Mouser: Okay. Let’s get out of here. I open the door.

GM: When the Gray Mouser opens the door, where’s everyone standing?

Pippin: Ahhhhhhh!!!!!!

Merlin: As far away as possible!

Conan: Rogue go boom!

On the Alexandrian Discord, CorpCord asked, “How do you avoid revealing that a decision is important by framing it, when the characters wouldn’t know?” In other words, there are lots and lots of little, incidental things that our characters do in the game world — e.g., choosing exactly where to stand in a room; picking which tie to wear; deciding whether to drink the white or red wine — that we don’t typically call out or interrogate at the gaming table.

But if a situation arises where that information suddenly becomes vital — e.g., the trapped door is about to explode— the fact that the GM is suddenly asking for it makes it difficult or impossible for the players to make the choice as if they were their characters: Their characters don’t know that their choice of wine is vital (because it’s poisoned), but the player does. And that metagame knowledge will either influence their decision, affect their immersion in the scene, or both.

Let’s consider a few other examples:

• They’re walking down a hall and a trap goes off… what was the marching order?
• The pressure plate for the trap is in the middle of the hall… so are the PCs walking there or are they hugging the walls?
• They’re all back at Suzie’s “safe” house when someone throws a pipe bomb through the window… who was in the living room at that moment?
• The businessman they’re meeting is a close friend of Adlai Stevenson… so is the PC wearing their I Like Ike button?

When dealing with a situation like this we can start by asking ourselves how much benefit of the doubt we should give the players. (For example, is it reasonable to assume that the group is always cautiously backing off whenever the rogue is opening a suspicious door?) This is actually a subset of figuring out the threshold for player expertise triggering character expertise, as described in The Art of Rulings.

The answer here is situational. (Do we assume PCs are as cautious opening a door at the local tavern as they are opening a door in the dungeon?) But it’s also about achieving desired gameplay. I generally recommend leaning towards giving the players the benefit of the doubt (because capricious or unfair “Gotchas!” usually aren’t fun), but if we just assume that the PCs are always doing the optimal action — they always check the chests for traps; they would have obviously hired an NPC security team to keep watch outside their safe house; their character would clearly know to make polite inquiries about the political allegiance of the businessman — then the game starts playing itself, and that isn’t fun, either.

In other words, you need player expertise to activate character expertise. Which means, sometimes, you have to ask the question and tip your hand.

So what can we do about this? Let’s break it down.

First, specific declarations by the players should, obviously, always be respected. For example, if someone said they’re standing in the hall keeping a lookout for goblins, then they’re in the hall. None of the techniques below will cause them to suddenly be standing by the door when the explosion goes off (unless, of course, they make another declaration changing their location).

Next, if there’s a particular type of information that you’re constantly finding yourself wanting, you should set up a standard operating procedure with the players to provide it. Marching order in a dungeon is a good example of this, whether it’s determining who gets hit by a trap or where people are standing when the group is ambushed.

In some cases, you might have multiple SOPs and the players can indicate which one they’re currently using. For example, in an urban campaign what you’re wearing might be frequently important, so the group might be in Adventuring Gear or High Social — and, in each case, everyone at the table will know what outfit each PC is wearing.

If you don’t have an SOP, then one technique is to lay down a false trail. In other words, don’t ask the players where their characters are standing ONLY when the rogue is about to open a trapped door. Instead, occasionally ask them for “incidental” details like that when there’s no risk. This obfuscates the metagame knowledge being imparted by the question.

You can also strategically use this technique to build up a bunch of false tension… and then releasing it with a feeling of relief when nothing happens. (If you’re wondering why you’d want to do this, check out how horror movies us this technique.) Even better, this can also result in the players getting lulled into a false sense of security. (“Justin’s just trying to scare us again. You’re not fooling me this—” BOOM!)

You can further throw them off the trail by using these declarations to, instead of assessing danger, paint the scene. For example, you can ask everyone where they’re at or what they’re doing in the safe house and then use that information to give a little description of what everyone is doing. This can help to draw the players into the reality of the game world (by getting them to actually form a specific picture of what their character is doing)… while also setting them up for those moments when the same or similar question is determining where they’re at when the pipe bomb goes off.

Another effective technique is to vary the right answer when asking these hand-tipping questions. Instead of a trapped door exploding and hurting everyone close by, for example, it might be a situation where everyone taking shelter suddenly finds themselves stuck outside the room by a force field. Or maybe when the rogue touches the weird, glowing blue sphere, everyone within ten feet gets blessed.

Building this type of variation into your scenario design means that, even if the players are triggered by the metagame knowledge that you’re asking the question, they’ll still need to think about what their answer will be. (Instead of just automatically running as far away as they can.)

Basically, all of this is aimed at allowing their character to be competently aware of the heightened stakes of a situation, while not necessarily giving them the equivalent of a spidey-sense that unerringly warns them of incoming danger. False alarms, mixed signals, reversed expectations, and the like can all help.

Along similar lines, you can disguise the question by getting the incidental information you need as part of a different question. For example:

GM: The door is locked.

Conan: I’m going to kick it open!

GM: Is anyone helping Conan force open the door?

This is a mechanically significant question (since it will give Conan a bonus on their Open Door check), but you’re also sneakily establishing who’s at the door. (And, using benefit of the doubt, you could then infer that anyone not helping is standing far enough back not to get hit by the trap.)

Another effective disguise can be hiding the question in a little throwaway add-on to a different question. For example, as you’re getting ready to transition to the PCs’ meeting with Paul Dubois:

GM: Okay, you finish feeding the corpse into the wood chipper and then dump the chunks into the tank. You’re covered in blood, but the sharks will take care of the body.

Suzie: Well… I probably shouldn’t walk around town looking like this. I’ll head back to the safe house and get changed.

GM: Give me a Stealth check to see if you can cross town without anyone noticing your appearance.

Suzie: 12.

GM: Great. You make it back to the safe house without incident. After stripping off your blood-soaked track suit, what’s your new outfit?

Here the question of, “What are you wearing?” (i.e., will you mention your favorite I Like Ike pin?) seems to just naturally emerge from the chain of events. You could even reinforce this by waiting for Suzie to describe her outfit, and then saying something like, “Okay, it takes about an hour to get cleaned up, but then Suzie walks out the front door in her beautiful blue dress…” (By using the information to paint the scene, you’ve also provided an explanation for why you collected that information.)

Finally, you can enhance all of these techniques by anticipating the decision. For example, if you know that the door out of the room is trapped, don’t wait until someone goes over to the door to figure out where everyone is standing. Instead, ask the question early. The players might get suspicious… but then nothing immediately happens, so they’ll assume you were just trying to spook them. Or you take that information and use it to re-establish the scene, so they just dismiss it as part of the natural flow of the scene. But then, having established the scene (“so while Conan is poking at the pile of rags, Merlin is studying the orrery”), you now know exactly where everyone is and will continue to be unless they explicitly declare that they’re moving.

Now, when the rogue over and starts checking out the door, you don’t need to ask the question again, and the players are never tipped off.

Thanks to CorpCord for asking the question that inspired this tip.

A classic walks among us once more: It is time to visit the legendary City State of the Invincible Overlord, a hoary relic left from the younger days of roleplaying.

Review Originally Published February 12th, 2001

Once upon a time, there was a company known as the Judges Guild. In their day they released more than one hundred “generic fantasy” (nudge, nudge; wink, wink) supplements. The quality of these supplements – easily some of the best material produced to that date – earned the Guild a reputation of excellence. But then the Guild went away and – although nostalgia granted it a place in the collective memory of gamedom – its products faded into the mists of time.

Undoubtedly the Guild’s most famous product, and the one which still holds renown twenty years later, was City State of the Invincible Overlord. This incredible volume described its titular subject with exacting detail: Every street and nearly every building is given a description, a cast of characters, and set of events – minimalist in each instance, perhaps, but monstrous in totality. Add to this the dungeon complexes of the Overlord’s castle, the Orcs of the Purple Claw, and the nearby Thunderhold (a dwarven citadel) and you have a product which was capable of acting as the epic cornerstone of many a campaign.

A few years after the Judges Guild disappeared, the City State supposedly returned in a boxed set released by Mayfair. This product was a travesty – robbing the City State of its former breadth of detail, while simultaneously failing to grant it any significant depth. It was obviously one of those horrid examples of someone trying to “save” a product which they don’t understand, and which never needed “saving” in the first place.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, a few months ago when I discovered that the Judges Guild had returned. No, not a “new Judges Guild.” Not someone who’s bought the name, nor someone who’s trying to copy the concept, but the founder himself and a crew dedicated to “bringing back Judges Guild the way it was – but better”. (As the Judges Guild website says.)

And their first product? What else besides a re-release of the revised version of their classic City State, complete with two B&W poster maps and everything which made the original a classic.

For $10.

Yup, you read that right: One of the classic products of gaming is back, and they’re only asking ten bucks for it. Ten measly bucks.

If you haven’t already left to go buy your copy yet, then it’s obvious you’re going to need a hard sell – which sounds like a cue for the conclusion of this review:

CONCLUSION

City State of the Invincible Overlord is a hoary relic left from the younger days of roleplaying… but there’s a reason it’s regarded as a classic: There’s more fodder here for the imaginative DM than the more polished products of today could hope to squeeze into twice as many pages.

Of course, let’s not pretend that the polished products of today don’t come with a lot more depth, development, and useful bits, too. They do. So, there’s a lot of fix-up you’re going to need to do – and a lot of development which is left to your own personal whim and taste: But at $10, City State is still a veritable steal.

City State is a firm foundation. And what you choose to build on it is all part of the fun.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Grade: B+

Title: City State of the Invincible Overlord (Revised)
Authors: Bob Bledsaw and Bill Own
Company: Judges Guild
Line: Judges Guild
Price: $10.00
ISBN: n/a
Production Code: JG1999-0062
Pages: 86

I’d been hearing about the City State of the Invincible Overlord almost from the moment I joined the hobby, but I’d never even seen a copy. When I saw a copy of the Mayfair boxed set in the used section of my local game store, I instantly snatched up a copy… only to be bitterly disappointed to discover that it wasn’t the “real deal,” so to speak.

So, in 2001, this wasn’t quite the Holy Grail of Gaming for me. But it was certainly a Grail. So, yeah, when I heard that Judges Guild was back and selling the original City State of the Invincible Overlord for $10, I literally could not order a copy fast enough. It remains one of my most cherished gaming books.

If you’d like to see some tangible details about the book, its history, and its contents, check out Thinking About Urbancrawls: City States of the Judges Guild.

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 43C: Battle of the Banewarrens

They had pushed the lamia back into the generator chamber itself, but discovered that the darkness extended even here.

Tor, hanging close to the lamia in an effort to keep her under control, was taking a terrible beating. He called out for help. Nasira, still standing outside the area of magical darkness, shook her head. “I don’t want to go in there.”

But she plunged in anyway. They needed her, after all.

The exact details of how you need to handle magical darkness — particularly the mechanical details — will depend on exactly how it’s defined in your RPG of choice. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that magical darkness

• fills a specific three-dimensional area; and
• nullifies and blocks all light within the area.

So no light source within the area will illuminate and you also can’t see light (or anything else) on the far side of an area of magical darkness. (As opposed to normal darkness, in which you could see a distant light even if you couldn’t see some of the intervening space due to a lack of illumination.)

In real life, if you had to fight or maneuver in a sealed room without any light you would effectively be blind. If you were swinging a sword, you would just be swinging it wildly, perhaps guided a little by sound or physical feedback (e.g., your sword hitting the wall or furniture or even your target).

At the game table, though, this is difficult to emulate. If a character blindly gropes in front of them with their hand, how should we determine what they feel? If they swing their sword, how do we figure out if they actually hit anything?

KNOWLEDGE OF THE SPACE

The first thing to consider is whether the character knows what’s in the darkness.

Imagine a room in your house that’s been shrouded in magical darkness. You might even have experienced something akin to this if the power has gone out in a windowless room or on a moonless night. You would have an advantage navigating through this space even in utter darkness because you’ve seen it before. You know the rough dimensions of the room and where the furniture is and where the exits are.

But if the same thing happened to you in a room you’ve never seen before, you’d be much more likely to bark your shins on the coffee table.

This is also going to be true for a character in an RPG: Standing in a room and having darkness cast on you after you’ve already observed your surroundings is fundamentally different than, for example, opening a door in a dungeon and being confronted by a face full of darkness with no idea what lies beyond it/within it.

So this is the first paradigm to grasp in running magical darkness: Moving blindly through a known space is different than blindly exploring an unknown space.

Let’s start by assuming that the PC knows the space, but can’t see it:

1. They’re still going to be using their sense of touch to try to orient (i.e., putting their hand out to find a piece of furniture they know is “around here somewhere”).
2. They’re probably going to be moving more slowly/cautiously.
3. There’s still a risk that they’ll make a mistake and “get lost” – ending up in the wrong place, tripping over something, etc.

To achieve the first point, you’ll want to adopt a strong POV narration. As GMs, it’s not unusual for our descriptions to be in the third person, describing rooms in holistic, general terms of what the whole group collectively sees. This inclination can leave you baffled when you try to describe the blind character’s perceptions, for they will largely not have a holistic view of the room — they will often be perceiving only sound, perhaps some details of the surface they’re walking on (texture, angle, etc.), and the one thing that their outstretched hand is touching. You can (and should!) employ the Three of Five (sans sight, of course), but frame the description intimately for each PC as they take action:

You step towards where you remember the door being. After a couple of steps, you feel the crunch of the broken eggshells under your feet. Your hand touches the back of the rocking chair, and you can run you fingers along that, reaching out with your other hand until it finds the back of the door.

Darkness turns us all into islands. Even if the PCs are all in the same room, it will likely feel much more like they’ve split up and are all exploring different areas at the same time. (Although clever PCs may counteract that to some extent by, for example, linking arms so that they don’t become separated.)

In terms of movement, I generally find it useful to have a mechanical model for both caution and disorientation. It’s also useful if the player can choose to trade-off between the two — e.g., they can try to move faster, but the risk of running into stuff goes up; or they can move even more cautiously and reduce their potential hazard.

A simple example would be, when blind:

• You must make a Perception check. On a failure, you suffer a disorientation complication due to being unable to see. (This is at the GM’s discretion — e.g., you become disoriented and go in the wrong direction. Or you stumble over something and have to make a Tumble check or fall prone.)
• You move at half speed. If you choose to move at full speed instead, you must make a Tumble check or fall prone and your Perception check to avoid a disorientation complication is made at a penalty.
• You can move with extra caution at one-quarter speed, in which case you gain advantage on your Perception check to avoid disorientation.

This is, again, just one example. You could also imagine:

• When PCs are moving blind, the GM rolls 1d6. On a roll of 1 or 2, they suffer a disorientation complication. On a roll of 6 they must make a save vs. Paralysis or fall prone.
• PCs moving with caution at half-speed through darkness only suffer a disorientation complication on a roll of 1.

But, as you can see, this general paradigm can be adapted for use across many different mechanical systems. (And can usually incorporate what the system’s normal mechanics for blindness — vis-à-vis penalties on Perception/Spot Hidden/whatever rolls — may be.)

UNKNOWN SPACES

When a character is entering a darkened area they haven’t seen before, it becomes more difficult because the player can’t describe their intentions in terms of the known space. (They can’t, for example, say, “I’m going to head over towards the couch,” or, “I’m going to try to find the door on the far side of the room,” because, obviously, they don’t know the couch or the door exist.)

There a couple ways to handle this.

First, there’s groping by square. This works best if you’re using something like a Chessex battlemap where you can literally draw the room one space at a time. The player essentially moves their character one space at a time, revealing the space as they go. If they encounter an obstacle, you can call for perception-type tests and acrobatics-type tests to avoid complications tripping over stuff, making loud noises, and/or suffering damage (depending on the situation).

Second, there’s groping by vector. This is generally the way I prefer to handle it. The players will announce an intention about how they’re going to try to move through the darkness — e.g., “I’m going to walk into the room” or “I’m going to put my hand on the wall and try to follow it around” — and you can think of that as a vector pointing through the darkened area. Follow that vector until it hits something — e.g., a couch, the far wall, an ogre mage — and describe the scene accordingly. For example, “Okay, you walk into the room, you hand outstretched. You go about ten feet and then your hand encounters some sort of firm object covered in a velvety fabric.”

Characters can burn up additional movement or perhaps expend an action or bonus action, depending on the system you’re using, to stop and investigate obstacles they encounter.

As they explore the darkness, of course, they’ll be building up a mental picture of where stuff is in the darkened space.

Note: What about getting disoriented and moving in the wrong direction? Practically speaking, this is essentially impossible when groping by square. If you’re groping by vector it’s more achievable as a complication, but will almost always result in horrific confusion for the players. Unless you’re specifically aiming for that, I recommend avoiding it. You can reintroduce getting lost once they’ve established a mental picture of the space and begin declaring intentions like, “Okay, I’m going to go back over to the couch.” (Do they actually get to the couch or end up missing it in the dark?) In other words, as the unknown space transitions to a known space — even if they only know it through their fingertips — you can similarly transition to the known space structure.

PINPOINTING

Another useful mental model for handling blindness is pinpointing sound. For example, a PC hears someone running through a darkened room. Can they figure out where the footsteps are coming from and where they’re going?

To put this another way, when describing what the PCs hear in a darkened area there are, I tend to think of it as being in one of three broad states:

• They can hear it (e.g., you hear something breathing loudly).
• They have a general sense of where it’s coming from (e.g., you hear heavy breathing coming from off to your left).
• They can pinpoint its location (e.g., you hear heavy breathing; someone — or something! — is standing by the bookshelf).

Which state applies will depend on the situation. (For example, if the PCs are in a bathroom and they hear splashing, you don’t have to wonder whether or not they can figure out it’s coming from the full bath they saw before the lights went out.)

If a PC hasn’t already pinpointed where a sound is coming from, they can likely do so through a perception-type test. When implementing this mechanically, I recommend doing so in a way that lets them pinpoint and take an action in the same round (e.g., as a reaction to the sound or as a bonus action in D&D 5^th Edition). It’s possible that different thresholds of success will give a more accurate idea of location — e.g., DC 10 means you hear the heavy breathing; DC 14 means you have a general sense of where it’s coming from; DC 18 means you can pinpoint its location.

If you’re already making perception-type tests for maneuvering through the darkness, you might also use the results from that check to feed auditory information.

IN COMBAT

Now that we have a basic mental model for how to handle characters interacting with and moving through darkened areas, we can add the massive complication of trying to fight people in the darkness.

It’s not unusual, of course, for an RPG to have specific mechanics for fighting in darkness. Sometimes these mechanics are great. Sometimes they’re convoluted messes. Sometimes, like in D&D 5^th Edition, they’re just dumb. (It’s just as easy to shoot someone completely hidden in darkness as it is to shoot someone standing in broad daylight because the advantage and disadvantage cancel out! Derp, derp, derp.)

Broadly speaking, though, there are three things to consider for combat in darkened areas:

1. Movement, which can be handled as per the above.
2. If you want to make an attack, you need to guess where you target is.
3. Your attack will have some sort of penalty or miss chance.

The penalty to your attack will usually be handled by your RPG’s mechanics. (If not, of course, you’ll need to make a ruling on this. Generally, I would suggest a moderate penalty: Needing to guess the target’s location is going to cause a lot of whiffing all by itself.)

If they’re guessing on a battlegrid, this is as simple as the player declaring what space they’re going to target. If someone/something is standing there, you can resolve the attack. (Even if there isn’t, I recommend still having them roll attack as a metagame effect. You can imagine someone potentially wailing away at a coat rack while being utterly convinced they’re locked in mortal combat.)

If they’re guessing in the theater of the mind, the challenge is getting a clear targeting declaration from the player and then figuring out how to translate that into the combat mechanics. Diegetically, you’re going to get (or want to encourage) declarations like:

• “He’s off to my left! I swing my sword at him!” (i.e., a direction)
• “I think she’s standing by the bookshelf! I empty my pistol at her!” (i.e., a landmark)
• “She’s trying to run away! I lay down suppressive fire on the doorway!” (i.e., a specific spot)
• “I can hear splashing, so they must be somewhere down by the water line!”

A useful mental model for parsing these declarations it to classify them as:

• specific spot
• small area
• large area
• wild shot (e.g., “I shoot the darkness!”)

Think about how you might mechanically adjudicate these to make them distinct and meaningful. That might be a random determination if they actually hit the right spot; a miss chance check; or simply a penalty to their attack roll. For example:

• Specific Spot: If there’s a target there, resolve the attack normally, with modifiers for being blind.
• Small Area: 5 in 6 chance they picked right.
• Large Area: 2 in 6 chance they picked right.
• Wild Shot: 1 in 6 chance they picked right.

Again, this is just one possible way of adjudicating the underlying mental model of the ruling.

When shooting blindly into an area, you may also want to model the risk of hitting the wrong target. For example, if there are three potential targets (enemy and ally alike) in the area a PC has said they’re wildly swinging their sword through, then you might pick one randomly before checking to see if they hit anything at all.

Note: You can also use the techniques for declaring targets in the theater of the mind when using a battlemap. There may be times when a player’s understanding of the situation is just better suited to “I swing sword wildly off to my left” or “I shoot towards the grand piano” are better fits than “I pick that specific square.”

NPCs

Of course, to do any of this you will need to keep track of where the NPCs are located.

If you’re running the encounter in the theater of the mind, then you can just handle this the way you always do. You just won’t give the players access to information that the PCs don’t have.

If you’re using a battlemap, on the other hand, then darkened areas pose a unique difficulty (unless you’re using some sort of VTT option that can handle line of sight automatically). What I typically do is just transition darkened areas into theater of the mind tracking. You might instead prefer to sketch out a small map of the darkened area behind the GM screen and keep track of the NPC combatants on that.

The truth is that, no matter which approach you take, there will likely be some metagame knowledge for the players to contend with. (For example, when you tell Arathorn’s player that they can feel a door with their outstretched, groping hands, Lady Emily’s player will also become aware of that even if her character doesn’t yet.) If you’ve got a group who can handle that kind of metagame knowledge maturely, things will be a lot easier. If not, then you may need to figure out what information needs to be communicated secretly (which tends to create a lot of extra headaches and confusion).

Note: Keep in mind there’s a gray area here. Can we assume, for example, that Arathorn calls out the door’s location to his companions even if he doesn’t explicitly say that? Frequently. And if Lady Emily is attacked by goblins, it’s not unreasonable for other players to act as if their players heard the attack and her screams of pain even if, again, that’s never explicitly stated.

Another factor to consider is roleplaying blinded NPCs. Unlike the players, as the GM you have an omniscient knowledge of the battlefield. This makes it essentially impossible for you to truly make blind guesses for where the NPCs will be targeting their attacks.

The key, though, is really in the word “roleplaying.” When deciding what a particular NPC will do, you really want to imagine yourself in their shoes: What do they know? What are they thinking? What emotions are they feeling? What decision might they make as a result?

When in doubt, use perception-type tests to figure out if they’ve got a PCs’ location narrowed down to a pinpoint, small area, or large area. Or just flip a coin to see if they make a mistake.

IN SUMMARY

This has been a lengthy discussion. It may feel like it’s too complicated or overwhelming. The truth, though, is that if you make this a practice point and maybe run a few training scenarios featuring darkness, then you’ll quickly come to grips with it.

The key thing to grok is that there are a handful of useful mental models for making these rulings.

How PCs move through the dark.

• They declare movement by either a known landmark or groping (by square or vector).
• They likely move with a reduced speed.
• There is a risk of a complication (falling, making noise, suffering injury, etc.).

How PCs perceive information in the dark.

• Emphasize touch and sound with a strong POV narration.
• For sounds, characters can hear it, have the sense of a general location, or pinpoint its location.

How the PCs declare a target in the dark.

• They can declare their target by specific area, small area, large area, or wild shot.
• There may be a risk of hitting the wrong target.

You will also need to keep track of where characters are located.

Once you master these mental models, you’ll find it fairly easy to use them to make rulings in almost any RPG you choose to run. The specific mechanics, of course, will vary and have an impact on how things actually work in play, but the model will give consistent guidance and help you provide a high-quality experience at the table.

Campaign Journal: Session 43D – Running the Campaign: NPC Conversation Agendas
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 43C: THE BATTLE OF THE BANEWARRENS

October 25th, 2009
The 23rd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Kalerecent insisted on coming with them as they headed down the excavated tunnel into the Banewarrens themselves. Tee stayed ahead of the light pressing at her back (trusting to her elven sight to guide her), but as she passed into the first chamber of the Banewarrens she discovered a stygian, magical darkness blotting out the passage leading into the generator room.

She waited for the light to catch up and still the darkness didn’t budge. Not knowing what else to do – and fearing what the Pactlords might be doing at the sealed door – they plunged into the darkness.

Hidden in the darkness, the giant spider they had fought before tried to drop on top of them. Fortunately, Tee’s sharp ears heard it coming and she rolled quickly to one side. It scuttled after her, but instead found itself skewered upon the blades of Agnarr and Tor.

The spider collapsed in a spray of ichor. (Tor licked his lips: “Is that ichor?”) But even as it fell, the party found themselves attacked from above by vicious claws and the quiet beating of wings. They guessed that it was the winged lamia, but it was subtler and craftier than the spider and they were forced to fall back.

But as they did so, more of the magical darkness was laid down – extruding itself into the outer chamber and leading to a confused melee where only Tor’s blind-folded training leant an edge against their unseen foes.

Slowly, with Tor’s guidance, they managed to surround the lamia. Once they were in position, the tide of battle turned drastically.

“Nissentar!” the lamia cried out. “I don’t care how hurt you are! They’re forcing me back!”

“Fine, Wiver!” a bitter, inhuman voice called out from beyond the darkness. “I’m coming! I’m—BATS!”

Elestra had gathered the bats to her through the Spirit of the City and sent them into the chamber beyond the darkness.  Nissentar had been caught in a tornado of frenetic flying fur. A moment later, Ranthir followed suit – summoning a faithful hound of pure energy.

Tor, hanging close to the lamia in an effort to keep her under control, was taking a terrible beating. He called out for help. Nasira, still standing outside the area of magical darkness, shook her head. “I don’t want to go in there.”

But she plunged in anyway. They needed her, after all.

They had pushed the lamia back into the generator chamber itself, but discovered that the darkness extended even here. Almost simultaneously, the unseen Nissentar managed to skitter far enough away from Elestra’s bats that the swarm turned their ire against Ranthir’s hound and the flank of the front line.

Agnarr had been holding back in the outer chamber in an effort to protect the spellcasters. But, feeling that the front line had moved into a position where the risk of the Pactlords circling around unseen was minimal, Agnarr charged forward—

And ran into the wall.

Nasira called out to him: “Agnarr! The door is over here!”

Agnarr adjusted himself, charged forward—

And ran straight into the bats.

“BATS!”

But they were completely out of Elestra’s control.

Ranthir, planning to follow close on Agnarr’s heels (without quite following his example), decided to even his odds in the darkness somewhat by turning himself invisible. He did so, leaving only Kalerecent in the outer chamber… just as an ogre came lumbering up the other hallway and dropped another blot of darkness over the knight.

Kalerecent cried out. “The foe is upon us!” The ogre was upon him only a moment later, pounding him with grievous blows (although Kalerecent gave several in return).

Agnarr turned and ran back… out of the shadow and right past the unseen ogre, who hit him hard in the shoulder as he passed. But Agnarr planted his foot, turned hard, and swung his sword. The force of his blow knocked the ogre back across the length of the chamber. It fell hard in the corner… and the darkness fell with it.

As the full length of the generator chamber became visible they saw the spidery Nissentar crouched high upon the wall near the far end of it. And the flayer standing proudly resplendent before the sealed door. (Which, they thankfully saw, was still sealed.)

Both Nissentar and Matha withdrew towards the flayer. They were clearly planning to escape again by means of the flayer’s teleportation.

But Ranthir, with a desperate effort, hurled himself forward and cast forth a dimensional anchor: A beam of green energy shot from his finger—

And struck the wall uselessly.

But Ranthir dragged the beam across the wall, sustaining it through the sheer force of his will, and then forced it to affect the unnatural, purplish flesh of the flayer.

As the green bands of force locked down around the mind flayer’s form, the enemy formation burst apart again. Tor, who had raced across the room towards the spiral staircase leading to the catwalk and the sealed door, attracted the flayer’s ire. Struck by a blast of pure mental force he was left twitching on the floor.

Nissentar, already badly injured, fled in a panic, disappearing into one of the side chambers.

It felt as if the battle were turning their way, but as they took a moment to regroup, the flayer – circling the catwalk – hit them with a second mind blast and then escaped down a side passage, leaving Tee and Agnarr on the floor.

Ranthir ran back into the outer chamber where Seeaeti had been abandoned (forgotten in the confusion of the darkness) and dropped a web across the hall leading to the iron cauldron (hoping to seal the flayer into the inner complex and preventing him from circling around behind them and escaping).

It was a lucky thing that Ranthir did, because it gave him a chance to spot that the wounds on the ogre were beginning to rapidly heal of their own accord. Drawing his dragon pistol he fired once into the corpse, and then (with a fair degree of effort) managed to convince Seeaeti to continue ripping the ogre apart in a perpetual fight against his regeneration.

But this left only Elestra and Kalerecent in the generator chamber. Wiver the winged lamia flew down at them in a savage, full-flighted charge. Elestra screamed in panic, feeling herself little match for the lamia’s leonid fury. But Kalerecent pushed her behind himself and bravely stepped forward to meet the lamia in mid-flight.

A furious melee broke out between the two, with Kalerecent dealing blows as severe as he received. But the winged lamia slowly rose into the air, maneuvering on its wings to gain an indomitable aerial advantage over Kalerecent—

At which point Elestra shot a hole through its wings.

The lamia crashed to the ground and Kalerecent finished it off.

That’s when Nissentar reappeared. It shot a glob of web from its mouth, catching Elestra fully around the torso and then hauling her off her feet to leave her hanging ten feet off the ground. Then it leapt down to attack Kalerecent, but the knight raised his arm to catch the vicious bite intended for his neck and chopped the spider-creature’s head off.

The others began to stir, slowly recovering from their mind blasts. Once they had fully recovered, they quickly searched the corpses (finding a tantalizing key on Wiver in addition to a plethora of expensive equipment), cut off the heads of Wiver and Nissentar, and then organized a manhunt for the flayer (leaving Seeaeti to continue mauling the still regenerating ogre).

Running the Campaign: Running Darkness – Campaign Journal: Session 43D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

suffering asks:

What considerations are there for structuring a scenario so that the PCs are forced to choose between options that are mutually exclusive?

For example, the PCs are investigating a smuggling operation. A ship they suspect is being used for smuggling has docked. The PCs can investigate the ship or stake out the crew, but they don’t have time for both. By the time they’re done on the ship, the crew will have finished their dealings; if they follow the crew, the ship will have been cleaned out of most of the incriminating evidence.

Whichever way they go, they’ll have enough information to proceed, but won’t have the full picture.

The simple answer is: No reason to avoid it!

Framing scenarios or scenes so that they have tough choices in them is actually a great idea! For example, I have a video about dilemma scenario hooks, another example of dilemma-based scenario, that discusses some of the really cool dynamics you can get from designing scenarios this way.

If you want to explore the more advanced answer to this question, though, there are three things I would think about.

First, dilemma-based design can create a lot of wasted prep, as described in the Smart Prep series (among other places). If the PCs can do X or they can do Y, but not both, then your prep for one of those things will end up not being used. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something I would think about a try to mitigate. (For example, if the situation allows for it, maybe you don’t fully prep X or Y until the PCs have made the choice about which path they’re going to follow.)

This seems like less of a concern for the specific scenario you’re describing: The two sequences are pretty short, and the prep for either probably still circles back into the scenario later on. (For example, the stat blocks and write-ups for the crew members the PCs could follow will still be relevant later even if the PCs stay and search the ship.) But it’s probably worth keeping in mind.

Second, when thinking in terms of framing dilemmas, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of contingency-base prep: “If the PCs do X, then… but if they do Y, then…” But it’s going to be more useful (and probably also waste less prep) if — even while you’re aware of the potential dilemma — you keep your eye on situation-based prep.

In other words, think less about what the PCs might do and more about what’s happening. There’s a practical difference between prepping “the PCs can follow the crew or investigate the ship” and “this is what the crew of the ship are doing… I wonder what the PCs will do?”

For example, maybe the PCs spit up and do both. Or maybe they decide to ambush the crew and kill them. Or they wait for one crew member to become isolated, grab ‘em, and interrogate them. Or they set the ship on fire. Or they stage a fake crime so that they can call the cops and have them investigate the ship. Any or all of this could come from “half the crew goes into town on business; the other half stays on the ship and offloads the cargo.”

To read more about contingency-based prep, check out Prep Tools, Not Contingencies.

Finally, what effect does dilemma-based design have on node-based design and the Three Clue Rule?

To some extent, we can simplify this question by ignoring the dilemma aspect and instead focusing on time-limited nodes. For example, there are clues that the PCs can only get by following the smuggler crew while they’re doing their business in town. (Or only at the dark ritual or only at Lord Dalton’s party or only by observing the fall of the blue meteor or whatever.)

This can be even further generalized to “the PCs missed a node” — e.g., they never actually to Danner’s Meats for whatever reason. And even more generalized to “they missed some clues” (because they didn’t find them, couldn’t figure them out, etc.).

The good news is that the core function of the Inverted Three Clue Rule is to solve the problem of “they missed a clue.” So as long as you haven’t put all your eggs in one basket, you probably don’t need to worry about it.

With that being said, if your have a strongly-framed dilemma (such that the PCs can definitely only do A or B, but not both), it probably wouldn’t hurt to toss a few more redundant clues into the scenario and/or prep a proactive element to act as a backup.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1