The Alexandrian

Posts tagged ‘d&d’

Man with binoculars

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36D: Crypt of Webs

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

“Would that work?” Tee asked. “There were no moving parts in the lock.”

Ranthir shrugged. “I don’t know. It might.”

This moment from earlier in Session 36 – where the PCs abruptly realize, completely out of the blue and more than a dozen sessions after getting the all-key, exactly WHY they were looking for the all-key in the first place – is the one of those moments that would feel completely “wrong” in a film or book. After a hundred pages, the detective just suddenly realizes something for no reason? Just because? That feels forced and unsatisfying.

Authors, therefore, feel compelled to offer some explanation for what prompted the character’s sudden insight or new idea: Another character will say something innocuous, but it has a double meaning that ignites a light bulb! Or a beam of a light falls on something that jars their memory. Or a burnt out neon sign transforms its meaning. Or, if all else fails, a montage of flashbacks reveals the hidden pattern.

At the game table, though, these moments feel completely natural and are often deeply satisfying. Because they are, of course, really happening, in a way that the events of a novel or film can never be.

On the other hand, you might be looking at this and thinking: “Hang on… They found the all-key in Session 23 on June 7th, and then they just… didn’t do anything with it until Session 36 on January 24th? And the campaign just stalled for seven months?”

Well, no. The campaign didn’t stall. As you can see from the campaign journals, lots and lots and lots of stuff was happening. But this can be difficult to wrap your head around if you’re used to prepping and running linear scenarios and campaigns. In those campaigns, if the PCs don’t trigger the next scene or scenario in the sequence, then the whole campaign runs into a brick wall.

What we have in this case is a meta-scenario that’s running alongside the primary campaign structure. One of the great about meta-scenarios like this is that you can just let them simmer — often for very long spans of the time — while the main line(s) of the campaign continue apace.

But you can get similar results from any non-linear campaign structure: For example, in a hexcrawl the clues pointing the PCs to Siren’s Cove can be ignored for almost any length of time while the players are exploring any number of the other hexes available to them. Similarly, in a node-based campaign, the hook to a scenario can lie dormant while the PCs are busy engaging with the other options they have.

In some cases, these lengthy delays will be entirely due to the decisions the players are making: They know those clues point to Siren’s Cove and they could choose to go there at any time, but they were simply more interested in the Fane of Pandemonium and, while they were trapped within the Fane, the situation in Bluewood has turned into a crisis that they need to deal with immediately.

In other cases, though — like the current session — the players literally haven’t solved the mystery yet: They haven’t figured out how to decipher the map to Siren’s Cove. They don’t make the connection that “M.R.” are the initials of Montgomery Rosemount. They haven’t realized the all-key can unlock the box.

Those are the times when you can get the big payoff — that ultimate moment where they decipher the map, abruptly discover who the mystery “M.R.” is, or open the box that’s tantalized them for months or years — by just being willing to give your players the space to struggle for a while.

And what is the payoff?

It’s that little thrill you feel in knowing that if you HADN’T figured it out, the GM was never going to give it to you. It’s the tingling little frisson that runs up the spine when you discover that your actions in the game truly matter. There’s no script and you’re certainly not following it. The good stuff happened because YOU made it happen, and if you don’t want the bad stuff to happen, you’re going to have to try a little harder.

I said that this moment works in an RPG because it’s really happening, and that’s also the root of what makes the payoff so satisfying.

What can make these payoffs feel HUGE for the players is literally the anticipation: They’d been wondering what was inside this box for nearly two years at this point!

Of course, I’d figured that the pay-off for that wait would have come when they snagged the all-key… but it didn’t. They didn’t make the connection. And I really wanted to see that payoff. I’d been waiting for it, too! It was so tempting — and so easy! — to say something like, “Do y’all have any locks you haven’t been able to open?” or, “Do you remember that box your woke up with?” Or maybe I could have had them make an Intelligence check to see if one of them had the idea to use the all-key on the sealed box? (Ugh.)

But I didn’t succumb to that temptation, and the payoff was even better for it. Because it was worth the wait. And because it was their reward. They’d earned it. I hadn’t stuck my nose in and undermined their moment.

Of course, not every instance of “missing the obvious” will burn low for multiple sessions. Often the payoff comes a lot quicker. For example, at the end of this same session the PCs went looking for Alchestrin’s Tomb:

It was only a couple of hours before dusk and the sun was already low in the sky, but they felt they had already wasted enough time. They headed to the Necropolis, aware that they would need to finish their work there before darkness fell.

Once they had reached Darklock Hill, Dominic used his connection with the gods to fixate upon Alchestrin’s sigil and locate its nearest occurrence. He led them to a crudely built crypt with thick walls built from heavy stone slabs. Elestra recognized that these slabs were, in fact, repurposed stone sarsens. Several of them had the distinctive – yet heavily worn – sigil of Alchestrin worked into them.

This scenario was designed to be deliberately deceptive: Someone had scavenged the sarsens from the stone circle above Alchestrin’s Tomb and used them to build their own tomb nearby. So somebody looking for the tomb would likely spot Alchestrin’s sigil on the false tomb instead, become confused, and go on a little mini-dungeoncrawl.

Alchestrin's Sigil

At the actual table, though, I was surprised when Elestra made a point of specifically examining the sigils. I don’t remember exactly what skill check I called for, but she rolled well and would clearly recognize that the sigils were carved into stone sarsens that had been repurposed for the walls of this tomb.

At this point, I figured the jig was up: If the sarsens weren’t originally part of this tomb, then obviously this tomb couldn’t be Alchestrin’s Tomb.

But then the players… just didn’t see it. They missed the obvious.

It was only later, as more and more stuff about the false crypt didn’t add up, that Ranthir suddenly realized the importance of what Elestra had seen and doubled back to check his hypothesis.

“I think I have the answer,” Ranthir said, coming back down the stairs from above. “The stones on which Alchestrin’s sigil is marked are stone sarsens – originally designed as part of a stone circle. They must have been scavenged to build the walls of this crypt.”

Now, in this case I could have been tempted to fudge Elestra’s original check so that she wouldn’t learn that the walls were repurposed sarsens.

Or, after she made that check, I could have been tempted to spell it out and make the connection for her: “No, no. I said they were repurposed sarsens from a stone circle! So the sigil doesn’t belong to this crypt, but to wherever those stone sarsens came from!”

But how much more satisfying was it for the players to not only (a) finally make that conclusion for themselves, but also (b) realize that they’d had the solution the whole time and could have avoided the whole fiasco!

This wasn’t something that I had, as the GM, had done to them. I hadn’t pulled a fast one. I hadn’t cheated. And so the outcome was infinitely more satisfying on every level.

(And, of course, if it had all played out differently, that would have been okay, too. That is, after all, the whole point.)

Campaign Journal: Session 37ARunning the Campaign: The Adventure Not Taken
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Ptolus - In the Shadow of the Spire
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 36D: CRYPT OF WEBS

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Webbed Crypt © Wizards of the Coast

Being tethered to the Banewarrens – effectively limiting their actions east of Oldtown – was becoming completely untenable. Their affairs in the Banewarrens required them to seek out Alchestrin’s tomb, but the Necropolis was well out of the range.

To solve the problem once and for all, Ranthir spent the next couple of hours tracking down several scrolls which described the arcane creation of a small missive token that would allow its holder to communicate a brief message directly to his ears… no matter the distance between them.

In short order, Ranthir was able to give one of these tokens to Kalerecent. If Kalerecent’s guard upon the Banewarrens were disturbed, he could instantly summon them.

“Oh, good,” Dominic said. “And we’ll only be a quick half hour away. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Tee shrugged. “That’s no worse than what we were doing before.”

“The only other option,” Ranthir said, “Is for us to camp in the Banewarrens until the green-haired hag comes out.”

That didn’t sound like much fun. And there were too many other things demanding their attention…

CRYPT OF WEBS

It was only a couple of hours before dusk and the sun was already low in the sky, but they felt they had already wasted enough time. They headed to the Necropolis, aware that they would need to finish their work there before darkness fell.

Once they had reached Darklock Hill, Dominic used his connection with the gods to fixate upon Alchestrin’s sigil and locate its nearest occurrence. He led them to a crudely built crypt with thick walls built from heavy stone slabs. Elestra recognized that these slabs were, in fact, repurposed stone sarsens. Several of them had the distinctive – yet heavily worn – sigil of Alchestrin worked into them.

Alchestrin's Sigil

On one side of the crypt there was a badly rusted iron door. It was, in fact, rusted shut. Tee and Agnarr were able to pry out the hinges and lever out the door with a minimal amount of fuss and noise. On the other side there was a flight of gloom-shrouded stairs leading down about twenty feet.

Tee led the way into a long entry hall strewn with rubbled stone from the broken walls and ceiling. Thick cobwebs were strung from the walls, although there was a more or less clear path to the heavy door of stone that hung half-open – its bottom smashed apart – at the far end of the hall. Four open arches led off form the hall, two to the left and two to the right.

Choosing at random, Tee headed towards the first arch on the left. It opened into a small burial chamber, with an upright sarcophagus standing against the far wall. The sarcophagus itself had been smashed apart. The corpse of its former inhabitant lay on the floor in the middle of the chamber – thick webs seeming to manacle the dried husk to the walls. The chest of the corpse appeared to have been ripped open.

Tee quickly inspected the corpse, but found little of interest. (Perhaps if she had recognized the damage to its chest as an exit wound they might have had some warning of what was to come.) She turned back to the others to report, but spotted movement in the webs of the opposite room. Acting on pure instinct, she whipped out her dragon pistol and fired.

The shot harmlessly blasted away a patch of web, but a moment later a carpet of large, reddish spiders poured out of the room. In the entry hall, Agnarr, whirling towards the spot Tee had shot, was suddenly covered in the things – they bit him repeatedly, sending a rush of painful venom into his bulging veins.

With a roar of rage and a mighty cry, Agnarr swung his flaming sword through the spiders, using the flat of his blade to crush those crawling up his legs.

Elestra, thinking quickly, dropped a ball of magical flame into the middle of the spiders, but they swarmed away from it and over the top of the others – biting at every bit of exposed flesh they could find.

Dominic ran for it, heading back up the stairs and escaping the worst of it. But by the time Agnarr was able to scatter the swaming mass, Ranthir had been badly hurt – the painful, fist-sized welts leaving him gasping for breath.

But when Elestra laid her hands on him and sent a burst of healing energy into his body, Ranthir screamed in pain and collapsed.

Dominic, who was coming back down into the crypt after hearing the all-clear from Agnarr, heard the scream and hurried down the last few steps. “What happened?”

“I don’t know!” Elestra knelt next to Ranthir, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. But her further ministrations only made things worse. Even the slightest touch of positive energy raised vicious welts and gaping wounds on the unconscious mage.

But even as she was focusing on Ranthir’s dilemma, Elestra was using the back of her mind to guide her flaming sphere into one of the other web-choked crypts.

As the webs began to burn, a web-wrapped mummy stumbled through the crypt’s arch and attacked Tee from behind. Agnarr charged the sudden foe, shoving Tee out of the way, even as a second web mummy emerged into the entry hall.

Agnarr made quick work of his first foe: His sword cleaved the mummy’s chest in twain. But no sooner had the top half of the mummy fallen to one side than more of the crypt spiders began to pour out of the severed torso. Tee, in a panic, fired at the already dismembered corpse. This had little effect, but Agnarr – thinking quickly – plunged his blade into the mass and used it to create a sudden pyre.

But with his weapon thus preoccupied, Agnarr made an easy target for the second mummy – who clubbed him over the back of the head. As the barbarian fell, however, Tor moved to block it from attacking the others. As he shifted into position, the mummy brought both of its hands down on the kinght’s shoulders in a crushing blow. Tor could feel his spine compressing under the sheer force of the blow, but gritting his teeth he bore the pain and swung his sword strong.

The mummy’s head flew free… and spiders began to crawl out of its neckhole.

Tee, however, had retrieved a flask of oil from her bag of holding. She tossed it at the decapitated mummy’s corpse while Tor scooped up Agnarr’s sword and lit alight spiders and mummy alike.

SPIDER’S CRYPT

Now, however, the unconscious Agnarr was exhibiting the same symptoms as Ranthir. Any attempt to heal his wounds was backfiring.

However, Dominic – finally given the breathing room to give the afflicted a proper examination – was able to determine that the effect was being caused by the venom of the crypt spiders. Their mystical poison was creating an inversion of positive and negative energy, foully turning the life-touch of the gods to injurious pain.

Fortunately, Dominic knew a simple spell to suppress the effects of the venom. And the mystic properties of the poison were rapidly burning up in any case. It wouldn’t be long before those afflicted could be healed normally.

While Dominic was restoring Agnarr and Ranthir, Tee finished searching through the outer crypts. She found another corpse with its chest torn open (this one with a ruined shirt of mithril which had been torn asunder by the spiders) and in another sarcophagus she found a magical sword.

After much deliberation, however, they decided to leave these tombs (and their meager treasures) undisturbed. The strange, corpse-inhabiting spider swarms had already done enough to disturb the rest of those who had been buried here.

Tee therefore turned her attention to the door of broken stone at the end of the entry hall. Looking through it she could see an antechamber. A mosaic of glittering lapis lazuli depicting a bursting star had been worked into its floor. Twin statues with red gemstones in their eyes flanked a farther arch leading into the tomb beyond. Each of the statues was raising its right hand before it, as if to ward off trespassers. In the tomb itself she could see an iron sarcophagus worked in the likeness of a knight with a sword and shield laid upon its chest. Thick webs were draped from the sarcophagus, shrouding the far corners of the crypt in darkness.

Agnarr and Tor were able to wrench open the door. Convinced that the lapis lazuli floor was dangerous, Tee used her boots of levitation to reach the ceiling and pull herself across to the arch on the far side of the antechamber. Lowering herself to the floor there, she proceeded cautiously into the crypt on foot.

She had not gone far, however, when a gob of web suddenly flew through the air and clogged up the exit. Tee whirled to look at it, even as one massive, chitinous black leg descended from the ceiling above…

It was followed by seven more, encircling her completely. Looking up, Tee saw the bulbous, befanged body of the spider whose legs nearly filled the entire chamber. With a lurching leap, she narrowly dodged the venom-dripping fangs – each of which was nearly as long as her arm.

Seeing the spider descend, Agnarr leapt across the antechamber (barely clearing the lapis lazuli) and used his burning greatsword to quickly cut his way through the web.

But even as Agnarr came up on its flank, the spider continued its attack on Tee – its head jutting towards her again and again, until it finally succeeded in sinking its monstrous fangs into her flesh.

The saucer-sized puncture wounds alone might not have felled the elf, but the venom of the arachnic horror rushed to her brain and swallowed her in blackness. As she fell, the spider was free to turn its fury upon Agnarr.

But by now Tor, too, had leapt across the lapis lazuli and moved to flank the creature – catching it between the party’s warriors. Although their blades had difficulty cutting through the thing’s chitinous hide, and even though Tor was caught fast in another entangling gob of web, they were eventually able to hack the creature apart.

As Tor plucked his blade from the creature’s head (leaving it to collapse in a shuddering pile), Dominic uttered a short prayer to Vehthyl and – seeing that the floor of lapis lazuli was not, in fact, magical – walked across it bravely (crossing his fingers in the hope that there would be no mundane traps). Using his skills as a healer, he was able to apply his curative spells to Tee in a way which avoided triggering the inversive properties of the spider’s venom and soon had her on her feet again.

FALSE CRYPT

Barely sparing the spider’s corpse a glance, Tee quickly turned her attention to the iron sarcophagus. With the help of Agnarr and Tor she was able to leverage it open, revealing the undisturbed corpse of a knight. The knight wore fine chain of elven make. Upon his chest a sword of fine craftsmanship was laid under a shield bearing the heraldry that both Tee and Tor recognized as belonging to the Knights of the Golden Cross.

“It’s not possible that the Knights would have had anything to do with Alchestrin or the Banewarrens,” Tor said.

Tee frowned. While the others replaced the lid of the sarcophagus (not wishing to disturb the rest of a knight), Tee began a scouring search of the small crypt that lasted for the better part of an hour.

But, in the end, she found nothing.

“I don’t get it,” Elestra said. “Why would Lord Zavere send us here?”

“I think I have the answer,” Ranthir said, coming back down the stairs from above. “The stones on which Alchestrin’s sigil is marked are stone sarsens – originally designed as part of a stone circle. They must have been scavenged to build the walls of this crypt.”

“Then how are we going to find the actual crypt?” Tee asked. “Would there be any records kept?”

“I don’t know.”

But now the sun was getting low in the sky. If they were going to escape the Necropolis before night fell, they would have to leave now. Uncertain of what their next action should be, they headed for the gate.

Running the Campaign: Missing the ObviousCampaign Journal: Session 37A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Group of Girls on an Urban Adventure, pictured at an abandoned gas station.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36C: Hunting the Hunters

They headed back up to Oldtown and gathered Ranthir from the Nibeck Street mansion. From there they retraced Elestra’s steps, rapidly tracking the query-laden trail of the cultists who had been asking after “Laurea”.

They caught up with them in the Boiling Pot, a small tavern in the southern end of Oldtown. There were five of the cultists – easily picked out from the crowd by their prominent tattoos depicting black hands. Each also appeared to be marked by some horrible deformity or mutation. They were scattered throughout the crowd, asking their questions.

Tor and Tee, having barely stepped through the door, turned to look at each other – forming a plan of action in less than a glance. They split off from the others (who were left somewhat confused near the door). Tor headed into the crowd, quietly warning people that they should leave. Tee, meanwhile, palmed a dagger and headed towards a cultist who was draped over the bar, favoring a hideously twisted arm.

What’s described in the journal here is basically what happened at the table: Tee’s player and Tor’s player look at each other and, without saying a word, knew exactly what their play was going to be. The other players were momentarily baffled and just kind of carried along in their wake.

This sort of thing, at both macro- and micro-scales, will happen all the time in an RPG campaign as the group racks up time playing together. You’ll spend less time talking your way through all the options and more time knowing exactly what’s going to happen next.

You can often see this in a very tangible way during combat. It’s one of the x-factors that make challenge ratings and similar encounter building tools “unreliable,” because groups that get into this groove will not only make fewer mistakes, they’ll start discovering collaborative tactics and synergies between their characters that can greatly increase their effectiveness both tactically and strategically.

It’s also why I think, in a game like D&D, it’s important for PCs to spend at least three sessions at each level. Because it’s deeply rewarding to learn new abilities, play around with them for a bit, and then master them before adding even more new stuff. And what we’re kind of talking about here is that there’s even another level beyond mastering our own character’s abilities, and that’s when you start mastering the other PCs’ abilities: You know what they need. You know how to set things up for them. You know what weaknesses they have and how you can defend them.

But as you can see from the example of this session, this sort of party chemistry – the collective mastery of the group – extends beyond combat. Whether it’s solving mysteries or masterminding heists, the group will be learning what techniques work best, and they’ll be refining those techniques with experience. Where do you look for clues? How do you gather intel on your target? Who’s best at this? Who enjoys doing it the most? (Try to get these last two to align… although breaking up these patterns of behavior and seeing what happens when people are thrust into unfamiliar circumstances can also be fun.)

Another fairly concrete example of this is splitting the party: When the PCs need to do X, which subgroup becomes their go-to? If you’re a player, consciously realizing that this is a thing and consciously thinking about how you can improve your results can be a really big deal. If you’re the GM, recognizing these patterns can allow you to either play into them with confidence OR spice things up a bit by deliberately challenging the easy habits of the group. (When they need to do X, that’s usually character A. But when they need to do Y, they usually send A, B, and C to do it. Well… if you frame things up so that X and Y need to happen at the same time, then the players will feel pressure. Where is A most needed?

Along these same lines, something else that can be easy to overlook is that, as the GM, you’re ALSO part of the group. As you run more and more game, it’s not just that you’re gaining more experience as a GM. It’s that you’re gaining more experience running games for that specific group. You’ll learn the types of stuff the group likes to do, and you’ll figure out better ways of handling the actions they propose. You’ll also learn how to counter their best shots. (And there’s endless philosophical debates about how/when/if it’s appropriate for you to do that.)

And it’s not just about how you handle them at the table. This chemistry with the group, and understanding that each group’s chemistry is unique, will also improve your prep: You’ll figure out not only what you should be prepping to be “ready” for the players, but also what will let you rise to the opportunity and help them soar.

Campaign Journal: Session 36DRunning the Campaign: Missing the Obvious
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Ptolus - In the Shadow of the Spire
IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 36C: HUNTING THE HUNTERS

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Newspaper Masthead: Midtown Crier

CATCHING THE HUNTER’S SCENT

While the others had gone to Mahdoth’s and the Hammersong Vaults, Elestra had been walking the streets of Oldtown. Two stories were competing among the newssheets, the rumor-mongers, and the tavern-hangers. Headlines proclaiming “Blood in the Bathhouse” and the like led stories relating to the events in the Row Bathhouse, while “Vile Rites Performed in Oldtown” spoke of what the City Watch had discovered in the Oldtown apartment complex used by the cultists.

Their involvement in both affairs were not the subject of wagging tongues, but there were other whispers circling through the city: People were asking all over town for “Laurea” (the pseudonym Tee had used with the cultists).

It was nearing the time when they would need to refresh the alarm they had placed on the door in the Banewarrens. Ranthir volunteered to do so and remain behind, freeing Elestra to return to the Ghostly Minstrel with the others.

On the way, they returned the golden key to Tee’s vault and stopped by the Temple of Asche to relieve the en it had placed on her soul. When they reached  Delver’s Square, Tee let the others head into the inn ahead of her while she went down into the Undermarket to check in with the Delver’s Guild. There she found waiting for her a message to “Laurea” from the cultists:

YOUR PAYMENT WILL BE IN KIND.

Grimacing, Tee went to join the others in Ghostly Minstrel. But even there they discovered that Iltumar had been asking around the common room earlier that day for “Laurea”.

“Oh, Iltumar…” Tee murmured.

HUNTING THE HUNTERS

They needed to deal with this before it got out of hand. The good news, at least, was that Tee’s true identity hadn’t been discovered. At least not yet. But they feared it was only a matter of time. “They’ve got descriptions for all of us,” as Elestra put it.

They headed back up to Oldtown and gathered Ranthir from the Nibeck Street mansion. From there they retraced Elestra’s steps, rapidly tracking the query-laden trail of the cultists who had been asking after “Laurea”.

They caught up with them in the Boiling Pot, a small tavern in the southern end of Oldtown. There were five of the cultists – easily picked out from the crowd by their prominent tattoos depicting black hands. Each also appeared to be marked by some horrible deformity or mutation. They were scattered throughout the crowd, asking their questions.

Tor and Tee, having barely stepped through the door, turned to look at each other – forming a plan of action in less than a glance. They split off from the others (who were left somewhat confused near the door). Tor headed into the crowd, quietly warning people that they should leave. Tee, meanwhile, palmed a dagger and headed towards a cultist who was draped over the bar, favoring a hideously twisted arm.

Tee tried to strike up a conversation with the cultist at the bar, trying to get some sense of whether the cultists were still asking after “Laurea” or if they had some inkling that it was a false identity.

Tor’s ministrations, however, didn’t go unnoticed. One of the cultists, seeing what he was doing, started crossing the tavern towards him. As the cultist’s hand landed on Tor’s shoulder, however, Tee sprung into her action – her palmed dagger easily gutted the cultist in front of her.

Confusion instantly exploded from one side of the tavern to the other. Two more cultists rushed her from either side, but Tee slit the throat of one while drawing her rapier to run the other through.

Tor meanwhile had drawn his own blade with preternatural speed and leveled it at the throat of the cultist who had approached him (taking advantage of the confusion Tee had created on the other side of the room). “Yield.”

The cultist went for his sword and Tor cut open his throat. The last cultist came running up behind him and was almost instantly cut him down as well.

The entire blood-soaking confrontation had taken only seconds.

Tor turned to face the remaining patrons, who were mostly frozen in shock. “Sorry about that. We were hoping to get you out of here before what needed to happen happened.”

The bartender was incensed. “Who’s going to clean up all this blood?!”

Tee dropped ten gold pieces onto the bar.

The bartender immediately scooped them up. “I’m going to clean up this blood… Now if you wouldn’t mind leaving before the watch shows up.”

Tee quickly had Ranthir write a note (using his great skill with pen and ink to scribe it in a different hand):

PAYMENT NOT NECESSARY.

Using a common dagger, she fastened it crudely to one of the dead cultist thugs.

 

Running the Campaign: Group ChemistryCampaign Journal: Session 36D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Cloaked Figure in Marble Halls - Nobel

Go to Table of Contents

As described in Part 4B, you have everything you need for the PCs to penetrate to the heart of the Kraken Society conspiracy and rescue King Hekaton.

But what if you want to take this even farther?

Here are some options. You can easily use one, some, all, or none of them.

OPTION #1: ADD A STORM GIANT THREAT

The storm giants know that King Hekaton and Queen Neri were meeting with representatives of the Lords Alliance and the Open Lord of Waterdeep, and they assume that the small-folk are guilty of murdering the queen and kidnapping the king. Isn’t it possible that, with or without Serissa condoning the action, the storm giants might be making retaliatory strikes on the coast and/or coastal shipping?

You can easily add this element to the adventure, adding aggressive attacks by the storm giants that mirror those from the other giant factions, and creating a new vector for the PCs to learn about Hekaton’s disappearance and/or get pulled into the politics of Maelstrom.

(The potential drawback to this option is that it removes the contrast between the storm giants — who have simply gone radio silent under the waves while their former subjects run wild — and the other giant factions.)

OPTION #2: THREE CITY HOOKS

To remove the element of random chance from the PCs getting pulled into the Kraken Society investigation, add explicit hooks from each of the Three Cities pointing to the Uninvolved nodes. (These connections do not have to be direct, of course, or even terminate with the Kraken Society. You just need quest lines that intersect with the Kraken Society nodes.)

Alternatively, you can have missions given to the PCs by any factions they choose to join to point them to these nodes.

OPTION #3: EXPAND THE KRAKEN SOCIETY

To expand the Kraken Society’s presence in the campaign, add more Uninvolved nodes throughout the Sword Coast and Savage Frontier. You can do this by just flipping through Storm King’s Thunder, picking a location from the gazetteer, and then brainstorming ways that krakenar agents could be trying to infiltrate that location.

As with the extant Uninvolved nodes, include clues in these nodes pointing to other Uninvolved nodes and also the Involved nodes. (Remember that your structural goal is to pull the PCs towards the Involved nodes, where they can find the clues leading to Hekaton.)

One particular place you could look at is the Dessarin Valley, where Ghald & Unferth are trying to launch multiple krakenar operations. Lord Drylund’s operation in Yartar is also located here. By adding several Kraken Society operations throughout the valley, you could turn the whole region into a micro-campaign within the campaign.

Dessarin Valley - Forgotten Realms (c) Wizard of the Coast

OPTION #4: BURY THE INVOLVED NODES

In the default structure, the PCs can run into either the Uninvolved nodes or Involved nodes during the Phase 3 pointcrawl. If you want to create a greater sense of depth in the Kraken Society conspiracy, however, then DON’T make the Involved nodes accessible directly from the pointcrawl: The only way to reach the Skum Lord, Reefkin, or Lord Drylund is via clues picked up in the Uninvolved Nodes (which remain accessible from the pointcrawl).

In practice, this will create a flow from Uninvolved nodes to Involved nodes to Purple Rocks to the Morkoth. The players will truly feel like they’re getting pulled deeper and deeper into the conspiracy.

This option is probably best used in combination with Option #3. Since you can no longer enter the Kraken Society investigation through the Involved nodes, you’ll likely want a few more Uninvolved options to replace those entry points.

OPTION #5: ENTRY VIA MAELSTROM & WATERDEEP

The burgeoning political crisis between Maelstrom and Waterdeep creates an alternative vector for the PCs to follow.

For example, imagine that the PCs follow a path similar to that suggested in Storm King’s Thunder: They journey to Maelstrom and manage to get an audience with Serissa. She would like to trust them — it’s what her mother would have wanted — but it’s impossible under the circumstances. If they want the storm court’s help (to do whatever it is the PCs came here to ask them to do), then they need to help bring those responsible for her mother’s murder and father’s disappearance to justice.

Rather than giving them a casino chip, however, Serissa is going to point them in the direction of the “treacherous” Knights of the Blue Moon.

Meanwhile, in Waterdeep, Laeral Silverhand knows something has gone wrong: She was supposed to meet with King Hekaton and Queen Neri, but then, from her perspective, they abruptly postponed the meeting and a storm giant raiding party ransacked the Hall of Reflected Moonlight and murdered many Knights of the Blue Moon. (If you’re using Option #1, this may have been followed by additional storm giant raids.)

If the PCs are already working with the Lords Alliance or Harpers, it’s not hard to imagine that Silverhand might want to call in some agents with a proven track record for dealing with giant issues to get to the bottom of what happened at Red Rocks.

Either way, the PCs will get briefed on the details of Neri’s Peace — or, at least, a version of those events — and pointed in the direction of Red Rocks, the Hall of Reflected Moonlight, and the Knights of the Blue Moon.

Whichever direction they’re coming from, this investigation could quickly reveal the mismatch in communications between Waterdeep and Maelstrom.

From here, add three clues to reveal the agent responsible. (A chambermaid working for Silverhand? A lesser Knight of the Blue Moon who’s secretly a krakenar agent? Both of them locked in a forbidden tryst and working together?)

This agent, through three more clues, can then point the PCs in the direction of the Skum Lord, for whom they work.

The Skum Lord, of course, is an Involved node, and the PCs are now inside the Kraken Society conspiracy.

Tip: You might find it useful, particularly if you’re using this option, to have Imperator Uther discover Queen Neri’s body and lead the raid on the Hall of Reflected Moonlight during the events of the campaign, instead of having these events play out before the campaign begins. It will be a lot easier to create the sense of high stakes if events are playing out in real time, rather than waiting on hold for weeks or months for the PCs to level up.

OPTION #6: THE EXPEDITION TO ASCARLE

An expedition to the sunken city of Ascarle sounds incredibly cool!

… it’s also a huge undertaking and probably way outside the focus of a Storm King’s Thunder campaign.

If you’d nevertheless like to provide a path for the PCs to follow to Ascarle — one more layer hidden within the Kraken Society conspiracy! — then I’d recommend placing clues in Purple Rocks and on the Morkoth pointing the way.

Go to Part 4D: The Hekaton Revelations

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