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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 19A: Routing the Shuul

Ptolus - The Foundry

Tor had caught sight of Tee out of the corner of her eye. Tee, looking down the street, saw Tor give an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement. Tee gestured frantically down towards the front door, trying to make Tor understand that Shilukar was heading their way.

Let’s briefly review what brought us to this point.

First, back in Session 17, Shilukar managed to escape when the PCs raided his lair.

This was not the expected outcome: Once the PCs tracked down his lair, I’d assumed that Shilukar would be either captured or dead by the end of their raid.

Second, the PCs chose not to immediately take the Idol of Ravvan from Shilukar’s lair, considering it to be too dangerous for them to handle.

This was not the expected outcome: I’d assumed the PCs would loot the Idol. When they left it in situ, I was left scrambling and had to look at the totality of the scenario I had designed to figure out what would happen next.

The short version is that there was a third party that had been keeping Shilukar under observation and they took advantage of the unguarded lair to sneak in and grab the Idol. (I’d created this third party to satisfy the Three Clue Rule by providing one possible path the PCs could follow to Shilukar’s Lair. The PCs never followed the trail that would have taken them to this clue, but that didn’t mean the third party observers weren’t still there.)

The PCs wouldn’t directly cross paths with this third party until much, much later in the campaign, but it would ultimately result in the creation of a completely new scenario in Act II. If you’re reading this several years in the future, you can track where the Idol ends up, look at the campaign-transforming consequences that happen as a result, and kind of have your mind blown when you look back and realize it all boils down to this one decision.

Third, the PCs very cleverly think to hire Shim to find Shilukar.

Before this happened, I actually assumed that the PCs had basically completely failed here: Shilukar was in the wind and there was no clear path (or, at least, no prepared path) by which they could find him before the deadline he had given Lord Zavere expired. I assumed the next time they saw Shilukar, he would be a well-protected “guest” of Castle Shard.

(Another interesting decision the PCs make here at the dawn of Act II: To not tell Shim that they had lost their memories and to NOT hire him to investigate their period of lost time. I had really assumed that one or both of these things would happen, which would have potentially revealed a lot of new information about what they had been doing.)

Fourth, because the PCs had hidden their identities from Shilukar during Session 17, I had (for various reasons) concluded that Shilukar would blame the Shuul for the assault on his lair. As a result, I noted in the campaign status document for Session 18:

09/08/790: Shilukar is reported to have broken into a Shuul facility.

Shilukar also wanted his Idol back, and if he thought the Shuul had it I figured he would go looking for it.

As a result, however, when the PCs asked Shim to track down Shilukar, I looked at the totality of my notes, made some skill checks for Shim, and concluded that he must have somehow discovered the upcoming heist.

“I don’t know what you’re doing in Agnarr’s room, but Shilukar is planning to attack the Foundry in the Guildsman’s District in less than 30 minutes. If you want him before dawn, this will be your only chance.”

All of which ultimately brings us to the PCs staging a raid on the Foundry in order to capture Shilukar, who is simultaneously staging a raid on the Foundry.

Why the Foundry? Well, I hadn’t specified which Shuul facility Shilukar would have been attacking overnight. The Foundry, however, is the only Shuul facility which is thoroughly detailed in Monte Cook’s Ptolus, including – most importantly! – a map. When you’re faced with unexpectedly improvising an entire scenario in the middle of a session, it’s not bad practice to default to whatever tools you’ve already got at your fingertips.

So at this point I:

  • Grab my Shilukar stat block.
  • Go to page 186 of Ptolus and grab the map of the Foundry.
  • Go to page 133 of Ptolus and grab the stat blocks for the Typical Shuul Agent.

Ptolus - The Foundry (Map)

I look at the map and:

  • Since it’s the middle of the night, conclude that the Foundry is mostly shut down for the night.
  • Figure out what sort of guard the Shuul would place on the facility: Guards go here. A pair of patrols around the outside of the building.
  • Ask myself, “How would Shilukar broach these defenses?”

You saw the answers to these questions in Session 18C (which is when all this improvisation was going on).

At that point, I can turn things over to the players.

They sneak up and put the building under observation. They see the two patrols circling the building. Tee’s player asks me if there’s a blind spot in which she could sneak into the building. I look at the map: I’d decided the patrols were equidistant around the building to maximize their field of view, but because of how the warehouse sticks out on one side of the building… yeah, there’s an unusually long period during which neither patrol would have their eyes on that corner.

From this point forward, I’m just playing the scenario: I know what Shilukar will do. How do the Shuul respond to that? As the PCs take actions, how do all of my NPCs react to that? Having put the pieces into play, now I’m free to just live in the moment and see what happens.

FINISHING TOUCHES

Because we had to wrap for the night before the raid on the Foundry was finished, however, I was able to spend some time between sessions polishing things up. This was particularly relevant when it came to the lower level of the Foundry, which I was able to spend a few minutes fleshing out with a proper key.

In addition to being able to give some meaningful thought to what various projects the Shuul might be working on down there, this also gave me the opportunity to seed the Foundry basement with a number of clues pointing to other nodes in the campaign.

And as we’ve been discussing unforeseen outcomes and long-ranging consequences, consider the letter they find from Maeda to Brother Savane down there.

That letter doesn’t exist if the PCs don’t make some very clever choices to bring them some place I never thought they’d be. And it also probably doesn’t exist if the timing of the sessions had been a little different, the raid hadn’t been split up across two sessions, and I hadn’t gotten the extra prep time to write it up.

And it literally changes everything in the campaign.

This is Session 19. You can literally go to Session 119 and discover that the entire session is dependent on this letter existing and the decision Dominic makes as a result of it.

Ptolus - In the Shadow of the Spire
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 19A: ROUTING THE SHUUL

April 13th, 2008
The 8th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Elestra grabbed a couple of the rifles out of the crate she had pried open and handed one to Ranthir. Ranthir smiled. His magical skills were not yet very advanced, and so he had often felt like something of a sixth wheel whenever they had found themselves in a tight spot. The firepower he held in his hands now might help him to be something more than an observer.

Agnarr, thinking this was all a good idea, wedged his toe under one of the rifles that had fallen from the hands of the Shuul agents lying before him. With a quick jerk he flipped it up into his left hand, keeping his greatsword clenched in his right.

The Foundry was rocked by an explosion, accompanied by a massive gout of flame in the materials storehouse.

Ptolus - The ShuulThe two Shuul agents passing below Tee in the second foundry stopped in their tracks for a moment, frozen in shock. Then they began to turn back towards the front of the building…

Unfortunately, Ranthir’s reactions were faster. His ears recognized the aural hints that told him the explosion was a magical extrusion of primal fire, and he leapt towards the nearest door. Ripping it open he was confronted by the two Shuul agents. The agents arrested their turn and lowered their rifles at Ranthir. “Who are you?! Don’t move!”

Agnarr reacted quickly, shoving Ranthir out of the way and taking his place. “We’re friends! We’re trying to stop Shilukar!”

“Get out here!” (more…)

A Reflection on Gnomes

May 23rd, 2019

Gnomes in D&D.

I don’t understand why they exist.

It feels like we’ve spent 30+ years trying to figure out a way to make them meaningfully different from dwarves and pretty much failing except insofar as they are now sometimes halflings with pointy years.

Gnomes

(If you’re first thought was, “Dwarves have beards and gnomes don’t! They’re totally different!” you may want to bail out now. This is probably not the post for you.)

The best gambit was probably Dragonlance’s tinker gnomes, a memetic line of thought which culminates most distinctly with World of Warcraft. But it’s still lacking. Being technologically inclined isn’t exactly outside of the dwarven wheelhouse. Plus: A whole race that tinkers? Like, there are no gnome farmers? Or tax collectors? Or seamstresses?

World of Warcraft - Tinker Gnomes

So, without further ado, here’s a bevy of ideas for making gnomes unique enough to justify their existence.

MAKE THEM TINY. Like 1 to 1.5 feet tall. The size of a garden gnome. Playing them is now a unique experience compared to any other common PC race.

Murderous GnomeGNOMES DON’T ACTUALLY EXIST. They’re just dwarves who live outside instead of under the mountain. Your choice whether “gnome” is actually a racial slur or a self-embraced cultural identity. Or both.

HALF-SPECIES. The result of dwarves and halflings interbreeding. They really ARE just dwarves without beards and/or halflings with pointy ears.

(“3rd Edition halflings already have pointed ears!” That’s probably where the gnomes get it from, then.)

HALF-SIZED SPECIES. What if halflings are half-sized humans and gnomes are half-sized elves?

This raises questions. Is there an entire echelon of half-sized races? Like, sure, goblins are obviously the half-sized orcs. But where are the half-sized dwarves? Or are the dwarves actually the half-sized ones?

DWARVEN SUB-CULTURE. Sort of the equivalent of emo/goth teens. Gnomes are a youth cultural movement that shave their beards and get obsessed with gadgetry. Older dwarves try not to let their eyes roll out of their heads when talking about them.

GODDESS SHARDS

Long ago the Gods of Magic slew the Goddess of Science & Technology (which is why D&D-land no longer advances technologically and is suck in a perpetual Renaissance). The shattered shards of the Goddess fell to the earth and manifested as the manic, technology-obsessed gnomes.

Wing Kan - GnomeGnome farmers? They exist. But none of them just farm the earth in an orderly fashion. Every one of them has a unique scheme — elaborate hydroponic projects, subterranean growing caverns, legions of mechanical scurriers who harvest the fields like plague locusts.

Gnome tax collectors? The creepiest is probably the one who created a panopticon of clockwork tax-spiders who watch every transaction and exact their coin on the spot. What makes it worse is that the government they once served fell a generation ago and no one is entirely sure what the tax-spiders are doing with the taxes they collect any more.

Every gnome has a sliver of a dead goddess manifested in their brain. Every gnome constantly lives with the gibbering madness of her shattered, god-like consciousness whispering like a livewire as a commentary to their inner monologue.

Furthermore, inspired by Wing Kan’s art over there, I’ll also push the idea that gnomes are neon-hued in skin and hair. (Usually matching, but sometimes not for reasons gnomes struggle to explain.)

Isle of Dread

Not to be confused with hexcrawling, hex-clearing is the process by which monsters and other hostile forces were cleared out of a hex in preparation for a stronghold to be constructed. Clearing a hex was the first step towards bringing civilization to an uncivilized portion of the world. It was also the transitional point between the low-level activities of monster slaying and the high-level activities of realms management. It is one of the oldest game structures in D&D, yet I feel comfortable saying that probably 99% of all current D&D players have never done it.

In pursuit of a tangentially-related project, I decided to do a brief survey of the extant hex-clearing procedures in old school D&D. I offer them here in the thought that they might be of use to a wider audience.

OD&D HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 5 miles

  1. Referee rolls a die to determine if there is a monster encountered.
  2. If encountered monster is defeated or if no monster is encountered, the hex is cleared.
  3. Territory up to 20 miles distant from an inhabited stronghold may be kept clear of monsters once cleared.

AD&D HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 1 mile / 30 miles

CLEARING HEXES

  1. Make wandering monster check.
  2. If encountered monster is defeated or if no monster is encountered, the hex is cleared.

Once cleared, hexes will remain cleared, except:

  1. Once per day, check to see if a monster has wandered into an uncleared border hex.
  2. Once per week, check to see if one of these monsters has wandered into the cleared territory.

Patrols: If regular (1/week) patrols from a stronghold are made through a cleared territory, the check to see if a monster has wandered into a border hex is made only once per week.

CONSTRUCTING THE STRONGHOLD

  1. Must map and clear the central hex (location of stronghold) and six surrounding hexes.
  2. Unless 7 hexes are actively patrolled, there is a 1 in 20 chance per day that a monster will enter the area.

GYGAXIAN VAGUERY – PATROLS

Because Gygax was objectively terrible at writing rulebooks, the rules above are actually incomplete. They overlap with a different set of incomplete rules which directly contradict the first set of rules. If you use this second set of rules, a cleared hex that is being patrolled should be handled in this way:

  1. Once per week, check on the Uinhabited/Wilderness encounter table to see if a monster enters the cleared territory.
  2. Once per week, also check on the Inhabited table. Or, if there is a road, check three times on the Inhabited encounter table.

Zone of Civilization: If a territory is cleared to a 30 mile radius [should probably be 30 mile diameter, filling the large hex that the stronghold is at the center of], make ONLY the second type of checks, but ignore all unfavorable checks except once per month.

Reversion to Wilderness: If patrols are not kept up, the territory automatically reverts to wilderness status. “Unless the lands around it are all inhabited and patrolled” in which case “all of the unsavory monsters from the surrounding territory will come to make it a haven for themselves.” [So it won’t revert to wilderness, it will just really revert to wilderness.]

RULES CYCLOPEDIA – HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 8 miles / 24 miles

Clearing the Hex: You just… do it. “An area is considered clear when all significant monsters in the area have been killed, driven out, or persuaded (through bribery, threats, persuasion, or mutual-defense agreements) to leave the PC’s subjects alone.” There are no further guidelines.

Constructing the Stronghold: Clear the 8-mile hex in which the stronghold is being built.

Patrols: Cleared areas automatically remain free of monsters as long as they are patrolled.

  • Patrols can range 24 miles from a stronghold in clear terrain.
  • Jungles, swamps, and mountains require a garrison every 8 miles.

There are more detailed rules for dominion management, but they don’t really pertain to hex clearing.

EXPERT SET VARIATIONS

  • Hex scale is not clearly defined. (Isle of Dread, the sample adventure included in the set, uses 24 mile and 6 mile hexes.)
  • Patrol ranges are limited to 18 miles and 6 miles (instead of 24 miles and 8 miles).
  • The 18 mile limit of patrols matches the 18 miles an encumbered character can travel on foot in a day. The Rules Cyclopedia oddly maintains the same rule for determining overland movement rates (divide by 5 to determine the number of miles a character can travel over clear terrain per day, and therefore 90’ divided by 5 = 18 miles per day), but the Traveling Rates By Terrain table doesn’t follow that rule and instead uses values calculated to divide evenly into hexes (so an encumbered character only travels 12 miles per day in clear terrain).

JUDGES GUILD – HEX-CLEARING

Hex Scale: 5 miles

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Judges Guilds’ hexcrawl procedures and management had a major impact on the game. Virtually all of OD&D’s hexcrawling procedures, for example, were abandoned by AD&D in favor of systems clearly drawing from Judges Guild material. This was somewhat less true when it comes to hex-clearing, but I thought reviewing the material from the Ready Ref sheets might be useful. In this case, it largely was not:

Constructing the Stronghold: Clear 4 hexes radiating from the stronghold’s hex.

Patrols: Automatically keep hexes clear of monsters, except for mountains, swamps, and dense woods.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 18C: The Smoke of the Foundry

Sun Tzu said:

If large numbers of trees move, they are approaching. If there are many [visible] obstacles in the heavy grass, it is to make us suspicious. If the birds take flight, there is an ambush. If the animals are afraid, [enemy] forces are mounting a sudden attack.

Back in Session 13 I discussed the value of having a toolkit of basic tactical techniques in your back pocket as a Game Master. The headline for that essay was “Simple Simulatonist Tactics,” and the reason I did that is because I believe that the Game Master’s tactical acumen is not necessarily limited to the diegetic tactics of their NPCs.

Sun Tzu - The Art of WarIn other words, the tactical techniques you use as a GM don’t always map to what would purely constitute tactics in the real world. You can think of tactics as being the techniques by which you achieve your desired effect upon the battlefield: In the real world / simulationist play, the desired effect is usually victory. (Often the method used is to manipulate your opponents’ thoughts and their decisions – see the Battles of Trebia and Cannae, for example – but ultimately you goal is victory.)

In dramatist and gamist play, however, your tactical choices as the GM may be made to achieve ends other than victory. Instead, you use tactics to achieve either dramatic effects or to create interesting challenges.

For example, the combat system in D&D 4th Edition is heavily designed to create My Perfect Encounters™. These encounters are balanced on a razor’s edge in order to create a gamist tactical challenge, and in order for the game to work properly the GM needs to make tactical choices appropriate to that paradigm.

When I was playing the D&D Gamma World version of this ruleset, for example, I once forgot what system I was using and had the bad guys perform a tactical retreat from a combat they were losing and seek reinforcements: This completely unbalanced the precarious encounter balance of 4th Edition and resulted in a near-TPK. (You can read a fully playtest report here.)

Even when a system isn’t mechanically tying your hands like this, though, you can still make decisions like this: It would be more interesting, from a gamist perspective, to fight the Big Bad Guy in his stronghold, so he won’t come charging out from his sanctum to save his minions. It’s dramatically more interesting to fight a sequence of elementally-themed bad guys, even if it would make more sense for the bad guys to form mixed-force tactical groups. And so forth.

HEAR THE REINFORCEMENTS

Here’s a simple dramatist tactical technique your can add to your toolkit: Letting the PCs hear the reinforcements coming.

(To be clear: This is certainly something that can arise naturally out of simulationist play – as the result of opposed Listen and Stealth checks, for example – but if the GM is specifically choosing to let the PCs hear the reinforcements coming order to create effect, that’s a dramatist decision.)

This is a great technique because it gives the players a space in which to make decisions that aren’t possible when the reinforcements just burst into the middle of the encounter: How can they prepare for what’s coming? Is there a way that they can delay the arrival of the reinforcements? Do they take the opportunity to withdraw before the reinforcements arrive? Do they pull out some heavy guns to clear their current opponents? And so forth.

One of the Shuul who had been in the front hall, satisfied that Tor and Dominic were pacified, turned and headed back through the hall and into the materials storehouse. Two more turned and headed into the second foundry, directly below Tee’s feet. In the sudden silence pervading the Foundry, Tee could hear their footsteps echoing ominously below her…

You don’t really get the Platonic ideal of, “Oh shit! There are more goblins coming!” in this multi-faceted conflict between the PCs, Shilukar, and the Shuul, but there are numerous examples of how auditory cues of what’s happening elsewhere can affect the immediate battlefield.

In this case, the basic technique of hearing the reinforcements coming is being complicated through the more advanced techniques of crossovers. In practice, this single battle is being treated as several different encounters, with things happening in one battle crossing over (often through those auditory cues) into the other encounters. (The proximity of those encounters also means that characters – particularly the NPCs – are often rushing between one encounter and another.)

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