Bringing the group together during Session 0 can take a lot of forms, but it ultimately boils down to figuring out why this specific group of PCs is going to stick together and go on adventures / solve mysteries / get in trouble / work with each other week after week.

Whatever the modus operandi of the campaign might be, one of the most reliable ways to make this happen is for the PCs to have existing relationships with each other: If they’re family, friends, and/or coworkers, then they’ll care about each other, routinely be in the same place together, and/or be pursuing the same goals. That makes it a lot easier to explain why they’re all at the ski lodge where the murder happened or taking a freelance contract to raid the Salem-Watts biolabs.

The nice thing is that you don’t need all of the PCs to have the same relationships with each other, nor does every PC need a direct relationship with every other PC. As long as there’s a web of relationships weaving everyone together, the events of the campaign will slowly draw everyone closer and closer to each other.

The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game had an ingenious method for setting up these relationships which was, sadly, stripped out of the current Dresden Files Accelerated version of the game. Fortunately, it can be easily adapted to almost any game and setting.

SHARED HISTORY

Once the players have created their characters and have a firm grasp on who they are, you can plug this module in by creating an Adventure for each PC.

Note: This assumes, of course, that the start of the campaign won’t be the PCs’ first rodeo: They’ll be coming to the table with some experience under their belts.  If that isn’t the case, then you may need to make some adjustments. (For example, maybe the campaign takes place on the UCLA campus. Rather than adventure, you could create a Freshmen Year event for each PC, establishing some big, dramatic event that happened to them.)

To begin creating your PC’s adventure, start by grabbing a notecard. This will be your adventure card.

STEP 1: TITLE

Write a title for your adventure at the top of your adventure card. If you’re having trouble coming up with a cool title, think about books, movies, and short stories from the same genre as the campaign and then give them a twist:

• The Bourne Identity could become The Sampson Identity.
• Gone With the Wind could, with a twist to both noun and verb, become Arrival by Sea.
• The Lord of the Rings, by similar process, becomes The Duke of Swords.
• Escape from New York just needs a location shift to become Escape from Casablanca.

Alternatively, you might use any of these simple title formulas:

• The [Adjective] [Noun] (e.g., The Black Prince or The Remarkable Mr. Smith)
• The [Noun] of the [Place] (e.g., The Anxiety of Mars or The Uncle of London)
• They [Verb] (e.g., They Dream or They Hunt)
• A [Noun] [Past-Tense Verb] (e.g., A Crow Murdered or A Funeral Bound)
• The [Adjective] and [Adjective] [Noun] (e.g., The Macabre and Tragic Vision or The Gruesome and Forgotten Murder)

You can also create your own title formulas like this by taking many existing titles and breaking them down by word type.

Like any title, your goal is to create something evocative and intriguing. You might already have a premise in mind for your adventure (as described in Step 2) and craft your title to it; but starting with a cool title and then figuring out what the adventure for it is can be equally effective.

STEP 2: ADVENTURE PREMISE

Next, write down a simple premise for your adventure. The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game suggests this template:

When [something happens], [your protagonist] [pursues a goal]. But will [your protagonist] succeed when [antagonist provides opposition]?

For example:

When SpaceX engineers start turning up dead with blood streaming from their eyes, Jack Hammer is hired to discover the dark truth. But will Jack Hammer succeed when it becomes clear Elon Musk wants to shut the investigation down?

But there are a lot of different premises you could use. For example, S. John Ross’ Big List of RPG Plots is a fantastic resource, including entries like:

MANHUNT

Someone is gone: they’ve run away, gotten lost, or simply haven’t called home in a while. Somebody misses them or needs them returned. The PCs are called in to find them and bring them back.

Which can give you a premise like this:

Duchess Scarlet Madara is kidnapped from the Cannes Film Festival! Jack Hammer is at the festival attending the opening of a film written about his life. Can he solve the case even while standing in the limelight?

In writing up your premise, make sure your character’s role in the story is clear and phrase the conclusion as a question, leaving the ultimate outcome uncertain. You’ll also want to keep it short: ideally no more than two or three sentences.

STEP 3: GUEST STAR

Everyone should now read their character’s adventure premise out loud and place their notecard in the center of the table. Then, taking turns in whatever manner seems appropriate, everyone should select an adventure belonging to a different PC. (Alternatively, everyone could pass their card to the left. Or you could shuffle the cards and deal them out randomly.)

However the decision is made, you should now be holding the notecard for an adventure starring a PC other than your own. Your character will now be guest starring in this adventure!

To do this, simply add one or two sentences to the card explaining your character’s supporting role in the story. When brainstorming your contribution, it can be a good idea to talk things over with the player of the starring character and make sure you’re both on the same page and happy with the outcome. Your character should be significant — either complicating the situation or aiding the protagonist (or possibly both) — but not usurping the role of main character. (You don’t want to be a Mary Sue.)

It can be useful to think of a single dramatic situation involving your character, the protagonist, and, optionally, the antagonist(s). For inspiration, you might want to check out Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti. (You can find of Polti’s original book here, but it may be easier to consult of the hundreds of summary lists scattered around the internet to glean the essential idea.)

For example, one of Polti’s dramatic situations is:

13. ENMITY OF KINSMEN

“Hatred of one who should be loved” is a powerful antithesis.

(…)

(3) Hatred Between Relatives for Reasons of Self-Interest: “La Maison d’Argile” (Fabre, 1907). Example from fiction: “Mon Frere” (Mercereau).

Which might lead you to:

Rick Cuthain, the bastard brother of Duchess Scarlet who has always resented her, is the #1 suspect of the Gendarmerie! But after convincing Jack Hammer of his innocence, Rick helps him discover Scarlet’s connections to the strange Cult of Serpents.

Once you’ve added your character to the adventure card, take a moment to jot down the title and other details in your own character’s background. This is, after all, part of their story, too! Note, for example, how Rick’s player has discovered not only a sister, but an entire family wrought with drama through their participation in Jack’s story.

STEP 4: SECOND GUEST STAR

Repeat Step 3, with each player selecting a different character’s story and casting their PC as a guest star. (It’s okay to guest star in someone else’s story if they’re also a guest star in yours, but you shouldn’t guest star in the same story twice.)

For this step, it’s okay if your contribution also wraps the story up, but it doesn’t have to.

Once you’re done with this step, everyone should (a) have an adventure starring their character and guest starring two other PCs and (b) be the guest star in two other PCs’ adventures.

(If you only have two players, skip this step.)

STEP 5: WRAPPING UP

If your second guest star’s contribution to your adventure didn’t provide a conclusion, add one now.

You can flesh your adventure out a bit if you want, but you don’t have to. The capsule descriptions should provide you with a fundamental understanding of what happened that you and the other players can riff on and develop during play. (“Remember that time we broke into the Starlink facility in Bastrom and hacked the whole network?”)

If they don’t already, make sure everyone involved in your adventure has a copy of it. (Or, at least, their part in it.) You want to make sure everyone knows the canonical version of events.

Back to Session 0 Modules

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 44B: Time to Fly

 Tor grabbed up Agnarr’s body and turned, churning his way down the hall.

The twisting vines continued to confound their orderly retreat, but several of them had broken free now and were running back across the lounge. Tee, who was still trying to assist Tor’s retreat, tossed Nasira her magical lockpicking ring: “Get out! Quick as you can!”

Nasira reached the door to the long hall of whores and swung it open. Looking both ways she sighed with relief and called back over her shoulder, “All clea—“

The door at the far end of the hall opened. Two of the armored serpents and six unarmored ones poured through. “There they are!”

As I mentioned in Prepping Porphyry House, this adventure has been enhanced with an adversary roster. And it’s a pretty great example of the kind of dynamic play that having an adversary roster can unlock for you.

In the early part of the session, you can see that the players have already internalized the consequences of dynamic dungeons: When they stealthily take out some of the guards, they know they can’t just leave the bodies lying around, because it’s very possible that they’ll be discovered by other cultists moving throughout the building.

But a little while later you can see the evidence of me actively using the adversary roster:

Tee, on the other hand, did head into the room and quickly inspected the well (finding nothing unusual about it – it was a perfectly ordinary well). She was about to move on to the equipment in the corner—

When a patrol of two fully-armored serpent-men came around the corner in the hall.

One of them immediately turned and ran back around the corner. Tor, Agnarr, and Elestra quickly converged on the remaining serpent and hacked it to pieces. But by the time they were finished with it, two more had appeared at the end of the next hall in a four-way intersection between several doors.

The PCs get spotted, some of the bad guys run to raise the alarm, and things begin to spiral out of control.

Last week, Dave Oldcorn asked, “Does this not happen an awful lot of the time with adversary rosters?” And the answer to the question is complicated.

The first thing to recognize is that the PCs made a mistake and then got unlucky with their dice rolls: The mistake was leaving most of the party standing in the hallway (a high-traffic area) while Tee was searching a room (a time-consuming activity). They might have still had the opportunity to avoid catastrophe, but they rolled poorly and didn’t hear the guard patrol coming. And then, on top of that, they lost initiative, so the guards both had the opportunity to see them and run reinforcements before they could do anything.

Mistakes and bad luck will happen, of course, so it’s not necessarily unusual for this sort of thing to happen. But you’ll also see plenty of other examples in this campaign journal where the PCs didn’t make mistakes and/or the dice were in the favor, and so kept control of the situation. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine how just one thing going a little differently might have caused the entire Porphyry House scenario to play out in a completely different way.

Which leads us to a second important principle when it comes to adversary rosters: They shift some of the responsibility for encounter design from the GM to the players. By the point where the PCs were facing off against multiple squads of guards, an angry spellcaster, and a giant stone golem, they were clearly in over their heads. But that wasn’t an encounter that I created for them. It was, in most ways, an encounter they’d created for themselves.

This creates a really interesting dynamic where (a) the players feel ownership of their fate and (b) they can engage in truly strategic play, often controlling the difficulty and pace of the encounters they’re facing. (What happened in this session was, ultimately, a series of strategic failures followed by some strategic genius that ultimately allowed them to escape a rapidly developing catastrophe.)

In order for this to work, though, the GM needs to play fair. An important part of that is respecting the fog of war: The other reason “every monster in the place descending upon you instantly” isn’t the default outcome is because it isn’t the automatic outcome of the PCs getting spotted by a bad guy. That bad guy has to decide to run for help; the PCs have to fail to stop them from doing that; and then it takes time for them to fetch that help. And even once they have gotten help… where are the PCs? Did they just stay where they were? If not, how will the bad guys figure that out? What mistakes might be made within the fog of war? How can the PCs take advantage of that?

Above all, an adversary roster is a tool that lets you, as the GM, easily roleplay all the denizens of the dungeon. Truly embrace that opportunity by putting yourself fully in their shoes — thinking about what they know; what they would prioritize; and the decision they would, therefore, make — and playing to find out.

The final thing that pulls all of this together is the Dungeon as Theater of Operations: If the encounter in this session were glued to a single room — or if the players felt like they weren’t “allowed” to leave the borders of the battlemap — this would not have been compelling session. In fact, it would have almost certainly ended with all of the PCs dead. It’s only because the PCs were able to strategically duel with the actively played opposition of Porphyry House in an engagement ranging across fully half of the building’s first floor that (a) the PCs survived and (b) the session was a thrilling escapade from beginning to end.

Campaign Journal: Session 45A – Running the Campaign: Recognition as Reward
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 44B: TIME TO FLY

October 28th, 2009
The 24th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

It was coming from somewhere above them.

Having called whatever was coming, Erepodi started casting another spell—

And Ranthir reached out with his mind and slammed the door in front of her shut. Then he threw another web to seal it shut.

The shutting of the door also had the benefit of freeing Tor from the necromantic link that Erepodi had forged. He felt a little of his strength returning to him.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

It was descending now. Slowly, inevitably approaching them…

They could hear the serpents struggling to wrench open the door, but the web bought them a few minutes in which Tor and Agnarr could just focus on dealing out as much punishment as possible on the two serpent warriors trapped with them.

Or was it the other way around? They hadn’t managed to subdue even one of the serpents before the door was finally ripped open again. The thick strands of the web still blocked their sight, but they could hear that even more reinforcements had arrived. Erepodi was shouting instructions: “Go to the north and the south! Circle around them! Cut them off!”

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

“Time to retreat!” Tee shouted.

But it wasn’t that easy. Tor and Agnarr had become thoroughly enmeshed by the vines once again and were helpless to do anything except fight the serpent warriors directly in front of them.

“Are we going? Are we going?!” Elestra shouted.

Confusion reigned.

Tee dashed forward, using the bag of elemental flame to Agnarr free. Even as he was bathed in fire, Agnarr finally managed to cut down the serpent warrior he faced.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

From beyond the web they could still hear Erepodi shouting orders. “You! Fetch Wulvera! And you! Go to the madams!”

Elestra began weaving a spell to summon forth lightning while Ranthir cast a spell to enlarge Tor, which ripped the knight free from the vines as he grew. With all of them at last free to move again, they started to flee out of the vines. But the remaining serpent warrior backed away from the enlarged Tor and cried, “There shall be no escape!”

And the hallway beyond them exploded into more of the writhing vegetation.

As they all cursed, the serpent warrior darted back under Tor’s blade and viciously cut Agnarr down. Elestra, who had been caught around the corner by the vines, unleashed her lightning blindly… where its mis-aimed strikes did nothing except to backlight Agnarr’s collapse.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Tor concluded that they weren’t going to escape as long as this bastard was alive. He focused everything he had on taking him down… and finally succeeded after a torturous exchange of blows that left him bleeding from a dozen wounds. In fact, even that effort might not have been enough if Tee had not succeeded in directing Elestra’s blindly-aimed lightning into finally striking true.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

It had taken too long. Whatever Erepodi had called to her was tearing its way through Ranthir’s web…

And now Tor could see it: A massive, twenty-foot-tall statue of Erepodi – animated and brought to life.

“Oh gods…!” Tor murmured.

Ranthir, behind him, could not see the statue. But he could hear the telltale cindering of his web being burnt away by the serpents… so he dropped another forty feet of it.

Tor grabbed up Agnarr’s body and turned, churning his way down the hall.

The twisting vines continued to confound their orderly retreat, but several of them had broken free now and were running back across the lounge. Tee, who was still trying to assist Tor’s retreat, tossed Nasira her magical lockpicking ring: “Get out! Quick as you can!”

Nasira reached the door to the long hall of whores and swung it open. Looking both ways she sighed with relief and called back over her shoulder, “All clea—“

The door at the far end of the hall opened. Two of the armored serpents and six unarmored ones poured through. “There they are!”

But as the serpent warriors began to race down the hall, Elestra stepped past Nasira and called upon the Spirit of the City. The end of the hall erupted in jagged, cascading tremors – shaking the serpents from their tails and hurling them to the ground. She had bought them a few precious moments.

Ranthir, his feet quickened by another glamer, came tearing across the lounge behind them.

Nasira tried a door on the opposite side of the hall (hoping to reach one of the secret doors they knew to be on the other side of those rooms, and through those back to the hall where their entrance from the outside had been cut)—But it was locked! And Tee’s ring was already spent for the day!

And Tee herself, for perhaps the first time in all their days in Ptolus, was tarrying behind – her progress completely hindered by the vines.

And that was when the door directly behind them opened and eight more of the serpents were revealed.

Elestra, thinking quickly, reached out through the Spirit and dropped a suggestion into their minds: “Shut the door.”

And they did!”

They could hear a muffled shout through the door. “What are you doing?!”

Tor, who had just come trundling up with Agnarr’s body thrown over his shoulder, grabbed the door and desperately held it shut. Elestra and Nasira seized the moment to heal Agnarr: They needed him to knock down one of the whore doors. But, back on his feet, he threw his body uselessly against the stout door of mahogany.

Ranthir, meanwhile, dropped a web on the north end of the hall to further impede the patrol (who had almost broken free of Elestra’s heaving stones).

And then the door was wrenched from Tor’s grasp… and Ranthir dropped a web on the front rank of that patrol, too. But it was all falling apart and it was only a matter of time before—

Tee came racing up, grabbed her ring back from Nasira, and quickly picked the lock on one of the mahogany doors. Kicking it open she revealed the small chamber containing a single bed that she had expected, plus a whore scurrying in a panic back into a corner. She lowered her sword at the whore and then waved it at the far wall. “Open that door! OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”

But the whore just shrugged in hopeless terror and confusion.

“DAMMIT!” Tee threw herself at the wall, combing it for the secret door that she knew had to be there.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Erepodi’s statue had broken free. It was coming.

Nasira dropped a clairvoyance into the secret hall they had entered through… and saw that half of the western patrol had broken off and entered through the secret door! They were going to be cut off!

But Tee finally found the secret door. As it slid open, Ranthir dropped an illusion over it to disguise the opening. Tee pulled out the onyx silence ring.

Through her clairvoyance Nasira could see the patrol enter the hall and check the first door. As several of the patrol entered that room (perhaps to circle around to the outer hall and reach them), they seized their opportunity, throwing themselves through the secret door, webbing the patrol, and then running up towards the hole they had drilled. As she came through the secret door, Tee threw the onyx silence ring at the western patrol to stop them from shouting warnings to the others (who might still have time to cut them off).

Meanwhile at least one of the eastern patrol had broken free from Ranthir’s webs. They could hear him calling out to the statue—

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

“The second door! They went through that door! Smash it open!”

There was a splintering crash of wood—

And then they were at the crawlspace, forcing their way through – Tor coming last (as Ranthir released the enlarging effect that had been placed upon him so that he would fit) even as the serpents came slither-racing up the hall behind them.

In a panicked rush they beat their way through the back alleys of the Guildsman District and burst out into the crowded, mid-morning streets of Ptolus…

Running the Campaign: Adversary Rosters in Action – Campaign Journal: Session 45A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

The conclusion to the trilogy which began with Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport, Madness in Freeport brings the same strengths and weaknesses to the table.

Review Originally Published October 8th, 2001

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Madness in Freeport. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Madness in Freeport, the final installment of the Freeport Trilogy (following Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport — which are reviewed here and here), takes place over the course of three days as Milton Drac’s sinister plans begin to come to fruition and the PCs must work furiously to stop them.

Madness opens with the Grand Lighthouse Ball – a celebration to which Drac invites the PCs under the pretense of applauding their recent accomplishments. In reality, however, he’s brought them there in an attempt to set them up for a fall (just as he’s set up everyone else who has ever posed a potential threat to him). The PCs must resist Drac’s manipulations, while still using the opportunities of the Ball to further investigate the truth behind Drac’s plans for the Lighthouse.

If the PCs are successful, they will discover that they need to acquire an ancient artifact – the Jade Serpent of Yig – in order to counteract the foul summoning ritual which Drac is building the Lighthouse to attempt. The PCs will then be able to trace the resting place of the Jade Serpent to the cache of the infamous pirate Black Dog. Seeking out this hidden cache, they will discover an ancient, sunken Temple of Yig.

Once they have acquired the Jade Serpent from the Temple of Yig, they return to Freeport. But they may already be too late, and a furious chase through the Lighthouse ensues until the PCs reach the Big Finale.

LOW POINTS

Madness in Freeport shares its primary flaw with Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport: Once again, the strings which hold the adventure together are far too weak. The success of the module hinges time and time again on the PCs reading the author’s mind or making a lucky dice roll.

For example, it is absolutely crucial that the PCs discover the location of Black Dog’s Caves (where they suspect they can find the Jade Serpent of Yig). In order to accomplish this, they must make a Gather Information skill check. A complete chart of possible responses is given (ranging from DC 10 to DC 25) – but, essentially, they have to make this skill check at DC 25 in order to find out what they have to do next.

This is bad design. Plain and simple. The module writer practically admits as much in the very next paragraph, where he tells the DM to essentially ignore the die roll if the PCs don’t make it. If that’s the case, why the heck are you bothering to have me roll the dice, anyway?

Essentially, any DM wanting to run this adventure is going to have to modify it substantially in order to strengthen the flow of the plot – or he’s going to have to simply accept the necessity of railroading his players through it.

Another major flaw comes at the adventure’s end, when the author attempts to claim that the PCs (having killed Drac) will not have their story of what happened believed. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t make any sense. For starters, the PCs are already acknowledged heroes of the city. And, furthermore, a huge crowd just saw the climax of the adventure. In other words, the PCs not only have a lot of personal credibility built up in Freeport – they also have a massive amount of corroborating evidence.

Madness in Freeport, unfortunately, also shows a relatively sloppy handling of the rule system. For example, in the Lighthouse at the end of the adventure Simoni asserts that it takes a guardman two rounds to run to the top of a fifty foot stairway (this is crucial, because he’s going to alert others to the PCs’ presence). Unfortunately, Simoni is wrong – the guard can move 60 ft. per round while running. He’ll reach the top of the staircase in the same round he starts running.

The other low points in Madness in Freeport take the form of “that was good, just not as good as it could have been”.

For example, the Grand Lighthouse Ball at the top of the adventure is a roleplaying-intensive sequence. It’s handled well enough, but Simoni would have benefited from taking a look at Penumbra’s In the Belly of the Beast — which handles that type of scenario in a far better fashion.

Similarly, the sequence in the Sunken Temple of Yig is good insofar as it goes – but it suffers from trite tricks and one-note religious symbols, rather than exploiting the situation for some actual depth and mystery.

HIGH POINTS

Madness in Freeport primarily succeeds for two reasons:

1. Despite the flaws of execution, the story itself is a good one.

2. The adventure capitalizes well on the groundwork laid by the first two adventures in the Freeport Trilogy. Assuming the DM can stop the PCs from losing the thread of the adventure, everyone should enjoy themselves immensely as the mysteries of Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport are finally resolved while ancient evils are defeated.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, Madness in Freeport delivers a solid conclusion to the Freeport Trilogy. That being said: If the Trilogy had been released in today’s D20 market, rather than the virgin territory of August 2000, it would most likely have been widely ignored. The production values of Madness in Freeport simply don’t compare well with the other D20 products out there, and the module possesses too many flaws to distinguish itself from the competition.

To put this in context: When I compare Death in Freeport (the first Green Ronin module, released in August 2000) to Three Days to Kill (the first Penumbra module, released in August 2000), the comparison is highly favorable. However, when I compare Madness in Freeport to The Tide of Years, it becomes apparent that Penumbra has worked steadily to improve the quality of its offerings – while Green Ronin, for all intents and purposes, is still putting out the same old stuff.

So, while I still offer my endorsement of Madness in Freeport as a conclusion to the Freeport Trilogy, I also reserve judgment to the extent that, if this is the best that Green Ronin can produce in the future, then I probably won’t continue to categorize Green Ronin as a top-notch D20 publisher.

Style: 2
Substance: 4

Author: William Simoni
Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing
Line: D20
Price: $10.95
ISBN: 0-9701048-3-9
Product Code: GRR1004
Pages: 46

In retrospect, I’d knock at least one point off of my Substance rating above. My memory is that this was quite mediocre, and reviewing my prep notes for the adventure reveals that I ended up rewriting almost all of it. (Which isn’t a good sign.) Conceptually great; execution mostly a whiff. The best bit is the Grand Lighthouse Ball, and even that I had to heavily reorganize and remix to get it into a format I felt comfortable running. On the other hand, the process of figuring out how I wanted the Grand Lighthouse Ball organized was, if I recall correctly, the beginning of the process for developing my social event scenario structure, although it would take several more iterations over the next seven or eight years to work all the kinks out.

There was actually a significant gap between my reviews of Death in Freeport and Terror in Freeport, which were published on the same day in February 2001, and my review of Madness in Freeport, which didn’t appear until October. Some of that gap is explained  by Madness in Freeport being released at a later date, but that’s not the whole story here. I think this is one of those books I read, meant to review, but I didn’t actually get the review written in a timely fashion. If the gap between experiencing a piece of media and writing the review takes too long, then I generally find I can no longer write the review. The material is too stale and too many details will have slipped away from me.

I do remember that people kept asking me when my review of the third book in the Freeport Trilogy would be released.

Looking over my documents, I started putting together my prep notes for the Freeport adventures starting in mid-October of 2001. It’s probably not coincidental this review was published at the beginning of the month. I’m guessing that, having decided to run the trilogy, I re-read the whole thing. And then, with Madness in Freeport fresh in my mind, I also seized the opportunity to finally write up the review.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 44A: Whorehouse of Terror

Agnarr flew into a rage. “Stay away from her!”

The serpent-men in the far hall had now thrown open one of the doors there. “Erepodi!” they shouted through it. “We’re under attack!”

Erepodi… The name was familiar to Tee. It took her a moment to wrack her memory, but eventually she alighted upon its source: The small picture locket they had found in Pythoness House.

And indeed, in the very moment that Tee remembered the locket, Erepodi herself strode into view through the door, scarcely changed from her picture.

“I know not who you are! Or why you have come! But none shall disturb my house!”

This is a moment where the player has forgotten something that happened during the campaign. This isn’t unusual. As human beings we forget stuff all of the time, and unlike our characters we aren’t living in these fictional worlds 24-7. (Or whatever the hours, days, and weeks look like in your fantasy milieu of choice.)

I don’t remember exactly how this precise moment was resolved, but it generally happens in one of three ways.

First, one of the other players does remember this bit of continuity and simply reminds the table what happened. It’s up to the player to decide whether that’s an in-character moment (e.g., Tee forgot and Ranthir reminded her) or not. (I’m pretty confident this isn’t what happened in this moment, as this happens all the time and I wouldn’t have recorded it in the journal.)

Second, the campaign journal is consulted. Creating a record of continuity is, after all, exactly why we’re keeping a campaign journal in the first place. In the case of the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, one of the players has loaded the journal into the group’s private wiki so that it can be rapidly searched (along with digital copies of many of the handouts and other records the group has created).

Third, I’ll have the PC make a memory check. For my D&D 3^rd Editon campaigns, I simplified and adapted a rule from the Book of Eldritch Might 3 for this.

MEMORY CHECK

Whenever a character might remember something that happened to them either in actual play, from their own (pregame) past, or something that happened “off stage”, they should make a memory check. (This could also be to remember some minor detail that the DM didn’t point out specifically because it would have caused undue suspicion and attention…)

A memory check is a simple Intelligence check. Characters cannot Take 20 and retries are not allowed. (Characters can Take 10 in non-stressful situations, however.)

Characters also have access to the following feats:

• Excellent Memory: +5 to memory checks
• Photographic Memory: +15 to memory checks. (Requires Excellent Memory.)

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

THE GM’s ROLE

What about my role as the GM here? Shouldn’t I just tell the players when they’ve forgotten something?

Maybe.

This is a tricky bit of praxis, in my opinion. On the one hand, I don’t want the players stymied because they’ve forgotten something that their characters should remember. On the other hand, figuring out how things fit together is a deeply satisfying and rewarding experience, and I don’t want to be constantly short-circuiting that by spelling everything out for them. Conclusions are just infinitely more fun if the players figure them out for themselves.

And, in fact, it can also be fun when the players could have figured something out, but didn’t. That, “Oh my god! It was right in front of us the whole time!” moment can be really incredible, but none of you will ever have the chance to experience it if you’re constantly spoonfeeding them.

So if I can see that my players have “missed” something, the first thing I’ll ask myself is, “Have they forgotten a fact or are they missing a conclusion?” I may or may not provide them with a missing fact, but I will do almost anything in my power to avoid giving them a conclusion.

(This situation with Erepodi is an interesting example because it kind of lands in a gray area here: It’s partly about remembering a fact they learned in Pythoness House — i.e., the name “Erepodi” — and partly about drawing the conclusion that this is the same person. So it’s a little tricky.)

The next thing I’ll consider is, “Is this something that their character should remember?” The answer to that may be an obvious Yes, in which case I’ll provide the answer. If the answer isn’t obvious, call for a memory check. (This can usually just default to some kind of Intelligence or IQ check if your system doesn’t have a formal memory check mechanic.)

Tip: An advanced technique you might use, if you have a searchable campaign journal like we do, is to say something like, “You should check the campaign journal for that.” The disadvantage is that this consumes extra time. But it has the benefit that the players still feel a sense of ownership about “figuring it out.” Logically, it shouldn’t make a difference. In practice, it can be an effective bit of psychological finesse.

Another key consideration is how essential this information is to the structure of the scenario and/or the PCs’ current situation. If it’s just an incidental detail leading to a revelation that could just as easily simmer for a long time, then I might be a little more likely to let it pass and see if the players notice it or figure it out later. If, on the other hand, they’re in a middle of an investigation, are rapidly running out of leads to follow, and forgetting this detail will likely derail the investigation completely, I’m more likely to default to giving them the info.

A final factor here is if the players are directly asking for the info. For example, if they say something like, “Erepodi? That name sounds familiar. Justin, where have we heard that name before?” This is a very strong indicator, and I’m almost certainly going to either point them in the right direction (“check the campaign journal” or “do you still have that letter from the duke?”), call for a memory check, or simply give them the information.

Conversely, if they aren’t saying anything, players often know more than you realize. It’s not unusual for me to call for a memory check, have it succeed, and give them the information, only for the player to say, “Oh, yeah. I already knew that.” This is another reason why, in the absence of other factors, I’ll usually default to not saying anything and seeing how things develop through actual play.

If nothing else, when they realize their mistake, it will also encourage the players to keep better notes!

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: DELAYED RECALL

Here’s a technique I haven’t actually used, but by sheer synchronicity I was reading through Aaron Allston’s Crime Fighter RPG this week and stumbled across a cool idea. In the introductory scenario “New Shine on an Old Badge,” the PCs are tracking down a criminal who turns out to be an ex-cop dressing up in his old uniform. When the PCs have an opportunity to catch a glimpse of this fake/ex-cop from a distance, Allston recommends:

As the investigation and paperwork continues, the characters will find that no one knows who the officer was. Let the characters make INT rolls. If anyone achieves a 17 or better, he’ll remember who the guy is — “Ray Calhoun — only that can’t be right, because he retired six or seven years ago; he used to visit the station pretty regularly, even after he retired.”

If someone achieves a fourteen or better, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night remembering who the guy is.

Emphasis added.

In this case (pun intended), this isn’t something the players have forgotten or would be capable of remembering. (Their characters met Ray Calhoun before the campaign began.) But the idea of taking a partial success and resolving it as, “In the middle of the night you wake up and realize you forgot something!” is, I think, a really interesting framing for this.

Along similar lines, you might decide, “Well, they don’t immediately remember encountering the name ‘Erepodi’ before. But the next time they encounter the name, it will all fall into place for them.”

CONCLUSION

Some of the issues you’ll run into with player memory vs. character memory will be very similar to the issues that can arise when adjudicating idea rolls. For a deeper discussion on those, you might want to check out GM Don’t List #10: Idea Rolls.

Campaign Journal: Session 44B – Running the Campaign: Adversary Rosters in Action
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index