IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10C: Back to the Labyrinths

Opening the box of cherry wood they found a manuscript entitled Observations of Alchemical Reductions and the Deductions Thereof by Master Alchemist Tirnet Kal. The book seemed untouched by age, and Ranthir was immediately enthralled – this had once been a well-known alchemical text, but the last copy of it was thought to have been lost several centuries ago.

Treasure is something I left under-utilized in my games for years: Looting X number of gold pieces and maybe some magic items was simply de rigueur. And, honestly, the psychological pleasure of an escalating numerical value (particularly as it counts its way towards the anticipated acquisition which it makes possible) shouldn’t be undervalued.

But as I mentioned in Getting the Players to Care the Golden Rule of Gaming is that players pay attention when you describe treasure. So if the only thing you’re offering to that undivided attention is generic numbers, you are wasting a golden opportunity.

(I may be gilding the lily here with all these gold puns.)

What you want to do is create treasure which contains meaning; which has specific, creative content. The Observations of the Alchemical Reductions and the Deductions Thereof are one example of that. (Saying that there are “rare books” worth X number of gold pieces is more interesting than simply a sack of gold; specifically listing what these books are is more interesting yet.)

At its most basic level, such treasure increases the player’s immersion and interaction with the game world. But you can use this to additional effect:

• As with the Observations, such treasure can reward character skill (or player insight) by making the treasure more valuable than it first appears. This creates an additional layer of arguably more meaningful reward.
• As described in Getting the Players to Care, treasure can be used to package exposition into an attractive and memorable package for the players.

Simply providing intriguing chaff – little bits of random “cool” that have no purpose or intended greater meaning, like Tolkien’s reference to the cats of Queen Berúthiel – are nonetheless valuable because they provide texture to the improvisational texture of the game world. You can never be entirely sure what uses your players will find for items similar to my 101 Curious Items, or how they’ll combine with other elements of the campaign to create memorable events.

But then Ranthir raised the possibility that they might find a way of transporting the entire orrery to the surface and selling it intact.

The orrery that the PCs also discovered in this section of Ghul’s Labyrinth is an example of this: You’ll see a whole sequence of events spill out over the next few campaign journals which I had no way of anticipating when I created the orrery as a form of nifty and evocative treasure.

The orrery also shows how the context you add to treasure can be used to create obstacles and interesting challenges for the PCs to overcome. One of the most basic ways you can do this – as exemplified by the orrery – is to make the treasure weighty, bulky, or otherwise difficult to transport. Successfully getting the treasure home now becomes part of the challenge. (In the case of the orrery, this took the form of Ranthir’s player eventually coming up with the very clever idea of selling the location of the rarity and letting the buyer of that valuable information deal with the difficulties of transporting it.)

Personalizing this sort of treasure can also be effective. In another D&D campaign, there was a player whose character spent the first ten or so levels stripping dungeons and enemy lairs of interesting pieces of furniture, art, and other accoutrements in order to furnish the fortress-temple he wanted to one day build for his elemental goddess. You can be sure that these features received extra care and attention from me for the duration of that campaign.

Doing so revealed a large room filed with cages of wrought iron. Tee saw that there were age-yellowed skeletons lying in dusty heaps within several of them.

You can also make the creatures the PCs fight a form of treasure in themselves. Pelts, furs, and other animal products have possessed great value throughout history. In the case of this particular session, the creatures were long dead, but there’s no reason the PCs can’t harvest from their own kills.

In setting this up, however, you want to be careful: If you make a particular animal’s carcass too valuable, you will curtail your ability to use that creature ubiquitously.

This can also become an interesting way of complicating combat: You may not be able to fricassee the golden wombat with a fireball if you want to be able to sell its fur, which will limit the tactics you can effectively use while fighting them. (The old school rules for subduing dragons have a similar dynamic.)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10C: BACK TO THE LABYRINTHS

November 3rd, 2007
The 30th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE BLOODY ORRERY

The next morning, at breakfast, Cardalian came over to their table. She received a rather frosty reception from all of them as she introduced herself to “their new friend”, Tor. She invited them to attend the funeral of Devaral Unissa at the Cathedral of Athor on the 1^st of Kadal and then headed back to her own table.

They shrugged her off and headed back up towards the North Market and Greyson House.

There was still one mystery left in the outer area of the complex: The room with the orrery. Something in that room – or adjacent to that room – was inflicting them with the bloodsheen.

Ranthir had specifically prepared spells to get to the root of this mystery. Working his incantations he carefully circled through the room, trying to ignore the thin sheen of blood springing up across his body. “I am certain,” he said at last, “That one of bloodwights lies within the orrery. I think—“

At that moment, the glistening pink form of a fully regenerated bloodwight smashed its way through the wooden panels around the base of the orrery. Ranthir’s momentary outrage at seeing the ancient orrery damaged was quickly replaced by concern as he realized that the creature had effectively cut him off from the room’s exit… and the blood was pouring ever faster from his pores.

Tor and Agnarr rushed into the room, gladly braving the bloodsheen in order to come to their companion’s aid. Tee kept her distance, but drew her dragon pistol, carefully choosing her shots to blast hunks from the bloodwight’s undead flesh.

It was short and bloody work, but at last it was done. Agnarr grinned. “Well, I think that’s finally the last of them. So…”

Ranthir was lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood.

“Dominic!”

The priest came rushing in from the outer room. Fortunately, Ranthir – although faint from the shocking loss of blood – was not physically harmed. With the strength of Athor flowing into his flesh, the wizard and scholar was soon back on his feet.

His attention turned almost immediately to the orrery, which he had not previously been able to devote proper attention to. After years of neglect it was in very poor condition and utterly inoperable, but after careful study and the taking of many notes, Ranthir was able to reconstruct its basic principles.

He was intrigued to discover that the motions of the heavenly bodies it tracked were not accurate to a modern understanding – there were several minor inconsistencies reflective of a much older cosmological theory. But, even more fascinating, the orrery featured no less than seventeen heavenly bodies which were completely unknown to modern observation. What had the makers of the orrery been thinking? What did those bodies represent? Had they, in fact, existed at some point in the distant past?

Tee, meanwhile, was inspecting the orrery with a more practical eye. She confirmed that the bloodwight had, in fact, been resting within a secret compartment of sorts within the base of the orrery – it had probably once been used for maintenance. But she also discovered that the seventeen spheres representing the unknown heavenly bodies were not made of brass like the other spheres in the orrery, but were instead forged form pure silver and worth a small fortune (at least 425 gp).

Tee began looking for ways to break off these silver spheres, but then Ranthir raised the possibility that they might find a way of transporting the entire orrery to the surface and selling it intact. This seemed a daunting task – the orrery must have weighed at least 14,000 pounds – but Ranthir suspected it could be worth as much as 12,000 gp.

After much debate, it was decided that they would leave the orrery for now. Tee was skeptical that they could move it (even if they followed Ranthir’s suggestion of hiring workers to perform the necessary excavations) – there was, after all, the pit of chaos in the way. But there was also the possibility that Lord Zavere of Castle Shard would be interested in it – perhaps they could sell the mere knowledge of the orrery and allow the buyer to extract it for themselves.

With these thoughts in mind they moved through the deserted corridors that had been expurgated of the bloodwight plague and passed through the doors of bluesteel… (more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10B: Retreat to the Surface

Ranthir began marking their path back to the entrance with chalk marks. He also took out pen, ink, and parchment and began drawing an ornate, beautiful, and highly detailed map of their explorations.

Any character, regardless of medium, can be interpreted as a collection of specific traits: They’re brave. Tall. Conflicted. In love. Impatient. Educated. Handsome. Et cetera.

It’s also not particularly revelatory that, in a roleplaying game, the traits of a character will often by mechanically defined: It’s not just that a character is “smart”, that intelligence is given a number and the effects of that intelligence will manifest through the mechanics of the game.

(Of course not all of the traits of an RPG character will be mechanically defined. And even those that are will often – or should often – manifest themselves in non-mechanical ways: Being “smart”, for example, should have impacts on many actions that are not resolved through mechanics.)

It’s perhaps most typical for a character’s mechanical traits to be designed: The player wants Ranthir to be smart, so they assign a high score to Ranthir’s intelligence. They want Ranthir to be trained in the arcane arts, so they assign skill points to his Spellcraft skill.

By contrast, what I often find interesting are the traits which unexpectedly emerge from the mechanics.

For example, Ranthir’s player thought it would be appropriate for the character to be skilled in calligraphy, so he put some points into Craft (calligraphy). When Ranthir began mapping a dungeon during play and the player decided to make a Craft (calligraphy) check to see how attractive the resulting map was, what was unanticipated was the high die roll would cause the other characters to remark on the map. And, more importantly, that high check resulted in Ranthir’s beautiful maps (and his peculiar obsession with the accuracy of those maps) becoming a recurring theme of the campaign and a memorable trait of the character.

Dominic, meanwhile, was wandering the city and trying to get his bearings. (But, for some reason, he kept finding himself back at Delver’s Square…)

Of course, success is not the only way such traits can emerge. Dominic’s poor sense of direction, for example, was not something that was specifically designed. In terms of mechanical definition, in fact, the character wasn’t particularly stupid or anything. But a pattern of poor rolls on very specific types of checks (across multiple skills, actually) caused this element of the character to emerge, at which point the player (and the rest of the group) took it and ran with it.

This would notably lead, at one point, to a skill check where Dominic succeeded and knew which way they needed to go… except none of the other characters believed him, because of his notoriously poor sense of direction.

Obviously any trait can be improvised into existence as one explores their character through play. But I think these emergent traits – aspects of the character which would not exist without the mechanical impulse – are a particularly fascinating part of what happens at the table during a roleplaying game. They’re a great example of the sense of discovery which is one of the primary attractions of the medium for me. They’re also exemplary of the fact that the division that some see between the mechanical component of an RPG and the creative component of an RPG doesn’t really exist: When used correctly, mechanics are an improv seed. They’re the equivalent of an audience member yelling out a random word and pushing you in directions you could never have anticipated or prepared for.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 10B: RETREAT TO THE SURFACE

November 3rd, 2007
The 28th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

With Tee in such a state, they really had no choice: They had to return to the city and seek the healing they had foregone before.

They carefully bound Tee’s arms and legs – partly to stop her from injuring herself; partly to stop her from injuring them – and Agnarr gently lifted her and carried her back down the corridors they had already explored.

It took them the better part of an hour, but they finally emerged – bedraggled and soaked with blood and ichor – into Greyson House.

They headed down Upper God Way to the Street of a Million Gods and the Temple of Asche, attracting many stares. The priests there explained that Father Mand Scheben was not present in the church that day, but he had left instructions that they were to be offered healing at the lowest of possible costs. This was good news for the party, who still had to dip deep into their funds to afford the several hundred gold pieces required for the necessary components and divine casting.

When the clouds of madness cleared from Tee’s eyes, she was left with two sentences burning in her mind: “The lance is being built. The runebearers will not come in time.” She wasn’t sure what to make of it.

The priests allowed them to use their baths to clean up, and then they headed back towards the Ghostly Minstrel. On their way back, a flying ship passed overhead. This startled most of the group, but Tee described it as a common sight in Ptolus – the aeroship of House Shever.

When they reached the Ghostly Minstrel, Tee pulled Ranthir to one side and told him the phrase she had emerged with from her madness. He wasn’t sure what it meant either, but he promised to research it the next time he went to the Delver’s Guild Library.

…which turned out to be immediately after dinner. Ranthir and Elestra both headed to the library. While Ranthir researched the things Tee had asked him to look into, Elestra read up on Ghul the Skull-King. What she found confirmed their suspicion that the complex they were exploring was connected with him: There was, in fact, an expansive construction beneath Ptolus referred to collectively as “Ghul’s Labyrinth”. The Delver’s Guild believed that these were the breeding chambers, barracks, and laboratories of Ghul during his dark reign. Much of the treasure drawn up from the depths came from chambers within the Labyrinth. Many delvers were even reporting the discovery of chambers protected with ancient preservation magicks – their contents untouched through the eons. (When Elestra briefed the rest of the group on what she’d found, Dominc grimaced: “Preserved corpses… No… Well, I hope not…”) To find an unexplored section of the Labyrinth, as they had done, promised many rewards.

Tee, meanwhile, bought a newssheet for a copper piece and browsed through it while she taught Dominic the rules of dragonscales. She discovered that earlier that day an older, well-known, and well-liked City Watch guard named Devaral Unissa had been found killed with the shape of a raven carved into his chest. This was the sign of a gang-killing by Kevris Killraven’s men.

Agnarr, boozing it up, was hearing the same thing from others in the Ghostly Minstrel’s bar. Tee was surprised to hear that the Killravens were now considered to rival the Balacazars as the premiere criminal gang in the town. When she had left Ptolus a little more than a year before, the Killravens had only just arrived in town. It was rumored that many of Kevris’ top lieutenants had come with her from out of town.

After talking it over, Tee and Dominic decided to head over to the Cloud Theater and try to talk to the “Dullin boy”. Tee was convinced that this boy’s life was in danger, and she wanted to warn him.

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 10A: The Labyrinths of Ghul

Tee and Elestra both recognized the statues as depicting the legendary figure of Ghul the Skull-King…

Towards the beginning of the campaign journal for Session 10, there are a couple large blocks of text – one for Ghul the Skull-King and another for shadowveined rock — which were originally written up as handouts for the players: If/when their characters succeeded on the requisite Knowledge checks, I’d be able to hand them these one page summaries.

The alternative to this, obviously, would be for the GM to simply read or summarize this information out loud. So why go to the extra effort to write up a handout?

First, you’ll note that there’s a lot of information being conveyed in these handouts. I’ve tried to keep the presentation of that information efficient, but that’s just resulted in the information being quite dense. Presenting this amount of information in written form (particularly if accompanied by visual references or enhancements) can aid comprehension.

Second, it highlights the information as being of particular importance, helping to make sure that the players pay attention to it. Of course, this only works if you don’t overuse the technique. (These two handouts weren’t explicitly designed to be delivered in such rapid succession, but the group had failed their earlier Knowledge checks to recognize Ghul’s Labyrinth by ways of its unique architectural features, and it was only the more explicit examination of the statues of Ghul himself which provoked their memory.)

Third, such handouts can serve as rewards. This is particularly effective with certain groups (the ones who light up and start clapping their hands with glee when the GM dips his hand into the Big Box of Handouts), but even with players are less inherently excited by this sort of thing

For example, the original version of the Shadowveined Rock handout included a number of mechanics, as you can see in this PDF version of the same:

I didn’t include these mechanical details in the campaign journal, eschewing them for a purely narrative approach, but the original handout included all kinds of information that would allow the PCs to leverage their discovery of the shadowveined rock to maximum effect (including unique items that they could either commission or have Ranthir create, for example).

Fourth, on a similar note, such handouts serve as reference material, allowing the players to easily review what they know about a particular topic (without having to freshly quiz the GM about it). This is particularly important because these handouts — like any exposition dump — should only exist for a purpose. The GM shouldn’t just start waxing rhapsodic about obscure details of their campaign world in the middle of the session without any rhyme or reason.

In the case of the shadowveined rock handout, the primary purpose was to serve as a rules reference when the players needed it later. (I do this a lot, actually: Packaging up snippets of non-core mechanical material into handouts and effectively drip-feeding the content into the campaign. In the case of shadowveined rock, it was something I had created. But this is also a really effective technique for incorporating material from supplements.)

In the case of the Ghulwar handout, the knowledge of Ghul provided context that helped them to navigate the dungeon they were standing in. So being able to refer back to these key facts regarding his life and exploits was continually useful for them (particularly as their expeditions extended between sessions and, later, years of out-of-game time).