The Yawning Portal seems utterly synonymous with the Forgotten Realms today, but it actually didn’t appear in the original Forgotten Realm Campaign Setting boxed set, published in July 1987.

The wait was not particularly long, however. By the end of the year, driven in part by the prodigious amount of Realmslore Ed Greenwood had created for his setting, TSR had released nearly a dozen Forgotten Realms books, including FR1 Waterdeep and the North and the first details of Durnan’s tavern.

(The “and the North” portion of the title was actually something of a misnomer. According to Shannon Appelcline, Greenwood had warned TSR that his Waterdeep lore alone was enough to fill a book. And that was more than true: Almost all of the material about the rest of the North got knocked out of FR1 and later handed over to Jennell Jaquays for FR5 The Savage Frontier. It’s unclear why they didn’t just drop “and the North” from the title. Perhaps they felt locked in by the title they had solicited? But I digress.)

THE EARLY DAYS

In FR1 Waterdeep and the North, the Yawning Portal appears as Building #4:

4. The Yawning Portal (inn) – See Durnan, p. 17

Thus, most of the original information about the Yawning Portal is actually contained in the NPC write-up of its proprietor, and these are fairly barebones: It contains a “well-like shaft leading down into Undermountain, the subterranean ways under Mount Waterdeep.”

The Yawning Portal’s next appearance is in the City System (1988), a boxed set filled to the brim with twelve huge poster maps, ten of which joined together to form an insanely huge map of the city. The City System was designed to be used in conjunction with FR1 Waterdeep and the North: FR1 described the city. The boxed set only included the huge maps and a small pamphlet with useful tools (like random Street Scenes and indices).

(This confused the heck out of me as a kid, who bought City System but never saw a copy of FR1 at the local game store.)

In the City System, therefore, the Yawning Portal remains Building #4, but no additional text description is provided. The boxed set does include the first official map of the interior of the inn, but we’ll come back to this later.

The Yawning Portal’s next appearance was in the adventure module FRE3 Waterdeep (1989), also by Ed Greenwood. The PCs are taken to the Yawning Portal by Elminster and Khelben Arunsun the Blackstaff. The adventure tells DMs that they can use the map from the City System boxed set, but also includes a much more detailed description of the Portal’s interior:

• It’s a “large, rambling building.”
• A signboard above the “round door” reads “The Yawning Portal,” and “on the door itself, someone has chalked ‘Come Ye Inn.’” (sic)
• It is dimly lit.
• There’s at least one private side room.
• A 14-year-old girl works as a server.

Most notably, FRE3 adds a second well to the Yawning Portal:

Durnan leads the party to the back of the inn. (…) The innkeeper lifts a huge bar from the door with one hand, as though it weighs nothing, and leans it against the wall. Then he opens the door and leads you into a dark room. The torch’s flickering light shows a covered wall and a table. On the table lie coils of rope, a tinder box, and a half dozen unlit torches…

“I haven’t been down this back way in some time,” he says. “We usually go down the dry one; it keeps the water cleaner.”

At some distance down the well, there’s a side tunnel that leads into a cavernous region of Undermountain which includes the Pool of Loss.

(The reason for this addition is fairly obvious: The adventure wants to send the PCs to Undermountain, but doesn’t have the space or page count to do that. So Durnan has a short cut that takes the PCs more or less directly to where they need to go.)

Despite only being an adventure module, FRE3 Waterdeep was frequently cited in TSR products as the authoritative source for the Yawning Portal. This notably includes the Ruins of Undermountain boxed set (1991), which rather hilariously notes:

More about Durnan and the inn can be found in the sourcebook FR1/Waterdeep And The North, the City System boxed set, and the module FRE3/Waterdeep. Details of the inn itself have been omitted from these pages to allow DMs free rein in customizing this rambling, shady place.

“We’ve detailed this location in THREE different books, but we haven’t included those details here so that you can have ‘free rein’ in customizing it.” Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say, TSR.

(Ruins of Undermountain II actually doubles down on the absurdity here, similarly demurring to describe the inn, but this time asserting that “the Yawning Portal is detailed in the original Ruins of Undermountain boxed set,” where, of course, readers will instead find the boxed set declaring that it definitely does no such thing.)

But because the Portal actually hasn’t been particularly detailed previously, Ruins of Undermountain does add several new details:

• “The Portal is a rambling, dingy, blue-tapestried building of smoothly carved pillars and paneling.”
• It is located “squarely on the site of the long-vanished tower and fortified warehouses of the archmage Halaster Blackcloak.”
• It is the “the only known entrance” to Undermountain accessible to the general public.
• The first well is 40’ in diameter and located in the main taproom. It’s “situated between the bar and most of the dining tables” and surrounded by a “waist-high, foot-thick stone ring/rampart.” Lit torches are placed around the circumference of the well and there’s a massive block-and-tackle “hanging from a stone lintel above the well, hiding among the roof beams.” The well is 140 feet deep, dark below 50 feet, and there are noisemakers at the bottom (used to signal the taproom for the rope to be lowered).
• You pay Durnan 1 gold piece per head to be lowered into Undermountain.
• The “wet well,” which is used only for washing water, is lesser-known and hidden in a backroom. It leads to a section of the dungeon not detailed in the boxed set, but which connects “with the city sewers in many places” and the plane of Hades (via the Pool of Loss). It’s possible that there are actually multiple passages intersecting the wet well, but the phrasing here is ambiguous.

Now, you might expect to find some reference to the Yawning Portal in Volo’s Guide to Waterdeep (1992), but not really. It has a city map which my copy lacks, but which I believe is essentially identical to the one from FR1 Waterdeep and the North and on which the Portal remains Building #4. And it has a footnote telling you to go check out FRE3 Waterdeep.

So our next stop is actually the City of Splendors boxed set (1994), which is very much designed to replace both FR1 Waterdeep and the North and the City System boxed set (although it lacks the latter’s prodigious map). The numbered key for Waterdeep is overhauled with ward-based numbering, and the Yawning Portal is now C48 (C for the Castle Ward).

City of Splendors mostly compiles the known information about the Yawning Portal from all of our previous sources, but there are a few notable new details:

• Durnan established the Yawning Portal in 1306 DR.
• The Yawning Portal is a 3-story Class C building. (Class C buildings are generally the “tall row houses that line the streets” with shops on the ground floor and offices or apartments above that, but the “better-kept” inns and taverns are also grouped in here.)
• It now also costs 1 gold piece to get pulled OUT of Undermountain. (Make sure to budget accordingly.) I believe this is also the first reference to patrons wagering on would-be adventurers.

There is actually now a long break in the Yawning Portal being described in RPG supplements, with one interesting sidenote in Skullport (1999), which claims in two different places (p. 9 and 64) that there is a secret door in the Yawning Portal’s wine cellar which leads, along a side passage, to the Bonewatch Pass, a tunnel which runs all the way to Skullport.

THE VIDEO GAME ERA

During this gap in RPG books from 1994-2004, the Yawning Portal actually makes two notable appearances in video games: Descent to Undermountain in 1994 and Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark in 2003.

These are particularly notable because, as far as I can tell, they’re the first visual depictions of the tavern.

Note: Some online sources claim that the Yawning Portal also appeared in the Eye of the Beholder games, but although there is an unnamed tavern that briefly appears in the later games of that trilogy, there’s nothing to suggest that it’s the Yawning Portal.

The depiction of the tavern in Descent to Undermountain is rather severely limited by the FPS technology of time, with everything rendered in Doom-style blocks.

• The common room is depicted as a big square room, with a big square well.
• Rather than a rope dangling over the well, there’s a wooden platform with a skull-embossed cage that’s lowered into Undermountain.
• The common room is surrounded by a hallway studded with guest rooms. (The guests are delightfully eclectic, including a mind flayer, a drow, and the Open Lord’s son.)

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark has a very different design for the inn. The game starts on the second floor, which features:

• An armory in the back corner of the inn, stocked with adventuring gear.
• A large common room, which is sort of a hostel with multiple bunkbeds and a small library of books.

A stair leads down to the first floor where there’s:

• Another common room, this one with cheap cots for sleeping but also accoutered with medical supplies for treating those injured escaping from Undermountain
• The taproom which… uh… lacks any taps? (The games’ presentation is a little ramshackle here.)

Notably the taproom also lacks a well. The well is instead located in the basement, and is less of a well and more of a “gaping chasm.” A “well” is located on a rocky spur jutting out over the chasm, and is protected by a clockwork brass dome that irises up and down.

(The pointlessness of this defensive device is established a moment later when a beholder floats up out of the chasm and near-murders Durnan.)

More recently, in the new Neverwinter game (2019), the Yawning Portal is depicted once more:

This presentation is heavily influenced by the Portal’s presentation in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (as we’ll see below).

• The taproom is shown to have a vaulted ceiling all the way to the third floor, with balconies featuring additional seating lining three sides of the room (and skylights!).
• The three-sided bar juts out into the room.

Next: Novels & Later Expeditions

João writes:

I don’t want to railroad my players. But how can I create a classic quest to destroy the Evil Thing™ without railroading?

The principle of “don’t prep plots, prep situations” can also be thought of as prepping toys and then letting the players either (a) figure out how they want to play with them and/or (b) how they’re going to react to you actively playing them.

So if you’re prepping an RPG version of The Lord of the Rings, don’t prep the journey to Mt. Doom. Instead, prep:

• the One Ring
• the villains interested in the Ring (Sauron & Saruman)
• the tools those villains can use against the PCs (Nazgul, crebain, orcs)

And so forth.

Let’s say that we’re in Rivendell and Elrond, et. al. have just explained the history of the Ring, that Sauron is seeking it, and that the only way to destroy it is by throwing it into Mt. Doom.

(You could also design this scenario without proscribing one method for destroying the Ring: It could be  Mt. Doom or the fire of an Elder Dragon or the sunken forges of Beleriand. Or you could take one step further back and not make Sauron’s defeat or destruction dependent on the One Ring. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just focus on the McGuffin Delivery concept.)

So you’re in Rivendell. You have the One Ring. And the know the Ring has to go to Mt. Doom.

Add a map of Middle Earth showing where Rivendell and Mt. Doom are.

Now, let the players decide how they want to get to Mt. Doom.

And… that’s it.

Railroad averted.

ACROSS THE MAP

The players now have a vast array of options open to them: Go through Moria? Over Caradhras? Through the Gap of Rohan? Head straight down the coast and sail to Gondor? Escort Bilbo to the Lonely Mountain, call in old favors owed, and taken army of dwarves south?

This, of course, makes a “here’s a map of the whole world, plot a course for yourself” campaign like this incredibly daunting to prep in advance and basically impossible to do so without wasting a bunch of time prepping stuff that will never be used.

If this is for your home campaign, though, you don’t need to prep everything in advance. You can figure out what your players are planning to do and then prep specifically for that.

They’re heading over the mountains? Prep Caradhras.

They’re heading to the coast? Prep the Corsairs of Umbar.

So what DO you need to prep for the map?

You need a broad patina of the world so that the players have enough context to make their decisions regarding route. The map provides the structure here, and so your prep mostly boils down to being able to answer the question, “What’s here?” when the players point at the map and ask.

You don’t need a lot of detail for this. Just one to three sentences for each broad region.

“What’s here?”

“That’s the Lonely Mountain, a dwarven kingdom ruled by King Dain.”

Just drawing the map will honestly do 90% of the work here. (There’s mountains here, a kingdom called Rohan there, etc.)

DEFAULT TO YES, FLESH OUT THE WORLD

As the players begin making their plans, they’re going to propose routes you never even considered. When this happens, default to yes and flesh out the world.

Player 1: There are mountains here. Should we go around them to the north or south?

Player 2: What about climbing straight over them?

Player 3: What about under the mountains? Are there any dungeons we could go through?

DM: (thinking fast) There are two, actually. A system of caves in the north near Mirkwood, infested with goblins. And an abandoned dwarven city to the south.

The players decide that sounds too dangerous and they decide to head south instead.

But now, of course, we’ve established that the Mines of Moria exist…

PLAYING WITH YOUR TOYS

The other thing you’ve prepped, of course, are those toys we mentioned earlier. With the planning session complete, you can use these tools to flesh out your prep for the players’ intended route. For example, they’re heading towards the Gap of Rohan, so you pull out some crebain spies dispatched by Saruman and plan to have those followed up by Uruk-Hai patrols if the PCs get spotted.

But these toys are also designed for active play. When the players do something unexpected that you weren’t prepared for, the first thing to ask your self is: How can I use my scenario toys to respond to that?

The second thing is to see if you have any generic toys that can be plugged in. (The PCs have gotten spooked by the crebain and are heading to Caradhras now? Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got this Living Mountain write-up from the bestiary.)

And the third thing is to say (when the players fail the extended skill check on Caradhras and are forced to turn aside to Moria), “Reaching the top of the stone steps, you look down upon the Walls of Moria. There the Gate stood once upon a time, the Elven Door at the end of the road from Hollin by which you have come… Okay, well this seems like a good place to wrap things up for this week.”

That should give you plenty of time to prep a legendary dungeon.

(Double check your challenge ratings, though. Otherwise someone might die in there.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #8

In the world of Exandria, in the city of Bazzoxan, there lies Betrayers’ Rise. Once a “dark temple instrumental to the machinations of the Betrayer Gods during the Calamity” (Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount), the Rise is a gargantuan complex worming its way into the earth; a place of vast, unexplored depths where explorers delved too deep and woke up abyssal horrors from an elder age, placing the people of Bazzoxan on the front lines of an ancient war.

As presented in the Call of the Netherdeep campaign, however, Betrayers’ Rise is a tiny little dungeon with just sixteen rooms.

They’re good rooms. Great rooms, even.

But it doesn’t quite deliver the experience promised by the lore.

THE PROBLEM

To be fair, Call of the Netherdeep knows it has a problem. The writers kind of toss out the idea that “the characters experience a particular version” of Betrayers’ Rise, and that others experience “different configurations” of the dungeon. They also provide “Betrayers’ Rise Encounters” (p. 63) that can be used as inspiration to “expand” the Rise.

And this is not actually an unusual problem: You want to send the PCs into a legendary dungeon — Moria, Undermountain, Castle Blackmoor, Betrayers’ Rise — as part of a larger adventure. But these vast dungeons have dozens of levels and hundreds, possibly thousands, of rooms.

At that scale, in published adventures, page count becomes an issue. For another example of this, consider Ed Greenwood’s FRE3 Waterdeep module. Greenwood wanted to send the PCs through the well in the Yawning Portal and into Undermountain as part of this adventure, but obviously couldn’t include the entire dungeon (which usually requires hundreds of pages) in a 52-page adventure. (His solution was to create a previously unmentioned secret well in the Yawning Portal’s backroom that conveniently led directly to where the PCs needed to go.)

But even if page count or prep time weren’t important (which they obviously are), there’s also pacing to consider. Megadungeons are awesome. I love megadungeons. But it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to put Call of the Netherdeep on hold for 10 or 20 or 40 sessions while a largely unrelated dungeon crawl is happening.

So what’s the problem?

If I’m saying that you can’t do a megadungeon in Call of the Netherdeep and that you shouldn’t do a megadungeon in Call of the Netherdeep, don’t we just have to accept that micro-dungeon that Call of the Netherdeep presents?

No, actually.

THE SOLUTION(S)

We’ve been hearing “vast underground complex” and we’ve been defaulting to “megadungeon” as the solution. The solution is to shift our paradigm, and we can do that by rephrasing our goal.

The micro-dungeon in Call of the Netherdeep is (a) good and (b) probably has about the right narrative weight for its role in the campaign. So what is it that we want?

Ideally, we’d take the exact same micro-dungeon and present it in a way that’s consistent with Betrayers’ Rise being a gargantuan complex with vast, unexplored depths where explorers delved too deep and yada yada yada.

OPTION 1: MULTIPLE ENTRANCES

Instead of Betrayers’ Rise having a single entrance that leads to a sixteen room micro-dungeon, the Rise has multiple entrances leading to a convoluted honeycomb of many different dungeon complexes. Some of these are small; some are vast. Some are connected to each other; others are not… or, if they are, the ways are secret, blocked, or only accessible through interdimensional spaces.

One of these entrances, of course, leads to our micro-dungeon.

The key question now is, how do the PCs know to use this specific entrance?

To answer this question, we simply step back and look at the PCs’ goal in Bazzoxan: They’re here to get answers about the Jewel of Three Prayers, the enigmatic Vestige of Divergence which has come into either their possession or the possession of their Rivals.

Therefore, this entrance must have a specific connection to the Jewel of Three Prayers.

There are many ways you could create his connection, but you can keep it quite simple: There’s a giant drawing or bas relief of the Jewel depicted on the entrance or near the entrance or just inside the entrance.

The next question is: How do the PCs learn about this connection?

This revelation is essential for the adventure, so we want to use the Three Clue Rule here. In fact, there are two closely related revelations here.

REVELATION 1: WE HAVE TO GO TO BAZZOXAN.

• The Elder in Jigow who told them to go to Bazzoxan (p. 37) should tell them: “I was in Bazzoxan once, where the legacy of the Calamity lingers more strongly anywhere else in Xhorhas, and I saw this very Jewel depicted on the walls of the Betrayers’ Rise. Perhaps you will find answers there.”
• The PCs can discover references to this depiction of the Jewel at Betrayers’ Rise through their own research.
• The Rivals will conduct their own research (or perhaps seek the casting of a legend lore spell) and discover the Jewel’s depiction at Betrayers’ Rise. They’ll then inform the PCs, ask for the PCs’ help, or the PCs can pursue them there.

REVELATION 2: THE LOCATION OF THE JEWEL’S DEPICTION.

• The PCs can do their own survey of the Rise’s exterior to find the depiction.
• The Three Scholars of Ank’Harel in Bazzoxan (Question, Prolix, and Aloysia) are all here researching ruidium (which is specifically found around this entrance and in this micro-dungeon). They can be questioned and their notes also include depictions of the Jewel.

Design Note: This conveniently also addresses some other structural weaknesses in Call of the Netherdeep. For example, in the adventure as written the Elder doesn’t actually give the PCs’ a reason to go to Bazzoxan; so when they arrive, they end up just kind of wandering around hoping to bump into the plot. By having the Elder give them this specific connection to Bazzoxan, the PCs now arrive in town with a specific agenda which will drive the action forward.

You could also further develop this lore to strengthen connections between Bazzoxan and Ank’Harel. Perhaps the excavations in the sunken city of Cael Morrow have recently discovered a depiction of the Jewel of Three Prayers, and some or all of the scholarly factions have independently discovered its depiction in Bazzoxan (providing an alternative or additional motive to ruidium for coming here).

OPTION 2: THE POINTCRAWL

If you want to actually delve into the “true” Betrayers’ Rise — that vast, unexplored depth which yada yada yada — then what you need is a pointcrawl.

A pointcrawl adventure uses a point-map to represent navigation at an abstract level. One way of understanding a pointcrawl, and its original application, is modeling travel along a trail system (i.e., the connections between points are literally wilderness trails running between the locations).

In the case of a dungeon pointcrawl, like the one we would use for Betrayers’ Rise, the points represent notable locations or regions within the dungeon and the connections between them model the navigational connections between them. Because these navigation connections are being represented at a high level of abstraction, they are often not specific. (There might be several different passages you can take from the Low Halls to the High Throne, but they’d all be represented by a single line. This is similar to how there are many streets you could take while driving across town from McDonald’s to the Museum of Natural History, but they’ll all be heading in basically the same direction.)

Let’s make this less abstract. The way a dungeon pointcrawl would work here is that the vast depths of Betrayers’ Rise would be abstracted. You’d narrate large spans of the journey as a sort of travelogue through terrifying-yet-empty vaults.

The Rise is not a beehive with every inch filled by demons. It is a wasteland.

If you want a touchstone for what this would look like/sound like in actual play, consider the journey through Moria in The Lord of the Rings:

For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met not danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard’s light, bobbing like a will-o’-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.

They had marched as far as the hobbits could endure without a rest, and all were thinking of a place where they could sleep, when suddenly the walls to right and left vanished. They seem to have passed through some arched doorway into a black and empty space. There was a great draught of warmer air behind them, and before them the darkness was cold on their faces. They halted and crowded anxiously together.

Gandalf seemed pleased. ‘I chose the right way,’ he said. ‘At last we are coming to the habitable parts, and I guess that we are not far now from the eastern side. But we are high up, a good deal higher than the Dimrill Gate, unless I am mistaken. From the feeling of the air, we must be in a wide hall. I will now risk a little real light.’

He raised his staff, and for a brief instant there was a blaze like a flash of lightning. Great shadows sprang up and fled, and for a second they saw a vast roof far above their heads upheld by many mighty pillars hewn of stone. Before them and on either side stretched a huge empty hall; its black walls, polished and smooth as glass, flashed and glittered. Three other entrances they saw, dark black arches: one straight before them eastwards, and one to either side.

Then the light went out.

The “points” of the pointcrawl would be points of particular interest/danger. They’d also represent key navigational choices. In the movie version of Moria, for example, these are:

• the Entrance;
• “I have no memory of this place”;
• Balin’s Tomb; and
• the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

In designing this for an RPG, you would need to include options for the paths Gandalf didn’t take (so that the players would have navigational choices).

PREPPING THE POINTCRAWL: Unlike Option 1, therefore, this option would require significantly more prep, because you’ll need to create other points within Betrayers’ Rise in addition to the original micro-dungeon (which I’m going to call the Cyst of Avandra).

My guess is that you’d want at least a half dozen points that are actually micro-dungeons. (You could think of each of these as a 5-Room Dungeon.) And then you’d probably want another dozen or so points that are just individual rooms or cool landmarks (a statue, a strange chasm, a subterranean bridge, etc.).

Some of these points might be better thought of as entire regions, out of which navigational choices can be made.

“You’re in the Hex Pits. You see a number of stairs winding down. Or you could perhaps try to make your way up one of the great ramps at either end of the Pits.”

OPTION 3: THE GUIDE

If we consider Gandalf an NPC instead of a PC, then we can get some of the atmosphere offered by the pointcrawl, but wrap it in a simple package (with near-zero prep) by simply requiring the PCs to have a guide.

What guide? One of the Three Scholars, of course.

And how do they know where to take the PCs? Once again, it’s the depiction of the Jewel of Three Prayers. Rather than being an entrance to Betrayers’ Rise, the painting or bas relief of the Jewel is located deep within the Rise.

The chosen scholar(s) can guide the PCs there in abstract time (a montage of moments as they delve into the dungeon; just like the hobbits’ experience in Moria), perhaps triggering a few “random” (actually scripted) encounters along the way.

When the PCs arrive at the depiction of the Jewel, you simply shift to now time as they come to the entrance of Cyst of Avandra.

Design Note: You could enrich this interaction a bit by having the Three Scholars each propose/take differing routes through the Rise. But there’s probably not a huge gain from this unless the PCs can make some sort of meaningful choice between route options.

The PCs could also avoid the need for an actual guide if, for example, they steal one of the researchers’ notes from their rooms. (Allowing them to study the notes and guide themselves.) You can prompt this as an active premise by having one of the scholars ask the PCs to steal a rival’s notes. (Prolix might do so in order to figure out what Aloysia is doing in Bazzoxan, for example.)

For the encounters studded along the route, you can use (or at least start with) the “Betrayers’ Rise Encounters” on p. 63 of Call of the Netherdeep. Try to have these encounters really reflect the vastness of the spaces through which the PCs are traveling, however: They pass through a galley looking out over a vast underground chasm or chamber, lit by the ruddy light of a lake of fire on the far end. In the center of the lake is an island upon which is a slab of stone. And upon the slab of stone there lies a sleeping balor.

Best not to rouse it.

FURTHER READING
Call of the Netherdeep: Running the Rivals

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26A: Tor’s Training

After several mournful minutes in which little was said, they quickly decided that someone needed to return to the surface and notify House Erthuo of the death of Faeliel and the others.

Dominic and Ranthir took that heavy task on themselves. Tor left with them, needing to keep an appointment later in the morning.

The walk back to the surface took a little more than twenty minutes. Then they took carriages in opposite directions: Tor back towards Midtown; Ranthir and Dominic towards the Nobles’ Quarter.

In The Art of Pacing, I explain running an RPG for a split party is basically the easy mode for handling pacing as a GM: Because you no longer need to wait for the end of a scene before cutting back and forth between the groups, you not only have a whole bunch of new pacing techniques you can use, you’re also freed up from needing to honor the structure of the current scene (since you’ll be cutting back to it later).

In Random GM Tip: Splitting the Party, I delve a bit deeper into the practical side of splitting the party and share some basic best practices.

But if splitting the party is the easy mode for pacing, then splitting the party in an urban environment is the easy mode for splitting the party.

First, in my experience it’s much easier to convince groups to split up in the first place in an urban environment. Even groups that adamantly profess, “Never split the party!” will often still be comfortable doing it in an urban environment where (a) the risk seems minimal and (b) typical tasks so readily lend themselves to multitasking. (“You sell those mage-touched swords we took from the bandits and I’ll arrange for our rooms while the wizard gets his reagents. We can meet at the Onyx Spider afterwards.”)

WHO FIRST?

When the group splits up, whose scene should you frame first?

In general, what you’re looking for is the group whose scene is most likely to be interrupted the fastest. This might be:

• A complicated decision.
• A skill check.
• Some sort of logistical calculation.
• A dramatically appropriate moment.
• An unexpected rules look-up.

And so forth. Basically, any of the reasons you’d normally cut from one scene to another.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward: You’re dipping your toes in the first scene, and then as quickly as possible cutting away to another group. Not only does this keep everyone engaged, but you’re getting to the time-saving advantage of multitasking as quickly possible (with Group 1 continuing to resolve stuff in their scene while you’ve turned your attention to Group 2).

The slightly more advanced technique here is to first check for effective crossovers (those moments when elements or outcomes from one scene have an impact on another scene) and make sure you line them up.

For example, in this session I knew that the House Erthuo guards were likely going to stumble onto Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra with the corpses of the Erthuo researchers. This suggested a natural sequence in which:

• Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo.
• Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra are discovered by the House Erthuo guards, resulting in a cliffhanger.
• Cut away from the cliffhanger back to House Erthuo, where Cordelia arrives and explains what the guards are doing there.
• Cut back to Ghul’s Labyrinth, to finish resolving the confrontation.

HOW LONG?

As you start juggling multiple scenes playing out across a city, you’ll need to answer the question of how all these scenes relate to each other in terms of time.

First, remember that you don’t have to keep time perfectly synced between the groups. In fact, you’ll almost always want to NOT do that.

For example, maybe the Erthuo guards showed up 30 minutes before Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo and the whole interaction between the guards and the dungeon group “actually” played out before anything of interest happened with Ranthir and Dominic. But that would have been dramatically far less interesting. And, even more importantly, you want to scale time to balance table time.

The key thing is not to push this so far that PCs can’t respond to things they reasonably should be able to respond to. (For example, if Ranthir and Dominic would have been able to warn the other PCs that the Erthuo guards were coming, it wouldn’t have been fair to frame things in a sequence that would prevent them from doing that.) But, generally speaking, you’ve got a fairly large fudge factor and the players will generally support you by not deliberately doing anything that violates established causality.

(And if something does go askew, a minor retcon is rarely going to hurt anything.)

Speaking of the fudge factor, you’re usually going to find it easier to juggle multiple groups doing stuff at the same time if you “chunk” time. You can kinda think of this as establishing ad hoc turns, with each discrete group usually being able to do one thing per “turn.”

I usually think in terms of:

• the hour,
• the watch (4 hours), or
• the half day (morning/afternoon)

Which mental construct I find most useful depends on how “meaty” the PCs’ planned actions are. If someone is planning to gather information down at the Docks, I might think to myself, “That’ll take about half a day.” And so the active question becomes: What is everyone else doing with that half day?

Once you’ve collected those declarations, it’s not hard to become sequencing how things should resolve.

Here’s my final tip: If the group has fractured into three or four or more groups (often in the form of individuals scattering to the winds), write down their declarations. Just jot them down in your notebook. You don’t have to get fancy or specific with this, just a quick one or two word reminder:

• Tee/Agnarr/Elestra: packing
• Tor: training
• R/D: Erthuo

Just enough that you can re-orient yourself with a glance at he end of each scene.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26B – Running the Campaign: Treasure Logistics
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 26A: TOR’S TRAINING

August 24th, 2008
The 13th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After several mournful minutes in which little was said, they quickly decided that someone needed to return to the surface and notify House Erthuo of the death of Faeliel and the others.

Dominic and Ranthir took that heavy task on themselves. Tor left with them, needing to keep an appointment later in the morning.

The walk back to the surface took a little more than twenty minutes. Then they took carriages in opposite directions: Tor back towards Midtown; Ranthir and Dominic towards the Nobles’ Quarter.

When Ranthir and Dominic arrived at the estate of House Erthuo, they still weren’t sure what they were going to stay. Clambering out of the carriage they approached the two guards on duty at the gate.

“What’s your business here?” The guard had an edgy suspicion in his voice. It wasn’t until that moment that they realized what a dismal sight they must present – dusty and bloody from their delving.

“We bring news for Cordelia Erthuo.”

“News of what?”

“Of Erthuo workers who were retrieving an orrery. She’ll know what we mean.”

The guard nodded to his comrade, who left through the gate. They stood in uneasy silence for several minutes before Cordelia came rushing up.

MEANWHILE…

Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra had remained behind in the bloodwight complex to watch over the bodies.

Agnarr and Tee took the time to go back to the hall where the ghulworg had stacked the more cumbersome treasures from the Laboratory of the Beast, confirming that nothing had been taken by Ribok or the other servants of the Surgeon in the Shadows. Nothing was missing, although it was clear that the items had been rifled through.

The bluesteel door had been smashed open, proving that they were not completely impassable. But in the process, the door had also been rendered useless. There was nothing preventing the Surgeon’s men – or other intruders – from returning to these tunnels. So Tee made the decision to gather up the few remaining items of taint and chaositech from the obsidian temple, intending to take them to the safety of the facility Aoska had mentioned to them on the 12^th. They also took the time to strip the adamantine from the ghulworg’s skeleton, stacking it with the other items in the hall.

A little over forty minutes had passed by the time they returned to where Elestra had been waiting. As they were walking up, Elestra suddenly heard footsteps approaching from the direction of Greyson House.

It was still much too soon for Ranthir or Dominic to be returning, so they quickly moved into defensive positions: Tee kept a watchful eye focused in the opposite direction, while Elestra, Agnarr, and Seeaeti flanked the passage from which the footsteps were approaching.

“Do you want to send your dog down to the stuff we gathered?” Elestra asked. “You know, to guard it?”

Agnarr looked flatly at her. “No. I don’t.”

And then they fell silent, awaiting the approach of whoever – or whatever – was coming…

… they were House Erthuo’s men. Six of them, dressed in the livery of the house mercenaries.

MEANWHILE AT HOUSE ERTHUO…

Cordelia came rushing up. “Master Ranthir! Master Dominic! You’ve come from Greyson House?”

They nodded. “Yes,” Ranthir said.

Cordelia couldn’t help noticing their melancholy. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid… Your men are dead.”

Cordelia gasped. “All of them? What happened? Even the guards I just sent?”

“Yes— Wait… the guards you just sent?”

After several moments of confusion, they quickly realized that they must have crossed paths with the House Erthuo guards. Cordelia had sent them after Faeliel failed to report in.

“Oh dear,” Ranthir said. “I hope nothing unfortunate happens.”

Cordelia asked them to return to the orrery site and help with the recovery of the dead bodies so that they could be given proper rites.

“Of course.”

MEANWHILE AT THE ORRERY SITE…

“What happened here?” The House Erthuo mercenaries, taking in the sight of their dead housemates, were clearly suspicious – if not outright hostile.

Agnarr – his sword still raised above his head – opened his mouth to respond, but Tee quickly stepped forward. “They were killed by a man named Ribok who worked for the Surgeon in the Shadows.”

“Who?”

“He works for the Balacazars.”

They clearly recognized that name. “Why would they want to kill scholars?”

“They were just innocent bystanders,” Tee said.

“We think they were looking for chaositech!” Elestra blurted.

“Back that way,” Tee said. “Beyond a bluesteel door. That’s where we met them.”

“And who are you? What are you doing down here?”

“My name’s Tee,” she said. “This is Agnarr and Elestra. We were the ones who sold the location of the orrery to Cordelia.”

At that, the Erthuo mercenaries finally relaxed and lowered their weapons. Agnarr followed suit.

“What happened to the murderers?”

“We killed most of them,” Agnarr said.

“Except Ribok,” Tee said. “He escaped.”

The Erthuo mercenary grimaced. “Not for long, if I have anything to say about it.”

The three companions helped the Erthuo men gather up the bodies. Ranthir and Dominic arrived during this morbid work. It wasn’t long before the dead were being carried up the passage towards Greyson House.

TOR’S TRAINING

Instead of taking his carriage into Midtown, Tor had it turn aside on Golden Elm Way and pass into the Temple District. When he arrived at the Cathedral, he quickly headed to Sir Kabel’s office.

After a warm and cheerful greeting, Sir Kabel took him back across the Cathedral’s courtyard and up the Godswalk towards the Godskeep.

 “The Godskeep serves as the headquarters and training facilities for the Order of the Dawn,” Kabel explained. “In truth, it is a set of twin keeps which have been joined by the upper towers.” He pointed up to the colossal statue of Crissa atop the western keep and the matching statue of Athor atop the eastern keep, both looking north.

Crossing through the Godskeep gateyard, Kabel led Tor out the far side of the keep. There stood the Statues of the Six Gods – Itor, Itehl, Sarathyn, Sayl, Bahl, and Tohlen. Smaller than the colossi atop the keeps, these statues were nonetheless impressive, standing three times as high as Tor.

“These are the heart of our order, Tor. Only Vehthyl has no statue here at Godskeep, but that should not be considered any slight. We are all sworn to serve the Nine Gods.”

Sir Kabel then led Tor into the Godskeep itself, and began recounting the oral history of the Order.

TOR’S PRIMER – RELIGION IN BARUND

Tor was born in 757 YD at the height of the Twenty Year War between Seyrun and Barund. Among other things, the Twenty Year War triggered a religious schism within the Imperial Church. After Seyrun invaded Barund, the king of Barund refused to acknowledge the Edicts of the Novarch (as those edicts were closely associated with imperial power in Seyrun). An outright refutation of the Novarch, however, would have put the king on somewhat shaky ground: For six centuries, the Line of Kings had been recognized and legitimized as a divine bloodright dating back to the Holy Coronation performed by the Novarch in 127 YD.

So the king declared that the Novarch, while still the Living Voice of the Nine Gods, had no secular or religious authority over the lands controlled by the divine bloodright of the Barundian royal family.

The supreme leader of the Church in Barund had always been the Prelate of Barund. The Prelate of Barund had been appointed by the Novarch and had authority over the regional prelates of the church throughout Barund. Following the religious schism, however, the king of Barund – on the authority of his divine bloodright – promptly appointed his own Prelate of Barund.

Following the end of the Twenty Year War, the schism was at least partly repaired. However, even today, there are still two Prelates of Barund: One appointed by the King and the other appointed by the Novarch.

This is all to say that Tor was born into and grew up during the height of this religious tension.

TOR’S PRIMER – ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

Any order of knighthood has three things in common:

1. They follow the Code of Law as laid down in the Book of Athor.
2. They adhere to the Martial Code as laid down in the Book of Itor.
3. They honor the Seven Compassions as laid down in the Book of Crissa.

The Code of Law is your bedrock “thou shalt not” stuff: Don’t murder, steal, enslave your brother, and so forth.

The Martial Code is essentially your standard chivalric ideal: Face your opponent fairly and honorably.

The Seven Compassions are a bit more philosophically complex, and are also referred to in some commentaries as the Seven Cares. The compassions are of the self, the companion, the stranger, the task, the thought, the memory, and the true. In other words, care for yourself, for your companions, and for strangers. Take care with what you do, what you think, and it shall be remembered. And if you can do all that, then you will know true compassion. (For most people, the Seven Compassions boil down to “be nice to people” and “think before you act”.)

Collectively these are also known as the Way of Knighthood.

TOR’S PRIMER – THE DEEDS OF HONOR

Although not an official part of the Way of Knighthood, the Deeds of Honor are intimately tied to the popular conception of “what it means to be a knight”.

The Deeds of Honor, as written in the Book of Itor, are a collection of legendary tales of valor, honor, bravery, and faith. In some ways they serve as a kind of “scorecard” or exemplar of heroic actions. “He lives his life by the deeds of honor” is a common saying.

TOR’S PRIMER – THE ORDER OF THE DAWN

The modern city of Ptolus was founded by a man named Shay Orridar, the head of the Orridar merchant family (now defunct). It is said that the inspiration of the city was based on the research of the loremaster Gerris Hin, who was studying the ruins of an ancient city built on the same location.

As a result of Hin’s researches, Ptolus also became one of the early centers for the rejuvenation of Pantheon worship. The Knights of the Golden Cross, founded by Hin on the basis of his research into the old traditions which predated modern history, championed the cause of the Nine Gods.

The Knights of the Dawn were founded perhaps a quarter of a century after the Knights of the Golden Cross. The Knights of the Dawn, like the Knights of the Golden Cross, were dedicated to the Pantheon. The two groups became rivals of a sort, but the Knights of the Dawn became ascendant when they became the official protectors and guardians of the Imperial Church in Ptolus – an official Order of the Church.

The Order of the Dawn is now primarily a defensive knighthood, there to protect the temples, holdings, and interests of the Church. Only occasionally are they sent on quests, and then only with the direct blessing of the Silver Fatar.

The current leader of the order is Sir Kabel Dathim, who answers directly to the Silver Fatar of Athor.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Urban Splits – Campaign Journal: Session 26B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index