forcing them to wait until you’ve finished the rest of the description.

Note that this isn’t just a matter of associating the experience of character and player. It’s also about effective dramatic presentation: A director of a horror film, for example, wouldn’t follow up on a jump scare with an establishing shot that slowly pans across the scenery before showing the main character’s reaction to the monster!

Okay, but can’t we resolve this dilemma by just not describing the room? The character’s focus would be entirely on the slavering monster. If they’re not focused on the rest of the room, we just won’t describe it to them!

Description #3:

With the sharp crack of splintering wood, the door smashes open, revealing five goblins! Their heads whip in your direction.

Unfortunately, this approach ignores the limited bandwidth by which information about the game world is transmitted to the players (i.e., the GM’s voice).

Although the character may be fixated on the monster, their peripheral vision is immediately processing the environment: Where are the exits? Where can they hide? What are the defensible position? How can they attack? Not only can they take in the totality of their sensorium, they’re also capable of taking action while simultaneously continuing to observe their environment.

The player can’t do that: When they communicate their intended action to the GM, they’re monopolizing the same channel that would be used to give them a description of their character’s environment.

Two outcomes become likely:

First, the player will recognize the problem and ask clarifying questions to obtain the understanding of setting they’re lacking. (“Are there any obstacles that would stop me from charging them? Do I see anything I can dive behind?”)

Second, without understanding the environment, the players will take nonsensical actions. (You didn’t mention the giant chasm that runs across the room between them and the rabid mammoth, so now they’re charging straight into it even though that would be a ridiculous thing for their character to do? Whoops.) This, of course, will force you to stop and correct them, explaining the important context they didn’t know (even though their characters would have).

In either case, you’ve reverted to interjecting an environmental description between the revelation of the monster and the reaction (Monster First). Only it’s actually gotten worse because the presentation is now awkward and frustrating.

WHAT ABOUT A BATTLEMAP?

If you’re using a detailed battle map couldn’t you just reveal it to the players to provide essential environmental information? And then just verbally announce the five goblins in the room?

Sure thing! You could also use other visual references. Pictures are worth a thousand words. In terms of technique, though, this is still Monster Last: You’re use using the visual presentation to handle the room description.

(Or, at least, to make that presentation more efficient: I’ve found that even the best visual aids usually benefit from additional verbal details. The great thing is that you can multitask, usually delivering the additional details at the same time that you’re drawing or revealing the visual reference. The usual single channel of information at the game table briefly becomes multi-channel, which is great!)

WHAT ABOUT INITIATIVE?

Wait a minute. What about initiative?

We’ve been talking about that moment of instantaneous response as if it looked like this:

GM: Five goblins are ripping books off the shelves, but their heads whip in your direction. What do you do?!

Player: I yell, “Fire in the hole!” and throw a fireball in the room.

But doesn’t it actually look like this?

GM: Five goblins are ripping books off the shelves, but their heads whip in your direction. Roll initiative.

(rolling dice)

Player: 14.

Player: 8

Player: 21!

Player: 15.

Player: 16.

GM: (also rolls dice and does math) … okay. Looks like Bob is first. What are you doing, Bob?

This is actually something I addressed in the very first Random GM Tip I posted to the Alexandrian:

Have your players roll their initiatives at the end of combat. Use this initiative for the next combat. (Initiative modifiers essentially never change, so it doesn’t really matter when you roll the check.) When it looks like the PCs are about to encounter something, roll for its initiative and slot it into the order. If they don’t encounter it for some reason, no big deal.

Using this method, by the time combat starts, initiative is already completely resolved. As a result, there’s no delay while you ask for initiative, the dice are rolled, your players tell you their results, and then you sort the results into order. This allows you to start combat off with a bang and keep the ball rolling with that same high intensity. It means that when the players are ambushed, you can maintain that adrenaline rush of surprise instead of immediately undermining it with the mundane task of collecting initiative.

This method also means that initiative results are generally being collected at a time when other bookkeeping chores are being done anyway: After the heat of battle, wounds are being healed; corpses are being looted; equipment lists are being updated; and options are being discussed. Juggling a few extra numbers does not detract from that moment.

And you’ll notice that the reason for moving the resolution of initiative is the same reason for using Monster Last scene description: To capitalize on the moment of reaction to drive the players’ excitement into launching the new scene.

THE REACTION POINT

I’ve been talking about the initiation of combat, but there’s a general principle here:

1. Identify the reaction point (the point at which your players WANT to react);
2. Focus your description to that point; and
3. Clear away any detritus that gets in the way of the players immediately reacting.

The stronger the players’ desire to react, the more important this becomes.

You can also think of the reaction point as being literally the point where you’re asking the players for a response: You want that point to be as interesting as possible because you want to provoke a strong response from the players. Because that’s what will drive the action forward in interesting ways, which will let you easily frame the next reaction point to be as interesting as possible.

Examples outside of combat might include:

• Even though you just rolled the random wilderness encounter, make sure to set up the terrain first before describing the merchant’s wagon coming over the hill.
• Noticing that the eyes of the painting in the haunted house are following you should probably be the last thing described in the room.
• A beautiful, blue-haired man blows you a kiss from across the tavern’s common room.
• They notice someone following them.
• The Federales warchief demands the ship’s instant surrender.

Now, here’s the dirty secret that sort of inverts the idea of putting the most interesting thing at the reaction point: If you instead want the players to preferentially react to something in an otherwise undifferentiated list, put it at the reaction point. Psychologically this is due to recency effect. (The other strong position is to mention something first due to primacy effect. But for immediate choices – i.e., a direct response to a described scene – Miller & Campbell, 1959 identifies the last position as the stronger preference.)

For example, if there’s a pit trap under the fancy tabaxi rug in the middle room, drop the description of the rug in the middle of the room’s description and mention the shelves covered in knick-knacks on the far side of the room last: You increase the odds that a curious PC will cross the room (and the rug) to check out the shelves first.

Go to Part 1

When talking about node-based design, I’ve generally used examples of single scenarios (and usually quite simple scenarios). This has the advantage of keeping the examples relatively uncluttered, but can also be inadvertently deceptive by masking the true power of node-based design.

For example, nodes can be locations, characters, organizations, and so forth. But conceptually they can also be entire scenarios.

This is usually how I design campaigns: I start by brainstorming the major scenarios that are part of the campaign. I think of each scenario as a node and I connect these nodes with clues, following the standard Three Clue Rule, Inverted Three Clue Rule, and all of that. For the sake of argument, let’s call these campaign nodes.

Once I’ve sketched out that broad plan, I can look at each individual scenario and work it up in detail. Many of these scenarios will also be node-based (featuring scenario nodes), although it’s easy enough to mix in other scenario structures (like dungeons or raids or parties or whatever) as appropriate.

The 5-Node Mystery essay has an example of this process. The 5-Node Mystery itself is a basic node template for creating a simple mystery scenario with five nodes – an initial node, three locations/people, and a finale arranged into a simple pattern. You can whip up five of these simple mystery scenarios and then arrange them in the exact same pattern as campaign nodes to form a full campaign.

You can also invert this process, starting with a single scenario, linking it to other scenarios, then linking those scenarios to still more scenarios, organically building up a node-based campaign. (This can obviously work well as a way of building an active campaign week-to-week as you play.)

Note: Not every campaign node necessarily needs to be a full scenario. You might have a bunch of campaign nodes that are full scenarios (unfolding into much greater specificity) connected to another node that’s simply “Admiral Dawson” (a single NPC).

THE CAMPAIGN BINDER

My campaign notes generally live in a binder. The first section of this binder contains all the campaign-wide details — lists of campaign nodes, revelation lists, etc. Then each additional section is an individual scenario or similar chunk of information.

To keep the individual scenarios / campaign nodes organized, I’ll frequently number them. They’re usually also sorted into conceptual bundles. You can see an example of this in Part 7 of the Dragon Heist Remix:

0.0 Campaign Overview
1.0 Finding Floon
2.0 Trollskull
3.0 Nimblewright Investigation
3.1 Gralhund Villa
4.1 Faction Response Teams
4.2 Faction Outposts
5.0 Heist Overview
5.1 Bregan D’Aerthe – Sea Maidens Faire
5.2 Cassalanter Estate
5.3 Xanathar’s Lair
5.4 Zhentarim – Kolat Towers
6.0 Brandath Crypts
6.1 The Vault

To briefly summarize:

• The 0.0 document is the campaign-wide material.
• Node-based design mostly kicks in with Part 3.0, which is a node-based mystery in which the solution is going to Part 3.1 (which is a raid scenario).
• The 3.1 raid contains a bunch of leads pointing to other scenarios. I’ve broadly organized these into Part 4 (faction-related stuff built as a sort of node campaign inside the node campaign), Part 5 (the major heists, which the PCs are pointed to by leads in Part 4), and Part 6 (the final scenario, which is built as a dungeon crawl and further broken into two parts for convenience).

Sometimes this conceptual structure is literally just the nodes themselves in a simple list. Masks of Nyarlathotep and Eternal Lies use a globetrotting structure to similar effect: Each major city visited by the players is treated as a separate scenario (i.e., a campaign node) with links between them.

Act II of my Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire campaign has forty-two different scenarios. In addition to conceptually breaking the campaign into acts, I have further divided this act of the campaign into three sections, using prefixes to distinguish them. (So this campaign features adventures with organizing codes like NOD4, CC3, and BW09. Which may sound confusing, but is perfectly clear in context.)

My big point here is that there’s not necessarily a “one true way” here. It’s what works for you and it’s what works for a specific campaign.

USING NODES TO MANAGE PREP

The conceptual separation of a campaign into separate nodes is also a great way to manage prep and, in accord with the principles of smart prep, minimize wasted prep.

Basically, you can set up the essential elements of a campaign node (in terms of how it connects and interacts with other campaign nodes) without fully prepping the scenario that lies “behind” that campaign node. Therefore, you don’t actually need to prep that scenario until the PCs move to engage it.

For example, when I originally laid out Act I of Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire, it featured thirteen scenarios. Because of the choices my players made, however, I ended up only needing to prep seven of those scenarios.

The high-level view of the campaign gives enough detail to have a complicated web of interrelated content, while also conceptually firewalling the campaign in a way that prevents you from pouring a bunch of extra detail into areas where it turns out you don’t need it.

Note: As you design and expand individual campaign nodes, you’ll often find new opportunities to link the node to other nodes arising naturally out of the material. Do so. As a corollary of the Three Clue Rule suggests: More clues are always better. (Make sure to list these new connections in your campaign-wide documentation, too.)

ADDING NODES

The modular nature of node-based design, however, also makes it easy to integrate new nodes into your campaign structure.

In fact, it’s not unusual in the slightest for the actions of the PCs to generate new nodes by either creating leads out of whole cloth (by pursuing methods of investigation or a strategy of action that I hadn’t anticipated) or following leads that I didn’t realize were leads when I made them. I discussed one example of this in Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire here, as the unexpected actions of the PCs added two completely new nodes to Act I (even while they were, as noted above, ignoring six other nodes I had planned).

Something similar happened in the Eternal Lies Remix, with the players choosing to go to the Severn Valley by following information that wasn’t explicitly designed as a lead, but which they nevertheless interpreted as such.

As the GM, you may also find yourself proactively creating new nodes that arise logically out of the evolving circumstances of the game. The Shipwrights’ Ball in my Dragon Heist campaign is an example of that.

As you’re adding these nodes to your campaign, don’t forget to link them to other campaign nodes just like you would with any other node. You don’t need to worry about making sure to include three clues pointing to the new node (you’re designing the node because the PCs are heading there; you don’t need redundancy to make sure they do the thing they’re already doing), but seize the opportunity to add new leads pointing to other nodes. (For example, when adding the Laboratory of the Beast to In the Shadow of the Spire, I added several new links to Act II of the campaign.)

These connections will often arise naturalistically in any case. If the PCs become interested in a mobster’s yacht or lawyer or ex-wife because of their connection to the mobster, it just makes sense that those things could be potentially connected to the mobster’s other affairs (i.e., the other nodes connected to the mobster in the campaign).

Note: There are plenty of exceptions to prove this “rule.” If the PCs go haring off on a wild goose chase, it’s perfectly fine for them to discover that it’s a dead-end in terms of their wider investigation. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that they won’t find something interesting there. The Manse of the Red Dragon sounds pretty exciting even if it doesn’t have any connection to the conspiracy of Elf Lords.)

In some cases, you may find that the PCs have blasted open a whole new multi-node section of the campaign. That’s great! Just remember not to prep more of those nodes than you immediately need to.

META-SCENARIOS

I spoke earlier about the two prongs of mystery design: That there are leads which point to other nodes where you can continue investigating things and clues that point to other types of revelations (like the solution to a mystery). Furthermore, the latter can be spread out over the course of an entire scenario, with the PCs slowly accumulating the clues they need to piece things together.

This same principle can hold at the campaign level: You can take a big mystery, break it down into separate revelations, and then spread the clues for those revelations out over the entire campaign (perhaps dropping only one or two in a given scenario).

This is a meta-mystery, and it’s an example of what I call a meta-scenario.

Although the design principles here, like much of what we’ve been talking about, are the same as they would be for an individual scenario, in some cases a difference in scale is a difference of kind. Largely, this is a matter of organization: I usually find that meta-scenarios require their own section of the binder. I find them easiest to both design and manage if I think of them as a distinct entity that’s kind of being “draped” over the top of the campaign’s primary structure.

Meta-mysteries are not the only sort of campaign-spanning meta-scenario. Other examples might include:

• Collecting the specialized components for performing a ritual.
• Making allies for the Prophecy War.
• Being hunted by an intergalactic cabal of assassins.
• A countdown to the apocalypse as the Stars Come Right.

Go to Part 3: The Fractal Node

Node-Based Scenario Design describes an ultra-flexible structure for designing scenarios based primarily around the acquisition and flow of knowledge: When the PCs learn about a node, they can go to that node and, usually, find information that will let them learn about more nodes (which they can then go to and find more information).

The structure is extensible, very robust, and lends itself naturally to mystery scenarios, which are based around the acquisition of knowledge – i.e., the information you gain in a node comes in the form of clues (or leads) that point to other nodes where you can continue the investigation. However, GMs who use node-based scenario design often find its usefulness extends far beyond simply traditional mystery stories, as it turns out that the basic concept of “things which are connected to each other” has a fairly broad application.

The original essay included some simple examples of how node-based scenario design works (most notably the Las Vegas CTU scenario in Part 3 of the series), but those really only scratched the surface of what you can do with the structure. Plus, I’ve spent another ten years learning new tricks and techniques. So now it’s time for a little applied theory as we dive into some examples of how the node-based structure can be used in actual practice.

REALLY PRACTICAL EXAMPLES

If you just want to see full scenarios featuring node-based scenario design, here’s a quick reading list.

The Masks of Nyalathotep is a classic Call of Cthulhu campaign by Larry DiTillio & Lynn Willis. It had a major influence on codifying the Three Clue Rule and is also a great ante-example of node-based scenario design at a campaign-wide level.

Eternal Lies by Will Hindmarch, Jeff Tidball, and Jeremy Keller is a Trail of Cthulhu campaign inspired by The Masks of Nyalarthotep. I did an Alexandrian Remix of the campaign, which is probably one of the most comprehensive examples of how I prep a node-based campaign currently available.

Quantronic Heat is a three-part adventure series for the Infinity Roleplaying Game designed by Nick Bate and myself (mostly Nick). The first adventure, “Conception,” in particular, is a very clean example of scenario-level node-based design.

Here on the Alexandrian, you can check out The Strange: Violet Spiral Gambit. This is another very clean example of scenario-level node-based design, serving as a pretty good Platonic ideal of what a node-based mystery scenario looks like. Other examples on the site include Gamma World: The Egyptian Incursion, Star Wars: Red Peace, and Eclipse Phase: Psi-chosis.

Welcome to the Island is an adventure anthology for Over the Edge that I was lead developer for. The scenario I co-wrote for the book (“Seversen’s Mysterious Estate,” with Jonathan Tweet) isn’t node-based (it uses the party-planning scenario structure), but most of the other scenarios in the book do use node-based design, often adulterated with other scenario structures. For example, Jeremy Tuohy’s “Battle of the Bands” has the PCs trying to reunite a pop-punk band from the mid-2000s, with each band member being a node that they need to track down.

NODES VS. REVELATION LISTS

What is a node?

In Part 9 of Node-Based Scenario Design I list five types of nodes:

• Locations
• Characters
• Organizations
• Events
• Activities

Activities have proven to be exceedingly rare in my scenario design (maybe your mileage will vary). In any case, I tend to think of nodes as things that the PCs can go and interact with.

PROACTIVE NODES

There are also proactive nodes which typically do the opposite: They come to the PCs and interact with them.

Proactive nodes are usually characters. I often think of them as the “response teams” of a scenario. This is frequently literal, with my proactive nodes being the people who are sent to deal with the PCs once the bad guys realize they’re snooping around. But it’s also a useful metaphor: Proactive nodes are the easiest tools I can use as the GM to take action at the table instead of simply reacting.

What about other proactive nodes?

Well, locations tend to be stationary and rarely follow people around… unless you apply sufficiently advanced technology and/or magic. The technology doesn’t really need to be all that advanced, either: An abandoned ghost ship drifting into the town’s harbor can easily be a proactive node.

Organizations can be proactive in their responses, but the response usually takes the form of a specific response team (which would usually be the actual, character-based proactive node).

Events can be proactive if they’re of a sufficiently large scale or if they’re specifically targeted at the PCs: A city-wide festival or a ritual that causes all the trees in the forest to start weeping blood count as the former. A series of enigmatic phone calls that ring up a PC’s cellphone would be an example of the latter.

Almost anything can be a proactive node if it can be framed as information being pushed on the PCs. For example, if the PCs are cops investigating a series of bank robberies, they would be automatically notified if a new bank robbery took place. (Is this an event or a location? Both? Does it matter? Don’t get too obsessed with the categories here.)

In addition to creating a living world where there are both long-term and short-term reactions to the PCs’ choices, proactive nodes also have the practical function of getting a scenario back on track. For example, if the PCs have missed all the clues pointing to a particular revelation, a proactive node can be used to provide a fresh lead.

REVELATION LISTS

On that note, a revelation is any conclusion that the PCs can make or need to make in the scenario (see the Three Clue Rule and Using Revelation Lists for more information).

A revelation can be a node (i.e., “we need to go check out that location / character / organization / event”), but it can also be stuff that isn’t a node (i.e., “the runes are Achaean” or “the rage-wraiths can be kept at bay by the smoke of burning wisteria”).

In my more recent work, I’ve started talking about evidence & leads, where leads point you to places where you can continue investigating (i.e., new nodes) and evidence points to other types of revelations (often the solution to the mystery; e.g., Bob’s the killer). In practice, though, these can often overlap. “Bob’s the killer” is a mystery solution which also points at Bob (who, as a character, might be thought of as a node). Furthermore, for a satisfying mystery you’d probably want to establish Bob before revealing he’s a killer, so there’s a “Bob exists / is here / is involved” revelation that points to Bob-as-a-node and then a “Bob did it” revelation that points to the Bob-as-solution.

I think it’s useful to separate the node-based list of revelations from the list of other revelations. I just find this to be conceptually clearer. (This assumes that there ARE non-node revelations. That won’t always be the case. Pure procedurals and breadcrumb-style mysteries often have a 100% overlap between revelations and nodes. This also tends to be true for non-mystery scenarios.)

In any case, your node list will most often be simply copy-pasted into your revelation list, with a couple notable exceptions:

The initial node that begins a scenario almost never requires a revelation list. The exception are scenarios with multiple points of entry, in which case you may want the investigation from one entry node to potentially lead to other entry nodes. (This is also only true within the context of the scenario itself: The PCs might actually be led to the initial node of a scenario by the revelation list of another scenario. More on that when we discuss fractal nodes and node-based campaigns below.)

Proactive nodes usually don’t have a revelation list, either. These nodes are designed to come looking for the PCs, after all, so they don’t necessarily require a mechanism that will lead the PCs to them. (Many nodes, of course, could be both. I tend to just list those as normal nodes and then opportunistically play them as proactive when or if it comes up.) What I will do for proactive nodes, though, is include a list of them in my prep notes with the likely triggers that will cause them to take action and/or become available for action. These triggers can include stuff like:

• Monitoring Avery Hall [and might therefore spot the PCs investigating Avery]
• Sent to kill Avery Hall [potentially while the PCs are talking to Avery]
• Staking out Node 1, Node 2, or Node 6
• Notified by Avery [if she becomes aware of the PCs]
• Sent by Avery if she learns they know about the jade statue
• Trigger randomly as the PCs are traveling between locations
• Respond to any violence in the neighborhood in 1d6+10 minutes

These triggers aren’t really a binding list. They’re more of a quick personal reminder for how particular tools can be used.

Go to Part 2: Node-Based Campaigns

THE SECRET LIFE OF NODES
Part 1: Secret Life of Nodes
Part 2: Node-Based Campaigns
Part 3: Fractal Nodes
Part 4: Nodes Aren’t Everything
Part 5: Naturalistic Node Design

Running a successful horror scenario in a roleplaying game can be a unique challenge, but it’s not the impossibility that some feel it to be.

There is one baseline requirement, though: The players have to be invested in the game world. They have to CARE about something. Their own PCs at a minimum. The whole group is better. Other stuff in the game world is ideal.

And, as a horror GM, you want to be aware of what your players actually care about: If they don’t care about something, then they cannot fear its loss. Target what the players care about, which may not be the same thing as what their characters care about.

The thin line of distinction here can often be found in joking around the table: It’s okay if the players are using jokes to try to distract themselves from the danger. That’s part of horror! It actually shows that they’re invested in the world.

But if the players are using jokes to distance themselves from the game world, that’s a problem: Those jokes de-invest the players’ engagement in the game world. It’s the difference between Buffy cracking wise with Willow and the MST3k crew mocking a movie.

The distinction between these two forms of humor at a gaming table – where roleplaying, meta-game discussion, and meta-commentary often flow around each other seamlessly – can be very subtle, but it’s important.

Long story short: If you’re trying to run a horror game and you’re having problems with disruptive behavior (i.e., players disrupting the table’s investment in the scenario), then it’s useful to step back and have a group discussion about expectations. However, it’s easy for this conversation to misdirect towards things like “no laughing” or “horror is serious business, so everyone put on their frowny faces.” In my experience, this is often ineffective and it can be more useful to drive to the heart of the matter: Why don’t you care?

Fixing that issue may be a much more complicated issue (and beyond the scope of this essay), but the frank discussion is usually a good place to start.

In any case, let’s lay this digression aside and assume that you have a group invested in their characters and the game world.

What next?

THE CORE OF HORROR

Regardless of medium, achieving true horror is a vague and unspecific art. But you’re generally looking for some combination of danger, anxiety, helplessness, and enigma.

These qualities are often associated with the lack of power, and this can lead to the assumption that horror becomes impossible if characters have a certain amount of power: You can’t do horror with superheroes. Or D&D characters. Or colonial marines in a warship armed with nuclear weapons.

In general, however, the objective amount of power you have is only relevant because it influences your RELATIVE power. And even relative power is only meaningful insofar as it affects PERCEIVED power.

If you perceive yourself to be overpowered by something that wants harm you (or, often more effectively, those things and people you care about), then you are in DANGER.

If you see no way to escape or redress the imbalance of power, you are HELPLESS.

If you are concerned that such danger or helplessness could happen, you are ANXIOUS.

Finally, when confronted with an ENIGMA, players will perform an act of closure. With proper circumstance and priming, their closure will create the threat of danger or helplessness, either heightening the sense of anxiety or creating anxiety even in situations where it isn’t necessary.

Scott Mccloud – Understanding Comics

SHORTCUTS & MULTIPLIERS

There are a number of shortcuts and multipliers you can use to create or enhance horror.

PHOBIAS have various sources, but they are all pre-trained fear responses. They bypass rational threat assessment and immediately trigger a sense of overwhelming danger.

Making the players fear for something other than their PCs (i.e., themselves) allows you to place the endangered thing or person at a distance. This DANGER AT A DISTANCE reduces the perceived ability to do anything about the danger, thus reducing perceived power and enhancing helplessness.

Conversely you can endanger PCs from a distance or in a way they don’t understand. If they can’t figure out how to apply their power to MYSTERIOUS DANGER, they also lose perceived power. (I used this technique in The Complex of Zombies with the bloodsheen ability to create a terrifying mystery.)

You can achieve similar effects via DILEMMAS. If multiple things the PCs care about are simultaneously put in danger (preferably in different locations), being forced to choose which one to help or save can create helplessness. (Or it can force the party to split up, which is also great for horror: It reduces the perceived power of the characters and it lets you put isolated characters at risk, presenting danger at a distance for the rest of the group.)

You can use PRIMING to direct how players perform closure on the enigmas you present. (There are a lot of ways to do this. Horror movies actually do it with their soundtracks: Specific music cues or types of music or the lack of music prime the audience to literally imagine the worst possible outcomes from otherwise innocuous interactions – like opening a door – a thousand times over.)

You can use the UNEXPECTED to create quick enigma, disrupt the perception of relative power, or maximize the effectiveness of a phobia. (Jump scares are a simple example, but so are xenomorphs climbing through the ceiling when you expected them to come through the doors.)

It can also be effective to ESTABLISH RUTHLESSNESS. In order for horror to exist, the threat of loss cannot simply be performative: The audience (i.e., the players) must believe the threat to be real. And the easiest way to make that happen is if the threat is real, which can be demonstrated by actually pulling the trigger (or swinging the axe, as the case may be).

This can be very effective when dealing with the problems created by genre expectations: There are all kinds of genres in which the main characters are placed in jeopardy, but are never in actual danger of being killed. This is particularly true of the pulp genres and TV procedurals that many RPGs are based on.

Modern design ethos, for example, has ingrained the belief in many groups that game play is supposed to be a predictable series of “fair” encounters. The expectation is thus that the PCs will constantly be placed in the perception of “danger,” but will never actually be at risk. You’re obviously never going to feel helpless if you know every encounter has been designed for you to triumph, nor are you going to feel anxious about the possibility of facing the next “dangerous” encounter. Horror, of course, is completely impossible under these conditions, and often the only way to break that long-held belief is to bluntly demonstrate that, no, you and/or the things you care about are NOT safe.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Let’s wrap up with a couple things you should NOT do.

First, don’t tell the players that their characters are scared. While it’s true that we have an empathetic model of mind (i.e., if we see someone smiling we often reflect that emotion and become happy ourselves because we have circuitry in our brains specifically designed to recreate the emotions seen in others) and that horror fiction – particularly film – leverages that to create fear in an audience by showing a character in fear, instructing players what their characters are feeling can often psychologically distance them from those characters and have the opposite effect.

(What you CAN do is vividly describe the emotional reaction of NPCs. Particularly NPCs that you know the players care about. The bandwidth is still limited compared to a film, but the technique can be effective.)

You should also not allow this imprecation to discourage you from using tools like sanity mechanics, assuming you’re using them correctly, of course. (Note that, when used correctly, sanity mechanics create enigma and use priming to frame player closure through foreshadowing without disrupting their emotional engagement with both their character and the moment. This is obviously not a coincidence.)

Second, never railroad the players into danger.

As the Railroading Manifesto tells us, railroading is never a good idea. But it sure can be tempting in a horror scenario! After all, if helplessness is one way of creating horror, what could make the players feel more helpless than forcing them into a preconceived outcome?

The problem is that this helplessness is not diegetic; instead of being focused on the game world (and the things that the players care about in that game world) it’s focused on you. This emotional redirection can disconnect the players from the game world, causing them to lose the investment that is foundational to the horror experience. In other words they stop caring. And often the fear you want them to be feeling is replaced with anger.

Conversely, true autonomy often heightens the horror: It’s only when choices matter that enigmas are fully engaged with (because they know the outcome of those enigmas are not predetermined; in the most simplistic form, if they could solve this puzzle faster then they might be able to save Lisa’s life). Furthermore, when players feel true responsibility for what happens (because it’s the result of the choices they made), the guilt they feel for those outcomes – and, importantly, the fear of experiencing that guilt if things go wrong – will enrich their emotional response to danger and helplessness.

That kind of emotional engagement, of course, will heighten the players’ investment in the game world, expanding the depth and breadth of the horror itself.

Go to Part 1

KORA MARWOOD

(Created by Chris Malone)

Kora Marwood was born the youngest to an impoverished family living in Waterdeep. Her father, Hogar, was a member of the guard and occasional longshoreman, and her mother cared for her four siblings and kept house in a shabby apartment in the Dock Ward. In the autumn of 1471, Kora’s mother, Samira, took a short-term field job with the Snobeedle Orchard and Meadery. In the midst of a work day, she unexpectedly gave birth to Kora in the middle of the field.

Life continued to be difficult for the Marwoods, and things finally fell apart for the family when Hogar died while working on a job on the docks, killed by a faulty bit of cargo netting and crushed to death by lumber imports from Chult. Samira, fearing for her inability to care for Kora and her siblings, brought them to the Temples for adoption.

Kora, only three years old at the time, remembers little of her mother and her family. While her siblings went to temples of Lathander and Ilmater, Kora was taken by the acolytes of Mystra. She was raised in the mysteries and teachings of Mystra, learning the histories of civilization, magic, and religion.  While life was safe and predictable, it was also boring. Kora began sneaking out at night to spend time in the city, and soon found herself enamored with a young man named Aseir Kalid, from Calimshan.

Aseir was an artist, working during the day in his father’s shop weaving and dyeing, and then working on his own projects when he had time. When he presented her with a small wooden painting of her one night, she decided that she was done with life in the temple and left shortly thereafter. She lived with him for six months, exploring the city with new eyes. It was in the Spring of 1486 that Aseir fell ill with the Weeping Plague, an illness that began with sores around the eyes and nose that wept a clear fluid, then quickly spread throughout the body, followed by a fever and, for many, death. Brought to Waterdeep from ports far away, the city respond quickly with quarantine. It was then that Kora was reunited with her brother Randal, who had become a priest of Ilmater. Despite his training and magical prowess, he was unable to save Aseir, and left Kora in quarantine to care for him until he passed.

Heartbroken, Kora returned to the temple, throwing herself at the feet of the Head Priest. She begged him to take her back, so that she could serve the temple as a lay healer. While Mystra is not inclined towards life and healing, magic serves all, and they taught her the healing arts. She took to it quickly, showing prowess and aptitude.

She was asked to accompany a pilgrimage to Myth Drannor as a healer and acolyte, and she attended to this. Along the way, she made the acquaintance of a dwarven ranger named Dain Balderk. Dain was initially standoffish with Kora, but after she had several opportunities to demonstrate her knowledge, diplomacy, and skill, he showed a grudging respect. Unfortunately, the arrival of the pilgrimage was preceded by destruction, as the city of the Netherese fell upon Myth Drannor, destroying it. Again.

The pilgrimage stayed at the Ruins of Myth Drannor for several months, caring for the wounded and exploring the wild magic of the disaster. It was during this time that Kora discovered that Balasha Asorio, one of the guides and foragers with the party, was actually an agent of the Zhentarim. Exposing the traitor forced a hasty ambush that had been in the making for some time. The Zhent were repelled, but Balasha escaped and Dain received a grievous wound to his back that would never heal completely. On the return trip to Waterdeep, Dain revealed himself as a Harper, and indoctrinated Kora into the faction.

When the pilgrimage at last returned to the city, Kora swore herself to the service of Mystra and began her life as a cleric in full. She now lives at the House of Wonder as a healer, acolyte, and doing odd jobs when asked. She serves mostly as an informational asset for the Harpers, looking to find those who look to destroy personal freedom and otherwise act out of evil. She still meets with Dain regularly, who acts as a mentor (and handler).

DESCRIPTION: Kora stands about 5’6”, tending towards a leaner frame; not scrawny, but more svelte. She has darker skin, that of a deep tan or of a more Mediterranean ethnicity, not quite brown, but not pale. Her hair is dark brown, to the point of appearing black unless under direct sunlight. Her face is more narrow than broad, with a rounded chin, high cheekbones, and green eyes.

When at home and not expecting trouble or a call to action, she wears a robe or a tunic with a simple shirt underneath and blue or black leggings. When out and about, she wears her armor with a tabbard or tunic over it, leather leggings/britches, a cloak, and her shield, mace, pack, and healer’s kit at her side. She dresses in white, silver, and blue, with red elements in linings and trim to reflect Mystra’s holy colors. Mystra’s holy symbol is emblazoned on her shield.

WHAT KORA KNOWS – THE ZHENTARIM:

• Zhentarim is a shadow organization of thieves, spies, assassins, and wizards that trades mercenaries and goods (including weapons) for profit.
• Their original base of power was among the Zhent people in the Moonsea region, primarily a place called Zhentil Keep.
• Long sought to gain political influence in Waterdeep, but the strength of the city’s Masked Lords, nobility, and professional guilds makes that difficult.
• In the late 14^th century (about 100 years ago), the founder of the Zhentarim (Manshoon) was killed and Zhentil Keep was razed. Zhentarim power was shattered, with the organization breaking down into many internecine factions.
• You’ve been trying to figure out details about the local Zhentarim for awhile, as their power and influence seems to be growing. Recently, however, there appears to have been a schism within the group.
• This schism is not widely known, because the Zhentarim are simultaneously fighting a gang war with the Xanathar Crime League, and that violence is capturing everyone’s attention. You know that that this gang war is the result of some provocative action taken by the new splinter group of the Zhentarim.

CREATING KORA

I’ve run games for and played games with Chris for a number of years now. His approach to character creation tends to be a quiet one: He likes to thoughtfully develop them in great detail, often working ahead of the group even in unfamiliar systems. In this case he was quite familiar with 5^th Edition and the Forgotten Realms, and so by the time we were getting some of the new players up on their feet, Kora was already a fully fledged character rich with details. In fact, virtually everything you see above was already basically in place by the time I tuned in on Kora for the first time.

PUBLIC INTEGRATION: There’s an anecdote that’s somewhere between gospel truth and urban legend that goes around both the movie and video game production circles. You have either a developer or a writer or a director or maybe an SFX house who’s giving a presentation to their producer or editor or investor. And so they very deliberately add one element to their presentation or edit or final render that they know is dumb: Like, maybe it’s a noir drama but there’s a shot of a guy holding a goose for no reason.

So their boss says, “Looks great, but I think you should lose the shot with the goose.” And our creator-hero takes the note and deletes the goose… because, of course, they never actually wanted the goose in the first place. The point of the story is that everybody in a decision process feels a need to give notes; either because they psychologically want to feel that they’ve “contributed” to the final product or because they need to justify their paycheck. If they just say “that’s good,” it’s not like they’ve actually done anything, right? The point of the dumb goose was to provide a lighting rod for the irrelevant-but-necessary comment they pathologically need to provide.

This is my long-winded way of saying: As a GM, don’t be the executive in this story.

If you’ve got a value-add, go for it! That’s the whole point of the “public integration” phase. In this case, Chris’ expertise and clear vision meant that Kora was already fully integrated into the setting.

No need to look the gift horse in the mouth. Ride on.

PRIVATE INTEGRATION: Chris had chosen for Kora to be a fledgling Harper and had also set up a violent history with the Zhentarim, so that bit of integration with two of the major factions of the campaign was also more-or-less automatically done for me. I simply swapped out the scripted Harper contact (Mirt) for the character that Chris had created (although I eventually brought Mirt back in as Dain’s boss; thus Kora’s background gave additional depth to the Harpers rather than vice versa).

(I guess maybe it is worth pointing out that swapping out elements you had planned and replacing them with what the players created is not only just as valid as adding relevant stuff to the PCs’ background, it’s probably MORE valid.)

You’ll note that, like Sarah, Chris got a “What You Know” handout for the Zhentarim. Some of the bullet points are duplicated (there’s no reason to rewrite or reword stuff you don’t have to), but others have unique information, slightly different information, or information with a different interpretation. The goal, of course, is for the two players to be able to actually swap information in-character. (If their handouts were perfect duplicates, the interaction is more likely to be one of them regurgitating everything know and the other player not getting any pay-off from their character’s knowledge. The unique information solves that problem. The information that slightly overlaps – or even contradicts! – provokes actual discussion between the players.)

The Snobeedle Orchard appears on the map of Waterdeep:

I had a huge version of this map hanging on the wall and Chris simply grabbed it off the map when fleshing out the story of Kora’s mother. This was a really cool opportunity, but I blew it: I completely missed the fact that Dasher Snobeedle, a member of the Snobeedle family, had become one of the wererats sent to harass the new owners of Trollskull Manor (i.e., the PCs).  I eventually noticed my oversight towards the end of the campaign when I started doing some meaningful development on Kora’s missing mother and was able to work it in. (You can read about that in more detail over here.)

BRINGING THE PARTY TOGETHER: As I mentioned in Part 1, Edana’s position as a fixer made her a natural fit for being the character who would connect the rest of the party with their contact at the Yawning Portal. Kora’s role as a Harper agent, however, also made sense for this role.

There were a few options we collectively considered, including:

• Kora somehow being undercover and investigating Edana. (Chris wasn’t really interested in playing Kora with a false identity, and this also suggested that Edana was currently involved in criminality, whereas Sarah was more interested in having her at the tail end of one of her respites.)
• Edana introducing half of the party to their contact and Kora introducing the other half. (The problem was that Kitti, Pashar, and Theren were already grouped up, so there was no “other half” for Kora to introduce.)

The final solution ended up being a somewhat convoluted web of connections: Upon arriving in Waterdeep, Kitti decided the best way she could help Pashar raise money was by joining the underground fight circuit. (I made a note to connect this to the underground fights that figure later in the campaign.) Asking around, they got pointed in the direction of Edana. When Edana realized how much money they really needed, told them to skip the fights and decided to take them to Kora, who had been putting the word around that she needed a crew.

“Mystra’s got money,” was Edana’s rationale. But it turned out the job wasn’t for the Temple of Mystra. Kora was freelancing. But the offer was better than nothing, so Kitti, Theren, and Pashar accepted. Edana decided to tag along for a little bit just to make sure everything was copacetic. (It seemed to her that young Kora was flying by the seat of her pants… She wasn’t wrong.)

And that’s when Kora took them all to the Yawning Portal to meet her contact.