Kaostech is one of the many forms of technomancy. Like the other technomantic arts, it is not truly technological or magical. It does not function according to the pure rules and logic of natural science nor the transmutative animism and sympathetic laws of alchemy. Its existence is no dependent upon the power of magic or the whim of the gods.

Kaostech is something different. It is a harnessing of primal chaos, but it is also an embodiment and an expression of that primal chaos. It is corruption and destruction given form. It is something that could not exist without a perversion of the natural order — and the creation of that perversion is at the very heart o the kaostech device’s function.

Kaostech is also known as the technology of the taint. Its devices have been called chaos machines, demon devices, and artifacts of the taint.

FORMS OF KAOSTECH

Kaostech devices can be roughly divided into two categories: bones of steel and betrayals of the flesh.

BONES OF STEEL: These are mechanical devices designed to harness and use the powers of chaos. Although their intimate connection to chaos, and their manipulation of chaotic forces, often make the construction of bones of steel seem illogical or incomprehensible, they are fundamentally machines. They are built of metal and glass and cloth. Inside they maybe filled with a baffling array of wires and gears and tubes, but their function is still easily comprehended once it has been demonstrated.

BETRAYALS OF THE FLESH: Betrayals of the flesh, rather than being mechanical devices, are living organisms. They are grown in alchemical vats, harvested from corpses, or perverted from natural creatures. Some betrayals of the flesh are independent creatures of a sort — they eat and breathe and grow. A few of them are even capable of movement.

Other betrayals of the flesh, however, are designed to be used in a parasitic symbiosis with another creature: They are grafted on as replacement parts or created through the manipulation and surgical alteration of the host creature itself.

KAOSTECH SKILLS

CRAFT KAOSTECH (Intelligence + Special) (Trained Only)

Check: A character can make a Craft Kaostech check to build, repair, or modify a kaostech device. It can also be used to identify and activate newly encountered kaostech safely. The DC of the check depends on what the kaostechnician is attempting to accomplish.

Create Kaostech Device (Weekly Progress): The DC required to create a kaostech item is listed in the item’s description. The DC of the check, the skill check result, and the item’s price determine how long it takes to make a particular item.

1. Find the item’s price in silver pieces (1 gp = 10 sp).
2. Find the DC listed with each kaostech item.
3. Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials and expend a splash of raw chaos.
4. Make a Craft Kaostech check representing one week’s work.
5. If the check succeeds, multiply the check result by the DC of the item. If the result is at least equal to the price of the item in silver pieces, then the kaostechnician has completed the item.
6. If the result doesn’t equal the price, then it represents the progress the kaostechnician has made this week. Record the result and make a new Craft Kaostech check for the next week. Each week the kaostechnician makes more progress until their total reaches at least the price of the item.

If the check is failed by 4 points or less, the kaostechnician makes no progress. If the check is failed by 5 points or more, the kaostechnician ruins half the raw materials (and the cost of those materials must be paid again).

Create Kaostech Device (Daily Progress): Checks can be made by the day instead of by the week. In this case, evaluate the kaotechnician’s progress (check result times DC) in copper pieces instead of silver pieces.

Determine Activation Method: A kaostechnician can identify the activation method of a kaostech device by make a Craft Kaostech check (DC 20).

Identify Kaostech Device: A kaostechnician can attempt to identify a kaostech device by making a Craft Kaostech check. The DC is equal to the item’s original craft DC + 5.

Repair Kaostech Device: Generally, a kaostechnician can repair an item by making checks against the DC required to originally make the item. The cost of repairing an item is one-fifth its price. Due to the unstable nature of kaostech, if the repair check fails, the kaostechnician completely destroys the item; no further attempts are possible.

Repairing a kaostech item requires a splash of raw chaos.

Modifiers – Determining Activation & Identification: Craft Kaostech checks made to determine the activation method of a kaostech device or identifying a kaostech device are made easier or more difficult depending on the kaostechnician’s familiarity with the item in question.

Extremely Chaotic: If the character is extremely chaotic or maybe even a little made (a determination made at the DM’s discretion) they gain a +2 bonus on their check.

Extremely Lawful: If the character is extremely lawful or logical (a determination made by the DM) they suffer a -2 penalty to their check.

Familiar with Similar Item: If the character has used or dealt with a kaostech item similar to the one currently being examined they gain a +4 bonus to their check.

Obvious Use: If the device’s use is straightforward or obvious (goggles, for example) the character gains a +10 bonus on their check to determine the item’s method of activation. (They do not, however, gain any bonus for identifying the item’s function.)

Unfamiliar with Kaostech: If the character is unfamiliar with kaostech or believes the item to be magical, they suffer a -4 penalty to their check.

Try Again: No, except for creating a new kaostech device (although a failure by 5 or more points results in losing half the raw materials from the attempt).

Special: In addition to their Intelligence modifier, a kaostechnician’s Wisdom modifier also applies to Craft Kaostech checks. However, you must invert the Wisdom modifier so that a bonus acts as a penalty and vice versa.

Example: A character with a -2 Wisdom penalty gains a +2 bonus on their Craft Kaostech checks. On the other hand, a character with a +3 Wisdom bonus suffers a -3 penalty on their Craft Kaostech checks.

To create, repair, or identify a kaostech device the kaostechnician must have the right tools. Outfitting a kaostech creation laboratory costs 10,000 gp. One suitable only for repairs and identification costs 1,000 gp.

Untrained: If you have no ranks in Craft Kaostech, you can make an Intelligence test modified by your inverted Wisdom modifier to determine the activation method of a kaostech device.

CHAOS SURGERY (Intelligence + Special) (Trained Only)

Check: A chaos surgeon can perform surgical procedures to implant intrinsic kaostech devices into the body of a living creature or replace portions of a living body with kaostech.

Attach Intrinsic Device: Each type of intrinsic device has its own Chaos Surgery DC and requires a specific amount of time to perform the procedure, as specified in the item’s description.

If the Chaos Surgery test is successful, the intrinsic kaostech device has been successfully grafted, implanted, or otherwise attached. The subject must enter a recovery period, the length of which is specified in the item’s description. During this time the subject requires complete bed rest. If the subject undertakes any strenuous activity or suffer any damage during the recovery period, they must make a Fortitude save with a DC equal to the original Chaos Surgery DC required to attach the device. If they fail the saving throw, the kaostech device fails and does not function.

If the Chaos Surgery test is failed, the intrinsic device automatically suffers chaotic failure (and has the standard 1 in 20 chance of suffering chaotic backlash or chaotic necrosis). In addition, the subject suffers 5d10 damage and 2d6 points of Constitution damage. The subject must still wait through the recovery period. If the subject undertakes any strenuous activity or suffers any damage during the recovery period, they must immediately make a Fortitude save (DC 15 + damage taken) or suffer 1d10 points of damage and 1 point of Constitution damage. (They do not need to make a second save as a result of damage taken from this failed saving throw.)

A chaos surgeon cannot attach an intrinsic device to themselves.

Treat Chaotic Necrosis: A chaos surgeon can revitalize a betrayal of the flesh that has suffered chaotic necrosis. This treatment requires 10 minutes, a successful Chaos Surgery check (DC 25), and materials worth 1/10^th the original creation cost of the device.

Modifiers:

Distractions: If the chaos surgeon is distracted (by loud noises or nearby combat, for example) while using the Chaos Surgery skill, they suffer a -2 penalty to their check.

Filth Environment: Making a Chaos Surgery check in a non-hygienic environment imposes a -2 penalty to the check. (A filthy area may also force the subject to make a Fortitude save to resist disease, as the DM’s discretion.)

Try Again: Yes

Special: In addition to their Intelligence modifier, a chaos surgeon’s Wisdom modifier also applies to Chaos Surgery checks. However, you must invert the Wisdom modifier so that a bonus acts as a penalty and vice versa.

To make a Chaos Surgery check, the chaos surgeon must have the proper tools (a scalpel, grips, cutters, forceps, rags to soak up the blood, and so forth). This surgical kit costs 1,000 gp.

Untrained: Chaos Surgery cannot be used untrained.

Go to Part 2: Using Kaostech

Go to Part 1

As I mentioned in Part 6C: The Vault of the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist, you can basically run the main vault at the end of the campaign unaltered: The PCs get the vault doors open, journey down to the lower level, find the golden dragon Aurinax hanging out down there disguised as a dwarf with the dragonstaff of Ahghairon, and then somehow get the gold from him.

In practice, there are a few problems with this:

• Aurinax and his relationship with Lord Neverember is not previously established in the campaign. So at the very end of your epic story, the big conclusion hinges around this dude you’ve never heard of before. It’s very confusing and probably anticlimactic.
• If the scene ends in a fight, the low level PCs will almost certainly be brutally murdered by the CR 17 dragon.
• So the scene seems pretty heavily weighted towards social negotiation, but the way it’s designed makes this incredibly unlikely to succeed. (Multiple checks, with the designers actually telling the DM to ignore the rules to make failure more likely with stuff like “if even one character loses the contest, Aurinax senses that the group is lying to him.”)

So what you have is a confusing encounter which likely ends with the PCs either being forced to leave without the gold or being brutally murdered.

NEVEREMBER’S DRAGON

Spoilers: This is not how I ended my Dragon Heist campaign.

First, let’s identify what’s actually cool about this encounter:

• A huge pile of gold. Not only are these inherently awesome, but this huge pile of gold has been literally the goal of the entire campaign.
• Dragon fight. Dragons on top of golden hoards? Awesome. Dragon slaying? Epic.

This is largely all you need: Epic dragon fight. If you win, you claim the dragon’s hoard. Perfect note to end the campaign on.

What do we need for this to happen?

First, it shouldn’t be a gold dragon. Gold dragons are Lawful Good and explaining why one is down here guarding stolen gold inevitably leads to some sort of weird, convoluted continuity that the players aren’t going to care about at this point. (It’s the end of the adventure; it’s the time to be wrapping stuff up, not adding more back story.) It’s really easy to simplify this: There’s a red dragon. Neverember put the dragon here to guard his gold. How? I dunno. Dragon owed him a favor. He enslaved him with an artifact. It was a young dragon who just really wanted to sleep on a big pile of gold, and Neverember’s offer was irresistable.

Second, emphasize the big pile of gold. In the adventure as published, this is what the vault looks like:

Sort of a weird, complicated space with the gold tucked away in the back corner. Compare that to the epic painting of the dragon perched atop the hoard above! We don’t need all this distraction. Want a nice, simple dynamic here: Big pile of gold. Dragon.

So what I did was just have a large staircase leading down to the arched entrance of the lower vault. The vault itself was one big chamber with four pillars in the shape of dwarven hammers in  the middle of the room (matching the architecture above). In the square space between these pillars was heaped the huge pile of gold.

When the PCs arrived, I had the dragon behind the pile of gold. This gives you TWO big moments:

• Players see the gold and have a moment to really focus on and process that image.
• Dragon crawls up over the top of the pile! Oh shit!

Third, it will probably be rewarding to reduce the chance of horrible death by not having the dragon pursue the PCs if they flee. If Neverember enslaved the dragon and bound it to the vault, then this takes care of itself. Smart PCs who feel overwhelmed by the dragon will now be able to retreat, regroup, and potentially call on the powerful allies they’ve made throughout the campaign (which would make this big finale fit thematically with the rest of the campaign).

(Tangent: If you wanted to, you could hypothesize that this is a modified orb of dragonkind or a similar artifact which is suspended from the roof the vault and keeps the dragon from leaving. PCs who intuit what’s happening could use that to find an alternative solution to the dragon problem. But it’s probably an unnecessary complication.)

REALITY CHECK – HOW BIG IS THAT PILE?! If you do the math, it turns out that 500,000 coins don’t actually make for that big a pile. If you’re being generous in your assumptions, it’s probably about the size of a big pile of leaves. And why is it all in one big pile in the first place?!  Wouldn’t Neverember have his stolen hoard conveniently stored in coffers or bags or something? Why would he bring it all down here and then just pour it out on the floor?

First: Honestly, this is probably a place where you just need to care a little less. If the players do the math later and hit a fridge logic moment where they’re like, “Hey! That pile of gold shouldn’t have been that big!” it’s fine. It’s not going to detract from this big, awesome moment you had or the dragon fight that ensued.

Second: They’re in a big pile because dragons like sleeping on big piles of treasure. Stop kink-shaming. (If you want to add a bunch of leather satchels or coin coffers that have been ripped open by dragon claws and tossed in the back corner of the vault, that could be a cool touch, though.)

Third: Okay, you still care. Maybe the players have already done the math because they’ve been trying to figure out how they’re going to get all those gold coins out of the vault, so they’re already expecting a leaf pile of gold. Fair enough. Two things you can do:

• Who said the whole hoard was made up strictly of gold coins? Add a bunch of silver and even more copper to bulk things up. The gold is a thin layer on top, because dragons like the feel of gold on their scales.
• Look at that picture again. Notice the stone plinths sticking out from the corner of the hoard pile? Yup. Middle of the vault is actually a big stone pyramid and the dragon has piled all the gold and silver and copper on top of it, greatly increasing the perceived size of the pile. (Why? Dragons like big hoard piles. Again: Stop kink-shaming!)

Oh! Better yet, it’s actually a stone replica of Mt. Waterdeep. (If the PCs have been paying attention to the Dumathoin imagery throughout the rest of the vault, they might realize the Melairkyn dwarves have placed a huge sapphire worth 25,000 gold pieces in the center of this replica to echo the Heart of the Mountain. Up to them whether they desecrate the ancient holy place to dig it out. This can be a nice reward for groups that have ethically agreed to return the money to the city, however, because the sapphire wasn’t stolen from Waterdeep and the city has no claim to it.)

(Damn. That’s really cool. Wish I’d thought of this last night when I ran that final encounter.)

DESIGNING THE DRAGON

A brief digression on encounter design in 5th Edition.

With the remix of Dragon Heist I was worried, coming to 5th Edition for basically the first time, that the heists built around the villains’ lairs would be too fragile/difficult. This concern was primarily based on the number of times the book says any of the PCs going to these lairs will almost certainly die.

Not only was I taking stuff that was supposed to be too hard, I was also writing them up with adversary rosters so that the NPCs would dynamically respond to the PCs if the PCs were detected. Using this technique with encounters that are already extremely difficult can easily lead to TPKs, as I discussed long ago in Revisiting Encounter Design. (You can also read an example of this happening in actual play in my Playtest Report on Gamma World.) In actual practice, though, there was nothing to worry about for Dragon Heist: The NPCs rarely get a chance to respond dynamically because they’re generally dead before they can raise any sort of alarm.

For example, the books says that, “Lord and Lady Cassalanter are formidable spellcasters and devoted to one another. If one is assailed (…) the other arrives as quickly as possible. A direct confrontation with the Cassalanters will likely result in defeat for the characters…” But in practice the PCs can dish out so much damage that the “formidable” spellcasters will be dead before they can cast more than one spell.

In my game, for example, the PCs snuck up on Victoro, got a surprise round, and then all beat his initiative check. Two full rounds of unleashing damage on him and he was dead before he was able to take a single action.

This was not an isolated incident.

My experience with 5th Edition is still mostly limited to this single group, so it’s possible that my players are just really good. But the fact that I’m routinely seeing “Deadly” encounters (or stuff that’s even more difficult) getting curb-stomped by the PCs does leave me scratching my head on what effective encounter design actually looks like in this game. Because the point where the curb-stompings by PCs become mechanically unlikely seems to ALSO be the point where the bad guys have such outsized offensive capability that if the PC’s DON’T successfully curb-stomp them, they’re going to one-shot kill the PCs.

So right now it seems to have a real “choose your glass cannon” problem going on.

With that being said, my experience is still limited to a very specific campaign and I can already see that there are a number of other play dynamics that I need to actually run at the table. This notably includes:

1. Really huge mobs of bad guys. (These are comparatively rare in urban adventures like Dragon Heist.)
2. Long dungeon crawls or similar scenarios where long-term strategic play has a potential impact. (Also not really part of the Dragon Heist experience.)
3. Higher level adventuring. (With the remix, Dragon Heist tops out at 7th level.)

In any case, this influenced my design of the final encounter: I knew the dragon would be alone down there. But I wanted the encounter to be meaningful and challenging. It was, after all, the big finale of the campaign.

TARGET LEVEL: One other thing to discuss here is the expected level of the PCs for this finale. This is discussed elsewhere in my notes for my remix, but basically I have the PCs level up:

• After Chapter 1 (when they rescue Floon).
• After the Gralhund raid.
• After each of the heists.

There are four available heists, although the PCs may only need to do three of them. So the PCs will either be 6th or 7th level going into the Vault. (In the case of my campaign, the PCs did all four heists, but we were on a race to the end and I forgot to have them level up. So they were 6th level heading into the Vault.)

THE DRAGON: The first thing I did was to just pull up the list of available dragons. I’d decided a classic, fire-breathing red was the way to go, so:

• Ancient Red Dragon (CR 24)
• Adult Red Dragon (CR 17)
• Young Red Dragon (CR 10)
• Red Dragon Wyrmling (CR 4)

The Ancient and Adult Red Dragons are obviously too deadly. If you want to build an encounter strictly by the book, then I might suggest throwing a pair of Red Dragon Wyrmlings in there. A double dragon fight sounds cool. (You might even bump it up to a triad of wyrmlings for larger 7th level parties.)

But what I really wanted was that really iconic dragon-on-its-hoard encounter. So I decided to grab the Young Red Dragon at CR 10.

However, I’d already seen my PCs mop the floor with “deadly” CR 10 encounters. (Victoro Cassalanter, for example, is a CR 10 opponent and they’d rolled right over the top of him.) Having the dragon go, “ROAR!” and then do nothing while they turned it into a thin, red paste felt like an anti-climactic way to wrap things up.

(If it happens, that’s fine. Awesome even. The players will probably love telling the story of how they blew a dragon away. I’m just not going to deliberately design it that way, since that would be the opposite of awesome.)

What I concluded was that the plausible solution to this problem was to give the dragon some legendary actions. Generally only much more powerful monsters are given legendary actions, but they almost instantly solve the problem of the bad guy not getting to do very much before being wiped out.

Long story short, this is the dragon I designed. Feel free to plug it into your Dragon Heist finales:

YOUNG RED DRAGON
Large dragon, chaotic evil

Armor Class 18 (natural armor)
Hit Points 178 (17d10+85)
Speed 40 ft., climb 40 ft., fly 80 ft.

STR 23 (+6), DEX 10 (+0), CON 21 (+5), INT 14 (+2), WIS 11 (+0), CHA 19 (+4)

Saving Throws Dex +4, Con +9, Wis +4, Cha +8
Skills Perception +8, Stealth +4
Damage Immunities fire
Senses blindsight 30 ft., darkvision 120 ft., passive Perception 18
Languages Common, Draconic
Challenge 10 (5,900 XP)

Multiattack.The dragon makes three attacks: one with its bite and two with its claws.

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d10+6) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) fire damage.

Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +10 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d6+6) slashing damage.

Fire Breath (Recharge 5-6). The dragon exhales fire in a 30-foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw, taking 56 (16d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

LEGENDARY ACTIONS

The dragon gets 3 legendary actions. These actions can only be taken at the end of an opponent’s turn. They refresh at the end of the dragon’s turn.

Detect. Make a Wisdom (Perception) test.

Bite Attack. Make a bite attack.

Wing Attack (2 actions). Creatures within 10 ft. make DC 18 Dexterity saving throw or take 2d6+8 bludgeoning damage and are knocked prone. The dragon can then fly up to half its flying speed.

Go to Part 1

The cinematic technique of the montage is vaguely defined and multifaceted. In the French tradition “montage” refers to all editing. In Soviet montage theory, it is specifically the juxtaposition of non-sequential imagery in order to create specific meaning. The basic definition provided by Wikipedia, however, is, “A film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information.” It is in this sense that one has the “montage sequence” which is specifically designed to show the passage of time, and is what is most often referred to by the shorthand of “montage” in English.

FRAMING THE MONTAGE

The basics of a montage, therefore, can be understood as very hard cuts from one sequence of action to the next.

In The Art of Pacing, I discussed at length how we frame, fill, and close scenes. Creating a montage basically consists of framing very hard and very deep into a scene, spending the least amount of time necessary to address the agenda of that scene, and then aggressively cutting to the next scene (which is similarly framed very hard). This effectively creates a sequence of micro-scenes.

The trouble with doing this kind of hard scene framing as a GM is that it becomes increasingly difficult for the players to meaningfully contribute to what’s happening. (This is why, as I noted in The Art of Pacing, the harder the scene framing becomes, the more likely it is that a game or GM will introduce narrative control mechanics in order to return control back to the players.) For example, consider the famous baptismal montage from the end of The Godfather:

To get cuts that tight and that focused, it would seem as if the GM would basically just be saying, “Okay, cut from the church. We’re in your kitchen. You’re cleaning and assembling your gun. We cut back to the church.” There’s no breathing room for a back-and-forth conversation; no space for the players to propose an action.

When you get this tight, though, something interesting happens: The GM can actually invert the players’ part in the conversation of meaningful choices. Instead of framing the scene, the GM can instead prompt the players to frame each micro-scene.

This is the first secret of the RPG montage.

In this example the players have proposed simultaneously assassinating the other New York dons. Michael Corleone’s player, though, says, “I’ll need an alibi. What if we do it while I’m baptizing my kids?”

(“That’s fucking dark,” says Kay’s player. “I love it.”)

So the GM describes the baptism. And then, rather than framing to the next scene, the GM prompts one of the players:

GM: Rocco, how do you prepare for your murder?

Rocco: I’m in my kitchen, disassembling and reassembling my gun.

GM: Outside the window we can see your family relaxing on the beach. Your fingers shove pieces of metal together with the casual precision of familiarity. We cut to—Clemenza, what are you doing?

Clemenza: I’ve got my shotgun packed in a cardboard box. Looks like I’m delivering a package. I pause to polish a bit of dirt off my immaculately detailed car.

GM: Great. We cut back to the church, where the priest does the sign of the cross, gesturing with his hand as if using a cloth to wipe clean Michael’s sin. He grabs a few grains of salt and presses them to Anthony’s mouth. Anthony’s little hands reach up and touch his own chin. What about you Willie?

Willie: I’m getting a shave.

We finish that cycle of declarations and then the GM presents a second prompt by telling each of the players where their assassination is taking place:

GM: Don Barzini is working in his office building. What’s your plan, Al Neri?

Al Neri: Well, I’m dressed as a cop. Does Barzini leave his office at the same time every day?

GM: Sure. He comes out the front door and gets into his limo. Like clockwork.

Al Neri: Okay, then about five minutes before he’s due to leave, I’ll stroll up and tell the limo to move along.

GM: The driver refuses.

Al Neri: I’ll start writing him a ticket just as Barzini comes out of the building. That should distract him and his bodyguards.

And the GM, once again, goes around the table with this prompt and we get the second phase of the montage, with everyone setting up their attacks. The GM continues cutting back to the baptism. Maybe he’s pulled up the Catholic rite on his phone and is reading it out loud through the entire sequence. He reaches the point where the priest says, “Michael, do you renounce Satan?”

Then we hit the final phase of the montage: The GM calls for whatever action checks are necessary to resolve each murder (which in some cases might be attack rolls; in other cases it might be a Stealth or Deception test). It’s a montage, so the GM will probably want to keep these resolutions mechanically tight (rather than, for example, going into full-fledged combat rounds).

The GM’s on his game, so at the end of each murder he continues plugging in the renunciation of sin, pressuring Michael with the hypocrisy of his answers: “And all his works?” “And all his empty promises?” Maybe he calls for Kay to make an Insight check to see if she notices that something is wrong with Michael.

And that’s your basic structure of a mass assassination montage:

• Prompt micro-scenes by requesting preparations for the murders
• Declare the locations of the murder and prompt declaration of the murder
• Resolve the murders

If any of the PCs aren’t directly contributing to the murders, see if you can frame them into a scene that contrasts or thematically comments on the murders and then cut back and forth between that scene and the rest of the montage. (But this isn’t strictly necessary. It’s okay if only some of the PCs are participating in a particular montage.)

This structure points us towards the second secret of the RPG montage: In order to be an effective montage, the micro-scenes which make up the montage must have an overarching agenda — a question that the montage as a whole is seeking to answer. (In this case, the question would be, “Is the Corleone family successful in taking out all of the other dons?”) Without that unifying agenda, the montage will lack focus and purpose. It will just be a bunch of random stuff thrown in a blender (and you’d probably be better off resolving the elements of the montage separately).

This specific structure probably has limited usefulness, though, because how often are your players going to propose simultaneous mass murder in multiple locations?

(Don’t answer that.)

RUNNING THE INVESTIGATIVE MONTAGE

One response to this could be a GM-led montage. Here the GM basically uses the same technique, but instead of waiting for the players to say something like, “We’re going to try to murder all the dons simultaneously,” the GM initiates the montage by saying, “Okay, at this point you’re going to murder all the dons simultaneously.”

Of course, a GM-led montage doesn’t sound like the right decision in this case. The decision to murder a lot of people is obviously a really meaningful choice and skipping past that choice (effectively taking that choice away from the players and making it for them) is almost certainly problematic and very disruptive to the conversation of meaningful choices which is the fundamental principle of the RPG medium.

(In a storytelling game, your mileage might vary depending on how the narrative control mechanics are set up.)

This doesn’t, however, mean that GM-led montages are never a good idea in RPGs. A common counterexample is the investigative montage, the point in a detective story where there’s a bunch of different leads and legwork to pursue, so we get a montage of the heroes splitting up, investigating the shit out of it, and then coming back together with the insights and conclusions that drive us forward into the next chunk of plot. A GM-led montage (“Okay! It’s time to split up and do the legwork! Farida, how are you working the case?”) can work here because the context has already established that the PCs want to solve the mystery being investigated. The GM is pushing a structure for resolving that desire (and framing hard to do it), but he’s not taking the meaningful choice (“let’s investigate this mystery”) away from the players.

I actually spent a non-trivial amount of time trying to find the perfect cinematic or literary exemplar of an investigative montage for us to work from here, but I have been unsuccessful. (Even as I write this, the back of my brain is trying to sidetrack me by saying, “Wait! What about Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I bet we can track down a scene like this with the Scooby Gang! Let’s go spend the next twelve hours trolling through the DVDs!”)

It’s possible that this is a, “Beam me up, Scotty!” moment, where I’m convinced that scenes like this exist in film or television, but they really don’t. I suspect, though, that the reason I can’t find the exact scene haunting the corner of my mind’s eye is because most detective stories in other mediums feature a sole protagonist, so the typical investigative montage just features one guy doing a bunch of stuff in quick succession. But by the time I started looking for an example of this to reconstruct, the concept had already transmogrified itself in my mind into the group context of an RPG scenario.

Long story short: I’m not going to worry about it. I’m guessing you probably already know the type of scene I’m talking about, and if you don’t, then you’ll still find investigative montages useful.

The first thing you’ll want for an investigative montage is a list of montage revelations. This basically works exactly like the revelation list you create when using the Three Clue Rule, except that you’re not going to prep specific clues for each revelation. You’re just listing the things the PCs need to learn. These revelations should generally be leads (pointing towards more fully developed scenes) and there should be several of them (one for every two PCs seems to be a good amount). For example:

• One of the victims of the White Lotus assassins survived the attack. Her name is Lisa Cardo and she’s recuperating in a room at Elkhart General Hospital.
• The albino with the Solomonic tattoos the PCs spotted earlier is Vincent Estadio, a personal assistant to the Spanish ambassador.
• There’s an arms dealer named Dogmull who’s rumored to supply the White Lotus with their poisoned darts.

The investigative montage is then resolved in three steps:

• Each player chooses a line of investigation
• Each line of investigation is resolved (probably with a single action check)
• The GM uses the context of the PCs’ investigations to provide the montage revelations

The actual methods of investigation chosen by the players don’t specifically matter, as long as they’re logically things that a cop or private detective would do to turn up fresh leads. (This is basically a version of permissive clue-finding on methamphetamines, right?) Examples might include:

• Checking the casefile.
• Trying to track down that albino they saw earlier.
• Roughing up local crooks to make them spill information
• Analyzing samples of the White Lotus poison in the crime lab
• Putting surveillance on known associates of the White Lotus
• Talking to an old friend or other local contact

For each successful line of investigation, choose one of the montage revelations and then present a fast-paced, hard-hitting sequence that provides it. For example, the lab technician analyzes the White Lotus poison, recognizes a combination of rare chemicals and checks shipping records that indicate a suspected arms dealer named Dogmull has been importing the chemicals.

(You can either just cut away from failed lines of investigation, or maybe inflict some kind of consequence or complication from them. These can be mixed freely into the montage of the other results.)

If you have more successful lines of investigation then there are montage revelations, find ways to either split the revelation into separate parts which can be split up across multiple PCs and/or sequenced so that one PC’s investigation enables another’s. (If you just repeat the same revelation for multiple players, it’s disappointing and anti-climactic for the second player who gets the result.)

For example, the PC checking the casefile might see that there’s a victim named Lisa Cardo who survived the attack but has since vanished. Meanwhile, one of the local thugs being roughed up by another PC tells them that he heard a rumor the Lotus were going to axe a witness who’s being cared for over at Elkhart. (This is one revelation being split into separate parts that are discovered independently.)

Or: The lab technician analyzes the White Lotus poison and recognizes the rare chemicals. She sends out a text to the team, which another PC receives in the middle of questioning their local contact. They ask their contact about the chemicals, and he identifies Dogmull. (The lab technician’s discovery of the first part of the revelation enables the other PC’s investigation to complete the revelation.)

I recommend resolving all of the lines of investigation and THEN contextualizing the results. Among other things, this will make it easier to figure how to pace/structure the revelations.

SCALE OF THE MONTAGE

You can use this same basic technique at different scales. For example, you could use an investigative montage to either hunt Carmen Sandiego across an entire globe or run a CSI crew investigating a single crime scene.

At the smallest scales, you may discover that this becomes virtually indistinguishable from how you were previously resolving such scenes (asking each player what their character is doing, resolving those actions, synthesizing the narrative result, etc.). This can be a valuable insight for how you can set up and frame montages at larger scales.

You can also flip this around yet again for those situations where all the players want to jump in and have their character participate in a Search check. Rather than just letting them all roll their dice and taking the best result, slip into a montage technique and ask them to specify what distinct thing each of them is doing to contribute to the search. (Or, if they just roll reflexively, you can simply assume they’ve divided the task in your descriptions of the search’s outcome.) Rulings in Practice: Perception-Type Tests has a broader discussion of related techniques you might find useful here.

These, of course, are just two types of montages out of many. But I suspect the basic techniques of the RPG montage to remain fairly consistent to the principles we’ve established here. We’ll probably come back later and explore a few more varieties as part of the scenario structure challenge, too.

Go to Challenge #6

These rules are adapted from a published D20 sourcebook. My primary design goal here was to both streamline the system and increase its versatility by introducing the concept of faint taint (which allows the GM to use taint more frequently due to its lower stakes). I unified these rules with those for kaostech (which I’ll be presenting separately), and both of these are used in the Laboratory of the Beast Scenario.

BECOMING TAINTED

If a character remains exposed to a tainted place or object for more than 10 rounds, they must make a Fortitude check (DC 15) or immediately suffer 1 point of taint. In addition, if a character uses or wields a tainted object, they must make a Fortitude check (DC 15) or immediately suffer 1d3 points of taint.

For every 24 hours spent in a tainted place, or spent carrying a tainted object, a character must make a Fortitude saving throw. The base DC is 15 + 1 for every consecutive 24 hours of exposure. Multiple, simultaneous exposures (such as carrying a tainted weapon in a tainted place) increases the DC by +2 per additional source of exposure every 24 hours. If the character fails this saving throw, their taint increases by 1.

FAINT TAINT

Some objects and places are only faintly tainted. Characters exposed to such objects and places still risk becoming tainted themselves, but the risk is not as great.

A character who is exposed to a faintly tainted place or carries a faintly tainted object for more than 1 day must make a Fortitude save (DC 15) or immediately suffer 1 point of taint. In addition, the first time a character uses or wields a faintly tainted object, they must make a Fortitude save (DC 15) or immediately suffer 1 point of taint.

For every week spent in a faintly tainted place or carrying a faintly tinted object, a character must make a Fortitude save (DC 15) or suffer 1 point of taint. Unlike fully tainted objects and places, multiple or simultaneous exposure to faintly tainted objects or places do not increase the DCs of these checks.

TAINTED PLACES

When a character casts an evil spell in a tainted area, the caster is considered at +1 caster level for spell effects that depend on level. When a character casts a good spell in a tainted area, the caster is considered at -1 caster level for spell effects that depend on level. (This has no effect on spells known, spells per day, or highest level of spell available.)

Faintly tainted places have no effect on the casting of such spells.

DETECTING TAINT

The use of a detect evil spell can detect taint. It reveals itself as an oozing, purple pulsation within the blackish aura which normally detects the presence of evil. The strength of the aura depends on the amount of taint present:

• 1 taint point = Faint aura
• 2-4 taint points = Moderate aura
• 5-10 taint points = Strong aura
• 11+ taint points = Overwhelming aura

EFFECTS OF TAINT

A character’s taint score applies as a penalty to his Constitution and Wisdom scores. Thus, a character with a 16 Constitution and a 14 Wisdom who acquires a taint score of 4 has an effective Constitution of 12 and an effective Wisdom of 10. These penalties reflect the taint’s impact on the character’s physical and mental health. Characters who embrace taint (see below) and make use of it can ignore some of these penalties. These penalties are not treated as ability damage, ability drain, or any other penalty to an ability score that can be removed by magic.

The effects of the tainted character’s Constitution and Wisdom penalties can be experienced in many ways, depending on the level of taint. A character who has lost 25% of their Constitution to taint is mildly tainted. A character who has lost 50% of their Constitution is moderately tainted. A character who has lost 75% of their Constitution is severely tainted.

MILD TAINT EFFECTS:

• Occasional nausea or vomiting
• Pain in joints
• Hair goes white
• Mild paranoia
• Disorientation
• Increased aggressiveness
• Mild hallucinations
• Phlegmy, wracking cough
• Eyelid swells, obscuring vision
• Pale, grayish dead complexion
• Sunken eyes, cracked lips
• Skip seeps greasy, yellowish “sweat”
• Skin thickens, turns leathery

MODERATE TAINT EFFECTS:

• Bones begin to warp, thicken
• Black, lichen-like skin growth
• Reddened, burn-like sores
• Eye clouds or blood vessels break
• Lips shrink back from gums
• Gums swell, bleed, rot
• Bleeding from orifices
• Hair falls out
• Uncontrollable seizures
• Eruption of painful sores
• Sores ooze blood, pus, ooze
• Sores ooze spiders, insects, maggots
• Hear the voices of evil spirits
• Severe paranoia
• Fits of disturbing laughter
• Disregard of hygiene

SEVERE TAINT EFFECTS:

• Flesh of nose rots away
• Mutated, deformed extremities
• Spine twists, back hunches
• Severe warping of skeleton
• Skull enlarges and deforms
• Great, swollen growths on the body
• Lungs eaten away from the inside
• Eye falls out, leaving gaping socket
• Skin peels off in papery sloughs
• Fingers or toes begin to web and fuse
• Irresistable murderous rages
• Reduced to primitive beahvior
• Eats inedible or still-living things

IGNORING TAINT

Only undead and creatures with the evil subtype are unaffected by taint.

DEATH FROM TAINT

If a character’s Constitution score reaches 0 from the effects of taint, they die. 1d6 hours later, they rise as a hideous, evil creature under the control of the DM.

CLEANING TAINT

Taint can be removed in a number of ways, particularly through the use of spells.

• Remove curse and remove disease each reduce a taint score by 1 point, although they cannot reduce a taint score below 1.
• Heal reduces a character’s taint score by 1 point per three caster levels, but it cannot reduce a taint score below 1.
• Restoration reduces a character’s taint score by 1 point per four caster levels, but cannot reduce a taints score below 1.
• Greater restoration reduces taint by a number of points equal to the caster level of the cleric casting the greater restoration, it can also reduce a taint score to 0.
• Miracle or wish spells cannot remove taint except by duplicating the effects of other spells described here.

CLEANSING PLACES AND OBJECTS: Clerics may use hallow to remove the taint from an area, but it takes time. The spell must remain intact for a year and a day to remove the taint from an area. If, during that time, an opposing character casts unhallow on some or all of the area, the effort is lost and must be begun again.

Unintelligent items left in a hallowed area for a year and a day lose their taint. Items that have an intelligence score are cleansed as if they were characters.

TAINT-ABSORBING ITEMS: Some items can naturally absorb taint, either cleansing those affected by it (rare) or protecting those who carry them from taint (more common).

TAINTED FEATS

Tainted feats require that a character have at least 1 point of taint (as specified in the feat’s prerequisites).

CORRUPTED BODY [TAINT]

Prerequisites: 1 taint point

Benefit: You do not suffer any penalty to your Wisdom score as a result of the taint. However, you suffer twice the normal number of mutations.

Special: If you are ever completely cleansed of the taint, you may immediately choose another feat to replace Corrupted Body. A character with both the Corrupted Body and Twisted Mind feats suffers no penalties, mutations, or insanities from the taint.

MASTERY OF THE TAINT [TAINT]

Prerequisites: 5 taint points

Benefit: You have learned to use the taint within you to channel powerful magical energies. You cannot cast spells of the good and lawful types, but you cast chaos and evil spells at a +1 caster level. In a tainted area this bonus is doubled to a +2 caster level.

Special: This feat can be selected as one of the wizard’s bonus feats.

MASTERY OF THE TAINT, GREATER [TAINT]

Prerequisites: Mastery of the Taint, 10 taint points

Benefit: Your mastery of the taint has grown, allowing you to cast chaos and evil spells at +2 caster level and all other spells at +1 caster level. In a tainted area these bonuses are increased by one (+3 caster level for chaos and evil spells, +2 caster level for all other spells).

Special: This feat can be selected as one of the wizard’s bonus feats.

TAINTED EMBRACE [TAINT]

Prerequisites: 5 taint points

Benefit: You gain protection from good and protection from law as supernatural abilities.

TAINTED STRENGTH [TAINT]

Prerequisites: 4 taint points

Benefit: Your muscles and sinews have been infused with the taint, lending them unnatural strength even as your body rots from within. You gain a +2 bonus to Strength.

Special: Because your tainted strength requires the taint to corrupt your body, you cannot benefit from the Twisted Mind feat if you possess this feat.

TAINTED STRENGTH, GREATER [TAINT]

Prerequisites: Tainted Strength, 6 taint points

Benefit: You gain an additional +2 bonus to Strength (for a total bonus of +4).

TWISTED MIND [TAINT]

Prerequisites: 1 taint point

Benefit: You do not suffer any penalty to your Constitution score as a result of the taint. However, you suffer twice the normal number of insanities.

Special: If you are ever completely cleansed of the taint, you may immediately choose another feat to replace Twisted Mind.

A character with both the Corrupted Body and Twisted Mind feats suffers no penalties, mutations, or insanities from the taint.

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

When you’re drawing lines on a map, it can be very easy to see them as very neat divisions: You’ve got the elves over here and then the nagas over there. The sun-worshiping samurai are in this bit, with the Daejongist Empire tucked away on this peninsula. And the Goryō Kingdoms take up this big chunk to the north. If you’re in the kingdom of Taiyō, then you’re going to see a bunch of melanin castes. But if you’re over in the Daejongist Empire, you’ll have a bunch of shaman lords running around.

And nary the streams shall cross.

In the real world, of course, cultures blend at the borders and draw together into the melting pots. So the first thing you can do, if you’re near the border in your campaign world, is to reach across it and selectively draw in elements from over there. For example, in In the Shadow of the Spire, the city-state where the campaign takes place is located in Arathia (whose architecture is primarily Greco-Roman in influence), but it’s very near the border with the Vennoc Protectorates. Which is why you’ll see the faintly gothic architecture of the Vennocan style creeping into my descriptions of the city.

You can take this technique to the next level by thinking about how both cultures are shifted as a result of this cultural exchange: It’s not just that there are death shamans near the border of the Goryō Kingdoms, it’s that many of the ghosts in this region have learned to murder the animistic spirits and take their place like spiritual doppelgangers.

But the cultural penumbra of a people or nation is often more significant than that. Consider, for example, the region of Brittany in northern France. It’s called Brittany because in the 4th century people from Britain crossed the channel and created a colony. In the 5th and 6th century, this immigration by the British exploded as a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain.

Or look at Franconia, a region of Germany so-named because it was conquered by the Franks (the same Franks from whom France takes its name). Although the Frankish dominion of the region has been swept away by countless invasions and regime changes, that historical legacy nevertheless endures.

These vestigial or tributary realms not infrequently outlast their motherland, leaving them as a living tribute to a lost history.

There are a couple of ways that you can build this kind of dynamic cultural legacy into your campaign world.

First, you can meticulously plot out the entire history of your world, tracking invasions and cultural migrations and regime changes in the detail necessary to know that, for example, the Bakunawan serpent clans swept down the seven valleys of the Nauteka river delta, drove the Bathalan people to the west (where they warred with the proto-Daejongist civilization), and claimed the so-called lunar cities for themselves, only for those cities to become isolated when the Shwe Nabayan empresses seized the Celestial Throne and began a purge of the Bakunawans. Six of the seven lunar cities were destroyed during the Shadow Wars, and then all these lands were claimed by the kingdom of Taiyō as the wars came to an end. The province of Bakunawa remains, with the old city of Maiphai as its capital, its rocks riddled with the infamous wyrm-caverns, and its samurai favoring serpent-hilted swords.

But working out your fictional history to that level of detail, while fun, also takes a lot of work and time.

Once you know that this sort of pattern exists in history, though, you can skip the laborious steps and jump straight to the effect.

For example, if you’ve got a big old kingdom full of elves (or maybe a region where there’s lots of ruins from the Old Elven Empire), then you can look across a channel or a river or maybe even just a couple hundred miles away in a semi-arbitrary direction and… Yup, there’s Alvland. Probably filled with an anomalously large population of half-elves. (Most people have at least a hint of a point on the tips of their ears.)

Once you’ve placed one of these vestigial realms, of course, you’ll probably want to fill in some of the details about why it exists. In the case of Alvland, for example, it turns out that about six hundred years ago one of the crystal citadel-cities of the elves abruptly vanished from the sky, reappeared a couple hundred miles away, and crashed. After the initial catastrophe, during which the local populace swarmed to their aid, many of the elves chose to remain in the area and settle down.

(Hmm… I didn’t even know the elves used to have flying cities made out of crystal. I wonder what happened to the rest of them?)