IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 2B: A WOMAN ASSAULTED

March 18th, 2007
The 16th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 2B: A Woman Assaulted

In which assaults both inexplicable and inexcusable are committed against the innocent and guilty respectively, and a holy man asks a favor with long-lasting consequences…

The shivvel addict in the first part of Session 2 is what I sometimes think of as a “foreshadowing encounter”.

In the Shadow of the Spire is primarily designed as a node-based campaign (with a few wrinkles that I’ll discuss at greater length at a later date). This means that I do have some general sense of what will be included in the campaign, if not necessarily what will happen in the campaign.

(Although only a general sense: There are quite a few “foreshadowing encounters” scattered throughout these journals which foreshadow… absolutely nothing. The PCs went a different way. I like to pretend that I always meant for those to be “local color encounters”.)

In this particular case, I knew that the PCs were probably going to get wrapped up in a tight little knot of criminal conspiracy involving the shivvel trade. The pay-off starts coming in Session 7, but by laying the groundwork for shivvel here I’ve established some necessary exposition which will make the later stuff easier to present when it comes up. I’ve also established shivvel as part of the wider reality of Ptolus; so when I later say “the shivvel trade is important”, the players don’t have to just take my word for it: They know it.

A subtler example in this same session is Brother Fabitor. I knew that in Act II (which turned out to be several dozen sessions later) I would need someone from the Imperial Church to contact the PCs; thus the introduction of Brother Fabitor here.

I thought there was actually decent odds that Brother Fabitor would become a more significant NPC. And he might have if the paladin Alysta had remained part of the campaign. Instead the PCs ended up becoming more closely associated with Mand Scheben (who you haven’t met yet) and ended up engaging the Imperial Church in completely unanticipated fashion.

… but those are tales for the future.

FURTHER READING
Random GM Tip – Foreshadowing in RPGs

Tagline:In the spirit of Capture the Flag and Paintball, but with twists all its own, Killer definitely deserves the title of Best LARP of All Time.

Running Just as I’ve never had a chance to run the Darkness Revealed trilogy, I’ve also never managed to get a proper game of Killer set-up. Yet another some day…

The history of Killer: The Game of Assassination dates all the way back to 1981. This new edition, released in 1998, continues the nearly 20 year tradition admirably.

Killer’s basic concept can be summed up very simply (in the words of SJG): “Wipe out your friends.” Basically Killer gives you a set of guidelines for setting up a competitive structure in which, yes, you go around killing your friends. This shouldn’t be confused with something like Paintball – where you go out into the wilderness and spend a few hours blowing each other away in a fairly harmless manner. No, as the full title (“The Game of Assassination”) suggests this is more subtle than that – a typical game can stretch over weeks, months, or even (although I pale to think of it) years. You don’t walk up to somebody and shoot them, instead you have to plot ingenious and crafty ways of knocking them off. You’re not a soldier, you’re an Assassin.

With such a simple concept, you might think, you don’t have to even buy the book. And why is it 80 pages long – there must be a lot of fluff, huh?

Wrong.

This is a great manual giving you giving a set of guidelines and a handbook to playing the game. It starts by giving you a general set of rules which you can use to vary the specific nature of your game (examples vary between allowing access to living places or times of day when killing is allowed). From there it gives an exhaustive list of fake weapons which can be constructed and used (and cautionary notes against many which should not be used) – from guns to bombs to poisons to sci-fi contraptions.

From these basics the book provides several optional versions of the game, some general words of advice and caution, some pre-built scenarios which can be used, a scoring system, and a set of photocopiable faux documents for the use of the playing group. And let’s not forget the hilarious illustrations which accompany the text.

All in all by the time I finished reading this manual I was itching to set up a game. Definitely give this book a try, at only fifteen bucks you won’t be disappointed.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Steve Jackson
Company/Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Cost: $14.95
Page count: 80
ISBN: 1-55634-351-5
Originally Posted: 1998/12/14

I actually had no memory of reading this book or writing this review until I started converting it for the website; then a flood of memories came rushing back. It was after a few experiences like this that I started keeping a log of books as I read them. Human memory is a really fickle thing.

I do remember now that my interest in this book grew as a direct result of my first experiences with paintball (which I was properly introduced to by members of my D&D group at the time). I was never able to get that group interested in Killer, though.

Has anybody reading this participated in a round of assassination? How was it? Worth the time for me to try to get one set-up?

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

Smoky torches? Check. Worn stairs? Check. Black-mawed doors? Check. Inexplicable carvings? Check. Vapors of a worrisome nature? Check and check.

Nothing more exciting than a good dungeoncrawl.

Note, too, how the central figures are dwarfed by the enigma of the locale. They could be anybody. They could be you.

Which way will you turn?

Had an interesting experience with a plot map in Technoir last night and wanted to share it: I generated a mission seed, figured out what was going on, and then hooked the PCs.

But during the actual session, the PCs never got anywhere near the core of the plot map (the heart of the conspiracy defined by the original mission seed). Instead, they became completely wrapped up in a complex periphery of events that were being influenced or instigated by the conspiracy without actually being a part of it.

I’m now referring to this as the “untouched core”. Let me give a hypothetical example of what I’m talking about:

I generate a conspiracy focusing around a complex alliance of interests working to rig the presidential election in Ohio. The first impulse is that the PCs will work their contacts, shake a few trees, and eventually find a way to unmask (or at least de-fang) the conspiracy (presumably preventing the election from being rigged). But when the campaign takes the form of the “untouched core”, that’s not what happens: Instead, the PCs get tangled up in the street warfare of a small gang that murdered a campaign worker. Or end up investigating the illegal medical testing of one of the companies involved in the election rigging. Or wrangle a contract to protect one of the down-ticket candidates.

The point is that you end up with his sort of “cloud of activity” surrounding the conspiracy at the center of your plot map, and it’s fully possible for the PCs to get completely (and compellingly) tangled up in this cloud without ever worming their way into the heart of the matter.

This isn’t necessarily something that I could force to happen. (And I wouldn’t want to.) But it’s something I’m going to make a point of leaving myself open to and being all right with if it happens in the future.

By contrast, I think I inadvertently mucked up the first Technoir adventure I ran by pushing too hard for the revelation of the central conspiracy. I think I would have been better off simply letting the PCs resolve the local squabble they were tangled up in and letting the deeper conspiracy either pass them by or come back for a second pass in a different form further down the road.