IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Interlude: Visions on the Edge of the Void

In which lost memories return as the party lingers on the edge of oblivion…

As I mentioned in the last installment of Running the Campaign, the near-TPK in Session 7 led to the lengthy break which resulted in the campaign’s Retcon.

When the campaign started back up, I decided to kick things off with the visions described in this installment of the campaign journal. If I recall correctly, I e-mailed these visions to the players a few days before the session to gin up anticipation. I also printed out individual copies so that the players could review them at the beginning of the session, with the joint-but-separate cliffhanger at the end of each vision leading directly to the first moment of Session 8.

In addition to simply getting people excited about playing again, I also wanted to make an experience which had ended up being unexpectedly traumatic and significant to the group in the real world an equally significant milestone for the characters, and I hoped that these visions would help drive home how close to real and meaningful death the PCs had come.

The actual visions themselves, however, were not created for this particular moment. They had been designed before the campaign ever began.

PURPOSE OF THE FLASHBACKS

The campaign began with the PCs experiencing a period of “lost time”. I took extra efforts to make sure that the players really felt this missing gap in their lives, because the things which had happened to them during that time were really significant.

The next step was to make sure that this missing time continued to be significant to them throughout the campaign, so that it wouldn’t just fade into “something that happened awhile back and isn’t really significant any more”. One way of doing this, as I’ve described previously, was to create a meta-scenario featuring a mix of investigating the past and also consequences from the past coming back into the oblivious lives of the PCs.

The other way I decided to keep the “lost time” as a pervasive factor throughout the campaign was through the use of flashback visions: Glimpses that the PCs would have into their lost memories. These visions were carefully excerpted from the “secret history” I had prepared regarding the period of lost time, and would hopefully also tie-in with the various meta-scenarios revolving around that lost time. (The idea was to create synergy between multiple tracks running persistently throughout and behind the other adventures of the PCs.)

FLASHBACKS IN PRACTICE

The triggers for these flashbacks were intentionally designed flexibly. (And most flashbacks had multiple triggers.) They generally weren’t things like, “During Adventure #5 when X happens, the PCs receive this vision.” Instead it was, “If something kind of like this happens, it’ll probably cause the PC to flashback to this moment.”

I also never hesitated to use a flashback — or create a new flashback! — if something that felt dramatically appropriate happened which I hadn’t anticipated. By and large, that’s what happened here: There were some flashbacks that had “near death” as a trigger; others that felt thematically appropriate. (I was also trying to strengthen the relationship Elestra and Dominic had before the lost time, since I had identified that this had not really been as deeply invested in by the players as the Agnarr-Tee relationship had been because the Elestra-Dominic prelude didn’t actually happen at the game table. It still didn’t really take. Things that happen at the game table are just more “real” than things that are only written down in character backgrounds.)

You’ll also note that the flashback visions are static. I’ve talked in the past about using playable flashbacks, but in this case I didn’t want the players to feel authorship of them or the ownership which would come with it. I wanted them to be alienated from these experiences; for these experiences to feel as if they had “happened to somebody else” even while they knew that it was, in fact, something that had happened to them.

This would not remain invariably true as the campaign progressed, although there were some unique twists which accompanied their first opportunities to “live” these memories. That, however, is a tale for another time.

TEE

There is darkness… And then you find yourself standing in a long hall of stone. Ten black-scaled reptilians stand guard upon another reptilian in robes who shouts, “Behold Serrek Tarn, the Acolyte of the Master! He who shall be your doom!”

Agnarr is beside you. He scoffs. “Only an acolyte? Hah!”

There is a shattering flash of prismed light, and when your vision clears the reptilians lie dead and Agnarr is laughing. You walk down the hall together and throw open the door at its end.

You’ve seen this before. You know what to expect: A room of gold and a door of ebony…

… but that’s not what you see. The door opens onto a large chamber. The ceiling is several dozen feet above you and the entire room is choked full of bramblous growth reaching to a height at least twice your own. Before you a path seems to have been hacked out of the dead or dying brambles. You step forward onto the path…

… and wake in chains.

AGNARR

There is darkness… and out of the darkness a chamber filled with shadows emerges. There are others around you. Your companions? You can’t tell. Their faces are veiled by the shadows and seemed blurred besides.

Before you, however, is the sarcophagus of a dwarven thane – his cold and stony features etched in profile atop it. On a narrow ledge before the sarcophagus lies a gleaming greatsword. Your hand reaches out, you grasp the blade. It fits your hands perfectly. You raise it aloft and a glorious shout erupts from your throat, “FOR THE GLORY!”

The blade bursts into blinding flame, the light spreads and fills the room…

… and you wake in chains.

ELESTRA

There is darkness… and then slowly, horrifically, the darkness fills with an unnamed dread. Your eyes are sightless and your ears hear no sound, and yet the certainty of horror ebbs into your very soul.

And then, suddenly, there is a light – impossibly bright; impossibly warm; impossibly soothing. The darkness is banished before it. And the light grows and grows and grows… And then it’s gone, but the darkness it leaves behind is merely the lack of light, not a manifested malevolence.

You open your eyes, and find yourself lying in a bank of snow upon the edge of a mountain. You can see for miles in every direction. The snow is chilling you, but there is a burning warmth in your left hand, which seems to be clenched about an object. Looking down and opening your hand, you find a mithril snake – the silver snake of Vehthyl; the serpent doubled. It seems to smolder, but is cooling rapidly.

You turn and see Dominic lying, much like yourself, in the snow. He, too, is holding the doubled serpent of Vehthyl. He looks up at you, and you see that his eyes are two glowing orbs of silver…

You wake in chains.

DOMINIC

There is darkness… and then slowly, horrifically, the darkness fills with an unnamed dread. Your eyes are sightless and your ears hear no sound, and yet the certainty of horror ebbs into your very soul.

And then, suddenly, there is a light – impossibly bright; impossibly warm; impossibly soothing. The darkness is banished before it. And the light grows and grows and grows… And then it’s gone, but the darkness it leaves behind is merely the lack of light, not a manifested malevolence.

You open your eyes, and find yourself lying in a bank of snow upon the edge of a mountain. You can see for miles in every direction. The snow is chilling you, but there is a burning warmth in your left hand, which seems to be clenched about an object. Looking down and opening your hand, you find a mithril snake – the silver snake of Vehthyl; the serpent doubled. It seems to smolder, but is cooling rapidly.

You turn and see Elestra lying, much like yourself, in the snow. She, too, is holding the doubled serpent of Vehthyl. She looks up at you, and you see that her eyes are two glowing orbs of silver…

You wake in chains.

NEXT JOURNAL ENTRY

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 7B: Blood in the Water

In which the dark abyss of the harbor claim many a valiant soul, leaving but one to stand vigilance upon disaster…

So what you have in this session of the campaign is basically a TPK. (Ranthir stayed in the boat, but other than that…)

What happened here is a sequence of strategic errors which are, I think, well summarized narratively in the journal, but which may be useful to break out more specifically:

• The players ignored the shark on the surface, dismissing it as not being an active threat.
• When the shark attacked, Tee and Elestra continued swimming down, leaving the rest of the party multiple rounds of movement behind them. (This problem was further exacerbated by poor Swim checks that caused characters to flounder instead of making progress.)
• As the situation got bad, characters rushed forward one at a time (again, exacerbated by poor Swim checks) instead of regrouping.

The result was that instead of facing the encounter as a group, they basically fought the encounter as three sequential micro-groups.

TPK.

The campaign did not end here. I’m explaining because you look nervous.

Once the water was filled with blood, I called a short break. The group was in various states of shock. Things had gone from “pleasant romp” to “horrific” really, really fast. We all needed some time to recover, and that included me. I needed some time to think about what had happened and what was going to happen next.

In many similar circumstances, this would most likely have been the end of the campaign. Or, at least, the campaign in any recognizable form: With Ranthir still alive, it’s possible he might have been able to continue. Maybe called in some favors to bring his comrades back (albeit, with a huge debt weighing them down like a lodestone). Or, more likely, fallen in with a different troupe of delvers.

But there are plenty of TPKs where that’s all she wrote: You got killed by people who don’t care in a place where no one will ever look for you. (Assuming methods of resurrection exist in the milieu of the campaign at all.) Game over. What shall we do next week?

And, by and large, I’m okay with that. I think it’s important that encounters play out to their logical and non-handicapped conclusion because that’s what makes the moments where a group truly rallies and wins a day which had seem lost truly exciting. And the same is true on a large scale: Knowing that a campaign is not fated to end in success makes it more meaningful when a campaign does.

You value what you earn, not what you are given as charity.

In this particular case, however, there was another logical outcome: The sahuagin weren’t a random encounter. They were there for a purpose. And the people who had hired them for that purpose would logically be interested in who the PCs were and why they were there. I also realized, as you’ll see in the next journal entry, that the PCs would be immediately useful to them. In fact, once I stepped into their shoes and thought about what they would do with the situation that was being presented to them, there was only one logical thing they would do:

They’d dump some healing magic in the PCs, wake them up, and start the interrogation.

So… not a TPK.

This time.

CONSEQUENCES

The other great thing about letting things play out (instead of predetermining or forcing an outcome) is that the consequences you discover along the way are inevitably wonderful and unexpected and take you to amazing places you would otherwise have never discovered.

Although, unfortunately, that’s not always the case. This session had severe metagame consequences: Agnarr’s player felt strongly that I should have railroaded the encounter to prevent them getting overwhelmed and knocked out. He also hated the idea of his character being taken prisoner in general, and specifically felt there was no justification for the sahuagin taking prisoners.

He didn’t hang around to see how it played out. He quit the campaign.

Which threw things back into a bit of chaos for awhile, leading to a long break and the sequence of events which eventually resulted in the Big Retcon before we continued.

In the campaign itself, however, the consequences were much more interesting: They resulted in the PCs coming to the attention of (and becoming indebted to) the Balacazar crime family, with wide-ranging consequences that would continue to effect play more than half a decade later.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’ll just have to keep reading to see exactly how things turned out.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 7B: BLOOD IN THE WATER

May 5th, 2007
The 23rd Day of Amseyl in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

 LINECH’S JOB

After lunch the party headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel so that those who had changed for the occasion could switch back to clothing which would make them appear more like the rough-and-ready wanderers that it sounded like Linech was looking for.

Linech, it turned out, owned an entire burrow in the Rivergate District. Everyone living there worked for Linech – either directly or indirectly. In truth, the entire place was basically a walled compound. They could see several armed guards scattered here and there amidst the buildings.

Entering the lower level of Linech’s place of business, the group was greeted by a young man with his hair pulled back into a ponytail. He asked them their business and, when they told him they were here for the job, he led them upstairs.

Asking them to wait outside for a moment, the man headed through a door. They couldn’t hear what the man said about them, but they did hear the bellowing voice which replied: “Well what are you waiting for? Get ‘em in here!”

The door opened and the group was ushered into a large office that had been garishly decorated. Perhaps the most arresting sight in the place was the life-sized gold statue of a nobly-dressed man which stood opposite the door. Behind a large desk covered in papers they saw the half-orc Linech. He bore an uncanny resemblance to his brother – he even seemed to be mashing the same brand of cheap cigar between his teeth.

After some discussion the group had agreed, with some trepidation, that Agnarr should be the one to talk. As unlikely as it seemed, he was the most appropriate person considering the circumstances. (“You’re all on Agnarr’s team now.”) So when Linech demanded to know who they were and what they wanted, he stepped forward: “We’re delvers. We’re here for the job.”

“Delvers, eh?” Linech said. “How do I know you’re cut out for this job?”

Agnarr grinned. “Cut out for the job? Just look at us. I’m a barbarian, he’s a priest, he throws spells, she’s got a sword, and she’s a sneaky elf. We’re exactly what you’re looking for.”

“Fair enough. All right, here’s the deal: I love my daughter dearly. I sent her on retreat to an estate I keep on an island off the coast. A week ago someone attacked the resort. They burned it to the ground and she was killed. I sent a ship to retrieve her body so that she could be buried with full rites in the Necropolis. But last night, when the ship was returning to Ptolus, it caught on fire and sank in the harbor. I think somebody attacked it. I think somebody is trying to hurt me. Why, I don’t know. But it’s important to me that my little girl be given a decent burial. So I want somebody to go down to the wreck and retrieve her coffin. And I want somebody who can defend themselves if it comes to it. For this, I’ll pay you 1,200 gold pieces. How’s that sound to you?”

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 7A: The Aristocrat’s Table

In which preparations are made for a momentous meeting, secrets are kept, and a fateful flame is seen burning in the harbor…

I’ve talked previously in this series about the role of a journal in enhancing a campaign. This week you can see  some vestiges of the document’s living history: At this early stage of the campaign, many of the characters were keeping secrets from each other. Although there are many ways of handling this, I’ve generally favored having the players also keep the secrets from each other. A little light paranoia never hurt anybody, and the resulting patchwork of understanding can have all sorts of entertaining fallout.

If a secret is worth keeping, then a secret is worth keeping.

So these early days of the campaign featured a number of sub-channels in our online chat, and later there would be any number of side conferences and the like with me and various player scurrying off to another room.

Preparing and, more importantly, disseminating the journal for In the Shadow of the Spire proved somewhat challenging under these conditions, however. I didn’t want to leave all this secret action unrecorded, so simply leaving it out of the campaign journal entirely wasn’t a viable option. In practice, it meant carefully structuring the campaign journal so that the secrets were clearly separated from the rest of the material and could be removed as a “chunk” without leaving a clear trace behind. (The section near the beginning of this journal entry headed “Tee Slips Away” is an obvious example of this.)

There was one memorable session where this meant creating a different version of the journal for every single player, although in general it meant preparing 2-3 different versions. And, eventually, only Tee was still keeping a part of her life hidden away (necessitating a “secret journal” for her every couple of sessions; or rather, vice versa, a special incomplete version of the journal created for everyone else).

SECRETS AT THE TABLE

There are, of course, many groups who would consider this entire concept of players keeping secrets from each other anathema. I’ve generally found that these groups are virtually always the ones which also prohibit any sort of intra-party strife of any kind, and many of them also abhor the concept of splitting the party.

In my experience, these sorts of prohibitions (“no secrets”, “no strife”, etc.) are almost always seeking to address a fundamental problem by targeting its symptoms. There are generally two variants of this problem.

First, you have a disruptive, immature player is just trying to ruin other people’s fun. To address this problem you create a network of Thou Shalt Not rules attempting to knock down the player’s disruptive antics. In reality, of course, the disruptive player will always be able to find some new way of disrupting the group. You need to solve the underlying problem of them being an asshat (by either getting them to stop doing that or kicking them out of the group).

Second, and often related to the former (or previous experiences with the former), the group has constructed a whole interlocking network of formal or informal rules preventing:

• PCs leaving the group.
• PCs attacking each other.
• PCs agreeing to kick another PC (not player!) who they no longer wish to associate with out of the group.
• Splitting the party.

And  so forth. The exact network of such prohibitions or “understandings” varies, but the net result is that you take a bunch of characters, thrust them into high stakes situations, and then artificially force them to continue co-habitating even after events have set them at irreconcilable loggerheads. Basically, you’ve created an RPG simulation of Sartre’s No Exit.

And then you just keep adding on more forced conventions in an effort to keep the lid on the pressure cooker you’ve created.

And what you also lose in the process is all of the cool gaming experiences that can arise from hidden player knowledge. The entirety of Paranoia, for example, or the superb Ego Hunter scenario for Eclipse Phase are a couple of pre-packaged examples, but the organic examples that rise up spontaneously at the gaming table can be even more exciting.

RUNNING SECRETS

A few best practices for handling player secrets.

First, take the initiative from the players. (Or, more accurately, from the actions of their characters.) Although it can be useful to make it explicitly clear that the option is available, since some players have been conditioned by previous tables to think that it’s not an option, generally speaking the desire to keep a secret needs to originate from the character keeping the secret; it’s not something that can be imposed from the outside.

Second, you’ll generally want to follow the same conventions as splitting the party: Make sure to balance spotlight time and switch between the groups so that neither is left loitering. (Although giving part of the group a straight-up break while you resolve what the other part of the group is doing — and then vice versa — can be an effective technique.)

Third, don’t mistake “the other characters don’t know this yet” as being the same thing as  “secret”. Nine times out of ten, when the party splits up, there’s no need to keep their activities secret from each other: If they’re not trying to keep secrets from each other, they will most likely be fully briefing each other next time they get together (so you might as well let them know as it’s happening; which will save you time on the other end and also keep the table engaged as an audience to what’s happening). There are exceptions to this — when keeping each group blind to what’s happening to the other group will enhance the enjoyment of one or both groups — but they’re relatively rare.