The conclusion to the trilogy which began with Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport, Madness in Freeport brings the same strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Review Originally Published October 8th, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Madness in Freeport. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Madness in Freeport, the final installment of the Freeport Trilogy (following Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport — which are reviewed here and here), takes place over the course of three days as Milton Drac’s sinister plans begin to come to fruition and the PCs must work furiously to stop them.

Madness opens with the Grand Lighthouse Ball – a celebration to which Drac invites the PCs under the pretense of applauding their recent accomplishments. In reality, however, he’s brought them there in an attempt to set them up for a fall (just as he’s set up everyone else who has ever posed a potential threat to him). The PCs must resist Drac’s manipulations, while still using the opportunities of the Ball to further investigate the truth behind Drac’s plans for the Lighthouse.

If the PCs are successful, they will discover that they need to acquire an ancient artifact – the Jade Serpent of Yig – in order to counteract the foul summoning ritual which Drac is building the Lighthouse to attempt. The PCs will then be able to trace the resting place of the Jade Serpent to the cache of the infamous pirate Black Dog. Seeking out this hidden cache, they will discover an ancient, sunken Temple of Yig.

Once they have acquired the Jade Serpent from the Temple of Yig, they return to Freeport. But they may already be too late, and a furious chase through the Lighthouse ensues until the PCs reach the Big Finale.

LOW POINTS

Madness in Freeport shares its primary flaw with Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport: Once again, the strings which hold the adventure together are far too weak. The success of the module hinges time and time again on the PCs reading the author’s mind or making a lucky dice roll.

For example, it is absolutely crucial that the PCs discover the location of Black Dog’s Caves (where they suspect they can find the Jade Serpent of Yig). In order to accomplish this, they must make a Gather Information skill check. A complete chart of possible responses is given (ranging from DC 10 to DC 25) – but, essentially, they have to make this skill check at DC 25 in order to find out what they have to do next.

This is bad design. Plain and simple. The module writer practically admits as much in the very next paragraph, where he tells the DM to essentially ignore the die roll if the PCs don’t make it. If that’s the case, why the heck are you bothering to have me roll the dice, anyway?

Essentially, any DM wanting to run this adventure is going to have to modify it substantially in order to strengthen the flow of the plot – or he’s going to have to simply accept the necessity of railroading his players through it.

Another major flaw comes at the adventure’s end, when the author attempts to claim that the PCs (having killed Drac) will not have their story of what happened believed. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t make any sense. For starters, the PCs are already acknowledged heroes of the city. And, furthermore, a huge crowd just saw the climax of the adventure. In other words, the PCs not only have a lot of personal credibility built up in Freeport – they also have a massive amount of corroborating evidence.

Madness in Freeport, unfortunately, also shows a relatively sloppy handling of the rule system. For example, in the Lighthouse at the end of the adventure Simoni asserts that it takes a guardman two rounds to run to the top of a fifty foot stairway (this is crucial, because he’s going to alert others to the PCs’ presence). Unfortunately, Simoni is wrong – the guard can move 60 ft. per round while running. He’ll reach the top of the staircase in the same round he starts running.

The other low points in Madness in Freeport take the form of “that was good, just not as good as it could have been”.

For example, the Grand Lighthouse Ball at the top of the adventure is a roleplaying-intensive sequence. It’s handled well enough, but Simoni would have benefited from taking a look at Penumbra’s In the Belly of the Beast — which handles that type of scenario in a far better fashion.

Similarly, the sequence in the Sunken Temple of Yig is good insofar as it goes – but it suffers from trite tricks and one-note religious symbols, rather than exploiting the situation for some actual depth and mystery.

HIGH POINTS

Madness in Freeport primarily succeeds for two reasons:

1. Despite the flaws of execution, the story itself is a good one.

2. The adventure capitalizes well on the groundwork laid by the first two adventures in the Freeport Trilogy. Assuming the DM can stop the PCs from losing the thread of the adventure, everyone should enjoy themselves immensely as the mysteries of Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport are finally resolved while ancient evils are defeated.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, Madness in Freeport delivers a solid conclusion to the Freeport Trilogy. That being said: If the Trilogy had been released in today’s D20 market, rather than the virgin territory of August 2000, it would most likely have been widely ignored. The production values of Madness in Freeport simply don’t compare well with the other D20 products out there, and the module possesses too many flaws to distinguish itself from the competition.

To put this in context: When I compare Death in Freeport (the first Green Ronin module, released in August 2000) to Three Days to Kill (the first Penumbra module, released in August 2000), the comparison is highly favorable. However, when I compare Madness in Freeport to The Tide of Years, it becomes apparent that Penumbra has worked steadily to improve the quality of its offerings – while Green Ronin, for all intents and purposes, is still putting out the same old stuff.

So, while I still offer my endorsement of Madness in Freeport as a conclusion to the Freeport Trilogy, I also reserve judgment to the extent that, if this is the best that Green Ronin can produce in the future, then I probably won’t continue to categorize Green Ronin as a top-notch D20 publisher.

Style: 2
Substance: 4

Author: William Simoni
Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing
Line: D20
Price: $10.95
ISBN: 0-9701048-3-9
Product Code: GRR1004
Pages: 46

In retrospect, I’d knock at least one point off of my Substance rating above. My memory is that this was quite mediocre, and reviewing my prep notes for the adventure reveals that I ended up rewriting almost all of it. (Which isn’t a good sign.) Conceptually great; execution mostly a whiff. The best bit is the Grand Lighthouse Ball, and even that I had to heavily reorganize and remix to get it into a format I felt comfortable running. On the other hand, the process of figuring out how I wanted the Grand Lighthouse Ball organized was, if I recall correctly, the beginning of the process for developing my social event scenario structure, although it would take several more iterations over the next seven or eight years to work all the kinks out.

There was actually a significant gap between my reviews of Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport, which were published on the same day in February 2001, and my review of Madness in Freeport, which didn’t appear until October. Some of that gap is explained  by Madness in Freeport being released at a later date, but that’s not the whole story here. I think this is one of those books I read, meant to review, but I didn’t actually get the review written in a timely fashion. If the gap between experiencing a piece of media and writing the review takes too long, then I generally find I can no longer write the review. The material is too stale and too many details will have slipped away from me.

I do remember that people kept asking me when my review of the third book in the Freeport Trilogy would be released.

Looking over my documents, I started putting together my prep notes for the Freeport adventures starting in mid-October of 2001. It’s probably not coincidental this review was published at the beginning of the month. I’m guessing that, having decided to run the trilogy, I re-read the whole thing. And then, with Madness in Freeport fresh in my mind, I also seized the opportunity to finally write up the review.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 44A: Whorehouse of Terror

Agnarr flew into a rage. “Stay away from her!”

The serpent-men in the far hall had now thrown open one of the doors there. “Erepodi!” they shouted through it. “We’re under attack!”

Erepodi… The name was familiar to Tee. It took her a moment to wrack her memory, but eventually she alighted upon its source: The small picture locket they had found in Pythoness House.

And indeed, in the very moment that Tee remembered the locket, Erepodi herself strode into view through the door, scarcely changed from her picture.

“I know not who you are! Or why you have come! But none shall disturb my house!”

This is a moment where the player has forgotten something that happened during the campaign. This isn’t unusual. As human beings we forget stuff all of the time, and unlike our characters we aren’t living in these fictional worlds 24-7. (Or whatever the hours, days, and weeks look like in your fantasy milieu of choice.)

I don’t remember exactly how this precise moment was resolved, but it generally happens in one of three ways.

First, one of the other players does remember this bit of continuity and simply reminds the table what happened. It’s up to the player to decide whether that’s an in-character moment (e.g., Tee forgot and Ranthir reminded her) or not. (I’m pretty confident this isn’t what happened in this moment, as this happens all the time and I wouldn’t have recorded it in the journal.)

Second, the campaign journal is consulted. Creating a record of continuity is, after all, exactly why we’re keeping a campaign journal in the first place. In the case of the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, one of the players has loaded the journal into the group’s private wiki so that it can be rapidly searched (along with digital copies of many of the handouts and other records the group has created).

Third, I’ll have the PC make a memory check. For my D&D 3^rd Editon campaigns, I simplified and adapted a rule from the Book of Eldritch Might 3 for this.

MEMORY CHECK

Whenever a character might remember something that happened to them either in actual play, from their own (pregame) past, or something that happened “off stage”, they should make a memory check. (This could also be to remember some minor detail that the DM didn’t point out specifically because it would have caused undue suspicion and attention…)

A memory check is a simple Intelligence check. Characters cannot Take 20 and retries are not allowed. (Characters can Take 10 in non-stressful situations, however.)

DC	Situation
5	Something just about anyone would have noticed and remembered; the general appearance of the man who killed your father (assuming you got a good look at him)
10	Something many people would remember; such as the location of the tavern they ate at across town yesterday
15	Something only those with really good memories might recall; like the kind of earrings a woman was wearing when you spoke with her three days ago
20	Something only someone with phenomenal memory would remember; such as the name of a man you met once when you were six years old
25	Something no normal person could remember, such as the nineteenth six-digit combination code on a list of 80 possible combination codes for a lock, when you only saw the list for a few moments

Characters also have access to the following feats:

• Excellent Memory: +5 to memory checks
• Photographic Memory: +15 to memory checks. (Requires Excellent Memory.)

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

THE GM’s ROLE

What about my role as the GM here? Shouldn’t I just tell the players when they’ve forgotten something?

Maybe.

This is a tricky bit of praxis, in my opinion. On the one hand, I don’t want the players stymied because they’ve forgotten something that their characters should remember. On the other hand, figuring out how things fit together is a deeply satisfying and rewarding experience, and I don’t want to be constantly short-circuiting that by spelling everything out for them. Conclusions are just infinitely more fun if the players figure them out for themselves.

And, in fact, it can also be fun when the players could have figured something out, but didn’t. That, “Oh my god! It was right in front of us the whole time!” moment can be really incredible, but none of you will ever have the chance to experience it if you’re constantly spoonfeeding them.

So if I can see that my players have “missed” something, the first thing I’ll ask myself is, “Have they forgotten a fact or are they missing a conclusion?” I may or may not provide them with a missing fact, but I will do almost anything in my power to avoid giving them a conclusion.

(This situation with Erepodi is an interesting example because it kind of lands in a gray area here: It’s partly about remembering a fact they learned in Pythoness House — i.e., the name “Erepodi” — and partly about drawing the conclusion that this is the same person. So it’s a little tricky.)

The next thing I’ll consider is, “Is this something that their character should remember?” The answer to that may be an obvious Yes, in which case I’ll provide the answer. If the answer isn’t obvious, call for a memory check. (This can usually just default to some kind of Intelligence or IQ check if your system doesn’t have a formal memory check mechanic.)

Tip: An advanced technique you might use, if you have a searchable campaign journal like we do, is to say something like, “You should check the campaign journal for that.” The disadvantage is that this consumes extra time. But it has the benefit that the players still feel a sense of ownership about “figuring it out.” Logically, it shouldn’t make a difference. In practice, it can be an effective bit of psychological finesse.

Another key consideration is how essential this information is to the structure of the scenario and/or the PCs’ current situation. If it’s just an incidental detail leading to a revelation that could just as easily simmer for a long time, then I might be a little more likely to let it pass and see if the players notice it or figure it out later. If, on the other hand, they’re in a middle of an investigation, are rapidly running out of leads to follow, and forgetting this detail will likely derail the investigation completely, I’m more likely to default to giving them the info.

A final factor here is if the players are directly asking for the info. For example, if they say something like, “Erepodi? That name sounds familiar. Justin, where have we heard that name before?” This is a very strong indicator, and I’m almost certainly going to either point them in the right direction (“check the campaign journal” or “do you still have that letter from the duke?”), call for a memory check, or simply give them the information.

Conversely, if they aren’t saying anything, players often know more than you realize. It’s not unusual for me to call for a memory check, have it succeed, and give them the information, only for the player to say, “Oh, yeah. I already knew that.” This is another reason why, in the absence of other factors, I’ll usually default to not saying anything and seeing how things develop through actual play.

If nothing else, when they realize their mistake, it will also encourage the players to keep better notes!

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: DELAYED RECALL

Here’s a technique I haven’t actually used, but by sheer synchronicity I was reading through Aaron Allston’s Crime Fighter RPG this week and stumbled across a cool idea. In the introductory scenario “New Shine on an Old Badge,” the PCs are tracking down a criminal who turns out to be an ex-cop dressing up in his old uniform. When the PCs have an opportunity to catch a glimpse of this fake/ex-cop from a distance, Allston recommends:

As the investigation and paperwork continues, the characters will find that no one knows who the officer was. Let the characters make INT rolls. If anyone achieves a 17 or better, he’ll remember who the guy is — “Ray Calhoun — only that can’t be right, because he retired six or seven years ago; he used to visit the station pretty regularly, even after he retired.”

If someone achieves a fourteen or better, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night remembering who the guy is.

Emphasis added.

In this case (pun intended), this isn’t something the players have forgotten or would be capable of remembering. (Their characters met Ray Calhoun before the campaign began.) But the idea of taking a partial success and resolving it as, “In the middle of the night you wake up and realize you forgot something!” is, I think, a really interesting framing for this.

Along similar lines, you might decide, “Well, they don’t immediately remember encountering the name ‘Erepodi’ before. But the next time they encounter the name, it will all fall into place for them.”

CONCLUSION

Some of the issues you’ll run into with player memory vs. character memory will be very similar to the issues that can arise when adjudicating idea rolls. For a deeper discussion on those, you might want to check out GM Don’t List #10: Idea Rolls.

Campaign Journal: Session 44B – Running the Campaign: Adversary Rosters in Action
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

The sequel to Death in Freeport, Terror in Freeport brings the same strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Review Originally Published February 12th, 2001

Terror in Freeport picks up exactly where Death in Freeport left off (my review of the latter is available here) – which is only logical, since it’s a sequel.

In terms of its strengths and weaknesses, Terror is very similar to its predecessor: It’s picked up a few new flaws (weaker boxed text, repetition of material), but it’s also picked up a few new strengths (more adventure material, better lay-out).

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Terror in Freeport. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

A couple of months have passed since the events of Death in Freeport and the PCs are approached, once more, by Brother Egis: He’s sure that the serpent people are still active in Freeport, and has come to believe that someone is working behind the scenes to undo everything that the PCs have accomplished. The plot which begins to unravel from this simple seed is so delightfully convoluted that the author, Robert J. Toth, has included sidebars entitled “The Real Story” throughout the adventure to make it easier for the DM to keep track of everything that’s going on.

Things open with another round of investigation, starting with a secret residence that Milos (the main villain from Death in Freeport) kept under an assumed name. Investigating the rented room will not reveal anything (although if the PCs make some lucky search rolls they will uncover a set of documents which will be very important in setting up Madness in Freeport, see below). Shortly after they start investigating, however, they will attacked and – if they follow one of the would-be assassins successfully – he will lead them right back to the bricked up temple building from Death in Freeport.

The temple is supposedly being cleaned out by Councilor Verlaine, but if the PCs successfully investigate they’ll discover that the Temple is still inhabited by serpent people – who are transferring the contents of the Temple into the basement of Verlaine’s mansion! A series of subsequent investigations and diversions will make it appear that Verlaine is in league with the Brotherhood, but – in fact – he’s being set up by his boss, Sea Lord Drac – the ruler of Freeport.

The Brotherhood then attacks Egis’ Temple, some more craziness ensues, and the PCs triumph. Along the way they finally get to talk with Thuron, the head of the Temple – but at the end of the adventure it’s suddenly revealed that Thuron is one of the serpent people, too! Fortunately, he’s one of the good serpent people. (Made ya look!)

Finally, the big whammy is laid on the PCs (setting the stage for Madness in Freeport): K’Stallo reveals that the diagram the PCs discovered way back at the beginning of the adventure are the plans for the Lighthouse which is being constructed in the harbor – a Lighthouse which is being carefully prepared for a demonic ritual which will see the Unspeakable God of the Yellow Sign reborn into the world once more!

LOW POINTS

Terror in Freeport possesses the same primary flaw as Death in Freeport: The links which hold the adventure together are far too weak. A missed die roll here, a failure to read the author’s mind there, and the adventure is hopelessly derailed without even a glimmering clue regarding how to get it back on track.

To this, a few other weaknesses are also added: The boxed text is generally much weaker than in Death in Freeport, and on at least two occasions it makes decisions for the PCs (something which I simply can’t stand). The pregen PCs from Death in Freeport are reprinted here and, although they’ve been advanced to third level, I consider this an even greater waste of my space and time. Finally, during a sewer sequence,  the map of the sewer fails to match the description in the text.

HIGH POINTS

The biggest advantage Terror in Freeport has is that it is a sequel to Death in Freeport. The same sense of lurking horror and hidden mystery lurks within these pages, and even as some of the mysteries left lingering in the shadows of Death are brought into the light, even more sinister mysteries are shown to lie behind them. Terror raises the stakes elegantly and naturally – drawing the PCs into higher circles of power, and showing that the corruption and horror they had so briefly brushed against before becomes even more terrifying as the full scope of its truth becomes revealed.

Other positives: Adventure seeds for getting players involved in Terror in Freeport are included (in case they didn’t run through Death in Freeport) – even though I can’t seriously imagine running a group through Terror that hasn’t been through Death. In general, Terror is a far meatier adventure than Death, although this is largely due two factors: First, Terror draws upon the background in Death (so that it has a larger number of actual pages in which to describes its adventure). Second, Terror is for higher level characters – so the PCs can handle a bit more breadth and depth than they could before.

CONCLUSION

If you liked Death in Freeport, you’ll like Terror in Freeport. If you didn’t like Death in Freeport, you probably won’t like Terror in Freeport. And if you haven’t read Death in Freeport, then you’re probably best advised to check that out first.

Support the reviewer’s plan for world domination: Click here to order Terror in Freeport through an affiliate link to Amazon.com.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Authors: Chris Pramas
Company: Green Ronin Publishing
Line: D20
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0-9701048-2-0
Production Code: GRR1003
Pages: 32

It’s been a long time since I cracked the cover on Terror in Freeport, but I have only the fondest memories of running this module. (Unlike Death in Freeport, I’ve only run Terror in Freeport once, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the module itself and shouldn’t be held against it.)

Taking a peek at my prep notes, it seems that I made virtually no adjustments to the module. It looks like I modified the hook to incorporate a patron who’d been established in my campaign; fleshed out the the tracking section with a Gather Information table; added a cool trap from the Traps & Treachery supplement published by Fantasy Flight Games; and modified Thuron’s story to align it to the cosmology of my own campaign world. Everything else is just stat blocks and handouts.

My point is that sometimes you can have fond memories of an adventure as you experienced it at the table that have little or nothing to do with the adventure as it was published, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. Terror earns my nostalgic accolades.

Perhaps my strongest recommendation is that I hope to some day return to these modules and run them again.

Next Freeport Review: Madness in Freeport

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

So I’m revisiting Aaron Allston’s Strike Force, the legendary campaign supplement for the Champions roleplaying game, and he’s talking about the PCs’ Hunted. But he’s talking about it in a really weird way: As if obviously every PC is going to have a Hunter. He’s built it into his character creation checklists. It’s baked into his campaign planning.

If you’re not familiar with Champions, let me explain a little bit: It’s a superhero RPG which would later grow to become the generic Hero System. It’s one of the earliest point-buy character systems, in which players are given a budget of points and can use them to buy various abilities, skills, and powers. There are also disadvantages: weaknesses players can pick for their character to give themselves more points to spend on stuff.

One of these disadvantages is Hunted, which means that there’s someone or an entire group of people hunting the PC. But, as I say, it’s just one character option among many. So why was Allston writing not only as if every PC would have this specific disadvantage, but that this would be self-evident to the reader?

My introduction to Champions came through a review of the 4^th Edition of the game in Dragon Magazine, and I later scooped up a copy of the same edition at my local gaming store. Although I was never been able to play or run it as much as I would’ve liked, I immediately loved it and it had a major influence on me as a gamer.

Allston’s Strike Force campaign, on the other hand, didn’t use 4^th Edition. It started as a 1^st Edition campaign when the game first came out. So I went back to 1^st Edition to see if I could figure it out.

What I found is that Hunted hadn’t actually changed much. In fact, it still hasn’t in the current 6^th Edition of the game. But the difference was that, by 4^th Edition, the Champions rulebook was almost 400 pages long. For me, Hunted was just one pebble on a very large beach.

The 1^st Edition of Champions, on the other hand, was only 56 pages long. So for Allston — and, I suspect other Champions GMs of that era — Hunted had a much more prominent position. Both the GMs and the players were much more aware of it, and the result was that it become somewhat central to how Allston ran the game. (I’ve also talked about this kind of mechanical “spotlight” that can emerge in barebones systems in Reactions to OD&D: The Influence of Little Rules.)

In Strike Force, Allston talks about how a GM can/should:

• Check during character creation to make sure you know how a Hunter will be used.
• Use Hunters to pace character arcs and set up campaign finales.
• Age Hunters by combining them, resolving and replacing them, evolving them, or creating spinoffs.
• Incorporate the Hunters from new PCs into a campaign.

It quickly became clear to me that this concept of being Hunted was something that could easily inject interest into almost any campaign, regardless of what RPG you were running. This idea was really the seed that eventually grew into the entire Session 0 Modules series.

HUNTED

During Session 0, ask the players to define their Hunter. This can be done either individually (so that each PC is being hunted by a different Hunter) or as a group (with a single Hunter pursuing all the PCs and/or the organization the PCs belong to). A mixed approach is also possible, with perhaps two or three PCs all being pursued by mysterious organization whose agents wear rose-tinted glasses, while another PC could have an NPC rival serving as their Hunter.

Option: In the spirit of the original disadvantage, you could instead offer Hunted as an option to the players in exchange for some boon or benefit. (Maybe if they choose to be Hunted, they gain a powerful Ally. Or a powerful artifact. Maybe it’s actually the artifact that the Hunter is seeking?)

CREATING THE HUNTER

If the players have a strong vision of their Hunter spring full-blown from their brow, that’s fantastic. They should write down every awesome idea that they have. But whether you’re looking to brainstorm a new idea or fleshing out an inspired one, you can use this semi-formal cycle of question-and-response to develop the Hunter.

GM: Who is the Hunter and why are they hunting you? (Player responds.)

Player: How often does the Hunter hound me? (GM responds.)

GM: What do you think is the most frightening or dangerous aspect of the Hunter? (Player responds.)

Player: What weaknesses does the Hunter have, if any? (GM responds.)

GM: When you think of the Hunter, what is your most powerful memory of them? (Player responds.)

GM: Who is the Hunter and why are they hunting you?

The GM will ask this question and the players should answer it. If you’re the players, you don’t need to produce a full dossier here. You just need to sketch in a broad concept.

If multiple characters are being pursued by the same Hunter, then the players should all have a part in answering the question. The GM can help them all have a creative stake in their Hunter by spreading some or all of these supporting questions around the table:

• What do they want from you?
• When did they first start hunting you?
• What’s their modus operandi? How do they threaten you?
• Why haven’t you been able to escape their pursuit?
• What do they look like?

The term Hunted lends itself to characters like Kraven the Hunter or the Black Riders from Lord of the Rings — i.e., characters who are literally hunting the PCs and want to kill them (or worse). But the stakes don’t have to be life-or-death. For example, being pursued by authorities who want to arrest them — like U.S. Marhsal Samuel Gerard from The Fugitive or Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard — are often a good fit. It can also include rivals like Gary Oak from Pokemon or someone obsessively pursuing the PC romantically like Lwaxana Troi from Star Trek. J. Jonah Jameson’s antagonism towards Spider-Man is another good example.

The important thing is that the Hunter makes things difficult for the PCs and/or impels them to take action (regardless of whether that action is fight or flight).

If it’s appropriate for the campaign, you might even be able to make the Hunter more abstract. Maybe there’s some strange plague that haunts the PCs’ footsteps, for example. Or the Nothing from The Neverending Story.

If the Hunter is an organization, however, consider giving that organization a “face” — an NPC who is most likely leading the efforts to hunt down the PCs. This NPC might not be present every time the organization show up, but they show up often enough that the PCs can form a personal relationship and antagonism with them. Think about Agent Smith is the face of the Agents from The Matrix, for example, or Prince Zuko’s role as the face of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Player: How often does the Hunter hound me?

Will every session of the campaign be like an episode of The Fugitive TV show, with the only question being when — not if! — the Hunter will show up? Will they show up to complicate things every few adventures? Or are they more of a looming threat that will only show up (with likely catastrophic intensity) once in a blue moon or at major turning points in the campaign?

See “Triggering the Hunter,” below, for more details on Hunter frequency. Setting this frequency will be partly about what effect you want the Hunter to have on gameplay and partly about how interesting you think the Hunter and/or the threat of the Hunter will be to the narrative of the campaign.

(If you don’t think the Hunter is interesting at all, that may be a sign that you should veto the Hunter and try to come up with a new one that everyone is interested in.)

GM: What do you think is the most frightening or dangerous aspect of the Hunter?

The answer to this question may be emphasizing an established characteristic of the Hunter, but this is also an opportunity to raise the stakes by adding some new and terrible facet to the Hunter: Yes, the FBI is chasing us, but did you also know that Agent Keighley is secretly a werewolf?

If multiple players are being pursued by the same Hunter, have each of them give a separate answer. Ideally, each of them will come up with some new addition to the Hunter’s danger, but it’s okay if they both fear the same aspect of the Hunter, as long as they can give it a new twist or explain why it particularly resonates with their character. (Or both.)

If you’re struggling to think of an aspect, you might consider:

• Unique technology the Hunter possesses
• A supernatural ability
• Official authority and/or pervasiveness in the campaign world
• The minions they control
• What makes them so hard to kill
• How they threaten to transform/ruin/remake the PC

Player: What weaknesses does the Hunter have, if any?

Werewolves are vulnerable to silver. FBI agents can only directly pursue you in the United States. Prince Zuko’s ship is slower than the Avatar’s flying bison. The PCs have a double agent in the Hunter’s ranks. The Hunter doesn’t know the PCs’ true identities. After unleashing their Cerulean Minions, they have to recharge their lunar batteries in the light of the full moon.

Whatever the weakness may be, it should give the PCs a meaningful edge, loophole, or leverage against the Hunter. This also means that the more powerful or all-encompassing the Hunter is, the more significant the weakness should be. (On the other hand, the Hunter’s weaknesses probably shouldn’t turn them into a joke, either.)

Tip: If, during the course of the campaign, the Hunter manages to neutralize their weakness, this will likely make them FAR more dangerous to the PCs. This means revealing their plans to do so can be a VERY effective scenario hook: Give the PCs a chance to make sure their identities remain hidden; prevent the satellite network from neutralizing kryptonite worldwide; stop the ritual that will allow Agent Keighley to turn into her werewolf form any time she wants to. If they succeed? Great. If they fail? Have their Hunter push them to the edge.

GM: When you think of the Hunter, what is your most powerful memory of them?

Try to make this memory something specific. It should be a distinct, concrete event — maybe a fleeting moment (e.g., when Agent Smith caused your mouth to disappear); maybe a prolonged incident (e.g., the Texas Affair); but not simply a general impression.

Here are some supporting questions you might use if you’re having difficulty brainstorming a memory:

• When did you first learn that you were being hunted?
• What’s a time when the Hunter injured you?
• How has the Hunter affected the other people in your life?
• What major life event was ruined by the arrival of the Hunter?
• When did you receive a warning or realize something was wrong, giving you just enough time to slip out of the Hunter’s grasp?
• How has the Hunter scarred you?

Your primary goal here is to weave the Hunter into your character background, but you may also discover something new about the Hunter or add lore to them as you’re fleshing out this memory. That’s just fine. Ideal, even.

Option: If you’re creating a Hunter who will only be introduced after the campaign has begun — as part of the first session, for example — then simply skip this question.

TRIGGERING THE HUNTER

Hunters should, of course, show up during the campaign. They are, after all, pursuing the PCs.

In some cases, you might have an entire scenario dedicated to dealing with the Hunter when they show up, but it’s usually more effective to add the Hunter as a complication to other scenarios:

• The PCs need to find the Ruby of the North in the Labyrinths of Omarrat, but now the Blightborn have entered the dungeon, too, and are trying to track them down.
• Melissa has been kidnapped by the Mystic Triad and the PCs need to save her! What a terrible time for Quartz to show up and pick a fight!
• The Maltese Falcon has appeared in Hong Kong in a 1980’s pop-up juncture and now the PCs, the Eaters of the Lotus, and all four of the Four Monarchs have teams scrambling to nab it for themselves. Of course Gorok the Cyber Ape, who has been hounding the PCs for months, is getting in on the act!

Procedural Check: Instead of or in addition to arbitrarily deciding when the Hunter will show up, you can make a check once per session or once per scenario. Think about how often you want the Hunter to appear and set the odds of the check accordingly.

If the group have three or more Hunters, I recommend having a 1 in 1d6 chance to trigger the Hunter.

If the group only has a single Hunter, I recommend using a 2 in 1d6 or 3 in 1d6 chance.

Having the Hunter show up as a procedural element in the campaign is fun because (a) it provides you with a cool creative prompt and (b) it can really enhance the feeling of the Hunter adding complication to an existing situation. Keep in mind that a Hunter’s presence doesn’t have to hog the spotlight: It might even be entirely incidental (a letter from a PC’s friend mentions strange men asking questions at their old school; they see Quartz fighting a different superhero on the TV news; etc.).

Of course, if circumstances dictate that the Hunter couldn’t possibly show up at this particular point in time (e.g., the PCs have been teleported to the far side of the galaxy by the Neutron Crystal) or vice versa, then you can obviously ignore this check.

Design Note: The Hunted disadvantage in Champions defaults to a roll of 8 or lower on 3d6, but a player could increase this target number to 11 or 14, causing the Hunter to appear more frequently (but also earning them more points to spend in exchange).

The Omnipresent Hunter: Hunters will generally be a light spice for the campaign, but in some cases you may find them so compelling — or so overwhelming in their scope — that the whole campaign becomes about them. As an extreme example, consider the players proposing that their Hunter is a zombie plague which is slowly spreading across the land, with the inevitable conclusion that the campaign will turn into The Walking Dead.

If that sounds like an awesome campaign to you… well, fantastic! Leap at the opportunity! You’re never going to have players more invested in a campaign than that.

But if you, or the other players, aren’t okay with a Hunter dominating and/or defining the campaign like that, then you’ll need to either veto that Hunter or figure out a way to alter the Hunter to figure out a different path forward.

EVOLVING & RESOLVING THE HUNTER

Hunters, and the characters’ relationships with the Hunters, should ideally evolve over time: Yes, Lieutenant Gerard showed up at the end of every episode of The Fugitive and the Joker always pops back up with a new scheme to challenge the Batman, but even those characters have had their stories brough to a conclusion. (Even if they come back again the next time the franchise reboots.)

Escalation: If the PCs feel as if they have their Hunter under control or that the Hunter is no longer posing a threat, you can find a way to escalate the danger they pose. For example, a vampire shows up with a coterie of newly turned husbands in tow; Agent Keighley reveals that she’s a werewolf for the first time; the lich-king obtains the Crown of Sizzerak; the FBI puts the PCs on their Most Wanted list and now there’s a larger task force assigned to their case, plus they’re being recognized and reported by people on the street.

Combination. If the PCs have multiple Hunters, a specific form of escalation can be for their Hunters to team up. You might also reveal that these Hunters have always been working together, possibly as part of a larger organization. For example, Spider-Man’s foes team up as the Sinister Six; the Fey Queen who has been pursuing the PCs imbues their other Hunters with faerie magick to form a Wild Hunt; or it’s revealed that the Sith and the Trade Federation have been working together this whole time.

Defeat. Perhaps the most natural resolution for a Hunter is their defeat: The PCs track down and kill the Man in the Silver Mask whose mercurials have been hounding them. Or they reveal General Lee’s crimes and watch him get hauled off in handcuffs.

If the Hunter is connected to a character, then the defeat of their Hunter is likely a major part of their story arc or even its conclusion. So you’ll want that to either line up with the end of the campaign or, in a more episode campaign, be prepared for that character to either retire or start a whole new arc.

If the Hunter is pursuing the whole group, then the same thing but even moreso.

Changing the Face. If PCs are being hunted by an organization, they can enjoy a measure of success by defeating the Face that’s been pursuing them. But even with the Face gone, of course, the rest of the organization can reorganize and redouble their pursuit.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to give the PCs a respite from their Hunters as a reward for the setback they’ve inflicted. But when the Hunters come back, you’ll likely want to escalate their threat and definitely set up a new Face for the PCs to build a relationship with. It’s best to not just retread the narrative beats the PCs have already experienced, though, so try to find some way of raising the stakes, letting the PCs get closer to a final victory over their adversaries, or transforming the nature of the threat posted by the Hunters.

Tip: As a variant here, you might introduce a brand new Hunter … only to reveal later that it’s actually the SAME Hunters with a new M.O.!

Spin-Off. Another variant here is that, after a Hunter’s defeat, the PCs might be confronted a spin-off Hunter: They kill Dracula only to discover that his wives are seeking revenge; a criminal discovers a cache of supplies left behind by the Hunter the PCs sent to prison and emerges as a new supervillain; or they discover that defeating one Predator only means that you’ve been identified as an even more desirable prey.

Success. Of course, it’s also possible that the Hunter succeeds: They kill the PC they wanted to kill; they steal the magical artifact the party was trying to protect; they arrest the PCs in a massive sting operation and lock them up in prison. This is definitely a subversion of expectations, but when we play to find out in RPGs, that happens all the time.

If the Hunter’s success takes the form of death, that’s pretty final. (Although not always, of course.) But other Hunter success stories may just post massive setbacks for the PCs or turning points in the campaign (e.g., I guess this game is about breaking out of prison now). Or maybe not: A tragic ending can be just as satisfying as a happy one.

Heel-Face Turn. For a more positive conclusion, maybe the Hunter switches sides. That might be a supervillain inspired by their PCs’ example and wanting to help the world with their powers or a dedicated U.S. Marshal who realizes the fugitive they’re pursuing has been wrongly accused.

Alternatively, maybe only the Face of the Hunter organization might perform the Heel-Face Turn, becoming an ally of the PCs in their fight against the rest of their organization. (This can be a great replacement character for a PC who’s died or a cool role for a new player to step into.)

Back to Session 0 Modules