D&D Nov-13-2003

[ralphmelton]

I've got two snappy opening lines for this post:

The best-laid plans of GMs and men fizzle into INCANDESCENT STEAM upon contact with the players.

and

Perhaps I should be doing NaNoWriMo after all. All this seems to be so much better when it's going on in my head.

The big point of today was for the players to learn the identity of the Emperor's assassin. This did come to pass. But I had plans, such as them contacting Elyssisoriel who would say, "I don't want to leap to conclusions, but you should know that Garrett had vibrant purple eyes." These plans fell through--they suspected Garrett well before contacting Elyssisoriel.

My own personal goal was to really do a good job of portraying all the NPCs. To this end, I assigned each of the NPCs to one of the players, with the directive that whenever that player said something, they should remind me to say something for their designated NPC.

This plan sank like a lead balloon. Most of the players showed no interest in the NPCs' reactions, and the NPCs were just too overwhelmed by everything they were told to really have interesting reactions. So I've shortchanged the campaign by this. For example, I'd wanted to establish Karameikos as a cocky glory-seeker, which might add a note of emotion later if his hubris leads him to catastrophe--but there's not much room for that now. And I think the campaign is the worse for it.

I do feel, though, that this experiment indicates more strongly that I'm really not going to be able to portray vivid NPCs within this campaign--at least, not without a lot more help from the players. This is a very bitter pill for my story-oriented side.

Then the PCs decided to go looking for a fight, and they found one. This was reasonably exciting, even though it was a heavily unbalanced fight, because the fight started with Turok fighting alone against the ferocious hell-hound.

Then, the players neatly out-played me. Instead of waiting to take on the vampire (which I had thought wouldn't be for a while yet), they decided to scry on him and teleport directly to him. This is, in many ways, a very good plan--in particular, it neatly subverts a lot of the defenses I had been planning for him for the past month. Fooey.
The other reason it's a good plan is that there's a fair chance that the PCs might get lucky, because they only have to get lucky for a moment.

And we've established that the PCs are all expecting vampiric domination, so I don't get any surprise with that.

Not sure what I'll do yet. Maybe I'll just stew in my juices for a while.

Darn it, I want to feel happy about the results of the game more often.

Comments

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

Mordenkainen's private sanctuary and Bracelet of Friends. (Or charm bracelet of friends, or something)

The 'enemy expecting to be attacked's friend.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Don't go into too much detail, because I didn't lock this post away from my players. :)

[cellio]

Teleport really screws up a campaign in a lot of ways. The scry/teleport suggestion took me by surprise too.

From a character perspective, haste is important -- the sooner we deal with the vampire the sooner we get the dagger that's needed to help stop the bad stuff going on. From a player perspective, though, I have two reactions: (1) we're not ready to fight a vampire! and (2) the hunt was probably supposed to be an important part of the story. So if I'm playing the character well I can't argue against the teleport approach (and what does Larissa know from whether we can take on a vampire?), but as a player I find myself hoping that that we can't do it.

Part of the challenge with the NPCs was timing. What tended to happen is that each player had a line of questioning or investigation he wanted to pursue, and back-and-forth between that player and the NPC (the ghost, I mean) is both efficient and easy to manage. If, however, other players jump in with different lines of questioning, and then on top of that you try to give each NPC a line after each time a player speaks, you get chaos. I think this can be tweaked for the future, though; for example, next time Larissa can do her thing and then Tobin gets a block (his questions/comments might be aimed at us), and then Turok and then Karameikos, and so on. And, of course, I'm betting that most of the time you won't be trying to ride herd on half a dozen NPCs at once.

So I think you can portray vivid NPCs -- you've done so in the past -- but that portraying several vivid NPCs concurrently is a Herculean task for any GM.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

The NPC thing was a good thought but didn't feel natural. I don't know how you could have possibly developed personalities for all 4 major NPCs. The most you can really expect is the spokesman, which seems to be Viggo. Tobin also has half a chance at developing a bit because he is so unique and since we've seen him before. The other two are probably doomed to be eclipsed by Viggo and Tobin though.

Although, if you have combats with the big group and everyone takes one of the other characters, the player might invest them with a little bit of personality if you give them some guidance. I believe that Monica was doing some of this with Tobin and I'm pretty sure that hubris could some through for Karameikos in this way. Battles with the big group could be pretty cool but they will be long if we are evenly matched.

You could also take a page from television where they sometimes build up characters by having the camera follow them around and let the story revolve around them. I'm not suggesting that the story be dominated by NPCs because that is frustrating for players but Karameikos might develop a bit more if he ends up being stuck with Turok in a spot and they have to figure out how to escape. Of course this breaks the "don't split the party" rule. Perhaps it is just the other three NPCs who get split off and Karameikos helps the PCs to rescue them.

I was serious about talking to Tal about the vampire thing. My party did pretty much the same thing and he ran us through the ringer for doing it. :) His point was that a vampire, especially one as old and seemingly powerful as Garrett, would have lots of defenses in his lair. In our case, there were a lot of undead in various places in the small complex and we won but it turned out to be a highly nasty fight.

Actually, you should also talk to Tal about running a lot of NPCs. He did that a lot in our 2E campaigns because the optimal party size was larger and the game wasn't as popular so we had fewer players. There were some memorable characters that came out of that campaign (like Sklaw and Elif) although I think for the most part that they were developed over the campaign and not in a single session so that probably made things easier for Tal.

Hmm, in that same campaign we travelled with a group called the Fellowship of the Torch (which was out of the Greyhawk supplements). I don't remember them having very developed personalities but I do remember them having distinct roles in the group and they acted based on those roles when necessary. We were with this group for the "Sklaw's Girlfriend" arc and the big battle that I like to talk about so much (where Marie from the Fellowship IIRC laid down defensive spells while Flar was casting offensive spells to support the rest of the two parties who were at various spots on the hillside). That was one of my favorite battles even though we almost lost, especially when the mage's position was overrun, and one of our NPCs was killed and eaten by demons.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Kyle is still iffy about teleporting when not drunk to start with. If you then throw in undead, he's still pretty disturbed by the Doral Taviani (sp?) incident since that drained him so much so he's disliking this idea. (Yes, Kyle is a pretty disturbed individual.)

Don't let the players get you down.

[sethcohen.livejournal.com]

Then, the players neatly out-played me. Instead of waiting to take on the vampire (which I had thought wouldn't be for a while yet), they decided to scry on him and teleport directly to him. This is, in many ways, a very good plan--in particular, it neatly subverts a lot of the defenses I had been planning for him for the past month. Fooey.

If they can ruin your plans, you can ruin theirs.
Player: I scry the vampire's lair/the vampire/that guy with purple eyes.
Ralph: It's dark. Darkness like you've never seen before. Darky darky dark. Wow, like no light at all. You'd see more if you squeezed your eyes shut real tight.

Or, if you're not as obnoxious as me, you could say "Mist. Swirls and swirls of it." Why don't you email me about more of the current status, and I can help you plot. After the weekend, of course.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

we're not ready to fight a vampire

I worry about both sides of that. What happens to the campaign if you're not ready?

[cellio]

If you do not want this fight to happen now, there are plenty of ways you can prevent it:

If he moves around a lot, successive scrys will not produce a good image of where he is, thus complicating teleport.

I'll bet you can't scry something in gaseous form. Or rather, what do you see if you do?

It's very dark in here.

Your scry is now being blocked. Gee, I guess he noticed the last one.

He noticed the last scry and is sitting in deliberately-misleading surroundings.

He's got minions. Lots of minions. You can see some of them in the scry.

Lore: there are ways for the target of a scry to backtrack it once he notices repeated incoming scrys. Do you want the vampire to hunt you?

If you go to Zahadum, you will die. (Oh, excuse me. :-) )

[echoweaver.livejournal.com]

Though I've actually never played D&D since first edition, this comes up a lot in GURPS with seeker/trace. We of lcowper's player group used to find and defeat many a well-conceived villian way too quickly by using this combo. Then Lyn wised up and stopped making her primary adversaries vulnerable to one or both spells. Either you could get a picture of what's going on (can be used for truly disturbing flashes of insight into what horrible things the villian is doing) but can't get a trace, or you simply can't get seeker to work to be begin with.

I think most major villians simply need to be contrived to be immune to this in one way or another, unless their vulnerability is in fact a trap. I see nothing wrong with that -- this is why they're the big villians.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Many of these don't work, for reasons I won't go into. Some of them might.

Blocking a scry turns out to be surprisingly expensive. nondetection costs 50gp and a 3rd-level spell, and it lasts only an hour per level. (Do you see cheaper options?)

More generally, I view it as y'all's right to make this choice--you know that it's very risky, and that's your option. And my plan was that in the third arc, the PCs would have even more choice and agency than before--and, well, this is one of the things that can happen when y'all have a lot of agency. :-/

Re: Don't let the players get you down.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

I have said this before too. Sweetie, if you want something to go a certain way, and we're getting in the way, spells can fail. Maybe the vampire notices the scry and blocks it. You are in charge of this story, and you're allowed to make things work by having a spell fail. It's more interesting that way anyway.

You do a good job. Don't beat yourself up!

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

You could make it into an item. If he's been around 500 years and has the ethics that he appears to, he should have accumulated enough money to block scrying if he cares. Depending on what you want in the campaign, you might want to tune the item specifically to him or something so the PCs don't end up with it.

Either that or he could have an item that complicates scrying. Maybe it doesn't make it impossible, just more difficult.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit confused as to why we decided to fight it. We know that it went through the, presumably elite, guards "like butter." Do we know that the guards are significantly weaker than us?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I do agree that there was a timing problem with giving the NPCs time--but the same sorts of timing problems tend to leave Lori out a lot, too, so it's a problematic thing even without NPCs. (Hmm. I wonder if it would have worked any better to say 'you have to give your buddy NPC a chance before you speak.' Probably not.)

One more thing that I was trying to express: Charlos is also a paladin, though possibly of a somewhat different flavor.

Re: Don't let the players get you down.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The thought occurs to me that it might be more bastardly to give them all the rope they need to hang themselves.

I'll send you e-mail, or perhaps post a protected message here.

[cellio]

I don't think we decided. I think, at the end of the night, Dani made a suggestion about what we might do next and no one objected. But you're right that we have direct evidence that we're not ready for this yet -- that he went through these guys like butter. So I think we need to learn more and become stronger before we go after him.

I don't know what that means about what we do next, though.

[cellio]

I think the timing thing is more about flow than about air time. If each player wants to have a different conversation and we try to swap among them, we lose time and coherence due to the swapping. If we let one run its course and then move to the next, people who go late get left out. I agree that Lori has been getting left out of things (also Mike), and I don't know how to do things differently to make that not happen.

One more thing that I was trying to express: Charlos is also a paladin, though possibly of a somewhat different flavor.

Ooh. We must talk. :-)

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. I'm not sure what else we could do now. Is there anything else we can do in Cardior? Should we bury the emperor? Why hasn't anyone else done that anyhow? Is everyone dead?

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

For the most part I'm not feeling left out. When things are going along fine, my additional opinion isn't necessary. Besides, Kyle himself probably isn't that attached to saving the world but, instead, he finds this to be an interesting way to gain money and experience. Some of the occurrences pique his interest though. This means that he's more inclined to let those wanting to save the world lead and just make snarky comments about it. :)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

There's not such an item currently, but I like the idea of something that can be overcome.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Everyone who was in the sanctuary is dead, and no one has visited since the death.

Burying (or perhaps rather cremating) probably would neither help nor hurt the emperor, but it might be a nice thing to do.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Another comment: you folks do have some other leads of things you could do. If y'all don't remember, I'm willing to provide a list.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you're not feeling left out.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I don't remember. Maybe Monica does though. It seems like we should do something about the immediate problem of the dad emperor, like at least tell someone. Presumably, even if we fix the land, the emperor is still dead and that'll have to be dealt with.

[cellio]

We've created magic items that aren't in the book; why can't Garrett? (Well, through agency if he's not a spellcaster.)

[cellio]

I'm feeling a bit dim on other leads now.

We (now) have a better fix on where Elys' was trapped, so we could try to find and free her. We certainly want to do this eventually anyway, and doing it sooner could help us save the world.

Before the teleport suggestion I had asked about getting a map (or what's known of it) for the lands to the north -- the area we might call the "capitol". That would help us work out the relative locations of Garrett ("the center"), the caverns of Laryn, and the Gorge of Fire. The latter two are points of interest for us, though I don't know how they interact with saving the world. Realistically, though, we'll need some outside help to find all of these locations -- etiher a rough map so we can use the geography theory better, or some ideas about distances, or something. It'd be hard to find the caverns of Laryn on foot without more hints than I think we have now.

I think part of the problem is the urgency of it all -- the world is going downhill so we want to act quickly and defer tasks that aren't mission-critical, but it might all end up being mission-critical. How to tell? How to choose?

And yes, we need to have a conversation with Marius about getting an heir lined up. There will need to be a new emperor and we don't know of anyone who was in the pipeline. But we are adventurers and world-fixers, not kingmakers, so I don't think we can choose a new emperor.

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

I think Turok would be a great candidate. I mean he has royal dragon blood and two groups of adventurers to back him up. What more could we want? :)

Somehow I feel like there is more that should be done in Cardior to start setting things in motion here before we leave. It's true that we aren't king makers but if we have taken it upon ourselves to solve the problems of the world, it seems as though we should start working on a post-solution vision as well. Sadly, I'm still suspicious of Marius and I wonder if we would give him way too much political advantage by telling him the complete status. Of course, we've probably already told him enough to upset the balance.

I'm just spewing thoughts here. There probably isn't much coherency.

[cellio]

I think Turok would make a fine emperor IFF he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life hiding in the sanctuary. :-) Before I knew about that wrinkle, I had sort of assumed (out of character!) that Turok would end up as the new emperor. So if we can fix the world, rather than just fending off the sickness like they had been doing, that's the perfect ending. If not, we'd have to subdue him. :-)

Cardior: good point. And at the very least, we should try to clean up the monsters currently roaming the streets and find and attack their source (must be a pool here somewhere as I don't think they're coming from the sanctuary via teleport). If Ralph is listening, perhaps he'll comment on whether this would fit into his plans for the next game.

Marius: I distrusted him at first too, but have gotten the feeling from Ralph that he's meant to be a resource, not an adversary. And as you say, he already has a fair bit of information about the situation.

Our resources are, basically: Elys'/Anarian for ancient lore, Seamus for conventional (recent) lore, and Marius for political foo. This is pretty clearly political foo. (Yeah, I've left out Colm, Brion, Mairead, and others, who are more like personal resources than campaign-level ones.)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I intended it to be a bit easier to use the geography theory to get around. I'll try to provide a rough map, then.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

You know, with all this setup of Turok becoming the emperor, it may be hard for me to do that without being anticlimactic.

Cleaning up Cardior: I had not actually given that much thought, but you're right, it does make sense. (I had been thinking that it would be generally intractable to do so, and the armies would be a stopgap measure, but maybe it would be more satisfying to enable you to clean up the town, at least partially.)

Lord Marius: originally he was supposed to be trustworthy, then I thought it would be cool to give him a separate agenda. But my intent is that you should be able to trust him to pursue his agenda. (Actually, that gives me some ideas...)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it would help us come to common ground for us to list the adventure hooks you have right now (as you've done), with some hints on what y'all might need in order to pursue them, so that our plans can match more closely.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

This seems a good idea to me. I'll send email to the list, but I also wish to say that I think taking on the Vampire right now is a colossally bad idea.

[cellio]

You know, with all this setup of Turok becoming the emperor, it may be hard for me to do that without being anticlimactic.

In many stories the ending is well-known but the course of getting there is still exciting. I expect that to be true here as well.

Cleaning up Cardior: I had not actually given that much thought, but you're right, it does make sense. (I had been thinking that it would be generally intractable to do so, and the armies would be a stopgap measure, but maybe it would be more satisfying to enable you to clean up the town, at least partially.)

I think that would be satisfying, and it can give you the opportunity to plant more clues if you like.

[cellio]

That's a good idea. I'll wait for Lori's email to expand on this, but a few off the top of my head:

- Rescue Elys'. Need to locate and access the flying city. (Larissa would like to go there to procure ingredients for magic items, too.)

- Rescue Therion if possible. Requires info (Elys' was dubious about whether it would work and she knows more about this than we do), and that we locate the caverns of Laryn.

- Take Kotara-nar to the Gorge of Fire.

- Figure out how to cure the world once we have Weeping Wounds.

- Acquire Weeping Wounds. This pretty much requires that we neutralize Garrett somehow.

- Larissa would love to visit the Lake of Optalis (ingredients again), but absent a story reason to go there we presumably won't. Perhaps legends tell us that the improved vision there is not just physical?

- Turok's homeland, aka the other Dragon Empire. Where? Why? How? And who is the catman working for?

I'm sure there are more. (I'm not counting end-game stuff, like Liandra/Viggo, Kyle/Dalia, and so on. :-) )

[mrpeck.livejournal.com]

Kyle would have to mature quite a bit for the Dalia thing to work. Maybe he'll just go off and form a one halfling unicorn cult instead. :)

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

He might well. I wouldn't want him to have any magic items that I wouldn't let y'all have (especially since it's not impossible that you might end up with them), but something less effective that nondetection wouldn't be objectionable.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Since you asked about the spelling: Dorl Tavyani.