The Alexandrian

Dark Tower from Goodman Games!

May 17th, 2022

Goodman Games is proud to present Original Adventures Reincarnated #7: Dark Tower, updated and expanded from the 1979 classic for both 5E and DCC rule sets! Ranked as one of the Top 30 adventure modules of all time by Dungeon Magazine, Dark Tower is considered by many to be the first published mega-dungeon. It was one of the first modules to utilize the newly released (at that time) Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, which author Jennell Jaquays incorporated into the original design.

Two editions will be published: one using 5E rules, and one using the DCC RPG rules. Packaged in a handsome slipcase, each edition will be published as three hardcover books. Volume one is a reprint of the classic adventure, with introductory essays by gaming luminaries, including John Rateliff, Eric Mona, Justin Alexander, James Maliszewski, Jon “Taco” Hershberger, Stephen Newton, and others.. Volume two is a conversion of Dark Tower to new rules. Volume three is The Chosen Suns of Set, an all-new adventure and sourcebook expanding on concepts presented in the original 1979 adventure.

Goodman Games says that I’m a gaming luminary!

If you’d like to see a revamped version of Xandering the Dungeon which has been specially adapted for this deluxe release of the classic Dark Tower adventure… well, you’ll need to buy this deluxe release of the classic Dark Tower adventure!

You can read more about the Dark Tower on the Alexandrian over here.

ON KICKSTARTER NOW!

Filed under: Roleplaying Games, Site News Comment (1) Article tags: dark tower

Call of the Netherdeep – Running the Rivals – Part 3: Situational Advice

May 16th, 2022

Go to Part 1

STEALING THE JEWEL?

As written, if the PCs have the Jewel of Three Prayers and the Rivals are Unfriendly towards them, then the Rivals will attempt to steal the Jewel. This is also listed above as one of the general courses of action that the Rivals might pursue.

I would be extremely cautious about having the Rivals choose this course of action. I’ve been DMing for awhile and, in my experience, there are two Unforgivable Sins that an NPC can commit:

They can kill a PC’s pet.
They can steal the PC’s shit.

Anything else is probably negotiable, but these are almost always points of no return.

So if the Rivals steal the Jewel? Particularly early in the campaign before the PCs have established a relationship with them?

The Rivals are dead meat.

I’m not saying you should never do this. If it makes sense, then roleplay truthfully.

I’m just saying that you should be prepared for the consequences, which could very easily see the Rival’s role in the campaign come to an abrupt (and messy) end.

THE GMPC PROBLEM

If the Rivals are friendly with the PCs, it can quite logically end up with them joining the PCs so that they can all work together. As I mentioned above, Call of the Netherdeep actually scripts exactly this moment at the very beginning of the adventure:

If the characters are on friendly terms with the rivals, the rivals meet up with them soon after the characters’ breakfast with Elder Ushru.

Ayo Jabe doesn’t mince words; she wants to know what they found in the grotto. If she gets the sense that the characters have stumbled onto something big, her eyes grow wide. She decides that she and her group want a piece of the action and proposes that they travel with the characters, saying that there’s safety in numbers. A character who makes a successful DC 13 Wisdom (Insight) check realizes that she isn’t hiding anything and wants nothing more than to be a part of a grand adventure.

Call of the Netherdeep quietly assumes that the PCs will turn this offer down, but it seems far more likely that the PCs will agree with Ayo Jabe’s logic…

… and now the GM has to deal with five GMPCs.

Honestly, this feels like a huge headache to me.

GMPCs are not the same thing as NPCs. A GMPC is a GM-controlled character who is functionally the same as a PC in the adventure: they’re an equal member of the party and you could basically imagine an invisible player at the table controlling them as such.

It is possible to have success with such characters, but it’s far more common for them to fall into one of two pitfalls:

First, the GMPC can hog the spotlight and/or be used to railroad the players. This may be because the GM wants to do this (bad GM, no cookie), but it’s often not intentional. The core problem here is that the GM has privileged information (i.e., everything in their notes). During prep, they can predict exactly what the GMPC will do, and this can become a seductive crutch for them to fall back on. During play, their knowledge of the scenario inherently biases their decision-making. And even if the GM erects an impeccable firewall around the GMPC, the other players know that the GMPC has this privileged information and it will affect their relationship with the GMPC and the GMPC’s opinions.

(Imagine that you had a player at the table who had read the entire adventure and that the other players knew had read the adventure.)

Second, the GMPC can become a weird kind of half-character who awkwardly doesn’t participate in group decisions and/or frequently “vanishes” from the game world because everyone forgets that they’re there. (This can even happen because the GM is trying to avoid the first problem: Knowing that the players will privilege the GMPC’s opinions, for example, they just never have the GMPC offer an opinion.)

So even running one NPC companion effectively can be a big challenge. Five GMPCs at the same time? That probably doesn’t just quintuple the difficulty; it’s almost certainly exponential increase in difficulty. Even laying aside the inherent difficulties, juggling those five characters and making sure they are consistently a living part of the campaign world is going to chew up a lot of your mental bandwidth. There’s also combat to consider: all those GMPC turns are going to slow combat down.

Speaking of combat: All those extra GMPCs are going to have a big impact on the balance of combat encounters. And, importantly, the adventure isn’t designed for this. Running 5^th Edition for a group of 10 PCs is infamously difficult, but Call of the Netherdeep seems to just blithely assume that it will make absolutely no difference at all.

If you’re comfortable trying to run five GMPCs, go for it.

For everyone else, I’m not saying you should never allow the PCs and Rivals to team up. But I could certainly take efforts to make sure that this is only a momentary state of affairs.

Redirect the Rivals into supporting action off-screen. In other words, the PCs do X while the Rivals take care of Y. This is a little difficult in Call of the Netherdeep because of the linear design of the campaign, but it can be managed. For example, they might go to research the Jewel of Three Prayers somewhere else and then join the PCs in Bazzoxan. In Ank’Harel, they might volunteer to infiltrate an enemy faction. And so forth.

Encourage splitting the party, with each smaller group having a mix of Rivals and PCs. (For these scenes, you might consider letting the players whose PCs are not present take on the roles of the Rivals, particularly for combat.)

Remember to debate the agenda. Our methodology for running the Rivals (i.e., they should frequently believe that the group should be pursuing a different goal or, if they share a goal, that there is a better way to achieve it) will naturally lend itself to either splitting the party or breaking the alliance between Rivals and PCs entirely. Don’t be afraid to lean into this, as the aftermath will heighten the tension between the groups to delightful heights.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, this all boils down to a simple formula:

Roleplay truthfully. (Actively play the Rivals and track the relationship gauge.)
Debate the agenda. (And force the players to think about and defend their choices and opinions.)

But this formula will manifest itself with an infinite variety at the gaming table, as the Rivals and PCs collide spectacularly in myriad ways. The unpredictable nature of these conflicts itself will bring the drama — and the characters — to vivid life. As you choose to actively play with them, the players will feel the fundamental reality — the ineffable uniqueness — of the events happening at your gaming table, and they will rise to the occasion.

FURTHER READING
Call of the Netherdeep: Running Betrayers’ Rise

Filed under: Roleplaying Games Comment (1) Article tags: call of the netherdeep, critical role, d&d

Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Missing Clues

May 15th, 2022

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 27A: The Midnight Meeting

“By coming here, you have already joined this Brotherhood,” Dilar continued. “Over the next few weeks you will be contacted. For many of you there will be training. You will be asked to do things. Many of these things will seem simple or even unimportant, but you should never doubt that in even the smallest service you are aiding the Brotherhood and all that we are attempting to accomplish.”

If you’re a long-time reader of the Alexandrian, you’re probably familiar with the Three Clue Rule: In a mystery scenario, for any conclusion that you want the PCs to make, you should include at least three clues.

This redundancy makes mystery scenarios robust, so that they don’t break down during play and leave either you scrabbling frantically, your players frustrated, or both. In my experience, the process of fleshing out a scenario to support the Three Clue Rule also usually results in a more dynamic and interesting scenario.

When I’m prepping a module, therefore, I make it a point to check each revelation and make sure that the Three Clue Rule is being observed. For published adventures, unfortunately, this often isn’t the case, and I’ll need to add clues. Session 27 of In the Shadow of the Spire is a good example of this.

Many of the events detailed in this session — the secret meeting and project site — are from Monte Cook’s Night of Dissolution mini-campaign. A key revelation is, in fact, the location of the project site. From the secret meeting, the published adventure includes one clue pointing to that revelation:

Dilar has a number of papers and notebooks with him. […] Among other things, the papers show the location of the Brothers of Venom’s secret project: an apartment build in Oldtown off Crossing Street. The documents refer to the building only as the “secret project” or the “joint project,” however. (The address can lead them to the Temple of Deep Chaos, found in Chapter 4.) The pages also discuss the cult’s new allies, the Ebon Hand cult, and mention that cult’s leader, Malleck, and their activities involving kidnapping young people and transforming them.

(You can also see here a secondary revelation — the alliance with the Ebon Hand — which is non-essential.)

Seeing this, the first thing I did was prep Dilar’s papers as a physical handout that I could give to the PCs.

You can see that this is not particularly elaborate, being a fairly simplistic example of the lore books technique we’ve discussed previously. The primary goal here is just to let the players “shuffle through the papers,” rather than listening to me narrate them. The map here also neatly correlates to the map of the city hanging on the wall during our sessions, so the players would’ve been able to take this handout over to the map and literally figure out where they needed to go.

As it turned out, however, the players never actually got this handout. Which is why the next thing I did was so essential: Adding additional clues to support the revelation.

To the adventure’s credit, it does discuss multiple paths by which the PCs might come into possession of Dilar’s papers: They might, for example, kill him and loot them. Or they might bloodlessly infiltrate the meeting, take the opportunity to surreptitiously peek at his papers, and then get out without the cult being any the wiser.

But these routes still all go through Dilar’s papers, creating a chokepoint that makes the scenario fragile. You can see that in actual play here: Because of how events played out, only one PC infiltrated the meeting, making the “kill all the cultists and loot their stuff” outcome basically impossible. Tee was also well aware of how vulnerable she was, meaning that she didn’t want to take any risky actions that might expose her (e.g., looking at papers she shouldn’t be looking at). If I’d run the adventure as written, it would have broken here.

What I needed to do was create additional vectors leading from the secret meeting to the project site. (Alternatively, I could have gone for a node-based approach, adding clues to the secret meeting pointing to cult-stuff other than the project site, and then seeded additional clues to the project site in those other nodes.) My thought process went something like this:

Well… what is the actual purpose of this meeting?
What if it’s to brief cult members on the project site? That would also explain why Dilar is bringing notes detailing the project site to the meeting.
We know that this meeting includes new recruits. They’re not going to be fully read in on the project. (Which is convenient logic, because otherwise all of the scenario’s revelations would get frontloaded into this single scene instead of being slowly peeled back by the PCs over the course of their investigation.)
What would the cult be asking new recruits to do that might be related to the project?
They could be assigned as external security/lookouts!

This immediately gives me two new clues:

The PCs can infiltrate the meeting and get briefed on the contents of Dilar’s notes.
The PCs could question Iltumar about what he learned at the meeting.

And then, by having the cult members taken directly from the meeting to the project site, I can add another clue:

Following cult members leaving the meeting will lead PCs to the project site.

While this took a little bit of thought, one thing to note here is how little prep was actually required. This is often the case. In my experience, it takes virtually no effort and a truly minuscule amount of time to add basic clues to a scenario. That’s because clues are just indicators. The meat of the scenario — the stuff you’ll spend the bulk of your prep time on — is what the clues point at.

(The most common exception to this is when you design a handout for the clue, like the lore book for Dilar’s notes. But this is usually not, strictly speaking, necessary, and the time you’re investing there is more in the value-add of the cool handout than it is in the clue itself.)

Despite the relative ease of adding these clues, also note how much depth we’ve added to this scenario. For example, the original adventure only told us:

The cultists are here to plan further murders, trade advice on poison use, and engage in perverted sexual acts.

But we now have a much more specific agenda for the meeting. The natural interrogation of the scenario that happens when we think about the vectors required for clues means that we now understand the what and why of the cultists here. So if the PCs were to eavesdrop on the meeting or, as it turned out, infiltrate the meeting, we have a much firmer foundation to stand on for improvising the scene.

As I say, this happens all the time when you apply the Three Clue Rule in your scenario design.

The other thing you’ll discover is that missed clues will no longer be something that you fear. This can feel weird, but it’s incredibly liberating. For example, if this scenario had still depended on Tee looking at Dilar’s notes, I would have felt the need to reassure her that it was OK to sneak a peek. I would have needed to find some direct or indirect way of letting her know that she didn’t really need to be afraid of exposing herself and getting caught.

But because I knew that I’d made the scenario robust, I didn’t need to do that. The result was a vastly better scene, in which the tension of discovery drove the stakes from beginning to end. It would have been a shame if I’d felt a need to deflate that tension in order to prevent the scenario from breaking.

And this is, again, something that happens all the time when you’ve got the Three Clue Rule backstopping you. Missed clues are no longer catastrophes; they are a vital part of the scenario’s flow.

If you haven’t experienced this firsthand, it can feel paradoxical. It might even feel like a violation of the principles of smart prep: You have this prepped content that you’re not using! It’s wasted! But, in practice, missing a clue isn’t a waste — it’s a consequence, a cost, or a choice. And even if you have a clue that is “wasted,” it’s not that big of a deal because, as we noted before, the clues are mostly ephemera. They aren’t the meat of the scenario.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 27B – Running the Campaign: Improvising Floorplans
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Filed under: Roleplaying Games Comment (1) Article tags: d&d, in the shadow of the spire, ptolus, running the campaign

In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 27A: The Midnight Meeting

May 15th, 2022

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 27A: THE MIDNIGHT MEETING

September 7th, 2008
The 14th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Tee put her disguise back on and hit the streets, trying to find another contact for the Brotherhood. She wasn’t having much luck, however, until she stopped looking for the Brotherhood and started looking for people who knew Jamill. After that, it wasn’t long before she was pointed in the direction of a small pub at the north end of Tavern Row where a blond woman with sparkling green eyes and a small scar above her lip was nursing a beer.

Tee gave her name as “Laurea”. The woman introduced herself as Arveth and, like Jamill, she was clearly wary of Tee’s questions regarding the Brotherhood. But once Tee actually dropped Jamill’s name, her suspicions seemed to melt away.

It turned out that Arveth had actually been waiting for Jamill to show up so that they could “talk about tonight” (a revelation which made Tee more than a little nervous). Arveth slipped Tee another of the rings with a broken square and said, “Wear this ring and come back to Tavern Row tonight at midnight.”

Tee thanked her and headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel (taking a deliberately circuitous route to throw off anyone following her and stripping off her disguise before entering the inn itself). She rejoined the others and quickly briefed them in on what she had accomplished.

There was still the problem of Iltumar. They assumed that he was probably planning to go to the meeting that night, too, and they had no idea what might be waiting for him (or Tee) there.

“Is there any way we can stop him?” Tee asked.

“Can’t we just tell him not to go?” Dominic said.

Tor rubbed his chin. “Considering the way he reacted when I tried to talk to him about it in even general terms… I don’t think it would work.”

They talked round (and round) the subject for several minutes, but eventually concluded that they couldn’t approach Iltumar directly about what was happening. Instead, they decided to distract him – keeping him busy with something else so that he wouldn’t have time to attend the meeting.

Tee crossed the hall and touched base with Ranthir (who had returned to his studies). Ranthir affably agreed with their conclusion, and was very open to the idea of letting Iltumar study with him as a way of pulling him out of the meeting.

Unfortunately, the plan didn’t work: Tor waited several hours before heading over to the Bull and Bear around ten o’clock, only to discover that Iltumar had left at nine o’clock. Iltumar had told Hirus that he was going over to the Ghostly Minstrel… but he wasn’t there.

Tor went back and told the others. “He’s gone.”

THE MIDNIGHT MEETING

(09/15/790)

Tee had already resolved to go to the meeting: If Arveth was going to be there, she would be expecting Tee (as “Laurea”) to be attending. There was no sense throwing away all the work they’d done to make contact with the Brotherhood, and Tee might be able to learn something valuable from the meeting itself.

The possibility of someone going with Tee (using the ring they had found in Pythoness House) was briefly raised, but they eventually decided not to push their luck. Elestra was concerned for Tee’s safety and made it clear that, if Tee hadn’t returned within a couple of hours, the rest of them would come looking for her. It wasn’t entirely clear to Tee what they could do (since none of them even knew where the meeting was going to be held, exactly), but there wasn’t much time to argue about it: With midnight rapidly approaching, Tee slipped back into her disguse, went out the rear door of the Minstrel, and circled around to the south to make it appear that she was approaching Tavern Row from the opposite direction.

As she arrived, Tee spotted Arveth at the far end of the Row. But she was approached by a different woman with mousy-brown hair. The woman gave Tee an innocuous greeting, but with a subtle tilt of her head she indicated a nearby rooftop. Tee surreptitiously glanced in that direction and spotted a shabbily dressed girl. With Tee following on the street below, the little girl ran down the roofs and came to a stop next to an alley near the middle of the block.

One of the buildings flanking this alley was a small, seedy-looking pub named the Rat’s Nest. Tee could see that the backdoor of the pub opened into the alley. The door was open and a woman dressed like a serving wench was standing in it. When she saw Tee round the corner, she waved her over. As Tee drew near, she opened another door that led into a small, open area. Several large, wooden crates had been stacked up in this space, allowing Tee to climb up onto the rooftop garden of the building directly behind the Rat’s Nest (which fronted onto Runshallot Street).

The only other exit from the rooftop garden was a door. With a shrug of her shoulders, Tee swung it open. The room beyond appeared to be nothing more than a sparsely-decorated living quarters. Three thugs were crowded around a small table, playing cards. As Tee entered, they looked up. One of them pointed towards a bench that had been shoved up against the wall near a flight of stairs leading down to the first floor. Spread out across the top of the bench were a dozen white masks with crude eyeholes cut in them.

“Put on a mask, then go downstairs.”

Tee nodded. She was actually quite grateful for the mask, since it would save her the difficulty of figuring out what to do if Iltumar recognized her. She grabbed a mask, tugged it down over her head, and then headed down the stairs.

The stairs bottomed out into what appeared to be a cobbler’s shop. There was a large table near the fireplace, with a half-dozen cultists in identical masks sitting around it. As Tee came down the stairs, they turned and stared at her. The effect was deeply disconcerting.

At the bottom of the stairs, another cultist waited – this one unmasked. “Take a seat. Keep your mask on. And remember, no names.”

Tee nodded her understanding and headed over to the table. Her eyes instinctively found the exits: The stairs she had come down and two doors – one that might lead outside and another directly opposite it.

A few minutes later, there was the sound of movement coming from above and then another masked cultist came down the stairs. Tee recognized his stride and his body language. It was Iltumar.

Oh, Iltumar… Tee thought. What are you doing?

With Iltumar’s arrival, the greeter at the bottom of the stairs was apparently satisfied. He crossed to the inner door and knocked.

A moment later, the door swung open and a large centaur entered the room, stooping under the human-sized lintel.

Oh shit, Tee thought. She didn’t recognize him, but it was possible that he knew her. There weren’t that many centaurs in the city, and most of them had some sort of connection to the Narred enclave.

“My name is Dilar,” the centaur said. “And I am honored to see so many who are ready to take the first, glorious steps in championing the cause of freedom. You have come to this meeting from many different places and for many different reasons. But you share a common dream – a dream which the Republicans have begun, but which they were not daring enough to realize!”

Tee cringed at the thought of the Republicans – who had tried to kill the Commissar – not being daring enough, but there was a palpable sense of excitement from the others around the table and she was careful to match it.

“We have a real chance to make a difference!” Dilar said. “To change the course of history! By choosing to be here, you have chosen to be heroes. You have chosen greatness.”

Tee saw Iltumar straighten up at the mention of the word “hero”.

“By coming here, you have already joined this Brotherhood,” Dilar continued. “Over the next few weeks you will be contacted. For many of you there will be training. You will be asked to do things. Many of these things will seem simple or even unimportant, but you should never doubt that in even the smallest service you are aiding the Brotherhood and all that we are attempting to accomplish. Over time, your responsibilities will increase.

“The truth is that, even now, we are in desperate need of your help. And so I am asking for all those who can immediately commit themselves fully to our cause to volunteer for our newest project.”

Iltumar’s hand shot up. Several others, including Tee’s (against her better judgment), followed.

“Excellent.” Dilar smiled. “Now, for one final point of business. We have many allies in our struggle. Among them are the brothers of the Ebon Hand. They have a public temple, but as long as we must operate in secret it is important that none of you should go there. However, if any of the Ebon Hand should contact you, you should treat their words as if they came from the mouths of the Brotherhood itself.”

With the meeting concluded, the greeter instructed those who had not volunteered to return upstairs and then leave the way they had come. The others, one at a time, were let out through the front door.

THE PROJECT SITE

Once outside, Tee was met by Arveth. With few words exchanged between them, Arveth led Tee to an apartment complex on Crossing Street in Oldtown.

Arveth identified one of the buildings as the “project site” and explained that security had become very important. She led Tee to a position in an alley across the street from the building from which she could covertly observe the building’s entrance, then she taught her several hand-signs.

“Members of the Brotherhood will identify themselves using these signs,” Arveth said. “You’ll stand watch between the hours of midnight and six o’clock every day. If anyone attempts to enter or leave the complex without properly identifying themselves, you should raise the alarm. Do you understand?”

Tee nodded. She was certain that the “Brotherhood” was planning to kill the Commissar (what other work of the Republicans could the cultists want to carry out?), and she desperately wanted to know what could be hidden inside the apartment complex which could further those designs… but Arveth either didn’t know or didn’t think that Tee should know. Pushing the issue might make her suspicious, and Tee had the feeling that she was in deep enough at this point that she wouldn’t be allowed to simply back out of the deal.

Arveth arranged to pass messages to Tee through the Delver’s Guild, and told her that she could contact Arveth in the tavern where they had first met during the evening hours.

With these arrangements made, Arveth left Tee to her first shift.

However, this left Tee with something of a dilemma: She knew that her friends were waiting for her at the Ghostly Minstrel, and the hour was fast approaching when they would abandon restraint and come looking for her on Tavern Row. Their efforts might come to no effect at all, but they could just as easily bumble their way into ruining all of her work at infiltrating the Brotherhood.

While keeping a faithful watch on the apartment complex, Tee planned carefully. After about half an hour, she started looking around nervously. This escalated until she was actively miming the need to relieve herself.

Hoping that her act had convinced anyone watching her, she retreated down the alley. Emerging onto Tower Road, she was able to flag down a carriage and ride it to the White House – a nearby gambling establishment that she had visited a few weeks earlier. As she had hoped, there were several messengers waiting to service the large, late-night crowds there. She quickly wrote out a terse message assuring the others that she was safe and that she should not go to Tavern Row, dispatched the messenger, and then slinked back to her post on Crossing Street.

Tee had no way of knowing what she might have missed during her absence, but the rest of the night passed quietly. Just as her shift was ending, however, she saw two men in black robes leave the apartment building. They gave the proper signs and headed south down the street.

Tee briefly considered following them, but then discarded the idea. A few minutes later she concluded that no one was coming to specifically relieve her (she guessed that the other shifts must be watching the building from different locations), and she slipped away quietly.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Missing Clues – Campaign Journal: Session 27B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index