IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 9B: In the House of Helmut

The key is found. The lost shall be found. The night of dissolution comes when the barbarians arrive.

In this session, the PCs found two different sets of prophecies, both prepared by Helmut Itlestein.

Prophecy is, of course, a mainstay of fantasy fiction (and in mythology before them). They’re great storytelling devices because they can (a) inherently imbue events with a sense of importance and (b) serve as puzzles which foreshadow future events, thus building anticipation for them and a satisfying sense of payoff when they occur (particularly if there’s some unexpected twist to how they’re fulfilled).

The things about these prophecies, though, is that they generally exist either because the author knows what they’re planning to write or, in the case of mythological history, because they’ve been retroactively created to fit events which have already happened. (Really easy to pick winners and losers a couple centuries after the fact.)

The non-linear and unpredictable nature of RPGs obviously makes it more difficult to use prophecies effectively. You could railroad the outcome, of course, but you really shouldn’t, and the act of forcing the outcome onto the players tends to negate the “magic” which makes a prophecy so satisfying in the first place.

I think the core thing to understand is that fiction and mythology should NOT be your primary infelunces when designing RPG prophecies. RPG prophecies should instead model themselves on how successful real world prophets — i.e., bullshit artists — operate. The prophecies of Nostradamus, for example, continue to possess an enormous amount of cult cachet centuries after he wrote them.

On the other hand, a GM does enjoy a lot more control over their campaign world than Nostradamus or Hildegard von Bingen did over the real world, so they don’t need to completely abandon literary principles. I’ve touched on a similar topic in the past when I’ve discussed Foreshadowing in RPGs, and a lot of the same advice applies to prophecies.

FLEXIBLE PROPHECY

The core technique for using prophecies in RPGs is creating flexibility in their outcome: You aren’t sure what direction the campaign is going to go, so you’ll need the prophecy to have a usable pay-off regardless of which direction the campaign goes.

Imperfect Prophecies: Deliver prophecies through questionable translations, multiple translations, or have different versions passed down via different lines of transmission from elder days. Figuring out the “true” version of the prophecy can become a puzzle in itself, or require a quest to find the “original” version of the prophecy (delaying the point at which you, as the GM, need to nail down the prophecy’s specific meaning).

Multiple Intrepretations: The Delphic Oracle was famous for these. “If you make war upon the Persians, you will destroy a great empire.” (Hyuck, hyuck, turns out it was yours! … but it could just as easily been theirs.) To quote Shakespeare, “There’s a double meaning in that.”

Conflicting Prophecies: Instead of having just one prophecy, invoke multiple prophecies. The question isn’t necessarily which one is “right”; it’s which one can you make right. This invokes another useful maxim: Simply seeing a prophecy fulfilled isn’t inherently interesting. It’s what people do with the prophecy that creates interest: Do you try to fight it? Work within it? Hide it? Destroy it? Deny it? Embrace it?

False/Broken Prophecy: Even without a conflicting set of prophecies, it can be okay for a prophecy to just… not be true. Straight up false prophecies can work if they’re set up right, but it can be more effective if you can frame it as, “The prophecy has been broken!” (Which can be the result of either the actions of the PCs or the actions of the bad guys.) This can either heighten the reward of success, or be used as an “oh shit” moment where the PCs realize the comfortable safety net of their prophecy has been stripped away.

In the world there will be made a king who will have little peace and a short life. At this time the ship of the Novarch will be lost, governed to its greatest detriment.

Evocative Imagery: Another angle of approach is to use prophecies which are, for lack of a better word, vague to the point where they could mean anything… or nothing at all. This is a pretty common tack for “prophets” in the real world. St. Hildegard, for example, once predicted, “Before the Comet comes, many nations, the good excepted, will be scoured by want and famine. The great nation in the ocean that is inhabited by people of different tribes and descent by an earthquake, storm, and tidal waves will be devastated.” Or, in other words, a coastal nation with a lot of different immigrants or native clans (i.e., every coastal nation in the history of forever) will have a bad year… or maybe several years, since no specific time frame is defined.

Prophecies That Have Already Happened: These can be particularly effective if the PCs don’t know that they’ve already happened. It can be very useful to couple these to useful divinatory facts. For example:

S shall find the golden statue while it still breathes. But the Idol of Ravvan brings doom. His lair lies beneath a vacant lot of brandywine.

When the prophecy was made (within the context of the game world), these things had not happened. As we’ll see in upcoming campaign journals, when the PCs read it, they already had (but the PCs didn’t know it): Shilukar (S) had already found the golden statue (Lord Abbercombe), already had his lair under a vacant lot in Brandywine Street, and he already possessed the Idol of Ravvan. (Although there’s a double meaning there, since “brings doom” doesn’t specify the doom nor who it will befall.)

Prophecies Beyond the PCs’ Control: Natural disasters are a good example here. Can’t really stop an earthquake, right? But this can also apply to events which are simply outside the PCs’ immediate sphere of influence or interest. Such prophecies can be a nice way of establishing the bonafides of a prophetic document: By presenting a list of things that the PCs can receive news of coming true over time, you’re investing the key prophetic statements that apply to the PCs with extra weight and a sense of inevitability.

A Multitude of Prophecies: On that note, providing a multitude of prophecies (of varying character and specificity), as seen with Helmut Itlestein’s papers, can be a very effective technique in and of itself. When you’re presented with a target-rich environment, the lucky picks will get remembered and the misses get tossed in the dustbin.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 9B: IN THE HOUSE OF HELMUT

October 21st, 2007
The 27th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

THE MYSTERIOUS HAMMERSONG VAULT

In the morning, with a 6,000 gp pay-off burning in their pockets, the group headed back to the Hammersong Vaults to put a lot of that money into their lockboxes.

Ranthir, however, had been struck by a thought: Since the Hammersong Vaults was essentially the only bank in town, it seemed there was a good chance that they might have stored something here between the time they came to Ptolus and the morning they woke up with amnesia.

After they had secured their gold, Tee approached one of the Hammersong dwarves on duty. “How would we find out if we had rented a space here?

“You mean the lockboxes you just went to?”

“No, another space.”

“… wouldn’t you know if you had rented a space?”

“Humor me.”

“We have a log of all our vaults and lockboxes. If you showed proper identification, we could look through that and find out if you had any other accounts.”

All of them – even Tor, who was increasingly confused by all of this – presented their identification papers and waited while the logs were checked in a back room.

When the man came back out, he was holding a slip of paper and had a frown on his face. “We do, in fact, have a record of a vault rented in the names of Agnarr, Dominic, Elestra, Ranthir, and Tithenmamiwen. We do not have any record of another account held by Master Tor.”

“How would we get into that vault?” Tee asked.

“You don’t have a key?”

While the others were focused on all this talk of paperwork and accounts, Agnarr’s eyes were scanning the room. He noticed a dwarf standing by the door to the backroom, studying all of them while making arcane gestures with his hands. “Who’s that?” he demanded.

“Hey!” Tee shouted. “What are you doing?”

The dwarf just smiled at them, looked at the official who was helping them, shook his head, and then went through the door into the back room.

“What was that all about?”

“Just checking for your security,” the official explained.

In any case, without a key it turned out that they would all have to sign a document testifying their right to the vault. They would then have to wait at least 30 days and then submit to a magical verification of identity before they could gain access to the vault they had apparently rented. They agreed and began signing the necessary papers.

But when the illiterate Agnarr made his “X” upon the contract, the official’s exasperation returned. “Sign it properly!”

Agnarr put a second “X” on the paper.

The official showed them the slip of paper with their original signatures: Agnarr’s signature was written in beautifully scripted calligraphy. (Tee took the opportunity to note that they had apparently rented the vault on the 30^th day of Du’elseyl, the day before they had rented their rooms at the Ghostly Minsterl.) “He can’t produce his proper signature?”

This made it necessary for Agnarr to undergo an immediate magical verification of identity, forcing them to pay an additional fee of 50 gold pieces.

Agnarr, accompanied by Tee, was taken to a back room. In a circle of magical light which compelled him to speak truthfully, he was asked several questions to verify his identification.

Finally satisfied (more or less), the Hammersong dwarf told them they could return in 30 days, at which time a duplicate key would be magically created and they would be allowed access to the vault.

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 9A: Gold

Tee must have made some sort of noise, because the woman suddenly whipped around, “Who’s there?”

When, where, and why should you roll to resolve NPC actions?

This is one of those areas where most people seem to assume that the way they do it is the way everyone does it and that there’s really no other conceivable way that you could or should do it, which tends to result in a lot of gnashing of teeth and bloody tears when these preconceptions suddenly collide with a different gaming style/preference/methodology.

One thing that is universally true: You can’t always roll for the NPCs.

“Oh yes you can!”

No, seriously. You can’t.

About 75,000 people live in Ptolus. (And that doesn’t even count the monsters.) At any given time, the absolute maximum number of those people I’m actively tracking is maybe 75. Even if you were a hundred times better than me (and, thus, actively – and absurdly! – actively tracking 7,500 people simultaneously), you’re still only engaged with 1% of the population. At any given moment, therefore, there are vast swaths of the campaign world for which you are assuming activities and outcomes based on various degrees of common sense and creative instinct.

And here’s something that most GMs hold to be true: You roll for the NPCs at least some of the time.

“Whaddya mean most?! You have to at least roll for attacks, right?!”

You don’t, though. Some GMs fudge those outcomes. Others use aggressively player-faced mechanics in systems where the actions of NPCs are only mechanically resolved if they’re directly engaged with and opposed by a PC.

The vast majority of GMs are going to be somewhere between these two radically opposed poles, however. At the beginning of this session’s campaign log, you can get a decent glimpse at how I generally handle things (with some variation depending on both circumstance and the system I’m using).

First, using dramatist principles, I decided that having Linech’s mistress (Biesta) searching Linech’s office for shivvel during the PCs’ attempted infiltration would make for a good scene.

Second, using simulationist principles I set up an initial condition that looked like this:

• Guards (2) – in area 4
• Guards (2) – in area 8
• Guards (4) – at gate
• Linech – in area 7
• Oukina – in area 7
• Ruror – outside area 7
• Biesta – approaching Linech’s office, she arrives in 3d6+5 rounds (looking for shivvel; shivvel in area 3 is gone; she isn’t wearing her armor)

(This is a pretty basic example of an adversary roster.)

SETTING UP INITIAL CONDITIONS

In creating these initial conditions, the first thing you’ll note is that I haven’t tried to simulate the entire nightly schedule for Linech’s burrow. For example, I haven’t said, “Biesta will sneak into his office and steal shivvel between 12:00 and 12:15 AM.”

Why not? Primarily because, at least in this particular scenario, that’s a lot of wasted prep. The PCs are unlikely to see more than one specific slice of the burrow’s schedule. Secondarily, because missing the dramatic interest of Biesta’s presence in the office because the PCs didn’t happen to show up in a specific 15 minute window isn’t a desirable outcome for me (and is also wasted prep).

Those who prize simulationism above all other concerns may balk at this. But I refer you back to our previously established truism: You can’t always roll for the NPCs. And, in a similar vein, you can’t perfectly simulate the daily schedule of all 75,000 inhabitants of Ptolus. At some point you are making an arbitrary decision about the initial conditions of any locale that the PCs begin interacting with.

Because you can’t simulate all 75,000 inhabitants of Ptolus, there is always some degree of compromise, and that means that prepping eighteen different sets of initial conditions doesn’t make any sense: No matter how many you prep, the PCs will never encounter more than one set of initial conditions (by definition).

(There are exceptions to this: If a scenario is likely to feature the PCs putting a location under surveillance, then you will, of course, want to set up the typical daily schedule for that location. Maybe mix in a few random events to vary it from day to day without needing to hand prep every day if it’s likely to be a lengthy surveillance.)

AFTER FIRST CONTACT

With all that being said, the second thing to note here is that I’ve inherently built uncertainty into the initial conditions.

One thing to remember is that I actually have no idea how the PCs are going to approach this scenario: They might sneak in. They might fight their way in. They might come up with some completely different solution I couldn’t even imagine.

These initial circumstances are designed to create interesting complications for the PCs, which they’ll either need to avoid or interact with in order to accomplish their goal. How will they avoid them? How will they interact with them? I don’t know, so I’m not going to waste a lot of time thinking about it. Following the precepts of Don’t Prep Plots, these are all tools in my toolbox; and I’ll improvise with them during actual game play.

Which is what you see play out at the beginning of the campaign journal:

• As the PCs arrived onsite, I rolled 3d6+5 to see how many rounds it would be until Biesta arrived.
• Because Tee waited behind the chimney “for at least a minute” to make sure she hadn’t been spotted climbing up, it meant that Biesta arrived in the office before Tee did.
• We roll a Move Silently vs. Listen check to determine whether or not Tee is aware of Biesta. (She is.) But we also roll a Listen check for the nearby guards to see if they hear Biesta. (They don’t.)

Let’s stop there for a second, because this is our primary topic today: I rolled for the guards because I did not know what the outcome of Biesta’s snooping in the office would be. And that was true even if the PCs didn’t interfere at all.

For example, a completely different possibility is that the PCs try to break into the compound from a different direction; while they’re performing their infiltration, however, Biesta gets caught snooping and there’s a whole bunch of new activity flowing to and away from the office that they now need to deal with. Or maybe Biesta sneaking back out of the office creates a timely distraction that allows the PCs to escape. Or maybe Biesta walks in on the PCs while they’re trying to leverage Lord Abbercombe out the window.

The point is that Biesta is a dynamic element which, once set in motion, even I don’t know the consequences of.

Other GMs might want to get a little more specific in planning out Biesta’s predetermined course: They might know, for example, that (barring PC interference) Biesta will reach the office, find the shivvel, and leave without alerting a guard. In other circumstances, I might do the same thing. A lot depends on the specific needs of the particular scenario.

Think of your scenario like a billiards table: You set up the table and you let the players take their shot. Unlike a normal billiards table, though, a bunch of the balls (NPCs, etc.) are in motion when the PCs show up, and will remain in motion (probably cyclically so for the sake of easy prep) until the PCs take their shot.

(Some GMs will take this even further and ignore the interference of the PCs. I’m going to refer those GMs to the Railroading Manifesto.)

• We roll a Listen vs. Move Silently check to determine whether or not Biesta notices Tee. (I probably also rolled for the guard, but given distance and walls his success was really unlikely.) She does!
• We now roll a Hide vs. Spot check to determine whether or not Biesta spots Tee when she comes over to the window. She doesn’t, but in coming over to window and saying, “Who’s there?” she’s made enough noise that…
• We roll a Move Silently vs. Listen check for the guard to once again notice Biesta. And this time, he does!

As a result, we’ve discovered that Tee’s presence — despite being quite subtle — has resulted in Biesta being discovered by the guard. This has long-term implications, because the guard then takes Biesta to Linech: Which means that the guard closest to the office is no longer present, making the additional Move Silently checks for actually extricating the statue substantially easier for the group to succeed at. But also creates a ticking time bomb at the end of which Linech is going to come to his office to find out what Biesta was up to. (In fact, if it hadn’t been for Ranthir’s clever use of feather fall to speed up the extraction, it’s likely that Linech would have gotten back in time to catch them in the act. Careful planning is important in D&D, folks!)

This is, as I said, a rather minor interaction. But I think it offers a rather nice window into my general methodology as a GM, and also highlights the fascinating and rewarding outcomes that can result.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 9A: GOLD

October 21st, 2007
The 26th Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The group headed up-city into the Rivergate District. After leaving the Ghostly Minstrel they broke up into smaller, less noticeable groups. Dominic and Elestra arranged for a carriage to wait for them near the burrow adjacent to Linech’s.

The narrow alley beside the Yebures’ house was crowded that night: All six of them were needed for the plan to work.

Tee secured her grappling hook and rope to the lip of the chimney and rapidly ascended to the roof. She hid behind the chimney for at least a minute to make sure that her ascent had not been detected, and then climbed down towards the window.

As she approached it, her sharp elven ears clearly picked up the sounds of someone moving about inside the room… despite the fact that the light hadn’t been turned on.

Tee carefully approached the window and peered inside: There was a thin, emaciated woman searching the office. She was, in fact, poking around the bookshelves where Tee had hidden Zavere’s scrying cube.

Tee must have made some sort of noise, because the woman suddenly whipped around, “Who’s there?”

Tee jerked back, but the woman was coming towards the window to investigate what she had seen. But just as she was nearing the window, Tee heard the door of the office thrown open and a rough, burly voice growled, “What are you doing up here?”

The woman’s voice was filled with tightly-controlled fright: “Linech asked me to get something for him. I was just looking for it…”

“With the light out? Get over here, we’ll just go and see Linech about this.”

“Oh please, no… no…”

Tee could hear a brief struggle, and then the woman was pulled from the room and the door slammed shut behind her.

Tee waited a few moments and then peeked around the corner of the window to confirm that the office was truly empty. It was. She reached for her tools and quickly unlocked the window, sliding it open silently and slipping inside.

She quickly crossed to the door and locked it, listening to ensure that no one else was waiting outside the room. Then she secured a second rope to the golden statue for Agnarr and Tor to climb up.

While Tor and Agnarr were climbing, Tee quickly checked on the scrying cube to make sure that the woman hadn’t discovered it or disturbed it. She hadn’t. But Tee decided to move it anyway: If people were going to be searching the office, she wanted the scrying cube to be more secure.

She focused her attention on the desk, thinking to find a drawer behind which she could hide it. What she found, instead, was a secret compartment at the back of one of the drawers. Sliding it open she found two things: First, an iron money coffer that was completely empty (obviously Linech’s funds were almost completely depleted at this point). Second, a letter written on elegant paper that had once been sealed with wax that was now broken.

The letter read:

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 8B: Meeting Tor

During Session 8, the party had its first interactions with two very influential citizens of Ptolus: Malkeen Balacazar of the Balacazar crime family and Lord Zavere of Castle Shard.

At this point in time, the PCs were either 2^nd or 3^rd level (depending on whether or not they had earned XP in the prelude sessions). Malkeen was 14^th level. Zavere was 20^th level. Obviously, in terms of puissance, the PCs were completely dwarfed. If they’d decided to pick a fight with either one of them, they’d most likely have been crushed like bugs almost instantaneously.

“Don’t antagonize someone who has a fang-faced, void-mouthed guy to order around.” – Elestra

This, of course, was entirely intentional. In a zero-to-hero game like D&D, I think it’s really important for the PCs to have interactions with the very powerful. It gives them something to aspire to and is also integral to establishing that the world they inhabit is a large and complex place with concerns which extend beyond their daily lives. Doraedian is another prominent example of this, as are any number of denizens of the common room at the Ghostly Minstrel.

In some ways, this is kind of the inverse of Revisiting Encounter Design: Just as you want to increase the dynamic range of your encounters by designing them with a wide variety of creatures of varied powers, you also want to make the dynamic range of your entire campaign as broad as possible.

Agnarr cracked a sunrod and observed that they were now doing the same job (retrieving the girl) for three different employers: Zavere, Linech, and the man with the star-tattoo.

This high level of power is not, of course, a necessary quality for a patron. (During these same sessions, Linech is an example of a patron on par with the PCs’ power level.) It’s obviously not a requirement for every villain. But these characters allow you to open doors that would otherwise remain closed.

On the other hand, this liberty must be carefully balanced against the inherent threat of the disparity in power: The ability to squash the PCs like a bug is not only problematic because they might actually end up getting squashed; it’s also problematic because it can make the players feel helpless, manipulated, and coerced. (That can be okay some of the time, but in most campaign it becomes a major problem if the players feel that they’ve become completely de-protagonized or that the GM is railroading them.)

The precise way you accomplish this balancing act is always pretty heavily dependent on the specific circumstances of the campaign. But there are a few general principles you can keep in mind:

Balance the Interests of the Powerful: Counter-intuitively, you can often reduce the PCs’ sense of powerlessness by including even more powerful people. These powerful factions can be used to checkmate each other. You can see an example of this with Malkeen Balacazar and Lord Zavere: The PCs were being sent up against a really powerful crime family, but they were doing so at the best of a very powerful patron. If things got dicey, they should be able to fall back on their powerful ally to provide protection.

Keep the Distance: You can have the powerful get involved with the PCs’ lives without them constantly invading the PCs’ personal space. Lord Zavere, for example, reached out to them through the intermediary of Mand Scheben. Malkeen Balacazar, on the other hand, was not actually supposed to directly interact with them: At the first sign of trouble, he was supposed to clear out under the mistaken belief that someone was bringing the hammer down and he would be in person jeopardy. (Allowing the PCs to perhaps glimpse him during his retreat.) The campaign obviously went a different way than that, of course.

“Tee! I was just writing you a letter!” He crumpled the paper and shoved it to the side.

You can usually tell that you’ve been successful in striking the right balance, however, when you discover that you can’t keep the powerful at arm’s length because the PCs are actively seeking them out. You can see evidence of that in this week’s campaign journal with the “crumpled letter” gag: I hadn’t actually anticipated that Tee would actively seek out Mand Scheben or Doraedian that morning, so I’d actually prepped letters that they were supposed to have delivered later that day. (I literally crumpled up the props and tossed them aside.)

Making the PCs Vital: If powerful individuals are taking an interest in the PCs, it means that the PCs have something to offer them. Crank that dial up. Make the PCs vital to the interests of one or (preferably) more of the powerful. This not only serves as a layer of protection (“I can’t kill you, I need you!”), it also, by definition, prevents the PCs from feeling powerless or irrelevant: Their choices matter. What they do matters.

The importance of this last point, in my opinion, cannot be over-emphasized. The reason to bring the powerful into the PCs’ sphere isn’t so that the PCs can goggle at the amazing antics of the powerful. It’s so that the PCs can get tangled up in their affairs.

And as the PCs seek to untangle themselves, over time they will slowly discover that they have become the powerful and the affairs are, in fact, their own.