IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 2A: Welcome to Ptolus

In which the darker side of Ptolus proves to be an addicting experience and the services of many are divided across shopping trips both past and present…

At the beginning of the campaign journal for this session, Tee shares the revelations she gleaned from reading through the Delver’s Guild membership papers. This is actually something that was resolved between sessions. In fact, I’ve still got the original e-mail from Tee’s player:

One thing that should probably be added to the journal is the matter of the ID papers.  Everyone took their set that says they are members of Ptolus (I’d imagine that Tee would either keep Agnarr’s for him, or explain to him what it means so he can hold it himself) and the rest of the papers were placed in the secret compartment of Tee’s trunk, and the trunk was then locked (Tee now carrying the key with her instead of leaving it in her room).

I’m not sure what happened with the Delver’s Guild papers officially, though I would imagine that they were distributed and not locked up with the ID papers, as presumably they are not falsified. On a side note – Tee would have read through her set of Delver’s papers (you said there was a packet of information) and probably gone through the ID papers that night, to see all of the things we were “members” of, to try to keep a mental list in case they were needed later, and to see if we were all members of the same things.

I’ve found it can often be quite useful to end a session at the point just before the players are going to engage in a lot of “down time” activities. These activities can then be resolved at length, in detail, and at leisure through e-mail or other means. This conserves table time, allows for more detailed explorations of certain aspects of the campaign, and can also keep the players engaged in the campaign between sessions.

This particular e-mail from the player was prompted by an e-mail in which I sent out the campaign journal for session 1 and asked all of the players to, “Please take a look through it and let me know if you feel anything was misrepresented
or anything important left out.”

This is another aspect of keeping a detailed campaign journal: The process of review not only helps to keep the record accurate, it also helps to reinforce the players’ memories of the session for future reference.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to convince the players to actually read the campaign journal. So I’ve taken to secretly docking their XP by 50% whenever they don’t do it.

(No, not really. That’s just my way of seeing whether or not any of them are reading these essays. I’ve found that if players don’t want to engage in a campaign, you can’t force them to do so through punishments. You need to keep adding carrots and trying different techniques to see what will stick. And what sticks will often change over time.)

Tagline: An excellent story which, unfortunately, has some flaws as a module, which are further compounded by some truly baffling design decisions.

Running the Darkness Revealed trilogy in its entirety is on my bucket list. I’ve tried on three occasions, but have never managed to actually make a campaign congeal. Some day…

(In other words, if you’re potentially one of my players you shouldn’t read this review!)

Note: This product is a module. In the following review there will quite likely be spoilers of various sorts. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Descent into Darkness is the first of a three-part adventure series for White Wolf’s Trinity. It contains three separate adventures which are joined thematically, thrusting the PCs into the heart of a major development in the Trinity universe. At $15.95, its a great deal in this age of $20 single-sheet modules and $25-$35 sourcebooks.

That being said, this product possesses some serious – although not irreparable – flaws.

GOOD STORY, WEAK MODULE

The adventure is based on some rock-solid material. The vast conspiracy plot being described in this adventure is nefarious, wicked, and cleverly conceived – my mouth was practically salivating thinking of running players through this puppy and having them slowly piece the puzzle together. Unfortunately I discovered that, having this rock-solid material in place, the writers then fell down flat in presenting it. In two of the adventures the full picture has absolutely no chance of being revealed until the very end – where we are instructed to have the PCs discover what’s been going on by looking at the minicomps possessed by the NPC conspirators. In the third you might be able to discover some of what’s going on, but only if you possess a specific psi power and make a specific die roll which will send you down the right path. Otherwise you have to wait until the end and disseminate the data files. The writers here wanted a mystery, but apparently didn’t have either the skill or the patience to see it carried out properly – so instead the PCs are onslaughted by forces they don’t understand in a series of segues they can’t comprehend, until the end where the GM is apparently supposed to lecture them for several minutes explaining the really excellent story they didn’t understand while experiencing it.

COLORED SECTIONS

This problem is further compounded by the three glossy color sections found in the book. These are designed to be given to the players as briefing files from the Aeon Trinity organization. Besides the obvious problem that these three sections are spread throughout the book so that you are faced with a decision of (a) ripping them out and completely destroying the product; or (b) xeroxing them (and thereby removing the entire reason for having them in color to begin with), these sections also successfully serve to completely destroy the plots of the adventures and suspension of disbelief.

For example, in the first adventure the PCs are supposed to be investigating shady activities of the Aesculapian Order on Luna. Eventually they will discover that this secret “biorg project” is being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Jerzy Grabowski, that it is using Aberrant taint to genetically alter psions in order to greatly increase their power, and that these new bioapp-enhanced psions were field tested in destroying Freak Alley while fighting Aberrants at a Lunar Base; and, finally, that a Dr. Malachi Ross was tested with these bioapps, escaped, and is now hunting Dr. Grabowski.

Reading the color briefing section for this adventure (to be disseminated to the players before the adventure starts) we are given the following pieces of documentation: (1) A transcript describing the attack on the Lunar Base in great detail; (2) An autopsy report of a John Doe found at the site of the attack who died of bioapp-feedback and then subsequently had all the bioapps removed from his body before the docs arrrived at the scene; (3) a hand-written note at the bottom of this autopsy report saying (essentially), “Jerzy—this guy knows too much, we need to transfer him to a place where he’ll never bother us again”); (4) excerpts from the diary of Dr. Malachi Ross which not only tells us his name, but also that he’s involved in the “Huang-Marr” bioapp project.

Do we see a pattern of similarity here? By the time the players finish reading their mission briefings they already know everything they need to know; they just have to go through the motions. Not only that, but the material found in these Aeon Trinity briefings pretty much invalidates the PCs actions: If you are wondering whether or not Jerzy Grabowski is involved in something fishy, is it really necessary to have the PCs look for that something if you’ve already got a memo with an incriminating note on the bottom of it?

BREVITY

The other major problem I was having with the adventures as described is that they are awfully brief and light on character activity. The first adventure, for example, has the players go to the clinic where Grabowski works and accomplish very little. Then they go to the site of the Aberrant attack, look around, and find nothing of much interest. Then they go to Freak Alley and find (you guessed it) little of interest. Then they go back to the clinic and, for some reason, they are now supposed to have enough evidence to arrest Grabowski (despite the fact they have uncovered NO evidence that wasn’t already in the briefing report, unless they randomly decied to hack into the clinic’s computers and discover the completely non-incriminating evidence that Grabowski is scheduled to go to Earth soon). Assuming they do this, Ross breaks into his cell and Grabowski is killed. Once Grabowski’s dead they hack into his minicomp and find out the details.

At no point (as a result of the color inserts) do the PCs really learn anything, nor do they really accomplish anything (the real work is done by the people they’re supposed to call in to arrest Grabowski), nor is it really ever explained to us what drives them along the course they’re supposed to take. However, the module does imply that they are supposed to waste great quantities of time (for example, when going to Freak Alley it is apparently assumed that they will spend great amounts of time talking with those who saw the accident… but no one will know anything of any interest).

The second adventure is the strongest of the three, but still suffers from unsubstantiated leaps of “logic” which the PCs are supposed to be making. In my experience, this type of module design inevitably leads to a necessity of dropping “subtle GM hints” in order to prod the players along the railroad.

PLOTTING BY LOCATION

No, the book doesn’t have location-coded maps, but one of the more egregious plotting stupidities they pull takes place in the third episode. The PCs arrive at Summit Center, a giant complex which literally circles the peak of Olympus Mons on Mars on a rail. Once there they are apparently supposed to wander around the place accomplishing absolutely nothing until such time as they end up standing in front of the power core (which, for some idiotic reason, is located at the very center of the complex and is highly visible to the public). At this point a would-be assassin launches a grenade at them.

Why? Because it’s necessary to blow up the power core so that Summit Center will collapse and go rolling down the side of Olympus Mons. Huh? The number of things ignored in this railroaded plot (what if the PCs split up? what if the PCs never go anywhere near the required location?) is mind-boggling.

INVOLVEMENT

One nice touch is the way in which the designers don’t simply gloss over PC involvement. Throughout the work several different methods are mentioned as to different ways PCs can become involved (fresh starts, skipping certain episodes, etc.) and then these are actually followed up later on, with pointers on how various PC involvement strategies will affect the way certain sequences play out.

This is a nice touch, especially in comparison to many other adventure products out there (which either leave the work up to the GM entirely or gloss over a few weakly inspired ideas and then drop them – as if why the PCs are involved in an adventure has no impact on how they will approach the events which envelop them).

ARTWORK AND TEXT

The quality of the artwork is quite excellent in some cases, and never worse than average. However, in several cases little connection between what the art is representing and the text can be made (although often you will realize that the art was depicting something that would be discussed later in the text), and is often recycled several times through the work (confirming that no connection is actual, although often it is implied).

The text is very readable, full of information, and nicely laid out on the page. Even the sidebars are placed in such a way that they are informative and easily digested (too many products just stick the sidebars in any old place, and it becomes difficult to assimilate what they are trying to tell you).

CONCLUSION

Having said all these negative things about the plotting and construction of these adventures I’m going to do a rather surprising thing: I’m going to suggest that you buy this product.

No, White Wolf isn’t paying me sizable amounts of cash to say this (or even insignificant amounts of cash). I say it because the background-material on which these adventures are based is, as I said at the beginning of this review, rock-solid and highly worthy of your consideration. Naturally they need a bit of work. Here’s what you’ll need to do to make this product worth your while:

(1) Don’t hand out those color sections.

(2) Redesign the flow of the adventures so that they operate like true mysteries. Only a hack designs a mystery where everything is discovered at the last minute: Have the PCs gather clues slowly throughout the process, and then have them put it together before the big finale (not in the aftermath by finding a handy minicomp).

(3) Seriously work at the connective material. Right now the modules are driven along a railroad; find a reason for the PCs to progress. Better yet, find many possible reasons, and many possible routes. Your players will probably still thwart you, but at least you’ll be better prepared to deal with them.

So I guess that’s my conclusion: The adventures are crummy, but they rest on such a fascinating, rock-solid set of background information that the product is still worth picking up (particularly at $15.95 – great price!). Just be aware you’re going to have to put a little bit of elbow grease into making this one serviceable.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Author: Bruce Baugh and Richard E. Dansky
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $15.95
Page count: 120
ISBN: 1-56504-751-6
Originally Posted: 1998/12/11

For several years after writing this review, Bruce Baugh would publicly cite me as his favorite reviewer and credit the useful critiques of this specific review for greatly improving the second and third volumes of the series. (And they were, in fact, very much improved, as you’ll see in later reviews.) I enjoyed Baugh’s work before, but after that I respected him greatly. Not because he was praising me (although that was nice), but because he was willing to take a critique that wasn’t sugar-coated and grow from it.

I wrote this a few years before formulating the Three Clue Rule, but you can already see some of its roots here. I’ve had a long dislike for the “mysterious shit happens and the PCs have no way of figuring it out” method of adventure design, though. It goes all the way back to reading the Touch of Death module in junior high, as I describe here: Stop playing poker with your players!

I’m also faintly amused by the quaintness of my complaints vis-a-vis xeroxing the color sections of the modules. These days, of course, I’d just pop open the PDF and use my color printer to crank out as many copies as I thought might be useful. (I wouldn’t in this case, of course, because they really do suck as handouts. Although it should be noted that a few pages can probably be salvaged.)

Read the review of Darkness Revealed 2: Passage Through Shadow

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

The Rogue – Bonnie Tang

It was surprisingly difficult to find a painting of a rogue that didn’t look like a slavering madman or an emo cosplayer. I was initially looking for a picture in an urban setting (perhaps with a bit of lockpicking action), but this sylvan elf by Bonnie Tang enchanted me completely.

Hopefully it will enchant you, too.

Go to Part 1

Looking at the two versions of Madame Ling from yesterday, it’s notable that both contain the same amount of detail. Does this mean we can’t (or shouldn’t) add any prep to Madame Ling?

Not necessarily. But we need to look for where we can execute value-added prep that isn’t wastefully redundant or needlessly limiting within the scenario structure of Technoir. Specifically, we want to avoid pre-linking any of the nodes together: The plot map mechanics will do that for us during play.

But beyond that, there are a lots of way in which we could theoretically enhance Technoir transmissions.

For example, consider Club Neo. Off the top of my head, we could potentially prep:

• A detailed floorplan of the club.
• Throw together a couple paragraphs describing the “overlapping reality” club scene, in which people deliberately share a common physical space with contrasting audio- and visual-inputs pumped through their AR rigs.
• Detail the “seven layers of reality” on Club Neo’s experiential menu.
• Provide a stat block for the club’s bouncer.
• Prep a drink menu for the club that could be given to the players as a handout.
• Set up a random table of ten colorful NPCs who could be used to provide the club with some instant flavor as needed.

How much of that should you actually prep? I dunno. How much of it actually looks useful to you? How much of it do you think would enhance the game for you and your players? How much time are you willing to spend in prep?

For myself, I’ve so far confined my Technoir runs to the minimalist approach of the default transmissions, with one exception: For each city that I’ve run, I’ve googled up a neighborhood map of the city as it currently exists and printed it off. Although the cities have changed dramatically in Technoir’s dark future, these maps have given me just enough of the local geography for a firm foundation.

SOME FINAL QUALIFIERS

In closing, I want to just clear up a couple minor semantic points which are likely to throw some people off the scent if they get too hung up on them.

To be perfectly clear: Every bit of detail you prep is, in some sense, going to lock down options. That’s why I made it a point to specifically identify the principles of smart prep as guidelines. If you try to pursue them as hard rules you’re going to be disappointed.

For example, what if I decide to prep Club Neo in more detail and, as part of that, say that it’s owned and operated by former twee-disco star Big Purple? I have now effectively locked out the option of making Madame Ling the owner of Club Neo. How is that any different than locking Madame Ling into actually being the owner of Club Neo? Haven’t I still restricted her relationship with the club?

Well, it’s largely a matter of degree. By making someone else the owner of Club Neo, I have locked out one option for Madame Ling among a nearly infinite multitude. But if I make Madame Ling the owner of the club, I have locked out a multitude of options in favor of a single choice.

Then am I saying that you should never make an NPC the owner of a restaurant? Well, as Big Purple demonstrates, obviously not. This is something particular to the fact that Madame Ling and Club Neo are both nodes in Technoir’s scenario structure: There’s nothing particularly heinous about making Madame Ling the owner of a sex salon or giving Club Neo a particular owner; it is rather the particular act of pre-linking two nodes which is substantially problematic within this specific scenario structure.

The point is that you want to maximize the utility and flexibility of your prep while avoiding prep which serves little or no function except to limit the flexibility of your material. Pre-linking nodes in Technoir is a particularly clear-cut example of how you can limit your flexibility without adding utility; prepping plots instead of situations is a slightly more complicated one.

But there are plenty of other examples (both large and small). For example, you might write, “The giants are automatically hostile and will not listen to negotiations of any kind.” It’s just one sentence, but unless I’ve got a really good reason for introducing that type of limitation, I’m not going to do it. I’m certainly not going to elaborate upon it. What’s the point of wasting time on something which provides a strictly negative value at the actual game table?

Smart prep. It’s what all the cool kids are doing.

GM rulings and GM fiat rest at two ends of a single spectrum.

On one end of the spectrum you have GM decisions that are completely disconnected from the existing rules. These are examples of clear GM fiat and the same decision would be made regardless of what rule system the GM was using or even if there were no rules at all.

On the other end of the spectrum you have a very simple and straightforward ruling: The players want to do X. There is a rule for X. We will use the rule to determine X.

In between you have a broad spectrum of gray.

For example, let’s consider the case of jumping across a crevasse. At one end of the scale you have pure fiat: The GM says “yes, you can” or “no, you can’t” based on his desire for them to do so, his whim, or somesuch. At the other end of the scale you have the simple application of 3E’s jumping rule: The GM simply picks up the rule, applies it, and determines whether or not the action is a success.

In between you might have OD&D, which lacks a clear rule for jumping. So the GM says, “He has a Dex of 15. He could probably make this jump easily, so yes.” That seems to still clearly be a ruling; the GM is simply figuring out how to apply the mechanics in a situation for which a clear rule does not exist.

Heading further into the gray we have thinking like: “His character background says that he was an Olympic track athlete, so it makes sense that he should be able to make this jump.” or “Last week he wasn’t able to jump over that pit and this crevasse is even wider, so it makes sense that he won’t be able to make this jump.” Are those rulings or fiat? It’s getting a little harder to judge. (Is the latter a ruling based on a previous fiat? Or just more fiat?)

Another way you can draw the distinction is that it is very easy for rulings to become rules; it is difficult or impossible for fiat to do so.

For example, in a case of pure fiat (where I say “yes, he can jump that crevasse because I say so”) it is very difficult to then make an informed ruling based on that fiat. At the purely local level it probably means I’ll decide that the character can make that same jump again, but whether or not that will have any wider applicability will probably still depend on some arbitrary decision-making.

On the other hand, the more concrete the ruling the easier it is to begin applying it as a rule. For example, if I say “he has a Dex of 15, so he can make the jump”, then it’s relatively easy to apply that as a rule and decide that, yes, the character with a Dex of 16 can also easily make the jump.

If I go even further and base the ruling on something like “I’ll say that you can jump 2 feet for every point of Dex”, then it’s very easy to simply treat that as a rule going forward.

A third way of looking at this is through the lens of consistency: The easier it is to reapply the same decision in a consistent fashion across multiple situations (because it’s based on some sort of meaningful criteria), the more likely it is that the decision is a ruling. The more difficult it is to do so, the more likely it is that the decision is fiat.

Which is one of the reasons why I say that a properly structured rule facilitates rulings.