In laying out the Black Book Beta, page 63 ended up being blank. This bugged me, but it’s actually a non-trivial problem to solve so I decided to lay it aside. I considered commissioning a full page of art to fill the space, but this would be expensive and randomly out of place given the layout in the rest of the book. So I’ve been looking at various ways to re-arrange Chapter 10: Companions & Allies and/or possibly Chapter 9: Conditions to “pad out” an extra page.

The other day, however, I was running a session of my Thracian Hexcrawl campaign and I realized how significant a role morale has begun to play in my handling of hirelings at the game table when one of the gem sisters collapsed into a complete panic when her sister was killed by a platoon of skeleton archers. So now I’m thinking that Page 63 — coming at the end of the chapter on Companions & Allies — might actually be a good place for morale rules. These would also be trivially adapted to use with adversaries and monsters; but the primarily utility would be aimed at hirelings.

Basically, as a DM, I don’t actually want to run hirelings as full NPCs: I’m already juggling enough balls that the idea of running a GMPC of any sort (player-initiated or not) isn’t appealing. I’d rather let the players manage their coterie. A simple morale system, on the other hand, gives a hireling a certain degree of “otherness” — they aren’t just adjunct PCs. (For some previous thoughts on hirelings and followers in Legends & Labyrinths, read here and here. For some thoughts on old school morale systems, read this.)

With all of that in mind, I’ve got a couple questions for you.

First, is this a good idea? It would be one of the more significant systemic departures from “vanilla 3E”.

Second, what form should such a morale system take? I’ve got a couple options in mind, but wouldn’t mind hearing some open-ended brainstorming in the comments.

OPTION 1 – OLD SCHOOL:In this option, morale and loyalty are essentially flat and don’t scale with level or CR. Loyalty would be determined by the PC’s Leadership score and/or the offer made to hire the NPC. The morale score of a hireling would be determined with a simple 2d6 roll modified by Loyalty. Morale checks would similarly be rolled on 2d6 (with a result lower than the hireling’s morale indicating surrender, panic, retreat, or a similar reaction).

An area of concern here is the scaling of the Leadership score by level. (Check out “Thinking About Morale” for why I think this is problematic. Essentially, it doesn’t take much for such a system to effectively become irrelevant.)

Another potential problem with this approach is that it’s radically inconsistent with the rest of 3rd Edition’s design ethos of having a “core mechanic”. (Although not that dissimilar from the turning mechanic, I suppose.)

OPTION 2 – SKILL-BASED: Alternatively, what if triggering events required a Diplomacy or Intimidate check with a DC set by the CR of the hireling you’re trying to keep from panicking? (Effectively you’d use the Trained Check DC from the Hazards table on page 86, although there’d probably be a morale-specific instantiation of the table on page 63.)

A potential problem with this approach is that it gives no ability for a hireling to stay loyal if their boss is incapacitated or absent. Maybe the hireling makes a Will save with the DC set by the CR of the prevalent threat, and only if they fail do their bosses have a chance to “rally the troops” using the skill check?

What do y’all think?

Go to Part 1

I’ve often found it useful to think of mystery-based scenarios as having two “prongs”: First, the clues required to figure out what happened or is happening (the concept solve). Second, the clues that take the PCs to another location or event where more clues can be gathered (the scenario solve).

This is somewhat similar, of course, to the concept of the Second Track, but where a second track presents a secondary set of nodes, here I’m talking about using a single node structure containing two sets of clues.

In practice, of course, you’ll often end up with quite a bit of overlap between the two sets of clues: When the players discover that Altair Electronics is somehow involved with the recent string of cyber-jackings, that tells the players something about what’s going on, but it will also point them in the direction of Altair’s corporate headquarters.

On the other hand, of course, there’s also the exception which proves the Three Clue Rule: In certain mystery structures you can actually be certain that the PCs will know about some locations without needing three clues. (Or any clues.) For example, if they’re police officers tracking bank robbers and another bank gets robbed, they’re going to get called to that location.

In such scenarios, of course, you can simply focus on delivering the clues necessary to reveal the mystery. (With three clues per necessary revelation.) But when faced with a more traditional two-prong approach, the important thing to understand is that you can spread the clues necessary to solve the mystery thinly (as long as you include the necessary density of clues to keep PCs moving from node to node). There may be entire nodes where there are no clues for unraveling the deeper mystery – just clues for moving on to the next node (where, hopefully, answers can be found).

How thin can you go? Well, it depends on what effect you’re trying to achieve. If you’ve got a mystery that’s serving as the metaplot of an entire campaign, for example, you may be spreading those clues very thin indeed.

Another option, of course, is to vary the clue density. Nodes that are difficult to find or difficult to exploit (due to armed resistance, for example) might offer more rewards in terms of mystery-solving clues.

Or perhaps the deeper you move into a conspiracy, the more clues you might discover. For example, the early stages of a layer cake node design might have only sparse or enigmatic clues. The deeper you move into the scenario, however, the thicker and more explicit the clues might become.

Conversely, it’s important to remember not to mistake mystery-solving clues for node-transition clues. What I mean is that including a mystery-solving clue in a node doesn’t actually satisfy the Inverted Three Clue Rule: If it isn’t helping you find another node, then it doesn’t count towards the “necessary” quota of clues for keeping the adventure in motion.

Go to Part 6: Node-Based Dungeons

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 1B: TEE’S HOMECOMING

March 10th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1B: Tee’s Homecoming

In which desperate answers are sought and the lack of such answers leads to a heartbreaking revelation…

Something that I didn’t anticipate when I started this campaign was that the players would start keeping secrets from each other. You’ll see this reflected in several places throughout the campaign journals, but it really starts here: When Tee ran away from the others, her player requested a private session. Others would follow suit.

This had knock-on effects: Character backgrounds weren’t shared. The prelude campaign journals weren’t shared. And I often had to prep multiple versions of the campaign journal for each session in order to reflect different players/characters having different sets of knowledge.

(Ironically, I had actually thought I could use Tee’s interest in being a “secret seeker” as a gateway for funneling exposition into the campaign. But when we discovered that Tee sought secrets so that she could keep them, I suddenly had a whole structure built up for funneling information to Tee… and there it would stop.)

Although surprising, this wasn’t really a problem. But there are a few things to keep in mind with this play dynamic:

Balancing Time: The practice of balancing the “private session” isn’t much different than any other occasion when the group splits up. (The only difference is that the GM needs to transition between multiple rooms.) In general, I’ve found the trick is switch back and forth between the groups in order to keep everyone engaged.

There is a proviso to this, however. In general, groups that aren’t dysfunctional take pleasure in both their own activities and the activities of their fellow players (they are both actors and audience for the game). This is true whether the group is together or split up. Time spent with a player when the other players can’t act as an audience, however, is like dead air on the radio. It’s more troublesome.

As a result, there may be times when it makes more sense to just give the rest of the group a 5 or 10 minute break while you’re resolving things with the other player. (This is a good time to figure out what the pizza order should be for the evening. Or to work up a shopping list. Or just hang out and chat. Whatever works.)

Upon other occasions, we’ve simply pushed the “private time” off to a separate session (usually run via PBeM or IM). Of course, this only works if one is confident if the content of that private time isn’t going to have an impact on the rest of the current session. (Sometimes you can mutually agree on the rough parameters or “outline” of the events covered in the private session and then flesh it out later.)

Balancing Information: As I alluded to above, the keeping of player secrets pretty much automatically leads to a balkanization of information. This, in turn, can wreak havoc with the Three Clue Rule — either because the player with the necessary information doesn’t share it when it becomes relevant; doesn’t recognize that the information has become relevant due to a lack of context; or has simply forgotten it.

After all, the Three Clue Rule works due to redundancy and reinforcement. If Player 1 has Clue 1, Player 2 has Clue 2, and Player 3 has forgotten Clue 3, redundancy has been significantly weakened and there is no reinforcement.

This doesn’t require you to automatically hit the panic button, of course. Most of the time it will all work out just fine. But it is something to be aware of and keep track of.

The Bluff: This is only tangentially related to the kind of player-initiated secrecy I’ve been talking about here, but a successful pattern of bluffing can be useful when the GM wants to communicate secrets.

For example, let’s say that one of the players has been hit by a charm spell or replaced with a doppleganger. If you hand a note to that particular player… BAM. The whole table knows something is up. Even if the players don’t necessarily act on their metagame knowledge, it’s still out there.

A few ways to deal with this:

First, build a habit of intermittently handing out notes. They don’t always have to be important. They don’t always have to be secret. They can even just say something like, “Don’t tell anyone there’s nothing on this note.” The idea is to camouflage the important note when it comes long. (Disadvantage: Writing out notes is time-consuming.)

Second, include a “fake revelation” on the note. Something like: “Tell the other players that you’ve spotted a hidden rune on the ceiling. BTW, you’ve been replaced with a doppleganger.”

Third, hand out notes to multiple players. Only one of them contains the actual information — but now nobody is entirely sure who’s holding the secret. (This also works well if you include a few innocuous or semi-innocuous notes for other people. They may think they’re the actual target of the mass camouflage.)

Fourth, find a way to get the player the information away from the table. (In an era of cellphones this has actually become relatively easy. Take a break, go to the bathroom, text the player. Remember to ask them to confirm that they’ve seen the text; otherwise it may just sit at the bottom of their backpack until two hours after the session has wrapped up.)

When I posted Black Book Beta Response 6 last week, it didn’t get much of a response. After some reflection on the matter, I have several hypotheses for this:

1. With the funding project done, nobody is really paying attention any more.
2. People don’t really care that much about art.
3. Since I screwed up the options on the poll, most people couldn’ t vote when they saw the post.
4. The fact that you needed to go flipping through the book to look at the art made it less likely for people to comment/participate.

On the theory that #3 or #4 are most plausible, I’m going to try this again. And this time I’m going to do it better. (Assuming I don’t screw up the poll again.) Below the poll you’ll find that I’ve included all the questionable art that I’m asking for your feedback on. I’m also adding in a few additional pieces that people have specifically commented on.

If you voted before, feel free to vote again. And, again, please feel free to leave a comment pointing out other pieces of art you don’t like. I’m particularly interested in hearing your feedback on any pieces that felt too “familiar” to you. (I’m using public domain art, but I still want the book to feel fresh.)

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