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Ptolus: Running the Campaign – Patron Exhaustion

May 1st, 2024

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 37C: Iltumar’s Folly

When everyone gathered back at the Ghostly Minstrel, they met Agnarr’s news regarding Iltumar with exasperation and impatience. They felt universally that they were facing “another Phon”, who would thank them little for trying to extricate them from a situation of their own creation.

“I’m less worried about Iltumar than about the woman who went looking for him,” Agnarr said.

“That’s true,” said Elestra (who had actually met Lavis). “I empathize with her.”

“And she shouldn’t suffer just because Iltumar is an idiot,” Tee said.

It’s not unusual – primed by published adventures, computer games, and simply practicality – for campaigns to be studded with patrons: NPCs who ask the PCs to do thing for them, usually in return for money, a favor, or some other form of remuneration. You need to hook the PCs into an adventure, and the easiest thing in the world is for an NPC to simply walk up to them and say, “I need you to go to X and do Y.” In this case, “I need you to investigate a warehouse and try to rescue Iltuamr (and Lavis).”

In fact, many campaigns are entirely structured around patronage, with either one NPC or a rotating cast of patrons cycling through to deliver episodic assignments.

Patrons can also take many forms: Shadowrun has its Mr. Johnsons. Paranoia has The Computer. You could even imagine a campaign where the PCs are Delphic Oracles, receiving their missions through divine visions.

There are ways this can go wrong, of course. One of the worst case versions is the mail carrier scenario hook, where the PCs are reduced to being mundane messengers doing boring, menial tasks. Many GMs have also experienced the potentially disastrous consequences of having a patron betray the PCs, causing a loss of trust which can permanently break patronage as a scenario hook in not only that campaign, but any other campaigns the GM might run.

(There are ways to pull off these double crosses, but that’s a topic for another time.)

But even when their patrons are playing fair and the task list is appropriately juiced with important stakes and duties that clearly only the PCs are capable of achieving, you can still reach a point where the players get fed up with a patron: Why is this guy nagging us? Why can’t he clean up his own messes? Why do we always have to do what he says?

In some cases, the solution is to up the pay. In others, it may be time to cycle in some new patrons and freshen up the premise. Or perhaps have their patron “level up” their participation, revealing some new level of the conspiracy, increasing their resources, giving them an opportunity to buy into the organization, or unlocking a new tier of targets.

This is particularly essential, of course, in an episodic campaign where you’re counting on that NPC to deliver the scenario hook each week. In a more varied campaign, the players’ interest in something getting burnt out is less of a problem: They’ll pursue a different lead. Or, in a sandbox, decide for themselves what they want to do next. When they turn down a job or duck the patron’s calls, you can just follow through on the consequences (e.g. Phon dies in a house fire) and then follow the PCs’ lead.

In the specific case of Iltumar, “the hero-worshipper who’s been following you around gets ‘kidnapped’ by cultists and needs to be rescued” was basically the endgame I’d been laying the groundwork for since introducing Iltumar at the beginning of the campaign.

If you’ve been following these campaign write-ups for a while, you’ll probably also be unsurprised to discover that I’m not actually invested in whether or not the PCs help Iltumar: If they do, things go one way. If they don’t, then Iltumar-as-chaositech-altered-cultist would be a fascinating subplot to see play out.

(As you’ll see by the end of this session, the PCs figured out an option I had never even considered.)

Not caring whether the PCs do what a patron asks them to do, of course, makes everything easier. And if your players can break the ingrained expectation of “you’re supposed to do what the NPC tells you to do” (dilemma hooks are useful for this), you can get really liberated. Now patrons aren’t a method for the GM to take control of the campaign’s agenda; they’re just another vector for information, and the players remain in charge of their destiny.

Campaign Journal: Session 37D – Running the Campaign: Losing a PC
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

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In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 37C: Iltumar’s Folly

May 1st, 2024

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 37C: ILTUMAR’S FOLLY

May 9th, 2009
The 20th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

When everyone gathered back at the Ghostly Minstrel, they met Agnarr’s news regarding Iltumar with exasperation and impatience. They felt universally that they were facing “another Phon”, who would thank them little for trying to extricate them from a situation of their own creation.

“I’m less worried about Iltumar than about the woman who went looking for him,” Agnarr said.

“That’s true,” said Elestra (who had actually met Lavis). “I empathize with her.”

“And she shouldn’t suffer just because Iltumar is an idiot,” Tee said.

So they decided to check out the warehouse that Lavis had been investigating when she disappeared. But they also decided to wait until after dark: If Lavis had been caught, that was proof enough that there were prying eyes that they would be better off avoiding.

While the others kept their distance, Elestra turned into a squirrel and went scampering through the trees surrounding the warehouse. What she discovered was that the building was sealed up tight: The few windows were boarded on both the inside and the outside and the doors – although having the appearance of neglect and dilapidation – were fit tightly into their frames. There was not a single cranny or crevice anywhere on the building for her to peer through.

Ptolus: Warehouse (Monte Cook Games, modified)

When she returned to the others with the news, Tor shrugged his shoulders. “Let’s just knock on the door.”

And so they did. But when they knocked on the front door, there was no answer. So Tee took a few moments to pick the lock and make sure it was safe, before stepping aside and letting Tor and Agnarr take point.

On the far side of the door they found a small room piled high with junk and refuse. The walls appeared unsound and the entire place looked abandoned… but a closer inspection revealed that the walls, like those on the outside, were without true flaw. And there was also a conspicuous absence of any door leading deeper into the building. There had to be a secret entrance hidden somewhere amidst the junk.

And so there was. Tee found a panel on the far wall, concealed behind a high pile of refuse. She also found that it was rigged to deliver a powerful electric shock when opened. She disengaged the electrical connection and signaled that it was safe for Tor to open the door.

Unfortunately, as Tor opened the door, the electrical connection Tee had disengaged swung back into place. With a sharp click the circuit was completed and Tor only barely managed to release the door before the sharp arcs of energy electrocuted him. Despite his quick reflexes, he had still been painfully scorched by the trap.

Tee started to apologize, but as the door swung open it revealed – immediately on the other side – a once-human brute, its face contorted in a rictus of pain. Four multi-jointed, bladed limbs burst from its back and its hands had been stitched into permanent fists and studded with black, chitinous spikes.

The creature’s blades and fists lashed out, but Tor’s sword was already in his hand. Nainsyr flashed in a halo of lightning, performing a nearly flawless flurry of parrying virtuosity. Only one blow, glancing off Tor’s blade, found its way through the defense, leaving the thinnest of cuts upon the knight’s cheek.

But Tee had been practicing her swordplay with Tor whenever the chance allowed, and now she tried out a few of the new tricks she had learned. Sweeping one of the brute’s many limbs aside, she plunged her sword through his chest. The blow sent it stumbling back, gurgling a thin stream of blood. Tor seized the opportunity, turning effortlessly from the defense to the attack, and swept the creautre’s head from its shoulders.

Moving farther into the partitioned warehouse, they found a storage room filled with vats of strange chemicals and mechanical detritus. None of it seemed to serve any sane or logical purpose.

Then they came to an iron door. After a cursory inspection, Tee discovered that the door had been barred from the far side. “I can pick the lock, but I don’t think I can move that bar.”

Agnarr glanced to either side. “We could chop through the walls. They’re just wood.”

But Elestra had a better solution: Laying her hand upon the door and calling upon the Spirit of the City, she felt the portal reveal itself to her. The bar flew from its grips, the tumblers of the lock spun into place, and the door swung open…

… revealing a horrific chamber.

It stunk of blood and ozone and things far worse. Large, bizarrely-shaped machines – with vats and tubes of strange alchemical liquids thrust out from them in grisly protrusions – filled the room. Spatters of dried gore could be seen everywhere. Gruesome tools were hung on racks near several stained operating tables.

Upon one of these tables, Iltumar lay unconscious. His arms rested on wooden stocks to either side of the table and the flesh of his hands had been delicately flayed open. Bent over him was a figure wrapped in robes of red silk. As the door flew open, this figure twisted to face them with an oddly alien contortion. Its face was masked with iron and strange balls of iron hovered above its shoulders.

“The Surgeon in the Shadows…?” Elestra murmured.

The figure held their gaze for only a moment, then – without ado – it raised its hand and vanished.

Only then did they become aware of the other occupants of the chamber: A stunted, hunchbacked dwarf clad in black leathers suddenly cried out. “Master! Do not abandon me! I beg you!” But he was already too late, and with a look of pure malevolence he whirled to face them, ripping a massive axe from the straps on his back. It had been outfitted with strange, mechanical protrusions which hissed slightly as he adjust his grip upon the hilt.

And from the other side of the chamber, a horribly disfigured woman sidled out form behind the banks of machinery. Her skin was a crisscrossed grid of scars and stitches, covering her entire body with a second layer of mismatched flesh. One of her arms had been replaced with a long, serrated hook formed from some chitinous, gray-black substance.

Tor stepped smoothly out of the doorway, moving off to the right to engage the dwarf. This opened a clear path for Elestra to take a shot at the behooked woman with her dragon rifle. The blast caught the woman cleanly in the chest, but scarcely staggered her. In fact, despite the scorch mark it left on her leathery second-skin, the shot’s only seeming effect was to enrage the woman and draw her ire. The woman leapt across the room with a shocking speed, and – with a gleep of concern – Elestra barely ducked out of the way of her sharp hook.

The hook buried itself deep into the frame of the door, affording Tee the opportunity to dash past the woman and come to Tor’s side.

Tor was in the process of deflecting the first swing from the dwarf’s massive axe. But as the blade slid past his face, it suddenly gave forth a blast of scorching steam. Tor stumbled back, his cheeks glistening crimson.

Before the dwarf could follow through on his first swing, however, Tee’s longsword had plunged into his side and deep into his lung. She wrenched the blade free, pulling with it gouts of pinkish tissue. The dwarf gasped for breath, and in that moment Tor’s sword caught him in the opposite side with such force that he went tumbling across the length of the room.

Tee was still in motion. Spinning from her attack on the dwarf she slid in behind the behooked woman. Agnarr had literally plunged his greatsword through the wall from the next room, catching the woman a glancing blow. Tee seized the opportunity presented to slash upward with her blade, catching one of the thick stitches on the woman’s back and ripping it apart – exposing muscle, bone, and spine.

With a silent scream of anguished pain, the woman spun towards Tee and raised her hooked arm high above her head. But Agnarr, having wrenched his blade free from the wall, came through the door and plunged his greatsword through the opened wound on her back. The blade emerged from the woman’s chest, and with a gurgling moan she sank to the floor.

LOOKING FOR LAVIS IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES

Iltumar was still stretched senselessly upon the operating table. A closer inspection revealed that tiny, chitinous blades had been attached to the bones of his fingers – like some sort of hideous claws. The bleeding from his flayed skin had been unnaturally slowed in some manner, but once Elestra (with Tee and Tor offering numerous suggestions) started trying to remove the blades he began bleeding profusely.

“I wish Dominic was here,” Elestra said. “Should I stop?”

Tee shook her head. “We’ve got to remove those blades. There’s nothing good about them.”

Eventually they had to fashion crude tourniquettes to stop him from bleeding to death. This gave Elestra enough time to finish removing the blades. Once that had been accomplished, she was able to magically heal his wounds – although this left long, white scars running to the tips of his fingers.

“Good,” Tee said. “It’ll be a reminder.”

“Should we wake him up?”

“Not yet. Let’s finish searching this place first. We still need to find Lavis.”

In fact, the others had already been searching the rest of the operating chamber while they had labored over Iltumar’s hands. On a side table they had found a large sheaf of papers with a note affixed to the top of them:

CASTOR’S NOTE

Illadras says that she has shown these procedures to Wuntad and he says they will serve the purpose of the Tolling Bell. They will be providing the appropriate subjects over the next month at your demand.

Castor

The mention of Illadras, Wuntad, and the Tolling Bell confirmed their suspicion that they were once again neck-deep in the affairs of the cultists. The rest of the papers appeared to describe surgical procedures and other modifications. Ranthir had been studying them for several minutes, but couldn’t make any true sense of them. About the only thing he was able to conclude was that the procedures seemed to have been arranged into ten groups.

He had more luck interpreting a separate set of notes that Tee discovered in another corner of the chaotic laboratory. Titled “Cranial Walker Research Notes”, these appeared to be an attempt to reconstruct incomplete instructions for performing a chaositech surgical procedure in which a severed head (possibly one taken from a separate device referred to as either a stasis pod or preservation tank) would be connected to a small, round platform rendered mobile through the support of six 2-foot-long insect-like legs. Optional support for arm mechanisms was also described. Nearby they discovered a partially constructed platform (sans head) matching the descriptions, but the writer of the notes also seemed uncertain that their work was correct. There were suggestions that “further tests” and “experimentation” would be necessary to perfect it.

The chamber immediately adjacent to the operating room looked like some sort of bizarre, mechanical crypt. Strange devices and huge vats all seemed focused upon a central slab of stone about the size and shape of a bed. Various cables and tubes seemed to be designed so that they could be hooked up to whoever might lay upon the slab.

In a small, desk-like niche built into the wall of this chamber they found a large bag of purple velvet sitting atop another sheath of papers. They were delighted to discover that the bag contained 1,000 platinum pieces. They were less delighted to discover that the top sheet of paper was a letter signed with a familiar name…

ILLADRAS’ LETTER TO KINION LUTH

Kinion—

I am sending along my final payment for the procedure along with the copies of the original plans as you requested. I thank you again. I am more than pleased with the results.

Illadras

The rest of the neatly written pages described something referred to as a “burning totality” – which appeared to be some form of “flesh graft” and a “betrayal of the flesh”. (“Chaositech,” Ranthir explained.) The “burning totality” appeared to be a radical and bizarre surgical technique which would “gift” the recipient with a “skin of flame”. The details of the procedure, however, proved difficult to decipher.

But they might not prove so for long. Behind a concealed panel on the stone slab, Tee discovered a leather-bound tome entitled The Book of Greater Chaos. The book represented a comprehensive treatise on the basic arts of chaositech – both its use and creation. Additional chapters discussed the effects, cleansing, and use of taint. (“Use?” Tee asked with a note of outrage.)

THE BOOK OF GREATER CHAOS

And the Banelord labored long in the bowels of the earth. There he crafted a new art, unlike any that had been known before. It was a craft of primal chaos, and it bound all his works of evil and turned their purposes to an ancient bent. Through that craft, the whispers of the demonweb and the counsels of the forgotten sleepers could be heard.

But when the Banelord was thrown down by the First Convocation of the Sorcerer-Kings, the arts he had perfected were lost and their evil went out of the world.

But though the arts had been lost, the crafts which had been wrought with them were not destroyed. Years would pass. Centuries would pass. And through them all the crafts of the Banelord waited.

In time the mighty Titan Spawn alighted upon the coast of the Southern Sea and founded their great city of Lithuin. Their arts were mighty beyond mortal ken, but their thirst for knowledge was greater still. They came to the shadow of the Spire, and there they found the crafts of the Banelord. They studied those crafts until their secrets were rediscovered and then, in their pursuit for power, the Titan Spawn fell into darkness. They convulsed themselves in civil war, and finally many of the Titan Spawn left the shores of the Western Lands and returned to their mysterious continent of mists. The great city of Lithuin fell to ruin.

And behind them they left the craft of chaositech.

While Ranthir continued paging through The Book of Greater Chaos, they entered a room in such total disarray that at first they thought it to be some sort of dumping ground. It quickly became apparent, however, that it was simply a filthy, cluttered bedchamber. Poking through the mess, however, Tee was able to recover a variety of valuables, including a set of strange looking tools which Ranthir was able to identify as chaositech repair tools.

The next door they came to was locked. It was easy for Tee to pick it, revealing a long, narrow chamber with three dirty-grey cots and a slop bucket. There they found Lavis: Tied, gagged, blindfolded, and thrown into one corner.

They quickly undid her bonds. Elestra, who had met her before, quickly made the introductions and explained the situation.

“What happened?” Tee asked.

“That filthy little dwarf snuck up behind me.” Lavis rubbed the top of her head with the memory of it.

“He won’t be doing that again,” Tor said smugly.

“Good,” Lavis said in all honesty. “Is Iltumar all right?”

They shifted nervously.

“Sort of,” Tee said.

“What’s wrong?” Lavis looked up querulously into faces of anger, exasperation, and sadness.

“Iltumar,” Elestra answered.

Running the Campaign: Patron Exhaustion – Campaign Journal: Session 37D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

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Unboxing – Slay the Dragon!

April 30th, 2024

Slay the Dragon! is a Polish RPG which is now being translated into English by Hexy Studios. They wanted to give me a sneak peek at what the game offers, and when I saw the treasure trove they’d sent, I knew I wanted to open that treasure trove with you!

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RPG Flags: Wants vs. Warnings

April 30th, 2024

There are plenty of RPG tips that look great on paper, but not at all when you bring them to the table. The really tricky ones, though, will work just fine… and then suddenly explode in a fiery ball of chaos and destruction.

The problem, of course, is that players, groups, and games are all unique. Something that works for one group may not work for another. It may not even work with the same group when they’re playing a different game. Or it may work for some players in the group, but not others.

For example, back around 2000 there was a brief fad for character flags: The clever insight was that if players put something on their character sheet or in their background, that was a signal — or “flag” — that it was something they wanted to be featured in the game!

In practice, unfortunately, this didn’t hold up. Turns out that just because you included “escaped from an abusive father” in your character’s back story, it didn’t necessarily mean you wanted the abusive father to show up in the game. Often quite the opposite.

Similarly, it turns out that many players will buy up a skill in character creation because they DON’T want that skill to be a significant part of the game: They invested a bunch of character creation resources to specifically NOT be challenged by it, wanting to quickly and trivially disposing of any such content if it does happen to show up.

Conversely, someone creating a character with a high Lockpicking skill might absolutely want lots and lots of locked doors to show up in the campaign… but only so that they can show off how awesome their character is by getting their LockpickingLawyer on and casually gaining access to every egress, treasure chest, and safe. If you were to instead respond to their lockpicking flag by creating lots of ultra-difficult locks that will challenge their high level of prowess, you’ll still end up with a frustrated player.

(And the point, of course, is that other players who have created a character with a high Lockpicking skill will want to be challenged by lots of very difficult locks.)

Recently I’ve seen a similar “GM trick” doing the rounds that I’m going to call Schrodinger’s secret door. The basic idea is that if the PCs are in a dungeon (or a gothic manor or whatever) and they look for a secret door, the GM should respond by adding a secret door to the room and letting them find it!

The idea, of course, is that when the players say, “Let’s see if there’s a secret door!” what they’re really saying is, “It would be cool if there was a secret door here!”

Which might be true.

But it can just as easily be, “I hope there isn’t, but let’s make sure before we use this room to take a rest.” Or simply, “Let’s test this hypothesis and see if it’s true.” (See The Null Result for more on that.)

It doesn’t have to be a secret door, of course. Maybe the players decide to run surveillance on their new patron to make sure they don’t have any secret agendas. Or they check their room for bugs. Or they post a watch at night to make sure they aren’t ambushed while they’re asleep. None of that necessarily means that they — as either players or characters — want to betrayed, bugged, or battled.

EXPLICIT FLAGS

None of which is to say, of course, that it wouldn’t be useful to know if the players want a confrontation with their abusive father or more challenges of a specific type.

But if you want to empower the players to signal that they want something included, it’s usually better to include specific mechanism for them to directly signal that, rather than trying to intuit signal from proximate cause.

In character creation, for example, you can have players make a specific wants list for the campaign.

The stars and wishes technique (created by The Gauntlet) can provide a simple structure for feedback at the end of sessions: Each player awards a star (indicating something they really liked about the session) and makes a wish (for something they’d like to see happen in a future session).

Along similar lines, I’ve used a technique I call gold starring, in which each player gets a “gold star” that they can at any time “stick” to an element of the campaign (even an element that hasn’t been established yet) to signal its importance to them. (They can also move their gold stars at any time.)

For stuff like, “I think it would be cool if there was a secret door here!”, storytelling games are designed entirely around narrative control mechanics and it’s not unusual to see similar narrative control mechanics lightly spicing roleplaying games, too.

The common denominator in all of these techniques, of course, is that you’re explicitly asking the players for specific information and, in response, the players are clearly signaling what they want. The resulting clarity means you can have confidence and focus in how you respond to your players’ semaphoring.

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