IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Session 1D: The Common Room at Night

In which further friends are met as strangers, recompenses are paid for a broken door, and the matter of several strange documents become of quizzical importance…

As I’ve mentioned before, the players for my Ptolus campaign were originally scattered to all corners of the country: Indiana, Iowa, Arizona, and Minnesota. The group included my oldest friend, one of the players from my original 3rd Edition campaign, my brother, and my girlfriend. This was, in short, the only way I could play with these people.

Today we’re fortunate enough to have a plethora of online game tables to choose from. Back in 2007, there weren’t as many options to choose from. And most of them were expensive. IIRC, one involved purchasing a $50 piece of software for the GM and then $25 licenses for all of the players. With 5 players it would have set me back $175, which I considered to be a fairly ridiculous price.

The solution I eventually settled on was ScreenMonkey: It had the dual advantages of being affordable and not requiring any special software for my players. ScreenMonkey allows the GM to host a session that can be accessed through any browser. That being said, it’s not a great piece of software and — at least when I was using it — prone to severe lag. But it handled dice rolling, let me display maps, and allowed the players to move their miniatures around.

To supplement ScreenMonkey we also used Ventrilo and, later, Skype for voice-chat. And we used the SSA-X2 PDF character sheets to conveniently swap standardized character sheets.

Which basically sums up what you need for a virtual tabletop:

• Ability to share graphics (preferably with battlemap and miniature support).
• Dice roller.
• Ability to talk to each other.

With that being said, I’d also like:

• Ability to tab and/or splitscreen multiple graphics.
• Integrated private messaging.
• Fog of war. (Customized to individual PCs would be great.)

I know lots of people also like to see integrated mechanical support for their systems of choice (character sheets, initiative trackers, etc.). But I’ve found they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth: I’d rather keep the digital interface clean and simple and let people manage initiative and character sheets and all that the same way they do at the physical table.

PREPPING THE ELECTRONIC TABLE

With that being said, I haven’t done a lot of gaming at electronic tables. Partly this is because I don’t do a lot of gaming with strangers. Partly this is because my gaming schedule is already filled beyond capacity with face-to-face games.

But largely, speaking as a Game Master, it’s because prepping for an electronic table requires a lot more work than prepping for a table game.

Largely, this is because I’ve found that people tend to have very different standards for what they consider “graphically acceptable” on a computer screen. When I scratch out some lines using colored markers on a Chessex battlemat, players at the table tend to simply provide closure and imagine vast halls of cyclopean majesty. When I’ve taken the same players and shown them the same chicken-scratchings on a virtual tabletop, however, it doesn’t seem to work.

(I eventually started using Dundjinni with the Old School map pack. This is the only mapping software I’ve found that lets me crank out polished maps in about the same time it takes me to sketch them out by hand. It’s not glitzy and it still needs to pre-prepped for a digital table, but it’s of a high enough quality that my players stopped getting perceptibly yanked out of the game.)

But this also goes beyond battlemaps: Stuff that can be quickly shown at the gaming table without any effort at all requires special prep for the virtual environment. Something as simple as holding up a bestiary and showing the picture of a monster requires scanning the image and getting it into a format (and location) where it can be displayed to the players. (This is becoming less of a hassle as more and more of my RPG library becomes digital, although I still need to get the picture out of the PDF.)

The net result of all this is not only that prepping is more labor-intensive for a virtual tabletop, but that I also find the virtual tabletop inhibits improvising. If my tabletop players unexpectedly go into a random building, it’s not hard for me to whip up floorplans on the fly. On the digital table, however, there’s just no way for me to pull that off in any sort of smooth or effective way.

In many ways I find this similar to using detailed miniature terrain like DwarvenForge. It’s fabulous. And if I was independently wealthy I would hire somebody to make and customize miniature terrain for my campaigns full-time. But it’s too time-consuming for me to use it on a regular basis.

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

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

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.)

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

Prelude 2: The Awakening – Tee

In which our heroine elf awakes to a welcome (yet surprising) homecoming, only to discover that things are not always what they seem and the past is not so easily forgotten (even if it has been completely misplaced)…

When I pitched In the Shadow of the Spire to my prospective players the campaign didn’t even have a name yet. Actually, it didn’t have much form at all. I only knew two things:

(1) I had pre-ordered Ptolus and it would be arriving within a couple of weeks. I already knew enough about the city to know that I wanted to run an urban-based campaign there, but I (obviously) didn’t know a lot of the details.

(2) I wanted to incorporate the Banewarrens adventure into the campaign. I first read this adventure back in 2002 and I’d been itching to run it ever since. In some ways I had actually started laying the groundwork for this campaign way back then, when the players in my original 3rd Edition campaign passed through the port city of Ptolus and saw the Spire for the first time:

(That’s a player handout modified from a DM-only reference image.)

As I started wading through the Ptolus tome and the campaign began to take shape in my mind’s eye, one of the things I realized early on was that the PCs shouldn’t be from Ptolus itself. It would be more interesting, in my opinion, if their characters were exploring the city with the same fresh eyes that they were. It would also be more disorienting (for both players and PCs) to awake with amnesia in completely unfamiliar surroundings.

Those of you who have been reading the campaign journal from the start, however, may have noticed a slight incongruity here: Tithenmamiwen is from Ptolus.

No plan, however, survives contact with the enemy… or, in this case, the players.

Actually, though, trying to push this one off on the player is a bit disingenuous on my part. Tee’s player simply came to me with the idea of playing an elf. The character concept she was discussing in general terms, however, struck off all kinds of resonance for me with the work I had just recently put into fleshing out some of the elven communities in Ptolus itself.

Taking a step back, I realized that it made more sense to tap into this pre-existing development work and use it as part of Tee’s background. I also came to the conclusion that variety is the spice of life: Yes, it was interesting to have both players and PCs coming to the city with fresh eyes. And, yes, that lack of familiarity was disorienting.

But there was also something inherently interesting in the broken homecoming experienced by Tee: She had left home for reasons she didn’t fully understand and now she was back again for reasons she didn’t even know. There was a disoriention to be found there as well, and a useful contrapuntal beat to the other characters.

This decision also had some long-term consequences that I hadn’t fully considered. For example, Tee had a greater sense of ownership in the city than the other PCs… which meant that her reputation was important to her from Day One. She needed to be able to live there when all was said and done, which meant that she helped to keep some of the more radical impulses of the group in check.