V. writes:

In the current 5E adventure I’m running, I’ve attempted to apply many of the concepts I’ve learned from the Alexandrian… Generally, multiple clues have been available to transition PCs between nodes. Now the players are about to experience a party scenario. One planned event will be a senior member of the faction that players belong to showing up unexpectedly at the feast. That NPC is going to give a specific mission to the players that would push them towards a particular node. Would this be considered overt railroading? Something to absolutely avoid?

I guess my mind is really spinning after having just re-read the node series. I don’t remember you mentioning a node structure without multiple entry points to a specific node.

The key thing to understand is that, generally speaking, a node with only one potential point of entry is fragile. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, it just means that you – as the adventure designer – should be aware that it’s quite possible the PCs won’t go to that node. (Because, following the principle of the Three Clue Rule, they either won’t find the lead, won’t understand the lead, or won’t follow the lead.)

The exception to this is a proactive node. These are the nodes that come looking for the PCs. They don’t need multiple leads pointing to them (although they can) because the PCs don’t need to go to them in order for them to enter play.

Scenario hooks, in particular, are often rendered as a proactive node. And a very common form of this, particularly in published adventures, is the job offer: Somebody wants the PCs to do something and they tell them what that is.

This is, of course, that situation you’re looking at here.

One thing to note here from a structural viewpoint is that, while the job offer may be proactive, the next step (of taking the job and going to do whatever the patron asks) is theoretically fragile (because you only have one lead; i.e., accepting the job offer).

In actual practice, however, this tends not to be case: First, you have an NPC literally saying, “Do this,” which eliminates most of the ways in which a lead can fail (by the PCs missing it or misinterpreting it), leaving the only fragility the possibility that the PCs will just outright refuse to follow the lead (i.e., turn down the job). And this is comparatively less likely because, in most campaigns, scenario hooks are considered something that the players are expected to follow, so as long as the players recognize that this job offer is a scenario hook, it becomes much more likely that they’ll accept it. Also, as in your current scenario, such job offers often come from organizations or patrons that the PCs have an established relationship with, making it more likely they’ll do it for in-character reasons.

Yes, the expectation that the PCs will take a scenario hook when it’s offered by the GM is very light railroading. But the “scenario of the week” format in play is quite common and not particularly objectionable, and even in campaigns where that’s not the case, in practice explicit/obvious scenario hooks are just treated as having more “weight” than other leads.

With that being said, the advanced technique to understand here is that the patron’s job offer — i.e., the thing the patron wants the PCs to do — IS NOT THE SCENARIO.

The scenario is whatever situation (e.g., a collection of nodes) the patron’s job offer is pointing the PCs towards.

For example, the patron says, “I’d like you to steal four hundred cure disease potions from this Imperial caravan.” The PCs might do that. They might also steal the potions and fence them. Or warn the caravan guards and then help them protect the shipment so that it reaches the plague victims in Vilheim safely. Or steal them and redirect them to the poor people in the Cataris district instead of the self-serving 1% in Vilheim. Or take the patron’s intel and use it to steal something else from the caravan. Or sell the intel itself. Or… well, lots of things. When you’re designing scenarios instead of plots, the possibilities become almost limitless.

It also become easier at this point to recognize that the job offer from the patron doesn’t have to be the only scenario hook pointing at that caravan, the cure disease potions, and/or the plague victims in Vilheim and Cataris.

This moves us towards material I cover more fully in Juggling Scenario Hooks in the Sandbox and the Running the Sandbox video, but it obviously removes the theoretical fragility of having the job offer as the only lead pointing the PCs towards the scenario.

(Of course, in the sandbox the players will know that they aren’t expected to follow every scenario hook. So, paradoxically, it may become more likely that they never go on that caravan raid. On the other hand, that’s just fine because, in sandbox, the fallout from them NOT raiding the caravan may be even more interesting than if they had. But I digress.)

Once you have multiple scenario hooks in play, the next design revelation you may have is that these hooks don’t all need to point at the same node! For example, the patron’s job offer is “raid the caravan” (which points them at the caravan, from which they can learn about where the cure disease potions are being sent and why). But the PCs might also have an ally whose mother lives in Cataris and has become sick (leading the PCs to start in Cataris, learn about the plague, and then potentially discover the cure disease caravan as a possible solution). Or they pass on the job, the patron hires someone else to hit the caravan, and now a wealthy uncle who lives in Vilheim wants them to track down the culprits and recover the cure.

If you stop thinking in terms of plot, you’ll discover that a scenario can often engage the PCs from lots of different angles, which will, in turn, give them lots of meaningful choices about how they want to engage with it.

The short version is this: No, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the PCs getting job offers. In fact, it would be weird if they didn’t. Most PCs are hyper-competent and rapidly accumulate a resume of high-profile accomplishments. They’re exactly the sort of people you want solving your problems for you.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #5

Desert Orange asks:

I’m trying to use node-based scenario design for the first time. I’m designing a Hangover-style scenario on a superyacht: the PCs wake up on the ship surrounded by corpses and with no memory of how they got there.

If I’m using a funnel design, is it possible to only have two nodes before the first funnel? There’d only be two clues per node. That can’t be right. But what bugs me is that I only have two locations for the PCs to explore: the ship they’re on and the island that’s nearby.

I’m not sure if I should use the locations as nodes or the conclusions that the characters have to reach. The funnel would be figuring out how the previous night ended. After this, they’d begin figuring out how it started.

Easy answer first: If you’re designing a node-based mystery, think of each node as a place where you can investigate for clues.

Each node (other than the starting node) is also a revelation/conclusion because the players have to conclude that they can go to the node and investigate. (The three clues pointing to Node X are basically pointing to a conclusion which says, “You can find more clues at Node X.”)

But in a mystery scenario you can also have conclusions that aren’t nodes – i.e., things that the PCs need to learn that aren’t places they can go to investigate for more clues.

In my more recent writing, I’ve started referring to clues that point to places where you can continue your investigation as leads – they lead you somewhere. In node-based design it’s the leads that need to adhere to the Inverse Three Clue Rule:

If the PCs have access to ANY three clues, they will reach at least ONE conclusion.

Because as long as the PCs have somewhere to continue investigating the mystery, the adventure keeps working. It’s only if they run out of places to investigate that the adventure breaks.

So in your Hangover cruise adventure, for example, you’ll have a list of revelations which consist of Things That Happened To Us That We’ve Forgotten. And you’ll want clues for each of those (and three clues for any that the PCs need to know about). Those probably aren’t leads.

NOT ALL MYSTERIES HAVE NODES

But here’s the thing: I don’t think your mystery is actually a node-based scenario. At least not at first.

The PCs are not trying to figure out where to look for clues: The clues are on the ship.

So what you actually have is a location-crawl in which they explore the ship room by room, finding clues in each room. You’re still using the Three Clue Rule:

For every conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

And you’ll have a revelation list so that the PCs can piece together what happened to them, but the players aren’t really finding clues in the helm station that tell them they should check out the stern deck for clues. They’re just methodically searching the ship for clues (while also potentially dealing with other crises or conundrums).

(This isn’t to say that a location-crawl can’t have clues in Room A that point the PCs to Room B, for example. That’s a great way to make a location-crawl feel cohesive and, if those clues are revealing hidden secrets that the PCs might have missed in Room B the first time they went, can add a lot of depth to the experience. But that’s not really node-based design and doesn’t structurally function as a node-based adventure.)

Now if there are clues on the ship that point the PCs to another location where they need to continue their investigation, that would suggest a node-based design. (Maybe they need to realize that the superyacht was at a different location at some point last night and they need to go there. Or they discover the ritual that opened a gateway to a dark dimension that they need to go back to in order to continue piecing things together.) But I still wouldn’t try to break the ship up into multiple nodes: The superyacht as a whole would just be one node, with that node basically being a mini-location-crawl inside the larger scenario.

You’d mentioned that you wanted the scenario to start with them figuring out how the previous night ended and then, after that, they’d begin figuring out how it started. You can see how this structure would essentially accomplish that: The superyacht has all the clues that let them figure out how the previous night ended, which allows them to figure out where the night started (i.e., the other node where they can look for the clues to figure out what happened there).

In fact, this node-based scenario might consist of just these two nodes: The superyacht and where the night started.

There’s nothing about node-based design that says you have to get super-complicated about it.

REGARDING FUNNELS

Although I don’t think it necessarily applies to this scenario, let’s talk about your specific question regarding funnel design for a moment: The key thing about the Inverse Three Clue Rule is that the PCs should have access to at least three clues at all time.

(This doesn’t necessarily mean they will FIND all those clues. The whole reason you have redundancy is in case they don’t, after all. But they should have ACCESS to them, by which I mean that in locations which the PCs know about, there should be at least three clues pointing to locations that they don’t already know about. Or, in the final scene(s) of a scenario where they’ve almost finished their investigation, three clues that point to all the conclusion(s) they need to bring the scenario to its conclusion.)

In addition, the Three Clue Rule still applies! You still need three clues for each conclusion the PCs need to reach!

So your current structure is:

• Node 0 ➞ A, B
• Node A ➞ B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C
• Node C

We can immediately see that in Node 0 (the opening scene) they only have access to two clues. That’s a structural problem which violates the Inverse Three Clue Rule.

In addition, you basically have three conclusions:

• You need to investigate Node A.
• You need to investigate Node B.
• You need to investigate Node C.

But for each of those conclusions, there are only two clues, which means you’ve violated the Three Clue Rule.

Adding enough clues to satisfy the Three Clue Rule will, conveniently, also satisfy the Inverse Three Clue Rule. Here’s a symmetrical example:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, B
• Node A ➞ B, B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C, C
• Node C

You could also saturate the opening scene:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, B, B
• Node A ➞ B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C, C
• Node C

And other patterns are also possible:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, A, B
• Node A ➞ B, B, C
• Node B ➞ C, C
• Node C

If you walk through these simple node structures, you can clearly see how the PCs always have access to three clues pointing towards nodes they haven’t investigated yet.

You may also be able to see how different patterns of clues will make certain paths through the adventure more or less likely. For example, in the third arrangement it’s much more likely that the PCs will end up going 0 ➞ A ➞ B ➞ C, but if they DO go from 0 ➞ B, then it becomes likely they’ll never go to Node A.

If you’re dabbling with node-based scenario design for the first time, I recommend doing a couple of symmetric designs first. It will give you more reliable results and a better sense, after running the scenarios, of what node-based scenarios “feel” like.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #4

Mark writes:

In your Dragon Heist Remix, you have changed events so that there’s some more breathing room between Chapter 1 [when the PCs investigate the disappearance of Floon and discover the real kidnap victim was Renaer Neverember] and Chapter 3 [when someone is assassinated on the PCs’ front doorstep].

As far as I can see, it’s assumed that the players will be doing faction missions, other character-related content, and fixing up Trollskull Manor.

I’m worried that the group will feel disconnected from the overarching plot and the moving parts of the factions in the Grand Game [i.e., the factions in Waterdeep that are all pursuing the half million gold pieces that were embezzled by Dagult Neverember].

What would you suggest to keep the players invested in the Grand Game in that interim period?

To start with, the expected experience is that the players/PCs won’t really know that there’s a Grand Game going on at the end of Chapter 1. What they’ll have is an introductory scenario that has been successfully wrapped up and a large, neon sign saying, “GO TO TROLLSKULL MANOR.” At best, they’ll have a cluster of loose threads:

• There’s a Zhentarim/Xanatharian gang war.
• The Zhentarim and Xanatharians are both interested in the gold embezzled by Dagult Neverember.
• There was something inside Renaer Neverember’s locket.

There’s not really a defined way for the PCs to immediately pull at these threads. They’re deliberately enigmatical elements that are meant to sort of hang around until they get paid off later in the campaign.

So if the PCs choose to pull at these threads, it’ll be through some clever angle that the players creatively think up on their own initiative. That’s great! You just need to figure out how to roll with it. The Remix almost certainly gives you all the tools you need to do this. You’ll also probably want to try to breathe a little air into it, weaving the events of their investigation into the wider tapestry of Chapter 2.

(To a certain extent, the players are likely to breathe that air into it themselves: Once you can get a bunch of balls up in the air in your campaign – e.g., the investigation, renovating Trollskull, faction missions, the orphans, the business rival trying to sabotage them – the players will be forced to start juggling their priorities. If you aren’t hearing stuff like, “We can’t do that tonight, we have to meet with the distillery!” or “Meliandre can guard the tavern in case the dire rats come back, Bassario and Francesca will run that mission for the Harpers, and I’ll head back up to the Yawning Portal to see if I can find Yagra,” then just add more balls.)

For example, my group made the intuitive leap that Renaer’s mourning locket must be connected to his mother’s tomb. So after checking out their new digs at Trollskull Manor, they headed straight to the Brandath Crypts… well, mostly straight. They had to request a meeting with Renaer. Then they arranged a time when he could take them to the Crypts (“it can’t be tomorrow, because we’ve got that… thing we’re doing”). Once at the Crypts I was actually fascinated to see if they would discover the Vault where the embezzled gold was hidden early and sort of “short-circuit” the entire structure of the campaign, but they ended up missing their Wisdom (Perception) check. Regardless, the investigation had forged a closer relationship with Renaer (who ended up marrying one of the PCs), kept the players puzzling about the Grand Game, and offered a huge pay-off when the whole campaign circled back to the Crypts at the end. (“We were right here! Oh my god!”)

A more likely alternative is for the PCs to start poking around the Zhentarim and/or Xanatharians. That more or less leads straight into the core structure of the campaign: They’re investigating a faction, so you should point them at a faction outpost. (Once again, weaving these investigations into the broader scope of everything else happening in Chapter 2.) This activity might preempt some of the “later” revelations about the Grand game, but that’s just fine. (The idea of them being “later” revelations is really just a conceptual holdover from the heavily railroaded design of the published adventure. And we’re not doing that, right?)

The most likely outcome is that the group will have a little bit of a head start in the Eye Heists that follow the events of Chapter 3. We might imagine the players patting themselves on the back for getting ahead of things, but they probably won’t think of it like that. (The structure of the campaign is obfuscated from them. They don’t see how your notes are arranged and don’t know that this was “supposed” to happen later.)

BUT WHAT IF THEY DON’T?

Other groups, though, won’t pull at those threads from Chapter 1 — either because they can’t figure out how to do it or because they just don’t care enough to do it. That’s OK. It just means that the players’ focus is somewhere else. The events of Chapter 1 are still important. They’ll either foreshadow what comes later (“If only we’d paid attention to the clues in front of our face!”) or they’ll be a mystery that eats at the back of their brains. Anticipation heightens the eventual pay-off. (“Oh my god! It’s all connected!”)

Keep in mind, too, that the Chapter 2 material isn’t completely disconnected from the Grand Game: Virtually all of the initial faction missions, for example, either involve one of the factions from the Grand Game, are directly aimed at the events of the Grand Game, or result in revelations about the same. (The exception is the Emerald Enclave, which is probably one of the reasons why I never prioritized getting that faction involved in my Dragon Heist run.)

Note: Also look at Part 1C: Player Character Factions. The Grand Games of Waterdeep usually involve ALL of the byzantine factions of the city becoming collectively fixated on something. That includes the player character factions. Even if the faction play in Chapter 2 wasn’t connected to the Grand Game, it would BECOME connected by virtue of the PCs being connected to it.

One thing I would have liked to have designed for Dragon Heist would have been a series of detailed background events detailing the evolving gang war between Zhents and Xanatharians. I didn’t get that done for my campaign, but background events like these can also be a good way to keep elements of the campaign “in the mix” even when the PCs’ immediate attention is turned somewhere else.

BUSINESS AS USUAL

One last thing to keep in mind is that this whole approach doesn’t really stop when you hit the end of Chapter 2: The faction missions continue. Now that the tavern is open, you can use A Night in Trollskull Manor to provide a constant level of activity. The PCs are going to continue pulling at threads and having to deal with blowback from their actions.

In fact, once Chapter 3 starts off with a bang (pun intended), the only thing that’s likely to happen is that you’ll be tossing MORE balls into the air for the PCs to juggle.

If you have any questions for future columns, let me know in the comments! In Ask the Alexandrian, instead of looking at general methodology, theorycraft, or prep, I try to solve specific situations from actual play by asking myself, “If I were the GM in this situation, what would I do?”

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1 – Ask the Alexandrian #3

AC writes:

When I first picked up Waterdeep: Dragon Heist I’d already looked at some reviews and I knew the module was a bit wonky. After giving it my own read through I knew I wanted to somehow use all the villains provided and fortunately I found the Alexandrian Remix.

After many, many, MANY hours of reading and prep I started out with our game group. Up to Chapter 1 (Ch1 of the module, so 5B of the Remix) things were going well enough. Of course that’s also only the barest start of the whole thing so that’s not saying much.

Since then it’s been an unmitigated disaster.

Things got badly bogged down trying to refurbish Trollskull Manor, this was due to my attempting to introduce the party to all the faces around the neighborhood so that they’d actually be invested in the place AND so that for the investigation yet to come they’d have some folks to actually talk to that wouldn’t just be random Joe/Jane shop-owner whose been (surprise!) next door all this time.

After slogging through that I thought we’d be able to make some headway… WRONG. I made efforts to establish some timelines, throw in a couple of faction missions, then the Cassalanters introduced themselves and their “problem”, and the parades were about to occur along with the opening of the inn.

Unfortunately I guess I miscalculated what the party would do… like I suppose heroes would, as soon as they found out about the cursed children they took off at a gallop to track down Renaer, get whatever info they could from him… and they were on the verge of taking off for Neverwinter to put the screws to his father!

At that point I shut down the game session as I had no idea how the get the damn thing back on track and I’m on the verge of just giving up on it entirely. No fault of the Remix, it’s the DM to blame here.

I’m not a first time DM, I’ve been running D&D campaigns on and off for years. The last campaign I lead was the two part Horde of the Dragon Queen / Rise of Tiamat. Maybe this time I bit off more than I could chew with the Remix, maybe I expected more from our group as I was trying to give them more of a sandbox and not so much a hack ’n slash railroad. I dunno.

What I’m wondering is if anyone else has had things go so badly wrong that they got to the point where they were seriously considering just giving up.

One side note: Trying to game with everyone locked down and remote has been a huge challenge for me. I find the loss of true interaction you get from being face to face with players in the room has killed much of my ability to improvise and is a serious impediment to building up any sort of momentum on game nights. Constantly having to repeat ourselves, pausing for long moments just in case someone else is about to say something, or just straight up technical difficulties. It’s all conspiring to suck the fun out of getting together for game nights.

First, AC, you are not alone in struggling with remote gaming. I’ve had similar difficulties. Everything takes longer. Sitting at a camera is more exhausting than sitting around a table. The channels of communication between players are limited. Body language is limited. It all translates into an experience where it becomes much harder to set tone and pace.

As a long-time GM across many different systems, I have an engrained sense of what a good session “feels like.” Remote gaming seems to be just different enough to trigger a kind of uncanny valley response; even if the session was, on its own merits, a success, it just feels as if something went wrong.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is just the amount of stuff that gets done during a session. Even if you manage to avoid having any technical glitches, the constraints of the remote experience inherently mean less gets done:

• Referencing common material can be cumbersome, particularly if you’re not using a virtual tabletop or if the material in question hasn’t been integrated into the virtual tabletop. (Think of an action as simple as finding a reference in the book and handing it to another player to look at.)
• Constraints on simple physical demonstrations and body language often mean longer descriptions and explanations.
• At a physical table you can have multiple conversations happening simultaneously. This obviously doesn’t happen constantly, but having only one effective voice channel prevents side-table discussions. In combat this means the wizard and fighter can’t coordinate their attack while you’re resolving the cleric’s turn. It also means that Sarah and Chris can’t quietly figure out what they’re planning to do next while you’re running the scene with Peter spying on Heather’s date.

And so forth.

So even the simple metric of, “Did we get a good amount of stuff done in this session?” is disrupted in remote gaming. And it’s not even that the amount of stuff that you get done is actually a problem; it just feels like a problem because it’s out of sync with what years of experience have subconsciously taught you a “good session” feels like.

Something that may help is doing brief post mortems with your players: Literally just check in with them and find out how they felt the session went. You might find that it works well to do this immediately as the session ends (during the chatting and small talk after the action wraps for the night), or you might find it’s more effective to do it a couple days later by e-mail or text message. Either way, you’ll often find that your players actually really enjoyed sessions that you felt were a struggle, and I find that can help buoy my spirits. If they are having problems, turn the discussion towards solutions: Focus on what you all (as a group) could be doing (or doing differently) rather than simply moping over the rough edges. (If you’re having the initial discussion between sessions with each player separately, you may find it useful to open the next session by discussing the problems and collectively brainstorming solutions.)

But I digress. Let’s chat about where you are in your campaign.

MEANWHILE, IN NEVERWINTER…

I’m not there at the table with you, but while this may feel hopelessly messed up and out of control for you, I’m guessing the same is not true for your players.

First, let’s look at what went “wrong”… although I don’t think it’s actually wrong, per se. I would have waited to have the Casalanters approach the PCs until after the Dalakhar explosion. That way, the players would have known that the way to help the Cassalanters solve their problem (if that’s what they want to do) is by continuing their ongoing investigation.

What’s happened here is that you’ve given the players a clear screnario hook (“help the Cassalanters save their kids!”) before you’ve given them a clear way of pursuing that scenario hook. They’ve responded by creating their own way of pursuing that hook and aggressively going for it.

This is not a problem!

Okay, what’s the first thing you can do?

Go with it.

They want to put the screws on Lord Dagult. Following the principles of active play, pick up that toy (Lord Dagult) and ask yourself what the logical outcome of that would be. What would Lord Dagult’s response be?

(I mean, they’re pretty obviously not going to be able to “put the screws to him.” But when they try, what happens?)

Well, if these random blokes from Waterdeep know about the gold, then it’s more at risk than he thought! (That’s particularly true if the PCs let slip that their knowledge comes from the Cassalanters.)

But these folks also saved his son. So he might think of them as useful cat’s paws in the Grand Game? He might even warn them about the Cassalanters (“you’ve been tricked by devil worshipers!”) before offering them a heap of gold to act as HIS agents. Heck, he might even offer them ALL the gold; then the big revelation would be that Dagult doesn’t seem to think that the gold is the most important thing at stake here: It’s the Stone of Golorr itself that he prizes above all else!

“Bring me the Stone of Golorr with all its Eyes and I’ll tell you where the gold is!” he says. “Then you can give it to the Cassalanters or buy a pirate franchise in Luskan or spend it on the richest gigolos on the Sword Coast. Just bring me the damn Stone!”

If the PCs agree, then he’ll tell them to head back to Waterdeep. He’ll be sending one of his local agents to contact them. (That’s Dalakhar, of course. So, then… ka-boom.)

Alternatively, he might let some information inadvertently slip while trying to figure out what the PCs know. (“Does Manshoon know? What about the rest of the Zhentarim?”)

Or maybe it’s a total dead end and all the PCs have done is add another faction to the Grand Game as Lord Dagult floods Waterdeep with his agents.

The point is to just look at what Lord Dagult knows — not just historically, but about the state of the Grand Game right now and the PCs specifically (if anything) — and then just… let things play out. See what happens.

MEANWHILE, IN WATERDEEP…

On the other hand, an epic segue to Neverwinter may be far enough outside the intended scope of the campaign that you would prefer to avoid all that. That’s OK. Even sandboxes have borders, and Dragon Heist isn’t even a sandbox.

What you need to do here is take a step back, identify the thing the PCs need to be pointed at, and then figure out how to deflect their current vector (“Let’s go question Lord Dagult!”) towards the thing they need.

In some cases it may not be possible to do this without railroading them, in which case I think you should find a different way. But if you’re running a robust, dynamic scenario (which I would argue the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist qualifies as), you’ll often find that the PCs’ vector will end up naturally interacting with that scenario.

That’s the case here: If they’re still talking to Renaer, he can just say, “My father has a number of agents still active in Waterdeep. I know how to contact one of them. Why don’t I set up a meeting? They might be able to tell us what he’s up to.”

Renaer, of course, will then set up a meeting with Dalakhar for them. And then … ka-boom.

You’ll note that many of my solutions here are looking for ways to point the PCs back at Dalakhar so that the explosion can happen. But the other key thing to keep in mind here is that Dalakhar’s death and the fireball are only “essential” to the Remix insofar as they’re designed to be the primary hook into the Grand Game for the PCs. But in your campaign, the PCs are already hooked. So Dalakhar and the explosion are relatively non-essential.

Since the PCs are already in the Grand Game, it’s a good opportunity to review Part 7: How the Remix Works. There’s a simple checklist there for the GM to follow when running the campaign:

(1) Are the PCs looking for a lead to one of the Eyes? If yes, pick a Faction Outpost and point them at it.

(2) Did the PCs just piss off one of the Factions? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs.

(3) Are the PCs floundering and don’t know what to do next? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs. (If you’re not sure how they might target the PCs, just have them show up and try to kill them.)

Repeat until the campaign is done.

This list is really just a default algorithm for actively playing the core elements of the campaign.

If you can’t redirect to the Dalakhar assassination in some way, you’ll have to do a little extra lifting to direct the PCs to the stone itself (since their investigation of the fireball won’t lead them to the Gralhunds). But keep in mind, as described in Part 2 of the Remix, that this chain of events already has a default outcome if the PCs get involved which ends with Jarlaxle in possession of the Stone (i.e., one of the Factions that the default algorithm consistently prompts you to pick up and play with).

To come full circle: I don’t think your campaign is as “out of control” as it feels to you right now. In fact, I think your campaign is in a great place. You’ve got a group of players who are clearly heavily invested in what’s happening AND self-motivated enough to create their own plans and aggressively push for the outcomes they want. That’s FANTASTIC.

Follow their lead.

This is an experimental new series for the site. It might end up just being one-and-done. Let me know what you think of it in the comments. If you have any questions you’d like to have considered for future columns, throw those in, too. The goal here is to address specific situations from actual play; the general gist being, “If I were the GM in this situation, what would I do?” (As opposed to more abstract questions about general methodology or theorycraft.)

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #2

From Reddit:

At the conclusion to this school year’s campaign, in order to pick up at the beginning of next semester, I want to have Pelor and Sehanine fight, with Pelor winning and eating Sehanine’s heart to become corrupted. However, if I just set the gods in a valley and describe what happens as they throw down, I feel like I am taking away my players agency. Advice?

My response to this is based on Part 2 of The Art of Pacing, and I thought it raised some specific points that might be of interest to others:

Right now you’re setting the agenda of the scene as, “Will Pelor eat Sehanine’s heart?” That’s an understandable impulse because it’s clearly the biggest and coolest thing happening in that particular moment. But, as you note, that agenda doesn’t mention the PCs at all and, therefore, prevents them from taking any meaningful action.

Instead of focusing on the outcome of the god-fight, you need to figure out what the PCs’ agenda will be during the fight: What is it they’re trying to accomplish and what are the obstacles they’ll need to overcome to accomplish it?

Another way to think about this would be to replace the god-fight with a similarly cataclysmic event. For example, the PCs are in Los Angeles and the Big One hits the San Andreas fault. The agenda here would not be, “Will the earthquake destroy Los Angeles?” The answer to that question is beyond the PCs’ control. The agenda will instead involve the PCs reacting to the immediate chaos and destruction around them, probably answering variations of, “Can you survive?” or “Can you save that person/place/item?”)

Or you could actually think of the god-fight as a spectator event. For example, let’s say your PCs go to a football game. There are two possibilities here: Either the event is narrated very quickly and you move on to the next interesting thing which actively involves the PCs (“The game goes to sudden death overtime, but the Vikings pull out a victory. What do you do after the game?”). Or you’re focused on an event happening at the football match which is unrelated to the game (so that the agenda is something like, “Will Carlie kiss you?”). Or the PCs are able to take actions which somehow impact the outcome of the game (by stopping the gangsters who are trying to assassinate the star wide receiver or by outfitting the home team’s shoes with Flubber or whatever).

Returning to the god-fight, you’ll find that the same techniques apply. You could spend 30 seconds describing the titanic fight in brief (but effective) detail before moving onto the next agenda that’s immediately relevant to the PCs. Or you could set agendas that:

• Deal with the collateral damage of the fight (saving themselves or others).
• Use the god-fight as the backdrop for some other conflict. (Which may have nothing to do with the god-fight; for example, as the gods begin to fight the PCs might be attacked by a group of assassins. The narration of the god-fight backdrops or thematically complements the fight against the assassins; maybe by-products from the god-fight affect the assassin fight in cool ways.)
• Allow the PCs to directly affect or influence the god-fight (maybe there are local shrines to the gods that they can imbue with energy; or they could organize mass prayers; or travel to points of sympathetic divine resonance in the region and sacrifice their divine spell slots to aid their god).
• Or the outcome of the god-fight (for example they might be able to take actions during the fight which will either aid or hinder them later while dealing with Pelor’s corruption).
• Allow the PCs to learn something from the god-fight.

If you’re struggling to come up with an appropriate agenda, don’t be afraid of letting your players set the agenda. For example:

GM: Pelor and Sehanine start to fight. What do you do?

Players: We RUN!!

Presto. The agenda is, “Can they escape?” and you should be able to run with it from there. Even if they decide there’s no possible agenda for them to pursue (like people just enjoying the football game in front of them), it’s still a useful technique:

GM: Pelor and Sehanine start to fight. What do you do?

Players: We sit in stunned silence and watch.

Now you can launch into you 60 second description of the titanic battle playing out in front of them, but you haven’t removed their agency. (They’re the ones who chose to stay and watch.)

Final tip: Break the fight into a half dozen or so distinct beats. Describing these beats succinctly is the 60 second description, but the beats also provide a flexible structure for any other agendas that might be pursued. (If they start fighting assassins, for example, each beat gets described as the backdrop to a round of combat. If they try to save people in a nearby village, some or all of the beats provide complications to that effort. And so forth.)

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #15