IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

PRELUDE 1B: THE LOST VAULTS CONTINUED

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 1B: The Lost Vaults Continued

Before our first proper session of In the Shadow of the Spire, I offered to run prelude sessions for any players who were interested. I had never done this before, but I had several reasons for trying it now:

(1) We had some scheduling problems which meant that there was about a three week gap between creating the PCs and starting the campaign. It wasn’t that people weren’t available to play — it was just that we were never all available to play at the same time.

(2) I knew that the campaign was going to start as the PCs woke up with partial amnesia and a period of lost time. I felt this might have a larger impact if the players had actually spent some time playing their characters — in other words, if they actually lost the time.

Because without that first-hand experience, there isn’t that much difference between a character background that ends with the line “… and then you go to the Adventurers ‘R Us Tavern” and one that ends with “… and then you wake up in a bed you don’t know.”

(3) Because most of us were new to the online tools we were using for our virtual gaming table, I thought it might be advantageous to tackle them with smaller groups and work out the kinks.

This experiment with preludes was something of a mixed success. On the one hand, I was mostly right: The smaller groups let us work out the kinks of using the virtual gaming table, the preludes let us get some gaming into a gap when we would have otherwise been idle, and those who participated did feel the effects of the lost time more personally than those who didn’t. (In fact, when one of the players realized what I was doing at the end of the prelude session, they spontaneously exclaimed, “Son of a bitch!”)

On the other hand, only the prelude featuring Tee and Agnarr actually happened. The scheduling for the others just never worked out. Some of the material from those preludes was worked into the character backgrounds of the other characters, but most of it wasn’t.

The prelude had a few other notable effects:

First, it meant that Tee and Agnarr started the campaign at 3rd-level while the others started at 1st-level.

Second, it created a meaningful chemistry between Tee and Agnarr that the other characters didn’t have at the beginning of the campaign. All of the characters (and players) quickly bonded, but I think the instant Tee-Agnarr alliance helped propel Tee into a stronger leadership position.

The original plan had been for two other characters to similarly share an adventure together. Some of that survived into the character backgrounds and, from there, into the actual campaign, but there really is a difference between something that you write up in a character background and something that you’ve “lived” in play. I suspect that if the other preludes had taken place, there would have been a second strong pairing and the group dynamic would have been very different for the rest of the campaign.

Finally, the content of the preludes wasn’t irrelevant to the larger themes and events of the campaign. Many hints and clues could be gleaned from the events that took place (or would have taken place) during the prelude adventures. Most of the content from the other preludes was not included in their character backgrounds, which meant that this material would emerge in different ways throughout the rest of the campaign.

Man in Black: You’re amazing.
Inigo Montoya: I ought to be after twenty years.
Man in Black: There’s something I ought to tell you…
Inigo Montoya: What?
Man in Black: I’m not left-handed either.

The Man in Black switches his sword hand. The duel continues.

Inigo Montoya: Who are you?
Man in Black: No one of consequence.
Inigo Montoya: I must know.
Man in Black: Get used to disappointment.
Inigo Montoya: ‘kay.

The duel continues. The Man in Black disarms Inigo Montoya.

Inigo Montoya: Kill me quickly.
Man in Black: I would as soon destroy a stained glass window as an artist like yourself… However, since I can’t have you following me… and the rules here say that I can’t knock you out for more than 5 minutes…

The Man in Black slits Inigo Montoya’s throat.

CONTEXT FROM THE GAME TABLE

This is not as entirely random as it might appear at first glance. Yesterday one of the groups I was playtesting Keep on the Shadowfell with managed to get back together following an interminable three months of mutually incompatible schedules. And this actually happened at the gaming table.

Well, not with Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black, obviously. But the PCs had forced a goblin to surrender by making an Intimidate check, tied him up, and questioned him. Once they had gotten all the information they needed from him, the group fell into a debate about what to do with him. (“You said you were going to let me go!” “Shut up. We’re talking here.”) Half the group wanted to just knock him out and show him some mercy. The other half wanted to make sure there wasn’t any chance of him coming back to cause them any problems.

The debate was resolved when we checked the rulebook and discovered that, in the Land of 4th Edition, anyone who has been knocked unconscious wakes up after taking a short rest. A short rest is 5 minutes. Ergo, they couldn’t knock the goblin out for more than 5 minutes.

And so they slit his throat and headed for the Keep.

Poor little guy. If it had been 3rd Edition he probably would have woken up a few hours later with a headache and skedaddled back to his homelands in the Stonemarches.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

PRELUDE 1A: THE LOST VAULTS

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IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 1A: The Lost Vaults

Now we get to the start of the actual campaign journal — the chronicling of what actually happened at the (virtual) game table.

Writing the campaign journal is actually the most time-consuming part of running a game for me. I spend more time maintaining the campaign journal than I do prepping the adventures or running them. So why do I bother?

(1) The campaign journal is an invaluble reference tool for both me and the players while the campaign is actually running. In the Shadow of the Spire, for example, started in February 2007. Events that happened in those very first sessions continue to be relevant a year and a half later. So being able to quickly reference those events is important.

(2) I have a finely tuned sense of nostalgia. Any RPG session results in a unique story created by the GM and the players. These stories don’t function particularly well as narrative constructs, but when viewed as a chronicle of events I think they can actually be quite fascinating. I have many fond memories from the gaming table and, when a campaign is all said and done, I enjoy going back to read the campaign journals and having those memories refreshed. The campaign journal may take a lot of time in its own right, but it also greatly extends the long-term enjoyment to be gleaned from the campaign.

The desire for a reference tool and the concept that a campaign journal is a chronicle of events have come to shape the format I use for my journals. Most notably, I use bullet-pointed paragraphs. This evolved out of my earlier campaign journals (which were literally just bullet-point lists of events that would read something like “Talbar went to the temple” without any kind of supporting detail; the journals were more like cheat sheets for the session designed to jog our faulty memories). But I’ve also found it to be a useful psychological trick: If I’m writing in standard paragraphs, I tend to slip into trying to structure events into a narrative. This is more difficult and time-consuming. It also tends to distort events.

(For example, when Shakespeare wrote Henry V he didn’t try to record what Henry did every day. Instead he distilled those events into a compelling narrative structure. When I’m writing a campaign journal, on the other hand, I am trying to record what the PCs did every day.)

Which brings us to the next question: How accurate is this recounting of events?

Lots of campaign journals will try to polish or jazz up what actually took place at the gaming table. Events will end up being just a little bit more dramatic; dialogue will be a little more eloquent; and everything will come off just a little bit cooler.

For the most part, I try to avoid that temptation. Partly, again, because I’m shooting for an accurate reference tool. But also because I like to humor myself into thinking that we’re plenty awesome without needing to revise the historical record.

Which isn’t to say that there isn’t an editorial process: Routine shopping trips will frequently hit the cutting room floor. Lengthy conversations will be summarized or edited down to the salient points. But virtually all of this takes the form of deciding what not to write about, rather than altering anything. Basically, if you read it in the journal than that actually happened at my gaming table.

(And even with the editorial process I’ll err on the side of conservation. If I had a nickel for every time the PCs suddenly decided to make contact with the scribe they hired 10 sessions ago… Well, I’d have a nickel. But you get the point.)

SPOILERS: It should go without saying that the journal will contain various spoilers for the Ptolus sourcebook. However, other chunks of the campaign are drawn from various published modules. When that happens, a spoiler warning identifying the source will be affixed to the top of the relevant journal entry.

PICTURES: Pictures featured in the campaign journal are almost always pillaged from other sources. Whenever possible, these pictures are hyperlinked to the original source. For example, the map of Stonemarten Village in today’s journal entry was pulled from Grailquest 2: Den of Dragons.