Everything has to happen somewhere, and that means that locations are an essential element of RPGs and RPG settings. And that makes locations a worthy subject for this month’s Blog Carnival.

Posts I would like to see as part of this month’s carnival are:-

• How do you choose a location?
• How do you represent a location if you don’t have a matching Battlemap?
• How do you modify a location to achieve a specific story requirement?
• Location Descriptions: There are places each of us know because that’s where we live, or work, or grew up. GMs who don’t have that advantage can use that knowledge. Describe the places you know – a town, a suburb, a city, a state, a building. But don’t describe it physically, with facts that can be gotten from a Wikipedia page or a government website; try to capture the flavor of the location, as briefly as possible.
• Location Descriptions Take Two: And then, try to shift the location in time. What will it be like in 50, 100 years? What was it like 50, 100, 200 years ago? What would it be like if it was transplanted to an equivalent location in a fantasy location? Or a moonbase? Or a space station? The more variations on your description you can offer, the more likely it is that it will be of use to someone else.
• Location Descriptions Take Three: If you’re still looking for ideas, you could describe one or more fantastic locations from one of your games. Or talk about how you created it. Or both.
• How do you improvise a location if the dice indicate a random wilderness encounter?
• And finally, anything else you can think of concerning locations, how to choose them, describe them, use them.

A recent article that I posted here at Campaign Mastery might be helpful: The Poetry Of Place: Describing locations & scenes in RPGs. One of the reasons I’ve been holding back on this blog carnival topic, which I’ve had in mind for some months, is that I wanted to have that article available as a reference for participants.

I have ideas in mind for all of the above topics to appear here at Campaign Mastery. Whether or not I get all of them done, or burn out on the subject before I get that far, is another matter. But it’s a big topic, with plenty of scope.

Finally, a piece of information that might be of interest, and of relevance: I once talked at length with a real estate agent about how they value properties. I thought that there was some system, that you set a base price according to the size and number of rooms, type of building, etc, modified it for proximity to amenities, shopping, parks, etc, then applied a factor of some sort to represent the typical relative value shift of the location – some suburbs are worth more than others. But oh, no, that’s not the case at all. It’s one part historical records for the region, one part adjustment for the current property market and general demand for property of that type, one part the value at which neighboring buildings were sold, one part guesswork, and one part chutzpah. They make it up as they go along – though a lot of people like to pretend otherwise. Personally, I think that a really good statistical analysis by a large real estate firm could probably permit then to be a lot more scientific in their approach, but what do I know? I’m not a trained real estate salesman. Think about that, the next time your PCs want to rent a warehouse or buy property on which to build a base…

Location! Location! Location! Let’s go…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…
   A triple-sized serving of the Orcs and Elves series today, to make up for missing last week, and to wrap up the Clan Wars plotline.
   I explained what had occurred to destroy last week’s posting in a series of comments attached to the then-most-recent article, but for the benefit of anyone who didn’t read those, here’s what happened.
   After working all day – well, as close to it as my physical condition permits – I was about half-way through Chapter 80 when the combination of time, infirmity, and exhaustion caught up with me and my creative juices just stopped flowing. For various reasons, I knew that I had to get to the end of what is now chapter 86 in the course of the next two parts of the series, and to ensure correct continuity, I had to at least have them outlined in pretty solid detail before I could commit to the content of Chapter 79, especially the dates and lifespans.
   I returned to working on it on Tuesday Night, and in one burst of sheer creativity, I finished Chapter 80 and wrote everything that now comprises chapters 81-86 as a single massive chapter. And then had a systems crash in the middle of saving the updated text. I tried everything that I could to recover the lost data, even searching for ways to do a memory dump, but to no avail.
   I got up early Wednesday, and working from a backup of everything that I had done on Monday, I was able to reconstruct in detailed note form everything that had been lost, in the process plugging a couple of logic holes and breaking what was a monster chapter into the five that it now occupies, from memory – a task that took almost as long as writing it in the first place had done. But by now it was too late to publish it, I had to start work on the article for Thursday – which was delayed and compromised by a blackout. The payoff was that it was a breeze to convert those notes into finished text.
   There’s another reason for the extra-large post this week, which I’ll get to in a concluding footnote.

Of course, I still have notes that didn’t get used in the course of the series. The Warblade and Clan Shaman of the Burning Swords don’t get named until Chapter 79, for example. I had the names all along, it just never became important.
   More significant is the role of Yurtrus, Orcish Goddess of Death and Decay, mate of Baghtru, and since it’s what inspired the whole interpretation of the “stupidity” associated with that deity, which is explained in the course of these chapters, it’s worth noting. Medieval cities tended to have very poor waste-disposal systems – they were unsanitary to the extreme. And if any race could find a way to raise the bar of “extreme” in this context, it would have to be the Orcs, who had naturally immunity to diseases and poisons. Orcish cities would therefore be a breeding ground for pestilences of the worst kind, uninhabitable by anyone but Orcs. Parts of this came out, parts were hinted at, but the obvious logic of one of the patron deities of cities being Yurtrus was never made clear, it simply never seemed to fit.

Unexpectedly, what began as a blend of footnote and afterthought has become one of the most complete and compelling parts of the narrative – originally just three chapters, it mushroomed by more than twenty. Does that mean that I embraced my inner Orc?
   In the process, a lot of what were originally just vague notes – “Verde discovers the truth about his quest”, for example – became clarified by situations and personalities.
  I hope my readers have enjoyed it.

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A couple of reminders that may be useful:
Directions in Fumanor are Sunset, Sunrise, Dexter (90° left of Sunrise), and Sinister (90° right of Sunrise). Modern maps are usually drawn with Sunrise at the top, but when the terms were coined, the practice was to make Sunset the dominant direction. Orcs count in base five, ie 1-2-3-4 fingers, 1 hand=5, 1-hand-and-one=6, and so on through to 4 hands and 4 fingers, which is followed by 1 fist=25. Orcs cannot count higher than 4 fists, 4 hands, and 4 fingers = 125, they have to group larger numbers into groups or units that can be counted on this scale.

Clan Wars XXIII: The Resumption of Normal Hostilities

Corallen illuminated the rim of the portal, and one by one the triumphant survivors passed through. The moment before they entered the passageway back to the doomed city of the Mailed Fist Clan, the Elvish God clouded their memories of events. They would still remember that they had achieved a great victory at equally great cost – of the nine who had dared the Lair of the Hidden Dragon, only five were returning – and would remember what needed to be done next, but not why. The weapon arm of the three Orcs who had struck the fateful blows against the chains that had bound their enemy in slumber had begun to tingle, and the strength in those limbs was fading. In the days that followed, the wounds would with and become diseased – a noteworthy event for a race that had never succumbed to such illnesses before – and the disease resisted all curative blessings. When the trio grew feverish, the decision was made to amputate the rotting limbs. Fortunately, this drastic action, another imitation of human practices, served the immediate need, but they would never be as capable of their former roles in their native societies again.
   They returned to a ruined city; every structure save that of the tower itself had been demolished, reduced to rubble, some of it completely covering the entrance. It took them almost eight hours to dig their way out of the debris. After reporting to the young Clan Chieftain of the Red Eyes, they collapsed in exhaustion.
   The next day, Garunch and his counterpart from the Mailed Fist Clan and old friend, Kudja, supervised a mass prayer to Gruumsh of all the Shaman of the Red Eye clan, beseeching him to tear open the earth beneath the tower and let the river of melted rock beneath well up through the crack to seal the tower for eternity, making it as close to a monument of solid rock as the Orc-God was capable of achieving. First then summoned the power and craftsmanship of the God Of Elves to finish the monument, polishing, carving, smoothing, and inscribing it in Orcish to commemorate the fallen city and the dictum of Gruumsh as reinterpreted by the Burning Eyes and Mailed Fist clan: no Orcish community greater in number than 4 hands of dwelling clusters would be permitted, and no such collection of dwellings to contain more than 4 fists of Orcs, numbering all from eldest to newborn – in other words, the largest permitted communities were to number 2000 Orcs. An exception was declared for Moots, when a temporary gathering of 5 fists of clusters would be permitted (10,000 Orcs) – but these dwellings must be temporary and completely destroyed or removed at the end of the Moot. Even these were barely enough for the Clans to bring a single leader and escort to a moot.

But there was one individual ‘present’ whose memory had not been clouded by Corallen, nor is it clear that he would be able to do so if he wished to attempt the deed. He was completely unaware that Lolth had been present at the fall of the Hidden Dragon not merely by proxy (in the form of Ambassador Tathzyr) but more directly through the spiderweb mirror he had carried in his pouch. She had heard it all, and did not like what she had heard. The destiny that Corallen sought to ensure had spoken of a day in which Elves, Drow and Orcs would unite to threaten the Chaos Powers directly; since she had expressly forbidden any congress with outsiders save that personally directed by her, and she had no interest in exposing herself to a direct threat by the Chaos Powers, this mandated that her children would one day supplant their love of her for another, as she had long feared. Once again, she realized that she would need to intensify her search for a new populace to rule, one which could never rebel against her; in the meantime, this mooted alliance must be rendered as improbable as it sounded, and placed as distantly into the future as she could possibly contrive.
   It was a simple matter for her to “clear the memories” of her Ambassador, filling his mind with her version of events, and to instruct him to reveal that “discovered truth” to the Orcs. With the Orcish threat and potential of the city dispersed, she had no further need of an Ambassador to the Orcs in any event, though she would keep the now-trusted Tathzyr in place as an agent within the court of the newly-dominant Orcish sub-nation, the clan of the Burning Eye.
   As instructed, Tathzyr went at once to Kurvath, the young Clan-chief, and told him that his mistress had removed the clouds placed on his memory by Corallen of the Elves and revealed to his memory that the entire Clan-War had been the result of an Elvish manipulation of the Orcs. Long ago, they had awakened a sleeping power that was too great for them to control without great bloodshed and loss of life, and so they had – under the direction of Corallen – carefully crafted a deception to cause the Orcs to suffer and die in their place.
   This deception contained just enough truth to completely convince the newly-elevated and yet-to-be-confirmed Clan-Chief, who immediately gathered two fists of Warriors and confronted First and the rest of the Elvish Band. The Huyundaltha were detained and condemned to death, but Second had learned much of Orcish customs during his brief stay and was able to invoke a custom designed to permit defeated clan-leaders to end conflicts without one side completely killing the other. Because the Orcs were celebrating a great victory, and because they had decided that the Elves were their enemies in that conflict, he was able to demand Banishment from the Orc-lands for himself and his companions. Although Kurvath was furious over ‘the deception’, Tathzyr convinced the Orcish leader that it was better to send the Elves home with a warning to stay out of Orcish affairs or face eternal enmity and utter ruination. This was Lolth’s subtle way of warning Corallen that she knew of what she saw as ‘his machinations against her’, and would oppose him at every turn.
   Kurvath relented, and grudgingly granted the Elves the minimum time permitted under Orcish Custom to depart; when the sun had travelled across the sky the width of his First, any Elf in the Orclands would be considered fair game, and his hunters would be dispatched at that time to pursue those fleeing with all the relentless indefatigability at their command.

Thus ended the first great alliance between Elves, Orcs, and Drow, with a restoration of the Status Quo between the three races, but its effectiveness would serve as a Harbinger of the future. While the tale would degenerate over the centuries amongst the Orcs, reduced to myth, anecdote, and custom, Lolth would remember it, and would devote herself to preparing against the day her children rebelled against her rule; Corallen would remember it, and devote himself to safeguarding all three races (from the shadows if necessary), even if that meant that some won temporary victories over one of the others; and there was one other.
   Careful to let his face reveal nothing, First framed a silent communion with his Deity. Since his return from the Lair of the Hidden Dragon, he had been by withdrawn and uncharacteristically silent, feigning a spiritual wound as deep as the physical wounds of the Orcs. With Ambassador Tathzyr squirming under the direct scrutiny of his Mistress, the deception had been accepted without question; even when he and his fellow Huyundaltha had stood accused of being the architects of the misery of the Orcs, he had remained mute. Now, in the silences of his mind, he finally broke that silence. “Great Corallen, Father of all Elves, I must advise that you have failed. My recollection remains clear and my memory of events remains unclouded. I have played my part in furthering your intent as best I could while amongst the Orcs, but now I must have your guidance. What am I to do, now that we return as promised to our homeland?”
   — You have played the wounded spirit perfectly, my son, and I am well-pleased with you. I wondered how long it would take you to broach this subject —
   “I bask in the warmth of your praise, My Lord, but praise answers no questions. I beg for your enlightenment apon my path henceforward.”
   — The tasks that lie before me are many and arduous, and it is possible that I will prove insufficient to their measure. If that should transpire, there must be a way for the truths which have been revealed to you to find their way to the members of the Great Alliance that is to come. Your continued memory is a safeguard against mischance, failure, and chaos. The path to the fulfillment of the prophecy is yet unclear; I must prepare as many avenues to the ultimate victory as I can conceive —
   “If one may remember, why not all? Is not the prophecy complete? We had an alliance of Orcs, Elves, and Drow – and I marvel that I was a part of such an unprecedented event – and there was, too, our hidden ally, the Verdonne – a ‘walking tree’ exactly as foretold – and by undoing the schemes of the Dreamer, did we not threaten the supremacy of the Chaos Powers? And more, did we not forge the bonds of mortality apon them? Where one has been ended, all others become vulnerable, though it take centuries to accomplish the inevitable.”
   — There was more to the prophecy, my son. Some could not be translated by the Orcs, some was cast in languages that do not yet exist and remain impenetrable even to me. No, the true Great Alliance lies in the days to come; your victory lies in setting feet apon paths not yet perceived, and that alone is enough for now —
   “Then the clouding of memory of the other participants was to permit Lolth to serve your needs in restoring relations between the races to what they were?”
   — Exactly so, for there were two cloudings of memory each, and not one. Each of the participants beyond yourself retains part of the truth, enough to prepare them for when the time is right, and these will linger, passed down through myth and race memory from parent to child amongst the Orcs. Lolth, too, remembers, and will unknowingly instill the key fragments of memory in those of her servants who need to know. And you shall perpetuate your own memories against the day when these preparations come to fruition. This was necessary, for should any remember completely, the Chaos Powers would be aware of events and would move to block the path to success before all is prepared for them. All will have their parts to play in making what remains only a dimly-perceived future opportunity for victory, and eventual success is not prophesied – but neither is failure —
   “Then I ask again for your guidance. What must I do, now?”
   — Apon your return to your homeland, you will remake the Huyundaltha, establishing a secret order within their ranks. That secret order shall be tasked with the protection of the One who bears the truth, even should all Elvenkind fail and perish from the World. That one shall bear the title of First, which you have made a name of great honor. And you will cloak the secret task of that order in the guise of the restoring of the Noletinechor, the Guardians of all that is Elvish – a role that is now expanded to include the training of the Huyundaltha. The Order of The Noletinechor will be an elite within the elite. This is a task that will consume the remainder of your days, and at the end of that span, you may pass to the Heavenly Isles content with your life’s achievements. This is my will and my instruction —
   “It will be done, My Lord, to the best of my abilities. It might be well if these others who shared in self-imposed Exile were the first members of the reborn Noletinechor, for in truth, we have all seen enough of War that none will think it strange that we choose a more peaceful role in life.”
   — That would be well. Shared experience is ever a bonding agent. But understand this: you are the keeper of the secret; it would be most unwise to expose yourself in addition to the demands of leadership of those who protect that secret —
   “Second has stepped forward to act as spokesman after I seemed to withdraw. I will appoint him as leader of the Noletinechor.”
   — A wise choice. Put these decisions into action, and I will know that the path into the future is well-cared for. I leave you with this thought, to engage your mind in the quiet times when these deeds are accomplished: Chance favors the opportunist, but none are so vulnerable to the control of chance by the power of destiny. In that thought lies the key to this victory over the Powers Of Anarchy and Destruction. I have always known this fact; now they have learned it, too. It will be a central influence on the shaping of the days to come; learn this lesson well, that it may bring enlightenment to you and those who follow you as First. —
   Straightening from his bowed and stooped position, First looked around at the others in his company, seeming to throw off his solemn and withdrawn mood. Noting that the Elves had just passed the traditional boundary that the Orcs held to be the border of the Orclands, and that they were safe from pursuit, he spoke to his companions. “Our Lord has need of our services, but before I may reveal to you his requirements, I shall require oaths of service and fealty to his cause from you all…”

Orcish Victory Songs

And the fates of the other individuals whose lives were swept up in the Clan Wars?

The Red Eye Clan:

Tathzyr lived out his life under the intense scrutiny of his Mistress, who trusted him and his unorthodoxy even less than she trusted most of her children. The strain prematurely aged him, and his life came to a close a scant century after the fall of the Orcish City. His family, too, were marked with the taint of suspicion, and his male descendants were favorite choices for sacrifice in Lolth’s name thereafter.
   Kurvath went on to become as enlightened a leader as the Red Eyes Clan had ever known, laying the foundations of a unified Orcish Society, drawing apon the harsh lessons of disunity and Clan War.
   Lukzal, eldest child of Kyrd, The Usurper, lost his preeminence amongst the warriors with the loss of his weapon arm, but this bothered him not. Events within the Cavern beneath the Oracle Of Gottskragg had awakened his mind to a larger reality in which the power of strength of arms was a very small thing indeed; he entered the Priesthood, and despite coming to this path relatively late in life, the same determination that had led him to prominence as a Warrior and an ability to see through complexities to the simple truths at their core more than compensated. He would become one of the greatest Clan Shamans in Red Eye history, and would be a staunch supporter of Kurvath for the remainder of his days. In the process, he would revise the belief amongst his race that a maiming was the end of usefulness to the Clan.
   Garunch was already elderly for an Orc when he participated in the raid apon the Hidden Dragon. He survived but a handful of years thereafter, devoted single-mindedly to grooming his hand-picked successor and most devoted student, Lukzal.

The Mailed Fist Clan:

Clan-Chief Agronak never fully recovered from the loss of prestige that accompanied the destruction of the city his ancestors had helped found. Although his followers held him blameless, and even revered him for safeguarding the lives of his clan through extraordinary challenges, his leadership was reduced to timidity. In time, his son would challenge his rule and force him to retire.
   Goral yielded his position as Warblade, and devoted his remaining days to a quest to find and tear down the Oracle of Gottskragg, but even though he was given descriptions to where the explorers of the Mailed Fists had encountered it, he could never find it. He blamed this failure on Elvish Deception, and would rail endlessly against ‘pointed-ear treachery’ to the point where even his most supportive kin thought him addle-minded on the subject.
   Goral’s Mate chose the name Enkarapra, which was Orcish for “Abandoned Child”. Although proud of being granted a name, and of her role in preserving her clan, it was a bittersweet reward for her, for though her husband had survived, his obsessions effectively widowed her. Her simple wisdom led her to be granted a position on the Clan Council, and she was always a welcome guest in the home of Agronak, but this was poor compensation for the loss of loving husband.
   Kudja, who had sacrificed his arm to preserve the existence of his clan, felt humiliated at being left out of the great quest that he had helped to engineer. Compounding his humiliation, he was revered as a folk hero amongst both his own clan and the Red Eyes; their celebrations of his deeds whenever he chanced to be nearby kept the emotional wounds burning fresh in his spirit. While he recovered physically, his mind was never quite right thereafter; he threw his remaining days into an obsessive need to drive the bugbears out of Mailed Fist territory with a cruelty and ruthlessness that was utterly uncharacteristic of the enlightened person that he been previously. No victory was sufficient to restore his pride, and eventually he took one desperate chance too many and was killed in a hopeless raid. Ironically, his sacrifice was instrumental in uniting the Red Eye Clan and Mailed Fist clan in the bonds of mutual peace, securing the prosperity and safety of his Clan; doubly-ironically, his obsession would yield a bitter harvest and be responsible for as much misery for his race and clan as that which it had prevented, re-unifying the Bugbears and triggering a second Clan War against the Bleeding Swords.

The Bleeding Sword Clan:

In every war, there are winners, losers, and victims. Some winners achieve greatness, others are transformed by their experiences into something greater than they could ever have achieved before the events that marked them, and some pay a price for the victory. If any group can be singled out as the victims of the Clan War, it is the Bleeding Sword Clan. Reviled by the Red Eyes for their treachery, condemned by the Mailed Fists for unleashing the Bugbears, and despised by all three for their leader’s cowardice in remaining behind and cowering in safety when the call to battle was sounded in the clan wars, they were left friendless and mistrusted in a hostile situation of their own making.
   Most despised of all was Morbag, the Clan-chief held most directly responsible for these failings, which went against all the precepts of Orcish Society. When the other Clans met in moot to settle their differences, he was unable to attend, surrounded by a wall of Bugbear-claimed territory, earning him further contempt for not even making the attempt. A messenger from the Mailed Fists, as the closest thing to a neutral party between the betrayed and betrayers, had braved the dangers to command his presence at the moot, and even survived to bring word of the Clan-Chief’s refusal to even attempt the journey. His name became a curse throughout the rest of the Orclands, and it became popular sentiment that it was the Bleeding Swords who were the Bugbear’s allies, and not vice-versa.
   Spared some of the acute disrespect and anger of the other clans was their Clan Warblade, Drash, who had led the invasion of Red Eye territory, and who was killed by the Red Eye’s troglodyte allies. Nevertheless, it was popular sentiment that he should have challenged the cowardly and treacherous policies of his Clan-Chief and that he had failed in his duty to do so. The claim of wrong-doing at the instructions of a superior became known throughout the other Orc-Clans as the Drash Excuse, and all Orcs were taught that resorting to it indicated guilt of a crime as great as the misdeeds themselves. “I was only following orders” is an admission of criminal guilt in Orcish Society, and that principle is enshrined in the name of the deceased Warblade.
   Vaaga, the clan Shaman, was held to be largely blameless. With no authority to challenge the Clan-chief, and convinced in what he was doing by falsehoods of sufficient quality to have deceived the other Clan shamans, it there was nothing that he could have done to avert disaster. Nevertheless, the name was considered to be bad luck by the populace thereafter, and became a metaphor for helplessness in the face of impending disaster.
   Surrounded by enemies, Besieged by hostile forces, and held in contempt by their own kind, the Bleeding Swords were the only clan not singing Orcish Victory Songs at the end of the Clan Wars.

The Tranquil Years

For most of the peoples of the world, what followed were three centuries of relative peace and prosperity. The reasons for this have been the subjects of endless speculation by theologians and philosophers; what is clear is that by the end of what has become known as The Tranquil Years, the various races had come to regard the social and political conditions under which they lived as natural and normal, no matter how great a shift they represented at the commencement. Patterns had become established, and memories of the past had faded.
   The consensus amongst the learned was that for some reason, the Chaos Powers had been thrown into disarray by the defeat of their puppets in the Elven Lands, which was itself but the final act in a failed attempt to achieve their goals through acts of genocide against the worshippers of the Gods.
   Humans still thought of themselves as the centre of creation, and few of these learned individuals even know of the events in the Orclands, never mind paying them any regard. They continued to form Kingdoms and Empires and play political games with each other, and considered those games to be the most important events in history.
   The Elves welcomed back the Huyundaltha who had entered voluntary exile, and accepted their story that they had been receiving instruction and training from Corallen, and contented themselves with expanding their forests. The restoration of the Noletinechor as a sect within the Huyundaltha was seen as a return to normality by the bulk of society; the Huyundaltha had been created as an act of desperation, and represented a deviation from the true purpose of the Order. While the Huyundaltha would remain the Elves’ front-line defenders against their enemies, their true purpose was to preserve Elvish Society. Not to shape it, or direct it, but to encapsulate and sustain it in a world where practicality mandates the compromising of ideals. Ellionara, who secretly bore the title of First, made it the Noletinechor’s public mission to find ways of bending the forms and expressions of Elvishness to necessity without sacrificing the quintessential philosophical foundation of Elvishness itself.

   Ellionara thought long and deeply about the parting words of Corallen, and everything that he had experienced in the Orcish Clan Wars, and in the Dwarfwar which had preceded it; he absorbed all that he could learn of human theology, the only one which acknowledge the Chaos Powers, and winnowed through it, discarding self-serving human perspectives and rationalizations, expanding apon the results with his own experiences. Had he published his findings, he might well have been regarded as one of the greatest philosophers ever produced by the Elvish Race; but he kept his own council, and contented himself with being ready to pass his writings on to his successor when the time came.
   His reflections penetrated and punctuated the limited human concept of “Chaos Powers”. These beings were not truly Chaotic, but were expressions of a fundamental incompatibility with structure. They did not desire destruction, they demanded isolation from the impinging of external stimuli apon their personal universe of experience. This left them inherently unstable in any collaboration or cooperation, fighting their own natural instincts. The fact that they were able to unite at all was proof that they had been ‘contaminated’ by order, and were at war with their own propensities; even if they were to succeed, they would remain unsatisfied. They could never go back to what they had been.
   And that, even more than the mere imperative of self-preservation, was why they had to be opposed the last breath of the last living thing. It could be argued that they had the right of prior claim over all existence, and if a void could be created that mimicked the state of existence they desired, a peaceable settlement might have been reached with them; but with that flaw in their nature, this would only delay the inevitable and enhance their destructiveness. They would no longer have anything left to lose, existence would be intolerable to them, and they would be willing to trade their own destruction for the destruction of everything that vexed them – which was, quite literally, everything.
   And that small contamination with order made them all the more dangerous. It gave them the capacity to cooperate with each other to at least some degree, it gave them the capacity to comprehend the world around them, and the capacity to plan intelligently; and with each step, each failed scheme, the capacity for an orderly response in service to their natural anarchy would grow within them. They would learn from every failed encounter, and only grow more dangerous with time. But at the current time, the races in opposition were like babes at arms in comparison; the only hope for success was for them to learn from every encounter as well, and to learn faster and better than their enemy. The Gods, Corallen included, had the power to forestall the enemy, but not to defeat them; their primary task was to draw the attention of the enemy until it was too late.
   Ellionara realized early that it was most unlikely that Ethraztia had told the Chaos Powers the details of his vision of the future. At best, he would have told them that he saw the future; but in order to do obtain that ability, he had embraced the order within and around him, which would have made his presence uncomfortable to his fellows. They would have avoided him as much as possible, having no idea that they were vulnerable to destruction by virtue of the contamination of order, and presuming that this was an advantage that they could exploit until the day of their final success.
   The loss of that ability would have two effects on them, and the combination explained the Tranquil Years. First, they would have learned that there was an advantage to be had by embracing, rather than avoiding, the Order within their anarchy, harnessing it to their own goals; but that would take time. When next they struck, they would be ten times as dangerous, and infinitely more subtle. Second, they would have to come to terms with the fact that embracing this advantage would also embrace the vulnerability and mortality that came with it, and that would encourage them to adopting a more covert and indirect role than they had done in the past; but proxies and lieutenants take time to train, and the Chaos Powers would have to come to terms with the limited lifespans of their recruits. It would undoubtedly take them time and a few false starts to get that right.
   Ellionara spent much of his time coming to an understanding of Corallen’s cryptic final words, and the more time he spent on that task, the more importance he attached to them. The power to direct chance that the Verdonne had shown was the Key; not only would he travel back and forth through time ensuring that chance worked to bring about the opportunity for a direct attack on the Chaos Powers, bringing together the right people with the right potentials and capacities, but he quite literally held the one power to which the Chaos Powers were most innately vulnerable. And yet, Verde’s capacities were not infinite, while those of the enemy he faced were, or were close to it; he would need to husband his resources for those key moments, and influencing just a few key individuals and outcomes throughout history.
   His first priority would have been to ensure that the circumstances arose which had set him on this course in the first instance. That would require ensuring that the alliance that had brought him to a full understanding of his power and his destiny would have to be ensured and preserved, and the confrontation with the Hidden Dragon was a key element of that requirement; and more importantly, the knowledge, wisdom, and insight that Ellionara was cultivating and preserving was also essential to setting that destiny in motion. It was, or would be, in order to recover that knowledge that the Unlikely Alliance – what had Verde called it, “Tajik’s Misfits”? – would deliver Verde to the one that held the keys to Verde’s understanding of his destiny. Whatever was needed to ensure that the “Misfits” were the people required to achieve that, in the circumstances that required it, would be done. Verde’s task was, without doubt, the most cold-blooded and cold-hearted that any being could willingly undertake; if need be, tens of thousands or more would be killed to deliver the messengers to the message. Only once that self-fulfilling prophecy was complete could Verde use whatever power he retained to strike against the real enemy.
   And he could not be infallible; he was mortal, and as capable of misjudgment and error as any other mortal being. While he could use his powers to ensure that such errors were not fatal to his cause, to a certain extent anything less than fatal error would need to be tolerated; chance still favored the opportunist, and the Chaos Powers, the would-be nullifiers of existence, were nothing if not masters of opportunism. Whatever the final confrontation comprised, it would still be a desperate confrontation, with everything to play for.

Dwarves had long memories, and they were of an increasingly solitary and belligerent bent. They wanted to be left alone, mistrusting every other race, and they wanted it with an aggressiveness that posed ongoing risks for the Drow, who the Dwarves had particular reason to hate. Lolth knew that their numbers would increase more rapidly than those of Her followers, and was disinclined to be over-reliant on those followers to begin with; She resolved to be even more ruthless in expending those followers to achieve her goals than ever before, but they could do nothing if the Dwarves invaded her realm or sealed off the hidden entrances that led directly to her hidden tunnels and caves.
   The Minotaur servants of the Orcs were as ill-used in the confrontation with the Hidden Dragon as anyone else could claim to be. While their lives may have been those of indentured servants, they were not poorly cared for under the Orcish regime; but they had been persuaded, compelled, by the dream of liberty into throwing that away. When it was revealed as a chimera, they were trapped with – they thought – all hands raised against them. When a Drow carried to them an offer of Sanctuary.
   Lolth’s plan was to use the Minotaurs to bar the Dwarves from the surface by infesting their upper tunnels with the Minotaurs. She correctly surmised that the Minotaur and Dwarvish cultures would cross-pollinate; the Dwarves would react to this invasion with hostility, the Minotaurs would assume that the Dwarves wished to re-enslave them, and in order to protect themselves would adopt a martial culture of their own. Eventually, a stalemate would be achieved, which would bar the Dwarves from accessing the raw materials they needed to expand their realm; this in turn would force them to limit their population to a manageable number.
   Of course, this risked turning Dwarvish hostility toward her children below; to combat this, even while the Orcish Clan Wars were underway, Lolth had sent Drow Envoys rescue some of the Troglodytes attacked by the invaders from the Bleeding Sword clan, and had “given” them the tunnels that led from her realm to that of the Dwarves to inhabit, escorting them into position through the direct Drow tunnels. In this way, she sought to ensure that no-one living in the tunnels had scope for expansion save her own followers. To ensure her own safety, she clouded their memories, having learned to do so by closely watching Corallen in the cavern beneath the Oracle of Gottskragg.
   This situation quickly degenerated into a messy three-way conflict between the Dwarves, Minotaurs, and Troglodytes, with each side gaining ascendancy over the others in some parts of the underground realm, and taking members of the other races as Slaves. But Lolth’s goals were achieved, as they kept each other far too busy to worry about the Drow beneath their feet.
   Nor was this the only dispossessed group with whom Lolth established relations in this time. The others were the Trolls, who Lolth offered protection if they would guard the surface entrances her people employed against Elvish incursion. For a relatively small investment in effort, Lolth persuaded others to secure her borders for her, then used her new-found ‘party trick’ to make the participants think it was their own idea to do so. It matters not what you promise if the other party cannot remember the promises to hold you to the agreed-upon terms.

It was in the Orclands that the greatest turmoil persisted during the “tranquil years”, where life was not tranquil at all. To the contrary, in Orcish history, these were the Decades of Blood. Central to the turmoil were the Bugbears.

The Decades Of Blood I: Empire Of The Bugbears

Bugbears have never been known as the most pious of races. They have no trouble believing in Gods in the abstract, but have conceptual problems translating that faith into any sort of real expectation of influence, interaction, or concrete reality. Even when one of their gods was standing right in front of them, or so it seemed, they had difficulty believing that the Divine Being was capable of more than what the physical reality appeared able to do, like any other concrete being, and their shamans struggled to invoke more than the most basic of blessings or healing spells. Their society is one bound apon the concept of obedience to the stronger – and of constantly challenging that ‘stronger’ to prove that they are still capable of enforcing their commands.
   When the minion of the Hidden Dragon first came amongst them and commanded them to breed beyond the capacity of the lands in preparation for a campaign of glory and conquest to come, once they had established that the minion had sufficiently great personal strength to force them to his will, they were perfectly willing to obey. Three generations of Bugbears sprouted like weeds in a field, and only their traditional tribal structure and practice of abdicating authority to the strongest whenever two came in contact with each other kept the peace in their numbers as they were reduced to the edge of starvation by their swelling numbers. Although it had not been realized at the time – the full scope of the Hidden Dragon’s machinations was still being discovered by the Unlikely Alliance – in order to achieve the staggering population levels revealed during the Clan Wars, the intervention in the society of Bugbears must have been the true beginning of the Clan War. If Ambassador Tathzyr’s “opportunist” assessment is accepted – and it accords with everything known or believed about the Chaos Powers and their natures – it is likely that the Hidden Dragon did not know at the time to what purpose this army was being raised; it was simply an opportune resource to cultivate and have on hand.
   The very nature of Bugbear religious fidelity makes this a rational choice, since they are not prone to asking deep or awkward questions once authority is established by simple force of arms. The minions of the Hidden Dragon could afford to make mistakes and correct them without significant impact, could practice and perfect their impersonations until they got them right. Gradually, they would have worked their way up to more discriminating and independent audiences – the Minotaurs, and then the Orcs themselves.
   So it was that when the Bleeding Swords concluded their bargain with the Bugbears, expecting a yield of a mere thousand or perhaps two, the Bugbears had both the capacity and incentive to stream into the fertile central Orclands in numbers measured in the hundreds of thousands. These forces were confused and scattered by the transformation of their Deity into what in their eyes was a demonic entity. There had been little interaction between the Bugbears and Minotaurs, and what interaction had occurred was not of a nature to lead to any understanding of Minotaur theology; the Bugbears simply would not have cared about the subject. This left them incapable of associating the apparition with Minotaurs, and ironically left their assessment closer to the truth than that of anyone else at the time.
   But they were too significant in numbers to be cowed for very long; and the lack of depth to their faith also reduced the impact of their disillusionment. Heresy only matters to the pious.
   By the time of the conclusion of the Clan Wars, two fingers out of every hand’s worth of the Orclands had been occupied by the Bugbears. These lands were barely sufficient to sustain the excessive bugbear population. Half of this territory had been captured from the Mailed Fists, the other half was former property of the Bleeding Swords clan that had been captured by the Red Eye counter-invasion and liberated by the Bugbears – who were not inclined to go anywhere.

When the armistice between Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans was confirmed following the return of the Unlikely Allies from the temple of the Hidden Dragon, most of the remaining members of the Red Eye clan’s armies returned to the lands they traditionally claimed. The surviving Bleeding Sword invasion force, already disrupted and reduced to unsteady morale by the guerilla tactics of the Army Of The One Eye and their Troglodyte allies, were ground into hamburger by weight of numbers, more proficient combat tactics, and sheer ferocity, until they were forced to flee. Perhaps the greatest differential were the differences in morale; where the Bleeding Swords army was divided, uncoordinated, and ranged from nervous to near-panic, the Army of the One Eye were united, coordinated, and left confident by a great victory. The outcome of this encounter between Orcish Armies was not all that surprising, and generally all the returning victors had to do was show up to put the invaders into a forced retreat – if not an outright rout.
   Cities may have been forbidden by the Divine Edict that they had agreed to regard as genuine, but that did not mean that the Mailed Fists abandoned or forgot everything that they had learned by imitating humans; immediately the Red Eye clan had quit the field in victory, the Mailed Fists had begun to construct a string of fortified villages surrounded by palisades and prepared defensive trenches. In time, the dimly-remembered events of the Clan War would color even Orcish attitudes toward the Mailed Fists patron Deity, whose policy of putting all his (metaphoric) eggs into “one basket” (one city) became symbolic of foolishness; the most intellectual of the Orcish Gods would become known to the population as the most stupid.
   Long before that perception spread throughout the population, however, the remnants of the Bleeding Sword Army fleeing from the wrath of the Red Eye clan found themselves trapped by this line of fortified emplacements. With the Elvish Forest and impassable mountains occupied by belligerent Dwarves and Desperate Minotaurs on the one side, a hostile army at their rear, and these fortified positions before them, they had no choice but to turn to the Sinister and race for the coastline, then to attempt to cross the hostile territory down the frozen coastline, short of food and ill-prepared for the conditions. Along the way, they had to cross the lines of Red Eye soldiers stretching to the coast, engaged in carrying rubble from the fallen cities of the Mailed Fists (as Gruumsh had commanded them to do) – a task they were quite happy to set aside in order to pursue the hated would-be invaders of their homeland. Past this series of death-traps, they came to the vast territories occupied by the Bugbears, but the latter dislike coastal regions, and provided that they starved themselves by staying away from the more temperate regions where food could be obtained, they were relatively unmolested; conditions and nature picked them off, there was no need for an army to do so. Few survived to return to their clan.

High summer of the following year saw the long-awaited Moot which formalized the peace terms between the Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans, and acknowledged and enshrined the bonds forged in blood and shared battle between the two clans. The Bleeding Swords leaders declined to send representatives, earning them the contempt of the rest of Orcish Society, but they were being squeezed between two populations of Bugbears and their former prosperity was a distant memory. It had only been a matter of time before they defaulted on their agreement with the Bugbear mercenaries they had engaged to fight on their behalf, and the Bugbears had turned on their former allies; they were now overrunning and enslaving them, one isolated household at a time.
   After five years of constant assault, the Bleeding Swords were reduced to small pockets of Orcish culture. That year, the Bleeding Swords swallowed their pride and begged the Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans for aid, a request that was summarily rejected.
   Two fists of years after the end of the Clan War, the last of the Bleeding Sword homesteads was overrun, and the entire Sunset region south of the fortified villages of the Mailed Firsts became one continuous Bugbear Feudal Empire.
   This empire was inherently unstable, in a condition of perpetual imminent collapse into anarchy that never quite fell apart. First one tribe would become ascendant, and then it would fall, its authority successfully challenged by a subordinate, who would then take its place as the rulers of the Empire (or a region within it), only to be challenged in its turn. The only marked change in their rather sloppily-defined borders came as the Bugbears withdrew from the coast; Bugbears swim quite badly when their fur becomes waterlogged, unless they have the chance to protect it by coating themselves in animal fat. Consequently, the Bugbears have never liked the sea, and avoid coastal regions whenever possible.

The Decades Of Blood II: Kudja’s Raiders

Ironically. one of the unifying forces that helped hold the Bugbear Empire together were the ongoing attacks by Kudja’s Raiders, which comprised dispossessed Mailed Fists from the sunset regions of their former clan territory. They did not mind overly if the Bugbears had conquered and humiliated the Bleeding Swords, but were intent on liberating those territories that were formerly claimed by their clan. Kudja himself was a folk hero amongst his people, and this crusade had considerable popular support as a result.
   Now, Kudja was a high priest, who had risen to become the ultimate spiritual authority within his clan, the former Clan Shaman. Even reduced to one arm, it might seem surprising that the Bugbears could seriously oppose the forces, both temporal and spiritual, that Kudja could put in the field, and certainly when he began his crusade, Kudja expected the Bugbears to be easy prey; his first recruits were gathered to serve as bodyguards to protect him while he did the ‘real work’ of pushing back the Bugbears. Earthquakes, Pillars Of Fire, and withering storms were amongst the tools Kudja could call apon. If need be, he could raise a volcano beneath the feet of the invaders, shift the courses of rivers, or rain fire from the clouds; how could the Bugbears hope to stand against such might?
   It came as something of a rude shock for Kudja to discover that the indifferent faith of the Bugbears was sufficient to enable them to resist the effects of his most potent spells, imperfectly and inconstantly, but enough that his campaign was not the inevitable and assured victory that he expected. A compounding of overconfidence in his divine abilities, obsession with his mission, and his desperation to repay the faith placed in him by his fanatically-loyal followers, lead Kudja into an ongoing series of narrow escapes and improbable victories. These heroic exploits, exaggerated by those loyal supporters, only reinforces his folk hero status amongst the Mailed Fists, so he was never short of willing recruits and supporters willing to donate food to maintain his crusade against the usurping Bugbears.
   It might have been possible for the Mailed Fists to reach an accord with the Bugbear Empire, had they been willing to accept the status quo as a reality, but the esteem in which Kudja and his crusade were held squandered any opportunity for peace. Time and time again, Kudja would lead his forces in an incursion into the Bugbear empire which would savage one targeted tribe or stronghold only to be driven back when his divinely-granted spells failed him; and, it must be stated, Kudja was no great military tactician. Several times he was captured by his enemies, only to be rescued in daring raids in which his forces traded their lives for his liberation and the continuation of the struggle. Between the dishonor of the Bleeding Swords and the obsessive irrationality of Kudja’s raiders, it should not be too surprising that the Bugbears declared themselves the enemies of all Orc Clans.
   After four fists of years mauling the Bugbear boarders and singlehandedly creating a no-mans-land between the Empire and the Orc Clans, Kudja engaged in one raid against overwhelming odds too many, and was slain. The Bugbear who achieved this victory changed his name in celebration to Urka Priestkiller, and became the first Bugbear in twenty years to become High Lord of the Bugbear Empire unopposed – for all of a year. With Kudja’s passing, the spark of obsessed inspiration went out of the raiders, and their numbers began to dwindle. Slowly the Bugbear borders were secured, and then they began to exact their revenge; over the next 30 years, they overran the fortified villages and townships of the Mailed Fist clan. If they had still possessed their fortified cities, these might have held out long enough to become rallying points, but they were long gone, and no village can support the same levels of protection that city walls afford. The Mailed Fist captives that were taken when their townships fell were executed or enslaved.
   It is often said that Pride goes before a fall, and so it proved for the Mailed Fists. Sure that they would eventually prevail against the Bugbears, so slowly were their enemies proceeding, that they stood alone until the last possible minute, accepting only token reinforcements from their allies in the Red Eye clan. Only when they were reduced to a single stronghold did they reluctantly accept that they were insufficient to the needs they faced; a rider carried word to their old friends and allies in the Red Eye clan, begging for help. Unlike the similar call three Orc Generations earlier by the Bleeding Swords, the Mailed Fists and Red Eyes had established respect for each other and even some limited intermarriage; the Red Eye’s army was gathered and marched as quickly as it could be raised, but it was still too late to save the final refuge of the Mailed Fists.
   Now the Bugbears changed tactics unexpectedly, revealing that the decades of internal struggle had left marks within their society, as well; with the last of the fortified villages overrun, they did not stop to consolidate their conquest, as they had after each previous victory; instead they rushed forward to confront the Red Eye army directly.
   The ferocity of this attack forced the Red Eyes, caught unprepared and out of position, into a defensive battle, trading lives for space, and eventually halting and beating back the advance. Year after year, the Empire would engage the Red Eyes in battle, penetrate deeply into their lines, and be driven back – but each time, they would halt and hold firm just a little deeper into Orcish territory. The Bugbear Empire continued to expand, step by step, year by year, as inexorable as the coming of winter.

The Decades Of Blood III: Strategies And Armies

A century of unremitting warfare took their toll on Orcish society. Much of the progress toward culture that had been achieved was lost; the education of the young became ever-more-confined in scope, the average age of their commanders slowly fell, and the people stopped thinking beyond the next year’s battle. Despite this cultural decline, some advancements took place and became entrenched, most notably those which yielded improvements in efficiency. For example, they had discovered the power of numbering in units of ten, and the use of simplified basic arithmetic that it permitted. Then, too, the Red Eyes had learned from the fate of the Mailed Fists, and from the now legendary exploits of the Clan Wars, though these were now shrouded in myth. They might have been the most culturally insular and intransigent of the Orcish Clans, least willing of all to change their traditions, but even these will bend when enough of those traditional roots are eroded; with two-thirds of their territory forfeit, and the last year’s bugbear incursion halted only fifty leagues from the Clan-Chief’s stronghold at the foot of the mountains, they evolved a desperate, enlightened, and progressive four-fold strategy.
   As was their tradition when faced with the need to accomplish multiple objectives, they divided their Army and tasked each with the single-minded achievement of a single objective.
   The Army Of The Skull was tasked with emulating some of the tricks of the Mailed Fists, constructing defenses and trading their lives to slow the incursions of the Bugbear Marauders, buying time for the other armies to achieve their objectives. The new front-line was their responsibility.
   The Army Of The Moon was tasked with providing offensive counterstrokes to harass and further delay the enemy, supported by the Red Eye’s troglodyte allies, then falling back to prepared positions that were being dug into the foothills. With mountain strongholds held by allies at their backs, they were the Rearguard.
   Ambassador Tathzyr had remained with the Red Eyes at his Queen’s instruction since the fall of the Orcish Cities. In that time, he had helped to educate several receptive officers and warriors in the tactics of stealth and subterfuge. Now near death from premature old age, he nevertheless lived long enough to see those special pupils gathered together into The Army Of The Night Crow, charged with scouting the enemy, functioning as spies deep within their territories, and recruiting slaves within each Tribal Kingdom of the Bugbear Empire to serve as a fifth column and resistance.
   And finally, a select band showing sufficient leadership potential and tactical expertise were formed into the core of the Army Of The Open Hand, their purpose to recruit Allies.
   Each of the three Great Orcish Clans had been socially advanced over the others in it’s own way. The Mailed Fists had excelled in agriculture, domesticity, philosophy, and the intellectual pursuits, especially architecture; the Bleeding Swords had been the most culturally advanced and most adept at making alliances and treaties, the most able to see things from an outsider’s perspective and adjust their own thinking to take advantage of that perspective; and the Red Eye had excelled in remaining true to their cultural heritage and roots, were the most Noble of the clans, and – while not as adept at forging alliances – had proven their capacity for fidelity to such alliances as they had formed over the centuries. The Orcs of the Red Eyes had long recognized that as a cultural strength of their clan, and now they determined to use it as a weapon against the invading Bugbears by recruiting allies into the Army of the Open Hand and welding them into a strike force of diverse abilities.
   In overall command was Kazbran, Warblade of the Clan, responsible for coordinating the activities of the four armies and orchestrating those activities into an overall campaign. It was he who had made the intellectual leap required to seek allies from amongst the other races that surrounded the Orclands.

One by one, members of this fourth force went forth at great risk to themselves and sought out the populations of the neighboring regions, bargaining with them for aid in repelling the Bugbears, and one by one they returned to report varying degrees of success, each now tasked with the responsibility of serving as liaison and overall commander of the troops they had recruited. Each had been given strict negotiating parameters and a free hand within those limits, ensuring that whatever the price demanded, it would be within the capacity of the Orcs to pay should the campaign succeed.
   The first recruits to the Army Of The Open Hand were 2312 Ogres under the command of 35 Ogre Magi. These were soon joined by 431 Black and Green Trolls, each a small army in their own right. Although the Gnolls declared themselves officially neutral (they shared a border with the Bugbear Empire, after all), 1655 Gnoll “irregulars” chose to take advantage of the opportunity for looting.
   In light of the century of good relations with the Red Eyes, and in return for the Orcish promise to serve her in a future military campaign of her choosing, Lolth sent 2400 Drow archers, 3600 swordsmen, 600 mages transformed into Dryders, 4500 of the Giant Spyders of various kinds, and fifty priests to heal the wounded but not take part in combat.
   But not all the recruiters were successful. The Elves refused the entreaty. The Goblins were inaccessible, blockaded by the Gnolls. The humans were unreachable, their Kingdoms and Empires lying beyond the Elven Forest or through more than 1000 miles of Goblin territory. Dwarves were unobtainable, access to their subterranean kingdom blocked by Minotaurs with neither love nor trust for Orcs; these were not even contemplated as potential allies. Together with the Army Of The Open Hand that had recruited them and the surviving members of the Army Of The Skull as they fell back to their prepared positions behind the lines of the Army Of The Moon, these became the Army Of The Five Hands – one hand for each of the Races allied (treating the Dryders and Spyders as part of the Drow contingent).
   The Bugbears had strength of numbers, strength of position, and only the Trolls could match them for physical force, one-on-one (though the Ogres came close).
   The recruitment and assembling of these forces took ten years. In the interim, the fecundity of the Orcs was their salvation. But slowly these forces were gathered behind the protection of the Army Of The Moon to strategize and develop coordinated tactics while awaiting intelligence from the Army Of The Night Crow. When those long-awaited reports finally began to reach the Clan Warblade, they transformed the nature and conduct of the entire war.

The Decades Of Blood IV: The Fall Of Night Campaign

Ogres are simple creatures. Ogre Magi were intelligent, educated, oppressive, and barbarous. Bugbears were merely savage – smarter and more cunning than Ogres, but simpler and more brutal – but they smart enough to adopt good ideas from whatever source they derived.
   Starting with administration of the hunting and herding, captured Orcs of the Bleeding Sword clan had slowly insinuated themselves as the administrators of the households, controllers of the supply lines, dictating strategies and tactics and logistics. Bleeding Swords had become the powers behind the thrones, pampered and preened, feigning subservience, and using their Bugbear ‘Masters’ to exact revenge apon the clans that had spurned them in their time of need. These were the true unifying force that had held the Bugbear Empire intact in the face of its innate propensity to collapse, for more than a century. The true slaves of the Bugbear Empire were captured Red Eye and Mailed Fist clans, Orcs who had been subjugated – in some cases – for generations.
   Peace between the Bleeding Swords and the other Orcish clans had not been established because the former had not attended the Moot where the Clan Wars had been ended. To the Red Eyes and Mailed Fists, this was considered irrelevant, because the Bleeding Swords had been wiped out by their Bugbear ‘allies’; now it was revealed that all this time, the Bugbear Empire had simply been the weapon with which the Bleeding Swords had perpetuated the Clan War against the rest of their race.
   Simple plans for a single thrust through the heart of the Bugbear army to capture the current Great Lord of the Bugbear Empire, Ruckal The Strong, and force the Bugbears to give up their captured territories as the price of his release, were replaced with a far more subtle and sophisticated strategy that drew apon the individual strengths and abilities of the allies and the vulnerabilities of the disposition of the enemy forces, which were concentrated most strongly in the front lines.
   The Ogrish instinct for engineering was turned to the construction of great ships, taking advantage of the thin Bugbear forces along the coastal regions. While these were under construction, the Army Of The Night Raven worked to fulfill its mandate to recruit the slaves of the Bugbear Empire into a fifth column. Much of the overall strategy was modeled on the slave revolt of the Minotaurs a century earlier, and the dimly-remembered events of the Orcs slave revolt against the Ogres centuries earlier.
   All proceeded according to plan, which was a first in the history of conflict. Gruumsh clearly smiled apon their endeavors.

   When the ships were complete, they were used to ferry alliance forces to selected staging points up and down the coast. From these staging points, each force from the Army Of The Five Hands struck inland to capture key points, isolating one Bugbear tribal kingdom from another, and slicing the Bugbear Empire into smaller factions.
   At a prearranged time, those Orcish Slaves in each Bugbear tribal Kingdom who had been recruited into the Army Of The Night Raven emulated the Minotaur revolt, slaying the Bleeding Sword ‘heads of households’ before fleeing toward these rendezvous points. At the same time, Ogres and Trolls disguised as Bugbears through Ogre Magi and Dryder magic, and bearing the colors of a neighboring Bugbear tribal Kingdom, staged from the strategic positions they had established, with Gnoll irregulars in reserve to fend off any attempts to cut their lines. When these thrusts were fully extended, they withdrew under cover of Drow bow-fire, hopefully having been reached by the fleeing Army Of The Night Raven. When they had returned to the forward positions held secure by the Orcs and Drow, the entire force would retreat to the initial staging positions along the coast, leaving the path clear for each tribal Kingdom to turn on the neighbor who they thought had attacked it.
   The key to victory was the Army Of The Night Raven; the Bleeding Swords ‘administrators’ would have been able to reassert order and prevent the Empire from devolving into ten, twenty, even thirty simultaneous civil wars that would eviscerate it. Most of the members of this fifth column were killed by outraged Bugbear “Lords”, but many were liberated. The fifth column was under no illusions about their chances, but the chance of freedom was worth the risk of death, as the Orcs had learned when they had been subjugated by the Ogres centuries earlier, and the slaves themselves had been awaiting an opportune time to again strike for their freedom. Plans and techniques had been passed down from slave generation to slave generation under the very noses of their slave-masters, who had grown complacent. Each household’s slaves knew which of their numbers could be trusted, who had become soft and compliant, and who were pampered collaborators and could not be trusted. At the right time, there were a series of ‘accidents’ that left the overseers without their cadre of stool pigeons and informants, followed shortly by the actual revolt which left those overseers dead.
   Any tribal Kingdom that showed signs of restoring internal order were subjected to a fresh strike by the Army Of The Five Hands, bolstered by the abandonment of disguises which enabled the use of more direct magic against the enemy, but it was hoped and expected that nine tenths of the Bugbear Empire would destroy itself while leaving the majority of the Five Hands forces intact, bolstered in numbers by escaping members of the Army Of The Night Raven. These would then sally forth to occupy defensive positions and consolidate the recapture of the Orclands, and so it proved.

With their supply lines cut, the front lines of the Bugbear Army had no choice but to retreat, harried at every step by the Army Of The Moon and the Troglodyte allies of the Red Eyes. By the time they reached the lands that the Bugbear Empire had settled and not merely captured, the Army Of The Five Hands had fortified, and the Bugbear forces were trapped with nowhere to go, just as the Bleeding Sword’s original Army had been at the end of the Clan War. The plan had been to employ Orcish fecundity to reinforce each defensive position annually, while the returning army was trapped between hostile armies and facing the onset of Winter. With each passing year, the Bugbear army was lured deeper back into the heart of their former Empire; each mile of regained territory costing lives, while fresh forces were put in place to both front and rear. Priority was given to the killing of any Bleeding Sword accompanying the Army, which degenerated with every step into a rabble as the cohesion that sustained and administered it was cut away or starved out, one slice at a time. Thirty Orcs dead for each Bugbear was a net victory for the Orcs. Eventually the Bugbear Army fell apon itself and collapsed, the survivors fleeing as a rabble.
   The Fall Of Night campaign was a slow grinding away of an overwhelming force that was never permitted to come to grips with its enemies. It took twenty years to complete from the day the first ships sailed, and it cost over two million dead by the time it concluded, more than a century after the ‘official’ end of the Clan Wars. One quarter of the fallen were Bugbears, 475,000 were Bleeding Swords or slaves which were killed by their Bugbear “Masters”, and one-and-a-half million were Orcs killed over the 150 years of the conflict that followed the end of the Clan Wars. Only then did the Tranquil Years at last descend apon the so-called Fallen Races.

The Decades Of Blood V: The Price Of Virtue

Victory in the Fall Of Night Campaign was not purchased cheaply. Bugbear numbers were reduced to less than one-third what they had been prior to the intervention of the Hidden Dragon, and the Orcish population was a tenth of what it had been prior to the Clan Wars. In its own way, this was fortuitous, for the promises which had secured the services of the Orcs’ allies in the Army Of Five Hands represented a heavy burden to shoulder.
   Gnoll opportunists had consumed the sunset third of the original Bugbear realm all the while proclaiming their official ‘neutrality’, and had begun to harbor their own dreams of conquest and looting.
   The Sunrise third of the former Bugbear realm, and the adjoining Sunset third of the original Bleeding Sword territory, was given by treaty to the Ogres, who settled in the mountains to the Dexter and only emerged from their hidden valleys to hunt.
   The Dexter Third of the territory that had once belonged to the Mailed Fists, and which contained the paths to the Elven Forest, was given to the Trolls, the first time this simple race had been given a homeland of its own.
   Between the Troll-lands and the Ogres lay the forested mountain passes that led to the Drow and the most sunset-facing of the Dwarven tunnels; this region was given to the Drow, who turned it over (per Lolth’s instruction) to the Spyders to further isolate the Elves and Dwarves, and to place a barrier between the Orcs and the Elves; the prophecy of the Oracle Of Gottskragg was ever-present in her mind. She did not know what turn of events would lead to her children turning against her, but any barrier that could be placed between the races of the prophesied alliance might serve to delay the day.
   The mountains to the Dexter of the former Red Eye lands were offered to the Troglodytes, including those fortified valleys that had been refuge to the Ogres, but they only wanted the tunnels below the rocks and to be left alone; those mountains and fortified valleys were left unclaimed, for the Orcs did not want them.
   Even ceding more than a full third of the former Orclands to their Allies left the Orcs with too great a region to administer. Communities were isolated, and the survivors of the great clans fractured into many smaller clans over the years that followed. They would not reunite as a race until the Drow demanded, in Lolth’s name, that they pay the price of the aid that she had granted the Orcs in this struggle, some centuries later, when the world was a very different place. Orcish society became a more uniform blend of the three former clans; fortified villages surrounded by cultivated farms, in the manner of the Mailed Fists, and herds in the way of the Bleeding Swords, and from which they hunted the wilderness which surrounded their communities as had the Red Eyes.
   So few in number were the surviving Orcs, and so isolated from each other, that they were unable to mount any coordinated defense when one of the human Kingdoms, searching for room in which to expand, discovered passes that could be made traversable into the fortified valleys that had once served as refuges to the Ogres, and descended from the mountains past the tunnels of the Troglodytes onto the great coastal plains of the Orclands.
   These were humans who had grown used to a general peace over a span of nearly 250 years, and while they looked apon the Orcs with contempt as primitives, it was easier to give them a wide berth; the reduced Orclands were still sparsely populated in comparison to their potential, and there was plenty of room for everyone. In time, these human communities even dared to tentatively trade with their Orcish neighbors; thus were the Orcs exposed directly to human culture, human theology, and human politics. There were things they liked about their new neighbors, and things that revolted them, but on the whole, they got on. And so the Tranquil Years rolled on. Amongst some Orcish communities, their Gods came to be seen as one pantheon amongst many, while others abandoned their own Gods in favor of those worshipped by the humans.
   But Chaos never sleeps for long, and the Orcs failed to recognize that in embracing community with their new human neighbors, they were left vulnerable to the tribulations and vagarities of human society…

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The Return of the Ongoing Elvish Glossary

• Alkaith: Curved 14-inch dagger favored as a weapon and general cutting tool by Elvish Spellcasters and some High Elves.
• Arnost: Simple Speech (Modern “Common”, a human tongue)
• Arrunquessor: Plains Elves
• Ayer: Nuthanori word meaning “Squat”. Mont Ayer is the name of one of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands.
• Calquissir: High Elves
• Ciltherosa: A variety of tree which grows very tall before erupting into successive crowns of branches of diminishing size which arch and curve horizontally.
• Comesdhail Osfadara­ Litrithe Congress Of Spellweavers
• Corellan: The First
• Drow: “Those Who Dwell Apart” (in Nuthanorl). Added to Ogre by the Drow with the meaning of “Smart”.
• Ellessarune: The “Shining City” of the Tarquessir, home of the Elvish King and capital of the Elven Lands to this day.
• Eltrhinast: “Guiding Spirit”
• Elvarheim: “Blessed Leafy Home”: The Elven Forest, homeland of the Tarquessir and the centre of Elven Power in modern times
• Gilandthor: “The Gathering”, the formal title of the Elvish Council.
• Hithainduil: High Elven Language
• Huyundaltha: “Masters Of The Ondaltha” (literal), “Bladedancers” (colloquial). Formerly Noletinechor, now Guardians Of Elvish Society.
• Illvayssor: “The Other”, a mythical race
• Infelstreta: “Demon” in Hithainduil.
• Isallithin: “The Sundered”, a name applied to Aquatic Elves
• King: A human title interpreted by Elves as “speaker to others” and defined as such within their language.
• Lesiatrame: “Bright Ego”, a deprecating term used to describe Human Gods, rendered suspect during the commencement of the third Great Dwarfwar.
• Magi: A corruption of the Zamiel word “Machus”, which means “of the wise.”
• Magfelstreta: “Devil” in Hithainduil.
• Mithryl: the Elvish name of an extremely fragile metal given in trade by the Dwarves to the Elves. The word is imported from Dwarven, who in turn obtained it from the Zamiel Tongue name of the metal, “Mithral”. “Mithryl” means “Moonsilver” in Elven. The word also enjoys popular usage as a metaphor for a treasure found which appears initially worthless.
• Mithral: the Drow name for Mithryl. A literal translation from Zamiel is “Shadowsilver”.
• Mont: Nuthanori word meaning “High Place”. Used human-style in the naming of Mountains.
• Noletinechor: “Lore Shields”, an elvish historical vocation, and a secret order withing the Huyundaltha who mask their activities under the cover of this historical vocation.
• Nuthanorl: Low Elven Language, Common Elven
• Ondaltha: A two-weapon combat style based apon Elvish Dance, practiced exclusively by Huyundaltha.
• Osfadara­ Litrithe Spellweaver, literally ‘Weaver of Harmony’.
• Sarner: A human abbreviation of the Hithainduil word “Saranariuthenal” which means, literally, “Swift and Wide”. The River Sarner runs through the central valley of Elvarheim.
• Siurthua: Tainted
• Tarquessir: Forest Elves
• Thonsutriane: “Dark Egos”, a deprecating term used to describe Chaos Powers, rendered suspect during the commencement of the third Great Dwarfwar.
• Thuyon: Nuthanori word meaning “Tall Spires”. Mont Thuyon is the name of the taller of the two peaks that define the traditional elvish lands; Modern Elvarheim lies between the foothills of Mont Thuyon and the River Sarner.
• Verdonne: “Quickbranch”, an artificial race created by Elves to be “The Guardians Of The Forest”.
• Zamiel: Drow Language

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The Orcs and Elves series is taking a break for most of the next month, when Campaign Mastery is hosting the Blog Carnival. The subject is “Location, Location, Location” and it kicks off on Thursday with a rare double-post…

When it returns, “The Politics Of Heaven” come under scrutiny…

So far, I’ve looked at what I’ve defined as the primary types of writer’s block – initial ideas, detailed plots, settings, actions, character personalities, and narrative – and offered an absolute treasure-trove of solutions. Sixty-five solutions to six types of writer’s block, and few if any of them that can transfer to a different type of problem.

But that’s just the beginning. In that first part, I also proposed the concept of Translation Blocks, and that’s an entire subject that still has to be explored, and solutions presented.

Translation Blocks in General

A reminder: what are translation blocks?

Translation blocks are all about moving from one level or layer of the story that you’re telling to the next. You already have a road mapped out of where you are going, and you already know where you are coming from, but trying to make a seamless connection from point A to B seems to escape you.

I realize that speaking in generalities isn’t very helpful, so here’s a more concrete and realistic example: You know the plot situation, you have just introduced a new character into the story. You know what that character’s personality is going to be, and you know what information that character has to impart with his dialogue. What needs doing is to express that personality in description and perhaps initial activity while setting the scene, and then use the personality to shape the dialogue so that the information being presented is saturated, or perhaps you would prefer suffused, with that personality. In other words, you have the elements, but you need to bind them together into a seamless whole. This is an example of three different translation blocks in succession: Specific to Narrative, Action to Narrative, and Persona to Dialogue.

The diagram above illustrates the ways in which the elements of a scene relate to each other. Each of these lines represents a translation of what is known, or has been decided, about a scene, to the next thing that is to be presented in the scene. Not all scenes will have all elements, and “Action” can be considered a special form of narrative in literature.

Causes of Translation Block

There are three general causes of Translation Block:

• Inadequate Foundations,
• Technical & Process problems, and
• Transitional Issues.

Inadequate Foundations

Nothing creates writer’s block faster than not having your prep done properly. Any inadequacies in any single element contaminate every connection between that element and the rest of your writing. How can you get the dialogue right if you don’t know who the character doing the speaking is? How can you get the action right if you don’t see how the character’s capabilities can react to the existing situation? How can the character decide what to do in order to advance their goals if you don’t know what the character’s goals are, or what opportunities exist within the current situation for the advancement of the character’s agenda?

In every scene, a writer needs to be able to explain to himself why the scene is present, what its purpose is, who is participating, where it is taking place, what is supposed to happen – and how it will lead to the next step in the overall plotline. Any weakness in any of these foundations can manifest as writer’s block and frustration.

The solution to this type of writer’s block is relatively simple: identify the area of inadequate preparation and generate the missing detail. Invent it out of whole cloth, if you have to, then think about how it will fit – and then change it if the fit is not good enough. The previous parts of this series should give you all the tools that you need – if you have the time to employ them.

Technical & Process problems

It’s one thing being able to come up with ideas. It can be quite another to present them in a clear and concise manner. The more writing you do, the more skilled and polished you become. Writer’s block can be a manifestation of the writer simply not having the technical skills to achieve his objectives. This is the hardest type of writer’s block to overcome quickly, but is the easiest type of writer’s block to resolve in the long term; the cure is to read books on writing, attend workshops, and/or write something else; repeat until you achieve the necessary proficiency.

In the meantime, fake it. There are no new problems in writing, and therefore someone else has confronted this issue and solved it before. Spend a few minutes thinking about all the books that you’ve read, trying to identify the single sequence in one that is closest to the situation you have before you, then look at how it was solved by that author. Outline a rough draft of that solution, then polish it using your character names and personalities and situation. The solution used by the author won’t be an exact match to your situation, so it will need to be modified, line by line and word by word, until it solves your problem. Once you have done all that, and have that solution clearly in mind, delete it from your text and write, from scratch, using your own phrases, style, and vernacular, that solution. This eliminates any potential problems over plagiarism.

But this solution, though it is an immediate way out of the creative bottleneck, takes time. What do you do if you don’t have that time?

Hold that thought, and I’ll get back to you in just a moment.

Transitional Issues

These occur when you discover a hole in your planning. A plotting analogy should make this source clearer: you know that you need to move your plot from “A” to “C”, which logically implies a scene in the middle, “B”, to do just that – but have no idea what should be in that scene.

The same thing can occur internally within a scene. You can have a setting, and a character, and something that you want that character to say or do – but no idea of how to passage seamlessly from your description of the setting to the dialogue. Simply describing the physical appearance of the character reads too much like writing by numbers (the equivalent of painting with numbers) – it looks artificial or sounds forced, or – worse yet – fills the page with dull narrative that does nothing but tread water without moving the story forward.

Most of these problems can be dealt with by employing the solutions offered for the type of content that you are trying to create within the scene. Again, the solutions already provided hold the answers you need – if there’s plenty of time to implement them.

Improvising solutions

It’s when there’s no time that you need a different technique – that of improvising a solution. That doesn’t happen very often in most forms of literature, but it’s all too common in an RPG.

I should start by referring the reader to

• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Adventures On The Fly,
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Six Foundations Of Adventure,
• By the seat of your pants: the 3 minute (or less) NPC, and
• By The Seat Of Your Pants: Using Ad-hoc statistics,

my previous articles on improvisation at the game table. These can solve a lot of problems, especially when it comes to the Plot Phase, or the need to create a quick character for a one-off encounter.

If you count up the links leading into, or present within, the Scene Phase, you will find there to be eleven of them. I have solutions for nine of these eleven – not because the others were unworthy, but because they can usually be solved by “backtracking” and taking a different path to where it is that you need to go within the scene. I have also added a ringer from the Plot Phase. These ten problems, and one or more solutions to each (plus a few additional specific problem-and-solution ringers here and there in sidebars) comprise the remainder of this series.

I should stress that there is no reason why these solutions won’t work for literary writers; they have been excerpted and extracted because they are problems to which GMs of RPGs often need to improvise ad-hoc solutions. These solutions are probably not going to be quite as refined or pretty as those resulting from long hours sweating over the word processor, but they have the advantage of answering the need, “I-need-it-right-now!”.

Translation: Conceptual to Specific

I’m starting with a deliberate ringer. This type of writer’s block is defined as when you know what you want to do in general but don’t know how to get there from here. It can occur when the players make an unexpected choice and you have to improv a scene on the spot – hopefully one that will get the overall adventure back on track, if that’s necessary.

Solution #1 (if blockage is due to an unexpected PC choice):

The Best Thing That You Can Do is to admit, “I didn’t think of that, give me a minute to work out what will happen.” Then let the players high-five each other while you think.

The Worst Thing That You Can Do is to say, “No, you can’t do that.” Even if they can’t.

The Second-Worst Thing That You Can Do is to get too attached to the original plotline.

So start by jettisoning that and seeing what will happen as a consequence. Here’s a checklist of questions – work through them, answering each.
 

1. Will their action solve their problem?

• Is there anything they already know that their solution overlooks and that will invalidate it?
• Is there anything they don’t know that will invalidate their solution?
• Are they making a false assumption?

 

2. If they are overlooking something:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can be reminded of that something that leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their solution actually make it impossible to solve the problem? In this case, and in this case only, the GM is justified in employing some more heavy-handed solution like a dice roll to “remember” the forgotten detail, or having an NPC point out “There’s something you’re overlooking.” And if there are no NPCs present, have one arrive who can demand to be brought up to date – then make the “There’s something you’re overlooking” speech.
• Is there a natural way in which they can be reminded of what they are overlooking prior to that point in time?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious from the lack of results that their solution is not working? Insert a scene with an NPC at that point and have him voice the obvious: “It’s not working, you must have overlooked something”, then let the PCs try to figure out what the something was (with the GM’s assistance).

 

3. If there is something they don’t know that will invalidate their solution:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can discover that something which still leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their solution actually make it impossible to solve the problem? If so, what is the last possible moment at which they can discover this fact that avoids this difficulty?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious that their solution is not working?
• Is there a natural way in which their actions will lead to the discovery of the missing information prior to the earliest of these points in time? If not, you will have to orchestrate one – or let the PCs live with the consequences of failure.

 

4. If they are making a false assumption:

• What is the last possible moment at which they can discover their error that leaves them time to solve the problem?
• Will their mistake actually make it impossible to solve the problem? If so, what is the last possible moment at which they can discover this fact that will avoid this difficulty?
• Is there a point at which it will become obvious that they have made a mistake?
• Is there a natural way in which they can discover their mistake prior to the earliest of these points in time? If not, you will have to orchestrate one – or let the PCs live with the consequences of failure.

 

5. What will the immediate consequences of the PCs choice be?

• What plot elements – setting, characters, etc – will you need to roleplay the scene?
• In general terms, what will happen after that, and after that, and after that, and so on?

Sidebar:
These question follow four key principles that are worth enunciating:

• Never, ever, start a plotline without thinking about what will happen if the PCs fail, and how you can recover the campaign from that point.
• Always let the PCs follow their own course until the point where the campaign/adventure is about to become unsalvageable, while watching for opportunities to get things back on track if necessary.
• Never say “No”; find a way for the players to decide to change what they are doing of their own volition.
• Where there is one solution to a problem, there’s usually more than one. If the PCs find a working solution you hadn’t thought of, it’s up to you to accept it, and adapt the rest of the adventure to accommodate it.

Solution #2 (if blockage is NOT due to an unexpected PC choice):

Which brings me to the general solution: Determine how the general plot to this point will interact with the everyday life or lives of the PCs/protagonists and start with the roleplaying/writing of that everyday life, then introduce the interactions. Fiction writers have more scope, as they can use the impact on a minor character.

If you’re desperate and there isn’t an immediate impact on the ordinary life of the PCs/Protagonists, let an NPC feel the impact and roleplay a scene where they meet the PC/Protagonist and tell them their story.

This solution works by casting everything that happens prior to the PCs becoming aware of the situation into the past. This makes the situation established historical fact that can be described far more succinctly and propels the characters straight into the search for a solution, bypassing the scene with the problem. Nothing matters until it affects a PC.

Translation: Specific to Scene

This type of writer’s block is defined as knowing what the next part of the story is but don’t know how to manifest it in a scene.

Solution:

Choose an unrelated setting and let the PCs roleplay something that has nothing to do with the main plot, or is tangental to it. It could be as simple as briefing someone else about the situation. This scene exists purely to stall the action. Use the additional time to (mentally) review where each of the primary characters are and what they are doing. Look for a way to connect those activities with the next part of the plot.

At the end of the stalling scene, touch base with each of the PCs and roleplay their current activities for a minute or two, scheduling whichever one best connects with the next part of the plot, last. Use that connection to lead into the next part of the story.

Translation: Specific to Setting

There are two subtypes to this type of Translation Block.

Needing a location

When you know what is to happen next but can’t find the right location in which to have the events unfold.

Solution:

Identify the key characteristic that the location is going to bring to the story. That’s usually either resources for the protagonists to use, resources that the antagonist has used or stolen, or a particular tone or mood. Then try to encapsulate the resources, tone, or mood into a specific location – choosing with logic in the first case and emotion in the second.

Having an incongruent location

When you know what is to happen next but the location where the characters are doesn’t seem right for it.

Three Solutions:

This usually means that the tone of the story and the logic of the situation are in conflict. If you can change the scene without completely fouling up the story, that’s usually the better solution; but more often than not, you will need to transition the setting to convey the tone of the story, or possibly even set the scene in a completely different location, inserting a scene transiting from one location to the other. A third solution is to play up the incongruity between location and tone.
 

Sidebar:
A shortcut that I sometimes employ when in desperate need is to pick one key adjective, think of a location that encapsulates or matches that adjective, and use that as my starting point for a location. For a variation, try for a location that would normally contradict the adjective. “Sterile” or “Antiseptic” would normally suggest a hospital or doctor’s office. A family home is usually the last place to which such a description would apply – but using it as a starting point conjures a fairly vivid image.

 

Translation: Specific to Action

When you know what is to happen but can’t describe the action.

This type of translation block has two possible causes, and each requires different solutions. The first possible cause is conceptual – you can’t visualize what’s going on in your imagination, so you have trouble describing it. The second is trying to compress or abstract the action too much.

Solution 1 to cause 1:

Simplify the problem. Picture one thing that’s going on, then add each of the other effects or activities one at a time until you can visualize the whole. Sometimes it’s better to imagine the scene as a freeze-frame or a painting, other times it’s easier to get one dynamic process in mind and view it as an imaginary animated sequence. Whenever possible, use the second of these approaches; the first can solve the immediate problem only to have it recur a few seconds later when the PCs respond and react.

Solution 2 to cause 1:

Sometimes there’s a specific reason why you’re having trouble conceptualizing a specific effect, and it’s usually because you are trying too hard to be unique or original. Almost everything in the way of visual effects that can be done has been done by someone, and trying to avoid the ‘classic’ appearance of an effect can become a real mental block.

The best solution to this version of the problem is to start from a “classic” form of the visual effect, then tweak it. Make the energy beam narrower, or phase it in and out of visibility, or have it pulse, or change the color, or something. Think about the ancillary effects that Hollywood often neglects – the thunderclap caused by heating of the air, the red shift caused by the gravitational field of extremely concentrated energy – it takes a lot less energy to shift colors. If you can emphasize these secondary consequences, or make them unique, you can solve your problem indirectly.

And if you really want to stretch your imagination, read some of the classic Dr Strange by Steve Ditko.

Solution to cause 2:

Slow it down, take it step by step. If you have to, break the action into second-by-second components, or even smaller. If you have to, look at the action from one character’s point of view at a time.

General note:

This situation is where game aids like miniatures or even just hand-drawn quick maps come into their own. They take some of the work out of visualizing the action by doing part of the job for you. A lot of writers of literary fiction might find that using miniatures to plot out their action sequences makes them a lot easier, too.

One of these days I’ll get around to an article on some tips and tricks I’ve developed to extend the usefulness of minis in describing a particular scene.

Translation: Specific to Persona

When you know what is to happen but can’t visualize who is to do it.

Solution:

The key to this problem is motive. What is the individual to do, why are they going to do it, and what do they think they are accomplishing? Once you have that, you have a generic profile of the required character. From there, the techniques offered in By The Seat Of The Pants: The Three Minute (or less) NPC will do the rest.

Sidebar
You can sometimes solve persona questions by taking the same adjectives that you’ve used to describe the setting and applying them to a person. They may require reinterpretation, but it almost automatically makes the person you’re describing fit their environment. Then rephrase.

 

Five Translation Blocks down, five to go.

I commented in the previous article (when explaining the trials and tribulations I had experienced in trying to get the next part of the Orcs And Elves series, “When it rains, it pours”. Well, sometimes when it pours, it can be a deluge. In this case, a massive power failure affecting 60,000 homes in Sydney, including mine (a substation exploded, I think), left me with a lot less time to write this article than I expected or anticipated. It’s all there, but it might be a little less fulsome and explanatory than it would otherwise have been. There’s only one part left of this series, but in September I’m committed to hosting the Blog Carnival here at Campaign Mastery – so look for the final article in this series to appear as part of a double-post next week!

A change of pace this week, as I want to talk about some observed trends in internet usage patterns and the impact that they have on sites like Campaign Mastery. This is not only directly relevant to the value that I can offer our readers, but – since many RPGs are set in the ‘now’ or ‘near-now’ – are also relevant to game backgrounds.

Likes, Tweets, and the dying of comments

Over the last five years, there has been a pronounced drop-off in the number of (non-spam) comments made to sites like mine. The prevalent trend is to Like something via facebook, Tweet that you have read or are reading something via Twitter, or something similar. This essentially informs the public at large and particularly the social circle of the individual (which presumably includes those of similar interests) of the existence of something interesting, with minimum effort by the reader. We’ve become something of a pushbutton internet.

Smartphones and Tablets

Part of the reason may well be the rise in popularity, even to the point of dominance, of internet-capable devices that usually don’t have a hardware keyboard. I don’t consider it a coincidence that these two trends are coinciding. If you don’t have a physical keyboard, composing any sort of text message is a lot more work in comparison to simply pushing a button and letting the site’s social media plugins compose the message for you.

Upsides

There are a number of compelling advantages to the user in this behavior. It’s easier (as noted already), and it’s much faster. Two clicks and you’re done.

It’s anonymous, so far as the site is concerned – they can maintain a nose count of the number of people who have done so, including any retweets or likes of likes, but that’s about it. In modern times, personal data security is a genuine concern for a lot of people (or should be), and the anonymity is therefore a definite advantage to them.

And it’s not bad news for the site, either, because it publicizes the site in a focused manner to what is hopefully a target audience interested in the subject, and can therefore generate immediate traffic to the site. I have already noted a strong correlation between “extra traffic” (over and above the usual minimum) and social media responses to articles. What’s more, this tends to be an immediate hit, within 24 hours at the most (arguably less – much less).

In The Middle

One consequence is a change in the sense of positive reinforcement. In broad, Likes and Tweets can be considered the equivalent of compliments and kudos, at least until you look more closely. All those tweets might be about how unsatisfactory the article is, or how the author failed his spot-the-bleeding-obvious skill check. Likes are a little more significant as an indicator, therefore, because they are only positive statements.

But even there, there’s a problem. What if thee-quarters of an article is brilliant but the author has crashed-and-burned in the final part? What if there’s a problem that readers are willing to overlook because a post is top-quality in every other respect?

There’s no specificity. If an article is popular, the author no longer gets feedback on what they did right to make it so, and where they can improve. All they can do is try to capture the same genie in the same bottle, or take a chance that their next article is not going to be as popular as their last.

And make no mistake, there is a momentum to success. One hit after another has a compounding effect on site popularity, while a string of misses has a dampening effect. “People say X is great, but I was disappointed the last time I went there, so maybe I won’t bother right now, I’ll look at it some other time when I’m not so busy.” It’s very easy to go from a must-read to a maybe-I’ll-read – and the result is that in any given week, half the potential readership don’t show up.

So, while it’s easier to offer general encouragement and positive reinforcement, it’s a lot harder to get specific feedback and therefore to improve.

Downsides

The transition from textual comments has some pronounced downsides. To start with, both Tweets and Likes tend to be transitory, visible for only a brief time (unless one digs for them), while comments remain visible with the article forever (or until deleted). That means that the traffic boost that is received from social media also tends to be transitory; at the very least, you would have to describe it as ‘volatile’. You could also describe this as a deterioration in Site Loyalty relative to Casual Readership.

One capacity that has largely been lost in consequence of the change is the potential for a lasting dialogue. I’ve been looking over a lot of our older articles lately, and time after time I have observed a dialogue in the comments that extends, enhances, or clarifies the content. These days, such discussions seem to take place within social media if at all, and as such, they are also transitory, and not a resource that the casual reader can benefit from in a year or two, and something that the site author may never even hear about.

Finally, one of the things that used to happen in the comments was the provision by readers of links to other relevant articles, blog posts, and resources. The ‘web’ was self-assembling, with crosslinks to other relevant material. These days, the web consists of more centralized hubs without the richness of those crosslinks (except where the author has provided them). Twitter is a hub. Facebook is a hub. Tweet Aggregators are hubs. Google is a hub. The casual visitor comes from one of these hubs to a site that looks interesting, but then has nowhere to go except along paths the author has defined, or back to the hub.

In the ‘old days’ of the web, the wealth of cross-connections were able to extend the knowledge of the author as well as the reader, and web-surfing took you from one site to another related site. The result is the increasing isolation of the author, which in turn restricts his growth and hence impacts the quality of the material he is able to offer. It gets harder to write something of quality, and more of the author’s creative time is consumed by research.

This is a self-accelerating phenomenon; the harder it becomes to contribute something of value, the less frequently it will happen, and the more reliant the public become on those centralizing hubs to separate wheat from chaff, making it even harder to contribute something of value.

Long-term impacts

In my original draft of this article, that was about as far as it went. But the penalty for being of an analytic bent, philosophically-inclined, and used to extrapolating from the known or assumed to a bigger picture, is that first drafts are usually only a small fraction of the content; I kept moving the goal-posts of the article as I found more things to say on the subject. I started this downhill slide by asking myself, “What are the long-term implications of this trend and the associated consequences that I have identified?”

Reduction of long-term traffic flows

Here’s how the web used to work: A site would publish a new piece of content. After a day or three of peak traffic brought in by the newness of the content, it would get replaced with something else that was the newest content on the site, and the older piece of content would begin generating residual traffic. That residual traffic stemmed from other websites referring to the content, from search engines referring readers to the content, from internal links contained within newer content by the same author, and by the occasional reader who explored the site’s archives. In general, it would be a fraction of the initial traffic, but it would persist for years, if not forever. The more content that you provided, the more these fractions would accumulate to increase the site’s overall traffic. Comments and pingbacks were significant sources of some of that residual traffic.

I might post an article, and someone else would be inspired to write an article based on something I had written in that article, and that would inspire someone else in turn, and we would all tell each other about those articles in the comments sections. Traffic to any one of those sites would connect through the links within the comments to each of the other pages. Particularly valuable in that respect were sites where an author would aggregate and review links to the content that he had discovered during the last week. There used to be lots of them, but most are now gone, killed by the instant (quicker and easier) push of a like or tweet button and changing priorities.

The result is that residual traffic sources are shrinking, with one exception: search engine results. Even these depreciate over time, but relevance remains a primary factor. This in turn has several flow-on effects.

Reduced economic and social viability of websites

Websites take time to create and maintain. Campaign Mastery is my sole source of income outside a disability pension. That income is proportionate to the traffic that a site generates. Anything that reduces the long-term traffic flow to the site reduces the economic viability of the website and the ability of the site’s authors to justify the time and expense of maintaining that website and adding new content. Dozens of sites devoted to the RPG ‘niche’ have gone dark over the last few years; it used to be that for every site that died, one or more would take their place. That doesn’t seem to happen as often anymore, because they are simply not as viable as they once were.

I remember when almost every internet user seemed to have a personal website. Those days are gone; the web is shrinking in diversity. Does that mean that those users no longer have something to contribute? No. It just means that they are making that contribution through social media, or youTube, or podcasts, instead. Transitory media, generating transitory traffic. (Podcasts are amongst the worst problems in this respect; you can’t embed a hyperlink in them, they aren’t searchable, and there is no direct traffic generation as a result. But it’s easier to talk about something than it is to write about something, and the results have an immediacy, so they aren’t going to go away).

They were replaced by, or have evolved into, subject-oriented specialist sites like Campaign Mastery. Or they have simply stopped, as hard economic realities dictate that a time-consuming hobby becomes less worthwhile than something that is more fun and less expensive.

Greater reliance on SEO and search-engine traffic

As other forms of residual traffic dry up, sites become increasingly reliant on the few that remain. That means an increasing reliance on the relevance of search engine results and search engine placements. And that means that SEO (“Search Engine Optimization”) becomes a critical consideration.

Just what website owners didn’t need – another overhead to worry about. SEO either adds to the administrative burden of the site, or it adds to the economic pressure on the sites viability if a consultant does it for you. Or you can largely ignore it, and continue to focus on generating relevant and interesting content – and watch your site’s residual traffic diminish over time. But if one site does it, everyone has to; those who don’t will fall off the front pages of results.

‘Content-is-king’ replaced by ‘Publish-or-perish’ paradigm

This inevitably leads to a fundamental shift in the operational principles of websites. An increased reliance on the initial surge of readers from the newness of content to maintain viability promotes a change from “Content Is King” to “Publish Or Perish.” The newness value of a post is more important than the depth and long-term value of the content. Hit-and-run articles become the norm – something quick and concise and easily-digested.

Economics-driven publishing

What this amounts to is more cutthroat economics-driven publishing designed to appeal to a wider audience and less hobbyist/special-interest niche content. Reduced Feedback equals less encouragement for mavericks and individualization and more ‘lowest common denominator’ editorial direction. This trend can be summed up as “The homogenization of the web.”

I don’t yet know of any website owners who choose what to publish in any given week based on what will give them the biggest hit in the search engine results, but the increased emphasis on SEO leads to an increased awareness of what is popular, and an increased temptation to pander to that popularity. There is an analogy to be made, comparing this with the transition of television from 1950s and 60s – when it was easier for individual visions to make it to the screen, and networks would take chances and see what worked – to the television of the 1970s onwards, where networks lived and died by the ratings. It might seem a long step to go from the shift to social media expressions of approval to viewing SEO as ‘pandering to the ratings’ and ‘publishing by the numbers for mass appeal’, but the path seems clear.

Worst-case prognostication

Extrapolating a little further leads to the death of the web as we know it today, reduced to function-driven websites or ‘virtual apps’ linked by search engines and other traffic hubs.

What do I mean by “virtual apps”? I mean that content is function-driven. Visitors only go to that site when they want to employ that specific ‘function’. The transitory traffic becomes all-important.

Do I think that this is what’s going to happen”? Yes and no. Let’s consider an alternative long-term view.

An alternative future

Sites become forced to optimize their subject matter to rely on ever-more-targeted search engine results. SEO therefore forces websites to specialize in increasingly-narrow niches within even a specialist subject (excluding e-commerce sites, of course): a site that specializes only in maps, a site that specializes only in Science-Fiction gaming, a site that specializes in world-creation, a site that only deals in encounters.

It can be argued that the reduction in ‘link review’ sites/series that has taken place is a sign of this narrowing of focus on the part of those sites. ‘Content is king’ thus becomes ‘publish-or-perish’ without sites changing anything that they are doing other than narrowing their definition of ‘content’.

But this future holds more scope for synergies amongst web conglomerates resulting in site mergers. Megasites that, like a shopping mall, consist of sub-sites dedicated to each specialty subject within the general. There’s an analogy here to what happened to business in the 1980s and 90s – corporate takeovers and mergers, with shared overheads reducing the economic burden and increasing the economic viability of the sub-sites. I would also point to the rise of book and media merchants who rely on Amazon for point-of-sale services. These have nothing but “back ends” and use a third party for the showrooms of their products. There’s a clear similarity between this business model and this projected future of the internet.

The narrowing of focus will mean that the content gap, where articles bridge one part of a hobby or interest to another, becomes wider. Gaps will open up, creating opportunities for new sites. However, the reduced economic viability of individual sites means only the real anoraks of a sub-industry, driven by personal interest and not by economics, will be willing to take a chance on exploiting them. This will produce a model more reminiscent of the glory days of the web, where start-ups could produce rags-to-riches stories – but for every over-the-top survivor gone-viral success story, 100 others will fail and vanish, or be absorbed into the conglomerate sites.

Ultimately this leads to the same worst-case prognostications by a different road.

A Personal view

I sure hope I’m wrong. I like the way the web was, even 3 or 4 years ago. People contributed more. The blogosphere and internet in general feel colder and its components more isolated, these days. There’s less of a sense of community, and less of an opportunity to explore; the better the SEO-and-search-engine marriage becomes at filtering out the not-quite-relevant, the less scope there is for the accidental discovery.

Avoiding the worst-case

By nature, another of my personal attributes is that I’m a problem-solver. Having identified what I perceive as a growing problem, I had to turn my attention to possible solutions.

The reduction in comments simply makes each comment received, each favorable review of a piece of your content, that much more valuable to a site owner. Right now, a tweet or like is worth roughly the same as a comment, but this ratio is dropping.

So the most immediate action you can take to avoid the worst-case and to combat this trend is this: If you have something to say, don’t just commit it to a perishable visible-today-gone-tomorrow social media mention, post it to the website as well.

Tell someone you like what they have done. Tell someone if you have a different idea. Ask a question. Criticize if that’s warranted.

And get into the habit of doing so, before rising spam levels lead sites to stop accepting comments at all.

But that’s a short-term behavioral solution, and the problem is really a technological one. What we really need is a technological solution.

A search engine for old social media mentions that works

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to search for something on twitter. The results are the worst, most literal, that it is possible to conceive. There’s no relevance ranking, there’s no context, there’s not even a sorting so that items with multiple keyword matches are at the top of the results. The search functions are primitive at best.

Searching for something on facebook is worse.

I know of absolutely no way to find out what people on facebook are saying about a site that they like. I know of no way to even find out who liked it.

This seems strange to me; if we both like the same thing, it seems likely that we have at least a chance of wanting to become followers of each other’s accounts. If I like an article, I have something in common with others who also like that article. Failing to provide a way to identify those people with whom I have a common interest seems a fundamental hole in the services provided by Facebook.

I’m not talking about a Google web search, which can include tweets and facebook mentions. I’m talking about a dedicated and optimized search engine dedicated to showing “what people are saying about [search subject]”, with a full range of tools for narrowing the results.

Automatic Feedback

Next, as part of this solution, we need a way for those mention results to connect related posts and replies within that search engine, so that site owners (and the general internet user) can see the whole conversation – the whole iceberg – and not just the mention (the tip of the iceberg).

It then becomes a simple matter for site owners to include a pushbutton “see what others are saying” on the content page.

The Lasting Conversation

Finally, we need a plug-in for websites that permanently and automatically attaches those search results to the comments section of the site via the original “tweet” or “like”. This represents a genuine coming-together of the social-media pushbutton and the comment so that sites can automatically capture, store, and display those social media conversations AS comments on the content – essentially, self-generating forums powered by social media as part of the site platform.

Right now, the internet and social media are like a couple on their first date, only barely connecting with each other, a little shy and awkward, and a little clumsy in their connection. They need to become more tightly married together, to integrate into a more seamless whole.

Put all three of these developments together, and social media comments can become a true replacement for old-style “manual” comments. All those negative and gloomy prognostications go away.

To make this happen

Part of the problem is that social media platforms change the way they do things all the time. Twitter Apps need to be constantly rewritten and revised to deal with changes in the way Twitter works “under the hood”, and that is difficult and time-consuming. To make these solutions viable, what’s really needed is a way to monetize this platform integration feature, so that investing the time and effort into maintaining the service becomes profitable. Alas, that’s where I get stuck.

So it’s over to those more qualified in the relevant technologies than I am. Experts in the configuration of blogging platforms. Experts in SEO and search-engine software. Experts in Social Media Apps and Add-ons. The future of the internet is in your hands. Don’t break it.

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it here, I’ll never get it done in time…

It’s all been leading to this! Although there are a few more chapters to come, this is the climax of the Clan Wars plotline, which in many ways is the climax of the whole Orcs & Elves story. One major narrative arc remains, but it was the need to reach this point that has had this Campaign “on hold” for most of this year. The weekend that we (usually) play is already committed in September and October, but come November, it should be able to restart – right on schedule.

In the meantime, I hope that everyone (especially my players) enjoy the twists and turns that follow below – hopefully there’ll be a jaw-dropping moment or two when you see what I’ve been building towards….

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Clan Wars XX: The Freedom Of Nightmares

As prophesied, the Hidden Dragon had awoken!
   The chains which had bound Ethraztia, forcing him into endless slumber, him had shattered and fallen away. The Hidden Dragon, the literal stuff of nightmares, exulted in that release. “Free at last! Oh, how you shall regret that folly, pathetic Elfling. As reward, I shall permit you all to survive, to endure, and to bear witness until the last; a fitting reward! You have earned your freedom and your impotence, for nothing can oppose me! Creation is mere putty in my hands, and at last I am free to reshape it however I see fit. It shall tear itself apart under my control, and this intolerable reality will finally be ended.”
   “You had better have had a good reason for this, Ambassador.” growled Garunch, the Shaman of the Red Eye clan, ignoring the posturing of the Chaos Power. He could tell that even though the Dragon had directed his comments at them, he was too absorbed with his sudden awakening to really be aware of their presence.
   “How was that even possible?” moaned First in disbelief. “Corellan himself forged that spell, and he made it to be unbreakable. He gave up much of his power to ensure that those chains could never be broken. I would have wagered my life that they were as immutable as the mountains themselves…” The three-fold simultaneous strike by the Orcs had not simply shattered the chains that bound the nightmare, they had shattered part of the bedrock of First’s life. If mortal Orcs were more powerful than the God that defined his reality, nothing made sense to him anymore.
   “The absolute faith in their beliefs is strong enough that the Orcs don’t need their Gods to be real in order to work miracles, First. The chains were never real, they were magic that looked like something solid. The Orcs broke them not with their weapons, but with their belief,” answered Tathzyr. “To you or I, those chains would never have yielded. You, because in your world, Corallen’s power reigns supreme over all; me, because only my Queen has the power to oppose the father of all Elves, even when his view of the world is incomplete or inadequate. Nor could the servants of the Dragon ever have done so, because he thought them unbreakable, and he forced his followers to subscribe to his world-view. Belief and perception are always more important than objective reality – when those beliefs are made manifest through magic.”
 
A sudden flash of blinding light filled the chamber, accompanied with a rush of air so forceful that it forced the Orcs, Elves, and Drow to their knees. Corallen appeared before them from nowhere, seizing the Drow Ambassador by his clothing and hauling him off his feet to gaze into the eyes of the infuriated God of the Elves. –What have you done? Not even your mistress would have dared this!–
   The ambassador was not cowed in the slightest. “Release me, Corellan. I am protected by my Queen. This was necessary. Your chains bound him in slumber but not his power, and that power had grown to the point where the world was imperiled by it.”
   *CORELLAN! Most hated of all the Gods. You shall be the first to feel my power!* Not even a self-absorbed self-possessed and self-distracted Chaos Power could ignore the appearance of a God. With a baleful expression, the monstrously oversized and diseased head focused it’s gaze back on the party, glaring specifically at the ten-foot-tall Elvish Deity.
 
Nothing happened. The dragon head reared back in confusion, then snapped it’s withering gaze back on its chosen target, who had dropped the ambassador and was shielding himself with his hands ready to counter whatever magic the Chaos Power threw at Him.
   Getting back on his feet, a cruel smile started to spread over the Ambassador’s expression. “Is something wrong, Ethraztia? The Father of Elves seems quite undamaged.”
   With an ear-splitting roar, the dragon-shaped Chaos Power lunged at the waiting God, attempting to bite him in twain, only for its jagged teeth to pass harmlessly through the metaphysical form of the waiting god. Once again, the head reared back in confusion.
   “Why, I’ll bet that you can’t even change your shape anymore,” continued the Ambassador, “because you have no shape to change. You gained your power by embracing the change that Corellan had forced apon you, and reshaping it to your own ends. You became the essence of nightmares, but dreams have power only in sleep – and, as our Queen has taught my people, the Dark Never Sleeps. Only one power have you now – the power of prophecy – but even that is confused and fading. You saw the world of the past and future, what was and what would be, through the dreams of those who dwelt there, but you were connected to them only through the fact of your slumber. But now the Sleeping Dragon has awoken, and like all nightmares, fades to nothing when the sleeper awakens.”
   The Ambassador’s smile widened. “Oh, perhaps you might find that you can still whisper scary thoughts into the minds of those who slumber from time to time, showing them your nightmares instead of their own, but that will change nothing. You will still be impotent. Even should your brethren one day succeed, you will remain ephemeral and unimportant – even more so, for they never sleep, do they?” Each statement seemed to strike at the very reality of the Nightmare form of the Chaos Power, rendering it a fading, translucent, image.
   Positively grinning, he concluded, “Your fondest wish was to be awoken. I have granted it. You prophesied that this day would come, and your own machinations have led to the fulfillment of that prophecy. And now, we will permit you to survive, and depart, and remain a forgotten phantom for the remainder of eternity. As you put it: A fitting reward for your long labors! You have earned your freedom and your impotence. Begone! Trouble some other sleeper; we are wide awake!” Without even a whisper to mark its passage, the last vestiges of the image faded from view.

Clan Wars XXI: A Grip On Reality

–You were brave, Drow, to speak as you did to such a being.–
   “I reverence only one being in all existence, Corellan,” answered the Ambassador, deliberately ignoring any respectful titles, “and I obey her implicitly.”
   “How did you…?” asked Lukzal, confused.
   “The Sleeping Dragon crafted a spell to permanently open a doorway between the realm of its servants and the world in which we live. I don’t understand much about magic, but I understood that much – after it was explained to me. First reversed that spell, establishing a permanent connection between our world and the world of the caster. Here, everything is whatever the Dragon dreamed it to be. I simply spun him a nightmare of his own, and let his own powers make it real for him. The more real it became to him, the more impossible it became for him to ever undo it; his own power makes his impotence eternal.” Corellan nodded as his understanding grew.
   “But how did you…?” asked Lukzal again, still not comprehending.
   “I simply asked myself what would be the most cruel thing I could do to him, to repay him for all the misery he has brought me and others, and suddenly it came to me – the worst possible thing I could do was to give him exactly what he wanted,” answered the Ambassador, still trying to guess at what question Lukzal was trying to express, without great success.
   Corallen nodded again. –Very Clever, Tathzyr. I see why your Queen insisted that you participate in this expedition,– he said, ignoring the Ambassador’s title in turn. –Your insight is a credit to you, and raises hopes that there remains common ground through which your people may themselves earn redemption and reunite with your kin.–
   “I would not presume to know my Queen’s mind, Corellan, and so long as she wishes us to stand removed from them, we will obey – without hesitation. There may be common ground, but it remains forbidden territory to my people, save under the most extraordinary of circumstances. According to the prophecies of the Dragon, it may not always be so; but we live in the here and now, and that is the reality of it.”
 
   “Are our Gods not real? It said they weren’t and so did you,” moaned Goral. The Ambassador hesitated; he still had to live amongst the Orcs, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find a diplomatic way of answering.
   “It doesn’t matter,” said First, beginning to regain his mental equilibrium. “Your Gods are real for you, and that should be enough. It doesn’t matter to you whether or not anyone else believes in them, because you are right, and your priest’s ability to convey their blessings proves it. The Dragon believed they were not, and the Ambassador had to include that belief in his story to convince the Dragon – but the Chaos Powers are the masters of deception, according to the Humans, who know more about them than I; I would mistrust anything that one said, and believe the opposite until proven wrong.” Dimly groping for an elusive insight, he added, “That was what this was all about, in the end – what we believe. I believe one thing, and that shapes me, and what I do in the world. You believe another. The Ambassador believes something else. We’re all right – from our own point of view. Even the dragon – his power was to overrule what we believe with his own manufactured nightmares of reality – but he needed to sleep to create those nightmares.”
   –You are grown wise, my Son,– said Corallen. –The service that you and your fellow Huyundaltha have performed is more than sufficient to redeem you, and I grant you forgiveness and absolution for your misplaced Passion. You may reclaim your names when you return to your Homes.–
   “I give thanks and praise, my God,” answered First reverently.
   –A word of warning to you all,– said Corallen. –The Hidden Dragon he became, and as the Hidden Dragon he has rendered himself powerless and ineffectual through his belief and the power he held to reshape existence to match that belief. Mention of his true name erodes the singularity of identity that he has created for himself and may restore him to power. Let that name die here, and let him be the Hidden Dragon henceforth.–
   “That seems wise. If belief shapes the world, let us remain focused in our belief that he is as the Ambassador described him.
   –Then Hope endures.–
 
   “Is it true, Lord Corellan? Were our people created to care for the first Elves?” asked Garunch, his mind still reeling from the revelations that he had been forced to assimilate.
   –To protect and care for them, yes. A century of service in recompense for existence and freedom seemed fair. But it is not yet time for you to embrace the softer aspects of your existence; should the prophecy stand true, and an alliance between your three peoples one day threaten the Chaos Powers directly, you will need to remain ready, and that requires you to remain in the embrace of your warrior culture for a time yet.–
   “I cannot forget what I have learned here. I will never view my people, or these, the same way again.”
   –You must. You Will. Those memories that must not be revealed will be caged. I am not your God, but in their names I will make it so.–
 
   “What now, Corellan?” asked the Ambassador.
   –I do not have the authority to give instruction to these Orcs. I freed them from that authority long ago. But I may still advise,– replied Corallen with a wink. –In a moment, I will return you to the place from whence you came, and cloud your memories of what transpired here, until the time is ripe for your people to relearn what you have discovered. When you return, obey the instructions you were given by Gruumsh – level the city in which the passageway to this place abides, save only the tower. Fill that tower with rock and seal it in steel, so that the passageway is hidden from view and access. Then travel overland to this place; collapse the caverns and bring down the Temple overhead. Leave no avenue by which what was done here may be undone. That is my advice.–
   “I think Gruumsh would approve. I will advise our Clan-Chief to do so.”
   “One thing more needs be decided before we return,” stated First. “Ambassador, what will you tell your Queen of these events and discoveries?”
   “She sees all and hears all, First. She already knows. I will supplement that knowledge with whatever I can recall, to the best of my abilities – is that understood, Corellan?”
   –Perfectly,– answered the Deity.
   “Very well. We stand victorious over a Dark Power, the essence of Nightmare, the Sleeping Dragon. Let us go and consummate that victory with celebration.”
   –Not yet, my son. One thing more must be understood first, that the memory that is confined will be complete. When I arrived here, I sensed a hidden presence. As we have spoken, I have been probing the reality of that presence. I now require it to come forth and reveal itself.–
   The Orcs snatched up their weapons and began to scan the cave warily, uncertain whether this was a new enemy.

Clan Wars XXII: Death Of A Traveler

With a vast creaking sound, the scaffolding tore itself from the wall, shedding an exterior coating of solidified rock as it did so, and its shape began to twist and writhe as the magic which had distorted its body for centuries was finally released.
   “I might have known that I could not hide myself from your view, Lord Corallen,” it said as it stood revealed as a strange blend of elf and tree, and so ancient that age seemed to linger in its presence.
   Of those present other than Corellan, who already knew who and what it was, only First recognized its species, and that recognition left him stunned. “A Verdonne! Why? How? Who?” His mind was now reeling every bit as much as those of the Orcs had been.
   “Is it an enemy? My axe is made for flesh, not wood,” stated Goral, Clan Warblade of the Mailed Fists.
   –It is no enemy. This is Verde, and – in a way – he may be the first and last of his kind. He has come here from the time when the prophesied alliance of the three Kindred Races has come to pass, his purpose to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled. His power to twist possibilities such that the unlikely transpires has had much to do with what has transpired here.–
   With a voice like the breaking of timbers that has been under too much strain for too long, the Verdonne began to speak, and so captivating were his words that none could interrupt.
   “Long into your future, a destiny was revealed to me. I did not know fully what it was, but my belief in that destiny unlocked a power within me to achieve it. As my understanding of that destiny grew, so did that power. I have seen more of death, and tragedy, and joy than any mortal being in the course of fulfilling that destiny, and I have more blood on my hands than any living being as a consequence. It was only when the truth of the Sleeping Dragon was revealed to me that full understanding came. I have spent my life in the service of that understanding, knowing that by doing so I was safeguarding friends and loved ones. For Ten Thousand Years I have battled and thwarted the Powers Of Chaos.
   “I was there when the Orcs cared for the nascent Elves. I was there when the Dwarves fell under the sway of a Demon. I watched as the Halflings were all but obliterated. I released the power of the Sleeping Dragon and shaped it into a form that was ultimately self-defeating, knowing that by doing so, thousands would perish – but that this was better than the destruction of all.
   “One of my companions in that future time when the Kindred are allied was inadvertently brought forward in time. I was able to use her displacement through the centuries to propel myself backwards in time as though it were a whip whose end I rode, enabling me to travel much further into the past than she came forward. Five times have I made the long journey from what will be to what was. I am my own fulfillment, for in time another branch of my existence will ensure that she makes that inadvertent trip into her future – the act that enables me to travel in time and ensure that chance always favors the defenders of Life. I cannot ensure the ultimate victory, but by acting behind the scenes in the service of my doom, I have ensured that hope remains, and that the chance of achieving victory is achieved.
   “I speak not to you here, but through your memories, to my younger self that is yet to come. With these words, I complete the circle. As you perceive them, in the distant future, you will know what you have to do. The adventurers with whom you have travelled are the embodiment of your life’s work. They are your friends, and that is why you will spend your life doing what needs to be done. Without you, Tajik’s Misfits will never come into existence. Elves, humans, Orcs, Drow, Dwarves – none of them will be as you know them to be, and from those foundations stem the reality that has produced those friends. It is their task to end the menace of the Queen Of Elves, for she threatens all of existence with her capricious ambitions. Conclude this business of the Empire Of Gold; its sole purpose has been to produce the conditions that unite you, but now the time has come for you to defeat it and turn your attention to the greater menace.
   “To those others in the distant future who hear these words, I greet you one last time, old friends. The memory of your company has sustained me, and given me purpose. I thank you and salute you. But beware; I have done all I can, the rest is up to you.
   “The affair of the Sleeping Dragon was one of my most arduous and onerous tasks. Now it is complete, and at long last I can rest.
   Verde paused, and went silent. A shiver traced its way down its limbs and leaves and he quivered; and then, like a tree whose strength, sapped by insects and age, can no longer sustain it, he fell with a great crash. Startled out of their stupor, the band who had dared invade the realm of the Hidden Dragon rushed forward. Verde was blinking rapidly, as though fighting the need to sleep. “Always remember: Belief changes the world. You have only to act on it.” Then his eyes closed, and the oppressive sense of age and timelessness was lifted.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

I’ve been foregoing this while our attention is focussed on the Orcish side of the story. It will return next time, as our attention shifts back to the Elves.

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Next time: The Final Chapter of the Clan Wars saga and the aftermath. Chapters 78-80!

In part one of this series, I identified several primary types of writer’s block. All but two have been dealt with; this article examines solutions to those remaining primary types:

• Dialogue Blocks, when you have a conversation to write but have no idea what the participants will say, or what they are saying seems wrong, somehow, or unnatural; and
• Narrative Blocks, when you have information to convey to the players, or to the reader, but can’t seem to explain it clearly.

At the heart of both of these is the communication of information, making these a natural pairing.

The Purposes of Dialogue

Dialogue always has a dual purpose, and sometimes a triple purpose:

• the author/GM always has a reason for the dialogue taking place that reaches beyond the immediate story needs, though they may not always recognize that reason, or even the need for such a reason.
• the dialogue will always convey characterization information about the person speaking, though this may be deliberately false information if the character is attempting to disguise his personality.
• the character will sometimes have ‘factual’ information to convey, or opinions that the author/GM wants to make sure that the other parties in the conversation have, or that they want to introduce to the readers/players. It is often better to convey such information in the form of dialogue rather than narration, because the interaction of personalities makes the information more interesting and more captivating, especially when (in an RPG) a PC is one of the parties engaged in the conversation.

It’s always important to recognize the purpose of the dialogue, because you need to make sure that it achieves that purpose, or – more correctly – all those purposes. If you don’t know what the purpose is, you can rewrite the dialogue as often as you want, it will never be “right”. This becomes even more important in an RPG, which is a “live” setting – while you can retcon a dialogue scene to fix a problem, it will never be as satisfactory as nailing it the first time out. GMs have to know what they want the dialogue to achieve before it starts if they are to get it right the first time.

I make it a practice after every revelation in an RPG plot to allow the players time to discuss the revelation unless they have to react immediately to that revelation. If I don’t, they will do so anyway – interrupting the flow of whatever I had planned. It’s far better to allow for such discussions and build them into the structure of the plot.

Metapurposes of dialogue

Dialogue’s metapurposes are any reasons for having the dialogue take place at the time and place at which it is occurring. These can be as simple as establishing a relationship between two characters meeting for the first time or justifying a character’s future choices of action or as complex as planting a particular philosophical seed in the mind of a character, a player, or the reader, which will bear fruit at a future point in the story. That fruit might take the form of a sudden insight, a new context, a deeper layer of meaning, or many other possibilities. Dialogue can be used to explain choices already made or choices that are yet to be made.

At it’s minimum, dialogue always either establishes, extends, or expands on the relationship between the participants. The fewer the participants, the more intimate the dialogue and the greater the role this metafunction has on the dialogue’s substance.

More importantly, metapurposes must be achieved seamlessly within the dialogue; otherwise you have changes of subject that seem unnatural or forced. This can be made more difficult because metapurposes can sometimes be at odds with other dialogue functions. This most frequently results when a single passage of dialogue has too many purposes to achieve – trying to be too efficient results in unnatural dialogue. You are often better off, when this occurs, breaking the dialogue into smaller conversations and putting something – anything – in between. Have the initial dialogue achieve its initial purposes, then have another character arrive, interrupting that dialogue, and then start a new dialogue with the same characters to achieve the rest of the objectives.

Characterization through dialogue

A second function that dialogue always has is revealing or reiterating the characterization of the participants. I was once told that “good” dialogue never merely recapitulated on characterization or relationships, that in order to justify its presence in a story it should always extend or expand or develop one or both aspects.

I don’t necessarily agree with that, and I know a lot of scriptwriters and TV viewers would disagree; the first time two characters in a serial situation interact within an episode of that serial situation, it can often be useful to reestablish where those two characters are at. That makes it easier for new viewers to pick up on who they are and what their relationship is.

At the same time, you need to avoid having such introductory dialogue having NO other purpose; it has to be interesting enough for those who have seen it before. It is for that reason that recapitulated introduction should always be a secondary function of the dialogue, while the primary reason remains the relevance to the scene, situation, or circumstances being discussed.

A sure sign that the metapurposes of the dialogue are getting in the way is when you have a character saying things that are in opposition to the characterization of the participant who is speaking. The street punk sneered at the cop, “Quantum theory implies that causality is a casualty of inverted temporal divergences.” – just to throw a completely over-the-top example out there. Though sometimes this can be exploited for comic effect – “Flash! I love you! But we only have 14 hours to save the Earth!”

If the dialogue is unnatural for the character, you have the participants of that particular conversation wrong. They may have been right for an earlier function of the dialogue, but they are wrong for this conversation.

Content Of Dialogue

Dialogue may have an explicit purpose to achieve in communication of information. The relevance and urgency of that information to the current situation dictates how dominant this function of the dialogue is in the conversation. If it is both directly relevant and urgent, there is no time for the conversation to meander around to the subject, and most other functions of the dialogue have to be subverted to the immediacy. If the conversation is to be relevant but non-urgent, there’s more scope for a natural dialogue flow.

It is almost always preferable to impart information in a dialogue structure rather than a narrative one. The latter is the author/GM delivering a lecture to the readers/players; the latter is one character interacting with another. This is even more strongly the case in an RPG.

The Complexity Of Dialogue

Dialogue can be simple, or complicated, or VERY complicated.

• Simple dialogue is a conversation between two participants. Others may be present but some sort of protocol or voluntary choice precludes them from being a part of the conversation.
• Monologues are conversations a character has with themselves. These are often trickier to write than simple dialogue because the interaction between two personalities is absent; the one character has to both respond to the preceding conversational stimulus and provide their own stimulus for the next passage of text. But we all have conversations with ourselves in our heads from time to time, especially when we have a difficult decision to make, so a monologue can be a great tool for taking the listener/reader into that character’s head. Be aware, though, that if you do it for one major character, you will probably need to do it at some point for all the other major characters.
• Dialogue increases in difficulty and complexity as the square of the number of participants minus 1. Or maybe the cube. Or somewhere in between. Three-character dialogue is 4-8 times as complicated as simple dialogue. Four-character dialogue is 9-27 times as complicated as simple dialogue. Five character dialogue is 16-64 times as complicated as simple dialogue. I’ll talk about the reasons for that in a minute.

Simple Dialogue

Simple dialogue is easy to write – some of the time. At other times, it can be like pulling teeth. That’s because it’s easy for the dialogue to wander down a blind alley and stumble to a premature conclusion, in which everything that can be said on a subject by those participants and at this time has been said. Very little feels as false as a conversation that lingers after it reaches what seems a natural conclusion. With a third participant, when a conversation between two comes to an end, the third can stimulate the conversation down a new course, in effect starting a new conversation between the participants. I always approach a simple conversation with some wariness, simply because there is less room for mistakes.

Simple Dialogue has its place, though, because the fewer the participants, the more intimate the conversation – and intimacy is important for some dialogue functions.

Monologues

Stories written from a first-person perspective can be considered one long monologue, and this conversation type is an essential element of some literary forms, such as the plays of Shakespeare, and film noir. It might seem that they have very limited utility in RPGs and in more interaction-oriented forms.

Permit me to take a moment to expand your horizons, if that’s an opinion you happen to share. Star Trek’s log entries are essentially monologues – useful for synopsizing past events, putting them into new context, for getting inside the head of a character (a traditional purpose of monologues), for bridging periods of slow action – or for slowing events down, if it comes to that. Characters can muse or reflect aloud – those are monologues, too, and those musings and reflections can be overheard by someone if the author/GM wants.

In the course of writing the most recent chapter of the Orcs and Elves series, I exposed the thoughts of a couple of the participants at key moments – essentially mini-monologues – because I found the characterization potential too great to ignore. Strictly speaking, they should not have been there, since there was no way for that information to be conveyed and incorporated into the source material that the series supposedly reiterates and integrates to tell “the whole story”. Bah, humbug, say I. That information could have been expressed as a character muttering under his breath, assuming that he would not be overheard, or as a snatch of dialogue, or it might have been inferred as occurring by one participant based on the expression on the face of the monologuing character. It read better, communicated to the reader more effectively, as a snatch of monologue. But that’s a literary application, once again, for all that the Orcs and Elves series is background material for one of my RPG campaigns.

Most RPG adventures are written as relatively linear plotlines, told from the collective third-person point of view of the PCs. For variety, why not occasionally consider changing it up and exploring a different framework, when it is especially useful to the adventure? Start an adventure with a character monologuing, film noir style, with events in the past tense – and then let the temporal perspective shift to the PCs and their situation in the then “now” being described. My name is Phillip Baker. I live an ordinary, humdrum life, for the most part, but there was one occasion when I found myself at the centre of extraordinary events. It all started…

Or perhaps, in a superhero or secret agent game, using a similar framing device in the form of one PC or NPC dictating a mission log or preparing an after-action report.

In a fantasy game, does the princess keep a diary?

Modern-world or future-world, perhaps a little girl preparing a class report?

Superhero again – why not frame an adventure from the point of view of the villain? Not all the time, but every now and then, when there are some particular insights to be offered to the players?

Rule one of an RPG is always to make it entertaining, make it fun. Monologues have a lot more to offer RPGs than it might initially appear.

Heck, I’m tempted to use just such a framing device for one of the upcoming Orcs and Elves, told from the point of view of an Orcish Keeper Of Memory. Why? because the limits of understanding of the narrator restrict how much of the context and events have to be made clear to the reader. If there’s something I’m having trouble explaining, or don’t want to explain at the time, I can just have understanding of the why elude the narrator and leave it unexplained or misunderstood at the time. But that’s getting off-track for this article.

Complex Dialogues

Why are complex dialogues complicated?

It’s a question of interactions and combinations. If there are three participants, one participant can speak to himself, can speak to either of the two other participants, or can speak to both at the same time. Either or both or neither can react. So, for every line of dialogue, there are three x three, or nine, possible contexts and developments in the conversation. Each of the participants has a personality that can influence the delivery, the content, the reactions. Each pair of participants has a relationship that is inherently entwined in that line of dialogue. Each may have an agenda that shapes that line of dialogue or the reactions to it. That’s 9+3+3+3, or 18 possibilities for that one line of dialogue. If the conversation consists of more than one line of dialogue, the number of possible combinations increases exponentially.

These factors only increase more quickly with each increase in the number of participants.

Authors, and GMs, manage by cherry-picking the conversational paths that seem more likely to achieve the purposes of the conversation, and ignoring as many of the others as possible. It’s easy for an author, because he has total control over all participants, subject only to the exigencies of consistency of characterization; it becomes much more difficult for the GM, because one party to the conversation is usually controlled by a third party, who is not privy to the hidden agenda that the GM is using to shape the conversation.

Add to all that the difficulty of ensuring that it is clear who is speaking at any given time. Writers can explicitly state ‘replied {X)’ after the line of dialogue, etc, but that can be easily overused. Finding new ways of stating the identity of the speaker is a continual challenge that only grows more onerous the longer a conversation continues. GMs can attempt to use props or accents or can resort to a blunt “(X) says,” – it lacks finesse, but it gets the job done.

Given all these complications, and the fact that any line of dialogue can be “wrong” if it doesn’t match ALL these contexts – something the character would not say for reasons of his personality, or for reasons of his relationship with the character he’s speaking to, or because it gets in the way of his agenda, or because the mode of expression is wrong, or because his emotional state is wrong for the content, or…. well, the point is made – it’s a wonder that any line of complex dialogue is EVER satisfactory.

And on top of all that, you have the meta-problems of having the conversation flow naturally, and of delivering any content that has to be delivered, and of steering the conversation to achieve the metapurposes of having the conversation take place.

Coming to the rescue is the fact that there ARE so many possibilities. There are many paths from first word to last in such a conversation, and far more than just one are “right” – defined as meaning that the objectives for the conversation are achieved. This factor is so powerful that three-cornered conversations can be easier to write than two-person conversations, as noted earlier.

For me, the keys to success are always, at each step of the conversation:

• Does any participant have something their personalities would require them to contribute at this point?
• Is the mode of expression ‘right’ for the character? How can I rephrase? Is there any extra nuance of personality that I can convey as a side-benefit?
• Does any participant have a personality, agenda, etc, that require them to react even if they don’t have something to contribute?
• What is the next point that I want to emerge as part of the conversation, and who is the logical character to make it, and how can I steer the conversation so that it will be natural for them to make that contribution?
• If there are more than one points remaining, is it possible to construct a dialogue ‘flow’ or ‘map’ that generates a sequence for them to be logically made?
• There is always a rhythm, an ebb-and-flow, in any conversation of any length. Am I ‘going with the flow’ or am I swimming upstream – and is that what I want to be doing at this point?
• How do I want the conversation to end? Make sure to avoid getting to that point too early, but make sure to get there AT the end.

Employing these seven principles enabled me to get through the long conversations in the Orcish Council Chambers in the Orcs and Elves series, where – at times – I had as many as seven or eight participants, in what I hope was reasonable clarity. There were a couple of secondary personalizations and reactions that I would have liked to include, but by making sure each conversational passage achieved what it HAD to achieve, and only including those extras that fit naturally, I ensured that the conversations worked.

There were a couple of occasions where I was driving towards a particular contribution only to have the conversation temporarily derailed by one of those “necessary” reactions, but I was always able to find another path from where the conversation went to that contribution – even if it came later in the dialogue than I originally intended.

Planning a Conversation

I want to briefly look at the structure of a typical conversation, because violating that structure can be the source of unexpected problems – and opportunities.

Participants

The first step is to make sure that I have the participants right. That means looking at the key revelations/insights that are to be emerge, and who is the logical character to make these contributions. What factual information has to be conveyed, and who is most appropriate to know it? If every contribution doesn’t have an appropriate ‘planned source’, can I have one of the participants quote an appropriate source, or must I introduce another participant? Is there anyone whose reactions will be particularly relevant or interesting to the outcome? Is there anyone whose reactions or knowledge will get in the way? How can I get them out of the way, if they would logically be part of the conversation?

I always try to start planning a conversation by assembling a “cast list”, all of whom are involved in the conversation for a reason.

Starting Dialogue

How do I want the conversation to start? This is almost always dictated by the circumstances that have led to the conversation taking place ‘here and now’, and always has more to do with pre-existing opinions and relationships than with the purpose of the conversation. It lays the foundation for the effect of the conversation on the plotline by relating to conditions prior to the conversation, and focuses on the personalities and relationships of the participants.

Sustaining Dialogue

The middle is where content is generally provided that does not provoke immediate action that would end the conversation. Quite often, it prepares the ground for a change in personality or relationship if that is one of the metaobjectives.

Ending Dialogue

When something has to be done immediately, because the personalities or circumstances mandate someone actually doing something, or because everything that needs to be said has been said, its time to end the conversation. Conversations should always end in either an emotional state, a stunning revelation that stifles further discussion until it is digested, or in a need for action, because that propels the story forwards into whatever happens next.

The sources of Dialogue Problems

Any of the attributes or aspects of conversation that have been discussed can be the causes of Writer’s Block when creating Dialogue. This is particularly the case when two or more are at cross-purposes within the dialogue. What’s more, in addition to the specific functions that the dialogue is to serve, there are the general requirements of all writing that have to be satisfied – consistency, clarity, and connection with the audience – whether that’s readers or players. If they aren’t engaged in what is going on, the conversation will fall flat, no matter how witty, insightful or erudite the writing might be.

Which brings us to the subject at hand: You have a situation in which you know that two or more characters are going to have a conversation, but you either can’t seem to get started, or the dialogue ends in a train wreck, or just doesn’t seem right, and you don’t know how to fix it.

Solutions to Dialogue Blocks

In addition to the general advice offered above, I have ten solutions to offer to get through Dialogue writer’s block, plus a couple of variations.

Solution Zero: Revise the functions of the dialogue

Are you trying to have one conversation do too much? Have you forgotten one or more key purposes of the conversation? What are you actually trying to achieve? Make sure you have these answers clear within your mind, or the results will inevitably be muddled. It’s also worth double-checking the participants list for contradictions and conflicts with these purposes at this point. Only once you have these ducks in a row can you apply the specific solutions I am offering below. Most are designed to get you past the initial writer’s block, but a few also apply to the content-inappropriate-to-the-speaker problem. If that is your difficulty, though, and you haven’t been able to put your finger on the specific cause in the process of performing this step, I suggest reviewing the general advice offered above.

Solution 1: Have them say something else

Very few conversations in real life get right to the point. If the situation is such that your conversation has to do so, you may be better off not using a conversation to achieve your purposes at all – look for a way to monologue it, or to describe it through narrative. Perhaps a third party’s point of view can get past the sticky point? I occasionally use the press for this purpose in my superhero campaign; a news report of an emergency or crisis or whatever permits the reporter to monologue a description of events without giving the PCs the chance to ask “inconvenient” questions, as they might do if they received a direct call for help from the authorities. I’ve never had to do so, but I’m always prepared to impart essential information third-hand in my fantasy campaigns through a Bard’s song. Or a bird-song.

But, if you really need a conversation, try starting it off with some appropriate small talk. Even in the military, something like “Sir, do you have a moment?” or “Sir, if I may be permitted a personal observation?” are not inappropriate.

This has five benefits, and any one of them can get you past the blockage: First, it gets you (and the reader/audience/players) into the personalities of the participants instead of trying to leap right into the meat of the conversation “blind”. Second, it gets everyone into the relationship between them, giving a starting point that is independent of the purpose for which you’re having the conversation take place at all. Fourth, it humanizes the participants, and the conversation feels natural as a result. Finally, it gets you started with no pressure.

If you’re word-count limited for some reason – often the case – you can still write the small talk beginning of the conversation and then cut it out of the finished draft, joining the conversation midway through. That always feels more natural than having the conversation start abruptly.

Look on this choice as an opportunity, not a problem.

Solution 2: Talk around the situation

Consider having the participants deliberately avoid the subject until they can no longer do so. This is especially appropriate when it’s a conversation that one or more of them don’t want to have. Only when it becomes obvious that they are stalling can one of them get to the point, and force the conversation onto the track that the author always wanted it to follow.

Or you could have one participant talk about a metaphor or analogy to the current situation, rather than talking about the situation directly.

This has most of the benefits of the first solution, and can be viewed as a variant of it. But there are times when small talk is inappropriate, and this can be a way of exploiting that.

Solution 3: Reflections of personality

Still another variation is to make the initial conversation reflective of the personalities, deliberately showing these off through a discussion about a minor, unrelated, incident – either contemporary or in the past. Careful choice of incident/subject can provide a vehicle for explaining why and how a character feels the way he does about the main subject in advance of broaching it – achieving some of the objectives for the conversation before actually starting the part that (technically) matters.
   “Have you ever played baseball?”
   “No, basketball was more my speed.”
   “One man at the plate, an entire team intent on making sure that he fails, but most of them can only react to what he does. It still comes down to one pitcher and one batter and dealing with one pitch at a time.”

Solution 4: Through a mirror, Darkly

Sometimes you can solve your conversational problem by having one participant deliberately speak out of character. “I would never normally say this, but…”

A variation on this has one participant expounding the worst-case situation as an inevitability, challenging the other to show that the situation (whatever it is) is not so hopeless.

Solution 5: React, don’t act

Have one participant talk about his or her emotional reaction to the current situation instead of talking about the situation itself. The other participant (or ANother if there are more than two participants) then react to this emotional state as is appropriate for his or her personality. This especially works well when the initial reaction is unexpected, and can be quite enlightening as to the personalities as a result.

   “It feels good to be back in a good, old-fashioned hopeless situation again, with the odds stacked against us and every hand raised in opposition to us, the few against the hordes.”
   “You’re joking!”
   “I hate the pressure of expectation when it looks like everything is going our way. I keep wondering if I’m going to be the one to blow it and lets the side down. No, make me the underdog any day of the week. I’m at my best when the chips are down.”
   “Well, that’s definitely the situation this time…”

An entirely natural transition to the actual discussion of what can be done about the situation.

Solution 6: The Directly Indirect Approach

Another solution is to have one of the participants get right to the point – but advocating an obviously-flawed approach to the situation. This carries a subtext of the character feeling out of their depth, but trying gamely anyway. It works especially well if infused with a touch of humor.

   “Hey, boss, I had an idea about that alien fleet hovering overhead.”
   “Oh?”
   “Yeah, why don’t we take all the Captains down to the pub and get them drunk?”

Or perhaps, “Yeah, why don’t we all go down to the pub and get drunk?”

Another pair of entirely natural transitions to the actual discussion of what can practically be done about the situation.

Solution 7: Add Color

Well, I’m certainly motoring through my list of solutions this time around. This solution has one participant talking about someone else’s reaction to whatever is going on, often in a humorous or light-hearted way.

   “Well, it’s official. (X) says that Air Traffic Control Pasadena just reported a flock of winged pigs flying south for the winter.”
   “I don’t believe it.”
   “Oh yes. Of course, the official report will read ‘Geese’ but (X) can read between the lines.”
   “Before we go any further down the rabbit-hole, let’s see what we can do to get some perspective around here.”
   “Sounds good to me. Where should we start?”

Or,

   “(X) has just finished field-stripping and cleaning the guns for the third time this morning. We’d better have something to tell the others soon, or he’ll start on the ammunition.”
“Got any ideas?”

Or,

   “FOX is running continuous coverage of the end-of-the-world parties. CNN has some talking heads rabbiting on about mass psychoses – could come in handy when we try to explain all this.”
   “Could be worse, then. Anyone got any rabbits in their hats they haven’t told us about, yet?”
   “Actually…”

Solution 8: Nonverbalize the communication

My almost-last-ditch solution is to do away with the dialogue completely, or at least up to a point. Winks, nods, facial expressions, strumming fingers, body language like shoulders slumping, shrugs… do as much you can non-verbally before one of the participants breaks the silence, either by reacting to the silence or to the bottom line from the non-verbal communication:

   “It’s hopeless, then?”

Or,

   “Say something, dammit.”

Solution 9: Have someone DO something.

This is a different form of non-verbal communication, and it really is my last-ditch go-to technique for fixing the dialogue problem. Have one of the characters do something that is both physical and expressive. Get up and pour themselves a drink from the scotch-bottle that was full only an hour earlier. Lean back and light a cigarette. Run their fingertip over a bookcase as though checking for dust. Remove a weapon from a scabbard or holster and place it on the desk in front of them, or start cleaning it. Smash a mirror in frustration. Play with the dog. Stoke the fireplace. Either they, or the other participant, can say something about the action performed, thereby breaking the ice on the conversation.

Heck, picking up a tennis racquet and practicing a few return-of-imaginary-serves might help the character think or take their mind off the situation for a moment, and definitely adds personality to the character. Just make sure the action is appropriate to the personality.

Solution 10: Solving Premature conclusion

Sometimes, the conversation stumbles to an end before everything has been achieved. When that happens, you have three choices: One participant can have an afterthought, restarting it; one participant can employ one of the 9 solutions listed above to restart the conversation; or you can have a subsequent conversation, involving a completely new choice of participants (who might happen to be the same ones) to achieve the remaining purposes of the conversation. Any of these can be preferable to taking a conversation that seems reasonably natural and achieves most of the purposes set for it and throwing it out the window.

Narrative & Flavor Text Blocks

Descriptive text is intended to impart information directly to the reader/players as a substitute for not really being there. It’s an ex-parte communication of what the characters would perceive if they were really present in the time and place being described, or of what they would know if they had really grown up in that environment.

It can be dull, lifeless, and/or irrelevant. It can also be vitally important, and its certainly ubiquitous.

So what can cause writer’s block when trying to craft narrative and flavor text?

The obvious causes are an inability to visualize what you are trying to describe, or getting swamped in details, or not being articulate in the subject you are trying to describe, or being vague. Using too many analogies or adjectives is, unfortunately, symptomatic. Well-crafted narrative text provides the maximum specificity, relevant detail, and atmosphere with the minimum verbiage that is readily digestible by the reader or person hearing it read.

It is often possible when describing places to employ verbal shorthand, because we all create a general idea of the setting in response to a simple label. “Police Station” conjures an image in the minds of almost everyone – those images might be different for each person, but so long as the important details are then described to be incorporated into that general vision, all will be fine. The same thing works for “Fire Station” and “Warehouse” and “Throne Room” and “Subway Platform” and many others. But there are other situations in which this doesn’t work, or where the general term is not specific enough, or where the situation is more complex.

Then there’s the problem of giving information about somewhere or something. It’s very easy for this to be too bland, or for there to be too much. A little bit of detail can work wonders – but can also offer clues that should be buried; if the only geology you talk about are shale deposits, it’s a fair bet that shale is going to be important. If you talk about the spin of quarks, and don’t mention any other characteristic of them, or the spins of other particles, it’s a fair bet that quark spin is going to be important, and so on. The only way to avoid giving the game away is to give more information. And more. And there’s a very real danger, when you do that, of crossing the line and going too far.

There are too many kinds of information that has to be conveyed through narrative for any set of solutions to be universal. Some of the techniques that I am about to offer will work in one situation and not in another. So this is not necessarily a case of trying solution 1 and then solution 2 and so on; solution 1 might well be totally irrelevant to the writing task in front of you. And, yes, at least some of them may be contradictory to the general advice I’ve already offered.

Solution 1: Research the subject

Know what you’re talking about. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you want to use a shimmering heat-haze effect, look up heat-haze and refraction on the internet and get some understanding of why this effect takes place. Once you do that, you’ll be in a position to think up a magical heat-haze with no heat, or perhaps an ice-haze, or whatever. If you want to talk about the Swiss Alps (or model another location on the Swiss Alps), watch a documentary on the subject or skim a book or check out Wikipedia – the more information you have at your disposal, the more choices you have to cherry-pick the vital facts from.

Solution 2: Look for an analogy

Although I recommend against using analogies in your narrative and flavor text, except perhaps to encapsulate and sum up a description you have just detailed, having an analogy in mind for you to use as a guide when crafting the description can be simply magic. It can clarify and guide your thinking, define what details are most important to include in the actual description, and bind your notions together while you’re exploring all the elements that you might include. You can try one way of phrasing your description, and if it doesn’t work, avoid losing the grand vision by using the analogy as a touchstone to find your way back.

Solution 3: Modes of expression

When I was in high school, there was a creative writing exercise that was so invaluable that I remember it to this day. Each student was given a brief piece of text extracted from a book, about a quarter of a page long. Some of it was first person, some was in third person. We were then required to rewrite the original text in the other mode of expression. Naturally, some students were better at this than others, but most were good enough that the profound differences caused by the changes were made clear. The first-person text recast into the third person became far more impersonal and authoritative, but also colder, drier, and much more condensed. What was even more interesting were the cases that ran in the opposite direction, from third-person to first-person mode of expression; where the student recognized the source, they tended to incorporate the perspective and personality of one of the characters – to the point where the identity of the ‘speaker’ was recognizable to others who recognized the source material. Where the ‘translator’ did not recognize the source, they generally (and seemingly quite inadvertently) incorporated their own personality and perspectives, though a few invented generic ‘speakers’ whose voices were used as the point of view. Of course, the text inflated in size to contain this additional material.

The reason this lesson has stayed with me through these many years is that I have learned that when I get stuck while trying to write narrative, it can often be much easier to invent a generic citizen or knowledgeable person and then write the narrative as a monologue from their point of view. Once this is complete, I then have the choice of either introducing that character into the plotline to provide the description (and then depart the scene) or of taking the first-person monologue and redrafting it back into the third person. I have also found that when there are too many details coming too quickly, I can slow down the delivery to a manageable rate using this technique. Finally, by implying the personality traits and attitudes of ‘the typical citizen’, I can often cut whole paragraphs of descriptive text. Lots of advantages that make this technique worthy of serious consideration.

On the other hand, if the first-person narrative runs over a page, I’m in danger of making the mistake that I described in Information Overload in the Zenith-3 Campaign. That’s definitely the point at which I would – with the benefit of hindsight – look to compress the information by switching to the 3rd person. At most, I might keep a single short paragraph in first person at the start and end.

The upshot: if you’re having trouble, changing the mode of expression can sometimes get you to a solution, and can also have side-benefits.

Solution 4: Someone’s point of view

This can be tricky to pull off, but sometimes I have gotten results by putting the narrative into the context of what a particular individual perceives, whether that individual is a protagonist/PC or a minor character/NPC. Or even, on one occasion, an antagonist. This orders the information to be presented by applying the context of their perspective to the relative importance of each piece of information, and helps sequence everything.

Solution 5: Importance

There are other ways of ordering the information. That helps get through writer’s block because it breaks the problem into smaller, more easily-solved, sub-problems. The most obvious sequence is in order of likely importance to the party. That means describing the charging bull before the color of the window glass, or the height of the roofs.

But sometimes you can achieve even better results by starting from the least important and working up to the most important – then cutting small details off the top until a reasonable length is achieved. And, if you know it’s going to get cut anyway, you have the freedom to be a little clumsy starting off – which can be quite liberating. Finally, this means that instead of the most important thing (the ‘charging bull’) being a distraction from absorbing all the smaller, less-important (by definition) details, the narrative ends with a call to action of some sort – even if that action is to engage in dialogue.

Solution 6: The Most Obvious

Sometimes, the most important detail is not necessarily very obvious. So ordering information according to how obvious it is can be a better alternative. Think about that for a minute.

Solution 7: Essence of Abstraction

I have occasionally found it useful to abstract the information more strongly than would normally be the case. This emphasizes conceptual qualities over specificity, and there are times when that eliminates a lot of unnecessary detail and concentrates the attention on the conceptual.

Swirling ribbons of marshmallow tango and foxtrot over passionfruit marmalade, twisting and entwining like a gymnast’s ribbon. Soothing, restful, comforting thoughts surround you and cloud out all other details. Drowsiness blooms as your eyelids grow heavy and your heartbeat calms.

Try reading that when your PCs next open a door, or just imagine reading it. What actually lies beyond the door is insubstantial, ephemeral in comparison. Sure you could describe the room or area, and then the 12-foot-tall Ogre Magi casting the spell, and then have Spellcraft rolls made with virtually no chance of failure to identify the spell, and then naming the spell. If you then followed with the narrative as written, it would have all the impact of whet spaghetti. Far better, under those circumstances, to assume success and go straight to the abstract description. The very fact that the PCs are expecting all those dry details makes the impact all the greater.

Solution 8: Emotion and Allusion

Preceding those dry, factual details with a little poetic allusion or emotional context leaves that contextual information as an ‘aftertaste’ that colors and enriches those details. Compare:

The firehouse has red brick walls and white plaster ceilings. A brass pole lies bright and shiny in your field of view, as does a line of helmets and jackets hanging on a row of brass hooks on the wall. To one side is a freshly-washed and polished fire engine.

with

The frangipani tree fills the air with comforting but cloying scents. You can’t help but remember the sense of security you felt whenever you passed by the fire station in your respective home town as a child, and the thrill when the fire bells rang, the time old Macpherson’s barn burnt down. The walls are the same red brick that you would find in a hundred other municipal fire stations all over the state. Through the welcoming open doors you see a shiny brass pole and a line of yellow helmets and black jackets hanging from a row of brass hooks, and a brightly polished fire truck to one side.

Sure, the second one is about twice as long, and omits the white plaster ceiling; but it transports you to the location far more effectively. And, because it starts with an impression of the place rather than a specific – the scent of flowers in the air – it starts getting you into the creative mindset before you have to worry about specifics; from that point on, you are more concerned with not breaking the mood than you are with getting the details right. The specifics sort of come along for the ride.

Solution 9: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I have found that when I need to describe a more complex scene or situation, I can often break through any writer’s block by finding a relevant image using Google image search or Wikipedia commons, creating a thumbnail impression of what I can see in that image, then focusing on the ways in which the image doesn’t match the scene to be described. If necessary, I might even go hunting for a second image that helps visualize the next missing element, and repeat the technique.

For example, that would give me a description of the forest, and then the mountains in the distance (which aren’t in the forest photo), with the moon rising behind them (which isn’t in the picture of the mountains), and then the castle (ditto), with the light spilling from its tower windows, and so on. Focusing on what is there in the photographic reference and describing it, then identifying something that isn’t there and looking for a way to describe that (using a new image if necessary) permits you to build and layer your description.

Since you only use ‘thumbnail descriptions’ and general impressions instead of a load of specific details to describe each part, what you are slowly building up is a visualization of the scene in your mind based apon the visual notations that you are making – once you have that, you can go back and flesh out the details that need to be included, and ignore the ones that don’t.

Solution 10: Adjectives in free-fall

My final technique for breaking down writer’s block in narrative is to list nothing but relevant adjectives. No nouns, no objects or subjects, no context – just the adjectives. When you have a satisfactory list containing everything relevant that you can think of without consulting a reference, link one element of the scene with that adjective – which restricts the number of specifics that you can incorporate to the number of descriptive terms that you came up with. Then you arrange those adjectives so that they have some sense of continuity and flow, giving you the order of description of each of the elements you’ve selected. I find this to be a great tool for sharpening my mental image of a scene that needs description. It can be challenging and a definite spur to the creativity, because you want to match the adjectives with the most significant elements of the scene.

In the next part: It’s time to start looking at Translation Writers Blocks. Don’t know what they are? Check out the first part of this series…

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it publicly, I’ll never get it done in time! Only one chapter this time, but it’s a biggie…

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Clan Wars XIX: The Hidden Dragon

Beneath the granite facade of one particular mountain range lies a heart pockmarked by limestone caverns. Once, this region was beneath the sea, and coral and seashells littered the sandy surface. As volcanic pressure beneath the ocean floor exerted itself, this ocean floor was lifted clear of the waves. Eventually, a huge volcano punched through and erupted, spilling tons of ash and rock over the land. Much of this volcanic outflow formed a vast plain leading from the mountains that had formed. Slowly the rain and wind leeched the smoke and ash from the air, carving deep ravines and furrows in the rock and sweeping loose ash downstream. Then it grew much colder, perhaps because of the thick blanket of haze in the air, or perhaps because the elementals at the world’s heart were tired from their exertions, and great mountains of ice swept down from the Sinister.
 

Reminder: Directions in Fumanor are (clockwise): Sunrise, Sinister, Sunset, Dexter.

 
   In time, the ice receded, and the mountains began to grow again, though not at the same dramatic rate. More volcanoes erupted, and then went out, laying down fresh coverings of rock from deep in the surface. The rains came, and the fertile soil bloomed, and the elementals beneath the mountains were driven out by the Gods, returning to their homes in the World Of Fire at the heart of the world. As is their way, some of the rivers that formed found the limestone deposits that once were shells, sand, and coral easier to attack than the granite, and caves beneath the mountain were opened. From time to time, the world would shake, and mountains would shift and move and tilt, and old watercourses ran dry as easier paths were found for the rain to flow, and some of the caves became dry.
   Into one of these vast caverns, a teardrop 400 feet long by 200 feet wide at its greatest, a warband materialized as though by magic, riding the ritual cast in haste by the Hidden Dragon back to its originator. Standing back-to-back, not knowing what to expect apon their arrival save that it would be in the heart of their enemy’s stronghold, it took them a moment to get their bearings and make sense of what they perceived.
   At the distant wider end of the cavern, a monstrous figure barely small enough to be contained beneath the 150′ ceiling was enshrouded in chains of mist and cloud that glowed with a pearly light. It had the body of a dragon, ninety feet in length (plus tail). From it’s feet sprouted seven toes, disproportionately large for the size of the body by a factor of five. But most monstrous of all was the incredibly oversized head, easily ten times the size it should have been, and a strange and disturbing blend of humanoid and draconic features. It’s eyes were closed, and its head rested against a silvery silk cushion of incredible proportion, 80′ square, which was held upright against the cavern wall by a rough scaffolding carved from the rock itself. The creature abruptly twitched in its sleep, one vast foot flaying out, and it suddenly became clear that the bowl end of the cavern had started existence not much larger than the narrow end, but had been excavated and carved out by the monstrous creature in it’s sleep over a span of centuries. But this was not the totality of its vile description; for the skin of the creature was mottled with age, mildew, and a leprous rotting, and the nauseating odor of decaying flesh filled the cavern. Slowly the creature’s tongue stole out through the side of its cheek and licked the lower extremity of one the great bat-like wings, a point some eighty feet removed from the head, leaving a slimy glaze over the rotting tissue. And yet, there was something slightly insubstantial about the creature, as though it were not fully present in the same reality as everything else.
   Surrounding what could only be The Hidden Dragon were a small horde of devils and demons, fourty or more strong. Some were engaged in polishing the teeth or claws, others scrubbed the flesh of the dragon, or threw infant creatures down the monstrous mouth. One spotted the intruders and called a warning in a language that was painful just to hear. Many lay on sleeping pallets arranged in a ring around the dragon; at first, it might have been hoped that these were actually sleeping, but that hope was dashed when they began to rise from their reclining positions in response to the alert.
   “Ambassador, watch the rear for more,” yelled First as both he and Third let fly with their arrows, taking two of the servants in the throat and eye, respectively.
   “Fan out,” ordered Goral, and stepped forward, his war-axe at the ready. Reality dissolved around him…
 
The creature, suddenly vibrant and healthy, hung suspended in space with a litany of horror. A creature with tentacles where a mouth should be, an inky blot of 10,623 eyes, a relentlessly amorphous blob, a humanoid figure with a front but no back, and many more. Around them, reality shimmered, twisted, and distorted, straight lines and edges tying themselves in knots. One spoke, and somehow was understandable, though the language was nothing that had ever existed before or would exist in the future. *This order, this regularity, burns within me. I want it gone, gone, gone forever.*
   Another replied, in still another incomprehensible tongue that was nevertheless crystal clear in its meaning, *it sneaks under my surfaces and insinuates itself. Sneaking up, it twists my thoughts until I find myself lessened, reduced to what I think I want to be doing. Who wants to have to wait for the perception of want before its satisfaction?*
    *It is still a fragile thing. It can be broken.*
   *If there are none to perceive it, there is no pattern. We must cleanse all existence of this foul corruption that confines and regulates the infinite possibilities.*
   *If we destroy it all, only the void – and ourselves – will remain!*
   *It burns, it burns.* Suddenly, one realized that they had fallen into the orderly pattern called “conversation” and screamed in pain, longing, and frustration.
 
The Cavern:
   Lukzal, son of Kyrd, Warrior of the Burning Eyes, shook his head to clear it of the clinging vision, and realized that the Demons had been unaffected, and had taken the opportunity to arm themselves and begin – according to their forms – to run, slither, or fly toward the invading force. Trying to recall why they seemed so familiar, he suddenly had a mental image of the “Army Of The Eye” summoned by what he had since learned was a false Gruumsh. Rage overwhelmed him, and he did not fight the berserker fury as it rose. If they had to fight while blind, at least some of the time, sheer violence would have to substitute for vision.
   “It sleeps, it dreams, and we share those dreams!” exclaimed Garunch, the Clan Shaman of the Burning Eyes.
   So that’s what it is, thought Lukzal. A trick of the enemy. Ignore it. Fight. That seems clear enough.
   Reality swam around him as he dimly perceived that the two who had been struck by Elven arrows rose up. One ripped the arrow from its throat and tossed it aside, the other ignored the shaft protruding from it’s eye – it had two more, after all – and lurched toward the Orcish raiding party.
 
The Dream:
   *These things of order create other things of order to oppose us. I cannot escape their thoughts, this unnatural progression of effect following cause becoming new cause in its turn. They twist and turn and collide within me.*
   *The things they make are imperfect. There is a little of our nature within them.*
   *But we have been contaminated a little by them, also. They are within us, under my surface, their thoughts slithering and crawling.*
   *They can be rendered self-destructive, self-defeating, impotent.*
   *Show us these creatures, Arioch.*
   *Don’t call me that! I am me, not some label. Every time you say the words to mean me, you confine me to the limits, the content, of that label. You lessen me, you lessen us, you are seduced us with the order that corrupts you.*
   *Just show us.*
   *These are Dwarves. Made of stone, minds of stone, they may break but will not bend. Order is strong within their natures.*
   *But they are flimsy things, whose sense of order can be shattered if the world around them is anarchy. They need order without to anchor themselves to, and without it, they are bereft. They pose no threat to our need.*
   *These are called human. They will exist in great numbers and have the quality of imposing order on their surroundings with their presence.*
   *Horrid, horrid, foul, vile.*
   *Their strength is their flexibility. They can turn their attention to many things, all imperfectly, but improving in flawlessness each time.*
   *They may one day be a problem, but their flexibility is a weakness. They will bend and not break. We can bend them our way and make of them our instruments.*
   *Not all of them.*
   *Enough that one will neutralize another.*
   *More dangerous are these, called Elves. The inferior Order which names itself Corallen has designed them to withstand our greatest weapons against this befouling order, and uses these others, called Orcs, to rear and protect them. The Orcs are orderly without knowing why, it is so strongly embedded within their natures. The Elves have the ability to sew patches of order into patterns of still greater order, and with their immunities, can only be intended to serve as weapons against us.*
   *But they will be aware of that ability, and it will make them vulnerable to corruption and desire. It will be difficult, but they can be overcome.*
   *The Order of the Orcs can be corrupted and misled. Without their shields, these Elves will be easily ended.*
 
The Cavern:
   As the vision faded, the Orcish group completed their maneuver to put enough space between them to permit them to fight without interference. Goral had taken the left flank, and Lukzal had found himself on the right. Next to each was another warrior from the Mailed Fist clan armed with sword, shield, and long spears attached to their shield arms with a sharpened blade on one side of the point. Next in line on each side were the Elves, First and Third, with the third unnamed Orcish warrior shielding Garunch, who had begun casting a spell asking Gruumsh to Smite these unholy foes. Behind them was the useless Drow, armed with a wicked looking dagger of little combat value beyond intimidation – and the Demons and Devils did not seem particularly intimidated, perhaps because some of them had razor-sharp fingernails longer than the blade.
   With one final beat of their scabrous bat-wings, the first wave of infernal enemies reached the skirmish line and engaged. Lukzal, Goral, and the three Orcish warriors swung as one, even as the Elves ignored the attackers immediately in front of them and fired at another pair of approaching enemies. Lukzal’s preferred weapon was a broad-bladed sword of his own design, with a sharpened narrow-bladed hook at the point; swung one way, it gave his weapon additional weight that enabled it to chop through poorly-crafted mail, swung the other, the hook would catch around limbs or weapon-shafts or necks, and sever them. Spikes on the heavy pommel gave additional threat. Like most Orcish weapons, it was sharpened regularly but not cleaned very well.
   “Fight even if you can’t see what you’re doing”, Goral instructed. Better the right instruction late than never, thought Lukzal. Their first two attackers had paid the price for daring to attack while outnumbered; it would not be so easy when there were more of them attacking at once. The cavern shimmered….
 
The Dream:
   *These are called Dragons.*
   An unholy scream of withering frustration erupted from the gathered Chaos Powers.
   *Every scale is in a predictable place on the body. These scales have shapes that progress in shape in predictable pattern. They bend and reflect light from one surface to another and then back again, giving them an iridescent metallic shine that is perfectly orderly. And more, they are beings of great power, imbued within them by the order that twists around them and shapes them.*
   *They will be few in number. Such order will be slow to develop.*
   *It will be hard to overcome them, but they cannot be everywhere. We have only to act wherever they are not.*
   *There is a chaos within that pattern. By being so predictable in pattern, there are more places where no scale should grow than there are right places. If we can but invade their forms while still growing and grow in one of those places a single wrong scale, or scale of flawed shape, that chaos will overwhelm the end result. They will destroy each other for us, and pose no threat.*
   *Good.*
 
The Cavern:
   Goral felt, rather than saw, the satisfying crunch as his war-axe met flesh and bit deep, spraying him with blood. One of the demons hooked its claws into the shoulders of one of his warriors and scissored it’s hind legs into the air to rake savagely down through the innards of the Orcish fighter. Lukzal had just beheaded another with that wicked weapon of his. Garunch swung his light mace overhand to strike the four-legged bird that had just savaged his protector; when its barbed spikes bit into the back of the attacking creature, the air around the head of the weapon seemed to burst with a forceful thud, shattering the creature’s spine in multiple places. First let fly with another shaft, ignoring the proximity of enemies to either side of him with great discipline, while Third wrestled with another flying creature that looked like an octopus with bat-wings that had wrapped it’s tentacles around his bow. The warrior to Goral’s right was hacking one enemy with his sword while the polearm blade swung past that foe to strike the chest of another coming up behind it. Abruptly, the Ambassador seemed to throw his dagger with a peculiar underhand motion, the blade flicking out on a long chain to whip into the lone eye of the octopoid engaging Third. He had never suspected that the Ambassador had such hidden talents. Eleven of their enemies had fallen, and another six were wounded; the band were giving a good accounting of themselves.
 
The Dream:
   *These are the most foul of all creations. They are called Trees. They exist purely to exist in orderly manner, day after day, year after year. Infinitely flexible, inexorable, persistent, there is nowhere that they cannot take root and multiply, given time. And once they do so, their very simplicity of purpose makes them inherently almost purely order.*
   *We can twist their shapes.*
   *They seize the chaos within them and twist their own shapes, rendering it harmless to affect their central existence, their purpose, their order.*
   *They are inactive, though. They do nothing but exist, and that means that things can be done to them by others.*
   *Against one at a time, yes. But even that does nothing against the next save perhaps giving it more air, water, and light, the things that it binds into more of itself. Destroying one makes the next imperceptible stronger. Destroy many, and the remainder become many times stronger, and more pernicious.*
   *If there is no water, no earth, no light, no air, they will be destroyed. They anchor order, and will be the last to fall, but they do not impede us.*
 
The Cavern:
   The warrior beside Lukzal was gone, half-swallowed by a serpentine bear before the terrible jaw with a hidden forest of razor-sharp teeth had closed and severed upper torso from lower. Lukzal himself held three foes at bay with his maniacally-swinging weapon’s figures-of-eight. Occasionally an attacker would spot an opening and strike, only to lose a limb or suffer a deep wound as the blade came out of nowhere. First and third continued to pepper the oncoming attackers with arrow after arrow; Goral thought they had yet to miss, even though half their shots were fired from memory while ‘blinded’ by the Hidden Dragon’s visions. Garunch alternated casting spells with savage strokes of his mace against any foe who dared come too close. Tathzyr was the least effective of them all, though since they had not counted on him to make a difference in the fight at all, that little benefit was a welcome bonus. The Ambassador was restricting his attacks to nuisance strikes against an enemy coming against the Priest or the Elves. Half of their enemies were dead or dying, and half the remainder were crippled or injured sufficiently to impair them in battle.
   Abruptly, Garunch yelled “Down!” as a gout of flame erupted from the throat of a creature consisting of nothing more than necks and mouths attached to a wolf-like body. Fortunately, everyone reacted without hesitation, but even so Goral could feel the flesh on his back blister and burn. But the attackers, who seemed immune to the flame, or who ignored it while showing no injury, were able to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability. One leapt on the Lukzal’s back and began to slash and worry at the Warrior. Another gored Goral’s side. A two-headed snake bit Third repeatedly, who immediately stiffened. A flier slashed at First, but the Elf was able to roll to one side and seize the polearm still strapped to the arm of one of the fallen warriors, impaling his would-be attacker. Tathzyr’s dagger whipped out and around again from the Ambassador’s prone position and sliced through the bat-wings of the creature on Lukzal’s back. The warrior stationed between Goral and First leaped over his fallen Warblade to engage the attacker who was goring him with it’s antlers, severing it’s head with one mighty stroke of his axe, but in the process leaving himself exposed; the barbed tail of another attacker struck at the warrior’s undefended right flank, inflicting a deep wound. The skirmish line that had proven so effective was broken, with Goral and the Warrior isolated. And then his vision wavered once again.
 
The Dream:
   *This is the last. These are creatures of pure order, expressed in form reflective of that inner order. The Gods name them Celestials, and they are a part of the Gods themselves.*
   *What is their purpose?*
   *The Gods intend them to function as their proxies, sheltering and marshalling the other races against us.*
   *Their purpose is to confound us, then. We must destroy these before all others.*
   *No. That is orderly thinking. We will destroy them when opportunity presents itself, and not bend ourselves to the timetable their existence seeks to force apon us.*
   *Clever. A subtle trap to bind the order that contaminates us ever more strongly to our natures.*
   *I was going to suggest that we each take one of these creatures and seek its destruction, but I see that is another such trap.*
   *Yes. Each must seek the destruction of all, as our chance and anarchy creates opportunities. Predictability and logic and pattern are the weapons of the enemy.*
   *I have an idea…*
   *Then implement it. You do not need anyone’s approval, and should one of us have an idea that works at cross-purposes to yours, it only acts to increase the chaos in this unnaturally orderly world and give opportunity to the rest.*
 
The Cavern:
   A wall of whirring blades manifested between the enemy forces and the Orcish party as Garunch released his spell, giving the invaders the chance to regroup. They had all been wounded to some extent, save Ambassador Tathzyr. Healing drafts were quickly quaffed, stemming the flow of blood. Without warning, Goral fell through a chasm that opened from nowhere beneath his feet. With a crash, he landed, and felt one of his leg-bones snap. Involuntarily he gave a roar of pain and collapsed, unsupported by the damaged limb. “Goral! Grab the rope! Quickly” yelled First as he tossed one end of a thin grey rope down the chasm.
   “My leg is broken, and I have not the strength to climb!”, he called back. “Leave me!”
   “Your leg can be healed, but only once the bone has been set, or you will have a permanent limp. Now grab the rope, Warblade Of The Mailed Fists, and hold fast; I will pull you up!”
   “Elves! Only thing more stubborn than a Dwarf,” yelled Goral. Abruptly he realized that the mouth of the unnatural chasm was beginning to close, and hastily wrapped the rope around one arm repeatedly. There wasn’t much that scared the Warblade, but being buried alive was one thing that did. “All right, I’m secured.”
   With a speed that astonished him, he was hauled back to the surface. With an astonishing economy of motion, First released the rope and grabbed the foot of the broken leg, the jagged bone protruding through the flesh above the ankle, and pulled firmly. Garunch was immediately at the wounded Warblade’s side, casting a Healing spell. “You’re stronger than you look, Elf,” murmured the Warblade.
   “So are you, Goral,” replied First.
   “I felt a twisting in the earth just before the chasm opened,” reported the Ambassador.
   “As did I,” admitted the Clan Shaman, “but I did not know what it meant.”
   “Now we do. How did they do that?” answered First, still breathing heavily after his excursions. Goral’s vision swam…
 
The Dream:
   The Chaos Power roared with laughter, exulting in the anarchy, blood, and confusion, watching as the last Celestial was slain and its skull ground into the reality beneath it.
   *You should tell us what you have done that we may learn from it.*
   *Learning from experience, even from the experience of another, is a symptom of order. It is anathema to our nature.*
   *It is foolish to ignore the contamination of order within us. If it is there, we must try and use it to our own ends.*
   *You seek to pervert the order within you to serve the cause of Chaos? Intriguing. Very well. I implanted in a few of the Celestials the thought that if the Gods were dead, they would be all that was left of them. They would then be the Gods. Each was drawn by the order within them to contaminate a few more, and then a few more. A few resisted, by chance, as it should be when chance rules supreme. That resistance caused them to fight each other, but they were too perfect for either to fall. Only by drawing on the chaos within them could those I corrupted succeed, twisting and transforming them into agents of Chaos and not order. Those that had resisted were no match for the power of order augmented by the nature of chaos. Now the chaos within them burns them as it does us, and they corrupt the order around them to ease the suffering. They cannot do so perfectly or completely, of course – there is too much order still within them – but imperfection is chaotic.*
   *The Chaos is stronger in some than in the others.*
   *Yes. Again, it is by chance – some held on to the order within them more strongly than others, who rejected it almost completely. The Gods foolishly showed what was occurring to the humans they breed to oppose us; those more orderly have been named Devils, those who rejected order more completely, Demons. They will hate each other for the order in some of them, and compete endlessly to be the ones that tear down all order and remake it all to their liking. And already, some of the humans begin to think that one day they will be able to supplant the Gods.*
   *It will take time for this to grow, but it will give us endless opportunities to act, to cleanse existence of this agonizing regularity. You have done well. Already, I can see a way to take advantage of what you have wrought.*
   *Then do it!*
   *I have only to put an idea in the minds of these Devils or Demons, and they will act as my proxies, thinking it all their own notion. I shall start by turning one against the other, that the chaos within them will never be stilled by order and predictability…*
   The Chaos Powers exulted.
 
The Cavern:
   “This place is part of the Dragon’s dreams!” said Tathzyr with a sudden insight. “When it is not distracting us with visions, it can reshape it! That’s how it opened the chasm!”
   “My barrier is about to go down,” warned Garunch.
   “And here they come again,” announced Goral, climbing to his feet. “Ready yourselves!” Suddenly, his vision shimmered once again. “Oh, not now!” he moaned, tired of fighting blind. “Advance, slowly!” he instructed.
 
The Dream:
   “It is boring! I want to hunt, not care for these pathetic mewling cubs!”
   *That’s right, little Orc. Doing what you want to do is more satisfying than doing what you are supposed to do.* The Orc was in a forest, gazing longingly at a stone-headed axe and leather shield that rested against a tree. The Chaos Power was in a lair that it had created for the benefit of the many demonic and devilish servants who worked on its behalf, convinced that it was merely a Demon Prince gaining power in Stealth. But it was also whispering into the mind of the young Orc.
   “I am going to hunt! Let the child cry, I am tired of putting its needs ahead of my own!”
   *Yesssssss…. that feels good, doesn’t it? And its not as though you are neglecting it. Someone else will do it if something has to be done for it.*
   — YOU DARE!?
   *Corallen? None of your kind have ever dared confront one of us Directly!*
   — My ‘Kind,’ as you put it, never do anything without a plan. I have such a plan, prepared against this day, and so I act! Understand this: the Elves are under my protection. Their Guardians shelter and guard them, and so I protect them, also. I tell you this so that your Brethren will understand the consequences of your action and never dare to confront one of us directly, in the future.
   *You are too late, Corallen. This is not the first of your Guardians that I have corrupted with indifference and desire, and already many of your beloved Elves have buried kernels of arrogance, pride, cruelty, hatred, and ambition growing within them. If I fail, another will find a way to make those seeds bloom.*
   — I know you engage me in conversation in hope of buying time for your servants to come to your aid, for you are unsuited to physical actions of your own. It will avail you naught, for in assuming a physical manifestation for their convenience, you have made yourself subject to the Order inherent in a physical existence, and have slowed the passage of time within this chamber. I shall be finished and gone long before time ceases its temporary, leisurely, crawl.
   — Around you I weave a spell of order.
   — A Spell of purity of purpose.
   — A Spell of unalloyed slumber.
   — Into this spell I confine you.
   — Your assumed fleshly form will wither with disuse.
   — Your servants shall tend your needs for eternity in hopes of releasing you.
   — The Words shape your mind, the words give structure and formality, the words impart order and confine your thoughts within that order.
   — The Chaos within you shall suffer for eternity in these chains of order. I bind them with the final word: I name you Ethraztia, the dragon which hides within slumber, the sleeping nightmare. And I bind you to that name and its meaning for all time.
 
The Cavern:
   “What does this mean?” demanded Lukzal, killing another demon as the group slowly advanced, and their enemy just as slowly retreated. 25 of them were now dead, and 12 were wounded; only three remained unmarked by the battle.
   “I don’t know. Worry about it later,” replied Garunch, fending off one attacker with a borrowed shield and chopping into the arm of another with his War Axe one-handed.
   “It’s the Dragon trying to distract us,” answered First, interpreting the question in a way that would forestall a theological debate.
   Abruptly, stalactites ripped themselves from the ceiling and flew like javelins at the compact group of invaders. Once again, Garunch instructed “Down!” and was instantly obeyed. He had clearly been anticipating this mode of attack, and released a spell that created a wall of wind that swept the delicate spires of razor-sharp stone to one side and away from the group. Most shattered harmlessly against the cavern wall, but several struck and wounded the waiting demons, killing another four outright, and wounding two of those who had been whole.
   “Predictable,” muttered Garunch as their vision again began to waver. “Whenever we seem to be gaining the advantage, the Dragon cloaks his forces in these visions. Brace yourselves!”
 
The Dream:
   The Dragon slept, and dreamed of its confinement, and slowly came to realize that Corallen had sacrificed much of his power to confine it, and then to recognize that the binding was not purely directed at it alone; should any of its brethren seek to interfere directly with the Elves, they would be trapped, confined within the dreams of Ethraztia, helpless. And for a time, its dreams were full of anger, fury, and frustration. He dreamed of the Elves as a unified race, standing proud as bastions of Order, and knew that this was what Corallen planned, and that nothing would stop it, for this was the future.
 
The Cavern:
   “Woman! Why are you here?” cried Goral.
   “My heart knew you were in danger, and I prayed to Luthic to permit me to share in that peril,” replied Goral’s mate. All around the group, other reunions were occurring, no matter how improbable.
   “Father! They told me you were killed!” exclaimed Lukzal.
   “Gruumsh released me to aid you, my son,” answered Kyrd. “We fight side-by-side one last time.”
   “It’s a trick, a deception,” shouted First. “They are demons! The Dragon defiles the memories of your family and friends!” One-by-one, he touched each of his companions, permitting them to share his Elven Sight, and revealing the true shapes of the monstrosities approaching casually. Though the true sight was immediately again clouded in the deception when he released his touch and moved on to the next of his companions, the one brief glimpse was enough to convince the others and rouse the Orcs to new levels of fury. As one, they snarled their defiance and anger and struck out at the cloaked demons. Abruptly the deception was lifted.
   “How did you do that?” demanded Tathzyr.
   “Long ago, Corallen taught me to do it, though it only works for a moment. ‘One day, you may have need of this ability,’ he told me. Perhaps he foresaw the possibility that Ethraztia would one day pose a danger, and prepared me to counter it, I don’t know!”
 
The Dream:
   The Dragon slept. And the dragon dreamed of what had been, and what had been done, and of the things that it had seen in Corallen’s mind when it opened before him to expose the chains of order that bound it. All of it’s existence, past, present, or future was open to its dreams. And slowly, the dragon learned to turn the pure order in which it was chained to the cause of the chaos that was its nature.
   It started when a wanderer chanced to sleep on the mountainside above the lair, and Ethraztia found that it could present its dreams to the wanderer as his own. And the wanderer, comprehending what he had seen but a little, and remembering less than he had comprehended, spread the word that this was a holy place where visions came to those open to them.
   Other pilgrims followed. Some were holy men of various species; others were troubled souls seeking solace from pain, fear, doubt, and confusion; and still others came to test their theories and imaginings. To each, Ethraztia showed a different vision, a different dream, one chosen at random. It could not lie in these dreams, for they had to be filtered through the orderliness of its confinement; but it could shade, and distort, and present a portion of the truth that each dreamer would find unsettling or affirming or gratifying. And Ethraztia fed apon the other dreams and nightmares of the dreamers through this connection, and slowly it grew in strength. This was not a strength as it had possessed before, the power of whispering within the mind and soul of another, but it was akin to it, though more indirect.
   And through the dreams of the pilgrims, Ethraztia learned of events beyond its confinement, and learned to add their dreams to its own.
 
The Cavern:
   “Did you sense an air of desperation about that last vision?” commented Tathzyr drily as Lukzal slew the last of the demons. “I had the distinct impression that Ethraztia was trying to convince us of it’s power, of the futility of attacking it.”
   “I don’t think I’ll let that stop me,” answered Goral, striding forward, war-axe at the ready.
 
The Dream:
   In time, as the Dragon slept, the servants of the Chaos Power now named Ethraztia noticed the pilgrims, and tortured a few to learn what brought them hence, and through the dreams of these pilgrims did Ethraztia re-establish contact with its servants. It directed them to labor to further grow its powers, summoning forth skilled artisans from the nearby Dwarven realm to craft a great temple in the place of dreaming, which they named Gottskragg. And Ethraztia dreamed a fantasy of its own devising, in which the order of the chains which bound it was linked to the purity of the temple, enabling his dreams of what was, what had been, and what would be, and all that it desired to appear as holy writ apon its walls. And through this medium, it was able to lure the servant of another of its Brethren, and through its dreams, to warn them of the trap that had been layed for them by Corallen.
 
The Cavern:
   With an angry bellow, Goral struck at the Hidden Dragon, but his blade passed harmlessly through it as though it were nothing but smoke. Lukzal, First, and Garunch joined in, but again nothing was achieved. “Ethraztia is definitely growing desperate,” remarked Tathzyr. “If I were to translate the last two visions, I would say: ‘I warn you, I’m stronger than you are, and I have powerful friends.”
   “I don’t know why it’s so desperate, nothing we’re doing can hurt it,” screamed Goral in frustration.
   “It’s as though there’s no substance, it’s like trying to cut through a dream with a knife,” added First.
   “If I’m right, next it will try to subvert one of us,” answered Tathzyr.
 
The Dream:
   With each dreamer lured to the Oracle of Gottskragg, the reach of Ethraztia’s dreams became greater. Eventually, a high Elf of the Orb-spinner totem came to dream, dimly, of the Oracle, and set out to discover if it was real. Elves do not sleep as do humans, but they do rest and meditate at need, and they do walk the path of dreams at such times. Ethraztia, unlike his brethren, had no fear of direct meddling with the Elves, but soon found that the immunity to enchantments built into their natures by Corallen left the elf immune to his whisperings, as the Chaos Powers had long ago forecast would be the case.
   But, to his wonder and amazement, Ethraztia found that the Elf’s spider-totem was not immune – but only because of the trappings of order in which it was confined. Sympathetic to such order by its nature, Ethraztia was able to pour into that vessel the same dream of supremacy, ambition, and hatred that it had once instilled within the Celestials, and spun a fantasy of the spider-totems uniting into a single being, a near-Goddess. And when reality mirrored art, that being named itself Lolth, and the high elf became her first hand-maiden. And thus Ethraztia fulfilled his own threat against Corallen; it had indeed found a way to make the kernels of chaos and evil that it had, in its former existence, instilled within the still-unborn Elves.
   And, having learned that it could still influence events profoundly and further its cause in spite of dreams of a contrary future, Ethraztia began to examine its own visions of the past and future, and to dream schemes of victory. His Prophetic dreamings were not what would happen, they were what could happen – if no-one did anything to change them.
 
The Cavern:
   With a snort, Tathzyr said, “See! I told you. Claiming to have created my Mistress and Queen, implying that I should be loyal to it. What nonsense.”
   “Then what can we do? Our weapons are useless,” answered Lukzal. “I did not come here and fight demons and dreams to do nothing.”
   “Dreams. Dreams. First, what did you say? ‘It’s like trying to cut through a dream with a knife’… Almost, almost. The answer’s there, I can taste it.” For long minutes, the Ambassador was lost in deep thought. Suddenly, his eyes widened. “What did the vision say? Of course! It all makes sense, now!
   “You, Ethraztia! Show us why you have done all this – and the truth, mark you, or as much of it as you are capable of. If you do this, I will release you – I know how to do it, now!”
   “What are you DOING!?” roared Goral.
   “Trust me,” answered the Drow, with no hint of irony, as once again, their vision twisted…”
 
The Dream:
   Ethraztia discovered that one day, an Elf, an Orc, and a Drow would unite with diverse others to directly threaten both itself and others of its brethren with ultimate defeat and destruction, including – horror of horrors – a walking, talking, tree, or something so close to one as to be anathema to his kind. Let others fight the battle against order in their own way; Ethraztia was the only one who knew of this eventual threat, imminent from the perspective of an immortal, and so it was Ethraztia’s battle to fight. When an Orcish exploring party discovered the Oracle of Gottskragg, Ethraztia began to discover part of the reason this combination would be so dangerous: the Orcs had a gift for being able to see many spiritual parts as a whole. They did not perceive a single Deity within their pantheon, they saw – and believed – in it as a whole, as they did their tribes, and their clans, and their race. The simplicity and directness of this perspective made them more closely attuned to Order than any other race. Elves were not the true threat Corallen had raised against the Powers Of Chaos, the Orcs were, for – while the time would come for them to set aside the deities in whom they now believed – they would view the true order of the Gods as a united whole, almost instinctively. The purity of their belief already enabled them to call apon their Gods as though they were real. So strong was this belief that those Gods were real, at least so far as the Orcs were concerned. The Orcs had been deliberately designed to compliment and complete the Elves, the more overt threat, and a distraction from the real menace. Together, the three would have the knowledge and power to unmake his prized creation, Lolth, and remake her into a weapon against the Chaos Powers themselves.
   And it all stemmed from the sense of unity of the Orcs. At all costs, this unity must be shattered, and the Orcs set at each other’s throats.
   Ethraztia’s dreams were a blend in equal measure of careful strategic planning, opportunism, and fantasy wish-fulfillment made manifest, and all were directed to this end. It was not enough for the Orcs to go to war against each other, they must be convinced that their gods were equally divided. Only then could they persuaded to set in motion a vast summoning, to bring forth permanently every fiend of the Abyss from which Ethraztia had obtained loyalty, that every last one could be hunted down. If extinct, or close to it, and at the hands of their own Gods, the Orcs would never threaten Ethraztia again.
 
The Cavern:
   “Half-truths and distortions. But probably as close to honesty as your kind can come. Very well, you have met the terms of the bargain. Goral, please stand here. Garunch, you here. Lukzal, over here.” Having positioned one of the Orcs before each of the chains. “The purity of belief of the Orcs is enough that their Gods don’t have to be real for them to be able to work miracles in their names. That belief is pure order. I want you three to concentrate on your beliefs and, on my signal, strike at the chains. First, I expect a rather important visitor to show up a soon as I give the signal; I would appreciate it if you would prevent him from incinerating me before I can explain.
   “Ready? Three, two one, NOW!”
   With a sound like breaking glass, three weapons struck the chains, shattering them. The Dragon’s great eye snapped open in an instant; lifting it’s great head from the pillow against which it had rested for centuries on it’s impossibly thin neck, it gave a shattering trumpet of triumph and exultation.

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

I’m going to forego this while our attention is focused on the Orcish side of the story, as it has no relevance to the narrative.

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I love it when a plan comes together! For those interested in the technical details: I wrote the “Vision” sequences first, answering almost all of the questions posed by the “behind the curtain” article published last week, and with a few more ideas thrown in for good measure. This told me how many action sequences I needed in between them, so I worked out (roughly) what was going to happen in each, and then wrote all of them up. Because I knew which ‘vision’ scenes would be significant to the Orcs, I was able to attune the interaction to match. This whole thing was done in two sittings, with a ten-minute break in the middle, totaling about 10 hours. There was virtually no correction needed, last week’s article had primed me so that the words just spilled out one after another. I haven’t been inspired like that in a long time.

And oh yeah: if you think I’ve written myself into a corner, getting specific about all sorts of things that I said I wasn’t going to get specific about, or making it clear that the characters would have had access to the top-secret information I’ve only revealed in the course of this series at the start of play, there are a couple of twists on the way that should explain everything… Like I said, I was inspired today.

Next time: The Conclusion of the Clan Wars saga, and what happens afterwards. Chapters 75-77!

“Lessons From The West Wing” is a series of occasional articles inspired by the Television Series. I’ve had this article sitting around in partially completed form for a couple of years now, waiting for the right example with which to illustrate the concluding point. Finally, that condition has been met, so it’s time to look at the concept of Victory for its own sake…

The episode “Bartlet For America” makes an understated point of contrasting the behavior of a Congressman, who wants to win just to score a victory over the enemy, with that of the Majority Council, whose ideals are more idealistic and who has a sense of responsibility to something larger than his own ambitions.

This is a recurring theme throughout the entire series, and one that deserves some analysis in the context of RPGs, both from the perspective of player behavior and in that of characters within the game.

Talking About Players

RPGs are highly objective-driven, and there is a constant danger that players will fall into the trap of prizing the victory at the expense of other considerations. There’s a common misperception that this is a driving flaw of Power Gamers, but that is putting the cart before the horse and as a result, GMs can make serious errors in judgment in dealing with the expectations of their players.

Power Gamers are portrayed as individuals who can be collectively characterized by a willingness to exploit any loophole in the rules, to subvert any constraint, in order to win an encounter. I think there are at least two other motivational factors in the mix, and any one of the three can be the driving motivation behind a power gamer. Those additional factors are the desire for the capacity to win and insecurity. Target the wrong one, by assuming that all Power Gamers think alike, and your responses – no matter how measured they appear to be from your perspective – can invite all-out war at the gaming table. What’s more, I would argue that there are two subtypes to the Capacity motivation: conceptual characterization, and the bright-shiny-cool factor.

Conceptual Characterization

This is where the player has some idealized notion in his head of what his character should be able to do, and the GM has a different concept of the same thing. The player is therefore motivated to find ways of being able to fulfill his idealized vision of the character that he wants to play, and every move that the GM makes to restrict his capability to do so becomes a direct attack on the character. Before you know it, a cold war is brewing. An obvious example of this takes place when discussing skill levels – the character achieves what the player wants to do more easily than the GM thinks it should be able to, so he ramps up the difficulty in order to boost the challenge to the character, so the player finds ways to enhance his skill levels still further – a vicious cycle that can only end in disaster if it is not recognized in time, and the real problem addressed.

I have seen this problem crop up in numerous game systems with many different characters. Inevitably, as soon as the obvious mechanisms for increase in capabilities are achieved, the player is left with no option but to pursue loopholes in the restrictions placed apon them. As the GM closes these down, one by one, the player is ultimately left with two choices: to concede defeat, or to cheat; and by now, the contest has become so personal, and so much effort has been invested, and the idealized vision of the character has become so entrenched, that defeat is unacceptable. The conflict inevitably escalates until the player either leaves the game in frustration, or steps over the line and becomes corrupt. The need for victory has become so entrenched that it must be achieved – at any cost.

3.x
I want to make special mention of the 3.x system here, because the basic system makes a key mistake, and because there is a fundamental flaw in the way they handle epic levels which is not addressed by the epic-level handbook, and both of these have bitten my campaigns more than once.

The key mistake is in ascribing a single, achievable, target value for all “superhuman” skill usages – DC 25. If it were only possible to achieve these capabilities in one or two skills, and only at extremely high character levels, and character growth is capped at 20 character levels, this would be tolerable, even acceptable. But this number, as I’ve shown in the past, is achievable too easily, and therefore can be achieved in too many skills by the time the character reaches high levels, and can therefore be a game-breaker. To forestall this, a number of GMs seek to add on masses of circumstantial negative modifiers; but to be consistent in their rulings, they also have to apply those modifiers at lower levels, and that is an open invitation to the Conceptual Characterization Cold War.

A far better alternative is to be generous with modifiers when circumstances are on the character’s side and give little or no penalty at all when they are opposed – and to move the goal posts. Corrected DC = 5+ 2x (DC-5) is the formula that I use.

Of course, if characters in your campaigns rarely reach level 15+, you might not even have noticed this problem, and therefore it might BE no problem in your campaigns.

3.x Epic Levels
The problem with setting all superhuman expressions of Skills at the same level only really becomes overwhelming if your campaign runs into Epic Levels.

When your plotline is so vast that it will earn the characters more than 20 levels at standard rates of character progression, according to the XP awards given in the DMG, you have only four choices: Give up the plotline, stretch it over multiple generations of characters, reduce the rate of character progression, or proceed into epic levels. All of these solutions have problems.
 

• Give up the plotline – this is the equivalent of reading the first volume of a trilogy and stopping there, even though you enjoyed it immensely – because the only way to go is downhill from there. It’s not a solution, it’s avoiding the problem and killing the campaign to do so.
• Stretch the plotline over multiple generations of characters – If you can manage it, this solution is fine. But it means that the problems encountered must be cyclic in difficulty – they build to a crescendo when the characters reach 20th level and then abruptly drop to almost zero when the next generation arrives. Rather than one big plotline, what you have is a series of connected smaller campaigns. Nothing wrong with that, but it limits the plotlines that your campaign can contain – so, at best, it’s only a partial solution.
• Reduce the rate of character progression – This is a more serious solution, involving stretching the character progression to fit the plotline and not changing the plotline to fit the character progression. But, in practice, it runs into difficulty, because accumulated bonuses from magical equipment become the dominant factor. Characters may have +5 weapons by the time they reach 5th level, under this solution. That forces you either to increase the range of magical equipment available – up to say, +20 – which brings back the very problem that I raised in the “3.x” section above, and leads the campaign down the merry path to pure Monty Haul – or you have to restrict the availability of magical equipment proportionately. But that brings in a new problem – it’s too easy for characters to make their own equipment, under this campaign regime, and to generate vast quantities of wealth. So you also have to clamp down on the magic item creation rules. And all of these changes can be perceived by players as restricting what their characters can do, given how much adventuring they have done, compared to what the players think the character should be able to do – and that starts the escalating cold-war cycle I described earlier. What’s more, because certain character types (mages and clerics) are going to be impacted by these changes more strongly than others, the players of those characters are more likely to react negatively; and the people who enjoy playing those character types are exactly the ones most likely to go crawling through the rules seeking every advantage they can find, making the war between player and GM even more likely.
• Proceed into epic levels – Inevitably, then, you are forced to the conclusion that an epic plotline requires epic level characters. But that’s when the problems of escalation really overtake the entire campaign. The entire progression of what characters can do needs to be stretched to fit by the epic rules, reshaping the character capabilities at lower levels, increasing DCs as appropriate, and differentiating between the skill totals required for different epic-level applications – and the epic-level handbook simply doesn’t go far enough. It assumes that the first 20 levels don’t need to be changed, that the mechanisms provided by the DMG continue just fine, and that all you need is to tack some extras onto the top. Quite frankly, it reads as though it were written without playtesting by someone who has never actually played a campaign at that level. The inadequacies of this official extension to the rules, quite frankly, force the GM into adding in some of the earlier solutions discussed – and bringing in the problems that they contain.

The public interest solution
Both the players and the GM need to work together to solve the problem. The player has to recognize that the GM is willing for the character to be able to match most of his idealized vision of what it can do – eventually – and be willing to let go of those parts that can’t be accommodated. The GM has to make sure that his in-game rulings and the house rules that he has devised to make the plotline playable also make it clear that eventually characters will achieve that standard. Egos need to be set aside; if the player feels that the GM is making tasks unduly difficult to achieve, he should say so, rather than trying to find a way to make them possible regardless, and the GM has to be willing to listen and take that perception on board – and then do something about it. Cooperation, not antagonism, is the solution, and communications is the key to unlocking it. The answer to all such issues should always be predicated on “What’s in the best interests of the campaign?”

The worst thing that can happen is for the GM to assume that the character is a rules lawyer or a power gamer because they are behaving like one; treating the player that way when he is not, and seeking to “curb the excesses”, is only poking the bear with a stick. It will make things worse, not better, and will only escalate the problem.

Bright-shiny-cool

Some players appear to be power gamers because they are always attracted to the next “cool” ability on the horizon. It might be the latest prestige class to catch their eye, or the latest magical gimmick they came across on the net or in a game supplement.

A variant on this style occurs when players seek to minimize or obliterate any vulnerability or flaw that the GM exploits “because the character is smart and that’s the smart thing to do”. Rather than seeking these reductions in impairment through roleplaying, they attempt to add a new ability to their repertoire that will compensate for or overcome the problem.

Ultimately, the variant is usually an expression of mistrust. The Player does not trust the GM not to exploit the vulnerability, and so seeks to eliminate the GMs control over the character. They don’t see the weakness/flaw/vulnerability as part of the character, an opportunity to roleplay or overcome a challenge. You especially see this all the time in Champions. The best solution is a metagame one: Work out ways for the player to retain control of the character while the flaw is in play, if necessary, giving the player advance notice that the problem will have an impact in the adventure, and communicating the GMs thinking about the way that it will manifest (in broad strokes) by note. That lets the player collaborate with the GM to create a more interesting adventure. I have, in the past, even gone so far as to have a player co-write selected scenes (without telling them the context); it works well, but slows the adventure creation process, so it’s something I will do again if it’s an important-enough element of the adventure I have planned. I especially like doing that when the player is likely to assume the situation in which the scene will occur is something completely different to what is actually supposed to happen, maintaining the element of surprise for the player.

Having solved the variant problem, let’s look back at the original. I find that this is generally a problem more likely to occur with younger players, and especially those who have come to tabletop RPGs through video or collectable card games, where they are used to continually finding new powerups and bright, shiny, new toys. The solution is for the GM to think about the character in terms of “what is it missing” and “what’s the highest priority of those” – based on what the characters have experienced lately, NOT what is coming up next! – and matching those perceptions with something that the player is (hopefully) going to find “cool” but that will only partially alleviate the need, or alleviate it only in the right circumstances. If you plan it right, you can “steer” the character development direction simply by carefully planning your adventures – using the age-old marketing technique of creating a perception of need and then satisfying that need.

The worst thing that you can do is to treat these players like power gamers and try to refuse them the “powerups” they feel they need. That will only aggravate the situation and their determination to crawl through broken glass to attain satisfaction of their needs – or eliminate one of the primary attractions of the campaign. You need to consider what is best for the campaign overall – and not what you think is best for the campaign.

The Capacity to Win

For some players, it’s not about the victory, but the capacity to achieve the victory – about the means at their disposal, and not the ends. This can be tricky to identify when you encounter it; it’s usually about avoiding any feeling of helplessness on the part of the player, or about the confidence that comes from being able to cope with anything that comes their way. Closely monitoring reactions when the characters are confronted with problems may provide clues. It can sometimes be helpful to talk about this with the player concerned, but often they will not know why they act the way they do, themselves, and wrong guesses can be more damaging to the campaign than letting things ride until you get a proper handle on the real issue.

Once again, this is often a question of trust at its heart. The Player wants to be secure in his confidence that the character can win, and the GM wants the character to succeed only after raising the tension with difficulties. The player sense the GM closing off avenues to an easy success, placing difficulties in his character’s path, and identifies with the character’s situation to the extent that the player feels as trapped by circumstances as he character is; realizing that is what leads the GM to the solution. Instead of simply ramping up the problems and difficulties, the GM needs to permit the character a few small victories along the way. “Problem – Success – Setback – Success – Worsen problem – Success – Setback – Solution” should be the pattern, instead of the basic three-act structure “Problem – Setback – Solution”. It may make the adventures bigger and longer, but it will keep the players happier. In other words, structure your adventures in the way that is best for the campaign, even if that means compromising the story.

Insecurity

That, of course, is one expression of the broader emotion of insecurity. Most problems with players and power-gaming come down, in the end, to some form of insecurity, and everything else that we’ve talked about is an expression of that insecurity.

It’s not your job as a GM to solve the personal and emotional problems of your players. You aren’t trained in doing so, you aren’t qualified to do so, and you don’t have the right to interfere. Your players signed up to play a game and be entertained in the process, not to have their heads shrunk by an armchair psychoanalyst.

But because your players are people, with all the complexities and convolutions that are part of people, it is impossible to completely separate the two. The most difficult decisions that a GM ever has to make are the ones that have real-life consequences. While most decisions can be made with a view to what is best for the game, there are two considerations that can, and should, overrule that perspective. If something is best for the game but not for the participants psychologically, it is the game that must, and should, give way. If something is best for the game but not for the health of the participants, once again, the game should be sacrificed.

These issues all come to a head when we start talking about how the emotional and psychological state of the player impacts on the playing of the game. It’s fair enough to change the game to minimize the impact of these personal issues and help the game, and if that’s beneficial to the people playing the game, that’s a happy accident.

Talking about Characters

“The price of victory” is always a fertile ground for GMs to explore in adventures. How far are the characters willing to go to win? Can they find another way through the problem that the GM has presented? It’s a nice, dramatic plot premise that deserves a place in every GM’s repertoire. It hardly ever seems the case that a GM will ask themselves if this plot is good for the campaign at this point in time, and that’s a serious problem lurking in the tall grass. It can completely derail a campaign.

The problem is that the premise implies a choice, and a choice always means that there is an alternative – and the GM rarely gives enough thought to that alternative.

The GM has to walk a fine line between balancing the negatives of the unwanted outcome and the difficulties that he puts in the path of the desired outcome. If this balance is off in one direction, the adventure will lack challenge, and the GM will usually react to that by last-minute extra difficulties – opening the door to over-reaction. If the balance is off in the other, the price or difficulty of the desired outcome is too great, and drives Players to complain about being railroaded – in the direction the GM doesn’t want the adventure to go!

Before I contemplate running a “price of victory” adventure, I will always do two things:

• Identify the adventure as one in which the real price of victory will not become apparent until long after this adventure;
• Or, if this adventure is not one of those, make sure I have a plan to let the PCs win in the end if they make the “wrong” choice because I have overestimated the undesirability of the price to be paid or underestimated the effectiveness of the difficulties I have put in place.

If I can’t tick one of these boxes for the adventure, I won’t run it. I would rather come up with a half-assed “filler” adventure on the fly than run an adventure with a potentially critical impact on the campaign that is incomplete or inadequately prepared. The players will understand.

The campaign is more important than any single adventure.

The Relevance to RPGs

The idea of being of service to something greater than yourself or your own personal ambitions is one that GMs should embrace. That means lending a plotting hand to another GM when they ask for it, or are having trouble making a game ruling. It means not being too precious with your ideas. It means sharing the thousands – well, hundreds – of little tips and tricks that you have picked up along the way. It means placing the welfare of yourself and your players ahead of the game, and the welfare of the game ahead of characters or plots that the GM may have fallen in love with. Keep your priorities straight and do the best you can, and you can hold your head high regardless of the outcome.

One of the most gratifying things about this hobby is that most GMs get genuine enjoyment from problem-solving, and are happy to do these things – often without being asked, and certainly when they are asked. Few of them would realize that this is a form of civic-mindedness, and something that is increasingly noteworthy in the modern world.

So here’s the bottom-line purpose of this article: Kudos to my fellow GMs.

Extending the relevance

But the relevance can go deeper than that. Every campaign has characters who are good guys, or who think they are good guys. All too often, these characters are presented as very generic because they all act in accordance with the GMs moral code, perhaps modified to the era and social climate of the campaign. The alternative seems to be characters who are obsessed with achieving one specific thing (whether that’s broad or narrow in scope) that they think of as “a good thing”. Sometimes they’re right about that, sometimes they are not, but more often than not their appearances become morality plays about their being obsessed and not about the subject of their obsession.

Characterization can run a lot deeper than that, with just a little more thought. You can have characters who are more human – neither devils nor angels, but flawed and fallible human beings – who nevertheless are dedicating their lives to the service of something they think of as being bigger than they are. If that something is altruistic in nature, that makes them good guys. If that something is generally considered evil or dark or self-centered, that makes them bad guys. If that something is more complex than a simple black-and-white good-or-bad proposition, that makes them “interesting” – and “real”.

It’s often said, and I have advised as much myself in past articles, that the bad guys rarely think of themselves as “the bad guys”. At best, if they think what they are trying to do is important enough, they may be willing to let themselves be ‘seen’ as the bad guys buy the general public, especially if what they are trying to achieve is more easily achieved from the shadows.

Villains can serve the public good as a byproduct of lining their own pockets. Heroes can occasionally be forced to get their hands a little dirty. And the whole campaign can become more interesting as a result.

A concluding example

I thought I would end this article with a series of illustrative excerpts from the most recent Adventurer’s Club adventure, which was based on the putative conspiracy / coup attempt in the 1930s. Some 9 months earlier, a security crisis had led to the FBI taking control of the Adventurer’s Club, much to the dismay and anger of many of the members. The Club’s founder, “Doc” Storm (modeled on Doc Savage), immediately headed for Washington to look for a way to reverse this decision. At this point in the story, The PCs were in search of Doc for assistance in dealing with the plot that they have uncovered, and were directed to speak with Senator Bronson Cutting, who has become Doc’s numbers man and assistant in dealing with the politics of the situation. After introducing Cutting, this scene briefs the PCs on the political realities so that they don’t go rushing in and undoing all of Doc’s hard work. The “P numbers” refer to illustrations – in this case, mostly photos (some of the real people, some invented) of the people being referred to, or of offices or other locations. I can only show one of them, a pie chart illustrating the relative sizes of the political factions (note that we worked *very* hard on the numbers!) Oh, and the bio of Bronson Cutting is real, as are some of the others, but they have all been fictionalized to at least some extent…
 

Bronson Cutting (P12) is a relatively young Senator who was born in New York but moved to Santa Fe on medical advice. There he became a publisher. In the Great War he was commissioned as a Captain and served as Assistant Military Attaché to the American Embassy in London. Apon his return to the US, he served five years as Regent of the New Mexico Military Institute (also known as the ‘West Point Of The West’ and became Chairman of the New Mexico State Penitentiary in 1925. On December 29, 1927, he was appointed to Congress to replace deceased Republican Congressman Andreaus S. Jones but gave up the seat when a duly-qualified replacement was elected on December 6, 1928 – an election in which Cutting did not stand. That replacement, Octavio Ambrosio Larrazolo, was the first Hispanic to serve in the American Senate; at this time there was only six months remaining of Jones’ elected term, and (due to failing health), Larrazolo did not wish to contest the reelection. He instead endorsed the man he was currently replacing, resulting in Cutting’s reelection in November 1928. He has served in the Senate ever since. Well known as a numbers man who knows which levers to pull to make things happen in Washington, Cutting has been active and successful in bringing the Hispanic vote into mainstream US Politics and has successfully negotiated several important Acts through both Upper and Lower US Houses against concerted opposition. An idealist with extremely liberal values and progressive opinions, and well known as a man of conviction who knows how to get things done, there is even talk of a Presidential Nomination in 1936 when Roosevelt’s first term expires. An impassioned public speaker, his rails against “back-door” censorship through the use of Tarriff Bills has won him the public support of Publishers, Booksellers, Authors and Civil Liberties Organizations on both sides of politics.

He greets the PCs warmly and ushers them into his Office where they can speak more privately. “How can I help you?” he asks as you settle into the slightly-uncomfortable chairs. Noticing your discomfort, he winks – “a political device to make people more amenable to quick agreement. I just keep them here until they agree with me.” (reply, request)

“Hmmm. That’s a difficult question. Let me give you some background. Washington can be divided into four groups on the subject: 59% support FBI control for various reasons, while Doc and I have gathered a coalition of 31% in favor of club independence, also for various reasons. There are another 10% who are uncommitted and might be swayed to our point of view – but even if we get all 10% of the fence-sitters, that still leaves us at losing 41 per cent to 59. That’s the bad news.

“The good news is that we might be able to shear away as much as 14% out of that 59 – converting some into abstentions and some into reluctant supporters. Most important, that makes it 45 to 41 – plus however many we persuade over to our side of the fence from amongst the nominal opposition, less however many we don’t convince of the uncommitted. So we still lose – and that’s the second piece of bad news.

(P13) “The only member of the Cabinet who has spoken up so far is Homer Cummings, the Attorney General – and that’s because the FBI is under his jurisdiction and he likes to be able to say that he’s in charge of the Adventurer’s Club. FDR hasn’t committed himself one way or the other. The instant he does, twelve percent of one faction move to the position he indicates – and four percent move in the opposite direction. If he supports FBI control, that would be 53 to 37 and the ball game. If he supports independence, that’s 37 to 49 and a party in Manhattan. Right now, though, even if he speaks up, it’s still not enough. We need to not only get most of the fence-sitters but we have to move some of the opposition – just to get to the point where a Democrat President with an overwhelming majority in both Houses can call the shots. The more we can move, the better.

“Lobbying is a tug-of-war on a slippery slope that tilts without warning in unexpected directions. You can win the support of a key figure, who brings with him 6 hangers-on – and who loses you five votes who used to support you, but who oppose him more. The larger a coalition in favor of something gets, the harder it is to hold it together.

“So there are four factions right now.” (P14).

“Doc’s supporters include a few people who trust Doc implicitly, a number of Democrats and Republicans who don’t trust Hoover, a number of committed republicans who oppose FBI control simply because there’s a Democrat in charge of the FBI, a few who oppose the current policy of isolationism, a few who dislike the current regime in Germany – whose ambassadors have made open overtures to Roosevelt on this matter – and a few Opportunists who expect a quid-pro-quo on something else or some other gain in mind. The committed opposition include most Democrats, because a democrat is currently in charge of the FBI; Militarists and National Security Advocates who want to use Doc’s research for the construction of weapons; a whole heap of people from Big Business and their elected lackeys; a number of science lobbyists who are upset because Doc doesn’t publish his research; Isolationists; Pro-Germans; and, once again, a few opportunists.

“Those are the battle lines. Straddling the fence – and swayable – are a whole mess of different folks. There’s those as are swayable by political support from Doc for their reelection; those that are swayable by favorable publicity; those who can simply be persuaded by a reasonable arguement; those who can be swayed by legitimate Money (donations to campaigns etc); those who can be swayed by a donation to a charitable organization that means something to them, personally; those who can be swayed by Doc doing them a personal favor, like getting a nephew a cushy job somewhere; those who can be persuaded by someone else – parents, friends, family, wife, trusted advisor, minister, whatever – those who can be intimidated by prospective bad consequences or ideology into support; a few who can be influenced politically by trade deals with other governments that might be possible, governments who feel threatened, and so on – and a small group who can be swayed by results. So far there’s been no train wrecks as a result of the FBI supervision, and until they see how the dust is going to settle, they won’t take sides.

“And that leaves the 14 per cent. The corrupt who can be exposed & removed from office – and replaced with someone more supportive of our position – or who is at least in the negotiable category. The slimy who we can’t get any hard proof on, but who are swayable by blackmail nevertheless. The slimy who we can’t get any proof on, but who can be persuaded to retire by blackmail. The slimy who can be persuaded by personal bribery. A few cowards who can be intimidated by threats – either openly or covertly. And a few who might be persuadable by opportunism – our allies promising them positions on important committees or boards of directors or the like. Politics can be a dirty game, but we need all of that estimated fourteen per cent we can get. But Doc refuses to deal in rumor and false evidence, and I agree. We can tolerate anyone with a legitimate belief or philosophy, however we might disagree with it, but criminals need to be rooted out – without becoming as corrupt as they are in the process.”

“Doc’s job here in Washington is five-fold. There are 96 Senators and 435 Congressmen and eight members of Cabinet, and they each have an average of three trusted advisors and key backers who support them. Each of those have wives or husbands, fathers and mothers, friends and enemies. They all need to be investigated and placed into one of the four categories and the thirty subcategories. On top of that, each of our supporters needs his hand held at least once a week to keep them from straying. Number three: Once a month we take a run at members of the opposition, looking for any opening to persuasion or handles than can be used to put them into group four. Number four, the uncommitted – we need to identify what levers they will respond to, make an approach, persuade them, and then revisit them regularly to hand-hold them. And finally, group four – Doc needs to gather evidence or proof, decide what to do with it, persuade them or act on the evidence if it’s proof enough, and get in good with their potential replacements.

“If Doc had to investigate all of them, that would be nearly 15,100 people. You don’t do that overnight, and Doc severely underestimated the scale of the job he was taking on when he came down here. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to look into all those 15-odd-thousand people. Once we have someone’s support in our pocket, we don’t need to investigate them further. So that cuts the list to about 4700. Once we have identified a handle on someone, we don’t need to look further – that cuts the list to about 900. I know a lot about the people we have to deal with and can cut the list to about a third that number – that’s leaves about 300 – and can put those 300 in order of priority. A lot of them will be closely located, so you can investigate groups of them at a time – bringing the target to about 60 groups of people.

“The way we’ve been working is that Doc and I will draw up a week’s activities for him to do – and he’ll move from task to task, person to person, on that list, in rough order, doing whatever needs doing and then moving on to the next. At the end of the week, we go over his results and plan the next week. In the last six months there have been 180 days – that’s about 3 days per group. Sometimes those three days are all it takes and sometimes its not long enough and we’ll have to spend more time on them in the next week.

“So I don’t know exactly where Doc is – but I can give you a list, in rough order, of where he is supposed to be, today. Give me about 30 minutes to draw it up – with a few notes so that you don’t go crashing in like a bull in a china shop and ruin everything he’s been doing for the last six months.”

 

(P15) Duncan Upshaw Fletcher, Senator from Florida. Cantankerous slightly older guy. Cutting’s notes say “Will talk your ear off. Honest. A strong ally to have, a worse enemy. Popular with both political parties. Chairman and member of many high-profile Washington committees, especially those related to finance law and economics.” Democrat, reelected for a fifth term in 1932 unopposed by the Republicans, achieving 99.8% of the vote.

*** Fletcher is argumentative for the sake of being argumentative, continually probing for soft points in the opposition’s debate and exposing them. He is happy to argue with just about anyone.

As soon as the PCs arrive he takes them into his office and asks what they think about the upcoming Shuyler Economic Reform Bill. He will refuse to discuss Doc’s whereabouts until they have talked about this legislation, which will strip the navy of 20% of its current budget, redirecting 10% of the savings into the army, and distributing the remainder into a number of other channels including a reduction in import tariffs, a reduction in stamp duties, increased medical aid for the American Indians, and increased funding for legal aid in federal cases specifically targeted at legal support for minorities. Whatever opinions the PCs voice, he will adopt the contrary position. If they try and avoid coming down on one side or another, he will push them to form an opinion and stick to it – timidity is for mice, not men.

***Mike & Blair to roleplay Fletcher for as long as they can maintain a good line of arguement, taking over from each other as necessary. When it starts to bore those not participating or when we start running short of good arguements, have one of the PCs make a perception roll at +3. If they succeed they will notice a suspicious twinkle in Fletcher’s eye and realize that Fletcher’s position is exactly the opposite of what he has been advocating, and that he has been exploring the arguements that his political enemies are likely to make against him. It’s up to that player to decide how he is going to use this discovery – will they call him on it?

He will then discuss what the PCs wanted to discuss when they first came in. “Storm’s been trying to convince me to let his boys handle their own leash for several months now, on and off. At the moment it’s 6-all and we’re going into triple overtime on the debate. I’ll probably come down on his side of the fence when the time comes but haven’t quite made up my mind just yet.” You again notice the twinkle in the eye as he says this.

“He stopped by early this morning to make another run at my position on the subject, but had to leave after an hour or so to keep an appointment with Little Bairdy, the Senator from New Jersey. That was, oh, two or three hours back, now.”

NB: If the PCs try to skip ahead, they will either find that they have just missed Doc or that he has cancelled his appointment there. If they try to phone ahead to get people to pass on a message, they will either refuse or inform them that Doc has changed his plans and rescheduled the appointment. The general rule of thumb is that the PCs will not catch up with Doc until the early evening when he returns to his hotel.

 

(P18) David Baird Jnr, Senator from New Jersey. Relatively young, rimless glasses, extremely receded hairline, manner of a used-car salesman, appointed to fill out the senatorial seat vacated by Walter E Edge who resigned to become Ambassador to France, appointed to that position by Herbert Hoover (Republican) 4 years ago. Edge refused to resign and even contested and was reelected to the Senate to ensure the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, raising tariffs and strengthening the protection against imports of US Manufacturers. Only when the bill had cleared all barriers and been enacted into law, and his hand-picked successor been assured of his Senate seat, would Edge resign to take up the appointment by Hoover, by which point Roosevelt (Democrat) was in the white house. Cutting’s notes warn “not to make any deals or accept any proposals, Baird is not to be trusted.”

Baird is obviously in a foul mood when the PCs arrive. “So, Storm’s sent his lackeys to vet my speech. He didn’t have to worry, I promised I would withdraw from the contest for reelection if he didn’t stir up trouble about those political donations from the Bank I used to work for. Here it is – read it, then go and tell your morally-oh-so-superior fuehrer that I’ve followed his instructions.”

He will be uncooperative and unhelpful.

 

(P22) Bertrand Wesley “Bud” Gearhart is one of the most remarkable figures in US politics. A staunchly conservative Republican who is pro-military and is known throughout the government as one of the most obstinate obstructionists in politics, he is about to face reelection completely unopposed by the Democrats and is well-known as having a few select liberal issues apon which he is just as staunch and unwilling to bend. If he lives long enough, he could even become the first Congressman to be reelected 30 years straight unopposed by the rival party – while being one of their strongest opponents in politics. He keeps party lines as he sees fit and is a holy terror to anyone and everyone who challenges his uncompromising values – The country over the public, the military over the country, and god above everything. Congressman from the California 9th district, which takes in several army military facilities north of Los Angeles and south of San Francisco.

“Bud” is yelling down the phone line when the PCs arrive, calling someone a blind fool who doesn’t deserve to be called human, let alone a Congressman of the United States, and doesn’t have the horse sense with which God gifted a flea, much less a pro-German lapdog, the position to which the person to whom he is speaking is apparently aspiring.

When his tirade is finished, he hangs up surprisingly gently and turns to the PCs. “I have about 10 minutes while that bleating sheep complains to the party leadership before they call me back to berate me. You have that long to talk, don’t waste it.” (reply)

“Yeah, Doc Storm was here a little while back – about 87 minutes ago as I recall. Fool didn’t think I was going to stick, he doesn’t see the dangers as clearly as I do. The Kaiser’s new Fuhrer is preparing for war, sure as dogs chase cats, and right now the most effective weapon we have against that is you folks in the Adventurer’s Club being free to get up his nose without a lot of government restriction and red tape. You’ll do the right thing when the time comes, I’m sure. Dang-blasted Roosevelt should never have agreed to speak to the blasted Jerrie Ambassador knowing that he was only there to demand tighter restrictions on you folks, but it shows that you’re rubbing nerves raw over in Kaisertown so keep it up. I don’t rightly know where he was going from here, but he said something about that milquetoast Advisor from the Department of the Interior.”

 

(P24) Harold L. Ickes (Eye-Kez) is the current Secretary Of The Interior, Director of the Public Works Administration, and is someone known to have strong influence over FDR and to be one of the mainstays of his Presidency. If Ickes can be persuaded to endorse independence for the club to Roosevelt, the FBI can probably start packing their bags. As a result, Ickes is in incredible demand – one of the most popular roads to FDR’s ear runs right through his office, which books 5-minute appointments months in advance. Accordingly, Doc has sought out someone that Ickes listens to – an advisor on the Domestic Economy, Benjamin H Stephens, and is looking to bypass that clogged avenue to authority.

(P25) Stephens is a mad-keen golfer in his late 30s with dark hair and brown eyes, who always dresses conservatively – except on the course, when he makes up for lost time. He never makes an important decision in his office, but insists on getting to know the real motives on the golf course; he is of the opinion that he can interpret someone’s character by the way they play. He is also known to be suspicious of J Edgar Hoover’s personal empire-building, suspecting that Hoover is more interested in his own power than in supporting the president. Besides, Hoover would never be caught dead on a golf course.

Given this information, it is not surprising to learn from Stephen’s aide that Doc and the cabinet advisor are not in his office, but have instead hit the golf course. Unfortunately the aide is not 100% certain which one it is. He thinks it most likely that it is the Congressional Golf Course (P26), part of the Congressional Country Club, at 8500 River Road, Bethesda. When the PCs arrive at the Congressional Golf Course, there is no sign of Doc or Stephens. Just then, a bell rings and the area is suddenly full of babbling schoolgirls, who immediately zero in on the famous members of the Adventurer’s Club. (P27) The Conelly School of The Holy Child is located on the grounds of the Congressional Country Club)…

 
The final scene in this sequence has the PCs back at Doc’s Hotel as Doc and Ickes arrive in Icke’s limo, obviously on friendly terms and agreeing to disagree.

So, what’s the point of these excerpts?

The politicians run the gamut from heroes to villains. But some of the villains are on the side of the Good Guys (from the PCs’ points of view) and some of the heroes are opposed – for what they consider to be good reasons. They are all interesting characters, for all that they are only present for the single scene in which they appear. And then there’s the elusive Doc, who doesn’t appear in any of them, but who dominates all of them with his presence – he’s the very definition of one of the good guys, but he’s had to do some morally questionable things in the name of “the end justifies the means”. For the first time in the campaign, he’s not shown as squeaky clean; he has had to compromise his ideals in order to achieve what he considers to be necessary. He may no longer be the textbook cliché of a hero, but as a prominent and recurring NPC within the campaign, he’s infinitely more interesting.

And that’s the point.

A break from the usual, this week, simply because before the next chapter can be written, I need to have an answer to this question myself – and that’s an answer that I don’t currently have. So, this week, I’m going to take you behind the curtain as I work out an answer to that question.

The Ages Of Existence from a non-human perspective

If you look at the Ages Of Existence, provided for readers of Campaign Mastery to download in Inventing & Reinventing Races in D&D Part 3, and synopsized within that article for good measure, it should be clear that the third Dwarfwar was part of The Age Of Heresies, despite the fact that in human records, that age preceded the Age Of Empires while the Dwarfwar obviously followed it – it was during the Age Of Empires that Half-elves came into existence. This was done deliberately, to emphasize that the human timeline of events was not the whole story.

Another implication of the human history is that there is a great deal of time between the Age Of Heresies and The Age Of Genocide, and another healthy gap in time between that Age and the Age Of Armageddon. Obviously, since I have already established that the human perspective is one that (rather arrogantly) places themselves at the centre of existence, I feel no need to slavishly adhere to this outline, which is why I had the Dwarvish experience of the Age Of Heresies lead directly to the Age Of Genocide.

All that is well and good, but it then raises the question: into which age do the events of the Orcish Clan War fall?

In The Age Of Heresies?

This could certainly be the case. There have been enough incidents involving the Orcish Gods for it to qualify. In the Age Of Heresies, the Chaos Powers impersonate existing religious figures to create controversy and division amongst the faiths. While the humans have them impersonating Priests, impersonating Orcish Gods is well within their powers. The implications of the prophecy clearly show that the whole Clan War is an attempt by the Chaos Powers to prevent, by pre-emptive strike, the formation of the current band of PCs, so having The Hidden Dragon be a Chaos Power certainly makes sense. The litany of ‘false gods’ who have appeared in the course of the Clan Wars can be either other Chaos Powers or subordinates of the Hidden Dragon, or even aspects of The Hidden Dragon.

But there is a complication. The prophecy, which appeared in Chapter 68 of the Orcs & Elves story, speaks of the Hidden Dragon being awoken when the Oracle was discovered. That implies that it was asleep (or at the very least asleep to the danger described by the prophecy) until then. The latter interpretation explains the situation, and is the reason why the prophetic verse was phrased in that way; the original draft spoke of the Hidden Dragon being “released”, which is a far more direct statement, and implicitly implies that it had been confined at some past time. By Whom? There’s no reference to any such event anywhere in the Orcs & Elves story, though I suppose one could be inserted retroactively. But the question still remains to be answered: by Whom? And another one: why not impersonate Priests? Why pretend to be Gods?

So this answer to the question of timing gives a possible solution to the main question of identity (a Chaos Power), with a few sub-varieties describing the subordinates. All are reasonable and satisfactory, but none are especially compelling, and there are some weak points. This was the answer that I had in the back of my mind when I started outlining the Orcs & Elves series.

In The Age Of Genocide?

This could also be the case, and it clarifies the objectives of the Chaos Power in doing all this. In an nutshell, it wanted to so weaken the Orcs that they would be wiped out. Divide, and conquer – one of the oldest tactics in the book. It also makes sense insofar as both Elves and Dwarves are in this Age, and it is entirely possible that Humans are, too. So this would be an answer that restored some consistency to the overall pattern of events. This was the answer that I drifted towards when I started writing the Clan Wars chapters of the Orcs & Elves series.

But I also hedged my bets. When I was writing up the article on the Orcish Mythology I had to answer the question of what the Orcs think their gods do all day? I didn’t want them underfoot, because I wanted their intervention to be a Dramatic Event. So I came up with the notion of the Gods fighting to conquer a realm “beyond the sky” (how else would you describe a Plane Of Existence when no-one has any notion of such cosmological details?), to be used as an afterlife for the Orcs. Orcs who lived ‘honorably’ earned their place in the army of Gruumsh, and got to live in this afterlife, save for occasional excursions to expand it to make room for more Orcs. This is clearly analogous to the legend of Valhalla in many respects.

Who were they fighting against? This was never made clear. It might be the current masters of Elysium, i.e. the Human Gods, and the Orcs were (in effect) seizing part of the Human Afterlife to have as their own. But that would make the Orcs “Bad Guys” again, and I was trying to avoid that. Since it had already been established in the campaign mythos that the layers of the Abyss were once just as idyllic as Elysium, until they were corrupted by the Demons & Devils that overran the place (Refer Chapter 41 of the Orcs & Elves series, where it was mentioned in passing). So why not have the Orcish myth be that Gruumsh and Co had conquered part of the Abyss and returned it to its garden-like state? This would keep the Orcs as “Good Guys” (in general), however distasteful their activities and cleanliness might be to more civilized societies. And that in turn led to the articulation of the “nightmare armies” that the false Gruumsh summoned to bolster his forces in Chapter 61; the descriptions being appropriate for Demons being beheld by Orcs, and consistent with the information presented in the course of the chapters on the Third Dwarfwar.

So the Hidden Dragon, whoever he is, has demon underlings, and hence might just be a Demon Prince. Or perhaps Demon Princes merely describe those lackeys of the Hidden Dragon who impersonated the Orcish Deities.

This answer has a lot going for it. Consistency with what has already been established, plus a bringing together of many other plot threads from the broader narrative – and tying the whole lot together into a relatively neat worldview.

But there is, perhaps, a downside. I deliberately implied that the Devil responsible for the Third Dwarfwar, Molgoth, had impersonated Gruumsh in the past. That was explicitly to raise doubts about the reality of the Orcish Gods without actually ruling them out of existence. But to justify the Demon Princes’ willingness to support the Hidden Dragon’s agenda, I would have to accept that the conquest of part of the Abyss by Gruumsh was real, and so was (therefore) the Orcish Afterlife, and so (necessarily) must Gruumsh himself be. And I don’t want to resolve that question. I love the notion of Orcs worshipping deities who may not exist (explaining why they were never caught up in later events), whose priests can nevertheless cast Divine Spells because of their belief in the Principles that those deities represent.

One way around that is to make “The Hidden Dragon” not a Chaos Power at all, but another being like Molgoth – a Demon Prince. But that doesn’t quite work, either. Molgoth was essentially a solo act, corrupting and inspiring and deceiving mortals into doing his dirty work for him. Events in the Clan Wars are on another scale entirely, and would require the architect of them to have that much more power and authority than Molgoth did. So this solution would require me to make Molgoth a relatively minor Demon Prince, at least in retrospect. That has both an upside and a down-side. It makes Demons and Devils far more scary within the context of the campaign, if a “relatively minor” example can cause so much misery, pain, and bloodshed – and that’s consistent with how they have been depicted in other encounters with the PCs. But it also risks reducing the importance of the conflict created by Molgoth, and that’s something that I don’t want to do, either.

So this answer to the question of timing also provides a different take on the original solution, and a completely different alternative. This is the solution that I’ve had in the back of my mind while actually writing the last twenty-odd chapters – so it is not too surprising that it dovetails with the story so far very accurately, but so far I have avoided committing irrevocably to it, hesitating because I could see those problems looming.

In The Age Of Armageddon?

Always lurking somewhere in the back of my mind has been this possibility, and in part, the pattern of events in this era were used as a template for events within the Clan Wars. This era is all about the greed for power of some Gods, called the Shadow Gods. When I was first creating the campaign background for the Fumanor Campaign, I was confronted with a fundamental question: If you’ve got the Chaos Powers as fundamental enemies of the Gods, why do the different pantheons need their own, internal, enemies? Why do you need a Loki, or a Coyote, or a Pluto? Where do these “evil gods” fit into the scheme of things?

After a bit of thought, I came up with a stratagem on the part of the Chaos Powers which would leave most of the Gods helpless – but not the Shadow Gods (I won’t go into details here, I have a forthcoming chapter of the Orcs & Elves series dedicated to the story). These ‘Shadow Gods’ got together, saved the day, and were lionized by their respective pantheons; past offences were forgiven, at least a little, and the necessity of a God who could at least touch “The Dark Side” was established. But people get tired of being grateful, and the innate arrogance of many of the Shadow Gods began to grate, and old patterns of behavior slowly returned, and the Shadow Gods were again marginalized within their respective pantheons. They only tolerated this for a while before acting to reclaim what they saw as the respect and authority that they had earned; in the Age Of Armageddon, this leads to multiple simultaneous wars between different pantheons of Gods, with mortals caught in the middle.

The “Hidden Dragon” might be a ploy of the Shadow Gods. This only makes sense if the Shadow Gods were also responsible for the Prophecy, making the whole thing an even grander deception than has been revealed so far. The expectation would be that the real Orcish Gods would respond to the deception, that the identity of “The Hidden Dragon” would be yet another subterfuge, and that the purpose of everything that had taken place would be to get the Orcish Gods to attack the Pantheon they thought responsible. Whether or not those events would be the way things actually played out could be a very different story, of course.

As with the other solutions considered, this answer carries inherent advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include compressing the remaining storyline by removing the need for a separate set of incidents describing the Age Of Armageddon and how it impacts the Elves and Orcs. That it places Armageddon prior to the Age Of Enlightenment, the reverse of the chronology humans use, is a minor quibble that doesn’t bother me. Another advantage is that instead of treading on old territory within the narrative – we’ve already had an episode involving the Chaos Powers and Demons and so on – this would tread new ground. But, balanced against these advantages are a couple of really difficult problems. First and foremost, it requires me to confirm that the Orcish Gods are real, or are not real – or to have the resolution of the Clan Wars be really anticlimactic. None of these is appealing, for reasons that are either obvious or have already been discussed. Secondly, there’s the question of which Pantheon all this would be directed against; there isn’t one conveniently at hand. And finally, there are parts of the story that – as things stand – would make no sense under these circumstances and each of these incongruities would need to be explained away – which could be very tedious and dull, and it would take a lot of work digging them all out and constructing those explanations.

So, while this gives me an option with some definite advantages, overall it is more of a liability. I may have been doing my best to keep this answer as a viable option, and there have even been times when I may have thought this the most likely answer and written accordingly, but at this point I am ready to rule it out of consideration. I might still have used it if I was really desperate, but I have other, better, alternatives.

Making The Big Decision

Having ruled one of the three major choices out, that still leaves me with two – the original idea, and the one I’ve been writing towards without committing myself. Frankly, the advantages of the latter clearly outweigh the lack of disadvantages of the former – IF the disadvantages of the second can be overcome satisfactorily.

That still leaves two choices. The first option – “The Hidden Dragon is a Chaos Power” – avoids most of them. The second – “The Hidden Dragon is a Demon Prince” – is more problematic, even though it more explicitly references other parts of the story. But, while writing this, a hidden upside to the first solution came to mind. One of the themes of the campaign is the ongoing struggle between the Chaos Powers and the Gods; Demon Princes are nothing more than a side-show to that theme. Having had a big story that focuses on that sideshow (The Third Great Dwarfwar), perhaps it’s right that an even bigger story (The Clan Wars) refocuses attention on the primary theme.

So the decision is made: The Hidden Dragon is going to be a Chaos Power.

So, what just happened?

It’s worth my pausing for a minute to review what just happened.

• I had a problem;
• I listed as many possible solutions to that problem as I could;
• I considered the benefits and liabilities of each of those solutions without committing to any one of them; and only when that was complete,
• I chose the solution that was of greatest overall benefit to the end product, the story, despite any downsides that it had.

I follow the same basic process whenever I encounter a problem. It doesn’t matter if it’s a problem with my personal budget, with an adventure that I’m creating for an RPG, or a story that’s to be rendered in prose.

Sometimes, I can do it all in my head and reach what may seem to be a snap solution; and sometimes I overlook things when I fly by the seat of my pants that way.

On other occasions, no snap-judgment “obvious answer” presents itself. I might need to cross-reference with past events (as in this case), or I might need to do some research, or I might have an idea for a later adventure that I need to incorporate. Those are the times when it’s worth pausing and documenting your thought process; over time, I’ve learned the hard way to be systematic in my approach, and always to keep one eye on the Big Picture. If you don’t do that, then sure as shooting, six weeks or six months later, when the time comes to render the finished product (whatever it might be), the details that made your solution work will have been lost, and you’re in trouble.

What’s Next?

The decisions aren’t over yet.

• No two chaos powers are alike; Lovecraftian Horrors all, but with very little in the way of common descriptive elements, and with very different capabilities and characteristics. So I need to work out what this particular Chaos Power looks like, and what its personality is, and how these things will be expressed. And I need to work out how all that relates to the name, “the Hidden Dragon”. Why choose that particular name? Or did whoever wrote the prophecy choose it? Why?
• For that matter, I need to make some final decisions about who exactly created the Oracle Of Gottskragg, when, and why – and whether or not to reveal any of that information.
• I need to decide how the “nightmare soldiers” are going to make sense given that the Demon Prince idea has been thrown overboard.
• I need to work out who, or what, was impersonating the various Deities to further this scheme on behalf of the Hidden Dragon, and how they are going to connect with the climax of the Clan War storyline. And why they are working on behalf of the Hidden Dragon.
• I need to work out where the Hidden Dragon’s lair is. And, how at least some of the protagonists who assault it are going to get back to tell their stories. (I know, for example, that I am going to need Ambassador Tathzyr after that climax, for example.
• I need to plot out an action sequence that permits me to divulge any of the above information that needs to be revealed in the course of that climactic battle.
• Which, of course, means that as I develop these answers, I need to decide what needs to be revealed, what can be implied (and how), what can be inferred, what can be left out – and what should be provided ex-cathedra as narrative or sidebar.
• And oh yes, one other small item: How will the Hidden Dragon be defeated? Or will the mission be a failure, or a qualified successes?

As you can see, I still have a ton of work to do before I can start writing the big confrontation sequence. How do I intend to go about it?

The Key to a Solution

Looking over that list, there are three items that really leap out at me as being the cornerstones of solutions.

• The name, “The Hidden Dragon” is either going to be descriptive, self-descriptive, or possibly a metaphor. The answer to that specific question will provide a lot of guidance toward solutions to every other question.
• While the nature of “The Hidden Dragon” should go a long way to resolving the “nightmare soldiers” and the “who are the false gods” questions, it might be even more useful to come up with a set of possible answers to those questions and reason back to nail down more of the nature of the main villain in the story. Sometimes it can be good to put the cart before the horse – when you’re going backwards, especially.
• And thirdly, the Oracle Of Gottskragg. Figure out the who, what, and where of that – again, perhaps making a list of possible answers, and then cross-referencing those solutions with the list of answers to the previous question – should really help with understanding the context of what is going on, and from that, who the participants need to be.

So those are my starting points. I’m going to take everything that’s been revealed so far, extend that information, and use the results to narrow down the requirements (from a story perspective) that I have for the Hidden Dragon. That should get me to a personality and a description. Once I have all of that, plotting out the action should be (relatively) straightforward, and lead to a logical outcome.

As a general principle, make the smaller decisions first (while being prepared to change them) and they will serve as clues to the bigger decisions. At least, that’s the best approach when you can’t go directly to the big decision for some reason.

What will be my ultimate answers to all these questions? You’ll have to read Chapters 74 and 75 of the Orcs & Elves storyline next time to find out…

There are four more primary types of Writer’s Block that I identified in part one of this series, and this article is going to tackle two more of them, and offer 17 solutions to those specific varieties of problem. The types of Writer’s Block to be dealt with in this article are:-

• Action Block, when you know what the situation is and who the participants are, but don’t know what a specific character is going to do; and
• Persona Block, when you know what you want to have happen, but have no idea who the character is who will do it, or why they will act that way.

(There were supposed to be four, but discussing these two types took so much room that I’ve had to further split the series).

Part One of the series also offered solutions for the problem of ideas, also known as “Blank Page Syndrome”, while part two looked at problems with incomplete ideas (Conceptual Blocks), problems with turning a general outline into a specific breakdown, specifically, which scene should come next (Specific Blocks), and when you have something planned – be it an action sequence, or a dialogue sequence, or whatever – but don’t know at what location it should be set (Setting Blocks).

Action Blocks

So the villain is going to replace one of the heros with a double. He has sent a henchman to attack the heroes at a charity event that none of them know is being hosted by the villain in his secret identity. You have some idea of who the participants are, you’ve described the social gathering and you’ve written the inane chatter and gossip that makes these things such a grind, and you’ve just written those fateful words, “…when suddenly,” and your mind goes completely blank. You have no idea how the action should unfold. (Actually you should try and avoid using those words, they are cliched writing, but that’s neither here nor there).

This sort of situation crops up quite frequently in both writing and in RPGs where the characters are reacting to events. It’s arguably worse in some genres of RPG because the antagonists instigate a confrontation more often in those genres – superhero and pulp games, for example – but the action sequence is part of every RPG plot and an awful lot of fantasy and heroic fiction. Some people find these sequences easy to write, some find it exceptionally difficult, and most of us are in the middle, where it’s sometimes easy and sometimes not, and where the struggle is to make each occurrance different and interesting for it’s own sake.

I have eight cures to offer for this situation. They all presuppose to some extent that once you actually get started on the action sequence, it will more or less write itself in the form of action, reaction, counter-action, new reaction, and outcome.

Solution 1: Consider the potential for inaction

It can be very effective in breaking the block to jump from pre-action to inaction – to dialogue, or menace, or narration of context. If you’re having trouble getting the action started, shifting gears to some other type of sequence can let you ease into the situation and work around the problem. It loses its value if repeated too often, but procrastination can be your ally.

This works because this creative inaction, provided it doesn’t concern some other plot thread entirely, always tells you something more about the situation or the participants. Getting deeper into their heads makes it clearer how they will act and react, which in turn makes it clearer how the action will start and how it will proceed. This solution can be so effective that even writers who normally have trouble writing action sequences find this one flowing naturally onto the page.

Solution 2: Describe the leadup

A sub-form of the first solution is to take a step backwards in time. Describe the preparations of the attackers, their interaction as the moment approaches, their moods and dialogue. In effect, this is following a second pathway into the scene in hopes that it will not be as blocked as the first. For the same reason that Solution One works – getting more deeply into the heads and capacities of a key participant – this can work.

Nor, despite appearances, is this solution only of value in fiction. Just because it is never presented to the PCs, a GM can employ it in an RPG, enabling the characters to seem more realistic when they are encountered; instead of being static and lifeless, it conveys the impression that they had a life outside the events to which the PCs are witness, and the two stories (the PCs and the enemy’s) simply intersect at a particular time and place. Two of the enemy may be in the middle of an extended arguement about a baseball game, and continue it in the course of the scene, for example. By conveying a sense that the attacking NPCs had a life and a relationship and a line of dialogue before the PCs were present to witness it, the whole situation becomes more lifelike.

You may even be able to use the material in some sort of prophetic vision, or some super-detective may be able to deduce it and present it to the other PCs retroactively – if there is some story value in doing so.

Solution 3: Impatience has its virtues

Another solution that can sometimes work is the Impatient answer. Nothing fancy, the villain just bursts in and fires a shot at one of the targets on offer. Cue panic and mayhem.

There are times when this solution is out of character. There are two answers to that complication; the first is to revel in the contradiction, making it a deliberate surprise tactic on the part of the attacker, or something that he has been required to do by circumstances (causing frustration on his part). The latter then leads to the questions of why or who he is required to act out of character, and how does the character react when frustrated? The more of the participants emotional responses and circumstances you can bring into the battle sequence, the better it will read on the page.

The second answer to the oontradiction is to use the suddenness of the introduction to combat to get you started, then replace the “impatient attack sequence” with something else once you have your literary juices flowing down the right channels.

Solution 4: Emotional Responses

Most of the solutions so far have been fairly clinical in many ways, but that’s not the only way to get through (or around) the creative blockage. I have occasionally found it useful to construct an emotional “roadmap” of the action sequence, especially when a combat seems too sterile and clinical.

That involves drawing up a table, with one column for each significant participant, plus one for the actions to which the PCs are reacting. The first action should read “Pre-action”. In the appropriate column, describe the emotional state that you want the character to experience, then choose an action that leads to that emotion. By constructing such a road map, you can take the sterility out of the sequence by rewriting each action and reaction to convey or reflect the emotions of the participants.

Emotional changes usually come in pairs on such a map – each event having one effect on the attackers and another effect on those being attacked. There can be exceptions, but this is always a good rule of thumb.

Even though you don’t know the emotional state of the PCs in an RPG – that’s a question for the players – this approach can still work; instead of specifying the emotions that the characters have, you are describing the emotions that you hope to achieve in the PCs. Nor do you know exactly what the PCs are going to do, and so you can’t be sure that the emotional “journey” you are planning for the NPCs will appropriately match events; don’t let that stop you. Alter circumstances within the battle to encourage the emotional states you want, don’t get too wedded to a particular sequence of actions. Heck, you can be quite successful by totally improvising the actions and their effectiveness and simply following the emotional arc that you want to occur. Both of these approaches can bring new life to your combat sequences, and new realism – I once had the tide shift in a battle in which the NPCs were doing too well by giving one of the NPCs a heart attack in the middle of the battle. It tipped the balance.

Another approach to this solution that works especially well in an RPG is to list emotional states and NPC responses to them. “If the NPC becomes confident, he will pause to gloat. If the NPC is surprised, he will panic and seek a distraction or threaten a hostage. If near defeat, he will attack the crowd of onlookers.” These could be summarized as simply as “Confident – gloat. Surprised – panic & distract/threaten hostage. Fearing defeat – attack onlookers.” Armed with this list of emotional states and actions, you can go into the combat sequence and choose the NPCs action from your menu. You have two guides to employ in deciding what the responses should be: the personality of the NPC, and the emotional state that he is trying to achieve (in himself or in the PCs or both) with that action. Your choices are also obviously constrained by the capabilities of the character.

It should be clear from the last two paragraphs that the better you know the characters and capabilities of both PCs and their players, the better (more interesting and alive) you can make the combat. The greater your level of ignorance, the more I would favor the second approach over the first.

Solution 5: Backwards counterblows from the coup-de-grace or climax

Sometimes, you can determine what the initial action should be by starting at the way you want the action sequence to end and working backwards, step-by-step. This works far better in a literary action sequence than in an RPG, unless you know the PCs extremely well, and even then it can feel “pre-scripted” when actually executed. This approach can leave you open to surprises.

Nevertheless, it can still be a useful tool in an RPG setting, provided that you are prepared to abandon the prepared “narrative flow” of the combat – you start with the desired climax, work backwards to the initial confrontation, then throw away all the intervening steps and let the action simply flow from that initial confrontation, surprise PC actions and all – but always looking for ways to steer the battle in the desired direction.

Solution 6: The character of the trigger

If none of the above solutions have gotten you past the blockage, it’s time to employ more desperate measures. Take a good hard look at the triggering character, the character that is going to start the action. You have three choices to contemplate:

• A quintissential manifestation: try to define an action that is quintissential to the personality of the triggering character, the attacker, something that is characteristic and defining of that character. Because it is such an expression of the personality and capabilities of the attacker, it is frequently a good starting point.
• A counter-intuitive action: If the problem is that you’ve already got such an action and it’s just not working for some reason, find a reason for the triggering character NOT to employ his usual approach, then make some secondary personality trait the defining guide to what the triggering action is going to be. This not only keeps the choice consistent to the character, by definition it gets around the problem you had. And, finally,
• Change the trigger: Sometimes the person you have starting the action is simply the wrong person to achieve the plot outcome you want. Consider letting one of the “attacked” become aware of the impending attack just before it is to happen, either by virtue of luck, or by enhanced senses, or being in the right place at the right time, or – of you’re desperate – by sheer coincidence. They can then react to the imminant threat, making them the triggering character.

Solution 7: Be Inconsistent

We’re running out of solutions, and they are becoming increasingly desperate. This solution is to focus on why the attacking character, the trigger, is doing it. What is his objective, his goal? What is his personality, and – most important of all – how will what he is doing reflect those traits?

I have had at least one case of “Action Block” where the problem was the personality of the attacking character being out-of-step with the role that the character was to play in a larger scheme of events. I could have changed how the character was going about solving his immediate problem to something more compatible with his goals and persona, or I could change how and why he went about achieving his real goals. Both risked compromising that larger scheme of events, because this was not going to be the character’s only appearance within that larger plotline.

Once I had identified the reason I had gotten part-way into the action sequence five times only to arrive at a dead end, or had decided “this just doesn’t feel right”, I took a good hard look at what the goal was for the scene. Why was the action scene present? What was it’s purpose in the greater storyline? If I threw out everything about the character and his M.O. in this scene that didn’t contribute directly to achieving that storytelling purpose, what was I left with?

This was complicated by the fact that the character had already appeared in an earlier game session. The PCs thought they already knew who he was and what he was all about, and everything that had been established in that earlier appearance had to be accommodated in any reinvention of the character. I employed the characterization technique that I described back in March 2010 in The Characterization Puzzle: The Thumbnail Method and succeeded in completely reinventing the character as someone who had gone from would-be arch-villain (in his first appearance) to someone whose world had collapsed on him in the meantime. In the process, he went from being an isolated figure to a family man with ambitions and a crippled daughter, and his situation became laced not with menace but with pathos and irony. He had reformed, but a combination of circumstances and his past catching up with him had forced him reluctantly back into his old life.

This completely transformed the action sequence. It set up a situation in which the PCs, by reacting to the person he had been in his first appearance, made his situation immeasurably worse in a way that would not be easily undone, and turned him from someone with no subtlty of motivation into an arch-foe who would never, ever, go away. That not only changed his behavior in this action sequence, it meant that when he reappeared in the finale to that plotline, he would have changed yet again (as a consequence of what the PCs had done). But it also opened the door to an unexpected situation in which the PCs were able to solve his problems and turn him from villain to hero and ally in that final confrontation – with him wavering until the climax. Reinventing the character to meet the real objectives of the story (as opposed to the immediate objectives of the scene and imperatives of the character as he had been) not only solved the immediate problem, it added boatloads of depth to the conclusion of the plotline in a later adventure.

By making the character inconsistent between the three appearances, but with a personal narrative that explained the changes, I solved the problem.

Solution 8: What would the participants be doing otherwise?

The final solution I have to offer, and the most desperate of them all, is to enter the daydreams of the triggering character. What would he be doing if he weren’t about to attack? What might his life have been like if he hadn’t become who he now is, and what might he have been doing if he were not doing this?

The trick is to have these reveries influance the character’s thinking in the here-and-now. You also need some plausible reason for the character to be indulging himself in this way, usually some event that is personally significant or a personal milestone. I once applied this solution and decided that the character’s mother had passed away, prompting him to contemplate the successes and failures of his life, and from there, to muse on the road not taken. In the ensuing action sequence – the one that was giving me trouble – he began to flirt with that ‘road not taken’. His ensemble of flunkies reacted accordingly – ‘the boss just isn’t himself, today’. Eventually, the truism that the character had made his choices, had ‘made his bed’ and now had to ‘lie in it’ asserted himself, and he became reconciled to being who and what he was. But for a brief moment, his humanity shone through, greatly expanding the characterization and realism of the character – and getting me past a situation in which his normal ruthlessness was at odds with the demands of the plot.

Persona Blocks

Having read the solutions offered to solve ‘Action Block’, it should be clear why I would want to this type of writers block within the same article as that – even though the division of labour argued in favor of seperating them. Logical sequence says that they should follow each other, and relatedness of problems and solutions means they should appear together.

A Persona Block occurs when you know someone is going to do something in particular, but have no idea who the character is and may not know why they are doing it. The more trivial the action, the more insubstantial the character needs to be, so this really only becomes a problem when the action is going to be important.

Prerequisite: A clear action

It’s absolutely essential that you clearly understand the story objective of the encounter. Why, from a metagame perspective, is this happening? What are the essential character traits and abilities that are necessary for the Persona to posess in order to act in a way that achieves those story objectives? These are the fixed elements around which everything else is to be arranged.

For example,

• We may have an encounter in which the story purpose is to introduce a new NPC who is going to be important in a later plotline. The essential character traits and abilities, in this case, will derive from that later role.
• Or perhaps we have an encounter to exemplify a particular attitude on the part of the general public (or some segment thereof) that the PCs have not previously encountered. The essential character trait is that the character holds that particular attitude and that the circumstances of the encounter will give them an opportunity to display it.
• Or, thirdly, the story purpose may be to exhibit a particular personality trait belonging to a particular NPC or PC who is already present in the campaign, which will then motivate a more significant action at some other time.
• The hardest of all is a generic encounter whose story purpose is simply to show that not everything the PCs are encountering is of world-shaking importance; this is because there is so little to go on. On the other hand, these can also be the easiest, because you have so few constraints.

It is also absolutely essential that the action that is to occur achieves those story objectives. If you proceed from a flawed premise, you will eventually confront the failure to achieve the objectives, and find yourself written into a corner.

How about I offer a concrete, really-happened-in-a-game example that remains memorable because it worked so successfully?

I wanted to show that the PCs in my superhero campaign had achieved Beatle-esque public popularity, but didn’t want to use a generic groupie encounter. So, what might a fan who had reached the point of obsession do? They would dress like their heroes, alter haircuts and other aspects of their appearance, and so on. So the PCs were going to encounter a woman who would be dressed in a polka-dotted shower curtain (and nothing else), and have convinced herself that she was a member of the team. (I thought about a fan mutilating themselves in an attempt to give themselves ‘super-powers’ but that seemed too grim for the tone that I wanted to convey; this encounter implied that the team’s popularity had reached the point that such things were possible, while providing a light-hearted counterpoint to surrounding events). The setting for this encounter (and this entire part of the campaign) was an alternate-history 1950s Boston, with Joseph McCarthy in the white house and fascist troops under his control enforcing a “pro-American” attitude. The PCs had succeeded in getting in good with the local police, had taken down the crime boss of the city, and had achieved national attention through a couple of spectacular fights with supervillains. By standing up for Joe Citizen in the face of McCarthy’s anti-communist Morality Police, the S.I.D., they had given the entire country a shot of hope in the arm, and had taken the nation by storm; but one of the members had made the mistake of stating that the team would welcome new members. Now the darker side of that public support was to be put on show.

So I had a clear story objective, a clear reason for an encounter to happen.

I thought about having the character in question uncover a plot, and attempt to report it to the authorities because she couldn’t seem to reach “her team leader”. I thought about having her uncover an imaginary plot that the PCs would have to investigate. I thought about having her simply show up at a superhero battle and attempt to pitch in. None of them seemed right, because all three of these options obscured the primary story point that the encounter was intended to achieve. It was only when I decided to keep the encounter completely low-key and mundane that the action would achieve the story objective. So the team’s leader was summoned to the local police station, where a dozen people in various ridiculous getups were asking to join the team; these were easily dismissed. Then she was taken to a desk in the detectives’s section of the station, where the woman was waiting. She had flagged down a passing patrol-car and told them that she was a member of the team but was unable to get in touch with the others, something must be wrong. They took her back to the station for her own protection, but before they called in the men with butterfly nets to assess her mental state, they needed to be absolutely certain that she wasn’t a member of the team – they all wore pretty outlandish costumes, after all.

That left only the question of who this person was, what their personality should be, and why they were doing this. Did she really have paranormal abilities? Could that have pushed her over the edge? Could she be a superhero from the native time-stream of the team who had somehow been trapped in this body? Or was she just a sad case of acute fandom crossing the line into delusion? I knew that these questions – and others, such as “is she bait in a trap” – would be going through the minds of the players.

The purpose of this example is to highlight the importance of clear story objectives and encounter particulars that achieved those objectives. Writer’s block in no way afflicted me in the construction of this encounter. So, to wrap it up and enable us to move on without an unresolved example dangling overhead, I decided that the woman was in late middle age, that she had no paranormal abilities (aside from being OK with a sewing machine), that she suffered from delusions and mild dementia, and that she had been in deep depression since her son had been killed during World War II a decade earlier. The team’s sense of optimism had penetrated that depression, and she became fixated on the team as a way of avoiding those negative emotions. This actually posed a difficult challenge for the team leader, St Barbara, because the woman was an object of pity and the player wanted to solve the problem without plunging her back into a mentally-dangerous state, which an outright rejection would have done. So she persuaded the woman that she had an undercover assignment for her that required her to return to her ordinary life, and that a team contact disguised as a social worker would visit her occasionally to make sure that she was okay and to receive any reports that she had for the team. Problem solved, at least for the moment. And a couple of new messages became part of the team’s next media conferance, emphasizing the sacrifices and costs of being a superhero, and the risks, and the difficulty of qualifying for the role, in an attempt to defuse the most extreme forms of public support.

Solutions 1, 2 & 3

These are as described as solutions 6, 7, and 8 in the ‘action blocks’ section, above. There are a couple of differences, in that those were cases of the personality being wrong for the encounter, and not cases of having no clear idea of the personality at all, but the principles still apply.

Solution 4: Sympathetic Magic

There is always a reason why you’re having trouble coming up with a required character, and it usually comes down to the character’s motivation being appropriate to what they are supposed to do in the encounter, or with that motivation being at odds with the personality that you’ve created (or with any rationally-constructed personality that you can come up with).

Motivation is the key. You can’t finalize who the character is until you have decided why they are doing what you want the character to do, from their point of view. So the next set of solutions that I have to offer are starting points for you to establish that motivation.

The first of these I have entitled “sympathetic magic”, and it involves making the story goals the same as the character’s goals. In other words, they are doing what the referee or author wants to have happen because that is also what the character wants to have happen, whether they realize it or not. The “magic” happens when you answer the question of what the problems and ambitions of the character are, that this particular choice of action is a solution to them.

For example, let’s say that I want to develop a love interest for one of the protagonists. The story objective is for the characters to be attracted to each other. That means that the new arrival into the plotline has to find the dominant qualities of the protagonist attractive, satisfying his or her needs and/or desires; it also means that the new arrival has to have personal qualities that make him or her attractive to the protagonist, and that the initial encounter between the two should display enough of those qualities on both sides to make the prospect of another encounter appealing to both. The personality, needs, desires, likes and dislikes of the protagonist therefore define the persona, needs, desires, likes, and dislikes of the new character, and the circumstances and content of the encounter.

Beware of making the two “too perfect” a match. Leave room for minor disagreements between the two, it will give them something to talk about.

Solution 5: Opposites attract

A more complex solution is to assume that what the character wants to achieve is the exact opposite of the story needs of the author/GM – but that the story needs will be met anyway. When the story need is a relationship – again, for example, the insertion of a new love interest for a protagonist/PC – the result is a far more complex relationship. To make this work, the pair need one overriding, all-important goal or desire in common, or that they satisfy in the other, or that they can only achieve together, whether they like it or not. A great variation is where one or both characters are recovering from failed relationships and are determined NOT to be attracted to each other even though they are completely compatible. If the relationship is to be antagonistic, this results in characters who agree on almost everything, but have fundamental differences of opinion on the most important thing or things.

Avoid making the two complete opposites; they need enough common ground to be able to connect and butt heads.

Once again, this uses the known personality and character traits of the protagonist to define the personality and character traits of the newcomer.

The circumstances of the initial encounter are a little more difficult and depend a lot on narrative circumstance. If the characters are going to be in each other’s lives frequently, you can afford for their initial encounter to be one of hostility. If the new character is to be less prominant, it might be better to start with a point of common ground; a great way to introduce a would-be world conqueror is to have them come to the aid of the PCs for their own reasons. Once you have the relationship established, it makes the drama of the revelation all the more poignant. The love interest with a heart of gold toward the poor and destitute, or who is a staunch guardian of justice, who likes to torture small children and animals on the side. The criminal who is forced to commit violent and reprehensible acts and hates it, who encounters someone who is good and honest and upstanding and who happens to love the criminal because they would secretly love to be able to do the things that the criminal does. Complex, interesting, relationships, all of them. That’s why Dexter works as a TV series.

Solution 6: The One-sided story

When one member of the protagonist-new character pair is or represents something that the other wants (or everything that they want), the attempt to attain the object of their desire can be the motivation required for the character to do whatever it is in story terms that the author/GM wants to have happen. When the relationship between the two is to be romantic in nature, that’s called unrequired love, and the utility of this solution can be seen in the character of Jimmy Fingers from my superhero campaign, which I described in the section “Beware The Dimunitive” in my article A Good Name Is Hard To Find. To quote from that article (with some slight revision for clarity),

Consider an NPC I created for the previous incarnation of my Superhero campaign, James Fingreiz (pronounced Fing-Greez) – or, as the PCs came to know him, Jimmy Fingers. “Jimmy-The-Fingers” was a teenaged street punk who was there to develop a crush on one of the PCs. He tried to impress by being macho, but that didn’t work. Time after time, he got himself into trouble or complicated the PCs’ lives by getting in the way. Several Angst-ridden conversations between Jimmy and the target of his affections followed – and, of course, he took all the wrong messages and signals out of these. He took ever-more-daring risks to prove himself worthy, infiltrating villain organizations (gathering intelligence that the team needed to have in the process) – and then getting caught. Finally, the PC in question (the Player was getting desperate) told him flat-out that no romance between them was possible because he didn’t have powers and would always be in danger when they were together. Predictably, this backfired, sending Jimmy off on a quest to become worthy of the woman he loved. The final sequences in this plotline form part of the new campaign. (Much to the PC’s chagrin, Jimmy has encountered a couple of Romantic Souls along the way who have done their best to help him achieve this goal, instead of sending him home where he belongs).

This was a case of very carefully choosing a diminutive version to emphasize the youth (and the age disparity) between the NPC and the PC. The players have never even heard the character’s full name; to them, he first introduced himself as “Jimmy-The-Fingers” and became “Jimmy Fingers” thereafter. Every aspect of the character was designed to contrast with that of the PC who the NPC was targeting; innocence and naivety vs. maturity and experience; petty hoodlum vs. heroine; swarthy vs. Anglo-Saxon (Danish, to be more specific). And the name was then chosen to embody, represent, and reinforce those aspects of the NPCs makeup. He was designed NOT to be taken seriously as a figure of romance by the PC, and the name [and persona] achieved this perfectly.

Once again, the existing known elements define the unknown when filtered through the motivation that connects them. Jimmy was defined as being the opposite of St Barbara in a great many ways – but with a couple of essential redeeming features.

Solution 7: The Last To Know

This is a variation on all of the above in which the story objectives are met inadvertantly by the interaction of new character and protagonist or antagonist. It’s entirely common for everyone else to be able to see the oncoming train-wreck, and to react to that in ways that are characteristic of their own personalities. It might be that the two characters are perfect for each other and everyone else but them can see it, or that they have a doomed romance; or these romantic interpretations may be analagous for the situation in the plot. Two characters who – if they could work together effectively – could conquer the world, but who can’t stand each other. Two characters who are each other’s worst enemies, but who are stuck with each other for some reason.

But, if you persue this approach, beware of The Moonlighting Syndrome, in which it is the unresolved tension between the two characters that makes the relationship entertaining or interesting (refer to the section Ratings & Decline in that article). Lois & Clark fell prey to the same problem, exacurbated by a number of increasingly silly episodes (clones who survived by eating frogs).

If you want a better media prototype to follow in terms of consummating a relationship and getting away with it, consider Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest which avoids the problems of the marraige of Will and Elizabeth (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly, respectively) which was left inevitable at the end of the first movie by restoring the status quo between the two in dramatic fashion, first seperating the pair and then estranging them – at least temporarily.

Again, the known defines the unknown once the motivation relationship is clear.

Solution 8: Trapped By Circumstance

The final motivation-oriented solution to consider is one in which the new character is trying to achieve the story goals despite opposing them, or in which he is trying to achieve something else against his will with the outcome of the story goals as a byproduct of the attempt. It can be one of the hardest motivation solutions to do well, but it is also one of the easiest motivation solutions in a number of ways, which has led to over-use. That over-use, in turn, is the reason it is so difficult to use this motivation approach so effectively; all the good ways have been used so often that they have become cliches, and hence are now bad ways of using it. Only if you think of a new wrinkle, a new spin to put on this motivation, would I consider using it – unless I was absolutely desperate.

Another complication is that for the first time, we can’t use a known character as the starting point, because this solution is about the relationship between story point and new character, and any common ground or lack thereof between the character and the protagonist with which he or she is to be involved is irrellevant, overridden by the “circumstances”. Therefore, the place to start is by defining (in general) what those circumstances are, developing the persona of the character accordingly, and then refining and detailing the circumstances based on that characterization.

All that means that this solution can also be more work than the others – and that’s another good reason to put it toward the tail end of these solutions.

Solution 9: Thematic Inspiration

If you’re sufficiently skilled at character creation, you can start with a stock character appropriate to your genre and play with it enough to make it an individual. Very few are good enough to do this without a LOT of work (and I don’t consider myself one of them even though I’m fairly good at character creation). If I had to, though (and it’s happened a time or two), I would start with a genre stock-character that was totally unsuitable to the achieving of the story objective and rework them enought to make the story objective reasonable and achievable, fully justifying all those changes – just to be sure that I changed the character enough from the stock-character origin that the result was original.

Further Solutions

I have offered several more solutions in a series I wrote on character development, to which I referred earlier: The Characterization Puzzle series. Check it out if you’re having problems coming up with a character!

Next Time: The missing types of writer’s block that I intended to include in this weeks post: Dialogue and Narrative blocks. At the moment I only have 12 solutions for those – but I only had ten solutions for the types of Writer’s Block discussed in this article when I started, so who knows?

I’ve got so much campaign prep to get done that if I don’t do it in public, I’ll never get it done in time…

This was supposed to be just two chapters, but at the last minute I broke the first into two smaller, more digestible, chunks.

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Clan Wars XVI: Faith & Politics

“It is actually very simple to prove that the Father of the Gods still lives in his palace beyond the sky, Garunch, though I admit that it took me a while to think of it,” said the Shaman of Clan Mailed-Fist. “It requires a human point of view.
    “Humans see the Gods as separate things that exist apart from each other. One place of humans may believe in Olympus, and the Gods that live there, but they will only pray to the god who is most likely to help them achieve a certain task or who is most likely to cause problems with that task. At the same time, they will often worship one of those gods more than the others because they think that this god likes them especially well.”
    “That’s not just silly, it’s stupid,” answered the Shaman of Clan Red-Eye.
    “It’s not our way. It’s as though they pretend that all the other gods that they believe in but aren’t asking for help don’t really exist, and won’t get involved if they aren’t mentioned. We know the gods to be equally real, and what happens in the world around us to be a mirror for the things they do each day. They do these things for the same reasons we do things – it is our nature, or it is necessary, or because we don’t know of anything better to do – if there is anything better to do in a situation, to avoid starting any side-arguements.”
    “I’m still waiting, Kudja.”
    “When we pray for something to happen, we pray to all the gods, and if one makes that thing to happen it is because that is what they do. They choose us, we do not choose them.
    “The false Baghtru told us that everything that was happening was Luthic stirring up trouble amongst the Clan Of The Gods. She wanted Gruumsh fighting Baghtru and Ilneval fighting Gruumsh because she wanted to be in charge. When we began to think that the Gruumsh who was killed was not the real Gruumsh, and when we saw that the Bugbear-God who fought him was not a real Bugbear-God, we began to wonder if the Baghtru who told us to do things that are not Orc-like was really Baghtru, and if The-Mother-Of-All was really to blame. I had been put into an unnatural sleep-with-my-eyes-open and could not be woken. The Clan-Chief needed to know if the things he had been told were truth, so he got a mother to pray to Luthic for help in waking me up, so that I could tell the Clan-chief of things that I knew about the Gods. She did. Luthic was not angry. If she had caused this trouble, she would not have healed me even though it was her nature to do so. That is how I am here and talking to you.
    “If Gruumsh is not dead, then he will answer a prayer to him. If it is not in the nature of any of the other gods of the god-clan, he is the only one who will answer. And you will know.
    “Make a fire, Garunch, and ask Gruumsh to make it bigger. Put a prisoner from the Bleeding Sword Clan near it, so that he will be burned if Gruumsh does this, and put me near it so that I will be burned if Gruumsh does this. Shargaas hates the fire because it drives the night away, and Luthic hates the fire because it hurts when you get burned, and Ilneval and Baghtru will not do it because their people will be hurt. Only Gruumsh will do it. And when you feel him in the flame, you will know.”
    There were immediate protests from his companions, the Elf who named himself First, and the Drow Ambassador to the City, Tathzyr, but the Orcs ignored them. This was a part of Kudja’s plan that he had not told them about.
    “That is very clever, Kudja. I have not thought of thinking about the Gods separately before.”

The preparations were quickly made, and a prisoner from the Bleeding Swords brought in and tied to a stake near the bonfire. On the far side of the fire, Kudja was tied to another stake. Old Zagluk, the Red Eye keeper of memory, bore witness to the preparations and the lighting of the flame. He had not been told what was to happen. When all was ready, the bonfire was lit in the presence of most of the chiefs of the tribes of the Red Eye Clan; there were a few who refused to attend or who had fallen in fights triggered by the despair of seeing Gruumsh killed. Most had been forced to attend at sword-point.
    Garunch circled the fire, and then beseeched the Spirit of Gruumsh to inhabit the fire, and make it grow bigger. Nothing happened. A second time, Garunch repeated his prayer. Again, there was no visible result, and the audience of tribal chiefs began to grow restive. A third time, Garunch repeated the prayer, and this time, the fire became a column of flame taller than the highest tower of the city. So tall was it that every Orc in the despairing Army Of The Crescent Moon could see it, and could feel the presence of the flame. Blisters rose on the unprotected flesh of the prisoners tied to the stakes.
    But Garunch was still suspicious that this was not a trick that Kudja had prepared in advance, so now he did something of which he had forewarned no-one, and beseeched the God Of The Sky to enable his words to be heard from every fire built by his armies, and then he said, “Without the glory of Gruumsh, the Night will never end, for he brings the sky when he rides his fiery chariot to the day’s battle beyond the sky,” and all could hear his words issue from every torch and campfire, but most of all, booming forth from the column of flame. “When the light of sky approaches and the night recedes will all know that Gruumsh is still our beloved Father, and take heart, and restore order in their ranks in His name. At Dawn, we attack the walls of the city in the name of Gruumsh the Great!”
    He then thanked the God Of Fire for his generosity in coming to his people’s aid, and beseeched him to return to his well-earned rest. Even more abruptly than it had erupted skyward, the column of fire vanished, and the bonfire went out. Legend has it that no fire would ever light on that particular spot again, but no-one knows exactly where it was, so no-one is completely sure. To the tribe-chiefs assembled, who had prostrated themselves in awe, he said that “Gruumsh was sleeping, and had to be shaken a few times before he awoke. Now you know that he lives, and that what we saw was a trick of the servants who betrayed those who took them in and gave them food, and shelter, and protection.”
    Clan-Chief Kurvath then rose. “I am the heir of Zalgan, and act as Clan-chief until we Moot in the spring. I make a new law for the Red Eyes: The Minotaur are outcast, the enemy of the Orcs, and shall be hunted until they are no more. Kill them all, wherever and whenever you find them. That is the law. Say now the Law!”
    Celebrations and ritual chanting of the new law went on for some time. Zalgan then described the Fall of Kyrd, former Warblade of the Clan, and appointed an acting Warblade to Command the Army. His first instruction to the new Warblade was to alter the deployment of the Army Of The Crescent Moon, leaving the troglodyte tunnels unguarded and massing their forces on the opposite side of the city. Much of their forces had been detached to chase Bleeding Swords and invade their Clan range, and they no longer had sufficient numbers to attack on all sides. The new Warblade protested, but was overrode – “There is more happening here than this attack.” Supported by the Clan Shaman, Garunch, and by the Keeper Of Memory, Zagluk, the new Warblade had no choice but to accept the decision. It was his role to translate the objectives decreed by the Clan Chief into smaller instructions, even if those objectives changed without notice or explanation.
    Only then, with the crowd dissipated, could Zalgan order the prisoners to be taken down from the stakes and Garunch to see to them. By now, the arms that had been closest to the flames were burned beyond healing, save by the direct intervention of Luthic herself, and that risked arousing the ire of Gruumsh, who had inflicted the injuries. Somewhat reluctantly – it seemed poor reward for Kudja and underserved in the case of the Bleeding Sword warrior – Garunch ordered the affected arms amputated and then healed the stumps in the name of Luthic. First, leader of the band of self-exiled Huyundaltha, found the entire proceeding to be barbaric, but held his tongue. Tathzyr was not so repelled; Kudja had knowingly sacrificed his arm to achieve his goals, and those goals were worth achieving; Tathzyr respected and even admired that strength of will.

Clan Wars XVII: The Sacrificial City

Curiosity is a trait that runs strong in most Elves, but is only mildly present in most Orcs. The few exceptions tend to gravitate toward the two branches of Orcish culture that provide explanations, the Keepers Of Memory and the Priesthood. When Kudja had been restored to health, despite the loss of his left arm, the inner core who had been privy to all the events of the night reconvened in the pavilion of the Clan-Chief. Time was wearing on, and the three who had braved great personal risk to negotiate the surrender of the city would soon need to return to set events in motion within its walls, but first, there was a little more that needed to be explained. Kudja had told Garunch that he could not explain the need for the attack to both commence and succeed at dawn until after the survival of Gruumsh was verified to the point of certainty; now that Garunch was sure, his curiosity burned within him more brightly than ever. What was the urgency, the cause of such desperation that Kudja – a pragmatist at heart, like all Orcs – was willing to knowingly sacrifice his arm?
    “I don’t have time to explain it all. When this is over, there will need to be a Moot of the three clans to restore peace amongst us. When that happens, there will be time for the full tale.
    “The false Baghtru who came to us told us to prepare a ritual that would summon something to fight for us. We thought that strange because we would want something to fight alongside us, but we did what we were told. When the Minotaur-God, or what looked like a Minotaur-God, revealed himself and seemed to kill Gruumsh, and all the servants attempted to kill Orcs and run away, this ritual began casting itself, and all the shamans of the Mailed Fists fell into a not-natural sleep with our eyes open. The Ambassador-Drow and the Elf later worked out that the reason for everything that was happening was to threaten the city enough to make us listen when we were told to do so, without allowing the threat to succeed. The Bugbears and the rebellion of the servants, both led by what they thought of as their Gods, and the death of Gruumsh, was to stop anyone from interfering by distracting us from the real attack. We priests were put to sleep so that we could not figure this out.
    “We plan to force whoever the enemy is, who we think is called ‘The Hidden Dragon’ to try to finish too fast by letting you win. When you do things too fast, you don’t do them very well. We are going to twist his ritual so that instead of releasing the Hidden Dragon, we ride it back to his lair and attack him there. Where it is, we don’t know. Whether or not we will survive, we don’t know.
    “We were tricked. You were tricked. The Bleeding Swords were tricked. The Bugbears were tricked. The Servants were tricked. All of us, all the Orc clans, have been used as playthings by the Hidden Dragon, and Clan-Chief Agronak is very angry.”
    “He is not the only one,” roared Kurvath. “It is not enough. It is not right. It was not the God you listen to who pretended to be killed, who was made to look weak. It was almighty Gruumsh. The Red Eyes demand a place in this retribution beyond the one you have made for us. We may have been used by a God; we will not let ourselves be used by another Clan even to punish the trickster! We will divide our army. We will strike back! We will hurt the Hidden Dragon as he has hurt us!”
    “My new Clan-chief seems to be suited to the job. I agree completely with him.”
    “We have limited capacity for numbers, Clan-Chief. We cannot transport an army,” said First.
    “But it is right that they share the burden,” responded Tathzyr. “Perhaps a compromise?”
    “Speak more, Drow. What do you suggest?”
    “Select your mightiest warrior. Send him, and Garunch here, to be your representatives in this matter. Kudja was to accompany the attack, but with his arm lost, he will be a liability, and your clan’s shaman will be better-versed in attacking and war-spells, anyway.”
    Kudja, who had not realized that his sacrifice entailed being left out of the mission of revenge, suddenly looked stricken. “I’m sorry, Kudja, but if I’m not useful enough to go, neither are you – in your present condition. Clan=Chief, if you wish to bolster your own authority, you may choose a warrior from a rival faction, since survival of this mission is unlikely – but if you do not wish to risk his return with still greater prestige, you may choose someone who will be loyal to you. But do not take long to decide, we must return to the city within the hour.”
    “If I choose a rival who later returns, I will share in his glory because it will show that I made the right choice, and even he will have to admit that,” mused the clan-chief with a chuckle. “Zagluk, who was most upset at my choosing Dag-rath as Warblade?”
    In his broken and cracked voice, the elderly Keeper Of Memory answered, “There were several who were vocal in their protests, Kurvath, mostly because they thought themselves candidates for the post, or were jealous. These can be ignored; by letting their opinions show, they proved they are not ready. But Lukzal, son of Kyrd, who could have claimed the place as his inheritance – at least until clan-moot, as did you – merely narrowed his eyes and smiled. Like his father, that one schemes in his sleep and waits for a misstep to give him an advantage. And he is definitely one of your most skilled warriors, if one of your most closed-minded. He would learn little if anything from seeing how others fight – because they are other than Clan Red-Eye.”
    “You speak well, Zagluk. My father should have made you a member of the Clan Council years ago – a mistake I will not repeat.”
    “I decline, my Clan-Chief. I prefer to remain apart from discussions, that I may remember who said what more clearly, without the distraction of participating.”
    “I will not let you decline, Zagluk. Another Keeper may watch for you and report anything you may have missed. But that is something we can fight about on another day. Kudja, I appoint Lukzal and Garunch to act in this raid for the Red-Eye Clan. I will send for Lukzal, and give him his orders, and then give you escort back to the tunnels under the city walls.”

When one is awoken in the dead of night from a sound sleep, it is not uncommon to oversleep the next morning. It may simply be that the Orcish sense of time is not very good, but it seemed to all in the Orclands that Dawn came late the next day. When it came, though, it was announced with a funfair of horns as the Red Eyes gave the signal to charge. Much to the surprise of the attackers, they found the walls undefended, and were able to maneuver their simple catapults into position without being raked by bow fire for the first time since the siege began. These were loaded with great hooks, which had flattened ends. Their machines hurled these across the ramparts without interference. Again, much to their surprise, no-one attempted to throw these back over the walls; small teams of Orcs quickly dragged the lines back until they were taut, and attached the ends to the undersides of the baskets of a second wave of catapults which some might have thought faced in the wrong direction. As soon as one was attached, the catapult was triggered, jerking the wall outward with great force. Had simpler hooks been employed, they might have ripped a great gouge in the top of the wall, but the broader flattened ends which made the hooks so heavy that only another siege weapon could throw them spread the force across the whole section of wall. Like all such, it had been constructed to withstand a push or impact from the outside, not an outward pull; in places, the wall broke in two partway up, while in others, the whole wall came down, broken at its base, where it toppled to the ground. In only a few cases did the wall prove strong enough to withstand this unexpected attack, with the catapult being torn apart by the force of the blow it sought to deliver, the sudden internal stress being too much for it to contain. Several catapult crews were killed instantly, as beams weighing hundreds of pounds became lethal weapons flying through the air, or murderous splinters.
    The attacks were spaced out along the walls at even intervals. As soon as the walls began to collapse outward, advance troops aligned with the towers rushed forwards, dodging chunks of rubble the size of cottages. Each squad carried a ladder to clamber up any remaining wall, and a number of spares, anticipating stern resistance, but once again, they were unmolested. Several became disquieted, sensing that this was all happening far too easily, and hesitated. The scaling ladders were quickly cut down to the required size, and Red Eye clan members swarmed like ants through eight broad breaches in the walls, and dispersed into the city, tearing down walls with hooks attached to lines and starting fires as they went. They had not yet encountered a live defender. What had happened to those within? Where was everybody?

At the first hint of Dawn, all but First and Third of the Huyundaltha had exited the tunnel and made for a stand of thick forest nearby, ironically following the same direct line of escape employed by the escaping Minotaur Servants the day before. Spreading themselves out evenly in a straight line, each raised a pennant. Behind them, a steady stream of Orcs began to exit the doomed city, running from Elven flag to Elven flag. A number of Red Eye scouts witnessed the escape, but had been given strict orders not to interfere in anything that might transpire on that side of the city. In a near-endless column, families of Orcs streamed from the scene of the conflict.
    And somewhere, far away, the architect of the conflict sensed himself losing control of events, and redoubled his efforts to complete his ritual before it was too late.

Clan Wars XVIII: Riding The Whirlwind

The ritual chamber on the sunrise side of the city was the farthest from the attacking Army of the Red Eye, and so had been chosen as the place for the select band of combatants who were to seek out the lurking menace of the Hidden Dragon. First and Third of the Huyundaltha, Goral, Clan Warblade of the Mailed Fists, three of his hand-picked Orcish warriors, Lukzal and Garunch of the Red Eyes clan, and an unexpected Late Addition to the roster: Ambassador Tathzyr, who had finally received instructions from Lolth. These events and the instigator behind them are beyond my ken, as is the place of prophecy that you report, she had told him through the spiderweb mirror in his chambers, to which he had repaired on returning to the city, to gather those things that he deemed essential. I approve of the planned investigation and order you to participate and report back. Carry with you the Mirror Of Whispers that I may locate this ‘Hidden Dragon’ should you fall, she had concluded. As Tathzyr had feared, coming to the attention of authority had done nothing but increase his personal danger – but he was not so foolish as to disobey. He did not know how Lolth would chastise him, should he do so – and did not want to know. Like it or not, he was going, and he was attempting to explain that to a fourth Orcish Warrior whose place he was taking. Some chatter incessantly when nervous and Tathzyr was one of them; he normally forced himself to silence, but sheer terror was countermanding his self-control.
    The scene was enough to unnerve even the most hardened warrior if he was unaccustomed to the supernatural. Tathzyr, neither warrior nor over-familiar with the extraordinary, felt the effect especially strongly. What had been a large storeroom for bed linen had been cleared, and seven braziers spaced evenly around a circle inscribed in chalk on the floor. These now burned with a disquieting indigo flame, periodically erupting with gouts of flame that arched unnaturally overhead from one brazier to another. A piece of red chalk inscribed sigils on the floor in blue, untouched by human hands, while a piece of blue chalk inscribed strange patterns in red in the air. From time to time, a strange ripple or shimmer seemed to pass through the air, and from the centre of the room a small flask of scented oil emptied itself endlessly into the empty air, its issue vanishing without trace just before it hit the floor. And all this was accompanied by the throbbing beat of an unnatural (and quite invisible) drum, punctuated at intervals by the tinkle of an equally invisible bell or chime. That ringing was the most exasperating detail of all, you could sense that there was almost a pattern to it, but every time the mind attempted to identify that pattern the next pealing would fall early or late, and the pattern would vanish.
    The fanfare that had announced the attack on the far side of the city had been only barely audible from inside the stone chamber, but it was beyond doubt that the attack had begun; the crash of the city walls that followed moments later was felt throughout the city, and was followed shortly afterwards by a dramatic increase in the urgency of the throbbing drum-sound and general increase in the self-driven activity within the room.
    “Ambassador, could you please still your tongue? This is very difficult and I am trying to concentrate,” said First, his eyes closed tightly, with a piece of white chalk in one hand and a knife in the other. With a final squawk, the Ambassador closed his mouth with a snap and lightly bit his tongue. Spiders Of Lolth, who knew what might happen if First got his manipulation of the incomplete spell wrong – or his efforts were noticed.
    Carefully, and with a precision that the Ambassador would be hard-put to match, First drew an additional circle outside the one that glowed blue and marked the perimeter of the casting, leaving six small gaps a handspan wide, followed by another with three more gaps that surrounded the entire group save the warrior who had to remain behind. The knife had been anointed with a fragrant oil that was then been burned off with a candle, after which the candle was cut in into three pieces lengthways; those pieces now rested on a silver platter at First’s feet. With the knife, First cut the innermost circle, connecting each severed end with a loop back to join his new circles to the existing one in a complex shape. Like the sound, this seemed to form a simple pattern, but whenever the eye attempted to follow it, it became confused until it was unclear which circle was being followed. As he completed this task at the sixth inner break, all three lines began to glow with the same bluish color as the original. Placing the knife on a cushion of red silk, which had been removed from the throne of the Clan-Chief, First made a curving, curling, gesture with his free-hand, and the three pieces of candle flew into the air and hovered there, slowly rotating around the enclosed space with each throbbing of the drum and spinning end-for-end with each chime of that maddening bell. He opened his other hand so that the chalk rested loosely on his palm; it quivered, then stood upright of its own accord, and then began to inscribe elvish letters in the air in a golden light. Suddenly curious, the Ambassador attempted to read the script, only to find that no word was complete; each contained gaps with one or two missing letters, and the whole made no sense whatsoever to him. Realizing abruptly what it would have meant to his life if he had been able to read them – a life of abject misery and subservience as a Mage, a position both mistrusted and despised by everyone within the underground City of the Drow to which all males with any trace of arcane talent was condemned, he silently gave thanks that he was unable to decipher the script.
    “It is done. If the ritual were a passage of text, I have inserted some footnotes, made a few slight modifications to the language, and expanded the circle to contain all of us. The chalk is linking those new footnotes to other parts of the spell as it is cast to keep the whole consistent. I have also made the candles part of the ritual as a warning to us to prepare; when it is about to complete, one by one, the ends will light. We will thus have a countdown from six – that’s from a hand-and-one,” he added for the benefit of the Orcs. “Already I can tell you that the Hidden Dragon has seven fingers on each hand,” he concluded. “I have no knowledge of any creature having such an attribute, but it is clear that this one does – prepare!” he commanded, as one end of the first candle burst into flame. With each subsequent throb of the invisible drum, the end of another candle ignited, and then the other end of the first, the second and finally the third.
    Abruptly, those inside felt a hollow sensation in the pit of their stomachs, followed by a strange twisting sensation. They felt as though their bodies were being compressed by great force and were bloated and expanding at the same time, and their vision dissolved into a sparkle of blue, red, and gold, and a fetid wind erupted from beneath their feet, a wind that was both hot and icy cold at the same time…

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The Ongoing Elvish Glossary

I’m going to forego this while our attention is focussed on the Orcish side of the story, as it has no relevance to the narrative.

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Next time: The Hidden Dragon Revealed!

Novels and RPGs have one thing in common – you have to describe a whole boatload of locations every time you play. As a result, every GM learns the basics of doing so very quickly. Unfortunately, once they achieve a level of minimal proficiency, most GMs never give this aspect of their craft a second thought. It seems relatively trivial in comparison with things like how to craft better plots, how to better capture and convey the nuances of personality, how to manage the real-world aspects of a game, and other headline-grabbing skills.

The majority of those who look past these priorities and actively try to improve in all areas of their craft quickly discover that the “rules” of a good descriptive technique for locations are largely unwritten and usually contradictory, and give up in disgust and frustration.

I don’t have any magic solution to take the chaos out of this situation. But, rather than give up, I say, let’s embrace the chaos and at least spell out the contradictions, and then try to assemble some guidelines to serve as the foundation of a solution.

Contradiction 1: Scope

There are three overlapping contradictions in the general advice available for the description of locations. Two of these proved too difficult to separate, dealing (respectively) with what descriptive elements should have Priority and with the sequence in which subsequent descriptive content should be presented. I was more successful at extracting the first from the general melee, the contradiction of Scope. How much detail should you include in your descriptions?

Priority 1: Economy and Concision

The less you have to say, the more easily digested and comprehended it is, and keeping your descriptions brief leaves more time for other things – like actual play. It seems fairly clear that less is more.

Priority 2: Comprehensiveness

I’ve written before about the declining imaginative capacities of modern times, and the solution of relying on visual aides to enhance the game as a way of compensating (‘The Gap In Reality: Immersion in an RPG Environment‘); The more you leave out of your descriptions, the more you rely on your player’s imaginations to fill the gaps – imaginations that may not be up to the job. So it is essential that you give those imaginations as much support as possible with fulsome and comprehensive descriptions.

What’s more, abridged and abbreviated descriptions can leave the game world a shifting chimera without substance and depth, a lightshow on the wall; more articulated descriptions shine light on the shadowy corners of the environment, giving the Gamemaster (or author, it’s all true for other kinds of writing as well) the opportunity to create depth and emotional context. The environment informs the personalities and influences of the occupants, so a comprehensive description achieves more bang for your descriptive buck.

Finally, there is nothing worse, as a player, than responding to a situation or scene only for that response to fail because of something being left out of the description. This frustrates players and puts an unnecessary strain on the game. There is, accordingly, a perpetual desire on the part of GMs to err on the side of comprehensiveness; if you describe everything (or at least mention its presence), there is no chance of leaving something out.

Guideline: Layered Poetry of Language

There are no simple solutions to this dichotomy of priorities. There are clear benefits to both approaches, both extremes. Striking a compromise can artfully harness the benefits of both, but risks introducing the inherent problems of both, as well.

How can you maximize the chances of getting the description right – just enough detail without saturating the players with irrelevancies? The best guideline I can offer is to learn to be poetic in your choice of language. By layering additional meanings into a few well-chosen words, you can suggest more than you explicitly show, jumpstarting the imagination without bogging down in specifics and tedious details.

Here’s one description of a city, which trends toward completeness rather than poetry:

It’s a very crowded city, with architecture crammed into every available space. Buildings crowd the streets as much as people do, jutting into the street in a haphazard manner. Most of the buildings in this part of town are three stories tall, constructed of red bricks or gray stones, and everything is unnaturally dirty and soot-stained. There is a dank and oppressive smell, and mould grows on many of the walls. The roofs are mostly constructed of reddish tile, though a few have slate tiles, and are angled steeply; you suspect most of having an extensive attic space for storage. From the higher stories of each building, gray stone balconies protrude, providing shade and shelter from the rain for those walking along the sides of the streets. There are no sidewalks. Clotheslines stretch above the streets from one building to another, connected to pulleys that enable clothing to be aired and dried after washing. Chalked religious icons are present on most of the doors, which are usually constructed of thick hardwood with heavy iron locks. The streets are narrow and roughly cobbled, not very level, and footing is uncertain. From place to place, deep pools of grimy and muddy water gather in depressions. The populace always seems to be busy, and generally look down as they rush from place to place, rather than meeting each other in the eye, almost as though they were all scared of each other. They typically dress in dark woolen cloaks and wear wide-brimmed leather hats of poor workmanship. Footwear is usually sandals, over thick woolen leggings or knee-high socks. Knife-sheaths and purses adorn leather belts to either side of the wearer. Carriages and wagons groan and clatter as they travel down the centre of the roads, swinging out to the sides of the streets only one must pass another; at such times, they pass mere inches from the faces of pedestrians who are forced to cling to the walls of the buildings to avoid being struck. Most are drawn by one or two horses, and evidence of their passage is perpetually underfoot. Every morning, barefooted convicted criminals wearing white smocks and red arrow-heads pointing downward scatter straw and hay on the streets to bind the dung, and each afternoon, they shovel the resulting mass into carts, adding to the crowding of the streets. Guarding the criminals are soldiers in bright blue uniforms with brass buttons which have been cast with insignia of rank, armed with swords, wooden truncheons, and whips.

But this description is only the beginning; there is no suggestion of commerce, or of the way people interact with each other – but they must be continually bumping into each other, if they are always looking down. So, to be comprehensive, you would need to add descriptions of street vendors, and perhaps a vendor haggling with a customer, and of a protocol that has people always pass to their left, and beggars with bowls begging for charity, and street urchins running from place to place in pursuit of a bouncing ball which they kick when they catch, and dogs without leashes and collars roaming the streets. And then you might realize that there’s no mention of windows in the buildings, or of the plan size of the typical structures, so you need to go back and insert that into an appropriate spot. And before you know it, your description is a page in length, and takes ten minutes to read to the players. But even without those details, you certainly get a vivid impression of the place.

This sort of description is the result of the GM (me, in this case) picturing the place, and describing what he sees in his mind’s eye, one thing at a time: Buildings, streets, traffic. It certainly conjures a vivid picture of the place, but Economy of language is clearly not a priority. In fact, it swarms with so many details that twenty minutes later, most will have been forgotten. And the chances of finding a picture that exactly matches this description is somewhere between slim and none, so the description either has to be compromised to match something that’s close but not quite right, or the GM has to rely on the description alone.

How would I go about rendering this image in a more concise manner?

1. Extract elements to convey with mini-encounters
Take out the wagons, and the passing foot traffic, and the street vendors, and the street urchins, and the dogs, and the prisoners & guards, and even the laundry drying and dripping from overhead. Each of these can be used as a mini-encounter in the streets, enabling the PCs to interact with the environment instead of simply looking at it. By breaking the information into smaller bites that can be delivered separately, you not only make them more easily assimilated by the players, you make them a little more memorable, and you make the players feel that their characters are a part of the landscape.

2. Extract anything that can go along for the ride.
A lot of the details – the balconies, the pulleys, the unevenness of the footing, the puddles, the dung, the straw, the way the people dress, even the smell – can be details attached to those mini-encounters. That means there is no need to detail them in the descriptive passage.

3. Extract any unnecessary details. It isn’t all that necessary to mention the attics, or the roofing materials, or the locks, or the religious signs chalked on the doors, as part of the initial description. These details can wait until one of the PCs wants to examine the objects possessing these qualities more closely. So I would separate them and put them in bullet points after that descriptive passage for easy location when I needed them – though some may creep back into the narrative in the next step.

4. Describe the impression, not the cause.
Finally, since you have such a vivid mental picture of the place, describe not the picture but the impression that the totality creates:

Buildings jut into the narrow streets, leaning and jostling each other for room like the people who jostle and bump into each other while rushing from place to place, their eyes perpetually downcast. Grime and mould decorate the walls of brick and stone beneath steeply-angled roofs. Straw, wet from the rain, makes a futile attempt to bind horse dung together for easy removal from the roughly-cobbled streets.

From there, I would launch straight into one of the “educational” mini-encounters: You dodge to one side as a ball bounces across the street, pursued by a pack of urchins, who ignore the occasional deep puddle of muddy water gathered into depressions in the road, splashing any who come too close. From behind you hear the clatter of an approaching horse-drawn wagon, and you can see another approaching in the opposite direction in front of you. Pedestrians hurriedly flatten themselves against the walls beneath the shelter of second-story balconies because the street is barely wide enough to permit the two to pass without colliding. [Pause for PC reaction]. …and so on.

By the time you have described two women yelling gossip to each other across the street from their third-floor balconies as they hang washing on lines strung between the buildings, and the haggling of the street vendor and customer, and the arrival of a prisoner detail with shovels, cart, and guards, and accosted the PCs with a beggar, and mentioned to each of the PCs that they have been jostled or bumped into, three or four times, you will have established all the details that were not extracted into bullet-point details, and the city will seem even more alive than that vivid picture assembled from the big block of text. Sure, it might now take two pages, and three times as long to convey that information, but the benefits of clarity and concision will be added to the benefits of being comprehensive. That’s the difference between a passable (comprehensive) description and one that uses the power of poetic expression to deliver a concise description with implied details.

Tip: I never write the artistic version “blind” – I always build up my mental impression using the comprehensive detail, taking notes as necessary. It’s much easier to move text around once it’s on the page than it is to maintain consistency and come up with the finished artistic description and mini-encounters straight off the bat; it’s like putting the cart before the horse and driving them in reverse. Get your details and consistent picture, but instead of writing it as a block of monolithic text, write it as notes that can be easily reformatted and reformulated into that finished product once your mental image is complete.

Contradictions 2 & 3: Priority & Sequence

That deals for the “easy” part of this article. The second part deals with the many-fold problems of which information to give, in what order, and in particular, what should come first and what should come last when you are describing a location. The examples used in the previous section should not be considered indicative of anything except one possible solution, described as a “Mood First” priority.

Priority 1: Mood First

This principle asserts that the mood and tone of a location provides a context, a filter, which – if presented first – can color every subsequent detail, sparing the GM the problem of integrating that mood and tone into those subsequent details. In other words, if you do this first, you have wider latitude with respect to the descriptive language employed subsequently.

Priority 2: Most Relevant Detail First

There is another line of arguement that states that the first thing to present in a location description is the most relevant single item. This can be especially true when it is something unusual but that the characters should be able to take in their stride, because it gives them time to consciously assimilate the information, processing this important factor while the GM is presenting the rest of the description. I have also seen this principle stated as “describe the elephant in the room”.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this approach. While it ensures that the pertinent information is accessible to anyone who skims a narrative text – in other words, makes the description more useful to anyone other than the author, and even to the author when he has to search past descriptions for mentions of “the elephant”, a lot of the time it seems to get in the way. The players / readers focus on “the elephant” and its presence in the room to the point where they miss other pertinent facts. Players will often react by stating actions that are rendered foolish by additional description (“I draw my weapon and charge!” – “You run headlong into the lava river that I was about to describe before you interrupted me.”), leading to frustration and conflict between players and GM, or continually interrupt description that they don’t find immediately relevant to demand more details about “the Elephant”.

Frankly, I think that extracting appropriate keywords and placing them at the head of the description for the GM to use as ‘signposts’ when looking for the description weeks, months, or years later gives you most of the benefits of this approach and enables you to adopt the alternative approach:

Priority 3: Most Relevant Detail Last

Anything that the PCs should react to with an action should be the last item in your description. And there should always be something, no matter how trivial. Why? Because it provides a natural transition from narrative text to play.

Priority 4: Establish Iconic/Symbolic images at the beginning

Still another approach prioritizes what are sometimes described as “Iconic Structures” in the narrative. I have also seen this described as “Putting Onion Towers In Moscow”, and as “The Eiffel Tower says Paris”. The Statue Of Liberty is an unmistakable icon of New York City – that’s why it says everything that needs saying at the end of the original “Planet Of The Apes”.

This method takes advantage of associated memories and impressions to achieve concision, at least in terms of the wider picture – mention the icon on the horizon, and then move on immediately to the specifics of the local vicinity. And when you describe it that way, it becomes clear that this is a special form of the “Elephant In The Room” – the definition of “relevant” has changed, that’s all.

But that small change, because there are additional benefits and therefore additional justification for this approach, makes it harder to actually argue against this method. Where it fails is in a somewhat hidden assumption: that you want it to become clear, immediately, that the scene is Paris, or New York City, or Moscow, or wherever. I would agree – with reservations, that I will discuss in a moment – with the concept of using an icon to flag the specific point in the plot at which it is to become clear to the characters that this is where they are.

I mentioned reservations. There is another, hidden, assumption, and it’s a whopper: that the shared impressions and associated memories of those being triggered by this “shortcut” will be roughly parallel and consistent, both with each other, with those of the GM, and with those of the adventure / plot. What are the odds?

The greater the shared background of those involved, the greater – it can be argued – the chances that this assumption will be correct, because they will all have access to a common cultural exposure on which to base the shared impressions. The more differences there are in background, the greater the likelyhood that it will fail. Similarly, the greater the shared experience of the location, the more likely it is that the assumption will be correct – and the more divergent those experiences, the less likely that is. The more interests people have in parallel, the more likely it is to be correct; the more different those interests, the greater the likelyhood of a different impression of the subject. And finally, the more opinions people have in common, the more likely it is that they will share a perspective regarding that icon and what it represents; the more differences people have in opinion, the less likely they are to have a common view on that one specific subject.

I have one set of mental associations with Paris and France in general, a mélange of sources from things I have read, from watching the Tour De France, from segments on Top Gear, from Iron Chef, from Masterchef Australia’s French visits and French visitors, from various scenes in various movies and TV shows, from various documentaries, and so on. Two of my players don’t watch Masterchef, one doesn’t watch Top Gear (at least I don’t think he does), none of them watch the Tour De France – even though we have broadly similar tastes in movies and fiction, and overlapping tastes in non-fiction, for sure they won’t have exactly the same impressions of Paris and France. My mother recently visited France on holiday – and I’m quite sure that she will have a very different impression again. My aunt visited Paris many years ago (in the 1970s I think) and it’s dead certain that she will have still another impression. A friend of mine passed through Paris en route to a holiday focusing on the Castles of Germany and Austria; his very different interests to those of both my mother and aunt will almost certainly have produced still another set of associations. None of those are likely to match the typical view of Paris of a New Yorker, or a Mexican citizen, or a native of Quebec – to say nothing of the impressions of someone who lives in London, or even a French citizen! And they are all likely to be a different blend of accuracy and inaccuracy.

That’s an awful lot of risk. It’s so much risk that it undermines the very concept of this Prioritization approach. However, the change to using an icon to flag the specific point where it becomes clear to the characters that this is where they are acts to minimize this risk by restricting the value of the associations to secondary descriptive items after establishing the most significant descriptive elements.

1. You can’t assume that what you want to convey with your ‘icon’ is the association that it will create in the minds of the audience, except in the broadest possible terms.

2. Things left unsaid are gaps through which confusion, complication, and even possible discord, can flow.

3. The important details of your description are too important to risk in such a dangerous gamble.

And that leaves the Iconic priority dead in the water, so far as I’m concerned.

Symbolism

But that’s only half of this. What of the proposal that any Symbolic descriptive material should figure prominently?

Aside from having similar (though perhaps lessened) risks of different associations, I think that this approach is yet another example of “The Elephant In The Room” – again, simply redefining what “most relevant” happens to mean. And like that approach, players & readers are too likely to focus on trying to figure out what the symbolism means to the point of distraction. So, for slightly different reasons, I also reject this approach.

Usual Advice: From the General to the Specific

When you look up any “How To Write” books or pages on the internet, they will usually tell you to focus on the general picture first, and specifics second, especially if “Mood” is considered part of that “general picture”. Most of the time, this is good advice, but – in contradiction to most of what I have written so far in this article – there are times when there are distinct advantages to prioritizing specific information, even absolute necessities. If I want to describe a row of houses with a Martian War Machine rising above and behind them, the last thing I should be doing is spending any time describing the Houses and any lawns or gardens. The imperative of the need for an immediate reaction is so strong that it doesn’t matter WHAT the rest of the environment looks like.

So singular is this piece of description that even Mood is secondary; the presence of the War Machine will transform any mood that may have been present. The only reason to include a statement of mood at all is to contrast “before” with “after”. Either these things have been around for a while, doing what they do, in which case it will be expected that the houses are burned-out ruins, or this is a new twist in the plot, in which case it will be assumed that the scene is one of normal, everyday, life.

Another example of this phenomenon is that jaw-dropping moment when the Ship is first revealed over Los Angeles in Independence Day. There, a mood of normality is established, then skewed slightly, then reestablished through the kid “shooting aliens” with his toy gun – just to produce that jaw-dropping moment of discovery through the power of contrast.

Guideline: Hierarchy of Relevance

So, all components of a descriptive passage are not created equal. In every scene or setting description, there is a Hierarchy Of Relevance. Anything that comes after an item of descriptive of any given level in that hierarchy must stand higher in that hierarchy. If there is no direct-response trigger, the general rule (general to specific) may apply; anything likely to cause a reaction should normally be placed at the end of the descriptive passage, because the need to react will signal the end of the descriptive passage and a transition to interaction with the scene.

The more significant the direct-response trigger, the more description of location it makes irrelevant, to be included only for specific and intentional purpose.

That hierarchy is a key requirement to crafting a good location / scene description, making this a very important decision. It will tell you what should come first, what should come second, what should come last – and what should be left out, unless you can sneak it back in somehow.

Guideline: Layered Poetry of Language (again)

If information is to be left out of a descriptive passage because the elephant is not only in the room, it is charging you, then incorporating the most salient points of the lost description into the initial language becomes a secondary priority to be achieved through the artistic use of language. Instead of describing “A Martian War Machine rising up behind a row of houses”, you could speak of “A Martian War Machine blotting out the sun as it rises behind the row of single-story tenement housing and white picket fences”.

But there’s a limit to how much detail you can build into the description of the scene. Everything that I’ve included in that example is there for a purpose: a general description of the buildings and, yes, something that is symbolic of US Suburbia and small towns. They imply where this is happening, and permit the reader or players to make some reasonable assumptions about that location which will shape and influence their reaction to the primary descriptive item.

Technique: An Arc Of View, An Individual Perspective

Heading for the end-point of this article, still with nothing clearly established in terms of a “bible” for writing location and scene descriptions, only a couple of tentative and somewhat vague guidelines, and a technique or two.

Unfortunately, it was always going to be this way. There are too many situations, too many complex possibilities, to provide any hard-and-fast rules.

I have one more technique to offer. It’s not always the best choice, but it can work very well indeed at times, and should be in every GM’s toolkit.

The Fog Of Priority

It can be argued that what a character will notice first is anything that poses a direct and imminent threat; and that what they will notice first if there is no direct and imminent threat is something that is particularly relevant to themselves. A mage will notice the most obvious magical effect. A cleric or Priest will notice the most obvious religious-oriented detail. A fighter will look at the dominant tactical impact of the terrain, and so on.

Rather than providing the description as though it were one collective perception that they all experience, try this: General introduction & Mood, Character #1 insight, Character #2 insight, (and so on), until each character has noticed the thing that is most relevant or important to them. If there’s more to be said, you can do a second round, though in general, one round (with a couple of passages ‘snuck in’ using the techniques demonstrated earlier) is probably enough to cover everything that matters.

This approach has the effect of obscuring details that the characters are not paying any attention to. I call this effect “The Fog Of Priority”, and so long as the GM is prepared to provide additional description of whatever the player says he is looking at more closely, and ensures that all the critical information is delivered in his opening salvo, this technique integrates the influences of the characters into the description.

Guideline: Expansiveness, Mood, Essentials, Triggers, and Clarity

My final stop on this tromp through the narrative wilds is to offer one final guideline for writers and GMs to follow: before you start to write a description, set the goals that you want that description to achieve.

• Expansiveness: Long, flowery descriptions have their place. Short, compact descriptions have their place. What is the right length for this occasion?
• Mood: What is the mood, the atmosphere, the overtone, that you want the description to convey?
• Essentials: What is the absolutely essential information that the description has to convey?
• Triggers: Reactions form a natural transition from description to action or to roleplay/conversation, so you should always try to end your description with something that will trigger a reaction – but what reaction do you want to trigger?
• And, finally, when you’ve written the description, Clarity: How clear is the meaning of what you’ve written? Do you start talking about one thing and interrupt it to describe another? Is there any possibility of the description of one element being misapplied to another?

Hey, what do you know? We’ve arrived at a hard-and-fast rule for most occasions, after all :)