DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 48C: Entering the Tomb

Passing down a short flight of open stairs and through an antechamber of sorts, they entered another large chamber, this one with a wide pit in the center of it.

Carefully approaching the edge of the pit, Tee looked down to find it tightly packed with two dozen or more ancient zombies – their grey and desiccated flesh stretched cross across browned bones. When they became aware of their presence, the undead things began to claw wildly at the walls, although they found no purchase and there seemed little risk of their escape.

“Desiccated?” Agnarr said. “That sounds flammable.”

As the PCs reach what we now think of as Tier 2, you have the opportunity to start using certain monsters for effect rather than threat.

When they were 1^st level, the PCs nervously peered in every direction, ready to leap into action at even the slightest hint of movement. They really had no choice: Even a rabid house cat might prematurely end their adventuring careers with a couple of unlucky dice rolls.

As you drift into higher levels, however, some of those early foes become so trivial that they no longer pose any meaningful threat, even in great numbers. Take, for example, the pit of zombies in this session. Even if one of the PCs had been thrown headlong into this shambling horde, they’d almost certainly have been okay: If they hadn’t torched them, Nasira could’ve turned them en masse. And if she hadn’t, then Agnarr could have easily cleaved his way through them.

As a GM, it’s easy to respond to this trivialization of challenge by simply eliminating such encounters. And, of course, to some extent, that exactly what you should do.

But what this ignores is that encounters can be – and should be! – about more than just combat challenges. If you’ve been conditioned to think of D&D as simply a string of combat encounters connected with a thin patina of exposition, this may seem strange. But encounters should also be serving the needs of mood, theme, logic, and world-building.

This particular pit is helping to set tone and show the history of the Tomb (the upper levels have been abandoned for a long, long time). It also reinforces theme and just generally creeps the players out. (It could have also been significant as a bargaining chip when the PCs went down to the second level of the dungeon, but (a) as we can see here, that never happened and (b) I no longer recall if that was intentional on my part when designing the dungeon or if it was just one of those happy accidents.)

Facing encounters that would have once been daunting but have instead become trivial also communicates something about the PCs’ changing place in the world. It’s also important to remember that, even though such encounters might pose little or no risk to the PCs, they can still be deadly dangers to their PCs’ allies and other NPCs in the dungeon (and showing that to the players can also be a great way of reinforcing everything they’ve gained through their hard work).

For example, maybe the PCs can cut a swath through the goblins on the top level of the dungeon with ease, but the presence of those goblins may nevertheless explain why the lizardfolk have been trapped down on the second level of the dungeon.

Undead, in particular, can have a lot of this worldbuilding potential. They can last a long time and continue communicating a lot about a dungeon’s original purpose and its history, either through their presence, their actions, or even just their clothing. And, in terms of challenge, there’s something deeply satisfying about watching foes that once intimidated you go scurrying away in terror after the cleric turns them.

You can take a lesson from that when running non-undead foes, too: You don’t need a divine gift for a mob of goblins to go scurrying for their hidey-holes after seeing the barbarian slice-and-dice their comrades by the dozen.

It feels great for the players, but can also present a fun twist where the trivial mooks raise the alarm and bring much dangerous foes into the fray.

Campaign Journal: Session 48D – Running the Campaign: Art Handouts
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 48B: The Fall of Tepal

The biggest story of the morning hours had been a mysterious fire in the Guildsmans’ District – an apartment building on Storm Street had burned to the ground in flames that witnesses reported to be a bright, phosphorescent blue (leading authorities to suspect magical arsonry).

But that news was being rapidly forgotten by the larger story sweeping across the city: An army had marched out of the Southern Desert, taken the city-state of Tepal by surprise, and sacked it.

Nasira was taken aback by the news. Learning that the news had arrived in Ptolus on three refugee ships she headed towards the docks. Speaking with passengers from the ships, however, she could discover little in the way of detail: The ships had sailed free just as the city was falling, and they could tell her nothing about the fate of her temple or the city itself once it had been taken.

At the beginning of this session, the PCs were visited by Talia and Marcus Hunter, delvers interested in exploring a section of Ghul’s Labyrinth which the PCs had previously discovered earlier in the campaign.

The Hunters are from Dark Tidings, an adventure by Monte Cook that was published back in 2009. In the original module, the PCs are hired by friends of the Hunters who want the PCs to save the Hunter expedition, which has gone missing in the Dungeons beneath Ptolus. If the PCs take the job, they’re given a full briefing on the back story, a map of the Dungeon area where the Hunters disappeared, and a list of the members of the Hunter expedition.

It’s a fun adventure and I wanted to incorporate it into the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign. One option, obviously, would be to run the scenario hook as written: The Hunter’s friends show up out of the blue and want to hire the PCs.

Instead, what I’m doing in this session is laying groundwork for the future adventure.

First, I’ve performed a campaign stitch: The Hunters aren’t going to disappear in some random section of the Dungeon. Instead, their explorations will be directly connected to the actions of the PCs. This means that I can also use Dark Tidings to answer the lingering question of what lies beyond one of the bluesteel doors in the Laboratory of the Beast. Plus, it lets me develop the Delver’s Guild and its inner workings a bit (with the delving contract), while also packaging up a unique, flavorful reward for the PCs (in the form of earning a percentage of the Hunter’s delving haul). All of which is also, conveniently, a great way to get the players invested in the fate of the Hunter party.

Second, of course, I’m setting up a reason for the PCs to be hired to save the Hunters when they go missing later in the campaign: It’s a section of Ghul’s Labyrinth they’re already familiar with, making them uniquely qualified for the job. There’s nothing wrong with random patrons popping up out of the blue to offer the PCs jobs on the basis of nothing but their reputation, but I’ve generally found it more effective when you can make things a little more personal. Not only does this make the campaign feel cohesive, it also means that the player’s choices have weight. (We tried to save the missing child at Greyson House, which led us to explore Ghul’s Labyrinth. We cleverly discovered a password which allowed us to discover the Laboratory of the Beast. We tried to sell the rare treasures we discovered there, which led to the deaths of the researchers from House Erthuo and, much later, the Hunters approaching us.)

Sometimes this sort of stuff will just organically happen during play. Sometimes, though, you need to look ahead and set things up. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have everything prepped ahead of time: You just need a general idea of what an upcoming scenario might look like. In this case, I’m setting up a published scenario, but we could just as easily imagine an original scenario where the only thing I really know is that (a) an adventuring party will approach the PCs and (b) will later go missing in order motivate further exploration of Ghul’s Labyrinth.

Published adventures, unfortunately, often overlook this type of groundwork. Since the author doesn’t know the particular details of your campaign, it’s easiest to have everything about the scenario arise from a tabula rasa. I think this is a mistake, though, and in my own work, as well as my work as an RPG Producer at Modiphius and Atlas Games, I emphasized the importance of including Groundwork tools that GMs could use to set up published scenarios in their own campaigns. (See Design Notes: Scenario Tools for more details on this.)

Regardless of what published adventures may do, however, as GMs I think we should always be looking fore these opportunities in our own campaigns.

In the case of the Hunters, the payoff for this groundwork would come eight sessions later., and the PCs wouldn’t actually go after the Hunters until Session 62, a full year and a half later in real time.

Sometimes you need to plant those seeds deep.

In fact, this sessions also features groundwork for a completely different adventure, with the Fall of Tepal being connected to multiple future scenarios.

Campaign Journal: Session 48C – Running the Campaign: Undead for Effect
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 48A: A Night in the Necropolis

Standing outside the door were a young man with his brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a lithe woman with black hair down past her shoulders. The young man stretched out his hand, “My name’s Marcus Hunter. We’re looking for Tithenmamiwen. We have business from the Delver’s Guild.”

Agnarr slammed the door in their face and went back to polishing his sword.

I love a good prop.

They’re immersive, riveting, persistent, and just plain fun for the players.

There are all kinds of props, of course, but among the best are interactive ones. There’s just something deeply powerful about the players physically interacting with something that their characters are also physically interacting with.

For similar reasons, although props are great as a vector of information (and that’s certainly the primary function for most of the props I create), it’s fantastic when a prop is something that the characters can actually use. Something they can get proactive with, not just react to.

And this is why I love writing up legal contracts as props.

First, getting them to sign the contract as their characters gives you that awesome immersive hit. (One of my players has the signed copy of the Hunter contract safely stowed amongst their notes.)

But the contract is also a legal instrument. It’s more likely than not that the PCs will be able to use that contract to further their agenda: Protecting themselves from someone trying to take advantage of them, or leveraging the terms of the contract to force the outcome they want.

(Or, alternatively, an NPC using the contract against them. Which is almost as good.)

There’s a really cool supplement for Mothership called Breach of Contract, which is just a full book of tear-out form contracts that you and your players can fill out. For obvious reasons, I’m looking forward to figuring out how to integrate these into my Mothership open table.

If you’re looking to create your own contract handouts, I recommend googling real world contracts — particularly seeking out historical examples if that’s your milieu — and then stripping them down to the bare essentials. Borrow overall structure and key turns of phrase for flavor, but I don’t think it’s necessary to waste a lot of time customizing a 30-page pseudo-legal document, even if that’s technically what should be signed. (Think of producing something closer to a memorandum of understanding, if this bugs you. But, generally speaking, anything longer than a page is probably overkill.)

Don’t be afraid of letting the PCs renegotiate the terms of the contract. That might involve just crossing out and rewriting terms on the physical handout, or you may need to make some digital revisions and print up a new copy. Whatever works.

Campaign Journal: Session 48B – Running the Campaign: Laying Groundwork
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 47C: Home Suite Home

Several hours into Ranthir’s candlelit researches, something sinister slithered under the door. Ranthir, intent on the strange intricacies of technomancy, noticed it not as it slipped across the room and attached itself to Tee.

Its first touch was so gentle that Tee didn’t even feel it. And when its voracious, lamprey-like mouths fastened onto multiple points along her spine it was too late… it had taken control of her body. As it drained her lifeblood, she twitched violently on the bed.

Ranthir, unfortunately, remained oblivious.

In The Art of Pacing, I talked about bangs, which are the big, explosive moments that launch scenes. Bangs come in a lot of different forms, and they can be prepped and discovered through play in a lot of different ways. One way that I use them is as a timeline of bangs, a list of events in my campaign status document that are going to happen in the PCs’ future. In practice, these bangs aren’t fully formed — “they’re more like bullets waiting to be fired. When the moment arrives, the actual bang will be customized to the circumstances of the PCs.”

The spineseeker which attacks in this session is an example of what these bangs look like in practice. Here’s how it appeared in the campaign status document:

2. TILAXIC ASSASSIN (9/25/790)

• The cultists summon a tilaxic, one of the Elder Brood.
• Tilaxic (Spineseeker, Book of Fiends 2, p. 58)
• Saavia (from NOD1; she has more levels and Pythoness House biocrystal breastplate)

Let’s break this down a bit.

First, this entry is #2 because it appears on a prep sheet titled “Laurea’s Doom.” This sheet contained multiple responses I planned for the cultists to take after they identified Tee as being “Laurea” (who had infiltrated their ranks and attacked the Temple of Deep Chaos, back in sessions 27 and 33, respectively).

I prepped this sheet as I was getting ready for Session 39, and then added the following entries to my master Event List:

9/22/790 (Evening): Chaos cultists identify Tee as being “Laurea.” They attack the Ghostly Minstel. (Laurea’s Doom)

9/25/790: Cultists send Tilaxic Assassin. (Laurea’s Doom)

9/28/790: Arveth uses Dais of Vengeance on Tee. (Laurea’s Doom)

These would have been interspersed with a bunch of other upcoming events.

Note the “(Laurea’s Doom)” reference, which reminds me to reference the prep sheet for these events. Not every event is supported by a full prep sheet, only those that require enough that they would clutter up the Event List. In this case, the prep sheet included a stat block for Saavia.

The spineseeker is taken, as noted, from The Book of Fiends, a monster supplement published by Green Ronin. (I’ve talked previously about looting bestiaries for my campaign prep.) I’m fairly certain that I created the “tilaxic” species name.

The reference to the “Pythoness House biocrystal breastplate” is one of the items taken by Wuntad and the other chaos cultists when they ambushed the PCs in Session 23. A good example of how you can take a bunch of different loose threads and tie them all together to set up a new situation.

USING THE BANG

As I mentioned before, the bang is incomplete. It needs to be plugged into the specific context of the game session to turn it into an actual scene.

What I know is that:

• There is a spineseeker, which is being handled by Saavia.
• At some point on the 25^th of Kadal they’re going to try to assassinate Tee.

And that’s basically it. At the time I slotted this bang in to my campaign status document, these events were still days away. I had no idea where the PCs would be or what they’d be doing on that date.

So when the 25^th rolls around, I’m looking at the list of current bangs on my campaign status document — of which this is only one — and I’m keeping my eyes open for any moment during play in which the bangs could be useful to

• escalate the action;
• fill a dead spot;
• logically happen;
• or basically anything else that makes me say “oh! let’s do it!’

There are limitations to this, of course. For example, the spineseeker won’t show up in the Banewarrens because the chaos cultists don’t know about the Banewarrens. So if the PCs, for example, spent the entire day of the 25^th in the Banewarrens, then this bang probably wouldn’t happen. (Although perhaps I might trigger it offscreen and the PCs might return to the Ghostly Minstrel to discover that there have been some strange deaths on the premises in their absence.)

Other bangs might be more restricted in time or place or circumstance (or they might be less so). Regardless, if the right moment arrives, I’ll use the bang (crossing it off on my campaign status document). And if it doesn’t, then that bang goes back in the bandolier (or simply gets deleted if it’s no longer relevant or useful).

In this case, getting ambushed at the Ghostly Minstrel was probably always the most likely use for the bang. But that can still leave a lot of questions that can only be answered in the moment: Who’s asleep? Who’s awake? Where are they? What time is it? And so forth.

So there’s a bunch of variables that can, literally, be in play here. But, in practice, it’s really pretty simple: You look for the moment where the bang makes sense. You combine what you prepped with the given circumstances of what’s happening in the campaign at that moment. You pull the trigger and frame up the scene.

The bang itself often requires very little prep, because the alchemy of the table will supply you with all the rich context you need to bring it to life.

Campaign Journal: Session 48A – Running the Campaign: Contract Handouts
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 47B: Children of Mrathrach

Mahdoth rotated towards them. “I’m going to release you now.”

And he did.

The artificial high of ebullient friendship fled from them, but not the memory of what they had experienced.

Mahdoth asked for their assistance in mounting a defense against whatever was coming. “Since I seem to find myself rather short-handed this evening.”

Games like D&D, Numenera, and Shadowrun have bestiaries filled with strange critters. The best of these will be filled with clever and creative lore that will inspire countless adventures and help you bring the creatures to vivid life at the gaming table. But what’s also important is that each creature is a little dollop of mechanical novelty.

It’s one of the ways in which fantastical games can be easier to run than games set strictly in the real world: Once you’ve introduced those fantastical elements, it becomes a lot easier to mechanically distinguish opponents — for a dragon to be different from a beholder which is different from a rust monster which is different than a black pudding. And that mechanical distinction, in turns, helps to keep combat-oriented play varied and fresh.

For this very reason, of course, these bestiaries are primarily designed to give GMs opponents that they can funnel into combat encounters: Take monster. Plug into combat system. Out pops 15 to 45 minutes of fun.

But here’s the secret: The same dollop of mechanical novelty that makes a creature a unique opponent can also mix things up and provide a breath of fresh air for the players. All you need to do is give the PCs an opportunity to fight with monsters at their side, whether that’s

• taming exotic pets,
• recruiting fantastical hirelings,
• forming a temporary alliance with a beholder, or
• having one of the PCs magically transformed into a harpy.

Not every monster, of course, will be appropriate or effective as a constant companion or permanent fixture in the party. (At least, not in every campaign.) But for a single fight or short-term alliance? You can have success with literally any monster, as long as the circumstances are right.

When a monster has joined the party, one option to consider is letting one of the players actually run the monster. (At least during fight scenes, if not otherwise.) It’s another nice twist and really mixes things up for the players. It can also be used to let players who PCs aren’t in the current fight scene still participate.

To make this work smoothly, thought, you need to make sure that the monster’s stat block is (a) in a format you can easily hand over (i.e., a separate sheet or paper or digital handout) and (b) organized in a way that will make the creature easy to pick up and start playing immediately. (It’s surprising how many games feature stat blocks that are opaque and difficult to use. If you’re planning to do this, you may need to, for example, prep a cheat sheet for the monster’s spells or abilities so that the player won’t need to look them up, possibly in books they don’t own.)

Ultimately, variety is the spice of life. And the best way to keep things fresh is often to shuffle these monstrous wonders along so that they don’t become commonplace or standard operating procedure.

The best part, though, is that once your players start thinking of the “monsters” of your campaign setting as a recruitable resource, you won’t have to set up these situations. You’ll just have to follow your players’ lead.

Campaign Journal: Session 47C – Running the Campaign: Inserting Bangs
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index