IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1C: Meeting Elestra

In which unknown friends are met for the second time, recompenses are paid for broken doors, and the mysteries of a box raise unopened questions…

After the incompatible schedules that resulted in the prelude sessions of the campaign, we finally managed to schedule our first session. Unfortunately, one of our players unexpectedly got held back for extra overtime on the night of the first session.

Since all of our schedules were quite limited, we decided to get started without the missing player. I handled this through the simple expedient of having Alysta wake up early and leave the Ghostly Minstrel. (Alysta is Elestra before she was Elestra. See the retcon for details.) This actually worked very well (since it added an extra layer of mystery to the “missing member” of their group).

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last time Alysta’s player would be held back or gain unexpected hours at work.

I’d like to say that I found some magical solution for this sort of thing, but I didn’t. The reality is that scheduling a stable group of five people for a regular or semi-regular activity is tough: The modern world is a busy, busy place.

An open game table, of course, is one way to deal with this sort of thing. (Like I’ve said in the past: If you love to play roleplaying games, you owe it to yourself to have an open table in your back pocket. You will be able to play a lot more.) But it’s not a magic cure-all: There are things you can do with an intense, closed campaign that are difficult or even impossible at an open table. I love the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, for example, and it’s not something that could be duplicated at an open table.

ON THE MATTER OF ATTENDANCE

With that being said, my personal philosophy for a closed game is that we don’t play unless all the players are present. Players will tell you it’s “okay” if somebody else runs their character. And, at first glance, it will all make sense: Sure, our schedules aren’t 100% compatible. But they’re compatible enough that we can play more often as long as we’re willing to occasionally miss a player or two, right?

But, in my experience, a couple of things happen:

First, it creates a sense that it’s OK for players to cancel or skip out on sessions. After all, they’re not really letting anyone down, right? The game is still going to happen, right? This pretty much inevitably results in more frequent absences.

Second, player absences will inevitably degrade the very things that make a closed game specifically desirable — shared experience, intensity, focus, investment, etc.

So, for me, there are closed games where everybody needs to show up if we’re going to play. And there are open games where I don’t care who shows up. And there’s very little gray area inbetween.

ON THE MATTER OF SCHEDULING

One school of thought holds that the best way to build regular attendance is to schedule regular sessions: If gaming is always every other Tuesday, then people can build that into their schedules.

Realistically, this doesn’t work for me. Our schedules are all too variable and conflicts inevitably arise; and the system doesn’t lend itself to flexibility. What I prefer, as a GM, is to send out an e-mail asking for everybody’s conflicts for the coming month. Then I sit down, crunch out the conflicts, and find the 2 or 3 days that we’re all available.

Our goal is to average about 2 sessions per month. In order to achieve that in practice, however, I’ll “overbook” by scheduling 3 or 4 dates if they’re available. It’s likely 1 or 2 them will end up getting canceled when something comes up. (And if they aren’t, then we just get a little more gaming done that month. No reason to complain.)

LETTING PLAYERS GO

Part and parcel with this philosophy is that sometimes you have to let players go: If they just can’t make the scheduling commitment necessary for a closed table, then the rest of the group will be better off if you cut them loose.

Which is another reason for having that open table in your back pocket. There are lots of people I love gaming with for whom a long-term commitment to a regular, closed campaign is impossible. I’m glad I don’t have to miss out on the opportunity to play with them.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 1B: TEE’S HOMECOMING

March 10th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1B: Tee’s Homecoming

In which desperate answers are sought and the lack of such answers leads to a heartbreaking revelation…

Something that I didn’t anticipate when I started this campaign was that the players would start keeping secrets from each other. You’ll see this reflected in several places throughout the campaign journals, but it really starts here: When Tee ran away from the others, her player requested a private session. Others would follow suit.

This had knock-on effects: Character backgrounds weren’t shared. The prelude campaign journals weren’t shared. And I often had to prep multiple versions of the campaign journal for each session in order to reflect different players/characters having different sets of knowledge.

(Ironically, I had actually thought I could use Tee’s interest in being a “secret seeker” as a gateway for funneling exposition into the campaign. But when we discovered that Tee sought secrets so that she could keep them, I suddenly had a whole structure built up for funneling information to Tee… and there it would stop.)

Although surprising, this wasn’t really a problem. But there are a few things to keep in mind with this play dynamic:

Balancing Time: The practice of balancing the “private session” isn’t much different than any other occasion when the group splits up. (The only difference is that the GM needs to transition between multiple rooms.) In general, I’ve found the trick is switch back and forth between the groups in order to keep everyone engaged.

There is a proviso to this, however. In general, groups that aren’t dysfunctional take pleasure in both their own activities and the activities of their fellow players (they are both actors and audience for the game). This is true whether the group is together or split up. Time spent with a player when the other players can’t act as an audience, however, is like dead air on the radio. It’s more troublesome.

As a result, there may be times when it makes more sense to just give the rest of the group a 5 or 10 minute break while you’re resolving things with the other player. (This is a good time to figure out what the pizza order should be for the evening. Or to work up a shopping list. Or just hang out and chat. Whatever works.)

Upon other occasions, we’ve simply pushed the “private time” off to a separate session (usually run via PBeM or IM). Of course, this only works if one is confident if the content of that private time isn’t going to have an impact on the rest of the current session. (Sometimes you can mutually agree on the rough parameters or “outline” of the events covered in the private session and then flesh it out later.)

Balancing Information: As I alluded to above, the keeping of player secrets pretty much automatically leads to a balkanization of information. This, in turn, can wreak havoc with the Three Clue Rule — either because the player with the necessary information doesn’t share it when it becomes relevant; doesn’t recognize that the information has become relevant due to a lack of context; or has simply forgotten it.

After all, the Three Clue Rule works due to redundancy and reinforcement. If Player 1 has Clue 1, Player 2 has Clue 2, and Player 3 has forgotten Clue 3, redundancy has been significantly weakened and there is no reinforcement.

This doesn’t require you to automatically hit the panic button, of course. Most of the time it will all work out just fine. But it is something to be aware of and keep track of.

The Bluff: This is only tangentially related to the kind of player-initiated secrecy I’ve been talking about here, but a successful pattern of bluffing can be useful when the GM wants to communicate secrets.

For example, let’s say that one of the players has been hit by a charm spell or replaced with a doppleganger. If you hand a note to that particular player… BAM. The whole table knows something is up. Even if the players don’t necessarily act on their metagame knowledge, it’s still out there.

A few ways to deal with this:

First, build a habit of intermittently handing out notes. They don’t always have to be important. They don’t always have to be secret. They can even just say something like, “Don’t tell anyone there’s nothing on this note.” The idea is to camouflage the important note when it comes long. (Disadvantage: Writing out notes is time-consuming.)

Second, include a “fake revelation” on the note. Something like: “Tell the other players that you’ve spotted a hidden rune on the ceiling. BTW, you’ve been replaced with a doppleganger.”

Third, hand out notes to multiple players. Only one of them contains the actual information — but now nobody is entirely sure who’s holding the secret. (This also works well if you include a few innocuous or semi-innocuous notes for other people. They may think they’re the actual target of the mass camouflage.)

Fourth, find a way to get the player the information away from the table. (In an era of cellphones this has actually become relatively easy. Take a break, go to the bathroom, text the player. Remember to ask them to confirm that they’ve seen the text; otherwise it may just sit at the bottom of their backpack until two hours after the session has wrapped up.)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 1A: INVESTIGATING THE PAST

March 10th, 2007
The 15th Day of Amseyl  in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

(more…)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1A: Investigating the Past

In which our heroes meet for the first time, resulting in confusion, loose tongues, startling revelations of a largely temporal nature, and a moment of abject panic…

When my players realized that they had been subjected to time-skipping amnesia, the response of Agnarr’s player was pretty straight-forward: “You son of a bitch!”

Starting a campaign with amnesia, of course, is something of a cliche. The video game industry, in particular, is completely infatuated with it because it allows the player to completely equate themselves with the character (both are ignorant of themselves and the world around them).

The conceit of “missing time”, on the other hand, offers a slightly different dynamic. Having taken the time to work up detailed character backgrounds in collaboration with each player, I was effectively stealing something from them. (And this was particularly felt by those who participated in the preludes.) The resulting sense of combined outrage and mystery serves as a great motivator and spring-board: It binds the PCs to a common purpose; gives them something to immediately pursue; and strongly motivates them to achieve it.

More generally, these kinds of “metaplot mysteries” can serve as strong backbones that can hold entire campaigns together.

At this point of course, as a GM, you need to be able to actually deliver on those promises. Unlike Chris Carter or J.J. Abrams, it will behoove you to actually put together an outline of your metaplot mystery. So channel your inner-Straczynski and get to work: You don’t have to be exhaustively detailed in this effort; you just need to provide a roadmap that will keep you on track as you and your players explore the mystery.

(In the case of the “missing memories”, I prepped a 4 page outline detailing the true history of what had happened to each of them between their last conscious memory and awaking in Ptolus. This outline is general in parts, but gets more specific regarding the last few days before they awoke.)

Next, you’ll want to start presenting the clues the PCs will need to start piecing together the metaplot mystery. For this, of course, you’ll want to observe the Three Clue Rule. Taking Node-Based Scenario Design into account probably isn’t a bad idea, either, but you’ll probably want to consider some of the lessons I talk about in “The Two Prongs of Mystery Design“.

Specifically, the clues of a metaplot mystery are usually delivered tangentially through other scenarios. From time to time, of course, you may have “metaplot scenarios” — but the whole point of a metaplot is that it isn’t the plot. (In this sense, Buffy the Vampire Slayer often had a metaplot. 24 never had a metaplot; it just had season-long plots.)

Presenting a metaplot mystery can often be a tightrope-walk: On the one hand, there’s a strong temptation to blow your load. The metaplot is, after all, really cool — and you want to awe and amaze your players with the really cool stuff. But if you reveal too much too quickly, you can’t put the rabbit back in the hat.

On the other hand, you can’t be so stingy with the details of the metaplot mystery that it withers and dies from lack of interest and attention.

In the specific case of these missing memories, I broadly prepped several “layers” of clues: Stuff they were likely to find out immediately (by investigating their rooms and personal possessions); stuff they could find out fairly quickly (by following up those leads and/or digging deeply); and then additional leads that would come to them over the course of the campaign (or crop up in later scenarios). I also prepped several flashbacks with various trigger conditions (which would give them immediate glimpses of their lost past).

(There are also a couple of additional layers beyond that; but they constitute spoilers. So, like my players, you’ll just have to wait and see.)

Basically, the idea is that I’m treating the metaplot mystery as its own, independent scenario — or meta-scenario — that I plan out completely ahead of time and then lay over the top of the rest of the campaign as it develops.

(Actually, “meta-scenario” is probably the best way to think of this. I’m going to change the title of this post.)

Of course, your meta-scenario won’t really be completely divorced from the rest of the campaign. If you’re doing things properly, there will be a feedback loop between the meta-scenario and the specific scenarios that develop through play. Once again, it’s important to see the meta-scenario as a roadmap — not necessarily the road itself. (If that makes sense.)