IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1C: Meeting Elestra

In which unknown friends are met for the second time, recompenses are paid for broken doors, and the mysteries of a box raise unopened questions…

After the incompatible schedules that resulted in the prelude sessions of the campaign, we finally managed to schedule our first session. Unfortunately, one of our players unexpectedly got held back for extra overtime on the night of the first session.

Since all of our schedules were quite limited, we decided to get started without the missing player. I handled this through the simple expedient of having Alysta wake up early and leave the Ghostly Minstrel. (Alysta is Elestra before she was Elestra. See the retcon for details.) This actually worked very well (since it added an extra layer of mystery to the “missing member” of their group).

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time Alysta’s player would be held back or gain unexpected hours at work.

I’d like to say that I found some magical solution for this sort of thing, but I didn’t. The reality is that scheduling a stable group of five people for a regular or semi-regular activity is tough: The modern world is a busy, busy place.

An open game table, of course, is one way to deal with this sort of thing. (Like I’ve said in the past: If you love to play roleplaying games, you owe it to yourself to have an open table in your back pocket. You will be able to play a lot more.) But it’s not a magic cure-all: There are things you can do with an intense, closed campaign that are difficult or even impossible at an open table. I love the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, for example, and it’s not something that could be duplicated at an open table.

ON THE MATTER OF ATTENDANCE

With that being said, my personal philosophy for a closed game is that we don’t play unless all the players are present. Players will tell you it’s “okay” if somebody else runs their character. And, at first glance, it will all make sense: Sure, our schedules aren’t 100% compatible. But they’re compatible enough that we can play more often as long as we’re willing to occasionally miss a player or two, right?

But, in my experience, a couple of things happen:

First, it creates a sense that it’s OK for players to cancel or skip out on sessions. After all, they’re not really letting anyone down, right? The game is still going to happen, right? This pretty much inevitably results in more frequent absences.

Second, player absences will inevitably degrade the very things that make a closed game specifically desirable — shared experience, intensity, focus, investment, etc.

So, for me, there are closed games where everybody needs to show up if we’re going to play. And there are open games where I don’t care who shows up. And there’s very little gray area inbetween.

ON THE MATTER OF SCHEDULING

One school of thought holds that the best way to build regular attendance is to schedule regular sessions: If gaming is always every other Tuesday, then people can build that into their schedules.

Realistically, this doesn’t work for me. Our schedules are all too variable and conflicts inevitably arise; and the system doesn’t lend itself to flexibility. What I prefer, as a GM, is to send out an e-mail asking for everybody’s conflicts for the coming month. Then I sit down, crunch out the conflicts, and find the 2 or 3 days that we’re all available.

Our goal is to average about 2 sessions per month. In order to achieve that in practice, however, I’ll “overbook” by scheduling 3 or 4 dates if they’re available. It’s likely 1 or 2 them will end up getting canceled when something comes up. (And if they aren’t, then we just get a little more gaming done that month. No reason to complain.)

LETTING PLAYERS GO

Part and parcel with this philosophy is that sometimes you have to let players go: If they just can’t make the scheduling commitment necessary for a closed table, then the rest of the group will be better off if you cut them loose.

Which is another reason for having that open table in your back pocket. There are lots of people I love gaming with for whom a long-term commitment to a regular, closed campaign is impossible. I’m glad I don’t have to miss out on the opportunity to play with them.

Like my review of The Paxton Gambit, this review was also posted to the Amber DRPG mailing list. What I can’t remember is whether I originally wrote it for the mailing list and then recycled it later for use on RPGNet (as I had done with the Paxton Gambit review), or if I wrote it for RPGNet and then posted it simultaneously to the mailing list. I guess we can add that to column of Mysteries Nobody Actually Cares About.

Amber: The Diceless Role-Playing Game (ADRPG), based on the series of novels by Roger Zelazny, was the first diceless RPG. While some games may claim to be “diceless” role-playing and actually cop out and use cards or coins or a stopwatch to resolve actions, Amber truly is diceless: the only thing determining whether or not the actions of the players succeed is the GM.

What this means of course, is that the players have to trust their GM — in who final authority lies. Any group who has an antagonistic relationship will not have any fun.

Player: I punch him in the face!

GM: You missed. He whips out his gun and shoots you. You’re dead.

The game also requires — in my experience — GMs and players who have a bit of poetry and storytelling blood in their veins. If you play RPGs in order to fight badguys, then dice provide a neutral challenge to the situation — if you play such a scenario in Amber you know that your GM probably won’t kill you, and if he does you’re going to feel bad about it. (Although this doesn’t mean you can’t die in ADRPG. If it serves the story and everyone is mature enough to handle it, it’s fully capable of happening.) Nor is Amber particularly good for those who play RPGs in an attempt to accurately simulate reality — reality is random, and dice introduce that element to the game.

No, Amber is designed solely for the storytellers.

The system is a good one for what it attempts to do — simulate the environment of the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Everything is based off of four attributes — Strength, Endurance, Warfare, and Psyche. Strength is a measure of both physical power and skill in unarmed combat. Endurance is a measure of how long a character can do things before collapsing. Warfare is a measure of a character’s armed combat and tactical skill. Psyche is a measure of a person’s psychic ability and mental acuity. While for some situations this would seem to be a gross and inefficient generalization, for Amber characters it actually works perfectly.

These attributes are purchased through an “auction” — all players start the game with 100 points to build their characters with. During the first phase of character creation they bid, with the GM as auctioneer, for their ranks in the four attributes. Those who bid highest get 1st rank and the best ability. Those who don’t bid at all get “Amber” rank in the attribute — meaning you’ll trounce any mortal who comes wandering along without any effort whatsoever. After the auction you are able to purchase up by spending points equal to those who bid for actual ranks, although you will never be as good as the people who actually bid for those ranks (if you spend as many points as the person who claimed first rank, for example, you are actually rank “1.5”). To get more points you can lower your attributes to Chaos rank (-10 points) or Human rank (-25 points). There is also an alternate system for simply spending points on the various attributes and skipping the auction — but the auction is actually quite a bit of fun, and, in fact, once again creates the feel of the Amber universe quite effectively.

Skills? As Wujcik says, Amberites live so long they can be skilled in anything they like. Plus, due to the realities of shadow, if you aren’t skilled in something you can jump to a shadow where time runs much faster, train for a decade, come back the next day local time and hit the ground running. How do you build a skill system to represent that? Answer: you don’t. As long as its consistent with your character background, you can do anything like a pro.

So, besides attributes, what else can you spend points on? Well, there’s the powers. Pattern Imprint, Logrus Mastery, Trump Artist, Sorcery, Conjuration, Power Words. Everything from both the first and second series of books, plus a few extra things. You can also spend points on creatures and artifacts — things with similar abilities to Corwin’s sword Greyswandir or the horse of Julian in the books.

And the system for resolving actions? The GM looks at the character’s attributes and determines if he’s skilled enough or strong enough to accomplish the task. What about when two characters go head-to-head? Compare the attributes of the two characters in question. Equal? They’ll fight to a standstill. Little different? It’ll be a long, drawn out conflict. Big difference? It’s going to be short.

Although I make light, the system is — in fact — extremely elegant. As I said before this is a game for storytellers and when the GM is looking at an attribute to see if the character is capable, more often than not he is also asking the question: “Will it make for a good story?” The system really shines in combat, and the book goes into extensive details on how to run it. The chosen attributes play off each other with amazing alacrity. You may be better at swordplay than the other person (Warfare), but if they’ve got a better Strength then they can always try to close within fighting distance — unless you’ve got a significantly better Warfare, in which case you can avoid their attempt to grapple with you. If you’re both fairly even in your skill, then the person who can last longer (Endurance) is going to take the day. Psychic attacks, of course, can always figure in as well — and since you need to be in physical contact to make those work, they balance with the other attributes as well. Add in the powers and you have an exquisite interplay of elements which means that success is in more than just the numbers — the tactics you choose to employ become as crucial to your success as the size your attributes.

The game has two serious weaknesses, however, which mar its perfection:

First, despite the fact that the overall system is perfectly matched to its source material, some of the details fall flat. It is a well-reputed fact that the power systems as the game describes them raises the eyebrows of readers of the books — “Where did Eric Wujcik get that from?” You can play the game quite happily with what is there, however, so this is not a serious problem — particularly since there are highly-detailed alternatives to this system sprinkled across the web. Since Amber is a very freeform RPG it is also very easy to simply say: “Describe what you want to do, and I’ll assign a point cost for it.” No stats means that all you need is an idea and a description.

The other problem, I think, actually springs from that freeform quality of the system. It’s not well laid out and the presentation is inferior to other games on the market today. Fortunately the system is so simple that working around the lay-out isn’t a serious problem — you can literally read through the book once and have all the major rules memorized without any effort whatsoever. Only some of the specifics of the powers get more complicated.

In addition to all this, the book also provides stats for all the main characters from the First Chronicles of Amber and a plethora of ideas for campaigns, plus a handful of more fully developed scenarios to put your players through.

To sum it up: The central system is fantastic, and is probably the best adaptation of a specific work I’ve seen in RPGs (with the possible exception of the Star Wars RPG from West End Games). The power system, like the central system, is well balanced and works perfectly — but it falls down in the adaptation department. The entire game suffers from a poor lay-out, but there’s a lot of raw material in there.

Definitely worth the $23 if you’re at all interested in either the works of Roger Zelazny or in seeing a marvelous piece of system design.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Author: Eric Wujcik
Company/Publisher: Phage Press
Cost: $22.95
Page count: 255
ISBN: 1-880494-00-0
Originally Posted: 04/20/98

Go to Part 1

It’s a fairly typical piece of advice for neophyte GMs that they can design scenarios “just like dungeons”: Replace each room with a location or scene; replace each door with a clue.

The logic behind this approach is fairly clear: Most GMs get started by running dungeon scenarios, most GMs are very successful in running dungeon scenarios, and most GMs find it relatively easy to prep dungeon scenarios.

(The reason for this is the dungeon’s clarity of structure, self-controlled pacing, and robust design. But that’s largely a topic for another day.)

But this analogy is problematic from both directions. First, as we discussed previously, doors or hallways in a dungeon are a robust transition:

If you’re standing in a room, the presence of a door or hallway into the next room is generally obvious and its purpose self-evident. Clues, on the other hand, are fragile in isolation: They can be missed, mistaken, or ignored.

Clues also allow for omni-directional relationships. A dungeon room, however, typically can’t have a door to another location on the opposite side of the dungeon. The geography of the dungeon is rigid (and usually reversible). The geography of a mystery can be flexible (and is often one-way).

So, in general, I think – despite its ubiquity – this is actually really bad advice to give to neophyte GMs.

ROBUST STRUCTURES: But there are lessons that can be learned from the analogy.

First, dungeons work because the doors are robust transitions. Ergo, we should try to find equally robust transitions in other scenario structures. The Three Clue Rule, for example, is a way of accomplishing that with a mystery scenario.

Similarly, as we’ve discussed before, it’s possible for the typical robustness of the dungeon geography to mislead us into a false sense of complacency: A mandatory secret door, for example, can create a very fragile dungeon structure. That’s something to be aware of when designing dungeon scenarios.

EPHEMERAL BARRIERS: Consider our simple dungeon example again:

Note that the structure of the dungeon essentially “forces” the players to experience area B: If they could pass directly from area A to their goal in area C, they would. In this sense, area B functions as a “barrier” for the PCs.

Most dungeons are filled with such “barrier content” – content experienced only because the PCs are forced to physically move through those areas in order to reach the areas they want to go to.

But as the PCs gain resources to become proactive, the GM can’t just put barriers in their way. This is why high-level dungeons so often fail: The PCs can simply scry, fly, stoneshape, and/or teleport their way past the old geographical or terrain-based barriers the GM was once able to use to force them into experiencing content.

Some think empowering players like this is a bug. I tend to think of it as a feature. But it does mean that if you want your players to take a journey, you’ll need to make each pit stop interesting. Actually, more than interesting: Each pit stop needs to become a center of gravity, capable of drawing the PCs in for a closer look.

This is where applying some of the lessons you’ve learned from node-based scenario design can be usefully applied to your dungeon scenarios: Effective node-based design, after all, is all about creating centers of gravity for your nodes.

In designing your dungeons, look at each room or major area: Is there a way to make the PCs want to go there and experience that content? Or, alternatively, is there a way to make the content proactive so that it will come and seek out the PCs?

CLUE-BASED DUNGEON NAVIGATION: Consider, too, what happens when you bring clue-based navigation into the dungeon.

For example, the players might find a diary indicating that a “silver throne” can be “pushed aside to reveal a staircase”. Such a clue can easily send them to rooms on the opposite side of the complex, leave them looking for more information about the location of silver thrones, or anything inbetween.

In other words, dungeons can be thought of as a collection of nodes (with each room or area being a separate node). Traditionally we default to thinking of the transition between these dungeon nodes as strictly a geographical affair. Occasionally we may also throw in some randomly-triggered content, but even when we do that, we’re still limiting ourselves. There’s no reason we can’t lace a dungeon scenario with other forms of node navigation: Clues, temporally-triggered events, proactive content, trails, and the like.

The result is a richer and more rewarding dungeon scenario that will keep your players engaged in a multitude of ways.

Go to The Secret Life of Nodes

FURTHER READING
Using Revelation Lists
Game Structures
Hexcrawls
5 Node Mystery
Gamemastery 101

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