Magic changes everything twice.

Game Masters often borrow from stories they have heard before to create adventures for their players.  That’s a fine way to get a head start, but some stories just don’t work in a land of wizards or super-technology.  Lean into that and surprise your players and make something they haven’t seen before in these three easy steps.

  1. Start with a familiar plan
  2. Smash that plan with magic
  3. Immediately smash the new situation with magic again

Here are some examples:

Die Hard

  1. The players go to a high-society function in an isolated compound. When the party is underway, a heavily-armed groups storms the compound, taking everyone hostage!
  2. As the leader of the terrorists gives his speech from the balcony, people in the audience start teleporting away, because they are rich and paranoid enough to have magic items for just such an emergency.
  3. The terrorists appear to give up and leave, but as they go, one of the heroes overhears them say that the teleport trap worked. All the rich people who fled were re-directed to a place of the terrorists’ choosing, and now they’re really in trouble.

Murder Mystery

  1. In a mansion full of suspicious characters, someone has been murdered! Everyone had a motive, and nothing is as it seems!
  2. Instead of interviewing suspects, the detective downloads the last video from the corpse’s cyber-eyes.
  3. Footage shows a party member do the deed, and the timestamp is three years in the past.

Titanic

  1. It’s the maiden voyage of an unsinkable ocean liner. No doubt the party is staking out a lifeboat, preparing Create Food and Water, and keeping a close eye on their favorite NPCs.
  2. The captain intentionally steers the ship towards an iceberg, and the heat knife built into the prow cuts the iceberg in half!  This ship is the most dangerous thing in the water.
  3. The Mer-folk won’t stand for this destructive behavior. Even if the ship survives their assault, there will be political fallout and danger to all mariners who use these shipping lanes.

Two Twists Are Harder Than One

If you can’t think of two different twists, you can still thrill with a single twist, but it must be different from the twists described above.  Imagine the scenarios above with only parts 1 and 2. They are basically solved. The party has little to do.  Instead of destroying the setup with a magical twist, you must transform it.

High-Society Ball

  1. All party-goers are strictly screened for weapons and magic items before entry. There will be no fighting here, just schmoozing and politicking.
  2. Lack of weapons and armor doesn’t degrade the capabilities of the Monks and Sorcerers who infiltrate and attack!

Outbreak

  1. A plague is sweeping through the Hobgoblin town of Durnhold.
  2. The plague does not affect Kobolds. Will the nearby Kobold village help, or could they have started the plague themselves?

Protect the VIP

  1. Protect your client from assassins until the important event is over.
  2. The client is an AI. Assassins are coming after her in cyberspace, but also attack the physical infrastructure that supports her existence.

RPG Idea: Shouldn’t the cops deal with this?

I’m usually against making player characters part of some big organization that orders them around. I prefer to let the players decide what they want to pursue.

Unrelatedly, polite characters in urban adventures will often want to bring in the proper authorities, because they trust society and respect laws.  This is inconvenient for a GM, because letting NPCs be good at their jobs and handle things leaves the players with nothing to do. Player characters should be active, driving the plot and solving their own problems.

Here’s a solution to both problems.  Let the player characters be the police.  Sure there are some NPCs with basic equipment walking the beat, but PCs are the detectives and the SWAT team.  Their special powers make them the best equipped to deal with emergencies.  Players can respect the rule of law without their characters becoming passive because their characters are the ones enforcing the laws.  As elite members of the police, player characters have power to make decisions, so they are not pawns in some big organization. They are knights, maybe even rooks.  Staying mostly in the same town can help the players get to know and care about NPCs, which I like. Questions like, “What laws should a society have?” and “How does a good cop behave?” are also good questions to wrestle with.

Here’s a hook for beginning the adventure, which, like an actual hook, comes back around later.  The PCs are residents of this town, which was guarded by an old wizard. The wizard tells the town that he has forseen that his frail body is about to give out, and that fine upstanding youths must step forward to keep the town safe. The PCs accept the job, and soon enough the old wizard is no more.  Now it’s all up to our heroes!

But the wizard didn’t die. He arranged to be re-incarnated by a druid, so he’s got centuries of experience and magical power in a young adult body with a new face. He’ll travel the world and have his fun, then check back on his old town at an inconvenient moment.

RPG idea: You’re not done yet

  • Villains that are so committed that they won’t stay dead are great!
    • I ran a game where a character killed by the party dedicated her ‘life’ to destroying them.
    • Fans of Critical Role are hoping that a recently-deceased villain can use her eldritch connections to come back and harry the party
  • If NPCs can do cool things, PCs should be able to do them too! Thus, I should allow my players to refuse to stay dead.
    • This was a hype moment for a player character in Critical Role.
  • I have trouble with the Last Breath move in Dungeon World where Death offers a deal to let a character return to life. What does death want?
    • More death? Everything dies eventually.
    • More death faster? If so, no evil overlord would stay dead, since they tend to kill a lot of other people.
    • The PC’s possessions? The PC is already going to lose everything by dying.

So here’s the synthesis of all the above. When a PC dies, it’s not Death offering deals, but several powerful spiritual forces.

  • The Good-aligned god of a heroic adventurer says she’s spent enough time in the muck, chasing monsters, hands soaked in the blood of victims she couldn’t save and the villains who killed them. Come home to Paradise. Rest.
  • A war-like deity knows that the dying adventurer still has work to do. Life will be offered as a loan. You may live until you complete this final mission.
    • One Last Job: When you complete the mission assigned to you by your deity, the next time you make the Make Camp or Recover move, you die peacefully in your sleep. You know this is coming. Perhaps you should gather your loved ones.
  • Revenge personified says, “Your hatred of those who killed you is justified, and I will empower you to carry it out!.” Not only will the adventurer die again once vengeance is achieved, but Revenge grants the adventurer several powerful and messy moves to achieve it
    • Eye for an eye: When you focus your hatred on your target and injure yourself, your target receives the same injury. You may not kill yourself with this move. If your wound is healed, the target’s wound is also healed.
    • No rest for the wicked: When you don’t pursue vengeance for an entire day, your sleep is disrupted with dreams of what your target did to you. You do not gain the benefits of the Make Camp move.
    • Boiling hatred. A rage meter that increases powers but causes violent outbursts, etc.
    • Just you and me: when you look your target in the eye and challenge her to combat, gain Hold equal to your Rage. During this combat, you may spend 1 Hold to negate one attack from a source other than your target, as your singular focus allows you to ignore everything else.
    • Nothing to live for: When your target dies, you explode is a shower of boiling, acid blood. Everything within reach takes your weapon damage plus your rage. Everything within near takes damage equal to your rage. You die immediately and do not make the Last Breath move.
  • The demon in charge of a plot that the adventurer may or may not be in the process of foiling could use some capable help, and offers a full lifetime, just as long as the adventurer does his best to make sure the evil plot is not disrupted.
    • Asmodeus’ First Law: If you disrupt your patron’s plan or injure those carrying it out, you suffer your weapon damage.
    • Asmodeus’ Second Law: If by inaction you allow your patron’s plan to be disrupted or allow those carrying out to come to harm, you suffer a debility.

Fairmeadow Fair, session 9

← Session 8 | Campaign Summary | Session 10 →

Last time, our heroes traveled to Templeton, site of the Fortinbras School of Mines, hoping to learn about the strange living statue that gave them so much trouble back in Fairmeadow.  They met Flint, a friend of a friend who might be mixed up in some shady dealings, and he offered to show them around campus the next day.  Maybe he can get them into the school library.

A map of the city of Templeton, built into a cinder cone volcano.

After leaving Flint, Gleador and Lucia decide to watch the sunset.  Templeton is built into a cinder cone volcano, so they head up the spiral streets to the crater rim.  The rim is lined with tall towers, most of them private buildings.  The tower that powers the school’s sundial does have an public observation deck.The deck is a crescent surrounding the central tower. The huge crystal at the tip of the tower focuses a powerful beam of sunlight down onto the sundial at the base of the volcano. The gap in the crescent prevents anyone from accidentally walking into that beam.  The deck is surrounded by high walls of strong glass, with decorative metal filigree to make it visible.  Many people are up there to watch the sunset, sitting on benches or standing against the glass.  Shortly before the sunlight fades from the crystal at the tower’s tip, an attendant comes out and slides open panels in the posts supporting the glass wall.  Inside are continual flames, magic light sources.

Gleador and Lucia head back to the hostel they are staying at.  Supper is included in the price of the room. The other lodgers in the 10-person room have a few friends over for a lively gathering, but quickly make excuses to take the guests elsewhere.  Lucia look like an authority figure and they don’t want to cross her.

The next morning, they have some time before they meet Flint in the afternoon, so they look for a public library.  Much of the volcano’s caldera is public buildings, surrounding city hall at the very center.  There is a public library: four stories of floor-to-ceiling windows following the slant of the caldera.  Inside there are many patrons, and pages wearing neat vests.  Gleador looks for the most enthusiastic page. That’s Angus, a young dwarf who loves books and hopes to get into the Fortinbras School of Mines when he’s old enough.  Gleador asks to see Angus’s favorite section, a section that most people might skip over.  Hidden gems, if you will.  Angus takes him to the literal hidden gem section: a half-shelf about precious minerals behind three big stacks of books about geology and mining.

Gleador asks if Angus knows what “OOLITE” is. Angus recommends asking the reference librarian.  Angus guides Gleador and Lucia up to the top of the four-storey building.  The reference section not only contains stacks with weighty tomes and ledger, but cabinet with wide, low drawers for oversize parchments and maps.  The reference librarian sits at a large circular desk with aisles arranged radially around it.  The whole floor points to this elf woman.  Her red hair is pulled back in a large bun wrapped in braids. If she let her hair down, it would be extremely long. She’s been growing it out for decades.  Hearing Gleador’s request, she takes a slip of paper, writes “OOLITE” on it in impeccable Dwarven letters, then burns the slip in the flame of a large blue candle on the desk in front of her.  (There are several such candles arranged on the desk, each a different color.)  The flame separates from the candle, takes a vaguely humanoid shape, and flies out into the stacks.  “Please wait for the indexing sprite to return,” says the librarian.  Lucia is curious about the different candles. The librarian explains that all the candles contain indexing sprites, and the different colors of candles help her keep track of different queries running at the same time.  Another sprite returns to the desk. The librarian excuses herself and fetches two waiting patrons to follow that sprite to their books.

The sprite for Gleador’s query returns, but the librarian is still assisting other patrons.  Gleador asks the sprite if other people have been asking about OOLITE. The sprite gesticulates, but does not speak.  Lucia realizes that it communicates through writing, so she swipes a slip of paper from the librarian’s desk, writes her question down, and burns it on the blue candle. The sprite zooms away, and Gleador follows it.  The sprite leads him to an old book and surrounds it with cool, non-destructive flames. Gleador brings it back to Lucia and they open it on a table.  It’s a ledger, but it’s written in Dwarven, which neither of them can read. Gleador wants to know what book the sprite found for the librarian’s original query, so he writes “OOLITE” on a third slip of paper and burns it. He can copy the letters for this particular word, even though he can’t read the language.  The sprite leads him to another ledger, this one written in Elven.  It records some deliveries of metal from the OOLITE company to an Elven furniture and woodworking company. The metal was used for fasteners and fittings. It’s an old ledger. Deliveries from OOLITE stop about 120 years ago.

Gleador heads downstairs to find Angus again. Dwarven is Angus’ native language, so surely he can translate the Dwarven ledger.  Angus says that translation will take him away from his page duties for quite some time, so Gleador will have to make it worth his while.  Gleador says he knows a guy at the college, and can put in a good word for Angus’s eventual application.  Angus wants to meet this contact now, before he translates the ledger. Gleador balks because his contact is Flint, a second-year student with no impact on admission, so he returns upstairs with the ledger untranslated. They try to return the books where they found them, but the shelves magically repel the books.  They return to the reference desk, which has a big shelf labelled “Return books here” and talk to the librarian, who has finished with the other patrons.

“We tried to reshelve these books…,” they begin.

“Did you see the shelf labelled ‘Return books here’?”, says the reference librarian, clearly annoyed.

Undeterred, they ask about the Dwarven ledger.  Of course the reference librarian can read it. It contains shipping manifests for the Balfour Trading Company from 160-140 years ago, and often mentions shipments of metals from OOLITE. The Balfour company survives to this day. There’s a warehouse here in Templeton, near the highway.  The party places the two ledgers on the “Return books here” shelf, and the books magically float back to their proper place. They are impressed by the system the reference librarian has going.  With obvious pride, the reference librarian says she’s had a long time to perfect and improve it.  Before they leave, Lucia says a quick prayer to ask what here is evil.  Some books and all of the indexing sprites are evil, but not the librarian or Angus.  Interesting.

Now it’s time to head back to the college and meet Flint for a tour.  He arranged to meet them at his lab in one of the more industrial college buildings.  They could arrive early if they hustle, but they arrive on time and find Flint waiting at the outside door of the building. The doors and hallways of this buildings are bigger than usual to allow equipment to be moved in and out. The roof is about 2 feet above ground level, with the rest of the building built into the ground.  There are skylights on the roof. Instead of a storm door. there’s a wide ramp going down to a pair of vertical doors that open inward.  Although the halls are wide, they are lined with lockers and cabinets full of tools, specimens, and so on.  Flint leads them to the door of his metallurgy lab.  He unlocks the door with a big old-fashioned metal key, holds the door open and says, “After you!”  Lucia and Gleador know a trap when they see one.  They make eye contact.  Gleador steps in and Lucia does not.  Flint waits a moment, then shrugs and steps in. Lucia steps in after him.  There’s a cabinet in the center of the room, work benches at either end, and a dumbwaiter in the far wall.

Upper storey of science building: lab, cold storage, and connecting vents.

It was still a trap!  The door slams behind them and they hear something heavy dragging outside, probably one of those cabinets blocking the door.  Flint panics and runs back to the door. It opens outwards, so the cabinet prevents it from opening, even though it’s unlocked! Flint kicks the door several times. The door fractures, and sticky expanding gel starts oozing and growing from the cracks. Flint recoils, avoiding the glue goo. One of the shady dwarves from yesterday appears at the skylight, opens it, and throws in a canister which starts spewing a thick, dark gas.  The party tells Flint that he’s stuck with them, and he must help them or die!  This has obviously escalated past what he signed up for, and he’s panicked.  The gas is spreading. The dumbwaiter is only big enough for one person at a time, so they reject that method of escape.  The movement of the gas reveals an air vent that they didn’t notice before.  “Into the vents!” orders Lucia. She pries the grate off the vent and she and Flint go in. Gleador grabs tongs from the workbench and tries to throw the gas canister into the glue goo to seal it shut. He fumbles and bounces the canister off a wall and back into himself. He receives a minor burn from the hot canister and a lungful of gas, which reduces his constitution. He flees into the vent.

In the vent, they are temporarily safe from the gas. They demand that Flint explain what he’s gotten them into.  He reveals that the two dwarves that were lurking about yesterday are paying his tuition in exchange for a special alloy.  It’s brittle, an unpleasant color, and has the exact same density as gold.  He doesn’t ask what they use it for. He doesn’t want to now. He didn’t want to get involved, lest something like this happen.  There’s a T intersection several yards away. Flint’s in front, so the party crowds him forward to look. He’s pushed to the right, and yelps because he’s now next to a significant drop-off into a smelting room.  There’s a fall, sharp implements, and fire.  That might be worse than the gas. There’s also a shaft that leads down to a lower storey.

They decide to go left. The grate to the left is covered in frost. Lucia has metal gauntlets, so she can touch the grate without freezing her flesh to it.  It’s cold storage. Shelves and crates fill the room. The floor is covered with ice, but Lucia slides out confidently, grabbing a crate to make a turn and end up at the door.  The crate she grabbed was a coffin!  Unimpressed, Lucia examines the door.  It has the same lock as Flint’s room, so it probably has the same gel inside. There’s a small magical heat source right under the lock keeping it thawed. The lock is wet with melted frost, and the frost refreezes in icicles underneath it.  Flint faceplants on the ice.  Gleador digs some lockpicks out of his adventuring gear and sets to work on the lock. He’s making progress and here’s a sharp ‘click’ but then glue goo comes pouring out of the keyhole onto his tools and hands!  He quickly yanks his hands away from the lock and apart, shaking the glue goo off. His hands are free, but encrusted with dried goo, impairing fine manipulation.  There are two machines keeping the room cold by constantly emitting cold air.  Each has four canisters attached, supplying it.  Lucia considers ripping one of the machines out, but the canisters aren’t that secure, so she stops to avoid dropping and breaking them.  They turn the machines off.  Now they won’t freeze to death if they stay here.  Maybe someone will notice the machines aren’t working and will come check on them.  Flint reads the warning labels (it’s all written in Dwarven) and says that if the canisters break, they’ll flash freeze whatever is nearby.  They consider re-directing cold air to the door to freeze and shatter it, but can’t find a suitable tube.  Throwing a canister at the door might work, but Gleador has had awful luck today and doesn’t want to risk it.  They look to the skylights to consider how they might reach and open them.  They see that same dwarf looking down at them!  “There they are,” yells the dwarf.  “Rott, no! I’m in here,” yells Flint.  Rott opens the skylight and grabs another gas canister from his satchel.  Lucia lassos him, but only gets his arm. They struggle and she only manages to pull the canister he was holding right to her!  She quickly holds her breath and retreats to the vent.  Flint runs for the vent right through the cloud of gas and collapses at Lucia’s feet. She says, “We have to go down!” and pushes him down the shaft to the lower level. He’s unconscious, so he goes over the edge with no resistance and is injured on landing.  Gleador holds his breath and dives into the vent.

Lower storey of science lab: automated smelter, secret super-max prison cell.

On the lower floor, vents lead left and right. To the right is the smelter, but now they are at ground level, so they can enter it safely. The furnace is in the middle of one wall. There are no skylights.  The chimney is open to the outside, but there’s an 800-degree furnace under it, so climbing it is extremely dangerous.  There’s a waterwheel on the far wall. It powers some mechanical equipment that feeds ore into the furnace, pours molten ore into forms, then places the cooled ingots into a hopper. The pipes that carry water into and out of the room are a foot across: too small to fit through. This room has the same locked door as the other rooms.

Gleador goes back into the vent and checks the room to the left.  He emerges under a table with chairs.  The far side of the room has metal floor, walls, and ceiling, as opposed to the stone of the other rooms, and the near side of this room.  There’s a heavier, scarier, more secure door on this room. There’s also a person sitting on the plain metal side of the room.  A bald male Dwarf. “Hello, friend,” says the Dwarf, “I didn’t expect to see anyone come in that way.”  Gleador calls Lucia over, and she drags in the unconscious Flint.  The bald dwarf is quite surprised by this motley crew’s unusual entrance.  Gleador gives Flint an anti-toxin to counter the effects of the gas, and Flint wakes up.  Lucia heals him. They greet the strange dwarf, who is a full five feet tall, as tall as Lucia, and totally bald.  His name is Andro.  As Gleador steps forward, Andro holds out a hand to stop him. “Watch out for the wall of force.  Here, where the floor turns from stone to metal. If you try to cross this line, magical electricity will stop you.”  They ask Andro how he came to be in this situation. He doesn’t remember how long he’s been imprisoned, but he indicates his bald head and says it can’t have been too long.  There’s no bed, chair, dishes, or anything on his side of the cell.  He says that sometimes people come in, sit at the table, and take notes, but not very often.  The party is unlikely to be discovered and released any time soon.  There’s a control panel on the wall by the door. Flint says the writing indicates it controls the Wall of Force, but it’s magical as well as mechanical. He tries to work the controls, but when he reaches out to demonstrate that the wall of force is gone, it zaps him!  Lucia exhorts him to try again, promising that if he gets them out, she’ll keep him safe from his former associates, but he’s had enough and hides under the table.

Lucia: It’s a good thing he didn’t stick with law enforcement!

Lucia tries the control panel and realizes that the crystal in the center is a status indicator.  Moving these controls changes the color, and this color must mean the wall is down.  She’s right!  Andro is free! Well, Andro is as trapped as the rest of them.  Gleador asks if he’s good with locks, and Andro says he can give it a try.  Gleador leads him away from the high-security door in the cell, through the vent, to the door in the smelter.

Andro approaches the door of the smelter, which is next to the water wheel.  He says, “I’m really sorry, friends,” and dives into the drain pipe. His head fits, but his torso won’t. His shoulders bend back at impossible angles. His whole body starts stretching, lengthening, disappearing down the drain.  Gleador grabs at his legs, which are now soft and floppy. Gleador’s fingers dig long grooves in Andro’s flesh as they struggle to find purchase. Gleador’s hands to find something solid, which he pulls out of Andro’s leg as Andro finally disappears down the drain.  It’s a small wooden box with a sliding lid.  Gleador hands it to Lucia, turns into an electric eel, and pursues Andro down the drain. He’s able to catch up easily, but does not electrocute him, instead following him until the drain exits the building into a culvert leading to a stream.  Andro drags himself to shore and starts reforming into proper dwarven shape. It’s not perfect. One of his shoulders is higher than the other, and one side of his face sags. He looks like he’s survived some industrial accident, which isn’t too rare here in a town of miners and engineers. He might be remarkable, but his strange non-humanoid status is no longer evident.  Gleador transforms back into an Elf while Andro is pulling himself together. Andro is surprised that Gleador was able to escape and follow him so easily. They are both full of surprises.  Gleador says that Andro had better return and break the others out, or Gleador will make a scene and turn him in to the authorities.  Andro doesn’t want to go back to the cell, so he agrees.  “Do we head back up the drain?”

No, Gleador leads Andro into the science building like normal people, and they find the smelter door.  It’s locked. Andro reads the sign. “No admittance from 9:00 to 6:00 during automatic smelting. See Mr. Haverly in Room 213 if you have any questions.”  Gleador yells through the door to Lucia. Gleador asks Andro to pick the lock, but Andro reveals he only said he was good at that so he could get close to a door and escape.  They are so close, but they can’t figure out what to do.  Lucia opens Andro’s box and finds 200 gold pieces and a magical amulet.  That reminds Gleador about the strange coin they found on the living statue.  He shows Andro the large rectangular coin and asks if he recognizes it. Andro thinks this is a very odd thing to be asking right now, but instantly recognizes the coin as being from Saarland.  Gleador has never heard of Saarland, which Andro thinks is odd, since it’s such an important city.  (Gleador isn’t ignorant. Saarland is not an important city that anyone talks about. Why does Andro think it’s well-known?) Gleador talks through the current situation, trying to think of what to do next. He says that Andro could just leave, and Andro thinks that’s a great idea and starts walking off. Gleador says, “We have your stuff!” but Andro would rather have his freedom.  He turns back, points at his eyes, points at Gleador, then continues walking away.  Gleador lets him go.

Gleador heads up to find Mr. Haverly’s room and get the key to the smelter. Mr. Haverly’s office is in a row of faculty offices on an upper floor.  The door is locked and there’s a sign that Gleador can’t read that says “Back in 15 minutes”. Gleador wants to wait around, but a school official thinks he’s a loitering student and starts scolding him. “Show me your student ID, young man! I’ll write you up.”  Gleador tells him to look him up in the directory and leaves.  In an nearby hallway, he waits until no one is in sight, then turns into a newt and crawls out the window.  He crawls along the outside of the building to Mr. Haverly’s office. The window is open! He goes inside and finds the key: an old-fashioned metal key like the one Flint used. It’s as long as his newt form and much too heavy to carry.  Footsteps and the sound of conversation approach the door. Gleador crawls back out the window and watches.  Mr. Haverly enters, accompanied by a student. He’s an older dwarf, with a neat white beard and small round glasses.  Gleador can’t understand Dwarven either,but he figures out that they are discussing classwork. Unsure what else to do, Gleador waits for an opening.

Back in the smelter, Lucia grills Flint about the his involvement with the shady dwarves. There are two of them. The one who threw the gas canisters from the roof is named Rott. He’s got a buzz cut and a similarly short beard. He’s demonstrative and impulsive. The other one, who probably trapped them in the first room, is a female Dwarf with long straight shiny black hair and beard. She looks like a shampoo ad. Her clothes are not flashy, but have high-quality fabrics and are tailored for her.  Flint has provided them with about 20kg of alloy so far. The alloy is brittle, ugly, and the same density as gold.  He made a delivery last week, and another is due in five days. The materials for the alloy are not expensive, but the procedure is precise, which is why they need Flint’s expertise. Since the materials are cheap, no one has noticed that Flint’s been stealing from the school’s supply. Lucia wonders why Flint’s buyers don’t just provide the materials, if they aren’t expensive.

Everyone has been waiting around for some time.  It’s time for Mr. Haverly to collect the day’s ingots.  Flint and Lucia notice the automated machinery stop.  In the office, Mr. Haverly wraps up his conversation with the student, takes his key, and heads out. Gleador follows along on the wall as a newt. Mr. Haverly goes downstairs and meets two TAs with handcarts who will carry the heavy ingots.  Gleador considers startling Mr. Haverly by flicking him with his long newty tongue, but that will cause Gleador to turn back into a Elf, and he wants to stay hidden.  Lucia and Flint hear people approach the door and hide in the vent. Mr. Haverly opens the door and all three enter the smelting room to begin loading ingots.  Gleador stays out in the hall and transforms back into an Elf.  Lucia waits for a chance to dash out unobserved, but makes a noise. Mr. Haverly looks into the vent and sees someone in full armor, crouched and ready to pounce! He screams, and he and his TAs run for the door.  Gleador blocks their path out and spins a tall tale about a security audit. They don’t buy it. One of the TAs rushes him with his handcart. Gleador falls into it and is carried down the hall. Mr. Haverly and the other TA run the other direction. Lucia tries to drag Flint out, but he starts to flee as soon as they exit the room. Gleador extricates himself from the handcart but does not prevent the TA from fleeing. They are all free!  Lucia thinks Flint will be tracked down and killed by his former co-workers, but if he’s determined to run away from her, she’ll leave him to his fate.

Gleador and Lucia huddle. Should they report this to the authorities? They are sure they are innocent victims in all this, and want to be more honest than they were in Fairmeadow, so they head upstairs to the faculty area. Gleador sasses the official that he clashed with earlier, which gets him an express trip to the dean’s office, just as he planned. The Dean interrupts the official’s rants about disrespectful youngsters. “Simmons, did you notice notice the fully-armored Paladin accompanying him?  What’s your story, young lady?” The party starts by saying that they came from Fairmeadow to visit a friend, which is pretty boring. Then they get to the part about “trapped in a room with poison gas” and the Dean says, “You should have led with that!” They give the Dean Rott’s name and a good description of the other dwarf and what class she’s in, so the school definitely has enough information to find her. They also say that the freezer room is defrosting, several doors are jammed with glue goo, and that they released a prisoner. The Dean looks very concerned. He sends some people to check the damage to the rooms they describe and asks the party to wait until they report back.  “Like, here on campus?” “In my office, please.”  Gleador makes sure there’s a window as an escape route, and they sit down to wait.

GM notes: This was the first time I locked the party in a dungeon. I imagined multiple scenarios in which they effortlessly avoided or escaped the dungeon, leaving me with a whole evening and nothing prepared.  Instead, they enjoyed exploring the facility and puzzling over its strange contents.  You’ll notice the maps above don’t fill the whole page.  There were a few rooms they did not find or explore.  Andro is actually a character I’ve blogged about before.  I don’t have a game to play him in, so I put him in this game as an optional NPC.

These poor adventurers just wanted someone to get them into the college library, and now they are involved in more plots and trouble than they know!

← Session 8 | Campaign Summary | Session 10 →

Fairmeadow Fair, session 8

← Session 7 | Campaign Summary | Session 9 →

The Fairmeadow Fair ended last session, with Gleador the secret shapeshifter dodging all the consequences of his weekend of deception.  He and Lucia the Paladin had to decide where to go next.  There were several events that warranted further investigation.

  • A statue with Dwarven markings came to life and smashed up the fair.  Who built it? What is it for?
  • The statue was carrying strange gold coins, unlike the local currency.  Where do they come from?
  • A Dwarf named Opal and two accomplices attacked our heroes, were driven off, and fled town in an unusual self-propelled cart.

Gleador and Lucia had one of the strange coins, so Pepe, the town sheriff, tracked them down to get it back before they left town.  They convinced him that they would continue investigating the statue, so they should hold on to the coin.  Pepe revealed that the statue was brought to auction by Hama, a halfling woman who often acts as an agent for rich clients who want to auction items without personally making the trip.  Hama said that she was selling the statue on behalf of the Miller family, one of the great families in Sugar’s Crossing, a town a few days to the west.  She had no idea that the statue could move.

A regional map showing the towns of Fairmeadow, Sugar’s Crossing, and Templeton.

Our heroes decide to head for Templeton, a Dwarven city to the west with a famous college.  This means not going to Sugar’s Crossing to question the owner of the statue, and not pursuing Opal’s gang south towards the port.  Alas, those were the two towns contained the bulk of my preparation.  To re-assure Pepe that they were not just running off with his evidence, they told him where they were going.  Pepe knows a guy in Templeton. Flint is now a second year metallurgy student, but he took a gap year of sorts in Fairmeadow and volunteered as a deputy.  Law enforcement was too intense for him.  He’s happier in a classroom.  Gleador and Lucia promise to look him up, and leave word with Flint if their travels take them further from Templeton.

Gleador and Lucia set out on the three-day journey to Templeton.  There’s a lot of traffic leaving Fairmeadow today, but they got an early start, since they don’t have to pack up booths or wrangle families.  When they are out of sight of other travelers, Gleador shifts into a falcon and scouts ahead.  There’s not much to report.  Near evening, he sees a clearing on one side of the road.  There’s room for at least a dozen carts around a big stone fire pit. There’s a stack of charred logs in the pit, and a magical, ever-burning flame in off to the side.  An inscription in many languages reads, “As we all share the everlasting warmth of fellowship, so will this fire always keep travelers warm.”  It’s a lovely rest stop, with no traps or shady people around.

A rest stop on the road from Fairmeadow to Templeton, protected by a magical campfire.

Gleador reports this to Lucia, and they stop there for the night.  As evening falls, several parties on horse-drawn carts, or on foot with handcarts also arrive and set up camp.  One group produces logs from their cart, adds them to the pile of firewood, and makes a trail of kindling from the magical flame to the central firepit.  A jolly blaze lights and warms the whole campsite.  Some starts playing a pipe, and a few people clap and dance along.  Gleador looks for the most interesting person to talk to.  That’s Selene, a clean-shaven Dwarf woman.  She goes to shake her hand, and she extends a metal prosthesis.  With certain movements of her shoulder and upper arm, she adjusts counterweights and rods in the mechanical arm to open its fingers and shake Gleador’s hand.  Gleador is very impressed!  She’s a graduate student at the College of Mines in Templeton.  Gleador inquires about the moving statue.  She’s unaware of technology that advanced. The mechanical devices she knows are moved by counterweights (like her arm) or pressurized gas.  Gleador mentions the name “OOLITE” that was written on the statue, and she thinks the school library would have information about it.  She doesn’t know Flint, but it’s a big school, so that’s not strange.  Lucia doesn’t participate in the evening activities.  She’s communing with her god and gaining a level.

In the morning, Lucia tries to cast Detect Alignment, but instead of a shockwave of holy energy, she produces a physical shockwave, making a loud bang and flapping all the tents and shelters.  Lucia and Gleador hastily grab their packs and flee the rest stop in embarrassment.  The next two days are uneventful. The terrain becomes hillier and rockier, so the fields of grain and vegetables give way to land for livestock.  They find an old barn, abandoned when a newer one was built at the other end of a field, and stay there for the night.  Nothing comes ot disturb them but some rabbits and birds, also seeking shelter for the night.

A map of the city of Templeton, built into a cinder cone volcano.

On the evening of the third day they reach Templeton, the city built into a cinder cone volcano. It rises out of the plain alone, visible for miles!  Streets spiral up the cone in both directions, since radial streets would be too steep.  The side of town closest to the main road is trade and tourism.  The Fortinbras College of Mines has an entire sector of the volcano on the northwest.  The rim of the caldera is covered with high towers, and inside the caldera are museums and civic buildings surrounding city hall at the very center.  Most of the buildings are built for Dwarves, but there are some taller buildings, especially in the tourist section.

Gleador and Lucia check into a tall youth hostel near the college.  Their room has five bunk beds and a washroom with a toilet and shower.  There’s running water in Templeton.  Lucia is obviously a Paladin, and the other youths in the room tease her for looking like a strict authority figure.  She heads to take a shower and surprises a Dwarf woman coming out of the washroom in a towel.

The next morning they wake up before the other 7 people in the room.  Not a hard task to wake up before college students.  There’s cheap but decent food served cafeteria style at the hostel.  They head to the campus to look for Flint and the library.  The library is not open to the public, only people associated with the school.  They ask around and learn that Flint is currently in a lab.  The college extends onto the flat ground surrounding the valcano and Flint’s lab is in a building on this flat ground.  The building rises only a couple feet, has skylights and vents for a roof, and storm doors for entrances.  As our heroes open one of the doors, they hear a voice assure another voice that the delivery of the alloy will be on schedule.  There’s a sudden pause, then the voices start talking about experimental procedures and titration.  Di that seem shady?  Did the people at the door notice?  Hopefully not. Gleador and Lucia act like they don’t notice and ask for Flint.  He’s the voice promising delivery on schedule.  They pass on Pepe’s greetings and ask to meet him after his lab.  He’s happy to hear from Pepe and agrees to meet them.  Lucia says a quick prayer for guidance and sees that the two dwarfs standing near Flint are evil, but Flint himself is not.

There’s a long, low arc of stone that acts as a sundial, receiving a beam of light from a tower at the rim of the volcano.  There are signs warning not to put any item, especially face or eyes, in the beam of light.  Near the sundial are some benches and tables with games.  The game is somewhat like Stratego, where two players try to defeat each other without knowing the strength of the other’s pieces.  The pieces are identical painted metal cubes, each of a different material and density.  Denser pieces beat lighter pieces.  Quickly judging the density of an item by holding it is a valuable skill for a miner or crafter.  At the appointed time (easily seen from the nearby sundial) the two evil dwarves sit a few benches away and start playing.  Flint arrives soon after.  Gleador plays to lose (easy when he’s never played and Flint is an expert) and engages in small talk, trying to sneakily get Flint to reveal information.  The evil dwarves keep playing games.  They’re sticking around to overhear.  Flint agrees to give our heroes a tour of the campus tomorrow.  Maybe he can sneak them into the library.  He leaves and the evil dwarves are still playing.  Lucia and Gleador leave and ponder their next move.

GM note: I had to scramble because I assumed that the party would go to a different town.  On the one hand, I really like the things I improvised: Selene’s mechanical arm,  the rest stop, the city built into a volcano, the sundial. On the other hand, when wrapping up one location and moving to another, I should make the party decide where to go at the end of a session, not the beginning, so I can focus my efforts entirely on what they will see. The drama between the three great mills in Sugar’s Crossing was wasted effort, and I kept describing the Dwarven college like a 20th century American university, because that’s what I could think of on the spot.

Also, this is the second time they haven’t gone in the direction of that one NPC  that I’m really proud of.

← Session 7 | Campaign Summary | Session 9 →

RPG idea: Mechanics follow personality

There’s often a disconnect in TTRPGs between what characters can do, their mechanical options, and how they do it, their personalities and emotions.  Here’s an example of how to make mechanical options come from character behavior.

Characters start out as generalists: a little magic, a little sneaky, a little smashy.  At the end of a significant chunk of play (maybe clearing a dungeon, or solving a mystery, or completing a journey), each player writes down a descriptor that matches how each other character has behaved during that chunk.

Eladrial was reckless.  Fogban was cunning.  Rex was oblivious.

Each descriptor maps to one or more character moves:

  • Reckless
    • Reckless attack. You have advantage on attack rolls. Enemies have advantage on attack rolls against you.
    • Charge through: You have +3 AC vs. Opportunity Attacks, readied actions, and attacks from traps.
  • Cunning
    • When you take a moment to observe a target undetected, the GM will tell you one of the target’s weaknesses.
    • +1 to Deception
    • When you explain a cunning plan, party members get +1 forward when following your direction.
  • Oblivious
    • When you are targeted by charm, compulsion, or manipulation effects, there is a 50% chance they completely fail, as you simply don’t notice the attempt.

The GM gives each player a list of potential moves that is all the moves mapped to all the descriptors that the other players assigned to his character.  The player chooses 1 move to add to his character’s list of moves.

Narrative Scars

Like actual physical scars, traumatic events can permanently change people.  People marked by such events are always reminded of them.  Here’s a way to represent emotional or mental scars with physical scars in a magical role-playing game.  I use Powered By The Apocalypse jargon, since that’s the kind of RPG I usually run.

When you rest and heal after battle, consider how you earned your wounds. If a wound or the circumstances surrounding it are important to you, it does not heal like normal and you gain a Scar.

When you display a Scar to remind yourself or others of the lesson you earned with blood, everyone who sees it takes +1 forward when acting on your lesson.

When you decide that a Scar no longer holds power or significance, mark XP. The next time you receive magical healing, the Scar will fade.

Examples:

  • A bodyguard re-affirms her conviction by showing the wounds she took in her charge’s place.
  • Friends gleefully show the burns from that experimental hoverbike that almost worked.
  • The hero tears off his neckerchief.  “You should have finished the job, Warwick! I won’t make the same mistake!”
  • “We got in too deep on bad intel. I lost a finger and two comrades in that jungle.  Never again!”

Fairmeadow Fair, session 7

← Session 6 | Campaign Summary | Session 8 →

When we last left our heroes, their past was catching up to them. Hobert, owner of the Brace of Pigs tavern, is famous for a special wine whose remarkable taste is due to special herbs he steals from Samantha & Ferdinand.  Gleador & Lucia had pressured Hobert into being nice to Samantha & Ferdinand by threatening to reveal his thievery.  Now he’s using the bottling ceremony for his wine to stir up a mob against all four of them!

The bottling ceremony, showing the crowd rushing from the stage to surround the Brace of Pigs Inn.

Gleador asks a crow to poop on Hobert, since it’s impossible to take someone seriously who is covered in bird poop. The bird declines.  Plan B is Lucia commanding Hobert to tell the truth!  He lets slip that the special taste of the wine is due to special herbs from Samantha’s swamp.  Lucia says that anyone could buy the herbs from Samantha and they could all make great wine.  Instead of a ceremony for how great Hobert is, there could be a whole wine tasting competition!  Some bystanders are so inspired by Lucia’s words that they run off towards the swamp to get the herbs immediately! This is bad because Samantha has set deadly magical traps around the swamp to keep Hobert out.

Gleador follows the runners out into the grain fields between Fairmeadow and the swamp.  When he’s out of sight, he transforms into a panther (the legendary Black Beast that put the town in a panic a few days ago).  Lucia had arranged a signal with Samantha ahead of time.  She speaks a magic word to the giant millipede that Samantha gave her and it glows a little.  The message has been delivered. Samantha and Ferdinand will arrive soon.  Gleador plans to follow the runners to the border of the swamp, then appear and frighten them away.

Samantha and Ferdinand arrive at the bottling ceremony. The crowd pushes them up on stage next to Hobert.  Hobert accuses them of injuring him, which is almost true.  Last night, he snooped on Samantha, who activated a magical escape spell that dragged her out of the room and dragged Hobert’s face into the door he was peeking through.  Gleador can see this through the eyes of the crow from earlier, so he decides to chase the runners back now instead of waiting for them to reach the swamp.  A panther suddenly leaps out of the tall grass and chases them back towards town.  They run back into the crowd, screaming about the Black Beast.  The crowd starts grabbing torches and other improvised weapons.  Gleador scrabbles up the back of The Brace of Pigs to make a grand appearance.  He emerges over the peak of the roof with a terrifying roar, then pees on the inn to show his displeasure.  Like a cat, he scratches afterward, sending roof tiles falling and splintering.  Then he disappears to the back side of the roof, turns into a falcon, and flies away!

It’s basically a riot now!  People have lit torches and grabbed shovels, brooms, stout bits of wood, and surge towards The Brace of Pigs to attack the Black Beast.  The stage that Samantha and Ferdinand are on shudders as the crowd surges against it and rips out some crossbeams to use as improvised weapons.  Lucia blows her town watch whistle and hears a whistle reply from the direction of town hall.  Pepe’s on the way.  Hobert runs to the door to keep the mob from entering and probably destroying his inn. There’s not even roof access from inside the inn.  But there is around the far side! Construction equipment used to clean up after Samantha’s violent escape spell is still there: ladders, axes, large saws.  Lucia runs around and convinces them that the Black Beast has fled back into the fields.  The mob turns from the inn and sets out into the fields.  It’s after harvest, so burning the fields (while still terribly dangerous) is less bad then burning a building in town.

High over the fields, Gleador has another plan.  He spies the carcass of a deer and lands by it.  He changes back into a panther and claws the surrounding grass and earth, as if there was a great battle.  He roars like he is in mortal pain, which alerts the mob to his position. A hunter in the mob says, “Careful, boys! That’s the sound of a beast in fear of its life! Very dangerous!”  Gleador attempts to turn into a gorilla, but fails, so he’s an Elf when the mob bursts into the clearing. He breathlessly describes a great battle between the Black Beast and an invisible creature that throttled it and carried it away.  They believe him!  Several people break off to escort the poor, shaken Elf back to town, while the rest spread out to search for, probably, the benevolent invisible gorilla.

Lucia meets up with Gleador coming back from the field and Pepe running in the from town hall.  Pepe hears that the Black Beast has appeared again.  Ferdinand is right there, and dozens of witnesses confirm that it wasn’t him.  Pepe runs off to take charge of the mob and assign proper search patterns instead of whatever disorganized thing they were doing.

Gleador’s helpers wonder if they can get him some comfort food from the inn, but Hobert isn’t letting anyone in!  A Dwarf woman named Marley offers to take Gleador back to her home and bake him some muffins.  Lucia is welcome too.  They accept and head to her house.  As they leave, they make eye contact with Samantha and Ferdinand, still on the stage, and give them farewell salutes. Samantha gives a knowing, respectful nod. Ferdinand waves enthusiastically.  Marley’s home, like most Dwarf homes, is set into the ground. The “negative porch” has steps going down about three feet to the front door. Her home is mostly underground, but windows around the top of the five-foot tall rooms are above ground level.  Lucia is only five feet tall, so she mostly fits, but Gleador has to bend down quite a bit.  They have a pleasant chat and some tasty muffins.  After a while, a family of Gnomes arrive.  Marley is hosting them for the fair, so Gleador and Lucia have to leave.

A map of the town of Fairmeadow, including the healer’s temple, and Marley’s house.

Lucia pulled a muscle fighting the statue last night, and doesn’t want to spend the three days of rest it would take to heal naturally.  She remembers that a deputy who was hurt worse was back on duty the next day.  They track Lucy down and she points them to Mother Tiffany, the cleric at the local temple.  Lucy didn’t have to pay for the healing spell because the town guard has good health care.  The temple is on the southern edge of town and has a small field behind it, where people plant symbolic offerings of crops for the gods to bless.  Mother Tiffany eats the crops that grow in that field.  Lucia tries to get free healing, since she was injured while acting as a deputy.  Mother Tiffany tactfully declines and charges Lucia 10 gold, which she gladly pays.  They return to their hosts, the Glazers.

GM notes: I can’t believe Gleador got away with everything! He hid his shapeshifting on a whim and started two urban legends (the Black Beast and the invisible benevolent gorilla) and set Ferdinand up to be framed as the Black Beast. I was sure he’d have to deal with consequences for this, but he schemed his way out of everything.

  • Gleador appeared as the Black Beast in front of a crowd while Ferdinand was there, clearly proving Ferdinand’s innocence.
  • Gleador says the Black Beast is dead. There’s evidence of a struggle, and many people heard a panther cry out in pain.
  • Gleador says the invisible benevolent gorilla killed the beast. I thought I had him here, since Pepe would notice that there were no tracks leading away from the scene of the fight. But Pepe has chased the gorilla before, and its tracks disappeared then as well, so this actually corroborates Gleador’s story!

So the Fairmeadow Fair is over, and when they leave, Lucia will be remembered as a hero who fought many battles to protect the town, and Gleador will be remembered as that guy who was with Lucia, had no special skills, and almost died a few times.

← Session 6 | Campaign Summary | Session 8 →

Constant boom-town setting.

Many RPG settings have some calamity in the past that destroys old civilizations and leave lots of ruins for adventurers to explore.  What’s another way to have ruins without blowing up the world?

The world is really big compared to the population, so crowding is not a thing.  Civilization is kinda bad at infrastructure and conservation, so often towns will spring up, drain the nearby land of resources, then be abandoned as the inhabitants move on.

So there’s a linear progression of environments.

  • untouched nature
  • frontier towns
  • civilization
  • ghost towns and wasteland
  • reclaimed by nature

Some interesting side-effects:

  • Civilization is mobile. Everyone is always ready to move on.
  • Cities that are better at conserving resources stay in place longer and have sturdier buildings
  • Trade routes are always changing
  • Ruins are unstable because buildings aren’t built to last.
  • Traditions and history have to be able to move along with the town. No ancient libraries or graveyards.
  • The environment behind towns has a bit of a Nausicaa feel.
  • CIvilization has not filled the world. The world is much bigger than people.

 

Silly putty dopplegangers

Hitpoints are a popular abstraction to represent injury to creatures. Their simplicity makes them easy to use, but the abstraction differs from reality in some obvious ways.  Characters usually perform at full capacity as long as they have any hitpoints left, so a character can be stabbed several times without being impaired, but the last stab knocks that character unconscious.

So let’s give that strange behavior a diagetic explanation.  How can a creature keep going at full power with an arrow through its body? Surely vital organs were punctured, or important muscles were torn.  Not if the creature does not have organs or muscles!  I propose creatures made of homogeneous, shapable goo.  If their bodies are bashed, pierced, or otherwise disrupted, they can reshape themselves around the damage.  Since they can reshape themselves, let’s allow them to shape themselves to imitate other forms. Thus, silly putty dopplegangers.

So at full hitpoints, a doppleganger looks like a normal humanoid.  As it takes damage, it is visibly damaged, but is mechanically unaffected, like a clay sculpture dropped and quickly reformed.  When it runs out of hitpoints, it’s mashed into a formless lump. When a doppleganger regains hitpoints, its form regains detail.

Some fun optional things:

When a doppleganger rests & heals to full, it chooses a new form to imitate.  It can imitate a generic humanoid, or a specific person that it has studied.

One doppleganger can transfer hitpoints to another by removing a chunk from itself and adding it to the other. Will this lead to doppleganger parties forming Voltron? That might be cool.

Dopplegangers can intentionally flatten themselves to squeeze through small places.

A doppleganger can conceal small items or weapons by jamming them inside its body. Retrieving an item from inside its body is slower than retrieving an item stored in a bag or on a belt.

A doppleganger can intentionally splatter when falling or being crushed. It takes half damage, but must spend its next turn reforming.