IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 11C: A WEARY TWILIGHT

November 11th, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE RAINBOW LAKE

In the sudden stillness which pervaded the cavern, things looked bleak. Without the stress of combat the torturous nausea diminished, but their wounds were grievous. Itarek had merely been knocked unconscious, but even after the soothing of Dominic’s divine ministrations he still oozed blood from countless wounds and moved with the stiff pain of torn muscles.

Itarek looked down at the body of his warrior which lay near by and with a weary voice asked, “Can you heal him?”

Dominic looked at the body — its skull caved in and its chest mangled — and shook his head. “No. There’s nothing we can do.”

Itarek nodded. “We must leave. Tend to our wounded.”

Tee, who had been prepared to argue for precisely that, quickly agreed. But Ranthir suggested that they should take a look — a cautious look! — further down this passage. They may be in poor condition, but knowing what lay ahead might better inform their decision.

Tee nodded and, while the rest of the group quickly stripped the duskblade’s body of anything that looked remotely interesting or valuable (taking particular note of a finely crafted sword, steel shield, and chain shirt), she slipped quietly through the shadows ahead of them. Read more »

(click here for PDF)

Robin D. Laws’ DramaSystem is tucked away inside the Hillfolk roleplaying game. Hillfolk is kind of an odd duck of a book: There’s about 50 pages of generic rules describing the DramaSystem engine. There’s 15-20 pages of setting material pertaining specifically to Hillfolk: A Game of Iron Age Drama. And then there’s another 150 pages providing everything you need to play in 30 other settings. In other words, there’s 200+ pages of material for the DramaSystem and only 15-20 pages of Hillfolk in there. The entire book is really designed as a generic resource for the DramaSystem, but it’s not branded, presented, or sold as such.

The raison d’être for the DramaSystem lies with Laws’ breakdown of fiction into procedural scenes and dramatic scenes: “In procedural scenes, characters confront and overcome obstacles — “they fight opponents, conduct chases, investigate mysteries, explore unfamiliar environments, and so on. (…) In a dramatic scene, the main characters confront internal obstacles, seeking emotional reward from people they care deeply about, for good or ill.” The majority of RPGs focus almost exclusively on procedural content. Laws wanted to design a storytelling game which specifically focused on creating and playing through dramatic scenes.

Laws believes that one of the primary obstacles to effective dramatic scenes in traditional roleplaying games lies in the fact that players tend to default to no, convinced that their characters are all possessed of a steely, unbreakable resolve that will never buckle, and thus creating flat, repetitious scenes that never build, centered around boring characters who never grow or change. (He says this in like the most insulting way possible, claiming that anyone who refuses to play games in an authorial stance is in denial about what roleplaying games are really all about, and that anyone who refuses to come to Jesus after experiencing the true glories of the DramaSystem is basically a petulant man-child who should be kicked out of your group. But except for the couple of pages where he goes on that Bizarro World rampage, he’s not fundamentally wrong.)

The DramaSystem structurally works to overcome these impulses by (a) specifically focusing gameplay on the dramatic content, (b) redefining “success” in dramatic instead of personal terms, and (c) mechanically encouraging (and, in some cases, forcing) characters to yield in dramatic scenes. The central mechanic around which these structures are built is simply framing scenes in terms of petitioners (and the emotional need they want fulfilled) vs. granters (and why they won’t give it).

One interesting feature in this is that Laws seems to identify these mechanics as modeling the storytelling techniques used by creators in other mediums. But that’s not really accurate. What the mechanics actually model is a process of literary criticism. (It is, in fact, the same lit-crit that Laws uses in Hamlet’s Hit Points.) Intriguingly, that’s also what the game’s mechanics feel like in play: A literary critique of the narrative you’re spontaneously generating.

The result feels very unique in play, and it definitely succeeds in forcing a group to aggressively focus on a type of character interaction which is, in fact, rather rare in most tabletop roleplaying. Having played it only a handful of times, I’m not 100% sure it actually succeeds as a game. But it definitely succeeds at being a very interesting creative exercise, and if nothing else I honestly think most groups would benefit from playing a half dozen sessions of it or so. The lessons you’ll learn (both individually and collectively) will likely have a very positive impact as they feed back into your other games.

SYSTEM CHEAT SHEETS

I’ve designed system cheat sheets for a number of RPGs and STGs now. This one is designed to be used with any DramaSystem setting (the 30 from the Hillfolk corebook, the 25 from the Blood on the Snow supplement, or any which you create yourself). For those unfamiliar with them: These cheat sheets summarize all the rules for the game — from basic action resolution to advanced options. It’s a great way to get a grip on a new system and, of course, it also provides a valuable resource at the table for both the GM and the players. (For more information on the procedure I follow when prepping these cheat sheets, click here.)

HOW I USE THEM

I generally keep a copy of the system cheat sheet behind the GM screen for quick reference and also provide copies for all of the players. I also keep at least one copy of the rulebook available, of course, and the cheat sheet probably won’t make much sense to you if you haven’t read it yourself. But the goal of the cheat sheet is to consolidate all of the mechanical content of the game, eliminating book look-ups: Finding something in a handful of pages is a much faster process than paging through hundreds of pages in a rulebook.

The organization of information onto each page of the cheat sheet should, hopefully, be fairly intuitive:

Page 1: This page contains the broad, general principles of the system.

Page 2: This page contains virtually everything you need in order to frame and play through scenes (which is the heart of the system).

Page 3: Something of a miscellanea. This includes general principles and rules for the GM, but the rules for player v. player conflict also got bumped onto this page due to lack of space.

MAKING A GM SCREEN

These cheat sheets can also be used in conjunction with a modular, landscape-oriented GM screen (like the ones you can buy here or here).

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 11B: Garden of the Sickstone Elementals

The arrow flew straight and true, striking one of the goblins in the back of the head. The pure force of Tee’s draw smashed the arrow through the creature’s skull, so that the tip of it emerged out of its eye.

If you’ve been reading these campaign journals for awhile, one of the things you might have noticed is that Tee frequently shoots enemies through the eye.

Is this some sort of special feat? Or does the player just like making called shots?

No. It’s nothing mechanical. It’s just how I ended up describing some of her kill shots. This started all the way back in the prelude sessions:

After defeating them (Tee skewering one through the eye and Agnarr cleaving them both in twain)…

But another of the reptilians walked in and started squawking: Tee drove an arrow through his eye, pinioning him to the rock, and Agnarr followed through with a devastating decapitation.

This wasn’t something that I had planned for. It’s one of a hundred different things I said in describing the early combat scenes of the campaign, but this is the one that resonated with us: Bam. Tee shoots something through the eye and it brings us joy and laughter.

It’s a running gag. They’re small things, but I think they really help to tie a campaign together. They’re a great example of the things which can help elevate a long-form campaign above episodic one-shot play.

Honestly, though, I don’t think you can plan for these. Or, if you can, they still won’t be nearly as effective or satisfying as those developed organically through play.

But you do have to be aware of them. You have to pay attention, spot the moments when these running gags have the opportunity to emerge, and then make the effort to cultivate and reinforce them over time.

You have to read the room.

These gags can be almost anything. The first time I ran Eternal Lies, for example, it was the character who managed – through pure luck and circumstance – to never be present when the supernatural elements manifested during the first half dozen or more sessions of the campaign. Once the player called this out, it became a consistent light-hearted moment whenever the rest of the group would begin rambling about what they had just experienced.

As these examples hopefully demonstrate, running gags don’t need to be huge, overblown, mood-killing things. Nor should they be overly frequent, as they will quickly kill the gag and sap the joy from it. But used with moderation and care, they become shared joy, a sense of community, and a lovely contrapuntal beat.

PLAYING WITH THE GAG

Here’s a couple of other things you can do with running gags, although they require great care and surety in their use.

Breaking the Gag. There may come a point when it’s most effective to end a running gag. In my Eternal Lies campaign, the character eventually did witness the supernatural firsthand. The player, rather cleverly I thought, chose to let the gag persist a little longer, but now the tone of the gag had changed: It was no longer a humorous Sculley-esque tolerance for the lovable crazy people she was associating with; it was a desperate and increasingly willful denial that she was using to cling to her sanity.

Eventually the time came for the gag to end completely. When the horrors which surrounded them had so completely and deniably impinged themselves upon the character that she had no choice but to break and accept what was happening to her.

And this really demonstrates the power of a good running gag: That final break – that final, mad acceptance of the supernatural – was made more powerful by the tradition which had proceeded it.

The trick with breaking a running gag, of course, is that you want to make sure that you’re not doing so cheaply or frivolously: The payoff you’re getting needs to more than outweigh all the future good that the gag could bring. (Or it needs to be so utterly necessary and demanded by circumstance as to be undeniable.)

Sharing the Gag. After they’ve been well established, some running gags that “belong” to a particular character can benefit from another character “guest-starring” in them. For example, once everyone firmly associates shooting people in the eye with Tee, it can reduce a table to tears of laughter when the normally bumbling Dominic suddenly does so almost by accident.

Here care must be used because you can end up watering the gag down. Tee shooting people in the eye has become a strong character trope in the campaign; if everybody starts shooting people in the eye, the gag loses its distinctive character (pun intended).

This is not, of course, to say that running gags can’t belong communally to the whole group. Some do. But others don’t. You need to make sure you understand what makes the gag work (and what makes it rewarding) so that you can cultivate it properly. Otherwise it’s like over-watering a cactus.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 11B: GARDEN OF THE SICKSTONE ELEMENTALS

November 11th, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

SICKSTONE ELEMENTALS

Seeing Tee climb down Elestra eagerly bounded forward and grabbed the rope. With her python viper wrapped around her waist, she swung over the edge of the ledge and tried to imitate the elf – rappelling quickly towards the floor of the cavern. Unfortunately, she set too fast a pace for herself. She lost her grip on the rope while she was still twenty feet off the floor. She landed with a rib-battering crash that was scarcely alleviated by the thin layer of moss-like growth.

With a deep groan, Elestra rolled over and sent her python viper forward to see if he could follow the trail of the spellcasters by scent. She was still staggering to her feet by the time he was halfway across the cavern.

Agnarr was moving a little distance into the cavern, as well. However, this may have been as over-hasty as Elestra’s climb, for as he drew near the first pair of rocky outcroppings the sound of a great rumbling and scraping echoed through the cavern and the outcroppings began to move.

They reared up into vaguely-humanoid forms which, with the creaking groan of an impending avalanche, stretched limbs of sickstone-laced rock. Agnarr immediately drew his greatsword. The goblins, still on the ledge above, briefly chattered to each other and then Itarek and another of the goblins grabbed the rope and began climbing down simultaneously.

Elestra’s snake, loyal to her last command, continued following the scent trail. “Agnarr!” she shouted. “Follow the snake!” Read more »

This article was originally written in 2000-01. It has never been published. It is a companion piece to Monstrous Tactics: Mimics.

The mimic has long been the bane of adventurers. Their penchant for using their natural shapechanging abilities to disguise themselves as desirable objects – most commonly, treasure chests – often serves as the lure which has led many to their doom. Tough, strong, tenacious, and crafty, the best way to beat a mimic is to simply keep your distance.

HELPFUL TIPS

• Find the mimic before it finds you
• Keep your distance
• Use ranged attacks to wear it down
• Don’t be afraid to bargain

PREPARATION

GRAPPLE: Mimics are coated in a thick, poweful adhesive which they will use to every possible advantage. If they succeed in hitting you with one of their pseudopods, you’ll quickly find yourself stuck fast in a slimy grapple. So if you know you’re entering the lair of a mage who loved his mimics, you’d better be prepared for grappling: This means spells with casting times less than 1 action, light weapons, and so forth. The Escape Artist skill is particularly invaluable.

SPELLS: Freedom of movement will help you free anyone who gets caught by the mimic. You’re also going to want to prep ranged attacks, while avoiding attack spells which require you to touch the mimic – shocking grasp becomes a serious liability when you’re dealing with the fantasy equivalent of a tar baby.

EQUIPMENT: Strong alcohol breaks down the mimic’s adhesive, so you might want to bring a couple of bottles along. If you don’t end up using them, you can always use them for the victory celebration afterwards, after all.

SKILLS: The best way to defeat a mimic is to detect their presence before they can surprise you. This means you’re going to need sharp eyes, and a high Spot skill.

TACTICS

USE THE ROGUE, LUC: As noted above, your best bet against a mimic is early detection with your Spot skill. Not only is this a class skill of the rogue, but the mimic’s preference for assuming the shape of a treasure chest makes it likely that you’ll be sending the rogue in to check for traps, anyway. The rest of the party should consider the rogue to be their first line of defense against a mimic – and the rogue himself should always make sure to run Spot checks on suspicious objects before closing in to detect the traps: It does you no good to know that the chest is really a mimic, if the mimic is already sitting three inches in front of your face.

BARGAIN: Mimics are more intelligent than many adventurers give them credit for, and are actually able to speak Common. If things are going badly – or if you just aren’t interested in facing off against a mimic at the moment – don’t be afraid to bargain with them. Most mimics are more than willing to let you walk away with your lives… in return for some food or treasure, of course.

KEEP YOUR DISTANCE: Mimics are at their most dangerous when they have you within reach – at a distance, their threat is negligible. Another factor to your advantage is the mimic’s relatively slow speed (about one third that of a human). Spread out, keep your distance, try to avoid or escape tight quarters, and pepper the mimic with ranged attacks.

AVOID SWORDS: The mimic is coated in a strong adhesive – if you hit it, your weapon will most likely become stuck fast. Instead, as has been said, you should keep your distance – peppering it with disposable range weapons (such as arrows) and spells. (Note that the adhesive will dissolve once the mimic is dead – allowing you to retrieve your ranged armament without any problems.)