DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26D: Elestra Digs Deep

Jamill slammed back the last of his amber-colored drink. “Okay, this is your last chance. Who sent you?”

Elestra suddenly became aware that two rather large men with short clubs strapped to their thighs had suddenly materialized out of the crowd behind her. She stammered, unable to find any kind of answer that would satisfy Jamill.

Jamill jerked his head and headed towards the back of the bar. The two thugs laid their hands on Elestra’s arms. She got the message and let them hustle her out through the back door of the tavern.

When you have factions in your game, those factions should react to the actions of the PCs.

But if factions act as if they know every action the PCs take – as if they were omniscient, all-knowing entities with an eavesdropping device planted under the gaming table — that becomes a frustrating experience for the players and stifles their ingenuity.

There are a number of methods you can use for handling this, but I’ve generally gotten good results taking the decision out of my hands and mechanically determining it.

For example, you might have a random faction encounter check, similar to a random encounter check. For example, roll 1d6 once per day and if you roll a 1, some faction is going to take action against the PCs (or, at least, based on what they know about the PCs’ actions). Increase this to a 2 in 6 chance if the PCs have been making a lot of “noise.”

Another option is to mechanically check whether specific PC actions are detected by relevant factions (e.g., the faction they’re taking the action against or a faction that has them under surveillance). You can think of this as a stealth-type resolution, but at a more abstract level (and possibly using different skills).

Note: This is different than a situation where a faction DEFINITELY knows what the PCs are doing. For example, if the PCs break into a Renraku facility and get spotted by surveillance cameras or fight NPCs who escape and can identify them, you can just actively play Renraku’s response.

A key thing I recommend here is that the PCs should be able to influence the outcome of these mechanics, ideally in a way that involves meaningful choices by the players and is more than just an all-or-nothing decision to take or not take the risky action.

For example, the events in this session use the counter-intelligence system I shared here on the Alexandrian back in 2010. (When I originally mentioned them in this article and talked about the gameplay they made possible that otherwise would never have arisen, it was specifically this Ptolus campaign I was talking about.)

The other thing to note about these counter-intelligence mechanics is that they aren’t uni-directional: The players can also use them to figure out if people are asking questions about them.

In the case of this session, the impact on play was pretty straightforward:

• Elestra succeeded on her Gather Information check to gain information about the cult Iltumar was involved with.
• But the cult also succeeded on their counter-intelligence check to detect that Elestra had been asking questions about them, resulting in the ambush at the Onyx Spider.

Elestra really had dug a deep hole for herself here, and I thought it quite likely that the scenario was now going to turn into a rescue op by the other PCs. (Or possibly even somebody finding Elestra’s body in an alley. The decision not to tell anyone else in the group what she was doing was incredibly risky.) But she managed to turn the tables quite nicely.

Taking Jamill back to their rooms, on the other hand, was a potentially disastrous decision from a counter-intelligence standpoint: The bad guys didn’t know who Elestra was, but if they knew where she lived they’d be able to figure it out pretty quick.

Tee recognized the risk and took some very smart actions to blunt the counter-intelligence vectors that had been established. Just dumping Jamill somewhere would have left him free to continue trying to figure out who Elestra was and why she’d been asking questions. Running him out of town under the guise of the cult itself AND planting the idea that Elestra had been “dealt with” even if she decided to stay in town was both a plan and a contingency plan.

The follow-up decision to then use Jamill’s identity to infiltrate the cult itself was also smart play, and would shape how the entire scenario would play out.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 27A – Running the Campaign: Missing Clues
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 26D: ELESTRA DIGS DEEP

August 24th, 2008
The 14th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

As two o’clock neared, Elestra headed to Tavern Row.

The Onyx Spider was a large, squat, two-story building wedged into the south end of Tavern Row. Elestra knew it to have a seedy and dangerous reputation. And as she passed through the front doors into the common room, it wasn’t hard to figure out where the tavern had gotten its name from: In the center of the room, levitating ten feet off the floor and embedded in a huge crystal sphere, was a giant spider carved from black onyx. It looked expensive.

Elestra spotted Jamill at the bar and pushed her way through the crowd to where he was standing.

“So you’re interested in the Brotherhood?” Jamill asked her, stonefaced.

Elestra nodded. “I might be interested in joining.”

“Might be?”

“I guess I just want to know about it.”

Jamill’s brow furrowed. “Right. Okay, who told you about the Brotherhood?”

Elestra hesitated. “A friend.”

“Who?”

“Well, it was more a friend of a friend… you know?”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t really… He kind of spoke to me in confidence and…”

Jamill slammed back the last of his amber-colored drink. “Okay, this is your last chance. Who sent you?”

Elestra suddenly became aware that two rather large men with short clubs strapped to their thighs had suddenly materialized out of the crowd behind her. She stammered, unable to find any kind of answer that would satisfy Jamill.

Jamill jerked his head and headed towards the back of the bar. The two thugs laid their hands on Elestra’s arms. She got the message and let them hustle her out through the back door of the tavern.

As they stepped through the door into the narrow alley behind the Onyx Spider, however, the two thugs briefly took their hands off Elestra. She immediately called upon the Spirit of the City and began her transformation in to a bird, hoping to fly away.

But the thugs were too quick for her. A large hand snapped out and grabbed the fragile sparrow-Elestra in mid-flight. She could feel it crushing the delicate bones of her new form and she was forced to abandon the attempt.

The two thugs reached for their clubs, but even as she landed lightly on the floor of the alley, Elestra was quick to draw her rapier. Her blade lashed out at the face of one of the thugs, cutting a deep gash through one cheek.

The thug screamed in pain, but even as Elestra grinned with satisfaction she felt the other thug’s club smash into her already aching ribs. Ignoring the blinding flash of pain, she spun around and cut a matching gash across the second thug’s cheek.

Jamill stepped out of the alley. He had drawn a longsword, but his swing seemed slow and clumsy to Elestra. She easily parried it and drove her own blade viciously past his defenses, skewering him through the stomach.

With a deep groan, Jamill let his longsword slip from his fingers and sank to the dirty cobbles of the alley. The two thugs stared at Elestra, glanced at each other, and then ran off in opposite directions.

Thinking quickly, Elestra grabbed Jamill (who had now slipped from shock into unconsciousness), threw him over her shoulder, and headed north towards the Ghostly Minstrel. Circumspectly circling around the inn, Elestra snuck in through the kitchen and headed upstairs.

She grabbed Agnarr from his room and left him to bind and blindfold Jamill in her room while she went back downstairs to leave a message with Tellith to let the others know that she would like them to come up to her room as soon as they returned.

TEE IS THE CLEVER ONE

Tee and Dominic arrived back at the Ghostly Minstrel together. Receiving Elestra’s message (by way of Tellith) they headed up to her room.

When they knocked, Elestra cracked the door slightly and peeked out at them. “Oh! Hello!” She visibly scanned the hall behind them to make sure that it was empty, then ushered them inside.

Agnarr was sitting on the bed with a vaguely bored expression on his face. Jamill was trussed up in the middle of the room, still unconscious. Elestra shuffled her feet nervously.

Tee looked back and forth between the three of them. “What am I looking at, exactly?”

Elestra, in a slightly disjointed fashion, explained everything that had happened. Tee was unbelieving. Wasn’t this exactly what she had told Elestra not to do?

“And then you brought him here?” Tee said, incredulously. “Why would you—“

Another knock came at the door. Tee quickly waved Elestra out of the way and cracked the door.

It was Tor.

“I had a message from Elestra to come up?”

Tee nodded. “Elestra has created a… situation.” She opened the door wide enough for Tor to see Jamill. “And it would probably be better if you weren’t part of this developing disaster.”

“Haven’t you just told him pretty much everything there is to tell?” Dominic said. “Just let him in.”

But Tor nodded to Tee and left. Tee shut the door.

“What—“ Elestra started.

“Shhh.” Tee cut her off. “Let me think.”

She had asked Elestra not to go asking questions, but she had. And now she was faced with almost exactly the type of situation she had feared: A cultist in their rooms, compromising whatever safety or security might be left at the Ghostly Minstrel. Anywhere else would have been—

“Elestra, I need you to go out and find a vacant warehouse. Somewhere far away from here. Try the South Market.”

“What are you—?”

“Just go. We’ve got to get this done before he wakes up.” Elestra left. Tee turned to Dominic and Agnarr. “You two stay here and keep an eye on him. If it looks like he’s going to wake up, knock him out again.”

Tee dashed out of the room and headed across Delver’s Square to Ebbert’s. She bought a strange, eclectic collection of material and then returned to the Ghostly Minstrel as quickly as she could.

By the time Elestra returned with the location of a suitable warehouse in the South Market, Tee had stripped down the common items she had purchased and assembled the makeshift components of a primitive disguise. Her biggest goal had been to make herself look human instead of elfish, hoping that would be enough to throw people off the trail if it came to that. (Of course, Elestra hadn’t been disguised at all… but there wasn’t much she could do about that.)

Tee had Agnarr and the others carry Jamill downstairs and load him into a carriage, making protestations as he went about how his friend had had “too much to drink”. Tee surreptiously joined them a few moments later. She bribed the carriage driver well and had him drop them off at the empty warehouse.

TEE HUSTLES

There was a dilapidated chair in the corner of the warehouse. She had Agnarr tie Jamill to it and then told everyone to wait outside.

“Will you be okay?” Agnarr asked.

“If not, you’ll hear me shouting. I have big lungs.” Tee gave a slightly nervous grin.

Once the others had left, though, she slipped the broken square ring that they had found in Pythoness House onto her finger and pushed those nervous feelings deep inside and set her face in a look of cold determination. Then she slapped Jamill awake.

“I’m ashamed of you.”

Jamill shook his head. “What’s going on? Who are you?”

Tee removed his blindfold, carefully making sure that he would see the ring on her finger without letting him know that she was trying to make sure he saw it.

Jamill shook his head again, trying to get his bleary eyes to focus. “What happened?”

“You couldn’t handle a little girl?” Scorn dripped from Tee’s voice. “A little girl who turns into a bird?”

Jamill suddenly turned surly. “She was tougher than she looked…”

“She’s been dealt with,” Tee said with a finality that made it clear that Jamill was lucky that he hadn’t been “dealt with”, too. “You’re an embarrassment. You’re embarrassing us. Get out of town. Don’t come back.”

And then she left him… still tied up.

BACK TO ELESTRA’S ROOM

Tee rejoined the others. She stripped off her disguise and they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel, gathering Ranthir and Tor on their way back to Elestra’s room.

They quickly compared their notes from the day. Tor filled them in on his fear that Iltumar might be followed by cultists, his meeting with Shim, and the news that they had been followed.

“But Shim said that it was an Imperial priestess.”

“What does that mean?” Elestra said.

“Do you think that the Church might be in league with the cultists somehow?” Tee said.

Dominic suddenly looked queasy and uncertain.

“Or perhaps there are just some members of the Church who are cultists,” Ranthir said. “The Truth of the Hidden God said that the Brotherhood of the Blooded Knife infiltrates religions.”

“Is it possible that Rehobath is working with Wuntad?” Elestra asked.

A flurry of panicky hypotheses followed, but then Tor held up his hands. “There’s something else you should all know.” He paused for a moment, trying to find the right words to express something that felt like a confession. “I’ve started taking steps towards becoming a knight with the Order of the Dawn…”

“Congratulations!” Tee said, a huge smile spreading across her face. “That’s wonderful!”

“But that means,” Tor said, “That the priestess might have been following me. The Order might be keeping an eye on me to make sure that I don’t do anything unworthy.”

To a large degree, all of this left them back at square one: Tee hadn’t dared to ask Jamill any questions because it might have made him suspicious enough for her gambit to fail. They didn’t know how to interpret the information that Shim had given to Tor. All they’d really done was to confirm that Iltumar was tied up with some very dangerous people.

“As much as I hate to say it,” Tee said, “Elestra may have had the right idea. If we move quickly, I might be able to find someone else in the Brotherhood that I can talk to by using Jamill’s name as a contact… before he has a chance to warn them or they discover that he’s missing.”

This didn’t thrill any of them, but it seemed like their best chance at this point.

“Of course,” Tee said with a withering look in Elestra’s direction. “I’ll be taking proper precautions.”

And she walked out.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Counterintelligence Vectors – Campaign Journal: Session 27A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26C: A Disposition of Treasure

To kill the time, Elestra grabbed some newssheets and started asking around about recent events in the city. After spending several days in Ghul’s Labyrinth, she was still feeling a little disconnected.

On the 12^th, a man named Doonhin – a salt merchant in the South Market – was accused of killing his wife by throwing her off the Stormwrought Campanile. Doonhin has been pleading his innocence, claiming to have been magically charmed by a sorcerer.

On the 13^th, there had been another Flayed Man killing. This one had taken place in the Guildsman’s District, suggesting that the killer might be moving out of the Warrens.

And only a few hours earlier, around noon, the Rat’s Nest – a pub on Tavern Row – had been vandalized.

In Smart Prep, I discuss the use of background events: a timeline of events that don’t directly involve or affect the PCs, but which are nevertheless a part of the world they live in. These events can manifest themselves as:

• newspaper headlines
• random rumors
• topics of casual conversation
• incidental details contextualizing revelations

And so forth.

They may have some non-direct but practical function – foreshadowing, exposition, etc. – but they’re often just about the world existing. Because in a real, living, breathing world, of course, things happen all the time that aren’t about you.

An example I like to use is a campaign set in New York city during World War II. The PCs aren’t soldiers; they aren’t going to the front lines. But the newspapers are going to be filled with D-Day and Saipan the 1944 election. That’s the type of stuff (along with local news and gossip) that will appear in your list of background events.

Like World War II, many background events will persist – evolving and developing over time. They can be a little like short stories seen at a great distance. Depending on the campaign, I’ll usually try to have a few of these “short stories” running at any given time, but I’ll also make sure to mix in a few completely random tidbits to flesh things out. In the example above, the Tavern Row vandalism is the beginning of a new event sequence, but the murder(?) at the Stormwrought Campanile is a one-off.

In a fluid campaign – particularly a sandbox – you may find that background events sometimes become foreground scenarios (and vice versa). There tend to be two common forms of this.

First, the PCs get involved. This may be the result of a player getting curious: they hear about a background event and think, “That sounds interesting,” and start nosing around. That might go nowhere or it might lead to the background event suddenly being very much an active part of the campaign.

This can also happen when the GM uses the background event as an active tool to respond to PC actions. The events are designed to be flexible tools – to be used in conversations as background details, etc.

For example, you’ve got a series of background events running about Triad attacks in Shanghai. The PCs need some hired muscle and they start asking around about who they can hire. You don’t have anything prepped for that, so you reach for the Triads that you know are part of the setting. The Triads are willing to help the PCs, but they’re going to need a favor in return. What type of favor? Well, maybe they’d like to retaliate against the rival Triad who bombed a restaurant under their protection (as previously detailed in a background event).

Now the background events aren’t in the background at all.

In the other direction, scenario hooks that the PCs choose to ignore can quite naturally transition into short background event sequences. The Flayed Man killings, above, are actually an example of this: the players in the campaign just kind of ignored the related hook and the timeline of Flayed Man killings I’d jotted down in my scenario outline simply played out.

(The scenario itself, in this case, was never fully prepped: The PCs didn’t follow that lead, so I didn’t do the prep.)

Some people get really antsy about this, declaring it “railroading” if, for example, the Flayed Man killings keep happening because the killer hasn’t been caught yet. But that’s not the case. As I’ve mentioned before, choices have meaningful consequences is the opposite of railroading (in which you choices are negated).

By the same token, it may be useful to remember that the function of background events is to demonstrate that the world doesn’t revolve around the PCs: Every job they turn down shouldn’t automatically end in utter disaster. It’s probably more likely, in fact, that the person trying to hire them finds somebody else to do the job (and do it successfully).

Letting action flow offscreen and into the background events is a great way to make the players feel as if they’re really living in the world and that their actions have meaningful and far-reaching consequences that persist even when they can’t see it. And giving players the freedom to engage with background events and make them suddenly the focus of the game is a great way to make the world feel huge and real; as if the PCs could go anywhere or open any door and find a living, breathing world waiting for them.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26D – Running the Campaign: Counterintelligence Vectors
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 26C: THE RIDDLE OF ILTUMAR

August 24th, 2008
The 14th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE KING’S ROAD

They headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel. In the lobby, they met Elestra on her way out, quickly filled her in on the details of the deal they had made, and gave her the platinum she was due.

“Where are you going now?” Tee asked.

“I’m just going out to the listen to the Spirit of the City,” Elestra said. “See what I can find out. Maybe ask around about the Brotherhood.”

“I don’t think you should,” Tee said. “I don’t want us drawing the kind of attention that asking those type of questions might bring. I don’t want to wake up with Wuntad in my room. I already did that with the Balacazars and I didn’t like it.”

“Okay,” Elestra said. “That’s probably true.”

While they were discussing their options, they were joined by the others. Ranthir returned to an idea that had occurred to them during the “meeting of all things” on the 11^th – that the prophecy referring to the “street of kings” could be a reference to King’s Road in the Nobles’ Quarter.

Feeling that they otherwise had a dearth of solid leads – and reflecting on the fact that Elestra had probably had a very close encounter with certain death when she had attempted to follow a similar lead on Brandywine Street by herself – they decided to head up to King’s Road together.

When they arrived, however, they realized they really had no idea what they were looking for.  The prophecy said: Arrived too late, the act has been done. The wind was against them, letters intercepted on their way. The conspirators were fourteen of a party. By the street of kings shall these enterprises by undertaken.

“Arrived too late?” Elestra said. “Does that mean we already missed it?”

Tee frowned. “Maybe. But even if we haven’t, it sounds like this is something that’s going to happen here. So unless we just happen to be here at the right time, I’m not sure what we’re going to see.”

In the Nobles’ Quarter, there were two major thoroughfares running away from the Dalenguard – Crown Street to the south and King’s Road to the north. Near the Dalenguard, King’s Road was filled with a variety of expensive shops, restaurants, and other storefronts dedicated to serving the rich and decadent tastes of the major merchant houses: Moleshan’s, The Jewel, Buckingham’s, The Dry Easel, and the like.

Further to the north, however, King’s Road ran past a number of merchant estates maintained by the major merchant house – Dallimothan, Nagel, and Rau – along with a number of other mansions, including Castle Shard.

Their particular attention was drawn to the Crown Theater – far enough to the north not to be lost in the sea of businesses near the Dalenguard, yet something more than enigmatic, luxurious, and inaccessible estate.

Making inquiries at the theater’s box office, they learned that the current production was The Merchant Warlord – a lavish opera telling the historical tale of Nulara Aretari, the warlord who married into the Aretari merchant family and served as the original First Commander of the nascent Mercenary Army during the Battle of Salesia, helping to create the modern nation of Arathia. Tickets were 25 gold crowns, a staggering sum that left Tee gaping.

A few minutes after they left the Crown Theater, the group was approached by a pair of city guardsmen. Upon reflection, they realized that they looked rather out of place among the pervading opulence of the Nobles’ Quarter, and that wandering openly up and down the length of King’s Road had probably attracted the wrong sorts of attention.

Tee flirtatiously talked the guards off them – weaving some tale about wanting to see a show at the Crown Theater – but the group decided that, since they didn’t seem to be accomplishing anything any way, it was probably time for them to leave. They returned to Midtown and then split up to go their separate ways.

TOR’S MORNING

Tor returned to the Bull and Bear Armory, where he found Iltumar manning the shop. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he asked Iltumar if Hirus was about.

“He’s upstairs tending to Sholum,” Iltumar said. “I’ll go get him. Can you keep an eye on things?”

Before Tor really had a chance to respond, Iltumar had bounded through the door in the back of the shop. Tor could hear him running up the stairs.

The shop was empty when Iltumar left, but a few moments later a young, blond-haired woman came in through the door. Tor suddenly felt himself to be bearing a responsibility he wasn’t sure how to discharge. He awkwardly explained to the woman that the shopkeep had just stepped out, but would be back in just a moment.

The woman nodded and began casually perusing the various weapons hanging along one wall. Tor kept a wary eye on her, but she didn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious. A few minutes later, Hirus and Iltumar came downstairs.

Iltumar moved to assist the woman who had been waiting, while Tor and Hirus stepped outside to have a private word. Tor ascertained that Iltumar had duties around the shop until midday, but after that would be free. Tor offered to take Iltumar riding with him after he’d finished his duties, if that would be all right with Hirus.

Hirus smiled. He thought that Iltumar would like that a great deal. Tor told him to let Iltumar know, and that he would be back at noon to pick him up.

Hirus went back into the Bull and Bear. Tor grabbed a carriage at the mouth of Delver’s Square and rode it to the alley off Yarrow Street where they had met with the enigmatic information broker known as Shim. Within mere moments of walking down the alley, he was rewarded with the sight of Shim slipping between the cracks of the wall.

“Master Tor,” Shim said with the sound of an unseen smile in his voice. “A pleasure to see you again. What can I help you with?”

For a minimal fee, Tor arranged for one of Shim’s men – whoever they might be – to keep an eye on him for the next few hours.

“You want me to keep an eye on… you?” Shim said, slightly bemused.

“That’s right,” Tor said. Although he didn’t tell Shim his exact suspicions, he suspected that the Brotherhood might be keeping Iltumar under observation. If they were, he wanted to know about it.

Leaving Shim’s alley, Tor returned to the Bull and Bear. Iltumar was waiting for him with an excited grin on his face.

“Have you ever jousted before?” Tor asked him as they stepped back out into the square.

Iltumar shook his head.

“Do you have a horse?”

Iltumar shook his head.

“Have you ever ridden before?”

Iltumar shook his head.

“Okay,” Tor said. “Let’s start by getting you a horse.”

They went to the stables behind the Ghostly Minstrel. Tor said hello to Blue and patted him on the nose, and then made some quick arrangements to rent a horse for Iltumar.

As they rode north along Lower God Row – Tor easing into the comfortable familiarity of the saddle and Iltumar awkwardly trying to stay on his mount – Tor gently tried to broach Iltumar’s thoughts.

“How have you been?”

Iltumar shrugged.

“Hirus has been worried about you.”

Iltumar’s whole body tightened. “Is that why you asked me to ride with you?”

Tor backed off. Iltumar obviously wasn’t going to respond to direct inquiries about whatever was going on, so he would just have to reach out and leave his hand there in the hope that Iltumar would take it.

They rode out of the city through the North Gate and spent a little over three hours just riding through the open prairies around the city. Tor slowly coached the lad into a greater sense of confidence in the saddle, all the while trying to convince him – without saying as much – that, if Iltumar wanted adventure, all he had to do was ask.

When they were done, Tor returned to the Bull and Bear with a very sore – but very happy – Iltumar. He made arrangements, if Iltumar would like, to meet him again in a couple of days.

Once Iltumar had said his farewells, Tor rode Blue back to Shim’s alley.

“You were right,” Shim said. “You were followed.”

“By who?”

“A blond woman dressed in the robes of an Imperial priestess.”

“An Imperial priestess?” Tor frowned. “Where did she go?”

“She followed you to North Gate and then waited in the area until you returned. Then she trailed you back to Delver’s Square. After you left the kid, she hung around outside the Bull and Bear.”

Tor paid Shim and left.

ELESTRA’S MORNING

Elestra decided that she wanted to ask around town about the Brotherhood after all. “I’ll just be careful,” she said to herself.

And she was. Poking her nose into all the right places and asking discreet questions, she learned that an organization calling itself the Brotherhood of Ptolus was quietly recruiting young men and women with idealistic-sounding jingo. She ran into a couple of walls, but eventually made contact with Jamill – a member of the Brotherhood with strange tattoos, numerous scars, long black hair, and the sunken eyes of a shivvel addict.

Elestra voiced interest in joining the Brotherhood, but Jamill wasn’t willing to talk about it until they were in “a more private place”. They agreed to meet at a tavern called the Onyx Spider on Tavern Row at two o’clock.

To kill the time, Elestra grabbed some newssheets and started asking around about recent events in the city. After spending several days in Ghul’s Labyrinth, she was still feeling a little disconnected.

On the 12^th, a man named Doonhin – a salt merchant in the South Market – was accused of killing his wife by throwing her off the Stormwrought Campanile (a freestanding belltower in the Temple District that’s said to be a sanctuary from bad omens, ill luck, storms, and evil magic). Doonhin has been pleading his innocence, claiming to have been magically charmed by a sorcerer.

On the 13^th, there had been another Flayed Man killing. This one had taken place in the Guildsman’s District, suggesting that the killer might be moving out of the Warrens.

And only a few hours earlier, around noon, the Rat’s Nest – a pub on Tavern Row – had been vandalized.

DOMINIC’S MORNING

Dominic spent the morning shopping. He bought Tee a bouquet of flowers and a charming necklace for her birthday, delivering them to her room at the Ghostly Minstrel. The gifts brought a huge smile to Tee’s face, and she thanked him profusely.

Dominic also stopped by Myraeth’s Oddities and bought a scroll describing a magical ritual which could be used to deliver short messages over long distances. He hoped that Ranthir might be able to learn the ritual and improve the group’s ability to communicate during times of separation. After delivering Tee’s birthday presents, he crossed the hall and knocked on Ranthir’s door.

“I have a present for you, Ranthir!”

Ranthir quirked an eyebrow. “You know it’s not my birthday, right?”

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Background to Foreground – Campaign Journal: Session 26D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26B: A Disposition of Treasure

There were three main problems to overcome: The sheer weight of the arcane equipment and precious metals. The pit of chaos warping the hallway. And the difficulty of lifting the material out of the basement here at Greyson House.

Out of everything, the “Drill of the Banewarrens” was going to prove the most difficult: Everything else could be mostly parceled up into smaller bundles, but the drill was both bulky and weighed several thousand pounds all by itself.

“Could we just sell the location of the drill to somebody?” Elestra asked.

“Like House Erthuo?” Tee said. “I doubt they’d be all that interested considering what just happened.”

“How can you make encumbrance fun?”

You can’t.

But you also can’t make hit points fun, and for much the same reason.

Hit points are just a number: It goes up. It goes down. At a certain value you might suffer penalties. At another you fall unconscious.

So, too, with encumbrance: The number goes up. The number goes down. At a certain value you suffer penalties. At another you can’t carry any more.

Hit points and encumbrance are simple gauges, and you can’t make them “fun” for the same reason you can’t make the gas gauge on your car fun.

But driving a car? That can be fun. And so is combat in D&D and a lot of other roleplaying games that use hit points.

The gauge isn’t fun. It’s just a gauge. But the system in which that gauge is used – for which, in fact, that gauge may be an essential part – can be all kinds of fun.

So the better question is:

“Why do we want to track encumbrance?”

Encumbrance is often most useful in expedition-based play: You put together the resources for an expedition, then expend those resources on the expedition to maximize your returns.

Encumbrance is, in large part, a budget. Without a budget, the solution is always “bring everything,” which is kind of like playing 52-card draw poker: Without limited resources, there is no challenge.

(Tangentially, one interesting facet of such play in 1974 D&D, because it had a system for resolving characters fleeing from combat, is jettisoning equipment in order to pick up speed in flight-pursuit situations. It became a unique way for bulk resource management to impact combat-based play.)

This kind of gameplay does become obfuscated if the encumbrance system is unwieldy and difficult or fiddly to use. (Imagine if hit points, for example, could only be tracked by keeping an exhaustive list of forty or fifty different individual entries on your character sheet. Combat would almost certainly become a slog.) Unfortunately, a lot of encumbrance systems are unwieldy and difficult to use, with the result that many groups simply ignore it (either decisively or by default through “close enough” fudging).

What you want, of course, is an encumbrance system that’s easy to use so that encumbrance-based play will effortlessly integrate into your play. Correctly designed slot-based systems, like Encumbrance By Stone, for example, can make tracking nitty gritty encumbrance as easy as writing down your equipment list.

THE OTHER HALF OF THE EXPEDITION

Prepping the resource pool for an expedition and then expending those resources efficiently in order to maximize your success is the front half of an adventure.

The other half of the adventure is returning home with what you’ve gained, which, in the case of D&D, is usually treasure.

We’ve talked about this a bit before, but creating bulky, difficult-to-transport treasure (and/or putting it in places where it’s difficult to extract it) can create its own unique challenges. We’ve seen the players here come up with a creative solution for disposing of the orrery, and now they’re being challenged once again with the Drill of the Banewarrens and some of the other treasure.

(And this stuff is all just a few hundred feet under a major city. Stick it in the middle of a jungle and watch what happens!)

“But, Justin, challenge isn’t really a big focus for my group! We’re much more interested in narrative, storytelling, and roleplaying!”

Drama is born of adversity.

And I don’t mean that you’re wrong or that you should value challenge-based gameplay more, I mean that in expedition-type stories encumbrance-based challenges are a fundamental part of the drama you’re looking for. (Look at, say, Indiana Jones trying to get the Ark of the Covenant out of Egypt.)

For example, a scene in which the players are roleplaying through the crushing guilt their characters are feeling because their decisions resulted in the deaths of innocent people that they feel responsible for? Grappling with the difficult dilemmas created by balancing expediency of liquidating their treasure against the responsibility of who’s benefiting from that treasure? This stuff is pure gold for dramatic play!

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26C – Running the Campaign: Running With Background Events
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index