Session 17A: Shilukar’s Lair

The features revealed as their hoods fell back were those of goblins – but goblins possessed of sickly gray skin. More disturbingly, the eyes and mouths of each goblin had been sewn shut with thick, black string. Despite this, all of them moved with sure, fluid motions.

In the Shadow of the Spire is actually the fifth campaign I’ve run in my Western Lands setting. I believe I’ve actually previously discussed that Ptolus first appeared at my gaming table 5+ years earlier when a group passed through the city and noted its distinctive Spire as they passed from the Southern Sea back towards Deepfall Pass in the west.

One of the players in that campaign, Dave, was Agnarr’s creator. Two other players had also previously played in Western Lands campaigns.

One of the cool things I think you can do when running multiple campaigns in the same setting (whether concurrently or over time) is to have crossovers between those campaigns. And also to have deep, long-term mysteries that are intrinsic to the setting and which are only slowly revealed

A good example of this sort of thing, from Monte Cook’s original Ptolus campaign, is the revelation that the entire world of Praemal is actually a planar prison for demons. Everyone else is just stuck there by accident, and the demons are constantly trying to dissolve the bonds of the prison and escape. That’s the kind of thing which can be quietly true for any number of campaigns – with various enigmas suggesting the truth only for the final revelation to really blow people’s minds.

(This particular set of metaphysics, it should be noted, isn’t true of the Western Lands, which is one of the reasons why my version of Ptolus diverges from Monte Cook’s, and does so rather severely in some key areas.)

Of course, this sort of thing doesn’t require tapping into the fundamental metaphysics of the entire campaign world. Sometimes it might be, “Hey, you know Good King George? The guy who’s been the beneficent monarch ruling over the kingdom for the last three campaigns? Turns out he’s actually a mind-controlled puppet and the whole kingdom is being run by the drow. And he has been his entire life.”

It’s also fun to have references to the PCs from the other campaigns and/or the things that they did. Those enduring legacies across years of play can really invest players into the setting, knowing that their actions will resonate not just in the campaign itself, but across campaigns. That perhaps players who they have never even met will be affected by what they’ve done today.

(The most ambitious example of this I’ve ever attempted was when the players in one campaign met the future versions of their PCs from the other campaign. Have I told that story?)

On the other hand, sometimes these crossovers are just, “Hey! Remember that cool character/monster/location from the last campaign?!”

Dave, for example, recognized the name Ritharius from that previous campaign. The revelation of Ritharius’ actions later in the campaign would have carried a little extra oomph because of that, I think. (And when Dave left the campaign I made a point of building Ritharius into Tor’s background to reposition that oomph.)

These creepy goblins are a little bit of both.

They first appeared in one of the earliest scenarios I ever ran for 3^rd Edition, a remix of The Sunless Citadel in which the lower levels of the scenario had been transformed into a much more horrific venue. In both cases, the nature of these goblins points towards the much deeper truth that [SPOILERS REDACTED] and also that [SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED]. But mostly they would have just been a cool cameo that players from that campaign would recognize.

Unfortunately, the player who would have recognized the goblins left the campaign before they showed up. C’est la vie.

This does highlight, however, that this technique can be of arguably limited value because there is a limited audience capable of appreciating the full context of these crossovers and callbacks. I would argue, however, that when done properly these things still have value even when no one is necessarily there to directly appreciate them.

Consider, for example, the success J.R.R. Tolkien had in using the then-unpublished Silmarillion to create mythological depth in The Lord of the Rings. Queen Berúthiel’s cats (a reference in Lord of the Rings which, infamously unlike many of Tolkien’s other “historical” allusions, was created off-the-cuff as he was writing) are also a thing, of course, but there is, I believe, both a qualitative and practical difference between such off-the-cuff improvisations and a fully-integrated body of lore.

The problem, of course, is that creating fully-integrated bodies of lore is a time-consuming process. And as cool as it can be a player digs into something and discovers that there is, in fact, a vast ocean of lore to explored there, the odds of wasted prep are quite high. Campaigns you’ve previously run, however, are inherently “fully-integrated bodies of lore”, and thus this can work both ways: Stuff you’re calling back to is “free prep” for the current campaign (you’ve already prepped it). And, on the flip-side, designing material that’s intended to be useful for campaign after campaign after campaign can be very high value prep indeed.

And, honestly, I find these callbacks and crossovers entertaining and rewarding in their own right on a purely personal level, even if no one else at the table is ever aware of it. In that sense, I am like the watchmaker who carefully filigrees the gear of a pocket watch which the owner will never be able to see: There is a pride and a pleasure in seeing the pieces of a job well done slide into place.

Session 16D: Zavere’s Need

Rastor ran his claw gently down the length of the blade, as if caressing a lover. “The markings here upon the blade are not merely gold, but taurum – the true gold, mined from the Mountains of the East. And there is a thin core of it in the heart of the hilt. The enchantment worked upon this blade sings from the taurum, and its name is nainsyr.”

The subject of whether or not PCs should be allowed to buy magic items is a contentious one. It is felt by many that magic items are That Which Must Be Quested For. They believe that “magic item marts” and the like rob magic items of their majesty, and they consider it absurd that Excalibur might be bartered at some corner store.

Maybe so.

But I’ll note that the buying and selling of magic items has been part of D&D since before it was D&D: The stories of actual play from Arneson’s Blackmoor all suggest a robust magic market, and a number of major powers controlled laboratories and workshops that would crank out magical items for sale (and use!) on a weekly basis.

And as I mentioned in The Local Magic Market, positing a setting where wandering mercenaries go delving into dungeons in order to pull out vast hordes of wealth which frequently include magical treasures, having those wandering mercenaries sell those treasures for gold coins, and then concluding that there’s no way to buy magic items seems unreasonable.

(Although, as I noted at the time, a campaign in which the PCs truly are the only sellers of magic items would be an interesting one, albeit wholly different from a typical D&D campaign.)

In practice, I’ve also found that being able to buy a magic item doesn’t inherently detract from its mystique. Oddly many of the people lamenting the ability to buy magic items are also those who promote minimal backgrounds at character creation because the only thing that matters is what actually happens at the table. In quite a similar fashion, the place where you picked up your +2 sword is only the tiniest fraction of the tales you’ll forge with it. (If it is, in fact, destined to become a memorable and unforgettable treasure.)

At the word, blue lightning sprang from the hilt and ran along the length of the blade – crackling with a vicious smell of ozone. Under her breath Tee murmured, “Let there be lightning.”

You can see an example of this beginning in this week’s campaign journal: The sword Nainsyr goes on to become one of the most recognizable touchstones in the campaign, and its deeds are many and renowned. Perhaps even more remarkable, this specific incident – the shopkeeper pulling out the sword and saying its command word – seems to live quite vividly in the memories of the players who were there. (Most likely because the sword becomes so important.)

Obviously this all happened because I’d put a ton of loving preparation into this sword and was just waiting for an opportunity to give it to the PCs, right?

Well… not really.

Here’s how it went down in play:

• The PCs said, “Tor, you need to get a better sword.” Tor said, “You’re right.”
• They walked across Delver’s Square to Rastor’s weapon shop and said, “Do you have any magic swords?”
• They wanted something better than a basic +1 sword. (If I recall correctly, they’d already looted several of those.)
• I rolled a random magic sword, improvised some cool details about its appearance, and checked my modest lexicon of Elvish words for a command word.
• I delivered these details in character as Rastor.

I then reached for my dice to roll up the next random sword because I had been planning to give the PCs two or three different options to choose from, but never got that far because Tor had already fallen in love with the sword.

This particular incident was one of the anecdotes from actual play I offered in Putting the “Magic” in Magic Items, which I recommend checking out if you’re interested in a discussion about making the magic items in your campaign special… whether you’re buying them from a litorian named Rastor or not.