A relatively short and focused article today, designed to give me the maximum running room to get the final part of the ongoing Long Road series out the door.

Adding Layers To Encounters

Imagine that the PCs are in the middle of a fight, battling a non-sentient creature. It’s been a knock-down drag-out affair that has knocked both sides around for several rounds now.

And then one of the PCs gets knocked down, pushing aside some underbrush, and revealing a fresh footprint in the earth – scaly, reptilian, and humanoid…

Right away, the current conflict assumes new dimensions. There is an implied potential connection between this indication of a future encounter and the one that is currently playing out, deriving from the potential connection between the two creatures concerned.

Is the creature now being combated the equivalent of an attack dog? Is it a pet? Is it a rival for domination or survival in this location? Might there be a sudden attack from the scaly humanoid from some other direction? Or is the creature buying time for Scaly to set traps or make a clean getaway?

What was a simple-but-difficult encounter, mindless entertainment of a sort, suddenly grows all sorts of social and tactical dimensions, potentially far more important and significant than it initially appeared.

Every party has its combat-monsters and its deep thinkers (rarely do the two coincide); an encounter playing to the former generally leaves the latter disengaged to at least some extent. Suddenly, they have a whole lot to consider and act upon, and the combat-monsters are bereft of their backup – hopefully just at the point where they start to feel like the group have bitten off more than they can chew.

This is a simple example of adding a second layer to an otherwise straightforward encounter.

Almost every encounter in an RPG can have added layers incorporated in this way. Parts of this practice should be no-brainers to any reasonable GM:

For some days now, the PCs have been having meetings with [someone, it doesn’t matter who] in order to gain their support for [something, it doesn’t matter what – it might be their innocence in a court hearing or a business deal or political]; at the next such meeting, just as all the side-issues have been dealt with and the negotiations are getting to the heart of the matter, the NPC party comments “You know, I was having dinner the other night with [PCs arch-enemy] the other day, and [s]he made a most interesting observation. He thinks there could be clear benefits to the Kingdom…”

It doesn’t matter how valid the point is that’s about to be made, the whole discussion has suddenly been overshadowed by the sudden connection between this NPC and the PCs arch-enemy. So potent is this association that even a decision in their favor is suddenly suspect, to be taken apart. Are the PCs playing into their enemy’s hands, or is he simply playing with their heads by proxy? Or is there a whole lot more to the story? Is their enemy really in favor of them doing what they had already decided they wanted to do? Or is he using reverse-psychology on them to get them to wave off on something that he really doesn’t want them to get involved in?

Sometimes – perhaps even most of the time – this will be just the DM playing with the players’ heads for the entertainment of all concerned. But there is the nagging risk that this time, there’s more to it.

Too Many Layers Grow Opaque

Once you get into the habit of “enriching” your encounters, it becomes easy to go too far.

To use the second example to demonstrate:

“On the other hand, [Another Arch-enemy] made a powerful presentation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day, pointing out how risky the proposal is, in terms of the Kingdom’s [economics or trade or self-defense or whatever]. The Chancellor is a very powerful man within the court…”

The PCs now have one enemy who is supporting their proposal, presumably for his own purposes, and another who is opposing it, presumably because it runs counter to their own purposes. The PCs are caught in the crossfire, and the players will feel like they have lost all control over the situation and are being toyed with by one side or the other. It all becomes too much work to unravel at this point, and some of the hardiest of players will simply throw their hands in the air.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s entirely possible to stack three, four, five, even six different layers on top of each other. But you need to give the players time to integrate each into their world-view and planning before the centipede drops its next shoe.

Employ different vectors for each complication, at different times, and be sensitive to your player’s needs at the game table. You aren’t just there to complicate their lives; you are the impartial hand of fate pushing them on to greatness (well, to great adventures, at least). You can drop bombshells all around the players, but need to give them time to scramble from one side of the crater to the other before detonating the next.

It Shouldn’t Just Be Enemies

Having an ally unexpectedly oppose some action by the PCs – either out of genuine concerns or because he/she has been misled – is just as valid a curve ball to play, forcing players to make a choice: spend (waste?) time allaying the concerns of the NPC or risk losing an ally.

Added Dimensions Should Be Qualitatively Different

If an encounter’s core is combat-oriented, the most effective grenade to lob (sans pin) is going to be cultural or social or magical or theological or tactical or intellectual. That’s why the first example works, as was pointed out in the ensuing discussion.

It’s also why the proposed third layer in the ‘too many layers’ discussion doesn’t work – the proposed third layer is too like the second. Instead of adding to the situation, it takes away from it. Adding a third layer to the encounter that is of a different type – social or theological or arcane in nature, for example – begins hinting at potential motivations for the arch-enemy that the players may not have considered, or adding Oomph to them if the possibility is on their radar.

Clarity Is Valuable, Too

My final point on the subject is this: Once you get the players used to complex, layered, encounters, they will start looking for the curve balls, and jumping at shadows. Every now and then, you can cue up an encounter that is as straightforward as it looks to be on the surface, sit back, and watch the fireworks.

This maintains a sense of uncertainty that should be present. But it doesn’t work unless you’ve prepared the ground first – by layering your encounters.

WARNING: At around 35000 words, this is certainly one of the longest posts here at Campaign Mastery! Settle in for a long and sometimes-bumpy ride, folks…

This is part two of my review / demonstration of the “Tangled Web” campaign sub-structure. I’m going to presume that you’ve already read part one, which you can find at this link and dive (more-or-less) straight in right where I left off.

There are two points that I think I should make before doing so, afterthoughts regarding the content in part one.

First, I should remind everyone that there is a distinct shift in style and focus from this point in the adventure. The first part was all spy games as a vehicle to deliver and update the relevant background information; phase two of the adventure is a series of mini-adventures that together form a broader tapestry – a campaign within an adventure which itself is part of a campaign within a campaign.

I’m going to interrupt myself to make a point about infodumps. I’ll expand this comment into a feature article of its own at some point (I’ll just make a note to do that, maybe next week). These are universally hated as the most boring of adventures – situations in which the GM does nothing but pontificate and the players do nothing but listen – but they are a necessary evil, a way to give the players the information that their characters should logically have – which is essential to the players being able to make informed choices for their characters. There are three keys to success:

• Keep them as interesting and interactive as you possibly can.
• Follow them up with observations “in the field” so that the information doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Make it relevant, ASAP. Preferably without telegraphing the course of the adventure!
• For the next few adventures, stay alert for the players having forgotten something that their characters would not have forgotten, and decide on a case-by-case basis whether or not to remind the player. A simple INT save by the character should be enough. Any character with an eidetic memory or equivalent should always justify a reminder – “you may have forgotten…”

With that, back to what I was saying…

These adventures quickly established a basic structural pattern, as you’ll see. A key thing to watch for are the progressions from one mini-adventure setting to the next – some of these will be highlighted within the text. Culture, environment, religion, politics, knowledge of science, social practices and expectations, and the way the locals use and live with magic – all evolve in a continuous progression as the PCs travel from region to region. Not that they or the players knew that at the time!

These encounters serve a meta-purpose within the broader campaign – they are all about how the game world has evolved from the starting point described in the original campaign background, provided to the players more than two years earlier (game time). I wanted to make the fact of the Ragnarok disaster feel real to them, and show how various communities had recovered and evolved in consequence. These changes don’t reflect what would be most likely to occur should some catastrophic event really befall the world or the region; things proceeded at the speed of plot. But “recovery from the disaster” and subsequent political developments is another of those important progressions from region to region.

The other point to be made is that with several of the synopses having been written after the fact just for this series, you might get the impression that there is little content overlap from one to another. In reality, while there is some effort to massively compress the preceding synopsis, I try to always hit the key points. Anything that’s not immediately relevant to the day’s play to come might get left out until it becomes relevant.

You always have to bear in mind that a synopsis has three jobs to do:

1. It has to remind the players (and, if necessary, the GM) of what happened in the last game session;
2. It has to remind the players of any context that they have to take into consideration during play;
3. It has to remind both players and GM of the bigger picture.

With the context in terms of this article now filled in, let’s get back to the synopses – after one more brief interruption…

Synopsis, Session 4 (from Session 5)

With the aid of Agent Indigo of UNTIL, the team had persuaded the 5th Reich to permit them to take advantage of their unofficial ‘corridors’ through to the US. Well, actually, they had mostly just been along for the ride, Indigo had done all the heavy lifting – several canapes and glasses of white wine, to be specific. It would be quite a while before they forgot the unique atmosphere of the capital, Fortaleza, where agencies played spy games on each other part of the time and socialized their days and nights away.

Despite philosophical objections, the team were also forced to admit that the Scientific Fascist Meritocracy that comprised the 5th Reich was actually good for the country, and showed promise of being an enlightened administration – an admission that none of them ever expected to be making, especially after their experiences with the far more “Traditionally Fascist” 4th Reich in Germany.

Muerte’s Chief Of Intelligence, Oskar Von Peirera, had handled the travel arrangements that were intended – in due course – to deliver them through Central America to the US, just in time to set up a semi-permanent base of operations and stop a group of radical domestic terrorists from detonating two stolen Russian Nuclear Weapons that had been sold on the black market.

The team had traveled to Maracaibo, Venezuela aboard a private jet (that had looked more like a large Cessna when it had taken off) in a carefully-orchestrated operation that would have made them extremely difficult to track.

When that aircraft landed, at about 1AM, Tuesday July 1, 1986, it taxied to where three jet-black jeeps flying the flag of the 5th Reich on each side waited. These were clearly “official vehicles”, with drivers who scrupulously ignored their passengers; there was enough room in each vehicle for two team members and driver.

There was little traffic on the streets, but what there was suggested that this was the universal road vehicle in these parts. Closer inspection as they passed under a street-lamp showed that each vehicle was actually a “Jimp” – obviously a cheap Jeep knock-off.

Maracaibo, post-Ragnarok, was a far cry from the tourist destination it had once been. If anything, it more closely resembled what they had expected Fortaleza to look like.

Eventually, the convoy delivered the group to a decrepit-looking trawler waiting at the docks. As they boarded, they noticed that many of the markings were in Cyrillic. They were taken below and shown to bunks, and informed that landfall in Jamaica for refueling would be in a little more than three-and-a-half hours. They would be required to remain below decks during that operation.

The fishing trawler chugged slowly out to see; none of the party were sure of the distances, but that estimate seemed awfully fast for a fishing trawler to achieve. This was Muerte’s signature once again – more was going on than met the eye. As soon as it was our of sight of anyone watching from Maracaibo, the trawler rose out of the water to reveal that it was actually some form of hover-vessel with an entirely separate drive system and a transparent conical canopy that unfolded over the trawler to create an aerodynamic shape. It was hard to estimate their speed, but the horizon was somewhere between 7 and 8 km away, and the wake behind the vessel stretched well beyond it. The waves were just a blur.

Since they had now been on the go for almost 18 hours, the team relaxed; better to grab a few hours sleep while they could. From what they had been told, their circumstances were going to rapidly grow more primitive, and likely to involve a great deal more physical labor.

About three-and-a-quarter hours later, they awoke when the vessel slowed, the canopy retracted and hid beneath the surface, and it was again reduced to a seemingly-standard Russian fishing trawler, rocking back and forth on the waves. From below came the sound of a cantankerous diesel engine stubbornly starting up after being wheedled by the ship’s engineer. The same ‘fisherman’ appeared and informed them that the vessel was approaching Montego Bay, and everyone should remain hidden until he came to tell them otherwise.

A few minutes later, the lights of the settlement became visible, and fifteen minutes after that, the vessel was tying up at the docks, disgorging a reasonable catch from various holds and nets, and taking on fuel, ready for another run. Runeweaver (now Specter, and publicly using the name Isaiah Lucas), was a little stunned; Jamaica reeked of Magic, it was everywhere. Even the pump depositing diesel fuel into the so-called trawler was powered by an Imp. Since arcane constructs had a tendency to explode on contact with Psychic Assemblies, he hastened to warn Vala, now Zeitgeist, and using the name Carmen DeLambert.

Two men in dark suits and sweating heavily in the pre-dawn heat attempted to conceal themselves in the shadows of the docks, without any great success. The captain walked down the Gangplank and approached them. A few words were exchanged, before the Captain removed something from his back pocket and held it flat in his right hand. A green spiral of energy erupted from whatever it was and rose about 15 cm. One of the men asked a question, to which the Captain replied, holding up fingers on his left hand to be sure that he is understood: two, three, one. The other man nodded, and said something, before the pair offered a Nazi salute and turned away.

You might have suspected the captain of selling you out if some of the party weren’t passable lip readers; the pair were relaying orders from Oskar Von Peirera to the Captain, advising him that passage for his ‘guests’ had been arranged with ‘the Rams’ through their territory from Puerto Barrios to America, somewhere East of the Sierra Madre. The ‘usual exchanges’ would be made en route – which they party interpreted to mean that ‘the usual bribes would be paid’. The 2-3-1 referred to Two women, Three men, and one “Ktzanmann”.

Dawn was almost an hour away, and the tide had just turned, when the struggling diesel was again coaxed into its chugging, sputtering, resemblance of life. The wind was a stiff breeze from the Northeast, the humidity 68%, and the temperature 36°C. By noon, according to the forecast, it will be 84% and 42+ degrees, and dark storm clouds would be lining the horizon with the prospect of 6-7 hours of tropical monsoon.

Once beyond the headlands, the vessel repeated it’s ‘party trick’ and transformed into its ‘speed racer’ configuration. The only person who considered this speed to be slow was St Barbara, who could hit Mach 5 if she needed to.

The sailor who was acting as liaison to the passengers came below and informed the team that breakfast would be served in the galley in an hour, and they should reach their destination in a little over 2 hours 40 minutes, which would be about 7AM Jamaican time, or 6AM local time, as they would be changing time zones again. They should prepare to disembark when the dawn broke. He also warned that the day would be hot and sticky, but much cooler in the highlands; storms would chase them all afternoon, so they would want to step lively. He then left without pleasantries, perfectly happy for the group to ignore him if they thought they knew better.

After another 50 minute cat-nap, the group had enjoyed about half a night’s sleep. Breakfast was shared with the crew, who had been ordered to ignore the team and eat in silence.

At 5:47 AM, local time, dawn broke. Twenty minutes later, the boat – again in ‘trawler’ mode – pulled up at a makeshift dock at what was left of Puerto Barrios, Guatemala. The port had not really recovered since Ragnarok washed most of the existing structures out to sea and the government collapsed. In fact, the entire culture had regressed to a tribal level.

Directed up a narrow valley, the team were met by a man who introduced himself as Maynor Estuado Morales, their guide. He had been sent by as a “Diplomatic Escort” by those who oversaw the Central Regions to guide them through the labyrinth of local politics and secure them passage through the myriad kingdoms that lay between here and their destination, a service that his organization had been contracted to provide by the Fifth Reich. The first of those Kingdoms belonged to King Hector, a vainglorious bully who was possessed of a certain craftiness.

In each Kingdom, they would be required to present themselves to the ruler and accept a task from him to earn them passage through their lands to the next Kingdom. These were usually minor, requiring an hour or less.

To travel through his realm, King Hector had agreed to loan the group enchanted slippers that would greatly accelerate their passage. They were self-adjusting in size and unisex in nature, but would take some getting used to – and there were storm clouds on the horizon to the east, so they should probably get started….

Key Points & Notes

This synopsis had to recapitulate the transition between phases of the adventure, and – perhaps more importantly – recapture the sense of such a transition taking place. The events in Jamaica were critical to that, and that’s why they received almost as much space as the preceding events – 430 words vs 680 words.

The next key item was recapitulating the introduction of Maynor Estuado Morales, who would be a key figure throughout the next several adventures, and who is likely to be a recurring NPC in the campaign. In the same paragraph I reminded the players of the impression they had been given of King Hector by Morales.

The last two paragraphs frame the pattern of the adventures to follow. I actually used a more complete breakdown to prepare the mini-adventures:

1. Border observations – first impressions of the Kingdom to come
2. Describe the Rapid Transportation Method provided for the PCs, usually some roleplay
3. Travel to the Monarch, Observe life in the Kingdom, sometimes with commentary by Maynor Morales
4. Meet The Monarch
5. Receive the Task
6. Travel to the Task location, more observations of life in the Kingdom
7. Complete the Task
8. Travel to wherever they need to go to have the Task completion recognized, still more observations of life in the Kingdom
9. Travel to the border, final observations of life in the Kingdom, summation

Aside from being a logical sequence (which I varied at need), each stage is designed to provide context for the next; there are some important and noteworthy underlying assumptions being made here. For example, no Monarch exists in isolation; an observer would form opinions of that Monarch based on what they saw of the Kingdom they ruled over.

Having met (and interacted with) the Monarch, the observers have the chance to make more observations of life and interpret how the Monarch’s personality, policies, and the restrictions under which they suffer, impact the Kingdom they rule.

There usually turns out to be “more” to at least one aspect of the Kingdom than first appeared. Sometimes that was the Monarch, more often it was the Task, and occasionally it was the environment through which they traveled, or some combination of these.

It should also be noted that the PCs were free to interrupt their journey to investigate something further, or interact with the locals, though the background strongly motivated them not to do so.

Finally, I kept careful track of travel time, and worked backwards to determine their initial arrival time, estimating how long the Tasks would take. I even adjusted the efficiency of the rapid transit provided somewhat to (a) keep them believable and reasonably limited, no matter how fantastic in nature they might be; and (b) to fine-tune the schedule of events.

If the Tasks had been the standard “an hour or so” promised (some were, some weren’t), and there were no diplomatic games and delays along the way, the journey had to take the promised length of time. It was the accumulation of these delays, and subsequent impacts on the journey, that were to push the PCs ever closer to (and beyond) the deadline imposed on them by the circumstances of the adventure.

This produced a gradual increase in the tension as this mini-campaign took place, a gradual increase in the emotional intensity that let it achieve a crescendo at the right time.

Synopsis, Session 5 (new)

For some reason, minimal notes exist of this game session, and no formal synopsis was produced. What’s below is minimalist and has been assembled after the fact specifically for this article. This origin means that everything you’ve already read about has been omitted from it, which would not be the case if this were produced for in-game use.

Society in Guatemala was primitive, at a Hunter-Gatherer level, and Magic was used to aid in the hunt, preserve food, and to keep King Hector in power, which he achieved by being the biggest thug. The buildings were primitive, made of mud-and-sticks with the occasional recycled pre-Ragnarok leftover added to the mix. The Jungle had reclaimed what little evidence there had been of civilization.

The magical slippers permitted a single step to cross a distance of 100 feet, in a straight line – but if the wearer were not careful when climbing a slope, they could easily end up entombed in the terrain they were supposed to be traversing, and similarly could find themselves some distance in the air if similar caution wasn’t taken when descending. They followed the feet of the wearer when they lifted their foot to take a step, both in direction and in angle.

It was also quite tricky turning corners in the slippers, and quite easy for the feet to materialize several feet apart. There was more than one minor fall as people ‘landed’ doing the splits! Nevertheless, it didn’t take the travelers too long to get used to them, and found that with sufficient attention, they could really devour the distance at something close to the 50-1 theoretical speed promised by the slippers. In short order, a fourth drawback became apparent – the slippers might abolish the distance between here and there to a single step, but the energy consumed by the wearer was unchanged – one quickly became ravenous and dehydrated, and more prone to make mistakes. Fortunately, Maynor had used them before, and was aware of these problems, forcing the team to eat, drink, and consume salt every few steps.

Morales revealed that the slippers had been the ‘price’ demanded of himself (on behalf of his organization) by King Hector on a past occasion, but that his thugs and bullies found using them too exhausting; they didn’t permit them to be ‘everywhere’ the way Hector envisaged. He broadly hinted that this was not an accident.

As the early morning wore on, the group climbed ever higher in altitude, and eventually reached the grass huts of Guatemala Antigua. A throne had been woven out of grass around the frame of an old campfire stool, and emplaced on the top of what had once been a yellow-and-green bus, making it the most elevated point in the village that was now the capital of Guatemala. The journey had taken a little more than three and a half hours instead of three and a half days.

King Hector greeted his ‘guests’ warmly from the throne and made a superficially respectful speech that repeatedly reminded Morales of the great favor that he was doing for the Cult Of Rams. He then ordered that they be fed, which quickly demonstrated that several within the village were magically gifted to some extent, but this magic was used for very simplistic purposes – enhancing personal strength, or hunting ability, or replenishing the fruit-bearing trees and bushes that grew naturally.

To amuse himself while the travelers ate and drank, Hector wrestled his warriors. It was quite obvious that he was using magic to ‘cheat’ in these bouts, and that without the backing of Morales “group,” his rule would not last very long.

Finally, Hector got around to specifying the price of passage – there was a treasure that he had promised to a loyal underling as a bride price for the underling’s daughter. Unfortunately, the escort that was delivering it had been attacked by bandits en route, and had hidden the treasure – a jeweled egg – in a cave near the religious site of San Martin Jilopeque, sacred to ‘the old religion’.

To earn passage, all the travelers had to do was retrieve the egg from its hiding place and deliver it to the chief administrator of the small town of Xuctzul. They could then proceed to the border at at El Ciebo, where they would return the loaned “magic feet”.

That seemed straightforward enough – possibly too much so. Hector’s expression showed that he thought he was being clever, manipulating Morales into putting his arcane talents into Hector’s service.

Nevertheless, agreement was not required; these were the terms that Hector demanded. Morales warned Hector against thinking himself too important to be disciplined, then gathered the team and left the grass throne of King Hector without a backwards glance – but not before noticing that several of the King’s warriors wore expressions of open disgust or contempt for King Hector. Clearly, they thought that such opportunities didn’t grow on trees.

In due course, the group arrived at San Martin Jilopeque, where the jeweled egg was reportedly hidden. The site proved to be an ancient temple of stone, wood, and grass; with a hole in the natural ‘floor’ leading to a vast cave, complete with its own underground volcano and hordes of bats. The group persuaded Morales to remain on lookout for the ‘bandits’ on the off-chance that they really existed, or in case King Hector sent some of his men to pretend to be bandits in order to support his rather weak story. Maynor had picked up on the sense of duplicity, too, and warned the group of the probability that there was more to the situation than met the eye, and asked if they were sure that they could handle whatever was below. The confidence with which the PCs responded told Maynor that there was a lot more to them than there appeared to be, too.

Once out of sight, they transformed into their new superhero identities. Each of them was convinced that at least half of Hector’s story had been fabricated and was being used to get the travelers (and especially Maynor) to do some dirty work on his behalf.

The cave was shaped like a thick sausage with an extra chamber at the far end. In that chamber was the statue of a Mayan deity that none of the group recognized, with the egg-shaped jewel mounted in his forehead.

Suddenly a beam of light shone out of the jewel and moved from person to person until it came upon Specter. The only mage within the party, he was the most susceptible to arcane manipulation.

The jewel contained the memories of the last Priest of the Mayan Deity, and those memories imprinted themselves on Specter, displacing his own, and then using his magical abilities to (temporarily reawaken the God while preparing Union Jack to be the human sacrifice needed to make the awakening and possession permanent; stone tentacles suddenly extruded from the cave walls, which had wrapped themselves around his wrists and ankles and pulled him flat, ready for the stone knife that had materialized in his hand to be used to complete the ceremony.

Key Points & Notes

Maynor doesn’t know who the PCs are, but his personality is to respect people until they give him reason not to; he treats them as social equals from word one. He also demonstrates that he has some knowledge of magic and the way it works, but has not shown the scope of his abilities as yet – he’s not a showoff. He is, however, prone to gossip. Urbane, civilized, well-spoken, able to manipulate people and situations, and prepared to let people and situations manipulate him when that’s necessary – he really is suited to a diplomatic role. This was not accidental; he had been selected for this role by virtue of his traits and abilities by people who knew what they were doing.

There are some GMs who are hesitant about putting an NPC into a party who is more competent in some areas than the PCs. There are even more GMs who would hesitate to give that NPC any level of authority over the PCs, first and foremost because he’s an NPC. This synopsis and the paragraph summarizing Maynor’s personality, above, show that it can be done, and be successful.

There are times when he takes the lead and decides on behalf of the group, as with King Hector; there are times when he backs off and lets the PCs make their own choices. The difference is whether or not his special expertise is relevant to the situation. If it is, he steps forward; if not, but he has relevant knowledge, he conveys that and waits for a group decision; if he has no better knowledge than anyone else (unusual), he asks an opinion of the person who seems best qualified to render a useful one and uses that as a springboard to a decision. His job (in this case) is to get the PCs to their destination, and he’s good at his job.

Synopsis, Session 6 (new)

This game session suffered from the same problem as the previous one (minimal notes), and no formal synopsis was produced. For a change, though, I know why that’s the case – I spent the time generating content for later in the campaign, and didn’t think one was especially necessary; what was needed could be improvised around the images presented to the players as ‘what their PCs saw’ in that game session.

What’s below has been assembled after the fact specifically for this article. In order to contrast with the preceding one, and permit comparison between the two, I have included the sort of context that I would provide if I were to actually use this in play.

To sneak into the US, where UN personnel aren’t permitted to operate, Zenith-3 have adopted new identities – St Barbara, Runeweaver, Knight, Vala, Defender and Mr Image have become, respectively, Nightshade, Specter, Basalt, Zeitgeist, Zantar, and Union Jack. UNTIL have also provided false (but backstopped) “civilian identities” to go with these new identities: Sue-Ellen Wilson, Isaiah Lucas, Frank Hudson, Carmen DeLambert, Brust, and Roger Woodchild, respectively.

In order to earn permission to travel through one of the local Kingdoms that have emerged in Central America and Mexico following Ragnarok (six years ago), the team and their “Diplomatic Escort”, Maynor Estuado Morales from Demon, have to perform a small task for each ruler. King Hector of what used to be Guatemala had thought he was being clever when he asked them to retrieve a jeweled “egg”. Although they would never be able to prove it, it seemed clear that he thought the only mage in the group was Morales, and that he would be possessed by the “Spirit” in the Gem and thus would become Hector’s servant, securing the backing of the most powerful and knowledgeable mage he had ever encountered.

Instead, the team had entered the caves beneath the Temple of the lost Mayan deity without Morales and assumed their superheroic identities, subjecting Specter to the mental domination of the “Spirit”, which replaced his memories with those of the Priest of the deity. A sacrifice was needed to permanently restore the reanimated God, who was animating his statue, with the gemstone the team required lodged in its forehead. As the first victim who came to hand, Union Jack had been chosen and immobilized by tentacles of stone from the walls of the cave.

Zeitgeist realized that Specter was under the domination of an implanted memory and excised it, at the last possible moment; at the same time, Basalt grabbed one of the stone tentacles and tore it in two, careful not to injure his teammate. The statue of the lost Mayan God reached down and grabbed Basalt in its grip; he planned to extrude two extra limbs to grab the wrist of the hand that had him trapped and attempt to break the limb, even though he was uncertain that what he was proposing was even possible.

Somehow – and not in this order – the following occurred:

• The spirit of the Priest was forced into the statue, displacing the animating spirit of the Deity;
• The statue was destroyed;
• Morales became aware that the team were superhuman;
• The team learned that Morales represented House Aries of Demon, whose supreme leader, Morbane Alpha, had rescued Knight from the curse of the Blackwing Armor, and who they warily considered to be potential allies (but who they could not trust completely);
• The gem was found in the remains of the statue.

(I’m sure they did something unspeakably brave and clever to achieve this, but the details and specifics have been lost).

Using the 100-foot slippers provided by King Hector, they delivered the gem as promised, much to the surprise of the Chief Administrator of the village – who inadvertently contradicted almost every element of the story offered by King Hector, something that Morales duly noted. He issued a document, as the only person in the village who could read and write at more than a 3rd-grade level, to document the fact and grant them permission on behalf of King Hector to complete their journey to the border at El Ciebo, gateway to the Kingdom of Tabasco.

Key Points & Notes

Because the spy-games part of the adventure isn’t particularly relevant to the day-to-day adventuring that was underway, most of the context is left unstated. The entirety is summed up in “To sneak into the US” – no mention of why being necessary at this point. The context then segues directly into a reminder of the new identities that have been adopted.

The second paragraph also does double or even triple duty – re-introducing Maynor and King Hector, providing context local to this particular adventure, and reminds the players of some speculation made at the table that seemed important.

The third paragraph completes the entirety of the synopsis of past days’ play.

All of this is minimal, because this particular mini-adventure was reaching its peak at the start of Session 6, and the action was about to start. A good synopsis doesn’t just capture the who and what, but also the mood of the table at the time. Being brief lends itself to exciting action sequences.

Unfortunately, the full specifics of that action have been lost; all I could offer were my notes of the outcomes. I have the vague memory that they took the gem up to Maynor before resuming the civilian identities that he knew, but I’m not even sure of that. Sometimes, later synopses fill in some of the blanks, but in this case I don’t think they do.

It’s a minor loss, but it does show the value of these synopses beyond the immediate benefit of refreshing the player’s memories.

Synopsis, Session 7 (from Session 8)

Zenith-3 have been recruited by UNTIL for an ongoing covert operation into the United States, with a very urgent initial assignment: Tracking down some nuclear devices that, it is thought, an Arms Dealer has sold, or is selling, to domestic US Terrorists.

Completing this assignment required the team to adopt new disguises and (in some cases), new ways of using their powers. Knight became Basalt, a man made of rock; Defender became Zantar, a Kzin hunter and tourist; Mr Image became Union Jack, an identity that he liked so much that he thinks he’ll keep it; Runeweaver adopted the identity of Specter, the ghost of a masked adventurer from the American Revolutionary War; St Barbara embraced the power of the Dark, and became the Ninja named Nightshade; while Vala chose to rely on her powers of illusion to appear almost human, adopting the name Zeitgeist.

To get to the US without detection, they have been injected into the network of kingdoms occupying what used to be Central America and Mexico, and are now run by the same Demon House that recently helped Knight escape being Blackwing, the psychological impacts of which he was still coming to terms with.

To escort the team, and guide them from Kingdom to Kingdom, House Aries sent Maynor Estuado Morales as a “Diplomatic Escort”.. He does not know who the team really are; their passage was arranged by Fuhrer Muerte’s Chief Of Intelligence, Oskar Von Peirera as a favor by the 5th Reich to the global community, i.e. UNTIL, but he does now know that they have paranormal capabilities.

In Guatemala, the society was primitive, at a Hunter-Gatherer level, and Magic was used to aid in the hunt, preserve food, and to keep King Hector in power, which he achieved by being the biggest thug. The buildings were also primitive, mud-and-sticks with the occasional recycled pre-Ragnarok leftover added to the mix.

In Tabasco, the team found simple Agriculture, which the locals enhance through the use of Magic to do things like aid crop fertility, protect the grain from parasites, insects, and unfriendly weather, and – of course – to keep King Rohaz in power; he preserves his authority with a mixture of High Justice and personal rewards for loyalty, the beginning of a Baronial system – all with a uniquely Mexican twist. The construction was eons more advanced than that of the Guatemalans, even if some of it may have been recycled from Mexico’s ancestors.

Each Kingdom has had its own methods of rapid travel, available only to the elite. In Guatemala, the group were loaned Persian Slippers that enabled each step to cover great distances. Using them took a little getting used to, because the elevation of the next step relative to where you already were was unchanged; choose a path that was too steep and you could trip over or bury yourself. It would even have been possible, in theory, to encase yourself in solid rock!

When the travelers reached the border town of El Ciebo, they saw that the Tabascans, in contrast, had riding animals that were at least semi-domesticated – again, with a twist: King Rohaz and his party were riding Dinosaurs about the same size and weight as horses, which magic had been used to at least partially domesticate.

In each Kingdom, to earn passage from the local dictator, the group are required to perform some “minor” favor. The local monarchs have been told only that your passage has been organized by the Demon hierarchy, and on that basis, the smarter ones have deduced that you are far more capable than ordinary people – a subtle insight that you would have put beyond them at first glance, which is a valuable reminder that “Primitive” doesn’t mean “Stupid”.

In Guatemala, they had to recover an enchanted Gem that King Hector had promised to a supporter. In Tabasco, King Rohaz tasked you with hunting down a “monster” that has been taking the locals from the El Ciebo region, and that has evaded or destroyed every hunting party that he has sent against it – his best twelve men so far. You got the impression that if he lost many more of his inner cabinet, his grip on power might become tenuous.

To assist the group, he added his best two remaining Hunters, Pedro-the-wary and Gonzales-The-Strong to the party as guides. They escorted the party to where the most recent disappearances had taken place, describing how a hunting party of two dozen people had simply vanished into the jungle without a trace. The clearing ahead was where their tracks simply ended.

Like the group, they have been sent to hunt “The Monster”. Pedro warned that many hundreds of different kinds of creature live in the jungles, and all of it has just one purpose: to become invisible until it suits the creature otherwise.

Nightshade had just used her machete to open a passage through the vines and underbrush into the clearing and noticed multiple pairs of beady yellow eyes staring back at her from places of concealment in the shadows on the far side!

Key Points & Notes

With the climax past, there was room within the pacing to be a little more fulsome in this synopsis. In fact, this functions to take everything down a notch and establish a baseline from which the next climax will grow.

The important part starts “In Guatemala” because the synopsis then goes on to compare and contrast that ‘Kingdom’ with the next, Tabasco.

Having used the basic formula once to establish it, I was comfortable modifying it for a second appearance – Hence, Rohaz was already at the border town selected for the PCs entry into his kingdom. The reason for his presence there became clear when he gave them the task to secure his permission to travel through his domain – he had lost so many key men to the “monster” in the region that his grip on power was shaky.

You will have noted that this direct comparison structure was employed repeatedly. This drummed into the players’ heads the fact that significant clues would be contained in the progression from one kingdom to another and they approached (comparative) civilization. This started paying dividends right away, but I was intending to take care not to let that be lost between game sessions into the future, nevertheless.

The PCs were suspecting that the monster would turn out to be a T-Rex or perhaps raptors. I didn’t want to disappoint them – so I added an encounter with both to what I already had planned, as you will soon see!

Synopsis, Session 8 (from Session 9)

What follows has been annotated (with interruptions) and extended (I’ll tell you when that happens, and why). In other words, this isn’t just the synopsis from Session 9, it also contains a lot of the game-play and scripted dialogue from that game session.

The team formerly known as Zenith-3, and now operating under the name The Alliance (a name none of them are very happy with), have been recruited by UNTIL for an ongoing covert operation into the United States, with a very urgent initial assignment: Tracking down some nuclear devices that, it is thought, an Arms Dealer has sold, or is selling, to Domestic US Terrorists.

Completing this assignment has required the team to adopt new disguises and (in some cases), new ways of using their powers.

• St Barbara embraced the power of the Dark, and became the Ninja named Nightshade;
• Knight became Basalt, a man made of rock

;

• Runeweaver adopted the identity of Specter, the ghost of a masked adventurer from the American Revolutionary War;
• Vala has chosen to rely on her powers of illusion to appear almost human, adopting the name Zeitgeist;
• Defender became Zantar, a Kzin hunter and tourist; and
• Mr Image became Union Jack.

To get into the US without detection, the disguised members of Zenith-3 have been introduced into the network of kingdoms occupying what used to be Mexico and Central America, which are now run behind-the-scenes by the same Demon House that had recently helped Knight escape being Blackwing. The psychological impacts of the resulting transformation have naturally started to manifest, and can be expected to persist for a while longer.

To escort the team, and guide them from Kingdom to Kingdom, House Aries has sent Maynor Estuado Morales to function as a “Diplomatic Escort”. He does not know who the team really are; their passage was arranged by Fuhrer Muerte’s Chief Of Intelligence, Oskar Von Peirera as a favor to the 5th Reich.

In each Kingdom, to earn passage from the local dictator, they have been required to perform some “minor” task. The local monarchs had been told only that their passage had been sanctioned by the DEMON hierarchy.

In Tabasco, King Rohaz deduced from the special treatment that you were receiving that you were more than the ordinary people that you appeared to be, and tasked you with hunting down a “monster” that had been taking the locals from the El Ciebo region, and that had evaded or destroyed every hunting party that he had sent against it – his best twelve men so far. You got the impression that if he lost many more of his inner cabinet, his grip on power might slip.

To assist them, he added his best two remaining Hunters, Pedro-the-wary and Gonzales-The-Strong to the party as guides.

The team had previously seen that King Rohaz and his advisors rode dinosaurs, so it wasn’t a total surprise when they encountered a pack of raptors. Both the hunters and the reptiles earned themselves a measure of respect from the group before their powers began to give them the upper hand; the first wave of attackers were routed, and the second wave were driven off, but the third wave that had been emplaced to ambush anything who attempted escape along the one avenue not closed off by the first two groups of raptors had at least drawn blood before being scattered by the arrival of an opportunist T-Rex!

Fortunately, the team had dispatched enough Raptors that the larger beast chose to chow down on those remains rather than engaging with unpredictable humans, giving you the chance to escape into the Jungle.

They were regrouping when they began vanishing, one after another. Nightshade was the last to be captured by the tentacles snaking down from the tree canopy.

Their captors were creatures unlike anything the team had ever seen before, seeming to combine aspects of dinosaur and octopus. With each member of the group gripped securely by tentacles, they carried you all away through the trees, brachiating from limb to limb like apes – but these were “apes” with a reach of thirty feet or more.

Nightshade was contemplating revealing her hero identity to the hunters in an attempt to break free when the creatures reached a grassy clearing between the trees and lowered the humans into its center, releasing them. The aliens then took up positions surrounding the group. One came forward and began to draw in the sand, quickly conveying that they were intelligent and then drawing a strange symbol in the sand – a crown with a Chinese dragon entwining through it.

While none of you knew the meaning, some of you guessed it fairly quickly. Your guide, however, seemed to recognize it immediately, and declared, “This matter is no longer your responsibility. I will deal with this.” Nightshade was reluctant to concede full authority to negotiate with what was effectively an alien invasion to the member of House Aries, and the quest from King Rohaz gave her some justification in refusing, but she decided to play things cool for the time being.

Meanwhile, some of the other creatures were healing the group, and providing food in the form of a freshly-killed deer.

Even an awareness of surface thought made Zeitgeist aware of a phenomenon she had never encountered before, as the alien’s awareness split into two equal minds, and each of those then split into two more, while a fifth mind seemed to emerge from the shared consciousness to direct and coordinate the others.

The alien rose onto one tentacle and used its tail to form a tripodal support with the one limb serving as a bar while the others formed two of the three points of a triangle, giving it? him? her? perfect stability.

Waving one tentacle back and forth through the air, and whistling a complex birdsong, it started casting a spell with two remaining tentacles, suspending the deer in mid-air, casting a second spell with a third tentacle (occasionally borrowing the second from the casting of the first spell) that cooked the animal, while simultaneously casting a third spell with its fourth and fifth tentacles to remove the entrails and skin, and then to carve the beast into large steaming chunks, passing one to each of the humans.

Specter realized that this creature was not just a spell-caster, it was capable of casting three or four or maybe even five spells simultaneously. The aliens might have numbers equal to the human group, but in reality that meant that they probably outnumbered the team, three or more to one! Their biggest limitation, so far as he could see, was only having two eyes!

When Zeitgeist waved away the offered food, the alien cast another complex set of spells to identify the problem and then transform the food into a form suitable for her digestion – exotic crystals. Basalt, noticing this, was immediately concerned that one of the hunters might realize that this showed she was not as human as she appeared, but fortunately they were too busy eating to notice.

Pedro-the-wary, true to his name, observed between mouthfuls that the deer had obviously been prepared in front of them so that they would know that it was safe to consume.

Maynor, meanwhile, had seated himself in Lotus position and begun to meditate while the alien negotiator continued to chirp at him and draw sketches in the sand. As the group finished eating a more substantial meal than any they had enjoyed since arriving in Dimension-Prime (or in years, in the case of the Hunters), the negotiator rose up and cast a spell opening a portal to somewhere else, and the other aliens began gesturing with their tentacles for the humans to precede them through it.

The group hesitated only momentarily – the aliens could easily force them if they wanted to. The only way to achieve an outcome that was in any way satisfactory was to play along until negotiations could commence.

There’s a lot that subsequent synopses leave out because it wasn’t immediately relevant after it had been played out. Long-term, though, it will be immensely significant, (and the players have had a small taste of that), and contains ideas that other GMs might be able to use, so I have decided to expand the “actual” synopsis above with excerpts and some summarizing before continuing.

The portal took the party to a plain alongside a cliff face containing a number of caves reachable by metal ladders. The rungs were spaced appropriately for humans to use, and many of the ladders would have been completely unnecessary for the aliens given the length of their reach – even if they didn’t employ some sort of levitation.

There were about 40 of the aliens present, along with the missing warriors belonging to King Rohaz, and a number of women (who Rohaz didn’t think worth mentioning). These are sitting in a natural amphitheater on stone benches while two of the aliens draw on blackboards. The scene is immediately recognizable as a classroom. The lesson itself, from what you could tell, was a complicated brew – part mathematics, part logic, and part philosophy.

When the ‘teachers’ notice your arrival, one raises a tentacle to suspend the class, and the hunters rise and walk toward your group, who are still arriving through the portal, their arms upraised to show they hold no weapons. You notice as they approach that several of them still have machetes, knives, or holstered firearms, by their sides.

There’s a lot of important subtext to the dialogue between NPCs that followed, so I will quote it in full. Note that it was written in the present tense for presentation in-game.

“Ola, and Welcome, Pedro-the-wary and Gonzales-the-strong. Who are these people that Rohaz has sacrificed alongside you?”

“Strangers and guests of the Greater Power, sent to earn passage through Tabasco,” replies Gonzales.

“If they are not of the tribe, the Rheezok must deal with them directly. But you, as honored hunters of the tribe, have a choice. You may commit whatever form of ritual suicide you prefer, or you may join us in study, renouncing the rule of Rohaz. We are learning many things; never again shall the people go hungry,” replies the spokesman. As he says the last, he waves one of his hands over the palm of the other, which obligingly sprouts a small flame.

“My loyalty is not so easily overturned, Jose-The-Eagle,” replies Pedro. “Why do these things teach you such magic?”

“For many reasons, Pedro. First, because it makes us more worthy to work alongside them; second, to prove that they will be more generous rulers than Rohaz-the-bully; and third, in recompense for our loyalty. Come, join us; if you are not convinced at some future time, you can always choose to employ your weapons.”

Pedro and Gonzales look at each other, and after a moment, Gonzales nods. He and Pedro wave farewell to you and go over to join the class, which quickly resumes.

Zantar then says to the rest of you, “That was very interesting. I would surmise that King Rohaz has just lost another pair of his ‘best men’. It is only a matter of time before his leadership is challenged – and even rudimentary magical training should be ample to ensure that the challenge is successful, unless we or someone else stand up for him. Any takers?”

There were none; who would want to fight to preserve the rule of someone known to his own people as “Rohaz The Bully”?

Maynor approaches Nightshade. “We should speak. The others defer to you, whether you lead them or not. I don’t know who you really are, and it is not my concern. I can speak for those who rule this part of the world, but cannot do so for the world outside. I know that you are more than you seem, for the same reason that the rulers you have met know – no ordinary person would be granted such assistance by the Fuhrer Muerte. What I need to know is whether or not you can speak for those beyond these shores?”

This put her on the spot; she thought carefully and then said that she could not tell them what to do, but those who they would talk to would consider carefully anything she might tell them, and any recommendations she would make, and in turn, they could be quite persuasive..

“Then you and your group should at least be witnesses to the negotiations. Come.”

As they walked, Maynor told the group what he knew of the aliens. “There are many worlds, as alike as two books on a library shelf. One may be a different edition of the same book, while another concerns a completely different subject. The closer to the shelf of the book you are comparing with, the more closely related the two are likely to be.”

This was all old news to the players, who were seasoned time- and dimension-travelers. But Maynor didn’t know that.

“There was a mighty Emperor of this world who was overthrown and his memory taken from him. Immortal, it was but a matter of time before his genius reasserted itself. He sought then to reclaim his throne, but history had passed him by, and he was opposed by the mightiest of the infidels – aliens, gods, sorcerers and mortals. Evenly-matched, their conflict threatened the stability and very existence of that which they vied to rule; until a bargain was struck between the enemies.”

This was a somewhat skewed version of the conflict between The Mandarin and The Champions, which had occupied the first two real-time years of the campaign back in the early 80s.

“In their travels, the infidels had found a world in desperate need of strong rule, having been subjugated by suicidally-insane extremists and carried to the edge of destruction by fanatics and ideologues. They offered to leave him in peace if he were to turn his attentions to he conquest of that world, where none could oppose him.”

Reasonably accurate after 1,000 years of historical distortion and as it might be abbreviated in a high-school history class. This was a world in which the Nazis won WW2, but Stalinist Russia survived. The two were about to engage in thermonuclear war in local-time 1962 when the players intervened to prevent at the time – but decided that regime change was beyond their do-gooder remit. A few months later, a quick return visit made it clear that they had simply delayed the inevitable and needed to take stronger action if they wanted to protect the planet’s population from the political extremes of their leaders, but they really didn’t want to do it. One thought led to another.

“His conquest of the human planet was trivially-easy. He then worked a mighty enchantment to accelerate time within his domain, enabling his new subjects to become a mighty Empire, conquering first the other worlds of his new Solar System, and then the great cultures of his new Galaxy. The inhabitants, some very human and some radically different, became new citizens of the Empire, for he was a benevolent and wise ruler.

All this came to light, and is relayed fairly accurately, in the buildup to Ragnarok. The official deal was that the Champions would leave the population and their Emperor alone, but one PC almost immediately started to renege on the agreement – not knowing that said Emperor had made arrangements to trick that PC into doing so. Ultimately, the Mandarin became an ally if not a friend.

The acceleration of time was a mechanism whereby events in that universe could evolve and change as quickly as I needed to in order to create interesting adventures.

That’s the end of what the players already knew – from here on, it’s all new information to them.

“Only one culture did he encounter whose citizens were his equal; but, having learned from the conflicts of his past, rather than engage in a futile and potentially devastating conflict, he chose negotiation and a live-and-let-live arrangement. The Rheezok came from a cluster of stars that had crossed through the plane of the galaxy eons earlier, a cluster that orbited the galaxy, bound to it but not part of it. From Earth, it’s analogue cannot even be seen without a telescope, for all that it is the second closest such structure to the planet upon which we stand.

“Relations between the two Empires remained cordial for centuries. Unexpectedly, and without explanation, the Emperor saw fit to reverse his temporal manipulation shortly thereafter; the galaxy was his, and there was little of value in easy reach beyond it, or so it is said. I myself was born into the 12,752nd year of his enlightened rule, on a world so distant that the light of Earth would take 142 years and some months to reach it, in a completely separate arm of the galaxy. Find Polaris, and turn 75 degrees. and near the Foot of Perseus, a great telescope may spy it from here.

“There came a time when our this universe and that of my birth faced mutual annihilation, and the mightiest forces of both collaborated to save all. But this could only be done for one of the two galaxies, which would be a blending of the two that had come before it. The Emperor sent forth his most skilled mages to prepare for the influx of refugees to come, but this left him without those he needed to actually open portals to the new worlds. For it was not merely a matter of travel to the Earth, but to almost every habitable star in this Galaxy.

“To remedy this lack, he renegotiated with the Rheezok; they would cast the portals on his behalf while he engaged in the enemies of existence responsible. So it was that he met his end, and then ascended to become as unto a God.” (a very meta- synopsis of Ragnarok and part of the outcome).

“In recompense, the Rheezok were gifted an entire arm of this galaxy; the Empire would stake no claim upon it, and citizens of that arm within the Empire would be relocated elsewhere. At least, that was the agreement; all I know of what transpired is that those scheduled to do so, those who had survived the conflict with the Enemies of the Empire, arrived here to join me.

“Over the years since, that group of refugees and myself have worked to integrate ourselves into this world, its communities and its government, under the command of one of the former planetary governors of the Empire. Others have taken other paths.

“Why the Rheezok are here, I do not know. I suspect that the answer will be pivotal. But I am bound by my oaths to the Empire and my oaths of loyalty to my Lord. They include the treaties between the Empire and Rheezok.

“Do you see my problem? Any agreement that I reach will be valid in practice only, unrecognized by the wider world, but that may not be sufficient to satisfy my obligations under those treaties, or the demands of the Rheezok.

“At the very least, I require witnesses to report these matters to the outside authorities, triggering negotiations that could destabilize certain delicate political situations at the very least.”

This was putting a large part of the future of the entire campaign into the hands of the PCs. Tell the world about the Rheezok and the US Government would hear about it; amongst others; any hint that one of their major political parties (if not both) had been ‘colonized’ by refugees from another dimension, and the US would collapse into anarchy, possibly triggering a fourth World War. And, unless the Rheezok were improbably modest in their demands, any misstep might trigger an even more widespread conflict. Peace and Galactic War might hang on their ability to satisfy the aliens.

The PCs discussed the situation intently for about an hour, noting that the treatment of the humans “captured” by the Rheezok was an important guide. Zeitgeist was able to confirm that none of them were under any duress, and believed implicitly in the trustworthiness of the aliens.

One Rheezok then led the group into one of the caves and used simple stick figures drawn in a sandbox to communicate its intentions, warning the group of what to expect. Specter attempted to analyze the magics being cast simultaniously:

1. Create force-field bubbles around each individual (including itself);
2. Fill the force-fields with an air-permeable gel that would not permit any lie to be heard (you could tell fibs until hoarse if you wanted to);
3. Create a hollow space within the gel around the heads of each individual by manipulating the shape of the gel;
4. Link the neural receptors of the ears within the hollow space with the speech centers of the alien, and vice-versa, using the gel as a medium and the bubbles to isolate each person from hearing what anyone else heard in their native tongue.

Of these four, only the first and third were straightforward, and they were complicated by needing to do it several times at once; an accomplished mage, he had near-zero confidence that he could even come close to attempting either of the other spells. Mentally, he revised the potential threat posed by the Rheezok to new heights.

“Now we can speak,” announced the alien, and each heard the words perfectly in their customary first language. Zeitgeist not only got the translations heard by the other PCs (through the mental link she maintained with the team), but also got a direct mental impression – effectively, the thought was being heard at six or seven times its normal volume, as though someone had put an electric bullhorn to her ear and was shouting through it. She immediately shut down the psychic link.

“Words not spoken cannot be heard. Words of deception will not be heard. Only the truth will be heard. I am the Eldar, I speak for the Rheezok. Man of the Empire, have you told these others of us?”

“I have, your excellency,” replies Maynor. “At least as much as I knew.”

As the Eldar continues to speak, it casts images onto the surfaces of each bubble with another spell, while continuing to maintain those it had already cast. “Our home was once located here.” The image of a group of stars, bound to each other, with the assembly bound to the greater galactic whole, was displayed.

“Our worlds were unlike yours in some ways and like yours in others. But, like you, we mastered our environment.” (Images of the Rheezok home-world, which almost looks underwater).

“In time, one arose who assimilated the galaxy to his rule. At first, this assimilation may have been a defensive maneuver; by the time it reached beyond the planets of the human sun, it numbered 3 sentient species and that was beginning to change, as each brought their own contributions to the resulting Empire. By the time the galaxy was filled, 325,000 species were part of the whole – many of them minor variations upon the same coding of life. Humans and those species sufficiently akin to humans to interbreed with them (given appropriate medical assistance) dominated; it was only appropriate that the Emperor was himself of that species.

“In time, we found his Empire, or they found us – a matter of perspective. Both pondered the problem of exerting dominance over the other, and came to the same conclusion. Then did the Emperor, accompanied only by his Imperial Guard, come amongst us to negotiate. Astonished by this audacity, we granted him leave to speak. Translating his words into our language – rendered utterly unlike your own by our anatomy – he said unto us, ‘If we contest for power, one must lose all, but the other will win but a fraction of what they already possess. Both would lose, and the citizens of both would suffer. I deem this to be unacceptable, and so come to offer terms.

“His words contained truth, and we acknowledged that truth and agreed to peace. He taught us some arcane practice that we did not know, and we taught him some arcane theory that he did not know, and respectful coexistence was cemented as policy between Empire and Rheezok.

“One condition only was placed upon this peace: that time proceed at the same pace in both, so that one could not launch a deception against the other. This was agreed to.

“Over the centuries that followed, mutual respect was acknowledged at every meeting between Empire and Rheezok. It became common for Rheezok adepts to tutor the most promising Empire adepts for a few human months, and for those Rheezok about to ascend to Eldar to visit the Empire Capital on Imperial Earth, and learn of the many thousands of lifeforms treated as equals there.

“Then, he came to us once again and did inform us out of mutual respect that the entire universe was shortly to be consumed in an unimaginable inferno. This explained many puzzling signs and portents that the Rheezok had perceived, and we knew that he spoke only truth.

“The Emperor told us that he and certain allies intended to subvert the plans of the enemies who had done this for their own ends. The prospects for success were slim, but could be magnified if more of the Empire’s powerful could be released to engage in the struggle. This required that their task, of protecting the Empire’s Citizens by migrating them to new homes in another realm of space and time, become the responsibility of someone else.

“The Emperor then offered to include the Rheezok in the resettlement program if they would perform that resettlement task when the time required. The Rheezok were granted one arm of the consolidated existence, for there was no certainty that the environment of our gathering of stars would be akin to what the Rheezok require, and we would not displace an existing sentient species from their homes.

“In time, planning was filled, and the Rheezok began to search for a new home. Many of the Rheezok did not survive the End Of All, but enough remained – some nines of tens of us – to form a culture of merit. The Rheezok knew that many of the Empire had also survived, and in time, Treaty would be renewed between Empire and Rheezok.

“For several solar cycles, we worked, and in time, a home was found that was both right and empty, and it became Rheezok anew. It was good. Then we began to see new signs and portents, akin to those that had puzzled the Rheezok in times past, and which we knew meant the destruction of all. Distant, is, but too close, too. Twos of tens had we spent preparing for the End Of All with the Empire; too close for such, comes danger anew.”

The PCs have done their best to forget this portent of Ragnarok II, in hopes (however slim) that the Rheezok were wrong, and because there seemed to be nothing that they can do about it. ‘One problem at a time’ is their motto whenever possible. They have received similar prophecies on other occasions that warned of Enemies becoming Friends and Friends becoming Enemies in the imminence of cosmic devastation, and some of that had also come to pass in-game. In fact, one could point to Maynor himself as an example – he represented Demon, a previous incarnations of whom were an enemy of the PCs, and some houses of which still were so. But Maynor was verging on being not just an ally, but a respected friend.

“Without Empire to discern the shape of menace, the Rheezok learned from humans to discover new truth within mystery, and worked to discover the truth of the new destruction of all. But one of those truths followed Rheezok back to Rheezok, and Rheezok-home was destroyed by one of the workers toward the end of all. Named, the one was, Ice Queen.

This was an old enemy of Specter, a mage of extreme power and cruelty. This was a great surprise to the player, who had not expected that I would have PC arch-enemies up to things that didn’t directly involve the PC in question. Me, I look at everything present and ask “what’s the best tool for the job that’s at my disposal?”

“Time track from the past of Ice Queen did the survivors follow, and here did it bring us.”

The Rheezok had explored the past of the Ice Queen until they came to her encounter with Specter (then Runeweaver), and followed his time-track back to Earth, and then returned to the contemporary time-frame. In other words, they ‘followed him home’. This meant that he had an unexpected share of the responsibility for them being there – he had never tried to mask his comings and goings, and now it was too late to do so. The player immediately took a more personal interest in the matter at hand.

“Fates bound together once more, and new home Rheezok do now require. Soon Rohaz-King fail, and Rheezok claim. Grow Rheezok home from this seed. Rheezok stay. More alliance, we bargain.

“Rheezok not take; Rheezok share. Humans suffer loss of heart, mind, knowledge after end-of-all. We work to restore for betterment of human and Rheezok. Once-Of-Empire say not yes or no; Allies Of Empire say not yes or no. Rheezok stay. Only more alliance do we bargain.

“I withdraw. You discuss alone. I return in human hand-span of human sun through sky.”

The Rheezok staying on Earth was not negotiable; they had set out to usurp the throne of Rohaz-the-bully by subverting the best that he had to offer, and had every intention of completing the process. What they were offering were terms of a broader alliance against the impending disaster.

This ultimatum – which is what it amounted to – was intended to be the cliffhanger ending to the game session. But the players continued to consider their alternatives even while they were packing up – that doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I know that I’ve got them fully immersed in a compelling situation.

They decided to permit the Rheezok to occupy Tabasco as a Refuge (they could hardly stop them), but to look for a more suitable home for them as they traveled, bearing in mind the ethical restraints that had been stated. While they could not speak with authority on the subject of the broader alliance, they welcomed any and all assistance in mutual self-interest, and would ensure that those with greater authority gave the proposal their full attention, in the expectation that any recommendation to form such an alliance would be accepted.

The Rheezok were willing to give the humans a reasonable deadline to look for a new home for them, but would continue their activities in the meantime as though their presence was to be permanent, because there was no certainty of an alternative being found.

The Rheezok, having understood the implications of Rohaz sending the group after them, would not provide a transit to anywhere except back to the region where they had been found – and to the time they were found. Anything more would have to wait on the formal negotiations between Earth and the aliens.

Key Points & Notes

This synopsis starts with some deliberate mixed messaging – the team are about to engage with wild dinosaurs, an action situation, but the format of the synopsis is longer and more low-key than even the previous one, spending a lot more time on context.

That psychologically prepared the players for the encounter with the Raptors and then the T-Rex to be just an entree for the main plotline within this mini-adventure, which was not to be combat-oriented at all. I don’t know that any of the players consciously picked up on this signal – I suspect not – but I have learned through experience that using ‘player reminders’ or ‘player briefing’ or whatever you want to call it adds considerably to the success, at an entertainment level, of a day’s play.

The Rheezok were a lot more significant than the local adventure; these were a major piece of the long-term campaign, and (in a way) it could be considered that everything up to this point had simply been to get the players into position to make decisions about them – decisions that everyone could see would have long-term implications and repercussions.

But there was a level of meta-planning involved, too – the encounter with the Rheezok, forced both Maynor and the PCs to lower their defenses somewhat more than they had done to date, establishing new levels of trust between them. Note that both parties had alternatives open to them, and it was up to the players which way things panned out; they chose something close to the best possible option available to them. The Rheezok’s “Truth Field” upped the ante again, and forced a deepening of that mutual trust.

I put a lot of design effort into the Rheezok, as befits such a major element. I wasn’t able to find an image on the net anything close to what I was imagining (I looked) so had to draw up something myself. The results weren’t perfect but they were good enough. I would have loved to find the time to do some action shots – Rheezok brachiating tree-limb to tree-limb, for example – but that wasn’t on the cards.

Synopsis, Session 9 (from Session 10)

I made reference earlier to how inadequate this synopsis was in terms of the Rheezok encounter. Now, readers can judge that for themselves.

Although it’s not strictly part of the synopsis, the confrontation with King Rohaz that followed was so much fun, and is so poorly represented in subsequent synopses, that I’ve decided to quote from it as well. All I’ve done to it is shift it into the past tense.

As an added bonus, I’ve included details of the riding dinosaurs and their natures, ready for GMs to import into some other campaign.

Zenith-3 aren’t feeling quite themselves, these days. They have adopted new identities for an ongoing periodic undercover mission from UNTIL and are in the process of being inserted into the USNA in order to undertake their first assignment: the recovery of some Nuclear weapons that are believed to have been purchased by a group of domestic terrorists with the intent to use them to make a political statement on the 4th of July.

Although they have yet to select a group name with which they are all happy, the new-look group of Basalt, Union Jack, Zantar, Specter, Nightshade, and Zeitgeist have at least begun to gel as a unit.

UNTIL did a deal with the 5th Reich to arrange the team’s journey through what used to be Mexico, which is now a group of semi-autonomous guerrilla states, all of whom answer to some degree to a hidden government built around House Aries of Demon.

The 5th Reich, in turn, had done a deal which requires the team to earn their passage through the different territories, guided by one Maynor Estuado Morales, representative of House Ares. The rulers are (for the most part) no dummies and have deduced that the party are more than just human, and have thus far scaled their “requests” accordingly.

Despite the delays that these ‘services’ represent, the team has, since coming ashore, covered almost 900 kilometers, climbing to over 1800m altitude, and descending again, no less than five times in the process – in about a day and a half. Since you have been told by your guide that your means of travel will get faster as you progress, and that the whole trip should take 2-3 days, they think they are a little behind schedule – but only a little.

You have just concluded a deal for Maynor and House Ares to protect Z3’s identities as “UNTIL agents with paranormal abilities” and assist in their mission as far as possible, without compromising the political neutrality that UNTIL have to maintain.

They have also agreed to a treaty with the alien Rheezok for mutual defense of the Earth against the Ice Queen or any other comparable threat; the PCs intend that the Rheezok’s presence be officially sanctioned on humanitarian grounds as they are refugees, but will have to work with the more progressive elements of the UN to have the emergent “nation” recognized officially – though none of the other “Kingdoms” of what used to be Mexico and Central America are recognized, either, so there will be considerable difficulties to overcome.

Now they have to deal with King Rohaz of Tabasco, who probably won’t like their report of how they found and “dealt with” the “Monster” that had been “taking his people”.

Maynor intends to simply incinerate the puffed-up ‘Monarch’ if he doesn’t go quietly, but that’s not a satisfactory answer to Nightshade. Maynor has been persuaded to give the team ten minutes to discuss alternatives while at the temporary cave settlement of the Rheezok – his ‘solution’ is always there as a fallback.

In a very fmailiar story, the next synopsis to be offered does an inadequate job of informing anyone who wasn’t there at the time of what happened. So here’s a summary of what actually happened in play:

Extracts from the Adventure Notes, Session 10

When the PCs return to El Ciebo, King Rohaz attempted to psychologically dominate the situation by keeping the PCs waiting. Maynor refused to play along, though he was clearly steamed by the treatment, he simply ordered the servants to bring them the finest of refreshments, and the most comfortable seating, at the King’s expense, that they may await the King’s pleasure. Of course, the most comfortable seating is the King’s currently-unoccupied throne, as Maynor told the PCs with a straight face.

Finally, Rohaz appeared and demanded an update from Maynor. What was the killer creature, and what had Maynor’s guests done to eliminate the threat? But first, remember your place, and return his throne – at once!

Maynor stood and answered, “Well that gets right to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? The creatures – there were many of them – are known as the Rheezok, and what we have done to eliminate the threat is to give them your Kingdom, throne and all – though they dislike such seating, and will probably give it back to you if you ask them nicely. In a nutshell, you have made such a mess of things here that I have removed you from power.”

Rohaz sputtered and spouted, apoplectic and unable to form coherent sentences for a while. Finally, “You can’t do that, we had a deal” squeaked out from his inflamed cheeks.

“Oh yes, I can,” replied Maynor. “The terms under which you were granted power – and under which we agreed to support you in retaining that power – are quite clear. Pre-existing obligations override more recent bequests. The Rheezok have invoked a pre-existing obligation between themselves and my Emperor.”

“But – but – but – I won’t let you!” gasped Rohaz, who then made potentially the biggest mistake of his life, grabbing a spear from his honor guard and pointing it at Maynor.

Sensitive to the PCs squeamishness, Maynor didn’t incinerate the King on the spot, only the spear that he was holding, with a casual gesture.

“Understand this, Rohaz – there is a metaphysical storm brewing. The devastation that blighted your former nation was only the beginning. A larger, more deadly, war is still to play out on this world, amongst others.

“In that war, the Rheezok may be humanity’s greatest ally or their greatest enemy. We have bought their friendship by granting them dominion over this land until they no longer have need of it, one way or another. In return, they will protect and nurture the citizens to the mutual benefit of all – a process that has already begun. You can either be a part of that new beginning or swept away by a popular revolution – your best hunters and warriors now stand against you, and we will not protect you. The choice is entirely yours.

“I submit that we have thus completed the task you set us, and require that you furnish the promised transportation – Seven trained Riding Enjambre (the riding dinosaurs), well-rested, saddled and ready to go.

In short order, the saddled dinosaurs were brought before the party. By now, the sun was casting long shadows over El Ciebo. Maynor said, “The beasts are easy to ride once you get used to them. Have any of you any experience at Horse Riding?”

Some did, some did not.

“Well, the Enjambre are like riding stallions. From time to time, they’ll test you to see if you’re still in control of them; the rest of the time, they will be placid unless you’ve failed the last test, when they will be spirited and fractious.

“If all things were equal, we would stay here overnight and depart in the morning; but the temptation to do something stupid might yet prove too strong for ex-King Rohaz if we linger. There is still almost an hour of daylight left, and the Enjambre have excellent night vision; once I plant the suggestion of their next destination in their minds, they will proceed there by the fastest route they can find, whether we can see what they are doing or not. So I suggest we ride through the night and get a few hours rest at the capital of Tabasco, where I must give some instructions to the government regarding the transfer of power.”

The group quickly agreed to this plan. They were beginning to have serious respect and trust for Maynor, who was not at all anything like what they might have imagined a member of Demon to be.

“Once we are on flatter ground, I will give the Eljambre a treat that will increase their speed. They will need to rest by the time we reach Quetzacealcos, too.”

Taking the lead, he begins to cast a spell, while whispering in a strange voice to his mount, “I name you Feathercap. Gracias de Dias, Feathercap, Gracias de Dias. Begin.”

With a surprisingly level gait, despite their bipedal nature, the gently-named “Feathercap” sets off, followed by the others. Soon they begin picking their way straight down the rough and broken sides of a steep mountain, scrambling from perch to isolated patch of slightly-less acute ground, more or less in a straight line. It’s absolutely terrifying to look to one side and see a wall of rock, then look to the other and see only a dark void stretching away below you.

Eventually, the Eljambre decide that they need to change direction back to the East, though Feathercap is perched on flatter ground that looks no larger than a playing card. Because of the gathering darkness, you are only barely able to make out what takes place unless you have some form of augmented night vision.

Those who do see the tail of the Eljambre in front of them abruptly swing to one side as the creature turns on one foot almost in the opposite direction, dipping it’s shoulders thirty degrees into the turn.

Just as you feel gravity begin to tear you out of your saddle, the shoulders dip in the other direction, catching your fall, and before you know it, you are again progressing in a surprisingly level manner. From up ahead, you can hear Maynor gently snoring.

It’s pitch black by the time you pass through the small town of Gracias de Dias. You can see candlelight through the windows, mostly made from car windscreens, and covered on the inside by curtains made of tarpaulin. Feathercap stops, dips it’s head and long neck as though smelling the ground, and paws at the ground. Maynor stirs himself, and tells you all, “let them wander about for a few minutes to get their breath and restore their sense of balance. Be alert for any attempts to throw you.”

Five minutes later, he gathers the mounts close to him, and again casts his spell. “El Coba, Feathercap. Good beast. El Coba, now, Feathercap. Begin.”

Feathercap trundles gently off into the dark, followed a moment later by the rest of your mounts. As the ground begins to flatten out, having descended 1200m in about 15km, the Eljambre break into a gallop, almost a lope, which would surely trigger any tendencies toward susceptibility to seasickness.

After half an hour at speeds that are unguessable in the dark for those without night-enhanced vision, but feels too damn fast, and is quite definitely too fast for anyone with such vision but no riding skill, the ground starts to slope up again as you pass through El Coba. After again giving them a chance to restore themselves, Maynor gives them the name of the next town, and you are once again on your way. Ten kilometers later, and having climbed another thousand meters, you break through the thick plant life and crest another mountain range, at the peak of which lies the town of Tenosique. It’s now about 10PM.

As midnight approaches, you’ve paused to rest the Eljambre twice more, and have reached Batancan, where Maynor told you the road becomes straighter and more gentle. When you continue, it’s at an even faster gallop than before. An hour later, you are again resting your mounts, this time in Chable. 45 minutes or so later, and you reach Entre Hermanos.

A few km out of town, as a thin crescent moon rises – it’s less than a week until the new moon – the road begins to run alongside a small lake, and has become completely flat to the naked eye. You are traveling at a breakneck speed of 60 km/h, give or take, and there is just enough light for you to be aware of your speed.

By 4AM, you have rocketed through the marshlands of the Reserva de la Biosfera Pantanos de Centia and reached the coastal town of Frontera, on the southern side of the Gulf Of Mexico.

Although it is still dark, lamps and lanterns reveal dilapidated fishing vessels being made ready. The crescent moon is now high in the sky, and as bright as it’s going to get. Twenty minutes on, having left the fishing fleet in the distance, the first glow of approaching dawn is just barely becoming visible.

Forty minutes later, the predawn light is far more pronounced, as you race through the larger town of Paraiso and once again turn inland. You are resting the mounts once again in the town of Comalcalco as the Dawn breaks.

The remainder of your trip is in some ways even scarier than the part already completed. Your pace does not abate, except when you rest the dinosaurs and get your bearings for the next breakneck sprint, but now you can’t avoid seeing how fast you are going. What’s more, you are increasingly sharing the roads with other traffic, and no-one seems to have ever heard of road rules. Time after time, a collision is narrowly avoided as mounts – yours or theirs – leap one way or the other.

Still worse, you often come upon traffic headed in the same direction you are, but at a far more leisurely gait. Every time this happens, the dinosaurs begin to chase the traffic ahead, a malevolent look in their blood-red eyes. At one point, you come up on a flock of sheep being led to market; before you know what’s happening, each of your mounts has a woolen mouthful.

Nevertheless, you begin to get a sense of how the locals are utilizing the magic that House Aries permitted Ramoz to dole out, as you pass impossibly large and fertile crops that would have been remarkable in a region with access to heavy agricultural machinery. Local farms are small but prosperous.

As the traffic intensifies, the trip becomes more and more harrowing. Suddenly ahead looms a great wall surrounding a riot of color and noise. “The capital of Tabasco, Coatza-cealcos,” announces Maynor. “I will take the mounts to the palace. Here is a gold mark and a silver peso, each. Use the peso in the market to buy yourself some food and something to drink. Use the mark at the Villa Coatza-cealcos de Grande – any of the locals can direct you – and get a few hours rest. I will join you in an hour or two, and by 2PM I want us to be back on the road.”

Key Points & Notes

I’ve preempted a lot of these with my interjections and opening comments.

Note the use of a ‘fake hyphen’ to break names up for reading aloud. The actual name of the capital is Coatzacealcos, but I wasn’t sure of my ability to pronounce that correctly, consistently. Breaking it into two words makes that a LOT easier.

I also wanted to point out that Zantar’s speech patterns have slowly evolved during his time in the campaign. They started as a blend between a perfunctory militaristic style and fortune-cookie oversimplifications of philosophy delivered in an almost-reverent manner, and both tinged with a little melodrama; he loosened up a little, but was still fairly serious and deadpan, both emphasized by an almost shy humility, and has slowly started incorporating more casual human expressions that contrast strongly with his usual style, and are slowly revealing a very dry sense of humor. The dialogue quoted included a perfect example:

“I would surmise that King Rohaz has just lost another pair of his ‘best men’. It is only a matter of time before his leadership is challenged – and even rudimentary magical training should be ample to ensure that the challenge is successful, unless we or someone else stand up for him. Any takers?”

This is not accidental; it reflects growth and change within the character, which have been taking place even though he is an NPC. When I look back at the canned dialogue with which he started, it’s as though a completely different character were speaking. I doubt the players have noticed this, but it’s a reflection of the NPC feeling more at home within the group.

I have been a casual observer of some other campaigns over the years in which an NPC’s personality was set in stone on the character sheet, and their mannerisms and mode of expression were completely predictable five years of weekly play after their introduction. While that made the campaign easier for the GM to handle, it often left the game world feeling like it was a cardboard stage set and not a real place. Not that this factor alone would counteract that; the same ‘unchanging’ philosophy carried through to townships and cities and the like. It doesn’t have to be that way – so let’s take the work out of the problem, and then highlight an unexpected use of the approach, before continuing.

Threshold of awareness of change

The key trick lies in two assumptions: that a certain amount of change has to accumulate before PCs will notice it, a threshold of awareness of change; and that not all characters or locations will change to the same extent over a given period of time.

When I create an NPC or location, I decide how quickly it is changing and evolving. This is a simple numeric value:

0: frozen, unable to change even if they wanted to
1: very slow change
2: slow change
3: typical rate of change
5: changing quickly
8: a very dynamic evolution
10: mercurial rate of change

Every time the NPC or location appear in the campaign, I add that many points to a cumulative total. When it exceeds the threshold of change that I have set, based on the PCs and how observant of such things they are, and how extensively they know the NPC or location, I subtract the threshold from the total and make a quick note of a change within the NPC or the location in the appropriate place within my notes, highlighting it in some fashion so that I know to call attention to it when the PCs next visit the location or meet the NPC – unless circumstances would hide it. These changes tend to be fairly dramatic or obvious.

There are times when an experience is particularly transformative – a major fire in a location, or a profound personal experience for an individual, for example. Depending on the scale of the event, I will temporarily bump the rate of change up a notch or two, accordingly.

When the PCs next encounter the changed person or place, I will add 3 to the rate of change to get a die roll on 3d6 to use in determining if any specific element has been affected by the change. ‘Changing quickly’ (score of 5) thus indicates that there’s an 8 or less chance on 3d6 of any specific detail having change, per visit.

Note that one possible change is to the rate of change itself! I only apply that when there’s’ been an event to justify it – but I’m not above inserting such an event into the location’s history since the PCs were last there in order to do so, if that suits the plot. A new, more vigorous young mayor or nobleman in charge, for example. A new trade route that passes through the location. A new occupation or recognition from a high-placed source. There are endless possibilities.

You don’t have to update the location or character every time they appear, aside from incrementing the accumulated change total, which is a matter of a second or two. It probably takes longer to extract the notes from a clearbook or open the document and find the accumulated score.

The other note to make about this method is that the awareness target is not a fixed value – it gets lower with each visit. That calls for a pair of simple lists – one of places the PCs have visited and one for notable people they have met. For places, I’m talking about more than simply passing through a community – they need to interact with it in some manner, whether that’s visiting the markets or staying overnight in a hotel or inn. The same is true of NPCs – a single conversation is not enough (except in unusual situations). Next to the name is a score for how often the PCs have been there or met the person. At the top of the page goes 30 minus the highest INT score (if I were using the D&D scale) amongst the party after a cultural modifier has been applied to it – that’s the base threshold. Elves, for example, are less likely to notice subtle changes in a human town – their culture has them looking at the wrong things – so a -2 or even -4 modifier would be appropriate. Some races are more sociable than others, and they might get a +2 or even +4.

To get the appropriate threshold, I simply subtract the number of visits from this base threshold.

The strength of this system is that it accumulates many small changes (with the die rolls) while also tracking more substantial changes without making a lot of extra work for the GM. A small change might be that the blacksmith now has a toddler in the household, or has taken a new apprentice, or has added a porch to his workshop. Little stuff. A more substantial change might be that what used to be the Blacksmith’s workshop is now a saddlery, or a bakery; or the walls around the town are being fortified; or there’s an urban beautification project underway, or the local homeless appear to have vanished. A bit sinister, that last!

The bonus that I mentioned: if you apply this system to most species in a game, over time, it becomes really obvious that a long-lived race are not changing at the same pace as the rest of the world. In essence, you can drop Elvish communities (and the like) down a couple of grades relative to the values applied to more short-lived races and create a palpable but inobvious sense of timelessness to them.

More Key Points & Notes

Another point to highlight is the degree to which the campaign background has been woven into the game situation. This does several things: (1) It binds the adventure to the campaign foundations; (2) it gives the players a sense that they are changing the game environment with their actions, making them feel their characters are part of that environment, and their choices matter; and (3) it provides a vector for injecting interest and relevance in both directions – both from the background to the contemporary situation and from the immediate situation to the background. As a bonus, it can make the campaign feel both more epic in scope and more intimate to the PCs, at the same time!

It’s also worth noting that there’s the “official” version of history given to the players, but that different perspectives give different versions and interpretations of history. In this case, the PCs had one version of the story of Mandarin; Maynor had another; and the Rheezok had a third. None of them completely incompatible, but none of them completely consistent, either.

Finally: I’ve highlighted in the narrative the importance of the discovery of the Rheezok to the campaign, but there were a number of secondary purposes embodied in this encounter that should be pointed out. First, there’s the evolution of the relationship between Maynor and the PCs. Second, it shows the PCs (and the players) that those migrated to Earth (and to the Milky Way in general) so that Mandarin’s universe could be sacrificed, during Ragnarok (the alternative was for both to be destroyed) weren’t just humans and humanoids. This provides groundwork for some future encounters that I had planned. Finally, there’s the point that humanoids vastly outnumbered non-humanoids in terms of species within the Empire of Mandarin (and therefore presumably within the milky way galaxy of Earth-Prime and Earth-Regency and most of the other parallel worlds out there), which I wanted to establish – there are several advantages, mechanically and physically, in the humanoid form, and this both justified the campaign history which had lots of humanoid aliens and very few non-humanoids. In fact, 95% of the non-humans encountered were humanoid – even more if you count mermen – and 75% of the remainder were dragons or arachnid species.

Synopsis, Session 10 (from Session 11)

Last Time, or thereabouts, the party told King Rohaz that he was out of a job, but nevertheless owed the party mounts. He grudgingly provided Eljambre, Riding Dinosaurs, as promised. When hyped up on the Speed Fodder that your Diplomatic Escort, Maynor, had brought with him, they proved capable of terrifying speeds. So it was that you soon found yourselves at the capital of the Kingdom of Tabasco, Coatza-cealcos, where your mounts needed to rest.

Maynor gave you each some local walking-around money and pointed you at the local market, with instructions to rendezvous at the Villa Coatza-cealcos de Grande (which lived up to it’s name). Having ridden through the night, a few hours of rest were necessary.

The wonders of the Bazaar, and the local cuisine, entranced some of you, and most of you have walked away with some souvenir of the occasion. After eating, most of you settled down for some sleep, only to awoken some hours later to resume your journey.

Again with augmented speed, you rode the Eljambre to Acayucan, the border between the kingdoms of Tabasco and Veracruz, where your mounts were left in the care of the border guards. Note that the local usage appears to run all three syllables of the latter into a single word.

Veracruz proved a definite step towards the modern age – this Kingdom seemed almost civilized! Each kingdom you’ve passed through, heading north from your landing place in Guatemala, has regressed to a lesser extent – and the way the Magic Muscle provided by Maynor and his associates is used becomes more sophisticated.

The Guatemalans were hunter-gatherers and used their magical benefits to make themselves bigger and tougher bullies and better hunters, and to provide any immediate needs. Tabasco had fallen back to the iron age, and magic was used for construction and simple farming – to make the plants grow large, no matter how poorly they were cared for. Veracruz is in the age of Empires, which in this part of the world means the Aztecs. They have rule by right of inheritance, recognize the value of experts and advisors, have not lost coinage, and use their magic to enhance their infrastructure and land, and to replace manual labor. The growth of plants is left to nature, but a nature that is augmented magically.

In keeping with this ethos, they provided rapid transit through tunnels containing some form of fixed teleport that shrank the distance from tunnel entrance to exit 100-fold. Not all towns in the nation are linked into this network; each is surrounded by a ring of satellite communities where the work of the “Neo-Aztec Empire” is carried on.

Through these tunnels, you have walked for what seems like little more than a kilometer-and-a-half – plus about 4 kilometers of actually walking through the towns in question. It actually feels like you’re walking through a vast and continuous city with short tunnels separating one suburban district from another. In reality, the distance you traveled in that hour or so is about 170 kilometers! All told, it’s taken you about an hour to travel this distance and reach the capital. If it had not been for the extensive delays caused by opportunistic rulers as you earned the right of passage through their territories, the “two or three days to reach the US” initially promised by your escort would begin to sound quite plausible.

You have reached the capital at 3PM, Wednesday July 2nd, almost a day behind schedule. Fortunately, you can expect the demands of the local rulers to at least start to moderate from this point forward, according to Maynor, as the rulers become more sophisticated and enlightened. Your comfort margin has been consumed, but the mission itself is not yet in jeopardy.

That mission: you are to set up a base of operations, establish new identities created by UNTIL as a way around the political sensitivity of the current US situation, then find and recover a pair of nuclear weapons believed purchased on the black market by a domestic terrorist organization with the intention of using them sometime on July 4th to make some sort of political statement, starting by making contact with a deep-cover UNTIL agent.

Once in the capital, you went directly to the palace, where you met Chief Felip-ey Denandes, who was urbane, polite, and relatively charming. After establishing that neither of the women in the party were interested in becoming his third wife, he ordered refreshments and food, while he bent “the staggeringly limited capacities of his inadequate intellect” to the task of deciding on an appropriate task to earn your right of passage.

The mini-adventure that follows is perhaps suitable as a drop-in for many different campaigns – especially for fantasy, but I can see this being reinterpreted for a Space Opera / sci-fi setting without too much difficulty. It’s also so self-contained that it gets very short summation in the next synopsis, so it is not inappropriate that it get a fuller supplementary treatment.

Extracts from the mini-adventure “A Bandit In The Bushes,” as played

“Ah! I have the very thing! Please listen, all of you. Do you know what I have in my hand? Of course not! But I’ll tell you what it is – it’s a report of a semi-competent bandit operating with seeming impunity in the Heroica region. Almost half the tax revenues flowing through that important port town over the last three months have gone missing, and two tax-men have been badly beaten. One almost died; the next one might not be so fortunate. And I don’t like bandits thumbing their nose at authority, and I don’t like semi-competent bandits learning through experience.

“Finding this miscreant should be almost effortless for people of your skill and obvious intellect. Finding out how it is that he has been getting away with it should not be very much more difficult.

“I’ll give you a couple of blank arrest warrants. You run on up there and sort the mess out, arrest anyone you think appropriate for trial, and convey them – forcibly if necessary – to Hueytamalco. I trust the sub-chief there, that’s why I put him in charge of the Royal Prison – so he’ll take them off your hands, take a sworn statement from each of you about your investigation, and you can be on your way. And the best part is that it’s all on your way, anyhow!”

Heroica is 148 km and 5 towns away, so an hour or so’s walking will get you there. At that point it will be about 5PM (if you leave immediately), which will give you just enough daylight to get a more substantial report from the Sub-chief of Heroica and start prowling around under the cover of night.

When you get there, you are Invited to rest by Felix Elanandez, the local Sub-Chief, who seems relatively unconcerned about the Bandit. “Most of the taxes get through.”

When pressed, he will describe a person wearing a black cape, black mask, black hat, and riding a black horse, who likes to climb trees and buildings and leap on unsuspecting taxmen as they pass below. If the taxman has an escort – it’s an obvious precaution – something lures the escort away just long enough to permit the bandit his leaping-and-beating activities. It could be anything from a smoke bomb suggesting that a public building is on fire to a kitten up a tree with a dewy-eyed little accomplice begging for help in rescuing her precious pet.

It’s not known whether or not the bandit always has such measures prepared or if he is somehow getting intelligence about the security precautions that are being taken. He seems able to see through any disguise, though.

This posed a different challenge for the players; actually finding the answers was easy; the PCs not only had a police detective amongst their number, but a telepath. What they needed, though, was evidence that would stand up in court. This is a chestnut that comes up in the campaign every now and then and is always a challenge, sometimes a frustrating one.

It was time for that pair to have the spotlight for a while, which is why I came up with this as a challenge.

The bandit has been getting intelligence from the Sub-chief, who gets half the loot. He has been warned about the arrival of Royal Investigators, with warrants, and is laying low and going about his day job as a chicken farmer.

After capturing the bandit, and finding necessary proof, the PCs returned to the Sub-chief, who invited them to a feast, commencing immediately. They got the impression that he was trying to distract them to give himself time to make a quick getaway. Instead, they arrested him.

They then persuaded the Bandit to turn states’ evidence against the other in return for leniency.

After conveying them to the border town of Hueytamalco for trial, the travelers met the local Sub-chief, Ernesto Sebastian De-humbrey (phonetic), possibly the creepiest person the PCs have ever met. His flesh looks like he’s a drowning victim, and his eyes seem to assess how much skin could plausibly be flayed from them when he speaks.

He is unfailing polite, but has a habit of pausing mid-sentance for a moment that adds to the creepy factor. Nevertheless, he seems to have a penetrating mind and – if the circumstances were different – might have become on of Mexico’s greatest litigators; he’s that good. Much of what he says also reveals a sly sense of humor; he’s well aware of his appearance and plays on it. He invites them to visit the prison (politely declined), then asks, “are you sure I can’t offer you accommodations for the night?”

That ended the mini-adventure and would have been the perfect note on which to end play for the day, but there was too much time left on the clock, so (after a short break) I moved on to start of the next one, planning to use giving of The Task as a cliffhanger.

In Leon, the next Kingdom, the society was Medieval with a Mexican twist, and very Christian. Brief prayer services had to be attended in every town on arrival, less-brief prayer services every two hours wherever you were, and a daily confessional. Church services lasted at least 6 hours every Sunday. King Manuel de Vasquez Jalihandre Nevados was believed by all (including himself) to have been appointed by God to lead the people through their struggles.

Travel in Leon was by non-instant temple-to-temple teleportation, one town to the next; you could not teleport from the same temple that you arrived in. Donations were expected in return for this service, and prayers had to be offered. The average was 5 minutes per town, plus 30 minutes every two hours. King Nevados asked for an hour’s honest labor on the construction of a fortified Temple in the capital, Gonzales, which he judged to be fair.

Key Points & Notes

The shopping at the markets was just a bit of local color. The main takeaway from it is that Specter now has an alternate source of his magic-boosting mana crystals – not good news from the other PCs point of view, as they think he is becoming addicted to them. The other magic items were invented on the spot and not expected or intended to have any long-term relevance – which is why I don’t have notes on what they were.

Since it had been a while since I had done so, I thought it time in this synopsis to touch base with some of the adventure’s background.

I’m not sure what they cryptic comments at the start of the synopsis about “Last Time or thereabouts” are referring to – I know that the real-world play date was some months prior to September of 2020, so perhaps the first Covid-forced interruption here was being referenced – and that would also make it sensible to be a bit more comprehensive than usual in the synopsis. The timing seems about right, given that I wrote my trilogy of articles about the Pandemic in March of that year.

I’m sure that this would also have contributed to the vagueness about the magic treasures – in fact, I now remember being vague about those details while preparing this synopsis since the game play had been so long ago.

This was a game session of NPCs with strong personalities; I wish I had time to expand on that of King Manuel de Vasquez Jalihandre Nevados for readers, as I think he would be a fine NPC to add to many fantasy campaigns. But this post is already approaching record length – and for Campaign Mastery, that’s saying something!

It’s long been a fixture of the game physics that teleportation between two fixed points is technologically much easier and safer, but that all teleportation can be disturbing visually, especially to those prone to motion sickness or certain psychological traumas. It’s also a truism of the campaign that as a general rule what is true of one technique or technology is true of other approaches to the problem. The rapid-transit solution in Leon applied that truism to the campaign physics fixture while using tunnels as a solution to the lesser problems associated with teleportation.

I wish that I had more time to have explored the consequences and ramifications of a Medieval Kingdom in which anyone can be anywhere in 1/100th the time. Picture the impact on freight, of the movement of armed forces, on the bureaucracy and administration, and on any of a dozen other factors. But by the time I was working on this section of the adventure, it was becoming clear that extra time would be needed for more important material that was needed for the chapters that followed.

Lastly, it should be noted that the PCs have had a lot of trouble with various religious elements over the course of the campaign. On Earth-regency, they have been chosen as ‘an easy target’ by a number of televangelists, one of which has even started creating super-villains to attack them – see Pieces Of Creation: Maxima and Minima from back in early 2016.

Synopsis, Session 11 (from Session 12)

The Russian Government, after six years of War with the 4th Reich, are beginning to struggle financially, and are resorting to desperate measures. Like selling some of their obsolete nuclear weapons to arms dealers.

UNTIL got wind of just such a sale to an alliance of domestic US terrorists. Normally they would have simply passed the information on to THUNDER, but there were some indications that the North American version of UNTIL were already compromised.

This put UNTIL in a bit of a bind; it was only a few months away from a critical Federal election that would determine how the US would reintegrate with the rest of the world. The balance was delicately poised, and being seen to pursue any sort of potentially political objective on US soil would, if discovered, tip it disastrously.

Their solution: bring in agents capable of dealing with any problem and give them the cover identities they would need to form a mythical superhero team, designated Team Shadow, who could operate with impunity on American Soil. Of course, this might not be the last time such operatives were needed, and if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well, so the plan was to create a resource that could be parachuted in to solve such “problems” long-term. In short, bring in Zenith-3, show them some new ways to use their powers, and disguise them as completely different heroes.

• Blackwing became Basalt, a man transformed into rock.
• Runeweaver became Specter, a ghost from the Revolutionary War.
• Mr Image was recast as Union Jack, who exemplified the indomitable spirit that withstood the Blitz, able to fire blasts of energy from his wrists and equipped with a force-field belt.
• Defender became Zantar, a Kzin tourist rescued by the team who joined up to repay the debt of honor.
• St Barbara assumed the identity of Nightshade, a Ninja-like character, using her powers to perform impossibly-acrobatic maneuvers and throw shuriken of “Shadow Energy”, and
• Vala became Zeitgeist, a character who seemed mostly normal and very human – and hardly noticeable.

Team Shadow were to be inserted into the US using contacts UNTIL had made within the 5th Reich, which turned out to be nothing like the team’s expectations. This was an environment in which everyone knew who all the other spies were, and conducted elaborate games with each other, where favors and obligations were better than money as an item of tradecraft. Dr Muerte, for all his supervillainish personal inclinations and fascist leanings, turned out to be a very effective administrator.

The team made landfall in Guatemala and began their Mexican tour. Post-Ragnarok, the nations of Central America and Mexico had collapsed into a number of much smaller Kingdoms based on the old state lines. The farther south that you looked, the more primitive these societies were – and Team Shadow were starting so far south that they weren’t even in Mexico yet.

A short distance inland, they met the guide and ‘Diplomatic Escort’ from Demon House Aries that Muerte’s Intelligence Officer had arranged for them, Maynor Estuado Morales. Again, he wasn’t quite what they expected; he quickly proved to be urbane and witty, and possessed of a warm charm. The team already knew that House Aries was a little different from the other Houses of Demon, anyway, after they had helped liberate Blackwing from the curse of his Armor, which had been slowly taking over his mind and body.

Maynor explained en route that in return for permission to continue traveling through their respective territories, the rulers of the local Kingdoms would expect the team to perform some service.

These services were usually something minor, but the urgency with which these arrangements had been made was enough that even the thickest, most brutish of the local rulers – Heif Zubal – could tell that Team Shadow were something extraordinary. So far, the services required have included recovering a “Lost Jewel”, hunting “Monsters”, and chasing down a Bandit operating with seeming impunity.

Along the way, you have come to trust Maynor quite a lot, and have confessed your roles as “UNTIL agents with paranormal abilities” to him, and dropped a few leading hints about your mission’s importance. He has agreed to assist in that mission as far as possible, without compromising their political neutrality.

They also reached a treaty with the alien Rheezok for the mutual defense of the Earth against the Ice Queen or other comparable threat; the PCs intend that the Rheezok’s presence be officially sanctioned on humanitarian grounds as they are refugees, but the PCs will have to work with the more progressive elements of the UN to have the emergent nation recognized officially.

Despite the delays that these ‘services’ represent, the team has, since coming ashore, covered 2,275 km, climbing to over 1800m altitude and descending again six times in the process – in 2 days and 8 hours total – and that’s with several hours worth of delays along the way as they undertook these side-quests.

Since you have been told by your guide that the whole trip should take 2-3 days, you think you’re a ways behind schedule, but Specter and Nightshade have a plan to correct that with a little time-travel once you leave your guide behind. So long as you cross the border before Noon of July 4, when UNTIL believes the Nukes are to be detonated, you should be able to give yourself a couple of days to investigate AFTER a week or so spent resting, establishing your new cover identities, and setting up a base of operations deep in the Redneck Heartland.

It is now 3:15 AM, Friday, July 4, so time is beginning to become an issue.

Just over an hour ago, the ultra-pious King Manuel de Vasquez Jalihandre Nevados, Ruler of Leon, tasked you with an hour of your time spent assisting in the reconstruction of a church here in Tampico that has lain in ruins since Ragnarok.

Normally, you would have waited until morning, but because of the press of time, you decided to go to work immediately. Maynor warned that Magic would be used to determine whether or not each was sincerely working as hard as they could, so the cover of Darkness would also enable you to use your full abilities (within the guises of Team Shadow) with relatively low risk of detection.

It worked out well. Nightshade and Zeitgeist cleared rubble from the site while Maynor and Specter dug new foundations, and Union Jack & Zantar poured concrete between the stone slabs carried into place by Basalt. Maynor and Specter took it in turns to speed up the curing of the concrete, so construction took only about half an hour (instead of the months probably expected).

The group then turned their attention to the interior, Maynor, Basalt, and Nightshade producing wooden panels, polishing and varnishing them, then mounting them, while Specter put his new woodworking skills to good use carving pews, Zantar hung silken curtains, and Zeitgeist laid tiles.

By the time you had finished, the Church was ready for decoration with appropriate religious iconography; as soon as that was complete, it would be ready to be blessed and hold Services.

At the end of the appointed time, one of the local priests inspected the work, and seemed to approve, unable to say much more than “It’s a miracle,” repeatedly. He was more than happy to sign off on the group’s efforts.

They then returned to King Manuel’s palace, to be greeted by his rudely-awakened Minister Of The Interior, the Most Excellent (that’s his title) Dominic DeSouza. En route, Maynor had asked you to let him do the talking, in the interests of getting through the formalities as quickly as possible.

After some verbal dancing with DeSouza, Maynor in very florid tones, stated “By this account of progress, duly authenticated by an official of His Majesty’s Church, we do proclaim that we have completed the task assigned us by His Majesty and claim the promised Service – immediate passage through his demesne. We must depart immediately for the border at Gonzales; we have many Leagues to cross in mere hours, and must reach the Train by the hour of four, less than an hour hence. If you will but grant us passage in His Majesty’s name!”

This contained the first hints of what was to come on the next leg of their journey, but it didn’t seem possible for a Steam Train (which is what the group expected that they would find) could possibly even come close to the implied speed required to make their schedule.

The King instructed DeSouza to comply, stating that “Lord Maynor” had previously made the need for haste clear to the monarch. The King’s words made it seem that Maynor was his social inferior, but his parting words revealed a more complex relationship between the two: “You may depart, Lord Maynor. And you may rest assured that I have spoken to those who run the railroad at Gonzales. Though they do not acknowledge Our sovereign authority, the heathens, they have indicated that they will hold the mechanical monstrosity for you – if you aren’t too late, that is.”

As the group departed the palace, Maynor commented to himself, “It never fails – a good man gets religion and becomes overburdened with pomposity. But he remains a good man.”

Key Points & Notes

It’s noteworthy that I also reached right back to the briefing at the beginning of the “Spy Games” phase of the adventure to incorporate reminders of some aspects of the adventure backstory that had not been mentioned in previous synopses, such as the role played in the situation of the Russian government.

The task given to the players in Leon – spend an hour working to rebuild a temple – was so simple that they all knew there was going to be a twist in the story. But I left it until they were actually en route to the temple to let Maynor drop the other shoe – magic would be used to verify that each had put in an ‘honest hour’s work’, laboring as hard as they could. That meant one thing in terms of the ordinary people they appeared to be, and quite another when their paranormal abilities were factored in – nor could Maynor offer any confidence. They decided that they had to play it safe, and work as hard as they could with those abilities, and sort out any fallout afterwards. They suspected that the King thought them all Mages like Maynor, and had chosen his ‘task’ accordingly.

Another key point in my planning of this mini-campaign was that each of these mini-adventures should be distinctly different from each other, posing different challenges to the PCs. The first was a combat romp, the second was a diplomatic mission (though they didn’t know that when it started), the third was a detective yarn, and this was a ‘domestic life’ story.

Finally: there’s a lot of scope to gloss things over in synopses, and that’s what happened with the next synopsis. To fill in some of the resulting blank spaces, I have once again excerpted material from the adventure, as prepped for play (except that I’ve redacted most of the references to illustrations, which can’t be presented here for copyright reasons).

Synopsis of play in Session 11, with Excerpts and annotations

The party reached the border at Gonzales at 3:55 AM. After presenting their credentials and the scrawled note from the minister of the interior, they were permitted through the stone gates that separate The Kingdom of Leon from the Republic Of Coahuila.

“We must hurry,” Maynor said. “The train leaves in just four minutes – and if they hold it, no matter what they promised Dominic DeSouza, I’m a roast avocado. This way!!”

When you mix widespread magical expertise and capability, ‘weird’ refugees from another dimension making themselves at home, and a Victorian society, what you get isn’t the age of steam – it’s the age of steampunk!

I thought that fairly obvious – but nevertheless, somehow managed to surprise my players with the development.

The ‘roast avocado’ reference was a somewhat clumsy attempt to remind the players that Maynor has made himself at home in California, but I didn’t have time to actually research turns of phrase from the period that were common in that state.

You barely have time to notice your surroundings, which are a strange blend of the modern, the magical, the Victorian, and the Mexican. A formal carriage passes you down the cobbled street drawn by a team of 8 burros while a Victorian automobile driven by an Orangutan in some sort of uniform waits to turn at the corner, held back by a policeman in a sombrero.

Maynor leads you to a building that appears to be made of glowing red bricks. As you get closer, you can see that the bricks are actually some sort of glass which traps glowing red embers and flames.

Instinctively, you turn toward the large wooden doors. “No, this way,” says the Sorcerer. “Those lead to the Waiting Room, a labyrinth from which none ever escape; they are perpetually waiting for their train to board. We go in here,” he adds, pointing at a smaller and less impressive doorway. “Our tickets are pre-booked in the name of M. E. Morales.”

Turning to Nightshade, he tells her to collect the tickets while the rest take care of the bags. “He’s a zombie, so he shouldn’t give you any trouble.”

He then begins pulling suitcases of different sizes out of thin air and handing them to the rest of you. “The railroad staff think it suspicious if someone travels without luggage. I’ve learned long ago that it saves headaches to prepare some illusionary suitcases. Now, let’s look for a porter, and remember to look disapproving when we find one…”

I wanted to make entry into this environment an experience, not something superficial; that meant hitting the PCs over the head with the uniqueness of the environment at a breathless pace. This also had the benefit of exemplifying the differences between a more ‘modern’ urban atmosphere – the pace of ‘the big city’ – and the more bucolic semi-rural state from which they were departing. In wanting to make the contrast sharp, I was able to take advantage of it in many ways at the same time.

In the process, a locale and set of characters that didn’t even exist when I outlined the adventure became so unique and significant that I expect them to recur at critical moments in the future – key campaign building blocks around which future plotlines can pivot. That wasn’t then intent – it’s total bonus.

It also gave me an opportunity to indulge an exuberance and sense of whimsy that doesn’t often get a chance to manifest itself in this particular campaign. “Please look into the ocular implant”!

Zombie Ticketmaster, Goblin Porters, and Ogre Conductor – all got a moment of spotlight that helped ‘ground’ the Steampunk environment.

The train itself was enormous; the engine was easily four times the size of any that the PCs had seen before. Maynor led them to a compartment that took up half the carriage. “That’s for three of you; you can get some sleep after the conductor clips your tickets. The table folds back and the couch becomes a second bed,” he added, “and we’ll be in the next compartment if you need anything. Breakfast will be ready at 7 AM.”

The furniture was ultra-soft, ultra-comfortable. There was a heavy-handed knock at the door; a partition in it then slid open to reveal a gauze screen with an opening in it’s base, and a deep voice half-growls, half-snarls, “Tickets, Please.” When the tickets are handed over, the 8′ tall 450-lb conductor scrutinizes them slowly through his spectacles. Finally satisfied, he punches holes in them in some arcane pattern that only railroad employees would understand, and hands them back. “The Dining Car will be open at 7. Use the bell-pull beside the door if you wish the Porters to fetch you anything from the luggage compartment. Complimentary toiletries and nightclothes are in the wardrobe. We are due to reach Monterrey at 8:15 AM. The train will then continue to Torreon and Gonzales via Zacatecas, Aqua Scalientes, and Tampico, arriving at its final destination at 9:21 this evening, ready to be cleaned and prepared for tomorrow’s service after a round trip of 403 Leagues.” In a pained tone of voice, he concludes with, “Enjoy your travels on Coahuila Rail.”

Meanwhile, Maynor was critiquing Specter’s spell-casting, having (correctly) determined that the mage was at least partially self-taught. It shows. “Some things seem to come to you easily, while others are harder than they need to be. There are techniques and elementary theory taught to all students in the Academies Of Magic in my former home. I do not have the time to instruct you formally, but I observed how interested you were in what the Rheezok were teaching. I can offer a crash course in one or two tricks that might make a difference at some point. And I cannot accept Nightshade’s word on how important your mission is without doing all I can to ensure success. It will be difficult; I do not have time to treat you as a Novice. Are you interested, and are you willing?”

This was an important character development point for both of them. I wanted to emphasize that Maynor was a lecturer in Magic that had been educated in a system that taught the subject to a University standard, while the PC was – essentially – a gifted, powerful, novice in many ways, while giving the PC additional knowledge of how the magic system worked “in-game”.

Since it’s a principle of this campaign that the ‘in-game physics’ overrides and overrules game mechanics whenever its necessary and reasonable for it to do so – in other words, that the game mechanics were an imperfect simulation of the ‘objective’ reality of the game universe – this was effectively telling the player that there were additional things that the ‘game universe’ would permit his character to do.

The fact that the principles that were to be expounded and their logical consequences all stemmed from the most recent revision to the game mechanics simply made everything dovetail more neatly. In particular, some constraints that had been incorporated for game balance reasons would be explained in terms of that in-game physics.

The carriages were hinged about a central axis, permitting them to stay level when the train rounds a bend.

From memory, this was actually something that I picked up from a Quora answer about traction in a 4WD vehicle. It permits the solid-axle wheels to be at different angles relative to each other, both in the plane parallel to the carriage floor, and in the vertical plane.

The bends are banked to permit greater speed. Now that it’s light enough to see what’s happening, the whole thing is terrifying; Nightshade, you would estimate the train’s top speed as 200 mph. That’s nothing when you’re flying, but it’s a heck of a lot when you aren’t. What’s more, you estimate the average speed as more than 120 km/h. On poorly-maintained Mexican standard gauge. With a train four times as tall as most.

In due course, the train pulled into the station in Monterrey, which was to be the PC’s stop.

Key Points & Notes

I actually have nothing to add – I’ve covered it all in my annotations! Time for another map, though…

Synopsis, Session 12 (from Session 13)

Team Shadow have been dragged from one end of Mexico to the other by their guide and ‘Diplomatic Escort,’ Maynor Morales of Demon House Aries, battling Lava Gods and Dinosaurs, concluding peace treaties with Alien sorcerers, and performing one task after another to earn passage through the Principalities that comprise the former nation of Mexico.

Now, only one task remains before they can cross the border into the United States Of North America and begin the next phase of this critical mission. To find out what it is, they have taken a magically-enhanced train, traveling in relative luxury for a change.

While most of the team were able to get a couple of hours of long-overdue sleep, Maynor had deduced that Specter was a largely self-taught Mage and took the opportunity to cram as much of what he had been taught at Mandarin’s Academy Of Magic into an intense tutorial, covering topics including Mana Curdles, Stealth Spellcasting, Mana Exhaustion, Mana Voids, Suspended Casting, Mana Tags, Elementary Summoning, The Principles of Advanced Summoning, Mana Combustion, Greater Voids, and Dimensional Fissures.

Time is beginning to press quite heavily; you need to cross the border into the USNA by Noon at the latest if you are going to be able to stop the suspected Domestic Terrorists from detonating their black market nuclear weapons.

It is now 8:18 AM, Friday the 4th of July, 1986, and the group have just arrived at the local capital, Monterrey.

Key Points & Notes

Keeping the synopsis short adds to the sense of urgency – a trick that I’ve mentioned (and made use of) before..The critical thing to do is ensure that you’ve included everything important.

If that list of “lecture topics” sounds familiar, it’s because those “lessons” were extracted and published here at Campaign Mastery, in The Meta-Physics Of Magic about three weeks after the fact – time spent adding in some of the foundation information that had already been established in the campaign.

That date of publication gives a correlation between real-world time and the timeline of game sessions, noting that there have been significant disruptions to the regular gaming schedule caused by Covid-19 Lockdowns.

Those also have an impact on the synopses from time to time; those which were intended to be delivered after a disruption need to be a little more comprehensive just to help reorient the players. At the same time, efforts were in place to keep them to a reasonable length – even though those are mutually-incompatible goals!

Synopsis, Session 13 (with excerpts from the Day’s Play)

This synopsis is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, a hybrid of the actual synopsis used in session 14 and excerpts from the day’s play, both as planned and as it actually happened.

The party were expected at the Presidential Palace because Morales had telephoned them back in Gonzales. So, they caught a taxi.

The vehicle which has just lumbered around the corner at 110 miles per hour is, perhaps, the most unlikely contraption you have ever beheld. A motorized tricycle with a canvas roof that seems to be built around the rear end of a 1930s green convertible tows a wooden double-decked carriage which would comfortable accommodate a dozen passengers. The steam engine mounted to the rear of the tricycle doesn’t have any visible burner or boiler, seeming to operate on clean thoughts alone. A neon-green sign on the side of the carriage burns brightly even in the light of day.

The driver leans out of his well-padded covered seat, a black sombrero pulled low and his head angled to keep the morning sun out of his eyes and replies “Hola, Amigos, Miguel is your driver today! Diende puedo llevarte esta buena masana? Where to?”

The Driver is as remarkable as his vehicle. A copper-colored lizard, black dining suit, white shirt, red bow tie, and a red rose in his lapel.

As the taxi sets off at breakneck pace, you realize that it has unsophisticated leaf-spring suspension. At speed, the ride promises to be on the uncomfortable side.

Maynor took the opportunity to sneak in some additional lecture notes on magic use, while complaining about not having any prepared lecture notes.

In the Campaign Mastery article, these were incorporated into the text as thought they had all been presented at the same time. In actual play, there were interruptions between almost every section so that the spotlight could look over the other PCs.

Meanwhile, in the carriage below, the occupants have had more time to soak up the uniqueness of Monterrey and the way they employ Magic, as passing views through the windows as the taxi bounces along toward it’s destination at insanely high speeds.

You pass a construction site at which a steel skeleton is being erected without the use of cranes, levitating Girders into place, and in some cases, twisting and bending them into curving forms which are carefully checked against a template that also hovers in mid-air.

I am a strong advocate for the premise that those with ‘special powers’ would find ways to incorporate the casual use of those powers into their daily lives. This holds as true for Class Features in D&D as it does superhero paranormal abilities. Mr Fantastic doesn’t get up to get a cup of coffee – he twists his neck so he’s facing rearward to see what he’s doing and stretches his arms (one holding the coffee-cup) to the percolator, all without leaving his chair. The Human Torch roasts marshmallows with his fingertips. The Invisible Girl should use a force-field coffee-cup, and so on.

Past the construction site, you watch, fascinated, as small, puffy, clouds are formed by a steam engine and marshaled into neat ranks in tidy lines. A series of devices that look something like oversized shower heads pump additional moisture into each, fattening and darkening it until it is ready to be deployed – presumably to a nearby farm.

Across the road, a craftsman is busy making fancy cowboy boots. Nine stands have been set up, side by side, and identical pieces of raw leather placed in the same position on each. As you watch, the one craftsman begins cutting the leather into shape, turning the piece of leather as he does so. On either side of him, four leather knives waft into the air and make identical movements to that of the tool in the craftsman’s hand; the pieces of leather turn at the same time as leather in front of him. By the time he is finished, he will not have one pair of shoes; he will have nine. A little further down the street, a potter works six wheels at once, turning out vases.

Another vendor creates neon-like fireworks in the air in the shape of the stars and stripes to advertise that he has the latest in American convenience products for sale “Muy Cheapo!” This raises an interesting thought for Nightshade – could it be that the major reason why this part of Mexico has recovered so visibly is not just that they are using magic to benefit the populace and economy as a whole, but that they are engaging in trade with the US – whether the nation is recognized as legitimate or not? Presumably, Mexican labor is also producing nick-knacks for the American market, and using Magic to improve their productivity to a level with which the Americans can’t compete. Since Coahuila presumably also trades with its’ neighbors, who trade with their neighbors, progress would be slowly seeping through the Central Americas, diluted with each exchange but accumulating, nevertheless.

Conceptually, this was a direct steal from Asimov’s Foundation series, in which the notion that trade could be a civilizing force all on its own. But the expressions of that principle are completely different.

From time to time, you spot masked people in bright green scrubs touching wands to people in obvious physical distress, who appear to recover almost immediately from their ailments. A sandwich-board sign nearby reads “Atencion de la salud publica, gratuita”, which the education you received through the mechanical educator quickly translates to “Public Health Care, Free”. A broken limb is healed as you watch.

That explains why you weren’t seeing the poor and downtrodden that you might have expected to find – restoring them to health permits them to find work and climb out of poverty, at least in relative terms, a very Scandinavian philosophy. St Barbara approved, quite vocally!

Of course, in the real world, this would not be enough; it’s often not health that holds the underprivileged back. But it would be a massive boost to the middle classes, which would then put more money into the economy, which could then be used to address some of the other problems faced by the poor, homeless, and hurt.

Much of the thinking behind the utilization of magic in this environment stemmed from “A Magical Medieval Society” which I bought many years ago through RPGNow. There’s an updated version that’s come out since, and at least one sequel. Again, the premise is that if you can do something, you would use that ability to achieve more in every aspect of your life to which you could apply it. Even being more efficient in your job creates more time for you to improve yourself, spend with family, etc – unless your working hours are not reduced commensurately, in which case they become additional profits for the business owners, fueling an economic disparity.

Today’s economic and social problems are always caused (at least in part) by yesterday’s mistakes. no matter how well-meaning, just as tomorrow will pay for the mistakes being made today.

The taxi reached the Presidential Palace, a vast and opulent building with people streaming in and out along a white marble walkway. The driver asked which entrance they wanted to use, and was directed to take them to the “Ambassadorial Reception Plaza” – which told the PCs that they should take a moment to clean themselves up and make sure that they were presentable.

The driver asked if they had the necessary diplomatic credentials, receiving an affirmative from Maynor; in the previous kingdoms, he had seemed to combine a role as “supervisor” with a lax, almost casual diplomatic role; because the Kingdoms themselves weren’t legally recognized, the team had not given that a second thought.

This sounded rather more formal, and reminded them that there was a considerable gap between what governments recognized “officially” and the reality on the ground that had to be acknowledged and applied practically. With trade (however unsanctioned and unofficial) across the border to the US, and with House Aries connections into the US Government and relations with the Government here, the Republic Of Coahuila must be on the verge of full diplomatic recognition. And, once one former Mexican state had such recognition, it would be that much harder to deny the others – something the PCs noted rather carefully given their promises to the Rheezok.

Union Jack had another take on the situation; he wondered what the probability was that such a person would be ‘randomly chosen’ to act as their escort and guide? Either the 5th Reich had a lot more political clout than seemed likely, or this diplomatic ‘beat’ was Morales full-time job, or news of their identities/mission had leaked. Discounting the first, that left a chance that the team was in trouble they hadn’t even noticed yet. The diplomatic ‘dance’ when they reached the palace might be very informative, and he resolved to pay even closer attention than he normally would have.

The Presidential Palace turned out to be a complex of buildings with a common facade, permitting it to be completely rebuilt or restructured and the public would never know.

It quickly became evident that Maynor was no stranger to the palace, and was well-known to the key figures in the local government. The party were escorted to the Palace Waiting Room, which would not look out of place in the Versailles Palace. Beginning with the obvious alien (Zantar), their escort began taking drinks orders. The second person he approached was Zeitgeist, who looks human (but isn’t); he recommended the 8,000-year-old quartz suspension, he understands that it is very popular with the Golems who have similar dietary preferences. It is immediately obvious that the staff have read them like a book – even those whose race they had never encountered before.

Maynor shakes his head as the Butler departs. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know how he does it, either – but he’s unerring at selecting those who have traveled the greatest distance from their homes, and a nit-picker when it comes to protocol. I suspect that he’s also the head of the Centro de Investigacion y Seguridad, Mexican Intelligence. Right now, while others prepare the drinks, he will be preparing President daSilva for the meeting.”

“When the President is ready, Carenza will come and get us. This is a formal occasion to the locals – after all, the other nations of the world don’t recognize his Presidency as legitimate, so he doesn’t get to play diplomatic host very often. I’ve found it’s more efficient in the long run to let them get it out of their systems before getting down to business.”

Sure enough, maids and junior butlers – each the opposite of your apparent gender – soon deliver your drink orders on silver trays with a bow or a curtsy. They then stand unobtrusively in the shadows near your elbows, waiting to remove the empty glassware when you’ve finished, or refills, as necessary.

Five minutes later, Carenza returns and leads them to the Presidential Office. You make quite a procession – the elderly butler, so much more than he seems, followed by Maynor, then the rest of you in a group, followed by servants with silver trays for any of you who had not finished your drinks, and servants with napkins for those of you who have.

Carenza leads you into another large and opulent chamber, which includes a large throne, and a business desk off to the side. When the group was arranged in a semicircle according to assumed rank (the same order in which your drinks orders were taken), three men in blue uniforms enter and raise trumpets to their lips before blowing a brief fanfare, which concludes with the crash of cymbals from a second trio. The doors open on the crash, and a man in expensive robes with a long train enters. This must be President daSilva. It’s hard to judge his age – he could be 50, and prematurely gray, or a well-preserved 70. Large rimless square glasses are perched upon his nose. He strides confidently to the throne and sits, cradling his hands in an attentive pose.

Greetings were exchanged between the King and Maynor, and verbal fencing between the two then followed for a few minutes, the upshot being that the two get along but have to pretend otherwise for the sake of formality, and so haggle endlessly about services rendered, debts, and payments. After a while, having ticked all the officially-required boxes, the conversation becomes more personal and friendly. It turns out that the Rose (wine) that the President had asked Morales to evaluate was a local product, part of an ongoing attempt to create an upmarket Wine industry. The King’s conversation is full of hints to a humorous side, a sly wit that he doesn’t get to parade publicly.

Maynor then gets to the point: “Senor Presidente, I know your intelligence service enjoys a challenge. Rather than presenting you with false identities, permit me to simply introduce you to the group whose transit brings me into your presence at this time. Their passage has been arranged as a personal favor to Senor Muerte of Brazil; any diplomatic rank that they may display at this time derives completely from that association. They may have, however, some small influence in other official circles.”

With a sweeping gesture, the President says to the five of you, “I bid you welcome to the glorious Republic Of Coahuila, Senors and Senoritas. The Oracle has, of course, warned me of your coming. I understand that King Rohaz has been displaced in favor of a more progressive Regime, and that a strong case may soon be mounted for the long-overdue recognition of the Sovereign Nations of what was once a united Mehico.”

This showed that the President was right up to date on current events despite the lack of modern communications between the Kingdoms, and opened several eyes wide at the game table.

“Formal Recognition of the Kingdom of Tabasco may soon occur. Should you make overtures to those who now rule there, a positive diplomatic relationship should result. A joint submission to the United Nations for formal recognition is far more likely to succeed. The Principality of Leon would also join with you in this endeavor; which would force acknowledgment of the other Kingdoms as well.”

And the reply showed that while the players had been hatching vague plans about formal recognition of the Kingdoms, Maynor had been orchestrating a more substantial and concrete plan. He was so affable in casual mode that his diplomatic skills kept surprising the PCs; every time that happened, the respect the PCs had for the NPC went up a notch. Every time that has happened in the past, the NPC has ended up being recruited by them – something that wouldn’t be possible, politically, even if he could accept such an offer. So this was a novel position for them to be in. Remember that ostensibly and officially, he was an enemy of theirs!

“That would be well. Lack of assistance from the other nations of the World delays recovery from the Dias de fuego y hielo, which they call Ragnarok.”

“You seem well-acquainted with the only news of significance that I have to offer. So, we have need of further travels within your realm. There is considerable demand for urgency in this matter. Your Northern Borders and trade across them may be At Risk should we fail.”

“So the Oracula has advised me. However, she has also insisted on reading each member of the group you escort. Since she knew when you would arrive, she will be here at any moment.”

A strident knocking comes rhythmically from the doors to the Throne Room. “And here is the Senora now!”

Maynor whispers to the rest of you, “I had hoped to avoid this, but did not really expect to be able to do so – not after the incident with the Rheezok. Your passage has had considerable impact on the Latin Americas even without that, but the importance of that fact sealed the deal, I’m afraid. Don’t be afraid of the Oracle; she is no mere fortune-teller, but is a true Seer. She will see through most disguises, but will recognize your need for secrecy – and probably the reasons for it – and speak circumspectly. She will probably offer personal guidance – you may wish to pay close attention to her insights.”

Slowly the doors to the throne room open. On the threshold stand a quartet that you will never forget. Two of the number are more than 7 feet tall, made up to look like the death-representations from the Day Of The Dead celebrations, in black robes and silver-trimmed hoods. Between them is a tall thin woman wearing a mask which seems to completely block her sight. Before her is a boy of perhaps eight years age, with Central American face paint and a blue feathered headdress. His eyes are remarkable pools of blue that match the glowing orb resting in the woman’s hand.

The way they move is just as remarkable – the escorts movements are all in perfect unison, as though one mind controlled both bodies. The woman doesn’t seem to have legs at all; her skirt falls fully to the floor and flows as though there were nothing of substance beneath it. And the young boy walks normally – if walking normally can be done from almost a foot above the floor, where he stands on insubstantial nothing.

At some unspoken signal, the Escorts take up positions opposite each other on the far sides of the Throne Room, while the child and woman circle around to face Maynor and the group.

“These are the foretold Visitors Of Note – Visitantes Destacados – who are not who they seem,” announces the boy, stating it as a fact, in a strangely deep voice that seems to come from very far away, as he moves to walk to one side of the woman and slightly behind her.

The pair approach Maynor, and appear to look at him closely. They then turn to face other, and you have the distinct impression that communications flow between them even though not a word is said – or can be heard telepathically “This one we know already,” says the boy. “His feet are already on the path unto greatness. Hail and welcome, son of the Mandarin Empire. We once again offer you citizenship bereft of pretense, though we know you will not and cannot accept it.”

“Buenos Diaz, Senorita, and Gracias. Una vez mas debo rechazar tu oferta,” replies Maynor – “I must once again decline your offer.” You get the impression that somehow the boy is lending voice to the woman’s words, and not speaking on his own at all.

Next, the pair place themselves in front of Zantar. “We greet The Sword Of Honor, purified in the flame of darkness and small visions. The great hope of all that is noble, a decision lies heavily upon his heart. Senor, trust that the universe will not permit a wrong choice – only a foolish one.” Zantar’s tail slashes the air back and forth and then seems to wilt as the words sink in. He mumbles “Hola Senorita and Gracias for the advice.”

The duo then come to Zeitgeist. “A Vidente of a different nature to ourselves. A child with a Mind of Mirrors, hard as steel – but a heart soft as a pillow, though she denies it even unto herself. A Truth will wound her deeply when it is discovered. If she can forgive the unforgivable, she may shine as brightly as the Northern Star.” Zeitgeist, they aren’t using Telepathy, and you are fairly certain that Zantar would have reacted differently if their powers had been Chi-based. It’s probably magic, given the widespread use of that art.

Because she considers you a fellow Seer – that’s what Vidente means – the child then opens a window into the Oracle’s mind for you to glance inside. Zeitgeist didn’t hesitate to accept the implied invitation – doing so might be considered rude, and if there was a quartet she did not wish to alienate, this was them.

She found that the four were not individuals at all, but four parts of a whole, a true Gestalt. The woman sees the ‘shape’ of past timelines, while the child sees the ‘shape’ of the future. But these prophetic abilities are not Magical in nature; they have no idea where they came from or how they work.

The two guards act as both protection and reference library; one is a Historian and expert in Politics and Economics, while the other has Doctorates in Physics, Biology, and half-a-dozen other scientific fields.

Each of the four is a mage but they don’t consider themselves the equal of someone like Runeweaver or Maynor in arcane talent.

She was also vaguely aware that they are from widely-separated places – the boy is Brazilian, the woman Mexican, and the Guards are Spanish and Finnish, respectively – so the story of how they found each other and became a unified whole is likely to be a fascinating one.

Before she could even think of looking into that, however, the ‘window’ was closed, and the Oracle moved on.

The third member of the group deriving from off-world, Union Jack, then follows. “The Unlikely Happenstance,” the Oracle names him, “who doubts the rightness of his place in this company. Those doubts may destroy him or he may rise above them to earn a place of respect he cannot now even glimpse. If he survives to see his world aflame, he may become a candle in the darkness. Of all here, his fate is the most uncertain the most quickly.” He thanks he for sharing her wisdom, but still sounds uncertain.

The fourth member to face this probing examination is Nightshade: “The burden of fate lies heavy on the shoulders of this one. She is The Fire incarnate. It may ease your burden, Senora, to know that your efforts will never be in vain, even should they fail, so long as your heart and purpose remain pure.”

Second-last is Specter. “This one has the potential to be a Mighty Oak, perhaps even the greatest practitioner of the Arts in all human existence, but only through great sorrow and suffering will this potential be unlocked. Therefore, Earnest Mage, renew thy peace each day, and let the morrow be of care on the morrow. Wonders await thee, should you succeed in this.” They aren’t using Magic, Specter, or at least, not any magic that you recognize.

Finally, Basalt: “The Heart of their Alliance, released from a terrible curse but recently, and still discovering what remains of his soul and what has been lost. He shall be the Shield Of Truth but must learn anew to trust himself.”

The Boy and woman then turn to face the President. “These are The Ones. All will unfold as foretold. Together, they will perform a great service for Coahuila. You should assist them.” the boy announces. Then the quartet reform without a word, and again moving in their unique manner, depart the Throne Room.

Once again, deep knowledge of the characters and discussions with their owners was the basis of this character analysis. But this also connected back to the character-based beginning of the whole adventure.

After watching the quartet depart, President daSilva says, “I have learned to trust the Wisdom of the Oracle. She foresaw your coming, and that haste would benefit Coahuila. Custom demands that a task be performed to earn permission to journey further through these lands, but I felt justified in taking that foretelling to heart.

“Still, I must still bow to custom or risk the disfavor of the spirit world – not to mention my many political rivals, who are always eager to undermine my rule and strengthen their own claims on the Presidential Palace.

“A task has been chosen accordingly.

“You shall travel to Escobedo, not far from here. You will assist in the loading of certain boxes of custom-built parts that await dispatch from the Precision Engineering Works. You will transport these to Doctor Esperanza at the Rosita Plasmic Works in Neuvo Rosita, and assist in their unloading and unpacking. The required task will then be considered complete.’

Maynor immediately protests. “El Presidente, Neuvo Rosito is more than 300 kilometers away, and does not lie on a straight path toward the border at Neuvo Laredo. We will then be faced with another journey of perhaps 200 kilometers to reach that point from which we may access the nation to the North. I thought you understood the need for urgency – this task may be simple, but it will take us all day!”

“You are incorrect, Senor. This IS the task that the Oracle has insisted you MUST perform to earn passage. But I do understand the need for haste, or at least that there are advantages to my country in permitting haste on your part.

“My rivals would not permit me to assist you without clear proof of your claimed need, Muy Amigo. But, should haste in the task assigned be of proven advantage to the Republic, they will wail and whine, but be unable to mount any serious protest.

“The Presidential Pneumatic will transport you to the Factory in Escobedo. From there, after collecting the parts, you will board the Clippership Peregrine, the fastest vessel within the Republic, which is already en route to meet you at the Factory. It will convey you directly to Neuvo Rosito. After you complete your task, you may then return the Clippership to Neuvo Laredo, where a vehicle better suited to sensibilities North of the border will await you.

“Direct travel to the border by the fastest vehicle you could easily find in Monterrey would take the best part of four hours. My way involves only 50 minutes travel in total, plus stoppage time – perhaps 20 minutes, perhaps 30. It will be much faster, I assure you.”

Maynor, now calmer, replies, “It seems I have underestimated your wiles, El Presidente. Very well.”

“You will be unable to use your arts to speed this task in any way, Senor. The parts under your care are very delicate and would be damaged if you were to do so. They must be loaded and unloaded by means of physical strength. There are those who might seek to interfere or delay you; in this way, you will certainly out-pace them.

“These components are desperately needed for Dr Esperanza’s work. She will explain it far better than I can. Until we meet again, then, Senor, I wish you and your companions Buena fortuna y salud – Good Fortune and Health.”

Maynor replies on behalf of your all, “And to you, El Presidente.”

“Carenza will escort you to the Pneumatic,” concludes the President as he gathers his train and leaves the room in what must be a blatant breach in protocol to judge from the shocked expressions of the servants.

Whew, there’s a lot to unpack from those adventure excerpts. First, excluding the Oracle, only one or two members of the Republic’s government were mentioned or named – but there was enough going on that this wasn’t really noticed. My first draft outline had a couple of others, including a political rival, making appearances, but those got redacted because they weakened the impact of first, the relationship between Morales and President daSilva, and second, the Oracle. It was a choice between focusing on the internal Politics of Coahuila or on the Oracle’s prophecies and descriptions of the PCs and their statuses; I chose the latter.

Part of the reasoning was that by this point I had recognized how compelling a location and set of trappings my Steampunk version of Coahuila could be, within the campaign. And, through the Oracle, I now had a new tool to speak directly to the characters if I had no other way of moving a plot forward. There would be plenty of time for internal politics.

In crafting those prophecies and visions, I actually looked ahead to the very end of the campaign, as it is currently anticipated to be, and the roles that the various team members would have in resolving the cataclysm that the players refer to as “Ragnarok II”, and the experiences that would lead to those roles. These were ‘first hints’ at everything to come.

More importantly, this progressed the overall plotline of the campaign forward. It’s worth momentarily recapping everything that had been integrated into the campaign for the future by this point:

• The political situation in the US;
• The ad-hoc routing around political roadblocks accepted by UNTIL;
• The Fifth Reich as something other than an enemy;
• The political situation in Mexico and Central America, post Ragnarok, and making the PCs the instruments of advancing that political situation as they saw fit to do;
• The Rheezok;
• Coahuila as a setting;
• President daSilva and his staff;
• The Oracle; and
• Unexpected progress in the main campaign plotline.

If that were the full extent of the objectives for this adventure, it was more than long enough to justify everything else attached to it. It wasn’t; that was only the beginning.

Which brings me to another piece of content that might be of value to some GMs out there: the “Pneumatic”…

As the elderly butler escorts you to the “Pneumatic”, he tells you what to expect – though he’s vague on the details. In essence, it’s an ultra-high-speed train, riding through a vacuum trapped in a tube of thickened perspex and driven by – essentially – a steam explosion in the tube behind it. A literal “Bullet Train”. The President backed the research and construction personally, and hoped that it would represent a next-generation technology that could be exported to the rest of the world; but it’s carrying capacity proved far too limited for that. Nevertheless, as a means of getting the President and an adviser or Commander to or from the Palace to the scene of a problem, it has proven sufficiently valuable that it has been retained and extended – anywhere in the capital city is mere minutes away from the Palace. He’s never ridden it.

The Pneumatic itself appears to be two parts joined by a collar; one part is polished silvery steel and extremely streamlined, while the other appears to be a mixture of steel, gold, and brass.

This section continues the lines of the front section and contains an aircraft-style plug door. Inside, there is a vestibule area leading to the passenger compartment. Surprisingly, this is currently in the nose of the contrivance and shaped as a cylinder with rounded ends. The surprise is because, from the outside, a row of darkly-tinted windows were visible in the rear of the device, well behind the rear of the passenger area.

A line of attendants stands ready to assist each of you in preparing for what Maynor’s description makes sound like a very violent departure. Each of them gives each of you essentially the same spiel, so I’ll only run through it once.

“This vehicle accelerates to a speed of 565 km per hour in one-tenth of a second. That is almost eight times the fastest speed of the fastest racehorse, and of course, your trip will be over much more than a quarter-mile. So violent and rapid is this gain in speed that your body will weigh about 160 times what it normally does for that fraction of a second. An 80kg man will have the weight of almost 159 copies of himself pressing down on him, and will feel like he weighs 12,800 kilos.

“Making this experience one that is survivable has dictated the design of everything within this compartment and the safety procedures. Understand that the vehicle is designed to be unable to depart should they not be strictly complied with.

“The seating is of the softest leather backed with steel. They are designed to recline to an angle of 60 degrees to the vertical and to lock in place until it is safe for passengers to stand. There are adjustable recesses in the foot-stand; feet must be placed in them and the wells narrowed until they grip the feet sufficiently firmly. Doing so will cause the chair to recline and lock into place automatically. This, in turn, will cause a pressure-mask containing a bit, again wrapped in soft leather, to unfold from the headrest. Pull it to your mouth and bite down on it; this prevents you accidentally biting off your tongue and forces you to breathe pure oxygen, which assists in preventing unconsciousness and brain damage.

“When it registers that it is being bitten into with sufficient force, the pressure mask will tighten to clamp the jaws in place. This will release a pair of padded panels to either side of the headrest, which must be folded up until they hold the head securely.

“I will then secure you by doing up a five-point harness and pulling it tight; this is made of reinforced spiderweb. It has a quick release which you may employ when it is safe to do so, as indicated by the green light at the front of the compartment. The mask and other restraints may then be removed or loosened. However, passengers should remain seated.”

“Finally, the wrists must be inserted into the recesses on the padded hand-rests until the elbows rest on the pressure pads in the arms. Inside each recess is a sphere with indentations for each finger. Pulling back or pushing forward on this sphere adjusts the armrests.

“When all ten of these, and the two elbow pads, are triggered for all passengers, the light in the front of the carriage will change from Amber to Red, and the launch process will commence automatically, with a 30-second countdown. This time is needed to build up the immense pressure that will propel the vehicle like a bullet from an air rifle.

“To cushion the shock, the entire compartment rests ahead of a special gel that absorbs as much as half the impact, like falling onto a soft bed. The compartment will be forced back by the forces of launch until it locks into position. You will experience a vibration or shudder when that takes place; this is normal and nothing to be concerned about.

“When the light turns green, you will be traveling at more than fourteen times the Coahuila speed limit, and will cover a distance of 157 meters every second, or one kilometer every 6 1/3 seconds or so. At a little more than 5 kilometers distance from your destination, the light will begin to flash; ten seconds later, the capsule will begin to brake. This braking will be relatively gentle; friction will have already reduced your speed somewhat. Nevertheless, it will feel quite violent to anyone not used to it.

“Some passengers with a condition called Epilepsy may react badly to the rapid blinking of light through the windows; for that reason, they are tinted quite darkly at the base.

“Your journey today is to the industrial part of the city, some 15 km away. Arrival will be approximately 2 minutes 10 seconds after departure.”
(Pause for reply)

None of you have any particular problems following the instructions – the chairs (which look like luxury leather reclining chairs) won’t permit you to move on to the next operation until the current one is completed successfully. With the attendants to assist (and remind you of what to do, if necessary), it takes only a minute or so, most of which is pausing in the process while the attendants exit the capsule and the door and tube are sealed. A captive elemental then extracts all the air from the tube while the steam pressure builds. You briefly wonder if they use an elemental for that, too?

Some players have a problem with the GM dropping thoughts into their character’s heads like this. Mine know that they can freely ignore them, or can grab the ball and run with it, as suits them; these are basically present as conversation starters, opportunities for the characters to voice an opinion and then segue into anything their characters want to talk about. I provide a limited tolerance for side-chatter that isn’t game related – one brief joking reference or relevant anecdote, maximum – on the principle that if you don’t let players get such things out of their systems every now and then, they will crop up at more inconvenient times. Maybe half the time, no-one takes the bait, but every time I’ve neglected including such thought bubbles – either in-character or metagame in nature – my game hasn’t played as well as it does otherwise.

But I’m very careful to build from what is documented on the character sheet and any background provided by the player (and for this campaign, I required a written background). What’s more, inherited from the Hero System, these rules track the psychology of a character – extrapolation from those, with one eye to not impacting the playability and functionality of the character usually produces results which are both acceptable to the player and often shed new light on aspects of them that the player hadn’t considered.

There’s an important point of game philosophy involved in the back of this approach: To what extent do PCs belong exclusively to the players and to what extent is the GM a collaborator in their creation?

This process takes an approach that is very heavily-weighted toward the “collaborator” side of that equation; this does not dispute the player’s ownership, control of, or responsibility for, their character, it just means that the GM will help flesh it out from time to time and work to integrate it ever-more-tightly into the campaign world. Your players might have different ideas on the subject, and so might you as GM; but at least the issue is there for you to think about, now.

By the time the servants have exited the capsule after strapping you all in tight, the warning light turns red, warning that you are now 30 seconds from riding the fastest surface vehicle you’ve ever heard of! St B at top speed can travel faster, so can most jet aircraft, and almost all real spacecraft would leave this for dead – but none of those are strictly comparable. It should be one heck of an experience!

Suddenly, the weight of the world feels like it lands on you, quite literally. The air is forcible expelled from your lungs (except those of Basalt, who is strong enough – barely – to breathe normally at 160g’s).

Each PC then had to make a CON save to stay conscious, with modifiers for their physical capabilities. I had put together a customized unconsciousness calculator – a spreadsheet – that took each character’s stats and the results of their saving throw and translated the combination into a period of unconsciousness. I’d provide it for readers, but it’s so specific in its function that I doubt it would be of much use to anyone else. I also rolled in advance for the NPCs and integrated their results into the narrative – giving me a couple of ‘test subjects’ to make sure that the system worked..

Note that the cushioning gel slows the g-forces you experience massively – from 160g to a “mere” 64g – before anything else is taken into consideration.

For those awake for it, a quarter of a second after the biggest kick in the pants that any of you will ever experience – you hope – there’s a violent jerk, the equivalent of a punch to the jaw by a heavyweight boxer, as the capsule locks in place. One second later, strobing indicates that you have been propelled out of the palace at, presumably, 560-odd kph, and the green light shines to indicate that it’s safe to unstrap and loosen your restraints – but to stay in the seats.

Since none of you are epileptic, you suffer no ill effects from this. Zantar and Union Jack come to, the first just as the green light shines, the latter a couple of seconds later.

Everyone else woke up over the next few seconds.

You find that the joins between sections of pipe flash by so fast that they are barely noticeable, less than an eye-blink – a 40th of a second every quarter of a second. It’s impossible to see anything clearly that’s close to the track that guides you, but more distant features can be seen for long enough. Eight seconds after departure, the strobing effect stops as you exit downtown Monterrey. 14 seconds later, the suburban inner city gives way to a substantial wooded tract, which 4 seconds later becomes a large park.

It takes sixteen to traverse the park, which is clearly substantial in size, and perhaps created when the Pneumatic was first built and not yet established as ‘safe’. Beyond it, you find yourselves passing through leafy, well-maintained suburbs, as buildings become visible between the trees. It takes only twelve seconds to flash through several suburbs of similar nature and enter another wooded section. Four seconds after that, the green light begins to flash, warning that you will start decelerating in ten seconds. What the attendants didn’t tell you was how the capsule slows down.

It turns out to be a very simple device – the train passes over a sensor that begins to admit air into the cylinder. The shape of the aerodynamic nose has obviously been calculated to give precisely the right amount of slowing through friction to stop the capsule from it’s present speed (a little less than the initial 560-odd kph) in the close-to-frictionless tube to nothing, in exactly 5 km.

The braking force is about 2g’s, or more than 6 times the force of slamming on the brakes in a car traveling at high speed. This is obviously the reason people aren’t permitted to get out of their seats! Fourteen seconds later, the trees give way to more suburbs, but these have fewer trees and are far smaller and more run-down – more like what you saw in Leon. You have slowed enough that it takes almost half a minute before you notice that the landscape has become far more industrial in nature – more warehouses and obvious factories.

Forty seconds later, the capsule comes to a complete halt. You have traveled 15 km in 2 minutes and eight seconds, and now find yourselves in the Industrial suburb of Monterrey named Escobedo! No-one told you what to do next…

Timecheck: 9:33 AM, Friday, July 4, 1986 (Local Time)

The team then assisted in the loading of Steampunk-technology components manufactured by Escobedo Precision Manufacturing. There was more deliberately steampunk flavor in describing the factory and implying the manner of its’ operations. There was also interplay between co-workers of different races, emphasizing that all sorts of humanoids were now considered citizens of Coahuila. This might well be the most egalitarian society on Earth.

Part of this was a reaction to the blatant racism being displayed by the US President at the time of writing, and part of it was redressing all the implied criticism of the Mexican and Central American peoples reflected in the collapse of government post-Ragnarok.

The Clippership Peregrine turned out to be a sailing-ship of the skies. I had an illustration, but ran out of time before I could get too deeply into its operating principles; in hindsight, that was a good thing because it let me focus player attention on more important things – like the fundamental operating principles of most of the steampunk technology, which had been excerpted from the discussion of the Train (where it had been originally placed, and was irrelevant) to here (where it was about to become directly relevant).

Various roleplaying then took place, which are detailed in the next synopsis, so I’ll skip over them here.

Maynor began brooding as soon as the loading of the Cargo began, but when asked what the problem was, he replied only “I might be wrong. And you should pray to whatever gods will listen that I am.” This became the subject of some speculation before Specter demanded to know the mage’s concerns – just in case.

“I hope these components are not intended for the purposes I think they are intended for,” he replied. “You may have noticed that the Coahuilans use a unique combination of Victorian technology and Magic as the cornerstone of their industrial achievements. The standard models – and a few proven variations – of these devices are at the heart of that technology. These are mechanical devices that, like a mage, operate using Mana, effectively converting it into other forms of energy, using that energy, and then converting the waste back into turbulent Mana.

“The Generator Rings capture Mana and funnel it in an artificial Mana Stream to the Compressors, which focus several such streams into stronger ones. This is then used to power various mechanical devices, like the train that brought us to the capital, or the airborne ship that we currently ride.

“That’s a concept that has never sat well with me. If anything goes wrong, it risks leaving a region mana-dead, or mana-saturated. Neither is very appealing.

“Now, these were described as prototypes. Right away, that’s risky. On top of that, there are these ‘Exciters’ – I don’t know what they do, but the similarity of naming suggests boosting or supercharging the mana flow in some way, possibly using some of the Mana gathered to Energize the rest, effectively casting a spell on the Mana flow that’s powering the spell in order to amplify the mana received. It would be all too easy for that to get out of hand.”

All of which sounded suitably ominous, and redirected the party atmosphere that had prevailed into a state of high tension, exactly as intended.

Key Points & Notes

Once again, I’ve preempted just about everything by incorporating it into interjected annotations. But there are a couple of things to discuss.

I worked very hard at conceptualizing how the game physics of “magic” would integrate into a steampunk environment, because – as noted earlier – this seemed to be the logical outcome of a post-cataclysm Mexico infused with magic and non-human refugees. Certainly, there would have been some adjustment problems on the part of the imported population, but the cataclysm would have seriously decimated population levels, so ‘people’ who simply showed up and went about doing whatever they could for the survivors would have been like answers to a prayer.

Which brings me to another factor in deciding to have governments collapse (even disintegrate) in the wake of the disaster – the US had a significant industrial and technological capability to assist in recovery from the disaster if it were deployed properly, and would have received considerable assistance from beyond their borders, at least until the government blamed the United Nations and walked out on the rest of the world, politically. Mexico would not have possessed anything close to the same level of resources, and would have been quickly overwhelmed once communications networks went down and it became impossible to move by road – first because the world was roasted in 60-plus degree centigrade temperatures (more than enough to melt asphalt) and was then covered in a meter of snow a day for almost a month. Someone local would have had to take charge in order for people to survive, and therefore, everywhere were people had survived, someone had taken charge. As the snow melts (adding massive flooding to the problems), governments start putting themselves back together from the pieces – but expecting all those who took charge to simply give back the authority that they have acquired – it simply wasn’t going to happen.

The principle is therefore established that the more industrialized a nation is, the more it can retain its unity and emerge ‘relatively’ unscathed (nowhere was untouched), and the less industrialized, the more tribal the results would have been – but with people remembering how things used to be. You either suppress any trend towards ‘progress’ that might undermine your authority, or you find yourself another unifying force (religion in Leon and Veracruz, magically-driven technology in Coahuila), and then advance as fast as your unifying force permits. This mimics the evolution of society between the 16th and 19th centuries in many ways – and hence the pattern of the Kingdoms emerges.

There are a couple of points about Infodumps to emerge from the preceding – specifically, breaking them up whenever possible and finding a way to deliver information when it becomes relevant and not before. The more you can do this, the less your players will be overwhelmed and your game time chewed up. That’s not the only trick to it, of course – but it’s a solid start.

Finally, I’ve left the next synopsis intact, so that you can appreciate how strongly it has been compacted, compared to something approaching the original telling (above).

Synopsis, Session 13 (from Session 14)

The team, posing as Team Shadow, accompanied by their guide, “Diplomatic Escort”, and new-found ally, Maynor Morales of Demon House Aries, reached the capital of the Principality Of Coahuila, Monterrey.

They utilized one of the most exotic forms of transport that they have yet encountered to travel to the Presidential Palace, where they met various colorful characters, culminating in an audience with El Presidente Ramon daSilva himself.

The assemblage was then joined by a most unusual quartet who collectively made up “The Oracle”, capable of seeing past, present, and future. They had prophesied the team’s arrival, and that they would perform some Great Service for the Principality – if daSilva assisted them in completing their obligations quickly and heading north.

To that end, he made available his exclusive rapid-transit system through the city, the “Pneumatic”, and hired the fastest Airship in the Kingdom, the Clippership Peregrine, to carry you the rest of the way on the assignment that he was politically obligated to set before you.

That task: to collect various prototype components of some sort from the specialist manufacturer, the Escobedo Precision Manufacturing Works and convey them to a “Doctor Esperanza” at the Rosita Plasmic Laboratory and you would then be free to race to the border city of Neuvo Laredo in the Clippership, where vehicles “better suited to the sensibilities of Coahuila’s northern neighbors” would be waiting for them.

If all went according to plan (and it has, so far), this will shave something like 3 1/2 hours off the total trip to the USNA.

The parts loaded, the Clippership set off at enormous speeds for the town of Neuva Rosita, 250km away. The expected flight time was about 30 minutes. That means that you’re traveling at somewhere close to 500km/h – and acutely aware that sunlight heats ground (and hence the air above that ground) unevenly. While too gentle to be noticed at slower speeds, or in larger aircraft unless the turbulence is likewise super-sized, the Peregrine has been bucking and tossing like a cork descending a raging torrent. Throughout the trip, four things have been used as distractions:

1. You’ve all been astonished at how Green the province is. The use of magic has transformed a desert prairie into a breadbasket, with mile after mile of lush, productive, cropland. It looks the equal of Missouri, or of Southern England – but it’s not much smaller than Montana.

2. You’ve all taken a stab at trying to figure out what the cryptic names of the pieces of Cargo mean. The consensus is that a “Toric Generator Ring” is a piece of a power supply that gets arranged in a circle or Torus – hence the name. “Manic Exciter” and “Manic Compressor” have taken a bit more effort; the best you’ve been able to come up with is that the one supercharges a Mana Flow by somehow dumping extra power into it from somewhere, while the other squeezes a Mana Flow into a more coherent beam – a laser beam compared to a spotlight. But these guesses might be completely wide of the mark.

3. The one exception to this party game, Maynor has been brooding ever since you loaded the Cargo, but when asked what the problem was, he replied only “I might be wrong. And you should pray to whatever gods will listen that I am.” When the guessing-game of the cargo was set aside, this became the subject of speculation. But, after a while, the lack of any hint as to whether they were right or wrong put an end to this pastime.

4. So you all turned to musing on the advice that the Oracle gave each of you, and its meaning, interspersed with speculation about when the first Muffins would appear on St Barbara’s pillow.

Finally, Specter confronted Maynor directly. He reluctantly explained his misgivings about the technology of Coahuila in general, and the terminology used to describe these experimental components, which could – if the worst happened – leave an area either magic-dead or magic-saturated. Since a magic-dead zone was inherently inimical to life, while a magic-saturated environment turned passing whims and idle fancies into magical reality without restraint or consideration of consequences as well as spontaneously-manifesting magical effects of more random nature, this put rather a damper on the exuberant party atmosphere created by the imminent end of their Mexican Trip.

I went into more detail about the Rosita Plasmic Laboratory because it was to be the scene of considerable activity. Security took the form of robotic guard dogs which referred to themselves as Mechanicals. Most of the workers were also mechanical.

Dr Esperanza is a very small woman, standing 2 1/2 inches less than Nightshade, who is easily the shortest member of your group. When she speaks, her voice is punctuated by pops, crackles, and wheezes. “My, but you are a strong one”, she buzzes, looking at Basalt, before touching a control on her sleeve. Her forelegs begin ratcheting upwards, (cht-cht-cht-cht-cht), lengthening until she can look you in the eye. “Please, put those down over there,” she continues, pointing at an industrial trolley.

After the delivery was offloaded, she directed another mechanical assistant to replenish the Airship’s supply of “Catalyzing Aether”.

Technobabble, steampunk-style, necessary to transform the airship technology from extraordinary into accepted and routine – in this environment. Since a non-magical society would have no chance of replenishing this consumable, it also ‘confined’ the technology to this part of the world, minimizing potential disruption elsewhere.

Failure to confine technology that the GM makes available to the PCs is one of the most common mistakes that a GM can make. It doesn’t matter if it’s a magic wand or an engineering marvel, the consequences can completely destroy a campaign – I’ve seen it more than once.

The most memorable example that’s coming to mind right now is a +10 Sword Of Dragonslaying, introduced to solve a plot hole that the GM had written himself into. With that weapon, multiple dragons were slain by the wielder, and their hoards grabbed by the party, who became the wealthiest people in the world, and awash with magic weaponry. Which was when the campaign imploded.

Now, this is obviously an extreme example – but that only makes the flaw obvious, it doesn’t negate the principle: When in doubt, think about ways to restrict or localize an effect. Instead of a healing wand that makes the party nigh-invulnerable with the equivalent of infinite hit points wherever they go, give them a healing wand that was crafted for a specific mission and only works within a certain range of the evil tower it was intended to let the party target. Your players may grouse a bit, but you’ll still have a campaign afterwards for them to grouse in.

Anyway, I then went to some lengths to establish Dr Esperanza as a key NPC because (again) I saw potential for the character beyond this one adventure.

Noticing the PCs reacting to her demonstration of personal technology, she gave a semi-human but warm laugh. “My own silly fault,” she admits. “I was responsible for a mining facility that was experiencing difficulties staying on schedule, so I went out to take a look for myself, despite reports that the reason for the problems was instability of the mine walls and ceilings.

“Sure enough, there was more to the story – the vibrations from the mechanical diggers were destabilizing the rock. And that was when the ceiling of the mine-shaft gave way on top of me. The diggers, as per their programming, set aside their task and got me out, but my legs, pelvis, ribs, and one arm were crushed to a red smear.

“Fortunately, we have some skilled surgeons here in Coahuila, and a ready supply of replacement parts created by our ingenuity. Like most Automa-brids, as I grew accustomed to the replacements, I began to design custom requirements to suit my own needs, and hey presto! Here I am, the hybrid being you see before you!”

This was important, because those character traits were about to become critically important.

While waiting for the Clippership to be refueled, she showed off the facility (and again reflected Victorian social values – the civilized thing to do with any visitor was always to provide refreshments), giving the group the two-peso tour.

“We’re a fully-functional Plasmic Generating Facility, broadcasting power to a quarter of the Principality,” she explains. “Mana is collected from the environment and converted into a form of electrical fluid we call a Plasma because an appropriate gas – Neon, Argon – illuminates with a bright glow when the electrical fluid is present. The Plasma is then converted into a number of different forms – a Catalyzing Agent used to fuel airships, electricity for local consumption, and broadcast power waves for industrial applications.

“Some operations convert one or more of these forms of power back into Mana, supplemented by other forms of energy they may collect. We do that here ourselves, for example, to power the Mechanicals.”

“Correct me if I am misinterpreting, Doctor,” said Zantar, one eye firmly fixed on the two mages. “Are you telling us that you can convert electrical or mechanical energy, say from a waterwheel, into Mana by adding that power to an existing supply of Mana that you have pre-converted into a compatible form?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right, Mr Kzin. Of course, once it’s used as Mana, it is in a turbulent state and can no longer be used for practical purposes. At least, not until now – that’s where the components that you have delivered enter the picture”

Maynor’s frown deepened; he looked like someone attempting to cure biting into lemons by chewing on a grapefruit.

More infodump, originally written as notes on how the Clippership worked and relocated to a point of greater relevance.

Dr Esperanza explained that she had devised a way to coalesce a number of smaller turbulent Mana streams back into a single stable Flow, which could then be recirculated back into the Mana Converters. Of course, this required some refinements to the standard technology.

“By collecting and recirculating the Mana, since Mana is not consumed when it is used to create a magical effect, this device will revolutionize Coahuilan Industry. Power can be used and recirculated, to be used again, almost endlessly, in a closed loop. Only power consumed in other forms, and losses through inefficiencies in the conversion process, will need to be replaced.

“Effectively, that’s a million-fold increase in the capacity of a standard Plasmic Generator, maybe even a billion-fold! Imagine it – the one installation like this one able to supply the energy needs of the entire planet for the next millennia or more! If it works, we will be selling Mana-based technology all over the world as fast as we can manufacture it!

“Of course, that’s still some way off – all we have at the moment is a small prototype, itself a scaled-up version of a small proof-of-concept demonstration model. There are sure to be some bugs to be worked out before we can go to full industrial scale, and it may even be necessary to build a whole new facility to exploit the technology properly.”

Maynor looked even more upset. “Mana Flows are not the tame and regulated thing you imagine them to be, Dr Esperanza. Even if your prototype is only a ten-thousandth the effectiveness you hope to achieve, the results could be disastrous – have you considered the effect on your generator if one of the Mana Streams on which it depends were to abruptly increase in power 10-fold, 100-fold, 1000-fold? Yet that is precisely what you intend to do.

“If your safety precautions are inadequate, it could be cataclysmic for life on the entire planet!”

I wanted to place the PCs in the middle of two NPCs who were disagreeing with each other and both right from their own perspectives. Dr Esperanza, the eternal optimist, could only see the potential positives (and they were not insignificant); Maynor saw only the potential dangers if things went wrong. Between the two of them, they articulated the risk-vs-reward equation that summed up the existence of the facility and the work that was taking place there.

Unfortunately, Maynor’s lack of respect for Dr Esperanza, and her own sensitivity to the subject, painted them into opposing corners; a more diplomatic approach and offer of assistance might have yielded a different outcome.

This was not accidental on my part; I wanted the PCs to witness an approaching train-wreck but not be able to do anything about it until the inevitable derailment. This counterbalanced all the talk about how influential they had been in the Americas already and showed them that there were limits to how much they could change the world. This tension has been central to the campaign from game session #1, back in 1981.

But it was also important to show that despite his considerable diplomatic skills, Maynor still had his limitations and blind spots. I’d given the character considerable scope for showing off, it was important to keep him ‘human’.

Long story short, the test would go ahead. Esperanza was convinced that all reasonable precautions had been taken and preparations made for the worst-case foreseeable outcome.

And I had worked hard on those precautions; I wanted them to appear sufficiently adequate that a reasonable person might be convinced by the reassurances that they provided.

So incensed was Maynor that he over-spoke as the group re-boarded the airship –
“Smug, arrogant, over-optimistic blind fool, forgetting that all the progress she takes for granted was built on the lives of those who preceded her! Hubris and Myopia incarnate, as though a Mana Stream of that intensity would not have entirely distinct properties, like matter super-heated for the first time. It will all end in disaster. Immediately I return, I will notify the Council Of 13. We will put an end to this dangerous flirtation with disaster – if it is not too late by then.”

The full scope of his authority was thus revealed – in any matter that the locals acknowledged (willingly or forcibly) his capacity to speak for this “Council of 13”, his authority was absolute, no matter how politely expressed. Only if the locals resisted this acknowledgment was he forced to actually do more than make a status report to the command structure of House Aries – and, since he was a member of that ruling council, and a skilled politician and leader, he could usually be confident of their responses to any matter placed before them.

Union Jack was the only PC who was reassured by these developments; this acknowledgment of his true authority had made it clear that Maynor’s normal role was as Liaison to the Puppet Governments of Central America, and it was in that capacity that Muerte’s diplomatic outreach had arranged for him to be their guide. Hence, their mission was still secure.

Eight minutes later, you have reached cruising altitude and accelerated to full speed, already a third of the way to the border, still more than 100km away, when the air is suddenly filled with static charge. You all feel it crawling over your skin like ants. Electricity arcs between the ropes, and between the ship and the ground, and the ship and the balloon overhead.

Maynor yells, “Specter – the biggest Mana Curdle you can create, Immediately! You must protect your friends – I will have my hands full protecting the crew. Everyone, between us and the stern, and protect your eyes! Quickly! – we may have only seconds!!”

Specter, you can feel the Mana flows twisting and turning away from a point somewhere behind the vessel.

Union Jack and Zantar didn’t hesitate, but acted in completely different ways. Jack took up position directly between Specter and the rear of the ship, while Zantar erected an anti-magic force-field and started leaping and bounding all over the place, grabbing crew members who were a little slow to react and physically tossing them to the rear of the ship, including the loudly-protesting Captain Ferracorizon. Like a well-oiled machine, the other members also swung into action. In a trice, everyone was safely in position as Specter obeyed Maynor’s instructions, and an unbelievably bright light blossomed behind them Suddenly, you could hear a pin drop, as though someone had muted the roar of the wind whistling past the airship, and everyone had an acute down-elevator in the pit of their stomach as the ship started to drop like a stone.

Zantar yelled to Nightshade “Dark Force-field Shield us from that light!” – but she was already doing it.

Specter sensed every Mana Flow in the vicinity turn to flow toward the Laboratory.

The light faded after about 30 seconds. The ship was still dropping like a stone, and the ground looked a LOT closer than it had – Nightshade, as the most experienced flier, estimated that they had fallen 3,000 of the 5,000 meters in altitude that they had attained, roughly the height of the Pyrenees.

Looking back toward the town 40-odd km behind you, an enormous explosion has created a clearly-visible shock-wave and a multi-kilometer-wide mushroom cloud. As you watch, the explosion grows and reality seems to begin to fray at the edges.

Everyone then lost 10% of their hit points for no apparent reason, and all Recoveries went off-line for the time being – no healing, no recovery from exhaustion. This meant that the PCs would have to be very careful to make their efforts count. Several of them would also have recognized this as a sign that magic had been depleted in the vicinity, and for an unknown distance beyond. That 10% was only the beginning; everyone in range of the explosion was starting to die.

But Specter, as the mage of the party, could see that the disaster was even worse than that.

Specter, you realize that the explosion is something you’ve never seen before, an explosion of mana itself. The fireball will continue to grow, fed by the mana streams flowing into it, and attracting mana flows still unaffected as it grew large enough to do so. But it would also project upward as the earth orbited away from the explosion point, becoming a column of fire fueled by all the mana in the vicinity, maybe all the mana on the planet. But if all that mana was flung out into space, the resulting mana potential will be so extreme that no celestial mana will flow in to replace it, so the entire planet would become mana-barren. You are literally watching life die on earth – all life – unless something is done about it.

Key Points & Notes

In a roleplaying game, any prophecy of disaster comes true ninety-nine times out of 100. That’s because disasters challenge the PCs and make for interesting stories. And that one in 100 usually arises because the GM doesn’t want to be predictable.

But in this case, I had made it clear that the experiment was extremely dangerous. What neither the PCs nor Maynor had taken into account was Dr Esperanza’s psychology – she did not know what authority he could bring to bear, but knew from the arrangements that he at least had the ear of the President himself; it was entirely possible that he could have her experiments shut down completely, something that was intolerable to her. Too much of her self-esteem, and the single-mindedness that had permitted her rapid recovery from her injuries, were now bound up in her work. As soon as the airship departed, she rushed through the installation of the parts and threw the switches…

That’s illustrative of another important principle – if you want your NPCs to act in a certain way, design them so that behaving in any other way would be contrary to their nature. If they are already established, you may need to have them undergo experiences that modify their normal responses to what’s needed.

A GM can’t afford to get too attached to his NPCs. They are as rubber mice to a cat, or should be. Otherwise, he can find it difficult to be cruel enough to them when that’s what the plot needs.

Synopsis, Session 14 (from Session 15)

Last time, you delivered some experimental components to the Rosita Plasmic Laboratory and their head scientist, Dr Esperanza before departing aboard the “Clippership” Peregrine. Maynor, in particular, was a prophet of doom, intractably opposed to the very idea of what Esperanza was attempting. The rest of you had more open minds and found the concept a of Recombinant Manic Translator – effectively a near-perfect perpetual motion device based on Mana use and re-use – to be a fascinating one.

The laboratory was more than 40km behind you, eight minutes later, when a tremendous explosion broke reality at the seams as all the Mana in existence began to explode. All healing and recovery stopped, immediately.

Using tricks of the trade that Maynor had taught Specter earlier in the journey, the Mages were able to protect the travellers and crew of the Peregrine from the other effects of the Mana explosion and you immediately reversed course. Planetary Catastrophe trumps national emergency, or international politics, any day of the week.

As you sped back to the scene, hasty plans were laid to respond to the situation that your more-acute-than-human senses witnessed at the Laboratory and in the town.

What followed was a series of rescue operations and confrontations. Spectre, Zantar, and Maynor first overcame the Mechanical Guard Dogs, which had run amok, and the mages then began draining Mana from the Fireball until you could get close enough for Zantar to smash the critical components and end the major immediate threat. In the course of this operation, they found the body of Dr Esperanza half immersed in a wall that had flowed like water and then resolidified after encasing her. Only her mechanical legs remained visible.

Is that the end for the Redoubtable Dr Esperanza? We shall see…

In town, the rest of the rescue party were dealing with the side-effects of the explosion. Basalt confronted the marble column from the town Bank which had animated as a Stone Golem; Zeitgeist dealt with a steel creature that proved to be more feline than monstrous, but which could slice to ribbons with little more than a touch, and Nightshade grounded an opportunistic Lightning Elemental that had stumbled through the weakened dimensional boundary.

Those in town then turned their attention to more mundane rescue operations, freeing people trapped in collapsing buildings, a heart attack, manic winds, metal turning to sand – dangerous in cars travelling at speed and in building skeletons – and people who were partially buried beneath rock that had temporarily liquefied. These operations are straightforward but ongoing.

Meanwhile, the trio at the Laboratory were confronting a new problem – the frayed edges of reality that had been worn threadbare by the rushing cascade of Mana were not really rejoining the way you would have hoped.

I often pose problems that the PCs have to find a way to solve. I make sure that there’s always at least one viable solution, but don’t force it on the players; if they come up with a satisfactory solution of their own, so be it. If there are potential problems that they aren’t taking into consideration, I may drop a hint or two if there’s someone who can see the possible complication. I will always answer any question their character is in a position to know the answer to, and if there isn’t someone in such a position, will guide the PCs in finding an answer to the question, or discovering that it would take too long to resolve that particular question. But final decisions are always the players.

In this case, I had a solution prepared if the players needed it, and suitable prompts, but the PCs managed to find their way to my solution on their own. It involved the spell that the Rheezok had used to draw everyone into a mutual dream-state to facilitate communications between the species….

Using that spell as a Mana Tag, Spectre could summon the Rheezok negotiator who went by the name “Eldar”. Nightshade could then invoke the mutual defense agreement between the two groups, and that would enable them to put his planned solution into practice.

The Rheezok guided Spectre in how to construct a self-perpetuating spell that would siphon Mana from the natural flow in the uninjured regions and use it to knit reality back together faster than it could be damaged, then recreate the spell with the healthy mana flow that resulted, bootstapping itself until all the damage was repaired. Because this did not attempt to affect the mana of the entire planet directly, it was possible to construct a spell that no mage could possibly cast – and cast it.

They then returned to the town and joined in the rescue operations. Help finally arrived, led by President daSilva himself. Nightshade observed that he had enough sense not to try and “take charge” – instead, he describes priorities to his rescue unit commanders, listens to their advice and comments, makes decisions, and sets about knocking down any bureaucratic road-blocks. Whatever is needed, in equipment or supplies, for example, is immediately en-route – he is able to micromanage to such an extent that he is revising the travelling sequence of the convoys of supplies despatched in advance, on the fly, without recourse to written notes, and to give each a specific street address at which they are to stop and unload.

Maynor greeted the President and then took decisive action after apologizing for the confusion that he was about to create.” With that, he created a magic circle around the entire group of travellers and cast a spell on it, which Spectre was able to identify as a two-way illusion – inside, they saw an illusion of the world outside the magic circle, while to those outside it, both they and the circle had vanished.

“I did not want him to ask too many questions. For one thing, my answers might be impolitic, and for another, we have a decision or two to make that require privacy. We may have one last rescue to mount, en route to resuming our mission.

“I can’t see President daSilva abandoning research into Recombinant Mana Power Generation, despite this disaster. He would be too politically compromised if he did so, as he intimated back at the Palace.

“Spectre, Nightshade, would you agree that since any other engineer is likely to be less competant, the security of the planet would be enhanced with Dr Esperanza still in charge of that research? She at least had some inkling of the concept of safety measures and precautions – no matter how inadequate her preparations were – and seemed able to learn from experience.”

There was general agreement. “Well, unfortunately, she did not survive the disaster, but I don’t see why we should let that stop us. We have one opportunity yet to save her, and it all rests on giving you the opportunity to complete your own mission successfully.”

And with that glimmer of hope in the face of disaster, this article comes to an end. There was more to the actual game session, as the PCs came up with a plan, led by Maynor, but that will be dealt with in the third and – for now – final part of this series.

That’s because there was an important coda to the disaster, involving the theory of time travel and some wrinkles that the players hadn’t considered before, but that were implicit in the campaign physics that was already well-established.

Even though that coda took place as part of the 14th game session (the one detailed above, in other words), it is far more tightly bound to the campaign content that followed, part of the segue from Phase Two to Phase Three of the sub-campaign.

So, for that reason, I’ve decided that this is the right break-point to separate part two from part three of this series.

I’m nowhere near as finished on part 3 as I was when I started this part, so it might take longer than a couple of weeks for the last part to happen. Next week, another “short” article not connected to this one.

Today I’m going to attempt to make the world’s most boring subject – How I Manage My Money – sexy.

No, that’s going too far. I’ll settle for interesting.

That might be asking too much, too – but there is RPG Relevance to the subject. The goal will be to not make it boring, and not to be too self-centered. Those are going to be hard enough to make this a challenging subject, so apologies in advance if I stumble in either regard!

With more than thirty subtopics listed to cover in the planned article, I don’t have the time to bog down too much along the way (I hope). Instead, each should be short and sharp. But there’s still a lot to get through!

NB: I’ve used the Australian ‘cheque’ and not the spell-checker-suggested American ‘check’ because the latter means something else here and I wasn’t confident that it was correct usage.

Background, Briefly

When I first moved to Sydney to attend university, I was on a government scholarship. This meant that once a month I got a cheque which I had to deposit; when the cheque cleared, I had cash. And that was all the money that I had for the entire month.

Those conditions force you to get good at budgeting, with an emphasis on keeping it practical. I quickly learned to divide my money into several envelopes – one for fares (I bought a weekly ticket because it was cheaper), one for routine expenses, one for ‘other’ expenses (travel, birthdays, and Christmas mostly), and one each for each week’s spending money. Finally, there was an “emergency reserve” envelope.

I started by taking out the money needed for fares and routine expenses and filling the relevant envelopes with what I thought I would need. That left 6-7 more (depending on how many Wednesdays were in the month, because the first Wednesday of the month was ‘pay-day’). So I divided whatever was left, as equally as possible, amongst those envelopes.

The secret to the system was when money came out of those envelopes. On Sunday night, I put that week’s ‘spending’ into my wallet, including what I needed to spend on tickets the next morning to cover the forthcoming week. Gifts had a fixed budget of $10 each, or less – if I had a birthday or had to do Xmas shopping, the appropriate amount also went into the wallet, with a list of who I still had to buy for (if one was needed – yes for Xmas, usually not for birthdays). One quarter-share of the original ‘routine expenses’ amount also went into the wallet.

That left only the “emergency reserve” – sometimes, there was a delay in processing the cheque (once, it got lost in the mail, for example). That was a cushion against needing to stretch my money an extra week, in ‘bare-bones batten-down-the-hatches’ style). It was also used from time to time for unexpected out-of-pocket expenses, like when I needed to buy a backpack or new pair of shoes. Whatever was left in that envelope at the end of the month became available for ‘luxury’ purchases over the course of the next month. It didn’t matter if I blew the lot on one purchase, or doled it out a little at a time on a number of smaller purchases; it was ‘extra money’ because the routine expenses were all covered already.

That system was the one takeaway from my university days that lasted, outside of RPGs and some friendships that abide to this day. When I went to work in a bank the year after, I employed a variation on the scheme to essentially divide my money up into ‘regular expenses’, ‘routine spending’, and.’emergency reserves’.

Background, Too: Bookkeeping

Much later, after my job as a systems analyst / programmer was outsourced, I started a second career strand as a bookkeeper. Many of the jobs that I undertook in this area were ‘odd fringes’ of the profession – forensic recreating of accounts in which some of the invoices were lost, some had gone unpaid, and some of the cheque stubs used to pay the invoices had been left blank, for example. Financial jigsaw puzzles that were each incomplete, but which generally told a complete picture when the overlapping parts were overlaid.

These puzzles required logic, system, and detective work to reconstruct – an invoice or account statement might list the previous invoice amount and show a payment of a certain amount on that invoice, which might be the only indication of the amount of the previous invoice (it had gone missing, and the cheque stub that matched the payment shown was blank; a bank statement told me the amount and the date the cheque had been presented). Only about three times was it necessary to pay to get a photocopy of the actual cheque from the bank, even though there were more than five years of such holes to reconstruct.

But this taught me to view money as a single ‘well’ from which pre-budgeted amounts could be drawn on a schedule, instead of dismembering the cash in advance. It made my envelopes ‘virtual’, in other words – just numbers on a page, and enabled me to transition from a physical currency to an electronic one (years later, when I went to work for an employer who paid cash-in-an-envelope, I was surprised at how archaic it felt).

And that, to a large extent, is how my budgeting process still works – money coming in is divided into various virtual envelopes. These days I use a spreadsheet, which allows me to project budgets years in advance, because domino effects mean that today’s decisions can impact budgets years from now, but the principles are the same.

Two Budgets

I maintain two versions of the spreadsheet in question – one labeled “Pessimistic” and one, “Optimistic”. Both labels are misnomers, as you’ll see before the article is complete. I always base my expenditures on the “Pessimistic” version, because it provides a reasonable ‘worst-case’ forecast, but base my budgetary decisions on both in combination.

Military planners and Intelligence analysts use the same principle – multiple projections are extrapolated from what is known or strongly believed, with different underlying assumptions making the difference between the two.

I apply the same principle to other aspects of life, too, especially to RPGs in various ways.

Reality usually falls somewhere in between the two – but by budgeting based on the “Pessimistic” forecasts, I can live with reasonable certainty that the essentials are covered.

The Big Three Expenses

My big three expenses are – in order from biggest to smallest – Rent, Food, and Electricity.

Rent is a fortnightly deduction, taken directly from my Bank Account.

Food is a discretionary purchase made through my credit card (which gives me the ability to exceed the budgeted amount if necessary or desirable).

Electricity represents (in winter) the biggest single-invoice item, a quarterly expense that rises dramatically in Winter and falls in Summer. The winter bills are far in excess of available funds from any given payment of income – I have to save up to pay for them for weeks or months in advance.

Assorted Other Expenses

On top of the big three, there are various other expenses that occur either regularly or as discretionary expenditures. My budget attempts to forecast when those will occur to a reasonable statistical certainty.

These include telecommunications, health care (especially pharmaceuticals), stationary, media, subscriptions, takeaway food, Christmas & gifts, paying down my credit card debt, Campaign Mastery, and the occasional luxury.

Focus: Income

I assume that I will make no money from Campaign Mastery – even though I do, every now and then. I also assume no income from sales of Assassin’s Amulet, even though those also occur from time to time.

My primary source of income is a government disability pension, and the first difference in assumptions can be found here. In theory, this goes up twice a year by the amount of the six-monthly inflation percentage (unfortunately, many of my expenses are not so indexed, or life would be a lot simpler).

Until the Pandemic, inflation in Australia was running between 3.4% and 4.3% per annum. During the pandemic, that inflation rate plummeted, but in an election-sweetener, the government payed a 6-monthly increase of 1.9% anyway (which works out to an annual rate of about 3.84%). My optimistic forecasts assume that my income will continue to rise by 1.9% every 6 months. My pessimistic forecasts drop this to 1.7% – which makes a big difference as they accumulate.

$500 (a nice round number), increasing 1.9% every 6 months for 4 years, becomes a projected income of $581.25. At the lower rate, it’s just $572.18 – a difference of more than $9 a week, or more than $235 over the course of a six-monthly cycle. If that discrepancy is maintained over the full four years, the accumulated difference in budgetary bottom-line is almost $1900.

The reality is that most six-monthly increases will be greater than the forecasts, but some may be smaller. But if they are larger, it probably means that expenses have risen by as much, if not more, than this percentage – so using the smaller amount as my budgetary basis actually allows for that.

Focus: Rent

My rent is just shy of $300 a week. Before getting the disability pension, my rent was actually more than my weekly income by a whisker – which meant that I was completely dependent on what outside income I could scrape together

My optimistic budget forecasts that this will increase by $5 every year. My pessimistic budget assumes a 4% increase every year, rounded up to the nearest dollar, or about $12 a year.

The reality is that there are a lot of rental properties available in my area, at the same rate or less, which acts to suppress rent increases. I’ve been at this address for more than 10 years, and had only two increases – of about $10 each, from memory – in that time. I’m probably due for another one, or would be (if not for the Pandemic), which has stifled the purchasing of new rental accommodation as an income generator, which is one of the primary causes of rental rises. But the budget prepares me for an increase, when it comes, and releases money back into my ‘pot’ of available cash each time one doesn’t eventuate. And that’s true of both budget versions.

Focus: Electricity

A while back, when electricity prices were ‘out of control’ (according to the government), they were rising at about 4.1% a year – against and inflation rate of mid three-point-something. Government pressure, and policy changes, and the increasing level of renewables in the energy ‘mix’, have reduced prices steadily, to a net increase of two or three percent.

Nevertheless, my pessimistic budget assumes that 4.1% per-annum increases over the previous year’s bill will start with the next bill due. My optimistic budget assigns a smaller increase of about 2.5%.

Both of these are pessimistic. The real rate, down from the high point, is about 1.5%. What’s more, these increases compound year-on-year, so the gap between projected invoiced amount and likely reality keeps getting bigger and bigger – to about $2000 a year in 4-5 years.

Each time an actual bill comes in, that gets fed into a table within the spreadsheet, updating the estimated invoices for the entirety of the predicted timetable. It also calculates the difference between the forecast amount and the actual; if there’s a trend of that getting smaller or larger, it means the increase percentages need revision.

On top of all that, one year is not like the next, weather-wise; a late winter can have a massive effect on the electrical bills, or an early one. To allow for that, the pessimistic budget adds $200 to the projected amount of each invoice and then credits it back the following fortnight, while the ‘Optimistic’ budget allows $100 and then credits it back. This makes sure that I have the funds on hand to pay any reasonable electric bill by the due date (because there is a penalty for late payment, or more specifically, a discount for early payment that has been factored into the estimates).

The net result, since I budget to the pessimistic budget, is that I get between $50 and $200 back into my pocket on top of the credit amounts, every quarter. The further into the future I project the budget, the greater these amounts become. By the time the projected invoices hit about $1200, the resulting ‘extra in my pocket’ is likely to be $300-$400.

I’ve tried many simpler approaches, only to be caught short when an unexpectedly high bill comes in. So both budgets are conservative to the point of pessimism in this area, only varying in the degree of pessimism.

Focus: Groceries

I buy groceries in 4-5 week lots, because the supermarket that I use gives free or almost-free deliveries above $300. On top of that, I will use my discretion (and what I feel like) along the way to ‘pad’ the groceries stored. I’ve found that longer periods mean that food has gone off before I consume it (I hate throwing money away) and anything less adds expense and inconvenience.

Despite all this, to keep the budget more-or-less balanced, the pessimistic model only allows for $260 a ‘grocery shop’ – so I routinely go over-budget, but make money back by not needing to do another one for a week or more longer than forecast. If I can squeeze an extra week out of four successive grocery shops, that’s a whole grocery shop that I haven’t had to make – so I have spent about $200 over budget to save $260, putting an extra $60 into my pocket.

The optimistic model is more generous in allowing for more grocery shopping, stealing back about $2600 a year from the money saved.

This is one area of the budget that is changing rapidly; my grocery bills have been going up as the supermarkets shift from being cheaper than the competition to being ‘greener’ than the competition. That makes it easier to get to the $300 target but harder to stretch the resulting food. Enter a new supermarket (almost) right across the road from me – a little more expensive, but a lot more convenient for perishables and day-to-day needs.

This means that I can focus on buying such commodities from them most of the time, permitting me to space primary shopping further apart and stocking up more on things that will last. So this budget area is evolving in response. If I can spend $120 to squeeze an extra two weeks out of each major grocery shop, I will bring the grocery budget back to where it was before the stores changed policy. So far, I’m not quite managing that, but I’m getting close to it.

Bottom line: I shop when I need more. I can probably survive for a month without buying more of anything if I have to. It might not be the most comfortable or indulgent month, but it wouldn’t be intolerable.

Focus: Telecommunications

My biggest expense in this area is phone and internet, which cost me roughly the same amount every month. But the pandemic has forced me to get a smart phone, and data charges mean that it’s costing me about $35 every three months on top of that fixed monthly amount. This isn’t currently in my budget, something that I have to rectify at my next opportunity.

While these costs will undoubtedly rise over time – all expenses do – neither version of the budget assumes that they will; instead, they assume that the budget will get redone when there’s such an increase.

Focus: Health Care

My primary health care cost is pharmaceuticals. I keep track of how long each packet or bottle of each should last, how much they should cost, and use that to get a fairly accurate total of my health-care costs.

The most expensive medication is about $86 every four months or so. But some of these purchases are subsidized by the government so that they only cost $5.60. I assume that all but one of the annual purchases will be at the full price, but the reality is that half (sometimes 3 of the 4) are subsidized, returning $80 to $160 to my pocket annually.

Both pessimistic and optimistic budgets use the same numbers in this area.

Complication: Two more Budgets

There are other costs that are greatly reduced as a result of that medication. Which means that prudence demands that I make allowance for it going away, or ceasing to work, without notice.

This changes the frequency of a recurring purchase from twice every 5 weeks to every 2 weeks. It won’t happen overnight – there will be a slow progression from one to the other – but I maintain two variants on the budget (one ‘pessimistic’ and one ‘optimistic’) which assume something close to this worst-case scenario.

Adding to that, the price of these expenditures is being artificially inflated every quarter by the government. So there is a disproportionate impact to the sudden loss of this pharmaceutical weapon, of up to $4000 a year.

I don’t use these budgets at all, except to plan my response to the headline change in assumptions. Suffice it to say that my quality of life would take a massive hit, and that damage would worsen with time.

Focus: Reserves

I deliberately budget to keep $100 reserve in my bank account at any given time, and $100 in my pocket. These ‘cushions’ mean that I can go about my life without worrying over every penny spent, but also keeps the amount of damage that I can do to the budget with impulse purchases to a reasonable level.

There have been times when I have experimented with increasing or decreasing these reserves, but both acts seem to result in budget instability for different reasons. Right now, this is a ‘sweet spot” that helps me cope with the unpredictability of life.

The reserves stay the same in both versions of the budget.

Focus: Stationery, Subscriptions, Takeaway Food

Every now and then, I have to buy stationery for various reasons. I budget about $65 for this every 12 weeks or so. The reality is that it costs a little less sometimes (but earlier than predicted) or it costs a bit more (but less frequently). Over the course of a year, the average would be statistically fairly accurate, but in the shorter term this is a wild-card element within the budget that is only marginally tamed.

Every couple of years, I have to pay half of a subscription that I share with a friend of mine. This hasn’t changed in quantity very often and is reliable in the time sense. This year, we were able to take advantage of a special offer to renew early, saving money in the long run. If that happens regularly, the budget will need revision.

When gaming happens at my place (which happens regularly these days), I will frequently get takeaway food at the same time that the players do. This is an indulgence. I bake it into my budget every fortnight, but the actual amounts spent are usually less than forecast. Balancing that, any takeaway treats that I pick up during the week also come out of this budget – which, in turn, helps stretch the interval between grocery deliveries.

All these tend to be very similar between both versions of the budget.

Focus: Christmas & Gifts

I do a lot of shopping for gifts online through my credit card. I sometimes do a lot of it in-store in cash.

I accommodate this by adding the Xmas Budget to my ‘cash in reserve’. If I buy something with cash, it comes out of the $100 reserve ‘in pocket’ which is then replenished with a withdrawal from the bank. If I buy something with the credit card, I transfer money from the reserve to the card. Either way, the amount in reserve gets dropped as purchasing proceeds.

If I spot a gift during the year, I buy it and reduce the amount to be officially set aside later in the year. I also allow myself a Christmas budget to buy a gift for myself, and some extra food, and a birthday gift for myself as well.

The amounts set aside for both these are different in the Pessimistic and Optimistic budgets – Optimism means that I have more money to spend, so this spends more of it, by a few hundred dollars Australian. I have a well-earned reputation for being a canny shopper in this area – and of always buying for the person receiving the gift (easier with some than others). I also often shop ‘to budget’ – allowing so much for each individual (not necessarily the same amount – couples get allocated as ‘1-and-½ people’ instead of two, for example. But these are used as guidelines and strong recommendations – if I spot something that looks perfect, I’ll buy it if it’s anywhere close to the budgeted amount.

Focus: Credit Pay-down

I freely admit that I use my credit card to absorb budgetary bumps along the way. But almost all my discretionary budget goes into paying down my debt because otherwise, interest eats my budget alive. But I’m neither a monk nor a saint; the temptation to indulge myself is ever-present. There are times when it, quite honestly, gets the better of me. It’s to fight those pangs off that I budget for those indulgences mentioned in the previous section. It doesn’t always work, but it helps.

Every version of my budget is aimed at first, paying off the credit card debt, and then keeping it controlled thereafter while that discretionary budget becomes savings, into which I can dip as necessary.

The date at which the card is paid off varies, and sometimes (to cover an electrical bill AND a grocery shop) I have to let the debt grow again for a little while.

Focus: Campaign Mastery

Campaign Mastery doesn’t cost very much to maintain – it’s about A$210 every couple of years. I maintain a separate bank account for it, with a cash reserve. When an expense comes in, I dip into that reserve and then rebuild it a little at a time as necessary – which is the same way that I built up the reserve in the first place.

Any money that I make from Campaign Mastery first contributes to that reserve, and second, adds to my spending on discretionary indulgences. Usually, I split such income 50-50, but if there’s been a big hit to the reserves recently, they may get more of the bonus..

Guideline, not straitjacket

I generally consider my budget to be a guideline, not a restriction. If the credit card is getting out of hand, in interpret the budget in a more restrictive way for a while, though, or if there’s a big unexpected expense (those two often go hand in hand)..

Most of the time, if I really want something, I can buy it – but if I do so, it’s borrowing disposable income from the future (specifically, from a time when the credit card is paid off). So I don’t do so completely casually; in fact, a lot of my budgetary process is aimed at permitting a certain level of indulgence while keeping the finances under control. My reserves are there to be used as necessary.

Straitjacket, not Guideline

All that changes when big bills ore other expenditures are on the horizon. I grow less indulgent approaching and during Winter, for example, and at the tail end of Winter, Christmas Shopping starts. The absolute bottom line is that I always need to have enough money on hand to pay the important bills – rent, electricity, groceries, telecommunications, transport (which I didn’t mention earlier), and to include a minimum Christmas spend in that total. Once those are covered, I can afford to be relatively casual about the rest.

A Dynamic Process

It’s important to observe that my Budget is a dynamic process, not a fixed set of numbers. I revise it every fortnight and whenever a significant quantity changes – income varies every six months, for example, and utility bills arrive quarterly (usually later than the date estimated in the budget, which only defers the credit repayment).

I always revise the forecast numbers to the actual as soon as they become known. That means that the budget can be viewed as a model simulating what my finances will look like at a future point in time if I behave in a certain way.

In fact, the reason I don’t project more than 4 years into the future is that beyond that point, the increase in utility bills become budget-breakers, something not likely to happen in real life – so the budget becomes an unreliable guide. Originally, I only projected two years into the future – that was when the electrical bills were rising rapidly – then I extrapolated that to be ‘whenever the credit card was paid off’, which at one point last year was 2025 under some pessimistic assumptions. That was when I realized that it was giving me false guidance, and began cutting back the forecast period.

Complications: Book-buying

I’ve almost finished describing it before moving onto some analysis and then making all of this relevant.

One complication is that I have a friend who uses me to buy books for him, since he doesn’t have a credit card. So he occasionally gives me money, which gets spent as though it were my own, and the books then become gifts. I make no money from acting as a go-between, but some of the books become resources used for RPGs. That includes the occasional Kickstarter that we back.

Until it gets spent, this becomes money in my account that I treat as not belonging to me; I logically partition it off. On top of that, I track how much it will buy in both Australian dollars and US dollars (approximately), given various fees and shipping charges.

We haven’t done anywhere near as much of this as we used to, due to changes in Amazon’s policies – that’s their loss.

The Pessimism in Optimism

It’s clear that there’s an element of Pessimism in the ‘Optimistic’ budget – it aims to strike a realistic balance between what is likely to happen and what might happen. Because it is the actual working instrument, the one that determines what can be spent and when, and what has to be accumulated toward a future invoice, it can’t be blindly optimistic, or even completely ‘realistic’; it has to prepare for the possibility that things will be worse than either of those.

The Optimism in Pessimism

Nor is the ‘Pessimistic’ budget a description of the worst-possible case; Electricity and Rent don’t increase by 5% a year, for example. That’s because the worst possible case is completely unmanageable, and so improbable that it becomes misleading. Instead, it compromises its pessimism with what it realistically the worst-case scenario that is likely to apply.

I’m always refining these models to make them more useful. Until earlier this year, for example, the pessimistic model assumed that there was no increase in income levels, but that became increasing unrealistic – to the point where it was of no value as a planning tool, and that is it’s primary purpose.

Do Good GMs Budget Better?

Well, a budget means being able to abstract and simulate; it means understanding the differences between realism, optimism, and pessimism, and how to use all three to moderate and control expenditure; it means being able to cope with deadlines and logical structures, being able to recognize patterns and use them as indicative predictors of the future.

All of those are either useful abilities or attributes that contribute to the success of a GM. They may not be the totality of requirements for the role, but they are a good start, especially if you throw in a little imagination. Certainly, to be a good GM you should have all those qualities in some measure.

So I would argue that the answer to this question is yes, absolutely – if they have learned how to apply their GMing skills to the budgetary process..

Money In The Abstract

Right away, then, there’s an obvious point of relevance – but actually, it’s more like a Window; a connection to a range of points of relevance applying the principles of my budgetary process in various ways.

First, though, you need to make the logical leap to thinking of money in the abstract. Once you’ve done that, it becomes a manipulable commodity, and you can use the same tools and principles used to handle monetary budgets to handling anything else that can be treated in the abstract.

And that’s the window to relevance.

The Principles

Before I go there, though, it’s probably worth the effort to expound the basic principles that I’m talking about:

• Be systematic
• Be logical
• Be organized
• Be analytic
• Know how to abstract
• Know how to use the abstract to simulate imperfectly
• Use all of the above to make and revise plans
• Ensure the essentials are covered first
• Don’t assume you won’t indulge; build controls to limit your indulgence to reasonable levels
• Use realism to moderate extremes
• Use plans as guidelines when not under pressure and rules when you are
• Always plan to deadline

Let’s look at how those principles can be applied to six points of real relevance (there are almost certainly more).

Relevance: Time Is Money is Time

How do you spend your time? The question itself is evidence that time and money can be considered interchangeable, at least in an abstract sense. And that means that all the principles of my budget can be applied.

• Be systematic — generalize your time expenditures, at least initially, to make sure that you are being comprehensive and not leaving out anything important. Then break those general categories down into more specific time expenditures. Keep an eye on both the average and the variation relative to that average to, say, the 85% mark – that is to say, 85% of the time it will be ‘this amount of time or less’. Allow 10% on top the average, and you have your pessimistic and optimistic time budgets, respectively.
• Be logical — Some activities can operate concurrently, others have to be given your full attention, and some are somewhere in between. For example, I try to always get half an hour of TV-watching done while eating breakfast, and at least half-an-hour more while eating dinner. If I have 3 hours a day budgeted for that purpose, and meet half of that budget in this way, I then have a choice of what to do with that scheduled hour-and-a-half – I can either use it to get the TV watching up to 4½ hours a day, or expend it on doing something else, or something in between. It becomes a budgetary reserve that can be deployed as needed.
• Be organized — You can’t budget time without some means of tracking what the time is and when you start and finish certain activities. Or, as Mythbusters put it, “writing it down is the difference between science and two guys fart-arsing around”. The simplest answer is a timepiece of some kind and a notepad and maybe a spreadsheet for analysis. The most complicated is time-tracking software. Choose the technique that is least inconvenient for you. But there are looser techniques – I often use the ‘CD timekeeper’ – I play a CD while involved in some task on the computer, like writing these articles, and take the entirety of the last track ‘off’ to rest my eyes. The average 10-track CD is about 35-40 minutes long, a 20-track CD is about 72 minutes (the one currently playing is 73 minutes 18 seconds long, and is one of the longest in my collection). Taking the last track off means that I’m paying attention to the CD ending and putting a new one into the machine, restarting the clock – otherwise, I tend to just hit the mute button and discover that hours have passed when I next think about putting another disc into the player, breaking my ‘clock’ and making myself more tired than I should be.
• Be analytic — This is something that a spreadsheet forces you to do. But you could manage it with a cheap set of ledgers in which you track time spent on different tasks instead of financial expenditures. Totals and averages matter, as do notes on the circumstances, and the ability to generalize and abstract those notes into theoretical cause-and-effect models. For example, I know that if I concentrate my game prep to the day before I game, I will get more done because of the level of focus involved than I would have had that time been broken up and allocated to other days of the week – but it leaves the time-budget vulnerable to chaos and misjudgments of economy and how long things will take, and almost certainly means that I will get 5 hours of sleep the night before play. Maybe less. That problem goes away if I’ve at least made a start on each major task before the-night-before rolls around because I’ve tested the theoretical assumptions about how long tasks will actually take while I have time to do something about under-estimates. Which means I get jumped by surprise less often when the big push comes. What I lose in efficiency, I more than gain through tighter scheduling.
• Know how to abstract — I’ve more or less covered this already, so instead I’ll discuss another aspect of being systematic, and that’s an awareness of the length and frequency of different cycles of activity. This is especially true when it comes to irregular time expenditures – things that don’t crop up very often or predictably, but that have a significant impact when they do happen. If I have to visit the doctor’s surgery (happens every 3-6 months), I can basically write off that entire afternoon or morning. If I were doing a time budget, I would allow for a ‘lost afternoon’ three months after each such appointment – and if it doesn’t happen then, I would bring forward other activities scheduled for the following week, effectively rolling the ‘lost time’ forward until reality catches up with it.
• Know how to use the abstract to simulate imperfectly — A week, when planned in advance, is essentially a rough simulation of how the week’s time will get expended, at least in theory. We’ve all used simple schedulers to track our classes – “Next period is English” – when we were in school. That’s all the foundation you need to be able to do it for your own purposes, and Master time, instead of letting it master you.
• Use all of the above to make and revise plans — Those plans might be as simple as a list of things that need to be done, in priority order, with an estimate of how long each will take to complete. You spend your week crossing items off the list. If you break each task down to achievement to a minimum standard, a better standard, and a high-quality standard, and budget your time and priorities accordingly, you end up with the system that I described in Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity and refined in To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget?.
• Ensure the essentials are covered first — That system has, at it’s heart, the principle of ensuring that the essentials are covered to a bare minimum acceptable standard before any time is invested in anything else. But we aren’t necessarily talking about game prep (yet) – essentials are things like chores, eating, bathing, and paid work, including travel time to and from. The fact that you can treat the net total of Game Prep as a block of activity and then apply the same principles and techniques to break that block activity down into general tasks shows the strength of the approach.
• Don’t assume you won’t indulge; build controls to limit your indulgence to reasonable levels — What’s ‘indulge’ in this context? Is it watching excessive TV? Or playing video games? or both? That’s up to the individual – I would argue that it’s anything that’s not productive in any way other than personal entertainment. The key is that by allowing for some time lost to that activity, you keep the system sustainable.
• Use realism to moderate extremes — You can’t assume that the world will be perfect. Neither can you assume that everything will have the worst possible circumstances – the maximum possible time requirement. You need to temper your forecasts and planning with a sensible dose of realism. A good trick is to assume that most things will take their average time, and then throw in an allowance for ‘whatever takes longer’. This essentially says ‘some things will take longer than forecast, but not all of them, and some will even be completed to a sufficient standard ahead of schedule, freeing up time for other purposes’ – which is realistic; the difference between optimism and pessimism then becomes a function of what the averages that you use are, and how large an allowance you make for ‘excess time’.
• Use plans as guidelines when not under pressure and rules when you are — Real life always throws up unexpected opportunities as well as complications. Knowing when time is a straitjacket and when its advice that can be disregarded in order to take advantage of an opportunity to take up one of those unexpected opportunities is a critical judgment skill. Knowing what it means in terms of practical differences, and how to compromise, only adds to your Time Management -Fu.
• Always plan to deadline — Knowing WHEN you need something is as important as knowing that you need it. Everything should have a deadline attached to it, if not several. I have deadlines for when I should have started doing something in order to have confidence that it can be finished in time, and deadlines for doing it to a minimum satisfactory standard which leaves time to refine it if necessary, and deadlines for deciding if that minimum standard will be good enough. Deadlines are one of your primary planning tools – in budgeting time as well as money.

  For example, as I write this, it’s just gone 10:51 PM – and 11 PM is my deadline for final revision and uploading of an article if it’s to be assured of being published on deadline (midnight, my local time). I can take up to an extra hour – but anything more means that I’ve missed my self-imposed deadline. Which means that it’s time to consider abbreviating the final sections of this article.

Relevance: RPG Prep

Of course, as implied a number of times in the preceding section, any advice that applies to general time management is also applicable to RPG Prep activities. So similar would the entries of any detailed analysis under this heading be (to those that were presented in the previous section), that such a breakdown would be largely redundant. With time pressure becoming a thing, I don’t have time to spend on redundancies.

Relevance: Organization

It goes without saying that the more organized your life is, the more any given planning tool will potentially benefit you. What might not be necessarily so obvious is that this works in the other direction as well – using a planning tool automatically helps you become organized in aspects of your life that aren’t directly impacted, simply by helping your thought processes become more structured.

Your campaign planning notes, for example, will be more logically structured and sequenced because you broke down the tasks involved in generating them and performed them in a more focused and diligent manner. The structure of planning not only impacts the process, but also the product. And that makes for greater efficiency in performance at the game table.

No matter how tightly you confine your planning, the advantages that manifest mean that the principles and processes will start to spill over into everything else you do.

Relevance: Logical Structure

Those same principles also apply to campaign and adventure structure. Your first goal is to tell a story that incorporates the input and decisions from the players and that is interesting (if not compelling) and satisfactory. Adding excitement and originality and surprises on top of that is icing on the cake, and adding felicity of description is sprinkles on that icing.

• Be systematic — Start from the middle of an adventure and work backwards to establish all the building blocks that will get you to that point. Then work forward to a resolution of the adventure, backtracking to insert any building blocks that may be needed to make that resolution possible. Once you have an outline of the adventure, you can start finessing and refining and aiming for ‘satisfying’ and all those other good adjectives.
• Be logical — Assume that everyone will behave sensibly unless it’s consistent for them not to. If you need a PC (or an NPC) to make a different decision to the obvious one, you need to incorporate factors that rule the obvious solution out, and incorporate (possibly assumed) factors that nudge the preferred decision out ahead of the pack. Even mistakes should be logical ones for the character to make.
• Be organized — There WILL be times when the game will go off-script. Sometimes, you can let it go, because you can see that you will still end up rejoining the planned adventure somewhere down the track; at other times, you may need to finesse the course of events to steer the ship in the right general direction. Remember, the players have their hands on the tiller, you provide and define the winds and currents. Having your prep organized in such a way that you can make snap decisions about such diversions is obviously beneficial.
• Be analytic — All characters (and this includes NPCs) are complex harmonies between the character on the page and the personality of the player. The two interact in strange and sometimes unpredictable ways. The scale of offenses that you consider ‘more heinous than’ the preceding item on the list will subconsciously impact on the actions that you have your villains perform. Your players may have different opinions or criteria; when you ‘up the ante’ and they act like you’ve tossed a wooden nickle into the pot, you’ve tripped over an example of comparative morality. It’s highly likely that neither of you have analyzed these assessments; they get made by instinct. But noting that ‘player A in combination with character B rates X as more serious than Y’ begins the process of writing to the game and its participants, and not to the abstracted fiction of who the characters might be.
• Know how to abstract — The tools of flow-charting are one way to abstract the structure of an adventure. Knowing the building blocks and how they fit into the bigger picture is another. I employ both. This is all about seeing the shape of the forest as well as the trees that you have planted.
• Know how to use the abstract to simulate imperfectly — The rules may say that in situation A, B will happen. Or it might be the game genre. Or the game physics. Or simply a logical deduction. If you want C to happen instead, you need to change the circumstances and context so that either B doesn’t apply, or B leads logically to a consequence of C.
• Use all of the above to make and revise plans — Adventure Narrative – the flow from scene to scene. Plot Narrative – the overall storyline of the adventure. Local metaplot – how one adventure leads into or connects with the one before it and the one after it. Plot Arc metagame narrative – how events within an adventure connect via plot threads with other events in other adventures to tell a story that is broader than any single adventure. Background evolution – how consequences of events and actions within an adventure change and evolve the campaign background and the relations of the characters to it. Campaign meta-plan narrative – the compilation of multiple plot threads or plot arcs or whatever you want to call them, that combine to yield the totality of the campaign, with a storyline, often expressed as trends from one thing to another and leading to a big finish when everything comes to a head. These are a hierarchy of plans within plans within plans, from the innermost layers to the most externalized. Each step out forces greater generalization and abstraction; each step in breaks generalities into more granular logical components. These are all plans that you should make, at least in general terms, lest “it seemed like a good idea at the time” become your campaign’s epitaph.
• Ensure the essentials are covered first — Having everything that is essential at the bare minimum quality that you need to run means that the essentials are covered; if this is not the case, then your day’s play is on shaky ground. Sometimes, you can muddle through, surviving on wits and instinct and half-baked ideas – and sometimes those same things will trap you in quicksand. I always make sure that the essentials are ready to go; at the very least, these signpost what cleverness and half-baked ideas I need to throw into the recipe.
• Don’t assume you won’t indulge; build controls to limit your indulgence to reasonable levels — Everyone has some parts of the GMing process that they enjoy more than others. For me, it’s plotting and storytelling. For others, it might be acting a part, or interacting with a player, or taking the rules and bending them over your knee until they (metaphorically) cry ‘uncle’. Putting extra time and effort into those areas that we especially enjoy comes naturally and instinctively – and unquestionably qualifies as indulging yourself, assuming that the ‘minimum necessary prep’ has already been achieved. Budget a controlled amount of extra time to indulge yourself, and restrain yourself the rest of the time.
• Use realism to moderate extremes — The more fantastic the scene or story or genre or campaign is, the more an undercurrent of realism is necessary; you harness it to lend credibility and plausibility to those fantastic elements. The more gritty and realistic the scene or story or genre or campaign, the more you need a streak of the improbable or amazing or fantastic or farcical to elevate it out of that inherent mundanity. These are principles that have served me well for many years. There are times to embrace the extreme, and times to hide it in a box down a deep, dark well; knowing which one applies to any given situation is a learned skill that requires experience and experimentation to master.
• Use plans as guidelines when not under pressure and rules when you are — Your plans aren’t a straitjacket until you lock yourself into them. The overall goal is to entertain both yourself and the other participants; everything else can be tossed out the airlock if necessary. But there are guideposts that your next-level-up in planning requires you to reach; it’s not going too far to suggest that so long as you hit those key points, you don’t really care what happens the rest of the time so long as it entertains.
• Always plan to deadline — I don’t think it’s necessary to elaborate further on what’s already been said in this context. But there’s an additional set of deadlines to keep your eye on – your in-game deadlines, at a meta-level. You can’t pull the trigger on planned event A until conditions X, Y, and Z are met? Then the point at which A is due to happen to make best use of the campaign pacing and flow is the deadline for events to occur that establish conditions X, Y, and Z (hopefully not all at the same time!). This is just as much planning to deadline as making sure that you have something playable, come game day.

Relevance: Pacing

My ‘extra hour” is now almost up, so I won’t be able to spend as much time on this section as I would have liked. Certainly, a detailed analysis is out of the question. So, suffice it to suggest that if you can quantify the ‘urgency’ and ‘intensity’ of the campaign with some numeric score and a relationship between the two, however nebulous the assessment is, then you can budget your pacing by noting what contributes to slowing or speeding the pace, raising or lowering the intensity.

For more on this, see my (quite lengthy) series on pacing:

• Swell And Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs Part 1
• Swell And Lull – Emotional Pacing in RPGs Part 2
• Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign
• Pacing and the value of the Pause
• Anatomy Of An Interruption – Endpoints
• Status Interruptus: Types Of Pause
• Compound Interruptions: Manipulating Pauses
• The Yu-Gi-Oh Lesson: New Inspirations In Pacing and Style
• Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish
• A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 1 – Eight Tips for Cliffhanger Finishes
• Shades Of Suspense Pt 2 – Fourteen Types of Cliffhanger Finishes

And that’s it, I’m right out of time. This “quick little post” is now over 8000 words long! Have fun out there, everyone.

This article started out as a way to save time and at the same time present some tips and tricks that often get overlooked in my scramble to get material ready for publication here. It was also intended (originally) to be part of last week’s 1000th-post celebration – so there are certain themes that will be continuation of the discussion of milestones – but that post grew to the point where I hadn’t even started on this and it was time to publish.

It also grew a LONG way beyond anything reasonable in very short order. As I write this, it’s probably only about half-done, and already measures more than 46,500 words!

The only solution is to break it up. And I don’t think I’m safe in breaking it into just two – instead, I’m looking at three parts. The problem is trying to estimate where the breakpoints should be, given that so much of it isn’t written yet.

But, there’s nothing that says that it has to be three equal divisions; that’s ideal, but not essential. So I’ve decided to break it along logical lines. I’m going to start by discussing the structural concepts, and a very broad breakdown of the actual application in play. I’ll conclude part 1 with excerpted synopses from the early part of the adventure and some notes concerning the content in general.

Part 2 will excerpt more synopses from the second major phase of the adventure – the ‘middle part’ of the movie trilogy, as it were – while Part 3 will cover the third part (so far), and look ahead (so far as is possible and practical, given that I don’t want to give my players too many spoilers) to the what will eventually be the equivalent of the fourth and fifth parts of this ‘trilogy’.

Along the way, I’ve observed all sorts of subtle tricks and tips that often get overlooked when dealing with more specific aspects of the art and craft of writing and running good adventures, which I’ll be calling out. These are things that I’m sometimes not even aware that I’m doing, recognizable only in hindsight. and that can be applied to the betterment of any number of campaigns, regardless of genre.

And there will be bits of material generated for this sweeping epic adventure – NPCs, game physics, alien races, local game settings, and more – that will also be potentially transferable to other campaigns.

Above all, though, this will strive to show you what I actually did in terms of writing and refereeing the adventure, and why I did things that way. This is as close a I can come to having readers actually look over my shoulder while I’m working, with me supplying a running commentary – and with (almost) all the tedious bits cut out. It will be a sometimes bumpy but very interesting ride!

As usual, when posting something this big and potentially ponderous, I’ll try to intersperse something smaller and lighter aimed at a slightly different part of the RPG audience. That helps both readers and myself stave off burnout!

The Tangled Web

When the previous Zenith-3 campaign (now referred to as Earth-Halo – something that I’ll explain a little later) began winding its way to a conclusion, there was a serious fork in the road presented by my players. My plans assumed one thing (and had done so from the very first game session), and what my players expected and were looking forward to was something very different.

Well, I could only give them about 70% of what they asked for, but that would be the best 70%. But it also meant that some of what I had originally intended would have to intrude upon, and form another layer of, this revised campaign.

This diagram illustrates the situation, and the solution, reasonably well. The players expected A, and then B, and then C. I expected to give them just C, with the occasional side-dish of A or B. My solution was to give them mostly B with recurring forays into A, conducting the two in parallel. That makes perfect sense because A, B, and C are all set in different parallel worlds. The way it works is that I can given them about 95% of A, about 5% of B, and about 50% of C – just enough to tie up all the loose ends, resolve every plot line that I intend the campaign to resolve, and for everything to climax at exactly the right point.

In fact, once I started compiling notes and plot arcs and putting everything together, the final plan came to look not only far better than either ABC or C alone would have been, but also pretty inevitable. I might have found this optimum configuration of ‘going where the story was’ without this compromise of expectations, but I equally might not. So I am far from unhappy about the outcome.

But that did mean that the plots weren’t entirely of the shape expected; when an important piece of a plotline in C is now happening in A, without any reasonable connection between them, you need to cut the diamond in two. Plotline A1 now needs a new resolution, while Plotline C1 needs a new “A1 equivalent’ component to make sense of future events.

Most of those problems weren’t too difficult to solve, using a variety of techniques. You’ll get to see some of them, and the inter-dimensional interplay that they created, described at the start of the first extracted synopsis.

One in particular, though, was more of a mess. The only way to solve it was with a protracted plot arc set in C. And thus, “The Tangled Web” was born.

The idea was, essentially, to create a whole new campaign set in C – call it D for identification purposes – in which all the pieces of this complicated plot arc, utterly necessary to other things along the way, could play out, essentially using the exact same technique – a campaign within a campaign within a campaign. In essence, every now and then, the PCs would jump out of the AB/C depicted in the diagram and instead jump into D for a while – and then go right back to where they had left from.

The adventure that this post (and the next, and the next) are all about is the one in which that D campaign gets established.

The Road To Hell is paved with plotlines (because intentions are never enough)

Have you ever noticed that pilot episodes of new TV series, or series reboots, are often double or even triple the length of any one episode? It’s not always the case, but it’s often true. That’s because there’s a lot to establish for the first time before the series can be considered a “stable” platform for the rest of the stories in that particular season, or the whole series, to play out in.

It’s often so with RPG campaigns, too – the first adventure is usually far longer than the expected norm.

“The Tangled Web” is certainly not an exception. In part, that’s because I felt it necessary to immerse the players in the new environment for a while. In part, it’s because I started using the creation of the campaign infrastructure as a vehicle for encounters and plots. In part, it’s because the PCs abilities effectively gave them almost unlimited time to get themselves set up and that takes a while to play out in real time. And, in part, it’s to give the new sub-campaign a concrete sense of plausibility. This was no light “what if” being played out, in which there could be lots of hand-waving; the players would be making decisions that would affect not only the course of the whole “D campaign”, but which would have ramifications and consequences back in the normal AB/C campaign.

The “Tangled Web” Itself

The sub-campaign’s plot framework rested on the PCs adopting a whole new set of identities, and adventuring in the guise of those identities. When you boil it down, the current adventure is fairly simple in structure:

1. Establish the need for the new identities
2. Establish a problem that meant it was these PCs who had to do the work
3. Establish the new identities in the minds of the players
4. Get the players used to the new identities
5. Explore the short-term ramifications of the new identities
6. Establish the basic infrastructure of the new campaign
7. Establish the new identities in the minds of “the public”
8. Resolve the original problem

Hey Presto! – ongoing sub-campaign that could progress at the speed of plot, and would last until it was no longer needed.

Items 1 and 2 on that list were taken care of in game session 2, after game session 1 was used to advance other plotlines from the AB/C campaign and tie up a few loose ends that I didn’t want to leave dangling for the whole of this adventure, effectively creating a baseline, character-wise.

Items 3 and 4, and some of the campaign background, formed a little mini-campaign inside the sub-campaign. So now we are four layers deep!

Items 5, and 6 are the part of the adventure currently playing out, and also form a mini-campaign within the overall adventure.

Items 7 and then 8 are to be the ‘operational phase’ of the new sub-campaign.

An Established Campaign

Ah, if only it were that simple. The Tangled Web came with a number of complicating curses.

• Legacies of the originally-intended campaign structure;
• Legacies of the ‘brilliant compromise’ (both of these should be no surprise, they were implied by what I’ve written above);
• Legacies of the fact that the AB/C campaign had been running for years, and the players were starting to get fairly comfortable with their characters’ situations, and seeing regular progress on some of the ongoing plotlines;
• Legacies of the fact that the AB/C campaign had been running for years, and the characters were fairly well established in the minds of the players; and
• Legacies of the plot elements and situations that had to come out of this ‘black box’.

Accommodating all of those meant that there was more campaign to establish than usual, and a few revelations to disburse, and some sacred cows to slay. In particular, I needed time for the players to settle in before they started making decisions about their futures, and that gave me the opportunity to introduce them to some building blocks for the future.

Some of those were always intended to be there, and some of them were simply me being creative – “I need something, this is a something that I haven’t done before and it makes sense in context, connecting the campaigns past to its future”. In other words, things that seemed to be good ideas at the time – time will tell whether they are as good as they appeared!

Structure Of this particular sub-campaign

If you look at the adventure from a high-level overview perspective, it becomes even simpler than the 8-part listing given earlier:

• Phase One: A Sense Of Reality / Spy Games
• Phase Two: The Long Walk
• Phase Three: The Road Trip
• Phase Four: Putting Down Roots
• Phase Five: The Final Plotline

But that’s a very superficial view of reality. When you display the logical structure, it becomes a bit more complicated:

• Phase One
  • A Sense Of Reality
  • Spy Games Pt 1
  • Spy Games Pt 2
• Phase Two: The Long Walk
  • Brazil to Jamaica to Guatemala to Guatemala
  • Guatemala to Tabasco
  • Tabasco to Veracruz
  • Veracruz to Leon
  • Leon to Coahuila
  • Coahuila to Laredo. Texas
  • Into Yesterday (times 30)
• Phase Three: The Road Trip
  • Road Trip Prep – Laredo Texas
  • Texas to Texarcana
  • Arkansas, Day 1 [Now!]
  • Arkansas, Day 2
  • Arkansas, Day 3
  • Arkansas, Day 4 & Rendezvous
  • Player’s Option: Missouri, Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
  • Player’s Option: Kansas Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
  • Player’s Option: Nebraska Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
  • A Place To Call Home
• Phase Four: Putting Down Roots
  • Player’s Alternative: Days 5-16
  • The Quest For Fame: Days 17-25
  • High Commerce & Misdemeanors
• Phase Five: The Final Plotline
  • On The Road Again (Day 26 to Oklahoma)
  • Rendezvous
  • Mission
  • Homecoming I: Shadowbase
  • Homecoming II: Zurich
  • Gifts For The Giving (Political Ramifications & Thank-yous)
  • Homecoming III: Be It Ever So Humble (Earth-Regency)

Even that view doesn’t capture the whole complexity. I can’t go into too much more detail at this point, because we’re still in Arkansas Day 1 – and I’m still writing (almost finished) Arkansas Day 2.

So let’s take a closer look at the five phases, and their content, and I’ll tell you what I can – ie, what the players already know.

Phase One: A Sense Of Reality / Spy Games

This provides the foundation for the sub-campaign. It divides into three key parts:

• A Sense Of Reality
• Spy Games Pt 1
• Spy Games Pt 2

The first part is simply housekeeping, moving the main campaign forwards, establishing the state of the PCs at the start of the adventure, and foreshadowing what was to come.

The second part was mostly an info-dump, dressed up as interactively as I could make it. After some color to show the PCs “the state of the technological art” – i.e. what was possible and what wasn’t (important since they were used to 2055 in Dimension A (Earth Regency), about 100 years more advanced than Dimension C (1986 Earth-Prime), I briefed the PCs on the relevant local parts of the game history (in more detail than they had seen before, and advanced by about 2 game years since the last report the players had read), and established the need for them to Go Covert to deal with the immediate threat, and any similar threats that might arise in the future. It also dealt with the “how” of that covert operation.

The third part was a deliberate tonal contrast to the grim seriousness of the second, and dealt with the question of how you sneaked into someplace that was both paranoid and had state-of-the-art technology and lots of it. It also showed that global politics produced some strange bedfellows, which in turn influenced those bedfellows in unexpected ways, and broadened some of the simplistic views held by the players on behalf of their characters.

Phase Two: The Long Walk

Phase Two gets the PCs into position to start their primary mission. It uses distance as a plot vehicle, and had almost as much in common with a fantasy campaign as it did super-heroics.

It breaks down naturally into seven legs, most of which are very similar in nature:

• Brazil to Jamaica to Guatemala to Guatemala
• Guatemala to Tabasco
• Tabasco to Veracruz
• Veracruz to Leon
• Leon to Coahuila
• Coahuila to Laredo. Texas
• Into Yesterday (times 30)

The first part simply used Spy Games Part 2 to propel the party from Brazil to Central America. The Jamaican intermission laid groundwork for what was to follow and did a little foreshadowing, while drawing a line under the “Spy Games” – it marked the completion of the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2. And, appropriately therefore, it had one last little gasp of the Spy Games.

Parts 2 through 6 essentially had the same basic internal structure:

• Border, first impressions
• Transportation Tech
• Border to Ruler, Local color along the way
• Interaction with the Ruler & Court, Assigned challenge / mini-adventure
• Ruler to scene of challenge / mini-adventure
• Challenge / mini-adventure
• Progress to next border via intermediary points

Each one would put a somewhat different spin on this basic formula; it would have its own technology, its own society and culture, it’s own roleplayed interactions, and so on. There was also an ongoing plot thread as the team and their escort first came to respect each other, then to trust each other, and then to become friends and (unofficial) allies. This also created fresh perspectives on the political briefing that they had been given, and further advanced plotlines that had started in preceding adventures, so it greatly enriched the game world as experienced by the PCs.

In terms of game sessions, the basic structure generally broke down into two game sessions in each Mexican Kingdom. In general, each challenge / mini-adventure started with a cliffhanger, so that marked the dividing line between the first game session and the second. But I did not hold to a slavish consistency; I simply stopped play at the first “good” point when time was running out. A “good” point was one that was convenient first, and dramatic, second.

Those trends all came to a mini-crescendo (the imminent end of the world) in part 7, which also gave the players the tools for part 8, which is where the players were “given the keys” and started actually dictating the pace and content to at least some extent.

It should never look like there’s a GM pulling the strings, at least not to the PCs, even if events are the result of complex interactions between GM and players at a meta-level. While some things will be the result of “life just happens”, if it’s an important decision, players should be given as much latitude to decide things for themselves – even if that involves a certain amount of tedium.

In this case, the players decided how far back in time they were going to go. There were obvious benefits to them of having more prep time, but there were also obvious difficulties and consequences made clear to them. The rational minimum choice was 4 days, the maximum reasonable was 30 days, and it was up to them where they landed in that range. They decided to push things to the maximum, which simply meant that the consequences of that decision would be more severe and require more effort to overcome.

Phase Three: The Road Trip

Phase two had used distance as a plot vehicle by spacing disparate cultures and situations far enough apart that one was distinctively different from another. Phase three uses travel itself as a plot vehicle; instead of events dictating where and when the PCs go, as in phase 2, in phase 3, where and when the PCs go dictates events.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Road Trip Prep – Laredo Texas
• Texas to Texarcana
• Arkansas, Day 1 [Now!]
• Arkansas, Day 2
• Arkansas, Day 3
• Arkansas, Day 4 & Rendezvous
• Player’s Option: Missouri, Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
• Player’s Option: Kansas Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
• Player’s Option: Nebraska Days 1, 2, 3, & 4
• A Place To Call Home

The breakdown is more complicated, simply because it has to accommodate decisions that the players haven’t made yet. The original plan that was given to them was that they should do a little basic research on the four states most suited to their various purposes – Arkansas, Missouri,, Kansas, and Nebraska, that they should spend a day or two finding a base of operations in their chosen state, then rush off to Oklahoma and what is now Phase 5.

The players were more pessimistic, and decided to give themselves more time to thoroughly explore each state instead of making a relatively blind choice. And that their lives would be considerably easier if they established their new superheroic identities in the public consciousness (and in the consciousness of law-enforcement) before the real curtain went up. So they decided to spend 4 days on each state, then establish their chosen base of operations (which is what’s now Phase 3), spend as long as necessary making it ready to operate and getting that 15 minutes of fame (in Phase 4) before putting it all to its intended use in Phase 5.

So, if that’s what they decided to do, that’s what we would do. But I think they underestimated how successful they could or would be; having made a start in Arkansas (simply because it’s the closest one of their targets to their Texas starting point) I doubt that they will feel any need to look at the others. Which means that instead of only having Days 17-25 to set up shop and get semi-famous, they will probably have days 5-25 for the purpose.

In fact, I expect there to be serious hesitation about continuing the search past Day 1, but think that the NPCs have a reasonable argument about it being worth at least doing the one state properly. And that hesitation will probably double after Day 2! I’ll do my game prep according to what they look likely to decide, using the prevailing winds; if there are any interesting encounters that get bypassed, I’ll involve them in Phase 4.

Each of the “Days” can be further broken down into a series of overlapping repeated structures, each elegantly simple. The main one is:

• Drive to the next town;
• Check their Guidebook’s entry for the town en route;
• Drive through it looking for potential Bases Of Operations (BOps);
• Evaluate the suitability of the town;
• Evaluate the suitability of each potential BOps;
• Leave town.

Repeat, again and again. It’s the difference of one community from another that makes each evaluation, each in-game event, more than just a repetition. The PCs have broken up into two teams with one NPC and two PCs each operating independent of the other, doubling the speed with which events occur in-game.

Over the top of that, and helping to draw out or add to the distinctiveness of each local exploration, are a number of other recurring loops:

• The roads are in different conditions, and that makes an occasional point of difference;
• The cars they have chosen have limited range. Every now and then they have to refuel – but they are on a very tight budget (not as bad as it originally looked, but still…
• A ten-minute break every couple of hours to freshen up and grab a snack, depending on what’s available;
• A driver change every 4 hours behind the wheel, or more often as necessary;
• Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. The basic plan they have chosen is to rise at the break of dawn, Eat, and get underway about 20 minutes later;
• After 12 hours (which includes the lunch break and the scheduled rest stops, they are finished for the day and can start looking for a campsite with about an hour’s daylight to set up their tents, and get an evening meal;
• Once the sun sets, each team goes over the choices they have encountered each day, and winnows their list down to the best three candidates so far (assuming that they find that many; one has, so far, one hasn’t – yet). They then have a team meeting to discuss any team policy questions and generally check in with each other before they call it a night.

Spicing all of that up even more, there are occasional encounters of an interesting nature. These started back in Phase 2, and will continue throughout Phases 3 and 4 – and, presumably, into Phase 5 as well. Those become more frequent on Day 2 (at the moment, I haven’t started really preparing Day 3, that will depend on decisions the PCs will make at the end of Day 1).

Each community is being extensively researched and illustrated.

And yes, for those who may be interested, I’m not only tracking how fast the cars are traveling at any given point, what that speed is doing to their fuel economy, how far they are traveling at those speeds (to the 10th of a mile) and how long travel and exploration are taking each team each time according to the size of the community and what there is to see (to the minute) using a spreadsheet created for the purpose. It also tracks time spent on the breaks and refueling, and on other interruptions, and how far ahead or behind schedule they are.

So it’s going to be up to the players when they end Phase Three by moving to the final part – the purchase and setting up of their chosen base. I don’t even know what that will entail at this point, because it’s going to depend on which location they choose. As the time gets closer, I’ll have a better idea – for example, right now, there is one leading contender. By the end of Day 1 (if not sooner), there will be a short-list, and the methodology that one of the NPCs came up with – (a) because that’s kinda his Shtick, and (b) because it did what the players wanted it to do in an obviously-rational way – keeps that shortlist down to three contenders each. So I will have a shortlist of maybe six to deal with when the time comes.

Phase Four: Putting Down Roots

If the players cut their road trip short (I expect them to, but don’t know how short), then game-time days will move from Phase Three to Phase 4. The first listed part of this phase is nothing more than a placeholder for any such ‘extra in-game time’; officially, Phase 4 starts with Day 17:

• Player’s Alternative: Days 5-16
• The Quest For Fame: Days 17-25
• High Commerce & Misdemeanors

Any extra days will be exactly the same, content-wise, as days 17-25. I actually expect this to be about 50-50 GM planned events and player-chosen activities. It will be interesting seeing what they decide to do to fill their time! Large parts of this time will also probably be hand-waved.

Day 26 is when things start getting real. Half of Day 26 is in Phase 4, and half in Phase 5 – the PCs have to do certain things with financing to preserve the timeline that they have already experienced, a card that I can also use to make sure that Day 2 (and potentially, days 3 and 4) of Arkansas exploration take place as planned. This will also let me increase the amount of hand-waving that I do, and potentially complicate the PCs lives for a while in days 5-16 if they choose The Player’s Alternative.

This is an important point that’s worth emphasis: the structure, for all that it looks quite structured and orderly, is actually dynamic, and will change with PC decisions. Variable constraints like “Experienced History” give me a measure of control over what game prep I have to do!

It’s probably worth noting, too, that if it weren’t for Covid lockdowns (which have cost us about 6 game sessions, to date) mean that right now, the campaign should be close to finishing up Day 2, instead of being in the middle of Day 1..

Phase Five: The Final Plotline

Which brings me to the last part of this adventure, and the reason why it is all one big adventure – Phase 5 is all about preventing the problem that the PCs were hit with back in Spy Games Part 1 from becoming an emergency that could and would reshape world politics, undoing a lot of the progress that has been made behind the scenes in the campaign over the two years (game time) that I mentioned earlier.

The structure is quite straightforward:

• On The Road Again (Day 26 to Oklahoma)
• Rendezvous
• Mission
• Homecoming I: Shadowbase
• Homecoming II: Zurich
• Gifts For The Giving (Political Ramifications & Thank-yous)
• Homecoming III: Be It Ever So Humble (Earth-Regency)

It starts with the PCs driving to Oklahoma from wherever they have set up their BOps. This will be a very compressed variation on the basic pattern of Phase 3. On Day 27, in Rendezvous, they will meet up with the Agent who discovered the problem (and who has continued to investigate it since his initial reports). It’s also when there starts being two copies of the same character in the same dimension at the same time (even though they are different points on their personal timeline), which is extremely wearing and will reduce the PCs firepower significantly, a consequence the PCs have already experienced, and noticed, but whose cause they misinterpreted at the time.

That then leads them into the actual Mission that they have done all this traveling to complete. They have no idea what’s going to be involved but they know that the critical day will be Day 30. At a specific time on Day 30, for a few hours, there will in fact be three copies of them co-existing, and they will really feel the strain. Again, they have already experienced this, though they misunderstood the real reasons why it was happening at the time.

These effects were deliberately set up to avoid “The Cheating Student” solution to PCs with time-travel capability who are experiencing time pressure.

A student who can time travel is facing a big exam. He knows that with an extra week/month/whatever to cram, he can get a passing grade. So he time travels into his past to get that extra time prior to the big exam.

The superhero equivalent is, “We’ve got this problem, let’s time-travel into the past and spend a month or two coming up with strategies and tactics and rehearsing them endlessly”.

It makes problems too easy to solve, and makes gameplay boring as all heck. The general principle that gets applied is that if there are N of you active in the same space-time at the same time, each of them is diminished to only one (N+1)th of their usual capabilities. The in-game physics that justifies this restriction is complicated and not really relevant here.

The alternative is to permit time-travel to generate infinite points of skills on demand. And the dues-ex-machinas that it circumvents are enormous. “Okay, so we need a supernova reactor to stop this guy? I’ll just go back 25 years and start whipping one up – and here it is, now.”

Not on my watch, bucko.

Oh, and you can’t use a different dimension to get around this restriction because the two parallel worlds are linked by your personal timeline for the duration – so, in this respect only, they can be considered one for such purposes.

Homecoming I takes the PCs back to their new base, wherever it is, and mothballs it ready for the next time they need it.

Homecoming II then has them head off to Zurich to report to the agency that put them onto this sleight-ride in the first place.

Gifts for the Giving is all about saying thank you to those who helped them achieve the mission; they include setting up a more formal informal relationship with their new ally, and pleading the case of a bunch of Alien Refugees that they have encountered, and so on.

And finally, Homecoming III takes them back to Earth-Regency and starts reintegrating them with the lives that they had to put on hold back in the first part of the first phase.

Just The Beginning

Of course, at some future point, they will be summoned to resume their lives as Team Shadow. It might be next week, or next month – it’s unlikely to be tomorrow, and it’s very unlikely to be more than a couple of months away, but within these limits, all bets are off!

The Size Of The Web

This adventure ie reasonably vast in scope for all that it’s been fairly tightly confined, and sweepingly epic in many other respects.

So far,

• 3,887 words of high-level planning, and
• 249,632 words of adventure (on 381+ pages), and
• 12,315 words of reference material, and
• 36,145 more words of research (some of which was described in How Good Is That Rust-bucket In The Showroom Window?), and
• 768 words of notes, have been done – that’s about 302,747 words in total!
• …plus 4 spreadsheets (including the one offered in The Price of Bricks and Soil (and more) a couple of weeks ago, and
• 1,593 photographs & illustrations, including maps (with some duplication and redundancy)…

…have all been done, and I’m doing more all the time. I want to at least get to the end of “Day 2” before stopping work.

All that represents a huge investment in time, too. But that’s how it is that I am 6-7 game sessions ahead of play in my game prep, and, of course, I started about two years ago.

More Complications: Day 2

I wasn’t originally going to explain this, but it gives a false impression if I don’t.

On Day 2, there’s an option (that the players will decide on at the end of Day 1) for a side-trip for one of the cars. I started by writing one version of Day 2 where they take that side-trip, and found that about half-way through the side-trip they would probably conclude that it had served its’ purpose and cut it short.

Now, I’m working on the version of Day 2 where they don’t choose to make the side-trip. The way I have structured the documents

This is not wasted effort, because if they do take the side-trip, these locations will get visited in Day 3, and if they don’t, some of the ‘best bits’ will reappear in the “get famous” segment of Phase 4. The only real content that can’t be ported across completely is in locating and setting up their campsite for the evening, and the evening meal.

Still more complications: Day 3

The same team also have the option of a side-trip on Day 3. This probably won’t be undertaken if the do the Day 2 side-excursion, but might if they don’t. So I would, in theory have to write their content four ways:

• No side-trips;
• Side-trip one only (means they start Day 3 in a different location and will end it in a different location);
• Side-trip two only (means they will end Day 3 in a different location); and,
• Both side-trips.

At the same time, the other team will also have the opportunity to choose to make a side-trip (which I’ll refer to as ‘Side-trip 3 for clarity). Unlike the first two, which are into the neighboring states of Mississippi and maybe a bit of Tennessee, Side-trip 3 simply takes in additional parts of Arkansas that the original schedule didn’t have room for.

It’s also worth noting that long before I have to actually start work on these variations, I’ll know which ones are really going to be needed, and which ones won’t.

Still more complications: Day 4

And, on Day 4 (if they continue that far), there’s potential side-trips for each car, both of the ‘Side-trip 3’ kind – entirely within Arkansas, simply adding more places to the list. I think both of these are, at best, 50-50, a lot depending on what earlier choices have been made.

The Tangled Web Synopses (so far) and supplementary notes

And so we come to the heart of this three-part article. At the start of each game session, I provide a synopsis of ‘the story so far’ for the benefit of the players (and I use them too, as reference in writing adventure content). I have excerpted those synopses as a series of snapshots of the adventure as it has unfolded.

In some early cases, no synopsis was preserved for some reason, so I’ve crafted new ones as necessary just for this article. Perhaps it was because those parts of the story were so strongly episodic, were completely wrapped up in the one game session.

Things to watch out for:

• The Evolution of the campaign-within-a-campaign as it progresses – this was a deliberate feature, starting with the PCs having one impression and discovering that there was more to the story.
• The embedding of plot hooks – raw material for future plotlines, many with no fixed purpose – as the sub-campaign progresses. If you ever thing to yourself, “I can see a number of potential plotlines using that” about some piece of content, you’ll have recognized an embedded plot hook.
• The impact of PC Decisions – while certain signposted content might be deliberately incorporated, a substantial amount of that was actually delivered in the second game session. Much of the rest of the adventure was either there to justify giving the players that briefing, or as a consequence of the briefing content. Which meant that I was happy to adapt and evolve the content in response to players making decisions for their characters.
• There are a lot of mini-adventures along the way. Some of those were deliberately emplaced, some were used to plant plot hooks, some were there to layer additional ramifications from the game background, and some were just for fun or to control the pacing. But, once the principle of using the trip from nation-state to nation-state as a plot vehicle was established, each leg needed one – so you will have to look fairly closely to see which category any given mini-adventure fits into.
• As part of that: I deliberately set out to make each challenge to the PCs (and hence the players) of a different kind. I’ve talked around that point in the structural discussion earlier in the article, so won’t belabor the point further here.
• Plot Twists & surprises – There have been a number of these along the way. I’ll try to point them out in the rather broad ‘notes’ content after each synopsis (and sometimes inserted into the middle of the synopsis.
• Tonal changes as the plot moves from section to section.
• Pacing changes, both section to section and within a section, and the buildup to important crescendos.

If my intended structural technique has worked (it didn’t but I persevered and overcame!), then you will find each synopsis color-coded, so you’ll be able to see immediately if what you’re looking at is a continuation of the synopsis you were reading or is the start of something new. I’ve tried to use headings to help with that as well.

It’s important to remember, as you read them, that these were written to be contemporary to the game session in which they were delivered. While I’ve tried to go through and set all of them into the past tense, It’s inevitable that I’ve missed bits here and there.

Synopsis, Session 1

Thursday, Feb 16, 2056, The Knightly Building, Earth-Regency [NB: Calendar does not quite match up with ours]

The adventure started with a debriefing following a mission conducted in between game sessions at Paris Island. While the mission itself was relatively straightforward, it was complicated by strange psychological changes within the team.

The trouble started when Vala reported that the former Blackwing kept trying to pull away from her mental link. He proceeded to hesitate repeatedly and seemed to lack confidence.

At the same time, Runeweaver seemed to suffer from the opposite problem – he was aggressive, over-enthusiastic, almost manic, literally blowing the tops off roofs and ripping walls open to get to marine out into the open.

And, when the former Blackwing did engage, in the form of a faceless metal man, he almost beat the ex-marine to death, seemingly afraid of using less than his full strength.

Vala, as the ex-Blackwing is explaining himself, you suddenly realize that every time you had previously made mental contact with Blackwing, it was actually with the Suit’s simulation of the person inside. This was the first time you have actually made a link with the real Paul Delancourt, and with the recent discovery of how the suit had been manipulating his thoughts, it’s no surprise that he’s a little sensitive to mental contacts of all sorts at the moment.

Blackwing then explained his mindset during the mission, stating that he was still in a state of shock over the revelations of Morbane Alpha, and at the same time every time he had gone into battle in the past, he had either been wearing a suit of armor or it hasn’t really been him. Even though he had shape-changed into a metallic form, it still felt like he was charging into combat naked. And then, when he did engage the enemy, that same feeling wouldn’t let him use less than everything he had; he couldn’t seem to pull himself back into line because he was afraid it wouldn’t be enough, even though intellectually, he immediately knew better.

Defender offered to teach the former Blackwing a training technique that combines what he learned as a Kzin Warrior and the lessons of “Master Dragon’s Claw” called the Soul Walk. This offer was accepted, and it was generally agreed that Blackwing, now released from the curse that was tainting his soul, just needed to get used to his new situation. He also felt that it was time to adopt a new superhero identity, or more properly, to return to his original one of Knight. It was then suggested that actually manifesting a suit of armor might alleviate the sense of vulnerability that had affected him on Paris Island, a notion that he immediately took on board.

Attention then turned to Runeweaver, who said that he had found it so pleasurable to be able to cast spells without worrying about the spell going out of control as they had done on so many recent occasions that he simply went a little overboard in the resulting head-rush. But a Mana Recharge had been the equivalent of taking a deep breath and let him get a hold of himself.

The others, aware of his deepening dependence on the euphoria of his Mana recharges, were concerned but this was at least plausible. Time would tell whether or not this was the beginning of a new stage of his problems or an isolated occurrence.

Defender was uncertain to what extent a soul walk would benefit Runeweaver, but it would not be harmful and might help him ‘recover his center’. He was also concerned that Runeweaver had neither mentioned, nor seemingly made allowance for, the influence that the Blackwing Armor was exerting on Runeweaver’s emotional state by shifting every doubt and uncertainty from Blackwing to that of the mage, almost as though he was denying it.

St Barbara decided not to use her authority to order either of them to attempt the Soul Walk or to undergo professional counseling under Vala, at least for now; having identified the problems, she would give both the chance to sort themselves out. The newly-renamed Knight seemed eager to undergo the process, and Runeweaver seemed intensely curious about it, so both were strongly motivated to take positive steps. And, aware of the problem, the other team members could be on the alert for it.

She had hoped that the team was getting out from under a shadow when Blackwing’s probation was reviewed and cut short, but it now seems some even deeper, darker shadows were lurking behind them, just waiting for their chance to leap out at her.

With the mission evaluation complete, Kira – the building’s AI and newly-hired secretary – then advised that the recent interactions with the Texas state police had resulted in greater enthusiasm for the proposed Liaison Program than expected; 143 applications for training in coordinating with the superhero team had been received from different law-enforcement agencies, divisions, and precincts, and were now being held for Knight’s approval.

After the meeting, Knight had trouble lifting the super-dense coffee mug that he had been gifted by Warcry. In fact, he could barely budge it; only after shape-changing into a metal form with enhanced strength could he move it. Clearly, he would have to learn and adapt to a more human level of casual strength. Taking a sip of the extra-strong blend that he preferred, he discovered that he could not taste it at all – he may as well have been pouring the black brew down the throat of a steel statue. Shrugging, he reverted to human and pulled down a standard-sized coffee mug, which he dipped into the bucket-sized orifice of his Blackwing-sized mug – and almost gagged on the strength of the indescribably-bitter concoction. Clearly, he would have to make some adjustments.

Later that afternoon, Defender took Knight to the Danger Room where he had prepared the Soul Walk, as it provided a reasonably resilient environment to anything that Knight might inadvertently throw at it. He explained that he would create a very cloudy fog which would numb the hero’s conscious thoughts. He would start to see shapes in the fog that weren’t really there, but that would be manifestations of his inner thoughts. The fog would respond to his thoughts of what he was seeing by making these creations appear more clear and solid, but they could not harm or be harmed by the Soul Walker. Some people saw many things in succession, others a more profound single image; either way, most things experienced would have multiple meanings to the individual and most would have some spiritual or allegorical relevance. Some might be straightforward, others might be attempts to self-deceive, and some might simply be obscure. Even seeing nothing would have a meaning; the Soul Walk did not provide answers, it asked leading questions that only pretended to be impertinent answers. As the Guide, Defender’s physical reality would also be reinterpreted by the Walker.

Blackwing discovered that he equated punishment with the attention of a parent, because that was the only attention that had been paid to him as a child. Accordingly, he had lived his life creating such situations for himself. This had led him to give in to the corruption of the suit of armor that had possessed him, and let it assume responsibility for life even as it kept him feeling safe and warm. He desired to leave innocence behind and take charge of his life, but feared that he was nothing but the child and the pain. But that was only the beginning of what became an even more profound experience, as his future choices (as he perceived them) were laid bare. His task was to decide how to fill the empty shell that was his self-perception and with what. He was going to be learning what it all meant for some time to come. He also had a newfound depth of respect for the combination of Kzin Warrior Philosophy, Kzin Social Customs, and Eastern Martial Arts that compounded to create his teammate. His abilities might be the flashier contribution, but his spiritual guidance was, perhaps, the more profound.

After he had cleansed himself of the residual effects of Knight’s Soul Walk, Defender summoned Runeweaver for the mage’s experience. After explaining what to expect, and answering a few questions, the session began with Runeweaver as a young man, fishing with his Grandfather, who was dispensing sage advice. Their conversation suggests that the mage’s life choices were, at least in part, an attempt to run from grief over the loss of his father, and in part an attempt to prove to himself that he was ready to live without that father – significant, because he had never been especially close to his father. And those choices then led him to make commitments that kept him from being with his grandfather when he passed, adding a layer of guilt to the motivational brew. He discovered that his early life had taught him that he could get approval from adults by studying hard, making him something of an over-achiever, almost ready to bite off a bit more of a challenge than was already on his plate. His childhood experiences also led him to take setbacks personally, blaming himself for being insufficiently prepared for the challenge. Again, there was more to the experience, in particular concerning the mage’s relationship with his mentor and father-figure, Ivar. The sum of all his experiences had led him to spend his life raising his personal standards until no-one could possibly live up to them, then engineering excuses for his failure to live up to those standards so that he could not be blamed. The significance and meaning of the would take longer to prize out than the comparatively straightforward vision experienced by Knight.

Later that afternoon, Defender made his way to Vala’s quarters to consult the alien telepath; he had realized that the team had a possible problem, but wanted her opinion on whether or not it was important enough to lay in St Barbara’s lap immediately. Most of the team were not native to the Earth-Regency space-time; Karlos Green, the Royal Family’s problem-solver, who they had recently recruited, knew that they were from elsewhere, but not from where. Inevitably, a mission would arise that would summon them back to Earth-Prime; statistically, they were overdue for one, and it would probably be big enough that the team would need his assistance. In an emergency, the team might not have the luxury of breaking the news to him gently; might it not be better to educate him in the things that he would have to know, if-and-when, in advance? He had designed such a program, but the optimum delivery method needed to integrate Runeweaver’s Magic and her Psionics – two normally incompatible ways of manipulating reality. Could she, for example, create the education program and ‘project’ it into one of her psionic crystals, while Runeweaver created a ‘reader’ for such a crystal. Intrigued by the prospect of doing something that she had previously thought impossible, Vala grew excited over the project and insisted on taking the proposal to St Barbara immediately.

The team leader, meanwhile, received a message encoded “Cypher Black” and rated as “Priority Alpha-Two”. ‘Cypher Black’ was a code produced by UNTIL [of Earth-Prime] for absolute top-secret communications with the Champions – things that must never appear on any official record. Priority Alpha-Two sounded like an UNTIL designation as well, but Zenith-3 didn’t use those message flags, she had to look up what it meant in her UNTIL Operations Manual – 1,570 pages of teeny-tiny type written by UNTIL’s legal division, and annotated into Plain English (or Japanese, or whatever) by UNTIL’s Command division so that you don’t need a lawyer to understand it. Fortunately, a copy came with the job of being Team Chairman, and had been gathering dust in her Safe. Alpha designated a crisis or emergency situation requiring immediate attention, while the sub-designation “-two” meant to ‘prepare to commence operations as directed within as a matter of urgency’ but permitted a short interval of time for the Agent receiving the instructions to make any preparations for a lengthy assignment that they deemed necessary.

Putting all that together, it suggested a classified Black Op, probably lasting more than a day, being instigated by UNTIL behind the Champions backs, in response to some crisis or emergency – but nothing so critical that the team can’t take an hour or so to prepare for it, whatever it was. It sounded like they were all suddenly in the Spy Game, whether they liked it or not.

That was when Defender and Vala arrived with their proposal. It was a nice idea, but depending on the sealed orders (which St Barbara still had to decode and decipher). might be a little too late. Karlos was more of a natural secret agent than any of the team; depending on the nature of the mission, they might find his presence invaluable. Since he would need to know about the team’s extra-dimensional origins and horrendously-complicated command structure sooner or later, and the underlying physics of dimensional/time-travel, and the practical consequences, she sent the pair to ‘educate’ him. Every experience told her that he was trustworthy. It would be a rude awakening that they were more than defenders of the British Empire, but since that political institution formed a subset of their responsibilities, she thought that he would be onboard – and deserved to know the scale of the problems that the team occasionally had to deal with.

Decoding the message, she found it long on urgent orders and short on explanations. A full briefing would be provided at UNTIL Headquarters at 2300 hours Monday June 31, 1986. The rest of the message told her that the team had to attend, how to disguise themselves, how to travel to the meeting to minimize exposure, and NOT to tell the Champions about any of it. They had to think that the team were still in Dimension-Regency, until UNTIL were good and ready to tell them otherwise.

Cloak-and-dagger – not something the team usually got mixed up in. She could already sense a headache in her near future.

Shortly before 11 PM, Monday June 30, 1986, Earth-Prime
UNTIL Headquarters is located in Geneva, Switzerland. Once, it had been a single building; it now occupied an entire valley in easy reach of the Swiss capital, a suburb in its own right (albeit a small one).

There is a railway station linking the facilities to the rest of Geneva and an underground Maglev for UNTIL personnel use that links the 43 separate multi-story buildings together, which were dug more deeply into the rock than they projected skywards.

It was a routine security measure not to use the front entrance of the building that you were actually there to visit; instead, you picked any other building, used it to access the high-speed Maglev loop, using it to reach the building you actually wanted to go to.

Building Delta proved to be one of the largest buildings in the Headquarters, and was the designated hub of Active Operations. Different geographic regions of the world were assigned to different floors (including a few exotic ones located off-planet). Sub-regions had individual corridors containing offices devoted to individual countries; in addition, some had specific operational interests being pursued outside the scope of the National Commands, with their own offices. Every floor had a different shape, with a different number of corridors running off from the central hub.

Room 1317 was on the 8th floor from the bottom, in the Pan-American section. There was a corridor for South America, another for Central America, and three more for (respectively) Western, Eastern, and Northern North America. At the end of the Eastern and Western America corridors was a large curving meeting room connecting both, labeled Room 1317, USA Operations. There was probably a similar joint command linking the South and Central Commands.

A large collection of senior UNTIL brass was waiting in silence in the room when the team arrived, obeying large signs that read “Your silence is required until Command deems it safe for you to speak”.

Present, in ascending order of rank, were:

• Captain Reginald Schwartz of the Resources Division;
• Major Heinrich Wasser, Chief Strategist of the Operations Division;
• Colonel Mason Courage III, Commander of the North American subdivision;
• Colonel Pablo Martinez, Commander of the South American subdivision;
• Brigadier Norma Raid, Head of the Champions Division;
• Major-General Dennis Smith, Commander of the Intelligence division;
• Major-General Patrick O’Kelly, Head of the Political Division;
• Major-General Oscar Holder, Head of the Legal Division; and
• Brigadier-General Isobel Dimitrov, Head of the Command Section of the Operations Division.

Some cloak-and-dagger with high-tech voice transformation devices followed so that operational personnel could participate with no chance of their identities being compromised. These gave every participant a random voice and random national accent. UNTIL had not yet been able to miniaturize them sufficiently for field usage, but they were used in the highest of high-level meetings for added security. They also briefed the team on how UNTIL had adapted to keep meetings secure in a world with Telepaths.

Backlash, the ex-head of UNTIL and current Chairman of the Champions (the PC’s parent organization and their superiors when they are on Earth-Prime) then made a spectacular entrance, announcing, “Ah, there you are Brigadier-General! I had to look all over to find you. You didn’t really think you could pull off something of this magnitude and only tell me after the fact, did you? Or did my invitation get lost in the mail?”

It soon became obvious that the two were old friends, and in fact, Backlash was once Dimitrov’s “Boss”. In the course of their re-acquantance and discussion, Dimitrov let slip that even allies being told could get them all locked up without keys, the matter was so delicate.

Key Points & Notes

You get a completely different sense of relevance from the first part of this adventure when you realize that the characters will soon get to spend a prolonged period pretending to be someone other than themselves. This content will also be relevant when we get to the encounter with the Coahuila Oracle, and goes to who the PCs actually are.

Other aspects of that early part of the story that will be relevant later are the role occupied by Defender as “Spirit Guide” and the peculiar fusion of the culture created for his species and the Samurai/Eastern philosophies he later adopted – parts of the resulting combination are strongly reminiscent of Amerind culture, but that was only realized after the fact. It comes across a lot more strongly in the synopsis of play than it did at the game-table at the time.

For some reason, no synopsis was actually preserved from the first couple of game sessions; the preceding and what follows below have been newly compiled from the original adventure notes.

These synopses (when we actually get to one produced for game use) were never intended to be a complete ongoing narrative summary of events; they were a reminder to the players who participated. That means that they often leave a lot of things out.

These omissions are most readily noticed when one compares the situation at the start of play (i.e. after a synopsis has been delivered) with the narrative of the next synopsis, and notes things that have been taken for granted because the players actually experienced them.

Some of the omitted content will be inserted here and there as I go along; more will be gathered into post-synopsis sections of analysis like this one, together with other notes that I feel worth calling out.

As with most of the adventures that I run in this campaign, I like to start by anchoring the events in the personal lives of the PCs, making them more than just ‘crime-fighting machines’. Events in these personal lives passages often presage or influence character states of mind during subsequent decisions, and sometimes provide context, subtext, or counterpoint. They can also sometimes provide a narrative thread binding loose plot elements into a cohesive whole. Quite often, its the players who decide what their characters make of these things; I focus on making sure that they fulfill any plot need and sound credible, and any additional meaning that the players read into them is a total bonus.

It is also worth noting that many of these character developments are not pulled out of thin air, but are the result of conversations with the players about their characters, sometimes from months or years earlier. On rare occasions, they can be completely wide of the mark, but my understanding of the characters is fairly substantial at this point; that doesn’t happen often.

One other subtle point that I’m not even sure the players have noticed; I’m very careful to refer to the characters by their “operational identities” at the time. The early adventure, therefore, has references to St Barbara, Knight/Blackwing, and so on, but once they assume their new identities, the references will be to Nightshade, Basalt, etc. They may be the same character, with the same player, but this helps distinguish between the two.

What’s not quite so clear in some of these synopses is whether or not the characters were acting in civilian guise or super-identity. I did contemplate using search and replace to name characters according to civilian guise at the time, but decided that this would only make things harder for the casual reader to know who was doing what.

Besides, at this point in time, those civilian identities are just a ‘cloak’ that the PCs happen to be wearing; they haven’t actually been playing Clark Kent, they’ve been playing Superman in a three-piece suit. That changes with the last part of phase 3, when they start playing those identities as the default. It’s probably fair to say that their “real” civilian identities didn’t get a lot of air time until I deliberately began exploring some of those identities a few years ago, too – they had been superheros pretty much full-time for years of play prior to that.

The entrance of Backlash is actually more important than it seems at the time. When he offers up the equivalent of “I have my sources” as answer to the unspoken question of how he knew about this top-secret meeting, and then focuses on his friendship with his former subordinate, there’s such an obvious unspoken answer that the players didn’t give it a second thought (they were too busy laughing at his intrusion and the by-plays that followed). That subtle unanswered dangling plot thread would become a lot more significant later on in the adventure!

Synopsis, Session 2 (from Session 3)

The team began to assess the impacts of the recent changes to their roster. The revelation that Blackwing’s armor had been corrupting him while sloughing any resistance, uncertainty, doubt, or hesitation off onto those nearby had profoundly impacted several members. In some cases, this had exacerbated existing psychological problems.

After taking the first steps to understand and come to terms with these influences, the team were summoned to Earth-Prime and a meeting with UNTIL that had been bathed in secrecy. Some of the biggest brass in the organization were present, but so far it wasn’t clear who was giving the briefing, and who was here to listen to it and decide what to do about it – a meeting that had just been crashed by the PCs superior officer in the Champions Organization, Backlash.

The most senior officer in the room, Brigadier-General Isobel Dimitrov, Head of the Command Section of the Operations Division, had just let slip that the content of the briefing could get everyone locked up in dark cells without keys if the wrong people found out about it.

St Barbara realized that all this “secrecy of identities” was for the purpose of protecting you from being identified by the Officers in the room. The UNTIL Officers all know each other, and you all know each other – and that meant that St Barbara had been correct when she characterized this mission as a top-secret Black Op – so much so, that UNTIL’s Field Commander was protecting her subordinates and peers from prosecution if it all went pear-shaped with some fairly extraordinary measures – including going completely outside the usual personnel pool for Agents to deal with the situation.

Colonel Courage then gave a brief background to the current political situation in what was now known as the USNA (United States Of North America). That country had withdrawn from the United Nations years before, and it was absolutely forbidden for UNTIL to even step foot on American Soil without permission from the American Government – but there were elections looming later in the year (in November as usual) and the two political parties that had emerged from the collapse of the Republican and Democratic Parties were both planning new policy directions, either of which would see the US emerge from its splendid isolation, eventually. The negotiations would stretch on for years when that started. He also revealed that there had been somewhat closer cooperation between the US UNTIL-Analogue, Thunder, and their own operations – strictly unofficially of course. For various reasons, the Americans were hyper-sensitive to political interference in their domestic affairs at the moment. It was even possible that the WiLL party, currently in the White House, would dis-endorse their own sitting President, so complicated and chaotic was the state of politics there at the moment. Worst case, they end up in a new Civil War, or in a war with the rest of the world. As a result, the official policy was to keep the US at arm’s length for the time being.

The South American Sub-Division’s commander, Colonel Martinez, then revealed that his division had learned that the WiLL party had fallen under the control of a House Of Demon, who were responsible for the change in political policy. That House of Demon had itself been infiltrated and were now dominated by skilled mages who had escaped to Earth-Prime in the course of Ragnarok and integrated themselves into the local society. The other political party, meanwhile had fallen under the control of a second House of Demon, one with more noble ethics and ambitions than the first, who were opportunists seeking personal power. Those were the ideologies who were about to clash, through veiled proxies, in the National Elections. Some of this, Team Zenith-3 already knew; some of it was news. They also had a level of wary respect and mild trust in one of the Houses of Demon, whose leader had rescued Knight from the Armor that had transformed him into Blackwing.

One of those Houses also controlled Central America, and now based itself in California; the other was New York based.

One of the many maps and diagrams created for this adventure, this shows the political ‘state of play’ in North, South, and Central America at the time – so far as PC-accessable intelligence sources knows, of course!

After a brief rest-break, the briefing resumed, this time with Martinez doing the talking. He expressed a preference for making sure Field Agents didn’t know everything as a means of keeping them on their toes and reacting to situations as they were rather than as command thought they were. So his briefing left a lot of information unsaid.

Mexico had fragmented into smaller nations in the social collapse of Ragnarok, and what social order emerged was at the behest of this House Of Demon, who had installed dictatorial regimes with selected puppet rulers selected from the local populations. They then dictated policies to these local front-men that have slowly been lifting the Central Americas out of Anarchy and toward more civilized behavior. The further north one goes in the region, the greater the influence that their big American Neighbor has had and the more civilized the Latin Countries become.

Brazil’s Fifth Reich had conquered many of its neighbors, whose governments had collapsed when The Great Poppy Plague had genetically altered the plants so that they no longer produced Opiates. So far, for a Nazi, Dr Muerte had proven to be a relatively benign, if ruthless, despot, who not only had a genuine concern for the welfare of his citizens, but had regard for his relations with the international community. Relations between the West-coast House Of Demon and the 5th Reich have also been surprisingly cordial, and the two have been working together to restore basic services and prosperity to the region. Muerte himself has become the most beloved figure in South America, and – significantly – the Reich has normalized relations with the Americans. He is everyone’s friend, at least at the moment.

UNTIL operatives normally sneak into the US via the 5th Reich, who have established a policy of ‘not noticing’ irregularities in paperwork and facilitating such transits. The Reich provides transit to Mexico and the Dictators then pass the agents toward the border as part of their cooperative attitude toward the Reich, and eventually smuggle the Agent across the Border.

With that information delivered, he wished the agents good fortune and left the room. Some of the lesser ranked officers had also made quiet exits.

The team took that to mean that the Agency was about to get down to the nitty-gritty, an impression reinforced by the fact that it was suddenly okay for identities to be revealed and introductions made. Brigadier Dimitrov again assumed the role of Ringmaster, which seemed to come naturally to her.

The functional nature of these introductions emphasized the operational nature of the meeting. Dimitrov was in charge of, and responsible for, everything that went on outside of Headquarters. Holder made sure that what UNTIL did was legal, especially when it wasn’t, and acted as a conscience for the organization. O’Kelly looked at what the others planned to do and what others were doing and advised on the repercussions – making him someone that even Dimitrov had to satisfy before a major mission could get underway. Smith knew more secrets than anyone else on the planet – in UNTIL’s estimation. Raid was in charge of the Champions from a global governmental perspective, and the Champions were in charge of their satellite programs like Zenith-3, making her the PCs boss. She actually regarded herself more as a Liaison, and was there because the Operational Personnel for the mission that was going to be proposed came from her Command. All of the above had to sign off on the Operation before it would be green-lit.

Wasser was the most gifted strategist in UNTIL and had planned the mission. Schwartz was there to provide technical support. And the team? They were there to carry out the mission – if it was green-lit, and if they accepted the responsibility.

Wasser informed the assembled group that a major incident was being prepared by a coalition of radical groups based in the American South who weren’t happy with the changes in policy that they were seeing. They are to make their move on the 4th of July. UNTIL had few other specifics at this time, but one of their operatives was presently in the US and would have more intelligence when the Operatives contacted him. All they knew at the moment was that whoever was behind it had connections with the Sons Of Liberty, who had connections with the Freedom Brigade, who had connections to the Rebel Tide.

A South African arms merchant by the name of Emil Zutzanger had sold Group X, the plotters, two stolen Russian nuclear warheads. His intelligence sources believed that they intended to detonate one or both as a political stunt and act of revolution in four days time. Worse still, through the Rebel Tide, UNTIL had become aware of several sympathizers within Thunder, so that organization could not be trusted to handle the situation. UNTIL’s second choice would be to work through the ex-Champions members known as the Crusaders, but the last time that they did so, they employed what UNTIL considers excessive force with an unacceptable loss of civilian lives; as a result, they are in internal turmoil and may even have splintered into two groups at war with each other. Their third choice would be to send in regular UNTIL agents – but the political situation in North America is too sensitive for that. UNTIL can’t be seen to be conducting an operation in the US at the moment. So their solution was to create a new set of identities for Zenith-3 and send them in to deal with this problem – and, having set them up, to maintain these covert roles until the North American situation stabilized politically with respect to the rest of the world.

UNTIL characterize the Zenith teams thus: Zenith-1 are good at finding things out, but are slow to get things done. Zenith-2 are good at blowing big holes in things, but slow to find the right things to blow up. Zenith-3 are somewhere in-between, without the failings of either.

So they proposed that Zenith-3 become – in addition to their other duties and assignments – a covert North American Field Branch of the Champions, capable of handling problems like this one, or rogue Crusaders, or anything else that might be beyond the capacity of Thunder to deal with.

That meant that they would have to be given new Superhero identities as well as new Civilian cover identities. Resources division, with Wasser’s assistance, had devised ways to camouflage the visual effects of their abilities.

The team can’t just teleport in, because the Demon House would detect that, and so might Thunder. Instead, they would have to go through the South-Central American channel like any other operatives and set up a Base Of Operations. In that, they could install equipment that would permit them to come and go covertly.

From time to time over the next year, when UNTIL need an operational force within the USNA, the team would be inserted back into their US cover identities, do whatever is necessary, and then exfiltrate to resume their normal lives and duties. Whether or not we need to continue the charade after that depends on the results of the elections there, something that we – and you – are not permitted to interfere with.

Officially, this Field Branch would be designated Team Shadow – what the members of Team Shadow decided to call their fictitious alliance of superheros in public was up to them.

Their followed a formal approvals process – one that flowed surprisingly quickly and seamlessly. The Legal department insisted on making it clear that membership in a subversive organization was not in itself necessarily an offense. The bottom line, expressed by Backlash (who could have vetoed the whole idea), was: “Operational Nuclear Weapons in the hands of radicals can’t be tolerated. Someone has to go in and get rid of the damn things, and I trust my people to do it in time more than I trust anyone else to do so.”

The final approval had to be St Barbara’s, but she got a commitment from each team member before giving it. And just like that, the process began of turning them into someone else.

The Political Officer listed a number of potential targets for Group X – ranging from Nuking the President on down to a demonstration and blackmail – but couldn’t give any indication of which one might be correct.

Captain Schwartz then led the team to his workshop and started throwing ideas at the team, in sequence from Easy to Hard.

He started by handing Knight a sketchpad of designs for him to choose a new appearance from. He chose a man made out of rocks, and the name Basalt.

He advised Defender that there were plenty of Kzin tourists roaming the US these days. Schwartz knew that the striped markings on his fur were clan markings, and asked if Defender was willing to change them; the answer was no, but he would forego wearing any while on this assignment. Schwartz then offered up a sort of ragged warrior look for him, and he chose the name Zantar.

Next was Karlos Green, whose best idea for a superhero identity so far had been “Mr Image” (Image being the organization he had previously worked for, the Earth-Regency equivalent of UNTIL in many respects). He was equipped with a standard UNTIL Force Field belt, a Force Utility Band – a blaster, in other words, designed to look like the beam was coming from the palm of his hand – and a union jack -based costume. This inspired the name, Union Jack, which he liked so much that he though he’d keep it.

Runeweaver was given a hat with a semi-invisibility generator that made him look semi-transparent, de-tuned so that parts of him in shadow would be fully invisible but the rest would not, and a head for his staff that created holographic glowing ‘spirits’, with a costume suggestive of a civil war officer and a mask, and a cloak that twists as though it had a mind of its own whenever magic was around, which he could deactivate if he wanted to. He chose the name Specter. It was suggested that he look for ways to make his spells look like ghostly powers.

St Barbara was given a comb that turned her hair raven-black or return it to blonde, a black outfit that covered her almost completely (unlike her usual choice of outfit), and finally, some contact lenses that shifted her perceptions of color into the ultraviolet. The absence of the usual colored sparkles that resulted made her energy blast look like a shadow leaping from her hand, accompanied by little bursts of light-devouring blackness that broke up the edges of her form. She became Nightshade, especially after Schwartz figured out how to use her flight to enhance her acrobatics surreptitiously. His piece-de-resistance was a disrupter that eliminated her distinctive personal force-field.

Vala was the team member who didn’t like what Schwartz had to offer. Any figure with wings would automatically remind the public of her true identity, as she had (without knowing about it) become one of the most recognizable people on the planet. She decided that she would simply use her powers to make people not notice her – and if that left her short-powered for doing other things, so be it.

Next, attention turned to the civilian identities that UNTIL had concocted:

• Knight: Frank Hudson, Manhunter
• Defender: Brust, tourist and inveterate explorer
• Mr Image: Roger Woodchild, Prospector
• Runeweaver: Isaiah Lucas, Ski Instructor and Competition Wood-logger
• St Barbara: Sue-Ellen Wilson, Talent Scout
• Vala: Carmen DeLambert (french name), Heiress, recovering from extensive plastic surgery performed in the South of France, and so swathed in bandages.

They certainly looked nothing like their usual selves when they were dressed in the appropriate outfits!

Finally, practical matters of finance were arranged; each team member was given a small amount of funds to carry; collectively, they would be enough to hire or buy a couple of cheap cars and other supplies, which they could use to search out a Base Of Operations. Once they had one selected, a phone call with the address and a local bank account number, and more money would be tracelessly wired in for the purchase and for equipping the facility.

They were given a precise rendezvous with the UNTIL officer who was, even then, gathering intelligence on the who and what of their mission. Using mechanical educators with many refinements and safeguards added over Behemoth’s original model, Spanish and German were then implanted in those who did not already speak the language, to two different standards – conversational fluency for some, and fluency to an expert level for others. Some final ‘good lucks’ and parting words, and the team were on their way – to another highly-secured building within the complex.

There, they learned that UNTIL had secretly copied the Champions Teleporter for point-to-point ultra-secure transits from UNTIL HQ to Permanent Bases within different nations – including Brazil.

Key Points & Notes

A huge info-dump, which I’ve largely just summarized here. There is some assumption that you know who the different entities are, but that’s not important enough to be worth the time explaining them. They have all changed so substantially from their original source material that they would be largely unrecognizable, anyway.

Take Demon, for example: a group of 13 groups of supervillain magi, a strictly-enforced meritocracy, there have been at least two major revolutions in their administration since their first appearance. Whatever you may have thought you knew about the organization is just their history.

The whole point of the briefing, then, is to remind the players (and tell readers) of the way things are, as opposed to the way things were.

Info-dumps are the most boring element of gaming. Every time one has to happen, I pull out absolutely everything in my bag of tricks to try and make them interesting.

I remember very well (and quite painfully) the lessons learned in the past, detailed in 2009 in My Biggest Mistakes: Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign – but you can never avoid info-dumps completely. I’ve broken this one up with interruptions, and moments of humor, and interpersonal conversations, and putting personalities on display, and gaming visuals – maps for the most part, and anything else that I can think of.

One of those tricks is the mixture of old and new information – if players feel they already know something, they will tend to start ignoring it and engaging in side-chatter. Since it’s unrealistic to expect a briefing not to contain any old info, I permit a little more of that than I otherwise would (especially if it can be interpreted as being in-character side-chatter).

If you do it right, you can have your NPC interactions segue back from such side-chatter to signal the transition to new information or updates. Do this consistently, and players will eventually start to subconsciously cue off the trigger. That means that you can let verbal horseplay between players break up your larger info-dumps.

Another trick is to pass as much of the info-dump as your can to elsewhere in the adventure, passing the ‘responsibility’ for delivering that information to some other NPC.

The more information that you can pass in a two-way conversation, the better. That breaks up the info-dump with conversational phrases. In terms of this info-dump, there was certain information that the PCs needed in order for the players to base reasonable decisions on it; but anything they didn’t need to know until after their BOps was established was pushed off to the planned meeting in the “Rendezvous” section of Phase 5. And even then, I took a whole lot of background material and shoved it onto “reading the guidebook” en route to that rendezvous, and will punctuate that with visuals. There will be still more that I can offload to narrative accompanying specific locations that the PCs drive through en route. A casual contact at a gas station can let me sneak something extra out of the info-dump. And finally, the plan is for the Agent not to have all the answers – just places to look for more answers. That makes acquiring a large chunk of the prospective info-dump, an interactive process of investigation by the PCs.

Put all that together, and this was a successful info-dump that kept the players engaged and interested. Compared to some (like the example linked to earlier), it was even better than that!

Something else to note is that some of the new identities were expected to be accepted, some were for NPCs (but it was reasonable that they would also accept them), and there were some that were more problematic, or even expected to be rejected.

That was – in part – where the revelations from the very first part of the adventure made a difference. In particular, the psychology of Knight – the former Blackwing – was critical; this was a character that had just reclaimed his humanity, it was rather unlikely without the prompting from the Spirit Walk that the player would have thought that the character would have accepted the new identity of Basalt, for example.

Synopsis, Session 3 (from Session 4)

Zenith-3 have been recruited into Team Shadow, a covert branch of the Champions to operate behind the lines of North America every now and then – starting now, because Domestic Terrorists have bought two stolen Russian nuclear weapons are believed to intend to use them on the Fourth of July, somewhere in the US of North America. Political sensitivity and the fact that they have no legal authority there mean that UNTIL cannot be seen to mount operations there, so the plan was for the team to infiltrate America via Central America and Mexico, guided by a contact of a House Of Demon that would be arranged through the Government of the 5th Reich.

To keep their true superhero identities a secret and avoid diplomatic entanglements, new identities both civilian and paranormal had been crafted for each member.

Before they knew it, in their new civilian guises, the team were teleported to Base Fortaleza in Brazil, where they were met by Agent Indigo, a dark-haired Hispanic woman in a very angry frame of mind over the inconvenience of arranging a last-minute meeting with Senior Government Official late at night on a Monday without advance warning. She demanded to know what was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until morning.

So the team told her part of the story – stolen nukes and someone intending to use them – which calmed her down somewhat. This was the first indication that things were just a little different to what they had expected, here in South America.

She gave them temporary visas assigning them Protected Diplomatic Status, giving them the protection of the Reich and encouraging cooperation from any official who might be encountered, then led them out into the street. The city was not at all what they expected, it was bright, shiny, and modern.

As soon as they left the UNTIL Field headquarters, some of the team noticed that they had picked up a Shadow. A man in suit and tie with glasses and a cocked hat, who occasionally mopped his brow with a red silken handkerchief, but otherwise pretended to be inconspicuous without trying too hard. Agent Indigo told them that the spies for the various agencies all knew who one another were, and so followed each other around. Because the group were strangers to him, he was naturally interested in their identities; there were few secrets on the streets of Fortaleza. If he wasn’t thrown off the scent, he would follow them all the way to their meeting at the central command and might even blow their cover. To do this, she took them over and introduced him as “Comrade Osselzlekzy of the KGB Central Intellat, Division 9, who was stationed there because no government in the world really trusted Fuhrer Muerte but no-one has so far been able to catch him out.

They quickly realized that the spy subculture went even further than this impression; they socialized, attending the same functions, sometimes cooperated and sometimes interfered with each other, and generally treated it like a fairly cordial game. Agent Indigo gave him a code-phrase to take back to his superiors that he obviously recognized after he announced that he knew of their late-night appointment already; “Hard Rain Umbrella” meant nothing to the team, but it caused the KGB man to shudder despite the heat and wish them all “Very, Very good luck”, which suggested that she may have even told him something like “Rogue nukes”.

But the encounter had cost the team time, so they had to take a “Putt-putt”, a small two-cylinder three wheeled van with seating for a half-dozen people, the most common form of transport in Fortaleza, and a short-cut. That in turn required them to walk down an alley in which, they were warned, they might see, hear, or smell distressing things; she warned them not to be too quick to judgment.

The alleyway led directly into what could only be considered a slum of the destitute, families living in squalor and misery. Agent Indigo explained that Muerte, to his credit, had tried giving them homes in clean, serviced apartments that were big enough for their families, but the locals expected it to be taken away from them on a whim, and so didn’t value the accommodations or maintain them. Soon, they start to look like what the team saw around them.

The Reich, to their credit, seemed to have found a solution to the social problem of slums that was starting to make inroads into the problem, a combination of socialism and fascism that she detested but that at least created the opportunity for upward social mobility. Once, hundreds of thousands had lived in squalor like this in the Capital; now there are that same number spread all over the Reich, the 3% on the bottom rung of the society. The rest had managed to bootstrap their way into a growing middle class.

As they walked, twisting and turning through several of the narrow corridors between buildings, she continued to describe the society that had been erected in the South American nation. Eventually, the group reached a “proper” alleyway; between them and its mouth were five men and a woman of rough looking people, ranging in age from late teens to late fifties, carrying various weapons. Agent Indigo told the team not to panic, just make sure that their rank buttons were showing, and advanced half-way to the group. She then stepped forward and announced loudly that she was about to turn around and walk back to the people she was escorting, who out-ranked her; anyone looking for a confrontation with the Reichsmarshall should still be there when she turned back around. She then turned her back on the thugs who looked at each other, startled, and then bolted like startled rabbits.

Past the entrance lay one of the major tourist thoroughfares; the group had no trouble hailing a couple of putt-putts. Agent Indigo gave the driver of the lead vehicle directions; he abruptly turned white, vacated his seat and brushed down the plastic-covered passenger seats. You would guess that Indigo had impressed upon him the VIP nature of her ‘guests’. The driver of the second putt-putt, observing this reaction, did likewise before, unsatisfied, ripped off the seat covers and dumped them in a waste-bin on the side of the road.

One road flowed smoothly into another as the putt-putts exerted their full 75 horsepower; the drivers proved adept at judging how fast they had to travel in order to avoid being stopped by traffic lights. Ten minutes later, they pulled into an otherwise empty boulevard. Indigo waved her rank badge at a checkpoint manned by an armed soldier, who saluted her. The putt-putt slowed to something less than a walking pace as you drove around a gardened area until a large building became visible, then slowed even more so that you could get a good view.

Indigo shouted over the noise of the engine, “The Palace Of Reichenfuhrer Muerte. Few get to see it so closely, fewer still to tell others of what they have seen. But you have the authority and it was on our way, so…” Glancing at her watch – one of those newfangled digital devices being sold by the Koreans, she gestured to the drivers, who immediately got underway.

Another ten minutes conveyed the group to a black building bathed in green spotlights with a three-story-tall Reich flag fluttering atop an enormous flagpole. After rating the job performed by each of their drivers, the team were escorted by Indigo into the Central Command of the 5th Reich.

The interior of the building was all red and gold and dark wooden paneling. Despite the warm colors, there was something clinical about the execution of the building – a pattern that seemed to apply to a lot of other features of the society, now that the team thought about it. The receptionist soon proved to be someone else charmed by Agent Indigo, who seemed perfectly suited to this social environment, at once disciplined and exuberant. When asked whom they wished to see – most general staff having left for the day many hours earlier – Indigo advised that they had an appointment with Oberster Fuhrer der Schutzstaffel ReichMuerte.

This name brought the flirting between the two to an immediate end as the reception officer, “Franz”, was suddenly all business. Passing through metal detectors and saluting guards, the group were directed to Room 1101.

The ‘Interview’ with Oskar Von Peirera, Doctor Muerte’s Oberster Fuhrer der Schutzstaffel ReichMuerte (Chief Of Intelligence), consisted of equal parts polite chitchat, canapes, wine, and banter with Indigo. Eventually, he asked a serious question about the mission. Indigo then began to work hard at convincing him that it would be of great importance to the Reich, and that at its end, he would want to have done everything in his power to ensure its success.

Evidently, she did not give her word to him very often, because he accepted the assurance, socialized a little more, and then wished the team good luck and whisked them on their way.

When they reached the ground floor, the guards were all carefully looking the other way so as not to see them depart, and the receptionist was nowhere to be seen. Exiting the building, they saw three black limousines waiting at the curb; choosing the middle one, as instructed, they noticed that the identical vehicle ahead and the one behind appeared to carry close doubles of each team member, including a Kzin in tourist get-up.

The convoy raced through the streets, one vehicle almost on the bumper of the one ahead of it; traffic signals mysteriously changed as the convoy approached, so they were never delayed. Other traffic made a point of getting out of their way. At a four-way intersection, the three identical vehicles split up, each exiting in a different direction; the one containing the team made a high-speed transit through a hotel’s underground car park and then a slow-speed transit through a car wash, which stripped away the black coloration and revealed the white paint and gold logos of a hotel shuttle service.

At a completely normal pace, the vehicle then conveyed the group to the Airfield and pulled up right at the entrance of a black-painted light aircraft, which they quickly boarded. The aircraft then took off without running lights; once in the air, the struts dropped away and the wings folded back into a delta-wing configuration, a small explosive charge shed the propeller, turning it into chaff, and revealing a hidden Magnetic Pulse engine; the aircraft accelerated smoothly to Mach 1.2.

The group were impressed by the level of organization needed to pull all this off at short notice; until they had walked through the front doors, the Nazis would have had no idea of genders or appearance, let along that they numbered a Kzin amongst them.

Two hours and 45 minutes later, the aircraft touched down in Maracaibo, Venezuela – which, the pilot warned, was in a different time zone to Fortaleza. The local time was 1 AM, and the team were officially tumbling down the rabbit-hole….

Key Points & Notes

My conceptual touchstone for the entire Fifth Reich was that nothing was exactly what it seemed to be on the surface, which is why every spy wore what they really were on their sleeves – for the contrast. It also made sense in a reverse-psychological way – if someone in such an environment looked like a spy, then “a spy” is probably what they weren’t.

The slums were another example of this, borrowing from some of the public housing history of native Australian populations.

There was a logical discrepancy between an intelligent and creative man – no matter how villainous – and such an obvious social throwback as a “Fifth Reich”. I therefore decided that his villainy was the result of his means of achieving ends that he thought justified – which is that the government function rationally, by force if necessary. This was such a contrast with the usual anarchy of South and Central America, that it could be argued that strict and militant applications of force were the only means of rehabilitating the culture. It probably didn’t help that the cartels which had propped up several of the governments had collapsed after intervention by another PC in an earlier phase of the campaign to eliminate the “narcotics problem”, and that this was followed by the global catastrophe of Ragnarok. These lines of thought led to the policies of the Fifth Reich, which were also intended to touch on another theme of the adventure – the value to be placed on liberty when it is self-destructive.

There are those who will read connections to the current global Pandemic into that theme, but these notions went onto paper long before I’d ever heard of SARS-Cov-2. The current situation in the US is just an ironic counterpoint. Where the PCs, who hold liberty in extremely high regard, come down on the issues raised was intended to be just another in a long line of such moral quandaries that they have encountered.

It took something that the PCs had always viewed as black-and-white and mixed a substantial amount of gray into both sides. Now, the PCs were able to take a pragmatic view, and ignore the broader questions this all raised for the most part – but the final Mission won’t give them that luxury, as they encounter a situation in which others have the same basic black-and-white philosophy that the PCs have espoused, and use it to justify things that the PCs find unacceptable – forcing the PCs to be the ones mixing in the gray, and broadening their horizons of what was acceptable.

The whole “Fifth Reich” concept should NOT be interpreted as a support or justification for Fascism. My personal opinion is that it’s a bad political system that crushes and oppresses, and I’ve seen nothing in the last 10 years or more to change that judgment. But the only acceptable answer to questions like “Should Axe Murderers be denied their Liberty?” leads inexorably to the conclusion that in some cases, society can benefit from the removal of individual liberty. The argument then is about where you draw the line, and about safeguards, and other real-world consequences.

In fact, a previous adventure was deliberately placed so as to make Muerte a villain of the blackest sort, and it remains just as valid in this continuity. For every Schindler, there’s a – well, take your choice, there are no end of options!

As stated elsewhere, another factor is that I wanted this part of the adventure to be more of a lighthearted romp, after the heaviness and ponderous tones of the “Briefing”, and despite not being able to lampoon the Fascists for the plot reasons described, I think that it succeeds. This is a society that’s on its way to transforming from Fascism to something else; at this point, they still have some fascist trappings, but the change is clearly underway.

And that’s where I’m drawing the line under part one. Parts two and three will follow as soon as I can get them finished. That’s right, I’m changing things up in recognition of this being my 1001st post – a little flexibility will give me cover to clean up some of the loose ends that I have let accumulate over the last 11-12 years. My original intent was to use the Thursday article slot in this fashion, but weakening health has made it impossible to get enough productive hours a week for that.

1000 posts: a personal milestone

So. 1000 posts. Four figures.

That’s no small achievement. It’s something to be proud of.

I’ve been casting about for suggestions on how to commemorate this milestone for the last few months, but the few suggestions I’ve received haven’t really been all that helpful – “Something reflective”, “Something forward-looking”, “Something quintessentially Campaign Mastery”.

Two or weeks before this words were first crafted, I came up with the notion of talking about campaign milestones, what they mean, and how achieving one transforms that campaign moving forward.

That ticks all of those boxes – reflective? Check.

Forward-looking? Check.

Quintessentially Campaign Mastery? Check number three.

I briefly contemplated a second part to this article, and that soon necessitated a third part to put the second part into context, and that started to get too big and complicated, and looked like it would overwhelm the first part – so that’s all be excerpted into an article for a week or two from now. That’s very Campaign Mastery, too!

What remains is still very large – twice the size of the usual Campaign Mastery post, and they are already plenty long – and that’s only appropriate for such a landmark article (I’ve admitted the blindingly obvious before – I don’t do “small” very well)!

As some of you may know, Sydney has just come out of 108 days of Lockdown due to Covid-19. Yesterday, face-to-face gaming resumed after almost three months absence. Next week, my superhero campaign should restart, and the week after, Dr Who, and the week after that, the Adventurer’s Club Pulp campaign. After the famine, a feast – at least until Christmas shuts everything down for about a month.

So this is a celebration of sorts – let’s get this party started!

Campaign Creation

I’ve divided the life of a campaign into five main stages. To some extent, the milestones within each stage are interchangeable in terms of sequence.

The first stage is, as you can see, Campaign Creation. Yes, you can create a campaign with none of these six milestones – but that campaign would be lacking any meaningful sense of cohesion. These are what essentially defines a campaign, and gives that campaign it’s uniqueness.

0. The Unscratched Itch

All campaigns start with an unscratched itch. It might be a hankering to get behind the GM Screen (which may actually be a metaphoric construct); it could be a desire to run a certain type or style of game; it’s possible that it’s the desire to run a campaign of a certain genre, or with a certain rules system; it can even be the desire to do something different from what you’ve done before, or curiosity about how a certain concept would play out.

I’ve played in, or GM’d, campaigns that fit each of these descriptions, and a few more besides. Like the time a discussion about chase game-mechanics led to the creation of a short-lived (3 game sessions) Wacky Races campaign with completely original rules – all of which fitted on a single page with room for the sense of whimsy and caprice to find expression.

It doesn’t matter what the specifics are. What matters is that this gives the GM his personal motivation for creating and running the campaign.

Without that motivation, the GM is running the campaign because someone has to, not because he (or she) particularly wants to. The result is that everything that he has to do to get the campaign ready will feel like work to a greater or lesser extent, and he only has his sense of responsibility to carry him through it.

Unless he can discover the fun to be had, his effort and enthusiasm will be increasingly compromised as the work progresses. I’ve seen GMs that have burned out without a single die being rolled – arguably, they should never have accepted the task in the first place.

There are ways of structuring the group dynamic so that there is less pressure on such GMs. A round-robbin arrangement, for example, means that the GM isn’t under as much time pressure to have a game ready to run, because there’s something else to fill the void.

Or you could decide to have a ‘board games day’ until the new campaign is ready to run.

There are numerous alternatives open to you if you need them. These possibilities only scratch the surface.

1. Campaign Concept

The first real milestone comes when the GM has an idea for a campaign. He or she might not have all the details worked out yet, the idea might be vague and undefined, but he now has a direction.

This gives the GM an answer to the question of what will scratch the itch. It begins to shape and restrict the nigh-infinite possibilities to fit the GM’s motivation, rendering it in a concrete proposal.

It also provides the key premises of the campaign, enabling further development to begin. Without it, a campaign might as well be constructed using random tables because it will have the same degree of unity and depth as one generated in that fashion.

2. Campaign Overview

You can’t really have an overview until you have a campaign concept, because this is a general statement of the direction the campaign is going to go, some notion of the overall storyline that will define the start and end-points of the campaign.

The creation of a campaign overview tends to bring into sharper focus any vagueness about the campaign concept.

This is as much about how adventures will be structured in relation to the broader campaign as it is about anything else. For example, you might decide that the adventures will be mostly standalone (episodic continuity) but that each will start with a briefing which relates the adventure to a broader picture, giving it context and continuity within that broader setting.

Or game sessions might be fully self-contained, to the point where NPCs will forget all interactions with the PCs from one adventure to the next. Or whatever.

3. Campaign Setting

This might be developed before the Campaign Overview; or in parallel with it. The Campaign Setting contains everything the GM needs to know about the environment and society against which the campaign will be set. While it may be specific, it should not contain specifics – but it probably does.

The Campaign Setting confines and narrows the adventures that will be possible. If an adventure is to take place despite this restriction, additional adventures may be needed to kick the campaign into an appropriate shape.

4. Campaign Background

The campaign background is impossible to write completely until the Campaign Setting and Campaign Overview are done, because it will tell prospective players what the need to know in order to generate PCs. It doesn’t include game or character mechanics; it’s conceptual in nature.

5. Campaign Briefing

The Campaign Briefing contains any game mechanics necessary to implement the Campaign Overview within the Campaign Setting that the players need to know before generating PCs.

Once all this has been done, you have a campaign – it’s just not ready to play yet.

Campaign Prep

The Campaign Creation phase starts vague and nebulous and gradually becomes specific in relation to what PCs know or need to know. The Campaign Prep phase starts getting specific on the GM side of the fence.

Once again, there are six milestones that fall within this phase of campaign creation.

6. Key NPCs

You don’t need specifics like character classes and levels and key possessions at this point, but you do need a sense of who they are, their personalities, and how they fit into the scheme of things. The first hints of these details will be found in the Campaign Setting and Background, and it’s not uncommon for this milestone to come into view (i.e. for work to start) before those milestones are complete. However, this milestone can’t actually be reached (i.e, key NPCs created) until those milestones are achieved. This milestone is achieved when you have a sense of who the “players” in the campaign social and political landscape are going to be.

Although it’s not strictly required at this point, I make an effort to name the key players just so that I have a reference point to distinguish one from another. Those are always subject to change (or, more frequently, to translation); I might name a character Sage Revenant in these rough notes and later decide that he’s an Elf and so rename him according to the naming conventions assigned to the Elvish race. “La Serge, Depateur Shade” sounds credible, doesn’t it?

I’m particularly in favor of names that add to the personality color of the character, that can create expectations just from the way they sound. Unless I want the character to be a colorless cut-out, of course – but it’s exceptionally rare to need someone meeting that description at this point in the process.

7. Campaign Planning

The final thing that you need to do is a rough breakdown of the Campaign Overview. These are akin to “director’s notes” for the forthcoming “season” of a TV show – For example, “Things start warm and friendly (but adventurous) and slowly become darker and grimmer. Rumors start circulating of conspiracies in high places, perhaps even Treason. Characters start having enemies appear who know more than they should. Important people start to drop out of sight or disappear, replaced by “temporary appointees” or “acting” officials. All this comes into sharp focus when one of the PCs is made such an appointee and learns that the situation is even worse than is publicly appreciated. Other PCs have to protect the ‘appointed’ one, stop a couple of attacks on him, and get a clue to the identity of the mysterious puppeteer behind events, which they pursue until it leads to the final confrontation.”

Six adventures would make this feel a little rushed, ten would feel about right, more than twelve and events might develop too slowly for the players to really notice.

With this done, you will have a sense of what each adventure will be like, and how many of them there will be within the campaign.

8. Campaign Prep Complete

At some point, all seven of the preceding milestones will have been ticked off, and that brings the GM to an all-important eighth milestone: he feels ready to actually start the playing cycle of generating adventures and running them. Everything prior to this has been one-off, it only has to be done once for a campaign; those things that have to be done repeatedly, for every game session, still lie ahead of him.

The word “complete” is a little misleading, in the title – campaign prep is never complete, it’s just “complete enough” to be fit for purpose. Most GMs are adding to campaign canon – background, important NPCs, splashes of color here and there – right up to the last game session of the last adventure (some times more than others, to be fair). It’s also likely that all the other documentation has continued to evolve, gaining detail and nuance and clarity, as campaign prep has been underway. It’s time to lock most of that documentation down, and a confidence in doing so is another important trigger for the achievement of this milestone.

Of course, there’s one ingredient that may be missing: warm bodies. Time to rectify that (if the GM hasn’t done so already).

9. Invitations To Game

“I’ve got a new campaign, I think you’d have fun playing in it, would you like to join?”
— I’ll think about it–
“Great, I’ll shoot you off a copy of the player briefing materials and campaign background. Get back to me if there are any problems.”
— Yeah, whatever, dude.–

This is an important milestone, achieved when everyone that you want to invite has been invited.

Circumstances are going to be different for every gaming group – it could be as simple as an announcement to an already existing group, “next week we’ll be starting my new campaign, here’s what you need to know” – or it could be as complicated as synchronizing schedules with someone living and working in a different state or city. There will almost always be one player who (unexpectedly) joins the campaign or (unexpectedly) begs off.

I have known GMs who took six months to go from a campaign being “ready to play” to having enough self-confidence to actually offer it up for play. In fact, I know one person who has generated multiple campaigns but never had the confidence to take them public.

This is an important milestone because it represents the GM putting his work on public display.

10. The First Acceptance

This milestone may take place seconds, minutes, days, or even weeks later. I came up with the first draft of Fumanor five years before this milestone was reached – the first group of players to which it was offered were not interested, either because of the game system, or because they were in several of my other campaigns already, or didn’t like the sound of it, or the moon was the wrong variety of cheese, or whatever. That was fine, I created and ran a TORG campaign instead – with several of the players who had turned Fumanor down. Years later, a new crop of players has joined the group, and there’s a vacant slot in the timetable, so I offered Fumanor up again – enough of them accepted that it was off and running.

The first acceptance is usually a lot more eager than the rather lackluster response offered in the exchange described earlier, which was indifferent at best. Any GM having that conversation would consider that player, at best, a fifty-fifty chance of signing up. The more eager a player is, the more likely it is that the campaign will actually take place, so it’s a vindication of the work that the GM has put into creating it. What’s more, enthusiasm tends to be contagious – one eager player is likely to actively recruit more (even people that you’ve never met before).

11. Ready To Go

Most GMs will have a threshold in mind, a minimum number of sign-ups needed before the campaign will be officially “go”. Some campaigns that I run were designed for one player, some for two (specific individuals in all cases), some for a minimum of three (but that have been run with two in the past for long periods), and some for more. Fumanor needed at least 4 initially, and two giving an ongoing commitment.

Sometimes, there will be too much interest; most GMs will have some idea of the maximum number of players that they can accommodate simultaneously as a GM. My limit is 6, and I prefer a ceiling of 5. My superhero campaign has four players at the moment, and it’s a comfortable number. Adventurer’s Club Pulp currently has 5, but has had seven or eight at times in the past – that was manageable with two GMs to share the workload, but there wasn’t really enough spotlight to go around that many players. If we were able to play more frequently, it might have been doable. But one regular dropped out to study at university, one dropped out because an opportunity came up to play something that he was more interested in, I switched from player to co-GM, and that brought us down to five.

If oversubscribed, you may need to run a ‘reserves’ list or a ‘waiting list’. At it’s height, my superhero campaign had nine players and a waiting list with 21 names on it. Too many players, really, but things were heading for an epic plotline so I felt justified in permitting an epic number of players. If you can tolerate such numbers, over time, one of two things happens: the numbers scale themselves back to something more manageable, or you learn how to cope well refereeing a zoo.

You can’t say know to someone who wants to spend a couple of hours traveling just to be in your game.

As soon as the number of players reaches the critical threshold, but doesn’t exceed the maximum, this milestone is achieved, and the campaign takes on a life of its own.

Campaign Reality

Generate adventure and trappings, play adventure, rinse, repeat. Again, and again, and again. That’s what the GM has signed up for when his campaign becomes “real”.

That’s not to say that there aren’t significant milestones along the way – there are. In fact, I’ve listed five milestones that range from near-certainty to absolute inevitability. The actual sequence in which they are experienced is extremely variable.

This is also the period when the GM has to get used to the requirements of GMing this particular campaign. Every campaign is a little different in terms of the prep-time required – some greater, some less, some with more ongoing effort shoehorned into the campaign prep and some with more ongoing needs. The GM may need to evolve his methods of performing game prep, or rearrange his schedule. There’s an ongoing evolution-and-response in techniques and attitudes that is occurring throughout this period. Sometimes, I recommend that GMs allow an extra 20% prep time in this phase simply because less of it will be second-nature to him or her and the methodology will not yet be really efficient.

12. The First Adventure Begins

There’s no doubt that this is a significant milestone in any campaign. It’s almost inevitable that at the end of it, the GM will feel that his prep was inadequate, or focused on the wrong things. It’s a near-certainty that at some point, the GM will have had to scramble to cover something that he hadn’t realized he needed to prep for, usually a PC doing something he didn’t expect, but perhaps should have. The better the GM knows the players and their default style, the less likely this is to occur – down to about a 50-50 chance of it not happening with respect to any particular player, at best.

This is also the GMs first experience at GMing these particular PCs and there are a multitude of lessons to be learned from that experience, too. Hopefully, he has managed things well enough to have a variety of characters (though I did once dream up a campaign for 4-5 players, all operating rogues – but with different sub-classes – so they were all the same but different). As he grows to know them better, the GM has to become adept at giving each character his moment in the spotlight, and start generating adventures that derive purely from character backstories – in the process, integrating the players’ creations into the game world and causing the campaign to evolve in consequence.

And finally, this is the players’ first attempt at becoming a cohesive unit. It’s exceptionally rare for this to ‘click’ on a first attempt – I’ve seen it take up to a year of monthly play. Usually, three or four game sessions starts to create a ‘party dynamic’ and the group begins to meld together to become more than the sum of its parts.

So this milestone signals a slight shift in the focus of the GM; from this point onwards, he’s not dealing with some abstract fancy, he’s dealing with the real and practical problems of an ongoing campaign. A shift in mindset is not only required, it’s essential.

This always reminds me of why Australian engineers were always popular hires for motor-racing teams through the sixties and seventies, and into the eighties. If they didn’t have something, they made it; if they couldn’t make it, they bodged something together to replace it (that often worked better than the original part) – at least, that was their reputation. This was a modern-day reflection of the legendary “bush mechanics” of days past; when the nearest spare parts are 300 miles or more away (and the internet hasn’t been invented yet), you either make it yourself or learn to do without. It might take fifty or a hundred tries (but it usually won’t) before you get it right, but you can usually come up with something “good enough” far more quickly. The more thoroughly you understand the operating principles and basic engineering, the shorter the path between need and solution. It was that ‘can-do’ attitude, combined with sufficient competence to get the job done, that the motorsport teams were enamored of.

And it’s that attitude and approach that the GM now needs to bring to the table; he can no longer afford to take weeks to fiddle with details until he has everything ‘just so’, he needs to get into the mindset of determining what is going to be ‘good enough’ and then moving on to the next problem. If he has spare time at the end, he can go back and refine his ‘good enough’ solutions to make them ‘even better’. It’s this basic process that I outlined in Game Prep and the +N to Game Longevity and further defined in To Every Creator, An Optimum Budget?

In a nutshell: The relative value of game prep is the time required to generate it to a suitable standard multiplied by the likelihood that it will be used. These relative values let you subdivide your prep time for optimum results. You don’t actually have to calculate the values, you can do it all in your head using instinct and experience. The reality is not quite so simple, of course, for various reasons – prep isn’t all or nothing, and some prep has residual value (a gift to the campaign that keeps on giving), both of which complicate this nice, simple, prioritization, but the general principle applies. The rule of thumb is that you prioritize the different parts of getting your game prep to a bare minimum standard. When everything is at that level, you can devote any remaining prep time to improving specific parts of your prep to a higher standard, based on the amount of reward you will get for the effort. This will differ from one GM to the next, because everyone has their strong points and weak points, and expending more prep on areas in which you are weak gives a better return on ‘invested time’ than spending prep time on something that you do well without a lot of prep.

So the GM’s priorities and thinking have to change when this milestone is achieved. In fact, they will change, whether the GM likes it or not.

13. Thinking In Character

The second milestone in this phase of the campaign life-cycle occurs when a player starts thinking in character for the first time, that is to say, becomes so comfortable stepping into their character’s shoes that they do so naturally and without effort.

Suddenly, there is a new filter over their perceptions of characters, and events, and dangers, and rewards, and relationships. The character has ‘gelled’ into a specific individual within their mind.

That creates a new imperative for the GM: his planning has been built around (at best) an approximation of what the character would be like, and needs to be updated to match the new reality. What’s more, the character becomes more predictable in broad terms, provided that the GM can penetrate the player’s mind and understand the character. That takes a lot of doing, and sometimes is never complete, but every approximation brings the GM closer to writing for the character, and not to a generalized abstraction of the character.

The better the GM understands this manifested personality, the better his adventures will be, and the better his NPCs interactions with the PC will be, and the better he will be able to run the character if the player can’t make it for some reason – so there are a whole host of benefits to achieving that understanding.

If the GM is doing his job right, this will represent a shift in his thinking and a subtle shift in his priorities – he no longer needs to devote as much time to understanding that character.

14. The First Surprise

Inevitably, at some point, the GM will be surprised by a character development or desire. This milestone tells the GM that the campaign has now taken on a life of its own, and is growing in unexpected directions. From this point on, the GM can take less for granted; characters may no longer operate in the most logical way, but will respond with a rationale deriving from their personalities and perceptions of events.

It’s questionable whether or not this milestone will occur before or after the 13th mile-marker described above; a surprise can occur because the player is still groping with an integrated personality for the PC or sense of their capabilities and ‘go to’ preferences, or it can happen because the player has achieved that personality integration and the GM is still trying to get a handle on it.

From this point onward, the GM has to at least consider unlikely choices on the part of the characters, causing some prep to be both necessary and wasted. That means that the GM has less luxury for detailed prep and needs to more closely plan his prep activities.

15. Character Unity

This milestone represents the characters working as a unit for the first time, making plans based around each other’s capabilities and personalities. Some players never reach this point; others seem reluctant to step into such a leadership role, perhaps fearing that they will steal too much of the spotlight from the other PCs, or that the GM will react to such a possibility by diminishing the amount of spotlight that they are actually getting. Others wear it uncomfortably, but are successful at it; and a few excel at it.

The team leader in the Zenith-3 campaign, Blair, is one of those for whom this doesn’t come naturally (in his own words, his character didn’t un-volunteer quickly enough and had leadership thrust upon her). As part of the current plotline, she has relinquished command in favor of another PC, whose player is more of a natural in the leadership role, but who has been more reluctant to take on that responsibility, creating an interesting dynamic within the PCs relationships.

At the same time, the role of field commander (who makes the strategic and not the policy decisions) has also been transferred from a PC (whose player wasn’t great at it, but who tried hard) to an NPC, creating a fresh challenge for me as GM: I have to be careful to separate GM knowledge from character knowledge, and avoid making the character’s decisions right all the time – but, at the same time, have to maintain his hard-earned reputation for insights and out-of-the-box synergistic thinking. I don’t want the PCs doing things the way this character suggests because the GM is suggesting them through this NPCs voice; I want them doing things that way because the NPC is right more often than he’s wrong, and has a tactical instinct and training.

At the same time, the two structures exist in parallel – any decisions that have a potential impact beyond a specific scope have to be referred back to the main commander, so she doesn’t get to take a complete holiday from the responsibilities of command. The practical upshot is that the really difficult policy problems land back at the original leader’s feet.

In general terms, this milestone represents a significant increase in the capability levels of the PCs. It’s a signal to the GM that he needs to step up to the plate with more substantial and interesting challenges, because the old ones will become too easy. At the same time, there needs to be a few of ‘the old standard’ just so that the players get a sense of how far their characters have come.

This milestone is a key indicator that the campaign is graduating from its beginning period into maturity.

16. The First Spotlight

But there’s one more milestone to go before that transition is complete: an adventure that derives completely from the intersection between PC persona as expressed in play and the campaign background. In other words, a spotlight session that derives from the way a character is actually being played, and not from their abilities or backstory. This can only precede milestone 14 through blind luck, because there is no focal characterization prior to that milestone; but it can easily slot in between milestone 14 and milestone 15.

This is an important step in the campaign’s life cycle because it signals to the players that the GM is modifying the campaign in response to player input – their characters are making a difference, in other words. Ideally, this adventure will be prepared and produced to the same standard as the usual, and, in fact- aside from the meta-game perspective of the players – should be indistinguishable from one of the GM’s own adventures.

This milestone acknowledges that the players are (at the very least) shareholders in the campaign (perhaps with a smaller share than the GM, depending on the campaign specifics) and may even be full co-owners. This is a significant relinquishing of total control by the GM, however tenuous his loosening of the reigns might appear, representing (and requiring) yet another evolutionary step in the way that he thinks about the campaign.

When both this milestone and the 15th milestone are achieved, the campaign can be considered a mature one, in which the GM furnishes winds and waves but the players steer the ship.

The Mature Campaign

In the mature campaign, a number of changes take place. More than any other stage of the campaign life-cycle, these can occur in any sequence. Some may even predate the achievement of ‘mature’ status, that’s how variable they are in timing and sequence. Some may never occur in a given campaign – but the longer the campaign lasts, the more inevitable they become.

A critical change that occurs at some point in this campaign phase is that it transitions from an unstable, semi-chaotic state to a predictable, regular, stable event. That, of course, is recognized by one of the milestones below, because it marks a dividing line in the campaign in many respects.

17. The First Revision

To a very large extent, up to the point of this milestone, the GM has been able to operate using his initial campaign-prep documentation, adding to it as necessary. This milestone occurs when, for the first time, he or she has to deliberately revise something that was previously canon.

This is fraught with danger and difficulty, because the players will have used “what was” as a driver of their decision-making. If the GM can orchestrate the change such that there is no retrospective change in PC knowledge, delivering a campaign-significant plot twist and accompanying revelation to the PCs about the nature of some element of the game world, there’s usually no problem, provided that the campaign history can be made compatible with the new reality; the presumption is that it was always this way, the inhabitants of the game world (including the PCs) simply didn’t know it before.

My Shards Of Divinity campaign took place before the separation of Elves into Drow and Non-Drow. This altered the racial profile of Elves significantly. Their first dungeon turned out to be a prison in which the nigh-immortal Prince who had been seduced by Lolth was held captive and powerless. Before his incarceration in magical suspension, he had been creating hidden camps of his adherents in various places – think terrorist training camps, some underground in the literal sense, most underground in the sense of them being secret. One of his followers, an Aquatic Elf, was infatuated with the Prince, to whom she had been betrothed; she had grown jealous (and suspicious) of Lolth and had betrayed the Princes’ dalliance to the Elvish King, who had directed his mages to create the prison and force his rebellious son into it. What he did not realize was that there were Drow Adherents amongst those mages, who modified the spell cast on the Prince so that all Drow Loyalists would also be cast into stasis by the Great Spell – to abide, hidden in their lairs, until their Prince reawakened. The PCs learned all of this only after accidentally re-awakening said Prince. Even the word, “Drow” meant ‘Secret’ in the Elvish Language, or possibly “Subversive”, or “Stealthy”. The word had been banned after the Great Schism.

This forced the PCs to re-evaluate everything they knew about Elves and about the Drow revolution. They now saw a continuity of personalities with the most fanatical at one extreme and the most liberal at the other; the spell had affected everyone past a specific cut-off mark but that had been generations ago, more than enough time for a few dissident voices to grow into a new Drow undercurrent, who had stealthily manipulated events to send the PCs on the particular quest by putting information about the location into their hands so as to awaken their lost leader. It meant that there was a little Elvishness in the Drow, and a little Drowishness in the Elves (plus some more rabid extremists). It gave the players a sense that they were at Ground Zero of great events that (as players) they were well aware of – but that the true story was a lot dirtier and grittier than the sanitized versions that would be written into the future history books (or their narrative equivalents).

Here’s the thing: from the very beginning, I had the notion that there was something imprisoned in the Pyramid (which was the shape of the dungeon – it was an ‘above-ground’ dungeon), and that this discovery would lead to significant consequences within the game world. I had some notion of what had happened to the Drow – they were a subversive sub-culture within the Elvish population – but everything else above was devised after the PCs, bummed about the lack of loot in the dungeon (who hides goodies in a purpose-built prison?) decided to wake the sleeping elf on the throne by breaking the enchantment that held him in unending Stasis. Part of it was off-the-cuff (enough to create a cliff-hanger ending to the game session), and the rest was created between game sessions.

This was a very early example of The First Revision, but because it was completely compatible with the background that they had been given, it was accepted by the players with only a brief blinking of their eyes as the revelations mounted and were assimilated.

More difficulties can arise when you can’t wrap the new information in a shroud of ignorance that justifies the background information given to the players. There is too great a disparity in potential impacts and specifics to offer much guidance on how to handle it – but the GM should be aware that he is jerking part of the ground out beneath the players feet, and behave accordingly. Hopefully, he has marshaled convincing justifications for making the change, and offers some sort of sweetener for anyone with a legitimate grievance over the changes.

Most problematic of all is when the change means that a central pillar of the campaign’s game-play vanishes, when some part of the adventures to date no longer makes sense. There are two possible solutions to this: (1) rewrite the past to accommodate the changes and communicate those changes to the players; (2) introduce a plotline that leads to the change being effective from now on, rewriting the campaign reality and making the PCs instrumental in the process. If you can trust the players not to mess it up, not go off on some tangent or get “creative”, (2) is the better solution in many cases. I save (1) for only the most extreme situations where (2) is not a viable option for some reason. And if the problem isn’t significant enough to warrant such a solution? Then neither is the change – live with the existing material or the contradiction, or devise some reason why it’s a lot more important than it initially appears.

18. The First Departure

Inevitably, you will have a player decide to drop out. Sometimes this happens in dramatic circumstances; in other cases, the player might be courteous enough to give you enough notice that you can work their departure into the plotline. If the character is too central to future planned events, you may need to consider making them an NPC or seeking the current players’ permission to give the character to a new player – then start working through your waiting list. If you can incorporate some capacity for the new owner to revise the character and make it his own, without impacting on the character’s past, so much the better.

In some cases, the death of the character will be the impetus for the departure. I’ve had players tell me, in the past, that while they had enjoyed playing their deceased character, they weren’t wrapped in the campaign setting and didn’t think any replacements could be as much fun, so they were bowing out. I’ve also had one PC who deliberately sought out a Heroic Death in furtherance of a Cause that the character believed in – the player saw an opportunity, and went for it. Sir Licheam earned his place amongst the heroes of his homeland the hard but Noble way!

How the GM copes when someone he thought was a bedrock part of the campaign chooses to depart is a critical test of his abilities – fail the test in the worst possible way, and you can not only lose the player, you can lose the friendship. Every alternative outcome is an improvement on this dire situation. The best solutions retain the friendship, permit the player to depart with his dignity intact, leave no hard feelings, and preserve the integrity of the campaign as an ongoing game. I’m pleased to say that I’ve gotten it right more often than I’ve gotten it wrong – to the point where a departing player has returned shortly afterwards with a new character (it’s not fair to take the revised character off the new owner unless both are willing).

Equally significant should be the change in attitude/approach that the GM has towards his game; something that he thought was settled has just gone “poof” and vanished in a cloud of smoke. The lingering question of whether or not something more could have been done to salvage the situation should provoke a little soul-searching and a review of what the GM is doing and how he is doing it – just because only one player has decided to call it quits, that doesn’t mean that others aren’t discontented to a lesser degree. In fact, ideally, you will notice warning signs and make changes before things develop to that extent – a subject that I intend to explore in next week’s article.

19. The First Buy-In

From the lowest of the lows to the highest of the highs – a player shows up and asks to join the campaign. I’ve had this happen a number of times – it hasn’t always ended well. I wrote about just such an occasion in one of my early articles here at Campaign Mastery — Moral Qualms on the Richter Scale — but it wasn’t the only one. One of my most painful experiences behind the GM screen was when I had to tell a handicapped player that the other players were insisting that he depart the campaign because he was ruining their fun to the point where ultimatums were issued. I still think that I could have handled that better – if I had unlimited time at my disposal, I might have been able to offer him a solo campaign, for example; my circumstances at the time didn’t allow for it – and I will always regret the way it worked out; I hope that he found a group to play in where his problems could have been accommodated. He worked harder at his gaming than anyone I’ve met before or since, and in the right group, he would have been an asset.

But sometimes, the stars align and the new player becomes a mainstay of the campaign. I’ve had that happen on several occasions, too.

A word of caution, too – following one of the departures described in the previous section, it came to light that two of the players who had bought-into the campaign had done so with the deliberate intent of sabotaging it because they were tired of not having enough good players for the campaigns they wanted to run. I had the best players and the game to be in, at the time, so that campaign became their target. It almost worked – in the end, only he and his collaborator departed, having ruined the adventure for everyone. I was eventually persuaded not to let them “win” and to write up the adventure as a work of fiction, a process that took many weeks; i actually presented that write-up here at Campaign Mastery — If I Should Die Before I Wake: A Zenith-3 Synopsis — and it’s worth noting that the player in question has admitted to being mentally ill at the time, and making questionable decisions. He has been forgiven (as has his collaborator), but both remain unwelcome in my games – not that this is a bother to either of them.

There are genuine player buy-ins, but as with any other human activity, people can be complicated and sometimes, the motive can be an ulterior one. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can reform human nature because your campaign is so compelling; it’s not going to happen. Appreciate the upvote when someone wants to join, and get on with doing the things that brought them hither.

20. The Stable Campaign

This is a very subtle milestone, often only recognized in retrospect. When it is applied to TV shows, the show is described as “appointment TV” – viewers have gotten into the habit of switching over to that show on that day at that time, it’s just what they do. To a large extent, appointment TV is far more resilient than other shows; it’s slower to grow its audience (if they were interested, they would already be watching) but they are slower to depart when there’s a dip in quality or other disliked development, for example a star leaving. Most viewers of appointment TV will give the show a season to replace the lost magic, whatever it was, and enough will enjoy the result that they will continue to tune in – so even then it will be slower than most to lose its audience.

Like such programming, an RPG campaign can become a routine habit, and so long as nothing changes, it will simply keep going for game-session after game-session. Inevitably, something will happen to upset that routine; but it is when you and/or your players first think of the campaign that way, as an old comfortable shoe, that this milestone has been achieved (and was almost certainly achieved a while back with no-one noticing at the time).

Achievement of a stable campaign can have profound influence over a GM’s thinking, and not always to their advantage. Some become so wary of upsetting the apple cart that they become more conservative, and the campaign more boring; such campaigns are ripening for a sudden collapse, or for a panicky reinvention by the GM when he perceives such an collapse to be imminent. In such circumstances, GMs (like most people) often go too far and throw the baby out with the bathwater – triggering a campaign collapse for exactly the opposite reason. Other GMs worry about the campaign becoming boring, and grow more adventurous immediately – this is less risky but brings that risk to the table with every game session. What you want to do is to reinvent the campaign without changing anything, and that’s phenomenally difficult to achieve. I’ll talk more on that subject in next week’s article, too. Ultimately, you have to remember the reasons why your campaign has become stable – players who enjoy what you’re doing enough to turn up, game session after game session. Avoid growing any more or less adventurous in your game planning, and enjoy the ride. After a while, almost all the game prep will be done already for any given adventure, and you can start reclaiming some of your lost free time – or start putting it into the development of a new campaign!

21. Campaign Evolution

Another subtle milestone. Any campaign that’s been played for a while has evolved, little by little, bit by bit, as all sides input into it. Eventually, something will happen to invite a retrospective look at the campaign – the triggers for this can be many – and you will suddenly realize that it bears very little resemblance, beyond the superficial, to what you expected it to be.

GMs react to this realization in different ways; some start trying to steer things back toward their original course, ignoring the fact that the biggest source of drift is satisfying the players. Others shrug their shoulders and say a metaphoric “Que Sera, Sera”. The best go back to their campaign plans and revisit the question of how those should change, given the newly-appreciated status quo is so different from the expectations upon which that plan was founded.

This milestone, then, should trigger a revision of GM planning, and that in turn can (and probably will, and probably should) lead to changes within the campaign – perhaps even changes great enough to altar the stability of the campaign.

The evolution of the campaign tends to occur through a steady drift; it’s certainly a mature-campaign phenomenon, but is also often a stable-campaign phenomenon.

22. Techno Revolution

Keep at things long enough, and technology will change the way you do things, which in turn will change the nature of the campaign that you’re running (even if it doesn’t impact the content of the campaign). Back when I was starting out, there was no internet, and no chance of being able to buy a computer even if there was such a thing. There was no google, and no Wikipedia. Research was a matter of listing possible relevant subjects, going to the library, and pawing through relevant reference books (and before I turned 5, even that wasn’t an option). When I started my first campaign, PCs were just barely starting to break through into the business world and the Apple-II was the state of the computing art.

My first computer was something called the Aquarius – an all-plastic computer from Mattel. I didn’t have the optional cassette drive, so any program had to be input from scratch. It had a whole 4K of ram, about 3.8 of which was actually usable. I had learned programming on a mainframe (a PDP-11, from memory) in a 1-week summer school at the University of NSW, and honed my capabilities on Apple-II PCs at school in my final year before graduation. But what the Aquarius forced you to learn was brutal efficiency; every instruction took only one byte of the memory, so you could have a program that was about 3800 ‘words’ long – but any text string that was intended to make sense of the results was one-for-one. Amongst other things, I wrote a stock market simulator on that machine and probed fractals and code-making and breaking.

Like a lot of people, Commodore computers were the real start of my computer ownership, as I bought a second-hand unit through the newspaper classifieds. I’d been using a friend’s C-64 for a while, but this was even better – it was a Commodore-128! – and I did some extremely advanced things with it through the years – writing my own printer driver, word processor and relational database, for example – for gaming purposes (a TORG spell creation system). I also wrote a sophisticated automated NPC generator which did everything from stats to skills to personalities – I created 10,000 NPCs in a night with that one, and still use one of them from time to time.

I then traded up to a windows-based laptop that was on loan so that I could create a new font for a friend, part of an ambitious project to map every possible character onto different code pages (others had the same idea, which is now known as Unicode and is almost universal). That’s how I can enter an unlikely character like “œ” and have it display – no offense intended to anyone whose language uses what was a random choice!) Of course, I was free to use this machine for my own purposes as well, and those purposes were gaming – though the lack of a printer held me back somewhat.

From there, I moved up to my own windows-based PC. It was no longer portable, but that was all right because I had a very fast 2000-dpi laser printer. And I had internet – this was when I was involved in the first attempt to bring broadband to the Australian masses. Still no google, though – but research became a whole lot easier. This was the time of the browser wars – Alta-vista vs Internet Explorer. I floated back and forth between the two while I was learning HTML (the language from which basic websites are made, and which I still use in writing posts here at Campaign Mastery).

These days, I’m back on a laptop because my replacement for the replacement for that original computer started suffering from Hard Disk problems that ultimately cost me almost everything on it – I had backups, but the data couldn’t be entirely recovered from them, and for some of the material I had relied on a DOS-based file splitter to spread the archives over multiple CD-ROM disks – one that wouldn’t recombine them properly even though it had worked fine when I tested it. A lot of my old work got lost around that time.

Not all of it, though – I still use the Win-98 calculator (faster to load, more user-friendly in scientific mode), and still nut out complicated table structures using Frontpage Express, and in general, still use about a dozen of the programs gathered in my Win98 days.

The whole point being that with every change in technology, the approach that I had to employ to translate my creativity into playable game changed. If I had to, I could go back to old-old-old-school pen and paper, but it would be slower and the results would not be as good – I’m a lot faster as a typist, even without fully mastering touch-typing. Each time the technology changes, what I can develop and present to the players as a game experience also changes, and the campaigns inevitably morph as a result into something slightly different.

In the course of 2020, I learned the art of creating animated Gifs. Because of the work involved, it’s not something that I can do all the time, but it’s there when I need it.

Last week, a reader contacted me and offered yet another example: he had constructed an RPG soundboard that he wanted to make available to readers. You can find it at tabletopy.com and it looks impressive (hint – scroll down on each page to see more sounds). The menu is repeated at the bottom of each page for your convenience, as well. (If you can’t hear anything, turn your volume levels up). Unlike some soundboards that I’ve seen, this lets you layer and stack sound effects and vary the volume of each individually, and they will persist even when moving to another page of the site. Some of them will undoubtedly be useful beyond fantasy, though that’s the genre for which they are primarily aimed – the crowd sound, for example. This is yet another change in the technology available to me – I’ve experimented a little in this direction in the past, but found the delay between launching a sound, and it actually starting to play, killed the effectiveness. The tabletopy soundboard is MUCH faster – so something that I considered off the table is now suddenly back in my palette of resources.

My campaigns will change a little, as a result. What will the next change be?

Every technological change is therefore a campaign milestone. It doesn’t even have to be your technology that changes – if a technical change alters the way a player uses his character, for example having an image of their character that they can display at will without searching for it, or can search through the rules or their character sheet for exactly what they are looking for, that change will impact the way that player interfaces with the game, and you will have to adapt your campaign to the change.

Campaign Twilight

At some point, the campaign will end. This could occur unexpectedly, even accidentally, or it could be deliberate. The moment the GM decides to begin working toward a conclusion of the campaign (perhaps inspired by one of the articles on staging a big finish here at Campaign Mastery), the campaign enters its twilight. That means that it could be in that stage for a long time before the players become aware that things are headed for a showdown.

23. The End In Sight

This is actually two different milestones, but only one will apply – whichever one comes later.

The first is when a clear pathway to the campaign’s conclusion becomes apparent to the GM. There may have been several game sessions in which he is maneuvering ‘chess pieces’ around the metaphoric game board to make that conclusion both possible and satisfying, in fact that is usually the case. When I was looking to finish up the Zenith-3 campaign on Earth-Halo (so-called because the laws of physics were slightly different and that manifested in a glowing halo around the earth, stunting their astronomy, which had consequent knock-on effects), I had a direct path to ending the campaign but it felt forced and would not have been very satisfactory. So it took a while to maneuver events to the point where a satisfactory epic conclusion became possible. Those plans were then tossed out because the players wanted to take the next phase of the campaign in a different direction to the one I had planned – so I was forced to run a fill-in adventure or two that started new plot threads and put that planned finish off the table while I integrated what they wanted with what I had intended to provide. It took another two years of game play to build back to the point where the Earth-Halo campaign could end, and the Earth-Regency campaign could begin.

The second one is when the players become aware that things are coming to a head, and the campaign as they have known it is likely to come to an end sometime soon. I think the case of the Earth-halo campaign, it was the penultimate adventure when they became aware that things were going over the top. It would have been obvious sooner, but I ran an adventure based on a Star Trek: TNG episode that stuck them in a recurring loop of time in which they (and the planet) were destroyed by a Dalek ship exploding in the wrong place at the wrong time. They started to figure out what was happening, and found ways to bootstrap that information into a future loop, and gradually found their way to the cause of the explosion (something they now did!) which enabled them to change the critical events. The good news was that this averted the loop in time, the bad news was that the Daleks now knew about Earth having a technologically-advanced race (the PCs came from Earth and had a starship, so this wasn’t a difficult deduction for them to make). Having undone the events that created the time loop, they found themselves at its beginning once again, this time with events playing out without the consequences of the cosmic explosion. This was an adventure or two prior to that penultimate adventure, and was a deliberate red herring – I was quite sure that they wouldn’t expect the big finish so quickly after blowing everything up and killing them all, half a dozen times.

24. The Final Adventure

This is the biggest milestone of them all. It starts at the beginning of the final adventure within the campaign, and ends with the final words from the GM – which may or may not be the traditional “The End”. It marks the ultimate change of focus with respect to this campaign on the part of the GM – he stops paying much attention to it at all. Unless, of course, he’s deliberately left behind some plot seeds that can sprout into a sequel campaign (a two-part article, there’s a link at the bottom of part 1 to take you to part 2).

After all, if the campaign was satisfying, the conclusion was thrilling, why wouldn’t you want to keep going? From the moment a campaign becomes Stable, I start scattering plot seeds as I go. Some of these will be the foundation of ad-hoc fill-in adventures in the main campaign, but most will remain fallow until the time is right to turn them into a new campaign. This enables me to reuse a lot of the campaign and adventure prep from the old campaign, saving huge amounts of time and effort. After all, your goal has to be to try and make the sequel even better than the original, right? Even if you don’t succeed, that’s the surest method of actually achieving parity between the two.

But it might be that you want the campaign to end with no sequel. I fully expect the current superhero campaign to be my last – I have absolutely no superhero ideas that have not been incorporated into it, and by the time we’re finished (at the current rate), I’ll be 76 years old, and one of my players will be in his mid-eighties! If I can arrange it, I’d like for the end to come in late September of 2041, even though that means letting that rough schedule slip by a couple of years – because that would be the campaign’s 60th anniversary, and that seems a rather appropriate way to mark the milestone. It could work out that way – I fully expect the final adventure of the campaign to take at least a year to play out, and it could easily be two. But it will end when it ends.

Just Like Starting Over

And, usually, when one campaign ends, it’s time to start thinking about the next one. Actually, it’s a long way past time – that’s why I recommend starting to gather preliminary thoughts and ideas as soon as your current campaign stabilizes.

Take the Zener Gate campaign – this always had a planned ending. At the moment, that ending is 5 adventures or so away – with the average being one-to-two game sessions per adventure. Right now, by choosing to watch instead of acting to ensure that history unfolded the way they want it to, the PCs have let a Chinese assassin kill the general who was instrumental in getting the program that recruited them for time travel up and running, and it is now directly controlled by Eric Trump, and all their history and achievements in the campaign to date – preventing WWIII, preventing war with the Martians who invented Time Travel, and so on – have been knocked into a cocked hat. Instead of them working for the survival and betterment of mankind, temporal agents will be busy doing what they were supposed to do: rewriting history to make it more “Trump-Friendly”. Opposing them will be the Chinese, who are working to make the world more “Chinese success-prone”. So they now have ground-zero seating at the venue of a time war. The way the game physics works is that every second time-jump has to be random – they chose their current location to infiltrate the Pentagon and measure the consequences of their stuff-up, so their next one will be random (i.e. at the GM’s whim) and then they can try and undo the mess that they have created.

If it weren’t for Lockdown stealing three months out of the gaming schedule, they would have completed this attempt to repair time by now – they already have a handle on how to do so – and we would be down to three adventures remaining in the campaign, a projected end date of early in 2022.

Always one to follow my own advice, I started thinking about what to replace it with more than a year ago. The decision was taken to resume the Warcry campaign despite the loss – now many years ago – of one of the key players.

All campaigns end. How they end – and what they consist of prior to that ending – is up to you. The one thing that is certain is that there will be historical milestones to look back upon – some recognized at the time for what they were, and some visible only in hindsight. These are the markers of a successful campaign, one that has seen adversity and overcome it, and made itself memorable to such an extent that it likely to be referenced in player and GM anecdote for years to come.

And that, my friends, seems a wonderfully up-beat and forward-looking note on which to end this, the one thousandth post to feature my by-line in singular isolation. Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride so far!

999!

This is my 999th post at Campaign Mastery! Next week, four figures, a landmark achievement and one that I am quite proud of reaching!

Old Words

Today’s article is all about looking back, which is a natural thing to do when you approach any milestone. And yet, the connection with the currently-imminent landmark is something that only occurred to me in hindsight, not the inspiration behind this article. I’ll get to what the actual inspiration is at the end of this particular road.

Specifically, the is article is all about looking back to the beginnings of a campaign after you’ve been playing for a while.

Why?

Plans carefully laid at the start of a campaign have a habit of becoming increasingly disconnected from the reality as game-play evolves.

Reviewing your playbook not only permits you to update it to incorporate the reality, but lets you selectively reincorporate the little things that you’ve forgotten, in effect infusing the campaign that is with your original intentions, keeping the best and tossing the rest. I’ll get into some of the specific benefits as we deal with each part of the process.

New Directions

Ideas are often lost in the shuffle as the campaign, under the influence of players doing the unexpected, and the GM extemporizing and landing on his feet, finds unexpected and unplanned resolutions through unexpected pathways. No adventure survives contact with players!

The inevitable result is that the campaign drifts away from its roots as time passes. In some ways, that’s a good thing; it is evolving in response to the participation of the players, as though it were a living, breathing, thing – a campaign that remains exactly on track despite ten sessions of play is usually one that’s in trouble.

But it can mean that opportunities and intentions can go missing, and recapturing those is the aim of the process. And, by giving the GM a chance to take stock, it can present new opportunities and new directions in which the campaign can travel.

20/20 hindsight

Hindsight is sometimes said to be 20/20, meaning that we can see more clearly in retrospect that we can at the time. That’s often a case of being able to see not just the trees, but the forest.

It’s also true that we all get better at things through practice, and examining the conceptual underpinnings of a campaign can often exploit that increase in skill at a more fundamental level.

But hindsight reveals nothing if we never look back. And the only way a busy GM can take the time to look back is if they bake it into their schedule.

How Often

How long is a while? I’d peg this as something to do every ten days of real-time play. It isn’t something that has to be done in one quick burst, so spread it out over the next couple of game sessions.

• Campaign Beginning
• Game Sessions 1-9
• Game Session 10, Commence Review
• Game Session 11, Half-done
• Game Session 12, Complete review
• Game Sessions 13-21
• Game Session 22, Commence Review
• Game Session 23, Half-done
• Game Session 24, Complete 2nd review
  ….and so on.

Since game prep is one of the key determining factors in how often you play, this naturally anchors the intensity with which the task needs to be carried out to the time that’s available.

It’s worth appreciating how this schedule relates to real time. If you play once a week, that’s a quarterly review. If you play once a fortnight, that’s a biannual review. If you play once a month, that’s an annual review.

At least in theory. In practice, you’ll probably take twice as long and carry out the reviews half as often – biannually, annually, and biennial, respectively. That’s fine.

But, a word of warning: This proposed schedule breaks the overall review process into two parts of approximately equal size. The first part is static in size (i.e. time and effort required), while the second is proportional to the number of game sessions since your last review. So if you go twice as long between reviews, the first part will be only 1/3 of the total task, and the expectation is that it will probably take three ‘game sessions’ rather than two.

Complicating this scheduling even more is the need to prioritize what you need for your ongoing campaign and adventure development – no matter what, you have to be as ready to play as possible when that bell rings. The longer any process that is external to that requirement, like this one, takes, the more likely it is that something will happen to get in the way – that’s why I said that the time needed for the overall task would double.

The Process

The first part of the process has four stages:

1. Development Notes
2. Campaign Plan
3. Campaign Notes
4. Campaign Background

The second part has – nominally – just one:

5. Adventures / Game Sessions played since the last review began

…but that’s a very broad summary of what’s a very substantial task.

Campaigns Without

Not all campaigns will have all four or even all five elements. Whether or not they should is a decision to be considered some other time; the bottom line is that you can only review what material there is to review. These documents are all beneficial to a campaign, enough so that I would rarely consider running a campaign without any of them – but I have done so in the past, and developed them as an afterthought, usually in far less structured and comprehensive form.

If your campaign doesn’t have one of these, you can either skip reviewing it, or – if you decide that you really should have one – spend the ‘review time’ creating one retroactively, so that at the next review you will have a baseline to measure against.

Campaigns Underway

The longer your campaign has been running, the more beneficial this process can potentially be, because there has been greater scope for things to be forgotten or overlooked and for the campaign to have drifted.

It might be that you need to allocate a much larger time to the review process, or that you need to skim a little more and then focus on those elements that will prove beneficial. Almost certainly, you will need to adapt the process, and will probably find that some specifics have escaped you and are probably gone forever.

If this is your first review and the campaign has been ongoing for some time, take as long as it takes; just be methodolical, and remember that the longer you take, the more there will be to do at your next review.

Let’s say that the first review covers 100 game sessions and takes eleven sessions (one for part 1 and ten sets of game sessions taken 10 at a time). That means that it will be complete around the time of game session 111, and that as soon as you finish, it will be time to start the next review.

But that review only has to cover 11 game sessions – though, being more recent, these will often contain more details. So, let’s say that it takes twice as long as it normally would. That’s one session for the first part and three more for the second (rounding up)- which means that by game session 115, you will be all caught up.

At game session 120, you can then proceed as normal.

The lesson is not to be afraid to adapt this process for your own usage. It might be that you can draw a line in the metaphoric sand and say “Background materials and as far back as this – anything else won’t be relevant”. I don’t recommend such a practice, but if that’s what you need to do to make the process work for you, so be it!

1. Development Notes

Every campaign starts as a loose collection of ideas, often compiled over a period of time, and then winnowed out when the time comes to actually start campaign development in earnest. Every few years, I skim my way through those notes – you never know when you’ll uncover a forgotten idea whose time has come. That habit becomes formalized, more regular, and more frequent under this process.

These ideas can be classified into several categories, and get treated differently as a result.

There are:

• Ideas that have been incorporated into the current campaign – these get ticked if I’m using a hardcopy or color coded if working digitally. Color-coding just means that I change the font color of that piece of text.
• Ideas that are supposedly incorporated into the current campaign but have not been especially prominent in that campaign, or have not been executed to your satisfaction. These get a purple or black dot if manual processing is taking place or get color-coded purple otherwise.
• Ideas that have been explicitly earmarked for use in a different campaign – these get highlighted.
• Ideas that don’t integrate well with the first category of ideas or that were otherwise deemed unsatisfactory or undesirable at the time. These get a red cross manually or color-coded red digitally.
• Ideas that are adrift, neither in nor out. These get a blue dot manually or color coded blue digitally.

At the start of a review, I’ll color code everything plain black with no highlighting so that I’m forced to evaluate each idea afresh. That’s important because these classifications can change from review to review – that’s part of the point of doing all this.

With the ideas that are already supposed to be in your campaign, you are looking at how well they have been executed, and how influential they have been. These are relative measures, so you need a standard – I have two and use both. The first is relative to the other ideas that have been incorporated; the second is relative to the potential of the idea for creating interesting situations and plotlines in the campaign as it actually is. Occasionally, these reviews will spark new ideas, which get jotted down appropriately, but it’s more important just to keep them in mind.

The ideas that have been excluded or that haven’t worked can also be important; you need to be sure that there have been no oversights or conceptual holes in the campaign development. These present a choice – you can either think about new ways of expressing and developing them, or you can think about revising/replacing them.

And then, finally, there are the ideas that are just sitting there, unused. Quite often, these will connect with plot holes and problems that were never anticipated at the time the campaign was devised.

Reviewing the original notes, ultimately, provides context for other parts of the process. Everything else you get out it is a bonus – but there will usually be an unexpected dividend at some point from this review. At the very least, they can help give direction when you need to make ad-hoc decisions in the future.

There are a couple of other things that I look for that are important enough to highlight here:

Directions Lost

Original intentions are revealed in their purest form in the campaign notes. Sometimes, events have headed in entirely different directions.

The seeds of the campaign that IS are buried somewhere in the development notes, whether you realized it or not – by definition, since you managed to get from there to here, wherever your campaign currently is.

Comparing the two and identifying the differences helps isolate what you and your players really want from the campaign – an invaluable contribution to the task of achieving that.

Ultimately, whenever the campaign doesn’t match the original concept, you have to ask “why?” and “is it an improvement?” – and then act on those evaluations as appropriate.

Paths Not Taken

Think about this for a moment. Your development notes contain, let’s say, ten ideas (it’s usually many more, but roll with me on this).

Three of those actually made it all the way to become central pillars of the campaign as you conceived it.

ONE of those survived the campaigns interaction with the PCs; the other two are there in the background, but muted. Instead, other ad-hoc choices have become featured – ideas that probably weren’t even on your list of ten in the first place.

It’s always useful to look through those discarded thoughts looking for elements that can be used to bolster and reinforce and develop the ad-hoc campaign ideas.

Which of your unused ideas do they most closely resemble (if any)? Are there plot seeds that were discarded as irrelevant to the three intended pillars of the campaign that might now become relevant/useful?

2. Campaign Plan

At it’s simplest, a Campaign Plan breaks a larger overall story (the campaign) down into planned plotlines and adventures. Everything else is all about making it more efficient to use in game prep.

Some GMs don’t like to look that far ahead; they might keep vague ideas of how it will all end in the back of their heads, but they will only look two or three or whatever adventures ahead.

There are many, many variations. Some parts of the campaign might be well-mapped, while others are almost completely responsive to player decisions and intentions.

So, what does a review of a campaign plan encompass?

The Unnoticed Left Turns

Where has the campaign diverged from the plan? I’ve mentioned this before, but any campaign that follows the plan too closely is in trouble; a good campaign should be full of deviations, some minor, some major.

The campaign plan structure that I’m using for my Zenith-3 campaign consists of campaign plot arcs that stretch between many different adventures. There are some for each character, some for specific locations, some for the whole group, and some for a specific occasion.

Each of these is broken up into events or plot milestones – specific in-game events. These are then scheduled so that the individual plot threads express themselves at a natural pace, weaving all those plot threads together into a broader tapestry.

When I add all these together, fill in any blanks to ensure that all the PCs have something to be doing, and wrap it all around a central plotline or focal point, I end up with an individual adventure.

I’ve written about this structure in greater detail several times before, in far greater detail, but that’s enough to be going on with.

Whenever there is an unexpected left turn in the campaign, the events that comprise relevant plot arcs may need revision or replacing, because the story that WAS there no longer matches the reality on the ground. The alternative is to insert a new event that restores the original plot direction – not always possible, but always something to consider.

That’s what this aspect of the review is all about – revising the campaign plan to take into account the changes that have taken place in-game. In other words, this takes player input from the game-play and integrates it (and their future plans) into your future plans, ensuring that the campaign plan remains fit for purpose.

Forks In the Road

One of the purposes of the review is to actually Revise the campaign plan.

Elements of the Campaign Plan fall into three fairly familiar-looking categories:

• Those that are still in play, essential to the campaign;
• Those that will be adapted to serve a new purpose
• The irrelevant.

As soon as you campaign diverges from the plan (and they always do), some of your planned plots cease to be relevant – which means that one of two things should happen: either they get adapted because the plot sounds like it will be fun, or they should be strip-mined for ideas and replaced with new plans that reflect the reality of where the campaign has been, and where the players want it to go in the future.

3. Campaign Notes

Campaign notes are the non-historical briefing that gets given to the players so that they can generate characters that will fit into the campaign.

What usually happens is that some of these notes become central to the campaign and its characters, some become relevant but peripheral, and some just get forgotten or abandoned. The latter include ideas that were bad from the get-go (but not recognized as such) and ideas that were not properly developed from the campaign notes.

As usual, the classification mandates different treatment. I start with the forgotten/abandoned material.

It’s important to realize that we’re not just talking about relevance right now, but over the totality of the campaign, as defined by the campaign plan. What hasn’t mattered in the campaign to date might become centrally important at a planned future time, towards which you are building – the puppet-master placing his building blocks exactly where he needs them to be.

At the same time, just because something isn’t relevant right now usually doesn’t mean that it can be ignored; on the contrary, it imposes constraints on what can be done by characters right now, whether the players realize it or not. Players can stumble over these building blocks at any time – the problem comes when they recognize it as potentially being a problem in the future and decide to remove it before that happens. This creates a “fork in the road”, and the campaign has gone in the wrong direction in terms of following the plan. Sometimes, the result can be more attractive scenery along the way but you can still end up in almost the same place; at other times, you need to come up with a way to replace that lost building block with something more subtle, or find a way to make the players think they have achieved this goal when, in reality, they haven’t.

Another way of looking at this stage of the review is looking for additional consequences of the material you have and evaluating whether or not they are desirable – and if they are, how you can best bring them to light. Be wary of changing something that a player is relying on with his character, though – you may need to prepare two different interpretations (one with the consequence and one which removes it) – and then let your player(s) choose between them. You should also never take an ability away without replacing it with something equally effective!

All that being said, if your review opens up a new direction in which the character can grow and develop, it can be an opportunity not to be neglected.

In addition, there are three things that I’m on the lookout for when reviewing Campaign Notes that need to be singled out:

Lost Treasures

Character elements that have been forgotten – decision time: is this actually necessary? Can it be expunged or replaced? Or is it a neglected gold-mine whose time has finally come?

The more of your character notes that actually impacts the campaign and what the characters do within it, the more distinctive and unique you campaign becomes. And if it doesn’t work out the way you want, you can always add a plotline that restores the status quo.

Another approach is to make a temporary change through circumstances that are not intended to last, as a sort of trial run – and incorporate an option for making it permanent. Many years ago, now, one of the PCs was temporarily transformed into a gargoyle, with razor-sharp claws. For a character who had always looked like a knight in shining armor, this was a radical change to say the least – but it was profoundly liberating for the character. While the original intent was to have the transformation undone at the end of that adventure, when the player handed the character over to a new owner, that owner decided that he liked the change, and the difference in expectations that people placed on the character. Publicly, the story was that the old character had left and been replaced with the new one – and a lot of baggage was lifted from the new character’s shoulders, and a whole new set of abilities were opened up. Instead of just being a tough guy, he became a shape-changer with great strength and the capacity to swallow things as though he were a living black hole. Eventually, that player was forced to step aside, and the character became the property of a third player. With a psych profile that explained everything that had happened to the character, a slow process of rehabilitation began; that process is now essentially complete, but the consequences of it are still rumbling through the campaign, and will reverberate for some time to come. A bland character has become rich, complex, and engaging. In essence, each owner has made the character his own.

Either way, lost gold can resurface in the campaign – but it has to make a difference, or it might as well not be there. That’s part of your obligations as GM.

Ice-cream Headaches

Sometimes, material that has been forgotten within the campaign notes creates a plot hole – something that should have happened, but didn’t, or something that shouldn’t have been possible, but happened anyway. Another of the GM’s jobs is to decide what to do about these and how to do it. I’ve devoted a series to the handling of such plot holes of various scales (I still have one more part to complete), the Elephant In The Grey Room series. Soon, I promise!

Terra Incognita

None of us are perfect, and we are all capable of oversights, of taking our eyes off the ball and missing golden opportunities because they were not recognized. As a result, parts of the campaign notes will have become critical to the characters and the campaign while other parts will just be sitting there.

Sometimes those neglected ideas connect with the parts of your future plans that you have just revised. They can enhance or contradict them, or simply offer a navigational path to the adventures, making the previously irrelevant relevant. And sometimes, they can be the source of a whole new batch of ideas with which to season your campaign ‘stew’.

I like to always have adventure ideas on standby in case something takes more development time than expected – something that I can pull out of my back pocket with minimal prep. This is one of the resources that can provide those ideas.

And sometimes, focusing on these neglected areas can open the campaign up to all kinds of new directions.

4. Campaign Background

The campaign background is the history that was (hopefully) expressed in the mechanics of the Campaign Notes. This is never complete, just as no one book can ever give the definitive history of the world – or even of one country or city. There’s always a new perspective or interpretation to consider!

Most GMs, at some point, fall into the trap of thinking their campaign backgrounds are sacrosanct; they build their campaigns around those backgrounds, use them to generate plotlines and adventures, and employ them as the connective tissue that links players to characters, characters to personalities, and characters to campaign.

It can always be an eye-opening journey to re-read your campaign background and note (a) what can be proven to have happened that way; (b) what parts of the background the ongoing campaign can provide substantiating evidence toward; (c) what parts of the background will gain substantiating evidence from future planned events within the campaign; and (d) what’s left. Everything in the latter category was an ‘official interpretation’, an ‘educated best guess’ – and NONE of it should necessarily be assumed to be Canon. In addition, there’s a subcategory within (a) of everything for which the official story seems incomplete, or which has a potential consequence that hasn’t been explored.

The trick is always to make these revelations relevant to the ongoing campaign in some way – briefly, for some time, or from the point of revelation onward..

Revisiting the background with this perspective can open new doors within the campaign.

The Muted Palette

Quite often, many of the background elements that have been emplaced within the campaign become muted and gray as characters are played, gradually hewing toward the central sourcebooks by virtue of the inbuilt game mechanics. No matter how distinct “Elves” may have been in your concepts, they gradually trend towards becoming generic “Elves” in play, with just one or two highlights of distinctiveness remaining, at best. Some of the neglected content has been ignored for good reason, but some of it can be absolute gold.

Future plans that can highlight some of the neglected uniqueness can go a long way toward evading the pastel palette problem.

Forgotten Textures

The place to put any “look-and-feel” guidance is in the campaign background, because that’s a more narrative structure. Once in place there, however, it can be easily forgotten and neglected. Sometimes, this can be accommodated as “we do things differently these days” (implying a ‘lost chapter’ of the background in which the change occurred), occasionally it is so distinctly different from the interpretations actually used in play that you have no choice but to take that approach; and sometimes this forgotten texture is just lying there, waiting for you. “A vortex of arcane energies swarm like streaks through the air and suddenly coalesce into a ball of fire that erupts toward the enemy” is nice narrative texture – but should then be employed whenever a mage casts a spell unless that description is contraindicated by the nature of the spell.

Extract or note these down, then use them henceforth! Your color text will become more consistent and internally believable as a result. Perhaps as important, the way you envisage these events transpiring in the course of play will also change, which will help you in interpreting them into game mechanics in a consistent way. Players like that, because it enables them to make decisions and have more confidence about what the GM will permit their characters to do..

An example from the Zenith-3 campaign – because the different metapowers (Magic, Psionics, and Martial Arts) are designed to be intentionally incompatible, the players assumed that they could not interact. An NPC with a brilliance for adaptive systems integration questioned that assumption and found it to be not necessarily true – and his innovative ways of combining these abilities toward a singular objective has become one of his trademark contributions to the campaign. For example, one of the abilities can be used to transform the environment in which one of the other abilities is operating, enabling consequences to emerge that would otherwise have been too difficult to orchestrate. Using his abilities, for example, he was able to employ a force-field created by a team-mate to act as a portal past an enemy’s otherwise impenetrable force-field, migrating one of the PCs someplace they were otherwise unable to go. Another time, he demonstrated that if a construct is created using one of the the metapowers that remains stable once that metapower is ceased, the other metapowers can operate on it with impunity..These take what would have merely been flavor text and make them integral tactical considerations, vastly expanding the team’s collective repertoire – but broadening the palette of what abilities their enemies can direct at them even more substantially.

5. Old Adventures

Finally, periodic reviews of old adventures can be extremely valuable. So much so that fully half of the review process (under the optimum schedule – and more, if not) consists of such reviews.

It’s rare for adventures to transpire exactly as planned – the players do something unexpected and the GM finds a way to accommodate and respond. This is the principle at the heart of one of Johnn’s best pieces of advice here at Campaign Mastery, Say Yes But Get There Quick.

There are several things to look for in these old adventures.

Unplanned Excursions

You’ve already looked into these, but that was in the context of the bigger picture, the overall campaign. But there are little bits here and there – scenes that never got played out, snatches of dialogue, descriptions and locations that were never needed. Every unplanned excursion within an adventure, even if the GM got things back on track to a satisfactory resolution at the end, yields such material – and some of it can be recycled, if you remember that it’s there.

Past Mistakes & Strokes Of ‘Brilliance’

Everyone’s imperfect and make mistakes. The GM is no different. When we’re skilled or lucky, we can hide these from the players so that they don’t get in the way of their sense of immersion and fun. On other occasions, the mistake is so large that we have to offer a Mea Culpa.

Some of the worst mistakes that can occur are the result of the GM parachuting a “Brilliant idea” into his adventure at the 13th hour, without subjecting it to adequate thought or development. Some of the GM’s greatest successes can come from the same source, to be fair.

By definition, none of these are part of the original adventure as it was planned. They are ALL inadequately documented – so it’s worth taking a few moments to correct that error.

In the process, you will discover plot holes that result. You have two choices: ignore these, or fill them. I’ve done a series on dealing with plot holes of different scales in a practical way, here at Campaign Mastery – but if you don’t look for the holes, you can’t fill them.

So document your ad-hoc changes, check your logic with the full power of hindsight, and then apply the advice in The Elephant In The Grey Room series.

The Devil is in the Details

Often, details will have been changed or constructed ad-hoc as necessary. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been able to take a character from being a minor NPC into one of the central pillars of the campaign – and its always twice as hard if the details are forgotten. So it’s worth taking the time to document any new or changed NPCs and look over their potential.

The same thing goes for locations, which will often recur within the campaign.

Finally, there are details that may have been overlooked.
♦ The PCs leaving an NPC tied up, who never reappears in the adventure,
♦ a PC giving an NPC their phone number;
♦ a PC causing trouble for an NPC by trying to pay with a 1000gp gemstone and expecting the NPC to be able to make change.

These little details can all become central parts of a new or future planned adventure idea.

♦ The PCs may have assumed that the NPC was taken into custody – an assumption you can stab them in the back with by having him escape and begin plotting a suitable revenge for his humiliation.
♦ The player may have forgotten flirting with the NPC waitress – it was just a bit of character color at the time – but it may have been a big deal to the NPC. What if they called but got rebuffed? What if they call and begin a new romantic entanglement with the PC?
♦ What did the NPC have to do to get that change? Taking that much liquidity of a business can be toxic to its future. Or perhaps there’s something special about the gem that no-one recognized at the time – but that now becomes centrally important to a plotline.

You can’t always hang a plot on these little details, but many of them have the potential for doing so – and players love it when campaigns become self=referential in this way, because it makes them feel like their characters are part of the campaign, driving its development with their choices.

Players very “generously” provide plot kindling to the GM quite regularly – but if the GM doesn’t take note of the details, they will become forgotten. Re-reading the past adventure serves as a reminder of the relevant details.

Loose Ends and Unexpected Consequences

The final thing to note are loose ends – often things that seemed complete at the time. Unexpected Consequences that logically should have occurred but that haven’t, yet, are an obvious source of new game material (often, you will need some way to justify the delay).

I was actually reflecting on the current epic adventure in my superhero campaign – which started a long time ago, now (back in 2019!) – and the many plot threads and elements that have been woven into it, the close to 100 significant or potentially significant NPCs that have been introduced and could pop up again at any time that seems interesting – when I thought of writing this article. So this is a case of my telling you about something I do as part of my Campaign Management that I haven’t discussed previously.

Plundering The Past

Your past creative efforts contain a wealth of material for you to build on. No campaign fully exploits everything that it has to offer – but having the rest on tap can take a campaign to the next level in this respect. So Plunder the past, not only for lessons in how to improve as a GM, but for inspiration and new ideas and forgotten treasures.

 

This is my 998th post at CM! Two more to the 4-figure milestone!

 

In my superhero campaign, the PCs are currently shopping for a building to convert into a base of operations for a second set of superhero/civilian Identities that UNTIL has prompted them to create so that they can deal with problems that they (and the UN) can’t officially be seen to be interfering in, but that are too serious for them not to deal with – spy- and political games within games, always lots of “fun”!

To some extent, I’m using this search as a plot vehicle, a way to add to the richness of the game world; to some extent, I’m using it to highlight existing riches that have largely gone unnoticed until now. And, of course, having a campaign-within-a-campaign provides endless opportunities for the campaigns to step on each other’s toes in-game, providing fresh challenges for the players and their characters.

It’s also posing new problems for me to solve as a GM. If you’re going to sell the PCs a building (and the land that it sits on), you need to have some idea of how much such things will cost, for example.

I’m currently a LONG way ahead of the game-play front in terms of plotting, so I spent most of the weekend just passed in creating a system to solve that very question.

Today’s article will examine the methodology and results before offering them as a 15-page free PDF download for other GMs to use.

I want to demonstrate how the work was done so that other GMs can not only extend or expand the system as necessary, but can satisfy similar needs in their own campaigns, regardless of genre.

Before we’re done, I’ll demonstrate how I intend to use the system in my campaign, and how it can be adapted to suit other campaigns.

I think I’ve caught and corrected any errors, but this will also equip you to make any corrections that may be necessary. Nor have I been entirely 100% consistent in some areas, because I was problem-solving as I went. I can live with that, but if you want to make the corrections, this will equip you to do so.

In addition to offering the results as a PDF, I am providing them in two spreadsheet formats to facilitate such corrections.

Today has been a public holiday here in Sydney, so I’m starting this late and intend to publish it a day later than usual.

That takes all the time pressure off, so that I don’t have to rush any aspect of the planned article.

Contents:

1. Production: Research
2. Production: Process
3. Production: Conversions
4. Production: Execution

   The first half of the article is all about how the PDF’s content was created, and will culminate in links that will enable you to download the results.

5. Usage
6. Example
7. Extension
8. Adaption

   The second half will deal with usage of the system, extending it as may be desired, and adapting it to other circumstances, even if the latter can only provide guidelines.

Production: Research

I’ve been curious about, and interested in, the pricing of real estate for a long time. I’ve raised the subject in conversation with a number of real estate agents as social contact permitted.

I had always assumed that there was some magic formula that could be adapted to RPG purposes. Base price, plus so much if on a corner, plus so much for each additional bedroom or square foot, plus so much for amenities, plus a factor for close to transport / shopping, plus so much for additional garage space, and so on.

The reality is very different. The actual practice boils down to looking at how much similar homes sold for in the area in the past, adding a fudge factor for how out of date those prices were, and adding another fudge factor for how much more desirable the agent thought they could make the home sound to a seller. And, if they managed to sell it for the asking price, all that happened was that a new baseline was added. Setting the price was a combination of marketing nous and instinct as much as it was a pseudo-scientific practice of increasing prices until the market squealed ‘enough!’

That won’t translate very well to an RPG system. But it gave me a huge amount of freedom when it came to developing such a system.

I started with a web search, which told me that for Australian homes valued at between AU$500K and AU$1m (most urban real estate in the cities), additional bedrooms that increased the total floor space added 50K to 80K each in 2020. I also learned that additional bedrooms pre-pandemic could add as much as 95K (2017 AUD) but that being under-bathroomed could cost as much as 205K (2017 AUD) on the final value – and that this loss would increase with additional bedrooms, by increasing the paucity of bathrooms.

I also learned that in pricey suburbs, the value of an extra bedroom could be as much as +160K to +500K (2017 AUD) but that this rate would decline with each additional bedroom unless the total land available also increased disproportionately. For a given block of land, there was an optimum dwelling size which naturally subdivided into an optimum bedroom-and-bathroom count after common areas were subtracted from the floor plans.

I was momentarily tempted to think of this in terms of a negative acceleration of price which aggregated (integrated) into a specific value for additional bedrooms, which then aggregated into a combined additional value for the building – but this was already way more complicated than I wanted to get.

Finally, I already knew that the 1986 US price of a three-bedroom home in the US was $80,300.

Confused? It’s quite a melange of facts and figures, from different dates and places, but it gave me the foundations that I needed.

Production: Process

Before I could translate that morass into a set of values, I needed to decide on the basic process that the system would utilize. How was I going to abstract the process of Valuing a specific property?

NB: As I started writing this section I became aware of a potential source of confusion: multiple meanings of the term “value”. So, here’s the general rule: When the word is Capitalized, it refers to the final Value of a dwelling. When it is not, it refers to the impact of a variable within the process of determining that Value.

I started by breaking general impressions of the building and its location into identifiable values which were to be multiplied together.

Both factors would then be multiplied by another factor that would rate whether or not the home came with more land or less than would normally be expected.

This approach generalized a huge number of variables into a single impact on the value, and meant that I could approach the overall problem from the point of view of valuing a ‘generic standard home’.

Because it was what I had statistics for, I chose a three-bedroom home as being the standard. In a third table, I could apply a fixed ‘basic adjustment’ for the number of bedrooms – a different value for the minimum and maximum Base Value.

These two values could be combined with a random value to select where in the resulting range a specific home would be located. Because I wanted something that looked basically like a dumbbell curve (values crowding toward the center or median value, with more extreme valuations – high or low – less likely), I chose 3d6.

Initially, that was where the process was going to end, but I knew that there were two additional problems that I had to account for.

On day 2, after I had started work on actually putting numbers to all these variations and generating the tables, I figured out how to solve three major holes in the process.

The first was a value multiplier for the size of the urban community around the dwelling. The standard was set to “town’ (without actually defining what a ‘town’ was, permitting that to default to the usual usage in a given campaign setting). This separated out farm houses from those in a large city.

The second was how to factor in the value of any business that was attached – whether that was simply using the dwelling as a boarding house or hotel, or a built-in shopfront (presumably with accommodations on upper floors or out the back), or whatever.

And the third was a fudge-factor to be applied to the die roll to reflect high sentimental value or especially skilled salespeople.

With those decisions, the basic methodology that would be used to determine the value of a specific property was complete.

I’ve glossed over as many specifics as possible because I didn’t know what those specifics would be, on the first day – I needed to establish the methodology so that I could work out what those values were to be.

I also used my game (and house rules) design experience to estimate how many values in each variable I could afford to use such that the resulting tables would be of manageable size.

The final design consideration was that the resulting tables would NOT be designed to be suitable for printing. That meant that for ‘the big tables’ I could put all sixteen 3d6 results, and preliminary calculations, across a page that could be improbably wide; I was more concerned with what would be legible when viewed on a screen, specifically, my screen.

If I hadn’t made that choice, I would have had to mess around with non-printing columns for those preliminary calculations and each size dwelling (by number of bedrooms) would have been three tables on separate pages. This would have been a lot more work, and I didn’t have that much time to spare.

Production: Conversions

The entire project was geared toward satisfying my campaign needs. I make no apologies for that. The in-game date is 1986, and the location is the US – specifically, the state of Arkansas (for plot reasons). The system would be naturally adaptable to other times and locations, but that was what I needed it to simulate as a default.

This is a problem that has been addressed for the pulp campaign (set in the mid-1930s, but with financial values matching those of 1930 specifically) on many past occasions.

For consistency, conversions are always handled in a specific way in my games:

Modern to Then:

1. Temporal correction first
2. Regional correction second

Then to Modern:

1. Regional correction first
2. Temporal correction second

Only if I can’t find the appropriate historical conversion information will some compromise be used.

In this case, I was converting numbers from 2021, 2020 and 2017 AUD, to 1986 USD. In the Pulp campaign, it would be to USD from 1930.

I was able to access and download an economic report in spreadsheet format showing the historic conversion rates from Australian Dollars to US Dollars. Historically, this has varied somewhere between 1 AUD buying somewhere close to 50 cents US and a high close to parity (1 dollar US). In more recent times, somewhere between 70 cents and 86 cents US has applied; but by comparing the historical data, I found that at the time in question, the rate was almost 2/3 of a dollar – 66.01 cents, to be exact.

If I had not found this information, I would have had to convert at some assumed rate based on contemporary economics that would have been quite incorrect. If I had used 72 cents, for example, my converted values for properties would have been only 91.667% of what they should have been – an undervaluing of almost 10%. If I had used 75 cents, the error would have been about 12%. These errors might not have been either visible or significant – but why take the chance?

Next, I employed one of my bookmarked resources – the inflation calculator at Calculator.net, which has proven massively useful on a number of occasions, because it works the inflation adjustment in either direction (unlike some others). I fed in $100 US in 2021 and converted it to 1986 dollars, which gave me the percentage to multiply the relevant conversions by. Repeat for the 2020 and 2017 conversions.

For the record:

• 2021 to 1986: × 0.41524
• 2020 to 1986: × 0.42039
• 2017 to 1986: × 0.44778

(divide to go backwards, i.e. from 1986 to 2021 = $ / 0.41524. So a home computer costing $3,499 back then is the equivalent of one costing $8, 426.45 in today’s money. Of course, if you were to buy something of equivalent capabilities, you would be talking a LOT less than that – maybe $84, maybe $8.40!)

With the key values converted to the contemporary target currency, I was able to do a lot of math that I’m not going to bore you with, and start populating my tables, simplifying and generalizing as I went.

Production: Execution

There’s a trick that I learned a long time ago in physics: if you have two independent variables, and you need to assess them, control one axis at a fixed standard value and vary the other one.

Generalization, Size, Quality, & Location (Table 1)

For table 1, I set the ‘typical’ value to 1 for both variables. Using the old maxim of location being more important than size and quality (or anything else), I set the location values to

• Very Desirable = 4
• Desirable = 2
• Typical = 1 (by definition)
• Undesirable = 0.6
• Very Undesirable = 0.2

…and the size and quality values to

• Very Desirable = 2
• Desirable = 1.5
• Typical = 1 (by definition)
• Undesirable = 0.8
• Very Undesirable = 0.4

Simple multiplication let me fill out the rest of table 1.

Generalization, Accompanying land (Table 2)

I then listed all the results as one axis of table 2 (labeled the “SQ,Lo Value”), and eliminated redundant results. Once again, the “1” result (since 1 × 1 = 1) let me assess the relative Land values as

• Lots (more) = 1.5
• More = 1.2
• Normal = 1 (by definition)
• Less = 0.8

I was going to include a 5th option, “none” (with a value of 0.5) but… well, I’ll get back to that.

Again, simple multiplication of these values by the SQ,Lo value let me fill out table 2. I noted that the peak was x12, while the minimum was × 0.06.

Dwelling Price Range

Next. I turned my attention to table 3, which was to provide the other set of inputs into table 4.

I had already set the base value as being that of a three-bedroom house. That went with the known median value of $80,300. All else being equal, I decided that a variation of plus-or-minus $10,000 sounded about right. That gave me a base minimum price of $70,300 and a maximum of $90,300. I could have made it more, or less – I considered both – but most of the volatility in price was going to come from the combined general assessment that I had made and the ‘market forces’ factor to come.

• 0.06 × 10,000 = $600 – so the bottom end of the market came out with a ‘plus or minus’ of just $600.
• 12 × 10,000 = $120,000 – so the top end of the market came out with a ‘plus or minus’ of $120,000.

Again, these values seemed about right, so I didn’t change the $20-000 range.

Copying those values filled out the entire “base min” and “base max” column. I then turned my attention to the adjustment to these low and high values for additional bedrooms, all else being equal.

Averaging the various values my research had provided (after conversion) and rounding to a convenient number gave me an adjustment of $12.500 per additional bedroom to the minimum and $20,800 to the maximum price. Rather than fuss around with diminishing impact on the price as the number of rooms increased, I simply multiplied the difference in bedrooms from the three-bedroom standard by these values to fill out the d1 and d2 columns, respectively. There was more than enough variability coming from other factors to ‘contain’ this error, I had decided.

Adding the resulting d1 to the base min gave the adjusted minimum price for a house of that number of bedrooms; the d2 and base max gave the adjusted maximum price.

Price by # Bedrooms and SQLoLa Value (Table 4, one page per Bedroom count)

This is the real meat of the system. One table for each count of bedrooms, the combined result of the general assessments on the left, and a random roll from 3 to 18 across the top to yield a base value for a specific dwelling.

• I had to start by filling out the left-hand column, again eliminating all the redundant entries.

I mentioned the 5th option on the “Land” variable (for “none”) earlier – I found that there were too many results if I did so to get them onto a single usable table. A compromise for the sake of practicality of use had to be made; I found another way around that for the purchase of Units, Lofts, Townhouses, etc, which I’ll cover in a separate section below

Next, there are the four columns in green, which are intermediate steps used only to generate the rest of the table.

• The “MIN” value is the “adjusted minimum price” for a dwelling of this number of bedrooms (from table 3) multiplied by the SQLoLa value (from table 2).
• The “MAX” value is the “adjusted maximum price” for a dwelling of this number of bedrooms (from table 3) multiplied by the SQLoLa value (from table 2).
• The “RANGE” value is the difference between these.
• The “Range/18” value is the RANGE divided by 18 – so that I can simply multiply by the die roll result.

Which brought me to the heart of the results – multiplying each row’s “range/18” value by successive values and adding the “MIN” result for each row.

Rounding The Corner

When you look at the main part of the results tables, you will notice that – in addition to the background “banding” – some values are in black and some in blue. In fact, they all started as red (to indicate that I hadn’t yet adjusted the rounding) and the colors were applied as those adjustments were made.

This part of the process was inconsistent across the entire process. In fact, I changed rounding and thresholds no less than five times. No, six. Sometimes I went back and corrected, sometimes I made the adjustment only from that table of results forward. Complicating that is that it was quite late in the process that I decided to put the “one bedroom” results into the table at all – originally, I started at “2 bedroom”.

The rounding to apply depended on the result Value. The pattern that I ended up with is:

• $2.25m+ = round to nearest $50 000 = blue
• $1m to $2.249m = round to nearest $25 000 = black
• $500K to $999K = round to nearest $10 000 = blue
• $200K to $499K = round to nearest $1 000 = black
• $100K to $199K = round to nearest $500 = blue
• $30K to $99K = round to nearest $100 = black
• $10K to $29K = round to nearest $50 = blue
• less than $10K = round to nearest $10 = black

At one point, there was an additional tier at the top,

• $3m+ = round to nearest $100 000 = black

and the tier below that was from $2.25m to $2.999m, but the band of results didn’t seem wide enough to justify it, so it got scrapped.

Size Of Urban Community (Table 5)

It may have been possible to incorporate this into the first three tables, but by the time I realized that it was a thing, I had already generated more than 2/3 of the entries for table 3 and they would all have to be redone – and table size was a consideration.

Thus, the decision was made to stick it on as an afterthought. There are seven entries:

• None = 0.5
• Hamlet = 0.7
• Village = 0.85
• Town = 1 (defined as such)
• Small City = 1.5
• Lge City = 2
• Metropolis = 2.5

In retrospect, though, it was a brilliant move to have this as an afterthought because these are perhaps the most contentious values to assign; the population levels are poorly-defined at best and subjective at worst, and could well be different in different campaign settings; and the average impact on pricing is quite dependent on those population levels and their consequent impact on housing prices.

Sidebar: Homes without land

For the sale of units, you can actually consider these to come ‘with a pro-rata share of the land’ on which the block of units sits. Some new blocks of units near me were also sold with an option on some of the shop space on the ground floor of the block. Which means that you can start with the “less land” option on table 2. However, that would only get you a value for a first floor or ground floor unit; every story further up, the value drops. It’s about 8% a floor (but I would use 10% for simplicity) up to 40% and then about half that thereafter, until you get down to about 60% discount.

• Ground Floor = 100% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• First Floor = same as Ground Floor
• 2nd Floor = 90% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 3rd Floor = 80% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 4th Floor = 70% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 5th Floor = 60% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 6th Floor = 55% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 7th Floor = 50% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 8th Floor = 45% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 9th Floor = 40% of the result using the ‘less land’ value
• 10th Floor and above = same as the 9th floor

Townhouses and anything else that doesn’t come with land, but is actually a purchase and not a lease, use the “Normal” land value and then halve the result from table 5.

NB: This part of the process is so new that it isn’t even shown in the instructions that form part of the PDF / spreadsheets! Which is why I’ve labeled it as a sidebar and put the whole thing in bold.

Business Included

This is actually three small tables and a procedure. It does make a couple of important assumptions that I took into account when formulating this part of the process.

The notion is that the potential profitability of the business determines its value, but it divides that profitability up into three different time periods – the first year (immediate profitability), the medium term (two to five years), and the long term (more than 5 years).

It’s in assessing those profitability that the assumptions come into play – the table uses the profitability IF these assumptions are satisfied. If you do something other than what is assumed, you may achieve different results in terms of business success!

The first assumption is that the usage of the rooms is as the new owners intend at the time of purchase. That means that if they intend to repurpose one of the bedrooms towards the business (by making it a home office, for example), the valuation of the overall package (business plus dwelling) should take that into account.

The second assumption only applies to the medium- and long-term assessments, and is that any necessary investment will be made as required – which obviously reduces profitability by spending money.

Each result on the table assesses the profitability during one of the time-frames; the assessments are exactly the same (Very Poor, Poor, Break-even, Good, and Very Good), but these are not equal in value; the long-term tends to dominate, for good or ill, and the medium-term is more important than the short-term.

The process is to make all three assessments, and multiply the three resulting values together. If the total result is less than 1, round the valuation factor up to 1 – as it says on the table, you can always simply close the business and consider the premises simply as a dwelling. You then multiply the dwelling value by the result to get the net price.

The values have been carefully selected to reflect the real-life experience of buying and selling a commercial operation as I understand it – I’m not an expert on this, but pay attention to things when others discuss such matters because you never know when the information will be useful.

It’s worth checking out a couple of the possible combinations, as I did before finalizing these values.

• Short-term break-even, medium-term poor, long-term good – describes a situation in which investment in the medium term yields a good longer-term outcome. 1 × 0.8 × 1.5 = 1.2.
• All three break-even – describes a situation in which the business itself is barely holding its head above water but is either good for a retiree, or well-positioned should market conditions change, or owns intellectual property that in itself is valuable. 1 × 0.9 × 0.7 = 0.63, rounds up to 1. The business adds nothing to the overall value of the property.
• Very Good short-term, Very poor medium-term, very good long-term – the business is profitable at the moment but requires hefty investment in the infrastructure in the medium-term. If you survive doing so, the prospects are excellent for the long-term. 1.4 × 0.5 × 2 = 1.4.
• Same situation but the choice is to run the business into the ground while you can, because the required investment cannot be made for some reason – out of date equipment or whatever. That means that medium-term profitability is good, but long term is very poor. 1.4 × 1.3 × 0.25 = 0.455, rounds up to 1. The business doesn’t add to the value of the property.
• Finally, let’s look at the best possible combination – very good profitability in all three time-frames (clearly indicating some other reason for the sale than profits – retiring, or ill-health, or the owner died, or something). 1.4 × 1.7 × 2 = 4.76. The attached business adds almost 400% to the cost of the building.

It is worth noting, also, that the size of the urban community doesn’t explicitly impact the value of a business, but some businesses require a community of a certain size in order for them to be viable commercial propositions. A 500-bed luxury resort in the middle of nowhere is unlikely to do a roaring trade; a gas station in the same location or a smaller, cheaper, hotel might do quite well. But that means that the current location is implicitly bound up in the assessment of the profitability. A business might be unprofitable now, break-even in the short-term, but likely to thrive in the longer term, simply because the community is growing dramatically and the demand for whatever it is that the business offers is going to increase – eventually.

Usage

I’m going to be fairly brief in this section because I have an example coming up in the next section that will make everything a lot clearer.

At the same time, I want to take the time to add a couple of notes that aren’t entirely clear. My starting point for this section will be the instructions from the PDF, but with the added notes tacked on where relevant; think of them as the “designer’s notes”.

Let’s start here: this is a flowchart describing the process of using the system:

It should not escape attention that the basic process for usage is the same sequence as construction of the system, with one exception (faded on the flowchart): Table 3 is not required unless you are extending the table. And there will be times when you want to do so; that’s why there is a later section devoted to the procedure for doing so. But let’s avoid getting too far ahead of ourselves.

1. Assess Size & Quality (yellow table top left)

Size quite clearly has little or no resemblance to the number of bedrooms. In fact, you can almost consider it to be the size of everything except the bedrooms – almost, but not quite. Don’t over-think these assessments.

2. Assess Location (yellow table top left)

I usually have the advantage of context – I’ll already have some idea of the population of the location, it’s economy, it’s history, and any unsavory attitudes on the part of the locals – and any good neighbors, too. If you have to, you can live without this information, but you’ll find life a lot easier with it – even if you have to invent it out of whole cloth.

3. Cross-reference to get SQLo Value

4. Locate result on Pink Table, far left

Look down the left-hand column of the pink table and find the result.

5. Assess land that comes with property (pink table far left)

This is another general impression but circumstances matter. If we’re talking a farmhouse, the land that is ‘normal’ might be considerable (50 acres or more – 20 hectares for metric users) but in a city it might be 1/4 of an acre. Similarly, the amount needed to qualify for “Lots more than usual” (as opposed to just more than usual) would also change with the circumstances.

If you want to get technical, it’s actually the value of the land that is being assessed, but without putting a dollar value to it – 5000 acres of desert might be needed to get to “Lots” or 500 acres of farmland – but a mansion on 6 acres of land in a city would probably qualify.

Use your descriptive language as the foundation, and that will generally take all these technicalities into consideration without your even thinking about it..

6. Cross reference land with SQLo to get SQLoLa value (pink table, far left)

It’s probably worth jotting this down on a scrap of note paper.

7. Select Blue Table appropriate to number of bedrooms

In the top left of each table you will find the number of bedrooms. It’s worth actually taking a quick glance at table three (to the right of table 1) just to be sure that there’s one of the appropriate size.

If you’re working off an image, you might have to estimate the number of bedrooms. This is where it’s appropriate to use the extra time you saved by being so quick and instinctive in the earlier steps.

8. Locate matching SQLoLa Value

Once you’ve found the right table, go down the left hand column to find the value from table two that matches.

9. Roll 3d6 (Optional: 3d6 & d4, see below)

    9a. For high sentimental value properties or especially skilled salespeople, use 3d6 & d4, as follows:

    a. Roll all four dice

    b. Select the d6 with the lowest showing value.

    c. Compare with the result showing on the d4.

    d. Discard whichever of the two is the lower.

    e. Read the total of the remaining dice as though they were 3d6.

It works out that exactly half the time, this results in an improvement to the total of at least 1. More than 10.5% of the time, you will get an improvement of three! This makes a significant improvement to the value of the dwelling.

10. Cross-reference to get property base asking price

Find the “3d6” result column that the roll has indicated and follow it down until you get to the row that contains the SQLoLa value that you determined earlier. Or track across from that value until you find the indicated column.

Jot down the resulting value.

(Okay, it’s bound to come up and this my last chance to explain it. SQLoLa stands for “Size, Quality, Location, Land”)

11. Assess Size Of Urban Community (orange table, page 1)

This is where the context information that I mentioned previously becomes really essential. Remember that these ratings are according to the standards of your game setting. A “Town” in 1986 (or 2021 for that matter) is something quite different from the meaning of 1686, which is different to the meaning of 1286.

12. Multiply Community Size Factor by base asking price

Multiply the factor that you get from the orange table by the price that you have written down. Write down the result if it’s different, and cross out the old price so that you don’t get confused.

If there is no business, skip steps 13 and 14.

13. If there is a business attached to the property, assess Business Factor (Purple table, page 1)

I’ve already discussed how this works, earlier in the article.

14. Multiply current asking price by business factor (if any)

Multiply the business factor by the current price you have written down. If it’s different, write down the new answer and cross out the old one.

15. Result is the FINAL ASKING PRICE. Most sales can be settled for 90% of this.

I’ve put the meaning of the result in capitals because it’s important. If a PC negotiates, they may get the acceptable price down to 90, 85, even 80% of the asking price – but if they fail, it could go up 10, 15, even 20%.

It’s never enough simply to roll unless its a private sale. Realtors have enough experience and expertise that the majority of ploys won’t work on them. This should be roleplayed and the GM should determine from the strength of the roleplay what result this represents – if he’s feeling generous, it might be a blended roll (half rolled and half from roleplay).

The more of a back-and-forth you can make this, the better it will be. It’s very rare in real life, when negotiating a sale of this magnitude, for someone to say “$X and that’s my final offer, take it or leave it” – at least right off the bat, it is. You might get to that point after going back-and-forth for a while. Remember that the salesman’s commission is usually a percentage of the sale price, so they have a vested interest in pushing that price up.

16. If Realtor’s fees etc are relevant, increase price 20%.

I’ve said 20%, but in some cases it may be only 10%, in others, 25%. This often depends on a whole range of factors – how long the property has been on the market, how many times the Realtor has tried without success to sell it (costing him time and effort, and making him more likely to accept a lower commission just to get it off his books), his mood on the day, pressure from the people he’s representing, whether or not he thinks the buyers will fit in around here, and many more. Again, use your gut instincts to assess the situation and translate into an appropriate commission percentage.

In most (but not necessarily all) jurisdictions, this amount gets added on the top of the agreed price, something that has caught a lot of buyers out in the past. If that’s not the case, you may need to pre-load this into the asking price before negotiations begin.

There may also be land taxes or sales taxes (or whatever) to take into account. These are generally assumed to be factored into the asking price, but if for some reason you don’t think that they would be, you should explicitly define how much they are and add that to the asking price as well.

In theory, the Realtor’s fees would exclude any such increase, but that’s too much effort for not enough gain in accuracy – the variables involved are more than enough to cover this minor discrepancy.

There may also be X-factors that I haven’t thought of, and that only affect this specific property. If a place has a reputation for being haunted, or the land is contaminated, or it has its own private airstrip, or anything else you can think of, be sure to add something to the asking price to cover that additional value.

Example

Here’s a picture of exactly the sort of dwelling that the PCs are looking for.

So let’s evaluate this place and how much – in 1986 – the system thinks it would cost to buy.

1. Assess Size & Quality (yellow table top left)

This is a nice place, and a fair size. It’s not a huge mansion, but it’s clearly bigger than average. I rate is as desirable.

2. Assess Location (yellow table top left)

It looks like a nice location but the grass is a little dry – so better than ‘typical’ but not top of the tree. That rates it as desirable on this axis, too.

3. Cross-reference to get SQLo Value

The Desirable-Desirable match gives a SQLo of 3.

4. Locate result on Pink Table, far left

Five rows down, between the 2 and the 3.2.

5. Assess land that comes with property (pink table far left)

The environment looks suburban. There is another house visible at the top of the hill in the background (just barely), so there is a back yard of some size. However, not all of it necessarily belongs to this property – in the absence of a fence-line, the assumption has to be that half of the back yard belongs to this house. Now, the house is larger than most, and it has a reasonable front yard as well, so it clearly has more than is usual – but it doesn’t have a whole estate. So that leaves it in the ‘more’ category and not the “lots more’.

6. Cross reference land with SQLo to get SQLoLa value (pink table, far left)

The intersection of “More land” and an SQ,Lo of 3 gives an SQLoLa of 3.6.

7. Select Blue Table appropriate to number of bedrooms

Next, I need to estimate the number of bedrooms. Assuming that they are all on the second story, I count two bays of windows on the side and one at the front left. That’s three visible bedrooms, and it’s a safe bet that there are one or two – but probably not three – out of sight. That gives a total count of 4 or 5 bedrooms. Since there might be a guest room on the ground floor, I’ll choose the higher of the two values as most probable.

A quick check of the blue table at the center top of page 1 confirms what I already knew – 5 bedrooms is one of the tables that I have generated. I would expect to find it on page 6 of the PDF… and there it is.

8. Locate matching SQLoLa Value

I’m looking for a SQLoLa value of 3.6 down the left-hand column – and about 12 rows down, there it is. It assigns a Min of $343,080 and a Max of $474,840. That’s a range of $131,760, and 1/18th of that is $7,320.00.

9. Roll 3d6 (Optional: 3d6 & d4, see below)

    9a. For high sentimental value properties or especially skilled salespeople, use 3d6 & d4, as follows:

    a. Roll all four dice

    b. Select the d6 with the lowest showing value.

    c. Compare with the result showing on the d4.

    d. Discard whichever of the two is the lower.

    e. Read the total of the remaining dice as though they were 3d6.

This place looks new, at least at the front – the rear looks older. I don’t see it as having a huge amount of sentimental value to the current owners; on the contrary, I suspect that they have bought it, renovated it, and are now looking to flip it for a profit and move on to another project. A fast sale would be preferable to getting the biggest bang for their buck, and any Realtor would be given instructions to that effect. So that means that the skill of any such would not be directed toward squeezing the last dollar of purchase price from the sale. Hence, no d4.

I roll 3d6 and get a result of eight.

10. Cross-reference to get property base asking price

Because I’m only using half the screen to view the PDF (the document containing the article is occupying the other half) this is just a little trickier than it would be, but it’s just a matter of scrolling up, down, left, and right, until I can see both the row and column at the same time. If I had rolled higher, I might have needed to zoom out a bit, but that wasn’t quite necessary. The base asking price is $402,000.

11. Assess Size Of Urban Community (orange table, page 1)

The urban community – I’ve already said suburban. I have seen communities with homes of this type in towns and small cities; in desirable suburbs, you might also find them in large cities, but I think you would get better lawns and garden care in that case. Right away, then, I’m down to two possibilities.

I’m leaning about 66-33 toward a small city, but I think I’ll step outside the system and compromise.

2/3 × 1.5 = 1; 1/3 × 1 = 1/3; so the urban community size value that I’m going to use is 1.33, a town on its way to becoming a 2nd-class city.

12. Multiply Community Size Factor by base asking price

1.33 × $402,000 = $534,660.

There’s no business involved, so I skip steps 13 and 14.

15. Result is the FINAL ASKING PRICE. Most sales can be settled for 90% of this.

The asking price is $534,660 – but the owners are going to be minded to settle for 85% of that for a fast sale, as already indicated.

85% of that asking price is $454,461. Call it $455,000.

16. If Realtor’s fees etc are relevant, increase price 20%.

Agent’s fees would raise the price a bit.

But the seller wants to sell quickly, and has promised to pay 5% of the fees out of his share if the realty can sell the house in the next few weeks. To encourage this, the Realtor will drop his percentage on the top to 10%, giving him a total of 15% of the purchase price.

There will also be a 10% land tax, adding $45,000 to the price.

But if the PCs bargain well, there’s a bit of wiggle room left – the 85% could drop to 80%, about $23,000, and everyone would be happy.

Time to total things up:

$455,000 + $45,000 = $500,000; add 10% Realtor’s fees to get $550,000. But the Realtor would probably accept $527,000 as a final settlement if the PCs bargain well.

It seems a little on the high side to me, but not too far off the mark.

There would be little public transport access, and there might be limited public amenities nearby – that could drop the price another $75,000 or so.

$425,000, down to $402,000 if the PCs do well.

That’s for a 5-bedroom, 3-bathroom house, luxurious interior, dining room, kitchen, maybe a swimming pool out back, two-car garage, sitting room, marble staircase, library, games room, fully decorated.

And that sounds like a reasonable price to me.

Extension

What if the number of bedrooms we want isn’t one of the ones that I have pre-worked – what if we need to extend the system?

Tables 1, 2, 5, and 6 don’t need to change. We need a new row in table 3, and to then turn that into a new entry of table 4.

But there’s no need to do a full table – just to do the parts that we actually need. The existing set of tables are robust enough to cope with most challenges. Which means following the same process as described above until we can go no further.

I’m not going to spell out the parts that are covered by the example above; instead, I’ll provide a very synopsized account until we get to ‘the interesting bit’.

The basic concept: a 25-room hotel in a small community of perhaps 250 people (unless there are exigent circumstances, that 10-to-1 ratio is a reasonable rule of thumb for hotel size; in a more remote community like the one I grew up in, the ratio is larger, about 100-to-1).

• Size & Quality: Typical.
• Location: Undesirable (it’s not on the main thoroughfare through the community, it’s off on a side street some distance away).
• SQ,Lo value 0.6.
• Land: Normal.
• SQLoLa value 0.6.
• 25 rooms is not on table 3.

So that’s where the real work has to start – when the process itself identifies the need to extend the system. But we only need to produce data for SQLoLa of 0.6. And, in fact, we can skip ahead slightly further and consider the die roll – Sentimental value isn’t a factor, but the most skilled salesmen are more likely to get this commission, so let’s go for the d4 option.

Rolling 3d6 & a d4: 2, 4, 4, 3. The 3 replaces the 2, for a total of 11.

That means that we don’t need to do the full table, either – just the entry for that particular roll.

Number of bedrooms

We know the hotel has 25 rooms. But I also want to include a small two-bedroom manager’s residence on the side, raising the total to 27.

d1 per room

This is 12,500 per room, or 25 × 12,500 – but it’s reasonable to apply one of the neglected pieces of research and devalue the rooms somewhat at this point. Let’s use $10,000 per room.

d1 = $10,000.

d2 per room

This is nominally $20,800 per room, but these are to be fairly bare-bones hotel rooms. The value has to be more than the $10,000 we used for d1, so it will be somewhere between that and the usual. Call it $12,000 a room. But we also need to note the fact that some of the facilities need to be more extensive than would be usual in a home – we’re talking a commercial kitchen, and perhaps a restaurant / dining room, and maybe a more substantial entertainment area, plus a spa, a reception, and a gymnasium. How much would those cost to build? $250,000? $350,000? Let’s use the latter, and load a one-25th share of that onto the d2 value (the two bedrooms for the manager’s residence should get the full standard value, which is why the 25 is still the appropriate divisor).

$350,000 / 25 = $14,000.

$12,000 + $14,000 = $26,000.

d2 = (25 × $26,000 + 2 × $20,800) / 27 = ($650,000 + $41,600) / 27 = $691,600 / 27 = $25615 (rounding for convenience).

Adj Min

The base min and base max are unchanged at $70,300 and $90,300, respectively. So we can move straight onto the Adjusted values.

Adj Min = $70,300 + 27 × $10,000 = $70,300 + $270,000 = $340,300.

Adj Max

Adj Max = $90,300 + 27 × $25615 = $90,300 + $691,605 = $781,905.

That completes the entry that’s “missing” from table 3. We can now move on to table 4, and calculate the Green Column values.

MIN

Our SQLoLa value is 0.6.

MIN = AdjMin × SQLoLa = $340,300 × 0.6 = $204,180.

MAX

MAX = AdjMax × SQLoLa = $781,905 × 0.6 = $469,143.

RANGE

Range = MAX – MIN = $469,143 – $204,180 = $264,963.

Range/18

Range/18 = $264,963 / 18 = $14,720.17 (to two decimal places).

Which takes us to the main part of the table. We only need the value for a roll of 11.

Base Asking Price

Base Asking Price = MIN + Roll × (Range/18) = $204,180 + 11 × $14,720.17 = $204,180 + $161,921.87 = $366,101.87

Rounding

In the 200K-499K range, round to the nearest $1000.

Rounded Base Asking Price = $366,000.

Until we get to valuing this hotel as a business, the rest of this process is just like the previous example, so it’s back to the summarized-synopsis format for a bit:

• Size of the community – I grew up in a town of 2000 people, but in US terms it would be a second-class city. Most of the surrounding communities were considerably smaller, so I’ve seen several examples on which to judge this. To me, a hamlet has less than 100 urban residents, and maybe 400 all told including local farmers. So, a community of 250 urban residents is somewhere in between that and a town – by definition, a village. But that’s in real life – in a fantasy setting, urban populations might be smaller, and this might be a fully-fledged town. But that’s getting a bit ahead of myself in terms of this article, so let’s stay with the Village assessment.
• That yields a community value of 0.85.
• So the adjusted asking price = 0.85 × $366,000 = $311,100.

Which brings us to assessing the viability of this operation as a business. We didn’t have to do that in the previous example, so let’s examine these steps more thoroughly.

Short-term profitability

If this community is on a major interstate highway, or near a tourist attraction, then its size might be reasonable relative to the community population. Under any other circumstance, it’s probably too large by about half or even two-thirds.

That unresolved question comes into sharp focus when we start assessing the profitability of the business. Since I’m making this example up, more-or-less as I go, any of these scenarios can be valid – but, to be honest, anyone who contemplated building a hotel of this size without at least one of those traffic-generating incentives, especially in a relatively out-of-the-way location, would be laughed out of the bank whose money they wanted to use to finance the construction.

It doesn’t matter which market advantage the business enjoys – this might be a regional hub for a rail network, and so need to provide accommodations for railroad staff all year round, or their bread-and-butter might be tourism, or they might have some other trick up their sleeves; the specifics aren’t important, what matters is that the 10-to-1 rooms to population ratio is justified by this factor.

That means that the short-term profitability is going to be good or very good. Unable to pick between those choices on this limited information, I’ll split the difference and assign a 1.3 short-term profitability value.

Medium-term profitability

There are two possible scenarios: either increasing maintenance costs will start eating into profits in the medium term, or they won’t.

That intersects with another pair of scenarios: either the hotel will have been a big success, attracting one or more rival operations, or it will have been a moderate success, and be hostage to changing market conditions. Little stays the same forever, and if they are a hostage to the fortunes of some entity outside their control, sooner or later, that status will turn around and bite them.

There is every reason to suspect that medium-term profitability will drop one-to-two steps relative to the short-term starting point. If the initial profitability was Good, that yields Poor or Break Even; if it was very good, it downgrades it to Good or Break-Even.

At first, it might seem that the one value in common to both – Break-Even – should be chosen, but not so fast! If initial profitability was only Good, one of the major downward pressures on profitability (rivals) goes away, making Break-Even more likely, and possibly even keeping things in the Good column. If the initial profitability was Very Good, there’s more downward pressure – but the adjustment happens from a higher starting point, so Break-Even or Good are the likely results.

So this time, I will split the difference between Break-Even and Good, and assign a medium-term value of 1.1.

Long-term profitability

The longer view is not so rosy. Those pressures on profitability will only increase with time, and eventually the inevitable will happen – rivals or market collapse. Unless something can be done in the way of generating a second string to their marketing bow, the long-term profitability prospects are Poor.

If the present owners, or the town, have a plan, it doesn’t matter whether or not the PCs think it will work; it will indicate that something can be put in place to overcome the problem, elevating the long-term forecast to Break-Even at the very least. How much better than that it might be does depend on the success of whatever plans to confront the problem are executed, though.

It’s possible that by luring a new major employer to the region, or developing a new industry to support the community, the outlook long-term could even be Good.

So this time I’m going to split the difference between Poor and Good, and assign the long-term value to 1.

Combining Values

1.3 × 1.1 × 1 = 1.43.

This is more than 1, so there is no rounding required.

Applying The Business Valuation

1.43 × Asking Price = 1.43 × $311,100 = $444,873.

With the profitability of the Hotel factored in, it has become clear why the current owners are probably wanting to sell – the business will never be as attractive a proposition as it is right now. This is undoubtedly the best time to sell.

This isn’t just a commitment to buying a business – it’s a commitment to local government and local politics, to becoming an involved and engaged civic leader. This is a defining point in the campaign, in other words.

If the GM wants to make this an attractive option because he can see interesting plotlines arising from it, its at this point that he can intervene to do so. If he thinks this will get in the way of what he wants to achieve in the campaign, he can now make choices that will discourage the PCs.

Personally, I like situations like this because ideas are already suggesting themselves to me – suppose an unsavory weapons manufacturer were to be persuaded to establish an R&D facility in the vicinity, someone who covertly supports enemies of the PCs? Making them dependent on the local presence of an enemy offers plenty of plot scope. And I always like giving the PCs things to do outside of adventuring. So I’m more likely to want to encourage this as an option.

The rest of the process is straightforward, the same as in the previous example. Just to finish things off, let’s run through it quickly:

• Most property purchases can be completed for 90% of the asking price. Depending on circumstances, this could drop to 85% or rise to 95%. The seller is motivated to sell now but won’t want to lose much of the profitability of the sale – so I’ll set their willingness to budge to a mere 95%. So that’s $423,000 (to the nearest thousand), instead of $445,000, or a $22,000 discount.
• Sales Tax, Legal fees, etc, totaling 8% (the community has an interest in making the sale attractive) adds $35,600. Adding that to the $445K gives $480,600.
• Realtor’s Fees – If the Realtor is convinced that the new owners will stick around and invest in the community, he will benefit more in the long run by taking a smaller commission this time around. If he’s nearing retirement, or isn’t convinced, or is simply too short-sighted, he’s more likely to charge big. This is where I can shade the attractiveness of the proposition for the campaign’s benefit, or make it look more discouraging. I’ll set the two choices at +7% and +18%, respectively. If the latter, the unscrupulous Realtor will also use the value after sales tax instead of the lower value that he should use. So that’s either an additional $31,150, or an additional $86,500 – grand totals of $511,750 or $567,100, with possible discount of $22,000.

Adaption

It’s very easy to adapt these results to different campaigns, eras, and genres – you simply need to work out a currency conversion.

There are a lot of factors that you can take into account – material scarcity and expense, transport costs, labor costs, automata / slave labor, economics, currency standards, and more – but really, why bother?

Pick a number that feels about right and be done with it. If you can, use some equivalent property from the game system that you are importing your results into.

For example, you might decide that 260,000 gp is the right price for buying a five-bedroom home in your fantasy campaign. Or that 1.25 million gold would buy a 25-room keep. Once you have a conversion factor, you can use the system at will just by adding a step to the end of the process.

Or, perhaps you want to use the price of a Saturn-5 and Apollo capsule as a three-bedroom house (open plan, obviously). Thus you would be able to calculate the construction costs of a 4-man variant, with four times the rockets, for a Mars mission. You could even use the link provided earlier to adjust 1969 prices to 1990 or whenever.

Sidebar: beyond now

It’s important, when projecting values beyond now, that you remember that inflation is a compounding event. The simplest method is to go back in time as many years as you have to go forward – it won’t be very accurate but will be so much as easier. Or you can decide what the overall inflation rate will be each year from now until whenever and raise it to the power of the number of years. Beware – small differences will accumulate to a big difference.

For example, fifty years of 2.05% inflation is 1.0205 ^ 50 = × 2.758357.
Fifty years of 2.1% inflation is 1.021 ^ 50 = × 2.82675.
Multiplied by $500,000, those are $1,379,178.50 and $1,413,375 respectively – a difference of $34,196.50. And that’s an almost minuscule difference!

It’s also an improbably low value.

• $500,000 from 1970 is equivalent to almost $3.49 million 2020 dollars.
• $500,000 from 1920 is equivalent to a little over $1 million 1970 dollars – or $7,461,982.65 dollars in 2020.

Around 2.74% is closer to reality – but inflation is expected to spike as economies come out of Covid restrictions, and stay high for quite a few years because of the debts various governments have accumulated while combating the pandemic.

One more example: Let’s say that your Sci-fi game lists a freighter with a 5-man (PC) crew as costing (plucks a number out of the air) 120,000 credits. Call that a standard 5-bedroom house (Captain’s quarters, two crew quarters for 2 PCs each, and two passenger cabins). Using this system, you can work out a 1986-dollar equivalent – and that conversion factor will let you use the system to work out how much a 25000-berth colony ship will cost, if that’s something you need that the game resources don’t tell you. Or a larger space yacht. Or a 10-crew freighter, or two-man explorer.

All the other complexities – computer systems, ship’s weapons, spacecraft hulls, etc – melt away. If you really need to factor them in, you can do it as percentage increases relative to the base model.

Lunar Colonies, Deep Space Habitats, Manned Space Telescopes, Wooden Sailing ships, log cabins, secret underground military bases – they’re all at your notepad.

Just remember, write down any conversion factors you determine so that you don’t have to repeat the work the next time you need them.

This system won’t solve all your problems – but it will give you the tools you need to start solving them yourself. It’s one less thing that you have to worry about.

Finished at last – this is only about 90 minutes late! Enjoy :)

Anytime a product with the combined talents of multiple industry heavy-hitters like Ed Greenwood and Skip Williams comes onto your horizon, you pay attention.

When that product made its funding targets in just 2 1/2 hours, you pay even closer attention. Clearly, the stars are aligning.

And when stretch goal after stretch goal get smashed, and the product offers incredible value for money, you start doing things that you otherwise would not – like previewing this article a week ahead of time just to warn people to pump up their finances.

The “product” in question (you’ll understand the use of inverted commas by the end of this article) is called Tanares.

What is Tanares?

This is a much more complicated question than it first appears, because Tanares is so BIG and so customizable.

• Tanares is a campaign setting comprising two volumes – one for players and one for GMs. And,
• Tanares is a set of adventures set in that campaign setting. A third volume! And,
• Tanares is a series of Miniatures (some of them about the same height as the sourcebooks, which appear to be standard sized)! And,
• Tanares is a board game! And,
• Tanares is a set of epic maps! And,
• Tanares is a set of simplified variations on the standard character classes designed to facilitate the introduction of new players to 5e D&D! And,
• Tanares is a set of new character classes (with extensive customization options) and new races which you can integrate into your own campaign worlds! And,
• Tanares is a set of new creatures for your PCs to encounter, complete with everything you need to bring them to life.
• Tanares is a system permitting solo, GM-less play!

….and that’s just scratching the surface!

There’s a lot there to dig into. Let’s start with…

The Three Books

There are three sourcebooks at the core of Tanares, from an RPG perspective (plus a fourth unlocked as a stretch goal).

Well, that’s how the Kickstarter campaign introduces the three books. So let’s dig a little deeper:

The Players Book

The first of the three books is the Player’s Guide. This includes a number of potentially interesting items in addition to the character classes and races already mentioned (and which I’ll look at in a little more detail later).

Team Play

The idea of a group of individuals forming a collective identity which unlocks new game dynamics – benefits, vulnerabilities, and so on – has been at the fringes of RPGs practically from day. It started the day an adventuring party first gave themselves a name, and in the process, began to establish a collective identity for themselves. That was either in the early 80s, or even earlier.

It’s something that I touched on in my Fumanor campaign, where I looked at the notion of state-sponsored benefits for those adventurers who registered as a group – which enabled the state to throw problems to groups who seemed best-fitted to solve them, and who were at loose ends. In truth, the economy was increasingly dependent on the infusions of wealth brought in from those who looted the treasures of the former civilizations, and this measure was reflective of the fact.

But those ideas only scratched the surface of the potential in that particular fringe; there’s a scarcity of detail in the preview (understandable since there’s so much to get through), but the implication is that there are specific benefits and consequences to be embedded within the game mechanics for things like cooperative actions.

Again, Fumanor touched on those, too – there were certain Feats that gave an advantage based on the number of allies who also had that Feat. It wasn’t a linear progression (I used a Fibonacci sequence) so that the numbers didn’t get completely out of hand, but it made a Goblin Horde something truly terrifying. But I always knew that there was a lot more potential to be unlocked in the broader concepts, and – at the very least – these would seem to be a step forwards toward achieving that potential.

New Spells, Items, Feats

These are practically ubiquitous in game supplements. While there may be some interesting new ideas, and some integration with the other new elements, this is probably the most ho-hum ingredient unless they’ve been deployed well.

What do I mean by that? If they’ve been used to confer a unique flavor and set of abilities to new classes and creatures and the like, and have been properly play-tested, they could be an asset because they would enhance the more directly-interesting content.

In isolation, these would only be noteworthy if they were absent. if effectively combined with the other content, and I have no reason not to expect that, then they could be as important a development in game design as giving each class its own unique spell list.

Guidance on Hunting Dragons (and, for the brave, Breeding Drakes)

I like the idea of new adventurers learning techniques from the old hands, and always have, but it’s always been difficult to implement without impacting on player freedoms. “This is the right way, the effective way” carries a strong flavor of “This is the ONLY way”.

So I’ve only ever partially succeeded at implementing this within my own campaigns through the concept of Mentors who occasionally set tests and training sessions for their Trainees, and who were otherwise available to dispense sage advice, background information, and flavor text on demand.

That means that I would be as interested in how this section is being done, from a meta-perspective, as by the intriguing content itself.

Headquarters: creation, maintenance, and upgrading

I’ve maintained for a long time now that D&D missed a bet when they threw out the idea of PCs building Strongholds when they advanced in levels – I think that happened with 3e.

An adventuring group constructing and gradually improving a safe base of operations simply seems so logical that it almost goes without saying – but full expression of the concept has had to wait on the development of the party-unified “Teamwork” concepts that I’ve already expressed interest in.

Since I have high hopes that the new mechanics in Tanares clears that stumbling block, it can only be hoped that this is an expression of what is possible once you have done so! All being well, the last hurdle has been cleared to make that logical development a formalized one.

Aerial Combat

For some reason, this has always been really hard to do in an RPG. Perhaps because techniques are dependent on outside-game infrastructure, like elevated platforms for minis, perhaps because the standard game mechanics tend to be two-dimensional in thinking because that’s so much simpler, perhaps for some other reason.

For that reason, I frequently integrate Board Games that successfully model dogfights with reasonable game-play, like Blue Max, into my RPG superstructure. Often, I won’t present full game mechanics integration, but use them for a ‘restricted look-and-feel’ for the combat.

If Tanares has truly cracked the Aerial Combat In RPGs nut, that alone would make it groundbreaking. Even if their solution is less than perfect, it would still be a significant contribution to the art of RPG design.

PvP Arena play

If there’s one addition to the game mechanics that I’m not so sure of, this is it. These mechanics could be absolutely brilliant, adding a new chapter to the standards of the Industry, pointing the way to integration with the CCG locomotive that could invigorate both. Or they could be a superfluous add-on. I can’t tell without reading the entire volume – so, until I do, I would employ wary interest in these, nothing more.

On the other hand, I can see how some groups would be strengthened by a means of settling PvP grievances in-game. So, for some, these might be the greatest thing since sliced Lembas.

The Campaign Sourcebook

The second volume is the Campaign Sourcebook. Tanares is described as a High-Fantasy setting, a “fragmented world in constant change.” Before a campaign begins, the GM can choose which “Avatar Dragons” are alive or dead (in any combination), which yields substantial changes to “the history, landscape, culture, and politics of the world.”

Very clever – random initial conditions have been a feature of a number of board games over the years, and this is adapts the concept to RPG Campaign generation.

But there’s content promised that could easily extend beyond this one milieu of RPG campaigns, and that would be of interest to most GMs out there (even some that don’t GM 5e!)

Plot Hooks & Adventure Ideas

Kudos for separating the two! A plot can extend through multiple adventures – I generally refer to these as “plot arcs”, a source of continuity that helps bind a campaign together.

Depending on how you read it, there can be over a thousand or ‘merely’ something approaching that number (with the balance being the adventure ideas and the content from the section below). When you think about the “Fragmented Reality” and the meta-level mechanics for campaign generation, this number clarifies into a new perspective, however: If there are (say) 5 special Avatar Dragons, each of which has two possible statuses in any given campaign, that gives 32 possible combinations; if 6, it yields 64. Thirty plot seeds for each of the former, or 20 of the latter, gets us close to that thousand in total.

Even so, this is an incredibly useful campaign creation tool. If you can ‘map’ any given campaign to just one of these configurations, however vaguely, these lists would become examples of the plots that would work in that campaign setting. And you can always filch and adapt ideas that don’t fit especially strongly for your own purposes.

Organizations & Locations

More readily adaptable to other game settings, you can never have too many interesting locations at your fingertips, and having interesting organizations to seed into your game world is almost as useful.

Eleven Detailed Provinces

Even if you aren’t interested (right now) in using Tanares directly as a campaign foundation, how these are organized can be as useful when applied to other campaigns.

And that’s without extracting contents from those detailed provinces for your own use: Tanares promises “hundreds of cities and points of interest”, plus sites of “extreme geography, like those that hide an elemental nexus, serve as an Avatar Dragon’s lair, or were ravished by a Malrokian Curse”.

The Penumbral Plane

A penumbra is the partially-shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object or a peripheral or indeterminate area or group. What that means in respect of “The Penumbral Plane” remains to be seen – does the name refer to the inhabitants, lurking on the edge of darkness? Or to the nature of the plane itself? Or both?

Either way, such names never fail to bring to mind Cthulhu and the works of Lovecraft and the lurking horrors on the fringes of reality that “Man is not meant to know”.

Unique new monsters ‘with unprecedented features’

Almost as ubiquitous as New Spells, but again, you can never have too many good ideas to draw upon. The “unprecedented features’ is both intriguing and worrying, because creatures are never playtested as thoroughly as PC-mechanics and never can be.

Let’s say (in a simplified world) that a playtest involves six encounters – it’s extremely unlikely that those six would be with the same type of creatures. Which would mean that the PC mechanics got six times the workout that each of the creatures did.

Scale it up: A playtest involves 600 encounters, over a campaign-length time frame. Now, it’s more likely that some creatures have come up multiple times – perhaps 10 or 20 times for common creatures, perhaps half-a-dozen times for uncommon creatures, and maybe only once or twice for significant but rare encounters (and that because plot manipulates the odds, or should). That gives ratios of 30-60 times (common), 100 times (uncommon), and 300-600 times (rare) for the ratio of PC testing relative to creature testing.

Fortunately, all these creatures don’t exist in isolation; what you learn from one, you can often apply to many or all others. This mitigates those ratios massively, maybe down to a ratio of two or three.

But, “unique features”. These restrict the applicability of those mitigations; and there’s only so much that you can do to compensate with additional playtesting.

The same is true of every creature supplement out there, of course, to at least some extent. That doesn’t make the resulting creatures any less interesting. But it is – or should be – a source of trepidation for GMs.

Rules for interesting travel (through space or time)

It’s about time that this element of traditional RPGs got a face-lift. Random encounter tables have been around forever, in essentially unchanged form. So if there’s a new approach spelled out in Tanares, it’s potentially as interesting and significant as the Aerial Combat rules. And a good place from which to move on to the third of the sourcebooks.

The Adventures Sourcebook

“Adventure In The Realms Of Madness” is more of a campaign than an adventure.

“When the ruins of the most powerful kingdom in history become open for exploration, player characters become involved in a frenetic treasure hunt” – that leads them to “the world’s deepest secrets” and “unique challenges” and “even a murder investigation followed by a trial,” and there’s a prison break in there somewhere, too, along with “surprising twists, portals, potent treasures and artifacts and dragon encounters.”

This isn’t a standalone product; you need both the other volumes to use it.

Plot Structure

The plot is described as a “branching, nonlinear story for characters of levels 3 to 12.”

There’s a rich background with many intriguing agents and moving parts.”

Which means that I would be as interested in how it’s all put together as I am in the actual content. There’s always another lesson to learn in the art of campaign and adventure design!

Dungeons

Not only are there (obviously) multiple dungeons in a logical framework that justifies their existence, you can add a dozen double-sided dungeon battle-mats specifically designed for this adventure (one for each chapter of the ‘adventure’).

But these aren’t just any battle-mats – these are full A1 poster-sized maps!

And you can add to that a whole lot of minis that take the environment into the third dimension. Eight of these form the basic “Adventure pack” of minis (some of them with multiple minis) and at least another six that have been unlocked as stretch goals.

While the minis can no doubt be repurposed, the notion of figures and dungeon dressings bespoke to this particular set of dungeons somehow elevates both to a whole new level of awesome.

New Races

There are four new races presented in Tanares.

Tak’Maku

The Tak’Maku sound like Vulcans reinvented for a D&D universe – minus the pointed ears. If anything, the artwork makes them look more like Thanos.

Described as seeking “a balanced, holistic life”, members of this race are “logical, literal,” and “rational”, with innate engineering skills that make available new gadgets and moving cities.

Gloomfolk

Drowlike in appearance, these are a “centaur-like scorpion species” which immediately brings to mind The Scorpion King from the second movie in the Mummy franchise.

They are described as having “a knack for improvisation” that enables them to thrive in chaos, they are experts with special poisons and venoms and in dwelling on the Penumbral Plane in communities that are “half-here, half-there.”

This seems to tie directly back to the concept of the Penumbral Plane itself, and makes this an extremely interesting choice on offer as a PC race.

Cirrus

Powder-blue skin characterizes the appearance of this race, while the masks and hoods somehow recall a blending of Middle-eastern desert cultures and Asian influences, posing interesting questions about their culture.

The write-up offered on the Kickstarter locates this race’s homes high in the mountains, which reminds me of another blue-skinned species in D&D – Frost Giants. But these are definitely not the same – a featured trait of the species are their wings (which grant full flight at 9th level) and voice-related powers including a power of Suggestion.

They are also described as inheriting both Angelic and Demonic features, and being extremely long-lived (perhaps near-immortal?), a blend that can be hard to achieve conceptually.

This race could be all over the place in concept, but if some central idea can bind these disparate elements together, they could be extremely interesting to explore, both as a player and as a GM.

Kemet

“Drow with glowing eyes” was my first reaction to the artwork, but then I took a closer look at the female example, whose skin is more pale and white.

The write-up posits several intriguing points that seem better suited to a class than to a species – “Deeply tied to portals and to the study of death and the occult” – it would be very interesting to me to see how such features impact upon a broader society as opposed to individuals.

“Part of this species is actually an Elven subspecies, while another branch lost its former fey ancestry and became an entirely new species” – more originality in the entire concept of two subspecies splitting off from different species to form branches of an entirely new species. Or it could be that the language has been mangled with some entirely new and inappropriate interpretation of the name – but, given the quality of the people in back of Tanares, what might otherwise be a leading theory becomes quite unlikely in comparison to some high-concept creativity.

They enjoy “a unique relationship” with their souls, which enables them to employ new traits – this reminds me extremely forcefully of one of my earliest posts here at Campaign Mastery, A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs, which advocates asking ‘the big questions’ when you are creating a campaign and integrating the answers that apply to that specific campaign with your adventuring, exploring the consequences in your plotlines. The theory is that this not only confers uniqueness on the campaign but a cohesiveness that binds the events within the campaign together into a larger whole. The opening paragraph of the article explains the reasons for that connection; it reads,

What exactly is the soul? No, I’m not getting all existential and metaphysical on you, I’m asking the question objectively and literally. You see, one of my D&D campaigns has this question of the nature of the soul as one of its key themes. More, it states that the answer is different for each race, and that this is the fundamental distinction between Elves and Humans and Dwarves and the other sentient species that inhabit the game world.

It is into that context that I interpret what’s been provided about the undying Kemet in Tanares, whose very existence poses some of those “Big Questions” – and whose nature may very well hint at some answers within this particular game setting.

Classes

Classes in Tanares come in three varieties of content. There are simplified introductory classes, there are new classes, and there are new sub-classes.

Simplified Classes

There are four of these: A simplified Wizard (the Mage), a simplified Barbarian (the Juggernaut), a simplified Rogue (the Scoundrel), and a simplified Cleric (the Shaman). Three of these have figurines in the “Mystical Pack”, the Juggernaut has a figurine in the “Villains Pack”.

In the first and last of these, the complexities that have predominantly been stripped away are those relating to magic – the choosing, learning, and preparing of spells, to be more precise. In the case of the Juggernaut, it’s the limits of the Barbarians’ Rage ability, which is presented in an always-on condition. It’s not entirely clear what the simplification is for the Rogue class, but it seems likely that their class abilities are not as constrained.

Game balance suggests that these simplified classes should be weaker than their full-on versions, but that isn’t made clear.

New Classes

There are four new races in the Player’s Guide, described as being “hard to master” with “multiple customization options”.

The implication is that these are challenging for players, with options that can be hard to pick between.

This is an important factor; quite often, as characters advance in levels in 3.x, there was a convergence of capabilities that made all really high-level clerics look alike, for example. I once described this as “hewing toward an archetype,” and that description remains as good as any other.

I once thought that the best solution was for each prestige class to forbid certain other paths while completing one would open certain other doors – but never had the time to actually map out the necessary pathways, let alone to implement them within a campaign.

That might still be the best answer; but it appears that it’s no longer the only one – if the Tanares design team have done as good a job as it’s claimed they have. The promise is “classes and races that are truly unique, with fun, interesting, original features like nothing you’ve ever seen, while NOT being overpowered in comparison with what is already out there”. That’s a big promise to live up to, but if they have pulled it off, analysis of the new classes could signpost an alternative to that rather constraining technique.

The Dragonblade

This class uses combos (of what?), tactics, and power from a dragon spirit. It requires ‘constant good positioning’ and ‘well-chosen abilities’ to ‘unleash incredible powers and combos’ (there’s that word again!).

In fencing, a ‘combo’ is sometimes used to describe a deliberate string of maneuvers that are designed to expose the enemy to a more significant strike; most of these aren’t designed to actually damage the opponent, just to reposition his blade and any shield so that they aren’t where they need to be in order to stop the real attack.

That’s a level of realism that is always glossed over in D&D and related games, where the principle is that each attack roll represents just such a string of maneuvers without trying to distinguish one from another. If, in this class, the designers have found a way to restore some of that color, that makes it extremely interesting to all GMs and game designers.

The Madwalker

The blurb offered for this class reads, “Madwalkers tread the thin line that separates the realms of dreams and nightmares, the physical plane from the supernatural planes, risking their sanity and bodies in exchange for extraordinary powers” – Great Shades Of Cthulhu! Powers from Aberrations What next?

Both the illustrated representatives of this class have glowing eyes, suggesting that this class is a specific for the Kemet race. But the description provided barely even hints in that direction. It might well be that this is something that anyone can learn from the Kemet, providing the conceptual link that seems necessary.

The Elementalist

Philosophers who derive power from choices, elements, and manipulation of spells, this class offers more than 100 new spells. The class is able to manipulate the range, shape, power, and elemental foundations of these spells.

It isn’t clear from the description whether or not each class member must specialize in a single element or if they are all open for use at the same time. The only hint is that the artwork for the Elementalist that is using water has an embossing of some sort on several pieces of his armor that definitely looks representative of Water, which is hardly conclusive.

This class (quite naturally) reminds one of the mythos of The Last Airbender. How closely the resemblance runs would be a point of interest I can see it being useful, either way.

The Redeemer

This class explores the contradictory nature of the basic cleric in a more explicit way than anything I’ve seen before. They “hurt and heal,” “curse and bless,” “sacrifice and redeem”. A “plethora of off-combat tricks and powers, alongside a flexible variety of combat abilities” – but they don’t cast spells.

They purportedly gain their powers from contrasts, people, and the energy present in valuables. So that makes them a little more rogue-like in a number of respects.

For some reason, it also makes me think of the basic structure of a battery, in which two different materials (usually two metals, like Zinc and Copper) yield electricity when combined in the right medium and the right way. Which might be completely irrelevant, or it might be directly relevant to the inspiration behind this class.

Sub-classes

New sub-classes for each of the classes within the game are promised, both new and pre-existing. Rather than go into details (there are so many of them), I thought I’d simply list the ones that have been revealed to date (some more intriguing than others):

• Cleric – Chaos Domain
• Monk – Way of the Kinetic Fist
• Wizard – School of Lost Magic
• Dragonblade of Kelorth, the White Dragon
• Madwalker – Trail of the Augury
• Redeemer – Shepherd
• Barbarian – Path of the Savage Hunter
• Bard – College of Life
• Rogue – Trapmaster
• Fighter – Death Knight
• Druid – Circle of Bloom
• Monk – Way of the Animals
• Rogue – Ninja

When you examine the illustrations that accompany these in the Kickstarter, you’ll find that some of them are doing double-duty, also representing the new classes described earlier. It’s perhaps more surprising that this isn’t the case more often!

The Figurines & Minis

Hoo-boy, are there a lot of these (and that’s not even counting the ones unlocked as Stretch Goals)!

You might recognize the figure above – it’s a slightly larger representation of the Pegasus that I used to illustrate the ‘sneak preview’ last time. I wasn’t going to present it here again (though I had allowed for the possibility) until I realized how much more detail you could see in the feathers of the wings in this slightly larger size.

Some of the sculpture is absolutely exquisite, there’s no other word for it. Rather than go into absolutely everything, I thought that I’d instead restrict myself to just three facets of this substantial part of the offering.

Dragons? You Want Dragons?

Dragons are the most iconic creatures in D&D. Hands down, no question. The Dragons Collection depicts the “Avatar Dragons” of Tanares, supposedly the most powerful examples of their respective types in existence.

There is Kelorth, the White Dragon;
Zarumag, the Black Dragon; Azymor, the Red Dragon; Thyra, the Blue Dragon; and Vradok, the Undead Dragon.

The “Arena” box adds a lovely Green Dragon to the collection.

And there’s a standalone Gold Dragon.

And the “Penumbral Pack” adds the Penumbral Dragon. Which brings me to…

Creatures Of The Penumbral Plane

In the “Penumbral Pack”, you will also get “Pain”, “Anger”, “Greed” and “Envy”, all villains from the Tanares Adventures. The pack also comes with storage space for the 4 species miniatures that come in the Characters Pack (described earlier). In particular, I like the fact that the wings of the Cirrus are detachable for the lower character levels.

Another nice touch that may escape a casual review is that the miniatures are 3D representations of the character art – which therefore serves as a painting guide. The Elementalist figure is the same person, in the same pose (complete with the lightning display) as that used below).

I really wanted to feature the Penumbral Dragon figure because it looks so impressive on the Kickstarter page, but shrinking it to fit Campaign Mastery’s page limits cost it the all-important menace, blurring too many of the details. The only solution was to shrink it still further, and put the whole figure side-by-side with a cropped excerpt. It’s still not as impressive as the figure shown in the Kickstarter, though.

I also want to highlight some other especially attractive figures (in terms of use outside Tanares), all from the Madness Box: The Knight Of The Undead, Chimera, Lich, Imperial Demon, and Titan figures are all excellent.

Even if you already have figures for some of these, the ability to field a second one of visibly distinct nature, can only be useful!



Click on any of the images from this review to go to the Kickstarter campaign page.

You want them Painted?

Some people are great at painting their own figures.

For the rest of us, we either buy pre-painted or go monochrome – or persuade others to do the painting for us.

The miniatures packs in Tanares come in two varieties: unpainted and painted. And that means that its’ worth showcasing just what that means.

If you look back to just after my introduction, you can see a monochrome version of the Gold Dragon (which also gives an indication of its height).

Immediaetly above this text is a closeup of the painted Dragon for comparison purposes!

Except that there is no comparison. Plonk the monochrome version down in front of your PCs and they’ll go “Okay, that’s big”. Place the painted version down instead and the reaction would be “Okay, that’s impressive.”

The Adventures

I know, it seems like I’ve already covered this. Well, I haven’t. Not completely, anyway. That’s because there have been a number of additional adventures and adventure paths unlocked as stretch goals.

Some of these are intended for GM-less play (but should be adaptable for GM-driven play!). Others are add-ons to the adventure book that expand it further, while still others are standalone smaller adventures or adventure materials.

Additional locations and adventure hooks for different provinces, for example. Additional monsters for the campaign sourcebook. A PDF Adventure, “The Hunt for Azymore”. A new campaign arc for Epic Level missions in the Time Twist campaign arc.

I just wanted to call out that there WERE these additions!

The Funding Success Story

Why? Because that brings me to the Funding Success Story.

I’ve already pointed out that it took just 2 1/2 hours for Tanares to achieve its (rather modest) initial target. As you would expect, given that, it’s gone on to smash target after target. I’ll get to the Stretch Goals that go with that success in a moment; first, let’s just appreciate the total.

Unfortunately, in a bid to be helpful to me as a customer, Kickstarter have converted the currency to AUD. So I can say that the campaign has raised between US$1,689,000 (because that unlocked the 2nd last stretch goal) and US$1,699,000 (which will unlock the last stretch goal). That against an initial target of just US$50k.

It’s worth noting that the materials have (mostly) already been written, designed or sculpted (as appropriate) – the money is for production costs.

The Stretch Goals Achieved (So Far)

By my count, there have been no less than 82 stretch goals unlocked on the way to the current total. There have been extra minis (lots of them!) and extra creatures and magic items and adventures and sub-classes and expansions.

Far too many of them for me to list individually, to be honest (though that was what I originally intended to do – I ran out of time)!

A Limited Opportunity

This review has just scratched the surface. But one thing that I have to point out is that a number of the items up for grabs are designated Kickstarter Exclusives.

Back the project now, in other words, or miss out.

It’s not just that anything beyond the Kickstarter won’t be offered at the same discounted price; that’s a fairly widely accepted and expected business model these days.

But here’s the kicker: as I write this you have just THREE DAYS to pledge. And that will drop to two any time now.

Tiers Of Interest

The next point to be noted is that There is no “I want it all” pledge level. You can come close, but you will need to bolster even the top-level pledge with add-ons to get there.

The minimum-level entry is to get a $5 credit toward add-ons for US$5.

You can get one of the three sourcebooks in digital format for US$25. Or a Hardcover copy of the book plus the digital copy for $50. But you may want to add the Battlemats.

But the minimum basic pledge that I think will interest readers is the $69 All Digital Books and Files (which includes some that I haven’t mentioned). But you may still want the battle-mats.

The $129 Essential RPG Kit gets you all three hardcovers, plus a slipcase, DM’s Screen, and the main poster map. It also includes the Classes Miniatures Pack. All the other miniatures have to be added on, plus the arena pack, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The $179 Minis & Cards gets you most of the Minis and Boardgame expansions, but none of the Campaign Sourcebooks, which have to be added on – and you won’t get the Extra books that I mentioned earlier. And you need to add the Madness Box, Dragon Collection, Tanares Adventures (solo play), Battlemats, Deluxe Slipcase, Mystical Pack and Gold Dragon. And any Hardcover books. And upgrade everything if you want the minis to be painted.

The RPG Superkit costs US$249 is the top of the tree from an RPG point of view. That gets you all the books in Digital format, the Essential Kit pledge listed above, and the Minis and Cards pledge listed above – that comes close to being “I want everything”. You still have to add the Madness Box, Arena, Dragon Collection, Solo Adventures, Deluxe Slipcase, Dungeon Battlemats, Mystical Pack, and Gold Dragon.

If you start with the Superkit, and make the additions mentioned above, it will cost about US$710. And that’s without the upgrades to get the minis painted, another US$186.

That’s a LOT of money. But you get a LOT for your money.

If you can afford it, buy it all. Most won’t be able to do so.

To help with your planning, assuming you have to compromise, list exactly what you can afford to do without and what minis are absolutely essential. Armed with that information, find a section of the Kickstarter labeled “Pledge Breakdown” (it’s about 1/4 of the way down). Select the Pledge tier that you want – I recommend either the Essential Kit or the Superkit just to get those extra books – then start adding on the extras you have to have.

My bare-bones “not-quite-everything collection” would be the Essential Kit + Villain Pack + Penumbral Pack + Madness Box + Dragon Collection + Maps + Gold Dragon – which totals US$413. That slices almost half the cost out of the bundle but keeps the stuff that I really want – though I would dearly love to add the extra for painting the minis. That would cost me an additional US$186, undoing two thirds of what I saved by being frugal.

Tanares is one of those rare cases where no matter how much you can (realistically) invest, you will be rewarded for it.

But don’t tale my word for it – listen to the 8,266 people who have pledged AU$2,330,559 (and counting – but only for Three More Days)!

This is a post in three almost completely unrelated segments. I start with some sad news, follow that with our regularly-scheduled article, and conclude with a sneak preview of next week’s article, for reasons that will become obvious.
 

In Memorium I have to open today’s post with some sad news: Brian “Fitz” Fitzpatrick has passed away, quite unexpectedly. I got the news through KODT and immediately went to his Twitter account to verify it, finding that his last post was the day before his passing. Brian first came onto my radar in 2010 with a review of Johnn’s book “Filling The Empty Chair”, which was previewed here at Campaign Mastery. From 2011 to 2012, Campaign Mastery was regularly featured amongst many others as part of his “Game Knight Reviews” of RPG Blog content, and in the years that followed he occasionally dipped his toe back into those waters. He very generously wrote a review of our game supplement “Assassin’s Amulet” that was so substantial that he had to split it into two parts. He participated in the RPG Blog Carnival regularly through to 2014. It was around then that he started / revived Moebius Adventures – I remember offering advice and doing some image editing work on his logo. I reviewed a number of his products here at Campaign Mastery and amazingly, saw actual changes to the products as a result. Throughout this, Brian was warm and supportive, a friend to the entire RPG community. He will be sorely missed. My deepest condolences to his friends and family. We are all diminished by his loss.

Reputation Fragility

I was deleting a number of pieces of spam from Campaign Mastery’s inbox the other day (as I have to do a couple of times a day) when one caught my eye.

I’d seen this offer before, many times – promises to raise the profile of the website by direct marketing it to other sites, bringing thousands of new visitors to my site for a low, low fee.

Have no fear, I wasn’t even tempted. It seemed all too likely that they would “promote” the site by spamming thousands of other sites with links back to mine, an act that would not be conducive to repeat visitors – and charge me for the ‘privilege’.

I would rather 10 real readers who care about what I have to offer them than 1000 visitors who would vanish, never to return, within seconds of arrival. The latter might be good for the visitor numbers, but the reputation campaign mastery would get from any such promotional campaign would be counterproductive in the long run.

I think the same thing every time such spam offers intrude upon my awareness – which is to say, several times a week, most weeks.

But, on this particular occasion, the thought went further, wandering off to the question of character reputations and how to handle them. This is one area where almost every rules system is noticeably silent, and there’s good reason for that: it’s notoriously difficult and subjective, and that’s not exactly conducive to good rules.

I’m not going to pretend to solve all the problems in this post, I’ll leave that to someone far cleverer than I. But I’ll try to make the problems clear, and offer the vague and partial solutions that I use when issues of reputation arise in my campaigns.

Multiple Reputations

If the adventuring party has been around for a while, they will have a reputation of some sort. If they’ve been around for a while, they might even be famous.

That reputation is actually a lot more complex than people usually realize when they think about it. Every different group will have a different connection with it, depending on their own proclivities and interests.

A fighter might know that the group has never been defeated. A merchant, that they are known to drive a hard bargain but can be suckers for a sob-story, well-told. A nobleman might know that they have supported the commons in struggles with abusive members of the Nobility, a gambler that they are willing to take chances. An Orc might know that one member of the group has a predilection for killing others of his kind, while a priest might know that the group as a whole has a particular dislike of Undead.

As this example shows, a ‘reputation’ is actually a compound of many smaller reputations – and that’s assuming that the recognition is correct in the first place (you can have loads of fun with a group of NPCs who misidentify the PCs and assign them a reputation that’s not rightfully theirs, treats the PCs like visiting kings, and then dumps a really hard problem in their laps).

Combat Correlation

Some elements of a reputation can be interpreted as correlating with the combat capabilities, usual tactics, and overall style of the group with the reputation. Some of these may make the group sound so impressive that they gain a psychological advantage over the opposition. At other times, it may cause the opposition to attempt to avoid combat altogether, or to alter their own usual tactics. It can even be that a particular reputation can give the group a net combat disadvantage that their enemies can attempt to take advantage of.

Combat is usually a part of any game system for which players demand hard-and-fast rules, and such situations are so complex in their permutations that they don’t lend themselves to hard-and-fast rules. The best solution is often some sort of guideline and some limits.

For example, “a strong reputation may be worth no more than (d20-based system) ±4 (3d6-based system) ±2 or (d% system) ±20%. This bonus may be applied before any attempt to hit is made (a normal combat bonus) or may be added to the damage done in the event of a successful hit in exchange for an equal amount of damage being received by the attacking force”.

There are lots of permutations, and they can all be valid. They can all also complicate combat rules massively.

Non-Combat Correlation

Outside of combat, reputations can enable encounters to anticipate and even manipulate attitudes, behaviors, and opinions; can create expectations; can influence reactions, bend people either toward or against alliances, can manifestly alter the reception that characters receive, and so on.

These can materially impact character interactions to the point of conferring bonuses or penalties to the use of some skills (oratory and interpersonal skills, for example). Reactions and responses are likely to be as individual as the characters encountered.

The one thing that you can be sure of is that the reactions and any bonuses to either side that result will be different in nature and independent in valuation to those that are relevant to combat.

One size will not fit all, in other words.

Incrementation

One approach that some game systems have employed is to make reputation a trackable stat. Do things that negatively impact on your reputation and it goes down. Trade on your reputation and it goes down. Do things that positively impact on your reputation and it goes up.

This is remarkably similar to the approach I attempted to take with Piety – see The Woes Of Magic & Piety. In a nutshell, so many actions and events impact these stats that the paperwork becomes a real drag on a campaign. No matter how much you might want to abstract and streamline the process, it only takes one exception for the mechanics to become overwhelming and the rules, untenable.

Known Reputation

Recognition of a reputation is another complex issue. For a reputation to have any impact at all, it has to first be known to the potential target of the reputation, and correctly assigned to this particular group of characters.

Look back at the list of reputational aspects listed earlier – does anyone really think that they will all have the same penetration? On top of that, there is the question of how well-informed a specific individual or group might be. Both factors have to be taken into account to determine if a reputation is even known.

What is to be avoided is having an array of reputations, each with their own penetration, each with their own chance of being known, that have to be checked or even compiled with each encounter. This would be an efficiency nightmare – but anything more efficient seriously compromises the fidelity of the resulting mechanics.

Triggered Consequence

Let’s simplify for a moment, and take a ‘monochromatic’ reputation – the PCs have a reputation for being extremely effective in combat. Such a simple reputation, uncolored by anything else, makes it easier to explore the next range of problems.

Assume, furthermore, that this reputation is known to an encounter, and correctly assigned to the characters in question. This will clearly trigger some sort of consequence – but the nature of that consequence is quite varied. Some encounters will attempt to attack by surprise, others may attempt to avoid conflict, and still others will view this as an opportunity to grow their own reputations. Some may quake with fear, others attack with desperation.

Once again, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and that complicates any game mechanics, because you need some mechanism for selecting the most appropriate consequence, and translating that into game mechanics.

Reputations Swing Both Ways

The GM always has to bear in mind that NPCs may have a reputation that is known to the PCs, too, and this can either compound with, or can oppose, the effects of a PCs reputation.

Things can grow even more complicated when the NPC has a reputation that they have to live up to and the PCs do not, because this steps into the area of taking agency away from the players with regards to their characters.

The best approach is to inform the players of the reputation and deliberately get them to consider that reputation from the point of view of their characters – with the GM able to then function as an editor should that response be inadequate to the reputations scale, scope, and specifics, and translate that into game mechanics as necessary.

Using Reputation: A roleplaying decision

The concept of “Reputation” poses so many problems that it’s easy to see why game designers prefer to ignore it. But it’s so rational and reasonable that GMs often feel they don’t have that option, or deliberately choose to do so for playability reasons, no matter how unrealistic that choice might be.

With that foundation, it’s time to look at my hopelessly inadequate and totally vague and incomplete solutions to the problem.

It starts with this: A reputation can do nothing more than guide NPC choices, actions, and plans unless the owner of the reputation seeks to actively exploit their reputation through roleplaying. The manner of any impact on NPC choices, actions, and plans is a matter of roleplaying the NPCs in question and stems from the GM’s perceptions of the totality of the game world including the past actions of the owners of the reputation. Attempts to utilize a reputation that is not known by the target produces a response that is generally the opposite of that desired.

Let’s unpack that a little.

• The impact that a reputation has on prep and planning by an NPC is a roleplaying question for the GM.
• Whether or not the NPCs have even heard of the PCs is also a roleplaying decision for the GM.
• To get any game mechanical impact from a reputation, the character(s) with the reputation have to actively attempt to trigger their reputation through roleplay and in-character dialogue. Simply saying “have they ever heard of me” won’t cut it.

That sidesteps a number of the difficult questions and potential game mechanics. It means that the PCs have to actively attempt to leverage their reputation before it has any impact.

The Consequence

If reputation triggers a change of some sort, that consequence is also principally handled as a roleplaying question. It might cause the target to attack more violently, or be more defensive, or seek to pull back from a confrontation; or any of half-a-dozen other choices; which ones apply are dependent on the nature of the reputation and how the individual reacts to such situations. There are too many possibilities for hard-and-fast rules.

This means that I am not directly interpreting the reputation into game mechanics; instead, I am interpreting their reaction into game mechanics if necessary.

That might seem a very subtle difference, but it trades a blanket rule that has to be ‘one size fits all’ with something more specific.

I feel the need for a non-combat example at this point: Character#1 (C1) has a reputation for rewarding artists whose work they like. Character #2 (C2) is an artist in an art class that C1 is inspecting. C2 knows C1’s reputation, and decides to make an extra effort, to be more attentive to detail than usual. The GM assesses quality of success in a creative art by “Margin of success” because that yields a simple number that he can then apply to other related die rolls such as an inclination to purchase. The GM doesn’t try and interpret the impact of C1’s reputation directly; he determines how C2 will react to that reputation (assuming he knows it) and then only has to worry about translating that response. How much of a difference does taking more care and attention to detail make to the quality of C2’s creative efforts? Taking more care is a common act, one that will confront the GM regularly. That makes it far easier to come up with an answer. Since C2’s art is usually very slapdash (a character trait that the GM decides is appropriate given C2’s personality), he decides that the extra effort makes a big difference, and gives C2 a +3 on his painting roll instead of the usual -2 that he would apply to a ‘slapdash’ artwork. As a result, C2 succeeds in his roll by 2 instead of failing by 3. C1 stops and encourages C2 in a complimentary manner but (quick roll of the dice) does not offer to buy. How C2 reacts to this is the next question – he might be discouraged by the lack of a sale, or he might make a personal breakthrough as a result of the positive feedback.

The process works the same way in Combat, or in any other situation. If, in D&D, you are confronted with a creature known to be able to breathe fire, you’re going to be on the lookout for any hint that this is about to happen – does that give a bonus to your saving throw? Or does NOT knowing that reputation mean that you have a penalty? (I would personally think the latter, but a passionate player might be able to convince me to go the other way – but he would have to bear in mind that the same standards would then be enforced for all characters at all times).

Do You Know Who I Am?

Quite often, a reputation isn’t deployed for any specific purpose. “Do You Know Who You’re Dealing With?” could be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate, or to use a reputation for fair dealing to grease the wheels in a negotiation, or as a warning to play fair “or else”. It’s this very variety that makes blanket rules for reputation so difficult, and why determining the impact something that is better done through roleplaying.

To a large extent, the intentions of the character deploying his reputation are irrelevant. That’s why I rule that the reputation has to be ‘channeled’ through roleplay if the character has some specific intent in mind – in which case, any reputation is a secondary influence on what happens, the roleplay ‘vehicle’ is the primary driver of the reaction. If you are trying to intimidate, a threatening posture and some forceful dialogue are the primary triggers of a reaction, and the reputation, if it’s known, is an add-on that might amplify, or diminish, the reaction.

A character with a reputation for being friendly and caring will have a harder time intimidating someone than a character with a reputation for being rough and violent – but not as hard a time as a character with a reputation for being meek and mild. Clark Kent intimidates no-one, and everyone should stand up to him.

Do You Know Who I Am?

Dueling reputations can be fun to roleplay, and in many ways, this is a natural come-back. But this nettle has a sting that can no longer be avoided.

It’s all well and good for the GM to decide whether or not an NPC has heard of a PC through sheer roleplaying and character knowledge – but that won’t generally work when the shoe is on the other foot, and the player asks the GM, “Do I know him?”

You need some basis on which to answer, and most world-knowledge is simply too vague to give the definitive answer that the player is looking for. “Well, he’s the CEO of a successful corporation in Brunei of medium size that is well-known in some circles, with a reputation for smothering rivals financially even if it results in short-term losses; he always has an eye on the long-term, and that sometimes makes his business moves surprising to others.” — that doesn’t answer the question, it evades it, while leaving the window open for the player to tell the GM what the GM already knows – that the PC has no connections to Brunei and it’s business culture, and may or may not be part of the ‘some circles’.

In D&D it’s fairly easy – roll a d20 and if it’s less than or equal to the NPC’s level, then the answer is ‘yes’ to at least some extent; then the GM just has to work out (as above) what the PC knows or has heard.

In any other game system, I simply come up with some equivalent. In the Hero System, I would look at a simple fraction (1/2 or 1/3) of the character points (XP) earned – and if the character has bought a ‘famous’ disadvantage (or some other equivalent), double it to get a target to roll against. If the NPC has an ‘anonymous’ disadvantage, I would halve it. The result is a target number that can be rolled against quickly and simply.

This quick-and-dirty approach solves a lot of the problems that otherwise clog up resolving the question, equating overall character success with recognizability.

Undeserved Reputations

For all practical purposes, there is no difference between a deserved reputation and one that has been conferred by a headline-hungry media. But an undeserved reputation can be very useful to the GM.

Consider the following sequence:

The PC has just spotted someone running from a grocery store from which a siren is blaring. Apprehending the person, they discover that the sales clerk is dead, but there is no sign of the gun used to kill him, and a search of the person apprehended yields nothing incriminating. The Police arrive and take the runner into custody, run his name through their database, and find that he was found guilty of murder ten years earlier and released a couple of months ago on a technicality. So far as they are concerned, he’s probably as guilty as sin, and this time they’ll nail him for it.

So the runner’s reputation has just scored a bullseye so far as the police are concerned – he’s now guilty until proven innocent, and the PC can put the whole thing behind him if he wants to without a second thought.

But the GM wants to engage the PC as a gateway to the plotline.

So: The runner says “I ran because I knew how it looked, but I didn’t do it – he was dead when he arrived. I knew I’d get no fair deal from the cops, but with your rep, [PC], I hoped for better from you. Guess I should’a known better.”

This uses the PCs hard-won reputation for fairness and championing justice against them, lumping them in with the most prejudiced parts of the criminal justice system. Whether they like it or not, they have to become an advocate for the Runner, protecting him from being stitched up for a crime there is no proof that he committed.

So the PC engages with the investigation, in the course of which they discover that the ‘technicalities’ that released the runner from jail added up to a wrongful incarceration – the release on a technicality was simply the most expedient way to get him out of the system. What was originally a duty (ensuring a fair investigation) is now likely to turn the PC into a passionate advocate for the runner; the reputation with which he was saddled has been expunged in the PCs mind.

But all the other evidence keeps stacking up against the Runner. He claims that the police or someone else are stitching him up, they are so convinced that he’s guilty, or maybe it’s the real guilty party trying to deflect attention to him. If so, they are doing a very good job.

Engaging plotline sinks its’ hooks into Player, news at eleven!

The GM lets the investigation unfold for a while, but in an improbably short time, or maybe in a flash-forward, its’ time for the Runner to face trial. That signals to the player (if they know their stuff) that the GM has presented everything that the PC needs to do in order to overturn the verdict, or that the GM is playing a bigger and longer game.

The PC is called as a witness by the prosecution and questioned as to the events of the night (it is so that these will be fresh in the players’ mind that the GM has brought the trial forward). The prosecution shuts down any attempt to testify beyond the scope of the facts, doing their best to treat the PC as a hostile witness. The Prosecution is even able to sneak the admission out of the PC that the accused killer has a prior criminal record. They become more convinced than ever that the Runner is headed for another wrongful conviction, and that the GM has some 11th hour plot twist laid out for the trial which lets the PC discover the real killer and save the day.

The PC then gets called as a witness by the Defense and asked the more open questions that the prosecution wouldn’t let them answer, while the player is desperately looking for the hole that the GM must have planted in the case for them to find, without success.

Despite a glowing character testimonial by the PC, which largely counters the defendants’ past record, the Jury finds enough circumstantial evidence to convict the Runner. As he is being led from the court, the PC tells him something like “Don’t give up”. The Runner shrugs, and replies “I had to try. I hoped having you on my side would be enough to get me off. Didn’t work, huh? But at least you tried. Thanks,”

He then turns to the DA. “Is it too late to do a deal on sentencing? I’ll tell you where I hid the gun and where I got it from. You’ll want that.” The DA replies, “We’ll talk about it.”

Moral of the story: sometimes an undeserved reputation cloaks innocence – and sometimes the perception that a reputation is undeserved cloaks guilt – and in this case, the Runner was using the PC’s reputation for their own ends.

Submerged Reputations

Some people submerge a reputation that they deserve. The ruthless businessman who secretly donates to charitable causes because he uses that reputation for ruthlessness to increase the money available for such gifts, for example.

Characters with richly complex reputations – such traits can only remain submerged for so long – make for interesting characters for PCs to interact with. You can even re-read the example above from the perspective that the Runner was attempting to submerge his true criminal behavior and the reputation that goes with it.

The common trope, in fact, is that of the generous and kind-hearted businessman who is really ruthless, corrupt, and even criminal – but keeps that part of their activities a secret.

A reputation for fun

Reputations can be a lot of fun to play with. The players in my superhero campaign will never forget the dumpy, middle-aged woman who showed up at Boston Police Central wearing a polka-dotted shower curtain as a cape (and nothing else) claiming to be a member of their team. The poor, delusional, woman thought that if she was a member of the team, she would finally stop being disrespected.

And the players in Fumanor will never forget the people who were impersonating them to gain access to Noble Houses and their valuables, who made the mistake of asking the real members of the group to join them – the NPCs had heard the PCs reputations but did not recognize the owners.

Or Edmond Confessor (not his real surname), who confessed to everything – again, and again, and again – but who was actually a witness with vital information that he used to make himself look more guilty because he deserved to be punished.

Reputations are fun to play with – but you need to know how they are going to work, first.

If this doesn’t whet your appetite, nothing will! The Pegasus from Tanares, one of many figurines and minis that come with the Campaign Setting. Background by Mike. Sneak Preview Next time on Campaign Mastery, I will be reviewing Tanares, a game setting and much much more. I don’t want to get ahead of myself (mainly because I don’t have the time) but needed to give advance notice. There is currently a little more than a week left in the Kickstarter campaign, and when the review comes out, there will only be a day or two remaining. There are lots of add-ons – beautifully-carved miniatures – that will add substantially to the cost of backing the project and getting out of it all that you can. Some are even available painted for those with no skill in that area (like me). So much so that I expected people having trouble raising enough money on short notice to fully participate, and being quite unhappy about the prospect – when they saw what was up for grabs. So this preview is to advise readers to set funds aside. US$200-300 should set you up fairly nicely. Yes, you can get by for less – but the extras that are exclusive to the Kickstarter make this a case of any investment being very well rewarded. So I’m giving readers advance notice – next week, I will be reviewing something that looks worth an investment of that scale. You won’t have very long to respond when I do – so start putting what funds you can spare together in advance! If you can’t wait, click on the Pegasus to be carried on it’s wings to the Kickstarter!

995… 996…

I’m still looking for ideas on how to commemorate my 1000th post at Campaign Mastery. Time is getting really really short, now!

The Unexpected Microcosm

A department store is a near perfect-simulation of, well, just about everything, really.

Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration – but much less so than most people realize.

This article will seek to simultaniously demonstrate the truth of the general statement and show readers how to use the microcosm of the Department Store in various ways through extrapolation to subdivide the problem of generating various larger structures and conceptual entities easier and more comprehensive.

The technique works by breaking the model – a hypothetical department store – down into essential functions, and then using each as a signpost or analogy to the equivalent functions of the objective, yielding a structural process that is far less likely to leave something important out.

If the structural object is planned or designed, this should be done before mapping takes place, because it yields a work order for everything that logically has to be there; in an unplanned target, a draft map should be done first and the various functions shoehorned into wherever they will fit, on some sort of logical sequence of priority / authority. Some of these will be obvious, others not; this process will naturally highlight any compromises that result, and hence, where the inefficiencies lie.

Individual geography, societal differentiation, and circumstances, all get taken into account through the simple process of choosing this priority sequence, so that you can start from exactly the same foundations and end with completely different outcomes that take these complex factors into consideration in a relatively simple way.

The end result is a planning tool that simplifies, and makes more robust, the creation of complex settings, whether they are intended for use in an adventure, a campaign, or a work of fiction, with an underlying internal logic that adds to their utility and believability.

The secret to the utility of the process is that we’re all familiar with the department store, and so can understand the way they work (even if we’ve never given the matter much thought). So this takes a complex problem and simplifies it enough that it becomes much easier to work with, creatively.

The Necessary Structure

It didn’t take much thought to divide the essential functioning of a department store into no less than twenty distinct components – enough that most won’t remember them.

That’s why the use of a department store as a mnemonic device is so useful – because the logical elements that comprise the collective umbrella description of “Department Store” can be derived from basic principles every time they are needed if you don’t have a list of them handy.

I happen to have such a list – that’s how I know there are twenty entries – so let’s look at each item and what function it serves within the Microcosm. I’ll have more to say about some of them in the examples a little later, but here’s an introductory set of descriptions.

1. Departments – The central purpose and concept of a department store is to offer products to sale within general categories of related products. The same logic holds true of supermarket aisles. Typically, there will be eight to twelve different departments in a single store but there can be more or less than this guideline. In some mega-stores, for example, there can be twenty or more; in some smaller stores, the categories might be broader and there will be fewer of them. What they all have in common is that revenues for each department or division are tracked independently (but with common procedures and processes).
2. Specials – These are frequently a sub-function of the individual departments, perhaps with an overall umbrella promotional principle dictated by the Publicity department (function 13 below). But the selection of products to be placed on special, the adjustment of stock levels to accommodate anticipated increases in demand, the creation and coordination of displays, and the placement of those displays, all add up to a specialist function within the operation of the department store. I’ll have more to say on this subject when I get to the second section of the article; suffice it to say that however complicated you may have thought it was, this is almost certainly more complicated than that!
3. Stocktaking – Every night or every week (perhaps every fortnight or month in a sleepy backwoods), someone has to count exactly how many widgets remain in stock on Aisle Three. I once had a casual temp job for minimum wage doing this – it’s not hard work but can be backbreaking. About 40 of us would descend on a single store and count the stock levels of every product on every shelf in a single night. One some jobs, there were pre-printed forms which told us how many of each item there should be, minimum, so that the store could determine how many replacements to order; on others they fed the stock counts into their own software to replace one form of human error with another. There aren’t as many such jobs, these days,, because most point-of-sale systems track the cumulative level of stocks taken off the shelves as they go; an automated subtraction does the rest. But, for all that it’s been automated, this remains a vital function – just imagine the chaos without it!
4. Receiving Docks – If you are ordering stock, you logically need some way for it to get into the department store, usually in bulk, and that’s a receiving dock. The presence of one also implies (for efficiency) a storage space where the bulk reserves can be uncrated as necessary to replenish stock on the floor. There can be variations on this pattern – the showroom concept in which only a demonstration sample is visible to the customer and the actual product is delivered to the customer from the storage area or even a central depot, for example – but the general principle of this being a necessary function for the operation of a department store remains.
5. Distribution – Product won’t get from the storeroom to the shelves on its own. I used to pump gas at my Uncle’s service station on a Sunday (giving him the only time off that he got), and one of the duties was restocking the refrigerators of soft drinks and ice-creams. On a hot day in high summer, this was a never-ending task – by the time you got to the end of it, it was time to start again. And sometimes there would be a run on a particular item for no obvious reason, necessitating doing it more frequently. There was also an iron-clad rule – no shelf should ever be empty, even if you ran out of whatever was supposed to be there, and you had to use your own experience and judgment to second-guess what to use to fill that shelf space. You also had to keep a sharp eye on product lines that weren’t moving at their usual pace and pass the information on.
6. Cleaners – Sweep the floors and sales increase. You also reduce the likelihood of workplace accidents (or worse yet, of customer accidents). Cleaning is a vital behind-the-scenes function.
7. Cashiers – In Australia, at least these are slowly phasing out, replaced by self-service options and a single security guard (who also mans a help desk). But the function itself remains essential.
8. Security – No store can survive without some sort of security – even if it’s nothing more than a locked door when the store is closed. Most have something more elaborate than this minimum.
9. Customer Finance – This isn’t about the store’s money, it’s about separating the customer from money that they don’t have on their person at the time. I’m just barely old enough to remember when the only option was lay-by, where an item was set aside until it was paid for (usually in multiple partial transactions, sometimes with a fee attached); then came credit cards, and now there are a plethora of financial instruments that can be used. But they are all the same, in principle. Some might not think this is an essential service, regarding it as an optional extra – but the fact is that (in general) a store that offers such a service will outperform one that doesn’t. Complicating the situation are the handling fees and charges that the store gets charged by financial institutions, which obviously detract from the additional profits that accrue, but this department doesn’t have to worry about such policy decisions; this function simply handles the interface with the customer – taking and tracking payments – that implements those decisions, and that’s true even if the cashiers can do it all.
10. Utilities – In general, only the largest stores will have a specific infrastructure to handle the utilities. That doesn’t matter. Light, heat, cooling, and water remain essential functions that the stores need to provide in order to maximize revenues. Cashiers may be able to resort to manual methods in the event of a blackout, but since the store would staff to operate at maximum efficiency under normal circumstances, such inefficient methods mean that cashiers could never come close to keeping up if there wasn’t an immediate drop-off in demand under such circumstances. This can also include unexpected items like a staff lunchroom, cafeteria or kitchens, washrooms, even a children’s playroom. I’d have called these Infrastructure, but that umbrella term would also include two other functions that are vital (11 and 12 below), and so could be confusing. If it exists to enable the other staff to do their jobs more efficiently, it generally comes under this heading.
11. Maintenance – A light-bulb needs replacing? A shelf needs repairs? A ceiling tile has come loose? A door has jammed? A pane of glass is broken? The floor is lifting? A cash register has malfunctioned? A fuse has blown, or some wiring has shorted out? The list of maintenance tasks just grows and grows.
12. Transitions – Elevators, escalators, aisles, and the implementation of store layout – these are all about transitions. Every customer needs to enter the store (at least they did until internet shopping came along), needs to be able to get to the products they want to buy, needs to be able to get to a cashier to make their purchase, and then needs to get out of the store again. Every member of staff needs to be able to enter the store in the mornings, get to the location of the work, and exit at the end of the day. All these customer and staff movements are Transitions. But there are additional complications in some stores – having the Hi-Fi department too close to the TVs can cause the two to compete for a sound footprint in the landscape, for example. Sales in some areas will go up with quieter surroundings. Some areas naturally pose noise problems – a complaints section, for example – and handling all these aspects of placement and mobility are represented by the Transitions function.
13. Publicity & Promotions – I’m not sure if it was Harrods or Seers who had the first bespoke Publicity function within their operation. It might even have been someone else whose name is now lost to the ages – but the days when a department store can get by with just the name of the store above the entrance are long gone. As a general rule of thumb, there’s a lot more to this function than most people imagine – ideas need to be dreamed up, plans need to be made, costs and success need to be tracked, and the whole then needs to feed back into the next promotion – and there’s no time to start the process over. Instead, you need to be tracking the current promotion, planning the next one, and dreaming up the one after that, all at the same time. And that’s just the promotions part of the activity. Promotions are a lot more effective if customers know about them – they actually drive people into the store – so publicity is also a natural element of this function. And that adds any other media relations activities to this function. In the very biggest chains, these may even be separate corporate divisions or subdivisions. The modern umbrella term is ‘Marketing’, but I think the more specific terminology is useful in this context.
14. Customer Relations – I’ve already mentioned customer complaints, but the process of keeping customers satisfied when things go wrong is an essential function, and one that you usually don’t want occurring in full view of other customers (who may not like what they hear). In theory, this could also be folded into the Publicity and Promotions or lower management functions, but there are practical problems with that approach; the first lends itself to trying to ‘spin’ your way out of problems so as to avoid negative publicity without actually addressing the problem (or to the perception that this is what you are doing), while in any dispute with the store, management is frequently perceived as ‘the enemy’, and there is a natural bias by management against the customer on the part of management when there’s a dispute that can be perceived if not actual. Neither is conducive to satisfactory resolution of the problem; it has been tried both ways, and it soon emerges that results are better for all concerned if there’s a separate complaints / customer relations process. So this naturally becomes a standalone function.
15. Design – There are two possible meanings to this function. First, the promotions & publicity department might come up with the idea for a promotion but have to hand it over to a bespoke design department to create and manufacture the promotional displays and advertising that implement the idea. Second, who decides which part of the store is electrical and which menswear, which one contains shoes and which saucepans Who decides how many aisles there should be, how long they should be, and what the store layout should be in general? There’s enough overlap that they can be considered a distinct function of the store, no matter who is carrying them out.
16. Administration & Accounting – The first part of this double-barrel creates and implements policies, procedures, and processes that enable the other functions to operate. The second tracks and documents cash flow, and reports same to those with a right to know, while watching for abnormal patterns. This function is a general umbrella for the back-room processes that make it possible for all the other functions to take place and be controlled.
17. Human Resources – Hiring, Firing, Payroll, and Working Conditions all fall under the Human Resources umbrella function. None of the functions can occur without people in back or in front of them, and Human Resources are supposed to provide and maintain those people.
18. Training – Life is full of change, and so are societies. Training not only gives the people sourced by Human Resources with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their functions, they revise those skills and knowledges when changing circumstances dictate, and maintain those skill levels. The larger and stronger the administration function, the more bespoke and idiosyncratic the procedures and processes become and the greater the need for training to prepare people to follow those procedures and processes.
19. Lower Management – Lower Management makes day-to-day decisions regarding at least one of the previous functions, aimed at maintaining the smooth operation of that function. Each department and each function other than the first will typically have a manager in charge. There may also be an intermediate level of management because there are so many managers that result. If a department store is part of a chain, with some centralized functions, this becomes all the more certain.
20. Senior Management – Senior Management makes the longer-term decisions that administration, HR, Training, and Lower Management then have to implement and make work as best they can. “Reduce staff levels 10%” – “Raise prices 5%” – “Reduce costs” – “Increase management pay rates” – whatever. In theory, the goal of senior management is to maximize profits, knowing that sometimes you have to spend money to make more money, but there’s an inherent conflict of interest and scope for short-term greed to overwhelm the interests of long-term productivity.

Those are the essential functions that come to mind when I reflect on everything I know about the operations of a major department store. Depending on the size of the store and the era (in terms of retail operations), one person may carry out many of them, or only a part of one, or anything in between; that’s why the separation is by function, because this enables the model to scale from the one- or two-person operation all the way up to something with tens of thousands of employees.

The Essential traits

It’s the nature of people to be lazy unless they are motivated to be otherwise. It’s the nature of profitability to demand efficiency, maximizing productivity for a given level of effort and profit for a given level of productivity. Over the years, there has been a great deal of research into how to achieve the second and third in the face of the first. Some of the lessons have come from direct studies of retail operations, some have come from seemingly unrelated fields and found surprising interpretations in the retail sphere.

Supermarkets, Department Stores, and Casinos have all invested something between considerable sums and vast fortunes into these studies, after early success was encountered adapting the discoveries of psychologists. The history of this research is as fascinating as the lessons learned, and awareness of the principles enables you to choose whether or not to combat the impact of the sales techniques that stores use to try and manipulate your purchasing choices, maximizing your productivity when shopping and getting you more bang for your buck.

It’s also useful to recognize the influence that this field of collected study has had on the different essential functions because these principles can taint the extrapolation process; some need adaption, and some need to be wholly ignored.

Those that can be readily adapted are what I have termed the Essential Traits (for lack of a better term): Purpose, Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Success. These essential traits have to be divorced from the twenty overarching functions described earlier because they require more abstract interpretation in terms of our model in order to extrapolate from our Microcosm to a specific target, and will guide that extrapolation process.

In Search Of Purpose

The purpose of a department store is obvious – to sell a wide variety of goods, at a profit. Every function is devoted to, and necessary to, achieving that purpose. Whatever structure we are going to model using our department store microcosm needs to have an equally simply-stated purpose which we will use to guide the translation from microcosm to modeled target.

These functions are sometimes tricky to find – a town that simply grew up because there’s a lot of traffic past a secure site, for example. Nuances matter a lot – you can end up with a very different population center if you nominate trade as your primary purpose as compared to, say, security or rest-stop. Context needs to be considered, too – if this location is in what a lot of GMs call the Wilds, you might get a very different answer to a location that is a day’s wagon-distance from the capital city.

The more unusual you make the purpose, the more unusual the resulting community, settlement, or structure. I like to have a list of 3 or 4 common ones and disperse examples of each type reasonably evenly – but there will be clumps – merchant towns along trade routes, mutual defense along borders (especially hostile ones), religious centers around important shrines, and the like. This enables different regions to have a slightly different ‘feel’ to them – one religion-oriented community is unsurprising, two in a row is unusual but not especially noteworthy, three in a row and you’re either near an important religious site or following the path of a popular pilgrimage to such a site – or in a particularly devout part of the world.

It’s important to note the usual human responses to such focus – the devout well be attracted to such communities, the secular will generally find somewhere else that’s more to their liking. What they can do about it is a question of the mobility afforded different social classes in the society of your game world – if they can’t move, they will become part of a secondary (and moderating) purpose within the ecology of the township; if they can, they will, which means that the religious community will grow more focused and the destination communities will grow more secular. The first diffuses extremes throughout the population; the second creates differentiation and differences of expression.

And, every now and then I’ll toss in an oddball – a town dedicated to cuisine, or wine festivals, or beer-halls. Just because I can.

You can anticipate future campaign needs, too. If you expect that the PCs will at some point come into possession of a potentially-valuable artwork, or an expensive-looking set of rare gems cut to form a set, having already established the Fine Arts ‘capital’ of the kingdom / known world or the gem-cutter’s guild headquarters – perhaps someplace relatively remote to the PCs and requiring an “interesting” journey – will enable you to steer the campaign while imbuing it with far more credibility than if such a location suddenly appears on the map the week after such an item or set of items is acquired.

In Search Of Effectiveness

I love this section because it gives me the chance to rabbit on about Formula 1 for a while!

There’s a huge difference between Effectiveness and Success. Success means winning, and that means designing and constructing the fastest car that isn’t clearly outside the rules. If there’s a gray area, you find a way to exploit it – but have a plan B in case the powers that govern the sport ban your too-clever-by-half idea. Making a faster car generally means that you will start the race from a better position, so there’s a compounding benefit. The problem is that you will usually have to overtake someone eventually, even if the only reason they are in front of you is because you’re emerging from a pit-stop – and, beyond a relatively low ceiling, making a car faster makes it more susceptible to the drag and ‘dirty air’ (aerodynamically disturbed air) coming off the car in front of you, making passing harder. This can completely ruin your race, so a faster car might not be fastest after all!

All things being more-or-less equal, you wouldn’t be held up by a slower car in this fashion for long because they would pit and get out of your way. But there is a reason why Formula 1 is sometimes described as ‘a moving game of chess’ – every team knows this, and has all manner of tactical options open to them. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the complexities of race strategy, and sometimes the best teams get it wrong.

Be that as it may, here’s the point: the faster car on paper may be the most effective in pure terms but if it is too compromised, it may not be the most successful. Another interpretation that fits would be that making a car faster used to mean making it lighter, which means making the parts more fragile, until you reach the point of being the fastest thing on four wheels – for half the race.

Effectiveness describes the extent to which the community being created satisfies their primary purpose regardless of the impacts on other general purposes that can be assumed, and how it achieves that. Let’s pick ‘Beer and Sausage Festival’ for our primary purpose, because why not? So, we’ll need a bunch of people who make their own sausages in the town, and a brewery or two, and a bunch of beer-halls, and some sort of annual festivities (if not more frequent booze-ups). None of that makes the town a satisfactory place to live, in fact it would be a ghost town if that was all there was. So the town is effective, but its success remains to be seen – the tourist trade is much smaller in medieval times (but might be larger – if more localized – in your campaign world).

In Search Of Efficiency

Efficiency is something else again – it’s usually considered to be output per unit of input or per cost unit. But we haven’t necessarily defined effectiveness as something we can measure – and that gives us a lot of creative license. But here’s a bottom-line: the money (or whatever the input is) has to come from somewhere, and it will flow for a reason. So either the operation achieves a minimum standard of efficiency, or the community is going broke, or they are being directly supported by someone or something for their own reasons. It could be the local ruler, or a thieves guild or all manner of things – some of them open and above-board, some hidden and covert.

At the border, it doesn’t matter how inefficient it might be, a community situated on the most defensible piece of real estate in the region is an asset not to be neglected.

Decide on the efficiency of the town or structure – and if the answer is not good, decide on who is propping it up (if anyone), and how, and why.

Again, the local environment needs to be taken into account. If the soil is poor and rocky, the efficiency will take an immediate hit – which doesn’t matter too much if the primary purpose is mining shale or slate or whatever. This probably meets the minimum standard for self-reliance; it just means that trade caravans will need to make their way to the community on a regular basis to keep it supplied with food, clothing, and many other such commodities. Those same caravans will probably buy whatever the locals are producing and take it away with them (an empty wagon returns no profit). Right away, the town begins to come to life.

Let’s say that it’s slate, and the bottom has fallen out of the slate market – no-one wants the stuff. Okay, the town has been through bad seasons before – everything will just get a bit more threadbare, is all.

Now let’s say this happened thirty years ago. Why is the town still there? What’s keeping it afloat, economically? What are the local up to?

In Search Of Success

Efficiency, scaled to Effectiveness, yields profit. Profit isn’t success either – unless that was the purpose, just like in our department store. Success is how good the target is at achieving everything else that it has to do.

To use Formula One as an analogy again: it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the fastest car but make slow pit-stops and can’t overtake, or use up tyres like a chew-toy and need to pit more often than anyone else – your overall success will be compromised.

In the case of out beer hall town, it’s how well the town does at keeping its citizens fed, clothed, content, secure, and able to pay tax revenue.

These four very similar-sounding traits define the central function of our microcosm as translated to the target, and provide guidance as to the analogues of the other functions and where those functions will sit on the priority ladder. They come close to telling us all we need to know.

So let’s start putting this theory into practice. If all goes according to plan, I will have five examples to show the breadth of capabilities of this technique.

Extrapolation One: A Town

Name: Cordain
Size: Bigger than a village, smaller than a city – maybe 2,000 inhabitants and 3,000 more living in the vicinity.
Location/Environment: Farmlands, situated at the crossing point of two major trade routes, and bisected by the river Thornton just prior to it’s merging with the Brandybuck. 500 years ago, this was all wilderness, and the village a fortified outpost; thanks to this place and others like it, the region has been tamed and civilized. Socially, a natural conservatism is regularly tested, challenged, and even tainted by infusions of new ideas from other regions, leading to a general live-and-let-live-but-don’t-tell-us-how-to-live attitude. An increase in the number of encounters with Goblins and the occasional sighting of Gnolls has the locals on edge.

• Purpose: Cordain could be a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but the ultimate purpose that best sums up the community is as a pin in a map, an anchor holding the greater Kingdom together as a unit. More than just a melting pot, this is the exemplar that represents the entire kingdom.
• Effectiveness: It takes time for information and new practices to reach Cordain, and more time for the locals to assimilate and react. That impacts the effectiveness of the community, especially in fast-moving situations. Because it is a melting pot, though, when it does assimilate and react, it does so fairly definitively.
• Efficiency: The town is quite economical at achieving it’s status as a cultural centerpoint or tent-pole, largely because there are functions that it doesn’t spend much on compared with both outer communities and larger cities. It passes these savings on to the community in the form of being as business-friendly as it can be, because it is a crossroads for all influences on the society and trade drives that status.
• Success: Cordain is highly efficient at the functions that other communities of comparable size and circumstances do well, and moderately successful at best at anything that doesn’t meet those restrictions.

1. Departments = Taverns with shelter for whole caravans are the heartbeat of the community function, supported by subsidized ale and wine. Supplies come from a competitive pair of local breweries, but the wine has to be imported. There is a vibrant marketplace and a freight exchange where bulk trading occurs. Several teamsters base themselves out of Cordain.
2. Specials = Most exotic products can be accessed from time to time, some seasonally. Similarly, specialists in most services pass through town from time to time and will often set out a temporary shingle before moving on. More common services that are not provided locally on a permanent basis are available on a regular basis. This includes a thriving black market for property stolen elsewhere. Those responsible protect the security of this trade very assiduously, so the local crime rate is extremely low.
3. Stocktaking = Before anything can be sold at the markets or at the freight exchange, it has to be ‘inspected’ – which means assessed in value for taxation purposes. It would otherwise be entirely too easy for cargoes to be bartered, bypassing the taxman entirely, and forcing up taxation requirements elsewhere in the culture. By spreading the taxation base more evenly, it actually lowers the tax rates overall.
4. Receiving Docks = Goods arrive from one of the four roads into town, or are ferried up- or down-river. The major docks and warehouses are located rather more centrally than is usually the case, but there are lesser examples close to the town entrances.
5. Distribution = Rumors and Gossip is rife within the community, to such an extent that many merchants add a 10% surcharge unless you can tell them some news that they haven’t heard.
6. Cleaners = Street Cleaners are a rare service in a medieval society, but with so many caravans passing through Cordain, a necessary one. Their primary purpose is the collection of animal waste which is on-sold to a fertilizer maker to defray the cost of the service.
7. Cashiers = The merchants of Cordain are renowned for driving hard bargains and knowing to a copper the current market values of goods from all over the Kingdom.
8. Security = The constabulary of Cordain are under-resourced and underfunded due to the low crime rate. The few who are employed by the crown are more familiar with crowd control but they do also provide protection for the tax collectors, for which service they receive 0.1% of all tax receipts conveyed to the capital by the protected tax collector. This is 80% of the remuneration provided to the constabulary, so the responsibility is taken quite seriously and enthusiastically. Cordain was once on the frontier, and had a substantial wall around the township, but it has fallen into dissaray as it is no longer needed, and parts of it have been robbed out for construction materials.
9. Customer Finance = There is a private bank that provides loans to merchants and caravaners. It acts more as a broker, on-selling these debts to spontaneous consortia based in the freight exchange, collecting a 20% service charge for doing so. This means that the bank rarely risks any of its own funds; only if insufficient backing can be found for a given venture are the banks owners liable if the debt is not properly redeemed. The more conservative the bank is with its money, the fewer people will qualify for risky loans, and the more secure investors will be in taking over that debt, so the bank’s owner has a vested interest in lending responsibly. The owner is also the biggest Fence in the Black Market, known by the nom-du-gurre “The Blackbird”.
10. Utilities = There is very little in the way of public utilities provided. by the town. There is a small expenditure on cleaners, as described earlier. By far the greatest utility provided are inspectors who ensure that the taverns and inns meet the minimum satisfactory standards needed to maintain the reputation of the town as a hub for trade and commerce. There is also a court with a permanent judge which primarily deals with civil concerns. Two wells provide clean drinking water – one in the Count’s Palace and one for everyone else to use.
11. Maintenance = The roads have to be maintained, and the Count’s residence and needs. To fund these maintenance duties he receives a flat fee plus a percentage of tax revenues from the Baron of Exwix, but is also required to collect taxation locally and see that it is forwarded to the Baron. A percentage of these tax revenues is forwarded to the capital for the King’s use.
12. Transitions = There are three categories of roads. the main thoroughfares, through which trade flows into and through Cordain; minor roads, which are used for local foot traffic, and which rarely extend beyond what remains of the city walls; and the alleyways that are used for the passage of menial workers and other low-society types, which never extend beyond those walls. There is no sewer system.
13. Publicity & Promotions = Town criers stalk the (better) streets, offering half a headline. For a silver coin, they will tell the rest of the story to anyone in earshot; for a gold coin, they will tell an individual or group privately. These in turn pay the merchants of the central market for news, and will frequent taverns to listen to public conversations to supplement these sources. It is traditional for a crier to visit one establishment a night (usually a different one each time, with a semi-regular schedule) to buy a round for all in the common room in exchange for news and gossip of interest.
14. Customer Relations = The Count sponsors and supports a Church and burial yard on the north side of town. On major festivals, he will attend in person to address the faithful (attendance is mandatory as this is when amendments to the civil and legal codes are usually announced). Off-duty members of his personal guard occasionally stalk the streets looking for trouble and carrying reports back to the Count’s Court. They will occasionally intervene in support of someone in distress, be they local or transient. Once a year, at the end of the Summer Harvest, the Count provides a Feast for the towns citizens (out-of-towners may pay a silver piece to attend). These measures are calculated to keep the locals happy and the Count popular and are largely successful.
15. Design = While there is no official building code, construction tends to be based upon the style that is currently contemporary. Buildings that are below satisfactory standards, or that possess a style that the Count dislikes, have a frequent habit of collapsing at night, resulting in an undefined and somewhat casual design standard that is enforced haphazardly. The count likes small stone structures of two or three stories with balconies; he regards these as ‘efficient’ and ‘tidy’.
16. Administration & Accounting = The Count’s chief administrator is named Provario and is regarded as a cruel and heartless man who the Count must constantly override to provide largess for the community. Provario is also the head of the Count’s personal guard, acting exclusively under his orders – which suggests that this reputation is not entirely fair. Nevertheless, if someone has to say ‘no’, it’s usually attributed to Provario.
17. Human Resources = Provario personally recruited Thaddeus, the head of the Count’s household staff, and provided Thaddeus with a limited budget for the recruitment of additional staff and servants. The Count chose Whitles, the head of the town watch (such as it is), on Provario’s recommendation, and Whitles recruits the rest of the watch as needed. Provario’s assistant, Jerest, is the accountant and head of the tax collectors, and has likewise recruited on behalf of the Court. Jerest also fills the positions of Judge and Bailiff as needed (so that there is – theoretically – a separation between those positions and the watch).
18. Training = There is a school on the west side for young gentlemen, an Academy on the south for young Ladies, and a Vocational College for the children of the lower classes on the East side. Attendance is mandatory for part of the year up to a certain age (15, 12, and 9 years of age, respectively), but the schools are not free; part of the costs are paid by the parents and part is a debt to the Count accrued by the students. The amounts of these fees vary as students grow older and the lessons more elaborate. The Vocational College offers a broad education in various fields of labor and acts as a feeder for apprentices to craftsmen. It also trains appropriate individuals to function as servants to the Count or other significant public figures. 70% of the sometimes meager earnings of these positions is assessed against the student’s accrued debts until the debt is repaid. Pay rises and promotions often coincide with this achievement, which is considered individually significant.
19. Lower Management = The count’s household staff number 12, not counting the senior individuals named and those recruits who work for them. They have virtually no authority. There is a mayor, appointed annually by the Count, whose function is to make day-to-day decisions necessary to the maintenance and good order of the town; some years this is a merchant, some years an innkeeper, and sometimes it has been the head of the watch or the Judge. On rare occasions, such as after the terrible floods of 46 years ago, it was a Master Builder, and at the time of the last Orcish Uprising, a Weapon-smith, but outside of such specific and particular needs, these are not even considered. It has never been a tax collector.
20. Senior Management = In addition to the individuals named earlier, there are 4 advisory positions available annually in the Count’s Court. These must be purchased from the Count at quite a stiff price; if oversubscribed, the prices are raised until enough contenders drop out of the running. The Count feels obligated to listen and even consider what the Court tells him, but not to follow their advice.

You can see how the functions of the department store parallel those of the village in this very D&D/Pathfinder example. The others will be presented in considerably less detail.

Extrapolation Two: A Fortress

Name: Dungilt
Size: Small, perhaps 500 residents (100 fighting men)
Location/Environment: built into the side of a mountain, with high walls and a moat. An outer wall protects a small farm, and farmers maintain herds of sheep and goats outside the outer wall. These supplement the regular food caravans from more central regions.

• Purpose: A shield against the Marauders of the Dwarven Wastelands.
• Effectiveness: Formidable defenses make Dungilt quite effective except against Dwarven Sappers. Tunnels are collapsed when they are found.
• Efficiency: Dungilt costs a lot to maintain and operate. It earns very little revenue to offset these costs.
• Success: Life on the frontier is very spartan. This shortage of comforts and luxuries limits Success beyond the primary function to a minimum.

1. Departments = The walls, 60′ thick at the base, progressively shrinking as they ascend.
2. Specials = Arrow slits and murder holes.
3. Stocktaking = Three great store-rooms hold perishables sufficient for a three-month siege. A mountain stream falls into the Fortress on the north side, collecting in a stone pool, before exiting through an artificial underground river.
4. Receiving Docks = A moat with two widely-separated drawbridges forcing attackers to split their forces – if only one is attacked, mounted defenders can ride out from the other to ravage the flanks and rear of the enemy.
5. Distribution = A series of dumbwaiters replenishes the supplies of archers positioned in the walls. There are three complete blacksmiths shops, stables for 50 warhorses, and five fletchers, connecting to the dumbwaiters via a series of warehouses linked by radial avenues. Elevated orbital alleys connect the sides for personnel in a series of concentric semi-circular rings that pass above these radial avenues, ascending in elevation as the inner walls are approached.
6. Cleaners = Sewerage is treated in two great stone vats before being carried away along the underground river. The vats contain long water-grasses and fish that transform the waste into an additional food source for the defenders.
7. Cashiers = There is room for between 40 and 120 archers (depending on whether 1, 2, or 3 share the same arrow-slits, aiming and firing in succession). Minimal skill is required for those near the top (height transforms missiles into a deadly hail) or the bottom (a wealth of targets, miss one and you will probably hit another). These reach their posts along the orbital elevated routes (another reason for these being at different heights above ground). There is room for a further 80 armed defenders along the radial avenues, half of them mounted.
8. Security = The watercourse presents the greatest points of vulnerability, especially in times of drought when the underground ‘river’ may not fill the stone tunnels used to drain the water from the fortress. Protecting from descent from above are razor-sharp crystalline blades embedded invisibly in the pool beneath the waterfall, while steel mesh confines a hatchery for dozens of deadly water-snakes that must be overcome by any force seeking to gain entrance from below.
9. Customer Finance = The stone used is native to the region, almost everything else has to be brought in from the outside. The purchases have to be subsidized, it costs money to transport the goods, and the shipments need to be protected while en route – all of which costs. So obviously beneficial is it to an attacker to cut the supply line to the Fortress that any missing or delayed shipment is considered potential early warning of an attack until proven otherwise.
10. Utilities = Large oil lanterns are arranged at regular intervals, sheltered from wind and rain by glass shields. The fortress and the outer wall are never completely dark, so that attackers cannot sneak up under cover of night. Kitchens and bakeries provide food to the inhabitants through large messes, and ale is carefully rationed. Accommodation is in barracks and small rooms for officer’s quarters.
11. Maintenance = Masons, stone-cutters, and an additional smithy all work to keep the city in tip-top shape.
12. Transitions = There are three fortified towns that are required to send defenders to Dungilt in rotation. Residents who are not fighting men are generally permanent. To prevent a general migration away due to the hardships of the outpost, residents are not subject to taxation. A number of very skilled craftsmen have used this to springboard themselves into very profitable careers in the central Kingdom.
13. Publicity & Promotions = The fortress of Dungilt has withstood a number of assaults over the years, creating something of a legend as a murderous place to try to conquer. Formal estimates are that defenders experience a force multiplication of between 7 to 1 and 10 to 1. It is most vulnerable to siege tactics, but this force multiplier means that s significant force is required, which is enough to alert Kingdom forces, which will rush to attack assailants from behind. This mandates a fast conquest before this force can relieve the siege, which doubles or even triples the force multiplication, so significantly more than 20-to-1 force is required – and that’s very hard to recruit and move in secrecy, which adds to the need for haste, making the task all the harder. Hence the legend that the fortress is unassailable.
14. Customer Relations = Dungilt is under the command of Viscount Massey, a grizzled veteran soldier of 30 years field experience, 12 of them as a general. This adds to the cachet and reputation of the post. The Viscount isn’t entirely selfless; in addition to his considerable wages and pension being untaxed, the estates he was granted when he was appointed to his title earn him income from a wine-making operation and an orchard, and mutton, goat-meat, goat’s milk and cheese, and wool in excess of the fortress’ needs are sold for additional income, all also untaxed. The effect is of giving him the assets of a large baronetcy, which he is investing in various holdings elsewhere, the foundations of a future mercantile empire. He intends to remain in his current post for another three years before retiring in favor of his son, who was made a General in the army four years ago.
15. Design = The next piece of the puzzle for Dungilt is the development of esprit de corps, through the creation of uniforms to be worn only at the Fortress, on the theory that this will motivate the defenders to make slightly greater efforts. Design for these uniforms is ongoing but the notion is being resisted by the King’s advisors because of the added costs involved.
16. Administration & Accounting = Since someone else is footing the bill, this is more about rationing supplies and ensuring that enough is constantly on hand to cope with any possible need – siege, blockage of caravan routes, etc.
17. Human Resources = The primary human resources are the soldiers rotated into the command regularly. Service in the fortress is normally a fixed year, with one-third of the force rotating out every four months. However, a number of variations take place, with some proving better suited to the demands than others. There are those who view service here as something to be endured, those who view it as a means to secure command rank, those who see it as a service to the Kingdom or it’s rulers, and those who simply enjoy the independence and solitude – or the tax exemption. As a general rule, those who do not want to be there are rotated out early in favor of those who want to be stationed there, on the assumption that if they don’t want to be there, they will not give their all. Soldiers who depart prematurely frequently find their careers negatively impacted – they will frequently be assigned to duty in other undesirable locations without the incentives and rewards of Dungilt, will be regarded as untrustworthy, will be denied part or all of their pensions (if they live long enough to earn one), and will have to work three times as hard for future promotions. But, for the most part, soldiers simply go there when ordered to do so and stay until they are relieved, with the command neither knowing nor caring who they are as individuals. Rather more attention is paid to the other essential roles – the cooks, bakers, farmers, clothiers, blacksmiths, and so on – because the fortress is deemed too vital to the security of the Kingdom for any chances to be taken. Recruitment is cautious and replacements for any vacant position sought promptly; commissions and entitlements are generous, as they need to be – this is a frontier posting which comes with considerable danger.
18. Training = Ongoing training is provided not only for the soldiers but the civilians, both in self-defense and self-reliance. It is expected and required that every man, woman, and child will play their role in achieving victory if needed, but it is recognized that a prepared and disciplined force is more likely to survive. Successful service in Dungilt is considered a mark of honor elsewhere in the Kingdom.
19. Lower Management = The command structure of the military units is supplemented with junior officers who liaise with the various professions, bringing problems to the attention of the Viscount and implementing his decisions.
20. Senior Management = The Viscount also has his own personal staff, servants, and advisors, and the latter in particular are the equivalent of Senior Management. The most senior position is currently held by Urubillit Markus, who is appointed directly by the King to monitor situations and the King’s interests; in theory, the Urubillit can even dismiss or overrule the Viscount, but any such crisis in the leadership would automatically place both on trial for their lives in the Royal Court, with the expectation that one of them (at least) will forfeit that privilege. It is popularly believed that the Golden Flame, the secret service of the Kingdom, maintains a hidden asset to monitor for collusion or incompetence on the part of either of these servants of the Crown. the presumption is that since their identity is unknown, this official cannot be bought, and thus protects the Kingdom against disloyalty by either or both. It is not known whether or not this belief is correct.

Extrapolation Three: A Space Station

Next, let’s look beyond the fantasy genre to something unashamedly sci-fi in nature.

Name: Orbital Telescope Alpha Four (OTA-4)
Size: 80 personnel
Location/Environment: High Lunar Orbit

• Purpose: OTA-4 watches for interplanetary threats to the well-being of Earth, especially during it’s time in Lunar Night when resolution is at its greatest. Rogue comets and planetoids are considered existential threats to the continuation of life on Earth, either through impact, atmospheric disturbance from reentry, or biological contamination. OTA-1, and -2 exist to probe space in various ways and make new scientific discoveries; OTA-3 monitors the resource-gathering activities of space-dwelling humans to ensure fidelity and transparency in their business dealings, with their significant political ramifications; OTA-5 monitors the sun for disturbances; OTA-4 is the high guard. The theory on which it operates is that the sooner a threat is detected, the sooner action can be taken to remove or mitigate the threat.
• Effectiveness: A modular design that sees periodic upgrades to its capabilities makes OTA-4 quite effective. Normal procedure is for peak sunlight to be downtime, crew rotation, and maintenance; lunar ‘afternoon’ is used to prioritize targets for detailed scrutiny; lunar ‘dark’ is for observations, starting with the highest-priority targets and proceeding down the list (any targets not examined automatically move to the top of the list for the following night), and lunar ‘morning’ is for the compilation, documentation, analysis, and reporting of results. Anomalous and potentially threatening targets violate this routine and are automatically designated top-priority targets. All this makes OTA-4 very effective at its primary task.
• Efficiency: It also makes OTA-4 a very expensive operation. It could have been established in Earth Orbit for a fraction of the cost, but this would have compromised its effectiveness, and (because of orbital junk) its reliability, and both were considered mission priorities after the Apophis scare of 2038.
• Success: Crew efficiency is likewise a priority, and mandates that some level of crew comfort and convenience is considered essential. But the primary measure of success outside of its purpose has to be keeping those crew alive and in contact with the Earth.

1. Departments = There are several observational platforms that collectively comprise OTA-4. Each can be considered analogous to a different department within a department store.
2. Specials = Representatives from the different observational platforms are often brought together to form a multi-disciplinary focus group to examine specific bodies of interest or potential threat. When Comet Bapp-724 was discovered to be a single solid-body beneath its layers of ice and snow by exhibiting an unusually pronounced and regular change of direction through out-gassing, instead of a loose amalgam of smaller rocks and materials as is more typical, the problem was handed to such a group who used a combination of multiple instruments to show that the object contained a deep crater that was larger on the inside than outside, which was systematically filled with deposits of different boiling points as the comet receded from the inner solar system. When its orbit returned it to the inner system, rising temperatures created the typical cometary halo but could not initially penetrate the “cave”; eventually, heat carried by conduction from the now-exposed surface heated the inner pocket sufficiently to cause out-gassing with the shape of the mouth creating a ‘jet’ effect that was most pronounced when internal spin faced the mouth away from the sun, creating the false impression of intelligent course-correction. Each orbit thus accelerated the body and changed the orbit of Bapp-724, and could eventually see it escape the solar system entirely.
3. Stocktaking = Provisions, including air, have to be extremely closely monitored and rationed. Maximum recycling is necessary.
4. Receiving Docks = A specially-designed docking port connect supply ships directly to the storage tanks. Other cargoes are offloaded while the tanks are replenished.
5. Distribution = Strict schedules are set by the Mission Commander for all personnel – everything from showering to eating is regulated. Only in the event of a priority alert are these adjusted. This regularity has been known to have negative psychological impacts on the crew, so psychological buttressing is also built into the schedule – a specific amount of R&R each shift, a specific amount of time spent communicating with friends and family on earth, and so on. These schedules are complicated by the internal social structures enforced, such as recognition of Birthdays and Anniversaries of note. With each crewman having a typical contact circle of six, and 40 crewmen aboard, there is such a variation roughly every second day, giving some idea of the complexity of the task.
6. Cleaners = Refuse naturally accumulates onboard a space station; it’s considered unavoidable. This detritus of life can pose a threat to the continued functioning of the station, so there are weekly, monthly, and quarterly cleanup schedules that are executed by a shift of three.
7. Cashiers = Engineers who maintain the observatories.
8. Security = In the event of a significant threat being detected, there might not be enough time to organize a mission from Earth to deal with the problem. For use in extremis, the crew of OTA-4 are tasked with direct intervention, and are equipped for the task, with the authority to commandeer any needed resources that are available. This includes the delivery and emplacement of nuclear devices, which are under the command of a specific segment of the crew. Of only secondary importance to this duty is the need to do whatever is necessary to maintain the functioning of the station, under conditions that could range from space-psychosis to acts of terrorism. The Space Marines charged with carrying out these tasks are another specialized unit within the crew. It is rumored that they also have operational directives concerning first contacts should such occur, but this has never been confirmed.
9. Customer Finance = Part of the crew are positioned ground-side to handle the ongoing administration of the project. While under the NASA umbrella, these are generally autonomous to the agency’s other functions and exist as a separate project administration. The essential goal is to provide the space-side crew with everything they need to carry out their mission.
10. Utilities = Electrical energy provides light, heat, and air. The water distribution and waste recycling systems also require electricity. The final vital utility is communications capability. A dedicated segment of the crew maintain these distribution systems.
11. Maintenance = Very little onboard OTA-4 runs itself; it all requires human operation and intervention. Psychological and Social health are therefore necessary to keep the essential equipment known as “the crew” in peak operational condition.
12. Transitions = There was a time when airlocks were considered essential throughout a space station. But it was found during ISS operations that delays in patching micro-punctures escalated and compounded problems more than the added security was worth, and humans eventually wedged such airlocks permanently open to facilitate travel between compartments, so the question of transitions within the space station environment were reconsidered. The approach on OTA-4 is to have a compacted plastic seal positioned at each compartment entrance that can be used to create a temporary seal as necessary, but otherwise a more open-plan structure is employed.
13. Publicity & Promotions = While the crew of OTA-4 can take matters into their own hands if necessary, it’s strongly preferred that the need doesn’t arise. All that stands between the two scenarios is the hardworking communications crew of the station, who not only keep the channels open to the ground-side politicians, but also the multiplicity of data links that permit verification of observations, and the numerous other comm channels that keep the station running.
14. Customer Relations = Analysis requires extensive computational power and huge amounts of data storage.
15. Design = The science performed by the station may be largely established and settled, but the crew are always looking to refine techniques and improve their analyses, and that means overhauling and rewriting their computer code. A dedicated segment of the crew are perpetually designing and implementing refinements to the onboard software. Interestingly, the most significant developments have been in the direction of less sophisticated results – fast analysis that selects data blocks that are more likely to yield useful results when subjected to full study.
16. Administration & Accounting = Inevitably, disputes will arise between crew members, exacerbated by close living conditions. Other sources of friction are the variances in perspective between crew and ground-control. While most traditional admin tasks are handled ground-side, dispute resolution needs to work on the front lines, de-escelating situations before they get out of hand.
17. Human Resources = Scientists can be eccentric personalities and those at the cutting edge, even more so. Personality matrices have to be built around the eccentricities of the individuals, which puts considerable demand on the human resources department. Nor is the psychology of crew compliments even close to a settled science; matches are as often guided by instinct as by insight, and field surgery on relationships is an ongoing process. While most of the recruiting process occurs ground-side, the hands-on psychological adjustments need to be performed by a specialist amongst the crew and his or her assistant.
18. Training = Data, techniques, and knowledge in general, are all being generated ground-side at 10,000 times the rate of development aboard the station, but little of this is directly relevant to the activities aboard the station. Filtering out the extraneous and applying what remains to their unique situation, mission, and matrix of personalities is the function of the Process Refinement members of the crew and takes the form of ongoing training for all aboard (including themselves).
19. Lower Management = There’s a lot going on aboard OTA-4 at any given time, and overseeing all of it are the mission sub-commanders. In particular, they seek to avoid scheduling conflicts and policy problems. They are acutely aware of the differences between theory “on the ground” and the reality “in the sky”, and continually seek to refine “the book” to accommodate practicality.
20. Senior Management = Station Commander Delson Velasquez and Mission Commander Alphaes Hortens are the last word when it comes to authority aboard OTA-4, with the Mission Commander the nominal senior of the two.

Extrapolation Four: A Website

Because websites are designed to emulate the bricks-and-mortar shopping experience and processes, there is a natural resemblance between the two. That means that our department store analogy can cover any sort of online store or site – and, by extension, virtually any type of computer program.

I thought about using Campaign Mastery itself as the example – after all, you have the site itself right in front of you to compare with – but realized that an online casino would enable me to discuss aspects of the analogy that would be more of a stretch with Campaign Mastery.

The basis of this section won’t be any one specific casino site; instead, it will be an abstracted generic (and completely fictitious) site, based on a number of typical sites. The list of sites ranked by top10rankedonlinecasinos.com was used as reference for some points; if you’re ever looking for casino sites, that’s a good place to start.

Name: Not-A-Real-Casino.com
Size: n/a
Location/Environment: The World Wide Web / The Internet (these aren’t the same thing, the Web is just a subsection of the total Internet).

• Purpose: The purpose of any website is to enable a visitor to interact with data and programming stored on a web server. In the case of a Gambling site, the programs are slot machine simulations and other gambling games either against live opponents elsewhere on the web or simulated opponents. The owner of the website represents the House, earning money by facilitating these operations.
• Effectiveness: Not-A-Real-Casino is a moderately-effective website offering a variety of games – a half-dozen slots, and an online poker tournament. They also provide tutorials, a history of slot machines, and advice on responsible gambling. Visitors to the website can win weekly or monthly prizes by being the right visitor number in the given period.
• Efficiency: The cost of setting up a website is negligible. The cost of setting up an e-commerce website, i.e. one that deals with actual money, is slightly more, a large chunk of which goes on the software that’s necessary. The cost of setting up a gambling website is somewhat more again, because you have the cost of each piece of gambling software, but also the financial base to set up – enough money to pay out more winners than you can reasonably expect, because you never know when a bunch of someones will get lucky (you know you’ll make it all back and then some in the long run, but you need the liquidity to last that long). That means that early in their online life, most websites are compromised in efficiency; corners have to be cut. Over time, those corners are replaced with more sophisticated constructions. Not-A-Real-Casino has improved several of its pages but some of the less-popular pages still remain to be done. All told, there are about 12 people directly employed in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing the website.
• Success: Most websites do something more than their primary purpose – that could be a newsletter, or obtaining and installing new games, or generating ‘side’ content. Not-A-Real-Casino is no exception. Most of these additional functions are adequate but nothing better because they are always a lower priority than the core functions of the site.

1. Departments = Each page with fixed content on a website can be considered analogous to a different department within a department store. Campaign Mastery has about twenty of these, for example the “about us” page. In addition, each blog post has its own dedicated page. And there is a dynamically-generated front page that is the equivalent of the store windows. In fact, there are so many pages here that Campaign Mastery is probably the equivalent of a whole shopping mall! That’s one reason why “Not-A-Real-Casino” is a better illustration. This fictional website has two or three pages of legalese and admin information, a sign-up/sign-in page, a front page, and a page for each of the games they host, and there would be another 3 pages devoted to the ‘extras’ that the site uses to add legitimacy and search engine rankings. Now, several of these are actually symbolic of, or connected to, one of the other functions discussed below, so even this tally of 16 or so pages exaggerates the number of ‘departments’ considerably.
2. Specials = The front page of my fictional gambling site contains news and special offers designed to welcome visitors.
3. Stocktaking = This one’s a little trickier, but there would have to be a limit on the number of players that can be accommodated at the one time if all jackpots are to track in real time, based on the server speed and site demands. Rather than moving product to consumer, though, this is moving consumer to product (or redirecting them if necessary). This is especially true of the hosted poker games, where the number of simultaneous players would directly add to the time taken to resolve an individual hand. It’s a little different for Campaign Mastery,. where stocktaking would represent the analytics that tell me which posts were popular and how many visitors they got on a given day.
4. Receiving Docks = That makes it clear, in turn, that the equivalent of the receiving docks would be the menu system on the front page that directs the visitor to one of the other specific pages.
5. Distribution = This function matches available players to the vacancies determined by the “Stocktaking”, possibly with incentives to play less popular games. But that only makes sense if each game is hosted by its own server(s); if they are shared, there’s no point in trying to load-share.
6. Cleaners = You always need to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to comments. Over the last 11 years, posts at Campaign Mastery have received more than 1.25 Million spam comments. Anything even the slightest bit suspicious gets held for moderation (anything that’s positively identifiable gets sent directly to the trash) – but there have been times when there have been 1000 comments awaiting moderation in a single day. So various policies and practices and anti-spam measures have been put in place over the years to help “clean” the website. This would be the same for every website out there – even refusing comments is no safeguard as every website is required to have certain email addresses which get spammed. Not-A-Real-Casino.com is no different.
7. Cashiers = The part of Not-A-Real-Casino.com that takes money in and hands chips out (and vice-versa) is the equivalent of cashiers. Campaign Mastery does not employ paywalls or sell services/products directly, so we have no equivalent to point to.
8. Security = There have been at least a million attempts to hack Campaign Mastery over the years. I’m only aware of one success and that one was quickly ejected after tripping a site security “land-mine” laid down for that very purpose. And we’re not a site which has money that can be stolen. The day Campaign Mastery gets the equivalent of Cashiers is the day that our security would get a further upgrade (even though that wouldn’t be free) – so the presumption would be that the site revenue that resulted would come with an immediate overhead that had to be cleared on a regular basis. Never fear, it’s not likely to happen in the foreseeable future! But Not-A-Real-Casino.com does handle theoretical money, and would need all the extra security that can be made transparent to the customer.
9. Customer Finance = It might seem that the ‘Customer Finance’ department is a redundancy, given that the default payment modes over the internet are by credit card, supplemented by less-universal services like PayPal. But I have thought of that. Perhaps Not-A-Real-Casino.com gives new customers a bonus number of chips/spins – I get personal spam making such offers all the time. Perhaps the ‘exchange rate’ is different at certain times when the site has a ‘special offer’. The fiduciary elements of every such transaction are the equivalent of the department store’s “Customer Finance” department. There may also be more direct comparisons that are valid – the default currency of the site might be US Dollars, for example, necessitating currency conversions. So there’s plenty for this department to do.
10. Utilities = This starts transitioning from the website itself to the real world administration. Anything that’s needed in order for the site to function as intended goes under this heading – in Campaign Mastery’s case, there are hosting fees, domain registration fees, PHP and other back-end updates, and maintenance/updates of the various modules that extend the basic functionality of the web hosting software, plus updates to that hosting software itself. On top of that, I have to pay for an internet connection and electricity in order to administer the site. All these requirements grow even more substantial in the case of a commercial site; considerably so if they own their own electronic infrastructure.
11. Maintenance = That’s where the equivalent of the maintenance department comes in – keeping the infrastructure, the hardware, functional. Campaign Mastery uses a hosting company to take care of most of this for us, and they have proven very reliable. But we do have to share bandwidth and technician’s time and so on with all the other sites that are hosted by this company – and that might well be an unacceptable compromise on the part of a site like Not-A-Real-Casino.com.
12. Transitions = You might also think that this is redundant – but it isn’t. The front-page menu and links take you to a specific page, but where do you go when you want to leave that page? On Campaign Mastery, the menus are the same on every page, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If you click on the “Blogdex” link, you’ll get taken to a hard-coded sub-menu, for example. So navigation from a target page, i.e. moving from one department to another, is the equivalent of Transitions.
13. Publicity & Promotions = The implementation of specials has already been discussed; the publicity and promotions section decides what these promotions should be, and handles telling people about the site, buying ads elsewhere, for example.
14. Customer Relations = Every site needs a ‘contact us’ for handling complaints, offers, and feedback. That’s customer relations.
15. Design = Where a site is designed to impart information, like Campaign Mastery, the design should be deliberately minimalist so that it doesn’t get in the way of the information. When you’re selling something, glitz and glam become a lot more important. On top of that, someone needs to create those adverts that I mentioned in the previous ‘department’. And, finally, every website out there has certain priorities around speed of loading. I could, for example, set the front page of Campaign Mastery so that it displayed the most recent 50 posts, in full – and fifty more posts each time you clicked the ‘next’ at the bottom of the page. But the loading time would be unacceptable. There was a time when we only displayed the 5 most recent posts; at one point, I increased that to 12 and found loading times to be too great. Currently, the best compromise is 10 posts, or about 2-and-1/2 months worth per page. These are all design questions, and every website out there will have similar concerns.
16. Administration & Accounting = Admin is all about how you ring-lead this rodeo, which has a lot more moving parts than are evident on the surface. Fortunately, our web-hosting software comes with an appropriate content-management system or CMS. Accounting is not so important for a site like CM – I simply pay the bills when they are due. For a site like Not-A-Real-Casino.com, though, they have costs and expenses and income that needs to be rigorously tracked and may well have taxes that have to be paid and government reports to generate. They may have shareholders to keep informed. Like everything else, the Admin and Accounting demands ramp up immediately.
17. Human Resources = Sad to say, less can be automated than you might like to think when it comes to a website. Human review and intervention needs to occur regularly. That means people – either employees or the occasional hired gun. Johnn and I were fortunate that between us we could do everything necessary to set up Campaign Mastery; a previous venture that I was involved in needed to spend thousands on shopping cart software and a specialist programmer to install and customize it. And that was decades ago, it would probably run us to 5 figures these days – if we didn’t opt for a simpler, cheaper, product (which wasn’t an option back then, this was in the very early days of e-commerce). And people have to be recruited, and paid, and have various legal entitlements administered and provided. I can pretty much guarantee you that a gambling site has at least one staff member at least part-time.
18. Training = You don’t keep your people up-to-date and fit-for-purpose with training them. The more developed your procedures and policies are, the more any new hires will need to be trained in them (and older employees might need the occasional refresher, too.
19. Lower Management = Here, for the first time, we reach a point of possible conflation of departments. Day-to-day management and senior management of a website can be one and the same person wearing different hats. When you work for someone else, though, you are (at best) Lower Management; the person employing you is Senior Management.
20. Senior Management = See above.

And that’s all twenty of our divisions within the department store. I had some other examples planned, but didn’t think they would add much to what these four already show.

Practicalities

I doubt anyone can seriously argue that the results from all four examples are far more fully fleshed out than they would otherwise have been. Is there still work to do on all of them before they could be used in a campaign? Certainly – though up to 90% of the work can be considered done at this point, enabling you to focus on a few specifics.

But this comes at a price. This process is slower than simply pulling narrative out of a hat. That’s because speed is not the goal that this process is trying to satisfy; completeness and robustness would be more accurate. Each of these examples took one-to-two days to complete; that’s probably four times longer than a less comprehensive approach.

It follows that you shouldn’t employ this every time; save it for when it matters. If development is likely to take more than a day or two – for example, if you are developing a city or an important location of some other sort – then this can be extremely valuable. If you are having trouble getting started, or can’t visualize something in your mind, then it can be invaluable.

However, the more often you use the technique, the faster it will become. You would inevitably grow more adept at remembering the different departments (or re-imagining them) and then translating them into appropriate interpretations for whatever you are trying to simulate. This is a tool with certain advantages and benefits, and a certain cost in time and effort; add it to your toolbox and learn to use it when it’s the best tool for the job, because there will certainly be times when that is the case.

A shorter article today (by CM standards), but one with a lot of impact to offer.

The head of the ruined statue lay on its side, half-buried in soil and vegetation. Three meters from crown to chin, the sculpture of which it was originally a part must have been enormous. The left side of the visage had melted like wax; what can do that to fine marble?

For some reason, the scenes at the end of The Fellowship Of The Ring (Movie Version) have repeatedly come to mind over the last few days.

It took me a while to figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me, but I got there in the end: Monumental structures impacted by History are the best representations of the existence of that History.

Those monumental structures can be architectural, ornamental, geological, or practical.

• “Architectural” is a ruined building of some kind.
• “Ornamental” is usually a statue or sculpture of some kind, like the example with which I opened this article.
• “Geological” is the overt absence of something that should be there, like the back half of a hill, or a hollow which used to contain an organic (wood or clay) structure. Or it might be a structure carved out of the earth – ring-shaped mounds are archaeological indicators of ancient defenses and structures.
• “Practical” is whatever’s left of something with a purpose, often (but not always) a vehicle of some kind.

The gray cylinder rests precariously askew on the snowy ledge, 20-odd meters across and more than 200 long, half hidden by long-frozen palm trees. Ominous black holes are exposed at one end, and a metal wheel with multiple curved blades can vaguely be distinguished at the other, flanked by smooth bulges. In the middle, barely visible under the mass of obscuring ice, is some sort of hump.

The PCs have found a derelict submarine perched on a mountain ledge and covered in snow. This is clearly not an everyday occurrence and very loudly proclaims that something strange has happened quite a long time ago. It’s a scene whose backstory will vary considerably with the genre of the campaign – in some, it’s entirely possible that the PCs won’t recognize what the shape is (and the language used to describe the screw and sail reflect that possibility), but the players should recognize it fairly quickly. This would be an example of positive metagaming, contrasting player knowledge with character knowledge to generate curiosity, interest and excitement – the same curiosity, interest and excitement that the characters would be feeling, but from a different source.

Integration

It’s not enough to simply have such a feature appear in the landscape – that always makes the feature feel tacked on and superficial. To fully integrate it into the location, you need to show the impact of campaign history on it – which also integrates the campaign history into the landscape and the player experience.

In the statue example, it’s the ‘melting’ effect, perhaps the result of a miscast Stoneshape spell, or a target that was partially out of range. In the submarine example, the object’s placement and the growth of the environment around it (snow and ice) serves the purpose. Stones with rents and cracks that clearly result from axe and sword blades tell the story of a past combat of some kind, asking the question who was fighting whom?

This would also provide an opportunity to expand the cultural significance of a chosen character class. While a knowledge check might yield multiple possible answers to the question, or none, examining the depth of the marks, the length of the marks, the curvature of the blade, the strength of the material, and so on, could be enough for a Fighter to recognize the specific type of weapons and when they were manufactured in that particular style. Coupled with the results of the History check, this could be enough to narrow the battle down to a specific conflict.

(A lot of people, GMs included, don’t recognize that the shape and style of common weapons continually evolves, some coming into fashion and some going out of fashion. Always, these marks of distinction become more pronounced and decorative in times of peace and more practical and utilitarian in times of war. Often, there will be little or no practical difference between the variations; it’s just what’s popular.

Sometimes, a General will have a favorite combat maneuver, and will require the men under his command to drill in that maneuver regularly; while it may not confer any advantage on the battlefield of significance, this has a two-fold benefit to the army in question. One, it instills discipline and a level of professional skill; and Two, some bright spark will tweak the design of the weaponry to take advantage of the maneuver or make it more effective. If every army has its own signature style and equipment that is of equal tactical worth, there is no difference in terms of game mechanics, but all the difference in the world in terms of distinctiveness.

For the GM, it’s a crack in the uniform veneer of the rules into which flavor and uniqueness can naturally seep – and that can be worth its weight in gold.

Searching out reference material on the specifics can be arduous, but the GM has a huge advantage over the historian – he can make it up as he sees fit. In one set of strokes of the (possibly metaphoric) pen, the GM infuses depth and detail into his campaign, and welds it to flavor, and – if he does his job well – adds relevance, to boot.

Consistency

Consistency is important. If you find a Roman sword, you would expect any armor or coins or whatever that gets found nearby to also be Roman in character, and of a similar vintage. This should then influence encounters and treasure and decorative styles and anything else that you can think of. Always remember, too, that a battle usually requires two sets of combatants.

I love Gnolls in my campaigns because they tend to use a lot of cast-offs and ‘found’ armor and weapons. A Gnoll is a piece of living history, and if the Gnoll is local, so is that history! You can hide significant clues to puzzles and problems in plain sight, just waiting for someone sharp enough to ask the right question. Be warned, though – do this just once and as soon as the players cotton on, they will expect this to happen every time!

Often, GMs treat the history of their worlds and the history of the objects within it as being all of one piece. Player resources frequently encourage this by simply providing tables of weapons with their game effects. This encourages Roman-style architecture with Egyptian decorations and Greek Urns and all sorts of other hodge-podge mashups; and, because they don’t know any better, and because it’s the GM’s world, players simply accept this and move on.

That might be good enough to get by on, but it’s an opportunity missed – and, once missed, it will never come again.

Editing History

Note that you don’t have to label things “Greek” or “Roman” or whatever – you can simply look up the architecture and armament of a particular group or location, find a picture, and use it as inspiration to describe what the PCs see. Orcs in my Fumanor campaigns had architecture that was a blend of African grass huts and Cumbrian-style longhouses with thatched roofs for meeting halls. Their society owed more to the Vikings than to any other culture – but with their own distinct culture and mythology, assembled piece by piece, and often rooted in the natural advantages that the game rules conferred on them as a race. You can see some of that process unfolding in the Orcs and Elves series, here at Campaign Mastery.

In fact, it’s often better if you don’t use recognizable labels, because that can leave you exposed when you aren’t able to be consistent. The ancient Greeks stole the notion of sliding wooden bolts from the Egyptians via a Near East culture (which one is unknown) somewhere between 1100 and 1000 BC. A small hole permitted a key of the right length and shape to hook onto a metal eye in the bolt and draw it aside through the door. The match had to be reasonably exact in order to get the right leverage to slide open the bolt [Source: https://www.historicallocks.com, plus some imagination based on the sketches provided].

If the architecture that you have led the players to expect is Greek, and labeled as such, then they would reasonably expect the locks to be Greek as well. To make a key that matched, the party Thief would need to find some indication of the original lock (or to proceed by trial and error with educated guesses, starting with a long ‘blank’ key and progressively shortening it until he got the right length). While that might be very interesting, and shine a spotlight on the details of educated lock-picking (and on the Thief/Rogue), if you have in mind a more mechanical contrivance with gears and teeth and tumblers of some exotic nature, the inconsistency can be counter-productive because the lock is clearly more technologically advanced than the architecture leads you to expect. If you strip away the label, on the other hand, mechanical prowess becomes a signature trait of the race that built the place – a trait that then needs to be present consistently throughout it.

There’s more scope for creativity if you leave the labels off. But doing so places a greater premium on consistency – which is not a problem if the GM knows it, and does his prep and creation accordingly.

Makeover Implementations

It’s never to late to start down this path – except perhaps in the last adventure or two of a campaign! But doing so mid-stream is a big ask, simply because of all the baggage created by past adventures and inconsistencies. If you’re lucky enough to have operated with some sort of stylistic theme – “Arabian” or “Persian” or even “Medieval French” for example – then this becomes a lot more manageable, but until now, there’s been no-one holding consistency to account. There will be anomalies.

The big trick to making these anomalies work in a more rigorous regime is to embrace them. Add little touches to your campaign history (or assume that they are there if you don’t see them becoming relevant) to explain these little bubbles of inconsistency and move on – being sure to continue to emplace (quite deliberately) similar bubbles of inconsistency in the future. This takes a lot of the stress and even more of the work out of the project.

By way of example, let’s solve the problem of the Greek-style construction with the out-of-place lock. Unfortunately, the GM let slip the telltale word, “Greek” during his flavor text, and employed Greek terminology like “Amphora” elsewhere in his description at the time, so this is now an inconsistency that he will have to live with and incorporate into his campaign henceforth.

First of all, we need a mechanically-adept species or race – Elves fit this bill in some campaigns, Dwarves in others, and Gnomes in most of what remains. But all three have appeared in this campaign in the past with no hint of this attribute – which means that either they lost it (unlikely but possible but it would be noteworthy and wasn’t noted), or we need someone else. So let’s say that Halflings are whizzes at creating (and picking) locks – to protect their stores of ale and pantries, of course.

Next, we need a way for the halfling-made lock to get to the place where it was found – that is either a solitary traveler and a singular exchange of some kind, or regular trade between the two at least for a while. If there’s some event in the campaign background to cut the trade links at the right time, the latter is probably the better choice, because it starts integrating the solution into the campaign history; if not, the first is the default way out of the problem. But the fact that there was only one such lock found in the PCs previous explorations argues strongly in favor of the solitary traveler – the experience in-game would be inconsistent with regular trade as an answer.

So, we have a traveler, someone who set out to see the world, making his way from kingdom to kingdom, picking up a knickknack or two as he goes and trading them for passage, accommodation, and food when he needs something more substantial than a day or two’s labor. This is the element that’s been missing from the campaign history, which explains the inconsistency. It didn’t matter before, because you weren’t trying to use cultural content as a tool to enhance the campaign, but now you are.

Fuzziness Is Your Friend (if constrained)

It would probably help to flesh out this rather minimal description a bit, but keep it vague and imperfect – details have been lost – and give him lots of different names that (if translated) all mean roughly the same thing – “Wanderer”, “Vagabond”, “Explorer”, and so on. Too many GMs make their history too perfect – at least in terms of what the PCs know. Yes, the GM needs perfection of reference so that he can build the history into the campaign’s adventures, but the history as the PCs know it will not be as neat. It will contain omissions, errors, historical biases, occasional vagueness, and even outright propaganda. I like to make a copy of my campaign history, deliberately obscure anything that I want the PCs to discover in the course of the campaign, and then “fuzzy-up” the rest, .Overwriting what’s already there.

This is made easier by the fact that Overwrite Mode in the word processing software that I use respects existing paragraph marks – if I get to the end of an existing paragraph and keep typing, the end-of-paragraph marker doesn’t get over-written, the additional text is simply added to the end of the paragraph. NOT ALL SOFTWARE WORKS LIKE THIS, so caution is warranted as you explore the tools available to you. In general, you should abridge the history a fair bit, too, but I like to do that as a separate process, because that gives me three versions of the campaign history:

1. A specific and accurate “Reference Version” for the GM;
2. An inaccurate-and-abridged summary that represents “Common Knowledge” amongst the PCs;
3. An inaccurate but more detailed version that can be split up and given to specific players as it becomes relevant, if they are in a position to know it.

In some campaigns, such as Fumanor, I actually went one step further and provided intermediate versions from the perspectives of singular races and classes where relevant. Sometimes one race got one version of the story and the rest a completely different version, and no hints as to which one was more accurate (if either).

Oh, and in the inaccurate-but-unabridged version, it’s acceptable to have sections where “no-one knows” something – but in the abridged version, that hole should always be filled with wild (and possibly contradictory) speculation. Again, this is a great way to differentiate the races – “The Elves think X, Dwarves are sure of Y, but Mages think they are both wrong and the truth is Z”.

Anyway, getting back to the point: From now on, whenever you create a location in the campaign, you only have to ask yourself “has the Wanderer been here? Has he left his mark? What oddity might he have left behind, and has it survived?” – many times, the answer will be no. You should only say ‘yes’ if/when you have an interesting answer that enhances and embellishes the adventure, encounter, or location.

Again, by leaving things fuzzy, you give yourself room to get creative.

Campaign histories work best when they are teased, not handed out on a silver platter, and uncertainty should be part of the package. This engages curiosity and makes room for plot twists as (some) of the truth gets uncovered in the course of the campaign. These are powerful forces to have at your disposal as the campaign unfolds; once you get used to the degree to which they can enhance your adventures, you’ll never want to go back to life without them.

993… 994…

I’m still looking for ideas on how to commemorate my 1000th post at Campaign Mastery. Time is running out!

The adventurers are moving over rugged grasslands punctuated here and there by the leaves of a wild melon. One of the PCs has been gathering these as they traveled to add a touch of flavor to the goat’s meat purchased in the last town, which has the flavor and consistency of stringy bark, in his opinion.

Although there are many plateaus and undulations in this region, the party has been careful to stay well clear of these and away from any potential danger of ambush.

The GM rolls the dice; the indicate that a random encounter is about to take place.

There are two common ways of thinking about what that encounter will comprise.

Way The First

Consider the terrain and landscape and pick an encounter that takes advantage of it to make the encounter more difficult / interesting.

EG: Goblins have used an illusion to conceal a natural bowl and the PCs are now surrounded by goblin archers with altitude on their side. The grasslands will waver as though in heat haze for a moment and then the sides of the bowl – and the archers, 30′ high on its rim – will stand revealed.

Problem: Why wasn’t the illusion detected / penetrated? This won’t be a problem if there’s no-one in the party resistant to such, but any Elf in the party raises a problem (at least in editions through 3.x – I’m not sure about 4e and 5e). Is there some limitation to the usual Elvish ability to see through illusions that the rules don’t mention? Or to racial abilities in general? Can clerical magic, for example, inhibit such abilities with an appropriate spell? Or Arcane Magic? Or is there something about this particular location?

The chosen solution to this problem will add considerably to the distinctiveness of the campaign. For balance, the opposite should also be true – there should be spells or locations that imbue specific races with additional racial abilities that they don’t have elsewhere. Suddenly, geopolitics in this world takes on a whole new significance and flavor!

Way The Second

Think about how the environment can be transformed to add spice to an encounter of a type that the PCs were not expecting.

EG: The PC picking melons sets foot on a piece of terrain that isn’t there, a hole hidden beneath the grasses. He falls 10′ (not enough to seriously harm most PCs) and is immediately attacked by a hungry spider with its mate to his rear. The spiders think that he’s probably going to have the flavor and consistency of stringy bark, but beggars can’t be choosers….

Meanwhile, the other PCs have noticed that the PC has vanished, but none of them saw where he went. They can hear him, though – BOY, can they hear him!

Way The Third

What is the story? Can it spawn an encounter? If not, do you have another little mini-story that can materialize unexpectedly?

EG 1: The PCs are on a quest to recover a legendary treasure. It’s of low monetary value and has no magical qualities but has high sentimental and patriotic significance. It has long been thought lost, but the memoir of its last guardian has just been discovered and provides a strong hint as to the location of the treasure. Whoever recovers it will be lionized and gain entree into the upper echelons of society, opening many doors to many opportunities.

No doubt some of the logical implications will be part of the main adventure. But this is a time to think through the logic again for anything you may have missed. The two most obvious implications are rivals on the quest and enemies who don’t want to see the item recovered. The main plotline will reveal (eventually) that the memoir is a fake and the treasure isn’t there, it’s a deception by a political rival looking to undermine popular support for the King. But the PCs are expected to discover a new clue to the real location of the treasure that will enable them to recover it and expose the plotting of the political rival.

Are there any other enemies of the Kingdom that might add their two cents’ worth? Are there any other adventuring bands who might also be on their way to recover the treasure? How might they have gotten ahead of the PCs?

To me that suggests an encounter: A rival band of adventurers have also been tipped off by a friend in the Kingdom’s circle of advisors. They have burned a one-shot teleport spell they recovered in the form of a magic item to get ahead of the PCs – which means that they were the first to encounter a band of Half-Giant Orcs who have been recruited by another neighboring Nation, one with which the PCs Kingdom is supposedly on good terms, but which fears that the Kingdom is growing too dominant in their relations. The Half-Giant Orcs are being well-paid to interfere in anyone’s attempt to recover the treasure. The neighbor knew about the treasure because they have a highly-placed spy in the Royal Court.

This not only adds nuance and richness to the politics of the Kingdom, it adds a new layer to the adventure, and throws in fair warning to the players that the GM is thinking outside the racial ‘box’ of the official rules. It also places a bit more treasure in the path of the PCs, compensating for the fact that the main reward of the adventure is not of significant monetary worth. In fact, it ticks an awful lot of boxes for the GM – so many that he really should have this as a pre-planned encounter en route.

Well, if that’s a pre-planned encounter that’s supposed to happen somewhere else, and there are no boxes that the GM can think of that they haven’t ticked already, perhaps a mini-story that just happens to intersect with the PCs path en route?

EG 2: A shepherd has been having trouble with a Harpy stealing his lambs of late. Many more have gone missing than can be accounted for in dietary needs alone. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but wants it stopped. As the PCs top a rise, they see (in the distance) the harpy carrying off another lamb as the shepherd tries to keep the rest of the flock together and his dogs attempt to attack the thief. The shepherd tells them (when they reach his location) that this is the 13th lamb stolen in 6 days. A single lamb should sustain a Harpy Nest for a week, he doesn’t understand it.

What he doesn’t know is that the Harpy is a Necromancer who intends to use the lambs’ blood in an evil ritual tomorrow night to enhance her powers, enabling her to raise and merge many Undead into a larger, more resilient and more dangerous form, a sort of Undead Flesh Golem.

The difference between this and a straightforward encounter is that the narrative behind the encounter is more important than the encounter itself, at least initially – the PCs see something in the distance, too far away for them to do anything about it, and then meet the farmer, who presents the plot hook. What’s more, by delaying the party, this eliminates the need for the pre-scripted rivals encounter to expend a teleport to get ahead of the PCs, which means that it can be set aside for use with a second band of rivals should another random encounter be indicated.

Of course, it might be that the story needs have all been catered for – that certainly seems to be the case at this point in my example! That brings me to…

The Zeroth Solution

The dice indicate an encounter, but there are times when the planned pacing is already chock-full, and adding another encounter into the mix will only get in the way. With every random encounter, the GM should always think about whether that encounter will help or hinder the pacing and unfolding of the plot, or if it will be too distracting. The less frequently you get to play, the more important such considerations become – there’s a lot more room to maneuver if you play weekly than if you get together bi-monthly, for example.

When there’s no room for an encounter right now, I invoke the “zeroth solution.” That’s an encounter that’s a time bomb – it won’t manifest until the time is right. If I can’t think of one that I haven’t used recently, then I’ll make it a plot development in a character’s background – they will return from the current adventure to find that things are not the same as when they left. Sometimes, these will be a change for the better, more often they will be for the worse. A third version of this encounter is a noteworthy location.

Let’s have an example of all three sub-varieties

EG 1: A pack of blink hounds stumbles across the PCs trail and begins stalking them. They will hunt the PCs for no more than three days, and will not follow the PCs into a dwelling or dungeon, though they will linger around the entrance in case their prey comes back out. They are looking for one of the members of the ‘herd’ to become separated from the rest, or for the herd to let their defenses down, eg a watchman who falls asleep.

EG 2: A PCs sister weds an unscrupulous character against the wishes of her family. What she hasn’t told them is that this is the price of his not turning over evidence of some past deed on the part of her father which, though legal, looks off-color, and would do his reputation serious harm. When the PC returns, the family will add this mess to his stack of things to do that require his immediate attention. Since that stack will now require him to be in three places at once, the only way he can make it all happen is by offloading some of his responsibilities to the other PCs. This encounter indicates that the Saga Of The Noble Scepter (or whatever it’s being called) will be followed by an unplanned change-of-pace adventure – one that wasn’t even on the horizon a moment ago.

EG 3: The PCs come upon a hill, one side of which seems to have been scooped away by some vast hand. A spring at the top of the hill cascades down the rocky side in a musical tinkle, landing on the side of a small pool, surrounded by shading trees. This place seems unnaturally peaceful; somehow, you can tell that this is the one place in all the world where there has never been an act of violence of any sort. On one of the tree-limbs, a sparrow and a hawk stand side-by-side, regarding you with unconcerned eyes. A rabbit pokes its head of a hole nearby to examine you with nothing more than curiosity while a fox emerges from the undergrowth to drink from the pool. This would be the perfect place for the PCs to camp and rejuvenate their spirits.

Every hour spent in this place adds a year to the lifespan of each PC, to a maximum of +25 years and does d3 healing. Once a character is fully healed, each hour adds +1 HP up to the maximum possible from the character’s hit dice. These extra HP will fade at the rate of 1 per hour once the characters leave the vicinity.

Any act of violence will be the equivalent of leaving the location, and will destroy the natural magic of this wonder of creation.

The place is also a trap for the unwary – every hour adds +1 to the difficulty of a WILL saving throw (or equivalent) to leave, it’s so comfortable and peaceful. If any party member fails, they will refuse to leave yet, for what seems like a good reason (to them, at least), and will resist any attempts to force them. Note that coming to blows will qualify as an “act of violence”. Even if a party member succeeds in one given check, that gives them no particular benefits at the next such check. Either the PCs split up, leaving some of the party at the pool, or they end the “magic,” or each party member has to succeed at the same time in order to leave.

Note that such rolls are not made every hour – they are only made when the time comes to leave according to the PCs established routines or other decision made by them.

A lot of narrative- and story-oriented GMs look upon random encounters as an inconvenience. The best will view them as an opportunity to flesh out a part of their game world or explore some aspect of it that hasn’t come to light. The very best will see it as a means of further world-building because they already have external forces lined up that will propel the PCs toward adventures that put all the established unique aspects of the game world on display.

Outside Fantasy

Game systems can be divided up into two main categories – those with random encounters and those without.

In the first category, we have virtually all Fantasy RPGs from D&D through to Tunnels & Trolls and Rolemaster. I’ve never seen a Fantasy game that didn’t have some ‘wandering monster in the wilderness’ mechanism. The same has to be said of every game system that is based upon a Fantasy-genre system – that’s D&D-esque game systems like Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, and Gamma World, and Pathfinder variants (only one so far, Starfinder).

Perhaps in an effort to distance themselves from the TSR/D&D model, random encounters are absent from almost every other game system, at least in terms of embedding them within the game mechanics. That doesn’t mean that casual encounters don’t and won’t take place, but these are more related to the logical potentials of each location and whether or not such encounters will add to or detract from the adventure at hand. If a superhero in Champions performs an act of public derring-do, nearby members of the press and fan-club members and members of the public in general will be attracted to the location. If the act is not so public, potential encounters are the people who could logically be at the location in question, from security guards to office staff working late.

Just because there is no die-rolling mechanism for invoking such encounters doesn’t mean that they won’t take place; it just gives the GM more control over their occurrence while placing more of the responsibility on his shoulders. In every other way, everything stated above still applies, including the four approaches.

Choices

With so many options, a systematic approach to choosing between them becomes critical.

I tend to adopt the following sequence under most circumstances:

1. The Third Way
2. The Zeroth Solution
3. The First Way
4. The Second Way

You could summarize this as “Story, Delayed-Bang/Background, Environment, Creative Capacity”. if nothing comes to mind in a given category, or is contraindicated, I’ll move on to the next category. Once the first three are exhausted, it indicates that no encounter is possible under the current circumstances, so if you really want/need an encounter, the only solution is to change those circumstances in some way.

A Fifth Answer?

In my superhero campaign, at the moment, I’m actually employing what could be considered a fifth approach, or at least approaching one.

I’ve created a list of possible encounters – little more than a placeholder – and whenever nothing interesting has been happening for a while in my adventure planning, I’ll spice things up by picking an item off the list that seems to match up with the local environment.

I can’t go into too much detail as we’re months away from actually playing through these, but they all fit under the “Third Way / Zeroth Solution” umbrellas so far (and the clock won’t even start on those months until the current Lockdown conditions come to an end – which quite possibly means a 2022 start).

Parting Wisdom

How you think about encounters pervades the atmosphere of your RPGs. Some approaches are better than others; the best choices will rarely happen by accident. All too often, one approach becomes habitual, even if it is no longer the best answer; take a moment to review how YOU handle random encounters, and your games will be the better for it.

I should end this article by pointing the reader to another of my articles on the subject – actually, a series of articles:

• Creating ecology-based random encounters: The Philosophy of meanderings

• Creating ecology-based random encounters: This Eats That

• Creating ecology-based random encounters: Encounters with meaning

And always remember, the object is to create fun at the game table for everyone!