Running a successful horror scenario in a roleplaying game can be a unique challenge, but it’s not the impossibility that some feel it to be.

There is one baseline requirement, though: The players have to be invested in the game world. They have to CARE about something. Their own PCs at a minimum. The whole group is better. Other stuff in the game world is ideal.

And, as a horror GM, you want to be aware of what your players actually care about: If they don’t care about something, then they cannot fear its loss. Target what the players care about, which may not be the same thing as what their characters care about.

The thin line of distinction here can often be found in joking around the table: It’s okay if the players are using jokes to try to distract themselves from the danger. That’s part of horror! It actually shows that they’re invested in the world.

But if the players are using jokes to distance themselves from the game world, that’s a problem: Those jokes de-invest the players’ engagement in the game world. It’s the difference between Buffy cracking wise with Willow and the MST3k crew mocking a movie.

The distinction between these two forms of humor at a gaming table – where roleplaying, meta-game discussion, and meta-commentary often flow around each other seamlessly – can be very subtle, but it’s important.

Long story short: If you’re trying to run a horror game and you’re having problems with disruptive behavior (i.e., players disrupting the table’s investment in the scenario), then it’s useful to step back and have a group discussion about expectations. However, it’s easy for this conversation to misdirect towards things like “no laughing” or “horror is serious business, so everyone put on their frowny faces.” In my experience, this is often ineffective and it can be more useful to drive to the heart of the matter: Why don’t you care?

Fixing that issue may be a much more complicated issue (and beyond the scope of this essay), but the frank discussion is usually a good place to start.

In any case, let’s lay this digression aside and assume that you have a group invested in their characters and the game world.

What next?

THE CORE OF HORROR

Regardless of medium, achieving true horror is a vague and unspecific art. But you’re generally looking for some combination of danger, anxiety, helplessness, and enigma.

These qualities are often associated with the lack of power, and this can lead to the assumption that horror becomes impossible if characters have a certain amount of power: You can’t do horror with superheroes. Or D&D characters. Or colonial marines in a warship armed with nuclear weapons.

In general, however, the objective amount of power you have is only relevant because it influences your RELATIVE power. And even relative power is only meaningful insofar as it affects PERCEIVED power.

If you perceive yourself to be overpowered by something that wants harm you (or, often more effectively, those things and people you care about), then you are in DANGER.

If you see no way to escape or redress the imbalance of power, you are HELPLESS.

If you are concerned that such danger or helplessness could happen, you are ANXIOUS.

Finally, when confronted with an ENIGMA, players will perform an act of closure. With proper circumstance and priming, their closure will create the threat of danger or helplessness, either heightening the sense of anxiety or creating anxiety even in situations where it isn’t necessary.

Scott Mccloud – Understanding Comics

SHORTCUTS & MULTIPLIERS

There are a number of shortcuts and multipliers you can use to create or enhance horror.

PHOBIAS have various sources, but they are all pre-trained fear responses. They bypass rational threat assessment and immediately trigger a sense of overwhelming danger.

Making the players fear for something other than their PCs (i.e., themselves) allows you to place the endangered thing or person at a distance. This DANGER AT A DISTANCE reduces the perceived ability to do anything about the danger, thus reducing perceived power and enhancing helplessness.

Conversely you can endanger PCs from a distance or in a way they don’t understand. If they can’t figure out how to apply their power to MYSTERIOUS DANGER, they also lose perceived power. (I used this technique in The Complex of Zombies with the bloodsheen ability to create a terrifying mystery.)

You can achieve similar effects via DILEMMAS. If multiple things the PCs care about are simultaneously put in danger (preferably in different locations), being forced to choose which one to help or save can create helplessness. (Or it can force the party to split up, which is also great for horror: It reduces the perceived power of the characters and it lets you put isolated characters at risk, presenting danger at a distance for the rest of the group.)

You can use PRIMING to direct how players perform closure on the enigmas you present. (There are a lot of ways to do this. Horror movies actually do it with their soundtracks: Specific music cues or types of music or the lack of music prime the audience to literally imagine the worst possible outcomes from otherwise innocuous interactions – like opening a door – a thousand times over.)

You can use the UNEXPECTED to create quick enigma, disrupt the perception of relative power, or maximize the effectiveness of a phobia. (Jump scares are a simple example, but so are xenomorphs climbing through the ceiling when you expected them to come through the doors.)

It can also be effective to ESTABLISH RUTHLESSNESS. In order for horror to exist, the threat of loss cannot simply be performative: The audience (i.e., the players) must believe the threat to be real. And the easiest way to make that happen is if the threat is real, which can be demonstrated by actually pulling the trigger (or swinging the axe, as the case may be).

This can be very effective when dealing with the problems created by genre expectations: There are all kinds of genres in which the main characters are placed in jeopardy, but are never in actual danger of being killed. This is particularly true of the pulp genres and TV procedurals that many RPGs are based on.

Modern design ethos, for example, has ingrained the belief in many groups that game play is supposed to be a predictable series of “fair” encounters. The expectation is thus that the PCs will constantly be placed in the perception of “danger,” but will never actually be at risk. You’re obviously never going to feel helpless if you know every encounter has been designed for you to triumph, nor are you going to feel anxious about the possibility of facing the next “dangerous” encounter. Horror, of course, is completely impossible under these conditions, and often the only way to break that long-held belief is to bluntly demonstrate that, no, you and/or the things you care about are NOT safe.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Let’s wrap up with a couple things you should NOT do.

First, don’t tell the players that their characters are scared. While it’s true that we have an empathetic model of mind (i.e., if we see someone smiling we often reflect that emotion and become happy ourselves because we have circuitry in our brains specifically designed to recreate the emotions seen in others) and that horror fiction – particularly film – leverages that to create fear in an audience by showing a character in fear, instructing players what their characters are feeling can often psychologically distance them from those characters and have the opposite effect.

(What you CAN do is vividly describe the emotional reaction of NPCs. Particularly NPCs that you know the players care about. The bandwidth is still limited compared to a film, but the technique can be effective.)

You should also not allow this imprecation to discourage you from using tools like sanity mechanics, assuming you’re using them correctly, of course. (Note that, when used correctly, sanity mechanics create enigma and use priming to frame player closure through foreshadowing without disrupting their emotional engagement with both their character and the moment. This is obviously not a coincidence.)

Second, never railroad the players into danger.

As the Railroading Manifesto tells us, railroading is never a good idea. But it sure can be tempting in a horror scenario! After all, if helplessness is one way of creating horror, what could make the players feel more helpless than forcing them into a preconceived outcome?

The problem is that this helplessness is not diegetic; instead of being focused on the game world (and the things that the players care about in that game world) it’s focused on you. This emotional redirection can disconnect the players from the game world, causing them to lose the investment that is foundational to the horror experience. In other words they stop caring. And often the fear you want them to be feeling is replaced with anger.

Conversely, true autonomy often heightens the horror: It’s only when choices matter that enigmas are fully engaged with (because they know the outcome of those enigmas are not predetermined; in the most simplistic form, if they could solve this puzzle faster then they might be able to save Lisa’s life). Furthermore, when players feel true responsibility for what happens (because it’s the result of the choices they made), the guilt they feel for those outcomes – and, importantly, the fear of experiencing that guilt if things go wrong – will enrich their emotional response to danger and helplessness.

That kind of emotional engagement, of course, will heighten the players’ investment in the game world, expanding the depth and breadth of the horror itself.

Go to Part 1

KORA MARWOOD

(Created by Chris Malone)

Kora Marwood was born the youngest to an impoverished family living in Waterdeep. Her father, Hogar, was a member of the guard and occasional longshoreman, and her mother cared for her four siblings and kept house in a shabby apartment in the Dock Ward. In the autumn of 1471, Kora’s mother, Samira, took a short-term field job with the Snobeedle Orchard and Meadery. In the midst of a work day, she unexpectedly gave birth to Kora in the middle of the field.

Life continued to be difficult for the Marwoods, and things finally fell apart for the family when Hogar died while working on a job on the docks, killed by a faulty bit of cargo netting and crushed to death by lumber imports from Chult. Samira, fearing for her inability to care for Kora and her siblings, brought them to the Temples for adoption.

Kora, only three years old at the time, remembers little of her mother and her family. While her siblings went to temples of Lathander and Ilmater, Kora was taken by the acolytes of Mystra. She was raised in the mysteries and teachings of Mystra, learning the histories of civilization, magic, and religion.  While life was safe and predictable, it was also boring. Kora began sneaking out at night to spend time in the city, and soon found herself enamored with a young man named Aseir Kalid, from Calimshan.

Aseir was an artist, working during the day in his father’s shop weaving and dyeing, and then working on his own projects when he had time. When he presented her with a small wooden painting of her one night, she decided that she was done with life in the temple and left shortly thereafter. She lived with him for six months, exploring the city with new eyes. It was in the Spring of 1486 that Aseir fell ill with the Weeping Plague, an illness that began with sores around the eyes and nose that wept a clear fluid, then quickly spread throughout the body, followed by a fever and, for many, death. Brought to Waterdeep from ports far away, the city respond quickly with quarantine. It was then that Kora was reunited with her brother Randal, who had become a priest of Ilmater. Despite his training and magical prowess, he was unable to save Aseir, and left Kora in quarantine to care for him until he passed.

Heartbroken, Kora returned to the temple, throwing herself at the feet of the Head Priest. She begged him to take her back, so that she could serve the temple as a lay healer. While Mystra is not inclined towards life and healing, magic serves all, and they taught her the healing arts. She took to it quickly, showing prowess and aptitude.

She was asked to accompany a pilgrimage to Myth Drannor as a healer and acolyte, and she attended to this. Along the way, she made the acquaintance of a dwarven ranger named Dain Balderk. Dain was initially standoffish with Kora, but after she had several opportunities to demonstrate her knowledge, diplomacy, and skill, he showed a grudging respect. Unfortunately, the arrival of the pilgrimage was preceded by destruction, as the city of the Netherese fell upon Myth Drannor, destroying it. Again.

The pilgrimage stayed at the Ruins of Myth Drannor for several months, caring for the wounded and exploring the wild magic of the disaster. It was during this time that Kora discovered that Balasha Asorio, one of the guides and foragers with the party, was actually an agent of the Zhentarim. Exposing the traitor forced a hasty ambush that had been in the making for some time. The Zhent were repelled, but Balasha escaped and Dain received a grievous wound to his back that would never heal completely. On the return trip to Waterdeep, Dain revealed himself as a Harper, and indoctrinated Kora into the faction.

When the pilgrimage at last returned to the city, Kora swore herself to the service of Mystra and began her life as a cleric in full. She now lives at the House of Wonder as a healer, acolyte, and doing odd jobs when asked. She serves mostly as an informational asset for the Harpers, looking to find those who look to destroy personal freedom and otherwise act out of evil. She still meets with Dain regularly, who acts as a mentor (and handler).

DESCRIPTION: Kora stands about 5’6”, tending towards a leaner frame; not scrawny, but more svelte. She has darker skin, that of a deep tan or of a more Mediterranean ethnicity, not quite brown, but not pale. Her hair is dark brown, to the point of appearing black unless under direct sunlight. Her face is more narrow than broad, with a rounded chin, high cheekbones, and green eyes.

When at home and not expecting trouble or a call to action, she wears a robe or a tunic with a simple shirt underneath and blue or black leggings. When out and about, she wears her armor with a tabbard or tunic over it, leather leggings/britches, a cloak, and her shield, mace, pack, and healer’s kit at her side. She dresses in white, silver, and blue, with red elements in linings and trim to reflect Mystra’s holy colors. Mystra’s holy symbol is emblazoned on her shield.

WHAT KORA KNOWS – THE ZHENTARIM:

• Zhentarim is a shadow organization of thieves, spies, assassins, and wizards that trades mercenaries and goods (including weapons) for profit.
• Their original base of power was among the Zhent people in the Moonsea region, primarily a place called Zhentil Keep.
• Long sought to gain political influence in Waterdeep, but the strength of the city’s Masked Lords, nobility, and professional guilds makes that difficult.
• In the late 14^th century (about 100 years ago), the founder of the Zhentarim (Manshoon) was killed and Zhentil Keep was razed. Zhentarim power was shattered, with the organization breaking down into many internecine factions.
• You’ve been trying to figure out details about the local Zhentarim for awhile, as their power and influence seems to be growing. Recently, however, there appears to have been a schism within the group.
• This schism is not widely known, because the Zhentarim are simultaneously fighting a gang war with the Xanathar Crime League, and that violence is capturing everyone’s attention. You know that that this gang war is the result of some provocative action taken by the new splinter group of the Zhentarim.

CREATING KORA

I’ve run games for and played games with Chris for a number of years now. His approach to character creation tends to be a quiet one: He likes to thoughtfully develop them in great detail, often working ahead of the group even in unfamiliar systems. In this case he was quite familiar with 5^th Edition and the Forgotten Realms, and so by the time we were getting some of the new players up on their feet, Kora was already a fully fledged character rich with details. In fact, virtually everything you see above was already basically in place by the time I tuned in on Kora for the first time.

PUBLIC INTEGRATION: There’s an anecdote that’s somewhere between gospel truth and urban legend that goes around both the movie and video game production circles. You have either a developer or a writer or a director or maybe an SFX house who’s giving a presentation to their producer or editor or investor. And so they very deliberately add one element to their presentation or edit or final render that they know is dumb: Like, maybe it’s a noir drama but there’s a shot of a guy holding a goose for no reason.

So their boss says, “Looks great, but I think you should lose the shot with the goose.” And our creator-hero takes the note and deletes the goose… because, of course, they never actually wanted the goose in the first place. The point of the story is that everybody in a decision process feels a need to give notes; either because they psychologically want to feel that they’ve “contributed” to the final product or because they need to justify their paycheck. If they just say “that’s good,” it’s not like they’ve actually done anything, right? The point of the dumb goose was to provide a lighting rod for the irrelevant-but-necessary comment they pathologically need to provide.

This is my long-winded way of saying: As a GM, don’t be the executive in this story.

If you’ve got a value-add, go for it! That’s the whole point of the “public integration” phase. In this case, Chris’ expertise and clear vision meant that Kora was already fully integrated into the setting.

No need to look the gift horse in the mouth. Ride on.

PRIVATE INTEGRATION: Chris had chosen for Kora to be a fledgling Harper and had also set up a violent history with the Zhentarim, so that bit of integration with two of the major factions of the campaign was also more-or-less automatically done for me. I simply swapped out the scripted Harper contact (Mirt) for the character that Chris had created (although I eventually brought Mirt back in as Dain’s boss; thus Kora’s background gave additional depth to the Harpers rather than vice versa).

(I guess maybe it is worth pointing out that swapping out elements you had planned and replacing them with what the players created is not only just as valid as adding relevant stuff to the PCs’ background, it’s probably MORE valid.)

You’ll note that, like Sarah, Chris got a “What You Know” handout for the Zhentarim. Some of the bullet points are duplicated (there’s no reason to rewrite or reword stuff you don’t have to), but others have unique information, slightly different information, or information with a different interpretation. The goal, of course, is for the two players to be able to actually swap information in-character. (If their handouts were perfect duplicates, the interaction is more likely to be one of them regurgitating everything know and the other player not getting any pay-off from their character’s knowledge. The unique information solves that problem. The information that slightly overlaps – or even contradicts! – provokes actual discussion between the players.)

The Snobeedle Orchard appears on the map of Waterdeep:

I had a huge version of this map hanging on the wall and Chris simply grabbed it off the map when fleshing out the story of Kora’s mother. This was a really cool opportunity, but I blew it: I completely missed the fact that Dasher Snobeedle, a member of the Snobeedle family, had become one of the wererats sent to harass the new owners of Trollskull Manor (i.e., the PCs).  I eventually noticed my oversight towards the end of the campaign when I started doing some meaningful development on Kora’s missing mother and was able to work it in. (You can read about that in more detail over here.)

BRINGING THE PARTY TOGETHER: As I mentioned in Part 1, Edana’s position as a fixer made her a natural fit for being the character who would connect the rest of the party with their contact at the Yawning Portal. Kora’s role as a Harper agent, however, also made sense for this role.

There were a few options we collectively considered, including:

• Kora somehow being undercover and investigating Edana. (Chris wasn’t really interested in playing Kora with a false identity, and this also suggested that Edana was currently involved in criminality, whereas Sarah was more interested in having her at the tail end of one of her respites.)
• Edana introducing half of the party to their contact and Kora introducing the other half. (The problem was that Kitti, Pashar, and Theren were already grouped up, so there was no “other half” for Kora to introduce.)

The final solution ended up being a somewhat convoluted web of connections: Upon arriving in Waterdeep, Kitti decided the best way she could help Pashar raise money was by joining the underground fight circuit. (I made a note to connect this to the underground fights that figure later in the campaign.) Asking around, they got pointed in the direction of Edana. When Edana realized how much money they really needed, told them to skip the fights and decided to take them to Kora, who had been putting the word around that she needed a crew.

“Mystra’s got money,” was Edana’s rationale. But it turned out the job wasn’t for the Temple of Mystra. Kora was freelancing. But the offer was better than nothing, so Kitti, Theren, and Pashar accepted. Edana decided to tag along for a little bit just to make sure everything was copacetic. (It seemed to her that young Kora was flying by the seat of her pants… She wasn’t wrong.)

And that’s when Kora took them all to the Yawning Portal to meet her contact.

LEAD DEVELOPER: Justin Alexander

Welcome to the Island features four all-new scenarios that can launch brand new story arcs, add intriguing complications to your existing arcs, or explode across you gaming table as exciting one-shots. Each scenario includes custom hooks for agents, burgers, cloaks, gangs, and mystics, making it easy for you to bring the action to your players no matter what kind of trouble they like getting into.

EXPLORE THE ISLAND

BATTLE OF THE BANDS takes you on the ultimate Al Amarjan road trip. There’s only one way to beat this Mover conspiracy. It’s time to get the band back together!

A CONCLAVE OF CHIKUTORPLS, or the Winds of Change Are Blowing (Up), or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Multidimensional Convergence. Place your bets now.

SEVERSEN’S MYSTERIOUS ESTATE is hosting the most important party on the entire Island, and you’ve got an invitation. Unfortunately, so do Dr. Morpheus, an astral vampire, a team of totem champions, and a Presidentials wetworks squad.

SYMPATHY OF THE D’AUBAINNES sees citizens all across the Edge receive a parcel containing a lifelike rubber mask of one of the D’Aubainnes. Once you put it on, you’ll find you can’t take it off. That’s when the killings start.

Produced with a grant from the Al Amarja Tourism Taskforce. Visit the Island today! Once you’ve come, you’ll never leave!

AWARD-WINNING AUTHORS

• Jonathan Tweet
• Justin Alexander
• Nick Bate
• Jonathan Killstring
• Jeremy Tuohy

WHAT I DID

In addition to working as the lead developer on the book for Atlas Games, I also co-authored “Seversen’s Mysterious Estate” with Jonathan Tweet.

It’s a one-shot sandbox.

An RPG sandbox exists when the players can either choose or define what the next scenario is going to be. So published scenarios are basically never sandboxes, because they almost always include a defined goal. Even old school dungeons, for example, are often designed to be included in a larger sandbox (as one scenario that the players could choose to explore), but are usually not sandboxes in and of themselves.

So how do you have a one session sandbox?

Well, in the case of “Seversen’s Mysterious Estate” the scenario is a party. Just… a party.

It uses the Party Planning scenario structure I developed and shared here back in 2015, and it’s chock full of amazing people and places and things that happen.

But why are the PCs there? And what will they do?

Well: That’s the sandbox. It’s entirely up to them.

One of the reasons we can make this work is because of how I’m doing scenario hooks for Over the Edge adventures. The general philosophy is that if you have a truly interesting situation, then there’ll inherently be lots of ways for the PCs to become interested in it. This doesn’t inherently create a sandbox, but it creates the OPPORTUNITY to start juggling hooks in the sandbox.

In addition, if you have a scenario that supports multiple scenario hooks, then it’s far more likely to be dynamic enough that players can choose how to interact with that scenario and what they want from it (rather than having the GM tell them those things).

For “Seversen’s Mysterious Estate,” one of the scenario hooks is literally just, “You get an invite to a party and you don’t know why. (No one does.)”:

Dr. Seversen has been working with the Cut-Ups to develop the Cut-Up Machine (see Over the Edge, page 180). On three separate test runs, the machine’s output consisted of the PCs’ names, neatly printed out on ParaCon invitations.

For a true one-shot, the super-fast character creation of Over the Edge makes it possible for you to create PCs and then directly ask the players, “So why do you want to go to this party?” Literally a sandbox presentation.

There’s also more traditional hooks. Here’s one:

Mystics: A PC’s mystic shit forms an oneiric resonance with the astral vampire (possibly due to a close encounter with the vampire in a coffee shop while it was attached to a previous host). They have premonitory dreams of its attacks at Dr. Seversen’s conference, including perhaps a very clear vision of its first target. They’ll have to finagle invitations if they want to do something about it.

Another cool thing you can do with all these different hooks is to give different hooks to different PCs: Giving the group lots of different vectors (and competing agendas)  will make the scenario inherently more dynamic.

This ALSO makes it easy to use any of the scenarios in the book (not just this one) as a meet-cute for your group: Everybody gets a different hook, they all end up in the same place, and — ta-da! — the party is formed in a team-up of mutual interest(s)!

WHAT ELSE IS IN THERE?

I worked closely with Nick Bate, Jonathan Killstring, and Jeremy Tuohy to create a suite of sweet scenarios.

If you’re looking for a published exemplar of the design principles I talk about here at the Alexandrian — stuff like Don’t Prep Plots, Node-Based Scenario Design, the Three Clue Rule, and the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template — then this is currently THE book for doing so.

One big thing I discovered while developing this book is just how flexible the party-planning scenario structure really is:

• For Jeremy Tuohy’s “Battle of the Bands,” we discovered that you can take the structure on the road, with the entire road trip being built around a variant.
• Jonathan Killstring’s “A Conclave of Chikutorpls,” expands the party-planning structure in time; using party-planning to model a crazed sequence of happenings that take place across several days or even weeks of time.
• We applied many of the same lessons to Nick Bate’s “Sympathy of the D’Aubainnes,” and then expanded it in space, as well, to handle a crazed political crisis culminating in existential riots that wrack the entire island. (Nick also beautifully weds this to a node-based Three Clue Rule investigation.)

(The book actually came out at the beginning of the year. But 2020 has been weird and I’m terrible at self-promotion, so failed to actually mention it here on the site. Check it out. I really am quite proud of it. If you’re buying in print, the deluxe version is very much worth it for the gorgeous full-color art.)

DESIGN NOTES FOR WELCOME TO THE ISLAND
Design Notes: Scenario Hooks for Over the Edge
Design Notes: Scenario Tools

MORE OVER THE EDGE @ THE ALEXANDRIAN
Over the Edge: System Cheat Sheet
Over the Edge: One Weird Twist

Patrons of the Alexandrian can now download a collected edition of the Dragon Heist Remix. This includes:

• The Complete Collection, a PDF with all 25 parts of the Remix plus the original review, addendums, and Running the Campaign essays in one convenient file.
• Justin’s Running Files, a Patron-exclusive collection of the documents I actually used to run the campaign (as described in Part 7 of the Remix). These are presented in Word format for easy editing and re-arranging to your heart’s content.

THE COMPLETE COLLECTION

The Complete Collection contains every single article from the Dragon Heist Remix — all 25 parts, the original review, 8 addendums, and 4 Running the Campaign articles — that have been posted to the Alexandrian to date. It currently stands at 110,000 words and 318 pages.

In addition to updating the previous Preview Draft to include all of the Remix material (including corrections previously only available on the website), this release also reformats everything into the new-and-improved Alexandrian PDF format.

JUSTIN’S RUNNING FILES

This zip file contains the final campaign-ready files I prepared for actually running the campaign.

What’s the difference between this and what appeared on the website?

First, a lot of my general discussion about WHY things were designed the way they were designed have been stripped out. I’ve also removed a lot of the discussion about HOW various tools can be used during play. (I know how this stuff is supposed to be used… and so do you if you’ve read the whole series.)

Second, additional reference material has been added where appropriate to ease my mental load during play.

Third, light revisions based on actual play (some, but not all of which got reflected onto the web pages) have been added.

Fourth, and probably most imporantly, organization: The Remix series on the Alexandrian was written as a design-oriented discussion that ambitiously grew into a much more prodigious project than I had originally anticipated. The original organization was not designed for use at the table, and became even less useful for such as time went on.

The running files are organized for play: The first three chapters of play are clearly broken out, each heist is given its own focused file, and so forth. I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to just look at the file list and instantly grok how they’re meant to be used.

The only thing to particularly call out, I think, is that the props for each scenario can be found at the end of the file. You’ll note that these are files are “watermarked” with the numerical code for the chapter (for example, “DH1 Props”). Why? Well, there are a lot of props. Something I learned when running my Ptolus campaign (which has literally HUNDREDS of props) is that my players will often ask me questions about a prop which they received weeks, months, or even years earlier, and I won’t necessarily remember exactly where they got that specific handout. I learned to mark on the prop what scenario they came from (using a numeric code which doesn’t spoil anything for the players) so that I could quickly and easily locate my notes regarding the prop.

These files remain dependent on actually owning a copy of the Dragon Heist book, of course.

WHY’D THIS TAKE SO LONG?

People have been asking me for a collected edition of the Dragon Heist Remix for a little over a year. Why’d it take so long?

First, I was hoping to authoritatively finish the Remix before collecting everything. (I probably haven’t. I still have a list of value-add addendums that I’d like to create at some point.)

Second, and more importantly, the Dragon Heist Remix was the last major project I launched on the Alexandrian before completely revamping my workflow. (And I revamped it largely in response to the problems I had with the Remix.)

For over a decade, I had been drafting copy for the Alexandrian in a vanilla Word file. My basic process can honestly be traced even further back, to when I was writing reviews for RPGNet (circa 1998). It had evolved over time, but was fundamentally the same thing. This draft would include notes like “ADD LINK to [hyperlink]” and “[INSERT PIC HERE]”, which would be implemented only as I transferred the draft onto the website. As a result, the website became the “definitive” copy, and if I spotted errors or needed to make updates, I would make them directly to the website.

When I started my Patreon in 2015, this inadvertently led to a Rube Goldbergian process in which I would:

• Do my traditional draft in Word.
• Transfer the draft to the website to create the “definitive” version.
• Copy the definitive version off the website into a new Word file, reformat it, and generate the Patron-exclusive PDF.

In addition, I still considered the version on the website to be definitive, so when I noticed errors or needed to make updates, I would only make them on the website. The PDF version (and the Word document it was based on) was a “dead” document — it existed to be distributed once, but once it was forked it was done.

In March 2019, I revamped the formatting of the Patreon-exclusive PDFs. There were a couple reasons for this:

• It was prettier.
• I was reworking the format so that I could draft the definitive version of an essay in it and then, with far less effort, transfer it to WordPress before generating the PDF from the same file.

One source document instead of a sequential process with a dead fork.

What had finally motivated me to trash my twenty-year-old web-copy writing process was the Dragon Heist Remix. I wrote the whole Remix in a single Word file, but I was (a) following my old workflow and (b) uploading installments as they were complete (rather than waiting for the whole series to be done). This kind of “post as I’m writing” approach had become more common after launching my Patreon. Back when I wrote the Game Structures series, for example, I’d written and polished the entire series before posting it… which meant that there had been a 10 week gap in which no new content was appearing on the site and then the whole thing appeared in like a week and a half. That approach didn’t work with Patreon, so I could either abandon long series (bad idea) or figure out how to serialize their creation.

But this meant that each installment would be:

• Written up in my draft document.
• Posted to the website.
• And then, because the website was the definitive edition, any future changes or additions to those installments would only be made on the website, even while I was continuing to draft new content into the draft document.

Which, of course, meant that I did not have a file that contained the actual Remix. I had a weird reverse-palimpsest in which the earliest sections of the document grew more and more out of date as the Remix evolved.

My twenty-year-old process was no longer rickety. It was broken.

Thus, the fundamental revision.

The Avernus Remix, in particular, has benefited from this: The definitive version of the Remix is written up in a single file and I am scrupulous in making sure that any corrections on the website are simultaneously made in that document (and vice versa). This has allowed me to effortlessly produce regularly updated collected editions as the Remix has evolved. (Looks like I’ve done 15 of them to date.)

But the Dragon Heist Remix was still in a rather hopeless state. Back in 2019, as the core of the Remix was wrapping up, I did my best to provide something workable via my running files and a Preview Draft that attempted to correct my draft document as much as possible to reflect the “definitive” version on the website, but it was clearly a stopgap effort.

Creating the Complete Collection, however, meant pulling all the content back down from the website, reformatting it, and then proofreading it. This was not particularly difficult work, but it was incredibly time-consuming — remember the bit where I said it was 318 pages and 110,000 words? — particularly if it was going to be done right. (And what would be the point if it wasn’t done right?)

I actually started work on this at the end of February 2020, at the same time I started working on Dragon Heist: The Final Session. Checking my calendar, I see that was actually the same day I started live-tweeting my reaction to Descent Into Avernus. A couple weeks later I started the Avernus Remix… and then literally the day before the first Avernus post went live, we went into COVID-19 quarantine. Three days later, my wife was in the hospital with an infection from the surgery she’d had the week before, which would lead to another surgery, which would lead to a cancer diagnosis, which would lead to chemotherapy, which would…

Shit. That got dark fast.

But everything’s fine now (except the general background malaise of 2020), most especially my wife. I’ve been slowly chipping away at this project all along, so I’m very excited to finally be able to get these collected editions out to people who have been hoping to see them for a very long time now. And my apologies to anyone who wasn’t able to get them in time to be of use in their own campaign.

Go to Part 1

THEREN

(Created by Erik Malm)

I spent my youth exploring the forests of Evermeet and learning to hunt from my father.

Shortly after coming of age, word reached the wood elves of Evermeet that not only had the ruins of our old home in the Ardeep Forest been overrun by kobolds and other monsters, but a group of humans, led by Lord Nandar of Waterdeep, had begun invading and trying to lay claim to the forest.

When Rond Arrowhome set sail with an army of wood elves to take back and protect the forest, I volunteered to join them. I was trained as a ranger and soon became an expert at hunting both humans and kobolds.

Now that the forest is once again safe, I prefer to spend my days alone with nature – exploring, observing, and experiencing the constant change and unpredictable events of the natural world. I especially love the power, beauty, and unpredictability of thunderstorms and have developed a connection to Aerdrie Faenya, though I am one of the few non-avariel who worship her.

I am always happy to help out lost travelers (who mean the forest no harm) or anyone else in need, though I remain distrustful of the wealthy elite like the Nandars of Waterdeep.

DESCRIPTION: Theren has copper-colored skin with a dark-brown/copper-colored hair (like dark, tarnished copper).

His clothes palette is standard dark forest colors; the sort of thing that would help with camouflage in Ardeep – deep greens, browns, dark grey/black. Theren’s original clothing would be elvish and probably trend more towards just greens and browns, emphasizing dark versions of those colors instead of a true black. (That said, the longer he’s in the city, the more likely he is to start wearing some greys that woud match stonework, etc. Maybe fewer greens as well, or even normal Waterdhavian clothing of a fashionable sort, but with subdued colors.) It’s ultimately all about camouflage; to blend into his environment.

Theren is 5’10”. Green eyes.

Hair is straight and shoulder length. Normally he just keeps it tucked behind his ears, which tends to keep it in place fairly well due to elvish ears being tall and pointy. But if it’s particularly windy (or similar conditions where his hair might obscure his vision), he’ll either wear a headband or tie his hair back.

There’s nothing particularly remarkable about Theren’s facial features – typical elvish face with thinner and more angular features than the average human. Rather, what is remarkable is the way that his life and outlook affect his skin, underlying musculature, and how he carries himself:

Theren has spent much of his life outdoors – baking in the sun, holding night-long vigils in the deep of the forest, and facing unafraid the heavy winds and storms which he is particularly fond of as a ceraunophile and worshiper of Aerdrie Faenya. Consequently, I think of Theren as looking a little weatherworn (or, at least, weatherworn for a young elf). It’s not that he necessarily looks particularly aged or beaten down by the elements, more like that subtle difference between how high quality furniture kept on a patio looks ever so slightly different than the exact same furniture kept in a three-season porch at the end of summer. He looks just a little out of place indoors and looks like he’s where he belongs when outdoors.

Similarly, his musculature looks just a little different than the average elf. He’s not particularly muscular or anything, though he still has an athletic build, but his muscles are all incredibly dense – like a rock climber’s, a farmer’s, or anyone else who’s primary form of exercise is one of intense and continuous use of their entire body. This also applies to the underlying musculature of his face, making him look a little extra solid/rugged/durable. I suppose it may look a little formidable in some cases, but Theren isn’t really threatening, scary, or even particularly imposing, he just looks like someone you’d rather not pick a fight with or try to rob.

His demeanor, posture, and manners have also been affected by his relative solitude and preference for the wilds. Having spent much of his time alone when he doesn’t need to worry about what others think about him, he displays his emotions a little more readily, he is a little more likely to speak his mind, his manners are a little more unchecked, and his posture and physical mannerism are a little more informal than a typical elf. To be clear, he’s still an elf raised on Evermeet, and a non-elf probably wouldn’t even notice anything at all, but to other elves he seems a little… wild/feral.

Finally, although his regular demeanor might be a bit more wild and relaxed, he also has a hunter mode that he shifts into when stalking prey or facing enemies. When he’s in this mood, he appears more cold, calculating, and emotionless. Unlike the differences described above, which might not be noticed by a non-elf, this shift is significant enough that everyone except the most unobservant can tell he’s hunting something or someone.

CREATING THEREN

The thing I always marvel at when revisiting Theren’s background is the intense depth of the physical description. I’ve had other players create similarly detailed descriptions, but usually it’s because EVERYTHING is lavishly detailed. The ratio between Theren’s physical description and everything else in Theren’s character background seems crazy at first glance.

But it works. And it’s a valuable reminder that everyone will have different touchstones that are most effective for them. (This will often depend not only on the player, but also the specific character.)

Look at how much amazing, actionable detail Erik works into Theren’s physical description! It’s all about blending into his environment? He’s a little bit uncomfortable inside? That’s gold. Even simple, specific physical actions like when/how he tucks back his hair.

PUBLIC INTEGRATION: Erik was the least versed in the Forgotten Realms at the table. Ironically, we ended up doing the most digging into the weird, esoteric corners of Realms Lore with his character.

The origin point was a simple question: Where would an elf ranger be from?

Evermeet was an easy answer: Big elven kingdom. Just across the ocean from Waterdeep. (Maybe he could be somehow tied into the maritime adventures of Kitti and Pashar?)

On the other hand, where might a wood elf live near Waterdeep? That led us to Ardeep Forest. And that’s where we really started digging in. I forget the exact path we followed, but I ended up not only pulling information from Lost Empires of Faerûn, but also tracking down an obscure article about the forest that was written by Ed Greenwood and published in Dragon Magazine #270.

There was also more recent lore, revolving around a conflict between Lord Nandar of Waterdeep and the elves of Ardeep in the 1470s. (The Waterdeep connection, however tenuous, made this appealing.) I was not particularly familiar with this era (and not at all familiar with these events), but they were intriguing.

PRIVATE INTEGRATION: The only thing of note here that I recall is that Volo was the “author” of the Dragon Magazine article. This didn’t really have anything to do with integrating the character into the campaign, but giving Erik a copy of the article was a nice way to subtly establish Volo’s existence for a player who otherwise wouldn’t be familiar with the name when it was dropped in the first session.

BRINGING THE PARTY TOGETHER: The key question which remained was how Theren would be pulled into Waterdeep. (Remember that every player needed to explain how their character ended up walking through the doors of the Yawning Portal at the beginning of the campaign.)

We looked at a few options, but what stuck was just aiming the Pashar-Kitti vector in the direction of Ardeep Forest: While passing through the forest on the way to Waterdeep, they would have met Theren. After helping him with some local trouble (or possibly being saved by him from local trouble, their mutual versions of the story had very different interpretations of those events), Theren was swayed by Pashar’s sob story and agreed to help him (them, really) raise the ransom money.

It was only six hundred gold pieces, right?

(He was in Waterdeep with them before he discovered that the actual ransom price was… uh… considerably more money than that. He hadn’t sworn an oath or anything… but good gods.)

Go to Part 5: Kora Marwood