DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38D: Arrows & Skulls
The room beyond was filled with carefully arranged piles of bulky, broken machinery bearing the unmistakable patina of age. Kneeling amidst this equipment – her back to the door – was a single ratling dressed in pale yellow robes.
“Not now! I don’t want to be disturbed!” she hissed.
Tee put an arrow through the back of her skull.
“… was that Silion?” Tee looked back at the others. “I think that was Silion!”
If you’ve been hanging around the Alexandrian for a while, this is a moment you may recognize. I’ve talked about it in articles, videos, and So You Want To Be a Game Master, among other places. When I talk about not fudging your dice rolls, this is a moment I’m thinking about.
Because Silion is a big deal. I believe the PCs first became aware of her in Session 9, which means the players have literally been hunting her for years. And we just introduced a new PC whose backstory and primary campaign hook were linked to her!
So if we were going to prep plots or enforce preconceived outcomes or try to “preserve” the dramatic moment, this would be THE MOMENT to do it, right? Silion can’t die like this! A single critical hit to the back of her head? The PCs never even saw her face! This is a disaster!
… except, of course, it wasn’t.
It’s been just over fifteen years since this moment happened at the game table, and my players still talk about it. They’ll probably be talking about it until the day they die. It’s a cherished memory from the game table.
Okay, but… why?
The Principles of RPG Villainy breaks this down in more detail, but the short version is that, for the players, this was not anticlimactic in any way. It was a huge reward for all their hard work: They had, in fact, worked for years to get here. They’d come up with clever plans to infiltrate the temple (even if not all of them had worked). They’d successfully snuck their way down to this inner sanctum.
They earned this.
And that’s why, a few minutes later, they can gleefully taunt Silion’s mate, Urnest, with what they’ve done. Because they were the ones who did it.
If I had fudged the results — maybe by boosting her hit points or bumping up her AC so that they couldn’t confirm the critical hit — that would have been a huge letdown for the players. Sure, they would have gotten to face off against Silion and maybe she’d summon reinforcements and there’d be an epic battle and the PCs would triumph or whatever… but none of that would have been something they actually did. It would have just been a thing that happened to them.
And the really key insight is that, conversely, if I’d tried to pre-script and force this moment — surprising Silion and shooting her in the back of the head! — it would have also fallen flat. Because it still wouldn’t have been something that the players actually did.
This is why moments like this — moments of great truth at the table — are so important. Because they’ll teach your players that what’s happening in the game is really happening. It’s not a script. It’s not a trick. If they achieve great victories, it’s because they actually earned those victories. And if they suffer horrible defeats, that’s a burden they have to bear… because they know it could have gone a different way if they’d made different choices.
As the players learn that lesson — as the belief of it seeps down into their souls — it will literally breathe life into every other moment of your campaign. It will elevate everything you and your players do to a new level.
When you truly play to find out — when you actively play scenarios instead of prepping plots — you’ll discover that moments like this aren’t unusual. What makes this particular moment notable, perhaps, is that it simply might be the purest example possible:
Boom.
Arrow to the head.
Campaign Journal: Session 39A – Running the Campaign: Using Scenery & Traps
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index
One of my players is a sniper. Ya gotta give them their moments.
Had a fun moment last time tho: Office fight.
One of the crooks had the bright idea of closing the blinds against the sniper. The reporter had to use old track skills to cross the room, get over the broken glass from the smashed diplomas and grab the curtain rod… then dash the other way across the room, before snapping the thing off and throwing it to the street below.
I had a moment of surprise in my game involving a one shot kill on my big bad but I had to adjust it on the fly to keep it from ruining the game.
I accidentally one-shot my own bbeg for the adventure and had to scramble to fix it so that I didn’t steal the PCs thunder. (Gotta be careful with banshee npcs)
It meant turning a confrontation with an overconfident necromancer into a panicked chase as he scrambled to flee, but it worked out.