SESSION 45A: BY COMMISSAR’S DECREE

October 31st, 2009
The 24th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

They emerged from the incense-drenched depths of Porphyry House into the surreal, sunlit streets of Ptolus.

Still gasping for breath, they decided to return to the Ghostly Minstrel, regroup, and recoup.

But when they arrived, the watchman from the Delvers’ Guild station who had been intermittently harassing them since Ranthir’s encounter with a shivvel addict was waiting for them in the lobby. For the first time, they learned his name – Marco – and he asked them to come to the watch station with him.

It seemed like an innocent enough request, so they readily agreed. Marco escorted them to the station and then to a small room near the back of the building. Then he left them alone.

“What’s going on?” Nasira asked.

“Are we being arrested?”

“Should we try to escape?” Tor said.

“We haven’t done anything wrong!” Elestra said.

“Well… we have killed some people,” Nasira pointed out.

“And Tee has all of that illegal shivvel in her bag of holding.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be discussing it here,” Tee said, gritting her teeth.

THE COMMISSAR’S DEPUTIES

A young woman with short-cropped red hair and wearing a signet with the Commissar’s seal stepped into the room. She introduced herself as Carrina.

“I’m glad you could come here today,” she said. “The Commissar appreciates all of the work and sacrifices you have made for this city.”

“Happy to oblige,” Tor said.

“As your recent actions in the Temple District suggest, you’re already familiar with the recent surge in cultist activities within the city,” Carinna continued.

“Intimately so,” Tee said.

“Just so,” Carrina smiled thinly. “That’s why the Commissar has chosen to deputize you to investigate the cultist activity.”

“We’re already doing that,” Elestra blurted.

“Then it should be no great hardship to do it in the Commissar’s name,” Carrina said. “You will each be paid 75 gold pieces a month, with additional bonuses to be paid at my discretion for tangible results.”

“What sort of results?” Tee said.

“I leave it to your imagination,” Carrina said. “I expect regular reports.”

“How do we contact you?”

“Through Marco here at the watch station.” Carrina pulled out an official-looking piece of parchment and handed it to them: It was an official decree by the Commissar enforcing their deputization and empowering them to act as such.

They didn’t really seem to have much choice in the matter. And although the government pay was clearly meager, it was money for doing something they were already committed to. So they started briefing her; rapidly filling her in on all of the major cult hotspots they were aware of around the city.

“Excellent,” Carrina said. “When can you start dealing with them?”

After some soul-searching, they decided to also brief her on the Banewarrens. If nothing else, they suspected that the Pactlords were another cult and, thus, under the purview of their commission.

Carrina had known nothing about the Banewarrens, but she listened carefully to their report. (Which, truth to be told, was not entirely complete. They edited carefully around the involvement of Rehobath and the Inverted Pyramid.) When they were finished, she promised to report the matter back to the Commissar. “Certainly if you think it to be a cult-related threat, you should act on it as quickly as possible.” But beyond that she saw little reason for panic: It was hardly the first vault of powerful artifacts to be found beneath the streets of Ptolus. Nor was it likely to be the last.

SOMETHING STIRS…

After the shellacking they had received in Porphyry House, they decided that they would spend the next day resting and recuperating. Their stores had been badly depleted and they had some deep bruises to heal.

They also agreed that a return to Porphyry House – particularly a Porphyry House likely to be armed and alerted – was beyond their present resources. So they decided to turn their attention back to the Banewarrens: They would pursue their leads to Alchestrin’s Tomb.

Ranthir, delighted at the down time, retreated to his room and his tomes.

Elestra, still mourning the loss of her python viper, retreated to her own room to begin a long communion with the Spirit of the City in the hope that she might be granted a new companion through whom the city’s voice could be heard and its will made manifest.

Tee spent the afternoon hocking their loot. Nasira tagged along with her and they spent the next few hours chatting amiably. In the evening they retired to the Ghostly Minstrel and Tee offered to teach her the game of Dragonscales. (Tee’s thoughts turned for a moment to Dominic with a sad sense of loss: She missed playing the game with him.)

Midway through their series of training games, however, they abruptly realized that the tiles had spelled out the words SOMETHING STIRS. This was not entirely unusual, but as the game continued the phrase appeared again… and again…

Tee cleared the board and they began a new game… SOMETHING STIRS.

They paused and considered their options. Tee tried manipulating the other tiles in various ways to explicate the message (“What stirs?” and so forth)… but then the message stopped occurring altogether.

Running the Campaign: Recognition as Reward – Campaign Journal: Session 45B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 44B: Time to Fly

 Tor grabbed up Agnarr’s body and turned, churning his way down the hall.

The twisting vines continued to confound their orderly retreat, but several of them had broken free now and were running back across the lounge. Tee, who was still trying to assist Tor’s retreat, tossed Nasira her magical lockpicking ring: “Get out! Quick as you can!”

Nasira reached the door to the long hall of whores and swung it open. Looking both ways she sighed with relief and called back over her shoulder, “All clea—“

The door at the far end of the hall opened. Two of the armored serpents and six unarmored ones poured through. “There they are!”

As I mentioned in Prepping Porphyry House, this adventure has been enhanced with an adversary roster. And it’s a pretty great example of the kind of dynamic play that having an adversary roster can unlock for you.

In the early part of the session, you can see that the players have already internalized the consequences of dynamic dungeons: When they stealthily take out some of the guards, they know they can’t just leave the bodies lying around, because it’s very possible that they’ll be discovered by other cultists moving throughout the building.

But a little while later you can see the evidence of me actively using the adversary roster:

Tee, on the other hand, did head into the room and quickly inspected the well (finding nothing unusual about it – it was a perfectly ordinary well). She was about to move on to the equipment in the corner—

When a patrol of two fully-armored serpent-men came around the corner in the hall.

One of them immediately turned and ran back around the corner. Tor, Agnarr, and Elestra quickly converged on the remaining serpent and hacked it to pieces. But by the time they were finished with it, two more had appeared at the end of the next hall in a four-way intersection between several doors.

The PCs get spotted, some of the bad guys run to raise the alarm, and things begin to spiral out of control.

Last week, Dave Oldcorn asked, “Does this not happen an awful lot of the time with adversary rosters?” And the answer to the question is complicated.

The first thing to recognize is that the PCs made a mistake and then got unlucky with their dice rolls: The mistake was leaving most of the party standing in the hallway (a high-traffic area) while Tee was searching a room (a time-consuming activity). They might have still had the opportunity to avoid catastrophe, but they rolled poorly and didn’t hear the guard patrol coming. And then, on top of that, they lost initiative, so the guards both had the opportunity to see them and run reinforcements before they could do anything.

Mistakes and bad luck will happen, of course, so it’s not necessarily unusual for this sort of thing to happen. But you’ll also see plenty of other examples in this campaign journal where the PCs didn’t make mistakes and/or the dice were in the favor, and so kept control of the situation. In fact, it’s not difficult to imagine how just one thing going a little differently might have caused the entire Porphyry House scenario to play out in a completely different way.

Which leads us to a second important principle when it comes to adversary rosters: They shift some of the responsibility for encounter design from the GM to the players. By the point where the PCs were facing off against multiple squads of guards, an angry spellcaster, and a giant stone golem, they were clearly in over their heads. But that wasn’t an encounter that I created for them. It was, in most ways, an encounter they’d created for themselves.

This creates a really interesting dynamic where (a) the players feel ownership of their fate and (b) they can engage in truly strategic play, often controlling the difficulty and pace of the encounters they’re facing. (What happened in this session was, ultimately, a series of strategic failures followed by some strategic genius that ultimately allowed them to escape a rapidly developing catastrophe.)

In order for this to work, though, the GM needs to play fair. An important part of that is respecting the fog of war: The other reason “every monster in the place descending upon you instantly” isn’t the default outcome is because it isn’t the automatic outcome of the PCs getting spotted by a bad guy. That bad guy has to decide to run for help; the PCs have to fail to stop them from doing that; and then it takes time for them to fetch that help. And even once they have gotten help… where are the PCs? Did they just stay where they were? If not, how will the bad guys figure that out? What mistakes might be made within the fog of war? How can the PCs take advantage of that?

Above all, an adversary roster is a tool that lets you, as the GM, easily roleplay all the denizens of the dungeon. Truly embrace that opportunity by putting yourself fully in their shoes — thinking about what they know; what they would prioritize; and the decision they would, therefore, make — and playing to find out.

The final thing that pulls all of this together is the Dungeon as Theater of Operations: If the encounter in this session were glued to a single room — or if the players felt like they weren’t “allowed” to leave the borders of the battlemap — this would not have been compelling session. In fact, it would have almost certainly ended with all of the PCs dead. It’s only because the PCs were able to strategically duel with the actively played opposition of Porphyry House in an engagement ranging across fully half of the building’s first floor that (a) the PCs survived and (b) the session was a thrilling escapade from beginning to end.

Campaign Journal: Session 45A – Running the Campaign: Recognition as Reward
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 44B: TIME TO FLY

October 28th, 2009
The 24th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

It was coming from somewhere above them.

Having called whatever was coming, Erepodi started casting another spell—

And Ranthir reached out with his mind and slammed the door in front of her shut. Then he threw another web to seal it shut.

The shutting of the door also had the benefit of freeing Tor from the necromantic link that Erepodi had forged. He felt a little of his strength returning to him.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

It was descending now. Slowly, inevitably approaching them…

They could hear the serpents struggling to wrench open the door, but the web bought them a few minutes in which Tor and Agnarr could just focus on dealing out as much punishment as possible on the two serpent warriors trapped with them.

Or was it the other way around? They hadn’t managed to subdue even one of the serpents before the door was finally ripped open again. The thick strands of the web still blocked their sight, but they could hear that even more reinforcements had arrived. Erepodi was shouting instructions: “Go to the north and the south! Circle around them! Cut them off!”

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

“Time to retreat!” Tee shouted.

But it wasn’t that easy. Tor and Agnarr had become thoroughly enmeshed by the vines once again and were helpless to do anything except fight the serpent warriors directly in front of them.

“Are we going? Are we going?!” Elestra shouted.

Confusion reigned.

Tee dashed forward, using the bag of elemental flame to Agnarr free. Even as he was bathed in fire, Agnarr finally managed to cut down the serpent warrior he faced.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

From beyond the web they could still hear Erepodi shouting orders. “You! Fetch Wulvera! And you! Go to the madams!”

Elestra began weaving a spell to summon forth lightning while Ranthir cast a spell to enlarge Tor, which ripped the knight free from the vines as he grew. With all of them at last free to move again, they started to flee out of the vines. But the remaining serpent warrior backed away from the enlarged Tor and cried, “There shall be no escape!”

And the hallway beyond them exploded into more of the writhing vegetation.

As they all cursed, the serpent warrior darted back under Tor’s blade and viciously cut Agnarr down. Elestra, who had been caught around the corner by the vines, unleashed her lightning blindly… where its mis-aimed strikes did nothing except to backlight Agnarr’s collapse.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Tor concluded that they weren’t going to escape as long as this bastard was alive. He focused everything he had on taking him down… and finally succeeded after a torturous exchange of blows that left him bleeding from a dozen wounds. In fact, even that effort might not have been enough if Tee had not succeeded in directing Elestra’s blindly-aimed lightning into finally striking true.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

It had taken too long. Whatever Erepodi had called to her was tearing its way through Ranthir’s web…

And now Tor could see it: A massive, twenty-foot-tall statue of Erepodi – animated and brought to life.

“Oh gods…!” Tor murmured.

Ranthir, behind him, could not see the statue. But he could hear the telltale cindering of his web being burnt away by the serpents… so he dropped another forty feet of it.

Tor grabbed up Agnarr’s body and turned, churning his way down the hall.

The twisting vines continued to confound their orderly retreat, but several of them had broken free now and were running back across the lounge. Tee, who was still trying to assist Tor’s retreat, tossed Nasira her magical lockpicking ring: “Get out! Quick as you can!”

Nasira reached the door to the long hall of whores and swung it open. Looking both ways she sighed with relief and called back over her shoulder, “All clea—“

The door at the far end of the hall opened. Two of the armored serpents and six unarmored ones poured through. “There they are!”

But as the serpent warriors began to race down the hall, Elestra stepped past Nasira and called upon the Spirit of the City. The end of the hall erupted in jagged, cascading tremors – shaking the serpents from their tails and hurling them to the ground. She had bought them a few precious moments.

Ranthir, his feet quickened by another glamer, came tearing across the lounge behind them.

Nasira tried a door on the opposite side of the hall (hoping to reach one of the secret doors they knew to be on the other side of those rooms, and through those back to the hall where their entrance from the outside had been cut)—But it was locked! And Tee’s ring was already spent for the day!

And Tee herself, for perhaps the first time in all their days in Ptolus, was tarrying behind – her progress completely hindered by the vines.

And that was when the door directly behind them opened and eight more of the serpents were revealed.

Elestra, thinking quickly, reached out through the Spirit and dropped a suggestion into their minds: “Shut the door.”

And they did!”

They could hear a muffled shout through the door. “What are you doing?!”

Tor, who had just come trundling up with Agnarr’s body thrown over his shoulder, grabbed the door and desperately held it shut. Elestra and Nasira seized the moment to heal Agnarr: They needed him to knock down one of the whore doors. But, back on his feet, he threw his body uselessly against the stout door of mahogany.

Ranthir, meanwhile, dropped a web on the north end of the hall to further impede the patrol (who had almost broken free of Elestra’s heaving stones).

And then the door was wrenched from Tor’s grasp… and Ranthir dropped a web on the front rank of that patrol, too. But it was all falling apart and it was only a matter of time before—

Tee came racing up, grabbed her ring back from Nasira, and quickly picked the lock on one of the mahogany doors. Kicking it open she revealed the small chamber containing a single bed that she had expected, plus a whore scurrying in a panic back into a corner. She lowered her sword at the whore and then waved it at the far wall. “Open that door! OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!”

But the whore just shrugged in hopeless terror and confusion.

“DAMMIT!” Tee threw herself at the wall, combing it for the secret door that she knew had to be there.

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

Erepodi’s statue had broken free. It was coming.

Nasira dropped a clairvoyance into the secret hall they had entered through… and saw that half of the western patrol had broken off and entered through the secret door! They were going to be cut off!

But Tee finally found the secret door. As it slid open, Ranthir dropped an illusion over it to disguise the opening. Tee pulled out the onyx silence ring.

Through her clairvoyance Nasira could see the patrol enter the hall and check the first door. As several of the patrol entered that room (perhaps to circle around to the outer hall and reach them), they seized their opportunity, throwing themselves through the secret door, webbing the patrol, and then running up towards the hole they had drilled. As she came through the secret door, Tee threw the onyx silence ring at the western patrol to stop them from shouting warnings to the others (who might still have time to cut them off).

Meanwhile at least one of the eastern patrol had broken free from Ranthir’s webs. They could hear him calling out to the statue—

THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.

“The second door! They went through that door! Smash it open!”

There was a splintering crash of wood—

And then they were at the crawlspace, forcing their way through – Tor coming last (as Ranthir released the enlarging effect that had been placed upon him so that he would fit) even as the serpents came slither-racing up the hall behind them.

In a panicked rush they beat their way through the back alleys of the Guildsman District and burst out into the crowded, mid-morning streets of Ptolus…

Running the Campaign: Adversary Rosters in Action – Campaign Journal: Session 45A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 44A: Whorehouse of Terror

Agnarr flew into a rage. “Stay away from her!”

The serpent-men in the far hall had now thrown open one of the doors there. “Erepodi!” they shouted through it. “We’re under attack!”

Erepodi… The name was familiar to Tee. It took her a moment to wrack her memory, but eventually she alighted upon its source: The small picture locket they had found in Pythoness House.

And indeed, in the very moment that Tee remembered the locket, Erepodi herself strode into view through the door, scarcely changed from her picture.

“I know not who you are! Or why you have come! But none shall disturb my house!”

This is a moment where the player has forgotten something that happened during the campaign. This isn’t unusual. As human beings we forget stuff all of the time, and unlike our characters we aren’t living in these fictional worlds 24-7. (Or whatever the hours, days, and weeks look like in your fantasy milieu of choice.)

I don’t remember exactly how this precise moment was resolved, but it generally happens in one of three ways.

First, one of the other players does remember this bit of continuity and simply reminds the table what happened. It’s up to the player to decide whether that’s an in-character moment (e.g., Tee forgot and Ranthir reminded her) or not. (I’m pretty confident this isn’t what happened in this moment, as this happens all the time and I wouldn’t have recorded it in the journal.)

Second, the campaign journal is consulted. Creating a record of continuity is, after all, exactly why we’re keeping a campaign journal in the first place. In the case of the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, one of the players has loaded the journal into the group’s private wiki so that it can be rapidly searched (along with digital copies of many of the handouts and other records the group has created).

Third, I’ll have the PC make a memory check. For my D&D 3^rd Editon campaigns, I simplified and adapted a rule from the Book of Eldritch Might 3 for this.

MEMORY CHECK

Whenever a character might remember something that happened to them either in actual play, from their own (pregame) past, or something that happened “off stage”, they should make a memory check. (This could also be to remember some minor detail that the DM didn’t point out specifically because it would have caused undue suspicion and attention…)

A memory check is a simple Intelligence check. Characters cannot Take 20 and retries are not allowed. (Characters can Take 10 in non-stressful situations, however.)

Characters also have access to the following feats:

• Excellent Memory: +5 to memory checks
• Photographic Memory: +15 to memory checks. (Requires Excellent Memory.)

This material is covered by the Open Gaming License.

THE GM’s ROLE

What about my role as the GM here? Shouldn’t I just tell the players when they’ve forgotten something?

Maybe.

This is a tricky bit of praxis, in my opinion. On the one hand, I don’t want the players stymied because they’ve forgotten something that their characters should remember. On the other hand, figuring out how things fit together is a deeply satisfying and rewarding experience, and I don’t want to be constantly short-circuiting that by spelling everything out for them. Conclusions are just infinitely more fun if the players figure them out for themselves.

And, in fact, it can also be fun when the players could have figured something out, but didn’t. That, “Oh my god! It was right in front of us the whole time!” moment can be really incredible, but none of you will ever have the chance to experience it if you’re constantly spoonfeeding them.

So if I can see that my players have “missed” something, the first thing I’ll ask myself is, “Have they forgotten a fact or are they missing a conclusion?” I may or may not provide them with a missing fact, but I will do almost anything in my power to avoid giving them a conclusion.

(This situation with Erepodi is an interesting example because it kind of lands in a gray area here: It’s partly about remembering a fact they learned in Pythoness House — i.e., the name “Erepodi” — and partly about drawing the conclusion that this is the same person. So it’s a little tricky.)

The next thing I’ll consider is, “Is this something that their character should remember?” The answer to that may be an obvious Yes, in which case I’ll provide the answer. If the answer isn’t obvious, call for a memory check. (This can usually just default to some kind of Intelligence or IQ check if your system doesn’t have a formal memory check mechanic.)

Tip: An advanced technique you might use, if you have a searchable campaign journal like we do, is to say something like, “You should check the campaign journal for that.” The disadvantage is that this consumes extra time. But it has the benefit that the players still feel a sense of ownership about “figuring it out.” Logically, it shouldn’t make a difference. In practice, it can be an effective bit of psychological finesse.

Another key consideration is how essential this information is to the structure of the scenario and/or the PCs’ current situation. If it’s just an incidental detail leading to a revelation that could just as easily simmer for a long time, then I might be a little more likely to let it pass and see if the players notice it or figure it out later. If, on the other hand, they’re in a middle of an investigation, are rapidly running out of leads to follow, and forgetting this detail will likely derail the investigation completely, I’m more likely to default to giving them the info.

A final factor here is if the players are directly asking for the info. For example, if they say something like, “Erepodi? That name sounds familiar. Justin, where have we heard that name before?” This is a very strong indicator, and I’m almost certainly going to either point them in the right direction (“check the campaign journal” or “do you still have that letter from the duke?”), call for a memory check, or simply give them the information.

Conversely, if they aren’t saying anything, players often know more than you realize. It’s not unusual for me to call for a memory check, have it succeed, and give them the information, only for the player to say, “Oh, yeah. I already knew that.” This is another reason why, in the absence of other factors, I’ll usually default to not saying anything and seeing how things develop through actual play.

If nothing else, when they realize their mistake, it will also encourage the players to keep better notes!

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: DELAYED RECALL

Here’s a technique I haven’t actually used, but by sheer synchronicity I was reading through Aaron Allston’s Crime Fighter RPG this week and stumbled across a cool idea. In the introductory scenario “New Shine on an Old Badge,” the PCs are tracking down a criminal who turns out to be an ex-cop dressing up in his old uniform. When the PCs have an opportunity to catch a glimpse of this fake/ex-cop from a distance, Allston recommends:

As the investigation and paperwork continues, the characters will find that no one knows who the officer was. Let the characters make INT rolls. If anyone achieves a 17 or better, he’ll remember who the guy is — “Ray Calhoun — only that can’t be right, because he retired six or seven years ago; he used to visit the station pretty regularly, even after he retired.”

If someone achieves a fourteen or better, he’ll wake up in the middle of the night remembering who the guy is.

Emphasis added.

In this case (pun intended), this isn’t something the players have forgotten or would be capable of remembering. (Their characters met Ray Calhoun before the campaign began.) But the idea of taking a partial success and resolving it as, “In the middle of the night you wake up and realize you forgot something!” is, I think, a really interesting framing for this.

Along similar lines, you might decide, “Well, they don’t immediately remember encountering the name ‘Erepodi’ before. But the next time they encounter the name, it will all fall into place for them.”

CONCLUSION

Some of the issues you’ll run into with player memory vs. character memory will be very similar to the issues that can arise when adjudicating idea rolls. For a deeper discussion on those, you might want to check out GM Don’t List #10: Idea Rolls.

Campaign Journal: Session 44B – Running the Campaign: Adversary Rosters in Action
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index