If you’re a geek older than forty, one of the tough/weird adjustments you’ve had to make in your life is that there was a point where you could reasonably expect to at least sample every significant geek media release…

… and then you couldn’t.

In the ‘90s, for example, I could reasonably expect to watch every science fiction TV show and play every geeky board game.

Today you could dedicate every waking moment of your life and you still wouldn’t be able to do either of those things.

And this extends to movies, roleplaying games, video games… All of it.

At first you think, “I’m just getting old. If I was still young, I could stay on top of all this.”

But that ain’t it.

I lived through the transitions from “there are three channels on your dial” to cable television to the modern fire hydrant of content. Having a local channel become a Fox affiliate — a fourth network! whoa! — was a significant event in my life.

We talk about the “last Renaissance man” — the point at which it was no longer possible for a single person to meaningfully master all fields of human study. In the last forty years, we’ve passed a similar threshold in media.

Looking back across that watershed, an important thing to understand is that, because it was possible, there was a cultural pressure to actually do it. To be part of the geek scene, you needed to know — wanted to know! — the shibboleths.

Pre-1970ish, SF fans could read every major SF novel.

Pre-2005ish, SF fans could watch every major SF TV series.

But, like the proverbial lobster, we have been imperceptibly transitioned into a reality where that’s NOT possible. And, just like the lobster, this creates a lot of stress.

Some of it is self-imposed.

Some of it is external.

“You haven’t watched [insert show here]? I guess you’re not a real fan!”

The scene then fractures.

I can’t learn all of those shibboleths, so I’m going to focus on one specific slice of geek media and learn THOSE shibboleths: So anime becomes its own, increasingly separate fandom. And then there’s so much anime that it, too, fractures into sub-fandoms.

When this fracturing takes the form of excluding rather than focusing, it can turn toxic. This is usually draped in conspiracy rhetoric and/or bigotry: Women or black people or story gamers are trying to steal our fandom!

Now we’re starting to see the emergence of mega-franchises producing so much content that it’s not just a matter of not having time to read every science fiction novel; it’s that you only really have time to engage with this ONE, all-consuming media tentpole. (And maybe squeeze a few other things in around the edges.)

This creates a bizarre paradox: We have a prolificacy of media vast beyond the bounds of comprehension; a cornucopia that would stagger the imagination of, say, an SF fan in the ‘50s.

But, simultaneously, the consumption of any single individual person is increasingly homogenous.

In the late 2010’s, how many people had 50% or 80% or 100% of their trips to the cinema be exclusively MCU films?

There are antecedents to this. From 1990-ish, for example, Star Trek and Star Wars both produced enough tie-in fiction that if you fully engaged with it you would probably read little or nothing else. There was a time when you could casually read every Marvel comic… and then you couldn’t.

It’s just becoming more common.

And this creates an interesting challenge for the megacorps driving these mega-franchises. You can push more and more of the all-in-one, all-consuming fandom… but only up to a certain point.

Once you exceed a fan’s capacity to consume everything — to learn every shibboleth — then the fandom will either radically schism (possibly toxically so) or, worse yet (for the megacorp, anyway), abandon the franchise entirely.

Dungeons & Dragons is an interesting case study here.

Pre-1984, or thereabouts, you could buy and read every single official release for the game. Starting in 1984, the number of modules being published each year was becoming onerous, but pre-1989 even a moderately devoted fan could still easily engage the major releases.

After 1989, on the other hand, AD&D 2^nd Edition’s release schedule became a firehose of content. (Even ignoring the 300+ tie-in novels and video games and comic books.) No one could keep up with it, so the fanbase schismed along natural fault lines (“I’m only going to buy Dark Sun books!”) or dropped out.

D&D 3^rd Edition and 4^th Edition tried to maintain a more sustainable pace of releases so that fans could at least afford to purchase the books, but the TYPE of material they primarily released (PC options) couldn’t be brought to the table fast enough, so fans would, once again, become saturated and then drop out. (This is the fatal flaw to using a supplement treadmill to support an RPG line.)

D&D 5^th Edition, on the other hand, initially dialed back the pace of releases and focused more heavily on adventure material (which is more consumable; you play the adventure and then you need a new adventure). The result is that even casual fans didn’t feel disconnected from the shibboleths or incapable of consuming the content: “Strahd” and “Dragon Heist” and “Auril” and “Baldur’s Gate” were all recognizable references to the vast majority of the fandom.

In the last couple of years, however, the pace of D&D 5^th Edition releases has increased, the shibboleths are beginning to slip, and there are clear signs that the fanbase is fracturing. (Which is probably not great news going into a new edition.)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is having a similar problem: Yes, the slip in quality (precipitated by a brain drain of all the major creators) is a contributing factor, but the more fundamental systemic problem is that the amount of material being released increased to a point where even people who wanted to keep up with it all couldn’t. The result? Fans, particularly casual fans, started checking out.

And, as the MCU demonstrates, the more you create the impression that “everything is important” and that a fan needs to “watch everything” in order to keep up, the more dramatic your crash will be the instant you pass the threshold at which fans can no longer do that: They won’t just dramatically scale back their engagement. They’ll drop out completely.

So if you’re running a mega-franchise, what’s the solution?

It basically boils down to releasing material at a pace that your audience can consume it.

That sounds simple, but it’s shockingly easier to succumb to temptation, ramp up your release schedule, and break the whole thing. Partly because modern capitalism / greed demands perpetual growth. Partly because your loudest and most hardcore fans will happily consumer FAR MORE than the majority of your audience, and if you heed their call they’ll be all that’s left in the burnt out husk of a once vibrant community. And partly because creating stuff is fun, and as your resources grow the allure of creating even more stuff — stuff you couldn’t have dreamed of creating just a few years ago! — can prove overwhelming. There’s also likely more and more people involved in the mega-franchise as it grows, and it will become increasingly difficult for that not to fuel an exponential pattern of growth.

Now, let’s flip it around: You’re a fan of a mega-franchise and it’s growing past your capacity to “keep up.” What can you do?

Broadly speaking, you’ll either need to let the franchise go or you’ll have to figure out how to change the way you engage with the franchise so that the “consume all” credo of collectorism doesn’t rob your joy.

That might be identifying some subset of the franchise (creators, characters, specific settings, etc.) that you’re most interested in. (Although be warned that the worst mega-franchises will make this difficult by constantly disrupting every segment of the fandom with “events.”) It might be withdrawing from new releases and just enjoying the stuff you love. (Were you really enjoying everything the mega-franchise was offering? Or were you buying some of that stuff just out of a sense of obligation?) Or it might be finding some new way of engaging with your fandom, perhaps by creating fan art or fan-fiction or Youtube videos, in a way that makes you more than just a passive consumer and gives you greater power to make your fandom what you want it to be.

And, of course, the best time to start figuring this out is BEFORE the franchise has become all-consuming in your life and knocked out all of your other interests and hobbies.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38A: The Arathian Job

Once Agnarr’s tail-lopping duties were completed, they loaded the various ratmen corpses – along with the Iron Mage’s crate – into the cart Elestra had procured and started the long haul up the Dock ramp.

As they went, they mulled the question of how they could protect the Iron Mage’s crate. It was too large and too dangerous for them to haul around with them, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing they could just leave lying about their room.

They rejected a plan to place illusions on the ratbrute corpses to make them appear like duplicates of the real crate before dumping them in the Midden Heaps or scattering them around town. They felt it was a ruse too easily penetrated… and once the illusions lapsed the corpses might lead to some unwanted questions on their own account.

“Besides,” Tor pointed out. “I promised to dispose of them properly.”

What the players decided to call the Arathian Job (it’s like The Italian Job, but we’re in Arathia!) isn’t the classic image of what a heist looks like, but it has the same attitude: Planning, prep work, execution.

And as you look at the Arathian Job as a heist, you might find it remarkable that it just… works. The players simply put together their plan and executed it.

If you look back at Session 8, when the PCs were hired to sneak a scrying cube into Linech Cran’s office, you’ll see a similar dynamic:

Once there, Tee went down the narrow alley between the Yebures’ and the house next door. From there she climbed quietly onto the Yebures’ roof. She had some difficulty climbing the next section of wall up to Linech’s window – falling and cracking her head once – but she eventually secured a grappling hook in the chimney on Linech’s roof, climbed the rope, and then rappelled over to Linech’s window.

The lock on Linech’s window yielded to her thieves’ tools easily enough and she slipped inside, falling to the floor next to the life-size gold statue they had noticed the last time they were in the office.

In looking for a place to hide the scrying cube, Tee’s eyes were naturally drawn to the bookshelves along the room’s north wall. Clearing some of the books away she reached back to place the scrying cube behind them… only to find a crumpled up sheet of paper lying there. She pulled this out, glanced at it, and then stuffed it into her bag. Placing the scrying cube and then carefully replacing the books she had moved, she went back to the window, shut it behind her, and climbed down.

Tee gave the signal that the others, scattered around the lower burrow, could disperse. It had all gone as smoothly as anyone could hope.

They’d done their legwork, come up with a plan that worked, made their skill checks, and walked away clean.

It can be tempting, as a GM, to think that if we don’t make things hard for the PCs or complicated in some way that the game will be “boring.” That might be true if every challenge is trivial and the PCs simply streamroll their way through the campaign, but the reality is that coming up with a strategic plan, executing it, and having it work is immensely satisfying.

So when the players earn a victory, let them bask in it.

These successes also create great contrast for when things DO fall part. You can see a very clear example of this in the case of the Linech Cran job because in Session 9 the PCs had to come back and break into his office all over again, this time to steal the gold statue he had on display there. This time there were new complications (someone else was trying to break into the office at the same time), and the PCs ended up flubbing one of their skill checks and dropping the statue, creating a loud noise that raised the alarm and created even more complications. The PCs were still ultimately successful, but it was a much more stressful heist.

The great thing about this contrast is — if you’re playing fair — then the players truly feel like they earned their victories (because they did), which makes them even sweeter. And the players also own their struggles and even failures: There’s no reason the second Linech Cran job couldn’t have gone smoothly. (The first job proves it, after all.) The complications they need to overcome (like dropping the statue) feel legitimate, partly because they are and partly because they’ve seen the proof of that. That legitimacy keeps the players immersed in the scenario, and also makes their ultimate success (assuming they achieve it) all the more satisfying because they earned it.

By contrast, when the players become convinced that they can never truly succeed because the GM will always find some way to thwart their best laid plans (whether in the name of “making things interesting” or otherwise), it steals the luster of the campaign. It’s the reason some players don’t enjoy making plans; after all, what’s the point when every plan is doomed to failure whether it’s good or bad? And other players will respond by spending even more time making plans in a Sisyphean and ultimately doomed effort to make them perfect. (And this, too, becomes a reason why players don’t enjoy making plans.)

The same thing is even more, in my experience, if the players becomes convinced that they can never fail because the GM will always twist things to make sure they succeed. Again: Why bother making plans if making the plan has no meaningful impact on the outcome?

And what happens as a result is that the tactical and strategic elements of the game become deeply weakened: Figuring out what you need to do and then doing it is in fun in games, it’s fun in life, and it should be fun in an RPG.

When that thrill gets pulled out of your roleplaying game, it’s a sad loss.

Campaign Journal: Session 38B – Running the Campaign: Adding a New Player (Part 2)
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 38A: THE ARATHIAN JOB

June 7th, 2009
The 21st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The commotion had inevitably attracted the attention of the Watch. A small squad of them cautiously approached the end of the dock. Agnarr, busily chopping off ratmen tails, glanced up. “It’s about time you got here.”

Fortunately, several members of the Watch recognized Sir Tor. Tor, humble yet quietly quite pleased with the recognition, took advantage of the situation. Offering a brief (and well-edited) accounting of the situation, Tor offered to dispose of the bodies. The watchmen were delighted to have this unpleasant duty taken off their hands. They quickly pointed them in the direction of the Midden Heaps (“that’s where we dump all the bodies”), waved their goodbyes, and headed on their way.

Once Agnarr’s tail-lopping duties were completed, they loaded the various ratmen corpses – along with the Iron Mage’s crate – into the cart Elestra had procured and started the long haul up the Dock ramp.

As they went, they mulled the question of how they could protect the Iron Mage’s crate. It was too large and too dangerous for them to haul around with them, and it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing they could just leave lying about their room.

They rejected a plan to place illusions on the ratbrute corpses to make them appear like duplicates of the real crate before dumping them in the Midden Heaps or scattering them around town. They felt it was a ruse too easily penetrated… and once the illusions lapsed the corpses might lead to some unwanted questions on their own account.

“Besides,” Tor pointed out. “I promised to dispose of them properly.”

This plan, however, spawned another and they quickly sketched out a scheme for protecting the crate through a combination of both security and obfuscation. While the rest of them stuck with the slow-moving cart, Ranthir and Elestra hurried ahead into the city.

Ranthir went to the Exotic Market, which specialized in one-of-a-kind items, strange livestock, miscellaneous magical trinkets, alchemical compounds, magical reagents, and the like. Amid its odd jumble of small wooden stalls and tents, he was able to find – as he had hoped he might – someone who could sell him five identical lead-lined crates. The lead-lining, as Ranthir had explained to the others, would block even the emanations of the powerful magical aura exuded from whatever artifact was hidden within the stygian darkness of the Iron Mage’s crate.

Elestra, meanwhile, headed to the Stockyards and hired five identical (or, at least, near-identical) carts. She had them driven to the Exotic Market, where Ranthir directed the loading of one crate into each of the carts. Then all five carts were driven back to meet the rest of the party at the Midden Heaps.

There they found Tee and Tor in a frustrated negotiation with the scrap merchants who ran the Midden Heaps. Apparently there wasn’t any profit to be had in scrapping bodies (“these don’t even have their tails!”), and the scrap merchants were inclined to either refuse the bodies entirely or charge a hefty fee for their dumping.

Eventually they talked their way to Delloch, an ornery dwarf who apparently ran the Heaps. Although he grumbled about “having enough ratmen running live about these Heaps”, they managed to talk him down to a reasonable fee and were able to dump the bodies, according to his directions, deep in the Heaps (making their way between and over heaping piles of slag, scoria, scrap iron, and other guildcraft chaff).

Then they were able to turn their attention to their more immediate and important affairs: Removing the outer crate they had placed over the Iron Mage’s original crate, they plunged the street near the entrance of the Midden Heaps into darkness. Under the convenient cover of this darkness, they placed the original crate into one of the five lead-lined crates. Ranthir also took the opportunity to create additional illusionary doubles of the crates, carts, and themselves. Then they sealed up all 5 crates (disguising the identity of the actual crate), dismissed the cart drivers, and clambered aboard the carts themselves.

And off they went.

THE ARATHIAN JOB

Their first stop was the Foundry. The elaborate caravan they had constructed pulled up across the street. Ranthir led (and directed) illusionary versions of Agnarr and Tor to the front door and oversaw the delivery of an illusionary crate into the front hall.

“What will they do when they find that its disappeared?” Elestra asked.

“Well, nobody is expecting it. So they might not miss it at all,” Tee said.

Their plan was to put some of the crates where they might not be found; some of the crates where they might force a confrontation between their enemies; and some of the crates with their most powerful allies. They felt a little guilty about potentially putting their friends at risk for the sake of an empty crate, so they were careful to only approach those they felt could handle the cultists and ratmen.

They left the Foundry and headed north into the Temple District. They weren’t sure if they should count the Church among their enemies or their allies, but it seemed like a good place for ensconcing a crate. Tor spoke to Sir Gemmell, who readily agreed to keeping the crate in a locked room on the third floor of the Godskeep (one of the rooms recently vacated by the knights relocating to the Holy Palace).

They were worried that anyone spying on them might notice that the crates were empty, so they decided to make sure that they pretended there was something heavy in them. This actually proved an unwarranted worry: When Tor and Agnarr tried to lift the heavy, lead-lined crate they found it almost impossible and eventually needed to get help.

Next was Greyson House, where they took an illusionary crate into the basement and “hid” it among the other crates in the basement. (In reality, Ranthir simply let the illusion drop away after they had reached the basement.) Then they crossed the bridge into Oldtown and headed towards the apartment complex above the Temple of Deep Chaos where an illusionary Ranthir levitated an empty crate into one of the rooms on the ground floor. Ranthir grinned at Tor and Agnarr. “I don’t know why you’re having so much difficulty moving them.”

As they dropped off the crates, the empty carts would peel away from the caravan – some disappearing a few blocks away as they exceeded the range of Ranthir’s spell, others being driven back to the market.

Staying in Oldtown they went to the Pale Tower and spoke with the Graven One. He agreed to keep a watch over a crate and easily heaved it out of the cart with one hand. (Tor and Agnarr reflected on the basic unfairness of the universe.)

Once they were safely through the Tower’s doors, they confided in the Graven One, telling him that the crate was empty. He nodded his understanding. “We will keep it safe. What is in it – or not in it – is of little consequence.”

Their impromptu caravan had some difficulty passing through the Dalengard, but once they had identified themselves and given Castle Shard as their destination the gates to the Nobles’ Quarter were quickly opened to them.

Tor had been thinking. “What do we really know about the Iron Mage?”

“Not much.,” Tee said. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m just wondering if we should really be doing this,” Tor said. “For all we know, we’re working for the bad guys.”

“If it turns out that the Iron Mage is just going to give it to Wuntad, I’m going to kill somebody,” Tee said.

They decided that was unlikely. Why would he tell Silion to steal the crate if the Iron Mage was going to deliver it to him? (“Maybe he didn’t want to pay him,” Elestra suggested.)

“Maybe you knew him before?” Tor suggested.

“You mean before we lost our memories?”

“Yes,” Tor said. “Why else would he keep coming to you with a list of chores?”

“Maybe,” Ranthir said.

“Or maybe that’s just the Iron Mage,” Tee said.

On the other hand, maybe not. They ran through a list of people the Iron Mage might be: Wuntad. Zavere. The Surgeon in the Shadows. The Banelord. The mysterious Ritharius. Or all of the above. Or some combination thereof.

They hadn’t reached any sort of a conclusion by the time they reached Castle Shard. Kadmus, of course, was waiting for them. He easily hefted one of the crates in one hand and carried it across the drawbridge. (Tor and Agnarr groaned.)

Zavere greeted them with a friendly smile. They had decided to leave the real crate with Zavere and, for that reason, not to hide anything from him. They explained everything that had happened and Zavere readily agreed to keep the crate safe.

They thanked him and left. There were only a few of the crates and carts left now. They hired a messenger to anonymously deliver one of them to the front gate of the Balacazar’s mansion and then they headed back down into Oldtown.

There the illusionary remnants of their caravan split apart in a final effort to lose and confuse any potential spies. Ranthir led the illusionary remains down into the Guildsmans’ District where they winked out one by one. Meanwhile, Tor and Tee drove the last of the real carts to the Hammersong Vaults. There they rented a vault for a month and placed an empty crate inside.

The Arathian Job was done.

Running the Campaign: Heists That Just Work – Campaign Journal: Session 38B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

A very easy trap to fall into as a GM is prepping the PCs’ actions: “When the PCs do X, this is what will happen.”

It’s easy because this is largely what an actual RPG session will look like: The PCs will do stuff and then other stuff will happen as a result of that. (Repeat.) It’s a trap because this only works if you’ve guessed exactly what the PCs will do.

That’s a problem because (a) you probably don’t have the gift of prescience and, therefore, (b) you almost certainly won’t guess correctly. (Or, at least, not a majority of the time.) At that point, your prep is going to start falling apart quickly and you’ll only have a few options:

1. Start railroading the players and force them to do the things you prepped for them to do. (This is awful. It’s antithetical to the entire reason we play roleplaying games in the first place and your players will hate it.)
2. Do lots and lots of contingency planning: Since the PCs might do lots of different things, you just need to make preparations for everything they might do! (Unfortunately, this will just result in a lot of wasted prep and the players are still likely to do something completely different.)
3. Throw out most or all of your prep and just start improvising like mad in a desperate attempt to keep up with your players!

None of these are particularly appealing options, but at least the third one is steering us in the right direction. Throwing everything out and flying by the seat of your pants, though, is an incredibly daunting prospect, and if we’re just going to end up throwing everything out anyway, shouldn’t we just abandon prep entirely? Maybe embrace a zero prep approach and hope for the best?

But I have good news. The only reason this is daunting is because you’re having to throw out all of your prep. And the only reason you’re having to throw out all your prep is because you prepped the wrong stuff. (Or, at the very least, you prepped it in the wrong way.)

There’s a better way.

Your prep can empower you rather than trapping you.

THE TRAP

The most extreme version of prepping the PCs’ actions is prepping a linear plot, with a specific structure of PCs do A → PCs do B → PCs do C, but it’s not the only one.

To show you what I mean, we’re going to take a look at “Out of the House of Ashes,” a scenario from The Zalozhniy Quartet, a Night’s Black Agents campaign by Gareth Hanrahan and Kenneth Hite.

SPOILERS FOR THE ZALOZHNIY QUARTET!

To be clear, this is a very good scenario in a very good campaign. I like this scenario quite a bit and recommend the campaign book. That’s why it makes such a good example.

The basic situation in “Out of the House of Ashes” is that an ex-KGB agent named Arkady Shevlenko has valuable information related to a vampiric conspiracy. Shevlenko is currently attending a trade conference in Vienna, where he is planning to defect to the CIA. The vampires, on the other hand, have very different plans: In an operation led by Sergei Rachov, they interrupt the CIA’s plan to extract Shevlenko, kill the CIA team, and convince Shevlenko to give them the information instead.

The PCs, of course, also want the information, and the designers consider a lot of different options for what the players might do and give the GM several contingency plans for likely variations of how events might play out.

But it’s nevertheless clear that the spine of the adventure is still built around a loose-but-intended plot (i.e., a series of specific actions the PCs will take):

1. The PCs become aware of Arkady Shevlenko and the information he has. (Several potential hooks are given, but one involves tracking an agent of the vampires named Sergei Rachov.)
2. The PCs arrive in Vienna and put Arkady under surveillance.
3. The PCs make contact with an MI-6 agent who chaperones them through a cut scene where they witness the vampires kill the CIA team.
4. The PCs contact Shevlenko.
5. The PCs extract Shevlenko from a performance of Marschner’s Der Vampyr at the Vienna State Opera.

And because the prep is structured around these specific PC actions, it all becomes surprisingly fragile. In other words, even through Hanrahan and Hite have included tons of useful options for the GM to use because they want the players to be free to approach the operation in any way that the players want, the fact that the material they’ve prepped is still organized around the plot (and presented via scenes triggered by the PCs’ actions) makes it incredibly difficult to actually use.

For example, let’s consider one deviation the PCs might make from the anticipated sequence: Instead of arriving in Vienna and then following Arkady Shevlenko, they instead put Sergei Rachov under surveillance to figure out what he’s doing.

This should be fairly straightforward, but what do I need from the book to pull this off in actual practice?

• Page 57 & 67: Rachov visits Dr. Ingolf, Shevlenko’s heart doctor. (Page 69: This includes giving him a vial of blood.)
• Page 73: He goes to a safe house on Veronikagasse.
• Page 68: He checks a dead drop where Dr. Ingolf leaves information for him.
• Page 63: On the evening of the next day, Rachov is at a reception at the Hotel Europe.
• Page 71: Rachov meets with a vampire named Simon Thonradel.
• Page 66: Rachov is at the Russian Embassy, meeting with Shevlenko.
• Page 76: Rachov attends Der Vampyr with Simon Thonradel. (Page 77: If the PCs don’t stop him, he extracts Shevlenko and takes him to a graveyard to interrogate him.)

Notice how the page numbers are jumping back and forth, and at almost every step, of course, I’m trying to tease information — particularly about the timing of events — out of a close reading of the text.

Imagine trying to do this in the middle of a session. It is, in fact, a daunting prospect. With an electronic copy of the book and a search function, it’s just barely imaginable that you could pull it off. If you only had a physical copy of the book, though? It’s almost certainly impossible.

But what’s the alternative? The players did something unexpected and charted a completely unique course through the adventure. Obviously you’d be left scrambling through your notes trying to stay one step ahead of them!

EMPOWER YOUR PREP

The situation I’m describing here is not, in fact, a hypothetical one: This is exactly what the players in my campaign did.

I was not, however, left scrambling.

Instead, I had this in my prep notes:

SERGEI RACHOV’S TIMELINE

Staying at the Lisky building on Veronikagasse.

DAY 0: Meets with Dr. Ingolf (ZQ, p. 67). Gives him the blood sample (ZQ, p. 69) and threatens him.

DAY 1 – 3 PM: Meets with Dr. Ingolf (ZQ, p. 68), who tells him about the CIA’s extraction plans at Hotel Europe.

DAY 1 – 8 PM: Hotel Europe Reception (ZQ, p. 62-64).

DAY 2: Rachov and Thonradel visit Russian Embassy. Their agent, Zhenya Mikaylou, gets them access to Shevlenko. (ZQ, p. 66)

DAY 3: Meets with Zhenya Mikaylou at the Veronikagasse building.

• Zhenya briefs him on anything she knows about Arkady’s activities.
• If Zhenya’s meeting with Lynne Feinberg happened, she’ll also be delivering Anna Shevlenko.

DAY 4: Attends Der Vampyr at Vienna State Opera with Thonradel.

• If they have Anna Shevlenko, she’s also in their private box opposite Arkady’s. (ZQ, p. 76)

So when one of my PCs trailed Rachov to the airport, saw him board a flight to Vienna, and then created a contact who could meet his plane in Vienna and follow him, all I had to do was look at my notes and know that he would be headed to the Veronikagasse apartment building. When the PCs arrived in Vienna a few hours later and took over the surveillance, I similarly had no difficulty keeping them up to date on where Rachov was and what he was doing.

(Until they killed him on Day 2. Then his whereabouts were significantly less important.)

You can see how simple, straightforward, and short these notes are. But why did I have them prepared? Had I successfully guessed that the PCs would be following Rachov?

Not at all.

Instead, after reading “Out of the House of Ashes,” I had immediately ignored the plot and the scene structure based on PC actions, and instead focused entirely on the situation:

An ex-KGB agent named Arkady Shevlenko has valuable information related to a vampiric conspiracy. Shevlenko is currently attending a trade conference in Vienna, where he is planning to defect to the CIA. The vampires, on the other hand, have very different plans: In an operation led by Sergei Rachov, they interrupt the CIA’s plan to extract Shevlenko, kill the CIA team, and convince Shevlenko to give them the information instead.

Looking at this situation I could easily see that it was being driven by three major players, each with a plan of action:

• Arkady Shevlenko
• Vampires / Sergei Rachov
• CIA Team

So I simply prepped a timeline for each of them, with each timeline fitting conveniently on a single page.

The timelines then indicated significant locations (the Russian embassy, the Veronikagasse apartment building, etc.) and major events (the CIA’s failed extraction of Shevlenko, the Der Vampyr opera operation, etc.). Each of these also got one- or two-page write-ups (which could be cross-referenced from the timelines to keep everything streamlined, focused, and easy to use).

Because these notes were now organized around describing the situation — the people, places, and events — rather than the PCs’ actions, I was able to respond to anything the PCs might do by simply reaching out, grabbing the appropriate part of the situation, and then using it to actively play with the group: What would Shevlenko do? What would Rachov do? When Rachov is killed, how do the vampires react to that?

CONCLUSION: PREP TO PLAY

The important thing isn’t the specific structure of the ops timeline I used for this adventure. (The scenario you’re prepping will determine what structure is the most appropriate.) The point is that you’re organizing your notes into specific toys (or, if you prefer, tools) that you can easily grab and start playing with.

Call it the Rachov Principle: Instead of prepping a bunch of contingencies featuring Rachov (and scattered across a dozen different pages), you are instead prepping Rachov himself — a toy you can play in myriad ways and a tool that you can use to solve an infinite variety of problems.

in myriad ways and a tool that you can use to solve an infinite variety of problems.

This is also, obviously, not dependent on adapting a published adventure. You can — and should! — prep to play when designing original scenarios, too. (And, in fact, it’s much easier to organize your notes like this when you’re not having to first deconstruct poorly organized material.)

Either way, with your scenario notes organized into the toys and tools you want to use at the table (instead of into scripts based on guessing the PCs’ actions), you’ll be empowered to actively play with your players, flexibly responding to whatever they choose to do!

FURTHER READING
Don’t Prep Plots
Don’t Prep Plots: Prepping Scenario Timelines
Don’t Prep Plots: Tools, Not Contingencies
How to Prep a Module
Gamemastery 101

Review: Night’s Black Agents
Review: The Zalozhniy Quartet

Many moons ago there was a tile-based RPG mapping program called Dundjinni. It had a lot of cool features, but one of the best was the Old School Mapping Pack, which was a tileset that would let you easily replicate old-school style dungeon maps. I really liked it because, unlike a lot of other mapping programs, it was the only one that I could create a map in almost as easily and quickly as sketching it by hand.

Over the years, in addition to using it for my home campaign (as seen in Running the Campaign: The Adventure Not Taken and the map shown above), I used it for a number of projects here at the Alexandrian, including:

The Halls of the Mad Mage

The Strange: Violet Spiral Gambit

The Ruined Temple of Illhan

Better Dungeon Maps

Remixing Keep on the Shadowfell

Xandering the Dungeon

The developers for Dundjinni, unfortunately, vanished into the mists of the internet and the Java-based program slowly started deteriorating. One of the first things to break were the official tilesets, including the Old School Mapping Pack. (If I recall correctly, as an anti-piracy measure, the program would verify the tilesets before loading them, and the website would no longer verify the tileset.) Fortunately, you could still load custom tiles, and so I ended up custom-crafting my own set of old school tiles so that I could continue using the program.

Several years ago, however, the program itself finally stopped working on modern operating systems, and that was it. Fortunately there are newer options like Dungeon Scrawl and Dungeondraft which have picked up the ball Dundjinni dropped and run with it. (And you’ve seen maps from those programs on newer projects here at the Alexandrian.)

A patron of the Alexandrian, however, recently asked if they could get copies of some of my custom old school Dundjinni tiles. I’ve tracked down my old files, packaged them, and you can download the full set at the link below.

The set includes stuff like these custom chairs:

Or, as another example, this sarcophagus, catapult, and cart:

The set also includes the custom symbols I designed for the Better Dungeon Maps series:

 And there are many more!

If you still have some old machine running Dundjinni, these tiles are still set up so that you can easily load them as a custom tileset, but you are more likely to find them useful in other mapping and imaging programs. Permission is granted for commercial and non-commercial use (see the included readme file), and if you do find some use for them, I encourage you to come back and share your creations with us, either in the comments here or on the Alexandrian Discord!

ALEXANDRIAN OLD SCHOOL TILESET
(zip file)