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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 13C: The Tale of Itarek

This is not the first time that I’ve shared the Tale of Itarek here at the Alexandrian. Several years ago it appeared as a Tale From the Table. I was motivated to pluck this particular story out because of the great impression it had made on both myself and my gaming group. It was a truly significant event, and one which still lives large in our shared memory of the campaign more than a hundred sessions later.

I’ve been asked, in the past, about what the story behind the Tale of Itarek was. Sometimes these queries come colored with a clear subtext: Why did you plan for this to happen? And how did you manage to actually make it happen at the table?

If you’re familiar with literally everything else I’ve ever written about running a game, you probably won’t be shocked to discover that the answers are (a) I didn’t and (b) I didn’t.

There’s not really anything “hiding” behind the events depicted in the campaign journal: Elestra’s desperate need to save her python gave birth to the Tragedy at the Door, which saw the party get absolutely brutalized by Morbion’s area effect spells. (It’s pretty rare in classic D&D for me to see an enemy spellcaster get a chance to dump their entire spell list into the PCs; Morbion did it before taking any damage himself.) Poor skills mixed with unfortunate skill checks turned the rope into an impassable barrier, preventing the group from retreating. Their panic caused their communication and coordination to fall apart, allowing them to be picked off one by one.

When Dominic was the only character left, it wasn’t because I’d put my thumb on the scale. It was because everybody else had lost all their hit points. The campaign really was a hairsbreadth away from ending in a TPK, and the whole table knew it. You could have cut the tension with a knife.

So, no, I didn’t plan this.

I also wasn’t the one who came up with the idea of healing Itarek. That was Dominic. Dominic knew he had no chance at winning a duel with Morbion and no path of escape. He needed a champion, so he picked one from the limited options he had available to him.

I will take credit for having Itarek issue a formal challenge to Morbion. Without that particular point of inspiration on Itarek’s part, Morbion would have simply snuffed out Dominic and Itarek wouldn’t have lasted long.

That’s how these things work, right? Emergent narrative from the unexpected interstices of independent creative impulses.

(Couldn’t I have just decided to not have Morbion attack Dominc? Technically, yes. But in every important way, no.)

Once Itarek issued his challenge, the outcome still wasn’t certain. Dominic barely managed to keep Itarek on his feet from round to round by outpacing the damage Itarek was dealing out. (If Morbion still had his most powerful spells it would have gone differently; of course, if he still had his most powerful spells the party wouldn’t have been in this situation.)

Intriguingly, I have had two different people with reactions to this story ranging from irate to outright anger that I would “do this” to my players. “Bad form in any system”as one of them said.

Intriguing because, as I noted, my own players consider this one of the true highlights of the campaign. (And there are plenty of other people who can read this story and seem to appreciate what an awesome moment it was.) I think this reveals a fundamental difference in perception between players who have taken (and have had the opportunity to take) ownership of their actions versus those who are force fed material by the GMs. I’ve talked in the past about the penumbra of problems created by railroading techniques – the literally crippling weight that a GM is forced to carry when they take on sole responsibility for everything experienced by the PCs. This is an example of that: When faced with a situation that has gone pear-shaped, players who have taken responsibility for their own actions will become ecstatic and feel a great sense of achievement when they manage to work their way out of it. Those who have been conditioned to believe that the GM is feeding them pre-packaged content are likely to instead become upset that the GM has miscalculated and given them something “too tough” which knocked them all out of the action.

There’s some other version of this campaign where these two rooms and the handful of bad guys keyed to them are largely unremarkable. And that’s okay, because in that other version of the campaign there’s almost certainly some completely different moment which those other-dimensional versions of my players remember as being an incredible, never-rending crucible which, in this dimension’s version of the campaign, passed in a fairly pedestrian fashion.

One final peek “behind the campaign journal” here: Dominic doesn’t speak Goblin.  Since everyone else was unconscious, the players did not initially know what Itarek was saying to Morbion. Their exchange – clearly portentous and meaningful – was a mystery to them. It wasn’t until I wrote up the campaign journal (and a dramatic re-enactment of the scene at the beginning of the next session) that the full story of what had happened was revealed to the players.

I think that enigma may have played a small, but significant, role in why this particular moment lived large in their imaginations. Always leave them wanting more, right?

(Although the electric thrill of surviving a near-death experience shouldn’t be undervalued.)

Ptolus - In the Shadow of the Spire

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 13C: THE TALE OF ITAREK

December 16th, 2007
The 1st Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The fire bathed him and cleansed him and brought the cairn-dark to his eyes. The bane-doom of his clan had come to rest upon his shoulders, too. The memories of the caves passed before him, and he traveled the Long Hall to the Mysteries of the Plain.

But as he journeyed down the Long Hall, he saw before him two figures. And one had the form of a man with golden skin. And the other was that of a great snake with silver scales and gossamer wings.

And the figures spoke to him thus, with voices of conjoined chorus: “Turn back, Itarek Clan-Warrior. This hall is no place for the quick.”

And Itarek answered thus: “But my place is upon the Green Fields of our Lost Fathers, for I am dead, my liege-lords.” And he fell to his knees and bowed his head, for they seemed to him now to be great chieftains.

At this the golden-skinned warrior laughed and the silver snake spoke again, this time its voice seeming no more than a whisper: “How can you be dead, Itarek Clan-Warrior? For you yet breathe.”

And at the words breath burst in Itarek’s chest and the blood beat through his veins. The figures seemed to step behind a veil, the Long Hall faded into shadow, and he opened his eyes once more upon the heart of the bane-doom.

The heroes of the world above had fallen. Their broken bodies lay scattered upon the floor. Only the Holy Man of the Forgotten Gods remained, and Itarek understood now that the strength had been restored to his limbs and the breath to his body only through the divine grace that flowed through the faith of this man. And Itarek felt that faith being born in his own blood. He felt it beating through his own heart.

Now, beyond the Holy Man he saw the bane-bearer Morbion and, at his side, a demon of corrupted flesh. He saw, too, that the Holy Man wavered upon the bloody brink of death. His fingers tightened upon his sword. His legs beat down upon the floor and he rose.

Itarek stepped forward and lowered his sword. “Morbion!” he cried. “I name you Kinslayer and Clanbane. I utter clan-curse upon you. And in the name of those you have killed and those you have corrupted, I give you the challenge of the clan.”

“Do you think me still bound by your mortal law?” Morbion said, and his voice was cold ash. With a flick of his wrist, the bane-bearer sent his demon forward – a mavering maw of muscular death.

Itarek thrust forth his sword, and impaled the demon upon it. “Bane you may be,” he said. “But in your chest still beats a goblin heart.”

And he wrenched free his blade. The demon fell dead at his feet, and in the eyes of Morbion the flickering flame of anger was kindled. Itarek saw it. He knew it. And it gave him hope, for now his vain words rang true in his own ears: Strange and blighted Morbion may have become, but he was not beyond the ken of blade or the bite of steel.

Morbion came forth and the tentacles of his corruption beat upon Itarek. But Itarek did not fear them. Behind him, the Holy Man remained upon his knees and Itarek could hear the murmur of his prayer and could feel the golden strength of it flowing into his limbs. It knit his wounds and soothed his pain.

“Bane you may be, but in your chest still beats a goblin heart!” he cried again. He raised his sword and brought it low. And at its passing, one of the corrupt tendrils fell free and flew from the back of Morbion.

Morbion cried in rage: “I have forsaken your ways!”

And Itarek answered with sword and word: “Forsworn you may be, but oaths there are that must be kept!”

And another tendril fell. And Itarek saw that, like his sword, his words had found their mark – for Morbion paid no mind to the priest or his prayers, and all his hate was bent upon Itarek alone.

And for this Itarek was glad, for he was sure that without the prayers of the priest he would be lost. Fast with blade he might be, but no speed could match the terrible might of Morbion.

Even then, as if to mock his thought, Morbion bore down upon him and drove him to the floor. His twin tendrils closed about Itarek’s throat and he laughed, “Did you think to stop me? Know that the Galchutt shall awaken! Know that all hope is lost!”

Through the red blackness that blurred his vision, Itarek looked up with bloodshot eyes. Through bruised and bloodied lips, he smiled. Through choked voice, he laid his sooth: “In darkness you may be lost, but the fires of our clan will light your way.”

And the prayers of the Holy Man beat upon him and spurred him. In that prayer he found his strength.

And now Morbion fell back before him and the anger in his eyes turned to fear.

“In the fires of our clan, your limbs shall burn, your blood shall boil, and your soul shall die!” And Itarek thrust his blade deep into the chest of Morbion.

The Bane-Bearer and Kinslayer and Clanbane fell. And his final breath was a warning and a curse: “The chaos comes. There is no hope…”

And Itarek turned his eyes from him and looked upon his fallen comrades and he wept.

NEXT CAMPAIGN JOURNAL

So you’re a GM who wants to run a new gaming system. Maybe you’re a little intimidated because it’s more complex than anything you’ve run before. Maybe it’s your first time prepping to run a game you Infinity RPG - Lead Designer: Justin Alexanderhaven’t previously played. Maybe it’s just something new.

In any case, you want the process to go smoothly. And you want to make as few mistakes as possible. (Although Step #0 is really accepting that mistakes will happen, and that’s okay. That’s part of the process.)

Step #1: Read the Rulebook. Cover to cover. I’m afraid there’s no cheating around this and no shortcuts. If you’re lucky, the RPG you’ve chosen will have a well-organized rulebook, but the process of mentally “touching” every page of the book will not only prevent you from missing a rule entirely, it will also begin constructing a mental map of the rulebook which will allow you to look up information inside it more quickly.

Step #2: Cheat Sheets. Make a cheat sheet. It’s real easy to fake mastery of a rule system when you have it all laid out six inches in front of your face. The act of creating a cheat sheet also enhances your own learning process: It involves “touching” every part of the system a second time, and also requires you to mentally engage with that system and really understand what makes it tick. (A lot of RPGs are also terrible when it comes to technical writing, and the act of boiling a messy text down into a clear cheat sheet will also result in you pre-resolving difficult cruxes that would otherwise booby trap you during play.) The cheat sheet will also often suss out those weird rules that RPG manuals leave lying about in dank corners.

Step #3: Run a One-Shot. If I’m interested in running a long-term campaign in a given system, I’ll virtually never start by jumping directly into that campaign. I’ll run a one-shot (usually with pregens). It allows both me and the players to work out the kinks, and the players gain a lot of valuable context when it comes time for creating their long-term characters.

Step #4: Co-Opt Player Expertise. Do so in every way you can. That includes, “Bob, can you look up the rule for pugilating people?” It also includes defaulting to, “Anybody know the rules for pugilating people?” (instead of defaulting to looking it up yourself). There’s sneakier stuff, too, like, “I can’t figure out how to beat the PCs when they use ability X. So I’m going to design a bunch of bad guys who use ability X, and I’ll see how the players deal with it.”

Step #5: Rules Highlight Sessions. This is something I originally discussed in Random GM Tips: Running the Combat, but for any game with a lot of specialized sub-systems, I’ll very specifically design sessions which highlight a particular sub-system so that we can, as a group, get a lot of focused repetition using it. Often groups struggle with these sub-systems because they only come up once every four or five sessions, which means every time they come up you’ve forgotten the last time you muddle through them and you end up muddling through them again. Having problems with grappling? A whole scenario based around grasping gorillas and their pet pythons will usually lock those rules in for the group. You’ll have increased expertise across the entire group.

Step #6: Set a Reference Time Limit. If you find yourself getting frequently bogged down in the new rules, set a time limit. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for in 30 seconds (or 60 seconds or whatever feels right to you), make an arbitrary ruling and move on. Be open and clear about what you’re doing with the players, and make a note to review those rules after the session. Then, before the next session, review the correct rules with the group.

Step #7: Identify Your Hierarchy of Reference. This is something I originally discussed in the Art of the Key, but you should try to prep your scenario notes so that everything you personally need is on the page. (This can tie in well with #5.) Where the system cheat sheet gives you the core rules at your fingertips, this technique puts the relevant class abilities, superpowers, creature features, and similar character-specific abilities that are pertinent to the current situation at your fingertips. Over time, recognize when you’ve mastered certain material so that you can refocus your notes on just the stuff that you need now (i.e., “I now know what the Spring Attack feat does, so I can stop copy-pasting that into the NPC stat blocks.”)

Teddy Roosevelt - Smithsonian African Expedition

When running a globetrotting historical Trail of Cthulhu game — whether set in the 1890’s, the 1920’s, or the 1930’s — it’s not unusual for the investigators to find themselves trekking out into the wilderness, akin to those expeditions described by H.P. Lovecraft in The Shadow Out of Time or At the Mountains of Madness.

Trail of Cthulhu: Mythos Expeditions - Pelgrane PressPelgrane Press has actually published an entire collection of such scenarios in Mythos Expeditions, which I understand to also include a rather robust set of rules for organizing and running such expeditions. I’m afraid I don’t actually own that particular volume, and the rules you’ll find here are unrelated to whatever full-fledged mechanics you might find there. What I wanted/needed was a relatively streamlined set of mechanics that could be used to meaningfully organize expeditions as part of a larger campaign in which they were not necessarily the primary focus, but nevertheless a significant part.

EXPEDITIONS

These guidelines assume a modest, personal expedition consisting of a fairly typical group of investigators, perhaps one or two local guides, and their porters. They’re not appropriate for larger groups, industrial-scale explorations, or military expeditions into the wilderness (although adapting them to such might not require too much effort).

SUPPLIES: The supplies for an expedition require a 1-point Credit Rating spend per week of supplies.

PORTERS: The expedition requires 1 porter per investigator, plus 1 porter per guide. It generally costs a 1-point Credit Rating spend per porter, but Bargain reduces the total cost by 1-point. A 1-point Bargain spend halves the total Credit Rating cost for porters.

If an expedition will last for more than three weeks, the number of porters must be doubled (due to the increased number of supplies to be carried).

GUIDES

In broad terms, a guide will provide a pool of Outdoorsman points (and other expertise which may or may not be useful). In certain circumstances, guides may also possess specific navigational knowledge (i.e., the location of a “lost” locale or local watering holes) or other advantages (friendship with local, usually hostile tribes).

TRACKLESS WASTE: Navigating through a trackless waste is not trivial. It requires a 1-point Outdoorsman spend simply to navigate out of the waste. (For example, getting to the Atlantic coast from the midst of the Amazonian jungle.) Getting to a specific point of your choosing is a 2-point Outdoorsman spend.

However, a map or compass each counts as a 1-point Outdoorsman spend. (So if you have the Outdoorsman skill, a map, and a compass, you can get to a specific point of your choosing without any spend.)

FINDING A “LOST” LOCALE: Sometimes you don’t actually know the specific point at which you can find whatever it is you’re looking for. (For example, you might be searching for the lost city of Irem.) For each week of the expedition, the expedition rolls 1d6. Assuming the location actually exists and is in the region they’re searching for it, they’ll find it if the die rolls “6”.

The Investigators and their guides can spend points to enhance the search. For every 3 points spent, they can roll an additional d6. Such spends could come from Outdoorsman, Archaeology (analyzing ruins throughout the area), Anthropology, Oral History (questioning locals), or any other skill for which a logical purpose can be proposed. (This will be highly dependent on the particular circumstances of the specific locale being searched.)

INTERPRETERS

Whether on an expedition or not, any Investigator without an interpreter who cannot speak local languages must make 1-point spends with Interpersonal abilities that would otherwise function without a spend. Acquiring an interpreter generally requires Bargain or Streetwise.

Acquiring an interpreter without Assess Honesty may result in hiring an unreliable fellow. Such an interpreter may do something that could inconvenience or even harm their employer (abandoning them, stealing from them, warning local cultists, etc.).

OTHER CONCERNS

Depending on where the expedition is located, it may be appropriate to use a Heat track (or similar environmental impact mechanic). Investigators who insist on hauling large quantities of explosives into the outback will find themselves saddled with additional logistical concerns.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 13B: The Tragedy at the Door

Sun Tzu said:

To cross mountains follow the valleys, search out tenable ground, and occupy the heights. If the enemy holds the heights, do not climb up to engage them in battle. This is the way to deploy an army in the mountains.

The army likes heights and abhors low areas, esteems the sunny [yang] and disdains the shady [yin]. (…) You must quickly get away from deadly configurations of terrain such as precipitous gorges with mountain torrents, Heaven’s Well, Heaven’s Jail, Heaven’s Net, Heaven’s Pit, and Heaven’s Fissure. Do not approach them. When we keep them at a distance, the enemy is forced to approach them. When we face them, the enemy is compelled to have them at their rear.

When on the flanks the army encounters ravines and defiles, wetlands with reeds and tall grass, mountain forests, or areas with heavy, entangled undergrowth, you must thoroughly search them because they are places where an ambush or spies would be concealed.

I was originally going to write that a lot of emphasis has been given recently to creating “dynamic terrain” or “tactically rich environments” or “interesting areas” or whatever other term somebody has decided to hang on the concept (all of which are just euphemisms for “two guys standing next to each other in an open field beating on each other is really boring”). But then I realized that this emphasis has actually been going on for like 10-15 years, which I suppose means it doesn’t really qualify as “recent” any more.

(Get off my lawn.)

What I will say to all you whippersnappers is that I think this has become significantly over-emphasized. This includes My Precious Encounter™ design where GMs become obsessed with creating the “perfect” encounter terrain, filled with all kinds of pre-programmed tactical features. It also includes the strange, Rube Goldbergian edifices that I’ve seen spring up where you need to mechanically “tag” the battlefield like some kind of amateur graffiti artist so that the characters can use a whole ‘nother set of mechanics in order to “invoke” the tags in order to (usually) gain some prepackaged, generic effect. Or, worse yet, you custom-build mechanical interfaces into every tag so that the players can dock into them with keywords or some such.

Gah.

Rube Goldberg - Napkin Machine

Basically, what I’m saying is that if this is how you’re achieving dynamic terrain in your games, then you’re really over-thinking the whole thing.

Just create realistic, detailed locations and then have your bad guys use them logically. (Or insanely awesomely depending on circumstance and genre.)

You don’t need to drape mechanics over it. The staircase can just be a staircase. You don’t need to pre-tag it with the “Banisters” property so that people can slide down them. And I’d argue that you shouldn’t spend a lot of time pre-planning the stunts your Triad martial artist mooks are going to be performing, because the fight might just as easily happen in the next room or the PCs might just blow them all up with a grenade before the fight even starts.

In fact, rather than trying to nail everything down and covering it with an encrustacean of extruded mechanics, I tend to embrace the largely opposite approach as championed by Robin D. Laws:

In Feng Shui, you want to be able to decide on the spur of the moment that there just happen to be awnings hanging over that walkway between buildings, or there is indeed a ledge big enough for that hoodlum to jump off of. (…)

An alternative to maps are color pictures from magazines. Travel or architectural magazines often have excellent photos which you can use as the basis of your set design. You can show these to your players to help visualize where their characters are, and they will stimulate the imaginative process instead of hampering it.

If a player says they want to slide down the banister, then unless the staircase was explicitly established as not having a banister, then it almost certainly does now. (And if that’s case, why would I need to not only spell that out in my notes, but also dump a bunch of mechanics into it? See what I’m saying?)

EASIER SAID THAN DONE

It is, of course, really easy to just say, “Describe terrain and then be awesome with it!” And with thirty years of experience, maybe I am overestimating how easy it is to do this in practice for people who haven’t done it before.

Feng Shui 2 - Robin D. LawsBut I will say this: It’s a skill and it will improve with practice. And all that mechanical over-engineering? It’s not practice for this skill. It’s a completely different thing.

And here’s my super secret technique for creating dynamic terrain:

  1. Try not to describe empty spaces.
  2. Think about how the space is actually used.
  3. Make sure to include the third dimension. (Both up and down.)
  4. Create chokepoints.
  5. During the actual fight, think about the unintended ways in which characters can affect the environment and vice versa.

That’s basically it. If you find that you’ve jotted down an empty, featureless room in your notes (or conjure up that visual while improvising on-the-fly during play), second guess that impulse.

If you’re looking for inspiration, think about why the room exists: What purpose is it currently being used for? (Or was being used for if the area has been abandoned.) What furniture would be there? What physical shape would the space possess? What decorations or accoutrements would people put here?

Finally, remind yourself that your map may be two-dimensional, but the game world isn’t.

This last point, almost entirely by itself, can carry a lot of the heavy weight when it comes to dynamic terrain. You can see an example of that in this session, when the PCs get trapped trying to descend and ascend the sinkhole. That one tactical reality pretty much defines the entire encounter (which is one of the most memorable of the entire campaign for the group). There was a similar example back in Session 11, actually, where there was a short ten or fifteen foot drop down into the fungal garden corrupted by sickstone.

“Okay,” you say, “but what if the group is outside and there are no walls and they’re in the desert or the prairie or some other vast, wide open space?”

Well, in that case the point of interest is the vast, wide-open space. What does that distance do to the combat (particularly the initial encounter range) compared to the claustrophobic knife fights that most RPG combat tends towards?

Just don’t do it all the time, because anything repeated often enough will become boring. Find a box canyon or something. Or just throw a couple of hills up. (Ask Paullus and Varro what can be done to you with a couple of hills.)

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