DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 39A: Chamber of Bone

Tee felt the ratlings throw their weight against the door, but she was able to hold it against their charge.

Tee signaled for the others to back up out of the chamber of bone, bracing the door against another pounding from the ratlings on the other side. Then she jumped back herself and, as the ratlings charged through, shot out the pillars of bone.

A cascade of bone collapsed. Several of the ratlings, pouring into the room, were struck about the heads and shoulders; one was even knocked unconscious by a particularly heavy chunk of pelvis. Others slipped and tripped, their feet turned treacherously by the shifting mass beneath their feet.

In Rulings in Practice: Traps, I said that you’ll know you have the balance right when the players start harvesting supplies from the traps or finding other ways of turning them to their advantage. In practice, this is probably a specific application of a wider principle: The more time players spend creatively interacting with stuff in the game world, the more you’ll know that (a) you’re succeeding in including cool stuff that’s bringing the world to vivid life and (b) that you’ve got great players.

Conversely, if you’re a player, pay attention to your character’s surroundings and look for opportunities to turn them to your advantage.

In this case, my players were very on top of things. Here’s what the key for this room looked like:

AREA 8 – BONE CHAMBER

The walls of this chamber are stacked high with bones — human bones. They have been arranged in intricate and detailed patterns with an effect which is entirely ghastly. Four pillars of interlocking skulls and femus reach from the floor to the ceiling.

Handout: The Bone Chamber

Bone Pillars: Any blow to one of these pillars (AC 3) will cause it to collapse, causing a cascade of bone. Characters within 5 ft. of the pillar must make a Reflex save (DC 15). On a failure, they are dazed and must make a Fortitude save (DC 12) to avoid being stunned.

Swinging Weapons: Characters who swing weapons within range of a bone pillar must succeed on a Reflex save (DC 10) to avoid striking the pillar. Alternatively, they can carefully avoid the pillar while making their attack — this requires no saving throw, but does impose a -2 penalty to their attack rolls.

(This room was inspired by the Sedlec Ossuary. The handout consisted of photos from the actual ossuary, which you can see in the linked campaign log.)

In addition to just being a creepy room, I’d intended for the ratlings to take advantage of the environmental hazard. The PCs, however, were savvy enough to be suspicious of the ones, realize they were precarious, and then almost immediately turn the situation to their own advantage.

In this case, the idea of the bone piles being precarious had occurred to me during prep. But the key thing is just including the bone piles as set dressing in the first place. Even if I didn’t have an answer prepped, a nigh identical scene could have emerged simply from the players asking, “Do the piles look unstable?”

Of course, it’s not just the bone stacks they’re using here. They start by using the door to control the start of the campaign, giving them time to estalblish their tactical position (as we’ve also discussed in Running the Campaign: Battles at the Door). And then, at the end of the fight, Agnarr rips the crossbow bolts out of his shoulder and uses them as improvised weapons!

When you fill your description of the world with interesting details, you’re providing the raw ingredients. Once you’ve done that, it become very easy for the whole group to start cooking.

Campaign Journal: Session 39B – Running the Campaign: Clues Linking Scenarios
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 39A: CHAMBER OF BONE

June 14th, 2009
The 22nd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

They headed north along the tunnel. It quickly straightened out… and then dumped into an open sewer channel.

Agnarr stooped to the ground and quickly examined it for tracks. “They’re wading.”

Elestra wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting.”

But there was no way to follow the ratlings’ trail through the sewage. So they backtracked to the T-intersection. There they pulled Silion’s body out of Tee’s bag of holding, placed a black hood over her head, and had Nasira use her holy touch to heal her wounds.

Silion resisted their questioning, at first feigning unconsciousness and then proving stubbornly intransigent. “I don’t talk to humans,” she snarled.

“She’s not human,” Elestra said, pointing unhelpfully to Tee.

“She can’t actually see me,” Tee snapped. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

“We could cut her whiskers off,” Agnarr suggested. Silion snarled.

“Last chance,” Tee said. “Where are the children?”

Silion laughed. “You’re too late! Malleck has them!”

Tee slammed a dagger into her heart. They re-secured the collar and stuck her back in the bag.

“Maybe her tongue will be looser next time we wake her up,” Ranthir said.

“If there is a next time,” Tee said darkly.

CHAMBER OF BONE

The northern tunnel was effectively a dead end for the time being, so they turned south. In this direction the tunnel twisted several times, and then opened into a cramped chamber stacked high with bones – human bones. The bones had been arranged in intricate and detailed patterns with an effect that was entirely ghastly. Four pillars of interlocking skulls and femurs reached from the floor to the ceiling, supporting a vaulting horror of skeletal remains.

Tee saw that these pillars were particularly precarious and warned the others to be careful. They hung back while she proceeded cautiously into the midst of the bones. The tunnel continued further to the south, but Tee took the time to carefully examine the ghastly nooks and crannies of the chamber. In the far corner she found a section of bones that could be pulled free, revealing a hidden door in the wall beyond.

She opened the door just in time to see half a dozen ratlings charging down a long hall toward her. With lightning reflexes she instinctively slammed the door shut again and threw her shoulder against it. She felt the ratlings throw their weight against it, but she was able to hold it against their charge.

Tee signaled for the others to back up out of the chamber of bone, holding the door against another pounding from the ratlings on the other side. Then she jumped back herself and, as the ratlings charged through, shot out the pillars of bone.

A cascade of bone collapsed. Several of the ratlings, pouring into the room, were struck about the heads and shoulders; one was even knocked unconscious by a particularly heavy chunk of pelvis. Others slipped and tripped, their feet turned treacherously by the shifting mass beneath their feet.

Agnarr and Tor had positioned themselves in each of the narrow tunnels leading out of the chamber and the brunt of the ratling charge had been disrupted. They easily held their ground against the dazed and confused ratlings… Or, at least, they did until a ratbrute came trundling around into the southern corridor behind Tor’s defensive position.

The ratbrute thrust his greatsword at Elestra (who had thought herself perfectly safe behind Tor’s broad shoulders). She gave a little cry of outrage as she ducked out of the way. Nasira, standing next to her, backpedaled rapidly towards Tor.

With a flurry of his blade, however, Tor finished off the ratlings facing him and turned to face the ratbrute – which fell back towards a larger chamber to the south in the hope of getting a better (and wider) footing. Tor denied it the opportunity – pursuing it down the hall with quick steps; parrying its large, awkward blade; and slicing it up with vicious, lightning-spiked blows.

The two remaining ratlings in the chamber of bone – facing Agnarr and seeing what had happened to their comrades – fell back through the secret door. Agnarr gave pursuit, ripping an axe from his bandolier and hurling it from the door. The axe caught one of the ratlings in the shoulder, but the ratling – hissing and snarling in rage – ripped the blade out of its own body and hurled it back at Agnarr, catching him in the shoulder, as well.

Agnarr fell back a step, giving both ratlings an opportunity to draw hand crossbows. They fired, both striking Agnarr in the opposite shoulder.

Agnarr roared. He charged down the length of the hall, ripped the bolts out of his shoulders, shoving one into the heart of a ratling and plunging the other into the eye socket of the second.

Running the Campaign: Using Scenery & Turning Traps – Campaign Journal: Session 39B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38D: Arrows & Skulls

The room beyond was filled with carefully arranged piles of bulky, broken machinery bearing the unmistakable patina of age. Kneeling amidst this equipment – her back to the door – was a single ratling dressed in pale yellow robes.

“Not now! I don’t want to be disturbed!” she hissed.

Tee put an arrow through the back of her skull.

“… was that Silion?” Tee looked back at the others. “I think that was Silion!”

If you’ve been hanging around the Alexandrian for a while, this is a moment you may recognize. I’ve talked about it in articles, videos, and So You Want To Be a Game Master, among other places. When I talk about not fudging your dice rolls, this is a moment I’m thinking about.

Because Silion is a big deal. I believe the PCs first became aware of her in Session 9, which means the players have literally been hunting her for years. And we just introduced a new PC whose backstory and primary campaign hook were linked to her!

So if we were going to prep plots or enforce preconceived outcomes or try to “preserve” the dramatic moment, this would be THE MOMENT to do it, right? Silion can’t die like this! A single critical hit to the back of her head? The PCs never even saw her face! This is a disaster!

… except, of course, it wasn’t.

It’s been just over fifteen years since this moment happened at the game table, and my players still talk about it. They’ll probably be talking about it until the day they die. It’s a cherished memory from the game table.

Okay, but… why?

The Principles of RPG Villainy breaks this down in more detail, but the short version is that, for the players, this was not anticlimactic in any way. It was a huge reward for all their hard work: They had, in fact, worked for years to get here. They’d come up with clever plans to infiltrate the temple (even if not all of them had worked). They’d successfully snuck their way down to this inner sanctum.

They earned this.

And that’s why, a few minutes later, they can gleefully taunt Silion’s mate, Urnest, with what they’ve done. Because they were the ones who did it.

If I had fudged the results — maybe by boosting her hit points or bumping up her AC so that they couldn’t confirm the critical hit — that would have been a huge letdown for the players. Sure, they would have gotten to face off against Silion and maybe she’d summon reinforcements and there’d be an epic battle and the PCs would triumph or whatever… but none of that would have been something they actually did. It would have just been a thing that happened to them.

And the really key insight is that, conversely, if I’d tried to pre-script and force this moment — surprising Silion and shooting her in the back of the head! — it would have also fallen flat. Because it still wouldn’t have been something that the players actually did.

This is why moments like this — moments of great truth at the table — are so important. Because they’ll teach your players that what’s happening in the game is really happening. It’s not a script. It’s not a trick. If they achieve great victories, it’s because they actually earned those victories. And if they suffer horrible defeats, that’s a burden they have to bear… because they know it could have gone a different way if they’d made different choices.

As the players learn that lesson — as the belief of it seeps down into their souls — it will literally breathe life into every other moment of your campaign. It will elevate everything you and your players do to a new level.

When you truly play to find out — when you actively play scenarios instead of prepping plots — you’ll discover that moments like this aren’t unusual. What makes this particular moment notable, perhaps, is that it simply might be the purest example possible:

Boom.

Arrow to the head.

Campaign Journal: Session 39A – Running the Campaign: Using Scenery & Traps
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38C: Scouting the Temple

Nasira quickly muttered an incantive prayer and projected a sense of clairaudience into the sanctuary hall below. She was in time to hear the ratmen deciding to summon reinforcements. She quickly informed Tee of what was happening, and Tee rushed back to the street in case the ratmen headed that way (in which case she could follow them).

But she saw nothing: The ratmen didn’t leave through the front door. Instead, Nasira heard the sound of scraping stone…

When I ‘m prepping published dungeons, I have a tendency to make them BIGGER.

Sometimes I think this might be a bad habit, but the results in actual play seem to be good.

What’s really going on is a couple of things: First, when I’m planning a campaign, I’m often pulling stuff in from a bunch of different sources. Sometimes that’s two different adventures that get linked to each other using node-based design, but sometimes I have two different “ruins of a dwarven city” adventures… and couldn’t they be the same dwarven city? I can just make one of the adventures Level 1 of the dungeon and the other adventure Level 2, and now, instead of two small dungeon cities, I have one BIG dungeon city that truly lives up to the name. Plus I can mix all the scenario hooks from both adventures and create all sorts of dynamic vectors for the PCs!

(See The Campaign Stitch for a deeper dive into this sort of thing.)

The second thing that happens is that I simply get inspired. As I’m reading through an adventure, all of the adventure’s cool ideas will start sparking off new cool ideas in my own brain: Sometimes those are ideas I can just add to the existing room key, but in other cases it’ll make more sense to pile ‘em all up and fill a new sub-level with them.

The Temple of the Rat God is a good example of what this looks like in actual practice.

This adventure exists because the Nights of Dissolution mini-campaign, which was one of the building blocks for In the Shadow of the Spire, features several of the chaos cults in Ptolus working with each other. And I basically thought, “Why not all of them?” So I went through the Ptolus and Chaositech sourcebooks and started grabbing chaos cults. Then I made a few of my own. Then I started linking them together with clues, creating a node-based campaign structure.

The Temple of the Rat God comes from the Ptolus sourcebook (p. 394), where it looks like this:

As you can see, it’s not fully keyed. So I took the map, made some modifications, and keyed it:

You can see I’ve added additional hallways leading off the edges of this map and connecting to other maps.

Elsewhere in Ptolus there’s a Ratman Nest (p. 442). This is a fully keyed adventure designed for the DM to drop it pretty much anywhere in the city sewers where the PCs might be chasing ratmen:

I decided to put it here, once again with some minor modifications. (You can see the changes on the map above, including the addition of a sinkhole and the connection to the temple.)

During my campaign prep, I’d also thumbed through my monster books for inspiration. Knowing that ratlings and the Temple of the Rat God were on the menu, I scooped up cranium rats from the 3^rd Edition Fiend Folio and the rylkar (dangerous fire rats) from Monster Manual V. (I also linked the latter to ash rats from Monster Manual II.) I rekeyed the Ratman Nest map to include cranium rat nests, and then added a whole new level down the sinkhole — the Rylkar Depths:

The result is a fairly expansive example (showcasing, as it does, a wide gamut of techniques all coming together), but it’s what I enjoy about working with published adventures: When the creativity of the author and the creativity of the game master combine, you end up with richer and more varied material than you could have achieved on your own.

I’m a really big believer in the power of collaborative creation, whatever form it might take.

This is a topic we’ll also likely revisit as the PCs begin delving deeper into the Banewarrens. There, too, I took inspiration from the core concept of the adventure and then drew on a wide variety of sources to create fresh wards: What else could the Banelord have locked away down there?

Campaign Journal: Session 38D – Running the Campaign: The Secret Life of Silion
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index