I love a good domino theory. They keep things nice and tense within the campaign, are a fertile source of adventures as people try to break the connection between desired action and undesired consequence, and are almost guaranteed to blow up spectacularly in due course. But that doesn’t make them easy to do, never mind to do them well. In this article, I’m going to look at how to create the most spectacular domino-theory chain reactions of events within a campaign, what can go wrong, how to use them to create adventure seeds, and – ultimately – how to ride the whirlwind as the dominoes start to tumble.

Creating Domino-theory chains

I’m going to start by looking at how to create a domino-theory chain – and I’m going to begin by asking the very basic question: just what are they?

What is a domino-theory chain?

When a force within the game – be it an individual, a race, a society, or whatever – wants to carry out some act for some reason, but cannot do so because of an undesirable consequence, they can be said to be connected to that consequence. When a second force – be it a group, an individual, or whatever – wants to do something for some reason but can’t because the undesirable consequence of doing so will be to remove the inhibition upon the first force, then that second force can be said to be chained to the first – if the second force do what they want, there will be a chain reaction (albeit a small one) that ends with the first force doing what it wants. So A does B which makes C do D which makes E do F which makes G do H which…. and so on. Each Domino triggers the next one in a chain reaction that ultimately can only end in disaster, or redemption, or – at the very least – change.

These aren’t as easy to put together as they might at first appear – not if you want a really lovely interlocking web of triggers and consequences. Any hack can put together a simple chain like the one above – but putting together something more interesting is a lot harder.

Creating your initial state of tension

The place to start is by defining your initial state of tension. This is your initial “A wants to do B but can’t because C”.

• The first step is to create an initial force (A) and decide what action they want to do (B).
• The second step is to create a reason why they can’t do what they want (C).
• The third step is to decide what they are doing about this problem (D).
• Finally, decide what they are publicly doing in the meantime (E).

Those five facts are the things that need to documented for every force or faction that is part of the domino-theory chain: Force Name, Objective, Hindrance, Plan, and Cover.

If you want to be especially complete, you could add things like Motive and Reputation but while they might help characterize the Force, they aren’t necessary to the construction of a domino-theory chain. It’s far more important to make sure that the logic of (C) is absolutely iron-clad.

Creating your initial connecting link

(C), (D), and (E) – Hindrance, Plan and Cover – are what I think of as “loose ends”. These are threads that can connect to other forces and other groups without forming part of the primary chain. “Loose ends” work to form secondary chains, which are what really make a great domino-chain so much fun. So important are they that I’ll come back to them in a later section.

The next step is to create a second group – one that is blocked from doing what they want to do because of one of these loose ends. The best approach is to decide which of the loose ends you are going to use and then choose all the other parameters of the group to fit. Again, the critical thing is that the logic be ironclad.

• If the force one Hindrance (C) is also the reason Force two are blocked, the two groups have the potential to eventually form a working alliance, or to compete with each other to be in position to take advantage of their goals when (B) eventually becomes possible.
• If the force one Plan (D) is the reason Force two are blocked, then the two Forces are in opposition, but only Force 2 necessarily know it. Remember the old saying, “before you can stab someone in the back, you first need to get behind them?”
• If the force one Cover (E) is the reason Force two are blocked, then the two forces appear to be in opposition, but in reality, force one is exploiting that apparent position to disguise their true goals. If force two recognizes this, there is scope for a secret alliance of convenience between the two while they maintain public opposition; if not, force two will genuinely oppose force one, while force one takes advantage of force two.

Adding further connecting links

Continue adding links branching off from the initial chain. That means that force three should be linked to the Hindrance, Plan, or Cover of force two, and then force four to force three, and so on. For every group, you get three loose ends and use one of them, so if you draw it as a diagram – an approach that I encourage – you can draw your initial chain as a long vertical strip with the unused links hanging off each side from each group.

The image to the right illustrates this. It shows a primary chain of 9 Forces (numbered), with 1 connected to 2, which is connected to 3, which is connected to 4, and so on, leaving two links – labeled a and b by number – to each side of each of the groups. Note the unused third connector from group 9.

Personally, I don’t recommend chains anywhere near this big. Four or five links in the primary chain is plenty. I also recommend that at this point you draw up a matrix with each force across both the top and down the left so that you can document the relationships between the additional forces as you go (using the example offered in the previous section).

When you feel that the primary chain is long enough, it’s time to start adding Secondary chains.

Secondary Chains

A secondary chain is exactly the same as the primary chain in its construction except that it hangs off one of the unused branches of one of the primary chain and will use one more of those unused branches for one of its other connections. If you are really creative, you might be able to use all three connections from the new group to cross-connect, but two is good enough. Keep adding secondary groups until all the chains have a force relating to them. It will often be the case that you will need to build a group that connects from one secondary group to another in order to achieve this.

Think about what that means for a moment. Every Force that forms part of the resulting complex matrix is connected to three other Forces, each of which is also connected to three Forces. All of them have an agenda, something that is preventing them from acting overtly on that agenda, a plan to overcome that problem, and something else that they are doing in the meantime.

The Web Of Catastrophe

I call this a “Web of Catastrophe”, because any change (perceived or actual) will bring the whole structure crashing down as a chain reaction, one domino falling after another. Enter the wild cards: the PCs. If this describes the state of affairs within the campaign, whether we’re talking about the internal politics of a single noble Court or the relationship between multiple rival nations, or something in between, any change will have repercussions felt a long way away.

Critical Mass

As a general rule of thumb, I find that having as many Forces involved as their are players, or less, enables the players to grasp the totality of what is going on, often before the GM wants them to. Having more, by one or two, makes the totality easily-grasped, but not immediately obvious – but it can still come out before the GM is ready. So I recommend, as the minimum number of Forces, three more than there are PCs. This is analogous to achieving a Critical Mass of plotlines within the campaign.

It’s also easy for there to be too many factions, something that confuses the players and causes them to blur one group with another. In my experience, most players can cope if there are somewhere between two and three Forces at work per player – with the exact number varying from individual to individual. This number is often reduced dramatically if a player has not been present for the entire campaign – though it can sometimes be increased by the external perspective that comes from not have sat through the events, and being presented with an overview.

Once a Force has done it’s “job” within the plotline – something we have yet to generate – if there seem to be too many cooks for the players to keep up with the recipe, feel free to annihilate that Force. Purge, Zap, Delete – they have performed their role in the cosmic scheme of catastrophic chain reaction, and are now superfluous. If you can make the PCs the instruments of that destruction, so much the better – a victory now and then does wonders for player morale!

A segment of example

This might not be totally clear from the abstract description of the process that I have provided, so here’s a small piece of a small example to try and clarify matters.

• Force 1: The Incarnum, a conspiracy amongst mages in the Kingdom of Truleth.
  • Goal: Ban Clerics and Clerical Magic from the kingdom of Truleth.
  • Hindrance: They have the political connections to do so but cannot employ this power because the NGaryth secret society of Demon-worshipers would gain ascendancy.
  • Plan: Construct a Divicula, an arcane device theoretically capable of driving out demons.
  • Cover: Advisers to the court of Truleth on all matters arcane, and strong proponents of law & order.
• Force 2: The Ngaryth Secret Society
  • Goal: The resurrection of the mad God Dwarla to subjugate the other faiths of the Kingdom of Truleth.
  • Hindrance: They need the Ring Of Tyanthomath, a lost clerical artifact, to find and awaken the Mad God.
  • Plan: Use demons belonging to the Demon Prince Chasis to search for the Ring in return for the society’s aid in Chasis’ war with his rival Plicianth.
  • Cover: A secret society within an association of mercantile leaders.
• Force 3: Dirim Harzer, Commander of the standing army of the Kingdom of Truleth.
  • Goal: To invade the neighboring Kingdom of Coalinth.
  • Hindrance: The Elvish Army allied to Coalinth.
  • Plan: Bribe the Troll Gaurdurk and his Army to invade the Elvish Forest to distract the Elves
  • Cover: Invent a Necromantic Secret Society to justify increased funding for the army to cover the diversion of funds from the military budget.
• Force 4: House Matron Zilvani of the Drow
  • Goal: To use the Army of the Kingdom of Truleth to wipe out the Elvish Forest without risk to her own forces.
  • Hindrance: The Kingdom of Coalinth are historic enemies of Truleth and the alliance is too strong for Truleth to defeat alone; furthermore, they are more likely to attack Coalinth.
  • Plan: Leak intelligence to the Kingdom of Truleth suggesting that Gaurdurk The Troll is about to secretly ally with Coalinth, forcing them to attack the weakest flank – the Elves – before Coalinth becomes invincible.
  • Cover: Mentally dominate the Princess of Coalinth and cause her to send emissaries to Gaurdurk so that the alliance looks like a Coalinth idea.
• Force 5: The Servants Of Dwarla (Half-elves and the real acolytes of the mad God)
  • Goal: Resurrect the Mad God to “purify the impure”
  • Hindrance: They need a Divicula whose purpose has been corrupted during construction, and don’t have the expertise to create one.
  • Plan: Trick the wannabe worshipers of Dwarla, the Ngaryth Secret Society, into retrieving the Ring Of Tyanthomath and attempting to use it, corrupting the Divicula being constructed by The Incarnum according to plans “fed” to them by the Servants.
  • Cover: Use Plicianth The Demon (clever but without high rank) to trick Prince Chasis (not clever but with the rank Plicianth thinks he deserves) to find and retrieve the Ring.

That seems like a deliciously-tangled web. It actually shortcuts the process a bit – there really should be an entry for each of the Demons – but it’s quite complete enough to yield plenty of fun and games.

Frayed Ends

The other thing that I would note, if I were preparing to GM this, is that everyone has their actions circumscribed by their circumstances, with one exception – the Troll Gaurdurk. Outside of the PCs, this is the only character with any freedom of action – and he’s being Feted by two different sides, while being manipulated by a third. If anyone deserves an entry of their own, he does! As things stand, he is a frayed end – pull on it and the whole carefully-knitted structure will fall apart.

On the other hand, having him at loose ends makes him a Trigger. Whichever side the PCs ally with, Guardurk can either ally with the same side or with the enemy, whichever looks like creating the most fun. So the occasional frayed end can sometimes be useful.

Source Of Illumination

With the construction process detailed and illustrated, let’s start talking about using this structure as a source of adventures.

The Status Quo

The collection of cover stories represent the apparent status quo within the campaign. So the first adventure or two (or more) that you derive should be only indirectly connected to the Domino Chain, and should establish and educate the Players as to whom the in-game players are.

Secrets Have A Way Of Getting Out

Additional adventures should be scheduled to bring any secret groups or organizations to the PCs awareness, even if they don’t know what the objectives of such groups are.

Warning: If any of the groups have a desire or need for secrecy as their Hindrance, these revelations may trigger the chain reaction if the GM is not very careful in planning those adventures. In particular, he needs to ensure that either the secret group don’t realize that their secrecy has been compromised, or he needs to ensure that the PCs have reason to keep the existence of the group secret and that the secret organization knows it.

Reactions To PC involvement

Whichever group the PCs interact with, the allies and enemies of that group should notice, and react appropriately. Each of those reactions can form the basis of a subplot running through a subsequent adventure. What’s more, some of these can then become the foundations of spin-off adventures.

There will be all sorts of forces not articulated in your chain reaction. The example makes no mention of the Dwarves, for example. If the PCs become affiliated with the Elves, or with the Kingdom of Coalinth, in the example, then the other of those two allied parties can ask the PCs to look into rumors that the Dwarves are allying with the Kingdom of Truleth (which seems to be where the money is). In fact, the Dwarves might be up to nothing of the sort.

The Direct Plans

Each and every Plan listed then becomes a potential adventure as it is put into motion or begins to work its way towards fruition. The question is, in what order should they occur?

Damped Reactions
Some of the chains of dominoes eventually run out of steam, come to a conclusion that leaves some of them still standing.

Explosive Reactions
Others cause one imbalance after another, creating the explosive reactions that will plunge the game world into chaos – unless the PCs intervene.

In other words, you can yield the entire plot potential all in one big bang, or you can dribble it out a bit at a time and get multiple smaller adventures instead of one all-or-nothing potential cataclysm.

The choice is up to you, but if I had put that much work into setting up a finely-balanced infrastructure like that, I would want to get as much bang for my buck as I could. Just as the PCs deal with one problem, the repercussions of that resolution should knock over the next domino, and bring about the next adventure. In other words, we want an explosive reaction – but not one that proceeds too quickly. The goal; is an controlled explosion.

Because we have kept the number of Forces to a manageable number, it’s not too difficult to set up theoretical trigger events and see what happens. A trigger is one of three things:

• A Direct Plan succeeds
• A Direct Plan is discovered by the PCs and stopped, forcing the Force behind it to come up with a New Plan (and possibly exposing them);
• An internal schism occurs within one of the Forces when someone gets a clever idea that promises a quicker success.

Three possibilities for each Force.

• Start with the first one, and with the first possible outcome of their plan, and see what happens. Does A set off B, which sets off C?
• Then look at the second possible outcome, and see what happens if the group gets revealed or taken out of the picture, presumably by the PCs. Does that release B to act overtly, which sets off C, and so on?
• The third possible outcome from the first group should then get assessed. Same question.
• Then repeat this three-step examination with the second group, and then with the third, and so on.

It will soon become apparent which thread to pull – which chain gives the greatest combination of length and control. Ideally, the choice should be one that will trigger the next event in the chain whether the PCs succeed in stopping the current plan or not. But there is a caveat, which brings me to:

The Perils

The biggest peril that you face when creating such a web of concatenated consequences comes in the form of a premature detonation. Each time you introduce the players to another element within your grand scheme, you run the risk of someone pulling a Sampson and bringing the house down – with the campaign inside it.

This danger can never be completely avoided, but it can be mitigated. The easiest preventative measure is to introduce another Force into the picture – one which exists to maintain the status quo, stamp out potential explosions before they happen, and who view the PCs as disruptive, meddling, troublemakers. That last is very important, since eventually you want the dominoes to fall and the PCs to have to deal with each of these groups “making their move”.

Nevertheless, having a group that can parachute last-minute assistance in for the PCs to use to deal with whatever problem they have set off, can be a game-saver.

The second biggest danger is the wet firecracker. This occurs when the order in which you set off the chain reaction is not right in another respect: it’s no good having a full chain reaction if later explosions are an anticlimax. No, you want the stakes, the difficulties, and the drama to continually rise with each domino.

To some extent, these things are scalable. The ultimate confrontation of the example might be the PCs vs the Mad God, or the PCs vs one of the Demon Princes, or War between the two city-states, or war between the Mad God and one of the Demons, or even War between the two Demons with the PCs holding the balance of power – and their home base as ground zero. If the Demons aren’t in the ultimate fight, you can dial them back to more individual efforts and make it a Mano-e-Mano confrontation between them (with the PCs in the middle, of course) rather than hordes of subordinate Demons battling it out. The Mad God can be scaled back by only releasing one of his Foot Soldiers – the plan to release the Big Guy can fail. And so on.

But if scaling won’t work – and for some items it won’t – you need to ensure that things happen in the right order. Your first choice for the chain of events might not fit this criteria – in which case, you need to junk that starting point and look for another, continuing the three-step assessment of direct plans, and possibly even compromising the length of the chain reaction.

Conflagration

Once you have the basic outline of events – “A does B to C, which enables D to do E to F, which…” – it’s time to tie the whole bundle together. Remember how I said that each Force you had identified would react to what the PCs did? Well, they are also going to react to whatever any of the other Forces do, too.

Again, the best way to organize this is with a table. Across the top, we have the names of the factions, while each event in your domino chain gets listed down the side. The Force performing the action just gets a star in it, unless you think that they might have a range of internal responses. Factions within a single Force have proven the undoing of political parties and governments in the past, and will again, and it’s not exactly unknown for an organization to have a coup when the current leadership is betting the farm on a pair of sevens, either.

It’s important to note that you have to make an assumption about the success or failure of the action. As a general rule of thumb, if the PCs are in a position to intervene, I assume that the action will fail; if the PCs are not, I assume that the action will succeed unless I don’t want it to for plot reasons. I note the assumption in brackets at the end of the action description which will be in the left-hand column.

The group responsible for the next link in the chain is designated the primary reaction – just put an asterisk in their column, because you have already defined how they are going to react. I then work my way through each of the other groups.

• Are they threatened by the action?
• Do they benefit from it in some way?
• Is there some other change in their circumstances because of the action? – An alliance broken, or an alliance strengthened?
• Is there a way for them to further their own agendas using the action?
• Is there a way for them to inconvenience or disrupt an opponent using the action?
• Can they at least ‘spin’ the action to generate propaganda for their own agenda?

Only if the answer to all these questions is “no” do I write “none” in the appropriate space on the table and move on. If the answer to any of them is “yes” then the group have to react in some way to the event.

These also assume that the group knows about the event. That sometimes gets forgotten, we’re so used to instant news in the modern world. Everyone is constantly acting and reacting to yesterday’s news – or last week’s, or last month’s. Smart people will tend to take that into account, while ideologically-driven people will tend to assume that things will work out according to their ideological interpretation of the world.

It also assumes that the news of the event is accurate, and that can be a bigger deal than people realize a lot of the time. Accidental error, exaggeration, rumor, and deliberate misrepresentation of the outcome are all possible. But this is the correct assumption to make, as you will see in the next section.

Color-Coding the entries

I also find it useful to use some legible but distinct color for events that have not yet occurred in-game, and the reactions that they produce. Blue would be my first choice in this context.

When a planned event actually occurs, the text gets changed in color either to Black or to Red. Black means that the outcome was as expected, and the reactions and subsequent events can unfold into their next step as planned. Red means that something unexpected has occurred (and that usually means the PCs have somehow gotten mixed up in things), and that means that every subsequent line of both the plan and the table of reactions needs to be reevaluated.

As mnemonic device, I will usually change the color of those subsequent lines of the table to Fuchsia and change them back to blue, one by one, as they get updated.

Updates to allow for the unexpected

The first question that always needs to be asked is whether or not the unexpected outcome alters the next step in the domino chain. If it does, news of the event needs to be misreported or misrepresented.

Any of the reasons previously listed will work, but my first preference is to look for some group that might deliberately distort the reports of the outcome for their own benefit. A deliberate act by someone is always more plausible than any sort of coincidence or random chance that just “happens” to keep the GM’s plot running. And my second preference is to invent someone to deliberately cause the misrepresentation of the news.

Any such misreporting represents a complication of the situation that the GM can take advantage of. Groups can react to either the truth or to the erroneous reports – again, whichever creates the most fun. You can even have some groups having it both ways: “if the reports are true, then… but I think it more likely that…”

Why This Is Not A Plot Train

It should be observed that despite the domino chain representing an overall plotline assembled by the GM, it is not a plot train, or at least it doesn’t have to be. The PCs have complete freedom of choice – this plan is all about NPCs and what they plan to do. The PCs can alter the outcome of individual events – and the GM simply updates his plans to accommodate those changes.

The “Orcs & Elves” Connection

Anyone who went to the effort of reading the lengthy “Orcs & Elves” Series – I know some did and some didn’t – will recognize that the Elvish History presented therein is very much this sort of chain reaction. “A happened, and the Orcs did this as a result, and the Drow did that, and the Dwarves did the other, and that caused the Elves to do this other thing, and that meant that when the Orcs did their next thing, the result was an opportunity for the Drow to do their next action,” and so on. That story was all about opportunities: making them, seizing them when they occurred, and guarding against others having them. Several times the Elves seemed to have everything under control, their lives as good as they got – only for them to be blindsided by something they didn’t see coming. Very little happened in a vacuum, it was perpetually about the intersection between past experiences, future goals and ambitions, and the opportunities that arose in the present.

If anyone wants a more substantial and complete example of this plotting process, that’s where to find it. This article is, at it’s heart, a formalization of the plotting process that was used for that mammoth slice of campaign background.

The Aftermath

The dominoes have fallen, and lie strewn all across the table. A chain of events have led to an apocalyptic finale. It’s human nature to ask, “what happens next?”

You have two choices: an Aftermath within the same campaign, a denouement to wrap up plot threads and loose ends, a coda to the cataclysm; or a sequel campaign (part one of a how-to), part two is here.

Either way, the starting point is still the same:

• Which Forces survived?
• How have their agendas changed?
• What opportunities exist for them to further those agendas?
• How has their public perception changed?
• What are their immediate problems?
•    …and so on.

Half the work has already been done for you. You still have your list of Forces, and you have established what they wanted and how they went about getting it. They will learn from their mistakes and try again, if their agenda has survived intact. “They all lived happily ever after” might be fine for a fairy tale – this is a Roleplaying Game. So line up the dominoes, and let them fall…

Finished at last! It’s a little late, but here it is… I actually wrote this article from start to finish (in my head) on my way to Gaming over the weekend (a trip of about 25 minutes by bus that completely wipes out my back for the following day). It seemed a lot shorter until I actually started putting words on digital paper…

The approvals process in my 3.x Fantasy campaigns

Back in “Exceeding the Extraordinary: The Meaning Of Feats” (April 2012), I promised that a future article would discuss the approvals process for feats, prestige classes, etc, in my 3.x Fantasy campaigns. It’s been a long time coming, but here at last is that discussion.

Why?

In a perfect world, there would be no need for any sort of approvals process. Any feat or class that a player desired would be open to them, regardless of source.

The balance problem

In the real world, things are not so simple. The same good idea might come to many different producers of game materials, resulting in overlapping stackable bonuses, to the point where a game mechanic breaks. Game “balance” and “fairness” are always tricky and touchy subjects, but they are also very real considerations in most games. Some ideas simply won’t fit the campaign. And opportunists can always try to exploit broken rules and mechanics.

Some form of approvals process is necessary to guard against these problems.

The continuity problem

Furthermore, I’ve long been a proponent of the notion that the rules should evolve to match the campaign (from a common base: the published rules) and that the campaign should not be hamstrung by the limits of what the rules support or permit. That also entails some sort of vetting process, though that affects subjects other than feats for the most part.

But here’s a hypothetical conundrum to contemplate: Postulate a master of his craft, whatever it may be, confronting an enemy, and winning (or losing) after an epic battle. Now imagine one of your players pointing out that if the “master” was all he was cracked up to be, he would have had feat “X” which would have enabled him to do “Y”, defeating the enemy quickly and easily.

This is “easy” to guard against; all the GM has to do is memorize the mechanics of every feat ever published and its impact both in combination with other feats and with every combination of class and prestige class that exists.

Okay, now that most of my readers have had a good belly-laugh, there are only two practical solutions: either Feat X does not exist in the game in its current form (i.e. it needs to be modified so that it no longer provides an unacceptably easy solution to what was supposed to be a dramatic and pivotal moment in the campaign background) or it did not exist at the time.

The evolutionary solution
The latter solution opens up a whole can of worms, because it implies that characters can invent and develop Feats in the same way that they can spells. On the face of it, that’s not a wholly unreasonable proposition, because it provides an avenue for ongoing development within the campaign in terms of tactics, strategy, training, education, etc, etc. Fundamentally, this raises the question of what exactly a feat is, at an in-game level? But there is no mechanism for doing this within the game rules, not even a hint of one. Heck, there isn’t even a common standard to what a feat should or should not comprise, as I pointed out in The Meaning Of Feats.

But, setting that to one side for a moment, postulating that such a mechanism has been devised and incorporated into the house rules, I can’t see any GM blindly accepting every proposed feat submitted by his players. There would still need to be some sort of vetting/approvals process.

The potential abilities solution
The alternative is to assume that Feats represent inherent capabilities that training and experience can manifest as in-game capabilities, benefits, or enhancements, and that as such the feats that are available within the game have always existed as potential abilities, even if they were not accessible in the past. This represents an evolving “state of the art” (neatly solving the hypothetical problem of “X”) while giving the players a known rules foundation to work from, and is the solution that I have always – well, taken for granted until writing this article, to be honest, the alternative simply never having occurred to me!

But here’s the important part: assuring consistency with that state of the art once again demands a vetting/approvals process.

Sauce for the goose

Another of the key assumptions that I have always employed is that the rules are the same for both PCs and NPCs. If something is available for a PC to use, it must also be available to any NPC who has the capacity and would benefit from it – whether that’s access to a feat, a spell, a prestige class, a magic item, or whatever. The one exception that I have usually made to that rule lies in restricting player races to those who can integrate into and participate in society within the game, and excluding those creatures that are deliberately unbalanced in game mechanics terms to ensure that they pose sufficient challenge – so no Demigods, no Gods, no Dragons, no Golems, and no Beholders (amongst others).

The result is a vaguely-defined standard that restricts both sides of the table to something approximating a reasonable game balance. If I want something for an NPC, I have to be willing to have that capability in the hands of a PC. If a player wants something for his PC, I need the capability to give it to my NPCs.

Absolutism vs the soft touch

When it comes to enforcement of restrictions, there are two approaches that can be taken. The first is an absolute No, where something is simply taken off the table, possibly with a review date based on in-game circumstances where the denial is rooted in some in-game development – an approach that I have taken quite a lot with my Shards Of Divinity campaign, where ability in certain skills is capped until in-game “technological” breakthroughs. There is virtually no such thing as planar travel, for example – so there are very limited and vague concepts of the Planes, Planar Knowledge is capped, and various feats and classes that pertain to Planar Travel are simply not available – yet. Likewise, certain creatures are encountered far more infrequently.

The alternative is to permit a modified version of the capability in question, reducing its capabilities (or increasing them in some cases), changing the character levels at which abilities are gained, adding, increasing, subtracting, reducing, or otherwise modifying requirements, and so on. Rather than an absolute no, this is a qualified and restricted ‘yes’. But it does impose an additional requirement: before any such changes can be made, the class, feat, or whatever, has to be in an editable format.

Practicality means that I could not hope to type them all up myself – so the fundamental requirement of my players is that if they want access to something before I am going to get to it, they have to type it up for me.

The Approvals Process

Those are the fundamental considerations that evolved into the approvals process that I employ in my 3.x fantasy campaigns. It doesn’t matter whether I’m talking about D&D 3.0, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, or any other variant of the d20 rules system (simply because I don’t use the game system for any such campaigns doesn’t mean that I’m going to rule out doing so at some future point in time). Nor would it matter if I were to change to D&DNext – the same process, or an appropriate variation on it, would apply to anything in a non-core game supplement.

The general approvals process is as follows:

1. A physical copy of content the must be provided to the referee for conversion to an editable computer-based document. Where this is provided by the loan of the sourcebook to the referee, the “computer version” will be generated by the referee when time permits and this must be done before this step is considered complete. Players wishing to accelerate the process may choose to submit an electronic copy ready to be edited and then copy-and-pasted onto the approved list. PDFs of the source which do not permit copy-and-paste are considered the equivalent of loaning a sourcebook, because the work required is still the same.
2. Background Justification: The referee will review the content from a standpoint of campaign background fit, and make any adjustment deemed necessary, or refuse to approve the submission. If the submission is not rejected as unsuited to the background, it then proceeds to step 3.
3. Comparative Justification: The referee will then review the content from a standpoint of game balance, and make any adjustment deemed necessary, or refuse to approve the submission. If the submission is not rejected as unsuited, it then proceeds to step 4.
4. Rules Justification: The referee will then review the content from a standpoint of uniqueness, logic, and necessity, and make any adjustment deemed necessary, or refuse to approve the submission. If the submission is not rejected, it then proceeds to step 5.
5. The referee will then review the requirements to ensure that they reflect the considerations of steps 2-4 above, and make any adjustment deemed necessary, or refuse to approve the submission. If the submission is not rejected, it then proceeds to step 6.
6. If approved, the submission will be noted for inclusion on the the official Approved lists.
7. When time permits, the referee will act on that note and add the approved version to the official Approved list. If time is short, he may include the submission as an addendum to the official list; this qualifies as approval.

Documentation

The astute reader will have noted mention of an official “approved list”. I use a set of tables in a HTML format (keeping the size of each file down to a practical limit) because that was the fastest and most flexible approach; you could use a table in a word document, or in a star office document, or however you wish.

Feats are organized according to a standard taxonomy, dictating which table they get listed under:

1. Personal Development Feats – let you do things others can’t
2. Battle Feats
   2a: Initiative Feats – add to your initiative
   2b: Attack/Weapon Feats – add to your attack total
   2c: Defense/Armour/Shield Feats – improve your AC
   2d: Tactical Feats – add combat options
   2e: Strategic Feats – only work in a group or in the long-term
   2f: Ranged Combat Feats – specifically for ranged combat
   2g: Other Combat Feats – whatever’s left
3. Metamagic Feats – enhance or adjust specific spells at the penalty of occupying a different spell slot or vice-versa
4. Task-Oriented Feats – bonuses and alterations to skills and skill uses
5. Item Construction Feats – construction of arcane and unusual objects
6. Other Arcane Feats – enhancements to spellcasting in general, some only available to Wizards and others only to Sorcerers, including Necromantic feats
7. Spiritual Feats – for Clerics & Druids
8. Unholy Feats – inherently Dark feats used for purposes other than Necromancy
9. Miscellaneous Feats – enhancements for everyone else (including monsters)

Feat Types were also expanded with some additional subcategories added:

• General: feats of use by a variety of classes
• General (Evil): feats of a specifically evil nature, of use by a variety of classes
• General (Heritage): feats relating to your ancestry. You can only ever have one heritage feat.
• General (Tactical): feats specially designed for massed troops, usable by any class
• Item Creation: used to create magical or unusual items
• Metamagic: used to alter the power of spells while altering their spell level
• Necromantic: feats relating to death, the dead, and undead
• Necromantic (Evil): feats of a specifically evil nature relating to death, the dead, and undead
• Special: available only to specific classes, races and/or in specific circumstances
• Special (Bardic): available only to Bards and not to Bard variant classes
• Monster: normally available only to monsters and non-humans, often restricted to a specific member of those groups

Feats were arranged alphabetically in the list to make them easy to find. Feat descriptions consisted of five columns, the fourth of which contained multiple sub-items on separate lines within the table cell:

• Name – Some feats get renamed for various reasons, including two different sources using the same name for two different feats. I also tend to rename feats if they are substantially changed. Renamed feats will have the original name in the Source field. Feats that have been renamed because of modifications made will also have an entry under the original name showing (in the summary field) that the feat has been replaced by a modified version named [x].
• Type – from the categories listed above. Different campaigns may have additional types.
• Source – The name of the source and the page it is listed. I use an m-dash to indicate an original feat. If the feat has been modified from the original, this is also noted in brackets.
• Summary – The amount of content varies from a complete description to a brief synopsis listing the essentials.
  • Prerequisites – If there aren’t any, I always explicitly state ‘none’.
  • Effect/Benefit – Always present, stripped to the essential game mechanics.
  • Special conditions/rules – Present only if relevant. I have a tendency to be specific here about what any modifiers deriving from the field will not stack with.
  • Normal – again, only present when appropriate.
  • Notes – rarely used, and only present when there are some. Because I treat ‘flavor text’ as rules, this sometimes contains specific notes describing the impact of that.
• Approved – A simple Y or N. Entries that have been rejected (or replaced with alternate versions) are in bold and red, and with a slight red tint to the cell color to make sure that this fact is obvious.

I have two illustrations to offer. The first, possible only because I did not use a fixed width table, shows a set of entries (from the Personal Development Feats list) under G, gives some actual examples of entries on the table with the text at a legible size:

The second gives an idea of how the list looks when printed, this excerpt showing the “I” entries from the same table of feats. It isn’t expected to be legible because the horizontal space available here at Campaign Mastery is much less than a printed page width, so I’ve had to compress the image size. As you can see, most feats don’t take up very much room – three lines would be typical, six or seven lines occasional, and more than seven lines unusual. I think the longest entry is about 10 lines in length when printed. “Good Eye” (shown above) is 5 lines long when printed – and that’s counting a full line for “Prerequisites: None”.

Some feat-specific house rules

Within the same document are some house rules and clarifications that relate to the approvals process and its enforcement as it specifically applies to Feats:

6. Feats
   • Feats which are not included on the official “approved” list generated by the referee are not available until they are approved and so included.
   • Past reviews by the referee indicating the acceptability of a given feat are NOT considered Approval of the feat until it is placed on the Approved list, they merely indicate that Approval will probably be forthcoming when the feat is submitted for Approval.
   • Any character who has an un-Approved feat listed on their character sheet will lose both the feat and the feat slot it occupies, and the feat in question will be banned from the game from that time forward regardless of whether or not it would have been approved had it been submitted properly. It is therefore in the player’s best interests to submit any desired feats for approval in advance of choosing the feat for their character.
     If the offense recurs, harsher penalties may additionally be required.
   • Any feat which is on the approved list may be taken by any character provided that any background considerations and other requirements are met.
   • Feats are not just game mechanics, and the descriptions are not justifications of the game mechanics. e.g. “Thug”: You know how to get the jump on the competition and push other people around. While others debate, you act.” Those can also be described as “Impulsive” and “Aggressive”, and the referee is entitled to misrepresent a situation from time to time to entice the character to enter combat prematurely.
   • Most of the problems with feats stem from the failure by players to submit a copy that the GM can retain for use during the game with his NPCs.

There are similar sections for Prestige Classes, Spells, Magic Items, PC Races, New Monsters, and new uses for skills. But they are all variations on a theme.

Not So Draconian

You might get the impression from the above that I take a very hard line on respecting the approvals process, in fact that I am positively draconian in laying down the law and enforcing it. While I want that option up my sleeve for use if necessary (and hence have adopted such a tone in the house rules listed), the reality is that I am a bit of a softy who rarely exercises the prerogative to be really harsh. I’ve been known to permit Feats and classes into the game before they have even finished being written, never mind approved, for example.

At the same time, not knowing what to expect gets under my skin; too much provocation in the form of liberties taken (especially liberties taken without my prior approval) eventually results in an explosion. So, while I recommend that GMs issue similarly hard-line dictums, they should also be fairly relaxed at granting temporary exemptions, especially in the face of untoward circumstances.

In fact, this formal approvals process and the harsh penalties were the result of the last such major explosion, way back in February 2006. Although I’ve vented a couple of times since, that was the last time I was sufficiently angry that I tossed around words like “ultimatum” and “non-negotiable”. I like to think that at least part of the reason for that has been the existence of a clear approvals process. It’s also worth noting that back then, I was able to dedicate three or four days a week to my campaigns, if not more so, aside from the occasional interruption for a stand-alone article Roleplaying Tips. I have much less time available, these days, so some measure of practicality has to be accommodated.

Approval? Respect.

A carefully-crafted approvals process for the inclusion of material from outside sources should be part of every campaign, whether we’re talking Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Space Opera, Pulp, or anything else you can point a d6 at. Implementing such a policy is a matter of mutual respect between players and GM. Not doing so calls for blanket bans on third-party sources, on player input into the game mechanics, and (in fact) on player input & creativity in general. Failure of the players to adhere (as much as possible) to such a policy clearly creates more work for the GM and is disrespectful of his efforts towards the game.

Any RPG is collaboration between players and GM. An approvals process is not about dictating terms, or shouldn’t be; it’s about how best to integrate the elements that the players want to have on the table with the campaign that the GM has and is creating. It can be a bone of contention, or it can be oil upon the waters, defusing the potential for conflict between players and GM.

It can even be argued that such a process is not necessary if sufficient respect exists at the game table, and I would have a hard time disputing it. But in the real world, rules are often necessary, and these are the rules that I have evolved to maintain the integrity of the campaigns that I run – when I need to enforce that integrity.

GM: “You see a stream through the fields.”
Player: “What does it look like?”
GM: “Ummmm, a stream, and fields to each side…?”

Has that ever happened to you? Or this:

GM: “There is a bend in the river.”
Player: “Describe it.”
GM: “Ahhh, there’s a river, and it bends to the left…?”

Or how about this?

GM: “The trail leads up into the mountain range.”
Players: “How steep is it? How wide? Are there any tracks?”
GM: “Ummm…”

These things, or something similar, have certainly happened to me, and I’ve seen them happen to enough other GMs to think it’s fairly common.

Players ask the darnedest questions

These occurrences, and many more like them, are examples of players asking for a detailed description of something the GM didn’t expect to have to describe in detail.

It’s almost impossible to prepare descriptions of everything; practicalities of prep time almost always mean that there are more useful areas in which to invest your time.

Consider that before you can describe something, you have to visualize it, and more importantly, you have to find the uniqueness that distinguishes this particular scenery from a hundred others.

If you were writing a novel, you could take as much time as you had to in crafting and polishing your description, That’s just not possible when you’re writing to a deadline, and game prep is always writing to a deadline.

What we need is a shortcut, a way to take most of the effort out of the process, and a shorthand to compress the results to a manageable level.

The Shortcut

My shortcut comes in three steps: Geography, Season, and Image search.

Geography

Whenever I define a geographic region, I will always nominate a real location as a basis of similarity. To do this, I dig out an atlas and look for a region somewhere in the world of similar climate and terrain to the region in question – it doesn’t have to be an exact match, just something that’s roughly similar. I also note any major differences between this basis location and the geographic location.

I employ this technique with plains, mountains, foothills, rivers, etc etc – as well as cities and anything else that might be useful. I might be describing a futuristic city to be emplaced around a star many light years from earth, or a medieval city to be emplaced in the elemental plane of fire; it doesn’t matter. I select an analogue that I consistently use as my primary springboard.

I do nothing further until the location in question seems likely to pop up in an adventure, at which point I will proceed to the next step.

Season

The first thing to note is the time of year, and any climatic effects that will need to be incorporated. If it’s winter, will there be snow? Will the ground be frozen? In spring or autumn, perhaps there will be hail, or heavy rain. In spring, there may well be mountain runoff swelling the watercourses. I don’t try to second-guess the climate; I either know it, or I look it up, or I define an analogue with which I am familiar.

Image Search

And then I do an image search. The first term is the specific feature I’m trying to describe; the second is the season; and the third is the name of the analogue. If that doesn’t produce satisfactory results, I will remove the season, and make any adjustments myself. I then pick the three or four images that look most interesting, or iconic, or unique, or typical – all I want are relevant images that look reasonably easy to describe verbally.

These images then become the description that I document using the shorthand – which I’ll get to in a moment.

The Shortcomings

The technique has a couple of major flaws or shortcomings. The first is that this ignores totally the impact of climate and geography on society and sociology; it assumes that these are all independent of each other, at least substantially, and that the society can be whatever I want it to be regardless of the chosen analogue location. The second is that there will usually be some interpretation necessary, and that can sometimes require some effort. The third is that the images may not precisely match the desired target.

Google image search works by displaying one or more images from any web page that uses the search terms within its content. It pretty much completely ignores the file name, but it will place emphasis on any caption or metadata associated with the image, as well as other factors, which are used to assess the probability of relevance to the search query.

In particular, when multiple search terms are used, priority is given to those images whose reference points (including page text) match all the search criteria; then those that meet one fewer terms; then those that meet two fewer; and so on, until either all the images that match at least one of the terms, and other search parameters, are met, or an arbitrary limit is reached. (I think Google currently operates on a 1,000 results limit, but I won’t swear to that).

For each search, my preference will be for “large” images, but if that gets me nowhere, I’ll look for “medium” images. I tend not to change the other parameters. These options are currently accessible by clicking “Search Tools” on the search page menu – that is, the results page.

In general, if you don’t have a result you can work with in the first couple of result pages, you’re not likely to find one – but it only takes a few seconds to scan a page of results and cherry-pick those that meet your needs.

The Shorthand

Once I have three or four images displayed in separate tabs in my browser, I will move on to the shorthand phase. What I want first is an overall impression, especially of anything the selected images have in common. This will get written down as the starting point of my narrative. I will then follow with any specific elements from each of the images that I want to add to my description. In both cases, of course, I have to adapt what I am describing according to any differences between the inspiration images and the actual location.

There are three rules to the descriptive narrative:

• Every non-essential word will be left out.
• As many vowels as needed will be left out.
• Punctuation will be left out. A Dash is used to separate descriptive elements.

I won’t refer to “jagged mountain peaks”, I will write “jggd pks – ” and then move on to the next descriptive element.

I generally find that colors need to be fully spelt out, almost everything else can have the heck abbreviated out of it.

The Fourth Rule

A fourth rule that is invoked whenever possible is to employ descriptive, emotive, vivid language as much as possible. This permits each word in the resulting description to conjure up many more, and to create a more vibrant impression.

Decompressing the shorthand

The results are treated like a bullet point summary when I get called upon to describe the location. I extend and extrapolate as much as necessary from these starting points.

It takes a little practice, but most of the time I can fit a full paragraph of description onto a single line or less – and that line got written about as fast as I can type.

Why it works

The goal is to conjure a sufficiently vivid image in the minds of the players to enable them to interact with their surroundings. I neither know nor care whether or not the mental image that player 1 generates bears even a superficial resemblance to the imaginings of player 2.

Remember, I employ this technique for generic locations; if a specific location is needed, I will craft an appropriate specific description, using the general model as a starting point.

A cheat or two

The occasional employment of lateral thinking can go a long way to extending the usefulness of this technique. If I need to layout the stalls in a market, I will look for a store guide to a shopping mall – then translate the shops into in-game period equivalents. Furnished office space layouts work well as the basis of a prison – cubicles becoming cells – or a hotel. The aisle layout of a hardware store can give you a handy analogue for an entire manufacturing district, showing where certain factories are located (the aisles themselves become streets). If you want a more “progressive” style of building, the layout of a theme park or resort can give rise to an entirely more futuristic building concept – but the internal logic of the original still maintains a rationality to the design. If I need to populate a tower block with offices, I will sometimes use the internals of a multi-story department store.

If what you need doesn’t exist, or is likely to be hard-to-find for some reason (like the internal layout of a prison), get creative.

Example: The stream through the fields

Here are three Google image searches to illustrate the diversity of results that this technique can yield (click on the image for an updated search, and note that irrelevant search results have been heavily blurred):
 
Google Image Search: Stream Fields Spain
 
Google Image Search: Stream Fields Bundaberg
 
Google Image Search: Stream Fields Peru
 
Google Image Search: Stream Fields Columbia

The first thing that I notice is that in most cases, I have a stream or I have fields, not both. That’s fine, if I have to, I can perform more specific searches.

Rolling a d4 at random to choose between these – under normal circumstances, I would have only one set to work with, anyway – I get “Stream Fields Columbia” as my example. In some ways, this is the trickiest one because – as you can see above – I immediately tagged seven images as being potentially relevant. I quickly prune that list down to three, operating as much by instinct as anything else. By coincidence, these are the three images on the right:

I liked the look of Number 2, but it was clearly from a different season than the others. If I specifically wanted a winter season, it would have been one of the more important choices.

Looking at the three images that I have chosen, I quickly exclude the first one; on closer inspection it is a glacier and not a stream. From the other two (one of which is technically not actually Columbia and the other of which is technically a lake) I note the following description:

flat bnks – dprssd sfce – cnstnt wrggle b&f – crstl clr – cool – snwcppd mtns mid-dist – trs in sml stnds – rushs stp wtr edg – no fnces – v lng frrws b strgt – rghly pllel to bnk

that quite literally took just seconds. I doubt anyone will have too much difficulty translating it, but what it says when decompressed is:

“The riverbanks do not rise noticeably above the surface of the ground, which simple falls away into a depression filled with water like a smooth-edged crack running through the fields, the edges undulating back and forth. The water is crystal-clear and cool. Snowcapped mountains seem to erupt from the ground in the middle distance as though someone had forgotten to include foothills between here and there. The flatness is only broken by the occasional small stand of trees, isolated in clumps of three or four. Rushes and reeds mingle with the grasses of the fields near the water’s edge, but do not grow into the water, coming to an end as though the river had been cut from them with a giant cookie-cutter. There are no fences to interrupt the long straight furrows of the fields, which extend as far into the distance as the eye can see, dead straight, and roughly parallel to the bank of the stream.”

This result is a synthesis of my impressions, used as the building blocks of a description that is internally consistent, and extended through the mental images that the compressed narrative conjures. It’s a lot of description for only a couple of lines of notes that took rather less than a minute to compile. Neither of the source images are the whole story, but both are undeniably a part of the finished description.

One final tip

Once you have a description of one location, descriptions of the surrounding regions tend to be a lot easier to create. This description is all about the stream, but I would have no trouble describing the stands of trees, the fields and farms, and the base of the mountains from this one passage.

Six months from now, that might not be the case. I would still have the compressed description but time would have erased the memory of the visual context – unless I tagged the shorthand description with a date, time, and the name of the fictional location, and saved the source images using the same tags (copy and paste is your friend!).

That couple of extra seconds of effort makes it possible to recapture completely the scene as it was in my mind anytime the PCs return there in five or ten seconds. I just read the shorthand, and look at the pictures, and then read the shorthand again, and I am instantly transported back to the fictional place of my own creation – utterly unique, and yet completely natural, and so vivid that I could reach out and touch it – not to say being able to instantly visualize whatever is happening there, and describe the scene to the players.

Conclusion

Even in a game session that’s all about traveling from A to B, it would be unusual to need more than a half-dozen to a dozen such locations, assuming that the GM can extrapolate what lies between. Allowing for the time to conduct the searches and select the images required, that should involve about 15-30 minutes of prep time. That’s a very small price to pay for never being caught short by a player’s unexpected demand for a description again!

I received a really quite flattering and complimentary email the other day, asking me to take a look at the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for a new video game that was inspired in part by my writings here at Campaign Mastery. It read, in part,

 

From: Luciano Sgarbi

I’ve been a huge fan of Campaign Mastery for over a year now. As a video game designer focusing on Western RPGs your site has proved a treasure trove of inspiration and guidance.

I know you don’t normally feature Video-game Kickstarters, but as so much of your content can be applied to the medium, I thought it was worth a shot.

Here’s our RPG, if you like the look of it, it would be wonderful if you passed it on. We’ve learned so much from your articles: I’m constantly firing your links around the team and saying “This got me thinking about something in Witchmarsh.”
Fantasy Games

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1027299776/witchmarsh

Well, it’s true that Campaign Mastery is all about tabletop RPGs and not Video-game RPGs, but I play computer games (when I have the time) so I decided to take a look anyway, and I have to admit to being impressed by what I saw.

Witchmarsh

Witchmarsh is an action RPG set in the Roaring 20s, featuring a team of investigators in a story-driven supernatural mystery. Right away, that ticks a lot of the right boxes for appeal to a tabletop RPG player – “a team of investigators”, “story-driven”, “mystery”. Some of these can be rather tricky to pull off in the video-game world, but that only boosts the appeal if they look like pulling it off – and they do.

Then there’s the theme: 1920s supernatural mystery. Describe that to most RPG players and one of two genres will leap out at them – Pulp and Call Of Cthulhu, both of which have sufficient overlap that often game materials intended for one are useful for another, and both of which get mentioned a fair bit here at Campaign Mastery.

The game action itself is side-scrolling, one of the simplest mechanisms – there’s a reason why that was the game mechanism of choice for so many of the early video games – but the action itself reminded me more than a little of the original Diablo. This is not a bad thing; there’s a reason why that game became a successful franchise. This confers major two advantages to the designers, in my opinion: first, it makes the action fast to execute, and second, it leaves more room in the computer code for story. There may well be other advantages, as well, but those two are enough to be going on with.

Fast

there’s nothing worse than an unresponsive game. So long as you can fight in “semi-automatic” mode, real-time gaming is tolerable even for those who aren’t fans of the style. I have to confess to a preference for turn-based games, myself, but that ship sailed a loooong time ago.

More Room For Story

That’s gold. So many RPGs of the past have had the feel of being relatively pre-scripted plot-trains – to get to the solution, you have to go through the same encounters, find the same clues, and solve the same puzzles, which lead to the same encounters. At best, you might have some pretense at dialogue functioning through multiple choice responses. In other words, they played like a find-your-own-adventure book read. There have been occasional exceptions, w3hich have all been lauded for being exceptional in the degree of interaction between player and plotline.

But if you keep reading the description of what the designers are aiming for Witchmarsh to become, it only gets better from an RPG point of view: “The game features online multiplayer, extensive character creation, countless ability and item combinations, and rewarding boss encounters.”

Online Multiplayer

I can take that or leave it, but it requires a great deal more flexibility in the number of ways that players can interact with the world around their characters, so I guess it’s a good thing. I do hope that the game can be played solo, though, so that you aren’t hostage to other people being available. But the success of MMORPGs is undeniable.

The other benefit is that you need to build in less “AI” if all the player characters are independently controlled. So that, too, leaves more room for story. So it’s by no means not without a silver lining, even if cooperative play is the only way to go.

Extensive Character Creation

That’s been around since the early TSR games for AD&D, which I quite enjoyed. Every player of those games that I’ve spoken to has had his or her own philosophy of team design, and that in turn impacted on what the group could defeat easily and what they struggled with, which in turn – in the best of the games – influenced gameplay outside the combats. Modern video-game RPGs can essentially be divided into two camps: those with pregenerated characters that you have to use, and those with Extensive character generation.

Countless ability and item combinations: this is fine so far as it goes. The question is whether or not those combinations will make a difference outside combat. I’ll come back to these two points: character creation and ability/item combinations – in a minute.

Rewarding Boss Encounters

Here’s where I start running into problems. The gameplay itself (horizontal scrolling) is already reminiscent of an old-style arcade game; “Boss Encounters” smacks of the end-of-level beasties that used to be sine-qua-none for such games. And they weren’t RPG in any way, shape or form.

You can’t have an RPG without the potential for combat. And you certainly can’t have an “action” game without it. But I had to wonder whether or not the “action” arcade-style gameplay was going to leave enough space for roleplay. The whole term “boss encounters” serves as a red flag to me.

Game Features

The next section of the project description lists the game features, and these not only assuage those concerns, they ramp up the excitement and promised potential of other features that already had a thumbs-up.

• A mix of modern and classic RPGs, with branching dialogue and responsive, tactical combat.
• Play singleplayer or with friends in 2-4 player Co-op.
• Dripping with Jazz Age style, featuring music by Francisco Cerda, composer on Gunpoint and Jamestown.
• A massive character creation sandbox with over 50 unlockable abilities* across five spellbooks. Mix and match attributes, perks, items and weapons to create a unique team of adventurers. Or simply use one of the many templates to dive straight into the action.
• A game for seasoned RPG fans as well as players new to the genre. Optional bosses and challenges for those brave enough to seek them out.
• Over ten playable characters. Watch your choice in personalities result in conflict, friendships, wisecracks… romance?
• A dynamic hidden item system ensures no two trips to Witchmarsh are the same.

I’m not going to go through all of these, but I do want to cherry-pick a couple of these game features for mention.

Branching Dialogue

This sounds to me like the multiple-choices style that I referred to earlier. But it also implies that there is no one “right path” through the dialogue, that it exists within the game to do more than frame the parameters and location of the next battle sequence, and that would put Witchmarsh a step ahead of most games using such systems, making this a means of interacting with the world around the characters – a hallmark of a true RPG.

Singleplayer or multiplayer

I’d already identified this as being a big bonus in my book. Say no more!

Soundtrack

I don’t know the composer, or his work. I’d love it if the designers made available a snippet of the soundtrack that could be downloaded as an MP3 for potential backers to sample (it doesn’t have to be a full track, just a minute or so would be enough. Or perhaps they could provide a full sample track – at a £2 backer level). Nevertheless, this – coupled with the availability at many of the backer levels of a CD of the soundtrack – means that there is potential value for any tabletop RPGs set in the 1920s or even the early 1930s. So this becomes a big incentive for tabletop RPG players and GMs to back the project.

Unlockable Abilities

This reminds me of the logic behind feats in D&D – in order to have the choice of obtaining a feat, you have to “unlock” it by achieving its prerequisites. Since these appear to be more than combat abilities, they have the potential for further expanding the degree of interaction between world and characters. Even if they are just combat abilities, the greater the capacity for customization of characters, without their being any “necessary” or “right” choices, the more it amps up the genuine RPG attributes of the game.

Mix and match attributes, perks, items & weapons

And this only reinforces that impression.

Dynamic

Dynamic has two meanings – one is fast-moving, action oriented, excitement; the other suggests that the world changes in response to the actions and choices of the players. In this context, the designers could mean either or both; based on the other game features they promise, my money is on the latter.

No two trips are the same

And this final statement only reinforces that expectation.

Leads, Clues, and Dynamic Plots

A clue as to the RPG integration with the game comes from this section of the project description. The designers use the term Leads to refer to plot signposts that direct the characters to locations where mysteries and events are unfolding. These may prove relevant, or they could simply be a red herring, yielding only EXP and treasure. Clues “fuel progress in the game’s main storyline, and how you choose to interpret them will impact on your team’s reputation. Did the embalming fluid come from the crypt, or are the local bootleggers brewing up something nasty? Dig around for information before throwing your weight around,” the designers write.

So, you customize your character, which leads to differences in both combat and in the way the character interacts with the NPCs, which leads to your being directed toward different encounters than would be the case with another character construction, some of which will enhance or alter your character’s reputation and capabilities, all of which will lead to different steps being taking in the solving of the main plotline. That sounds more like an RPG to me than any video-game that I’ve ever heard of before.

Multiple Paths to Multiple Outcomes

What interested me most was the promise of multiple paths to multiple outcomes. Some of this promise has been stated outright, some has been inferred. A computer game, by virtue of having fixed logic built into it, is inherently sandboxed, so this got me to thinking about how such a game would work, at a programming level (the natural result of having been a professional systems analyst myself). And, in particular, I started to wonder if maybe there wasn’t a lesson or two in RPG adventure design to be extracted from such thoughts.

The basic unit of logic

The illustration to the right depicts the basic unit of logic in programming. There are nuances and variations, but this is what lies at the bottom of them.

It’s called the If-then-else statement. The computer program reaches the point in it’s logic from two paths in the illustration – one where choice A has been made, and one where choice D has been made. These choices have been made earlier in the game by the player and the choice recorded. When you reach the branching point of the logic, the program has a choice: If the earlier choice was A, the program directs this subsequent interaction to B, if not, then it directs it to C.

This can be summed up quite succinctly in plain English: If A then B, else C, which means “If A has happened then do B, if it hasn’t then do C”.

A could be anything, from an element of character design to having said one thing and not another to a previously-encountered character, to having found a particular item or followed a particular clue. An RPG video-game can consist of hundreds of thousands of such statements, assembled into a web that creates multiple paths from the start to the finish.

All roads lead to Rome

When there is only one solution, the adventure has only one outcome, and all those paths eventually funnel down to that single resolution of the plot. This is the basic structural logic behind the simplest of adventures.

Fairly elementary, but now imagine that instead of one possible outcome, you have four, depending on whether or not you have also done E, F, G, or H, respectively. And now multiply that basic if-then-else by a hundred more. The result is called a decision tree, and you can end up with hundreds of combinations of outcomes and decisions. That’s why such patterns are called “decision trees” (even though the tree is upside down if you use the normal convention of starting at the top and putting branches underneath).

Tabletop RPG adventures are full of decision trees. “If the PCs do [x] then the plot does [y].” Some are small and self-contained to that encounter or scene, others can dramatically reshape and restructure the whole adventure from that point forward.

• “If the PCs feed the goblin, he will warn them of the mad Troll in the forest.”
• “If Marlon sings with Lorelei, she will tell him of the secret passage past the watchtower.”
• “If Tolmand picks the lock on the chest, he will discover that it is linked to the lock on the outer door, locking the PCs in the room.”
• “If a PC activates the navigation system without resetting the ship’s computer, the stardrive will engage at maximum acceleration.”

In the simplest of adventures, though, the plot eventually funnels down to the one possible solution. When we’re talking about Mysteries, these are most commonly built by starting with the solution (“Who did what to whom”) and working backwards to “How did they try to hide it” and then to “who might have done the deed”. Eliminate these other suspects one by one and permit the PCs to discover the hole in the cover-up and you have your mystery plot; it doesn’t especially matter which suspect they clear first, just who is left standing at the end, and how can they prove they did the deed.

Not all roads lead to Rome

But just last week, I showed that it was possible to use the same basic structural logic to lead to multiple different outcomes, in The Pattern Of Raindrops: A chessboard plotting technique. In terms of mysteries, the “parallel plot” technique described at the end of The Butler Did It: Mystery Plotlines in RPGs and illustrated with an example (“The wounded monarch”) in The Jar Of Jam and The Wounded Monarch: Two Mystery Examples gives a clear approach to building consistent mysteries with more than one solution, leaving the PCs free to discover their own path within the game.

There can be multiple possible endings and outcomes based on decisions of the player, with the “correct” outcome for any individual game selected by the choices made in the course of the game each time it is played.

The key is always ensuring that the solution is consistent with all the clues that the PCs have uncovered en route to that solution. And there’s no reason this approach can’t be implemented in a video-game; all it requires is that the switches between the different solutions are identified early enough in the gameplay that the identity of the true culprit changes NPC behavior appropriately.

A current mystery plotline

The PCs in the Adventurer’s Club campaign are currently trying to solve the mystery of who killed “M”, the head of the British Secret Service (never mind that MI5 and MI6 weren’t actually brought into existence until a later date in real-world history).

They started with a number of suspects, based on the assumption that the murder was probably either the consequence of something M was looking into at the time of his death, or that it was a subordinate. Each of the groups suspected had their own agendas and were doing their own thing, and several had reason to be “interested” in the death, so there were a number of encounters with each of them. Of their five initial suspects – a Tong engaged in the hostile takeover of another Tong’s activities in London, Opus Dei (the “secret service” of the Catholic Church), a former PC formerly employed by the British Library and now turned rogue agent in opposition to Opus Dei, a notorious crime family (the Kasugi Clan) with whom the PCs have had run-ins before, a known Yakuza Boss trying to organize a trade deal, and the former assistant in question, three have now been cleared, and another added to the list from left field – an assassin in the employ of the Chinese Government engaging in some risky political maneuvering of Britain.

In plotting this adventure, Blair and I were at pains to make each suspect a plausible culprit. While we had our solution in place (and I’m not giving away who that is), that plausibility enabled us to change horses in mid-stream if the directions the PCs took in their investigations led them down a different path. If the PCs chose to do something different to what we had anticipated, we were prepared to change the adventure to accommodate them. Have we put any of those plans into force? They will never know!

The Lessons For Tabletop GMs

The biggest lesson for tabletop RPG GMs to take out of all this is that you don’t have to have just one answer, or one path to the answer, to any puzzle or mystery in the game. So long as the solution is consistent with what the PCs encounter and get told, and the personalities are consistent throughout, it will be satisfying to the players.

Write your adventures with “If then else” statements built in, and instead of railroading your players, you shunt them into a rail switch-yard, where the courses they choose to take evolve the game around them. This makes the players collaborators on the adventure, whether they realize it or not.

Witchmarsh for the tabletop

That’s what I hope the creators of Witchmarsh have done with their game design. Multiple possible perpetrators, with the different solutions all internally consistent, and the choice between solutions based on character actions and interactions with the NPCs of the world. If they have embraced this, the game could be a next step in the evolution of Video-game RPGs.

Value for tabletop RPGs

The most obvious value in terms of tabletop RPGs is the possible utility of the soundtrack. The game itself and the other add-ons that might come with it would be a bonus on top of that.

But there’s the capacity for more, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

The prospects

Since the fundraising campaign started, it’s been going great guns; it seems to have touched a nerve. If the current investment rate continues, it will achieve its initial funding goals in another two or three days – in other words, within a week of the campaign commencing – and ultimately reach a target of more than three times that initial request, just enough to achieve the highest of their stretch goals. It certainly holds a lot of promise, and I would be VERY surprised if it were not a very big success.

Witchmarsh The Licensed Property?

Six months or a year after the game comes out, I would hope – based on these results – to see the creative team ready to fund-raise for a sequel. But more than that, I would love it if they licensed someone to adapt the game into a traditional RPG adventure. It could be for Call of Cthulhu, or d20 modern, or whatever; that isn’t so important.

Because it sounds like such a brilliant adventure, and so much closer to a tabletop RPG in structure than anything I’ve seen before, it could bridge the gap. This would no doubt entail a separate kickstarter effort for whoever took up the license, and would be a close collaboration with the games creators; and, importantly for all concerned, it would open the door to cross-promotion if the creative team were also promoting their sequel at the same time.

I have no idea whether or not these possibilities have occurred to the games developers – hopefully, if not, I have just put them on their radar.

You see, in any development project, there are ideas that don’t work out, that get cut for one reason or another. Those notes – alternative solutions, alternate plotlines – are often tossed aside after considerable development. Such a collaboration would have the potential to breathe fresh life into these leftovers.

Everybody wins from such an outcome.

So if you want to see this as a possible eventual outcome, or you simply want to put your hand up for a very affordably-priced video-game RPG that might just redefine the state of the art in terms of interactivity, check out their campaign at Kickstarter, and tell them Campaign Mastery sent you!

Johnn Four may no longer work on Campaign Mastery, but we still keep in touch from time to time. When he announced his recent plot seed contest for Roleplaying Tips, he asked if I had any links to articles on the subject at Campaign Mastery.

Of course, I responded in the affirmative, providing a number of links to such articles, but looking them over, I realized that there was not much on the site about how to use an idea seed, how to take it and turn it into a great adventure. I’ve nibbled around the edges of the question in articles such as Amazon Nazis On The Moon, and even more so in the two-part article on sequel campaigns Part 1 Campaign Seeds and Part 2 Sprouts & Saplings, but never tackled the subject in detail.

So let’s correct that omission right now…

Seed Planting

Let’s start with the absolute basics. You’ve picked an Adventure Seed – it doesn’t matter where it came from. The first step to transforming that seed into an adventure that is everything you want it to be is to identify exactly why this particular seed has appealed to you. Not only do you want to be sure that you don’t mess with that in the course of developing the idea, but the resulting adventure will be all the stronger if you design it to use that quality as the central theme of the adventure.

I’ve identified ten possible reasons, which either individually or in combination should usually define the appeal of a particular seed:

Inspiration

A plot seed can be more than the idea it presents, it sparks new ideas of your own. Inspiration is a powerful reason for building an adventure around an outside idea. It can even extend, clarify, or reveal fundamental aspects of the campaign’s foundations – whether those be game physics, campaign philosophy, or campaign mythology.

Excitement

A plot seed can be exciting, it makes you eager to play it out and see what happens, or it promises to be spectacular. Sometimes, it is simply that you know you have the right props and accessories to elevate a particular plot seed to a higher level – for example, an plot seed that takes place aboard a ship when you have some other game or game supplement that gives you a set of really cool blueprints for an appropriate vessel.

Connection

A plot seed can connect with ideas already in place within the campaign, bringing them out into the open or advancing them to the next step, or it can be the bridge between what the GM already has planned and what he wants to have happen next; in other words, it can connect with plots or background already planned for the campaign.

Ramification

A plot seed can have ramifications for the future, creating the right environment for a renewal of a campaign that is growing a little tired or stale, or simply creating (either temporarily or permanently) the appropriate conditions for new adventures to take place – adventures that would not be otherwise possible because of contradictions to some established element.

Environment

A plot seed can take the players into an interesting environment that the GM would like them to explore, but for which he has had trouble coming up with ideas of his own. Or it can alter an existing environment in some way that is especially conducive to new adventures. Or it can simple be that the PCs are going to be crossing a particular environmental region and the GM has no ideas for what is to happen on that part of their journey; there are, after all, only two options: you either simply mention the geography in narrative (and expect it to be quickly forgotten), or you do something significant to make is memorable.

Opponent

A plot seed can introduce an opponent that the GM finds intriguing, or can provide a plotline for an existing opponent.

Style

A plot seed can move the style of the campaign in a direction that the GM finds desirable, or can represent a variation on the usual style of the campaign. Variety, it is said, is the spice of life – and it’s as true of variety in adventures as it is to anything else.

Theme

A plot seed can match a theme that the GM wants the campaign to have, or at least to touch on. It’s sometimes said that to consider something a theme, it has to recur at least three times before it becomes established – which can be a problem if the GM has only two ideas for showcasing that theme before it becomes important to the campaign. Or perhaps the theme was established a while back, and the GM simply wants an isolated example to make sure that it remains front-and-center in the players’ minds.

Opportunity

Sometimes a GM will throw a treasure into the game off the cuff – it happens to all of us – and then have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Other times, a GM will find that a treasure is far more overwhelming than he thought, and needs a way to “get rid” of it. On still other occasions, the campaign will need a particular set of circumstances to come up in order to make a future plot viable or just more dramatic. A plot seed can provide any of these opportunities. And sometimes, the plot seed itself will simply offer an opportunity that the GM had not previously considered, or had thought impossible to achieve, given everything else in place within the campaign.

Wow Factor

Some ideas just have a jaw-dropping WOW! factor that can’t be denied, it’s as simple as that!

Fun

And finally, another of those very straightforward values: some ideas just sound like being too much fun for them not to be used.

Beware The Clever

A brief side-note: I’ve seen and employed a number of plot seeds because they seemed like a clever idea at the time. These adventures never seemed to deliver on their promise; they were, ultimately, too contrived. So if the reason you like a plot seed is because it seems clever, maybe you should reassess your choice.

Roots

So, you’ve chosen a plot seed and identified what it was about that plot idea that you want to focus on, that makes it appealing to you. The next step is to lay down foundations connecting that plot idea to various aspects of the campaign, in other words to integrate the plot seed with the campaign.

There are two aspects to having the plot seed put down roots. The first is the way the appeal of the plot seed can connect to various aspects of the campaign; and the second is the way the specific content of the plot seed connects to those aspects. The first is general, the second is specific.

While it’s better than nothing if these connections are also generic, the more specific they are, the better. What you are defining is how these campaign aspects will relate to the plot, and how the plot will relate to the campaign aspects.

I’ve identified five attributes common to all campaigns that might serve as the basis for such a connection. I think of these as analogous to the nutrients that are going to feed the adventure; the more of them that there are, the better adapted the resulting “plant” – the adventure – will be to the environment of the adventure, i.e. the broader campaign.

In Characters

If you think of the plot seed as the outline of a script for a TV show, and the PCs as the stars – with the contractual capacity to rewrite their parts as they see fit within the limits imposed by the executive director (the GM) – you have a reasonable analogy for the situation in most RPGs. The Executive Director can over-rule any specific script change, and can enforce some consistency of characterization, but if he pushes the stars too far (and they can sometimes be prima donnas) they may well walk. You’re pitching the plot to the stars of the show, and the first thing they are going to want to know is “how does my character fit into this story?” The more characters who can be given an answer to that question that is unequivocal and uncontrived, the better,

I use a fairly structured process to look for answers to this question. Passes one and two seek explicit answers; Passes three and four look for possible implied answers; and Passes five and six look for general answers. Each pass involves working down a list of the PCs and major NPCs in the campaign and asking the question, “how does this character connect to the plot in terms of [this way]?” – and making notes next to the name.
 

• Pass One:: What connections are there between a major character and explicit content within the adventure seed?
  • The plot might involve slavery, and one character was an ex-slave. Or it might be about magic, and one character being a mage – or being suspicious of mages. You want as many of these specific connections as you can get. But because most adventure seeds are minimalist – to say the least – you probably won’t get too many of them.
• Pass Two:: What connections are there between the “liked element” and the major characters?
  • Again, the technique is to go down the list of characters. Where you already have some notes, this helps put them into context; where you don’t, you have the basis for additional plot elements that can connect the character to the plot, when they weren’t by virtue of existing specifics.
• Recording: Passes one and two produce answers that aren’t likely to change, so I write them in pen.

 

• Pass Three:: What explicit possible connections are there between implied plot elements and the major characters?
  • An implied plot element is something that has to be there, but that isn’t explicitly stated in the adventure seed. All plots take place somewhere, for example. They all involve a circumstance or event. They all involve an opportunity for some, and a danger for others. They all involve reactions to those opportunities and dangers based on past relationships and rivalries. Most will have someone who will function as an antagonist to the PCs as a group. And so on and so forth. Any of these not explicitly stated as part of the plot seed has the potential to be an implied connection.
  • You are quite likely to end up with a lot of speculative answers that aren’t yet set in stone, and many of them will also be mutually contradictory. That’s fine – this is looking for possible connections, not definitive ones.
• Pass Four:: Which of the possible connections between implied plot elements and major characters are reflective of the “liked element” of the plot seed?
  • This is all about selecting which of the possible preferred answers actually match what you liked about the adventure seed. Some of them will, some of them won’t. Eliminate any that don’t satisfy this criterion, at least in part, or that contradict another implied element that is a better fit to the liked element. Cross them off lightly, because you might have to go back to one or more of them.
  • Remember, too, that we have two different criteria. One set of assumptions may yield a number of connections of acceptable quality, while another might only yield a few – but ones that are far more strongly resonant of the “liked element”. And there’s a lot of room in between these two “acceptable” alternatives. Choosing between them can be done by instinct, or it can be done with some additional hard work in prep; my preference is to use the second approach if I think I have the time up my sleeve to do so.
• Recording:
  • Passes three and four produce answers that are very likely to change (and may already have done so), so I write them in pencil – and as lightly as I can get away with, without compromising legibility. After pass four, any implied elements that I feel certain enough of to lock them in stone – if, for example, only one location survived pass four – I will go over the pencil notes in pen, preferably a different colored ink to those of passes one and two.
  • If you’re producing the documentation electronically, I use pale colors instead of pencil. That usually means that they aren’t actually legible until selected, but that’s something I’m willing to live with if I have to. There are a few colors, notable reasonably light grays, that are still legible though, and I will employ them in preference.

 

• Pass Five:: What other connections are there (in general) between the major characters and the plotline?
  • Ignoring anyone who has something written in pen in their notes section, or who at least has something in pencil and not crossed out, it’s time to look for and list any vague general connections between the remaining major characters and the plotline including any specifics noted in pen. In particular, I look for a character’s personality and how they will react to events even if they don’t affect them directly. Even if the character is neither particularly threatened or spies a particular potential advantage in the events, they may seek to deny an enemy a potential advantage, or they may have a specific normal response to the unexpected, or any of a number of other possible reactions implicit in their characterization.
• Pass Six:: What other connections are there (in general) between the major characters and the “liked element”?
  • We’re really scraping the bottom of the relevance barrel at this point, looking for any possible connection to the plotline as it currently stands that we can build on. Ideally, every listed character will have something listed at this point (that isn’t crossed out); but for any that don’t, this is the final chance at this point in the plot evolution to fill any such gap. It’s also always possible that absolutely nothing will come to you; if the character is not a PC and you find yourself in this situation, I then look at whether or not a position of neutrality is unusual for the character, and if it is, I make a note of that being the character’s policy in this adventure. Any remaining key NPCs then receive the notation, “get them out of the way of the adventure”.
• Recording:
  • Once again, these notes are not likely to change, so they get recorded in pen, or in dark colors. Ideally, I would use a third color of ink if possible, simply to distinguish between the different grades of information; if that’s not possible, then I have to be a little more explicit in my notes.

In History

I employ a similar process to look at the campaign history and how it might connect with the plotline or the Liked element. Having outlined the procedure in detail under the “Characters” heading, I’m not going to go into it once again, it would quickly grow repetitive. Suffice it to say that every key item and individual within the plotline needs to have a history, and some need a connection to that history; but a whole history would be incredibly boring and tedious. This part of the process is meant to extract the relevant high points and at the same time connect the adventure to them. What’s worth noting is that if the GM has done his job right in the past, his PCs and key NPCs are also connected to that History and therefore can be connected to the adventure by means of that common link.

If the plot seed involves a magical artifact, for example, there’s the history of the artifact, its construction, its previous owners, who used it last, other notable times that it has impacted history, and so on.

Each time I add a new notation here, I look back at the empty slots in the preceding sections, looking for secondary connections. If there is a historic connection between impending plot events and elves, for example, or one can be created and inserted, and one of the characters with no notations is an elf, this provides an opportunity to pull that character into the plotline.

Most usefully, this can create different perspectives on the plot within the party. Campaigns often work best when the PCs are a representative microcosm of the campaign as a whole, with divergent views on many of the controversial or central topics within that campaign. This enables the PCs (and hence the players) to interact with each other in a manner that is meaningful relative to the world around them. What might be dull exposition by the GM becomes vital dialogue between the players.

I not only would never pass up an opportunity like that, I will (and do) go out of my way to seek out such situations.

After (brief) descriptions of each historical element of the campaign that is going to be linked to the plotline, I note those PCs whose peoples or professions will have strong perspectives on the history.

It’s especially important to determine what the consensus overall will probably be, what the PCs consensus will probably be, and what the differences are between those. If either consensus opinion is not going to be what is required/most interesting for the adventure, it may be that additional notable individuals or circumstances will need to be added specifically to sway things one way or another.

In Places

As was noted in the section on characters, everything needs somewhere to happen. But some plot seeds call for many places, and transits between them. It’s time to decide:

• where the initial situation (from the plot perspective) will occur;
• where the initial situation (from the PCs perspective) will occur, if that is different from the first;
• where the plot conclusion will play out;
• where the PCs will be when that happens, if that is different from the plot conclusion location;
• any way-points where significant events will occur;
• whether or not the PCs need to be in attendance for those significant events or if they can simply hear reports of them (or some similar contrivance);
• and, finally, to map out the travels of all involved parties and list any major locations in between.

 
Knowing where the action will take place, at least on a first-draft basis enables a rough map and hence a rough timetable of events to be drawn up. Both are vital to the finished adventure.

In Events

From connections to historical events it is only logical to progress to considering contemporary events within the campaign. A lot of this work will have been done in the previous section, but it always pays to examine what is going on in the game world and how it might be impacted by, or impact on, the plotline. Nor do these connections have to be actual; characters might assume connections and impacts where none actually exist.

For example, if we have a major villain who is opposed by the PCs, and who is of the megalomaniac bent, and the plotline involves the discovery or return of some lost power from the past, is he going to take an interest in it – if he gets to learn of it? You bet your socks he will! The players are likely to assume that he is going to take an interest in developments simply because he’s their enemy, even if there is no interest on his part beyond that. Some events may even make them temporary allies!

But it’s not just existing conflicts. A kingdom or city on the verge of financial collapse will always be interested in any new form of wealth, any new resource, that is discovered. A kingdom or city on the verge of starvation will care about new sources of food, or perhaps in new foodstuffs that can grow where existing crops have failed. There are any number of possible situations that would make the plotline relevant to something already occurring within the campaign.

In Consequences

Not to mention that one of the possible criteria for choosing a particular plot seed can be the way it connects the current situation within the campaign to desired future events!

The final place to look for places to put down roots from the plot seed into the campaign is in the campaign’s future, and how the possible consequences and ramifications of the plotline can play into those. Sometimes, an entire second adventure will be needed to restore the status quo afterwards! The time to determine those basic requirements is now, so that the prep work for anything that needs to occur after the fact can be prepped and incorporated into the current situation. This is also the time to think about the ramifications if the PCs foul up and don’t achieve what the GM expects them to – how can he engineer a 13th-hour chance at rescuing the situation if that should prove necessary? Is he prepared to modify the rest of the campaign to accommodate the fallout from their failure? Or does he need some magic reset button – without incorporating an unjustified deus-ex-machina? If you’ve been reading Campaign Mastery for a while, you’ll already know my view on those. But for those who don’t,

• A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power and,
• Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity

will get you up to speed.

Sprouts

What you have so far is like a set of ingredients for making a really fancy soup. There are some ingredients that you know you are going to use, some ingredients that you might use, and some ingredients that exist just to partner other optional ingredients. You might use a beef stock, and burdock, and white pepper; or vegetable stock, and chicken, and black pepper. But you know that your final soup is going to have carrots, and celery, and leeks, and mushrooms (though you aren’t sure which of the three varieties of the last that you are going to select from your shortlist).

To abandon the soup metaphor, and revert to the general one that I’ve been using throughout, it’s time to plant these copies of your idea seeds and see which set of roots yield the best crop of sprouts.

This is most easily done electronically, due to the capacity to copy-and-paste that comes with that approach.

Another way of looking at the situation, and one that explains the process more clearly than either of these metaphors, is to consider what you have currently as a polympsest in which several different versions of the text have been recovered and are now overlaid on one another on the one sheet of paper. What you have to do now is to extract each of these versions and see which tells the most complete story, which fits best with the campaign, and so on – and then to choose between them, and fill in any conceptual blanks that may remain.

If you are exceptionally lucky, you may only have two or three versions to compare. If you are a little less lucky (because it leaves you without choice), you may have only one. And, if things have gone rather messily so far, you may have many different options and combinations to consider.

The Common Ground

The parts that each combination will have in common are, of course, the notes that you have written in pen. But it’s not a matter of simply recapitulating these; you want to order them in a rough sequence of events. A happens, character 1 reacts like this, character 2 reacts like that, character 3 reacts to character 1, character 4 acts to prevent character 5 from benefiting; B happens, character 3 does this, character 2 does that, and so on.

You won’t be able to synopsize the whole story. There will almost certainly be gaps. We’ll get to filling those in a little while.

The Variations

Once you have the central core of common ground, add some blank lines at the end – about half-a-dozen, so that it’s clear that this is not just a gap to be filled – then copy the whole thing and paste as many copies as you need into the working document. You should create as many copies as you have lines in pencil – even though this is more than you will actually need, because some of those pencil lines will be mutually compatible. Label the first copy “Master” and the rest, “Variation number 2”, “number 3”, “number 4”, and so on.

• Add the first penciled notation to the first copy.
• Then look at the next penciled notation. Does it fit everything in the first variation, or is there something that doesn’t make sense? If the former, it goes into variation#1; latter, it goes into variation #2.
• Look at the third penciled note; does it fit the first variation? If so, put it into variation #1. Does it fit the second? then add it to variation #2. Is it incompatible with both? Then it goes into variation #3.

….and so on, until all the penciled notes have been placed into one or more variations. Note that I use a different font color for the additions so that they are easy to spot and easy to count.

As soon as you have a variation with more than one penciled note added, you run into a fresh complication; future penciled notes may fit one of the penciled notes already added but not the other. If this happens, then you need to create a new variation that contains the new compatible combination, without the older contradictory element.

What you have here is the number of combinations of N elements taken up to N at a time – where N is the number of penciled notes that you originally made. The master will have none, some others will have one, a few will have two, some will have three, and so on.

The Gaps

It should be fairly obvious, reading over the variations, where the gaps are. There will be characters, locations, unexplained events, and plot holes which will be filled in some and empty in others. The goal of this process is to fill in these gaps and come up with a number of variations on the story until you find a few that work, that tick all the boxes. So the first step is to order the variations that you have put together in sequence of most complete to most incomplete. This is easy to identify because of the different color used for the ‘penciled notes’ in the previous stage.

Once you can prioritize your efforts on the most complete ideas, it’s time to fill the gaps. There are three basic sources of material to draw upon, each with strengths and weaknesses.

Brainstorming Ideas
By far the best answer is to come up with your own ideas. They will almost certainly integrate with the campaign more easily and be more consistent with the established campaign, bringing with them some of the flavor of past adventures (and future adventures) that are completely your own ideas.

Resurrecting The Abandoned
Of course, if you have an idea from earlier in this development process that was rejected because you couldn’t see how to make it work, sometimes you’ll have a moment of inspiration to fill that credibility/practicality gap.

Flying From The Outside
The final source is from the outside. Maybe you can steal part of the plot from a published adventure, or from your own unused ideas file (you do keep one, right?) But the first place that I look is wherever I got the adventure seed from in the first place. There are times when two plot seeds can be hybridized to compliment each other perfectly, each filling the gaps in the other perfectly. Back when I reviewed Eureka, I suggested using the idea seeds to construct character backgrounds. That notion can be adapted to service some of the gaps in the plot seed that you are trying to implement here. For example, if your current adventure seed needs a Barbarian, you could look at barbarian plot seeds for ideas to use to plug that gap. If your plot is all about Dwarves and you need an interesting location for some plot development, look at “Dwarves” plot seeds for ideas.

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s a tale worth repeating because it takes this approach to an extreme I’ve rarely seen before. In a previous phase of my superhero campaign, I had a rather large plot hole to fill and no time to fill it. The premise and ultimate conclusion were mine, but essentially there was an opportunity for someone to acquire ultimate power and a massive scramble amongst various forces, factions, and cosmic entities to claim it, or to deny it to their rivals – with the PCs in the middle. Throw in a cosmic cataclysm and Ragnerok and you can see how massive the plotline was. The problem was that while I knew who was going to win if the PCs got everything right, and I knew one or two of the contenders, I needed a whole heap more. So I dropped a published adventure from another game system into the hole. But that created another plot hole, So I dropped a couple of connected third-party adventures into that slot – but that created a couple more plot holes. By the time I had finished, 46 complete third-party adventures – some with a bit of rewriting, others with quite a lot, and a couple with virtually none – from six different game systems and six different companies – had been welded together with multiple cross-connections in a complex flowchart to form a single epic plotline. It was just a matter of modifying these outside adventures so that whatever the goal was of the antagonists, it would arguably put them into a position – if they succeeded – to claim the ultimate prize.

I want to reiterate: you don’t want just one answer. You preferably want two or three, and as different as you can make them. More is a bonus.

The Judgment

Once you have a few options to compare, it’s time to assess them. I score the complete plot outlines by eight criteria. Let’s look at each of them:

(i) Compatibility with the Seed
It’s very easy to dilute or over-complicate the original idea. So I score each of the draft plot outlines out of 5 for the purity of expression of the original plot seed – high being very good, low being poor.

(ii) Expression of the “liked element”
It’s vital that the reason you liked the original idea remains strongly expressed in the finished adventure. That’s why I put so much effort into identifying the reason or reasons in the first place. Once again, a score out of 5, with high being good.

(iii) Campaign Integration
It’s also important that the resulting adventure feels like it’s part of the campaign and not a “filler” episode. I rate each idea out of five for campaign integration.

(iv) Star Participation
Does every “star” of the campaign – the PCs and the leading antagonist(s) – have a substantial part to play in the plotlines that you are proposing? A rating out of five is called for, but I measure this against a fairly strict scale. A five is a “yes” to the question. I deduct a point from the score for one major antagonist not involved, or two if more than one are not involved. I then cut another two points off if there’s one PC without a substantial interest in the plotline, or three points if there is more than one. The result is a maximum score of five, and a minimum of zero.

(v) Internal Logic
How well does the plotline hold water? Are there any soft spots, is “coincidence” or some other relatively weak justification needed for anything? Does the reasoning stand up, or is someone doing something the hard way and ignoring an easier option without adequate explanation? I rank the internal logic out of five, with high being excellent.

(vi) Outcomes
Are there likely to be any undesirable outcomes? Is there any adventure detritus that is potentially campaign-wrecking? Is the adventure going to create headaches in the future? Outcome assessment is worth another five points, and I’ll take one or two off the ideal score if undesirable outcomes are possible, depending on how likely they are to eventuate – neutralizing that penalty if I have an idea for a subsequent adventure to undo the potential damage.

But even worse than a potential undesirable outcome is an insipid one. If there are no stakes, what’s the point? They don’t have to be world-shaking stakes, but the outcome of the adventure has to matter. I will absolutely eviscerate the points score of an adventure if the outcome just doesn’t matter.

(vii) Liking The Soup
How much do I like the overall end result? Do the mix of elements create interest? Does the adventure shed light on an otherwise dark or obscure corner of the world, or of the campaign background? Does the climax of the adventure satisfy? A score out of five measures my overall impression.

(viii) The Food Critic
Finally, I’ll run through the same list of things that I might like about the end result as was used to analyze the initial plot seed – and I’ll score one for each tick that I can give to say “this adventure has that”. Ten possible reasons for liking the end result, giving a score out of ten.

Scoring

Since the plot seed is one that you liked at the start, and I’ve made strong efforts to retain that particular quality in the draft adventures, each one gets a starting score of 60. I add up the five-pointers from (i) through (vii) for a possible further 35 points and add the score from (viii) out of ten to get an absolute maximum result of 105.

Frankly, if I get a total of anything less than 85, I’ll cross that draft off the list unless that’s the best score of the lot – and even then, I would be tempted to throw it away and start again from scratch.

A score of 96 or better is good enough to run, so it’s ready for the rest of the process, which I’ll get to in a moment. But first, a score of 85 to 95 suggests that the adventure could be improved – so it’s time for a little remedial action.

Tweaking The Mix

If the score shows the adventure is almost there, but not quite as good as it might be, it’s useful (while the scoring is fresh in mind) to review the adventure with a view to tweaking it to raise up the lowest scoring contribution. It makes good sense to sacrifice one point in one rating e.g. complexity if you get three or four in another, and possibly an extra one in the final section. Adding an extra complication to make sure that every PC has a vital role to play is well worthwhile.

The Selection

Hopefully, you will have ended up with two or three adventure outlines that have confidence-inducing scores. But, even if you only have one that is a clear winner, you can have confidence in the outline that you’ve produced, because you’ve checked that it has everything that matters.

Of course, the process of turning a plot seed into an adventure isn’t finished quite yet…

Mighty Oaks

There’s only “a little more work” involved in taking the adventure synopsis and turning it into a great adventure:

• Ordering Ideas
• Initial Situation
• Educating Players
• Educating Characters
• Introducing Characters
• Geographic Logic
• Building Complexity
• Building Suspense
• Building Drama
• Setbacks follow Successes
• Emotional Flow
• Plot Twists
• Revelations
• Clarity
• Final Stakes
• Big Finish
• Ongoing Aftershocks

Yeah, that won’t take very long at all. (it won’t, honest!)

Ordering Ideas

The first step is to get the ideas that comprise your synopsis into order. I start with a rough sequence:

• Before the PCs
• PC Intro
• In-adventure events
• The path to the climax
• The climax
• Aftereffects

These six categories permit me to take the synopsis – which is still pretty much a loose collection of ideas that add together to describe the key events of the adventure, in no particular order – and start putting some chronology into it. This is a trick that I discovered while building a bubblesort routine – ANY type of rough sort will increase the efficiency of the final sorting exponentially.

Once the rough sort is done, I drag-and-drop the notes in each section into a rough chronological order, or – if the note is about the background to events – to the first chronological point at which that note has an impact on the plotline. I will also make some additional notes as I go in some sections, so let’s look at each of them briefly:

Before the PCs
What happens before the PCs get involved? These events will all need to be told in flashback, or told to the PCs by an NPC, or otherwise learned by the PCs as the adventure unfolds. Chronology will be in the order the PCs are to learn of them, breaking ties using the order that they will be noticed by others, and breaking any remaining ties in the order the events actually occurred. Then I will number them according to the order in which they will have actually occurred. I will pay special attention to any event that the PCs may have become aware of without knowing its significance, through some mystic sense or prophetic vision or whatever – I either need to build a prelude into the adventure to accommodate that, or I need to insert the event into a prior adventure, or I need a flashback sequence somewhere in the adventure. The last choice is, by a LONG shot, the least-desirable, because players can always complain that they might have made subsequent choices differently if they had been aware of the event at the time. I tend toward continuity-rich campaigns, so the second option is my favored choice; those who prefer a more episodic approach should use the first as their default.

PC Intro
Notes relating to how the PCs get involved in the adventure. Where does the initial event or encounter happen, what happens, who is involved, and how does it point the PCs at the adventure itself?

In-adventure events
These notes all pertain to the PCs figuring out what is going on while coping with the side-effects of whatever is happening. This can involve a lot of exposition if not handled properly, which is why I deal with it separately in a later step; for now, put the notes into some sort of logical order.

The path to the climax
Once they know what is going on, they have to do something about it. Which means they need to work out what they can do about it. These notes all relate to how the adventure will unfold.

The climax
What’s going to happen at the end? Notes about plot twists and the climax go into this section, as do any revelations that are to take place either just prior to the climax or in the course of the climax, and any information about who the ultimate antagonist is that aren’t in either of the preceding sections.

Aftereffects
Finally, any notes that pertain to the long-term effects of the adventure on the campaign, generally divided into immediate, short-term, medium-term, and long-term. Immediate is fairly self-explanatory, short-term is days or a handful of months at most, medium-term relates to 6 months in duration up to a couple of years, and long-term means the consequence will last for years – all unless something can be done about them, of course. But here’s the thing: doing something about an immediate problem will have consequences that will show up in the medium-term; doing something about a medium-term consequence will have ramifications in the long-term; and so on. Furthermore, wise characters may be able to anticipate some of these consequences and prepare in advance to minimize them. So, as soon as I have the list of direct consequences, I start adding more notes about the reactions and indirect consequences. This can quickly become the largest section of notes about the adventure!

Initial Situation

With the notes ordered and structured, it’s time to actually convert them into plot sequences. I’m going to assume that no prequel is needed; if one is, I’ll tend to leave it until last, anyway, so that I can be sure that it is consistent with everything else in the adventure.

No, I start with an outline of the initial situation as the PCs will experience it – where, when, who does what, and so on. None of the background to the plot seed is to be covered, that is all dealt with subsequently.

This takes the notes from the first section, PC Intro,, and converts them into an actual encounter or event that will kick-start the entire adventure. And I’ll also make notes on what to do if the players don’t take the bait.

Educating Players

Next, it’s time to start work on the second set of notes, In-adventure events. These fall into several categories, and rather than work through the notes sequentially, I deal with each category separately, for two reasons: to make sure that nothing gets left out, and to make sure that the content is spread out through the course of the adventure. What I DON’T want is for all the exposition about campaign history to happen at once, for example. There is too great a chance that it will be forgotten. It’s far better to operate on a just-in-time approach, where the players learn what they need to know just before they need to know it. Where it is logical for the players to get all their information in one lump, I’ll tell them that they have so received it, and even hit the high points at the time of that encounter, but spell out the relevant details using flashbacks to that briefing scene when necessary.

The first category looks at the question, “What do the players need to know?” This is information that their characters supposedly have – well-known bits of history, etc – but that the players haven’t been told about or might have forgotten. I need encounters that will educate the players, divided 50-50 into those that have some accompanying roleplay or action sequence and those that will actually advance the plot.

So I create a list of such encounters and what they are supposed to teach the players. Some will obviously be of one type or another, others are more flexible. What I am actually creating is a list of scenes that will need to form part of the final plot, but I’m not yet attempting to put them into any particular order.

Educating Characters

After thinking about educating the players about what their characters already know, it’s time to look at the information that the characters don’t already have but will acquire in the course of the adventure – especially any that they need in order to get to the end of the adventure!

This information is handled in exactly the same way as the preceding category – encounters, types of encounter, etc. However, very little if any of this information should be handed out on a silver platter; there should always be some sort of challenge to be overcome. That might be winning the confidence of the NPC with the answer, or it might be recovering some lost tome, or doing some task in recompense for the NPCs time, or defeating some enemy, or whatever. I still aim for a 50-50 mix of roleplay and non-roleplay challenges, but I’m prepared to accept a much wider swing in this category.

This also adds to the mix the notes from The path to the climax.

Introducing Characters

Aside from the PCs and the antagonist, there are all sorts of characters now involved in the adventure. Those that hinder, those that help, those that seek to gain, the enemies of any of the above, and those with the answers – and that’s probably just scratching the surface.

Some of these characters will be known to the characters already, but the rest will need to be introduced. These introductions aren’t about the first encounter between the PCs and the NPC in question necessarily – it’s more about how they know that NPC “X” has information that they need.

Geographic Logic

Finally, I think about what will become my touchstone for ordering all of these encounters and introductions – the geographic logic. If you know that the characters are starting in location A and have to travel to location Z for the final confrontation, what lies in between? Which of these encounters can be assigned to a specific location between A and Z? Can any of the encounters travel to the PCs? Can the information to be provided travel to the PCs?

I always try to bear in mind what the NPC will do if he knows he has vital information concerning what’s going on. Very rarely will he sit and wait for someone to come and consult him! The NPCs personality and motives therefore have a direct impact on how their encounter will connect to the plotline. Some may send word that they have information, others will try to act on it, and so on – but they will almost always do something about it, unless they don’t appreciate the significance of what they know.

This forms a central spine to the adventure, one that can be complicated if the players don’t know that Z is their ultimate destination early on.

Building Complexity

With the central spine of the adventure – the geographic logic – in place, it’s time to put all those encounters into the sequence that they will occur in the adventure. It’s important to avoid the semblance of plot trains, or even a trail of breadcrumbs, so the logical sequence is not always the best road to follow, though most encounters will occur in such sequence. From time to time, though, have the encounter precede the reason that it is significant.

I make a copy of the results from the sections Educating Players through to Introducing Characters and then use drag-and-drop to impose a more-or-less logical sequence. I add in false trails, characters who aren’t where they are expected to be, and so on; sprinkle with minor side-encounters that have nothing to do with the main plot; spice things up with encounters that serve to introduce the character of each significant location; and so on.

Building Suspense

With a breakdown of everything that leads up to the climax, in other words everything that is supposed to happen in the course of the adventure, it’s time to read it in sequence. I’m looking for two things: always, does it make sense, and secondly, does it ramp up the suspense before critical encounters? I will tweak the sequence of events accordingly.

Building Drama

Then I’ll repeat that process, this time looking at the building of drama.

Setbacks follow Successes

Every time the PCs score a success, there should be a setback, however minor. The easier the success, the more strongly this rule-of-thumb should be applied. If necessary, I will insert additional encounters.

Emotional Flow

I’ve written a couple of articles on emotional flow. I don’t want the adventure to be emotionally monotone; there should be moments of sadness, moments of nostalgia, moments of tranquility, moments of fear, and moments of excitement. More rearranging. If necessary, more added encounters.

Plot Twists

The majority of plot twists should emerge naturally from play; if you aren’t railroading the PCs, and they aren’t following a trail of breadcrumbs, there will be times when they go off the rails. They will make assumptions, and act on them. They will misinterpret events and information, and act on their errors. They will confuse one motivation with another, and weight the value of the information they receive accordingly (I love putting vital information into the mouth of a congenital liar every now and then). Everyone will have their own agendas, and those can be misidentified and misinterpreted. Priorities can be set incorrectly. And that’s without taking misinformation and misdirection on the part of the bad guys into account!

Whenever any of these happens, I ask myself whether or not the character would know better. If so, I tell that character flat-out that they have made a mistake. When that isn’t the case, I play along for as long as possible. I will revise NPCs to fit the incorrect assumptions. I will revise encounters, likewise. I don’t change the real antagonist, or his motives and objectives, but everything else is fair game.

There are always certain key events that signpost the path to the correct correct solution. Until the adventure reaches the point where the PCs can proceed no longer without discovering the truth and getting back on that path, I let them go whichever way they want. The PCs in my Shards Of Divinity campaign are under the impression that their employer is testing their skills and reliability. Whether or not he is, or the testing stopped some time back and they are now working without the safety net they think they have, remains to be seen!

Every one of these mistakes becomes a plot twist, whether it be major or minor, when handled this way.

What you have laid out so far is the fastest route to the truth. Taking these possibilities into account creates multiple branches for the PCs to choose between. Beyond making sure that any essential information that gets lost along the way is available by some other means, let them diverge from the path prepared for them as much as they want.

That is made a lot easier by having some rough plans in place in advance.

Revelations

When you have a plot twist generated by player error, the truth always comes as a revelation. But these revelations always need some sort of delivery mechanism. That could be a character behaving in a way that makes perfect sense if the truth is known, but that is contradictory to the player error; or it could be some sort of confrontation; or the recovery of vital records and documents. More than once a character has delivered vital information from beyond the grave by means of his notes or diary or records, or even a ghostly apparition.

As soon as I identify a point at which the players go off on a tangent, I begin preparing the plot twist and associated revelation.

Clarity

It’s important that everything make sense in the end. This is especially true when the player confuse themselves, and even more-so because players are more likely to remember their pet theories as the truth, even when it is directly contradicted by subsequent events. A key element of the buildup to the final confrontation is always the achievement of clarity.

Final Stakes

The other thing that’s vital is making sure that the final stakes are both important enough to justify all the effort that’s gone into reaching the climax, and that the stakes are clearly understood by the players.

Big Finish

Next, I outline the big finish. In particular, I want to make sure that the climax is suitably cathartic, suitably dramatic, and suitably balanced. This should be the payoff for everything that’s happened in the adventure.

Character Goals

Whoops, I almost left out something vital. I always check for any possible way to tie in any goals that the PCs might have. I’ll do this repeatedly during the process, as part of each major step in the planning.

The Adventure

The adventure now exists in note form. C follows B which follows A. All that’s left to do is to make notes on the various places and NPCs involved, and prepare any narrative that is needed to describe events, places, and people.

Ongoing Aftershocks

Finally, I prepare an annotated version of my campaign notes that spells out the actual after-effects on the campaign. These are the things that subsequent adventures have to take into account. Until the adventure concludes, I will keep using the old ones; the new versions won’t come into effect until the adventure is complete.

A note on scale

Some adventures are bigger than others. This procedure is designed to cope with adventures of the grandest possible scale; smaller adventures may not require anywhere near as much development. Some steps can often be done simultaneously, or skipped altogether. At its smallest, all you really need is to know what’s really going on, and how the PCs are going to become involved; everything else can be created as needed on the fly. Knowing what procedural steps can be skipped or shortened is one of the key skills of an experienced GM.

This procedure gives you everything you need to take that one- or two-sentence plot seed and turn it into something as big as The Lord Of The Rings, or as small as a one-room dungeon. The scale of the sapling that sprouts is inherent in the idea seed itself; some ideas are more epic, more sweeping, than others. The time to realize that this adventure is going to be too big for you is before you start play, because that gives you time to start on a different idea.

When I first mooted the idea of Ragnerok in my superhero campaign, I expected it to follow in about a year of real-time, two at the outside. Instead, the buildup took most of a decade; I kept putting it aside, as it grew too large to be completed, and concentrated on building the foundation to it in smaller adventures along the way. Because it’s better to do something else than to perpetrate a half-baked adventure on the players.

Use the tools provided to take an idea you like and expand it to whatever scale fits your available time. If it’s too big, break it into smaller adventures and develop those. You can build a mighty forest, one seed at a time.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around a practical way of engineering the process of writing a different kind of adventure for several years, and think I’m finally starting to get my head around it. There may be a technical term for this type of adventure, but if there is, I don’t know it.

I’m not even sure that I can explain it clearly, let alone offer an example. So you might need to bear with me as I plunge headlong into this exploration of the evolution of patterns in random events.

Random Events

Life is full of stuff that just happens. I’ve written about that in the past (Directed Plots, Undirected Narrative, and Stuff That Just Happens), but for a long time I’ve been thinking about extending the concept but putting some structure into the structureless.

The idea is that you have a series of unrelated events that occur in a completely unstructured way that nevertheless combine to form a broader narrative in a somewhat more structured fashion. Which is like saying “blue is a color” – it doesn’t actually tell you anything useful.

So let me try again: One random event follows another, but no event happens in isolation; the first provides a context for the second, and the second provides a context for a third, and so on.

The Evolution Of Patterns

This seems like an example of the phenomenon where people impose patterns to events not because there is an actual pattern but because humans are psychologically predisposed to see patterns even when none exist. But I want to be able to impose a non-obvious pattern onto these events that only crystallizes into clarity as the final piece of the puzzle falls into place. So there is a pattern there, after all. But how to achieve that without railroading the players? Because it all sounds very contrived.

That’s the dilemma that’s been percolating away at the back of my mind ever since the aforementioned article: how to link these apparently-random events together in a structured and deliberate way that remains opaque to the players until the right time without contrivance, while maintaining player independence.

Snippets In Parallel

The solution began to present itself by thinking about the game of chess. There are a very limited range of choices for any individual move, and the compounding of past moves places a context on those choices that eliminates many of them in practical terms of achieving the goal. Nevertheless, the number of possible configurations of the game explodes into the uncounted billions or more as it progresses while at the same time funneling down into a very few outcomes in an entirely natural manner – a game can be a draw, a victory for white, or a victory for black.

Using all that as an analogy for progress within an adventure began to give me an insight into the correct way of selecting and structuring the “random” events to confer the structure upon the adventure.

For a start, the “random” events would not be random at all; they would be dictated by the overall structure, like pieces in a jigsaw. Each piece in isolation would seem to be nothing more than a random splash of color, but put them together and they form a picture, placing each of those splashes into context. Each event would be a snippet of a series of partial stories existing in parallel with each other, threads in a tapestry, corresponding to the restricted repertoire of individual moves available to the pieces on the chess board at that point in the overall game.

The Circumstances Lend Significance

The next piece of the puzzle came from contemplation of how these snippets would interact. Each would have to be designed to achieve a certain mental, emotional, or interpretive response; what the actual event was that produced the response was irrelevant to this new style of adventure narrative. So long as each “move” achieved one of a limited set of predictable outcomes in terms of the overall plotline, the events themselves could be completely random, or could even form a separate and distinct pattern of their own.

Further insight came from pattern recognition itself, when I realized that a huge amount of an image can be thrown away and because of our ability as humans to recognize patterns, we could still identify the subject of the overall image. To illustrate how powerful this ability is – and how susceptible we are to be misled by it, as a result – take a look at the series of images to the right.
 

• The first image is 100% complete.
• In the second, I’ve thrown away half of the visual information – and the human mind barely notices.
• For the third image, I’ve thrown away half of what was left – for every stripe of pixels with visual information, there are three black stripes of the same size. With only 1/4 of the original information, we definitely notice – but equally, we have no trouble recognizing the image despite the incompleteness of the information.
• With the fourth image, I started getting serious – blocking out 1 in four horizontal rows as well as the vertical stripes. There is less than 19% of the original left – but the lake, trees, sky, and mountains are all still readily recognizable.
• The final image really goes almost all the way. Only 6.25% of the original information is left – for every pixel of information, there are three columns and three lines in both directions that have been blacked out. Thunderbolt: The image content can still be seen!

An interesting aside: notice that color information is lost a lot more quickly than pattern recognition. The last two images are effectively black-and-white to the eye.

The Order Gives Meaning

In part, this is a result of looking at something very recognizable. If the image was very abstract, or something we don’t know very well, we would have rather more difficulty. In part, it’s conditioning – having already seen the image in more complete form, we recognize the elements that we can see and mentally stitch together these fragments to form a more cohesive whole. But mostly, it is because we see all these separate pieces at the same time.

If these isolated pixels were presented to us in random order, we would not be able to make rational sense of what we were seeing. Even randomly ordering the vertical stripes of information from ANY of these images (including the one that is “all there” completely destroys the meaning. We rely on the relationships between the discrete elements that we perceive and fill in the gaps with ‘something in between’ to produce a synthetic composite in our heads of the information that is there and that which is not, then interpret that as a whole image.

Finding Coherence

So there are two relationships that matter between these discrete elements: the relationship with the packets around it, and the order in which they are presented. Both need to be present, and to make sense, in order to have a narrative consisting of discrete scenes form a coherent whole.

If either are missing or obscured, the overall story will make no sense until the missing/obscured elements are supplied. Once that is done, the story begins to make sense as a whole.

States Of Ignorance

How to tell a structured story with none of the elements that connect one piece to another? One way is obviously the move-and-countermove of the chess game, with one side blind to what the other was doing. Picture a situation in which white only knows the position of those black pieces that are in immediate contact with one of his own, while Black can see the whole board.

In a way, that’s an analogy for every adventure, and one of the key pieces of advice that has been offered over the years is not to confuse the omniscience of the GM with the perceptions of the enemy characters. If white were PCs, then both sides should be blind to anything they cannot directly perceive.

But in this case, White is the players, and Black is the GM, wearing his story-teller’s hat. And that’s a horse of a completely different color.

It’s entirely normal for the GM to make clear the relationship between cause and effect, linking one scene in an adventure to the scenes that come before and after, so that the overall plotline is an emerging picture in the minds of the players. Under this structure of adventure, I don’t want that to be the case; I want the events to seem random and disconnected until the whole comes together.

Another way of looking at it is the three blind men trying to describe an elephant – one finds the body, another the ears, and the third the trunk, and all get very different impressions. The goal is to be able to put the PCs into the position of the blind men and the plotline in the place of the elephant. In fact, we want to use a simulated elephant so that the three (or more) pieces don’t even seem to connect, because there are in-between parts missing.

Dismembered pieces of plot

Trying to plan something like this without a preordained outcome from each of the scenes is a total nightmare. It’s hard enough doing so when everything connects seamlessly with cause following effect in a more traditional story structure. Solving this problem was the hardest part of the whole project.

If the PCs only get half the story until the penultimate stage of the adventure, when we want it all to come together, the easiest method is to have the outcome – whatever it may be – of each step in the plot to determine not just which piece of the overall plot they are going to get to see next, but which parts they aren’t going to see.

At the same time, these plot elements are not going to be predefined. The players and GM are to free to let the plot grow organically, so that the player’s awareness of events and their responses to it appear to form a pattern that is sensible to them. Only at the penultimate stage of the adventure will the missing pieces be supplied, so that the players can discover the real story.

The solution to the problem is to define scene Templates, not scenes; then fit the choices of the PCs into those templates to produce the next step in the story as experienced by the PCs. These templates define the pieces of the puzzle – the ones that are present, and the ones that are missing. They permit players to chase after red herrings or instigate direct action aimed at solving the mysteries with which they are confronted. Nested beginning-middle-ending “loops” as Johnn used to call them, or subplot arcs, to use my preferred terminology, define a template and make each scene a complete mini-plotline unto itself.

Defining these templates in fairly generic terms based on a generalization of the disassembled “elephant” permits them to be strung together completely independently of each other. What is then needed is a scaffolding to put the real structure in place.

A structured scaffolding

It was figuring out how to construct the structured scaffolding that was the key to solving the problem, and was the item that has caused the greatest delay. Finally, though, I think I’ve come up with a way of doing so. And it was a solution that was staring me in the face the whole time.

I started out by thinking of the situation using a chess analogy, and that is where the solution lies. Picture this: Turn a chessboard to a 45-degree angle, so that one of the black squares becomes a diamond at the top. This is the initial subplot that launches the whole adventure. From this initial position, you can move to any of the adjacent “squares”, or to any “square” on the same row, defining the plot template for the next part of the adventure. If they stick to the black squares, the white squares would represent the pieces of the plotline that the PCs don’t get to discover.

Alternatively, the PCs can make a different choice and move from a black square onto one of the white squares. That means that they then start discovering the white-squares part of the plot while missing out on the black squares. Changing colors is effectively the same as a plot twist.

In terms of narrative, it’s all move-and-countermove. The opposition or overall problem makes the first move; the PCs respond, dictating which course of action they will be following when the next piece of the plotline happens, and placing the template of the situation into context. The enemy then makes a countermove – this can either be obvious to the PCs (an event on the same color as the square they currently occupy) or can be hidden from them (an event on a square of the opposite color). A player can even have a flash of insight or make a correct assumption and reposition themselves on the board on an entirely different row, from which events then develop. For a while, the number of ways the plot can shape itself grow exponentially. But, as you proceed down the board toward the far corner, your range of options narrows until the PCs are either on one of the two bottom-most black squares and need a plot twist to get them into the final white square, or there has already been a plot twist, and they will be on one of the three white squares that lead to the ultimate conclusion of the plot.

A three-square-sided illustration

This illustration should make what I’m talking about a little clearer. The possible outcomes from the starting encounter are b, c, or e. From b, the characters can advance directly to encounters d, e, or g, or indirectly to c or f. Note that boards with an odd number of squares do not require the plot twist that changing colors are specified to entail, but if there is a plot twist with an odd number of squares, there has to be a second plot twist to get to the final solution, i.

With that clarified, I can get back to explaining the structure that I had in mind. If characters move to the right as shown (from a to c, for example), it represents a Red Herring (1 space), a diversion or mistake (2-3 spaces), or a false trail (3+ spaces). (From the direction of movement, this signifies something from “out of left field”). The most direct line, a to e to i, will not normally be allowed, because going directly to e means that the characters won’t have the necessary information to enable them to get to i.

So, let’s list the valid solutions:

• a – b (plot twist) – d – g (2nd plot twist, red herring) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – d – g (2nd plot twist, red herring) – h – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – d – e (red herring) – g (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – d – e (red herring) – h (2nd plot twist, red herring) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – d – f (diversion/mistake) – h (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – e – g (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – e – h (2nd plot twist, red herring) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – c (red herring) – e – i (2nd plot twist)
• a – b (plot twist) – c (red herring) – h – i (2nd plot twist)
• a – e – g (plot twist) – i (2nd plot twist)
• a – e – h (plot twist, red herring) – i (2nd plot twist)
• a – c (plot twist, red herring) – e – g (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – c (plot twist, red herring) – e – h (red herring, 2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – c (plot twist, red herring) – e – i (2nd plot twist)
• a – c (plot twist, red herring) – f – g (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)
• a – c (plot twist, red herring) – f – h (2nd plot twist) – i (3rd plot twist)

There are undoubtedly others as well. These don’t cover the innumerable “flash of insight” options discussed a moment ago, for example.

Every 2nd step, it should also be remembered, represents a countermove or response by the villain or opponent. a-b, a-c, or a-e are all moves by the players in response to the initial move from a.

The Initial Encounter

The next step would be to describe the initial encounter, in basic terms. Because I’m thinking of this in terms of use for my superhero campaign, where each of the PCs has (or is developing) a private life outside the team, I’m deliberately going to use a fantasy-game approach for all examples within this article.

“Thief & known pickpocket bumps into PC Alpha while running from the watch” sounds like a fun opening encounter. So we would have the ‘where are you’ establishing narrative, the collision, and an encounter with the watch. The thief may get away, he may not. The watch will tell the PC who the NPC is, and probably advise him to check that he still has all his valuables about his person. He may do, he may be missing something. That’s the sum total of our opening sequence, space ‘a’ on the board.

Thunderclouds on the Horizon: The initial situation

Having decided the first encounter, with some details still to be decided, we can now establish what the overall plotline is going to be about. The only restriction is that it seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the initial encounter.

“Necromancer/Villain steals magic item to use to twist the spirits of Elysium/Heaven to the cause of Evil.” Not bad. “Businessman attempting to unseat the head of the tradesman’s guild, PCs get caught in the crossfire” probably works better at our example 9-squares scale, though. The first idea would have required too much discovery to fit within the 9-boxes constraint – even though it’s the idea that was lurking in the back of my mind as an example throughout this article!

Little plot threads, all in a row

Next, we count the number of rows of diamonds, both black and white, ignoring box a. There’s the b-c row; there’s the d-e-f line; the g-h row; and finally, of course, the i square. That’s four. (I’d need to check more examples, but I immediately find myself wondering if this count is always one more than the number of squares being used as counted on the side of the board? Never mind, it’s easy enough to count each time).

To each of these, we assign a generic label that describes a step in the plot:

• b-c: PC attacked
• d-e-f: PCs investigate a mystery
• g-h: One enemy neutralized
• i: Revelation/Discovery, Confrontation, Aftermath

Notice that these are quite independent of each other. We know that i is the conclusion of the adventure, but everything else could happen in any order, and any of these items could be left out without compromising the final plotline.

taking a compass bearing

On any given line, there are only a few possible combinations of entry specification (plot twist, red herring, etc) and event label (PC attacked, etc). What’s more, which of those comes into play depends entirely on the choices the PCs make; each of the above sequences is independent of each other, but they can combine to tell a coherent story. It sounds like we’re all set.

Or are we? It’s all well and good to say “from a you can go to b, c, or d” – but how is the GM to choose? There are no labels to these choices. We know that two of them involve plot twists but that’s all about the plot after the reaction to what the PCs do in scene A.

Actually, there’s one thing more that we know, and it’s that information – in combination with those other factors – that defines the solution to this remaining problem. We know that each square consists of both a PC reaction and an NPC action. We don’t know which one goes first, because that depends on how we get into that square, something that we can’t predict, as the number of valid combinations listed makes clear. In general terms, the antagonist is either responding to what the PCs have just done (a ‘predictable’ choice) or is responding out of ignorance of what the PCs were going to do (a ‘wild’ choice).

In theory, the plot can proceed from its current square to any of the adjacent squares that we haven’t been to before. To try and give the plot impetus and move it toward a solution, we have stated that the preferred direction of travel is downwards, and the second choice is side-to-side, but that’s an ideal.

Expanding the plot

What needs to be done is to further detail the cell contents based on the generic label and the things that we DO know about the cells. That then permits us to choose the action that most makes sense under the circumstances of what the PCs have done and what the antagonist knows about that action. (This is where the true limitation of this small example layout becomes apparent – we don’t have very many choices to fill. It would normally be the case that we would have a lot more choices to fill – as many as eight in a single line if we were using a full 8×8 chessboard). So let’s do that now (my sidenotes on the process are in italics):

• a: Initial scene. The thief wasn’t trying to steal from the PCs, he wanted to plant something amongst the PCs effects to use the PC as an unwitting mule to carry the goods away from the scene of the crime. This is the opening move of a gambit by one of the antagonists (call him enemy #1) to get the PCs to eliminate his rival (enemy #2) for him.
  • a: After the ‘pickpocket strike’ the PC discovers a small handbook that he has never seen before, filled with numbers, possibly a code of some sort, hidden amongst his possessions. This is actually accounts information, evidence of bribery and corruption on the part of enemy #2.
• b-c: PC attacked. Which PC is attacked, why, and by whom? Those are the critical questions. In our example, we have two defined factions working at cross-purposes, so this is easy. When you don’t have a predefined solution, or you need more than two answers, you may need to get more creative.
  • b: Enemy #1 arranges for Enemy #2 to learn that the PCs have the stolen incriminating evidence. Enemy #2 sends forces to attack them and get it back. The plot twist is that a potential ally is being cast as an enemy.
  • c: Enemy #1’s forces, disguised as belonging to a third party (enemy #3), attack the party to retrieve the planted evidence. This attack is intended to fail. The fact that the attackers are not who they seem to be is intended to be easily discovered; enemy #3 is someone with the ability/resources to decode the notebook and the authority to remove enemy #2 from power. The plot twist is either that the PCs will fail to penetrate the deception and make enemy #3 an actual enemy, or that they have been successfully manipulated by enemy #1 into acting against enemy #2, a potential ally.
• d-e-f: PCs investigate a mystery. We now have three factions other than the PCs embroiled in this little plot. The PCs have one three choices to pursue: they can try to decode the book, they can try to chase down the thief (if he wasn’t taken away by the watch), or they can pursue whoever they think attacked them either by going to enemy #3 (requires c) or learning about the rivalry between enemies #1 and #2, then approaching enemy #1, thinking him a possible ally (requires b).
  • d: The PCs attempt to decode the book’s contents either themselves or by seeking out an expert. If this leads to a plot twist, the expert will discover that the book is a forgery. This is the most direct route to the conclusion, confronting enemy #1. …which is why it is the left-most of the options. Either way, the nature of the book will be revealed, telling the PCs part of what is going on, but not who is doing what to whom.
  • e: The PCs pursue whoever they think attacked them either by going to enemy #3 (requires c) or learning about the rivalry between enemies #1 and #2, then approaching enemy #1, thinking him a possible ally (requires b). Ultimately, this boils down to the continued success of enemy #1 at manipulating the PCs, because they are continuing to follow the sequence of events he has mapped out for them. Enemy #3 will be able to identify what the book purports to be, but will not discover that it is a forgery.
  • f: The PCs chase down the thief. Having fulfilled his role in the plot, the Thief is now a red herring. When they catch him, they can interrogate him. He knows that he was paid to plant the forged book on them by enemy #1, but he is scared of enemy #1, and at the same time, sees an opportunity to profit from the situation; he will name enemy #3 as responsible, thinking that he can extort enemy #2 for not sending the PCs after him. If the PCs are any good at their jobs, they will immediately find the Thief to be an unreliable source of information, and not fall for his attempted deception. There are four possible outcomes from this encounter: the PCs can be steered back to enemy #3 (square e), they can be misled by the thief into holding enemy #2 responsible (square h), they can decide to get the book deciphered independently because they mistrust the thief (square d) or they can force the thief to disclose enemy #1 as the manipulator (square g).
• g-h: One enemy neutralized. There are two antagonists, and we need two entries, so this is pretty straightforward. These squares almost always require a plot twist, unless the PCs are arriving at one of these squares directly from squares b or c. Coming from b means that the PCs have either fallen for the manipulations by enemy #1 hook line and sinker (h) and attacked what is ultimately the wrong individual from their point of view, or they have figured out that they are being manipulated and decide to confront their seeming-enemy (h) – so the nature of the confrontation will change, but not the identity of the person being confronted. Coming from (c) means that the party discovered enemy #1’s attempted deception and have decided to confront him directly without investigating via (e). That in turn means that he would be able to attempt to bluff his way out of it by claiming that enemy #2 is the one attempting to manipulate them, and that they have fallen for it! While this might seem like a plot twist, it’s actually enemy #1 doing more of the same, i.e. attempting to manipulate the PCs. But it’s far more likely that these squares will be reached by way of one of d, e, or f.
  • g: The PCs confront enemy #2. The nature of the confrontation depends on which square they are coming from, as described above. In the course of the encounter, the hostility between enemy #1 and #2 will be revealed/recapitulated. Either the PCs will succeed in having enemy #2 removed from power (just as enemy #1 wanted) or in recruiting him as an ally against enemy #1. If the former, they will discover enemy #2’s real “little black book”, revealing that the one they have is a forgery, and pointing the finger at their having been used by enemy #1. Either way, this leads to the conclusion.
  • h: The PCs confront enemy #1. Enemy #1 can attempt to bluff, and may or may not succeed, depending on how the PCs reached this position. If the bluff fails, enemy #1 will come clean, while still pointing the finger at enemy #2 as being corrupt.
• i: Revelation/Discovery, Confrontation, Aftermath. There are three ways to get here – from e, from g, or from h. Ideally, the route will be g-i, making the confrontation with enemy #1. If the path is h-i, this will be a confrontation with enemy #2. The GM should not permit the e-i route, instead following the e-h path and reserving the conclusion to the plotline as being an encounter with enemy #2.
  • i: A final plot twist is required – enemy #3 stands revealed as having manipulated enemy #1 throughout in a bid to remove both enemy #1 and enemy #2. He can either be a good guy or worse than either of them – they may have been corrupt, but they stood in his way of implementing the harsh totalitarian rule that he demanded. He will then declare the PCs persona-non-gratis throughout the Kingdom, but give them 24 hours grace before coming after them as recompense ‘for services rendered’. This either leads to the real ultimate conclusion (as the PCs take down enemy #3, who started gloating a little too soon, thinking that his power and position would protect him, or to a sequel adventure in which the PCs work to bring about the overthrow of enemy #3, or simply to a change of circumstances in which enemy #3 has become the power behind the throne in this Kingdom. That’s up to the PCs, but most of the time I would expect one of the first two options to be their reaction. Or, if enemy #2 became allied to the PCs, that’s an entirely different outcome – they’ve done a deal with “a” devil which will no doubt come back to haunt them at some point in the future.

Ripples In Harmony

This plotting technique is a lot more work than writing a straightforward plotline, but it preserves complete independence of choice on the part of the players. There are multiple paths through to the ultimate outcome. Each step of each path creates a knock-on effect on the next step in the path, changing its context and meaning. Each step can be said to create a ripple through the plot structure, changing the shape of events to come so that they always lead to the plot conclusion. The great advantage is that, like a choose-your-own-adventure book, the same plot could be run with the same players a second time and would reach a conclusion that could be quite different – or exactly the same, but by a very different path.

Expanding the plotline

This all stems from one seemingly-random event. Adding more cells enables a bigger tapestry to be woven. The obvious place to start is with enemy #2, who is a very passive element in this outline. That’s the inevitable result of making enemy #1 the antagonist and enemy #2 the intended victim – and the PCs, the patsies.

To give enemy #2 his own scheme to bring down enemy #1, you could eliminate square (a) (moving its content to square b) and permitting two almost-simultaneous plots to be in motion at the same time. But that would be too complex a plot structure to fit our simple 3×3 squares. The minimum would be a 4×4 structure with the uppermost cell removed. You would then have a three-corridor overall structure in which the left represented enemy #1, the right represented enemy #2, and the middle contained the red herrings and the potential for the other two enemies to interact with each other’s schemes.

The obvious plot hole

There is one obvious plot hole that needs to be addressed: what if the players decide to split up and pursue all their leads at the same time?

The answer: let them. (d) says that enemy #1 is behind events, (e) says that enemy #2 is responsible, while (f) points the finger at enemy #3 (but in an unconvincing way). The players still have to make the choice of confronting enemy #1 or enemy #2 (confronting enemy #3 leads to e, which has already been addressed).

Of course, the players might get clever and try to lure enemies #1 and #2 into a direct confrontation with each other, bypassing both g and h, under this circumstance – which is perfectly acceptable as an outcome. And it would even succeed in unmasking the real culprit – enemy #3.

The other obvious plot hole

Finally, what if the PCs decide to do something other than (d), (e), or (f)? They might choose to simply get out of town and let the mess sort itself out. They might decide to take their suspicions to the watch, or to a figure of authority. If this happens, both watch and authority would demand proof – deciphering the code book would be necessary evidence. That leaves the players back with choices d or e, and the plotline back on track. Only if the PCs choose to opt out of the adventure altogether does this plotline not reach a satisfactory conclusion.

The Pattern Of Raindrops

By isolating plot developments in the manner described while keeping a structured relationship between them that is dictated by the overall plot, we create a patternless noise akin to the sound of individual raindrops. But listen closely, and this technique will yield the underlying pattern of the plotline.

To wrap things up, here’s a rotated chessboard for you all to use. Click on the image to open it in a new window, suitable for printing.

One final suggestion: if you summarize your ideas very concisely, you could write them on post-it notes and do your plotting on an actual chessboard. This would cut out all the hassle of using code letters to link your notes with the layout and make the process a lot easier.

Updating the list of the “best posts” at Campaign Mastery has been on my to-do list for years. I’ve decided to finally bite the bullet and get it done, even if it means doing it as posts-in-progress here at the site. I’ve learned from past exercises not to try and do too much in any single post, so I’ve broken it up into five, and I’ll be doing one a month or so for the next five or six months. To look at, these posts might seem extremely empty. That’s because 99% of the job is throwing things away that didn’t make the cut. So, without further ado:

The Best Of 2008-2009

2008-2009 contained Campaign Mastery’s baby steps. Johnn and I were feeling our way towards a unique style and format for the site, learning as we went. We managed more than 100 posts in this period of time, so there were plenty to choose from. In fact, there were so many great articles that I found I couldn’t pick between these 17 entries.

In order of publication:
 

• A Quality Of Spirit – Big Questions in RPGs
• Guilds, Organisations, and other Bad Company
• Distilled Cultural Essence [Series]
• Ask The GMs: Networks Of NPCs
• Ask The GMs: Weather, Not Climate
• Ask The GMs: Pacing Your Campaign
• Lore Enforcement: The Legal System in an RPG
• ‘There Is A Hole In Your Mind…’: Solving Mental Block
• Shadow Levels: A way to roleplay the acquisition of Prestige Classes in D&D 3.x
• Two related articles in combination – Ask The GMs: An Epic Confusion, or how to stage a blockbuster finish, and A Grand Conclusion: Thinking about a big finish
• Broadening Magical Horizons: Some Feats from Fumanor and Shards Of Divinity
• The Nimble Mind: Making Skills Matter in RPGs
• Ask The GMs: Going Beyond The Rules
• Ask The GMs: “Let’s Split Up.” – “Good Idea, we can do more damage that way!”
• Legendary Achievements: Colouring Your Campaign with Anecdote and Legend
• The Perils Of Prophecy: Avoiding the Plot Locomotive
• Revealing the Exotic

 
 
In the next part: The best of 2010

Finished at last! You may have noticed that there was no post, Monday, for the first time in a long time; well, there would have been, but I simply couldn’t get this finished in time, and by the time I realized that, it was too late to start another. Still, I don’t miss deadline often…

I had quite a lot of interest in the first of my articles on Ergonomics and a number of requests for more, especially covering those topics that I didn’t really get to expand on in Ergonomics and the Non-human, so here goes…

Why Dwarves?

Why choose Dwarves for the second race subjected to ergonomic scrutiny? There are two reasons: first, they are (after elves) perhaps the most iconic race available for PCs to play; they are common to a massive number of RPGs, not just D&D/Pathfinder. And second, they make the ideal illustration for the process, and especially how range of motion, aka Kinesiology, can affect the anatomical profile of a race. Elves touched on the subject, but focused more on the basics of mechanical action, i.e. limb length.

As always, this is just one possible view of Dwarves – it’s certainly not canonical. The purpose of these articles is not to redefine the species in question but to give GMs the tools to integrate the species within their own game worlds, reinforcing the verisimilitude and uniqueness of those worlds. Readers are encouraged to take the principles that I outlined in the first article and apply them to their own variations on the theme.

The other principle worth enumerating here (because it probably didn’t get enough air time in the first article) is the way in which the GM can cheat from “the back of the book”. We start with established common ground, apply the process and a bit of inspiration, and use other factors from the game world / basic description as our desired destinations. Whenever there’s a choice, choose the option that takes you closer to the desired end-point, which is to say, justifies and explains other aspects of the race’s profile. Those aspects might be social, or political, or biological, or psychological, or simply a reputation for being good at certain things; how cool is it when the biology of the race not only explains the basis of that reputation but gives it quantifiable details?

Basic Proportions of Dwarves

The most common view of Dwarves is that they are relatively short, with very solid proportions. This is often achieved by reducing the number of “heads” in the vertical measurement without changing the size of the head, relative to that of an ordinary human of equivalent vertical proportion.

The more “heads” there are in the original body-shape, the larger that body is relative to the head – and a small difference goes a long way. The iconic superhero look is based on 9 or 10 heads, while the normal human has 7.5 to eight. If the heads are both roughly the same size, then you end up with a far more muscular look. Take that enlarged body and compress it vertically by cutting out “heads” and you end up with a squat, broad shape. Enlarge the result back to the old super-human height and you end up with the Hulk, or the Thing from the Fantastic Four. Don’t do so, and you get the iconic Dwarf.

Of course, the decision of where to cut those heads is all-important. As a general rule of thumb, any reduction in limbs should be roughly equally divided amongst both upper and lower limbs, and should affect all four limbs equally. So the arms get shorter by the same amount as the legs. Cutting a half-head from the belly area gives an over-sized chest; cutting it from the upper body gives a rotund, portly (and overweight) look.

If these changes don’t go far enough, you can always add an extra quarter-head in width to the location of the shoulders, while also making them larger.

The upshot is that Dwarves have very wide shoulders and this is just as important to the anatomy of the race as their height is.

Mass

Dwarves weigh roughly the same as the full-height human of the same horizontal dimension, if not more. That implies that they have more bone and muscle, especially the first, as these are both more dense than the overall average. Fat, on the other hand, has a lower density than the average (which is roughly the same as water, overall), so for their size they have relatively little fat.

Innate Characteristics

This makes sense in light of the innate characteristics common to Dwarves. They are usually described as having strength & resilience higher than that of the full-sized human of equivalent horizontal dimension.

What’s more, the shortness of their arms requires greater inherent strength to achieve the same effect. This is shown by the circumference of a circle, using the shoulder joint (because that’s where arm length is measured from) as the center of the circle – a 90-degree movement by a longer limb in the same amount of time has the end of that limb moving faster than a shorter limb. That is equivalent to the amount of force that the limb can impart when it hits someone or something.

It’s easy to demonstrate this for yourself. Moving your arms in and out from the shoulder, feel how hard the inner side of your elbow can hit the side of your chest for a given expenditure of effort. Then, for the same expenditure of effort, feel how hard your wrist can hit your chest. Notice how much faster your hand moves than your elbow – and how much more force it generates when it hits?

Just to hit as hard as a human does, a shorter-limbed creature like a Dwarf has to be stronger. But Dwarves are supposed to be able to impart more force than the typical human, so they need even more strength on top of the increase we have already surmised.

Strength at a price

Strength generally comes at a price, a reduction in flexibility and suppleness. Anyone who’s ever watched the summer Olympics must have noticed how weightlifters walk. They can lift amounts in the super-heavyweight division, but they walk like tree-trunks. In particular, they have relative inflexibility at the elbows, knees, and back.

I’m going to assume that this also affects Dwarves, but I’m going to go further. Since we need Dwarves to be even stronger to compensate for their reduced limb-length, and that for mass reasons, they need more muscle and bone than a human of equivalent body-width, and have to pack all of that into a smaller frame, I’m going to assume that Dwarves have more muscle – and more muscle needs more muscle anchor points, in other words, more bone.

The skeletal structure – torso

If our Dwarves have more bone, and not just thicker bones, then they will have a different skeletal structure. So let’s give them one. I’ll start with the torso, and assume that instead of having ribs like humans, they have subcutaneous plates of natural bone, flat strips placed on their thinner dimension and curved around. These can even overlap slightly, give the Dwarf’s vital systems a natural boost. These flatter, broader, ribs extend all the way to the coccyx. But these would make the dwarf more vulnerable to crushing effects, for all that they enhance the ability to resist stabbing penetrations and lacerations; to protect against that problem, I need to internally brace the skeletal structure.

From the spine, then, four protrusions extend out to flat plate-like ends. Two are angled at 45 degrees to the spine in the horizontal plane (some Dwarves would have this bracing right-side forward, others left-side forward). Two angle at 45 degrees in the other direction horizontally, but also at an angle vertically, front to back. With a layer of shock-absorbing fat sandwiched by a two paddings of muscle between these flat plates and the ribs, we end up with a torsional rigidity that imparts great strength – and relative inflexibility (Racing car roll-cages are all built using similar structures).

The shoulder joints would also be larger. I envisage these joints as having round covers of bone, like a hollow ball, with openings in the ball for the limbs to project through. There would be similar structures in the pelvis that internally armor the entire lower torso. (I’ll get to why in just a moment). Humans have a cover of bone at the knees – the kneecaps – but the Dwarfish shoulder and groin joints would be larger, wrapping around the joint more, and connected to the bones containing the joints by cartilage.

This arrangement would make all four limbs as flexible, front to back, as humans, but less flexible out from the sides, and with less rotational capacity in the arms – 60 degrees instead of 270 degrees. Assuming a similar degree of side-to-side and rotational capacity at the hips would actually make a Dwarf more flexible in this limited capacity as a human.

The key to all this internal structure can be made evident by a simple experience – turn your head using your neck muscles as far as it can comfortably go – usually almost 90 degrees. Do this in the direction of your off-hand – so, if you’re right-handed, turn your head to the left. Then, holding that position, feel the tension in the muscles – you will soon realize that you can feel the force all the way down to your shoulders. Now try moving your arms forward and back just a little, still holding this pose, and you will find that the side that you are facing away from will be just a little tighter and more restricted in it’s movement because those muscles are already rigid. The neck anchors to the skull at one end and the shoulders at the other, and on down the back.

Dwarven torso muscles have two sets of anchor points – one set interior to the bone shapes described, and one outside that is more typically humanoid. So there isn’t much difference to look at, but they have twice as much muscle and bone as the equivalent human, and far more structural strength in the torso, protecting their vital organs.

The reduced directions of flexibility permit a muscle structure more optimized for strength in those directions the Dwarf is flexible, giving them the equivalent to a third set of muscles in terms of force generated. The “second set” of muscles compensates for the shorter limbs, and the “third set” makes them stronger than humans – in those directions that their limbs move.

An evolutionary side-note: If we observed this phenomenon in a species in modern times, we would probably assume that the cross-bracings evolved from vestigial limbs – meaning that Dwarves evolved from a variety of eight-legged creatures with external exoskeletal structures, perhaps something akin to an armored spider. Which doesn’t mean much in its own right, but there are many creatures on earth that bear some resemblance to the form of ancient pre-humans – the various species of ape, for example. So this raises the prospects that somewhere out there, armored spiders might still be found…

The skeletal structure – limbs

I intend to employ a similar set of principles in the limb joints. I envisage locking bone structure at elbows & knees, making it easier and more natural for the limbs to stay rigid and firm – but at the price of reduced flexibility in all but one direction. Ankle and wrist joints would have structures similar to the shoulders – which makes the ankles of a Dwarf slightly more flexible than those of a human, but the wrists slightly less flexible.

The Legs start wide at the hip and bow slightly. This permits the ankles to be close together when desired, or splayed but with feet still flat (thanks to those ankle joints).

The legs of a Dwarf thus form natural triangle shapes, with with the point up, or the point down. When in battle stance, this gives the choice of far greater stability – try rolling a typical d4 by pushing at the side or top – or the capacity to change direction quickly when running, with the ankles closer together.

The consequence of this anatomical difference would be a rocking hip motion when running. Dwarves would tend to be superb broken-field runners, capable of turning on a dime without slowing down – but with a smaller change of direction possible than a human. Faster to turn, but with a bigger turning circle, as it were.

The finger and toe joints would have bony spurs that slide along cartilage along the horizontal plane of fingers. This enables the fingers to be either loose and flexible, or locked in a grip far stronger than that of a human – but a Dwarf would not be able to change between these two states as readily as the more flexible human joints.

A lot of these differences exist to enable the Dwarf to utilize his greater torso strength through his limbs while affording his joints greater rigidity, strength, and protection.

The Circulatory System & internal organs

Let’s think about the other legendary traits of Dwarves. Superior endurance coupled with explosive delivery of force and only a slight reduction in ground speed, relative to a human. Biological systems evolve to optimize either sustained effort over time or sudden bursts of energy – not both. Dwarves appear to have both – or, at least, the ‘sudden burst of energy’ equivalent of a human coupled with a far greater endurance. Since a natural circulatory system can’t let you have it both ways, I started to wonder if one was enough…

Dwarves have two bi-chamber hearts (human hearts are bi-chambered) – one high energy, one low-energy high endurance. The high energy system is slightly better than human, but it has to be, simply to meet the heightened requirements of the dwarf’s greater musculature during battle.

I also propose that Dwarves have twin sets of lungs, one wrapped around the other. These appear superficially to be one pair of organs; the difference is only detectable through dissection and following the blood flow. The outer lungs extract oxygen that the inner lungs haven’t already grabbed. Human breath is about 18% unused oxygen! I’ll get to why, in just a minute.

The first heart provides blood supply to both the hearts, the arms, and to the brain, and is fed by the inner lung. It provides normal blood flow for short bursts of high energy activity. Again, bear with me, and it will all make sense in a minute. The second heart provides a secondary supply to both hearts, derives it’s oxygen from the outer lungs, and also supplies the torso and legs.

This enables a dwarf to run or work at simple tasks for hours, if not days, with only brief rests. Having a second, low-pressure circulatory system actually reduces activity levels in the first heart, which simply keeps brain, inner lungs, and itself ticking over. Dwarves, in ‘endurance mode’, actually enter a slightly meditative state (reducing their sleep requirements) and enables them to just keep ticking off the miles or the repetitive strokes of whatever tool they are using. In ‘Endurance Mode’ they have, at best, limited awareness.

A Dwarf may be winded after a battle, but will rarely if ever arrive at one short of breath – no matter how hard and long they have had to run to get there.

Dietary Requirements

I started making a list of all the dietary requirements that Dwarves would need more of. Calcium. Iron. Metabolizing agents, esp Magnesium, which facilitates muscle control and the management of the absorption of calcium. Iodine. Vitamins C and K. High levels of carbohydrates for endurance mode. Sugars for activity mode – from fruit, and honey, but especially from ale.

They would probably have two separate fat stores – one for ‘endurance mode’ and one for ‘activity mode’ – with slightly different chemical compositions. Endurance-mode fat would be slowly metabolized, and equally-slowly replaced. Activity-mode fat would have a composition that permitted rapid breakdown into energy. This makes it a biological necessity for a Dwarf to get roaring drunk after a good rousing fight!

Outside of the ale, their diet would require a lot of milk, green vegetables like spinach, bread, red meat, and fish. They would probably go in for sticky, over-sweet desserts. Tarter flavors like lemon and grapefruit would be rare luxuries. And they would probably need to consume more salt than a human of equivalent mass.

The human cultures which combine meat and dairy products include Indian and US Southern cuisine. Both tend to have strongly-spiced, fiery flavors. It fits my perception of Dwarven ‘manliness’ to have them enjoy cuisines that other people can’t tolerate with ease, and there’s something very Dwarven about grinding things up with a mortar-and-pestle! Dwarven cuisine is probably more Tex-Mex than Indian, but there would be some Indian-style recipes as well. And all washed down with lots of sweet ale.

Disease Impacts

I also spent a little time thinking about how these anatomical differences would manifest as health problems in Dwarves. There won’t be much that’s unfamiliar here, but these would all have greater impact within Dwarven society than in a contemporaneous human society.

Circulatory problems

Two hearts, twice as much risk of heart disease, especially in light of the Dwarven diet.

Metabolic problems I: Reduced Endurance Mode

Early signs of a problem with the low-pressure heart would be reduced capacities in Endurance Mode. This leaves a Dwarf able to fight, but not able to get to the fight – a sure recipe for frustration and an explosively-touchy temper. The solution: move to where the fighting will come to the Dwarf. If a Dwarf hangs around human taverns all the time, especially in the seedier parts of town, it’s a good bet that he is suffering from this ailment. While this might be inconvenient for the Dwarf, it’s probably not going to be directly fatal in the short- or medium-term.

Metabolic problems II: Reduced Activity Mode

More serious, and probably more lethal, would be most of the traditional symptoms of heart trouble in humans, which signify a problem in the high-pressure circulatory system. While a heart attack would be less lethal because the secondary heart would keep the central organs and both hearts supplied with blood, it is likely to cause brain damage at the very least. Worse still, this would leave the Dwarf unable to fight, and that means he becomes an object of pity amongst his fellow Dwarves – something that no Dwarf could tolerate.

Blacklung

It’s necessary that the high-demand system has first crack at the available oxygen, and hence the innermost of the lungs is the one that provides air for ‘activity mode’. The ‘endurance mode’ system can get by on whatever the high-activity mode has left behind – which is why Dwarves go into a state of reduced consciousness while in Endurance Mode, it minimizes demands made by the high-energy system and leaves more supply for the endurance-mode system.

That leaves the entire body more susceptible to dust in the air, which causes damage the Dwarves refer to as Blacklung. Dust coats and clogs the innermost lung, restricting the supply of oxygen to both lungs. Of course, because they are natural miners, dust is all the more prevalent, so this would be a major killer of Dwarves. Blacklung is akin to asbestoses.

Of course, to humans historically, the name refers to the condition that afflicts coal miners, and which used to be a terrible killer in the early days of the industrial revolution, when the demand for coal skyrocketed. While Dwarves would mine and burn some coal, especially in their forges, they would not need to do so for heat – temperatures underground are far more stable than those above – and coal does not work all that well for producing light.

Nor would Dwarves use, by preference, anything else that burned to produce light, because they are in a relatively enclosed space and the dangers of rendering the air toxic would be quickly learned. They would need to adopt some other system, unless and until they found a way to circulate the air.

It might seem that this would also make Dwarves especially vulnerable to gas attacks, but this would be incorrect. A Dwarf’s response to being in a short-of-air situation would be to drop into endurance mode, so as to consume as little air as possible, while holding their breaths and functioning on ‘autopilot’ until clear. This means that they could hold their breaths for longer than a human, making them less vulnerable to this mode of attack – in the short term.

Muscle atrophy

Twice as many muscles means twice as much exercise is needed to stay healthy. Some of this would be derived through normal working activities, but the rest would need to be deliberately sought out. Whether they copied the idea from humans or came up with it on their own, organized sports would be common amongst Dwarves, especially those that involved a lot of running and endurance. Rugby and Soccer would be popular – but probably with three times the game-length. These would put a premium on endurance in active mode and awareness in endurance mode, and so the elite fighters amongst the population would also be the elite sportsmen. While Dwarves might wrestle or engage in other forms of faux-combat, these would not exercise them in endurance mode all that well. Marathons through the tunnels prior to such matches would redress the balance – and be uniquely Dwarven.

Arthritis

Joint inflammations would be a more severe and common problem to older Dwarves. The complexity of the joint structures would naturally make this a more routine problem. What’s more, the reduction in flexibility means that it is harder for Dwarves to work around the problem. It would therefore be far more crippling than the human version.

Skeletal Issues – The Spikes

I have a problem with my metabolism that sometimes results in sharp spurs of bone growing from various skeletal structures, especially in the pelvic region. These have, in the past, grown long enough and sharp enough to lacerate my kidneys, for example, or puncture an intestine. Such bony spurs are far more common than people realize, and are a consequence of the bone’s ability to knit; I haven’t broken many bones, thank goodness, but when I have done so, the bones have knitted more quickly than expected – and with considerable “lumps” of bone at the site of the break.

To some extent, this is a problem with metabolizing excess calcium. With most people, these spurs grow and then break down and get reabsorbed by the body before they can do any real damage. These were an early sign that my body’s metabolizing of magnesium was out of whack, because magnesium regulates the body’s handling of calcium, amongst other things.

With so much more skeleton, and the need for additional calcium in the diet for bone strength, Dwarves would be far more susceptible to this. Because these spurs tend to grow from the sharper points of the bones such as the Iliac crest and from other bony ridges, and at the heels and joints, the ends of the joints would be especially prone to this problem in Dwarves with dietary or metabolic problems. Bony spikes under the skin would be common and usually not a problem; in fact, they would usually be invisible to the naked eye, but could be felt.

Painful in humans, they would be both more common and more capable of severely restricting the activities of Dwarves.

Vision problems

Eye strain is all too common in humans. It frequently arises as a result of insufficiently varying the focal plane of the eye, and can result in permanent short or long-sightedness. Dwarves, by nature of the environment they usually live in, have even less capacity for varying the focal plane of their vision, and hence eyestrain and consequent vision problems would be all the more common.

The symptoms of aging

All of the problems listed, with the exception of the “Reduced Endurance Mode” metabolic problem, would be common in Dwarves as they age. This is especially true because a medieval society is going to be far less able to diagnose and treat nutritional problems than we are in the 21st century.

Since most Dwarves would tend to be the types who would not want to go out helpless and laid low by disease, at the first sign of symptoms of any of them, they are likely to look around for a good hopeless cause they can sink their teeth into, and hope to die trying.

Dwarves, at their peak of fitness and experience, are therefore the most prone to become heroic examples, and all their greatest and most-renowned warriors fall in battle – or beat the odds despite undertaking the most dangerous of tasks. Middle-aged Dwarves are the most dangerous to be around.

One Vulnerable Location

With so many of their joints armored naturally, Dwarves are very resilient and resistant to injury. They can grip more tightly, and are far less likely to dislocate joints because these are also held together more tightly. It’s very hard to seriously wound a Dwarf without killing him.

But there’s one location where Dwarves are just as vulnerable as anyone else, and it’s one that is all the more reachable because of their shortened stature: the throat and neck. This is something to bear in mind when considering Dwarven armor designs.

Simulation Techniques

Having considered the anatomical differences of the Dwarf (and gone into far more detail on the subject than I did with Elves), it’s time to think about how to simulate these differences so that we can get a feel for how they will alter the way Dwarves do things, what they would be good at and what they would not, and how their tools would develop to either compensate for their natural deficiencies or take advantage of their natural benefits

Stiffen Elbows and Knees

Simulating the natural “locking” of the arms and knees is easy – we simply hold those joints rigidly with our muscles and see what effect that has. Simulating the shorter limb-length is a bit trickier – the best solution I can come up with is placing a rolled-up newspaper under the armpit. The end of the newspaper is about the right length for the tip of the Dwarfish fingers.

Range Of Rotational Motion

Holding a pen flat against the palm of the hand with the thumb permits some simulation of the range of rotational motion; Humans can manage about 270 degrees of rotation, from palms flat and facing outward from the body to to palms facing behind us, to palms flat to our sides, to palms facing forwards. Dwarves have only about 90 degrees of rotation – from facing behind them to flat against their bodies. That means that if they are gripping something more substantial, like a weapon, they have to raise their arms to rotate it so that it doesn’t hit their bodies; humans can bend their elbows and shoulders to perform this action more easily (try it by holding one end of that rolled-up newspaper).

Ankle Flexibility

Now sit down somewhere and notice the side-to-side capabilities of your ankles. Most of us can go from feet flat on the floor to about 30 degrees feet inwards, and only a small rotation in the other direction (feet outwards). Dwarves can go about 40 degrees inwards and about 20 degrees outwards. That means that they can stand with their feet together and flat on the floor despite the width of their torsos – much wider than ours – or can be stable with feet flat on the floor with their legs spread wide.

The Effect On Gait

If you stand up and try to walk without bending your knees, you will find that your natural gait is to stagger from side to side with each step. Forwards locomotion is reduced to between 2/3 and 1/2 of normal. The longer and faster your stride, the more pronounced this effect is. This gait, rolling from side-to-side with each step, is how Dwarves would run.

Now try holding your knees rigid but at an angle (effectively shortening your leg length and simulating the slightly bowleggedness of the Dwarf), and keeping your feet close together when both are on the ground (knees facing slightly outwards) – you can’t do it without a Chaplinesque gait because your feet are also pointing outwards. Dwarves have the rotation in their ankles to enable them to keep their feet facing forwards. Although it looks and feels slightly silly – that Chaplinesque characteristic again – you will find that you are able to walk quite quickly and smoothly. Maybe not quite as fast as normal – but close to it.

Climbing Stairs

Climbing stairs with either of these gaits is quite difficult, because we rely on bending our knees to lift our legs appropriately. To climb a set of stairs practically, with the running stride, we need to turn from side to side with each step, so that the lifting of the foot is enough to carry us up to the next step. Narrow stairs would be even more difficult. With the bent knees, it’s not so bad – but I found myself coming to a full stop after each step, so progress took perhaps twice as long as it normally would. Dwarves don’t do human-scale steps very well.

The Dwarfish Grip

The best way to simulate a Dwarfish grip is to hold onto a pen or implement of some kind in a fist-grip and then put on some sort of heavy glove – a ski glove, or a gardening glove, something without a lot of stretch to it. The other way of simulating the grip is when the normal practice is not to use a fist-grip, for example holding a pen – the Dwarfish grip would hold such an object as tightly as thought it were being held in a fist. But there’s a downside – a human can go from a fist to an open hand with the fingers stretched out in a fraction of a second (about 7/10ths by my rough guesstimate). Now do it one finger at a time, not starting the next one until the previous one is outstretched. Each one still takes about 7/10ths of a second, but fully releasing the grip takes about three-and-a-half seconds – and that’s if you’re in a hurry. Now imagine that it takes twice that long to close and lock your grip: one, two, three, four, five, six, locked. What this means is that you don’t change tools casually – but once you do take a grip on something, nothing will make you release it until you are good and ready.

Arm Motions

Vertical arm motions are no problem for the Dwarf. This brings their full strength into play. What a human could do with some effort in this respect, a Dwarf can do easily. Things like holding a heavy telephone directory or hardcover book at arm’s length horizontally for a period of time (which is surprisingly difficult). To simulate how difficult something is for a Dwarf, halve the weight.

Horizontal arm motions are far more difficult for a Dwarf than a human. They have very limited range of motion at the elbow – only out to an angle of about 30 degrees, given the skeletal structure – and have limited strength to apply. To simulate both effects, double any weight. So instead of a can of soft drink, use a bag of sugar. Instead of one D&D supplement, put two in a plastic bag. And remember that you can’t bend your elbow more than about thirty degrees (one-third of a right angle). Now, here’s a funny thing: if you can bend your elbow so that your elbow is in a straight line below your wrist, you can hold up a much heavier weight than if you try lifting it straight out to your side. Try it with a heavy book. So the combination of double-weight and limited elbow mobility is a double-whammy.

Having roughed out the parameters of the anatomical differences, it’s time to apply that to everyday activities and the tools that have evolved to go with them….

Chopping Wood

Axes come naturally to this sort of musculature. The handles may be shorter, but that only gives increased control. The arms and greater strength mean that the Dwarf can use a greater mass axe-head and let it do most of the work; all he has to do is guide it. His elbow joint and rotational flexibility in his torso gives just enough freedom of motion that he can chop trees down with an axe; and, once a tree is more-or-less horizontal, he can really go to town on it, using his strength to full effect – bend backwards with the axe back over his shoulder, arm fully extended, then lean forward as it the axehead passes over his shoulder to put his entire bodyweight into the blow. The toughest log can be reduced to timbers in no time.

But, unless you want it for firewood, that’s not going to get you very far – and Dwarves, as already explained, don’t go in for fires very much. Saws are needed to trim the wood into a more useful shape.

Horizontal sawing is not something that a Dwarf is going to be good at – not with this skeletal structure. They don’t have enough front-and-back or side-to-side flexibility in their torsos. Vertical sawing, once the piece of wood is manipulable, is a different story, but even then they face practical difficulties – when people saw wood, they tend to hold the wood with one hand and move the saw back and forth using the elbow joint in combination with the shoulders. Dwarves can’t do that; they have to saw with the whole body, and that’s lot more easily done either as a two-dwarf te
Having roughed out the parameters of the anatomical differences, it’s time to apply that to everyday activities and the tools that have evolved to go with them.
am or by using a waterwheel and sawmill.

If they are going with the two-dwarf option, which will be the case in most campaigns, the wood is likely to be trimmed on the spot – why carry excess wood that you’re going to throw away? Trim it and just cart off the bits you were actually going to use.

Not that there would be a lot of wood used by Dwarves. Metal and stone are their stock in trade.

Woodworking & Furniture style

The reason is that woodworking tends to require a lot of precision work, a`lot of readjustment of grip, and wood is too soft a material for clumsy work. One misplaced blow to a chisel, in direction or strength, and the woodworking project can be completely ruined. Stone and metal are far more forgiving, a single incorrect blow is usually not fatal to the project, and they are more suited to being worked with the inherent strength of a Dwarf.

There are only two things that a Dwarf would generally use wood that they have worked themselves for – mineshaft supports, where the elastic strength of the wood can be useful, especially with some additional bracing by metal components; and relatively rustic and cheap furniture.

Getting prepared timber from humans or elves, on the other hand, permits the dwarf to assemble items, and assembly is something they are good at. Nails can be forged to the exact length required, for example. So Dwarven-built chests would be far superior to those by most other races, but only if the timber elements were sourced from another race.

Armour

Dwarves are relatively strongly armor-plated on the insides, so much so that they aren’t generally going to be worried by swords or knives, but crushing weapons are a different story, even with their internal bracing. Their choices when it comes to armor are going to reflect these concerns; most armor varieties are designed to protect soft flesh and internal organs from things that aren’t going to bother a Dwarf. In fact, three types of armor – perhaps four – would predominate.

The first is leather, either hardened or soft, for the extra speed and mobility that it confers. This would be favored by scouts.

The second is padded banded mail. which distributes the force of crushing blows, For the same reason, but offering a little more protection (but heavier weight) would be a mail shirt which drops not to the knees but to just below the groin; the reason for that is that most of the Dwarfish mobility comes from the hips and not from the knees. They can’t risk the mail-shirt being too confining to that mobility.

Finally, we have heavy plate, the ultimate protection – especially when the armor is built up to match the strength of the Dwarf, with just enough capacity for their weapon. Another, more lightly armored Dwarf would be appointed as a second, to both carry anything else the Dwarf might need, and to help them take the armor off and put it back on when necessary. The second needs to carry his own weapons and equipment as well, of course!

Vital to all these armors is a collar. It might be made of bone and leather, or lacquered cane, or metal, or any of half-a-dozen other combinations, but the principle goal is to protect the throat. These collars tend to be conical in shape with or shaped as a sideways “U” in cross-section (bulge out), the goal being to deflect blows either against the jaw (which can also be reinforced with armor) or better yet, downward to the chest. Some Dwarves have even shaped their collars to integrate a dozen or more sword-catchers attached to a helm, so that anyone who strikes for the (vulnerable) neck ends up with a broken weapon.

Weapons

Given the tremendous strength of a Dwarf in straight-ahead up-and-down motion, any weapon that relies on this sort of motion is favored. Weapons that require thrusts are less suitable, because most of these require elbow and wrist flexibility; Dwarves are not very effective with rapiers, for example. Heavy, slashing, swords; maces and bludgeons; and, most especially, picks and axes. These all make maximum use of the natural advantages of the Dwarf.

Spears and pole-arms are less effective, because they generally demand elbow flexibility. However, if the Dwarf can set himself, can charge, or can employ some form of spear-thrower that substitutes for his reduced elbow flexibility, these can still have a place. Ordinary bows are not on the shopping list, but that’s all right because heavy crossbows are so much more Dwarven in style anyway. To load such a crossbow, the Dwarf literally stands on the bow while his neighbors keep it stable as he pulls the string upwards.

Mining

Mining involves three actions: loosening the rock, separating the ore, and transporting both ore and tailings to wherever they need to go. Loosening the rock involves driving metal poles deep into the rock with big sledgehammers to break it up, pick action to prize these chunks of rock out, and a lot of lifting of rock. The last is a problem when you don’t bend very well, but the Dwarves use a sidewards-facing bucket on a pole and a number of flat scraping implements to drag the rocks into the bucket, then swing it up onto a table for sorting.

This requires the floors to be extremely smooth, so a secondary job in Dwarven mining is the use of chisels and hammers to chip and shape the rock floors with all the finesse that they can produce. Because they don’t bend very well, these have long handles, 3 feet long or more. Wire brushes are also used to smooth the floors. Dwarven mines may not be as smooth as a marble floor – but they aren’t far removed. The walls and ceilings, while a little rougher in texture, are also remarkably square; unlike a human miner, who might extract a chunk of ore from the wall and leave a pit to mark it’s location, A dwarf will start a full tunnel. Who knows how far the ore vein might extend until they dig it?

As a result, Dwarven mines are full of tunnels that may be only a foot deep, or may go on for miles.

Dwarves are also big on right angles, at least when it comes to navigation. Their mine walls slope gradually inwards towards the top so that the shorings are supported by the walls; the Dwarves will carve out hollows, swing two half-timbers into place, then nail each to metal joining plates on the three exposed sides to create a single rigid structure. flat bands of iron also run the width of the tunnels, connecting to the joining plates; if the ceiling begins to give way, the timber supports will fracture; but these iron bands will hold them together long enough for the tunnel to be evacuated and/or reinforced. As a result, while mining tends to be a relatively dangerous occupation for humans, very few Dwarves are ever lost in accidents.

All told, there are 15 types of occupation involved in the Dwarven approach to mining:

• Surveyors, who track the course of ore veins and plan how best to route the mineshafts to access them;
• Iron Poles & Hammerers, who take steel poles of up to an inch or so in diameter and up to one Dwarf in height and drive them into the rock to break it up and loosen it;
• Picksmen, who use picks to convert the loosened material into loose rock, some of which falls directly into an ore cart, some of which lands on the floor;;
• Rock Gatherers, who use dustpan-like tools together with rakes and brooms to gather up the material that misses the ore cart;
• Cart Push/Pullers, who move the carts around, first to the sorting and grading tables, and then to the ultimate repository of the forge or the tailings dump;
• Sorters and Graders, who assess the quality and purity of the ore that has been retrieved after separating ore-bearing rocks and minerals from worthless rubbish;
• Floor carvers, who use hammers and chisels on long shafts to break up any hard rock protruding from the floor, ensuring a smooth surface for the rock gatherers and cart push/pullers;
• Brush Polishers, who employ wire brushes to smooth out any smaller imperfections in the floor, especially chisel marks;
• Wall finishers, who smooth the worst of the roughness out of the walls and ceilings (providing more work for the rock gatherers) and who mount light sources and carve out the recesses where mine Braces will be fitted;
• Brace Cutters, who cut trees into shaft braces, dress them, and then cut them to length as needed for each individual shaft;
• Brace Stainers, who apply a brightly-colored surface stain to the braces that protects them against insect incursions and also contrasts strongly with the wood underneath so that any fractures in the timber are more obvious;
• Brace Haulers, who carry the wooden braces from the cutting & staining area to the points where they are needed;
• Brace Lifters, who hoist the paired half-braces into position within the mineshaft;
• Brace Joiners, who apply the uniquely Dwarven metal brace elements that join the two half-braces into a single reinforced unit and declare the resulting mineshaft extension safe or unsafe (adding more braces if necessary); and finally,
• Foremen. who oversee this entire gymkhana and transform it into a fast-moving, rock-eating, ballet of synchronized activity.

Chairs

Limited knee-joint mobility means that Dwarfish chairs come in two varieties: Deep-seated easy chairs with footstools (which look remarkably like thrones to the uninitiated) and something more akin to kitchen stools. In both cases, to accommodate the Dwarven proportions, these are very wide. Given the state of Dwarven carpentry, the stools are either built to order by another race, or are very simple in construction. It is not uncommon for the seats to interlock, producing something that looks more like series of trestles supporting a flat plank on which many Dwarves sit. The thrones are more often carved out of heavy rock and adorned with tapestry-like coverings, richly decorated, which serve to insulate the Dwarf from the cold of the rock. Cushions for these ‘thrones’ are viewed as a decadent luxury that many aspire to.

Most Dwarves in any leadership position would aspire to a ‘throne’ style chair. (NB: it might be amusing if the Dwarfish words for leader, authority, and ruler all sounded the same to human ears so that they thought everyone who sat in such chairs was a King).

Getting into or out of a throne would be a relatively difficult process, as anyone who has sat back in a recliner chair will appreciate – especially since the Dwarfish knee doesn’t readily bend at the joint. In consequence, those who have such chairs tend to stay in them, once seated, until they absolutely have to get up.

It would therefore be the custom amongst Dwarfish royalty that they would be seated on traveling chairs of similar design which were carried by a number of other Dwarves in a litter. (Few others could spare the manpower, or they would all travel in this manner).

Dwarfish seats are too wide, too deep, and too short to be comfortable for any other race. If a human adult sits in such a chair, he can either sit back and have his ankles dangling in front of him (and too low to the ground), or he can sit forward with his knees sticking up (the height issue again) and his feet flat to the floor, with his back some distance from the back of the chair and therefore unsupported. Think of a sofa that is too deep and too low to the ground, and you’ll get the picture.

Tables, Cutlery, and Crockery

Since Dwarves are almost standing up on the common ‘stool’ chairs that most use, most tables are much higher than would normally be the case (relative to their height). Standing in front of an ordinary kitchen table shows that the height is roughly half-way up the thighs; when we sit, that puts it at waist level.

Dwarves also have their tables at waist level, but it’s at the standing waist, or close to it. For a human, that posture would require the height to be about one foot taller; since Dwarves are shorter by somewhere between six and twelve inches, their tables tend to be about six-to-nine inches taller than a human would find comfortable.

Dwarfish elbows also don’t bend very well, so each Dwarf would require quite a lot of table space, and would prefer to keep things at arms length. This encourages the use of large platters of food and longer table implements. Dwarves eat with what we would use as barbecue forks and salad spoons.

The size of the plates encourages and exaggerates the myth of the Dwarven appetite, as does the fact that they can go for longer periods without food and break these fasts with a feast. A dwarf would generally prefer one large meal less frequently than smaller meals more often. In reality, their net consumption of food is not going to be all that different from those of well-fed humans (more meat than peasants get, and smaller variety of vegetables, but that’s about it). Dwarves are meat-and-two-veg type eaters, with lots of spices. And lots of beer.

Beds

Dwarfish beds would also be at a relatively tall height (as I pointed out last time, chair seats and beds tend to be the same height). Softer beds are harder to get in and out of without knee and elbow flexibility, so they would also tend to be fairly firm, and quite possibly would not have anything we would regard as a mattress at all. What’s more, the Dwarven body is more strongly supported by their skeletal structure, and is less flexible, so they would not receive as much benefit from a soft bed as humans do. Flat slabs of rock covered with a blanket would probably suffice for the moderately well-off. For the less prosperous dwarf, though, there would be a cheaper alternative.

A couple of feet out from the wall, at about waist height, and running the length of the wall, Dwarves could inset a long beam in the same way as they do in their mineshafts. Add a second right next to the wall, and run a length of thick canvas over it, tied beneath through eyelets, probably with leather that was wet when it was tied. As the leather dries, it hardens and shrinks, pulling the canvas “beds” taut. Several Dwarves could easily be accommodated along the length of a wall on a single such ‘hammock’.

It’s easy to envisage a series of these simple canvas ‘bunk beds’ in a room, giving barracks-style accommodations.

Ladders

Before we can contemplate the possibility of multiple tiers of such bunks, we need to think about a ladder system optimized for a Dwarf. To use human ladder, you need to bend arms and legs`at the elbows and knees, respectively, and Dwarves don’t do either very well. What’s more, while Dwarven legs have greater side-to-side range than a human, their arms have less. After thinking about it for a while, I came to realize that stiff ladders are not the ideal solution for a Dwarf; instead, their best answer would be semi-independent pairs of half-width rope ladders, tethered to each other every twenty or thirty feet or so.

They would climb by placing one foot on such a ladder and then swinging that leg out wider, which effectively lifts the rest of the body upwards. Getting a new grip, with the opposite arm and a new foothold with the other leg, they can pull back the leg just used to climb, and repeat the process to the other side. This is all illustrated by the diagram, which I draw to confirm my own subjective notion that it would work. In fact, as the calculations show, it works surprisingly effectively – if “a” is the total height from fist stretched high overhead to bottom of foot (which is about 4/3 height for a human, and probably about the same for a dwarf), this technique permits up to 40% of that amount to be gained with every climbing step. This is so fast that the Dwarf would be held up by the time it takes to relax his grip – unless he used less than his whole hand to do so. Perhaps two fingers would be enough (given the Dwarves’ innate Iron Grip), which would give a climbing rate of 40% of 4/3 of the Dwarf’s height every 3 seconds or so. For a height of 5′, that works out to 0.9 feet per second (all right, 0.8888… if you want to get fussy), or 53 1/3 feet per minute. A 60′ climb: 67.5 sec. A 500′ climb? 562.5 sec, or 9 minutes 22.5 seconds.

A human would probably have to rest. I wouldn’t bet on the Dwarf needing to do so, though. You could even enhance this slightly by staggering the rungs a little.

The same trick would work with flexible metal ladders, which couldn’t be cut, and which a Dwarf could undoubtedly carry just as easily.

Things don’t look so rosy when it comes to a Dwarf attempting to use a human ladder. Not only would the rungs be farther apart, but humans tend to use solid ladders, as already pointed out. To climb such a ladder, the dwarf would need to lever himself out from the ladder, his arms fully stretched out before him. He would then need to swing up, using his arms, until his feet were above the next rung, enabling him to drop onto that rung. Repeat, That means that at best, the Dwarf’s climbing rate on such ladders would be one half of the human speed, because a human can use one leg to climb each rung rather than needing to position both feet on each rung before they could tackle the next. And to get even that pace, the ladder would need to be at a slightly greater angle to the wall than humans find convenient.

Climbing Ropes

Climbing ropes work just as well as their own custom ladders for a Dwarf. Their natural capability of using their full leg strength while keeping their feet together would enable them to swarm up such contrivances. It might look more awkward than it would for a human, but in terms of pace, there would be nothing wrong with it.

Stairs

The shorter the step height, the better a Dwarf is able to cope. But unlike Elves, Dwarves can’t use their toes as a substitute for the whole foot; so they will need smaller height with deeper steps and a flatter angle of rise. But steps would be rare in Dwarven cultures; their living spaces are enlarged from mines, and improved natural caverns, and that means that they would have flat spaces for the ore carts to take the detritus away. Instead of stairs, they would tend to employ slopes and ramps.

Tools

I’ve already touched on this a little. Dwarfish tools would tend to be designed for use at arm’s length. This is not as easy as it sounds – with one hand, and keeping both arms stiff, grip a pen or pencil like a chisel and make a hammering motion onto the end with your other hand. Be sure to angle the pen or pencil towards the direction to where the “hammer blows” are coming from. A lot of human dexterity in tool use comes from the elbows, something that might surprise people until they try this quick simulation.

Angled heads on the hammers and other tools, rather than at right angles to the handles, make a big difference. If you repeat the simulation offered above but don’t try angling the tool, assuming that the handle itself is angled above where it is gripped, you will find it a lot easier to accomplish.

Once you’ve accepted that principle, you start to realize that while their architecture might be rigidly straight lines, their tools (and especially the handles) would evolve to be anything but. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an old-style surgical kit, from – say – the early 20th century, with all it’s strangely curved tools, many of which we no longer use very often. I tried, but couldn’t find an image to illustrate the point. What’s more, specialist tools would evolve to do specific jobs that humans would employ a more universal tool to achieve, especially in the field of sculpture and stone-carving.

A human craftsman unfamiliar with Dwarven physiology would struggle to work out how to use these tools, Even if one did, or was familiar enough with the way a Dwarf works to understand the principles and the reasons for these tools to be the way they are, many of them would rely on the greater strength of a Dwarf to be effective. Human tools exist to maximize the delivery of effect from the tool, within the limits of shape of the tool; rather than evolving a differently-shaped tool to give more control with a chisel, we simply use a smaller chisel. Dwarfish tools would be full of oddly-angled heads, strangely curved and twisted shafts, and bends in the handles, and would be more concerned with the precise control of the tools. They would even have strange two-handed tools which required a second dwarf to swing the hammer that applies force through the tool. The reason for all this is that Dwarves have so much strength at their disposal that even a fraction of it can be too much for delicate and sensitive work.

Human tools, in comparison, would be like flint knives and stone axes; even in the hands of the most skilled work, the best that could be achieved using them, without a lifetime spent mastering their nuances, would be crude and brutish. It would perpetually astonish Dwarves that humans can achieve what they do in sculpture despite the primitiveness of their tools.

Shelves

Dwarves can’t bend very well. I make this point over and over because it affects almost everything that they do and have. Standing up, and keeping your arms stiff and straight, you will find that you struggle to reach shelves that are lower than mid-thigh in height. Dwarves know this problem well, and place their shelves accordingly. To a human, these are also reasonably convenient heights, so this effect of the Dwarven physiology often goes unremarked.

What does get noticed is that Dwarves have no problem reaching for things – and as a result, they build all their shelves very deeply, far more so than is usual for a human. Shelves three feet deep are not uncommon.

Storage Chests

Dwarves use the space beneath their shelves for chests. It might seem that they would have the same problems reaching down into these as they would reaching shelves that low, but this is not the case, thanks to a clever bit of Dwarven engineering: the Dwarven “Lifter”, illustrated above. With the Lifter depressed at the front – and note that the slope of the bottom of the typical Dwarven Chest makes this occur naturally – it can slide naturally into the space below the lip of the chest base. The Dwarf then puts his weight on the other end of the Lifter while holding onto the chest for stability. The bowed section of the lifter moves forward and up, constrained by the channel and slider that fits into it, and then lifts the chest. Clasps and chocks are then used to “lock” the lifter in place with the chest elevated as much as two feet into the air. (Note that typically, this operation is performed from both sides at once by different Dwarves). Within the chest, nesting sections can then be lifted out by handles that extend to the top of the chest.

Pole Implements

Dwarfish pole implements are much shorter than those employed by humans, because Dwarves have little rotational capacity in comparison, and because a lot of the utility of such implements stems from elbow movements. However, they are not without their uses, even in Dwarven society; Dwarves may have limited rotational capability, but they have great strength, and the width of their shoulders effectively adds to the momentum that can be imparted by the heads. A Dwarf using a pole-arm of any sort is incapable of doing anything but putting his full weight and force behind the blow, and that – combined with the sharpness of the expertly-crafted heads – makes Dwarven Pole-arms at least as effective as their human equivalents.

There are two ways such weapons and implements are employed, depending on their design.

Vertical Plane Motion

This treats the pole-arm as an axe. Typically, this is employed by hook-billed weapons; the Dwarf brings the heavy, reinforced, head down upon the target, then leans back sharply, using the hook to penetrate the foes’ back, pull legs out from under opponents, rip shields and weapons from their enemy’s hands, and so on. This is necessarily a small-unit maneuver, because it typically leaves the Dwarf conducting it flat on his back as well – but it leaves the enemy highly exposed and vulnerable to an ally’s attack.

Horizontal Plane Motion

Holding the hilt of the weapon tightly in the off-hand and across the body horizontally and parallel to the shoulders, the Dwarf turns to face to one side of his enemy (the side the head of the weapon points toward). His other hand is half-way down the shaft, and holding it only lightly. He then twists his entire body as far as he can, coiling it like a spring; all told, this is barely enough to get the weapon facing 90 degrees from the direction of his feet. When he can go no farther, he swings back the other way (i.e. moves the head in a horizontal circle in the direction of the enemy) as hard as he can. Half-way through the stroke, he takes a step with the weapon-side foot, planting his feet for maximum stability, and at the same time thrusts forward with the off-hand as hard as he can. This combines a sideways and a thrusting motion, which works very well for sharpened and serrated-headed pole-arms. The goal is to thrust the weapon into the space between torso and limb, then use it as a saw. This is often a very lightly-armored point, and so this tactic wins the Dwarf a lot of battles. It is especially effective against opponents who are larger than human-sized, where it naturally finds the inner legs; a lot of species have critical blood flows that run through this area. The Dwarf also has enough wrist flexibility that, if he deems it desirable, he can twist the head 90 degrees at the last moment and, by raising his hands over his head, he delivers the sawing attack upwards into the groin area of such creatures.

Dress & Clothing

Buttons are inconvenient to a Dwarf, because he can’t release his grip quickly, and has a great deal of trouble bending his elbows to get the hands into position to do up such fastenings. Instead, the favor clothing which can be lifted overhead and dropped or draped into position.

A sure sign of a Dwarf with great wealth or power is therefore wearing clothing with human-style fastenings, because a lone Dwarf is incapable of doing up such devices on his own; he needs (and can afford) an assistant to assist him in dressing. Similarly, while Plate Mail may be the most effective form of armor, it requires a second pair of hands to adjust and do up the many fastenings; only the most elite of warriors are worth the use of another potential combatant in this way.

Dwarven Boots are frequently double-layered affairs, with strips of metal sewn into the lining between the layers, and padded with heavy cloth. These double as last-ditch weapons, as well as protecting the dwarf from accidental strikes with weapons, mining implements, or falling rocks. A kick from a Dwarf so outfitted takes a lot of forgetting!

Bows and Crossbows

Bows are another form of weapon that seem unsuited to Dwarves, and yet they have managed to adapt them to their needs and abilities. The secret is in having an extremely heavy draw, and not trying to draw the weapon very far back. It’s not unusual for a Dwarven light bow to have a pull of two hundred pounds or more. The force required to draw the bow compensates for the shortage of the draw.

If composite bows have been discovered, these are ideal for Dwarves, and will quickly become ubiquitous. Until then, light bows and crossbows will be roughly equally represented (The arms of a Dwarf are strong enough to draw and cock a crossbow designed for a human to use with his foot).

Dwarves In Conclusion

Dwarves are a very different proposition to Elves. Dwarves maximize the potential of some capabilities at the expense of reductions in others; they use their physiology to compensate for the shortcomings associated with other advantages. Their preferred environment offers maximum utility to their advantages while minimizing most of their shortcomings; who needs the ability to swing weapons from side-to-side in passages that are too narrow for that, anyway?

Outside that environment, they are a complex blend of advantage and shortcoming. Overall, they are less suited to a life on the surface than Humans, or Elves, but they are better suited to battle – which is one of the few reasons they will actually enter an above-ground environment with any enthusiasm.

The fact that they know their strengths and weaknesses, and have developed enhancements to take advantage of the former and reduce the impact of the latter, only makes them more dangerous. Think of them as small-sized but unusually broad Terminators and you won’t be far wrong. No matter what happens, they – absolutely – will – not – stop…

So, there it is at last. I hope it was worth the wait!

On an entirely different and separate note, I often get asked to consider promoting various kickstarter projects and other products. Sometimes I can’t do these for time reasons – the notice may be too short for example – and sometimes I can’t trial things because they require hardware or software that I can’t access.

Here are a number of such recent requests, for whatever they are worth:

Sheet Yourself 1.2 sounds really cool. It reportedly lets you design your own character sheets for your campaign, save them as a template, and do all sorts of other cool things. Unfortunately, it’s an App and I don’t have anything that runs apps. So I can’t review it properly, all I can do is point readers at it and let you decide for yourselves if you are interested:

Realm works is a world building tool that is supposed to work with any RPG setting. I really want to try this out, but until I can get my main PC up and running, I don’t have the hardware. As soon as I can do so, a full review will be forthcoming. In the meantime, you can learn a little about it here: .

Rollable d4s from Leo Atreides is a kickstarter campaign that has already made it’s minimum goal. These look really good for younger kids and those with reduced vision, having large and easily-read numbers. The design makes it obvious that they really will roll, and the price is quite reasonable, so take a look: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/263612668/rollable-4-sided-dice.

Have a great week everyone!

Although ergonomics is relatively young as a science, humans have been optimizing their environment and their equipment for as long as we’ve been making tools. This has influenced everything from the design of chairs to beds to doors to weapons and tools. And that means that all these things should be just a little different when considering different body proportions and musculature.

This is one of those little things that – if applied consistently – can greatly add to the verisimilitude of a campaign, regardless of whether it is fantasy or sci-fi. If the GM’s investment in time is small enough, the returns on that time investment can be substantial. This article is intended to show you how to minimize that investment while giving the maximum bang for your metaphoric buck. Most of the advice within will deal with the simpler problem of humanoids, to establish the general principles. At the end, I’ll touch on non-humanoids and how their unique anatomies might be reflected in their ergonomics.

The Two fundamental factors

There are two factors that are at the heart of applied ergonomics, so far as a simplified understanding of the topic is concerned. They are proportions and degrees of motion.

Proportions

Proportions are all-important to humanoids. If a race is humanoid, but short or taller than typical humans, that doesn’t mean that their proportions scale to human equivalents; in fact, they shouldn’t do so. The differences can be subtle but profound.

What are normal proportions? How do you find out? The answer lies in the subject of “How to draw comics” – there are multiple books and even a few websites and infographics out there. After a fairly quick Google search, I’ve selected four pages that will tell you what you need to know (I’ve chosen four so that if one goes dark, you should still be able to find the info):

• Webcomic Alliance – Anatomy 101, Part 1
• Techintersect – Superhero Proportions
• Making Comics dot com – Standard Proportions Of The Human Body
• Tuts plus – Human Anatomy Fundamentals: Basic Body Proportions

I’ve put these in rough order of usefulness, but each one offers information that the others don’t cover as succinctly, so check them all out.

There’s some interesting supplementary information at the Wikipedia page on the subject but, for a change, Wikipedia doesn’t seem to include the basic information.

Degrees Of Motion

The technical term for this subject is Kinesiology, but it’s a very complicated and technical subject – even trying to read and understand the relevant Wikipedia pages (Kinesiology and Anatomical terms of motion) – which don’t even specify the information we want, just define what it is – is far more work than it is worth for these purposes.

So, instead of technical references, we need something quicker and more practical. Like ourselves, and what our own bodies can do – and, presumably, how our standard tools, utensils and furniture have been optimized to accommodate those capabilities.

The Process

So, I went looking for data and came back with a 3-step procedure. For each item to be “xeno-fitted”:

• Analyze the relevant human proportions and how they relate to the design & function of the object;
• Analyze the motions and kinesthetics of the design and function of the object;
• Apply the variant factors that apply to the xeno-anatomy of the non-human life form to that understanding to identify the ways in which the object will be different for that particular race or species.

Of course, once we’ve done one, it becomes easier to do the next, because there is going to be a certain degree of overlap from one object to the next. After doing a few, it is possible to generalize into some basic principles that describe the majority of tools, furniture, etc, used by that race, relative to their human equivalents.

An Example: Elves

Elves are typically described as either tall, thin, and fair or shorter than humans, with more child-like proportions. Simply to contrast with my chosen second example, I’ve decided (as I usually do) to go with the first choice for this example.

Most GMs, if they think about it all, will assume that you simple scale a human up while keeping the width about the same (Elf 1 in the illustration). Elf 1 is a human at 105% height and 75% width. But that’s not the only way to do it. Elf 2 has a figure, still 75% wide, but with forearms, lower legs, hands, and feet all 10% longer than normal human. The result is only fractionally taller than a human – perhaps an inch or so of average height. Elf 3 is also 75% wide, but has the torso and legs 112% of normal and a little additional slope on the shoulders, and results in a figure that’s a full half-head taller than a human. On this figure, everything but the head is 75% wide. The result is that the figure looks like a small giant next to the other variations. It looks more like a human with giantism than what we want an elf to look like.

So let’s go with Elf 2.

Chairs

Let’s think about chairs. The optimum height for a chair is the height from the floor to the back of the knee, so that the feet are flat to the floor. Assuming our human is about 5’6″ feet in height, and 7.5 heads in proportion, that gives us a scale of 1 head = 8.8″, big hair notwithstanding. Our elf’s knees are about 1/3 of a head higher than those of a human, or almost 3 inches. If an elf sits in a human chair, the back of his knees will be three inches off the chair base – which is about as much as most people can actually lift their knees while in an upright sitting position. Try it, and you’ll find it acutely uncomfortable. Elves would naturally splay their legs out in front of them while sitting in such a chair, a posture that humans regard as extremely casual. The legs would also tend to open naturally, which generally means – in terms of human kinesthetics – that they find the person they are looking at to be attractive, and which tends to make the person so sitting look more attractive and open to those perceiving them. It’s also an indicator (in human terms) of a certain moral looseness, shall we say.

At the very least, Elves would appear casual and friendly in a human setting.

Elven chairs, on the other hand, would be at roughly the height of slightly-short kitchen stools, with tall backs. A human sitting in one would find the back of his foot off the ground by about three inches, his legs dangling before him. They would have to consciously lift themselves into place to sit on one. Just while sitting next to a chair, just hold your hand flat about three inches above it to get some idea of the difference.

Tables

The ideal height for a table is roughly one head taller than a chair base, perhaps a little more or a little less – call it “Give or take an inch”. That’s all about the length of the torso while sitting, less the length of the upper arms, so that the hands are at 90 degrees to the body. This is not the perfect height for exerting force, but it is the perfect height for detailed work like writing, eating, and so on.

Let’s now apply our determinations of Elf proportions. Elf 2 has a normal human torso, and normal human forearms, so the height above the base of a chair will be exactly the same as it is for human furniture – one head. But Elven chairs should have legs three inches taller than the human equivalent, and that means that their ideal table and desk height will also be three inches taller.

Go ahead – pick the nearest table and hold your palm flat, about three inches above it. Lift your elbows so that they are also flat relative to the palms of your hands. That will give you a notion of what it would be like for a human to use an elven table – doable, but not very comfortable. Now hold your hand flat about three inches below the surface of the table. That’s what a human table would be like for an elf. Again, it’s manageable – but far from comfortable.

Now do it sitting down and lifting your feet about three inches off the floor. I don’t know about you, but that puts my hands below the height of my knees by some margin. This just gets better and better, an elf might (sarcastically) think. Again, the elf has no choice but to slouch and splay his legs out before him when using human furniture. On a typical modern dining table, that probably means that he’s playing footsies with his neighbor on the far side of the table, and fairly aggressively doing so. Add the renowned good looks of the Elf and he’s probably sending invitations that are likely to be well-received without even realizing it. Humans who expect to receive elven guests would do well to have a table that’s an extra foot or two wide!

Beds

The ideal bed is one that is at the same height as a chair. By now, you know what to do next, but I’ll spell it out anyway – go to your bed and hold your hand about three inches above it! Think about what it would be like getting into a bed that tall. I’ve actually slept in one that almost matches (it was about 2 inches taller than normal) – it’s a little awkward, and you feel a lot higher off the ground than usual, not just the small amount you might expect!

Now hold your hand three inches below the top of the bed. Elves would practically have to fall into a human bed, or lower themselves very gingerly. More likely, they would kneel on the bed, then maneuver themselves into position before lowering themselves down.

Workbenches

Workbenches are all about exerting force while standing. The optimum height is roughly somewhere between the height of the hips, and the height of the shoulders less the height of the arms when they are held at a 45-degree angle downwards.

If you stand up with one arm to your side and use the other to note the height of your hips on that arm, you will find it almost exactly midway along your forearm. A forearm is also roughly two hands in length, you will note. The arms themselves – measured from the shoulders – are about three heads in length, about the same distance as neck-to-groin.

Ideal workbench height is about groin plus half-a-head, give or take an inch or two. Locating the groins on our illustration above for both human and Elf 2, and adding about half-a-head, we can see that there isn’t going to be very much difference in height between the two.

Workbench tools

However, a greater proportion of the arms length is used for forearm, by a considerable amount. If you hold your wrist up to your shoulder, bending at the elbow, you’ll find that the wrist is at roughly the same height as the armpit. Our workbench tools – chisels, screwdrivers, etc (hammers excepted) – are designed so that when we grip them, the working end of the tool is about as far from the wrist as the tip of our fingers would be, or a little more. (Hold a screwdriver in one hand and the other hand palm flat against it so that the wrists line up, and you’ll see what I mean). The forearms of our elf are about half-a-head longer than those of a human – call it about 4 inches. So, to see what it’s like for an elf to have such long forearms, try holding the tool – or a pen or pencil – four inches further back up the handle than you normally would. Now pretend to use the tool while holding it in that position, disregarding any grip issues. Maneuver it around a bit.

You’ll find that movements are exaggerated in range of motion quite substantially. It’s actually much harder to be delicate, but much easier to make broad sweeping motions. Now, still holding your tool in the “elven position”, with elbow bent, bring the tip of the tool to a position directly in front of you, as you might for delicate work. You’ll find that your elbow is further back than you expected, and that the tip of the tool tends to be closer to your eyes. You naturally find yourself working closer up.

This is both a good and a bad thing. It means that such delicate work is naturally easier to do (grip problems being ignored) but that any slip is more likely to result in a facial injury.

To optimize tool design for use by an elf, the gap between handle and point would be about four inches shorter than it is in human tools. This also aids greatly in delicacy of work, but makes it harder to exert physical force to any great degree. (At this point you can probably see why I chose the body proportions that I did – they naturally produce so many Elven characteristics).

These longer forearms would also give them greater natural leverage, especially if their longer fingers gave them a tighter grip. It is likely that their handles would be fatter than the human equivalents, which would also aid in precision craftsmanship.

The leverage effect will also be all the more important when I consider the next item on my list.

Hammers

If you have a hammer handy, pick it up and then slide your grip from it’s natural point back about four inches (holding the head in your other hand so that you don’t drop it). In most cases, your hand will have slid clear off the handle by an inch or so. To get a feel for how a hammer will behave in an elf’s hands, we need a substitute. The best one that I can find is one of those half-length folding umbrellas. Gripping one near the end, the same way that you would a hammer, try imitating a hammer’s action – don’t use any force, we don’t want to break it. The weight, at a greater distance from the hand, makes the hammer clumsy and unwieldy. You can deliver much greater force, because the hammer head (once moving) will be at a greater distance from the elbow, and so (for a given angle of movement) will be moving faster and have more momentum. In fact, since the circumference of a circle is 2 x pi x radius, the increase in hammer force will be roughly 6.25 times the ratio of the radii – in other words, the ratio of lengths of the forearms. Since the forearms are defined as 110% normal length, that gives us a hammer force of almost 7 times what a human produces, for the same amount of effort – and, probably, 1/7th the control.

To compensate, we need the hammers to be smaller and lighter – one 7th the weight, to be exact. A standard claw hammer weighs 16 ounces, according to Wiki Answers. So we’re talking about a 2.3-ounce hammer, or about 65 grams – about the same as a bar of soap, a large egg, or a slightly small metal serving spoon (most of those are 100-120g in weight).

No hammer so light is going to stand up to the punishment of actual use. Some of the weight can be saved (and some precision restored) by making the handle shorter – say, to about 4 inches in length – and some can be saved by making the head about half it’s usual size (by volume). The rest simply has to be coped with by hitting more gently with it – “tapping with great force”. “Many taps make light work”?

Putting things together with nails is, nevertheless, never going to be a popular elven technique.

Hoes, Rakes, Brooms, and other long implements

Most poled implements stand somewhere between chest high and slightly taller than head high. Chest high is the ideal for control, because it places the gripping position at about the same height as the human center of gravity, while above head height keeps the head of the implement above the head of the user when the item is being carried – an important feature for safety. The sharper and more dangerous the head of the tool, the more likely it is to be elevated well above head-height – even to the point of attaching an intermediate handle position so that the implement can be controlled with one hand and swung with force with the other, as is the case with the standard scythe, favorite of figures of death.

Our elf stands about human height, so the maximum won’t be that much different. When you examine the figures closely, though, you will notice that the center of the chest is perhaps an inch or so higher, and therefore so will be the center of gravity. That means that the minimum length is going to be longer by that inch or so. The power when using such tools comes from the shoulders (try swinging a broom around and you’ll see what I mean) while the control comes from the arms, especially the forearms. The overall mass of the user also makes a difference, and here our elf will lose out to a human.

A human using an elven implement, especially one designed for two-handed use, would find that the balance was all wrong. The effect is the same as having too heavy a head on the implement. Elves would struggle to match human effectiveness in terms of raw power – but would have much greater control. Because of the longer forearms, any mid-length grip would be closer to the head of the implement – probably a couple of inches too far for the human to reach. That would necessitate shifting the upper grip position closer to the head, making the implement less effective and more unbalanced. Human tools tend not to have any grips, or (where they do) to have those grips be smaller in diameter than the surrounding material – you create your implement and then carve the grip out of the material. The grips are indented. Elves, with their longer fingers, actually need the grips to be rounder and wider than those of a human, and to save weight, the rest of the shafts would be smaller – first, because they don’t deliver as much force, and so don’t need the implement to be as robust, and second, because they don’t deliver as much effect, and so will have to wield the implement more times to achieve the same level of work, and so want it to be lighter than the human equivalent. The general principle once again is: more strokes, more precisely and delicately applied.

Curiously, when you think about it for a while, you will find that the best way of thinking about an elf using a human implement, you will find that for completely different reasons, they would have very similar complaints. The balance point would be all wrong – the mid-position hand would be too far away from the head. The result is once again analogous to having an over-sized head on the tool!

Steps

Is there a set of stairs anywhere near you? If you put one foot on an upward step, you will find that humans have steps that are most of the length of a human foot deep, and that your thigh is at a little less than a 45-degree angle – anything more than that we find too steep, anything less than about 30 degrees is strangely shallow. Angle and thigh length therefore dictate the normal dimensions of human staircase steps.

Now, let’s think about our elf. The thighs are about the same length, but to set foot on the next step, their longer calves mean that they have to raise their thighs to a higher angle. The difference is about half a head, or four inches. Get some books and sit them on the step (cover them with something if you don’t want to mark them) until the step is about four inches taller than it was. You’ll probably find that the top is now only about an inch below the lip of next step up! Put your foot flat on the heightened step and notice how uncomfortably steep it now seems. An elf going up a human staircase of normal dimensions would find that it was very steep and would also be far more likely to trip.

Elven steps would be only about an inch, perhaps two, in height – less than half those of the human standard. Because they would want to keep the steps practical in total length, that would require the depth to be smaller – again, about half. This is quite manageable, most stepladders have steps of that depth; so humans would take elven steps two at a time and with only the balls of their feet supported. That’s fine unless you are carrying a heavy weight – when trying to proceed on tippy-toes is most uncomfortable. The unbalancing effect of the weight doesn’t seem like it would be the equivalent of carrying twice as much weight – I suspect that it would be more like an extra 40% weight, but have no math to prove it. Elves would have lots of small steps that they could scamper up; if a human tried to match an elf’s pace up one of their staircases, they would probably trip.

Clothing

Human clothing of the right length would have sleeves and trouser legs that were too short for an elf. They would also be very loose on the body – wide sleeves, etc – as though they were several sizes too big.

Elven clothing, if bought to length, would not fit on any but the skinniest human. Instead, to get clothes that fit, you would need to get clothes that were considerably larger.

Our elf’s horizontal dimensions are 75% of those of a human. What does that really mean? The obscure image to the right should help to explain it.

Viewed from above, the human body is more or less oval in shape, especially once the shoulders are allowed for. That’s the blue oval and the outer pair of yellow ovals for the shoulders. There’s some error, but it’s close enough. If our elves were 75% narrower across the shoulders but the same width front to back, you get the red oval. If they are also reduced 75% front-to-back, you get the green oval and the two inner yellow shoulders. I suspect that the reality would be somewhere in between – say, the average of the red and green ovals. The ratio of the areas should give us the ratio of clothing size.

So:

• blue oval = pi x A x B in area.
• Red oval area = pi x 0.75 x A in area.
• Green oval area = pi x 0.75 x a x 0.75 x b = 0.5625 x pi x a x b.
• Average of Red and Green ovals = 0.5 x (pi x 0.75 x a x b) + (0.5625 x pi x a x b)
  = 0.5 x (pi x a x b x (0.5625+0.75))
  = 0.5 x (pi x a x b x 1.3125)
  = 0.65625 x pi x a x b.
• ratio of blue oval to average of red & green ovals = 1/0.65625 = approx 1.5. Which should have been more-or-less obvious from the start.

So a human who normally bought a size 12 shirt would have to buy a size 18 Elven Shirt to get it to fit his chest. That means that the arm length would also be that of a size 18 shirt – roughly 1/2″ longer per size increase, or about 4″ too long. The same goes for the pants, except it’s closer to 3/4″ per size increase, or about 6″ too long.

Either you have the sleeves cut down, or you have them made with tight collars on the sleeves – not an imposition because the elven wrist is the same size as the human – and have very loose, billowy sleeves. The same goes for pants. A very definite style, and the sort of thing that high society types would go all ga-ga for.

And that same measurement discrepancy – 4 inches and 6 inches – is how short the sleeves and legs of human clothing would be if bought to fit the elvish chest. The same ratio applies both ways – Elves would need to buy 1.5 times larger than that indicated by their shoulder measurements to get human sleeves of the right length, meaning that the chest and waist sizes would be that much too large. Next time you’re near a clothing shop, duck in and take look at something eight sizes too large for you!

Wrapping up

I wanted to now go into another example – I was going to use Dwarves, making the assumption that they were shorter, heavier, broader, and had less flexibility in bending at the waist, and in particular focusing on how these changes would influence their architecture, their mining tools, and the mineshafts that they create, so as to demonstrate the impact of the second factor (degrees of motion) on their furniture, but I’m completely out of time.

If there’s enough demand, I’ll do Dwarves some other time – but even without that, these examples show how quick and easy it can be. None of them took more than 3 minutes – and, if I exclude the clothing, that drops to under one minute – to think about and decipher.

It took a lot longer to explain what I was doing and write it up. In total, all of the above amounts to rather less than ten minutes work (less description and illustration).

In return for that time investment, Elves have become far more concrete in their visualization. I can state general principles about elvish architecture, about elvish clothing, about elvish tools, about why they are such good craftsmen – and why even a human familiar with the principles would take time to master Elvish tools, and never be as good with them as their creators. I can describe Elves in a human setting – and justify both their apparent attitudes and the way the general public perceive them, purely in terms of their anatomical structure. I can also describe what humans would experience in an elvish workshop, or an Elvish council setting. The furniture and tools they use have become unique and characteristically theirs.

The anatomy fits the cultural profile from multiple sources, and the tools fit the anatomy, and the tools explain and justify that cultural profile. So take a few minutes – and these simple principles – and apply a little ergonomics to your races. Start with the PC races, and expand out from there as necessary.

Okay, I messed up – I misremembered the formula for the circumferance of a circle. Don’t bother looking for the error, it’s now been corrected – and it only impacted one section of the analysis, anyway.

Why this is appearing now: As a follow-up to last week’s article on Dreams in RPGs, I have decided to crack open my archives and share the synopsis of an adventure from my Zenith-3 campaign that is all about Dreams. This adventure was supposed to be played on April 20, 2002, and we got started on that day – but a colossal bust-up between two of my players destroyed any hope of playing it and almost leading to the end of the campaign. So much player knowledge was revealed by one of those two to the rest that the adventure itself was ruined. After being persuaded by the other players that they wanted to continue with the campaign, I decided that the only way to salvage the situation was to write it up in narrative form. The consensus of my players after reading it was that it would have been a lot of fun to play, but that it definitely would not have been playable under the circumstances at the time and without those two players. You’ll note that I’m being deliberately vague about the confrontation and the circumstances. There is still quite a bit of ill-will surrounding the events and I don’t want to stir old soup up again. Suffice it to say that things happened the way they did, in part, because one of the players was on the verge of a nervous collapse, something not realized by anyone until months or more later. Most of the graphics that I used to illustrate the original plot are not available for me to reuse in a public forum, so you will have to live without them. Sorry. This will also have the feeling of seeing a mid-season episode of a TV series, having missed all the earlier parts. Not much to be done about that either. Finally, because of it’s sheer length (effectively 3 short stories plus an article), I wasn’t able to spend as much time as I might have liked tidying things up, especially shifts from present-tense to past-tense. Sorry :(

(“not played” 20/4/02)

NB: The following scenario has been extensively fictionalized. If events had been played in-game, a brief synopsis would be enough to remind everyone of what transpired, but you can’t use a synopsis to remind people of events that weren’t experienced. That makes the following much larger than it would have been. Any character misinterpretations are entirely the referee’s fault. Every personality trait conveyed is either a trait identified on the relevant character sheet(s), is a logical extrapolation of what’s on the character sheet (allowing for the circumstances), or is a horrible stuff-up. I apologize in advance for any of those last items.

An Angry Breakfast

7:15AM, one week after the events at the Ullar Youth Camp. Zenith-3 were due to have a team meeting at Eight. Spider is back in D-Prime picking up a few things he forgot (and visiting his wife); th eteam get the impression that he’s going to be away a lot of the time. Is the team ready for a part-time mentor?? Jimmy is still convalescing, though most members suspect that he’s trying for St Barbara’s sympathy and some TLC. His para-metabolism has still not stabilized.
    One by one, the members gathered for breakfast. Blackwing was first, stumping grumpily into the kitchen and making a beeline for the coffee as usual. He was followed by St Barbara, who took one look at her Gargoyllian ally and muttered under her breath in Danish. Glory and Dragon’s Claw followed at about the same time from different parts of the house, bickering heatedly over whose turn it was to do the dishes. Breakfast settled down to a sullen silence over angry glares. The team were cleaning the table – still without speaking to one another – when Karma practically bounced into the room, bubbling over with enthusiasm for the start of a new day. Unlike the rest of the team, she is a genuine morning person. In response to her unthinking greetings, St Barbara uttered a weary “Morning,” DC maintained a stoic silence, ignoring her completely, Glory groaned, Oracle winced, and Blackwing merely Snarled. “No need to take my head off,” replied Karma, who had been learning the local vernacular with reasonable felicity.
    “Sorry,” replied St Barbara, I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m not in a very good mood. I almost wish some bad guy would raise his pointed head to give me something to pound on for a while.”
    Her reply was greeted with an unhappy buzz of sullen conversation, as it became clear that St Barbara was not the only member to have had their repose disturbed over the last few nights. At that point, Mist appeared in the kitchen with a soft boomph of expanding air. “Zenith-3, we have a problem,” she announced with a haggard and careworn expression. “Someone is trying to control our minds….”

The Stuff Of Nightmares

The team reconvened in the meeting room within their base. Mist explained that she had taken a break to try and resolve some personal issues. A few days ago, she began experiencing nightmares during meditation, despite her people’s natural resistance to mental interference. At first, these seemed to be an outgrowth of the problems that had led to her sudden sabbatical, but they had been growing both more extreme and more unlikely. “I may look human, but in many ways my species are very different,” she concluded. “We do not sleep as you do, but instead spend a period of time in meditation. We do not dream. We do not have nightmares. And, as in this case, we are aware of, and resistant to, external forces that seek to interfere with our thoughts.”
    Oracle then demanded details, admitting that he had also been having troubling dreams, and that (despite his near-total recall), he had been unable to remember specifics. In reply, Mist was forced to admit that she had also been unable to remember the exact content of the nightmares, something else that had troubled her. Oracle proceeded to give a quick explanation of how memory works, concluding by pointing out that since nothing was ever truly forgotten, it should be possible to raise the memories that were missing through hypnotism or some similar technique. Karma suggested that probing the team’s minds with her mental forensics abilities should be at least as effective as any hypnotism.
    Oracle replied that this was not enough. For his analytic capabilities to be able to extract the maximum information from the recalled memories, he would have to be able to compare minute specifics from vision to vision. Furthermore, since he did not hold a monopoly on expertise within the team, the others should also perceive the visions – someone else might see something he did not. “And besides,” added St Barbara, “If something is bothering my teammates I want to know about it – nothing can be fixed if we don’t know what the problems are.”
    With the decision made, it was time to consider who should go first, and in what order. St Barbara was inclined to be the first victim, but was persuaded by Oracle that Mist’s awareness of the visions being imposed from the outside might furnish valuable clues in subsequent visions. To avoid clouding his objectivity, he should be last. Outside of that, it probably didn’t make a lot of difference, he added. A quick game of paper-rock-scissors later, and the sequence of mind scans was established.

The Arcane Warrior’s vision revealed that she had been struggling to retain her identity and personal focus in this world of technology. Few of the team remembered that she came what was essentially a medieval culture, and certainly no allowances were made by the team for this fact. She been chosen to enter this world because of her adaptability, but nevertheless she came from a simpler existence and the impact of the technological revolution on the social values she revered had been overwhelming, and had reached the point where she had serious doubts about her ability to continue as a member of the team. She not only felt herself losing touch with her inner self, she felt that continuing along her present path would lead to a betrayal of everything her principles represented. The nightmare itself was a trifle more oblique.
    In it, Mist was on trial for her life, accused of being contaminated by the outside world. She was arguing her defense when the High Judge and Executioner, a big brute of a man, announced that he could prove the allegations, reached across and ripped off part of her skin to reveal the clockwork mechanism underneath. Mist’s Advocate and legal advisor jumped to her feet to protest, clover-green with fury, only for the Chairman to backhand the advocate violently, hurling her across the room. Mist was too busy bewailing her circumstances to do anything about it, barely noticing as the Judge began to grow bigger, heavier, and stronger. He laughed at her pitiful state, and taunted her. Gradually becoming aware of her surroundings, Mist realized that no-one else in the Court Chambers had moved an inch, standing as stationary as statues. The Judge, now almost 9 feet tall, seized the huge egg-shaped gem which was being used as a Bench, and gloated, “You want to earn your life?! Well, here it is, I control it, and you’ll never get to smash it now! The Power will be mine, Forever!”
    As with most nightmares, there were elements that did not make sense, but right up until the moment that Mist became aware of the Bench being a glowing, 1 meter tall green gem, there was at least some internal consistency. At that point, the nightmare became totally irrational….

The Martial Artist of Zenith-3 has, for a long time now, questioned his value to the team. Simply put, against the threats they have faced, he has often been as effective as a snowball in a smelter. He has often felt out of his depth, leading him – at least early in the team’s existence – to perform unnecessary heroics in an attempt to prove himself – both to himself and to his team-mates. The nightmare of Dragon’s Claw not only reflected these long-standing anxieties, but also the very real concern that he has seen before him the opportunity to fulfill the purpose of his existence – but that the opportunity is in the hands of others without his sense of morals, purpose, and determination.
    The dream began with DC in Washington, trying to convince a panel of bureaucrats to keep the Ullar Academy open. This was the fifteenth subcommittee in charge of something or other that he had given his spiel to, and from everything he had heard, this was the one with the real power to say yes or no.
    After an impassioned plea, by which the subcommittee seemed completely unmoved, DC turned to those who had attended the meeting with him – students from the Academy, present to argue it’s cause. The first student to address the committee was a charming teenager with pale skin. She began to speak, hesitantly and nervously, stuttering and stammering, and getting greener from fear with every mispronounced word. She was the color of clover when the Chairman, a big bruiser of a man, grew impatient and stood up, towering over the girl, and backhanded her, violently hurling her across the room. DC immediately went to his weapons even though he knew attacking the Chairman meant the death of his dreams, but also knowing that the ideals that those dreams embodied permitted nothing less.
    Combat ensued, as the Chairman grew bigger, heavier, and stronger. Despite the increase in size of his target, the Chairman easily deflected or dodged all but one blow in three, which bounced off ineffectually. The chairman laughed at DC’s “pitiful efforts”, belittling his ability to run a girl guide troop, never mind a militaristic academy. Several other members of the subcommittee were hurt through collateral damage from deflected Shuriken or Sword blades, but none reacted. In fact, they were as immobile as statues.
    Suddenly DC noticed that the head of one had been staved in, revealing him to be a hollow dummy. The Chairman took advantage of DC’s moment of distraction to seize the huge egg-shaped gem which the committee was using for a desk, and announced, gloatingly, “You want the funding for your summer camp?! Well, here it is, I control it, and You’ll never get to smash it now! The Power will be mine, Forever!”
    Once again, the dream began so realistically, so plausibly, that DC had not have been able to discern the difference between vision and reality. By the time things began to grow outrageous, he was so consumed with emotion and his focus on the battle, that he completely failed to notice. Even though awake, his expression following the replay spoke volumes about the levels of fear and doubt that the dream raised within him.

The contents of the Blonde-haired team leader’s nightmare were reasonably predictable to anyone who knew her, given recent developments. Her battles with self-confidence, and her protectiveness toward bystanders are both traits well-known to anyone within the team, and she has not been backward in expressing her concerns over the possible consequences of Jimmy’s Infatuation with her and the behavior that has resulted.
    Her vision began with St Barbara flying over Boston from nowhere in particular, and waving to her fans, on her way to be elected the person in charge of the Zenith-3 Christmas Club or something else she didn’t really want to be in charge of. As she passed a downtown intersection she spotted a Costumed Brick towering over a teenaged girl in the street. Without warning, the costumed criminal blasted his green-skinned victim with some sort of energy beam, hurling her through the window of a somewhat seedy looking bar. He then laughed, arrogantly, before grabbing a passing Buick containing a family of four and throwing it toward the pseudo-Irish tavern.
    Reacting quickly, St Barbara grabbed it with a pair of force-field pincers and began to set it down gently. While she was doing so, a child dressed in tights and a cape that at least 8 sizes too large for him leaped out of an alley and exclaimed with a dramatic flourish, “Never Fear, My Saint! I, Jimmy Fingers, will save you from —” by which time, the Bad Guy had grabbed Jimmy around the waist and was in the middle of bringing his back down HARD against the villain’s stiffened knee.
    St Barbara was caught in a quandary – save the family in the car, save Jimmy, or try to do both. Quickly she ran through her repertoire of powers and came to the conclusion that only quick action would give her any chance. Dropping the car, she materialized a force-field wedge between Jimmy and the villain’s leg, so that the would-be hero slid unharmed to the ground, then extended the wedge so that it became one leg of a pedestal, which the car safely landed on.
    The next few minutes were predictable, as Jimmy kept trying to help, and trying to show off, and making matters worse while putting the gathering crowd (why must there always be a gathering crowd!? St Barbara found herself wondering), at risk. St Barbara was kept so busy protecting everyone else that she had little opportunity to take the fight to the Villain, who shrugged off the few attacks she was able to make. Bad Guy (identifiable from the “BG” monogram on his tights) ignored her, concentrating his aggression on Jimmy and the bystanders, some of whom started taking bets on who would win, whether or not her costume would get ripped off in the course of the battle, and which of their number would be the first to die.
    Eventually, Bad Guy’s first victim awakened, and crawled through the debris of the tavern. When she was only a few meters away, she limply tossed a large gem at his feet, shouting “All Right! Here! Just stop hurting people!”
    Because of her injuries, the throw was off-target, with the gem landing at St Barbara’s feet, distracting her for a split-second – just long enough for Bad Guy to grab Jimmy and tear him in two before grabbing the gem with a force field. Jimmy groaned once and murmured weakly, “Kiss me and make it better, my Saint…” before stiffening abruptly. With the gem firmly in his grasp, the villain then crowed, “Mine at last!!! All Mine!!! You’ll never get to smash it now, St Bathetic! The Power is mine, Forever!”
    As the replayed dream ended, St Barbara commented, “I’m detecting a similarity of elements here. “There were a couple of differences, though. It never went completely crazy like the others – there were unexplained elements, sure, but nothing completely loopy. I wonder if that’s a difference in me or a reflection of the absurd behavior of the Jimmy-figure?”
    “I think the Jimmy/Bad Guy combination was loopy enough that when things went really strange it just seemed like more of the same,” replied Karma. “In any case, it’s time for our next victim…”

Blackwing’s nightmare was a little different from those the team had already experienced in that, at first, it did not appear to be a nightmare at all.
    It found him back in police uniform. As a favor to the Boston PD, he was checking out a cop who they suspected of being more than a little corrupt. The Gargoyle member of the team had trailed his suspect to a rat-infested warehouse. A quick change of shape later, and Blackwing was perched on the rafters, where he observed a meeting between the suspect cop and a young girl in a green dress and woolen pullover. “Got your insurance payment? Hate to see anything happen to that old man of yours,” the bent cop drawled.
    The girl meekly handed over a briefcase, and began edging away. The cop opened the case and riffled quickly through the cash. “Wait a minute, where’s the rest of it!?” he bellowed. The girl turned and started to run, but the Cop stretched his arm toward her about 6 meters and threw her against the third-floor ceiling with a heavy, wet sound.
    Blackwing has a deep hatred of police corruption, and he had leaped from his perch before he fully realized what he was doing. He crash-landed on his target from 4 stories up, letting gravity furnish his opening assault with a little added emphasis. A brawl ensued, with the cop proving almost as strong as Blackwing, and possessing a super-soft pliable surface that gave way before the hero’s every blow like taffy. The villain’s police uniform was quickly shredded, revealing an SID costume underneath.
    It was obvious that Blackwing was not holding back – if the rogue cop got killed, that was just too bad. The warehouse was soon a ruin, as were several surrounding warehouses (he did take the time to catch the girl on her way back down in the collapsing building).
    As the battle raged, Blackwing’s fellow team members emerged onto the battle scene, where they stood around carping and criticizing his every move, and making no effort whatsoever to help subdue the villain. Ultimately, the battle ended up somewhere near where it began. The bent cop started toward the girl, seemingly intent on using her as a hostage/shield, when the villain spotted something the girl must have dropped either on her way up or on her way back down. It was a large gem, and he grabbed it in his over-sized meat-hooks right away. “I knew that bitch was holding out on me! but now it’s mine at last!!! All Mine!!! You’ll never get to smash it now, you pathetic freak!! The Power is mine, Forever!”
    “Interesting,” said Glory. “That wasn’t a nightmare at first – more an action-adventure serial based on Blackie’s hatred of Corruption, and his natural concerns about SID low-lives scurrying into concealment within the ranks of the other branches of law-enforcement. But as soon as the fight actually started, it started to change – the helplessness, the cartoon-like distortions of anatomy, the rest of us doing nothing but criticize, they’re all variations on classic nightmare elements. Also, this dream didn’t get as out-and-out weird as the others we’ve seen – the Girl wasn’t green, she was just WEARING green. Even at the very end, it was fairly straightforward. That would cross out the ‘purloined letter’ theory of why St Barbara’s nightmare didn’t get so weird. It looks more like something to do with the personalities of the dreamers to me.”

Glory’s nightmare was one of the most terrifying to date, raising a number of issues that the super-heroine has clearly been avoiding, and revealing more to her teammates about her background than she has so far admitted. It actually opened as a very happy dream, with Glory being reunited with her family – “all is forgiven, everything is hunky dory”, yada-yada-yada. Oracle immediately recognized both – Glory’s father was the man in the Administration who had actually created the SID (as an elite military unit similar in concept to the Navy Seals), and her mother was a well-known charity socialite, both so upper-crust they positively flaked. It was also clear that in real life, Glory was more than a little estranged from them.
    The dream suddenly turned into a Gothic Tragedy. Dramatic Lighting, lots of shadows, mostly Black and White with splashes of lurid color. Glory’s mother and father suddenly collapsed. Glory tried to revive them using her powers, but they failed to show any improvement. The butler, suddenly looking gloomy and cadaverous, called an ambulance, but Glory realized she could get them to the hospital faster using the Champions Transporter. On arrival, there were dramatic scenes as Glory called on the full political and social clout of her family to get her parents immediate attention. Then the Doctor chased her out of the operating theater and began prepping for emergency exploratory surgery.
    After what seemed an eternity (but which was only a couple of seconds), a very young nurse in green hospital smock emerged and gave Glory the bad news that her parents have died – they suffered a complete collapse of multiple bodily systems, probably because their bodies were completely cancer-ridden. Funny thing, her father had been given a complete checkup at the hospital a month ago after a heart scare and there was no sign of cancer.
    Then the nurse suddenly collapsed, exactly as had Glory’s parents. A Doctor (the same big guy who has previously starred as a Judge, a Subcommittee Chairman, a Bent Cop, and in his unforgettable role as “Bad Guy”) leaped out from the operating theater, covered in blood, and began hacking at the nurse’s body with a rusty scalpel, screaming at Glory that it’s all her fault. Glory’s point of view abruptly shifted as she perceived herself to be a little Girl, no more than four or five years old, in summer dress and pigtails.
    From ward after ward, emergency alarms started going off. The other members of Team Zenith-3 (including the Bright Cutter!) were lined up on crash-carts, as are a number of SID troops and Native American warriors. Each has a toe-tag with the writing DOA clearly visible. Each is fully covered by a sheet, but Glory can see who they are, anyway. Interestingly, both St Barbara and Blackwing are somewhat larger than life.
    Glory was so consumed with grief that she barely noticed the disproportionate size, nor did she really notice that the Nurse’s blood was green. The Doctor was not even really trying to save the nurse, hacking off limbs and laughing maniacally. Dimly, Glory became aware that the crash-cart was a huge egg-shaped gem. The Doctor began throwing body parts off the cart at Glory, laughing insanely, then grabbed the gem (with the nurse’s torso still strapped to it – though Glory didn’t remember him taking the time to strap her down).
    Suddenly, it was Glory who was strapped to a crash-cart, with the Doctor gleefully flailing away with his rusty scalpel, which had grown to the size of a broadsword. Glory tried to break free, twisting and turning, but seemed completely paralyzed and helpless. Then the Doctor began crowing, “You never had a chance of smashing it in time!! Now the Power is mine, Forever!”
    When the dream ended, Glory was visibly disturbed (which is a first). She was almost sobbing, she was so overwhelmed by the nightmare. St Barbara immediately got up and put her arms around the team’s Field Commander. It was obvious that, however estranged they are, Glory still cares for her parents more deeply than she has been willing to admit to herself. There’s also a fear that she will somehow cause the deaths of those she loves; in waking life, the most likely way for that to happen would be through negligence – perhaps explaining why Glory has always seemed so driven and intense. Only one element was puzzling. DC was the first to actually ask the question: “Why would you think that your parent’s cancer would be your fault?”
    Getting a grip on herself, Glory replied, “I haven’t had these powers for very long… and I think that sometimes they leak a bit, or maybe it’s just the Life Symbiote’s influence… but I’ve seen the life energies in a crowd pick up a little after I’ve been around them a while… I first noticed it when we were hanging around Colonel O’Niell’s bunch, but thinking back I realized the same thing had been happening ever since I got the powers…
    “I just thought that maybe minor cuts would heal more quickly, and maybe there would be a slight rise in people’s fertility… I never consciously made the connection to an increase in the cancer rate… I just never thought….”
    St Barbara gently replied, “I think this is something we need to know more about. How big an area are you affecting? Is it more concentrated at close range? Should we be adding regular screenings for Cancer to our weekly routines? Things like that. When Warcry was with the team, he started running tests to determine just how our powers worked and what else we could do with them. He only had time to examine myself, Blackwing, and Oracle, and since he’s left we’ve sort of let that slide. Maybe it’s time to get that programme back underway…. and I’m making you top priority on the list.”
    Meanwhile, Karma had begun the process of connecting with the next – and last – member of the team. Without warning, the linkage was complete, and Glory’s reply was swept from her lips as she (and everyone else) was dragged into a vision of the world through Oracle’s eyes…

Oracle’s nightmare was hard to understand, mainly because he simply doesn’t see the world in the same way as everyone else. Nevertheless, once all the extraneous overlays were subtracted, it became obvious that he fears falling prey to the Dangerfield Syndrome – “I just don’t get no respect”.
    Oracle originally joined Zenith-3 firstly, as a refuge against Department Delphi, and secondly, because he was desperate for the camaraderie and respect that he thought he would earn. And for a while, it looked like it was going to be all his dreams come true. But then he got dumped from the Field Command position, and twice now he has failed to even come close to being elected Deputy Field Commander.
    As a result, he was particularly receptive to his nightmare, which began at some point shortly after the team had received an alert about a bus-load of school-kids sitting on top of a car bomb – and after they had told him to “stay at home and read his press clippings” because “he’d only be in the way”. Which is why, when the dream opened, Oracle was in a sleazy bar as far away from where anyone would expect to find him as possible, still simmering over this ill-treatment, eying the long row of bottles, and deciding whether or not to get hopelessly drunk for the first time in a long time… knowing that if he starts down that path, he won’t be able to turn back, not for a very long time. The question he was trying to answer at that exact moment was whether or not he cared any more. As his gaze glanced over each label, he involuntarily recalled the chemical composition, predominant flavor, and alcoholic content; the brewer’s location, biography, annual production, and turnover; he analyzed the recent performance of the company’s stocks and the likely change over the next 24 hours, and remembered the last time he drank something similar. He also recalled who he was with at the time, their biographies and current disposition, and every other occasion he was in their company.
    The barman was at the other end of the bar, talking to a very young waitress. One glance at them was enough to tell Oracle of the barman’s mob connections {instant biographic review of every other known or suspected member of the mob, authority hierarchy, most recent known activities, and prospective prison term} and that the waitress was trying to pay off someone else’s gambling debts {race results for the last 5 years, suspected knobblings, individuals probably responsible, socio-economic analysis of the waitress, projected familial relationships, probable biography, and a projection of the most probable line of conversation}.
    Of some interest was the manner of proffered payment, a large gemstone of a variety Oracle had never seen before {refractive index, internal energy source, probable spectrographic analysis, probable composition (diamond with radioactive dicarbolic hypochloride impurities), expected value on the current market, recent behavior of the gemstone market, biography of the deBeers family, etc}.
    Oracle obtained a bottle of schnapps (122 proof) and monitored the conversation between barman and waitress to compare with his projection. The pair bargained back and forth for a while before reaching agreement; the barman, for a commission, was going to sell the gem and use the balance of the proceeds to intercede on behalf of the girl’s father. The light through the stained glass window made the waitress look emerald green from head to toe as the bartender plucked the gem from her hand, before announcing loudly “Not Enough.”
    “What? But that’s all I have! You promised! You gave your Word!!” the waitress sniffled. Without blinking, the bartender backhanded her so hard that she flew backward through the stained glass window. Raising an eyebrow, Oracle noticed that it wasn’t just the light, she really was completely emerald green. Maybe it was skin paint, but somehow he didn’t think so. Intrigued now, Oracle activated his powers of precognition. To those seeing through his eyes for the first time, the world-view abruptly underwent a radical transformation.
    Oracle perceives the world not as simple objects and people but as relationships and probabilities and associations. A person is not just the simple shape depicted, it extends backwards through time, comprising everything that it has done in the past and everything that it might do in the future. Where those probabilities could be discerned with near-certainty, the images were sharp and clear, permitting a near-total understanding of the personality of the subject and how they are likely to react to various stimuli. Where they are less-certain, they fade into an incoherent fog of possibilities.
    The longer Oracle spends looking at someone, the more he learns about them, and the more clearly those probabilities resolve. The same is true of his perception of objects – a table is not just it’s current shape and position, it is a record of everything that has happened to it from the time of its manufacture to the present. Combining all of these potentials into a gestalt view, Oracle is able to perceive the inevitable consequences of the current state of existence. What’s even more useful, he can resolve the indeterminate possibilities into two or three locii, or probability paths – and where a nudge can shift events from one possible outcome to another.
    His abilities aren’t perfect, of course; quantum uncertainties have huge effects when they occur in something as complex as the human brain, and any particularly dynamic situation will change more rapidly than he can keep up with. Mobs are easy to deal with, as are small numbers; but groups, especially involving people with powers beyond the normal, are far harder to predict. Not only are their backgrounds likely to be more unusual, and less predictable, but their range of options in any given situation is greater.
    As he engaged his powers to get a feel for the current situation, he wished idly that his teammates would take these limitations into account instead of demanding the impossible every morning before breakfast and twice on Sundays. Returning his attention to the current situation, he quickly determined that the bartender had never intended to do anything to help the waitress’s father; he simply took what he could get as a profit from the situation. Having already decided upon a violent course of action, he would almost certainly continue along the same path.
    If the ‘waitress’ also had abilities of some sort to go with her unusual appearance, then anything could happen. If not, there would soon be an all-in brawl with several people hurt and at least a few killed – unless he stepped in. By becoming the focus of the bartender’s aggression instead of the Girl, the drunken mob would not be at the mercy of their more chivalrous instincts and would be in a position to clear out when things escalated. Of course, he would have to tread a fine line – if the bartender were clearly shown to be no match for him, given that he was the proprietor of the crowd’s favorite watering hole, and possibly associated with him though criminal enterprise, they would be compelled to join in. So long as it looked like the bartender could handle Oracle alone, the pair would be permitted to act without interference.
    What followed was as much a ballet as a battle, as Oracle deliberately missed just enough, and dodged just enough, to make it look like the bartender had a chance against him. Several times, things did not quite go according to plan, Oracle’s reflexes being impaired by the quarter-bottle of Vodka he had consumed while watching events develop. (At this point, those observing the replay could clearly see the illogic and inconsistencies that announced the sequence as a dream; Oracle alternately perceiving the bartender as a normal (if violent) human and as a paranormal opponent. To Oracle, these were simply accepted – he took the world around him as he perceived it and reacted according to his perceptions of the moment).
    Without warning, and taking Oracle completely by surprise, the Bartender clipped the hero, hard. The hero’s dream-self flew across the room, barely managing to avoid impaling himself of one of the pieces of furniture that had been smashed in the violence. This was troubling – Oracle’s powers had completely failed to warn him of the attack, and he suddenly experienced a twinge of doubt. He immediately stopped shadowboxing with his opponent and went all out, discovering that his abilities were completely ineffectual. Time after time, Oracle predicted with confidence that the barman would dodge this way, or strike out that way, only for the Barman to do something completely different.
    Eventually, the Bartender grabbed Oracle by the legs and use him as a living flail against the girl, and announced, “You want to get this back for Princess?! Well, I’ve got it now, It’s all mine, and you’ll never get to smash it now! The Power is mine, Forever!”

Detective Work

With the last nightmare retrieved and dissected, the team looked around at each other, and tried to come to terms with what they had learned. Until now, it had been possible to treat Dimension-Halo as a protracted holiday, an excursion without personal consequences, but in light of the deeply personal impact being felt by each team member, that fallacy was exploded. That would be cause enough for a moment of awkward reflection; but in addition, each had been given a glimpse into the naked souls of their teammates, and no-one was entirely comfortable with what had been revealed. It was a unique form of humiliation, having some deeply personal private laundry aired before everyone, and everyone was at least a little embarrassed by what they had perceived. Only Karma, whose perspective was not human, was relatively unaffected, and inadvertently stepped into the awkward pause that followed.
    “Gross common elements are the gem, the woman and the authority figure, who in each case implied that the objective was to deny the opportunity to destroy the gem, and that it was a source of personal power.”
    St Barbara forced herself to return her attention to what was going on around her, and again took charge. She pointed out that the more data Oracle had to work with, the more more effective his powers became. She then instructed the team to speak up in turn and report any impressions, observations, implications, indications, or suggestions they might have. She would start by pointing out that there had been no reports of Jimmy, Mrs Mayberry, or any of the UNTIL agents having such nightmares. In particular, Jimmy was under constant medical monitoring. On the other hand, Mist HAD experienced a nightmare even though she was physically not with the team – in another dimension, in fact – at the time. These exclusions were suggestive of purposeful targeting, but the reasons for that targeting were less clear.
    Blackwing followed up by noting that another common element – despite Mist’s awareness that the nightmares were unnatural and imposed from the outside, their beginnings were still drawn from the very real memories, perceptions, and concerns of the individual membership. So either some very potent psychic scanning was involved or these nightmares were somehow constructed from or enhanced by, real dreams and nightmares.
    Mist confirmed that her own impression of an external influence at work had only been reinforced by reliving her nightmare. What’s more, while the concerns expressed in her nightmare were genuinely deep personal concerns, the symbology used was not something that would have come naturally to her. Her nightmare was not something she would dream, assuming she normally did dream. It was more a case of how someone else would represent her fears, doubts, and concerns. To her, that suggested that the nightmares came in multiple parts – a genuine fundamental, a nightmare framework, and the mental interpretation of that framework by the individual, which “filled in the blank spaces”. In her case, the fundamentals produced the court-like setting and situation; the nightmare framework called on her to visibly manifest becoming something symbolic of what she feared, and so, even though the workings of such mechanisms are foreign to her, she was able (with prodding from the framework) to eventually dredge up something unlikely to meet its demands.
    Karma reported that she had not detected anything of the sort, but that the diversity of location of the affected members – some in dimension Halo, Mist in Avalon – suggested that the actual “framework” could be external, connected to the minds of the affected individuals only while generating the nightmares, like a mould or channel for dreams. The internal consistency of the dreams was too high for separate mechanisms – it was not like an infection, where everyone has their own customized version of it. However, she had not been able to detect any evidence of such an extra-dimensional mechanism at work, and she HAD looked. What she HAD noticed was that since the last time she had seen the team, their willpower – their drive and determination – had declined markedly.
    Glory reported that for for several days – ever since the nightmares started, in fact – she had been aware of a decline or diminishing of the life forces of the various team members, including herself, but she had not had enough experience with her powers yet to have been able to distinguish this from normal variation. It might mean nothing, a natural consequence of disturbed rest, or it might indicate that the team were being drained of something by the process. It was thin, but it was the first suggestion of any sort of motive for what was occurring. If the current trend continued however, eventually they would all die – even her.
    DC added that the nightmares could not have been better chosen to drive the team apart – they all focused on reinforcing doubts in each member’s mind about their value to the team, or on decisions to leave it. This might be because those were the things the members were worried about, or it might be more deliberate and selective. The nightmares were all intensely personal, things the members would have been uncomfortable discussing. That might also be just a coincidence, but all these coincidences in combination were starting to push the notion of random chance just a little too far. Perhaps they were chosen to make it less likely that there would be exactly this sort of coordinated investigation, and eventually, to cause the team to break up. That suggested that there was something the team could do about what was happening, if the team could only work out what that was.

The Power Of Oracle

Finally, all eyes turned expectantly to Oracle. “Do you have anything yet, Oracle, or do you need some more time to mull it all over?” asked St Barbara, more aware of the limits and parameters of her team-mate’s capabilities.
    “I’m still thinking it over, but to start with, here are a couple of correlations that have not yet been mentioned. The green female is always someone to be protected by the team; she never appears to be an active participant; and every time the ‘authority figure’ attacked a team member, the green gem glowed more brightly.
    “From these items, and those put forward by the rest of the team, a number of conclusions can be drawn with great reliability, and some with less reliability but total consistency with everything else known or deduced:
    “1. The team has been targeted by an unknown opponent whose methods and means are primarily emotional manipulation. 2. The reasons for the targeting are due to our potential ability to interfere with the plans of the attacker in question. The attacks can therefore be characterized as a preemptive strike. 3. The attacks are manufactured externally but are adaptive in nature, drawing on elements found within the targets mind. 4. The attacker made a very big mistake by targeting Mist; if not for that mistake, his preemptive strike would have had a high probability of success. 5. The nature of the mistake indicates that the attacker has only superficial or second-hand knowledge of the team’s membership. 6. The presence of the same helpless green female – who no-one in the team has mentioned knowing prior to these events – can’t be explained unless, like the authority figure, she is also a real being who is involved in some way. 7. The dream situations suggest that she is also a victim, who has somehow mastered at least some detailed knowledge of the attacker and his techniques, but the possibility that she is misleading us and is, actually, the attacker, is one that can’t be dismissed either.
    “Also, 8, I have observed that the speech pattern of the authority figure changed in mid-gloat at the end of each dream sequence. This is consistent with the theory that the female has inserted some additional ‘programming’ into the dream sequence. Again, this is suggestive of a victim seeking to both warn and enlist aid, but may be a deception.
    “Finally, a routine prediction, made earlier this morning, of what I will write on my whiteboard after this mission had revealed the instruction, ‘Seek Karma’s Dreams’. Which made absolutely no sense at the time, but now suggests a course of action.”
    “Umm, I don’t know how to break this to you Oracle, but have you forgotten that Karma doesn’t sleep and therefore doesn’t dream?” prompted St Barbara.
    “Mist can enter her meditative state at will. Karma can mind-link all of us to her, in effect sharing the same dream. Once there, we have only one option open to us; we know what will happen if we let events proceed as scripted. Our objective, therefore, must be to smash the gem at all costs.”
    “And what will that do?”
    “I’m not sure. It could simply destroy the mechanism used to attack us; it could put us under the control of whoever is attacking us; it could cause permanent mental damage to any or all of us; or it could have any number of other results. Without knowing a lot more about the technology used to induce these nightmares, it’s impossible to say.”
    “Wonderful.”

Although not entirely convinced that this was wise, no matter what Oracle’s whiteboard said, a lack of alternatives compelled St Barbara to endorse the plan. As Karma was establishing the mental links between the team members, Blackwing commented to Oracle, “You know, something just occurred to me. If a possible outcome is us falling under the control of whoever’s behind this, then he or she could make you write what you did on the whiteboard, couldn’t they? So how do you know we’re doing the right thing?”
    “I don’t. I decided that this is what we should do for the same reason the boss did – the alternative is to do nothing and wait for a miracle. But this group is all about DOING something about problems – and that means there was only one choice, right or wrong.”
    “Here’s a cheery little fact to reassure you that this is the right decision, then. On a hunch, I called Captain Thompson. Aggressive behavior is way up all over the city, and over half the population have dark rings under their eyes. He made some phone calls and confirmed that it was happening all over – he didn’t check everywhere, but everywhere he did check, they were seeing the same thing. Colonel O’Niell did some investigating through channels of his own at my request. This is a planet-wide phenomenon, at least. And we’re the only ones with the slightest lead on what to do about it – as usual. Nuclear Weapons under the control of multiple sleep-deprived individuals – what a cheery thought, not!”
    At first Mist’s nightmare seemed unchanged from last time. And then, one by one, the other members of the team replaced members of the audience which “gathered to bear witness to the proceedings”. As before, the judge assaulted the defense advocate, before turning on Mist. From the audience came a firm and unmistakable voice, instructing the judge in no uncertain terms to “Stop what you are doing – immediately – or else!”, as the Champions gathered around St Barbara. With a snarl, the Judge demanded that the crowd return to their seats, even as he was tossing immobile members of that crowd aside like ten-pins on his way to the team’s Chairman.
    What followed was a grand combat the likes of which Zenith-3 had not seen for quite a while. St Barbara attempted to surround the Judge with a shaped force field – a simple bubble – but he used magic to attack from within the bubble, while it prevented the team from getting to grips with him. Forced to lower the bubble – it was clearly counter-productive – the team began a furious assault. Ultimately, it was Dragon’s Claw who was able to maneuver himself – with Oracle’s assistance – into position to strike out at the green, glowing gem.
    When it became clear that this was their objective, the “Judge” began fighting with an intensity and ferocity even greater than that which was already keeping most of the team at bay. Only a more grimly determined attitude on the part of Blackwing permitted the duo to achieve the team’s overall objective. With one mighty thrust, DC drove his Soul Blade deep into the gem at the precise point indicated by Oracle. The huge jewel shattered most agreeably, and as shards flew off in all directions, the dream also shattered, scattering the team like 10-pins, and all went dark.

(not played 2nd Session 20/4/02)

Part I: Green Realm

Mist was the first to awaken. The first thing she noticed was the green sky, and the metallic green sand, and the way the rocks seemed to be composed of suspended strings, and the presence of a second, smaller, sun. The second thing she noticed was that the rest of the team were still unconscious (even Karma, who had reverted to her original form – and including another Mist!!)
    What was going on here? She got up to examine her Doppelganger more closely, only to collapse as a wave of dizziness swept over her. Putting out her hands to break the fall, she discovered that she was not wearing her regular clothes – in fact the gloves looked an awful lot like the modified SID uniform that Glory wore…
    Although the reflection was imperfect, Mist only had to stare at the image for a few seconds to realize where Glory was. Somehow, they had swapped bodies!
    A bubbling groan came from the direction of Blackwing, whose resilience ensured that he would recover quickly. “Ohhhh… what hit us? Whatever it was went through my forcefield like a hot knife through butter…”
    “Is that you, St Barbara?”
    “Glory? What happened?”
    “I’m not feeling quite myself… take a look at your reflection, but before you do – brace yourself for a shock…”

Orientation

One by one, the team members awoke, to find themselves in the wrong bodies (pay attention or this will get real confusing real fast): Mist’s mind occupied Glory, much to her distress. St Barbara was in Blackwing’s body, and furious. The Gargoylian Member was ensconced in the more nimble frame of Dragon’s Claw, who was himself in the body of Karma – a body that (without the constant attention of it’s usual mistress) had reverted to it’s natural form, a plasma cloud occupied by flashes of high-complexity patterns of force. Oracle’s body was occupied by Karma’s mind, while the precognitive hero now controlled the physical form of St Barbara. And lastly, Glory was now in Mist’s body.
    This development was unsettling for everyone, but some were more upset than others. Glory (in Mist) was one of the first to vent her feelings; Mist’s world is one where nothing is fixed, and things that Glory took for granted were simply ‘traditional’. It’s one thing knowing that you can set rocks on fire; it’s another being continually aware that a rock is only a rock until you want to change it into something else. Glory had always been rooted in practical and objective reality, and that foundation had been swept out from under her. To make matters worse, without her perpetual life sense, she felt half-blind; until it was gone, she had not realized how accustomed to it she had become.
    Nor was her exchangee all that thrilled by the transformation. Mist was accustomed to a universe which she could reshape as she deemed desirable or necessary. The fact that she preferred to know what to expect, and so made minimal changes to the nature around her, made no difference; with that ability now removed, she felt trapped, confined in a reality subject to someone else’s whim. For Mist, it had always been enough to know that she COULD do something; she had not needed to actually USE the ability. Now she could do nothing, and felt powerless and vulnerable.
    St Barbara was no less unhappy. While not ego driven, a part of her had always enjoyed being attractive, and her new body was monstrous in comparison. What was worse, the more she felt that way, the more the body changed shape to accommodate her thoughts; and the more it changed shape, the more monstrous she felt. She was demanding answers – immediately. The obvious place to look for those answers was Oracle – but Karma was completely overwhelmed by Oracle’s powers, and just stood there staring at the world around her, slack-jawed. After repeated attempts, the chairman lost her (his?) patience and grabbed Oracle, shaking him, hard – failing completely to make allowances for her new strength, inducing severe whiplash and causing substantial internal damage. Oracle immediately passed out from shock, as his brain was severely bruised. Fortunately, Mist was able to use Glory’s healing powers to repair the damage, though she looked strongly disturbed by the process.
    With everyone now paying attention, the team finally began to analyze their situation. Where were they? What had happened? How? Why? What impact would it have on their powers? What would be the effect on their personalities? At first, there was only a confused babble, but eventually St Barbara (Blackwing) asserted the authority of the Chairmanship and some firm answers – and practical advice – began to emerge. Karma (Oracle), with her experience as a former psionic, was able to make the greatest contribution.

I just don’t know what to do with myself

“It’s wrong to think of this as a body exchange,” s/he said. “St Barbara will not react as though she had been placed in Blackwing’s body; she will react as though her own body had been transformed into something that just happened to look the way her team=mate used to look. She will take time to get used to her new capabilities, and her first instincts will be to react as though she were still herself. After a while, expect to see powers used in ways they weren’t used before; St Barbara will have gotten used to being the team’s strongman but she will use those powers as though St Barbara had acquired the strength and resilience.
    “That said, the physique has on ongoing impact on the psyche. Sometime before the first series of reactions, a second series will begin. Elements of Glory’s personality have a basis in Biology, for example, and these will interact with Mist’s mind within the body. There will be some part of Mist’s personality which reacts to those and those elements will be strengthened or weakened, as a result. Parts of Mist’s personality that are not ordinarily dominant will come to the fore and parts that are usually up front will recede into the background.
    “Mist will still be Mist, but she might be in an unusual mood most of the time.”
    “Alight, ummm, Karma. Anyone else have something to contribute?”
    “I haven’t had Karma’s experience with Psionics, but I know enough Psychology and Sociology to to make a few forecasts,” ‘St Barbara’ announced.
    “Why is that no surprise,” announced ‘Blackwing’. “Go Ahead, Oracle, dazzle us.”

Theories

“For a start, I have a theory about why and how this has happened. Normally, it’s one dreamer to a dream. If we had each shattered our individual crystals – if we were able to – we would probably have arrived in our own bodies. Some of us, anyway – given how much trouble we had dealing with the ‘authority figure’, I don’t think much of our chances if we were taking him on one at a time. Anyway, because we were all in Mist’s head, whatever or whoever brought us here, wherever here is, couldn’t tell who went with which body.”
    “I also want to amplify a little on the consequences that Karma has talked about. What we call someone’s personality is a reaction to the amalgam of three elements: how they see themselves, how they perceive the world around them, and what they feel they can do about the other two. In our situation, two of those three have changed for all of us, and all three have changed for some. There WILL be consequences and there WILL be reactions. Changes of that magnitude can only result in an equally radical personality change in a relatively short space of time -and I think we’ve started to see those changes already. As Karma said, the traits that emerge will not be new, but they may well be hidden or suppressed in the ‘normal’ personality.
    “There will also be some residual impact from the physical body. The memory is partly chemical in nature, and that will stay with the body. Skills possessed by the ‘host’ will be ‘relearned’ more quickly than if we were starting from scratch. There will also be the impact of additional senses and altered frames of reference. I’ve never experienced LSD but from what all I’ve heard, it’s mild compared to what ‘Oracle’ over there is getting used to – trust me, I come from that body! Half the team will be tripping out on new experiences and senses and altered mental states for quite a while. Make allowances.”
    “If we had more time, the results could be quite revealing – more effective self-examination than thousands of hours on a psychiatrist’s couch – but we don’t have time for involuted voyages of self-discovery. Don’t try to understand why you feel the way you do, put it to one side and think about it later. I recommend that we keep an eye on each other’s behavior, and when that behavior changes, we make a point of keeping their attention on what’s going on around them. Otherwise, we might find someone’s woolgathering at a critical moment.
    “One other point. You can NEVER get the genie back into the bottle. When this is all over and we’re hopefully back where we belong, don’t expect to just snap back to the way we were. There WILL be lingering after-effects – even if those effects are nothing more than a heightened awareness of how others perceive us – and there WILL be consequences. We might never notice them, but they’ll be there.
    “An afterthought – as Karma pointed out, the people using our powers aren’t the usual suspects. Be aware of any new applications or techniques they come up with, and don’t be afraid to ask for help from the usual pilot, either. This is a chance to expand our repertoires, let’s not waste it.”
    “The possibilities are fascinating… I can see so many permutations, so many opportunities…. the data arranges so clearly, Its so beautiful….”
    “Good briefing, Oracle. Karma, get a grip on yourself and pay attention! Anyone else got something?”
    “One thing,” answered Glory (in Mist’s body). “We’re dancing around the issue of what to call people. In a combat situation, that can get us killed. We need to sort this out now, while we’ve got the chance. We’re used to visual identifications, so this is what I suggest. You,” she said while pointing at St Barbara (in Blackwing’s Body), “are not St. Barbara. You are now ‘Blackwing’, Chairman of Team Zenith-3. You used to fly and throw energy bolts and force-fields around, but you don’t do that any more. Whenever I use the name ‘Blackwing’, it’s You,” she said, pointing again, “who I’m talking about.
    “‘St Barbara’, over here,” she continued, “Used to be a guy who predicted the future, but these days SHE flies, fires energy bolts, and makes shaped force fields. And so on.”
    “Good point… ‘Mist’. As Field Commander, it’s your show.”
    “All right team, we don’t know what we’re up against, so don’t bunch too closely together and don’t get too strung out. I want subgroups of two or three. Everyone stay sharp, eyes peeled. Group one takes point, Group 2 watches our flanks, and Group 3 covers the rear. There’s some high ground over there and what looks like a cave; that’s our first objective. Get yourself organized and let’s move –”
    “Look! Over There! Where did SHE come from!?” exclaimed a sharp-eyed ‘Glory’.

Appearing as if from nowhere, clearly in mid-stride, was a familiar-looking girl with Green Skin….

TIME OUT FOR A QUICK SCORECARD:

• ‘Mist” used to host a Cosmic Symbiote but is now a spell-caster. Field Commander of the team.
• ‘Blackwing’ used to be an energy projector, now male and the team brick. Chairman of the team.
• ‘Karma’ used to be a male martial artist, now a genderless semi-female ball of psychic energy.
• ‘Oracle’ used to be a ball of psychic energy which manifested a female physical form, now a male precognitive.
• ‘St Barbara’ used to be a male precognitive, now an energy projector with a specialty in shaped force fields.
• ‘Glory’ used to be an elven mage, now host to the Cosmic Symbiote of Life.
• ‘Dragon’s Claw’ used to be a very strong gargoyle, now a very nimble martial artist.

All caught up? Now that everyone knows who’s who, let’s get back to the action!

\I couldn’t show the original for copyright reasons, but I did find time to throw together a new one :) Click on the image for a larger version (1040×780, 566K).

Part II – The Emerald Girl

The emerald-skinned girl appeared no older than 19. She was clearly in some distress, but approached the team openly. Her movements were unusual; she seemed to walk in place for a while, then suddenly in mid-step appeared considerably closer. She was then able to walk a short distance before again “walking in place”. When she eventually reached the team, she made a gesture signifying her intention to parlay. When waved forward, she closed and announced softly,”Thank Annath that I got through to you before it was too late! I am the Sarinjan Jarrell, and my people are in desperate need of your help.”
    In an uncharacteristically blunt reply, ‘Blackwing’ (St Barbara) – who had changed form again with Jarrell’s arrival, sprouting ugly horns – replied acidly, “Are you responsible for what’s happened to us?”
    At first, Jarrell did not understand what was wrong with the team. When the current predicament is explained, she looks horrified, and apologize abjectly for her ghastly mistake. She will surmise that it must have been “the presence of the interloper in your dreams. Or perhaps the Kaliph discovered my desperate plan despite my best effort to stay awake.” Looking at her more closely, ‘Glory’ could see that she appeared not to have slept in over a week.
    With Jarrell obviously having brought the team here for some reason – as Oracle had predicted would be the case – much of the speculation and predictions made earlier seemed well-founded. Jarrell asked the team to accompany her back to her city of Axiom, where there would be refreshments and explanations. Agreeing, the team set out, only to discover that it was unexpectedly difficult to get anywhere for a great many steps. Jarrell’s earlier movements were not some strange religious observation, they were imposed by the physics of this strange place!
    Looking at them impatiently, Jarrell snapped, “Don’t you even know how to walk!? This is hopeless, we’re all doomed!” before breaking down into tears. ‘St Barbara’ immediately put her arms around the weeping girl and made “There, there” noises, explaining gently that this place works differently to what they were used to; of course the team would be clumsy until they got used to the new environment. “But we’re very adaptable. Just tell us what we need to know and we’ll soon get the hang of it.” Wiping away Jarrell’s tears, ‘she’ kissed the green-skinned girl softly, before jerking away as though she had been scalded.
    Getting a grip on herself, Jarrell apologized for missing the obvious, before explaining that they had to build up a certain potential before being able to progress forward; that the more motion in a given direction was attempted, the harder the resistance that had to be overcome became. And since they were a largish group, the resistance to be overcome would be ferocious. The solution was for half the group to take a backwards step “in place” while the others stepped forward; then the others would step back ‘in place’ while the rest joined them.
    ‘Dragon’s Claw’ then announced, “I might have a better idea. Why don’t we try to Moonwalk? Since it’s walking backwards while moving forwards, it might cancel out this resistance.”
    ‘Blackwing’, who had attended numerous parties in her youth, knew how to moonwalk and was quickly able to test the idea, finding that it worked perfectly. With a little practice, ‘he’ could get up to almost 70% of his normal forward movement – which, Jarrell assured them, was extremely fast indeed. As ‘he’ returned to give the others a few quick lessons in modern dance moves, ‘Mist’ commented, “It’s just like a nightmare – you can run all you want, but you’ll never get anywhere – until you suddenly find yourself somewhere else completely.”
    Overhearing the remark, ‘Blackwing’ snarled, “It’s another Blodtryky inconvenience, that’s what it is.”
    Abruptly, ‘Karma’ gelled into the form most of the team were more accustomed to. “Finally!!” ‘she’ exclaimed softly; while in ‘her’ native form, she had been less constrained than the team members using more physical means of locomotion, ‘she’ was also much slower.

Reality Shift

With the secret to rapid group travel now revealed, it was not long before the team saw a strange city in the distance. Tall, cylindrical spires of silver arose, cresting impossibly thin stalks and blockish buildings designed with sweeping curves to the walls. As they traveled, Jarrell demonstrated more of the secrets of motion in this strange world; how the “Big Steps” were always a constant length, but the angle could be anything desired; how you could throw something in one direction and it would just hang there until you canceled the resistance by throwing something behind you; how you could impart a spin or a horizontal curve to the motion by throwing the second item at an angle; how two rocks thrown at the same time could never have exactly the same speed; and how, by throwing an object together with a handful of smaller gravel, she could ensure that the only speed possible to the largest stone was considerably faster than she could possibly have thrown it.
    Several times during the trip, ‘Mist’ began to withdraw, losing her focus on the events taking place around her. At one point she asked for a halt so that she could spend some time meditating. When the journey resumed, ‘Dragon’s Claw’, displaying uncharacteristic sensitivity, asked her what the problem was. ‘Mist’ explained that the world around her seemed to have no fixed foundations, and that she kept losing herself in it. The only point of constancy onto which she could lock her attention was her sense of self, of purpose. She now understood far more clearly why Mist had been so concerned with losing her personal focus that she had to leave the team so abruptly.
    Also continuing to experience problems was ‘Oracle’, who was perpetually getting distracted by what ‘he’ saw around him, and needed constant reminders to keep her mind on the job. ‘Blackwing’, whose mood had not been good to start with, grew increasingly irritable and snappish over the delays and problems of ‘his’ teammates; when Oracle stood transfixed, staring at a pebble ‘he’ had picked up for ten minutes solid, the team’s new strong’man’ almost came to blows with the “master strategist”. Only the foreknowledge that ‘Blackwing’ was going to attack prevented an even greater delay; but the force-field belt’s protection withstood the frustrated attack until ‘St Barbara’ was able to separate the pair.
    ‘Oracle’ did not even acknowledge the distraction, continuing to stare at the rather ordinary-looking stone. “Amazing….” ‘he’ said to himself, “EVERYTHING has a purpose…. even something as mundane as this….” Eventually, he very carefully put it back exactly as he had found it, only then noticing that ‘Blackwing’ was being physically restrained by ‘St Barbara’s shaped forcefield. “Incredible…. I thought this multiverse was built to resemble the old one – before Ragnerok – with only a few changes – but it wasn’t, everything that exists in it has a definite purpose… I can’t tell what it is, by I can FEEL that it exists…”
    Approaching the city took far less time than the team were expecting; they were still accustomed to estimating distance by eye assuming a constant rate of progress, and this was not the case in this strange realm. Within a few minutes of first sighting it, the team were being escorted down a leafy boulevard by Jarrell, at the end of which was an elaborately decorated building which practically screamed “temple”. Inside, they saw wall-to-wall bunks, stacked six high, and every one of them inhabited by someone tossing and turning. The occupants had sunken, black-ringed eye-sockets, were pale and haggard, and look like they had not slept properly in even longer than Jarrell. They also shared her bright green skin.
    One of them is an older man dressed in regal robes. Jarrell knelt on one knee before that cot with a bowed head before rising and turning to speak.

Nightmare of the Emerald City

“It started gradually. At first no-one thought anything about it. The latticelight had been unusually strong, and everyone attributed their inability to sleep well to the conditions. But after a few days it was discovered that everyone was having nightmares, always centering around some deeply personal and sometimes shameful fear or doubt, sometimes even one that the dreamer had not realized he possessed. And a few days after that, people stopped waking up.
    “I don’t know why, but I was somehow stronger than the rest. I was able to keep going long after everyone else had collapsed. It was as though I was being sustained, somehow. I went without sleep for as long as I could, searching every scroll I could find for a cure, working until I dropped. When there were no more scrolls, I built these beds for those who still survived. I hoped that the spirit of Mother Anneth, the sustainer, might protect the dreamers, even if only for a little while.
    “And then, in my dreams, I began to see more than just my nightmares. I discovered that the mind of my beloved father, and the minds of all who will one day be my loyal subjects, had been invaded; captured stealthily by a being who could draw on the power of their nightmare images and make them flesh, who gained strength and power beyond belief from the Dreamers. He is named the Kaliph Morpheus.
    “For months, I spied out his defenses, and learned his plans, and watched as he used creatures and powers and nightmares leached from my people to overrun another atom. And then, with the power of two, a third fell quickly, and then a fourth. Fully 63 quantum spaces have now fallen before his might.
    “And then, one dreary and disturbing night, as the light of the crystal latticework dimmed, he gained an insight most terrifying – he learned that what we knew as reality was only one of a vast order of realms, each inhabited by creatures – creatures of minds unsuspecting, each one infinitely vaster in their own way than the entire sum extant of his vast domains. And he determined to conquer those realms too. I know, for I was listening to every word he spoke to himself in his Tower of Polarity.
    “I had long since taken the opportunities presented to me to steal what knowledge I could from the Kaliph, and though I understood but a second-shell of his secrets, I determined to use what little I knew in one final, last, vain hope of victory. I created the gem, a lesser simulacrum of the Living Crystal that the Kaliph uses to focus the power he has stolen, and insinuated both myself and his image into the nightmares he was sending forth, in hopes that minds of power would recognize the threat and act to save us all. And so you are here, as I prayed but could not bring myself to hope. You are our final hope. Please, I beg you, help us, for all our sakes.”

Perception Shifts

It didn’t take the team long to decide to answer the call for help. Some eyebrows were raised when ‘Dragon’s Claw” opined that the team were “honor-bound” to help – it sounded so much like something the “real” DC might have said, and not at all like something that Blackwing, the current occupant of the body, would have suggested. But, given what was going on in Earth-Halo, they had little choice.
    Discussion about other facets of the situation was a little more extended.
    It was noticed that some members were already displaying the profound personality shifts that Oracle had warned of.
    ‘Glory’ continued to lose track of her fundamentals, becoming cold, emotionless, and dispassionate; dissecting alternative courses of action in purely pragmatic terms, heedless of their morality; her suggestion that the team pre-plan a sequence of members to be sacrificed in order to achieve the goal brought all discussion to a halt for a few minutes while the team members struggled with the idea itself, and then that it was Mist suggesting it.
    ‘Karma’ continued to have problems with control, of both ‘herself’ and ‘her’ powers; on a number of occasions ‘she’ replied to comments that had not actually been made aloud, and whenever ‘her’ concentration waned, ‘she’ reverted to the natural plasma form fundamental to the physical body ‘she’ inhabited. ‘She’ also seemed to be absorbing exotic parts of Karma’s personality, suggesting that “while [she] was all in favor of the principle of aboriginal rights, the only reason the team should risk itself was from loyalty to ‘their own kind’ ” – a question-begging term, given the variety of membership in the team. With a start, ‘she’ seemed to realize what she was saying and assumed an expression of self-disgust, telling the others to forget ‘she’ said anything at all.
    ‘Blackwing’, meanwhile, seemed to be fueled on rage and anger, and at the same time possessed of a strong desire to avoid attention; ‘he’ carefully chose a seating position that ensured that ‘Karma’ was between the team and ‘himself’ and seemed reluctant to say anything at all.

Adjustments

In the end, six other matters of importance were discussed:
    The observed behavior of this realm, and the language used by Jarrell in describing it, were all consistent with this world being “inside” an atom. Each of the “quantum spaces” captured by the Kaliph was a neutron or a proton. The “lattice light” that Jarrell had mentioned was the light emitted by the oscillation of electrons across a covalent bond and back – the brightness indicating the strength of the chemical bond. Obviously, this universe was neither a parallel or divergent world with respect to Earth; it lay upon a 5th-dimensional axis. For convenience’s sake, the team decided to use the rather melodramatic and somewhat inaccurate term, “The 5th Dimension” to describe the location.
    Team members should be cautious when using their borrowed “powers” until they were used to the strange physics of the place. Those who threw punches should use their off-arm as a counter-thrust. Those who threw energy or magic around would be wary of backfires, and so on. As they worked out through trial and error what worked and what didn’t, they could push themselves further.
    The overall objective was not to eliminate or overthrow the Kaliph, but simply to end his threat to other realms of existence. That meant that the Kaliph himself was not the primary objective; the real target was the “Living Gem” that made him so dangerous. Once it was out of the picture, Morpheus himself was an irrelevance.
    Jarrell confirmed that by one metaphysical interpretation, all this could be considered a Dream of hers; by another, equally accurate interpretation, it could be considered an extended dream of all those subjugated by Morpheus; a third, equally real interpretation would have it all as a Dream of Morpheus; and by a fourth, it could be considered nothing more than an extension of Mist’s Dream, which the rest had entered through Karma’s powers. All these perspectives were correct, and the device that permitted all this to take place, and maintained it, was the Gem Of Morpheus. When it was smashed, the dreams would all end – Morpheus’ dreams of power, the dreams which kept Morpheus’ victims comatose, and the dreams of the team members. Everyone would wake up again, and it would all be over .That meant that the team would automatically, from its point of view, be returned to their normal reality, in their normal bodies.
    ‘Oracle” then declared that ‘he’ had integrated enough data to be able to offer a definitive solution to the question of why they were in the wrong bodies at all. “Because Mist was, in one sense, the host, and all this was taking place in a domain subject to Mist’s personality and perceptions of the universe, the events would of necessity reflect any emotional problems she had been having prior to the dream; and Mist had been having problems with a perceived loss of contact with her identity. A fifth, and also equally valid metaphysical, interpretation of the events, was that Mist (despite the appearance of reasonable sanity on the surface) had suffered a minor mental breakdown, and that the fundamental “malleability” of the universe (in her worldview) had caused Reality to change in order to conform with her semi-psychotic perspective.
    “In combination with the information ‘He’ had received from Mist’s mind in the past, this also explains why the bodies had been switched as they had; the new forms were metaphysical interpretations of Mist’s perceptions of, and attitude towards, her fellow team members. Mist was jealous of Glory; so Mist’s “fantasy self” (having retreated or lost contact with her own form) was that of Glory. St Barbara had always been a tower of emotional strength and support to Mist, and hence St Barbara had become the team’s strongest member. She had perceived Oracle as flighty and vulnerable, and hence he was placed in a form which reflected those attributes. As Karma, ‘Oracle’ had spoken to Mist several times about the integrated philosophy of her people, which combined both what humans called “Technology” and what they called “Magic”, and so she had been placed in the form of the most intellectual member. Dragon’s Claw had been perceived as a very subtle person with hidden depths; and so he was placed in a form symbolic of hidden depths and subtlety. Mist thought of Blackwing as a Big Brother, so he was placed in the only remaining masculine form, and – again, because she felt disconnected from what her usual role represented, and because she perceived Glory as an enemy, or at least, as a rival, Glory was placed in Mist’s usual body. You see, it all makes sense – at least as much as any internal logic does in a dream.”
    ‘Glory’ made no response, and seemed not to have realized ‘Oracle’ was talking about her. It was as though one of the cast had interrupted the play to explain what was going on to the audience, while the rest held position and waited for the action to resume.

Planning

Jarrell was then brought into the discussion, which now turned to the logistics of attacking the Kaliph. Jarrell’s only access to the Kaliph to date was somehow using her unexplained “Dreamwalker” abilities. That involved subjecting herself to the Kaliph’s “rules”, in effect becoming an element of one of the Kaliph’s dreams – dreams in which he was even more invincible than in actuality.
    What’s more, that tactic constantly risked the Kaliph becoming aware of the nature and purpose of their presence at any time, eliminating any advantage of surprise the team might have. That left the team to make it’s way into the Kaliph’s realm by some other means. The team routinely used four different modes of transport – but the Bright Cutter wasn’t here, and neither was the Champions Transporter. That left ‘Mist’s teleport or ‘Karma’s tunnels through space-time. Since neither of these were under the control of anyone experienced in using them, the choice became one of Risk Management.
    ‘Mist’ could attempt to teleport the team, but if the teleport went wrong – and there was a good chance of it – the consequences would be catastrophic. ‘Karma’, on the other hand, could get accurate coordinates directly from Jarrell’s mind, and even if the tunnel was imperfect, with such a basis, the team should arrive SOMEWHERE in Morpheus’ realm, from which point they could approach his “Tower Of Polarity” by more conventional means (“Blodtryky Hell, More moonwalking,” came the comment from somewhere within the shadows.)

Preparations and Problems

With the decisions made, the team quickly made preparations for the mission. They didn’t know how long they would perceive their journey to take, so they gathered food and water and tents. ‘Glory’, after expressing uncertainty over her control of her powers, requested a Sword from Jarrell’s armory so that she would at least have a weapon with which she had some expertise. Then, without warning, ‘Karma’ launched an inadvertent Psychic attack on the rest of the group, stunning several of the team.
    ‘Blackwing’ staggered back, putting out an arm to brace herself, grabbing hold of a large statue, which came crashing to the ground, crushing several unoccupied houses. ‘Blackwing’ was experiencing the same period of clumsiness that had afflicted Knight immediately after his initial transformation into Blackwing. With ‘his’ temper already on a short fuse, ‘Blackwing’ gave a howl of frustration, picking up the statue and throwing it as hard and far as he could – it froze in place some twenty meters away, hanging accusingly.
    ‘Oracle’, showing unusual sensitivity, quietly spoke to ‘Blackwing’ about the “feedback loop” causing her appearance to continue to mutate and it’s ongoing impact on her psychology. ‘Blackwing’ promptly attempted to tear ‘Oracle’ apart (again), but ‘he’ had again had the foresight to activate his forcefield belt.
    Once again, everyone piled on to restrain the team Chairman; when they had her firmly pinned, ‘Karma’ tactfully suggested a solution, immediately calming ‘Blackwing’s’ ire. The hero immediately requested a deep-set hood and cape from Jarrell, as had been suggested; if no-one knew exactly what she looked like, ‘he’ would be less anxious and self-conscious about his ‘hideous appearance’, or so the theory went.
    Finally, with preparations complete, the mission got underway. Again, the membership was arranged in three layers; ‘Mist’, as field commander, took the lead with Jarrell. ‘Glory’ and ‘Dragon’s Claw’ were in the second rank, ‘Oracle’ and ‘Karma’ the third pair, with ‘Blackwing’ and ‘St Barbara’ bringing up the rear.

Part III: The Realm Of Nightmares

All too soon, the preparations were judged complete, and ‘Karma’ began attempting to to forge a ‘tunnel’ from Jarrell’s realm to the Kaliph’s microspace, advised and guided by ‘Oracle’, the body’s previous inhabitant. The first few attempts were dismal failures, but eventually the way was opened. Whether as a consequence of the local environment or ‘Karma’s inexperience with her powers, the passage was not the soft-glowing white doorway with which the team were familiar; a misshapen hexagon pulsed redly in the air before the team, throbbing with a disturbing irregularity, suggesting that the passage was none too stable. ‘Mist’ was about to suggest that ‘Karma’ release it and try again, when she was overridden; ‘Karma’ announcing, “That’s it, that’s as good as I can do it. We had better go quickly, I don’t know how long I can hold it; the tunnel is resisting me…”
    Quickly, “Mist” marshaled her forces and dispatched them through the portal.
    If the tunnel looked unstable from the outside, it was far more so from within. As they traveled, for the first time they were aware of a perceptible travel time – accompanied by violent lurches from side to side, radical changes in force and direction of gravity, and palpably contradictory information from their eyes and inner ears as to their direction of travel.
    Arrival was not the gentle process that the team were used to, either; the team members were practically spat out the far end like seeds from a fruit that had been squeezed too hard. ‘Oracle’ successfully kept his feet, ‘Dragon’s Claw’ hit the deck, rolled, and leaped to his feet in a single smooth action. ‘Karma’, the last one through, had once again reverted to ‘her’ plasma form, leaving up and down mere labels of convenience; the others did not escape so lightly. Some ended up in trees, others struck trunks at some pace, and “Blackwing’ just rammed the earth at high speed. Despite the violence of the arrival,. none of the team were hurt significantly, and in was only moments before they were examining their new environment.

Sharing a Bad Dream

Their first impression of the Nightmare Realm was of a Gothic horror on LSD. Swamps that were solid enough to walk on, stones that were not; trees growing upside down, a perversely twisted reflection in the sky of near normality that dripped like wet paint toward the ground. While this reflection appeared to be but meters overhead, a quick stone’s throw by ‘Blackwing’ immediately established that the separation was incalculably higher.
    Second impressions revealed scattered ruins amongst the debris and multitudes of human bones both old and new carpeting the swamp-like ground. Streamers of noxious and acrid odor drifted through the air in streams of purple-brown haze, pausing occasionally for a bat-winged cherub. Dirty gray sunlight penetrated the smoke, soot, and haze to fall like thick strands of spiderweb amongst the plants and bones. As ‘Mist” soon discovered, these were as sticky as spiderwebs, too.
    It did not take long to realize that the reflection was staggered with the reality; when someone took a step, there would be a few moments delay before the image echoed the action. On other occasions, the reflection would act in advance of the person, moving or behaving in some bizarre manner, which the hapless victim was compelled to emulate. Bones chased dogs, chewing vigorously on their tails, while snakes shed their skeletons and flowers whispered vile imprecisions to one another; and in every shadow were several sets of tiny eyes that stared at the party unblinkingly, only to vanish when one of the team looked squarely at them. In the far distance, stabbing downward from the reflection, was a squat and ugly tower surrounded by a castle born of a collaboration between Esher and Giger.
    “The Kaliph’s Tower Of Polarity,” announced Jarrell, stating the obvious. “Remember, in this place, forms and nightmares are made manifest and obey the Kaliph’s whims. While he should not yet know we are here, he will in due course discover our presence, and will seek to use those powers against us. Even then, he will likely assume that we are rogue dreamers that have somehow escaped his influence, and will not bring his full powers to bear. While he will eventually discover his error, we will have a period of grace in which to travel to the Tower itself.”
    “All right, you know the drill and you know the objective; let’s move out,” instructed ‘Dragon’s Claw’. Immediately they did so, one other element of the Nightmare through which the team traveled revealed itself – portions of the sky and ground intermingled and entwined with each other, changing the landscape with every step. What had been “solid marsh” a moment earlier was subject to a howling gale, or a blizzard, or became a rocky quagmire when the next person attempted to follow. As a result, progress seemed to take forever.

Dream Ambush

The team had cautiously traveled five or six miles though this surrealistic wasteland when they were attacked without warning, giant bats in psychedelic colors swooping from places of concealment overhead.
    ‘Mist’, accustomed to being forewarned by her Life Sense, was taken by surprise and received a nasty gash along her back. ‘Dragon’s Claw’, used to near-invulnerability, charged headlong into battle, recalling the excesses of Dragon’s Claw in the team’s early days. ‘St Barbara’ was a little more aware of ‘her’ changed circumstances, and rather clumsily took to the air.
    Lack of self-awareness was certainly not a shortcoming being experienced by ‘Blackwing’ and ‘he’ began pinpoint bombardment of the creatures with thrown tree-trunks; as St Barbara, ‘he’ had of course been accustomed to a Range-Combat tactical role. ‘Oracle’ had activated ‘his’ forcefield belt just before the attack began, and soon had a number of attackers trying to claw through the protective bubble of energy, making them easy targets; otherwise ‘he’ completely ignored their presence.
    Two of the fliers attacked the foolhardily-exposed ‘Dragon’s Claw’ bringing him back to reality in a hurry, as they almost clawed his arm to shreds; he turned tail and fled into the bushes. Karma attempted to stun selected fliers, but only managed to KO ‘Mist’; but then, ‘St Barbara’, flying at much greater speed and with far greater control, began firing at the ‘sitting ducks’ perched on ‘Oracle’s Forcefield, and any shift in the tide of battle that resulted from these injuries was immediately overcome.
    The Danish warrior-woman fired blast after blast with enthusiasm and abandon, reveling in ‘her’ abilities, and soon the creatures were fleeing. ‘Glory’ collapsed almost immediately the team counter-attack began, weeping and screaming for them to “stop”; while Blackwing heeded the instruction, not knowing what the problem was, but ‘St Barbara’ incinerated bat after bat without remorse. When the sky was clear of enemies, she soared into the sky, performing barrel rolls and high-G loops for the sheer thrill of it.

Sense Of Life

‘Blackwing’ attempted to calm the distraught ‘Glory’ as ‘Mist” came to, asking what had hit her; ‘Glory’ demanded to know, “How could you stand it? I could FEEL the life-force being torn from them when they dies… it was horrible, so cold and empty afterwards…. I could feel their existences just fade away….”
    ‘Mist”, recovering, replied, “That’s why I don’t kill unless it’s necessary; but if it saves lives, I’d do what I had to do and cope with the consequences afterwards. I’m a trained soldier, and sometimes soldiers have to kill; that’s all there is to it.”
    ‘Blackwing’ said nothing, but the look ‘he’ directed at ‘Mist’ was one of horror and the certainty that there was a lot more to be told on the subject. How DID Glory live with herself? Even the drains must have felt like she was slowly murdering the target – she just stopped short of finishing the job. For the first time, she wondered if Glory was just a well-adjusted sociopath. It took considerable persuasion before Glory would even heal the team’s injuries, stating that she could feel her own life-force ebb briefly when she did so.
    In total contrast to these events, ‘St Barbara’ was clearly coming to terms with ‘her’ situation quickly – in fact, she was almost hyper, she was so exhilarated by the sense of freedom she had discovered in the air. When the team regrouped, ‘she’ remained overhead; until the conclusion of the mission and ‘her’ return to her rightful body, she would not willingly touch the ground again. She was no longer the helpless weakling….

The Hollow Man

The trek quickly resumed; the team had no reason to believe that they had actually been detected, and the chances of that situation persisting would be greatly enhanced by leaving the scene of the battle as quickly as they could. They had not made much progress before a huge form, 20′ high, bubbled out from the rocks and gelled into a giant suit of medieval armor, which drew it’s sword, saluted, and then charged at the team.
    Once again, the team swung into action, led by the hyperactive ‘St Barbara’, the charging ‘Dragon’s Claw’, and the missile attacks of ‘Blackwing’. ‘Oracle’ carelessly kicked over a rotten log before approaching a brightly colored flower and again activating his protective force field to protect him while he examined it. ‘Glory’ crumbled to her knees, moaning “No, not again,” while ‘Karma’ attempted, successfully, to adopt ‘her’ crystalline form. ‘Mist’ watched helplessly, her sense of ‘reality’ eroded by the combination of Mist’s mystic awareness and by the chaotic environment to such an extent that she had no idea what was real and what was simply potential.
    ‘St Barbara’s explosive energy discharges were the first to reach the target, blowing substantial holes in it, and revealing it to be completely hollow. The shockwave deflected the lumber that had been hurled by ‘Blackwing’, negating the usefulness of his attack.
    ‘Dragon’s Claw’, adapting to his changed circumstances (despite appearances) grabbed the arm of the giant and swung underneath it’s grasp and up, perching securely on it’s shoulders, where he started slicing chunks out of the surface, while ‘Karma’ slowly strode forward. ‘St Barbara’, her first line of attack shown to be ineffective, switched tack, forming a wall around the Hollow Man, who had continued to advance toward ‘Glory’, ignoring the damage inflicted on it.. ‘Blackwing’, having also realized that ‘he’ and ‘St Barbara’ were getting in each other’s way, leaped forwards, only to hang suspended in midair by the strange symmetrical physics of the micro-reality.
    ‘Karma’, understanding the problem, also leaped forward and (exercising the acrobatic skills for which Dragon’s Claw was formerly renowned), used his super-strong teammate as a springboard, rebounding back the way he had come; With an loud ‘Boom’, ‘Blackwing’s interrupted leap resumed at a vastly accelerated pace, crashing through the suit of armor like tinfoil, tearing it in four on the way through. ‘Dragon’s Claw’ had to leap for safety, only to see the ground for which he had aimed transform into quicksand-like rock. Only a rotten log was left floating on top of the quagmire (the same one that ‘Oracle’ had casually repositioned).
    With a feat of Acrobatics the equal of DC’s best, he was able to alter his trajectory to leapfrog the quagmire, using the floating log as a stepping stone, while pieces of the giant flew in all directions.
    One arm landed near ‘Glory’ and began dragging itself toward her, grasping her leg; there was an audible ‘snap” as the bone was crushed. Screaming in pain and fury, ‘Glory’ flayed about with the Sword she had borrowed from Jarrell, slicing fingers of the hollow glove. ‘St Barbara’, meanwhile, had spotted the torso and left arm, and had attacked using the shaped force-field; projecting it as a stick-figure inside the suit, she then expanded it until the nightmare creature was shattered. ‘Blackwing’ had kept hold of the head-piece, and one swift blow at full strength was enough to shatter it like an eggshell; whirling in place like a dervish, the pieces were easily scattered. Finally, the Hollow Man was no more.

Angst & Recriminations

Afterwards, recriminations were heated.
    
‘Blackwing’ came under fire for thoughtlessness and excessive aggression, as did ‘Dragon’s Claw’, who replied that he was doing the best he could with a limited arsenal. But these were just the warm-up, as ‘Mist’ accused ‘Glory’ of being cowardly and uncommitted, and ‘Glory’ counter-accused ‘Mist’ of being narrow-minded and prejudiced against reality, and of engaging in wishful thinking. ‘Blackwing’, still smarting from her own rebuke, gave each of them a serving, “At least I’m TRYING, not WHINING.”
    To separate the pair, who were close to blows, ‘he’ declared ‘Dragon’s Claw’ to be “temporary acting reserve field commander”, used ‘his’ authority as Chairman to declare both Mist and Glory as ‘temporarily unfit for command duties’, and turned the running of the show over to the new appointee.
    ‘Karma’ ended the debate by angrily denouncing them all, punctuating each comment with a harsh mental finger-prod. “I thought Humans had climbed out of the trees and grown up, but you’re behaving like a pack of children! ‘Blackwing’, you’re always going to be a second or two slower to attack than ‘St Barbara’; take that into account next time and get over this bad mood you’re in – we’re all in uncomfortable situations. ‘St Barbara’, this is a team, start acting like a member. ‘Mist’, if you don’t like the reality around you, you’ve got the power to stabilize it. ‘Glory’, start pulling your weight and stop being such a prima-donna. And DC, you don’t have to keep proving yourself to us, all right? There are times when your skills aren’t the most useful, but that’s true of all of us. For heaven’s sake don’t get in the way just to get your turn in the limelight.”
    Jarrell, who had watched these angry exchanges in silence, then stepped forward, and discretely brought the team’s focus back onto the objective, and they moved out in sullen silence.

Wasteland Of Eyes

Ahead, the forest/swamp gave way to a desolate wasteland. Cover ranged from minimal to nonexistent. Great cracks littered the ground. The terrain ahead seemed to climb rapidly toward a distant mountain range, the tops of which curved above the horizon. “Once we start across, discovery by Morpheus is inevitable,” advised Jarrell. “How long that will take is a question that is open to debate.The good news is that the adjacent energy densities are spread further apart as we approach the surface, so we should travel far more quickly from this point. I caution you again not to show weakness to the Kaliph, he will exploit it.”
    “But I AM weak!”, exclaimed ‘Dragon’s Claw’.
    Jarrell was soon proved correct; it took only an hour to travel a distance apparently greater than that which had taken hours to traverse this far. The group were almost three-quarters of the way to the Mountain when they became aware of bestial eyes watching them from the clouds which erupted from the sky overhead like inverted mushrooms. The eyes would focus on one team member, then blink closed and vanish back into the haze, only to appear from a different cloud and focus on a different member. “The Kaliph has seen us, but has not yet realized that we are a group,” advised Jarrell. “Beware; he is sure to invoke some menace to attack whoever he perceives as the weakest. He probably won’t stay to watch, relying on his nightmare creations to deal with us.”
    “But can’t he see that we’re traveling as a group?”
    “Distances are unreliable this close to the edge; two things that appear to be side-by-side may in fact be far apart. If I had not been able to spy out the terrain, we would almost certainly become truly separated from each other.”
    As predicted,. an attack swiftly followed, a gelatinous blob bubbling out from the cracks underfoot and swallowing ‘Oracle’ whole, lifting ‘him’ to hang helplessly in midair. Fortunately, ‘he’ had activated his protective forcefield well in advance; the attack would soon prove to be nothing more than an inconvenience, ‘he’ was sure. Unexpectedly, the inner edge of the blob began to dissolve into a fine mist and to seep into the bubble of force surrounding the precognitive, where it congealed and began dripping down the inner surface.
    The general merriment at ‘Oracle’s discomfiture quickly died, and the team members began taking action. ‘Blackwing’ tried to tear it off, but it flowed through ‘his’ fingers like sand; ‘he’ could find nothing to grip. ‘St Barbara’ tried to blast it off, with similar lack of results. ‘Karma’ tried to seize mental control of it, without success, managing only to induce a bout of chicken-clucking in St Barbara, continued evidence of a lack of mastery over ‘her’ powers. ‘Glory’, confronted with a foe without life-force, was fully willing to act, for a change; but there was nothing she could do to affect it. Similarly, ‘Dragon’s Claw’ had only one possible mode of attack with any chance of success, the illusion power of the Honor Blade – but it twisted and burned his hands when he tried to use it, and in any case, ‘Karma’. reported that the creature was mindless, existing only to consume whatever it enveloped.
    That left only ‘Mist’ as having the potential to do something about the problem; but ‘Mist’ was struggling to comprehend what options she had, let alone selecting one that might prove effective. So many of Mist’s spells relied on her ignorance of modern science, cause-and-effect, and so on. ‘Mist’ did not have that advantage; she would be forced to ignore the spells Mist had learned and resort to casting Ad-hoc spells.
    Immediately she recast her thinking in terms of achieving effects that were at least scientifically plausible, within her understanding of the subject, ‘Mist’ felt far more comfortable about her situation, and commenced crafting a suitable spell. In this case, what she wanted was a suction; coupled with a tubular-shaped force field from ‘St Barbara’, the result should alter the creature’s assets into vulnerabilities. A simple low-pressure zone immediately above the tube’s opening would do the trick.
    The tactic worked perfectly; and while ‘Mist’ would not be as efficient or razor-sharp at casting spells, she at last felt that she could at least make a contribution to the group effort. And, with practice, her skills should pick up quickly.
    ‘Dragon’s Claw’, taking his new role as the (acting temporary) field commander seriously, then gave Oracle a dressing-down. “Overconfident” and “Secretive” were two of the milder terms; the point was that Oracle had foreseen the threat in time to alter the settings on his force belt to a spherical arrangement, but had not seen fit to warn the team. Nor had he made any contribution at all to his own rescue, simply waiting for the team to look after him. These had been amongst Karma’s most annoying personality traits, and they had only been intensified by the circumstances, from ‘annoying’ to ‘infuriating’. Oracle had always been a reticent, even taciturn, member, avoiding any hint of the spotlight, but not even he would have withheld something as pertinent as an attack on the team and the blowing of their veil of secrecy.
    The superficially contrite ‘Oracle’ made an insincere promise to “do better” as the team continued its march.

Climb Every Mountain

In no time, they found themselves high up within the mountains, which were far smaller than they had appeared. The major cause of this illusion was that the surface itself was curving upwards, so that what appeared to near-vertical cliff-faces were in fact near-horizontal surfaces. It took only a few minutes hard climbing for the team to pick their way to the feet of the great volcanoes that marked the boundary between upper and lower domains. From here, they could see practically the whole micro-world – and they were equally visible.
    This was also the point at which the Kaliph Morpheus would realize that he faced a single group, not coincidental individuals. No warning from ‘Oracle’ was necessary, the entire team expected to be attacked when they reached this point. Sure enough, from one of the clefts in the volcanic walls, a number of amorphous red vapors erupted, each racing for a different target. Being prepared, the team swung into action without the need for direction.
    ‘St Barbara’, as usual, had the clearest vantage point, and hence the most warning as to the exact nature of the threat . She didn’t know what would happen to someone engulfed by one of the vapors, and wasn’t inclined to find out. Erecting a force barrier between the vapors was the obvious move; because of the wide area that had to be surrounded, the resulting defense was very weak, but it would buy everyone else time. ‘Mist’ converted a nearby boulder into two great stone hemispheres, which were seized by ‘Karma’ (silicate form) and ‘Blackwing’.
    It was not long before the vapors ate through the wall erected by ‘St Barbara’, and she was soon leading several of the vapors on a merry chase, as were ‘Dragon’s Claw’ and ‘Glory’. When all was reported as ready the trio led their pursuers through a pass, on the far side of which the strongmen waited. When the vapors were in exactly the right position, the pair slammed their hemispheres together, and ‘St Barbara’ used her energy blast to seal the hemispheres. ‘Mist’ then completed the job by shrinking the sphere back to it’s original size and beyond, compressing the vapors to the point where they liquefied.

Settling In

Afterwards, ‘Mist’, still exhilarated by the success of her early spell-castings, declared “I could get used to this.”
    ‘St Barbara’, meanwhile, was amusing herself by flirting with ‘Glory’ – and suddenly found herself sneaking sideways glances at ‘Dragon’s Claw’ and ‘Oracle’, much to ‘her’ disgust. Dragon’s Claw’s mind was straight heterosexual in orientation, but St Barbara’s body was naturally Bisexual; when his personal inclinations brought one of his female companions to his attention, the body reacted – but it was just as willing to react to a male presence. Further confusing his sexual attitudes, he couldn’t escape the feeling that biologically he SHOULD be more attracted to men than women – all the hormones were strictly female, after all. When was ‘she’ being straight and when was ‘she’ being kinky? He couldn’t tell, anymore. To get ‘herself’ under control, ‘she’ again took refuge in the intoxicating freedom of flight, pushing ‘her’ body through a series of difficult aerobatic maneuvers.
    “Blackwing’ was rather less than amused. Now ‘one of the boys’, she had become acutely aware of how her teammates reacted to the physical presence of her former body. While not the smartest member of the team, she was acutely aware that the way her body moved naturally drove all awareness of her non-physical attributes out of the minds of the males around her. She saw how they reacted to those teasing glances, and discovered that she was feeling jealous of her own body at the same time that she was attracted to it. And, at the same time, she was angry that they could forget so easily that she had a mind, as well. While she never sought to be the center of attention, some small part of her had always taken secret pleasure in being attractive, and in the power it gave her over others (even if she never used that power). Every time she saw her former body, it only reinforced her heightened sensitivity to the contrast in how they looked at her now – as something monstrous, unattractive, and inhuman. And every time, she felt her shape shift a little under the concealing cloak that Jarrell had supplied her.

Cavalcade Of Horrors

Having recognized that an alliance of forces opposed him, the Kaliph Morpheus was not about to give up without something far more substantial in the way of a fight. They might have imprisoned his ghost-like vapors, but he had many other nightmares on which to draw.
    The team were not given the opportunity to do much more than take a deep breath, when they were again under attack. And with each attack, the environment shifted to advantage the ever more outrageous forces summoned to attack the party. Giant spiders were followed by Fire-breathing Rabbits, which were followed by flying three-headed sharks, then rotting corpses.
    This proved to be just the tonic that ‘Blackwing’ needed to distract herself from the gender/sexual/emotional confusion that she had been experiencing, and she threw ‘himself’ into the battles with abandon. After a while, she discovered that there is a particular satisfaction to thumping the hell out of something when you’re upset, and began to luxuriate in the sensation of raw power delivered, not with an impersonal gesture, but with a solid ‘Thump’.
    ‘Mist’, too, was beginning to revel in the opportunities afforded her by her ability to transform the world around her. She cast ad-hoc spell after spell, each seemingly bigger and more extreme than the last. She no longer paid even conceptual lip service to internal scientific logic, indulging in any flight of fancy that occurred to her. Rains of treacle, giant shrimp, balls of fire, turning trees into mini-volcanoes, even teleporting half of something into a solid object. A conga-line of purple anteaters dealt with the swarm of Giant Ants who came looking for dinner, and an earthquake shattered the tidal wave of rock sweeping toward the team.
    The third member of the team who was feeling almost drunk with power was ‘St. Barbara’, who fired energy blast after energy blast, at times using a shaped forcefield to “bank” her shots. When she tired, she switched to firing low-intensity ‘tactical’ blasts designed to toss targets into range of another team member.
    The rest weren’t as effective. ‘Oracle’ kept getting lost in the wonder of a universe only he could see, and was capable of only protecting himself. ‘Glory’ could go one better than that, and if forced to, would defend herself by means of the sword, parrying attack after attack until one of the heavy-hitters was free to protect her. ‘Karma’ was willing and able to attack, but control still eluded ‘her’.
    ‘Dragon’s Claw’ had no such problem, but his ability to be effective was severely limited. He spent his time spotting tactical opportunities and dodging (friendly fire half the time). Jarrell, faithful to her role as guide, ensured that the Kaliph was unable to use deceptions or distractions to mislead the party as the struggled ever-closer to their goal.

To Beard A Kaliph

Eventually, the team fought their way to the foot of the Tower Of Polarity. As had been feared, if there had ever been an entrance into the Tower, the ability to create literally anything someone dreamed in a Nightmare had enabled the Kaliph to erase it. The tower walls rippled and convulsed like a living thing, and its walls were as smooth as glass. At the same time it was as close to impenetrably solid as the Kaliph could make it; only from above could an entrance possibly be forced – perhaps.
    ‘St Barbara’ and ‘Mist’ each tried to reach the top by means of flight, but were attacked by the tower itself and brushed back to ground level almost contemptuously; they were too much the center of attention. That left only one member skillful enough to climb the walls, while the rest ran interference for him – ‘Dragon’s Claw’s turn in the spotlight had at last arrived as foretold.
    Inch by Inch, he scaled the tower using as much stealth as he could command. Reaching the top, he found the window that the Kaliph used to watch over his domain and leapt through. Spotting the Kaliph, ‘DC’ took a leaf out of the Kin battle manual – he screamed and leaped, wielding his Katana like a madman and throwing shuriken with his left.
    As he had suspected, he was no match for the Kaliph in single combat, but the fury of his attack distracted his enemy, who fell back in momentary disarray. Pressing his advantage to it’s limit, the neo-Japanese warrior never let up his barrage of attacks, dueling not to score or even to hit the target, but simply to keep the Kaliph busy reacting to him. Without the direct supervision of the Kaliph, the rest of the team were able to quickly ascend the tower on one of ‘St Barbara’s shaped force fields, created in the form of an ascending platform.
    When he judged the time to be right, ‘Dragon’s Claw’ (who had still not landed a solid blow on his target) leaped over the Kaliph’s head in a particularly showy and ostentatious maneuver. As the Kaliph turned to follow, ‘Blackwing’ hurled himself through the window, crashing into the Kaliph from behind, followed by the rest of the team.
    Despite getting a free, surprise attack, at full power, the team were quickly forced onto the defensive, as ‘Karma’s attack was mis-targeted inwards. ‘She’ collapsed, unable to take any further part in proceedings. Then Morpheus unleashed the power that had gained him his authority in the first place – a devastating emotional control ability. Fear, doubt, and Lethargy swept over the team, insecurity and confusion and panic struck them in waves.
    So intent was the Kaliph on this attack that he forgot about ‘Dragon’s Claw’ again; a lapse that the hero intended to take full advantage of.
    Again screaming his defiance, the martial artist leaped – not toward the Kaliph, but toward the Green Glowing Gem that was the focus of Morpheus’ power. Hands of stone erupted from the walls to seize Dragon’s Claw, but the distraction again had the desired effect, as ‘Mist’ was able to cast a counter-spell to the Kaliph’s ’emotional storm’.
    As Morpheus turned to face her next attack, she fired an attack so devastating that the tower itself exploded around them, and everyone tumbled into the debris.
    Obviously tiring of this two-front war, the Kaliph attacked furiously, ignoring ‘Dragon’s Claw’, who was trapped beneath falling debris. But he was stretched too thin, unable to keep track of everyone, and so his back was turned when Dragon’s Claw tossed his sword to the one team member who had made zero contributions to the battle, and who was considered no threat by the Kaliph – ‘Glory’. Raising the weapon high overhead, she rammed it down into the Living Crystal. For a heartbeat, all was still – and then the Crystal exploded, as the Kaliph screamed, “NOOOOO!”

And, just as the Crystal shattered, so the did the reality that Morpheus had created…..

Epilogue I

The team awoke to find themselves gathered around the conference table in Boston. Hours had elapsed since the dream-crystal was shattered, propelling the team’s awareness into the Micro-realm, but they appeared to have been immobile throughout. Watching the team intently was a clearly-distressed Spider, who told them that he had been about to give up on waiting for them to come out of whatever kind of trance they had been in. Delicately, the team gave Spider a superficial account of the events of the last few hours. It was clear that many members would be some time coming to terms with what they had learned about themselves and their teammates.
    One member who would not be doing that reconciliation with the team was Mist. More clearly than ever, she understood herself, and that she could no longer continue with the team. She did not even have to announce her departure; Glory did that, drawing on her newfound understanding of the forces and needs that drove her teammate. The other members said their farewells, leaving Mist with a standing invitation to visit sometime, and if she needed help, she knew where to find them. Only St Barbara seemed not to recognize that Mist needed to make what had been a temporary separation, permanent. Mist thanked them, but – in addition to the personal reasons that they all knew, she now possessed a unique insight into the problems that Avalon would encounter in its quest to raise it’s technological standards. Her people needed that knowledge, so she no longer had a choice; she had to leave.
    Spider then handed Dragon’s Claw a letter that had been sent “Special Delivery” while the team were in the 5th Dimension, announcing that it looked like Mist was not the only member who would be departing. A refusal would have been sent through regular mail; only an acceptance of DC’s proposal to reform the Ullar Youth warranted a special delivery. A few seconds later, Spider’s surmise was shown to be correct. DC announced that he would be around for a couple of days, tidying up loose ends, but would be leaving by the end of the week to take up his new responsibilities.
    “And one other piece of unhappy news,” Spider concluded, “I regret to announce that Tally – Hellcat – and I are divorcing. Our marriage has been on the rocks for a while now; we tried not to let it get in the way of the job, but couldn’t stop the job getting in the way of the marriage. That’s the price that law-enforcement types sometimes have to pay, I’m afraid. So I guess I’ll be around a lot more from now on….”

Epilogue II: two days later…

Life for Zenith-3 is began to shake down to a new normal. Mist was no longer a member. Jimmy was still comatose, but his vital signs were stronger; he could awaken at any time. St Barbara had still not decided to do about the crush he has on her; she’s been wondering how much she led him on without realizing it, in light of some uncomfortable truths she learned about herself in the 5th Dimension. Dragon’s Claw had tied up his loose ends – some of which were very mysterious, involving sealed messages and urgent consultations with Behemoth.
    It’s all very worrying to the team.
    Spider has sought solace from his troubles in the arms of Glory; but she has yet to decide whether or not to encourage his attentions or turn him down. Everyone has slept soundly, but awoke with a lot on their minds.
    Several outstanding issues remain unresolved from the team’s sojourn in the 5th Dimension. Both of the Deputy Command positions are again vacant; and another round of elections have to organized to fill the gap. Mist’s retirement has left a large hole in the teams resources, which has to be allowed for.
    It seems almost certain that at some point, Morpheus – possibly no longer a Kaliph – will return to bring misery to the team. No megalomaniac worth his salt could swallow coming so close to victory only to have it snatched from his grasp.
    But possibly the most significant – if not the most important – outstanding issue was raised by Oracle during the mission debriefing. He had found the whole concept of a “Living Crystal” fascinating, and had spent some time mulling it over in his mind, arriving at a line of unverifiable speculation, which was duly transcribed into the records:
    “Do you realize that Viruses form crystals when dehydrated? Tobacco Mosaic virus can be dessicated, dried, cut up, and sprinkled on a tobacco plant – and it will infect that plant. In fact, the actual term Virus is an abbreviation of a more specific term – ‘Filterable Virus’ – so named because they can pass through a filter fine enough to filter Bacteria – the finest filter known at the time the Viruses were discovered. A dried virus is therefore once possible form of living crystal.
    “Now, at the micro-world scale, a single water molecule is whole universes wide. By definition, any virus at that scale MUST be in crystal form.”
    “Which is neither here nor there until you realize that there is only one known variety of life-form which is potentially that small AND capable of bestowing some pretty fearsome, if specific, powers. So, for the record, I put the question: Was Morpheus’ gem a Cosmic Symbiote – and if so, can it regroup and regrow from whatever shards were left behind…?”

And somewhere in the churning waters of the winter Atlantic, someone was swimming desperately for Boston Harbor, trying to reach Team Zenith-3 before it’s too late. But that’s a tale for some other time…

The Power Of Dreams There are some points worth emphasizing about this plotline. The Hero System I was helped considerably in preparing the adventure by the Hero System, which explicitly lists psychological quirks and traits, and by my own variation on those rules, which expands and extends that practice. That meant that I didn’t have to play psychoanalyst before getting to work on the adventure. Categorizing Personality Traits Each Character’s personality traits were broken into three groups: Those that were inherently part of the character for reasons of biology or race; those that were learned or instilled as a result of personal experiences or culture; and those that had evolved as specific coping mechanisms & reactions to the paranormal abilities of the character (this was a superhero campaign, after all). The character points value of each trait within the group gave an indication as to that trait’s relative strength. It’s worth noting that I had to know the characters in question in depth and detail to be able to do this. Fortunately, I had been privy to the character generation process for almost all of them. Composite Characters These were then used to create composite characters – the biological traits of one character (A), plus the personal experiences and culture of another (B), plus a transition from the coping mechanisms and responses that used to apply to the character providing the personal experiences element (B) to either those provided by the initial character (A) or to something new, where an element of (B), reinforced, could fulfill that role within the character’s makeup. Internal Logic and Choices of Composites I had so many different ways to explain the choice of composite characters that I could pretty much choose the most interesting and enlightening options, then pick the justification that gave the answer I wanted. Some of those explanations were offered in the course of the adventure synopsis above; others never got mentioned and are now long-forgotten. Reinforcement When you put personalities together by adding A+B+(C-> D), some of the personality traits would reinforce each other, or trigger each other. If “protective of children” or something to that effect is listed on both A and B, then A+B would receive a double-dose of it. This meant that second-tier personality traits of both A and B would rise in significance to become a dominant factor in the psychology of A+B. Cancellations On the other hand, some traits would tend to cancel each other out. For example, if A has ‘hot-headed’ and B has ‘calm’, or ‘slow to anger’, or ‘calculating’, or any of half-a-dozen others, they can be considered to subtract from each other’s impact on the A+B character, effectively canceling each other out. I made careful note of these cases so that I could deliberately introduce circumstances that would highlight the changes in behavior. Transitions The C-to-D transitions were used to plan how the composite characters would evolve as they became more – “comfortable” isn’t quite the right word, but it will do – in their new composite bodies. Again, careful notes were made about how these would impact the characters so that highlighting events could be written into the plot. From the inside looking out I spent quite a bit of time thinking about how different characters would see the world, given their combination of abilities. Many of them had/have ‘extra senses’ as part of their combination of abilities; suddenly, someone else would be looking the world through those eyes. In part, this was done through discussions`with the players of the original characters. I wanted to emphasize how these perceptions changed their world-view, and how they had manifested in certain character traits (the C->D element), as much as I could. In the end, I wasn’t able to do everything on my list in this respect – there is no mention made of the unusual vision powers (microscopic, telescopic, 270-degree vision) that St Barbara, now in the body of Blackwing, had to cope with, for example. There simply wasn’t enough time to do it all. There were some that had to come up, because they were too important to the composite characters; the others went unremarked simply because those characters had other things of greater significance to the character to resolve/display. From the outside looking in I also spent time with each player in the weeks/months leading up to the adventure finding out how each of the characters saw each other member of the team, and what their self-images were. These were a summation of the character’s in-game interactions with the characters in question, so while they may have started with a cultural/personality-based (i.e. defined) predisposition, they had inevitably evolved in the course of play. Some of these external perceptions became central to the way the characters interacted, because psychology causes behavior which creates both perceptions and interactions. Combat Roles I also had to think about how the characters would behave in combat. Some composites would find ways to use their new abilities in roles that were analogous to those they usually occupied within the team, while others would need to adjust to new roles – and would react to those roles in various ways. The choice not have an immediate combat sequence was deliberate – I wanted the players to have a chance to get used to the challenges and rewards of roleplaying the new composite role before I introduced this added complication. In part, characters assume a given combat role because of their abilities, and in part, because it suits their psychological profile. Take two characters, give them the same abilities but different personalities, and the individual’s combat styles will evolve in different directions. This adventure gave me the rare opportunity to explore all that. The Dreamscape This sort of wholesale body-swapping could only plausibly happen in a dream. That was fine, characters like Nightmare and Sandman have been around in comics for a long time, stemming from the notion of attacking characters when they are at their most vulnerable. At the same time, I wanted to explore the implications of a character that’s popped up in Marvel Comics a number of times (starting in the Fantastic Four), Psycho-Man and the ability of something so microscopic to have impacts on the macroscopic world. In particular, how was it that characters who shrink too small in the marvel universe always end up in the same place, dubbed the Micro-verse? Subatomic particles the relative size of planets? Okay, that derives from the “solar system” model of subatomic structures. So the Psycho-Man lives/lived on one particular subatomic particle that was part of one particular atom – how can you hit the same atom time after time? The only explanation was for the entire place to be an ‘elsewhere space’ that was accessible through shrinking, but was actually full-sized, relative to those who went there – another Dimension. Marvel themselves eventually came to the same conclusion. I also wanted to update the concept by expanding various aspects of subatomic physics that weren’t as well known back in the day, such as the defined electron shells, and quantum mechanics, to the macroscopic scale of the characters. James P. Hogan’s “Entoverse” (part of his Giants Series) had explored one interpretation of the concept; I wanted to touch on some alternatives, and add a whole new chapter to the campaign’s cosmology. The Dreamscape that resulted was strange and unique, but consistent throughout. It was a Morphic Reality that responded to the influence of Dreams. The Kaliph Morpheus had the ability in this realm to make dreams come true, and hence had set about fulfilling his dreams of domination. Dreams get to the heart Dreams get to the heart of how we see ourselves and our world, and how we think that others see us. They touch on our deepest fears, and our wildest and most unrealistic aspirations. If you could compile each individual’s dreams, it would be as uniquely identifiable as a fingerprint, because dreams reflect who we are at a very fundamental level. That is their singular nature. Dreams can affect ‘reality’ But Dreams can change the way we behave, and how we think, and – by extension – can therefore be at the root of events that transpire within our lives in the ‘real world’. It is probably going too far to suggest that all personality development takes place within our dreams and our nightmares, but perhaps our dreams and nightmares are manifestations of integrating our experiences into our personalities. They offer fertile grounds for the occasional adventure that gets to the heart of who the characters are and how they perceive the world around them, dealing directly with things that can otherwise only be addressed indirectly, inferred by actions and statements in the ‘rel’ game world. They can be powerful instruments in the hands of the GM who is willing to use them.

There’s a new trend in online news that is creating waves. It’s called Native Advertising and it’s already all around you. And that means that it should be part of any modern-era or near-future game.

What is Native Advertising?

There is a current affairs programme in Australia that watches the media for exaggeration, error, and – at times – outright fabrication, without fear or favor. It’s called (not too surprisingly), Media Watch. On Monday April 21 they featured a story on the show about Native Advertising, and reported at some length the current controversy about the practice. You can read a transcript of the show (and possibly view it online) at the Episode 12 page of the show’s website. Watching the episode, I had a few thoughts on the subject beyond those offered, or quoted in the reports.

Native Advertising is the practice of advertisers sponsoring content to appear on news sites, not just advertising. Sounds simple, almost trivial, doesn’t it? But the more you dig into it, the more significant this change in behavior appears – at least to some people.

A summary of the controversy

Stories and articles on a news provider’s main site that look and feel just like the stories around it but that are actually paid for and often produced on behalf of an advertiser blur the lines between advertisement and news story. The characteristics identified by Junkee’s founder, Tim Duggan, and quoted by Media Watch are:

• Quality content,
• Inspired by a brand, and
• Delivered ‘In-stream’.

“Quality” in this context simply means that it has to look as interesting as any other story on the site, and be as indistinguishable from it as possible.

The big problem is that mainstream news sites are being forced to adopt the same practice by the need to stay competitive. There’s the Guardian and the BBC in England, the Washington Post, New York Times, Time, and many others – they are all doing it. In November last year, the Wall Street Journal identified the trend and warned, “…as the push toward native ads gains steam, the already murky distinctions between ads and non-ads will only get murkier. Not long from now, most of the paid messages you encounter online will be dressed up as unpaid messages, and figuring out which is which will be an ever more difficult task.”

The implied criticism is that advertising is being dressed up as news, compromising the independence of the media upon which we increasingly rely for information.

The second part of the criticism is that the media outlets hosting this ‘news’ are selling their credibility, or at the very least, putting their credibility on the line. And that can go horribly wrong, as The Atlantic discovered last year when it presented seven pages of ‘Sponsor Content’ for the Church of Scientology, producing howls of criticism.

And some are simply concerned that they are selling this credibility for peanuts, for insufficient revenue to actually keep the media operation financially viable. If the major news institutions fail, and many of them are doing so, all that will be left will be sites offering paid advertising dressed up as content.

Advertising disguised as content is not new

For years now, advertisers have known that an ad that’s catchy enough or interesting enough can go viral, and that’s been the holy grail of many an advertising agency. They soon discovered that they were more likely to succeed if their campaign didn’t look like an advert. People are less inclined to engage their “cynicism circuits” if what they are being presented with looks like programme content, and hence the claims by the advertisers look and sound more credible.

The theory is that everyone wins – the audience get entertained, the advertiser draws attention to his brand, and the hosting site draws traffic, enabling it to sell advertising to others. And if you can generate enough buzz that the story gets picked up by mainstream media, the rewards that you reap are many millions of times what you would expect to get for the same costs expended in traditional advertising.

It’s even become entirely normal for advertisers to try out their advertising ideas for mass-market campaigns using “vectors” such as YouTube (which became really interesting during the last couple of election campaigns here in Australia when the major parties started doing so). At the same time, advertisers were trying to get traction with the viewing audience through traditional media by trying to make their ads look more like content, at least here in Australia. I’ve no doubt the same trend was experienced world-wide.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of agencies geared to producing traditional advertising absolutely sucked at producing anything that really looked like independent news; we were obviously seeing advertising, and the efforts to circumvent cynicism only drove it to new heights for a lot of people. So, as soon as social media platforms became businesses funded by advertising revenue, it became inevitable that they would make the leap from content distribution to content creation, setting up in-house advertising departments. If anyone knew how to create and package something that would appeal to their audience, they did.

From this perspective, all that’s really happened is that agencies have become much better at making advertising watchable/readable. Remember that the goal of native advertising is to provide and publish an advertisement that is indistinguishable from the content surrounding it – and the publishing institution sets the standard for that content. If they publish rubbish, the advertiser can publish rubbish. If they publish impartial and factual information, that’s the standard that the advertising has to reach as well.

What Native Advertising amounts to, ideally, is product placement in news sites.

Content being paid for by advertising is not new

It’s been the case for over a century that advertising revenues are what fund newspapers. Subscriptions have been a secondary revenue stream for quite a long time, now. The problem that established news organizations have is that the advertising revenue is drying up. It was always possible to publish a newspaper that was fully-funded by advertising, but for three big reasons, this didn’t happen:

1. Subscription Revenues were the traditional base, and provided a bottom line that was always there, where advertising could be fickle at times;
2. Independence and Authority are attributed to information that we pay for; and
3. maintaining the fiction that subscription revenues paid for the newspaper enabled the news outlet to assume a position of editorial authority over the advertising, in other words to pretend that they were independent of the advertisers.

Journalistic Ethics are all predicated on the theory that news production – content – is independent, and can be held to a higher standard. Every movie or story about breaches of journalistic ethics all center on the compromising of that standard in favor of some vested interest, whether that be an advertiser, a business that is also owned by the owner of the newspaper, or politically motivated.

But, in reality, this is a polite fiction and has been for a very long time. As soon as individuals became wealthy enough to both own (or co-own) a newspaper and another business, independence of the news was compromised.

The Net Effect: Direct Connection

So what is the actual effect of Native Advertising? The reality is that it weakens that fictional distance, and requires advertising to rise to the standards of the remainder of the journalism being published. It removes that fictional bulkhead between advertiser and publisher and acknowledges the reality for all to see – provided that the journalistic standards are upheld.

The Ethical Jungle?

But that’s a big proviso, and always has been. Businesses the world over since the second world war, and since the 1960s and 70s in particular, have been focused on short-term profits rather than building for the long term, and so have governments. That’s the reason our cities have crumbling infrastructure. The conflict between a media outlet publishing something critical of a particular organization or not doing so because they advertise in the outlet has always been a conflict between the short-term (keeping the advertiser happy) and the long-term good of society (impartial and unbiased reporting of the true story).

In this brave new world, that’s not so very different from the old, will publishers be less inclined to impartiality?

Controversy and sensationalism makes for good viewing and good reading, and unless its lethal to the target, produces nothing more than a blip on the profit-and-loss sheet. The only exception is (sometimes) when a company is accused of activity that the social zeitgeist of the time has deemed unacceptable. Many companies who successfully spin corporate mistakes emerge stronger than they were before; the key is to be seen to act to correct whatever the problem was.

So I don’t think they will be – most of the time. And on those few exceptions, where a mismanaged company or political office really could go under as a result of a bad story – think Enron & Watergate, respectively – a diversity of advertisers insulates the publisher of the content to a large enough extent that they have the choice of sacrificing their credibility or telling the story. If the business affected is part-owner of the media organization, they may even make enough through additional sales/clicks of the story to compensate for the brief diminution of share price.

There is, in fact, a counterforce trying to manufacture controversy for the media attention that it brings. “Company in crisis” makes for a great news cycle – if it’s followed, a day or two later, by “Company saved” or “Company solves problem”.

So the ethical landscape may have become a little more tangled, a little more complicated, but by no means has the ethical battle for independence of media been lost. The real enemy of independence of media are plutocrats with dominance over a large segment of the populace – Citizen Kane in the guise of Rupert Murdoch – because that subtracts from that “diversity of advertisers”.

Campaign Mastery & Native Advertising

Long before there was a name for it, I’ve been employing Native Advertising here at Campaign Mastery. Some of the articles that have been posted here have been paid for, either by gifts of review copies or direct funding to my bank account. But I don’t have a problem with that, and neither should you, because the editorial requirement is that each of these articles is as useful and relevant to the readers and site objectives as anything else that gets published here. In other words, it has to be a good article first, and a sponsorship platform second.

When I accept a product for review, I make it clear that it will be an honest review, with no sugar-coating. And it’s the policy here to state outright if we were given a free copy to review, so that if there is any bias that results, our readers can take that into account. Our Policies page puts it plainly and simply – if there’s a link to a service or product or website in an article, readers should assume that there might be a vested interest. And if I write something that someone disagrees with, I’m more than happy to offer them an opportunity to rebut, either as a comment, as an addendum to the original article, or in a new article.

Nevertheless, everything I’ve ever said about a site that I’ve linked to, or the content of that site, has always been 100% genuine. There’s been no distortion, and I’ve even refused some offers because I wasn’t certain that Campaign Mastery could stand behind the product being offered – the last occasion was just a couple of weeks ago (and no, I’m not going to name names). I’ve also never accepted any offers of ‘ready made’ articles provided by sponsors – and there have been quite a few such offers over the years – because I was not convinced that the article would be of value to the readers.

In a nutshell, Native Advertising has never been a problem here because I (and Johnn, back when he was part of the operation) were always aware that what we were offering up was our credibility. The rule of thumb has always been “would I be happy reading this if this were not my website?”

The Potential Negatives

Yes, there are potential negatives to Native Advertising. I can’t escape thinking about various advertising campaigns over the years that have fabricated laboratory testing results, or even entire institutions, to give their claims credibility. Fortunately, we have a history of penetrating consumer affairs television here in Australia that delights in exposing such nonsense. Everything from health foods to dietary supplements to insurance fine print to toothpaste to shampoos to … well, you get the point – starting back in 1984 with a series called The Investigators, which was so successful that it was pinched by one of the commercial networks.

Currently there are three shows that dominate the subject matter in Australia: Media Watch (who inspired this article), Gruen Planet, and, especially, The Checkout (the links are to the Wikipedia pages for these shows, for those who may be interested, here are links to the shows’ respective home pages:

• Media Watch
• Gruen Planet
• The Checkout

A potential erosion of standards and a further erosion of editorial independence are the obvious dangers. Increasing cynicism on the part of the public is inevitable, regardless – the genie is out of the bottle – and that will have its own social impact. If the quality of journalism is compromised downwards to meet the advertorial target, that’s a problem. Centralization of power over media content is a huge problem, and by directly linking advertisers and content, could become even worse. Potential exposure to opportunities for corruption on the part of journalists will increase. Members of the public with a story to tell or a whistle to blow may be less inclined to take it to the mainstream media, and that would be a definite negative. And a trend towards sensationalist journalism, “balanced” by fluff journalism (21 cute puppy pictures, 20 celebrities who have lost weight) is another potential problem.

The Potential Positives

But there are potential positives, too. Diversity of sources can mean diversity of opinions. Funding of genuinely independent journalism can be strengthened. The quality of advertising, to the point where it is worth paying attention to, would be a massive benefit.

There’s always going to be someone who will do the wrong thing, given the opportunity to do it and get away with it. So long as journalists have the funding to uncover those wrongdoings and the editorial permission to tell others about it, journalistic integrity is secure.

The Cynical Assumption

I always consider the possibility that any positive story about someone or something is the result of advertising, and needs to be taken with a grain of salt. When I read a buyer’s review on Amazon, I always assume that – at best – their tastes and mine might be different, and at worst, they may be biased (either for or against). Such reviews inform my decision to buy or not to buy, they don’t make that decision.

I also consider the other side of the coin when I read something with a negative slant. I want information; I can’t trust an opinion unless I know and respect the provider of that opinion. Information, however, lets me make up my own mind.

And that’s the thing that makes those advertisements dressed up as TV ads obvious: They promise information and then provide opinion. That broken promise immediately triggers my cynicism, and I therefore immediately discount the opinions and become prejudiced against the product in question.

The Ethical Blueprint

The one thing that separates the possible positive outcomes from the possible negative ones is having a strong ethical blueprint. And there are five simple parts to achieving the positive and avoiding the negative. These are things that the content publishers have to provide;

Editorial Policies in black and white

Media sources need an editorial policy that’s spelt out in black and white for all the world to see, and you need to ensure that all content, regardless of its source, is subject to that policy. That’s why I published “The Ethical Reviewer” way back in February 2012. In terms of this discussion, you might find the section “The ethics of paid articles” (near the end) to be especially relevant.

More Than Mere Words

Media outlets need to have that policy be more than promises and hot air – they need to be willing and able to back it up. That means that a clause needs to be in the agreement for the publishing of externally-sourced or -funded stories that requires the content to adhere to the editorial policy and permits the removal or redaction of content that doesn’t measure up. Furthermore, you have to have full editorial control over the content. What you are defending with these policies is your credibility. You don’t want to sell it – but you might be willing to lend it out if the content merits it.

Biting The Hand

There will be times when honesty compels you to bite the hand that feeds. If something is rubbish, a media outlet has to be willing and able to say so. If a bank is ripping off their customers, you have to be able to tell the story. And you have to make that policy clear to the content providers whose material you are publishing or disseminating. The far more difficult question to answer is whether or not you should continue to accept advertising or sponsored content from that source after you have publicly castigated them; to my mind, that depends on exactly what they have done wrong, and what they are actually doing to correct the problem (not just talking about doing something to fix the problem). A mea culpa is not enough.

I would love to see confidentiality agreements outlawed in settlements and verdicts. I don’t think it will ever happen. Forcing businesses to admit publicly to wrongdoings and mistakes, and putting some sort of scale on those mistakes, can only force companies to try and find an option to put a positive spin on the settlement. Challenging a verdict becomes more expensive than being seen to do the right thing – unless you are absolutely convinced that you did nothing wrong, and not just in the legal or regulatory sense. If you do something wrong, try to fix it – not cover it up. If you have subordinates, it’s your responsibility to make sure that they are doing the right thing.

And anyone submitting a paid-for or sponsored article – or even a product for review – has to accept that the media outlet reserves the right to be critical of them or their products, if warranted. Explicitly.

Rivalries

Rivalries are rife in business. Any article that is critical of a product, institution, or service must be insulated from any claim that it is even slightly jaundiced because of such a rivalry. When a media outlet accepts an article, they have to be especially wary of this, even by inference.

Disclaimers and attribution within the article are not necessarily enough, but they are a start.

Verifiable Facts

News is about providing verifiable facts. If an article is an example of Native Advertising, any claims that it makes have to be backed up with Verifiable Facts provided to the publisher, and which the publisher is free to utilize as they see fit. You can say anything you are legally-permitted to say in an obvious advert; Native Advertising has to be held to a higher standard. In fact, it has to be held to the same ethical and journalistic standards as the rest of the content.

The Impact on RPGs & Fiction

Okay, so we’ve dealt with the social commentary regarding this not-so-new phenomenon, at least for the most part. If anyone is reading this for my real-world opinions on the subject, you can skip this section and the next, if you want.

Conflicts of journalistic ethics always make for a good, dramatic, story. Exposure of social propaganda or criminal activity, regardless of the source, is always a compelling narrative – when presented the right way. Whistle-blowing will always generate headlines. Native Advertising, in terms of telling adventure stories in an RPG or story, is simply another element that has to be taken into account, or may be the direct cause of the conflict, another window into the story.

If describing the Native Advertising impact is absent, it will noticeably detract from the verisimilitude of the story. A lot of such fiction is all about assuming the worst case, and pitting some individuals against those responsible in a quest to reveal the truth; that won’t change. The violation of ethics in journalism, or the misleading of the public, factor into a huge number of plotlines. This exploration of the perils, pitfalls, and possibilities of Native Advertising have given the writer/GM all he needs to integrate the phenomenon into his plotlines.

The Impact on the Gaming Industry?

When I was developing the background to my Zenith-3 campaign, I thought about sending letters to some of the major corporations, asking where they see their company and their products in fifty years time. What pie-in-the-sky projects do they have tucked away that might come to fruition – never mind the functional technicalities, I don’t need those, I can fictionalize them. I didn’t do so because (1) I couldn’t afford it at the time, and (2) I was unsure of how many responses I would get.

Native Advertising within a near-future RPG could be the answer. Get Toyota or Ford to provide a vision of the future, and put it in the section on transport. Get Panasonic or LG or Sony to write about the future of consumer electronics. Include their content, and maybe some pretty pictures, and help to fund the product.

A fantasy RPG is a trickier proposition, but even there, it could be done. Organic Foods. Energy Drinks. Pharmaceuticals. Hardware suppliers. Tool manufacturers. Remember, too, the proposition that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic” – so talk to those high-tech firms about the future, strip away the how-it-will-work and wrap some fantasy trappings around it. Want to create a new take on a hive mind? Talk to a manufacturer of computer network devices like Cisco about autonomous devices controlled by a network.

Sooner or later, it might just happen. The more mainstream acceptance of RPGs there is, the less unwilling corporate entities will be. And think of the cross-promotional potential. “The car of your fantasies”. “The Thirst Of Adventure”. Getting those companies to promote their involvement promotes your product at the same time.

Is it selling out? Maybe. I don’t think so. Would the legal complications be so extreme as to prevent it from ever happening? Maybe. Possibly even probably. Do I think someone will try it, anyway? Definitely.

The Impact on all of us?

Native Advertising could be beneficial, or it could be a disaster. Or it could be somewhere in between, with elements of both. There’s not all that much that is new about the concept, when you get right down to it. Will there be a few trainwrecks along the way? Sure. But there will also be some genuinely uplifting social benefits from time to time.

The Media Watch episode makes a point that “young people don’t seem to mind”. Despite a cliché that suggests that older people are more inclined to be cynical and world-weary, I think the younger generation are actually more prone to apply cynicism to everything they see – and don’t care. If someone’s going to be taking advantage of you anyway, you may as well be entertained in the meantime.

Or maybe I’m just being too cynical.

There are lots of things that the GM can do with dreams in an RPG. Trivially, he can use his own dreams as inspiration, but that’s not what I’m talking about in this article. No, this time I’m going to discuss all the things that a GM can do with a Character’s dreams.

Probably the most important things to note about dreams is that they derive directly from the characters, and that they don’t have to make sense. Compress time, Distort space, Exaggerate dimensions, Use metaphors like they had been bought in bulk. Turn molehills into mountains and mountains in Mount Olympus. Character abilities can be totally unrealistic one minute and completely forgotten the next. Check the lyrics of “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” – it’s a roadmap of what’s possible in dreams.

Tales Of Reality

I’ve divided the functions that dreams can provide to a GM into two categories. The first is all about the GM shedding light on things that have really happened within the campaign.

Alternative Explanations

Players can easily add two and two together and get five. The PCs have their pet theory about why and how something has happened, and are about to commit to action based on that theory. Rather than the GM coming out and telling them “there’s something you’ve overlooked”, he can let them go about their business and slip the alternative explanation into a dream that one of the characters has. Or even divide it into parts and give a number of PCs the different parts.

When the players can afford to lose a day or three chasing down the wrong avenue without the villains gaining total victory, this is often preferable. It lets the PCs discover their error at something approaching the eleventh hour (assuming they heed the GMs warnings), raising the drama and tension of the plotline. Only if the action the PCs were about to commit themselves to would be irrevocable would I resort to INT checks with the winner being told outright, “there’s a possibility that you may have overlooked…”. This, of course, constitutes their first and last warning; if they choose not to listen to it, the shape of the campaign changes, and I start looking for an adventure idea that shows the consequences of their mistake, then another on how they can start to undo it.

Things that have been overlooked

In a busy campaign, sometimes plot threads can be forgotten. There are times when that’s desirable, and when I go out of my way to try and pose a series of distractions to the players, making the assumption that if the player doesn’t remember it, neither does the character. But there are times when I don’t want a plot thread to be forgotten because it is going to tie back into the current situation at some future point. Dreams are a great way of reminding players of things they may be overlooking in their current analysis of events.

Things (that should be) on their minds

There’s no rule that I know of that says a GM should not help a player to play his character. When players choose expediency over a priority that I feel should be important to the character, a dream sequence can be a great way to warn the player that his character has, or should have, something else on their mind. Use symbolism and metaphor and rephrase aspects of the situation as often as you can. Incorporating some of the preceding day’s events is a useful technique for implying that the issue is nagging at the PC’s subconscious, and not simply repeating the same bottled message over and over again.

This technique also works well when the player simply ignores some plot development that the character, as described by the campaign background, his personal history, and the player, should be paying attention to.

The way it might have happened

A dream can be a great way to slip information into the players hands when there is no other way they could possibly get it. When I do this, I often like to present a second, false, explanation in another character’s dream, or mix and match parts of the two stories. This represents the characters’ minds struggling to put together an explanation for the way things might have happened.

In some campaigns, and where the events are especially significant, I might assume a limited form of psychometry – the event was so terrible or so important that the land itself remembers what happened and whispers the story to the PCs in their dreams. If this is happening, I will usually signal it to the players by having several of them share the same dream (though they will have to figure out for themselves that it was the same dream) – I will describe the dream sequence in notes simultaneously delivered to each of the players, or give part of the dream to one player and the next part to another (and not necessarily in chronological order). This takes what would otherwise be narration by the GM and renders it interactive, and a source of roleplay the next morning.

The Way Things Used To Be

It can be useful at times to use a dream to highlight and contrast the current situation or location encountered by the PCs with the way things used to be. Coming across a ruined castle in a desolate wasteland? Fine, a great setting for a small adventure! This is a way of slipping background information to the players that avoids large chunks of dry exposition by presenting a more dynamic vision. It should be long on tone and mood and general imagery and pageantry and short on significant events and dialogue; the point is to show what things used to be like, not how they became the way they are. This immediately sets up the mystery of how things went from A to B, which can unify otherwise disconnected and disjointed encounters. Nor is it necessary to be all that accurate – this is the character’s imagination conjuring up scenes.

Where there is a risk of players assuming that this is the way things actually were, I will slip a few obvious discrepancies into the dream sequence. Putting towns on the wrong side of a moat (or having the moat surround the town rather than the castle), making all the trees semi-tropical instead of what should have been in the climate presented, and so on.

This danger is especially high when one character dreams of the way things were, while another’s imagination conjures up scenes of the destruction. Make the two dreams deliberately incompatible, or overtly impossible, to stress that they should not be taken literally. And remember, dreams don’t have to make sense!

Tap-dancing in a minefield

Another way that I employ dreams in my campaigns is to warn players of the (possibly unnecessary) dangers that their current course of action entails. I simply pick one of the ways in which their plans could go horribly wrong (if possible, one that’s different from the one that I have in mind) and present it in glorious 3D to the character’s mind’s eye.

I will frequently go heavy on the metaphor and symbolism in part of the dream sequence and prosaic in another, when this is the message that is to be conveyed. “You are all dancing a complicated waltz with (the enemy and his minions). The villains disperse into wifts of smoke, but the dance continues, and you find yourself in a circle with the other PCs facing each other’s backs. The dance steps are very difficult to remember and you keep getting them just a little bit wrong; they seem to be having the same difficulty. Your hands, as required by the dance, alternatively stretch out to the sides, reach forward to touch the back of the person in front of you, raise up high into the air as your hand swivels about its wrist, or drops to your side to clutch the hilt of your weapon. As the music reaches a crescendo, your hand drops and grasps the hilt, but this time you draw it from its sheath and in the final move of the dance, you plunge it into the back of the comrade directly in front of you, as they do the same. You look down at the blade projecting from your chest, and observe the spurt of blood before you all collapse, the dance at an end. As the world begins to darken and your life ebbs away in pools of radiant red, you notice the orchestra who have led this dance – it is you and the other PCs, and they too have collapsed over their instruments above swelling pools of blood.” At which point you awaken from the nightmare with a half-strangled gasp, sweating profusely. – so the enemies the PCs are pursuing or plotting against are will-o-the-wisps and the PCs are responsible for each other’s demise, their own worst enemies. The next night, it might be combat with the enemies, who – as the final thrust is made – fade away to be revealed as another party member. And as many other variations as I can think of, on subsequent nights, until the players get the message.

The Nagging Conscience

Players will sometimes have their characters do something or permit something that – according to the background and makeup of the character – they should not. Even though the character may get away with this at the time, I will often revisit the event through dream metaphors until the character does something to assuage their conscience. This is actually the first application of dreams that I employed, and used to be a warning to a character that they were treading dangerously close to an alignment shift.

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

The subconscious can often put clues together that have not even been consciously noticed by the individual. When I adjudge that the characters may have seen enough activity on the part of an enemy for this effect to be a factor, I will sometimes drop some additional hints as to his nature and activities in the form of dreams/nightmares. Not necessarily accurate, almost certainly distorted and incomplete, but these clues can nevertheless provide a structural skeleton for the assembly of a more robust profile of the enemy. This can be a great way to shortcut the discovery process, the ‘getting-to-know-you’ phase of the conflict and accelerate the plotline.

Nightmare scenarios

Nightmare scenarios are a great way to explicitly describe the stakes that are on the table in an adventure, especially if the characters don’t seem to recognize the seriousness of the dominoes that the GM has lined up. These take the worst-case outcome, inflate it to melodramatic proportions, personalizes it to the character, then feeds it to him. Done properly, it can make the players utterly paranoid about failure, almost paralyzed with uncertainty and yet driven by the immediate need to take dramatic action.

Urgency and dramatic action always make for an exciting game session, don’t you agree?

But there is a warning to be sounded: more than any other type of dream application, this can turn around and bite the GM, hard. If the prospective outcome of failure turns out to be radically less than the nightmares would have it, players can downgrade the importance of not only this application of dreams but all applications. Once they stop trusting the information being presented to them, the whole campaign can be adversely affected, because it will then begin to spill out into other areas of the GM-players relationship. Radical action on the part of the GM can salvage the situation by inflating the actual consequences beyond what even the antagonists were expecting, and making sure that the players learn of these additional consequences, but sometimes these are too obviously tacked-on afterthoughts, or don’t come to light in time.

The surest sign of this problem manifesting is when the players begin to express the dream sequences in terms of the GM attempting to railroad the campaign or the plotline. So watch for that! You want to guide, shape, manipulate, and inform – not dictate. At least, not most of the time – there are a couple of limited exceptions to that general rule that I will address in due course.

The inner struggles

Finally, when the character has, or should have, something on their minds – an impending decision of some seriousness – having nightmares about indecision or wrong choices can and should reflect the gravity of the stress the character is supposed to be under. Once you have established this principle a few times, this can then also be used to inform characters that an impending decision that seemed trivial might have deeper ramifications that they aren’t appreciating – in other words, using the dream sequence as a vehicle for GM hints.

Psychic Communications

The other way of using dreams is to give the characters information that they could not possibly obtain (in time) by their own devices.

Beyond their ken

For example, the characters might experience events from far beyond, either contemporary with them or from the past. If you need some sort of flimsy logic on which to hang such dreams, the concept of psychometry provides it – the events being experienced all occurred in the same multiverse/cosmic structure as the one the characters reside in, and so the characters were able to pick up the ’emotional resonances’ of the events.

Alternatively, some witness may have found a way to ‘broadcast’ the events as a warning to whoever was capable of receiving it.

Cries for help

Which brings us to an application of dream messaging that is an obvious progression from the previous one – someone dropping a dime on the PCs in the middle of their dreams. I normally like to start this sort of dream sequence with something more normal and prosaic in nature – a normal dream with no particularly significant content – and have the “invasive” dream sequence “infuse” this normality bit-by-bit.

Message in a bottle

A variation on the cry for help is the “message in a bottle”. Because the implication is that this dream content is packaged and bundled as a unit, it normally comes on all at once, radically reshaping every element of an existing dream at the same time. I also find it useful to include some metaphor for entering a different world – being pulled beneath the surface of the water, passing through a curtain, entering a tent, or something along those lines. Alternatively, something that metaphorically (or literally) depicts the opening of a bottle or container and the new dream surging out – or even the bottle/container opening itself no matter what the character attempts to try and keep it in place, signifying that the character is helpless to avoid the message. What they then do about it is another question.

And that’s an important consideration for both this and the preceding dream communication – there should (eventually) be something clear that the character can do, or is supposed to do, about the situation. This may or may not be stated explicitly – my general preference is to leave the characters with more decision room, but there are times when the action required is just the first step with many to follow offering the character the chance to change direction, so it becomes more important to actually put their feet on the path to the adventure than it does to give them the choice to step off it just yet.

Instructions from Beyond

Gods are busy people, and would have all manner of workarounds for the problem of “Cant Be Everywhere”. One of those workarounds is almost certainly going to be speaking to their followers (or other people of significance) in their dreams. When this type of dream is underway, it is important to demonstrate that the deity/being responsible has total control over the dreamscape. Within the dream, the character should be a rag doll – the implication that the being responsible is conveying as a subtext is that he, she, or it would have no trouble doing the same in real life. That subtext might be accurate, or nothing more than intensive P.R. – that’s up to the GM and his world/campaign design. Whoever’s giving the orders not only wants to be obeyed but expects to be obeyed, and without hesitation.

In the cold light of morning, of course, the players may have entirely different ideas. I use this as often to have the villains threaten the PCs as I do to have their nominal superiors issue instruction and advice, in the full expectation that the players will turn around after the dream and tell each other “He’s nervous about us.”

There’s a lot more that needs to be said on the subject of obedience to dreams, and the implications of this type of dream. Firstly, whoever is doing this is smart enough to realize that the players may choose to disobey, and would plan accordingly (unless this level of arrogance was a deliberately-placed blind spot in the NPCs personality). Secondly, anonymity may be a thing of the past – or the dream may have been targeted without knowing who was going to be at the receiving end. Thirdly, there is the implication that if the Gods (or whoever) really is this powerful, the problems and enemies that they face must be equally dangerous – which might just be the only message that the GM is trying to convey with the dream. Finally, by softening the notion of “giving orders”, this permits these celestial beings to interact on a social level with the PCs in a way that could never really happen during “awake time”.

During the first Fumanor campaign, all sorts of beings were vying for the position of the Last Deity. Hastor, one of the more subtle contenders, strove to persuade the characters by being sociable during their dreams – and systematically pointing out, one after another, why his fellows could not be trusted with the position. These chats, in Hastor’s great Banquet Hall of dreams, proved vitally informative to the PCs, giving them information that could not be obtained any other way about the prospective contenders. In fact, Hastor was their leading candidate for a very long time as a result – only when the PCs discovered that they had a means of altering one aspect of the other contenders to make them “suitable” did Arioch come forward. Before that discovery, he was in last place amongst those who had declared their interest. In effect, Hastor’s attempted manipulations told them exactly what needed to be changed about each of the contenders, producing a whole different card game at the climax of that campaign.

Temptations from the Other Team

I’ve preempted discussion of this possible application in the previous section, I’m afraid. Dreams offer an ideal way for really powerful enemies, who are so inclined, to try to buy the PCs off. This should take the form of one of those dreams in which each PC seems to have everything he could possibly want – wealth, comfort, luxury, pleasant company, companionship, knowledge, power, respect, authority, fame. And, at the peak of the dream, the voiceover announces, “and all this can be yours, All you have to do is…”

The smaller and less apparently-significant that required deed is, the more tempting the offer is. “I don’t want your soul; I’m overcrowded here as it is. Just do me one small favor…”

Practical Considerations

Having established the great many things that dreams can be useful in conveying to the characters and hence the players, a few words on how you go about reaping these potential benefits are clearly in order. I have more than ten points to address under this heading, so let’s get started:

The Realm of Dreams

The place to start is the realm of dreams itself. Does it have some objective reality? What are the ground rules? Can anyone access it? Or is it a place that it uniquely private, a virtual world conjured by the activities within our minds? What are the value of dreams, anyway? Are they necessary for human psychological balance? Are there different classifications into which dream intensities can be categorized?

Most people have many dreams in a single night’s sleep, but rarely remember them. Of those who do remember their dreams, we rarely remember more than one in a single sleep period, presumably the last one to be experienced.

There are many unexplained and unproven phenomena associated with dreams – everything from Prophetic Visions to Levitation to remote communication. In terms of the game, I don’t care about the restrictions and parameters of the real-world dreamscape, if any can even be said to exist. The GM is creating a game world, and any resemblance to reality is either a happy coincidence or a convenient shortcut – a bit like mathematics, really. The GM therefore sets the ground rules for the dream reality within his game, what can happen there, and what can’t. It’s also within his purview to change those ground rules any time he sees fit – even in the middle of a character’s dream, if desirable.

Such decisions should always be an informed choice, and that requires the GM to at least have thought about the question in the first place.

What’s The Message?

It’s very easy to get carried away with dream symbology and creating the sense of unreality necessary for the player to distinguish between dream-sequence and actual events. The GM should always keep in mind the message that he is trying to convey to the player through the dream sequence, and make sure that it is not obscured. In fact, it should be the first thing that gets decided.

Matching personality to dreams

When I employ dream sequences within my games, I work very hard at matching the dream content to the personality, interests, and concerns of the character supposedly having the dream. Whatever the content may be, the character’s personality will dictate what elements of the dream are detailed and which are mutable or vague. I want the player to be convinced that this is something that the character might dream under the circumstances. This ensures that there is a noticeably different quality to those dreams that are “injected” from another source. It’s a subtle point, but one that can make a big difference to how the dream is perceived and acted upon by the player.

But I don’t sleep!

In many versions of D&D, Elves don’t sleep. There may be other races with the same trait. The first time you lay a dream sequence on such a character, nine times out of ten, you will get the response “But [Race X] don’t sleep!”

Every species has some form of sleep-substitute, usually meditation of some sort. This state of altered consciousness is exactly the same as sleep for our purposes, and is just as capable of carrying visions, dreams, and nightmares. But you can expect to have to explain this to the player.

Interactions

Some dreams are presented as blocks of text, with the character’s actions and reactions within the dream specified by the GM. On other occasions, the GM may permit the character to interact with events inside the dream and make decisions about the dream-character’s actions. When you decide to permit an interactive dream, it’s important to remember that the results and effects will usually bear no relationship with any objective reality. In never – well, very rarely – permit the rolling of dice within a dream, it completely breaks the mood and blurs the lines between game reality and dream sequence.

It is when you permit interactions that it becomes especially important to have worked out the “rules and parameters” of the dream environment. I always envisage the dream sequences as occupying a Warner-Brothers-Cartoon reality. Gravity works except when its inconvenient to the GM. Common Sense gets left in the parking lot. Characters can parade around with swords sticking out of them without noticing, or without being bothered. Colors of things that don’t matter are muted, while the colors of the things that matter are unusually bright. Logic takes a back seat to plot, symbolism and metaphor. Landscapes rearrange themselves at will. Clouds can be made of eggs that crack open when they are struck hard enough. Things can and should get outright strange – think Twin Peaks at it’s most bizarre.

And that’s all the way it should be. There are some dreams where you feel in control of yourself, and others in which you are a helpless puppet – and that’s before we even get into ‘introduced’ dreams from an external source.

Laying it on too thick

I’ve said this before, but it’s so important that I’m going to come at the same message from a different angle: If you obscure your message to the point of impenetrability through too many layers of symbolism, metaphor, and weirdness, it will not be understood by its intended audience – and you may as well not have the dream sequence.

It’s almost as though that message should be the one thing that remains in crystal-clear focus throughout the experience, the rock of consistency that provides the backbone to the rest of events.

The Weirdness file

Some GMs might have trouble coming up with surreal imagery to drop into their dream sequences; I do, sometimes (other times it seems to come easily). As a crutch to lean on when creativity is a little thin on the ground, I maintain a file of surreal imagery – actually, a folder and a file, with both verbal and visual descriptions. Anything weird that I come across that seems to have something about it gets parked in that file. It might be something abstract, a particularly interesting way of subtitling a graphic, an unusual juxtapisitioning of different visual or narrative elements, whatever.

Before I started building up The Weirdness File, I used another technique that I still resort to occasionally. Pick three books at random, and open each of them to a random page, laying them beside each other. Reading one printed line from each book in succession as though the text ran across all six opened pages produces a nigh-on-infinite number of strange juxtapositions of visuals and ideas. Most of these will be nonsense, to be thrown away immediately, but a few will contain little gems.

Once you have two or three ideas, you will find yourself in the right frame of mind to carry the dream sequence to its conclusion without further stimulus. It’s getting into that mindset in the first place that’s the tricky part – and, once you’ve finished, getting back out of it!

A couple of other tips: I have the primary message that I want the dream sequence to convey written before I start; I do that at the same time as writing the rest of the adventure. I do the dream sequences completely separately whenever possible, to ease the problems of slipping in and out of metaphysical frame of mind. If I find that I need to do the dream sequence in sequence or am so inspired that I simply can’t resist doing so, I make sure that I take a break of a few minutes and read or watch something to reset my headspace.

Dream Interpretation

There are a lot of books out there on both historical superstition and modern theory regarding the interpretation of dreams. Don’t use any of it.

It’s all esoteric mumbo-jumbo so far as your audience – the players – are concerned. If you rely on these sources to translate your message into “dreamspeak” they will always miss the point.

The whole foundation of using dreams in any of the ways discussed in this article is that sometimes dreams represent an objective reality that follows the same basic ground rules as the rest of the character’s existence – but that is being perceived through a mind-bending hallucinogenic haze. So ditch the books on dreams and dream-meanings; craft your message as straightforward narrative, then cloak it in symbology and metaphors that the players will recognize – eventually. Then powder-coat with weirdness.

Dream Interpretation II

What do you do if, after all your efforts, the players dismiss the significance of the dream or are unable to interpret what you have presented to them?

The first is a much easier problem to solve, so I’ll deal with it in this section and leave the second problem for the next.

• Before the important dream sequence, I make sure that I have already established the significance of dreams, by using a dream sequence in a preceding adventure.
• At the start of that preceding adventure, I’ll make sure that the PCs hear someone talking about “The meaning and significance of dreams” – it could be a snippet of a talk show, or someone they meet on the street, or something said in casual conversation, or whatever. The key point is to make sure that the players have been told that sometimes, dreams are important.
• Next comes the dream sequence in the preceding adventure. I will sometimes put this into the ‘hands’ of an NPC so that I can be sure that the character will talk about the dream and its content to the PCs, and sometimes not.
• This is followed by the events of the adventure to which this initial dream sequence relates. Throughout this series of events, I will keep referring back to the content of the dream, as described to the players. In-game events get explained by clues in the dream, or explain something that was obscure within the dream. By the end of the adventure, I will have established two things: The significance that dreams will sometimes play; and a code-phrase that I will consistently use to signal the difference between important dreams and any others that might come along. The phrase that I use is normally “unusually vivid”, though sometimes “unusual” may be enough.

Repeat this process a time or two and you will quickly inform the players that dreams are important channels of information.

I have also tried the approach of supplying the key clue to a mystery confronting the PCs within a dream, and found that while this hints at the importance of dreams, it doesn’t emphasize the point enough.

A more successful technique has proven to be the shared dream – if five PCs have exactly the same dream, or each get part of a connected narrative, or dream of the same events from different perspectives, they will soon come to realize that it holds some significance, and hence, so potentially do ALL dreams described by the GM.

I rarely have to resort to such overt techniques any more. I have established these principles in several campaigns with players in common to each, so they know that part of my GMing style is to occasionally use the dream sequence when that is the tool that will best serve the needs of the plot.

Dream Interpretation III

Sometimes, especially if you’ve laid the distortions and metaphors on too thickly, the players simply can’t figure out what the dream was trying to tell them, or they will make an incorrect assumption about the meaning and hammer the dream narrative to fit. This is where the whole dream sequence tends to come unstuck.

If their misinterpreted version is not toxic to the plotline, I’ll let them run with it – but keep dropping hints such as “it doesn’t feel right” or “It feels like you’re making a mistake” or “It feels like you’ve missed something important”.

If their misinterpretation IS toxic to the plotline, that’s a sign of bad writing/plotting on my part, because it means the dream sequence was there to railroad the PCs into the adventure. It’s happened a time or two, you can’t learn this stuff from first principles without making a few mistakes along the way. When this happens, the ONLY answer that works is to come clean and get the pain over with. Give the players the “plain text” version of the dream and what it is supposed to mean, and give them some sort of benefit in compensation for your failure – then make sure that you wring every last drop of learning from your mistake that you can squeeze out of it.

Avoid explaining “Why” unless it’s important

Unless the dream sequence is an attempt at direct communication from a third-party within the game, dream sequences work better when the process behind them is unexplained. It’s all too easy for the players to become so distracted with the “how” that they miss the “why”, and the content that is being delivered. Let the players come up with theories to their heart’s content, but never confirm or deny it; leave that to the context of the content and of subsequent in-game events.

Make a point of the after-dream

Characters who experience a significant dream should usually be visibly affected by that dream. The other PCs should notice something a little different about the character’s demeanor or appearance the next morning. This is a cue to the player who experienced the dream to say something about the content. If they don’t take that cue, there’s nothing more that you can do about it, for now; that player is taking the responsibility for interpreting the significance all upon their own shoulders. But if they then use the clues dropped by the GM into the dream sequence to gain an advantage through an otherwise unlikely choice of action, or derive some other benefit from them, a perceptive NPC (or even a perceptive PC) might start to wonder if there was more to the dream than the character was letting on. This should be especially true when the primary goal is to establish the significance of dream sequences within the campaign because keeping the dream private at such times is directly contrary to the purpose for which the GM has inserted it into the adventure.

Overuse

Like any plot or literary device, it’s easy to overuse the dream sequence, especially when you can do so many wonderful things with one. It can be very hard to recognize when you’ve gone too far. There are only two solutions to this particular problem other than waiting for someone to tell you that they think you’ve gone to that particular well too often.

The first is to make the dream sequence an integral part of the adventure structure. Every GM I know, at the end of an adventure, has an informal bull session talking about what worked and what didn’t, what was planned and what was serendipity. You can build such narrative into the adventure itself through a dream sequence. Alternatively, you can use a dream sequence at the start of every adventure to put the adventure and subsequent plot developments into context – sometimes the players will understand the dream sequence and sometimes it won’t be apparent until the end, if at all. This is the GM dropping hints about what the next adventure is going to be about, or was about (if done at the end of the adventure). This can work very well if done reliably, but it can also be very hard to do without becoming repetitive in your dream “style”. It also more-or-less mandates that you have plenty of playing time up your sleeve.

If you’re more pressed for playing time, or if there are large intervals between game sessions (more than a week), this approach just won’t cut it, and you’re left with the only alternative: once you’ve established that dreams can be important, only use them when they ARE essential. A lot of the time, you can put the key message of a dream sequence into the hands of a perceptive NPC; let them make the key observation that you want to deliver, and do it where everyone at the table can hear it.

The dream sequence can be a powerful weapon for the GM. It permits the presentation of information that the players could never get any other way, illuminate subtleties of personality, and be an in-game way for the GM to communicate directly with the PCs. But it blunts with overuse, and is very difficult to resharpen. Use it sparingly to bring the metaphysical into your campaign, and the world will feel a little more vibrant, complex, and interesting.