As a sort of extended addendum to The Art of Rulings, this series is going to take a specific look at some common types of action resolution, with a particular eye on sharing the tips and tricks I’ve learned for making them work well.

We’ll start with those scenarios where a PC wants to conduct a general survey of a large body of knowledge in order to glean information that’s specifically useful to them. These tend to break down into two broad conceptual categories: Canvassing (talking to a large number of people to find the information you want) and Research (searching libraries, online resources, or other static databases for the information).

In most systems these days, you’ll find these two approaches ensconced as specific skills (making the most basic adjudication decision of which skill to roll relatively simple). For example, 3^rd Edition D&D uses the Gather Information skill to cover canvassing. It’s not unusual, however, for investigation-focused systems to break them down into sub-categories. (For example, in Trail of Cthulhu you can use Cop Talk, Oral History, Streetwise, or even Credit Rating to canvass for information.)

Oddly, however, I can’t think of a system which actually groups these two broad categories — canvassing and research — into a single broader skill. (Perhaps because the traditional stat breakdowns derived from D&D often separate intellectual tasks like research from social tasks like canvassing?)

Unfortunately, it is slightly more common to find systems which, for whatever reason, lack one of these skills. Surprisingly, for example, Call of Cthulhu includes the ubiquitous Library Use skill for research tests, but lacks any clear skill for resolving canvassing. (Given my predilection for investigation-based scenarios, I generally find this lack incredibly annoying any more.) Defaulting to an ability check can often work, although we’ll discuss a few other options below.

Regardless of whether the PCs are researching or canvassing, the approach I take as a GM is roughly similar:

1. Summarize the approach
2. Make the key moment distinct
3. Contextualize the information

EXAMPLE 1: D&D

For example, in a D&D campaign where the PCs are using the Gather Information skill to canvass for information about the Vladaam crime family, I might want to deliver a chunk of information like, “There are a lot of stories suggesting a long-running feud between Sheva Callaster and the Vladaams.”

First, I’ll say something like, “You start hitting up your contacts in all the dives around the Docks.” This summarizes the approach that’s being taken to gain the information. (As opposed to, say, attending a fancy soiree in the Nobles Quarter.)

Next, I’ll identify the key moment that they find the information: “In the Inn of the Lost Sailor, you find your old sailing partner One-Eyed Pete lost in the haze of his grit addiction.”

Finally, I contextualize the information: “Pete warns you that you’d be better off staying well clear of the Vladaams. People who mess with them tend to disappear. Only person that doesn’t seem to be true for is a lady by the name of Sheva Callaster: He once saw her get jumped by three Vladaam thugs and she chased them off as if she were brushing dust from her shoulder.”

EXAMPLE 2: ECLIPSE PHASE

The same general approach can be used for Research tests in Eclipse Phase. Say you want to deliver a chunk of information like, “Achjima worked for Dolma Gope’s resleeving clinic.”

First, summarize the approach: “You start rooting through the corporate recruiting boards.”

Second, find the key moment: “You strike gold when you find a recent resumé for a young woman named Alicia Corey listing Achjima as a reference.”

Third, contextualize the information: “You hit the girl up. She’s turned pure infomorph because her body was ‘forcibly reclaimed’ by the local triads and she couldn’t afford a replacement. She’s eager to accept a few creds towards the new body fund and tells you all about her college days with Achjima. Sounds like Achjima has always been a radical interested in singularity seeking. She’s pretty sure Achjima is working for a woman named Dolma Gope now: Achjima was bitching about her the last time they talked.”

THE ALTERNATIVE

Player: I want to make a Gather Information test on the Vladaams.
GM: Roll it.
Player: 18
GM: You find out that Sheva Callaster has a long-running feud with them.

Player: I’ll make a Research test on Achjima. 45 out of 60.
GM: Achjima worked at Dolma Gope’s resleeving clinic.

I suspect the reason we want to avoid this sort of barebones alternative is fairly obvious, but the anemic narration of outcome results in an atrophied fiction-mechanics cycle which is (a) boring, (b) divorced from the character’s experience, and (c) difficult or impossible to build off of interesting ways.

Adding just a little bit of specificity creates interest, helps to immerse the players into the game world, and provides the opportunity for both you and the players to build on the interaction. (For example, by coming back to speak with One-Eyed Pete in the future or asking Sheva Callaster for details about the assassination attempt One-Eyed Pete witnessed.)

SUMMARIZE THE APPROACH

Summarizing the approach is basically a statement of intention and method, right?

When it comes to gathering information, I tend to have a very low specificity threshold for triggering action resolution. Usually a statement like, “I’m going to ask around town to see if anyone has heard of greenfire.” or “I’m going to spend the afternoon researching the name ‘Azathoth’ in the local libraries.” is more than enough. In fact, moreso than any other skill, I’ll often just allow a simple “I’m going to use X skill to do Y” to move us into action resolution (i.e., “I’m going to make a Gather Information check on the Blood of Amber.” or “I’m going to use Library Use to research the ‘cold price’.”)

Why? Well, primarily because the players don’t necessarily know where the information exists to be found. That’s why they’re making the check in the first place, right? In actual play, it’s generally not interesting for the players to play ‘guess which book you should look in to find the answer’ games.

As the GM, of course, you can always set a higher threshold for activating character expertise. But this is why my approach starts with summarizing the approach: Because we’ve resolved the action at a very high level of abstraction, the first thing we want to do when narrating the outcome of that action is to make it more specific. As a GM, setting this broad parameter of how the search was conducted also makes it easier to improvise the more specific details that follow.

Of course, just like any other type of action, player expertise can always trump character expertise. In other words, they’re free to get more specific in describing how they track down a particular piece of information. (For example, rather than just “searching the library”, maybe they specifically hit up the morgue of a newspaper hoping to find older stories.) In the case of gathering information, it is insanely rare for this to work against the PCs finding the information they want (and would require them to basically look for it in a way which very specifically could not possibly work). On the other hand, particularly appropriate efforts can work to their advantage (lowering the difficulty of the test or perhaps negating the need for a test entirely).

THE KEY MOMENT

The key moment is where the PCs gain the information they’re looking for. (So the approach is how/where they’re looking for it; the key moment is when the approach pays off.) The most important thing about the key moment is its specificity: You’re taking the general concept (“asking people around the Docks”, “searching through corporate job postings”, “looking in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library”) and creating something unique and particular (One-Eyed Pete, the girl who worked with Achjima, Moste Potente Potions by Phineas Bourne).

Framing Key Moments: Rather than simply summarizing the key moment, however, you can instead frame it as a scene.

The simplest example is framing to the moment where the PC approaches the NPC who has the information they want. Instead of summarizing what One-Eyed Pete has to say about Sheva Callaster and the Vladaams, for example, you instead say, “You’ve heard that One-Eyed Pete knows a thing or two about the Vladaams. You find him bellied up to the bar at the Inn of the Lost Sailor.” From there, you can then simply roleplay out the ensuing encounter (which will also contextualize the information, obviously).

Handouts can also be a form of this: The information is in a newspaper article, so you explain where they found it and hand the players a copy. The actual act of reading it is where the information is imparted.

You can also frame to a challenge. For example, your Research test brings you to Alicia Corey, but convincing her to talk might require additional social skill tests. (This effectively becomes a fortune in the middle technique and might be used to resolve a partial or complicated success on the Research test.)

A more elaborate version of the same is what I think of as “framing to a heist”: The PCs discover that the information they want is some place inaccessible, and now they’re going to have to figure out how to break in and get it.

CONTEXTUALIZE THE INFORMATION

At this point in the process you have a raw piece of data (“Sheva Callaster has a long-running feud with the Vladaams”) and you have the key moment where the PCs will gain that information (One-Eyed Pete). What you want to do is take these two pieces of the jig-saw puzzle and combine them in a way which is greater than the sum of its parts: The way One-Eyed Pete tells you the information reveals more about One-Eyed Pete, and it also gives a particular slant which colors and transforms that information.

The information would not have been the same (and would not have the same consequences) if it had come from anywhere else.

The importance of this can perhaps be most easily understood when it occurs in more specific circumstances:

• If the player specified a particular angle of approach, by having that choice influence the nature of the information they receive you’re building on and rewarding their creativity.
• If you’re framing to a heist, the nature of the information affects how the heist is carried out. (A kidnapped witness is very different from a file folder locked in a safe.)

And so forth. The key thing to understand is that even if you’re just going for the most basic, unprompted summarization of what happens, contextualizing the information not only makes it more interesting (and thus more of a reward for success) it will also affect (and also suggest) the ways in which the PCs can use that information.

Consider the example of Alicia Corey dishing information on Achjima’s relationship with Dolma Gope:

• Achjima was gossiping about how much he hates working with Dolma Gope.
• Achjima gave her Dolma Gope’s digital business card with an open-ended recommendation to get a job with her.
• Alicia is jealous of Dolma Gope, who she thinks (falsely) is having an affair with Achjima.

Every one of those conveys the same core nugget of information (Achjima works with Dolma Gope), but each one opens up different avenues: Achjima gossiping about how much he hates Dolma Gope might let them drive a wedge in their relationship when they meet with her, the business card might be a viable angle for gaining a meeting with Dolma Gope, and so forth.

(Note: You, as the GM, don’t think up the consequences or options of the contextualized information. That’s the player’s job. The point is that the mere act of contextualization implicitly opens up these opportunities which wouldn’t exist if you stick to the basic vanilla.)

Go to Part 2: Improvisation and Tiered Information

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 9A: Gold

Tee must have made some sort of noise, because the woman suddenly whipped around, “Who’s there?”

When, where, and why should you roll to resolve NPC actions?

This is one of those areas where most people seem to assume that the way they do it is the way everyone does it and that there’s really no other conceivable way that you could or should do it, which tends to result in a lot of gnashing of teeth and bloody tears when these preconceptions suddenly collide with a different gaming style/preference/methodology.

One thing that is universally true: You can’t always roll for the NPCs.

“Oh yes you can!”

No, seriously. You can’t.

About 75,000 people live in Ptolus. (And that doesn’t even count the monsters.) At any given time, the absolute maximum number of those people I’m actively tracking is maybe 75. Even if you were a hundred times better than me (and, thus, actively – and absurdly! – actively tracking 7,500 people simultaneously), you’re still only engaged with 1% of the population. At any given moment, therefore, there are vast swaths of the campaign world for which you are assuming activities and outcomes based on various degrees of common sense and creative instinct.

And here’s something that most GMs hold to be true: You roll for the NPCs at least some of the time.

“Whaddya mean most?! You have to at least roll for attacks, right?!”

You don’t, though. Some GMs fudge those outcomes. Others use aggressively player-faced mechanics in systems where the actions of NPCs are only mechanically resolved if they’re directly engaged with and opposed by a PC.

The vast majority of GMs are going to be somewhere between these two radically opposed poles, however. At the beginning of this session’s campaign log, you can get a decent glimpse at how I generally handle things (with some variation depending on both circumstance and the system I’m using).

First, using dramatist principles, I decided that having Linech’s mistress (Biesta) searching Linech’s office for shivvel during the PCs’ attempted infiltration would make for a good scene.

Second, using simulationist principles I set up an initial condition that looked like this:

• Guards (2) – in area 4
• Guards (2) – in area 8
• Guards (4) – at gate
• Linech – in area 7
• Oukina – in area 7
• Ruror – outside area 7
• Biesta – approaching Linech’s office, she arrives in 3d6+5 rounds (looking for shivvel; shivvel in area 3 is gone; she isn’t wearing her armor)

(This is a pretty basic example of an adversary roster.)

SETTING UP INITIAL CONDITIONS

In creating these initial conditions, the first thing you’ll note is that I haven’t tried to simulate the entire nightly schedule for Linech’s burrow. For example, I haven’t said, “Biesta will sneak into his office and steal shivvel between 12:00 and 12:15 AM.”

Why not? Primarily because, at least in this particular scenario, that’s a lot of wasted prep. The PCs are unlikely to see more than one specific slice of the burrow’s schedule. Secondarily, because missing the dramatic interest of Biesta’s presence in the office because the PCs didn’t happen to show up in a specific 15 minute window isn’t a desirable outcome for me (and is also wasted prep).

Those who prize simulationism above all other concerns may balk at this. But I refer you back to our previously established truism: You can’t always roll for the NPCs. And, in a similar vein, you can’t perfectly simulate the daily schedule of all 75,000 inhabitants of Ptolus. At some point you are making an arbitrary decision about the initial conditions of any locale that the PCs begin interacting with.

Because you can’t simulate all 75,000 inhabitants of Ptolus, there is always some degree of compromise, and that means that prepping eighteen different sets of initial conditions doesn’t make any sense: No matter how many you prep, the PCs will never encounter more than one set of initial conditions (by definition).

(There are exceptions to this: If a scenario is likely to feature the PCs putting a location under surveillance, then you will, of course, want to set up the typical daily schedule for that location. Maybe mix in a few random events to vary it from day to day without needing to hand prep every day if it’s likely to be a lengthy surveillance.)

AFTER FIRST CONTACT

With all that being said, the second thing to note here is that I’ve inherently built uncertainty into the initial conditions.

One thing to remember is that I actually have no idea how the PCs are going to approach this scenario: They might sneak in. They might fight their way in. They might come up with some completely different solution I couldn’t even imagine.

These initial circumstances are designed to create interesting complications for the PCs, which they’ll either need to avoid or interact with in order to accomplish their goal. How will they avoid them? How will they interact with them? I don’t know, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time thinking about it. Following the precepts of Don’t Prep Plots, these are all tools in my toolbox; and I’ll improvise with them during actual game play.

Which is what you see play out at the beginning of the campaign journal:

• As the PCs arrived onsite, I rolled 3d6+5 to see how many rounds it would be until Biesta arrived.
• Because Tee waited behind the chimney “for at least a minute” to make sure she hadn’t been spotted climbing up, it meant that Biesta arrived in the office before Tee did.
• We roll a Move Silently vs. Listen check to determine whether or not Tee is aware of Biesta. (She is.) But we also roll a Listen check for the nearby guards to see if they hear Biesta. (They don’t.)

Let’s stop there for a second, because this is our primary topic today: I rolled for the guards because I did not know what the outcome of Biesta’s snooping in the office would be. And that was true even if the PCs didn’t interfere at all.

For example, a completely different possibility is that the PCs try to break into the compound from a different direction; while they’re performing their infiltration, however, Biesta gets caught snooping and there’s a whole bunch of new activity flowing to and away from the office that they now need to deal with. Or maybe Biesta sneaking back out of the office creates a timely distraction that allows the PCs to escape. Or maybe Biesta walks in on the PCs while they’re trying to leverage Lord Abbercombe out the window.

The point is that Biesta is a dynamic element which, once set in motion, even I don’t know the consequences of.

Other GMs might want to get a little more specific in planning out Biesta’s predetermined course: They might know, for example, that (barring PC interference) Biesta will reach the office, find the shivvel, and leave without alerting a guard. In other circumstances, I might do the same thing. A lot depends on the specific needs of the particular scenario.

Think of your scenario like a billiards table: You set up the table and you let the players take their shot. Unlike a normal billiards table, though, a bunch of the balls (NPCs, etc.) are in motion when the PCs show up, and will remain in motion (probably cyclically so for the sake of easy prep) until the PCs take their shot.

(Some GMs will take this even further and ignore the interference of the PCs. I’m going to refer those GMs to the Railroading Manifesto.)

• We roll a Listen vs. Move Silently check to determine whether or not Biesta notices Tee. (I probably also rolled for the guard, but given distance and walls his success was really unlikely.) She does!
• We now roll a Hide vs. Spot check to determine whether or not Biesta spots Tee when she comes over to the window. She doesn’t, but in coming over to window and saying, “Who’s there?” she’s made enough noise that…
• We roll a Move Silently vs. Listen check for the guard to once again notice Biesta. And this time, he does!

As a result, we’ve discovered that Tee’s presence — despite being quite subtle — has resulted in Biesta being discovered by the guard. This has long-term implications, because the guard then takes Biesta to Linech: Which means that the guard closest to the office is no longer present, making the additional Move Silently checks for actually extricating the statue substantially easier for the group to succeed at. But also creates a ticking time bomb at the end of which Linech is going to come to his office to find out what Biesta was up to. (In fact, if it hadn’t been for Ranthir’s clever use of feather fall to speed up the extraction, it’s likely that Linech would have gotten back in time to catch them in the act. Careful planning is important in D&D, folks!)

This is, as I said, a rather minor interaction. But I think it offers a rather nice window into my general methodology as a GM, and also highlights the fascinating and rewarding outcomes that can result.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 9A: GOLD

October 21st, 2007
The 26th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The group headed up-city into the Rivergate District. After leaving the Ghostly Minstrel they broke up into smaller, less noticeable groups. Dominic and Elestra arranged for a carriage to wait for them near the burrow adjacent to Linech’s.

The narrow alley beside the Yebures’ house was crowded that night: All six of them were needed for the plan to work.

Tee secured her grappling hook and rope to the lip of the chimney and rapidly ascended to the roof. She hid behind the chimney for at least a minute to make sure that her ascent had not been detected, and then climbed down towards the window.

As she approached it, her sharp elven ears clearly picked up the sounds of someone moving about inside the room… despite the fact that the light hadn’t been turned on.

Tee carefully approached the window and peered inside: There was a thin, emaciated woman searching the office. She was, in fact, poking around the bookshelves where Tee had hidden Zavere’s scrying cube.

Tee must have made some sort of noise, because the woman suddenly whipped around, “Who’s there?”

Tee jerked back, but the woman was coming towards the window to investigate what she had seen. But just as she was nearing the window, Tee heard the door of the office thrown open and a rough, burly voice growled, “What are you doing up here?”

The woman’s voice was filled with tightly-controlled fright: “Linech asked me to get something for him. I was just looking for it…”

“With the light out? Get over here, we’ll just go and see Linech about this.”

“Oh please, no… no…”

Tee could hear a brief struggle, and then the woman was pulled from the room and the door slammed shut behind her.

Tee waited a few moments and then peeked around the corner of the window to confirm that the office was truly empty. It was. She reached for her tools and quickly unlocked the window, sliding it open silently and slipping inside.

She quickly crossed to the door and locked it, listening to ensure that no one else was waiting outside the room. Then she secured a second rope to the golden statue for Agnarr and Tor to climb up.

While Tor and Agnarr were climbing, Tee quickly checked on the scrying cube to make sure that the woman hadn’t discovered it or disturbed it. She hadn’t. But Tee decided to move it anyway: If people were going to be searching the office, she wanted the scrying cube to be more secure.

She focused her attention on the desk, thinking to find a drawer behind which she could hide it. What she found, instead, was a secret compartment at the back of one of the drawers. Sliding it open she found two things: First, an iron money coffer that was completely empty (obviously Linech’s funds were almost completely depleted at this point). Second, a letter written on elegant paper that had once been sealed with wax that was now broken.

The letter read:

Read more »

This material was originally developed in 1999 or 2000 as a proposal for a supplement to Gold Rush Games’ San Angelo.

Some quick background: Immediately before pitching this book, I had written Days of Terror, a campaign supplement for Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear RPG that followed the same format as The Paxton Gambit. Basically, it was a micro-setting supplement focused on one very specific topic and paired with the detailed overview of a related campaign. At the time, I was really enamored of the format and thought it would catch on with other game lines. Young Heroes was an initial pitch for a similar line of supplements for GRG.

Don’t bother looking for Days of Terror. I wrote the whole book, but the project was canned due to the poor sales of The Paxton Gambit and A New Breed for DP9. Young Heroes didn’t even get off the ground. As I mentioned when archiving my review of A New Breed, these days I’m considerably less enamored of the format, primarily because the “milestone” approach they use fails to provide the type of specific prep work (like stat blocks) that I think are actually the most essential elements of value in a published scenario. Ideas are cheap; execution is everything.

On the other hand, sometimes one man’s ideas can still inspire others to do great things. I certainly experienced that when Martin Tegelj took my idea of the Temporal Masters and transformed it into a fully developed Doctor Who campaign. In the case of Young Heroes, I had actually developed a complete campaign outline as part of the original pitch. That’s what I’m going to be sharing below, but since it’s almost two decades old I’m also going to be peppering in a few thoughts on how my older and wiser self would change things up to make for a better campaign.

A BRIEF SEGUE

Young Heroes was designed to be a supplement for college-age superheroes in San Angelo. My points of inspiration were the first fifty issues of Amazing Spider-Man, the early New Mutants comics, the second Avengers team (the one with Captain America trying to forge Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver into a cohesive whole), the late-’80s JLA (Batman trying to make a roster of second-stringers work), an incredibly obscure (but also wonderful) comic called The Fly from the Impact Comics line, and, oddly, Kurt Busiek’s Thunderbolts (which doesn’t really feature young heroes, but does feature new heroes trying to prove themselves). These days I would add stuff like Bendis’ definitive run on Ultimate Spider-Man, Kirkman’s Invincible (although the latter ends up being a bit more cosmic in scale than what I was aiming for here), and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

What about the micro-supplement part of the book? Well, I certainly hope it would have value if the full book had ever been written. But in outline form it doesn’t really offer anything of note unless you need to be told that a book about college-age heroes would feature information on the colleges of San Angelo, the neighborhoods around those colleges, stock faculty members, local musical groups (The Atlas, Jungle Beat, and the Mississippi Sirens, along with Sarah and the Peacekeepers; at least one of these would have secretly been superheroes), coffee houses and other hangouts, and the like.

This would have all been gazetteer-type stuff. These days, I’d have tried to figure out a more sandbox-style approach with material being presented through much more utilitarian chunks of content. And I’d probably also be looking at some kind of mini-game mechanical box that would strongly model the balance between classes, jobs, and superhero adventures. (Really try to capture that “Peter Parker madly juggling to keep all the parts of his life in the air at once” vibe and push it into hard, mechanical choices that would help drive the narrative.)

ACT ONE: ALL OUR DREAMS AS ONE

First off, and probably most obviously, I’d start by revamping the whole thing into a properly node-based scenario design. Perhaps not a node structure that was heavily bifurcated, but definitely one with a bit more flexibility and dynamic potential. In 1999, I was still trapped within the limited model of linear campaign structure, even though I was beginning some limited experimentation with non-linear scenarios. (Formally stating the Three Clue Rule to myself was, if I recall correctly, still a year or two in my future, too.)

Scenario One – The Birth of Legends. The first scenario is designed to bring the PCs together. A string of daring robberies has been plaguing businesses in the college area for about a week now, with the pace slowly increasing. The cops have caught a couple of the perps – all classmates of the PCs – but all of them claim to not remember the crimes. Plus, none of the stolen money or merchandise has been recovered. The PCs become involved when one of the robberies is carried out right under their nose (either while they are all “conveniently” in the same place or separately, but at roughly the same time). They, of course, capture the perps – who are just ordinary college kids who seem to be acting in some sort of trance. Eventually it’s all traced back to the Psychotropper. He’s been lacing the pizzas being delivered from the university Masked Bandit Pizza with his special drugs. The PCs face him and his “Zombie Horde” down and deliver him to the police. The important thing is that the PCs end up working together to solve the problem.

This is a very weak hook. “Bunch of heroes all respond to the same crime and team-up” is a staple of the genre, of course, but leveraging 4-6 PCs into the proper location, expecting them all to respond appropriately to the villains, and then fall into line for a campaign-long team-up as a result is awkward. It can work, but you’re relying heavily on the metagame expectations of “you’re all PCs, so you’re going to team-up” rather than having that emerge organically from the immediate circumstances.

What I’d probably do today is break up the initial beats of the campaign into a number of micro-interactions that would all end up pointing the PCs towards the Psychotropper’s antics from different directions. Because the different angles of approach allow the players to quickly see many different facets of the problem, this immediately creates magnitude. It also, in my experience, creates really interesting and unexpected initial interactions between the PCs as their vectors all converge on each other. One such micro-interaction might, in fact, be a couple of the PCs being at the same place at the same time and teaming up to follow their leads (but only a couple). For the others, I would try to tie the situation more intimately to the PCs and use the scenes to simultaneously begin putting pieces from their social lives and backgrounds into play. Using Tales from the Loop–style elements to character creation in order to generate a detailed network of connections and then implicating their friends will immediately make the problem meaningful. (These connection networks could also feature in that “balance your lives” mechanics I mentioned earlier.)

Scenario Two – A Common Thread. While busting some petty crooks the PCs are suddenly confronted with mystic firepower. Each of the crooks is carrying a business card on their person imprinted with an apparently random set of five numbers and letters. As they mop things up despite their surprise, the Bard shows up on the scene: A cache of mystic artifacts was recently broken into and he’s been trying to track them down. The PCs are drawn into his investigation, but as they draw near the source of the weapons the crooks they have just caught are consumed by mystic flame. At the end of this scenario the PCs meet Sylvia Inverse. Sylvia was the superhero Lightning during the early ‘80s. She was crippled in a fight with the Reaper in ’85. Sylvia then became an industrialist and is now a billionaire. She has been searching for a group of young heroes who she can sponsor as a team. The PCs came to her attention through their recent actions.

Something that may not be entirely clear from this text is that this was meant to be what I think of as a “Shiki-style” campaign. Shiki was a campaign for Sengoku (another Gold Rush Games RPG, actually) which featured four scenarios which were notably separated from each other by large spans of time. The idea was that Shiki would provide the epic backbone for a long-term campaign, with the GM weaving other scenarios into the spaces between the campaign scenarios. Same principle here. Particularly during Act One, the idea was that the GM would include a number of other “generic” superhero scenarios as the PCs established themselves as local heroes.

Scenario Three – Traitor Unknown. The PCs are taken to see their new headquarters, located in a secret sub-basement of the skyscraper which houses the local branch of Sylvia’s company. They are also introduced to the other two members of the team – Circuit and Starsong. Their tour is interrupted when the monitoring equipment picks up a news report of a bank robbery involving high tech weaponry. Breaking up the robbery the PCs will find cards identical to those found on the mystically armed crooks in the last scenario. This time they succeed in tracking the shipments back to a central source, but as they move in for the final figurative kill they find the base abandoned and evidence that one of their own sent a warning.

NPC members of the team. Always risky because many people have had poor experiences with them. And I, as a GM, hate the hassle of running them and frequently feel like I’m screwing it up because I forget to pay enough attention to the NPC party member to make them truly feel like a member of the party. If I was running this campaign today I would probably (a) try to conspire with one of my players to take on the role of Circuit (the true traitor) and (b) see if I could find a co-GM or another faux-player willing to take on the role of Starsong (the false traitor) while also disappearing for several sessions (as described below).

Scenario Four – Our Foe, Ourselves. This scenario starts with the official announcement of the team’s formation – a major media event. Later, while Starsong is on duty, the monitoring equipment intercepts a police call to a warehouse where strange energy weapons are being used. The team dispatches at once, but when they arrive they find the warehouse empty and undisturbed. This pattern of “phantom messages” repeats itself a few times… each time while Starsong is on duty. Finally a similar call comes in while Circuit or one of the PCs is on duty, but this time the call is real. The PCs encounter a group of red-hooded crooks calling themselves “Servants of the Scarlet Sect”. The PCs fight them to a standstill, but then they disappear just as cop cars arrive. The “Servants” don’t appear on the security tapes – only the PCs wreaking havoc; all sorts of technological equipment is missing from the warehouse; and a security guard is found murdered in a backroom.

ACT TWO: IN THE SHADOW OF OUR GREATNESS

Scenario One – The Shattered Dream. The team suddenly finds itself a fugitive from justice. Sylvia Inverse believes their version of events, but since her connection to the team is known she is under strict surveillance and can do little to help them. Most of this scenario will be played out in the PCs’ secret IDs as they live out their lives on campus, talking with friends – some of whom support the new team, some of whom despise it. In the end the PCs are forced to take action when the Mad Bomber tries to blow up the school. Just as they finish putting the kibosh on the Bomber, they are suddenly confronted with a new problem: The Justice Foundation has shown up to take the fugitives into custody. Cliffhanger ending.

For maximum impact, this scenario requires proper setup: The campus relationships need to be established and they need to have some real stakes to them. In the near future I’ll be talking about the “exposition drip” technique you can use to make sure these elements are properly introduced before you need them to fire on all cylinders. The other thing to look at here is properly establishing the tension between the safety of remaining safely hidden in their civilian identities and the responsibility they feel to right wrongs. The scenario would probably play best with a sequence of temptations, each forcing the players to make hard choices about their priorities. (And also inviting them to find creative, clever, and/or stealthy solutions to problems in order to avoid exposing themselves.)

Scenario Two – Fugitives of Justice. This scenario opens with the conclusion of the battle with the Justice Foundation from the first scenario. The PCs should manage to extricate themselves from the situation. Later, the PCs are tracked down and attacked by the Foundation once again, but this time with the twist that it was the Scarlet Sect who lead them to the PCs. Evidence after the battle seems to reveal that Starsong betrayed their location. While they are in the middle of dealing with that situation, members of the Scarlet Sect suddenly appear as if out of thin air in the midst of the PCs. They kidnap Circuit and disappear.

Planning superhero campaigns is tricky because traditional superhero plots tend to turn on the specific outcomes of big, show-piece fights. Assuming/predetermining the specific outcomes of fights is a really easy way to double stamp your passport to Railroad-land. But if you try to AVOID doing that, you can end up with narrative structures which AREN’T driven by big, show-piece fights, and then your traditional superhero campaign doesn’t feel like a traditional superhero narrative.

Regardless, I would definitely try to avoid doing, however, is having the exact same fight twice in the same scenario and assuming a specific outcome for each fight, despite the fact that there seems to be little utility in HAVING two separate fights. I’d take a look at Principles of RPG Villainy and have the PCs hunted by more than just the Justice Foundation.

Scenario Three – Hostage! With Circuit gone and Starsong fleeing under suspicion, things are going badly for the PCs. The only good news is that Sylvia has been keeping a covert eye on their monitoring devices, and during their last encounter picked up an odd electronic signature from the Scarlet Sect – she thinks it may be what allowed them to cloak their presence in the surveillance cameras… but she’s going to need to get more readings. At this point they are contacted by a shadowy figure calling himself Mastermind, the figurative head of the Scarlet Sect. He offers the PCs the chance to join the sect.

This is not actually a scenario. It’s literally two phone conversations. I probably would have figured that out when it came time to actually develop this campaign.

Scenario Four – Our Hopes Fulfilled. At worst its a trap; at best its an offer designed to damn them all. But the PCs are encouraged by Sylvia to take the bait. It pays off: During a climactic battle with the Justice Foundation (again lured into the situation by Mastermind’s manipulations), Sylvia Inverse gathers enough data on the signals to decode the original tapes – revealing that the Sect members were on them all along. Mastermind manages to escape, but the PCs have the evidence they need to clear their names.

ACT THREE: UPON THE PATH OF FATE

Scenario One – The Siren’s Song. The PCs are approached by Sylvia, who claims to have traced the signals to a specific warehouse. But it turns out to be a trap. They manage to save Circuit anyway when Starsong reappears to save them, and he suggests that they test Sylvia to see if she’s really a clone. It turns out that she is. Although she professes her innocence, the PCs probably aren’t buying it – and she’s forced to flee.

Scenario Two – The Island Realm. Meanwhile the PCs have figured out where Mastermind’s real base is – on a small island in the Pacific. This is the lead up to the big wrap-up: Fists fly and powers boom. It turns out that Mastermind is the original Lightning, who was driven insane by her injury. The Sylvia who the PCs have known is a clone, but she’s been living Sylvia’s life.

Reviewing my notes from 1999/2000, this is one of the major core ideas of what I wanted the campaign to accomplish: Create an atmosphere of suspicion, paranoia, and false identity. Implicate their boss as being a cloned impostor. Have them run a test and discover that she IS a clone – oh my god! And then have the big reveal where it turns out that the clone is actually the good guy and is, in fact, a more faithful preservation of the original’s personality before their mind was broken.

What’s missing here, however, are some key exposition drips: Sylvia’s accident needs to be narratively incorporated before the big reveal. The possibility of a clone (or multiple clones) being involved needs to be set up so that the accusation against Sylvia is a payoff instead of a random curve ball. It would also help to clearly set up how the PCs can test for a clone before they need to do it here.

Scenario Three – The Final Hour. And here’s the big wrap-up: Fleeing the island, Mastermind returns to San Angelo – planning to seal the city away from the outside world using her technology. The PCs have to get inside the city, and then defeat Mastermind once there.

Go to Part 1

MYSTERIOUS ARTIFACTS

Excalibur and the Lost Blade: The Society has run into the mythic Excalibur blade twice before. Although it is connected to Arthur, Merlin, and Camelot it is not of Atlantean or Lemurian origin, but something else. The Society originally uncovered the blade in 1932, but it was stolen by the Nazi archaeologist Grimoire (see below). It was liberated by British superhero Captain Valor and was encountered by the Society again in 1935, along with its sister sword – the Lost Blade.

The Holy Grail: Although the legend of the search for the Holy Grail is connected with those of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, that connection was made years after the actual events. The Holy Grail itself actually has a fairly active history, before landing in the 20^th century.

Shroud of Turin: The Shroud of Turin is a real artifact related to the death of Christ… but the one found in the Cathedral of Turin is not it. The true shroud has been traced by members of the Society to a Hong Kong branch of the Mystic Triad.

Jewel of Gwahlur: The Jewel of Gwahlur is a large ruby about the size of a clenched fist. It is a Lemurian artifact of great mystical power which has appeared at various times throughout history. It is currently in the possession of the Priests of Na’toth.

Philosopher’s Stone: The alchemical “sciences” were a degenerate Lemurian science which had been warped into impracticality over the millenia. One item of truth, however, was the legendary Philosopher’s Stone – a mystical regent capable of changing one element into another.

The Jade Buddha: The Jade Buddha is a completely ordinary statue of the Buddha made out of jade. Its significance lies in its importance as a symbol of power and prestige among those versed in the mystic arts. The Society has found itself in several situations involving possession of the Jade Buddha.

STRANGE CREATURES

The Leviathan: The Keepers (described below) used their ancient technology to create a legion of aquatic allies in their quest to keep Atlantis safe through the millenia-long sleep they had to endure. Among the aquatic lifeforms they altered were the majestic whales, making them hyper-intelligent watchers of the ocean waves. One of their subjects, however, was effected in an unexpected way – growing to gargantuan proportions and liberating himself from their control. He survives to the modern day. Known by many different names, he is widely known in the mystic community as the Leviathan.

The Hydra: The origins of this draconic creature are unknown, but he has apparently been alive since the earliest days of modern civilization. He acts in large part through his human servants, wielding a massive amount of influence from his dark web.

The Cyclops: After encountering the Hydra for the first time the Society also became aware of the Cyclops – a mortal magician possessed of a single eye, apparently every bit as ancient as the Hydra, and locked in eternal conflict with the dragon. His longevity seems to indicate some ties to Atlantis or Lemuria, but no one is truly sure.

The Celestial Order: The Celestial Order is composed of two massive robotic races created in the days of Atlantis and Lemuria as supermen. Possessed of superhuman intelligence they have long since passed beyond the consciousness of the average mortal man, returning from their plane of higher understanding only occasionally to involve themselves in the affairs of those they consider their lessers. Because they are no longer acting upon the stimuli of this world their motivations and their actions are often completely mysterious. At other times they are completely lucid.

The Molemen: Beneath the surface of the world are the Chasms, an immense network of underground passages created by the Molemen. This deviant off-shoot of the human race, from whom many primeval legends of monsters stem, live their entire lives beneath the surface of the earth.

The Fey Folk: When Simon Morrow discovered these thin-boned creatures in the forests of Germany who seemed to flit between this world and another he was convinced they were the fey folk of legend. Alex Fellows, the genius scientist brought to the Society by Howard Shaw, agrees that they may be the fey folk of legend – but insists that they are nothing more than an extradimensional race. They have since made appearances in the American Midwest.

SECRET SOCIETIES

The Knights of Arthur: The Knights of Arthur date back to the age of Camelot. They guard the secret resting place of Arthur and his knights – prophesied to return when Britain meets with her greatest danger. They act in the interests of protecting that secret and Britain herself.

Egyptian Priests of Na’toth: The Priests of Na’Toth are descendants of the disciples of Na’toth, an Atlantean refugee who settled in ancient Egypt and established a secret cult which supposedly controlled the throne of all the great Egyptian dynasties (although some of their members are said to actually be the disciples of Na’Toth). Or at least, so they claim. The Society, despite the credulity born of seeing many things thought impossible, has several facts in their possession that suggest the priests to be nothing but frauds. Whatever the case they remain extremely powerful – both mystically and politically. To the present day they continue to act behind the scenes of power, manipulating affairs for their own nefarious purposes.

The Knights Templar: The Knights Templar were not, as is typically believed, completely wiped out by the forces of Rome. Many of them escaped and their descendants continue to operate unto the present day – convinced that the Catholic Church is blinding itself from the true worship of God by ignoring the mystic arts. The Templars rigorously hunt down anyone who practices the “craft” without worshipping God, however, believing them to be sacrilegious. They are also obsessed with finding the hidden location of the Holy Grail. In many ways, they are a dark mirror of the Argonaut Society.

The Mystic Triad: One of the family heads of the Triad discovered the mystic world. His followers have become known as the Mystic Triad – combining the double-threat of organized crime and mysticism. Their leader is apparently interested in obtaining as many artifacts of mystic origin as possible in his quest to understand the deeper meanings of the universe. Such a goal has often put the Mystic Triad at odds with the Argonauts.

Keepers & Guardians: The Keepers are a cult society, recruited from the more primitive ranks of humanity, who watch over the sleeping Atlanteans; keeping them safe from outside harm. The Lemurian Guardians do the same for their faction. The two covert organizations have waged a centuries-long war, each seeking to weaken the other before the time of the Awakening.

Thule Society: Key members of Hitler’s inner circle are learned in the mystic arts. As far as the Society has been able to determine, none of them are truly adepts, but as part of their budding war machine they are attempting to gather artifacts of great power. Recently a supervillain archaeologist codenamed Grimoire has joined the Thule Society, becoming the arch-nemesis of the Argonauts.