DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 46A: Among Madmen

At the last possible moment, Zairic twisted aside so that the arrow lodged in his shoulder instead of his heart. Letting his book drop to the floor, Zairic vaulted over the high arm of his chair and jumped for cover. In mid-leap, he released a fireball through the window. Tee ducked down as the fiery inciting pellet passed over her head and avoided the brunt of it almost completely, but Elestra (standing in the open further down the alley) was caught by the edge of it.

Most of the others – clumped together across the street and still debating how they could (or would or should) use Elestra’s homunculi – missed the flash of the fireball. Fortunately, Ranthir – who was providing the daisy-chained camouflage near the mouth of the alley – recognized it for what it was. “Fireball!” he shouted, hurrying into the alley.

The fiction-mechanics cycle is arguably the heart of the roleplaying game experience: The ways in which we use mechanics to create fictional outcomes; declare fictional actions that are resolved mechanically; and use the outcome of either to feed back into the other form an intricate and interwoven dance at the gaming table.

A key component of this dance is how mechanical outcomes are explained in the fiction. For simple, straightforward intentions with unambiguous results, this is often so obvious that one can easily miss that something is actually happening: The player said they wanted to jump over the chasm; the dice said they succeeded; therefore, they land on the other side of the chasm.

Intriguingly, therefore, it is often true the failure requires more of an explanation than success: Success, after all, merely assumes that the stated intention which triggered the mechanical resolution was achieved. Failure, on the other hand, almost seems to demand an explanation for why the character wasn’t able to achieve their desired outcome.

(And this is before we even start considering advanced techniques like failing forward.)

There are a number of techniques you can use in creating these explanations, and different RPG rulesets will often help you in different ways. A universal technique I find useful is explicitly thinking about different factors in the game world that could affect outcome. It’s really useful for keeping things fresh and varied.

(One key insight from this is that you can often make the description of success more interesting by lightly spicing it with the same details and factors that we use to explain failure.)

Something else to consider is the often unexamined assumption of who at the table is responsible for providing these explanations. In my experience, this almost always falls on the GM in their role as adjudicator and world-describer. Every so often, though, the infectious spirit of communal improv will unleash itself and people all around the table will start collaborating on the answer. And another key insight is that, as the GM, you can prompt the players to get involved in explaining outcomes.

(Matthew Mercer, for example, has made, “How do you want to do this?” particularly famous.)

In fact, you can go further than that and create specific expectations for action resolution in which describing the fictional implications of mechanical results defaults to the players. (Storytelling games often do this because their mechanics revolve around determining which player is in control of a narrative outcome.)

But I digress.

What I’m particularly interested in talking about right now is a very specific slice of these table interactions: The moment where a mechanical outcome prompts a conversation between characters, which I’m going to refer to as ex post facto roleplaying. Here the character dialogue is being triggered by or being described as the key factor in an action’s resolution.

In this session, for example, most of the PCs failed a Spot check to notice the flash from a fireball spell going off around a corner.

Why call for this check at all? I mean, it’s a fireball spell, right? Shouldn’t it be really obvious? Well, to some extent this depends on how much noise you think a fireball creates — is it a huge detonation or a more ephemeral flash of flame? More importantly, what I was primarily concerned about here was how quickly they would react to the fireball: Would they be able to leap into action and immediately join the fight? Or get caught flat-footed and have to wait a round before being able to rush to Tee’s aid?

In this case, the players asked the same question in a breakdown that looked something like this:

• Why wouldn’t we immediately notice the fireball?
• We must have been distracted.
• What could we have been distracted by?
• We must have all been continuing our debate about using the homunculi!

And then they briefly acted out a few lines of that dialogue, giving Ranthir’s player (who had succeeded on his Spot check) an opportunity to interrupt by them by shouting, “Fireball!”

This is a good example of these ex post facto roleplaying moments, which are often played as kind of funny throw-away moments. But they can, of course, also be more protracted and/or take on a more serious tone, particularly if you make a more conscious effort to notice, prompt, and/or define these moments.

In fact, rather than just reacting to skill checks with dialogue, you can also deliberately frame skill checks to set up roleplaying interactions. Using mechanics as a roleplaying prompt like this is described in more detail in Rulings in Practice: Social Skills.

Campaign Journal: Session 46B – Running the Campaign: Speak with Dead SFX
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 46A: AMONG MADMEN

December 22nd, 2009
The 25th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

It was mid-afternoon when they left the Necropolis.

“Should we head back to the Ghostly Minstrel or go straight to Mahdoth’s?” Elestra asked.

“Ghostly Minstrel,” Ranthir said. “We need to clean up. Besides, we still have several hours. And the Minstrel is on the way in any case.”

Agnarr grunted. “You need to clean up?”

Ranthir rolled his eyes. “Yes. I seem to be covered in some sort of black ooze. I wonder where it came from? Oh, right! My eyes and my mouth!”

THE BIG PLAN

Once they reached the Ghostly Minstrel they spent a few minutes cleaning up and then gathered back up for a planning session.

Their biggest concern was Mahdoth himself. They knew he was connected with both Wuntad and the Pactlords, which made him an obvious threat. And Ranthir knew enough about beholders from his studies in Isiltur to make them all worried: Eyestalks causing paralysis, searing pain, and even death, combined with a massive antimagic field emanating from its central eye that could unknit their strongest offensive weapons.

They laid out extensive contingency plans for dealing with the various eyestalks – restorative magicks, scrolls to re-enervate their flesh, various potions and enchantments to boost their natural resistances against its powers, and much more of the like. It would be expensive, but it was obviously a necessary expense.

“The ultimate problem, though,” Tor said, “Is that all of these precautions are magical. As soon as he puts the big eye on us, it all becomes useless.”

“We do have some non-magical solutions,” Ranthir said, pulling out the alchemical potions of questionable provenance they’d recovered from Ghul’s Labyrinth. “Who wants to go blind?”

“Do we know if his eyestalks will work in his own antimagic field?” Nasira asked.

“I don’t know,” Ranthir confessed.

“Then we should assume they do.” Tee grimaced.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Elestra said.

From memory they sketched out a small map of the areas they had seen last time they had been at Mahdoth’s. But the truth was they had no idea how extensive the asylum complex was or how deep it might go beneath the streets of Ptolus.

To supplement their limited knowledge they considered using clairvoyance spells again, but they were concerned that defensive measures at the asylum might be triggered by their use.

Elestra tried to figure out how they could use her homunculi’s ability to pass seamlessly through earth and stone to scout out the complex, but since it was incapable of communicating anything of detail back to her that seemed for naught. Nasira, on the other hand, mentioned the possibility of scrying, but the limitations of the techniques available to her made it seem of little use, as well, until Ranthir combined the two plans: By affixing the scrying sensor to Elestra’s homunculi, Nasira would be able to watch the homunculi’s progress.

INFILTRATION BY FIRE

Eventually, feeling as prepared as they could perhaps hope for, they headed for Mahdoth’s around 9 pm.

On the way, however, they had time for further debate: Did they want to wait for the shipment to arrive and then ambush it? Or should they assault the compound immediately so that they wouldn’t have to fight both the asylum personnel and whoever came for the shipment at the same time?

“I think it’s six of one or half a dozen of the other,” Elestra said.

“I’ll take the six to one,” Agnarr said. “I like those odds.”

They all stared at him for a long moment.

“What?”

They settled on the immediate attack, which naturally opened the question of what their specific approach should be. They considered drilling down from street level into the staircase they knew led to the lower level (and which passed beneath the street). They also reopened the practicality of sending Elestra’s homunculi to scout (and, if so, where and when and how he should carry out the scouting).

Keeping the homunculi as an option, Elestra wrapped them in the camouflage of the city’s spirit. Keeping this camouflage-connection through physical proximity, they strung themselves out in a daisy-chain to allow Tee to get close enough to the building to scout the perimeter.

Through the simple expedient of looking through the windows, Tee confirmed that the street-level portion of the asylum (like the tip of the iceberg above its lower levels) was largely abandoned: Only Zairic – the halfling who had ratted them out to Mahdoth when they had come here at Danneth’s invitation – was to be found there, reading a book in a salon-like area towards the rear of the building.

Zairic looked like an easy target. Tee eased open a window at the opposite end of the room, carefully lowered her longbow into place, and… FIRED!

At the last possible moment, Zairic twisted aside so that the arrow lodged in his shoulder instead of his heart. Letting his book drop to the floor, Zairic vaulted over the high arm of his chair and jumped for cover. In mid-leap, he released a fireball through the window. Tee ducked down as the fiery inciting pellet passed over her head and avoided the brunt of it almost completely, but Elestra (standing in the open further down the alley) was caught by the edge of it.

Most of the others – clumped together across the street and still debating how they could (or would or should) use Elestra’s homunculi – missed the flash of the fireball. Fortunately, Ranthir – who was providing the daisy-chained camouflage near the mouth of the alley – recognized it for what it was. “Fireball!” he shouted, hurrying into the alley.

Zairic called out from behind the chair. “Who are you? Do you know who you anger tonight?!”

Tee didn’t bother to answer him. She vaulted herself through the window and skipped across the room, loosing another arrow that thumped into the high back of the chair.

Zairic wrenched her first arrow out of his shoulder, gulped down a healing potion, and made a break for the door. Elestra, cursing the burns from the fireball, threw open another window to the room and fired her dragon rifle at him. The blast missed narrowly, scorching the wall.

Zairic, in mid-stride, ripped a scroll from an inside pocket of his cloak and gestured through the window towards Elestra. The others were just arriving at her side, and they were all caught in a pounding, painful hail of dagger-like ice that plunged down from the sky.

Tee, deciding to fight ice with fire, dipped her hand into her bag of flames and hurled a fire elemental at the Halfling. Distracted by the fiery sprite, Zairic made an easy target for her as she plunged her dagger into his shoulder and re-opened the magically healed wound from her arrow.

Zairic cursed loudly. Wrenching himself free from her blade he cast another spell, sending his body into a rapid, cascading shift between reality and the Ethereal Plane. “You’ll die tonight!”

“You’re the only one dying tonight!” Tee shouted. “We’re happy to speak with the dead!” Her expert eyes were tracking his skittering, shifting, flickering form.

“I’ll speak with your corp—“

The halfling gurgled and collapsed. Tee’s arcing blade had ripped through half his neck. As his body fell forward, his head fell back upon a flap of flesh and landed upright on his back.

“That’s disgusting,” Elestra said, climbing through the window.

Running the Campaign: Ex Post Facto Roleplaying – Campaign Journal: Session 46B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45C: Long Reign of the Sun

Ranthir was examining the magical guards laid upon the plug. Eventually he concluded that their initial suspicions had been correct: Only at night could the plug be opened. The spell was ancient, but still potent – only a powerful wish would remove the plug.

“So when we get the wish spell from Rehobath do we use it on the sealed door at the Banewarrens?” Elestra asked. “Or do we use it here?”

“I think we need to use it at the Banewarrens,” Tor said. “We know how to get through this plug. We just have to wait for dark. But there may not be any other way through the sealed door.”

“Except the key,” Tee said.

“A key that may not exist any more. Or that we may never find.”

They debated staying until nightfall and then going into the tomb. But there was trepidation about staying in the Necropolis after dark without proper preparations.

And then Tee realized that they couldn’t stay: The note they had discovered in the Temple of the Rat God describing some sort of shipment at Mahdoth’s Asylum was dated for midnight. They couldn’t afford to be trapped inside the Necropolis while that kind of known activity was happening.

A dynamic I’ve found it can be difficult to understand if you’re only familiar with linear forms of play is the mixture of pressure and opportunity created when the PCs are pursuing multiple agendas.

At the beginning of this session, for example, the PCs had just barely managed to escape from overwhelming opposition at Porphyry House. In a linear campaign or scenario, they would’ve needed to immediately turn around and attack Porphyry House again. If they were clever, they might find some new way of tackling the problem, but ultimately this would be the one and only thing available for them to do.

In this case, however, the PCs have a bunch of irons in the fire. To mix idioms a bit, they’re free to let Porphyry House simmer for a bit while they pull a different iron out of the fire. It’s a powerful dynamic because it prevents the campaign from slamming to a halt when it meets an unexpected roadblock. By exploring other options, maybe the PCs can find resources or opportunities that can remove the roadblock. Combined with something like node-based scenario design or xandered dungeons, the PCs might find some way of routing around the roadblock. When you’re playing in a system like D&D where the PCs can become much more powerful, they may just level up to a point where the roadblock ceases to be an impediment.

On the other hand, at the end of this session, the PCs are forced to put a pin in their plans to explore Alchestrin’s Tomb because they have other agendas that are demanding their attention. They need to prioritize their goals and figure out the most efficient way they can be pursued with the time and resources that they have.

Linear adventures and single-threaded campaigns, of course, can be designed to include some form of time pressure. (“You have to rescue the princess before the blood moon rises!”) What’s most notable about the multi-threaded campaign, though, is that the GM doesn’t actually have to plan this stuff. At no point in my prep, for example, did I ever say, “Ah! I’ll schedule the shipment to Mahdoth’s Asylum so that it arrives at the same time they’re checking out Alchestrin’s Tomb!”

Because, among other reasons, I had no idea when the PCs might actually go and check out Alchestrin’s Tomb. There’s another version of reality where their assault on Porphyry House didn’t turn into a clusterfuck. In that other world, the PCs might have spent the whole afternoon burning through resources while clearing out the whorehouse, only to reach the evening and realize that they would need to deal with whatever was happening at Mahdoth’s while being severely depleted by the day’s events. Or maybe they’d realize they couldn’t shoot both barrels into Porphyry House and instead pull out early (puns intended) to conserve their resources for Mahdoth’s. Either way, those are also compelling strategic choices and consequences!

So if I’m not planning specific pressure points or forcing specific choices, what am I doing to make this happen?

1. Any time there’s an upcoming event in the campaign, whether the PCs know about it or not, I make sure to assign it a specific date and time.
2. I keep track of the passage of time.

That’s it.

When scheduling events, I notably don’t really think about how they interact with unrelated events in the campaign. I don’t need to. The various scheduled events and the actions of the PCs will naturally combine and interact with each other during play, and pressure will simply emerge organically from the mix.

This principle is a good example of how, in my experience, loosening your grip on the campaign, empowering the PCs, and actively playing the game world is actually a lot easier for the GM than trying to force a single-threaded chain of events. Partly because you don’t need to force it. Mostly because you’re no longer solely responsible for everything that happens.

The other effect of multi-threading like this, of course, is that stuff will tend to hang around. The PCs first learned of Alchestrin’s Tomb in Session 35. They tried to visit in Session 36, but got waylaid by a false crypt. Then they got waylaid by other pressing concerns for several days, only returning here in Session 45. And it won’t be until Session 48 that they can come back and actually get inside for the first time.

Can this be frustrating? Yes. But it’s a good frustration. It’s the frustration of solving a puzzle or plotting out the perfect turn in a board game. And, of course, it’s not like nothing was happening during those other sessions! During that time, the players were pursuing and achieving other goals that were important to them.

But even as they’re doing those other things, the sense of anticipation is building. Content isn’t being chewed up as soon as it’s introduced. It naturally endures, weaving its way into a more complicated narrative. It was a full year of time in the real world from when they heard about Alchestrin’s Tomb to when they actually entered into the tomb. Which meant that entering the tomb felt momentous.

Which, in turn means, that the feeling of reward when these long-lasting goals come to fruition is also greater.

This dynamic also has an interesting effect on things like the Principles of RPG Villainy. Extending the players’ relationships with villains over time just naturally gets them more deeply invested in that antagonism. The agenda pressure that naturally emerges from multi-threaded campaigns also means that truly memorable villains also just kind of naturally develop themselves. (As do relationships with faction, NPCs, and other facets of the campaign.)

Campaign Journal: Session 46A – Running the Campaign: Ex Post Facto Roleplaying
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 45C: LONG REIGN OF THE SUN

October 31st, 2009
The 25th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After several long minutes, the homunculus emerged from the cloud of black pollen that blotted out much of the hill. They waited the better part of half an hour for the last of the poisonous vapor to blow away.

Mounting the hill again, they easily reached its apex. Set into the ground at the center of the stone circle they found a large iron plug etched with bronze and set into the earth. The bronze etching detailed Alchestrin’s sigil. Around the perimeter of the plug was an inscription written in characters Ranthir identified as ancient Arathian. With the aid of a spell he was able to translate the passage:

Forevermore shall the sun be my foe.

From its light I pass forever.

The doors of my realm shall not open as long as its reign lasts.

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Tor asked.

“That we can’t get in unless it’s night?” Tee said. “Yeah. I think so.”

Indeed, the plug wouldn’t move. Ranthir tried bathing the area in a magical darkness and they experimented with other coverings to block the sunlight, but none of it worked. Elestra then tried to send her homonculus down into the ground, in an effort to circumvent the plug, but they weren’t able to clearly communicate with it or determine if it had found anything.

Eventually they hunted down a shovel from a gravekeeper a fair distance away. Returning to the hill they dug down around the edges of the iron plug, only to find that it was set into a smooth-faced iron shaft that also resisted their efforts to penetrate it.

Meanwhile, Ranthir was examining the magical guards laid upon the plug. Eventually he concluded that their initial suspicions had been correct: Only at night could the plug be opened. The spell was ancient, but still potent – only a powerful wish would remove the plug.

“So when we get the wish spell from Rehobath do we use it on the sealed door at the Banewarrens?” Elestra asked. “Or do we use it here?”

“I think we need to use it at the Banewarrens,” Tor said. “We know how to get through this plug. We just have to wait for dark. But there may not be any other way through the sealed door.”

“Except the key,” Tee said.

“A key that may not exist any more. Or that we may never find.”

They debated staying until nightfall and then going into the tomb. But there was trepidation about staying in the Necropolis after dark without proper preparations.

And then Tee realized that they couldn’t stay: The note they had discovered in the Temple of the Rat God describing some sort of shipment at Mahdoth’s Asylum was dated for midnight. They couldn’t afford to be trapped inside the Necropolis while that kind of known activity was happening.

“We were just deputized, after all.”

Running the Campaign: Agenda Pressure – Campaign Journal: Session 46A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 45B: On a Hill of Corpse Flowers

Several stone sarsens jutted up from the ground, forming a rough and imperfect circle. Each of the sarsens bore the sigil of Alchestrin and were worn with age and crept-over with moss. The grass had grown tall around them, and here and there even taller plants had sprung up with broad, shiny leaves and brightly-colored flowers. More disturbingly, they could see the corpses of small animals scattered here and there around the sarsens.

A faint whiff of pungent decay wafted down the hill towards them, but they decided to brazenly ignore the animal carcasses and head straight up the hill towards the sarsens. As they drew near the circle, they could see in its center a large iron plug etched with bronze and set into the earth….

In my experience, it’s difficult to take a simple environmental hazard and turn it into compelling gameplay at the table. Not impossible. The same principles that make for compelling traps can also apply to natural hazards. I just find, without the element of human ingenuity behind the construction of a deliberate trap, that it’s harder to justify those principles.

With that being said, this session demonstrates a fundamental design principle that I find incredibly useful: If you have an environmental hazard, you can add almost literally any creature to the encounter and you’ll instantly make both the hazard and the creature more interesting.

If I had just added corpse flowers around the entrance to Alchestrin’s Tomb, it would have taken, at best, a trivial effort by the PCs to burn them away. Similarly, if they had found nothing except a coldsnake curled up on top of the iron plug, the result would have been a pretty perfunctory combat encounter. Either way, it would have been a pretty forgettable experience.

But put the two together and… Presto! You’ve got a unique experience.

This principle works, in part, because it can:

• Force target selection. Which problem are the PCs going to deal with first? (If they only have one target — or their targets are indistinguishable — then there’s no meaningful choice. As soon as you have multiple options, however, there’s an opportunity for tactical choice.)
• Create weird and unexpected interactions and/or synergies, potentially giving a fresh spin to even familiar abilities.
• Offer tactical opportunities that can be taken advantage of by either the bad guys, the PCs, or both.

You get similar results from combining multiple monsters of different types into the same encounter.

Fortunately, Tee – trying to suppress a cough that seemed as if it would rip out her lungs – spotted one of the tall, brightly-colored flowers turning towards them with an almost sadistic purpose. Making an intuitive leap she realized that the flowers – not the serpent – were the true source of the noisome plague. She shouted out a warning to the others while lurching towards the nearest flower, but her weakly-swung sword failed to produce any effect on its thick, armored stalk as she collapsed.

In this case, I hadn’t actually planned for the PCs not to realize the source of the poisonous malaise afflicting them, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that can just spontaneously emerge from encounters like this.

LOOTING BESTIARIES, REDUX

I’ve previously discussed how I’ll systematically loot bestiaries as part of the development cycle for a campaign. In this case, as I prepared Alchestrin’s Tomb, I went on a mid-campaign survey looking for stuff that would be cool to plug into the adventure:

• Corpse Flowers are from Creatures of Freeport.
• Coldsnakes are, unfortunately, from a disreputable publisher I won’t direct you towards because they scammed me.
• The iron plug and its riddling inscription is taken from the brief description of Alchestrin’s Tomb in the Ptolus)

I love RPGs with lots of high quality adventures, because those can be plugged directly into a campaign structure. But even better is an RPG with tons of modular material that can be plugged directly into scenario structures and scene structures (i.e., encounters). It’s just so much fun to go browsing through these toys, grabbing the coolest ones that catch your eye, and then seeing how they can be combined into cool stuff.

Campaign Journal: Session 45C – Running the Campaign: Agenda Pressure
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index