DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 24A: The Squire of Dawn

Sir Kabel returned the bow with a nod and then sat down on the couch, motioning Tor to a nearby chair. “Sir Torland of Barund, if I remember correctly? We spoke of horses at Harvestime, did we not?”

“Yes, but I am no knight, sir.”

“Truly?” Sir Kabel raised his eyesbrows. “Yet you bear a sword at your side and you carry yourself like a warrior.”

“I am trained in the blade,” Tor said. “But I belong to no order.”

“Would you like to?”

In this week’s session, Tor makes a choice about which order of knighthood to approach in his quest to become a knight. This might be a good time, therefore, to do a call back to an earlier Running the Campaign essay, “An Interstice of Factions,” in which I looked at how and why I’d set up this choice in the first place.

I honestly have no idea how things might have played out if Tor had instead selected the Knights of the Golden Cross or the Knights of the Pale. But as you can see in the campaign journal (although Tor really doesn’t), Sir Kabel had not only become aware of Tor’s martial prowess, he also had political motivations for keeping Tor close to him. As a result, Tor’s entrance into the order is heavily accelerated as he moves almost immediately into almost informal Trials of Arms, which are what I’d like to discuss today.

UNUSUAL RULINGS

“I’ll rest on little ceremony here,” Kabel said. “This is your First Trial of Arms. We’ll begin with the Test of the Blade. Strike me. If you can.”

Tor attacked… and Kabel easily parried the thrust. “Good form. Controlled, yet fierce.”

Tor feinted to the left and then slashed to the right. Kabel almost completely ignored the feint and easily parried the slash, but Tor deflected his blow and plunged the point of his blade toward’s Kabel’s chest. Kabel was forced to twist his own sword in order to parry the follow-thru. “Excellent!”

Tor backed off half a pace and then quickly brought a strong blow down directly towards Kabel’s head, but Kabel was quick enough to shift his footwork, right his form, and block the blow.

“Enough!” Kabel cried, disengaging. “Now for the Test of the Shield. Defend yourself!”

A lot of mechanics in RPGs are clearly designed for one specific implementation, and this can often be seen quite clearly with combat mechanics. One of the great things about having a GM who can make ruilings, though, is that even these mechanics can be creatively turned to new uses when the occasion calls for it.

In this case, for example, I plucked attack rolls out of the combat system and structured them as a series of checks which included parsing some mechanical failures into partial successes – i.e., attacks which could impress Sir Kabel even if they were not, in fact, successful at striking him.

The cool thing about using mechanics in unusual ways – instead of just doing some ad hoc fiat – is that (a) the player still feels like they’re in control of the situation because they can apply their mastery and understanding of the rule system and (b) the GM can also continue to use the supporting infrastructure around those mechanics to support and enhance their rulings.

For example, I was able to use my house rules for fighting defensively to increase Sir Kabel’s effective AC (since he was entirely focused on parrying Tor’s blows). Conversely, Tor’s player realized she could do the same, using the Aim ability on Tor’s final attack.

PLAYER-FACING MECHANICS

Tor loosed the shield from his back and lowered himself into a defensive posture. Sir Kabel unleashed a withering flurry of attacks, and although Tor blocked many of them, Kabel’s sword seemed to constantly find the weak points in his defense.

After several exchanges, Kabel stepped back again. “I’m impressed. It’s clear you have had little formal training, but your instincts are strong and you have clearly been tested by the true heat of battle. The Order would be honored to have you serve as its squire.”

The other thing I did here was shift to a player-facing defensive roll when Sir Kabel moved to the Test of the Shield.

A player-facing mechanic involves the player always being the one to roll the dice: If a PC is attacking, the player rolls the attack dice against a static target number representing the target’s defense. If the PC is defending, on the other hand, the player makes a defense roll against a static target number representing the attacker’s skill.

(A system where both the attacker and defender roll on each attack is NOT player-facing; that’s dual-facing. D&D attacks are generally neither, with the attacker always being the one to roll.)

A player-facing mechanic can have advantages in both practice and design, but perhaps the biggest advantage is psychological: Even though the mathematical effect of a player-facing mechanic can be utterly irrelevant, we nevertheless associate rolling the dice (i.e., an action taken at the table) to the action of the character for whom the dice are being rolled; it feels as if that character is the one in “control” of the outcome.

This is also due to the variability of the dice: If I roll for the attacker but not the defender, then the defender’s outcome is constant. Ergo, our subconscious assumes that success or failure is entirely dependent on what the attacker did – on the variability of their outcome.

(I talk about this effect a bit more in “The Design History of Saving Throws,” and also how you can consciously choose to break this psychological default when narrating outcomes in The Art of Rulings.)

Long story short, I deliberately chose to have Tor make a player-facing defensive roll — rolling 1d20 + AC modifiers vs. Kabel’s attack bonuses + 10 — because it centered Tor as the most important character in that moment.

And, of course, the player rolling the dice is the one actually engaged in the resolution, and you can see that quite clearly in this example: If I’d followed the normal mechanics and rolled Kabel’s attack rolls during the Trial of the Shield, Tor’s player would have just sat there watching me roll dice and narrate outcomes. Having the player roll the dice, regardless of any other factors, simply made for a more satisfying game play experience.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 24B – Running the Campaign: Lore Book Meetings
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 24A: THE SQUIRE OF DAWN

June 21st, 2008
The 11th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Tor left the Ghostly Minstrel and turned north towards the Temple District, heading towards the Outer Cathedral. In the three weeks since he had come to Ptolus, he had felt a deep frustration growing in his heart. He had left his home and his family to become a knight and follow the path of honor. But he had found little of the certainty he had hoped for traveling with these strange companions that the mage Ritharius had sent him to. They were good people – of that he was certain, although there had been times when he had doubted – but they seemed lost in a time when he desperately needed direction.

And so he was intent in seeking out Sir Kabel Dathim, the leader of the Order of the Dawn. He had seen Sir Kabel’s cold reaction to the proclamations of Rehobath and this had, for whatever reason, created some sense of trust in him.

When he arrived at the Cathedral, Tor spoke with one of the lesser priests and was led to Sir Kabel’s quarters. The priest knocked on the door, entered, and returned only moments later to usher Tor forward and shut the door behind him.

Sir Kabel’s quarters were small, but well-furnished. An inner door led to what was most likely a bedroom, and the main chamber into which Tor stepped served as both an office and a lounge of sorts. Sir Kabel was sitting at his desk, but as Tor entered he closed a thin ledger, rose, and crossed towards the couch.

“Sir Kabel.” Tor bowed deeply. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.”

Sir Kabel returned the bow with a nod and then sat down on the couch, motioning Tor to a nearby chair. “Sir Torland of Barund, if I remember correctly? We spoke of horses at Harvestime, did we not?”

“Yes, but I am no knight, sir.”

“Truly?” Sir Kabel raised his eyesbrows. “Yet you bear a sword at your side and you carry yourself like a warrior.”

“I am trained in the blade,” Tor said. “But I belong to no order.”

“Would you like to?”

Tor couldn’t contain the grin which erupted across his face. “That’s why I’ve come to you!”

But now Kabel’s face, which had been drawn in thought and consideration, became clouded with suspicion. “You’re in league with the Chosen of Vehthyl, aren’t you?”

Tor’s grin dropped away and he chose his next words carefully. “He has recently been my companion.”

“How recently?”

“A few weeks.”

“And what do you think of the Novarch-in-Exile?” Kabel couldn’t keep the contempt out of his voice.

“I think he’s dangerous,” Tor said plainly. “And I don’t trust him. I don’t think Dominic trusts him, either.”

“And yet he stood at Rehobath’s side.”

“He didn’t know what Rehobath was planning. None of us did.”

Kabel nodded thoughtfully. “Do you think Dominic is truly the Chosen of Vehthyl?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he knows.” Tor shrugged. “But he bears the signs. That’s no trick.”

Kabel grunted and then stood up. He circled behind the couch and began pacing, his words coming thoughtfully. “I don’t trust Rehobath. He claims to speak with the voices of the Gods, but the Gods speak through the Church and he would raise himself against it. I serve the Church. Not him.” He turned to Tor. “I’m not sure what to make of your friend, either. I would squire you into the Order of the Dawn, but as part of that I must ask you to keep a wary eye on Dominic.”

Tor frowned. “I won’t betray my friends.”

“I’m not asking you to,” Kabel said. “Are not two of my men – men who are more loyal to Rehobath than me – already standing guard at the Ghostly Minstrel? And you can be sure that those are not the only eyes that Rehobath has on him. I am only interested in making sure that Dominic himself does not turn against the Church.”

Tor had to think deeply, but in the end he believed that what Sir Kabel said was true. Or, at least, true enough. “I can agree to that.”

“Then come with me.”

Sir Kabel led Tor out of the Cathedral and into the large complex of Church-owned buildings just to the north.

This complex was capped by the Godskeep, which housed the Order of the Dawn. At first, Tor thought he was being taken there, but instead Sir Kabel stopped in the small practice field just outside the keep’s southern gate.

A handful of knights were scattered here and there, practicing or skirmishing. Sir Kabel went over to the racks of practice weapons and pulled down two wooden swords. He tossed one of them to Tor. Tor caught it out of the air.

“I’ll rest on little ceremony here,” Kabel said. “This is your First Trial of Arms. We’ll begin with the Test of the Blade. Strike me. If you can.”

Tor attacked… and Kabel easily parried the thrust. “Good form. Controlled, yet fierce.”

Tor feinted to the left and then slashed to the right. Kabel almost completely ignored the feint and easily parried the slash, but Tor deflected his blow and plunged the point of his blade toward’s Kabel’s chest. Kabel was forced to twist his own sword in order to parry the follow-thru. “Excellent!”

Tor backed off half a pace and then quickly brought a strong blow down directly towards Kabel’s head, but Kabel was quick enough to shift his footwork, right his form, and block the blow.

“Enough!” Kabel cried, disengaging. “Now for the Test of the Shield. Defend yourself!”

Tor loosed the shield from his back and lowered himself into a defensive posture. Sir Kabel unleashed a withering flurry of attacks, and although Tor blocked many of them, Kabel’s sword seemed to constantly find the weak points in his defense.

After several exchanges, Kabel stepped back again. “I’m impressed. It’s clear you have had little formal training, but your instincts are strong and you have clearly been tested by the true heat of battle. The Order would be honored to have you serve as its squire.”

Kabel drew out a ring marked with the sigil of the Order of the Dawn and gave it to Tor.

Tor’s heart leapt. It was the dream he had sought, but scarcely hoped for. He quickly made arrangements with Sir Kabel to return once every other day for his training, and then made his way back towards the Ghostly Minstrel.

AGNARR’S ABORTED MISSION

Agnarr headed across Delver’s Square to Ebbert’s and purchased a variety of supplies, particularly a large bulk of raw meat and other food supplies. Loading all of it into his bag of holding, he set out for Greyson House: His intention was to travel down to the caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear, gift them with the food supplies, and then practice sparring with them. The fact that he spoke none of their tongue dissuaded him not at all.

Once he made his way into the tunnels beneath Greyson House, however, he found them unexpectedly disturbed: The pit of chaos had been covered over with a thick layer of stone… albeit a layer of stone which now seemed to be slowly bubbling and boiling away as a result of the powerful forces of primal chaos trapped beneath it.

Agnarr doused his flaming sword and proceeded carefully down the hallway. As he approached the complex where the bloodwights had nested, he heard many voices and the muffled sounds of some activity.

Toying with the idea of brazenly entering the complex and confronting the intruders, Agnarr instead decided for prudence. He retreated silently back to Greyson House and returned to the Ghostly Minstrel.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Player-Facing Mechanics – Campaign Journal: Session 24B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 23F: The Pale Tower

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

When the dungeoncrawl is done, it’s time for the PCs to deal with the lingering legacies and unresolved elements of the dungeon. This is a kind of epilogue which, structurally, you’re going to repeatedly experience when playing or running roleplaying games.

The simplest version – which is more or less the default – is just liquidating your loot. If all you’re hauling out of the place are coins and gems, this can be a purely routine transaction that’s quickly dispatched with. But even in this simplistic form, , I think this still functions as a primitive yet important narrative beat: The primary purpose of the epilogue is to provide closure, and even something as simple as divvying up the treasure can accomplish that; can definitively declare, “We have done this thing and this thing is done.”

However, one of the reasons I like including treasure in more exotic forms (besides flavor, immersion, and highly effective worldbuilding) is that the logistics of realizing its value can create an opportunity for intriguing entanglements. And, as you can see in the example of Pythoness House, in a fully realized scenario this will naturally extend far beyond simply treasure. In addition to selling their spoils and spending their new wealth, the PCs had to deal with:

• The lingering effects of Freedom’s Key (plus what to do with the key itself)
• The tainted items
• The Cobbledman
• Meeting Edlari at the Pale Tower

Figuring this out saw the PCs forging new alliances, gaining new resources, and setting up future scenarios. All of these things will either have a dramatic impact on how events play out for the rest of the campaign, provide an interesting crucible for roleplaying, or both.

In other words, what emerges from these logistics are stories. And when I see GMs skipping past these logistical concerns, what I see is not only a failure to provide proper closure for the previous adventure, but also a failure to properly plant the seeds for the next adventure.

Some of these elements will emerge naturally from your prep. For example, I couldn’t be certain that the PCs would free Edlari, but I knew that if they did he would extend them an invitation that would almost certainly pull them to the Pale Tower (where I could reincorporate Aoska, who they had met previously).

On the other hand, in a well-designed dungeon there’ll almost always be unanticipated fallout. For example, I had no idea that they would befriend the Cobbledman or take such care to help him seek aid from the Brotherhood of Redemption. In fact, I thought it quite likely that they would end up fighting and killing the Cobbledman.

Conversely, we could imagine an alternate version of reality where the PCs ended up befriending the ratlings in Pythoness House (instead of slaughtering them) and ending up with a potentially very useful gang of allies.

Which I guess is largely my point here: As with any other good scenario, the players should be making meaningful choices. These choices should, pretty much by definition, have meaningful consequences, and the logistical epilogue is where we begin to discover and define how these consequences are going to spill out of the scenario and into the ongoing campaign.

Which, in my opinion, is kind of inherently interesting.

How much time you spend resolving the logistical epilogue depends on how many consequences are spilling out of the dungeon and, of course, how complicated dealing with those consequences proves to be.

Pythoness House, for example, was a dungeon of moderate scope. Over the course of several visits intermixed with other events, the ‘crawl spanned a total of four sessions. I wasn’t recording my sessions yet, so I’m not sure exactly how long we spent in the dungeon, but it was probably twelve to fifteen hours in total. The logistical epilogue probably took up another thirty to forty-five minutes of playing time, while also incorporating some background events and other miscellaneous business the PCs wanted to take care of.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 24A – Running the Campaign: Player-Facing Mechanics
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 23F: THE PALE TOWER

June 7th, 2008
The 11th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

BROTHERHOOD OF REDEMPTION

Elestra led Dominic down to the Guildsman District. They found the public house of the Brotherhood of Redemption to be a rather small and unimpressive affair. When they knocked on the door, it was answered by a meek-looking man.

“Welcome. Can the Brotherhood be of some assistance to you?”

“I think so,” Elestra said.

“You have captured some bestial creature in need of the gods’ redemption?”

“Not exactly,” Dominic said.

“We met someone in need of help. He’s gentle. And kind. But a little lost and confused.”

“We are no common charity,” the man said. “If this creature is civilized, then he is beyond our purlieu.”

“Well, half of him is,” Dominic said.

“What do you mean?”

“He has two heads,” Elestra explained. “One of them is civilized, I guess. But the other definitely isn’t.”

“An ettin-like divided consciousness?” The man was not only intrigued, but excited. “With one turned against the other? Well, if you can bring him here we would certainly give him any help that we can.”

Taking their leave, Elestra and Dominic – primarily at Elestra’s prompting – decided to return to Pythoness House, by themselves, and try to find the Cobbledman.

They got no further than the courtyard, however, before they realized – given the possibility that a demon was still wandering about the place – that this might have been a good idea. Elestra called for the Cobbledman a couple of times and, when he did not come down into the courtyard, they left.

SHOPPING

They reconvened at the Ghostly Minstrel. Agnarr took the many rat tails they had collected and turned them into the proper officials for the bounty, feeling a great sense of fulfillment at finally managing to accomplish one of the first things he had vowed to do upon awaking in Ptolus.

Tee gathered up the items they were going to sell and led the rest of the group on a shopping trip. Ranthir chose not to go with them, instead remaining behind to continue his studies (while trying to find some useful way for Iltumar to contribute beyond petting little Erin), but did ask Tee if she could try to find for him an item with a particular enchantment laid upon it.

Ranthir described the enchantment in detail. Tee glossed over most of the technical details, but captured the gist of it: The item would attune itself to the rhythms of Ranthir’s own body. Once it had done so, it would be capable of nourishing him, intensifying the refreshment of mind and body during periods of sleep.

“Instead of needing to sleep for eight hours every night,” Ranthir explained, “I would only need two hours of sleep. And in the extra hours of the night I could be copying my scrolls or studying the many books we have discovered or anything of the like.”

Tee knew that Ranthir was frustrated by how little time he was able to devote to his studies and preparations, and she herself had worried that they weren’t spending enough time studying the various books of lore they were discovering. So she was quite happy to discover that Myraeth had recently received a ring with just such an enchantment laid upon it. Ranthir did not have quite enough money to afford it, but Tee talked it over with the others and they decided it would be in their best interests to pool their resources and help him buy it.

“After all,” Tee said. “The best wizard is a well rested wizard.”

THE PALE TOWER

They went back to the inn. Ranthir excused himself from Iltumar and joined them in Elestra’s room for a conference. They decided to follow-up on the offer that Edlari had made and go to the Pale Tower to speak with him.

Ranthir poked his head back into his room and spoke with Ilutmar, who was more than willing to wait for him to return. Ranthir smiled, nodded, and then ran to catch up with the others.

Standing in the northern reaches of Oldtown, not that far from Pythoness House, the Pale Tower stood in stark contrast to the structures around it, rising up from the midst of a perfumed garden more like a marble monument than a building. The windowless round tower was faultlessly white and seemed to shine as if newly built, and yet there was an air of great age that hung unmistakably about it.

There were two great knockers of gold upon the double doors of godwood at the front of the tower. Tee reached up and clapped one of them loudly.

The doors parted without visible hand, revealing an antechamber of marble. The rune-carved Graven One stepped forward to greet them.

“What business brings you to the Pale Tower?”

“Edlari asked us to seek him here.”

“I see.” The Graven One’s solemn face seemed to smile. “I shall seek him and return.”

At his gesture, they stepped into the antechamber and the outer doors of the tower swung shut behind them. The Graven One turned and went through an inner door. They caught a glimpse of a long hallway beyond it, making it clear that the Pale Tower’s interior was vastly larger than its exterior.

A few minutes passed, and then the Graven One returned, leading Aoska through the inner doors.

Aoska smiled. “The Graven One has told me that you seek Edlari.” Her voice was like honeyed silk.

“He asked us to seek him here,” Tee said.

“He did return here,” Aoska stood. “And told us of what you did for him. We thank you for freeing him from so foul an imprisonment. But he has left us again, and stepped through the Jewels so that he might stand once more before the Nine Gods and cleanse his soul of the taint that has been left upon it. He may not return, and Sephranos himself counseled that he should feel no need… but Edlari could not bear the touch of it.”

“We know something of the Taint,” Tee said. “We have suffered its touch in attempting to cleanse the evil from that place where Edlari was imprisoned.”

“I can sense it in you,” Aoska said. She seemed to think carefully for a moment. “Come. It is the least that we might do to see that such accounts are set to rights.”

She turned and led them through the inner doors, which parted at her approach. They passed in silence through many pillared halls and open gardens, each seemingly more beautiful than the last.

At last, Aoska brought them before great valves of silvered adamantine. She turned to them then and said, “You shall have audience with Sephranos, the First Among the Chosen.”

At her touch the doors parted and opened, revealing a hall of ivory and gold. Atop a dais at the far end, upon a throne of mithril, sat a gold-skinned man with white-feathered wings. His eyes were pits of pale blue fire shining out from a face both regal and welcoming.

Aoska approached him and whispered into his ears, and then his eyes were turned upon them. And, most particularly upon Dominic.

“We are honored to give audience to the Chosen of Vehthyl.” Sephranos smiled and turned his gaze to all of them. “We thank you all on the behalf of Edlari. We were saddened to see him leave us once again, but glad that he is now free to find his own path again. What boon would you ask of us?”

“When we freed him, Edlari healed us of the dark wounds we had sustained in the place where he had been imprisoned,” Tee said humbly. “After he had left to return here, we faced greater dangers and suffered similar wounds. We had hoped that we might find healing here.”

“This shall I do for you.”

Sephranos raised his hand and a golden light shone forth from it. For a moment it seemed as if they had had lost consciousness – but rather than darkness, it felt as if a bright white light had embraced them.

Then their eyes opened once more and all was as it had been – Sephranos upon his throne and Aoska at his right hand upon the dais. But their wounds had been healed without any lingering trace or ache – and even the soul-hung weariness which had afflicted Tee since using the golden key had passed from her.

Aoska stepped forward and led them out of the hall. As the valves of silvered adamantine swung shut behind them and Aoska led them back towards the entrance, Tee turned to her. “Aoska, we have in our possession many artifacts that bear the taint. We know that there are many people seeking them for dark purposes, and we can’t carry them safely. We know that a hallowed place would serve to hold them and even to cleanse them, but the churches we have approached have turned us away. Is there such a place here in the Pale Tower where they might be kept?”

“We could not bear to have these objects mar the purity of such a place as the Tower,” Aoska said.

Tee nodded sadly. “Yes, we’ve been hearing that a lot.”

Aoska smiled. “But there is a place in the Temple District. A hallowed vault and sanctuary where such items may be kept.”

They couldn’t help but notice, as Aoska gave Tee the directions to this vault, that their path back through the Pale Tower was not the same path by which they had come.

“There’s something else,” Tee said, hesitantly.

“What is it?” Aoska smiled encouragingly.

“We… lost some of the tainted artifacts,” Tee struggled to find the words and then, like a pent-up river bursting its dam, babbled the rest of it. “We were ambushed by chaos cultists. They were led by someone named Wuntad.”

“I know the name,” Aoska said. “A minor cultist of some recent years. We had thought he had long since fled the city.”

“He’s back,” Agnarr said gruffly.

“Is there anything you can do?” Tee asked.

“Perhaps,” Aoska said. “But there are many things of greater import to concern the powers of the Pale Tower. There are many such cultists, and their danger is not to be dismissed. But there are also larger dangers in this world.”

The thought of that didn’t sit comfortably with Tee, and she found herself changing the topic. “I was also wondering if you knew Eida Laevantha. I have met her and she once mentioned that she had affairs with the Pale Tower.”

“Yes, I know her,” Aoska said. “Our paths have crossed often in the Dreaming.”

And then they were back at the entrance of the Tower and saying their farewells to both Aoska and the Graven One (who waited there still).

REDEMPTION FOR THE COBBLEDMAN

It seemed quite strange to emerge out of the marbled wonders of the Pale Tower onto the common streets of Ptolus, but after taking a moment to orient themselves they decided that – since they were in Oldtown in any case – they should return to Pythoness House together and try to bring the Cobbledman to the Brotherhood of Redemption.

They found the Cobbledman sleeping in his tower again. Tee gently waked him (from a safe distance) and explained that they had found people who could help him. “You don’t have to live like this any more.”

The Cobbledman seemed trepidatious, but also hopeful. He followed them down to the Guildsman District, and there they placed him in the Brotherhood’s care. Ranthir gave him one last iron ration and, as they left, he was munching it contentedly.

THE FATE OF PHON

They headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel and then split up again: Ranthir returned to his room (where Iltumar was still reading). Agnarr decided that he was going to return to the caverns of the Clan of the Torn Ear. Dominic retired to his room to study the Book of Vehthyl.

Elestra went out into the streets. Most of the city was still captivated by the story of what Rehobath had done the day before. The newssheets had dubbed him the Novarch-in-Exile and public opinion seemed evenly split on whether Rehobath’s actions were weal or woe.

But Elestra also discovered that the day before Rehobath’s pronouncement, there had been another Flayed Man killing in the Warrens… and there were many whispers of worry coursing through the city.

There had been another atrocity that day, too: A house in the Temple District had burned down. Three dead bodies had been found inside and the rumor of the street was that the Balacazars were responsible.

A sickening suspicion entered into Elestra’s head, and asking further she confirmed it: The house had been Helmut’s. It appeared that Phon was dead.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Detritus of the Dungeon – Campaign Journal: Session 24A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING:
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 23E: With Nought But Their Lives

“First, there is the Dreamsight. The Dreaming is the wellspring from which all reality is born and the grave to which all living memory returns. As such, those who can see the Dreaming with unclouded eyes can perceive deep truths of the world around them.

“Second, there are the Dream Pacts. The Lords of the Dreaming are powerful and fey. Those skilled enough in the dreaming arts can turn their souls into conduits through which the Spirit Lords can be made manifest in the world around us. But following such a path requires supreme self-control, for the Lords of the Dreaming are capable of reshaping your very soul.

“Finally, there is the art of Dreamspeaking. Those practiced in the dreaming arts can reshape the Dreaming around them. Those who are masters of the Dreaming, however, can reshape the world around them by reshaping the dreams from which the world is born. These arts have been perfected into the dreaming tongue – a primal language which not only describes the most fundamental aspects of reality, but can be used to transform it.”

If you want to check out the mechanics for the Dreaming Arts that Tithenmamiwen is preparing to study, you can find them here on the Alexandrian. (Well, Dreamsight and Dream Pacts, anyway. Tee hasn’t chosen to study Dreamspeaking yet, so I haven’t finished putting flesh on those bones.)

Specialized sub-systems and mechanical options are, of course, quite common in roleplaying games, whether you’re homebrewing them or grabbing some cool new sourcebook. And when you’re playing a popular, crunchy game with lots supplements (like D&D or Shsdowrun or Ars Magica), you have to consider how you want to handle adding this type of material to your game: Do you use all of them? None of them? Some of them? Which ones?

Figuring that out could probably be a whole discussion itself. (And a fairly idiosyncratic one.) For the moment, though, let’s assume that:

1. You and your players have learned the “core” rules of them (however you choose to define that); and
2. You now have a new chunk of mechanics that you want to make part of your game.

How do you actually go about doing that?

Well, it turns out that this is ALSO a pretty big topic that can depend a lot on the dynamics and interests of your group. For example, you might have player(s) at your table who are not particularly interested in all the mechanical gewgaws of the game – they just want to be told what dice to roll. How you approach new mechanics for them is going to differ from how you’ll handle it if one of your players is really interested in exploring mechanical options and is actually the one advocating for a new sub-system to become part of your game. (And what if you have both types of players at the same table?)

There’s also the differences between player-facing, GM-facing, and dual-facing mechanics. Also, mechanics that are going to be used for one scenario vs. those that are going to be permanent additions. We could also look at the difference between modular components being bolted onto sub-systems already in play (like new maneuvers for a combat system) vs. completely new sub-systems (“We’re piloting mecha now!”).

These discussions, however, almost always deal with the metagame dynamic between you and your players. Which makes sense, of course, because the mechanics of a roleplaying game are inherently abstracted and metagamed – they are a thing you and your players interact with, not your characters.

But what I want to point out in today’s session of In the Shadow of the Spire is that you CAN introduce mechanics diegetically – as part of the game world and from an in-character perspective. This also makes sense because, even though they’re abstracted and metagamed, roleplaying mechanics are also inherently associated with the game world: They’re connected to what’s happening in that world and the choices your characters are making.

This connection can flow both ways: By adding mechanics we often add elements to the campaign for our PCs to experience, but by attempting new activities or acquiring new resources, the PCs can also create the need for new mechanics to handle those new aspects of their lives.

If you, as the GM, want to add some new mechanical element to your game – realms management, rigging, mercantile trading, pacts with Lords of the Dreaming – it can similarly be more effective to diegetically offer (or even require) those mechanics than it would be to simply, for example, drop a new sourcebook on the table and then wonder why nobody is using it.

To some extent, this is about how mechanics without a game/scenario structure to serve tend to wither and die, but it’s more than that. If you approach new mechanics diegetically, it gives you a whole bunch of new tools for pitching those mechanics to your group and getting them excited about it.

For example, you can offer the mechanics as a reward. Players love rewards. (Who doesn’t?) “Here’s your new ship!” you say, opening the door to those mercantile and crew management sub-systems you’ve been interested in exploring.

You can also nest new mechanics inside meaningful choices. You can see this with Tee’s dreaming lesson in the current session: The player is empowered to choose which sub-system she wants to introduce into play, which immediately invests her in that choice and makes her eager to read through twenty or thirty pages of custom house rules.

In this way, diegetic mechanics can also be connected to the themes of the campaign and/or the objectives of the PCs. (This also applies to Tee, obviously, who has been obsessed with learning the Dreaming Arts since the campaign began.) The mechanics aren’t just a generically cool new thing that you hope the players will be interested in; in a very real way they are the thing that the players already care about, just manifested in a different way.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 23F – Running the Campaign: Detritus of the Dungeon
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index