Go to Part 1

STINK

Stink was the heir to House Greygloom, but Stink was naughty. Stink’s father – Lord Baleen of the Tinfoil Ilses – was naughty, too, and as punishment Stink became the ward of House Snark. The Snarks were nice to him and, looking back on that, Stink is pretty sure he didn’t deserve it. Stupid, stupid, Stink. He abandoned his brother by another mother, abandoned his sister by the same daddy, and abandoned his oaths. He deserves to be Stink. He did terrible things. Turned on his friends. He killed… those boys. Now the pretty lady is asking him to do nice things, but that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing Stink is good at. He doesn’t have the balls for it.

SULKWELL TUBBY

“I know who yer daddy is.” – Sulkwell Tubby

But Sulkwell wishes he didn’t know his. Randy Tubby was Lil Finger’s frat brother, and he’s the sort of guy who heard the saying that, “The true path to the Porcelain Throne lies through books,” and thought it meant that the only place worth using a book was the privy. Sulkwell ended up thinking the same thing, but only because the privy was the only place he could read without being tormented by his father and his brothers. As soon as he turned eighteen, Sulkwell got the hell out of there… and it was definitely his own idea, he’ll swear to it. Josh Frost is best friend in the whole world.

LIL FINGER

Lil Finger is the sort of fellow who believes that the best pickup lines are all Yo Momma jokes. He could never understand why this hadn’t worked with Waitin Snark, and with all the logic of a werewolf in heat he concluded that it was because he was fated to fall in love with her daughter, Sanserif. Oddly, however, the Yo Momma pickup lines aren’t working on her, either. He thinks the problem might be that he has a wife, but the Yo Auntie jokes aren’t working, either. Women are weird.

BERRY OF TART

When she was a young maiden, Berry of Tart dreamed of becoming the Iron Chef, a title which she had significantly misunderstood. How, exactly, she wrought such miraculous pastries while using nothing but a sword is one of the great mysteries of the age. Her blueberry tart, which became known as the Sapphire Isle, was particularly spectacular. Although she was eventually named the Queen of Tarts, Berry was never able to claim the title of Iron Chef due to rank misogyny.

DAVE ONION

Dave Onion, captain of the black-sailed Unsinkable II (don’t ask what happened to Unsinkable I), delivered Tijuana Bibles and whiskey to Lord Canceled’s men during Bobby’s Rebellion, helping to keep their morale up and their resolve stiff. (Tijuana is the name of Lil Finger’s brothel in Jester’s Landing.) When the war came to an end, Lord Canceled had Onion knighted, but also sentenced him to have his nipples cut off as punishment for his past crimes as a smuggler of pornography. Sir Dave was fine with this. Male nipples are useless, and he has no time for useless things. Plus, the scars are bad*ss.

Feng Shui 2 uses an action count (or tick-based) initiative: Characters make an initiative check using their Speed to determine the initial Shot Count that they’ll be taking action on. Each action is then rated by the number of “shots” it will take to resolve, and this shot cost is subtracted from the character’s current shot total to determine the Shot Count on which they’ll take their next action. When everyone’s Shot Counts hit 0, the current Sequence ends and a new Sequence begins with fresh initiative checks.

There are some mechanical advantages to this system: It allows for Dodges and other interrupt actions to be handled very fluidly (by simply applying a shot cost that adjusts when a character gets to take their next proactive action). The ability to easily handle actions that have different “weights” (whether from a dramatic or simulationist perspective) by assigning them different shot costs can also be very elegant (and Feng Shui 2 wisely leaves most of those distinctions up to the GM rather than miring the system with a bunch of arbitrary, predetermined values that would impede play through table look-ups).

For a long time, however, I personally found that the mechanical disadvantages of tick-based initiative systems significantly outweighed the mechanical advantages:

• The system encourages a methodology of calling out initiative numbers (“Okay, anybody going on 18? No? 17? No? 16. Yes, great.”) that I find clumsy and poorly paced.
• It requires more fiddly bookkeeping from everyone at the table, which can be a drag on pace.
• It tends to interfere with or prevent me from using advanced combat management techniques like on-boarding, prep rolls, and the like.

Basically, over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that combat is most interesting when you can keep things focused on the events happening in the game world – entering quickly into the conflict; fluidly moving and overlapping action resolution – rather than focusing on initiative values. Tick-based systems tend to inherently conflict with my ability to do that.

But as I got ready to start playtesting Feng Shui 2 scenarios this month, something clicked in my head. I don’t think it’s something intentional (at least, it’s never been discussed in a published Feng Shui book to my knowledge), but maybe I’m just dense and it’s taken me twenty years to figure out something that was immediately obvious to everyone else. (A quick survey of online discussion suggests otherwise.)

Couple common misconceptions I’ve seen floating around that you should toss out in case you’re harboring them:

• A Feng Shui sequence is not a “round.” If you try to think of it through the paradigm of the typical combat round found in D&D and other RPGs, you’re going to find it difficult to square the difference.
• The “shot” in “shot cost” does not refer to the time it takes to fire a bullet. It refers to a shot in a movie. (Although, appropriately for Feng Shui, the term shot was derived from the early hand-cranked cameras; you “shot” a film the same you “shot” a hand-cranked machine gun.) “Sequence” is the same thing: It’s a film editing term referring to a series of individual shots.

And the thing that clicked in my head is that you shouldn’t just treat these as appropriated terms that lend a filmic theme to Feng Shui’s mechanics; you should embrace them fully in framing and describing the action of your Feng Shui game.

FRAMING TO THE SEQUENCE

Start with the sequence: Mechanically, when the sequence ends, everyone rolls fresh initiative and a new sequence begins.

As the GM you should also key off this moment to dramatically change the fight. The first sequence should not just seamlessly transition into the second. Instead, the first sequence should definitively conclude and the first few shots of the second sequence should establish a new paradigm for the fight that makes it feel radically different from the previous sequence.

• Reinforcements arrive. (Fresh waves of mooks flood in. The Boss shows up and shouts, “What’s going on in here?!”)
• A chase sequence transitions from one environment to another. (After a bunch of tight-corners and narrow streets, the cars blaze up an entrance ramp and onto the freeway. The rooftop chase reaches the end of the warehouses and the cyber-apes jump down into the crowded stalls of an open-air market.)
• A chase ends and a set-piece fight begins. Or vice versa. (Neo stops to fight Agent Smith in the subway station. Agent Smith regenerates and Neo runs up the stairs and back into the city.)
• A major environmental effect begins or ends. (Artillery shells from a naval ship just offshore begin raining down on the battle. The abandoned building catches on fire. The scaffolding begins to collapse.)
• The bad guys unveil some new attack or ability that they were charging up, deploying, or otherwise holding in reserve.

When embraced, this structure will keep your fights fresh and interesting from beginning to end. Leaning into the sequence will naturally pace the fight in interesting ways.

If you have the right sort of group for it, encourage your players to get in on the act: The PCs can also be a driving force for “and now everything changes!” at the start of a new sequence. They can grab the heavy ordnance from the trunk of their car; or decide that it’s time to skedaddle with the McGuffin; or change tactics and start trying to blow out the support beams in the abandoned theater.

Feng Shui 2 includes a beautiful Shot Count tracker, and I recommend using it: With proper tokens, it will not only simplify the bookkeeping required by the system, it will also visually cue the entire table into both what’s currently happening and the “pace” of what’s coming down the pike. This will be particularly useful as we begin looking at shot-specific techniques.

FILLING THE EMPTY SHOT

It’s far from unusual for a Feng Shui sequence to feature shots in which no characters are taking actions. Instead of simply skipping over those empty shots, you should fill them with a content. In the same way that not every shot during a fight in an action movie focuses on the combatants punching each other, you can use these shots to widen the scope and depth of the scene.

This is a good time for establishing shots: Describe the train roaring past the train yard. It’s the submarine bursting up through the ice. It’s a cut to the nuclear missile that’s reached the apogee of its flight.

Taking a moment to focus on environmental effects is a good use of an establishing shot: The wrecking ball at the construction site reversing its pendulum swing through the air. The lava spewing into the air above the Godsforge. The gasoline spreading out from the car wreck.

Or you can feature the shot where that gasoline catches on fire. Dynamic effects, like that wrecking ball crashing through the scaffolding and forcing everyone fighting on the scaffolding to make a Defense check, can add great spice to a fight, but you should try to use then in limited quantities. (A little bit goes a long way here and you usually want to keep the focus on the characters fighting, not an environment that’s more volatile than a shack full of old dynamite.)

If you’re struggling to come up with a good establishing shot, take a peek at the list of Things That Can Happen During a Fight. You’re usually not doing them on the empty shot, but you can set them up. For example:

• Someone gets pushed through a neon sign. (Describe the dramatic aerial shot that swoops past the tall letters of the neon bulletin board atop the building.)
• Confused tourists stumble into the middle of the fight. (Establishing shot of the father gesturing at a map and angrily indicating which way they should be going.)
• Cut the counterweight on the castle gate to ride it up or down. (Establish the movement of the counterweight when the bad guys are closing the gate.)
• Someone’s sleeve gets caught in the factory machinery. (Describe a shot of the machinery, its mechanical pounding seeming to act like foley for the fists flying in the background.)

In John Woo’s seminal Hard-Boiled, there’s a classic establishing shot of a nursery at a hospital:

Gee… I wonder if anything’s going to happen in there when the guns come out? Nah. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

This creates a cycle of set-up and payoff which is both satisfying when you do it as the GM, but also effective at cueing the players with elements they can take advantage of at their own initiative.

Don’t feel like any of these moments need to be overwrought. Quick reaction shots are more than sufficient to punctuate the flow of the fight. Get in, establish one cool idea in a couple of sentences, and then move on to the next shot.

Empty shots can also be used for character moments – the types of interactions (witty dialogue, steely-eyed glares, the respite in which an exhausted hero catches their breath before plunging back into the melee) that elevate the best fight scenes. Such moments don’t require empty shots (they can be woven around and through the action in general), but an empty shot may give you an opportunity to particularly highlight such a moment.

This is also a great way to get the players involved: You may encounter a little difficulty where some players struggle to understand that these empty shot moments are not a “free action,” but if you can get them onboard you’ll be able to throw empty shots their way to set up cool character moments.

You can also blend multiple empty shots together into a single moment, but challenge yourself to resist that impulse and see what happens. If you have three empty shots in a row, try to find three distinct things to do with them, perhaps looking ahead to see who’s action is coming next and using those shots to ramp up to or shift the focus to that character’s situation.

SUBJECTS IN THE SHOT

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll often have shots with multiple characters taking action. As described in the Feng Shui 2 rulebook, these actions are resolved:

• PCs first, in clockwise order from the GM.
• All GMCs in the shot.

Here, too, take a cue from what the shot system is telling you: These actions are all taking place in the same shot. In movie terms, that means they’re all happening on screen together. This does not necessarily mean simultaneously (shots extend over time), but it does mean that they’re all related to each other visually, spatially, and probably causally.

Generally speaking, the trick here is to mechanically resolve all of these intentions and only then weave the full description of what happens in the game world. This allows you to pull discrete mechanical interactions together in order to give the fight a wider scope and richer narrative flow.

Circumstances won’t always make this particularly easy and you may need to occasionally abandon ship, but I encourage you to challenge yourself: If the Shot Count is grouping together characters on completely opposite sides of the fight, is there a way that you can widen the shot? Or cause something happening over there to shoot across the fight and impact what’s happening over here?

DESCRIBING THE SHOT

Finally, embrace the filmic conventions of Feng Shui – the original love letter to Hong Kong action flicks – and lean into using actual shot terminology to describe your framing of the action.

One way of categorizing shots is by subject size (use the number of subjects appearing in the current shot as an easy guide for setting this, but break away from the obvious answer occasionally and see where that leads you):

• Extreme close-ups frame just one small part of the subject. (A single eye glaring; an entire fist filling the frame as it lashes out; a ghastly wound pouring blood down someone’s side.)
• Close-ups feature a single subject; the focus is on their facial expressions and the details of their emotions.
• Medium close-ups keep the focus on a single subject, but capture their head, chest, and arms. Surroundings are vague and unimportant.
• Medium shots can be focused on a single character, but can often capture several characters in the same shot (two-shots are common). One variation of the medium shot is the cowboy shot, used in Western films to frame subjects from the thigh-up in order to fit the character’s gun holsters into the shot.
• Medium long-shots are more likely to capture multiple subjects, and the environmental details became significant.
• Long shots or wide shots are used to either capture large groups of people and/or put the primary focus on the environment in which the characters find themselves.
• Extreme long shots or extreme wide shots feature characters (often multitudes of characters) who are dwarfed by the environment or the totality of the crowd. These will often be used for establishing shots.

You can generally just use close-up, medium, and long shots to convey most of the meaning you need verbally at a game table. This also makes for a good starter palette as you’re getting a feel for the technique.

You can also classify shots by camera position and movement: Eye level, low angle, dutch angle, over-the-shoulder, bird’s eye view, point of view, dolly shots (dolly in or dolly out), aerial, pans, tilts.

Also think about the quality of the shot: Handheld, steadycam, or a swooping crane shot can all convey different emotional connotations (even when evoked verbally).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Virtually all of these techniques can be implemented without the mechanical frame of the Feng Shui shot-and-sequence. But embracing that structure and pushing it hard will (a) give your Feng Shui fights a unique and distinctive flavor, and (b) serve as good practice for incorporating the best and most universal of these techniques into your other games.

Use the strong frame of the Feng Shui sequence to push you out of your comfort zone and, as I’ve suggested several times here, challenge yourself.

If you find yourself struggling, try this tip I presented in the very first Random GM Tips column here at the Alexandrian: Take a really great fight film – like Hard-Boiled or The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – and narrate the action as it happens on screen, as if you were describing it to your gaming group. It sounds corny, but it builds your repertoire and helps loosen up your descriptive instincts. This is particularly effective for Feng Shui, because it will help you see fights through a filmic lens.

By the same token, don’t let yourself get fuddled by treating any of this as a straitjacket. For the first half dozen fights or so, lean into the structure hard and treat these as immutable “rules” so that you’ll force yourself to learn from the structure. But once you feel like you’ve mastered what the technique has to offer, be aware of when the structure needs to bend to the exigencies of what’s actually happening and what would be most effective. Push yourself to truly expand your horizons, but then remember that you learn the rules so that you know when to break them.

Go to Part 1

Edana and Theren took the stairs down from the orlop deck to the upper hold of the Eyecatcher. As they rounded the corner to head down to the lower hold where they knew Captain Zord’s quarters were, however, a giant spider dropped down from the ceiling and landed directly on top of Theren’s invisible back.

I didn’t see this one coming, either. Running the Eyecatcher from an adversary roster, I saw that there were four giant spiders in Area J17. Flipping open the Monster Manual to the giant spider stat block, I was surprised to discover that 5^th Edition had replaced the spider’s tremorsense from previous editions with blindsight.

Cutting here, with the spider on Theren and their stealthy infiltration of the Eyecatcher at risk, is a solid cliffhanger cut. But it also gives me a chance to regroup slightly and quickly review some rules while multitasking the other scene.

Captain Zord rode his polar bear into the midst of the crowd. “The Sea Maiden Faire has arrived!” He twirled a baton high into the air and had the bear catch in his mouth. Behind him, a giant dragon float began a low swoop over the gathered crowd.

“The baton is a little much, don’t you think?” Kittisoth said with scorn.

“What do you mean he’s behind the automatons?” Renaer asked.

And then the whole story poured out: How Captain Zord was selling nimblewrights constructed by the technomancers of Luskan and that the nimblewrights had been outfitted with clairvoyant crystals which would allow Zord to spy on anyone who owned a nimblewright using a specially attuned crystal ball.

Renaer grabbed her hand and began pulling her through the crowd. “Come on!”

Kittisoth grinned. “I’ll bet you knew something like this would happen when you asked me here tonight.”

“It’s always exciting with you, my dear!”

Meanwhile, back on the Eyecatcher, Theren and Edana had managed to fight the spiders off long enough to run down the stairs and into Zord’s cabin, slamming the door shut behind them. The heavy scent of lavender hung thick in the air as the spiders slammed into the door behind them.

The lavender here is a very clever bit of keyed foreshadowing that’s built into Dragon Heist. You’ll see how it pays off in a little bit, and it’s one of the many places in the campaign where Perkins, Haeck, Introcaso, Lee, and Sernett show an excellent attention to detail that truly elevates the material.

Leaving the fair behind them (as Zord, with another wave of his baton, sent a volley of fireworks into the sky), Renaer led Kitti up to a staff-wielding woman in the crowd.

“Kitti, this is Vajra. Vajra, Kitti. Tell her what you told me.”

And the story spilled out again.

This event is being driven from character action, but it’s still taking place within the party planning structure: Vajra is on the guest list. A PC has had an interaction with her. So I put a checkmark next to her name.

As Kitti finished, Vajra furrowed her brow with thought. “If they’re keyed to a crystal ball, do you know where the crystal ball is located?”

“On their ship.”

At this point Edana’s player says, “Dammit, Kitti.”

“Well, I’m already this far in, right?” Kitti’s player says.

When the other players at the table not only start commenting on the action, but having sharp emotional reactions to it, you know things are working well. It may not be immediately obvious, but this is also the payoff from establishing crossovers between the scenes: Edana’s player can immediately see how this thing Kitti is doing is going to eventually snapback and impact her.

“And do you know who currently owns nimblewrights?”

“Oh,” Kittisoth said. “So many people.” And she began to list them: Nobles. Major guilds. Prominent citizens. Vajra’s eyes narrowed.

But before they could continue, a man with greased-back hair that tufts up around his ears mounted the stairs of the mansion. As the final volley of fireworks died away, he threw up his hands and announced loudly, “The carnival shall remain here throughout the evening! But for now, it is time for the Grand Promenade to begin!”

Once again I’m actively playing the party structure: I’m looking at my main event list and triggering the next event in sequence.

How do I know the time has come for this to happen? Mostly it’s just dramatic instinct. It felt like enough stuff had happened on the front lawn of the mansion and that it was time for a shift in scenery. From a practical standpoint, it also allowed Vajra to say:

“All right. I need to take my place in this. You get back on Renaer’s arm—” Renaer took Kitti’s arm. “We’ll meet up inside. I need to figure out the damage of… whatever this is.”

Following rules of social etiquette that Kitti didn’t understand, guests began going up the stairs and into the mansion in order of precedence. One of the first was a silver-haired elf in a scintillating blue dress that sparkled with living starlight. Kitti gave a low whistle.

“That’s Laeral Silverhand,” Renaer said. “Open Lord of Waterdeep.”

“Why didn’t you ask her?” Kitti asked.

“She intimidates me.”

“Oh. I get that,” Kitti said. “Yeah.”

And then, surprisingly early in the proceedings, Renaer was pulling her forward, up the grand stairs, and into the cavernous grand ballroom beyond, where the Grand Promenade was circling like a whirlpool into an endless spiral.

At this point I already know what Vajra is going to do, so I’m taking the opportunity of the Grand Promenade to establish who Laeral Silverhand is. That lets the next beat land in the arc that Kittisoth has abruptly transcribed more effectively than if I had waited to introduce Laeral. You can actually see that a bit with the introduction of Vajra: The player doesn’t know she’s the Blackstaff, so her introduction by Renaer doesn’t carry that weight of identity. But now I’ve set it up so that when Kitti actually meets Laeral, both player and character will get the full impact of it.

One thing to note here is that I have NOT put checkmarks next to Laeral’s name. Although Kittisoth has seen her, she hasn’t actually had a meaningful social interaction with her. So she’s still on my To Do list.

While Theren moved a heavy dresser in front of the door to stop the spiders – and anyone else the spiders attracted – from getting in, Edana started looting Zord’s cabin of its valuables.

As she transitioned to scooping up any paperwork that looked useful, Theren whipped back the fur rug on the floor and revealed a hatch they had suspected lay there. Ripping it open, they looked down a short airlock towards a second hatch.

They’d found their entrance to the submersible.

Back at Shipwright’s House, the portly man with the greased hair had mounted a stage at the far end of the room. It turned out that he was Rubino Caswell, the guildmaster. He began giving an. Incredibly. Boring. Speech.

“You have to do this every year?” Kittisoth asked.

As Rubino spoke, however, an incredibly beautiful woman in a dress of yellow silk glided over to Kittisoth and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Is this a good place to talk about an ‘explosive’ matter?”

Kittisoth glanced at her. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Then come with your comrades — your other comrades — to our villa tomorrow morning for a more… discrete discussion.”

And the woman glided away.

Renaer leaned in. “What was that all about?”

“She seems to know something about our investigation into the explosion that killed Dalakhar,” Kitti said.

Renaer frowned. “Be careful around the Cassalanters,” he warned her. That was useful. Kittisoth wouldn’t have had a clue who the woman was otherwise.

This is somewhat unusual: With Rubino’s Speech and the Cassalanters’ Approach, I am very rapidly triggering events from the main event track. Much more rapidly than I normally would. (Generally speaking, you’ll trigger an event and then let all kinds of social eddies and currents spin out from that before shaking up the status quo again with the next event.)

Why?

Because Kitti has initiated a sequence of actions here which I know is going to yank her completely off the main event track I had designed for the evening. I wasn’t entirely certain how the next scene would end, but it was quite possible it would derail the party entirely. The Cassalanters’ Approach was included as an essential hook that would come one way or another (even if Kitti had skipped the party entirely, the Cassalanters would have sought the group out through some other channel), so I wanted to drop that invitation now before the next scene took place and I potentially lost the opportunity.

Meanwhile, Theren and Edana clambered down through the airlock and into the submersible. Passing by the engine room carried them out to a main passageway: At the far end of it they could see that the front of the ship opened up into a sort of bulbous, multi-level control room. The walls of the control room were large, globular windows looking out into the blackwaters of Waterdeep Harbor.

CUT TO: Rubino was finally finishing his speech and the crowd was beginning to form little social clusters that either drifted through the ballroom or made their way back out towards the carnival displays that the Sea Maidens Faire had rapidly erected. Renaer and Kittisoth made their way through a bramble of social introductions, trying to figure out where Vajra had gotten to. They eventually spotted her opening the door to a small, private room off to one side of the ball room.

Nothing too fancy here: The same way that we’ve been looking at our guest list and main event list, I’m now looking at the zones I’ve sketched out on my location map and picking one for the next scene.

They rushed over to Vajra and through the door. Kitti was looking back over her shoulder, scanning the crowd as she entered. As Vajra shut the door behind them, she turned around and–

Standing right in front of her was Laeral Silverhand.

Oh no.

The, “Oh no,” of course, was actually spoken out loud by Kitti’s player at the table. A character’s inner monologue becoming manifest through a player’s meta-commentary on what’s happening can be really great.

“All right,” Laeral said. “What is this all about?”

And Kitti’s player said, “I tell her the thing about the thing that I’ve been telling everybody all night with my big fucking mouth.”

As she finished, Laeral said, “Bring me Captain Zord. Right. Now.” And her eyes sparked with tiny shards of blue lightning.

“Oh. Oh no,” Kittisoth babbled. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now, is it?”

Laeral smiled as her guard hurried out of the room. “I promise you we will not make too much of a scene.”

CUT TO: Theren and Edana cautiously made their way down the passageway and looked down into the lower level of the control room. Several gnome tinkerers were at work there, apparently overseen in their work by… a dark elf. That was no good. They cautiously backed up.

The motivation for the cut to Theren and Edana here is probably pretty obvious: The appearance of Laeral had cranked the stakes way up. Reading the room, it was clear that everyone was completely on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen. So you cut away. You let them live in that moment for a bit.

Laeral took a seat on the far side of the room. “So who is this, Renaer?”

“I’m not really anybody,” Kittisoth demurred.

“I doubt that’s true,” Laeral said with a smirk, looking at the way Renaer’s hand was resting on Kitti’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” Kitti said. “I don’t know what to say. You’re very intimidating.”

Laeral smiled and took Kitti’s hand. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be fine. We appreciate all the hard work you’ve been doing on behalf of Waterdeep. Please, step over here for just a moment.” She reached out into midair and her hand disappeared into some sort of dimensional pocket; a moment later she drew back a decanter of brandy.

“What’s our play here?” Vajra asked while Laeral poured.

“I like shock and awe,” Laeral said. “We’re going to talk to ‘Captain Zord’ and find out exactly what game he’s playing here.”

The handle turned and the door began to open–

CUT TO:

The table literally shrieked in frustration here. Yeah. That’s when you’re doing it right. You can’t force this sort of thing and you don’t want to overplay your hand, but when the anticipation is building sharp, quick cuts will heighten it even further, so that when the moment arrives it lands with even more power.

Faced with several doors, Theren and Edana picked one at random.

At this point I asked, “Exactly how do you open the door?” This prompted them to detail with great care and specificity exactly what precautions they were taking.

This was actually irrelevant for this particular door, but it would have been relevant for any other door they had picked in that passageway. (They got very lucky with their random pick. It would be the last luck they would have for awhile.) By asking them the question regardless I (a) remove metagame anticipation if I need to ask the question for future doors (“he already asked and it wasn’t relevant, so we know this is just a routine question he asks”) and (b) build a moment of suspense that pays off even if there isn’t an ambush on the other side of the door.

As they very gently eased open the door… the scent of lavender washed over them.

And here’s the lavender scent pay-off. The players take a great deal of satisfaction in the simple act of concluding that this room must also belong to Zord.

The crystal ball was sitting on a padded cushion of black velvet on a pedestal in the middle of the cabin. They scooped it up and dropped it into their sack.

CUT BACK TO: The door opened.

Captain Zord, flanked by the two watchmen, entered the room. The watchmen remained outside, closing the door behind him.

Zord swept the hat from his head and bowed deep. “Milady Silverhand, how may I be of assistance to you?”

Laeral gave a silent hand signal to Vajra. Vajra pointed her staff at him. There was a brief purple pulse from the end of the staff and Zord’s disguise spell melted away, revealing a dark elf.

At this point, my plan was to dramatically reveal Jarlaxle’s picture. But I actually fumbled retrieving the picture and wasn’t able to cleanly display it.

That was all right, though, because the lore-steeped players at my table had gotten ahead of me and did the work for me: “It’s Jarlaxle,” says one of them. “Oh no!” cries another. A third has dim memories of the Drizzt novels she read in her youth stirred up at the name.

This is pure RPG as an audience: None of the characters know who Jarlaxle is, so this is all firewalled away. But as players, they are all on the edge of their seats and completely engaged and BAM one last amazing revelation has them amped up about as high as they can possibly go.

Laeral spoke. “Jarlaxle. What do you think you’re doing?”

Jarlaxle’s eyes widened in mock innocence. “Milady, whatever do you mean?”

“Crystal balls. Nimblewrights. Explain yourself.”

“I see.” Jarlaxle was taken aback. He clearly wasn’t used to it. His eyes darted around the room, quickly taking in who was standing there. “Well… milady… as I have written to you often — and I am so glad that you have granted me an audience this evening! — my interests are simply to gain your support in seeing Luskan given its proper place in the Lords’ Alliance.”

“Do you really think that spying on me and—”

“Ah! I never spied on you! You did not receive an invitation to purchase a nimblewright, and I have taken special efforts to keep them away from you,” Jarlaxle said. “They were merely employed as an information-gathering service. And I can assure you that if any information I had obtained were to indicate a threat to Waterdeep, I would have surely—”

Laeral raised her hand to cut him off. “Jarlaxle, your tongue is as nimble and sweet as I remember. But I am not to be gulled.”

“I was attempting to gain blackmail material to further my cause as the Lord of Luskan,” Jarlaxle said plainly. “As any Lord of a City-State of the Sword Coast has an obligation to do. You yourself, I believe, employed similar tactics with your husband Khelben Arunsun on many an occasion.”

Talking to yourself as the GM is really hard to do, but having distinct characters with clear, conflicting objectives helps a lot. And when you can pull it off well it’s worth it. This moment got an audible, “Ooooo…” from the table as Jarlaxle scored a palpable hit, which was a good indication that it was time to…

CUT TO: Theren and Edana weren’t certain they could make it back through the Eyecatcher and escape. There was no telling what sort of alarm had been raised by the giant spiders they’d left behind.

They decided that their best option was to disconnect the submersible from the Eyecatcher and then swim out of the airlock. They decided that they might as well try to sink the submersible, as well, having no idea what mischief Captain Zord and the Luskans meant to use it for.

But when they opened the hatches, they discovered there was an energy field preventing the ship from flooding. “The only way this is going to work,” Theren said, “is to disable this field from the control room.”

So they snuck back down the hall together. Edana used a mage hand to reach out, grasp the lever, and—

CUT TO:

“Do you know what we do with traitorous captains in the Pirate Isles?” Kittisoth asked the room.

“I don’t,” Laeral said. “What do you do in the Pirate Isles?”

“We tie ‘em to the main mast and wait for the vultures to feast,” Kitti said.

Jarlaxle glowered at her.

“There’s interesting,” Laersal said. “I think he owns a vulture.”

“He owns a lot of sad animals,” Kittisoth said. “Just like himself. I’m sorry. I’m just sharing information. I know you’ve got this well in hand, milady.”

“I like this one, Renaer,” Laeral said. “You should keep her.”

“You can’t call me a traitor!” Jarlaxle protested. “I am not a citizen of Waterdeep. I’m a Luskan patriot.”

“I’m sorry,” Kittisoth said. “The women are talking.”

Another cool thing about this kind of scene-juggling is that it doesn’t just give you, as the GM, a chance to gather your thoughts: It also gives your players a chance to think about what their next course of action (or clever turn of phrase) will be.

Jarlaxle opened his mouth to respond, but then got a distracted look. “What are you doing, Laeral? My ships are under attack!”

Note here that Jarlaxle is basically anticipating something that hasn’t actually happened yet to the other group: He’s responding to the events that play out after Edana pulls that lever. This is a more advanced crossover technique, where you effectively foreshadow what’s going to happen to the other scene before they actually see it for themselves.

Edana pulled the lever.

Water came gushing down the passage behind them. Edana and Theren both grabbed handholds on the walls. As the water ripped into them, Edana kept her grip, but Theren couldn’t. The deluge swept him down the hall, over the railing, and slammed him down onto the deck of the control room, amidst the gnomes and the drow.

With the water still pouring down from above, Theren tried to swim out. But one of the gnomes either heard him or saw his invisible outline in the water. “Someone’s here!”

The drow waved his hand and everything in the control room was suddenly limned with the dancing green flames of faerie fire… including Theren. He surged to his feet to make a run for it, but one of the gnomes lowered his hand and—

After rolling so well all evening, the dice really turned on Theren here. After failing multiple checks to not get gushed into the control room, he now rolled a natural 1 on his saving throw vs. the burning hands spell and then I rolled max damage on 3d6. He only had 16 hit points left and so—

—the flames washed over his chest, blasting him off his feet. Blackness gripped his vision as he splashed back into the water, unconscious and at the mercy of the drow.

And that’s when I called it for the night. Always leave ’em wanting more.

Go to Part 1

As the scenario begins, one or more of the PCs have received a call from Detective Fred Watson in the middle of the night. Perhaps they’ve worked with him on previous cases. Perhaps they’ve been recommended to him. Whatever the connection, he has a case that needs their ‘special skills’ and he needs them to come up to the James J. Hill House in St. Paul immediately.

BACKGROUND – THE HILL FAMILY

• James J. Hill (1838-1916) was the CEO of the Great Northern Railway.
• Met Mary Theresa Mehegan (a daughter of Irish immigrants; waitress working in the Merchants Hotel in St. Paul) in 1864; married her in 1867. She died in 1921.
• They had 10 children together: Mary, James, Louis, Clara, Katherine (d. 1876, infant), Charlotte (d. 1923, pneumonia), Ruth, Rachel, Gertrude, and Walter.
• The children have largely scattered – most to New York. Walter lives on a ranch in Montana. (Louis and James are still local, but went with Ruth and Gertrude back to New York a couple weeks ago. Ruth and Gertrude were in town arranging the donation of the house with Rachel.) Only Rachel is currently in town.

BACKGROUND – THE MANSION

• Exterior built of a reddish stone.
• The mansion was completed in 1891. It was the largest and most expensive home in Minnesota, containing 36,500 square feet on five floors (13 bathrooms, 22 fireplaces, 16 cut-glass chandeliers, profusion of elaborately carved oak and mahogany woodwork, a three-story pipe organ).
• President McKinley visited in 1899.
• Back side of the house is on a kind of bluff. It looks out past the Cathedral (which rears up from some unseen depth) and across the sweeping, gently swelling hills of Saint Paul.

OVERVIEW – THE PARTY

• Rachel Hill wanted to throw one last party before she and her sisters donate the house to the Roman Catholic Dioceses of St. Paul. (They have recently purchased the house from her mother’s estate.)
• She invited 8 people. 13 people actually showed up because people brought friends or dates, so there were a total of 15 people in the house (including Rachel and the house servant Lucretia Gray).
• Gladys Roy left early (because she has an aerobatics show in the morning).
• Rachel went to bed with headache shortly after midnight.
• At 1 AM (the thirteenth hour), the Tanit-tainted liquor activated. Alicia Corey activated her Hamsa, which disrupted the ascendance of Tanit, but killed everyone there. Alicia Corey’s left hand was partially saved; but the partially ascended Tanit fragments in the left hands of the other guests separated from their hosts and crawled away.
• Screams awoke Lucretia. She woke Rachel. The police were phoned and arrived around 1:40 AM.

LOCATIONS OF THE DEAD BODIES

• Carriage Porch (1)
• Hall (2)
• Library (3)
• Art Gallery (3)
• Balcony (1 + Alicia Corey’s body)
• Attic Theater (2 + 2 Hands of Tanit)

GM Note: If the number of bodies are compared to the count of guests given by Rachel, it will be noted that one is missing: Gladys Roy (who left).

INVESTIGATING THE DEAD BODIES

Left hands are missing. Stumps left behind are not bleeding.

Some bodies have a small amount of bleeding from nostrils or ears.

Medicine: The flesh on the stumps are pink and new.

• Medicine 1 / Pump Stomach: The contents of the victims’ stomachs are slightly purplish and resemble a non-Newtonian fluid; like water mixed with corn starch. (This can be analyzed with proper lab equipment. See General Research: Lab Analysis – Tanit Parasites.)
• Medicine 2 / Autopsy: Cause of death is acute hemorrhaging in the brain, similar to an aneurysm.

Autopsy: Multiple sites in the right side of the brain are damaged. Left side of the brain appears entirely healthy.

• Autopsy (Medicine 1): The Broca area of the brain, in the left hemisphere, shows signs of very slight atrophy.
• Autopsy – Alicia’s Body / Hand of Tanit: Tissue in the left hand has been replaced with some sort of purplish, crystalline structure. (This counts as a 1-point dedicated pool when investigating the tophet serum, allowing the researcher to automatically see how the hexagonal cells are forming the biocrystalline structures.)

Alicia’s Biocrystal: The structure has decayed throughout her hand; some sort of apoptosis or necrotic effect damaging the tissue. It extends up the Ulnar canal – the semi-rigid longitudinal canal in the wrist which allows passage of the ulnar artery and ulnar nerve into the hand.

Hands of Tanit: The biocrystalline structures are connected to the eye in the palm of the hand. Their exact function is unclear.

AROUND THE HOUSE

These items can be found throughout the house. The GM should liberally strew them wherever it seems appropriate.

Minnesota 13 Whiskey Bottles: They were being drunk everywhere.

• Prop: Minnesota 13 Whiskey
• See Node 2: Research – Minnesota 13
  

13 Black Cat Flyers: Several people have them in their pockets, etc. There may also be a few strewn around on tables and the like where people abandoned them. (See Node 1: The Black Cats.)

• GM Note: Gladys Roy was handing them out.

ARRIVAL @ HILL HOUSE

There’s a gaggle of reporters at the front gate (which is being watched by two patrolmen; they’ve been told to expect the PCs). Police officers mill about on the front lawn. Fred Watson meets them as they come across the lawn.

Detective Fred Watson:

• Police arrived. He got called in. Saw the missing left hands and concluded this was the type of case he should call the PCs in for.
• Cleared the cops out of the mansion so that the PCs would have a clean slate (and to put some sort of stop to any weird rumors that are beginning to spread).

GM Note: The structural key here is that the PCs should be allowed to do their own investigation. If they just listen to Watson tell them what he’s found or have him lead them around the house, that’s really boring game play.

Three Key Points from Fred:

• There are bodies; he doesn’t know how many.
• Rachel Hill, the owner of the house, is in her room on the second floor.
• He’s going to go talk to the reporters now; the PCs should go look at the house.

GM Note: Fred won’t think to mention Lucretia (she’s just a Negro servant after all); but if someone explicitly asks if there are any other witnesses he’ll mention her. She’s in her room in the Servant’s Quarters on the third floor.

Cops: If the PCs question the cops who were cleared out by Fred, they can tell them:

• The known locations of dead bodies (see above; although they don’t single out Alicia Corey).
• That Rachel Hill is in her room on the second floor.
• That Lucretia Gray, the household servant, is in her room on the third floor.

Carriage Porch: There is a corpse with a drop-cloth over it on the front stairs.

Next: The Hill House Investigation

Go to Part 1

KELLY C

Queen Dani Rainybrith of House McDragonface, First One They called This, Queen of the Eunuchs, Some Slaves, and Other Random Dudes, Lady of the Umpteen Kingdoms and Protectess of Eastereg, Lady of This Castle I Guess, Kelly C of the Bigass Meador, the Flame Retardant, and Handcuff Remover. When Kelly C isn’t posting pictures of her adorable kids (#dragonmom), she enjoys horseback riding, wine tasting, and deep conversations with her hubby, Karl Go-Go. She and her brother don’t talk anymore. He knows what he did.

KARL GO-GO

Whenever a Sorippedi dancer loses a dance-off, they must cut their hair. Karl Go-Go has never cut his hair. He has worked his way through the Nine Free Dance Clubs, conquering each of them in turn, and now he’s ready to bring his act – and his fan club, the Raving Horde – to Eastereg, where he hopes to make waves in the competitive partner-dancing scene with his new wife Kelly C and earn a spot on Dancing with the Dragons, the hottest show around. Dragon Picking? The Jester’s Landing Shuffle? The Gold Pour? Go-Go has mastered all the moves of the dance floor, including the most important move of all: After all, a Karl who cannot Ride the Pony is no Karl.

RURAL JURAH

“Staberys Rainybirth, no stabbing! Staberys, no stabbing! Staberys, no stabbing!” Rural did the best he could, but Staberys never really understood the call of the dance and never accepted that Kelly C and Karl Go-Go had become united in their passion for a good two-step.

Rural Jurah was once the finest dance coach in Eastereg. When he was a younger man, he married his dancing partner, Lynette, after they won state together. Lynette, tragically, was addicted to spangly leotards, and was disappointed when Rural became more interested in line-dancing. Desperate to keep his wife happy, Rural eventually sold their back-up dancers into slavery… which, it turns, out is very, very, very illegal.

LORD VARIES

Do you have a friend who you would trust with your life? Good for you! Odds are pretty high that he’s actually selling you out to Lord Varies. The good news is that Lord Varies swaps sides so often that he’ll probably be working for you by next week and your secrets will be totally safe with him.

DRAGONS

ROAR, roar, roar. Roar, ROAR, roar. Roar, ROAR. ROAR, ROAR, roar. ROAR, ROAR, ROAR. ROAR, roar. Roar, roar, roar.

On Kickstarter Now! – Next: Brotherhood Without Pants