DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 32B: Shaped by Venom

A beam of scintillating energy shot out from a second door – only slightly cracked – and struck the barbarian in the chest, paralyzing him completely. Agnarr was completely defenseless as one of the thralls thrust its lance-like claw through his chin and up into his skull, killing him instantly.

Oh no! Agnarr! I can’t believe this! How will his death reshape the campaign? What will be the emotional fallout? What new character will his player create?

With the entryway cleared, Dominic came around the corner, looked at Agnarr’s grievous wound, and sighed heavily.

(…)

As Tee came back inside, she saw that Agnarr was shaking his head gingerly – Dominic had resealed the bond between his soul and body.

Oh. Never mind.

For the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, and other 3^rd Edition games, I used a set of house rules for death and dying designed to narratively smooth out the “you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead” up-and-down cycle that can emerge in D&D, but it’s nevertheless true that once you start hitting the upper range of what we’d now call Tier 2 the PCs’ relationship to death shifts.

Raise dead really is a game changer.

This used to be less true. In AD&D, for example, a character could only be returned to life with raise dead or resurrection effects a number of times equal to their Constitution score. (This could eventually be surpassed with a wish spell, but obviously only at a much later point in the campaign.)

(At least in theory. The fact that 3^rd Edition began eliminating such consequences because they weren’t fun is largely because a wide swath of people were already ignoring them because they weren’t fun. But I digress.)

Regardless, most D&D protagonists will reach a point where their relationship is largely unique in storytelling. Superheroes often experience a revolving door of death, but it’s rarely seen that way by the character except for comical asides or fourth-wall breaks. Video games will have stuff like phoenix down that will “revive” companions who are “dead,” but this is usually ludonarrative dissonance with these games nevertheless featuring actual death in their cutscenes.

The same sort of ludonarrative dissonance — a disconnect between the story of the game and the mechanics of the game — is something that will often crop up in D&D campaigns: You instinctively want death to have the same meaning that it does in stories or real life, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Dominic’s reaction to seeing Agnarr’s impaled corpse may be distress, but it really shouldn’t be the same emotional reaction that someone in the real world seeing their companion’s corpse would have. Because the reality Dominic and Agnarr are living in is just fundamentally not the same.

And, in my opinion, that’s OK. It’s fascinating, even.

I think there’s kind of two ways to deal with this.

First, you can try to treat death in a mid- or high-level D&D game as if it were emotionally and factually the same as death in the real world. If you take this approach, though, I think you’ll be best served if you actually house rule the game to match the vision of what you want (and sustain ludonarrative harmony). That would mean getting rid of spells like raise dead, and if you do that, you’ll probably also want to modify the mechanics around dying, your scenario design, or both.

Second, lean into it. Death doesn’t have the same meaning. So what meaning DOES it have, both emotionally and factually? And what are the unique stories that you can tell with that meaning?

A sentiment I often see in a variety of places (discussions of prequel movies, for example) is that if a character can’t die, then there’s nothing at stake. This can be a particularly alluring belief when it comes to a D&D because, other than the outcomes of specific die rolls, death IS the only mechanically defined thing at stake in the game.

But it’s not really true, of course, because the experience of playing D&D is much more than just the sum of its mechanics. And, particularly in fiction, life-or-death is often the least interesting thing at stake.

Campaign Journal: Session 32C – Running the Campaign: Non-Combat Goals
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 32A: Enthralled in Oldtown

But as Agnarr cut through the room at the center of the complex, the floor suddenly buckled beneath him – plunging him down to the first floor in a loud, splintering crash of broken wood.

Looking around, Agnarr saw the problem: Several support walls had been completely destroyed and there were several broken floor beams. He tried climbing back up to the second floor, but the acid-eaten floorboards broke beneath his weight a second time and dropped him back down again.

“I’m just going to stay down here,” Agnarr said, heading towards the far door of the room he’d fallen into.

The PCs should not be in control.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they should not be given control. If they exert control, that’s completely different. In fact, exerting control is likely to be their goal. But a good scenario – particularly a good dungeon scenario – will continually challenge that control and force them to fight to maintain it.

The problem with a lot of modern dungeon design is that it allows the players to trivially control the expedition: The monsters politely wait in their rooms. The PCs are free to engage and disengage with them in whatever way and whatever pace they choose.

The problem is that when the PCs have that level of control, the game breaks in multiple ways: Resource management becomes irrelevant. Weird exploits become reliable. The experience flattens. The challenge vanishes.

When you challenge their control, on the other hand, the players will be forced to respond dynamically, shepherding their resources against unknown threats and thinking outside of the box when faced with situations that are neither ideal nor anticipated.

One way to achieve this is with dynamic opponents (through the use of random encounters, adversary rosters, etc.) that challenge the players’ ability to control the pace and composition of encounters.

But you can also challenge the players’ control over navigation.

This can be done through confusion or deception (e.g., a maze-like dungeon where the PCs literally get lost, illusory walls, undetectable slopes, etc.). It can also be done through metamorphosis (e.g., tunnels collapse or walls move).

But an old school classic is the trap that moves you. The teleportation trap is perhaps the Platonic ideal here: You’re in one place and then, against your will, you are in a completely different place. You are no longer in control of your expedition and you’re going to have to work (and apply your expertise and knowledge) to regain that control (by figuring out where you are and how to get back). As the current session demonstrates, of course, there are other options, including entirely naturalistic ones. In this case, Agnarr has broken through the unstable floor and dropped down to a lower level: That was not a choice the PCs made and now, instead of being able to proceed in an orderly fashion through the dungeon (clearing rooms before methodically descending to the next level), they’ve been thrust into a completely different tactical situation.

The fact that I was using adversary rosters, location timelines, and other active opposition techniques only served to enhance the trap. Intriguingly, in this case, it worked both ways: It wasn’t just the PCs who were thrust into a new tactical situation and needed to figure out how to handle it, the NPCs were also surprised!

And being challenged like that is fun for me, too!

Campaign Journal: Session 32B – Running the Campaign: Death at Tier 2
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 31E: Kabel’s Tale

Returning to the Ghostly Minstrel they spent the better part of an hour cleaning up the coagulate gore and blood that had been spattered across them in the Banewarrens (and only now pausing to reflect on Brother Heth’s blithe reaction to the same).

We all have weak spots as GMs. Stuff that’s tougher for us. Mistakes that we make more often than we’d like. Things we overlook or fail to take advantage of.

One of these for me is keeping an updated “mental portrait” of the PCs in my head (and, therefore, my descriptions). I generally have a vision of the PCs in mind, but I have a tendency to let it default back to its generic baseline instead of, for example, incorporating all the muck and filth that a bunch of people rummaging around in monster-infested caverns are likely to get coated in.

In this particular case, the players had also forgotten to think about this until later in the session (when they wanted to get cleaned up for a social event), so we were able to play it as ironic comedy beat.

(Although I feel that if I was better about personally tracking this sort of thing and incorporating it into my long-term descriptions, then my players would be less likely to forget about it themselves. So I think the failure still comes back to me.)

A technique I’ve found useful for this is to put a reminder of the group’s “descriptive status” on a swap note on my GM screen. Having it persistently present in my field of vision provides a periodic, unprompted reminder that helps me describe things appropriately and make sure the campaign world is reacting appropriately.

(Now I just need to remember to update the swap notes…)

I’m still running this Ptolus campaign today, and, as you can tell from the dates on the campaign journals, the campaign has progressed quite a bit beyond this point. As a result, I’ve actually discovered a long-term problem related to this one: My mental image of the characters is kind of “stuck” on how the characters looked during these early days of the campaign.

(Sort of like how you often think about how your friends looked in college, even if it’s been years and years since any of you were in college.)

Talking with the players, I discovered that I was not entirely alone in this.

In the actual campaign, though, the PCs are all decked out in awe-inspiring magical gear, one of them has horns now, and a couple have been transformed into albinos. (As you do.)

For this, I discovered that commissioning some fresh character art and then either hanging it in the game room or using it for my GM screen did the trick.

Campaign Journal: Session 32A – Running the Campaign: The Traps That Move You
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 31D: The Midnight Watch

Tee floated up to the roof and kept an eye on the street to make sure that he wasn’t actually leaving the building. A few minutes later, however, she saw a light through the rear windows of the building moving back towards the room with the corpse. She returned to the window in time to see a group of several people return: The same grey-robed man was accompanied by two others wearing serpent symbols and a fourth man with a large tattoo in the shape of a black hand on his throat.

After no more than a cursory inspection of the corpse, the group fell into arguing with each other. Tee was having problems hearing, so she cautiously cracked the window open.

NPCs talking to each other.

…

I have felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of GM spines suddenly shivered at once and in unison.

Roleplaying one character is tough. Roleplaying two characters is tougher. Roleplaying two characters talking directly to each other sometimes feels completely impossible. (Dial up your terror level as the number of NPCs increases.)

In practice, this is the result of two distinct challenges.

First, putting words into the NPC’s mouths. Literally just figuring out what they’re actually going to say.

Second, making it clear to the players which NPC is talking (and who they’re talking to).

Of course, neither of these challenges are unique to scenes featuring multiple NPCs. Whenever the PCs interact with an NPC, we must establish who’s speaking and then play the role (i.e., figure out what they say). The exponential complexity arises from switching, often rapidly, between roles, turning simple performance — which can be difficult enough in its own right — into a juggling act.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic wand I can wave to make this simple for you. But here’s a cluster of techniques that I use to turn the untenable into the manageable.

First, universal roleplaying templates. I make a point of prepping these for major NPCs, and particularly for those that I know (or suspect) will be putting in an appearance during a big social event. A key utility feature here is that each template appears on a separate sheet. That might be a full A4/Letter sheet, or it could be a half sheet. Regardless, you want a separate sheet for each NPC because it allows you to easily grab the NPCs you need and lay them all out on the table in front you. This allows you to easily swap from one character to another by just flicking your eyes around.

With a little extra effort, you can make tent cards for the NPCs. Put a picture on one side and their name on the other, then put them on the table or drape them over the top of your GM screen where both you and your players can see them.

(For NPCs with shorter write-ups, you might even be able to fit all their info — or maybe just duplicate the most important info — on the back of each card.)

These tent cards make it very easy for everyone to keep track of which NPCs are present in the current scene (or the current grouping within a larger party scene). It can also vastly simplify indicating who the current speaker is: Simply pick up the appropriate tent card, then set it back down when they’re done talking.

Another trick for indicating current speaker is body position. Just sort of flipping back and forth in your chair can feel silly. It can be more effective, rather than thinking about the act of turning back and forth, to pick a point of focus for each NPC. (For example, King Abelard is looking at the dragon statuette in the corner to your right and Lady Beatrice is looking at the AC/DC poster on the wall to your left.) When the NPCs are talking to each other, just have them address the appropriate point of focus.

You might also consider standing up. Simply moving from the left side to the right side of your chair can feel more natural than spinning in place, while having an even greater clarity for the players. (Each NPC literally gets their own physical space in the game room, even if it’s only a slight distinction.)

Finally, returning to the roleplaying template, I highly recommend making sure each character has a distinct physical mannerism (stroking their beard, tapping their fingers together, bawdy winking, running their fingers through their hair, tugging their ear nervously, an accent, etc.). Such mannerisms not only help clue the players into which character is speaking, they can also make it a lot easier for you to switch between characters: The mannerism becomes a convenient hook for picking the character up and sliding into the role. Swapping from tugging your ear to stroking your imaginary beard is a mnemonic that helps easily propel you from one POV to the other.

Speaking of POV, that brings us to arguably the most difficult part of the whole exercise: Figuring out what each character is saying.

What I recommend here is to really clearly define for yourself what each character’s objective is. Why are they participating in this discussion? What are they trying to achieve? Don’t get wishy-washy with this. The more specific it is — and the more motivated they are to get it — the easier it will be find their words.

If you want to get more technical with this, then start thinking in terms of tactics: How is the NPC trying to achieve their goal? Once again, making this as specific as possible (she’s going to blackmail him with the photos to make him steal the vault codes; he’s going to appeal to the duke’s sense of morality; the goblin is going to lie about he saw) will make it easier for you to flip to the other side of the conversation and ask, “Does that work?” (And, if not, why not?) If you’re uncertain, then play the uncertainty. Or make a dice roll to resolve it.

“Reggaloch’s dead, Gavele. Theral found the body here.”

“Theral killed him you mean!” Vocaetun shouted.

While the other cultists went back to arguing, Gavele knelt down next to Reggaloch’s body and did a more thorough inspection of the corpse. Unnoticed by the others (but not unnoticed by Tee), she found a note and slipped it into her pocket. Then she stood up.

“That’s enough,” she said. “Reggaloch has been dead for days. Give the body to the thralls. They’ll eat it up. Then come with me and we’ll settle this. You really don’t want me to have to bring this idiocy to Illadras’ attention.”

Finally, if each character has clearly defined and opposing objectives in the scene, it will become a lot easier to identify when the scene is over (i.e., when one of the characters has achieved their objective). That will help make sure that the conversation doesn’t just kind of whimper out or continue forever without any sort of resolution.

Campaign Journal: Session 31E – Running the Campaign: Gore-Spattered Reactions
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 31C: The Obstinate Prisoner

“It’s been two days since I had a drink,” the orc said. “Are you planning to kill me?”

“What are you talking about?” Tee said. “I just poured water over you head.”

“Maybe if we tried a nicer approach?” Ranthir said. “Tell us what we want to know and we’ll give you some food.”

“You tore off my ear and killed my friends and you think I’m going to talk for a little bit of food?”

They shut the closet door and withdrew a little.

A bad habit for a GM is to just keep constantly re-making the same check until the outcome swaps. That might be calling for Stealth check after Stealth check until the PCs finally fail a check and the whole compound goes on high alert. Or it might be letting the PCs make Interrogation after Interrogation check until they finally get a success and crack their target.

That’s obviously not how I handled the interrogation in this session. (The orc prisoner remains uncracked.) Instead, I’m using a Let It Ride technique. In its most basic form this boils down to treating the initial check to resolve a situation as a binding result. For example, you can’t just keep making Pick Locks checks until you pick the lock: Your initial check determines whether or not this is a lock that you can pick at this time. (For a detailed example of what this can look like in practice, check out Letting It Ride on the Death Star.)

In this case, the binding check actually took place in the previous session when the PCs first attempted to interrogate their prisoner. I did allow a couple of different checks before “locking” things in, basically modeling your typical good cop/bad cop situation. (These were, in my opinion, sufficiently different approaches that different checks were merited. Similar to how you could still try to kick down the door even if your Pick Locks check failed.)

Players, of course, will continue to push for more checks if they’re trying to escape a failure. That’s good! The key thing, though, is that you want them to be creative. Not just, “I do it again.” (“I pick the lock again.” “I threaten the orc again.”) But creating some new way of thinking about or approaching or solving or overcoming the obstacle. As the GM, you want to hold the line – particularly in muddy social situations – because it will push play forward in interesting ways.

The last thing to note about letting it ride in a social scene, like this interrogation, is that you can – and almost certainly should! – play through the scene. The check determines outcome, but it’s still worthwhile to roleplay through the actual interaction. (And, through that interaction, the players may end up identifying the alternative approach that will allow them to forge a new path.)

With that being said, don’t let the players’ desire to escape failure allow the scene to drag out. If a social scene starts to spin its wheels, you need to wrap it up:

• Is there anything else you want to say here?
• It doesn’t look like she’s going to budge. What do you want to do next?
• You keep at her for another thirty minutes, but she refuses to crack. Now what?

Or, frankly, just cut to the next scene.

Campaign Journal: Session 31D – Running the Campaign: Roleplaying NPC Scenes
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index