Go to Part 1

As the PCs arrive in Bazzoxan, we come to what I consider the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. It works like this:

• In Ank’harel there are three factions — the Allegiance of Allsight, the Consortium of Vermilion Dreams, and the Library of the Cobalt Soul.
• Each faction has a specific ruidium agenda regarding ruidium. (The Allegiance wants to use it to become arms dealers; the Consortium wants to monopolize it for arcane research; the Library wants it destroyed.)
• Each faction has sent a researcher to Bazzoxan — Prolix Yusaf (Allegiance), Aloysia Telfin Consortium), and Question (Library).
• The PCs should arrive in Bazzoxan and befriend a researcher (or more than one).
• The PCs will follow the researcher(s) back to Ank’harel and join a faction (or more than one, although that probably won’t remain tenable given the factions’ mutually contradictory goals).
• The PCs will then perform faction missions, which lead them to Cael Morrow and then the Netherdeep.

Conceptually, this is a very elegant structure: You can see how the PCs are allowed to make one-on-one connections with NPCs which are then used to (a) draw them across the world to another continent and (b) pull them into more complicated alliances and politics which nevertheless remain meaningful to them because of the personal connections they’ve made. And at every step of the way — researchers, factions, missions — the tripartite structure gives ample opportunity to inject the Rivals and have them challenge the PCs (both ideologically and otherwise).

In practical terms, unfortunately, someone decided to cripple this structure right out of the gate in Bazzoxan by larding it with railroads and badly preprogrammed cutscenes. There are a number of smaller head-scratchers, but there are two major culprits.

First, all three researchers are hidden behind weird cutscene-triggers. To meet Prolix, for example, the PCs need to:

• Randomly decide to check out the crematorium.
• Talk to the crematorium workers.
• Agree to help them load corpses into the furnace.

Shortly thereafter, Prolix will come rushing up.

The sequences for meeting Question and Aloysia are no less convoluted (with the trigger for the latter actually being hidden inside Question’s scene like a Matryoshka doll).

Note: All of this actually makes perfect sense if you imagine Call of the Netherdeep as a video game in which the players are expected to click on every NPC to receive their preprogrammed dialogue. Unfortunately, this is both (a) undesirable and (b) doesn’t actually work in a tabletop roleplaying game. (You can’t actually click on every single patron in the tavern until you randomly click on Question.)

Second, at the end of the Betrayers’ Rise dungeon, there’s a railroaded cutscene in which Aloysia shows up with the Rivals, attacks the PCs, and tries to steal the Jewel of Three Prayers.

This sequence is broken in so many ways that it’s actually difficult to enumerate all of them — it assumes the Rivals aren’t working with the PCs; it assumes the PCs didn’t agree to work with Aloysia when she proposed doing that earlier in the adventure; it assumes the PCs have the Jewel; etc. — but the biggest problem is that it completely breaks the core structure of the campaign.

By force-framing a scene in which Aloysia becomes a maniacal, monologuing villain, the adventure collapses the PCs’ choices: The Consortium of Vermilion Dreams has just attacked them and (possibly) robbed them. Even if they had the opportunity to join the Consortium they almost certainly wouldn’t, and it’s rather unlikely they will have the opportunity, because Aloysia is their only contact with the Consortium and she’s either their enemy or she’s dead.

(Bizarrely, the book nevertheless acts as if joining the Consortium is just as likely in Ank’harel as joining the other two factions.)

In any case, we’re going to take all of this stuff, scrunch it up in a ball, and throw it away.

PREPPING THE RESEARCHERS

Our goal, basically, is to switch everything from preprogrammed railroads and cutscenes to active play. We could honestly just wing it, but we’ll probably get better results if we create some clean prep that’s designed for flexible play at the table.

The first thing we’ll want to do is prep our three researchers — Prolix, Question, and Aloysia — using universal NPC roleplaying templates. It’ll make them a lot easier to pick up and play, while simultaneously giving us an opportunity to clearly wash away all of the nonsense and other detritus.

When designing the Key Info for each researcher consider:

• How do they point the PCs towards the Cyst of Avandra? This might be directly or through another researcher (see below), but their most immediate function is to point the PCs towards the right location in Betrayers’ Rise.
• Make sure to include their faction’s ruidium agenda. (Even if they don’t just spell everything out, you’ll want to start hinting at these dynamics… which will also get the players thinking about it and forming opinions.)
• What unique Lore of Alyxian do they have to offer? Each researcher makes an excellent vector for this (based on both what they learned in Ank’harel and what they’ve learned since coming to Betrayers’ Rise).
• What offer will they make to invite friendly/allied PCs back to Ank’harel after they’ve completed their business in Bazzoxan?

CROSS-INTERACTIONS

Next, we want to start lightly tugging the PCs into the faction politics and maybe even prompt them to start thinking about their allegiances. To do this, we’ll want to give each researcher an agenda vis-à-vis the others:

• Aloysia will attempt to eavesdrop on conversations between the PCs and other scholars. (And can be caught doing so by attentive PCs.) She might also ask the PCs to distract Prolix so that she can slip away and so something without his prying eyes.
• Prolix may tell the PCs that he’s been sent primarily to spy on Aloysia. And we can strengthen this by having Prolix ask them to break into Aloysia’s room and steal her notes.
• Question suspects that one of the other Ank’harel researchers has stolen one of his sketchbooks. She’d like the PCs to recover it.

Other options you might consider could include hiring the PCs to:

• Accompany them on an expedition into Betrayers’ Rise.
• Retrieve ruidium samples for them.
• Assassinate another researcher. (My gut says it’s probably better to limit things to light intrigue at this point, but if it feels right to ramp up the stakes and/or escalate someone into being a villain in the players’ eyes, go for it.)

Any offers that the PCs don’t take up, of course, it’s fully possible that the Rivals might do instead.

LOCATION TRIGGERS

Instead of hard-coded cutscenes, you’ll want to look for opportunities to introduce the researchers flexibly as the PCs explore Bazzoxan. You might find it useful to prep a short list of options for each researcher (but, again, avoid actually doing half-page scripts or anything like that).

Prolix might be at the crematorium. But he’s also at the inn. Or studying a sacrifice engine.

Question is at the inn. Or leaving an offering at the Wall of the Unforgotten (she’s made, and lost, friends here). Or studying carvings at Betrayers’ Rise.

Aloysia is at the inn. Or demanding soldiers from Verin to escort her into Betrayers’ Rise. Or getting a puncture wound treated at the infirmary (she was helping in the fight against the gibbering mouthers, CotN, p. 50).

Rather than keying these to the researchers, I would still jot these down as 1-2 sentence notes in each location key. When the PCs go to a particular location, you’ll have those options right at your fingertips.

CHECK OUR WORK

With everything we’ve done, we should be covered here, but treat each researcher as a revelation and make sure you’re satisfying the Three Clue Rule.

If, as we’ve previously discussed, you’ve got “look for local researchers” set up as the default action for the PCs to take when the arrive in Bazzoxan, this should largely take care of itself, as the PCs can simply ask around town and almost anyone can point them in the direction of one, two, or all three researchers. (“I actually just Question over at the Wall of the Unforgotten.”)

Of course, the researchers are also their own proactive nodes: When in doubt, or if you’ve got a researcher who has been MIA so far for some reason, just have one of them show up. You can easily justify that happening almost anywhere.

MAKE AN ENEMY

I mentioned above that befriending a researcher is an essential element in the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. Although it’s not essential, you may find that it’s highly effective to focus on the opposite — to pay attention to which researcher(s) the PCs have made their enemy.

(And to do the same — both friends and enemies — for the Rivals.)

In fact, if you have the PCs interacting with the researchers and the researchers all have active objectives in conflict with each other, this will likely happen quite naturally. You just need to make sure that you lean into it: If the choices the PCs are making are big, meaningful choices, then the blowback from those choices should also be big and meaningful (and it should be quite difficult to walk the tightrope of somehow keeping everyone happy… or at least duped).

The beauty of it, of course, is that ANY of the researchers might end up being this enemy. Because you’re not predetermining it or forcing it, it’s the players who are responsible for the consequences.

To seal the deal, having some sort of big finale in Bazzoxan featuring a confrontation with this enemy is probably desirable. You can concoct a custom scheme for each researcher or play it by ear to see what makes the most sense, but it’s probably just fine if we draw inspiration from the book here: The enemy researcher tries to steal the Jewel from the PCs.

A few things to think about:

• Where do they do it? (This will depend, at least in part, on what the NPC knows about the PCs’ location and intentions.)
• How do they do it? (Broadly speaking you’re probably choosing between an open assault or a stealthy heist. If the latter, make sure you slather plenty of evidence around so that the PCs know exactly who did it.)
• What allies can they call upon? (The Rivals may or may not be available, but there are a lot of other NPCs in Bazzoxan. Some of the researchers have access to teleportation and might even return to Ank’harel and bring back a strike team from their faction.)
• How does the guilty party flee to Ank’harel ASAP? (Assuming they survive the attempt.)

You may discover, depending on how things play out, that it’s more natural to let the PCs travel to Ank’harel and then run this confrontation as one of their first experiences there. Nothing wrong with that. The point is, after all, to be actively playing in response to what the PCs are doing.

Go to Part 6: Betrayers’ Rise

Go to Part 1

At this point in Call of the Netherdeep, the PCs are supposed to (a) be aware of the Jewel of Three Prayers and (b) have received a vision of an unidentified prisoner who begs them for help (either directly or as a kind of psychic static if the Rivals were the ones who touched the Jewel first). Structurally, the PCs are now supposed to leave Jigow and head to Bazzoxan.

If the PCs have the Jewel, the transition works like this:

• Elder Ushru tells them he also had a vision of the same mysterious figure.
• He identifies the Jewel of Three Prayers as a Vestige of Divergence, i.e. “an enchanted relic from the time of the Calamity.”
• He tells them that they should go to Bazzoxan because “there is no place in Xhorhas where the memory of the Calamity lingers more strongly than in Bazzoxan.”

If the Rivals have the Jewel, the transition works like this:

• The PCs overhear someone saying that (a) the Jewel is worth at least 1,000 gp and (b) the Rivals have left town and are heading to Rosohna.
• ???

The idea seems to be that this will prompt the PCs to hunt down the Rivals and rob them. Although even if they do that, the campaign doesn’t really include any mechanism to then point the PCs towards Bazzoxan. So the connection here is either broken outright or outrageously fragile.

But even the first version of this hook is pretty problematic. The core problem is that the PCs are not actually given a reason to go to Bazzoxan. Yes, the “memory of the Calamity” lingers there, but that’s not actually a reason. To understand the distinction, consider the immediate follow-up question from the PCs: “And what do we do when we get there?”

If you can’t answer that question, then you don’t actually have a reason to go. This is why, when the PCs get to Bazzoxan, the book assumes they’ll just kind of wander around until they bump into the plot.

(There is, of course, a metagame reason for the players to have their characters go to Bazzoxan — the DM has mentioned a place name and is waggling their eyebrows suggestively. But (a) that’s a bad table experience and (b) doesn’t solve the underlying structural issue here.)

The other thing to ask yourself here is, “Why are the PCs even talking to Elder Ushru?” Well, because he had the vision, right?

But why did HE have the vision?

Because, in the absence of a reason to go to Bazzoxan, the adventure needs an NPC mouthpiece through which the DM can say, “You’re supposed to go to Bazzoxan.”

My rule of thumb, though, is that if I have an NPC doing something really cool (and I count receiving enigmatic visions from proto-gods on the list of really cool things), I should double-check and make sure I couldn’t design things so that the PCs get to do the really cool thing.

So let’s clean all of this up.

UNIVERSAL VISION

When anyone touches the Jewel of Three Prayers (whether it’s the PCs or the Rivals), everyone in the Emerald Grotto receives the vision of Alyxian the Apotheon.

This means that PCs and Rivals alike have a unique connection to the Apotheon and they have ALL received the campaign’s call to adventure, regardless of who actually ends up in possession of the Jewel of Three Prayers. This connection to the Apotheon, of course, can (and will!) persist through the entire campaign, drawing both PCs and Rivals inexorably towards the Netherdeep.

It also means that the vision can be used to clearly establish the bridge from Jigow to Bazzoxan. There are a couple of ways that we can do this.

EXPLICIT VISION

In the vision as written, Alyxian says:

“I am imprisoned, please help me.” […] “My name is Alyxian. I am lost in darkness. Long ago, I prayed to the Change Bringer in the heart of a temple of evil. I beg you, take my jewel and…”

The easiest fix here is to just change the vague reference to a “temple of evil” and make the call explicit:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise beneath Bazzoxan!”

This is every bit as direct as the DM waggling their eyebrows while pointing at the flashing neon sign saying, “The book says you need to go to Bazzoxan, dummies!” But, of course, it has the advantage of being diegetic: It’s the PCs, not the players, who are being given a clear instruction.

ENIGMATIC VISION

There are, however, a number of reasons why you might want the players to work for this a bit:

• I’ve previously mentioned Getting the Players to Care. One of the techniques described there is making something a mystery: the process of unraveling a secret will invest the players in the lore, and also give them a sense of accomplishment and reward when they figure it out.
• If they need to figure out what the vision meant, it will probably also focus their attention on the Jewel. (Whereas if they’re just explicitly told where to go next, they may not spend much time thinking about the Jewel at all.)
• While the PCs are taking action to figure out the Jewel and/or vision, you can use the actions they take as a vector for feeding in other Lore of Alyxian.

You can accomplish this by basically just stripping information out of the vision to dial in the desired level of enigma. For example:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise!”

… okay, but where’s Betrayer’s Rise? This is fairly easy to figure out (ask almost anybody or just look at a map of Xhorhas).

Or you can strip out even more information:

“You must find me! You must bring the Jewel to the Cyst of Avandra!”

Well, Avandra the Change Bringer is obviously well-known. But what and where is her “cyst”? The PCs now have two vectors they could pursue: The Cyst or the Jewel.

Note: I’m enigmatically referring to the Prayer Site of Avandra within Betrayer’s Rise (CotN, p. 72) as a “cyst” of good within the evil of that place.

And, of course, you can go one step further:

“You must find me! Bring my Jewel to me!”

Which would obviously leave the PCs with the Jewel as their only vector.

Regardless, your structural goal is to point the PCs in the direction of Bazzoxan. So, depending on the vectors you’ve provided, this ultimately boils down to:

• Identifying that the Cyst of Avandra lies within Betrayer’s Rise (e.g., it is said that during the time of the Calamity, Avandra blessed a site within Bazzoxan; it is described in some demonic texts as a “cyst” which blighted that temple of the Betrayers Gods).
• Discovering that the Jewel of Three Prayers is depicted on the walls of Betrayer’s Rise. (We previously looked at how this research might work when we were discussing campaign agendas; e.g., Elder Ushru tells them he saw a drawing of “this very Jewel” there when he was younger.)

Once the PCs start digging into this enigma, you may find them pursuing other lines of inquiry unrelated to the Apotheon’s vision. If so, remember once again that your goal is to point them to Bazzoxan.

For example, they might become curious about the ruidium outcroppings in the Emerald Grotto. (Identifying and researching the red crystals reveals that there are similar outcroppings in Bazzoxan.) Or they might try to do historical research into the history of the Emerald Grotto/Jigow to figure out where the hidden temple came from. (This would be an opportunity to drop some Lore of Alyxian, including perhaps a reference suggesting a connection with the “Cyst of Avandra,” which would lead them back into the research trail for the cyst.)

As you begin pointing your final vectors into Bazzoxan, it’s worth noting that the ideal hook — for reasons described in the next section — should also imply an action of “talk to the local scholars” when they get there. If the PCs had to do research themselves to get there (while still having lingering questions they want answers to), this probably follows quite naturally. But, of course, you can also make it more explicit.

WHAT ABOUT THE RIVALS?

As noted, the Rivals received the same vision the PCs did and will likely have a lot of the same questions.

If they’re working together, this might be a good opportunity to “split the party” by having the Rivals pursue one set of leads while the PCs pursue another. (This might eventually include the PCs heading to Bazzoxan while the Rivals pursue “other leads” and only join them later.) If the PCs fail to identify Bazzoxan as their goal (for whatever reason), then you can use allied Rivals to deliver the lead. Alternatively, maybe it’s the Rivals who fail to identify Bazzoxan, but still uncover some ancillary information of interest.

If they’re not, then think about how the Rivals might pursue their own research: Perhaps they journey to Rosohna to peruse the libraries of the dark elves or seek out a major temple of Avandra in Asarius in order to identify the Cyst. (If you’ve followed the Three Clue Rule and prepped multiple vectors that the PCs might follow to Bazzoxan, then you can just choose a research path they didn’t pursue and give it to the Rivals.) You might consider giving one of the Rivals a research journal summarizing their conclusions that the PCs might discover later.

In either case, it’s probably most interesting — even if the PCs and Rivals both successfully identify Bazzoxan as their next goal — for each team to collect related, non-overlapping lore in their investigations.

Go to Part 5: The Scholars of Ank’Harel

Go to Part 1

The Emerald Grotto is a great dungeon:

• The underwater setting is both refreshing and establishes an aquatic theme that will persist throughout the campaign.
• The bifurcated route does a great job of structurally reinforcing rivalry.
• The key itself is filled with a lot of delightful details and clever ideas.

But there are two problems bracketing the Emerald Grotto that I would want to address: the broken premise at the beginning and the fragile conclusion at the end.

ESSENTIAL HOOK: THE RACE

At the end of the festival, the Elders of Jigow choose the two most successful teams to compete in the Grand Finale race through the Emerald Grotto. One team will be the PCs. The other will be the Rivals.

An elderly orc, dressed in deep blue robes, stands atop a platform of crates. He smiles at the crowd… “The main event, as you know, is yet to come. Only two teams will be chosen to compete in the final challenge—a race through the Emerald Grotto, in the depths of which the greatest prize awaits!”

And this is a little weird, because literally none of the contests up to this point have been team-based events. In fact, “teams” have only been mentioned in order to explicitly prohibit competitors from participating as a team (in J3).

This is a very awkward continuity glitch to have squatting right on top of the event which is the lynchpin for the entire campaign. But I don’t actually have a great solution for it.

HAVE TEAM EVENTS: One option would be to revamp the Festival of Merit so that it would feature team events. Unfortunately, revamping the existing events to be team-based instead of individual-based isn’t very practical. So you’d basically be creating a whole new slate of team-based events.

THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF YOUR STORY: Alternatively, maybe the PCs aren’t actually a group when the campaign begins. They become a group because they are the individual athletes chosen by the Elders to form one of the Grand Finale race teams, and then their fate is inexorably bound together by the vision of the Apotheon.

Unfortunately, there are a couple problem with this.

First, what if one or more of the PCs don’t actually do very well in the contests? How would you justify the Elders picking them as the cream of the crop? (This problem also afflicts the team-based approach.) You might address this by running the Festival of Merit as a Dungeon Crawl Classics-style funnel, where the players are all running a bunch of introductory characters and only those who score highest in the competitions become the PCs. (Although since Call of the Netherdeep starts at 3^rd level, it would be a very unusual funnel.)

Perhaps just a straight up lottery would work? It doesn’t matter how well you actually did in the various competitions at the festival, because the participants of the Grand Finale are selected by lot.

Second, you’d want the same logic to apply to the Rivals. But their backgrounds are all built around them being an existing group of aspiring adventurers. So you’d basically have to scrap them as characters and rebuild them from the ground up. (Which isn’t very appealing, since the Rivals are one of the strengths of the campaign.)

Like I said, I don’t really have a completely satisfying solution here.

Here are some possibilities though:

• Lottery. Participation in the Grand Finale is determined by lottery. Festival members get a number of entries in the lottery equal to the number of medals they win. (Using the lottery system bypasses the, “What if the PCs have rotten luck during the festival?” as long as the PCs win at least one medal.)
• Individual Competition. If the PCs are competing individually (and being drawn together by fate during the Grand Finale), then you can frame the Rivals as being last year’s champions. (They won, have been hanging out since then, and have decided to try their hand at adventuring. This requires some minor revision to their back story, but not so much as to require a complete rewrite.)
• Group Competition. Alternatively, people sign up for the Festival as a team. The team gets a number of entries in the Grand Finale lottery equal to the number of medals they win.

Obviously the fix is in and the PCs and Rivals will be selected no matter what. This is, after all, the instigating event of the entire campaign. The goal here is not really to take your thumb off the scale; it’s to make your thumb invisible enough that the game world still logically makes sense.

ESSENTIAL HOOK: TRIGGERING THE EARTHQUAKE

When the PCs get to the end of the Emerald Grotto they see a shark with the Emerald Eye strapped to its side. They then fight the shark and, when they defeat the shark:

The dying shark slams into the stone pillar in the south end of the cavern. The pillar cracks under the force, teeters, then crashes down against the south wall. The wall fractures and collapses, revealing a passage awash with golden light.

If the PCs follow the golden light, of course, they discover the Jewel of Three Prayers, the essential McGuffin on which the entire plot of the campaign is based.

There are a couple of minor quibbles here:

• The PCs are in the middle of a race. So, yeah, the glowy light is interesting, but they’re heavily motivated by their immediate goal to NOT check it out right now. Generally speaking, you want scenario crucial actions to flow from the established goals of the PCs, not in direct contradiction to them. (The same is true for the Rivals, of course, but since you control their actions, it’s easy enough to route around this problem.)
• The players might have some questions about how the shark got into this cave, since it’s too large to fit through any of the passages. (This might particularly be true if they decide to lure the shark away from the grotto for some reason.)

But the far bigger problem is that the PCs don’t have to fight the shark.

In fact, fighting the shark is probably the dumbest way for the PCs to get the Emerald Eye.

Even if you overrule an Animal Handling check (although there’s no reason that you should), that still leaves alternative solutions like mage hand (to grab the amulet), animal friendship, or even just making a Stealth check (perhaps assisted by invisibility).

(It should be noted that the writers KNOW these options exist, because animal friendship is how a druid of Jigow got the amulet on the shark in the first place.)

The short version is that if the shark doesn’t get killed, then it has no death throes. No death throes? No pillar collapsing. No pillar collapsing? No glowy light. No glowy light?

The campaign doesn’t happen.

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: My recommendation is that grabbing the Emerald Eye triggers a thunderous voice which declares that SO-AND-SO HAS WON THE RACE. This booming announcement pulses through the water, echoes across the shore… and also triggers an underwater cave-in that reveals the glowy light.

(This also, you’ll note, ends the race immediately, so that the PCs no longer have a competing motivation driving them to ignore the glowy light.)

Go to Part 4: Road to Bazzoxan

Go to Part 1

The community of Jigow is really cool. A literal jumble of villages which have smashed together as they’ve grown around giant mangrove trees. It’s the chaos of urban growth in real-time as large chunks of the town are literally mobile:

The villages and townships that make up Jigow are loosely divided into three major areas: the Meatwaters, the main dock area on the shores of the Ifoon River; the Wetwalks, a collection of houses on stilts closest to the wetlands and marshes; and the Jumble, the most densely populated region of the city, where houses are built among giant mangrove trees or on the backs of horizonback tortoises and used as traveling homes.

As written, Jigow is a unique and very flavorful community.

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the cartographer:

To be clear, this map is a beautiful piece of artwork. But instead of presenting the unique city of the text, it presents a very generic community with the same kind of urban planning that we’ve seen in lots of other fantasy city maps.

Only three tortoises? Why is the thick mangrove forest depicted as scattered trees? This is not many communities that have collided, but a single community built around a central common area.

Aesthetics aside, the key is confusing at best. You’ve got the Meatwaters district on the shore, the Wetwalk stilt-houses near the wetlands, and the Jumble between them. But:

• J2 is in the Jumbles and J6 is the Wetwalks. So where is Meatwaters, exactly?
• J5 are the rice paddies on the edge of the wetlands, but J1 is also in the Jumbles… so where are the stilt-houses of the Wetwalks supposed to be?

Jigow, as described, would be a real challenge for a cartographer. (If nothing else, large chunks of the town are mobile.) On top of that, based on the keyed locations, I would assume they were given bad notes to work from. (The turtle tracks are a lovely touch, though.)

I am a huge, huge fan of using city maps to draw players into an immersive urban environment. In the case of Jigow, unfortunately, I would strongly recommend not using the map.

The other option would be to heavily modify the text to accurately reflect the map’s depiction of the city, but given how much more interesting the text’s version of the city is, I think that would be a mistake.

MOTILE LIFE: I want to take a moment to reflect on what I see as the motile life of Jigow. There are clustered “villages” of static structures, but lots of people and even more businesses live and work on the tortoises.

You “commute” to work by having your tortoise head up to the paddy fields. The bakeries follow you, arriving at the Wetwalks midday to sell lunch to laborers taking a break from the high noon heat. When lunch is done, though, the bakeries will head down to the Meatwaters for the mid-afternoon dock breaks.

Having a soiree? It’s likely that you and some or all of your guests will bring your tortoises together in a clutch and drop gangways that will temporarily link your residences into a single big party locale.

At night, you’ll see the bars moving to drop off their drunken patrons (or at least the ones who tip well) so that they don’t have to walk home.

THE FESTIVAL OF MERIT

The campaign starts with the PCs standing in the middle of the Festival of Merit. Locations J1 through J7 are different festival games or challenges, and the festival is introduced like this:

All around you, colorful signs and banners point toward festival booths surrounded by cheering people. On this street alone, you can see a meat-pie eating contest near a shop mounted on the back of a massive tortoise [J1], and on the other side of the road, a banner emblazoned with the words “Riddles and Rhymes: Unbeatable Riddles!” That banner points toward a three-story temple in the center of the Jumble. [J7] The town is yours to explore—where do you want to go?

So the PCs are standing in the street between J1 and J7 and they’re told, “Where do you want to go?”

Obviously they’ll hit J1 and J7, but then the expected experience here is unclear to me. Are they just going to randomly walk around town and hope they run into keyed content? Or is the DM supposed to show them the keyed map and have them just point to which keyed location they want to go to? (That’s not exactly “the town is yours to explore.”)

To put this another way, you want the scale of the PCs’ decision to match the density of the keyed material. You can do street-by-street navigation in the City-State of the Invincible Overlord because there’s content keyed to every street. But that doesn’t work in Jigow because there’s not enough material keyed to make those decisions meaningful.

OPTION 1: FESTIVAL GREEN

One option is to latch onto “all around you, colorful signs and banners point toward festival booths surrounded by cheering people” and collapse the festival down into a single location. (This would probably be J6 on the map if you’re using it.)

Some of the competitions — the harvest race (J5), the Ifolon river plunge (J3) — are specific to other areas of town. For those competitions, create horizonback hawkers in the festival green who ferry people to the other festival centers: You load up onto a horizonback tortoise and the hawkers sell you their wares (drinks, baked goods, trinkets, etc.) while the tortoise walks you through town.

(These hawkers will also be a good exemplar of the motile life of Jigow.)

OPTION 2: FULL FESTIVAL

A more complicated option is to use the Festival game structure described here on the Alexandrian.

The key thing here is to communicate to your players that there’s stuff happening in all three of Jigow’s districts. The meaningful choice for the PCs is now, “What district do you want to go to?”

And you can still present that choice as, “The town is yours to explore—where do you want to go?” Because whatever answer the PCs give, you can parse it through the lens of, “What district are they in?” and pull up the material you’ve keyed to that district.

This means splitting up the festival games described in Call of the Netherdeep, and I would do that by following the natural divisions of Jigow and divvying the games between the three districts:

• Meatwaters: J2, J3
• Jumble: J1, J4, J7
• Wetwalk: J5, J6

You’ll probably also want to add topics of conversation. I’d look to seed these with stuff establishing the festivals’ big finale at the Emerald Grotto; rumors from afar to bring players up to speed on Xhorlas; local color; etc.

Tip: No matter what structure you use to prep the Festival of Merit, you’ll probably want to treat the Emerald Grotto finale as a revelation. Seed three clues throughout the festival so that the players can become aware of it, anticipate it, and get excited about it.

ADDING MORE FESTIVAL EVENTS

Adding more festival games, events, and activities for the players to experience can be a great value add here.

If you’re looking for some fantastical ideas in this vein, you might check out the Numenera Tavern for inspiration. (You’ll likely want to change some science fantasy explanations for straight-up fantasy ones. Although even that may not be necessary if you have an artificer or two tending the games.)

As you’re adding more events, there are a couple things to keep in mind.

First, Call of the Netherdeep does a great job seeding the Rivals into the keyed contests. You’ll want to continue doing that with your new events, while also being cautious not to water the interactions down to the point where they become empty of meaning.

Second, this is a great opportunity to look back at your campaign revelation lists and start seeding in clues. Obviously you still want to keep your campaign pacing in mind (don’t overdo it!), but a little imagination can easily suggest opportunities like:

• A play depicting events from the Calamity.
• A hawker is selling mysterious red gemstones (ruidium) that have been washing up on shore.
• A fortune-teller who “reads the red rays of Ruidus” to tell your future. (It’s a scam.)

And so forth.

MAZE & RIDDLE

The maze and riddle contests in the Festival of Merit are, in my opinion, somewhat flawed in their execution. Two of the riddles, for example, are resolved with an Intelligence and/or Wisdom check. One of them can ONLY be resolved with a skill check (because the player doesn’t have access to the visual images required to solve the riddle.)

Basically, any place in the game where the DM is saying, “Here’s a situation, give me a check” — without the player making any meaningful choice — and the entirely reactive check completely resolves the situation is not a great experience at the table. (The game is playing itself.)

I much prefer the approach taken in the third riddle, for example, in which successful Intelligence checks provide the player with clues, but ultimately the player still needs to find the answer.

I discuss how to handle stuff like this in more detail in Random GM Tip: Rolling for Riddles.

Go to Part 3: Emerald Grotto

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 29B: A Knight in Mourning

And then he knew what he had to do. This entire place reeked of evil and these creatures clearly had foul intentions. He and Rasnir had charged into battle. During the melee, the crone who had opened the door managed to duck through it. But moments later Kalerecent had fought his way to it and wrenched it shut.

“There was another flash of light and the door sealed shut behind me. But even in that moment, one of the creatures – a half-leonid fiend – slew Rasnir. I killed several of the goblins, but the other creatures escaped.”

A really common trope in D&D-style fantasy is the dungeon that’s been “sealed for a hundred years” (or a thousand or whatever). It’s a great trope because it makes the dungeon redolent with the enigma of age: Who knows what forgotten lore or antique treasures you’ll discover?

But then you go into the dungeon and there are three dozen different monsters who have all coincidentally moved in during the last week. It’s like Indiana Jones and the snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, except often without the clear explanation for where the goddamn snakes are coming from.

The reason this happens, of course, is because combat encounters are an expected part of the D&D dungeoncrawl, and “stuff to fight” is kind of the antithesis of “sealed for a hundred years.” You can use undead, of course, but that can get monotonous. And so the temptation to add a big ol’ hole in the ceiling and explain that a clan of yuan-ti moved in last Tuesday grows strong.

But so what? As long as you’ve got some sort of plausible explanation, there’s no problem… right?

Well, yes… but also no.

This sort of thing certainly can be done right. (The Mines of Moria, for example, have been “abandoned” for centuries in order to set up the twist that the balrog and goblins who sacked the place never actually left.)

But one of the really cool things about the “sealed for a hundred years” concept is that it means the PCs are the first ones to step foot here in a hundred years. It makes the PCs special. They’re doing something momentous. They’re experiencing something unique.

… unless, of course, a yuan-ti clan, a tribe of goblins, a couple of ogres, and a flock of kenku all casually beat them to the punch.

Then it’s not so special.

THE OTHER GUYS

But… combat! Gotta have combat!

Well, not really. But for the sake of argument, let’s roll with it.

A good way of squaring the difference here is to have another faction (or multiple factions) actively pursuing exploration/exploitation of the dungeon at the same time (and possibly for the same reasons) as the PCs.

That’s basically what you’re seeing with the Pactlords of the Quaan here. (Technically, the Pactlords were the ones who got here first and the PCs are the ones following in their wake, but that will shift back and forth as the campaign proceeds and different sections of this ancient dungeon are breached. The competition to be the first one to discover or enter a particular section of the dungeon can actually be a great motivator in its own right.)

I’ll be discussing how I actively played the various Banewarrens factions in more detail in future Running the Campaign posts. This first instance was fairly straightforward, and more or less taken directly from the Banewarrens campaign book: As described by Sir Kalerecent, the Pactlords had retreated, but (a) the lamia Demimach remained in Area 11 and (b) the rest of the team, with reinforcements, was planning to return. “Nevertheless, at some point while the PCs are in the [Broken Seal area], the rest of the Grailquest Team returns.”

Once the PCs were hooked into the Banewarrens, I simply added a section to my campaign status document:

BANEWARRENS STATUS

PACTLORDS: GQT1 has retreated from the Broken Seal area and will return shortly.

As I said: Short and sweet.

Now I had an open proactive event at my fingertips which I could choose to trigger at whatever time felt appropriate. As it played out during the actual session, this seemed most dramatically appropriate:

At that moment, Tee and Tor caught up. Seeing itself badly outnumbered and already seriously injured, the lamia turn and ran towards a staircase at the far end of the hall. It howled plaintively…

… and was answered by a second howl!

Howl for howl.

Campaign Journal: Session 29C – Running the Campaign: Looting Consumables
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index