Visually, Milford Sound in New Zealand is just about the most perfect place on Earth. This Image provided by Julius Silver from Pixabay

It’s September again (already!) and that means that Campaign Mastery has its regularly-scheduled hosting duties for the Blog Carnival (The one back in March was an ‘extra’ because no-one else stepped forward to host, and I thought of a topic). So what have I got to offer this time around?

Places Of Exotic Reality

Describe a scene observed around you as it’s equivalent somewhere or somewhen else, ready to be dropped into a campaign.

You could go back in time, switch genres, visit a strange plane of existence, whatever. Imagine that construction site as expanding the City Of Brass, that highway as a caravan trail through a mountain pass. And yes, something you might see on TV counts.

The objective is to produce a pool of “mundane” splashes of color text, flavor text, drop-in scenes or even encounters that GMs can use to populate their games.

They could be targeted at one of your campaigns, or at a generic campaign of some sort. Extra kudos in advance if you visualize the same sequence for more than one environment or genre, or if you can encapsulate the differences between two campaigns within a single piece of exposition.

Let’s have a couple of examples and some meaningful content for readers, what do you say?

1. Major Highway, Traffic

Let’s start by looking out my front Window. I’ve described what I’m looking at when I do so – see A target of inefficiency: from Dystopian trends to Utopia for my tirade on the subject from a little over 4 years ago – today’s purpose is a little different. Suffice it to say that this is a major thoroughfare (but not the largest) within the medium-large (by American standards) city that is my home, Sydney. Across the road is a church, St Albans Community Anglican Church, which not only offers traditional services but also (unusually), regular services in Sudanese.

A long string of covered wagons, many painted in garish colors, stream down a narrow path of proven ground across the rocky ground. Some, infected with “Go Fever”, rush past others, jockeying for position, striving to be the first to reach their destination. Others, close to overloaded, struggle to keep up. Some carry many more passengers than would seem necessary or even prudent; others, inefficiently, seem to have only a single driver on board. Few notice the shrine hidden amongst the rocks in their obsessive desire to get to where they are going; if they did, they might realize that it marks the presence of other strangers to this land, who may be long-gone or may be contemporary, for all the drivers know. Were they paying it attention, it might have served to forewarn them of the dangers and difficulties ahead; but they pay it no heed.

There you have it – a perfect little vignette, with a slightly ominous hint of trouble ahead, that’s all that’s required. These are so short – and not all of them will even be this lengthy – that every contributor should be able to post at least half-a-dozen. Fewer if you work one up into a full encounter, of course.

Oh yes, I should point out that the above works equally well in an SF setting describing a “wagon train to the stars” – just replace the “across the rocky ground” with “through the endless void of space”, and so on.

2. Mass Shooting

Tragically, I see that there’s been another mass shooting within the US. I’m not going to identify which one, because the bulletin makes the point that the situation there has now reached the point of averaging one per day – which is way too many, in my opinion, to be tolerated. But be that as it may, it begs the question: what’s the equivalent in a generic D&D/fantasy campaign?

Owen Proudfoot is a mage on the edge. Chamber of commerce dues, unrest among his Apprentices, overdue Baronial, Ducal, and National taxes, marital disharmony, annoying neighbors, a government that seems intent on picking on him and other “little guys” like him, and unreasonable demands by prospective Patrons that have eroded his ready cash to meet all these demands. The final straw comes as one of the local constabulary stops him to point out that the wheel on his wagon is insecure and needs repairs; without waiting to find out why they are interfering in his life again, something snaps within Owen and a malicious demand for destruction wells up within him. The constable is his first target, a well-placed fireball almost incinerating him and half of the temple behind him; another targets the tavern full of wenches wont to tease passersby with their wanton charms, especially those who cannot afford them. Once he has yielded to the impulse within, Owen doesn’t know how to stop; another fireball brings down the entrance to the tavern, sealing both floozies and customers within the burning building. By now, bystanders have realized that a madman is stalking the streets, and turned to flee; a lightning bolt is faster than the swiftest can run, and the eventual body count rises to thirty-two. Your party stands within the range of the unruly mage, but behind him and out of his line of sight – for now.

What are you doing?

My sincerest condolences to anyone involved in the latest incident – or the one before that, or the one before that, or…

And I include the perpetrators, whose thinking has become so corrupted with hopelessness and/or indoctrination that they find this to be a valid response.

3. Construction I

Recently, a new block of flats has been constructed across the lane out my back gate. Another is almost completed at one end of that lane, perhaps fifty feet away, perhaps a little more. If I turn the other way, I reach a larger road, across which lies another new apartment block complete and full, and a more substantial structure complete with interior garden under construction. There are another fifty-three developments that I personally know of within a 2.5km (1.5 mile) radius that have either been completed in the last year or are presently in development, many of which I pass every week.

As a result, construction (in general) has been on my mind quite a bit, and so I now present five different takes on the subject…

First, one appropriate to the Rings Of Time campaign, one very reminiscent of old-school AD&D…

It’s clear that everyone knows their role in the elegant dance that is unfolding around you. In a covered pavilion, the future owner sketches rough ideas in words or scrawls of what he wants, visions that are then interpreted by artists. When the owner approves of these interpretations, they are passed to the architects, who modify their designs to incorporate these desired features, employing whatever means are necessary to achieve stability and solidity in the resulting structure. Each alteration is then handed to a site foreman, who translates it into a work assignment and hands it off to a specific job foreman, releasing as many workers as are necessary to complete it in a timely and efficient fashion. That job foreman divides his workforce into those assembling materials and those incorporating them into the structure, whether it’s enlarging the base of a tower so that it can support the larger features demanded by the owner, or adding more columns withing the structure. All involved know that they will be paid substantial bonuses in gold should they beat the deadline initially established by the architects, and that any demand which would make that target unreachable will bring about an automatic renegotiation of the contracts with a penalty payment to the workers if it goes through, encouraging the owners to restrict themselves to only the most essential deviations from the original plans. It’s astonishing what almost-unlimited gold, backed by loans from the vast Draconic Horde, can achieve….

It doesn’t matter what is being constructed, the process scales – only the number of workers changes. The PCs intended to construct strongholds for themselves, and that meant building the housing for the workers they were recruiting to their banners, and the infrastructure that those workers required. They had plenty of gold to dedicate to the purpose; this is the basic system that they came up with to recruit experts, settle them, and employ them.

4. Construction II

And now, a similar scene more appropriate for Fumanor, where Magic went from a forbidden art to an almost-ubiquitous demand in a few short years, thanks to the PCs.

Early in the morning, construction resumes. A dozen mages summon Elementals and supervise their work. Some transmute earth that has been roughly pre-shaped by the human and Orcish laborers into stone, others sculpt and face the stones into finished blocks with an inhuman perfection, under the keen supervision of a sharp-eyed Drow, carefully bundled up and gauze-wrapped against the glare of the sun. Air Elementals carry the block into position, while water Elementals mix and shape the mortar that will bind the rocks together. Still another group of Elementals transform yesterday’s mortar into stone. When this group of mages exhaust their daily limit of summoning spells, a cleric steps forward to bless their work on behalf of the Gods, and a new shift follow.

In winter, fire Elementals keep the site free of snow, while more water Elementals keep it all dry by diverting the falling rain toward themselves, held aloft by more air Elementals. They all know that they will be paid as much as would any human worker for their efforts, regardless of how long each would take respectively to complete them; and that the funds held in trust for them by the crown could then be called upon in exchange for favors from the courts, or the attention of specific individuals as befits their needs.

Notice the difference that different societies and social standards make? This is significant because the two campaigns had players in common…

Intermission

My own native Australia is not without it’s own scenes of grandeur. This is the 50-foot tall Wave Rock in Western Australia, image by Monika Neumann from Pixabay

5. Construction III

Next, let’s visit the Elemental Plane Of Fire, the City Of Brass more specifically….

One of the greatest surprises that awaits all who travel to the City Of Brass for the first time is that heat management is a serious concern in the design and construction of everything within the city. This results from the fact that brass, although much harder and stronger than copper (one of it’s principle constituents), has a lower melting point than that reddish element – 900-940°C (1650-1720°F) vs 1085°C.

The frames of buildings are thus constructed of soft copper with brass inlays, and have nothing to do with structural rigidity, the usual purpose of such frames elsewhere. The rigid elements that actually form the structure are brass of various thicknesses, molded and shaped and manufactured on-site, with indented channels that are then filled with strips of copper which connect with the framework to conduct away heat that would otherwise soften or even melt the walls.

The carving and molding of such panels, and in particular the mounting systems to be employed and the thickness chosen for the panels is the most delicate and important task facing the architect within the city. Specific instruction and permits are required, and builders are held criminally liable for structural failures in their work.

Of late, the “hot” architectural trend has been the incorporation of decorative radiator panels protruding from walls or extending upward from roofs or downward from basements, or some combination. The latter are cast in situ from molten copper and permitted to cool in place to allow ample room for the radiators to expand or contract without weakening the rocky surface upon which the city stands. One or two innovators have even used such systems to create systems for the delivery of luke-warm water within a building, an unheard-of extravagance previously….

The inadvertent transmission of excess heat during construction is one of the greatest concerns of builders and craftsmen within the city. They are, after all, generating temperatures sufficient to melt copper, which in turn are hot enough to boil raw zinc. Streets within the city are laid out such that every building faces one large enough for casting processes to be carried out without endangering the surroundings. To supplement and bypass closures of these main thoroughfares, a network of smaller alleyways can be found connecting one road to another.

This regulation was not always in place, and in the city’s oldest quarter, buildings have been constructed in such a way that the alleys form a maze. Every now and then, the rulers of the City contemplate mounting a project to raze and reconstruct the old quarter, working from the outside in, but the cost, the presence of the capital building in that quarter, and the added protection provided by the Maze which must be traversed to reach it, eventually outweigh all other considerations.

This is more of a location within the greater location, or perhaps a scene with a guide explaining what a visitor is seeing when they come across such a construction project. I think I got a little carried away with it, but it all just fell into place as I was writing…

Sources:

• Melting points, boiling point of zinc: Google
• Comparison between copper and brass: DifferenceBetween.net
• How Brass is made: Quora

6. Construction IV

At much the same time as ideas started coming to me for the preceding section, I thought of something for the Elemental Plane Of Water:

Construction in the Elemental Plane Of Water is, ironically, in the shape of bubbles, added one on top of another, with holes where they touch to permit entrance and exit. Most have a flattened surface at the bottom for the convenience of “walkers”; “swimmers” consider it a mark of superiority that they don’t need such concessions. The core framework is a coral-like growth that is constrained by a process of hardening the liquid water into a more solid pipe-like shape; the coral’s growth is then stimulated until it fills the resultant cavity. The hardened-water “pipes” are then removed and replaced with curved panels, which permit a thinner layer of the coral to grow in between, completing the basic shape of the structure.

When the coral is thick enough to sustain both itself and the desired weight to be carried by the structure, the molds are removed and the walls coated in a soft jelly-like material in liquid form upon which the coral can feed. They are then clad in a tougher gelatinous substance which forms the exterior surface of the wall or floor. More of the softer material is then forced into the space between this cladding. It must be regularly replenished throughout the life of the structure.

As the building ages, the coral will grow into the softer gel but be constrained by the tougher membrane, growing stronger and more resilient. Textually, every surface in a Plane Of Water habitat is like touching Turkish Delight, or walking in a partially-deflated air castle – you can just feel the surface yielding a little beneath your weight.

Similar techniques are used to manufacture furnishings of both solid (coral) and soft (membrane/gel) variety, including planters and other decorative features – think “soft aquarium” (without any kitsch toys or props).

There are some visions of the Elemental Plane that include no solid surfaces whatsoever. I sometimes go that way, and sometimes have “plumes” of underwater “sand-bars” which have a clear up-down orientation in their immediate vicinity. The above vision clearly fits better with the latter, though by removing the flattened surfaces for “walkers” and related content, can be adapted to suit the former. What’s your pleasure?

7. Construction V

There’s a lot of in-game material that I could excerpt and place in this section to pad the article out. I’m not going to do that; for one thing, it’s too specific to this particular campaign. Instead, I’m going to (briefly) discuss the philosophy behind the construction sequences from this campaign, just to display the variety of material that can fit under the umbrella of this Blog Carnival..

I’m a big believer in superheros growing so accustomed to having their powers that they find mundane ways to employ them in their everyday lives. My players, in contrast, feel that their abilities are exceptional and special, and that such applications cheapen them; and, moreover, that this distinguishes these “acquired” abilities from inborn and natural capabilities. Both points of view are equally valid, but means that “mundane” applications of powers only happen when I deliberately write them into the plot sequence.

I’m careful to respect the player’s attitude, most of the time, and between us, this tension has yielded a balanced perspective between the ordinary and the extraordinary that permits excursions in any direction on the issue. In particular, I’m careful to only write in mundane usage of paranormal abilities when this adds to the plotline or to the player’s engagement with the plotline.

So it was when the group were called to assist with the construction in orbit of a replacement for the parent team’s headquarters – I included a diagram of the layout as a giveaway in Yrisa’s Nightmare and other goodies, a work of which I’m still very proud – I thought about things from the Parent Team’s point of view. They would not have called the PCs in because they were warm bodies to perform the labor of construction; there were many more such available from the Earth below. No, the only reason to call them in was because of the extraordinary things that they could do – their powers. So that was the way I wrote the sequence – the super-tough shape-changer forming precision molds from his own body, the energy projector and the mage helping melt metals to be shaped in those molds, the team’s more acrobatic member leaping from piece to piece to maneuver them perfectly into position, and so on. Mundane applications of their powers to the problems of construction in zero gravity.

I had metagame motivations for the plot sequence of course; it advanced the status of the parent team, began acquainting the players with the layout and construction of the new facility, and laid the groundwork for a later adventure set on the resulting space station. It also gave me an excuse to dig a little deeper into trans-dimensional travel and block a couple of potential game-breaking applications by throwing in some complications that would make future adventures more interesting. The alternative was an arms race between the PCs and their enemies to exploit those game-breaking applications, something that I judged unpalatable.

The questions raised by this short essay are fundamental issues that every super-heroic campaign has to wrestle with. Nor are any other genres in which exceptional abilities are available to either PCs or NPCs, like D&D, completely exempt from them – and the “Fumanor” and “Rings Of Time” examples earlier in the article demonstrate how profoundly they can impact on a campaign.

Intermission 2

I’m not sure where this image of the Milky Way was taken – it could be any of several places with such rock ‘fingers’ – but it makes for an amazing landscape, nevertheless. Image by skeeze from Pixabay

8. Football

I saw (briefly, because I don’t enjoy the sport) a report on progress toward the grand finals of the Australian NRL which talked about the rivalry between two clubs and their coaches, and I thought, ‘what a silly way to settle one’s differences’.

Bargaining and Diplomacy on Acheron are muscular affairs. Where negotiations are being conducted between ordinary individuals, some contest of prowess is used whenever a bargaining position is contested to settle the matter, with the challenge being set by whichever side is demanding concessions from the other. If neither side meets that criterion, a neutral arbiter and scorekeeper may set the terms of conflict.

Where the individuals are wealthy enough to do so, or the bargaining is between leaders of larger forces – be they tribes, bands, or nation-states – they may employ a dedicated team to challenge on their behalf. It is judged better to settle disputes with others on the game field when already engaged in a war or two – and everyone there is always engaged in at least one.

Most of these challenges resemble a traditional game played in the real world, with the addition of weapons. Ball games will frequently demand maces or hammers without spikes, for example (so that the ball is not damaged). Unless explicitly required, ranged weapons are generally forbidden to contestants; the excitement is not in the victory but in the defeating of the opposition, and ranged weapons inhibit the actual clash between the two.

9. Weather Report

As part of the same news-break, I saw a weather report, which explicitly mentioned the possibility of what is now a category-4 storm but may be a full-blown hurricane by the time it makes landfall, now bearing down on Florida.

Located at the intersection of the Elemental Planes of Air and Water is The Microplane of Storms. A 100-mile radius (160 km) disk of farmland, rimmed on one side by mountains, and sloping gently away from these high points, this plane is beset by violent weather phenomena. Locations within are not beset by a single storm, but by a succession of weather events. Air and Water from the elemental planes mix at the edge, carried into the upper altitudes as the land is warmed by something analogous to the sun, which orbits high overhead and breaks through the storm-clouds at least once a day. Currents then carry it to the mountains, where it cools and forms new storm cells, which gradually release their water content on the lands below. These form rivers, which run down to the edge, ending in a succession of waterfalls that return the water to the Elemental Plane from whence it derived.

All this makes the land ideal for agriculture, if not for the constant risk of hurricanes and tornadoes and the like. Nevertheless, settlers have found a home there, employing storm cellars and the like to ride out the harsh weather when it’s necessary. Travelers need to be more wary.

That’s little more than an idea seed for each individual to build on as they see fit.

10. Political Analysis

One TV program that I always watch (time-shifted as necessary) is Insiders, which analyses Australian politics for the week and often brings forth events or perspectives that hadn’t occurred to me. Such is the reputation that it has garnered over the years since its’ 2001 debut that a good showing is considered make-or-break on a politician’s career, and it’s scarcely possible to regard yourself as well-informed politically in this country without watching it regularly. So, I watched it today, and as I did so with this article in the back of my mind, a thought came to me…

It’s Round Table Night at the Scarlet Raven, a Local Tavern and weekly event, in which invited pundits expound on the events of the week within the city, and sometimes beyond. These pundits, chosen for their ability to articulate and debate, are usually bards, and it is usual for one to present matters from the perspective of the nobility, one from that of the administration, and one from the perspective of the larger businesses within the community. Occasionally, someone will speak up for the military or the commons, but these are less frequent. The Host and Moderator is always Barusmus Kasseed, the owner of the Scarlet Raven. The Commoners, Wealthy, Pious, and Nobles all crowd the tavern to hear the debate (it’s usually standing-room-only), and reactions from the audience are often used as a gauge for the popularity of different proposed measures and the import of different issues. Every now and then, riots have broken out within the Tavern, following which only watered-down ale is served for a few weeks or months during the event and its lead-up hours of business. Others have attempted to emulate the evening, but have not been popular enough to sustain the expenses involved (three professional bards – four if you count Kasseed) for long enough to build sufficient credibility, or have been too partisan in their approach to resonate with the collective inhabitants of the city…

Over to you all…

So there’s my ten contributions. Including the context, source, and commentaries, they average 380 words apiece, and that’s a reasonable target to aim for. Now, it’s over to the rest of you to add to this beginning! As always, I recommend the double-step of linking back to this anchor post (usually but not always generates a pingback) and dropping a line in the comments section below linking to your contribution. And have fun stirring those creative juices and learning how to transform the world around you into grist for your particular mill…

Image by Reimund Bertrams from Pixabay

This is being posted a day early, for two reasons: One, today marks the start of this Blog Carnival, and two, I have errands to attend to during my normal writing time tomorrow. I intend to post a shortish ‘regular’ article later in the week for those who miss my usual “depth” – exactly when will depend on how long it takes me to write, relative to how much time I have free to work on it.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2019: What If They Held A Blog Carnival And No-One Came?

I’ve always suspected that this might happen eventually – there were a grand total of *No* submissions for this blog carnival. Which is a shame, because the accumulation of resources from multiple sources was one of the chief assets that was expected to result.

The technique for creating mundane events and scenes of daily life within a campaign remains a valid one, but the absence of other contributions means that the only examples other GMs have to appropriate for their own campaigns are the ones that I have provided above.

In hopes of promoting the technique, under the circumstances, I’ve decided to make this post the round-up as well as the anchor, another first for the Blog Carnival!

Until next time, have fun at the game table :)