From everything I’ve read – starting with early issues of The Dungeon, continuing with “Through Dungeons Deep”, and running all the way through to numerous blog posts – a lot of GMs have trouble connecting the desire to “make the loot part of the plot” with techniques for actually achieving this goal.

It’s my impression that a lot of this trouble derives from the way those GMs think about the rewards that they provide to the characters within the game. Because the rules specify the inclusion of a reward, the mindset seems to be to think of it as just that – a reward. That carries certain subconscious connotations, most of which revolve around a sense that the players (and/or their characters) are entitled to receive it.

This mindset permeates conversations on this subject, so deeply that it can be hard to identify all the places and aspects that it touches. It has even reached out to shape the structure of this Blog, as a quick glance at the categories list will reveal (hint: look under “R”). Before a GM can fully exploit the potentials of rewards for the embellishment and furtherance of his plots, he has to shed this mindset and its restrictions.

Well, if we can’t call it loot, and we can’t call it a reward, what can we call it that is going to engender a more useful mindset? I struggled with this question for quite a while – the first draft of this post was written in place of the shopping list of subjects that I offered last week – before I realized that the one obvious right answer was right in front of me the whole time. Why not put the cart before the horse, and let the objective define the terminology? Why not call the loot a Plot Mechanic?

Loot As A Plot Mechanic

When a GM does this for the first time, they experience a profound paradigm shift. Thinking about the different types of rewards that can be offered in a game no longer takes place in isolation, or with any sense of entitlement; instead, every possible reward comes with the associated questions to the GM, “How can I use this reward to enhance or further the plot? Is there an alternative that achieves the objectives more completely, or more compellingly?”

Instead of being a tacked-on derivative of the gaming process, rewards immediately become an integral part of the plot. As such, like any other plot element, they are subject to relocation to the position within the storyline that is most felicitous to the telling of that story – instead of coming at the end of the story, they can be placed at the beginning, or the middle, or wherever else they are most logical.

Loot ceases to be a reward and becomes a resource.

Even the most traditional of reward types, experience points, can be viewed in this manner. Instead of being a burden to be accommodated by the GM, or a necessary evil, they are a resource that serves to prepare the characters for the next stage of their grand adventure. XP, and their concomitant measure, character levels, are no longer a reflection of what has happened to date, but on what the character’s capacities are to be in the next adventure.

Like energy, loot – when viewed as a resource or plot device – can be converted from one form to another, interchangeably; only the exchange rate and difficulty of achieving the conversion vary. The process of conversion can itself form the basis of a plotline, especially if the GM has not succumbed to the temptation to populate his cities with magic emporia; these facilitate the conversion of cash into magic items and vice versa at the cost of killing virtually all story potential inherent in the desire to achieve such conversion.

Finishing The Job: Educating Players

Once the GM has achieved the personal breakthrough in his mental state, he might be forgiven for thinking that the process of converting from plotless loot to plot-rich goodies is complete; but there is one final step that may be required, without which the process will remain incomplete and frustrating: educating the players.

It’s not enough for the GM to perceive the rewards he hands out as resources; until the players see them the same way, they will not take full advantage of the roads to adventure that the GM is opening before them, and the campaign will remain restricted in scope to something less than it could be.

It is unusual for players to make the transition in mindset based solely on prompting by the GM; they have to learn how locate and identify the means of conversion of the resource they have been given into whatever they need to continue the adventure. Sometimes, that is easy; players are used to spending money for things, so they would adapt to that mechanism quickly and easily. A lot of the time, it won’t be so easy, and may even require some house rules and background information from the GM.

For example, I once played in a campaign in which the GM never handed out magic items. Instead, he handed out the components of magic items, leaving it up to the players to decide what they were going to craft (or have crafted) out of the resources. For the first adventure or two, the players weren’t up to speed on what was going on, and complained bitterly about the ‘garbage treasure’ that was being handed out. The next couple of sessions were spent grumbling but taking advantage of the reward structure to craft a few items the party wanted; after about half-a-dozen sessions, some of the players were beginning to grasp some of the possibilities in the idea, and after as long again, one of those became a convert, openly preferring the idea to the notion of having someone else’s magic item design foisted onto him.

For the first adventure or two that the campaign is operating under the new regime, the GM might have to lead the players by the hand a little, ensuring that there is a known objective for each reward type that they are to obtain before they receive it. For example, a mission to retrieve objective ‘x’, which their employer then converts into resource ‘y’, which gives him the vital requirements for the next mission, for which he again employs the PCs. After a while, someone will ask, “if he can do what he’s doing with that stuff we got for him, why can’t we?” The GM replies ‘no reason you can’t’ and matters proceed from there.

Types Of Loot

Some time back, Johnn and I collaborated on a list of types of reward, for a planned project that never materialized. I’m going to conclude this article with that list, with some crib notes on using each type as a plot device.

• XP: This was covered in the text above.
• Character Authority, Command, and Leadership: “Draw the sword from this stone and ye shall be king” – but what do you have to achieve in order to be able to draw the sword? “Slay the dragon and the hand of the fair princess is yours” – a variation on the same notion. Authority and Command are age-old rewards for success and achievement. And just as often come with the sting of responsibility in the tail; this type of reward is one of the most obviously plot-device capable.
• Mundane Knickknacks & Collectables: An object’s value as a plot device is a function of the emotional investment in the object or in the activity associated with the object as well as its monetary worth. The key to using these as a plot device is in determining who feels strongly about the subject and why. It could be a collector, or a reminder of a dark secret, or evidence of some past wrongdoing, or sentiment, or appreciation of beauty or artistic merit, or the indulgence of some desire (whole or perverse), or greed, or jealousy/envy of the person who has it – in fact, just about the entire gamut of human emotional responses can be at play, in whole or in part. One (or more) of the PCs may share the passion, giving grounds for a friendship or a rivalry, or the PCs might simply possess the item and consider the price – or risk, if the subject is illegal – too high. Or they might be hired to obtain it, or interrupt someone else’s attempt to take it – by fair means or foul. The possibilities, which seemed limited when I started writing this entry, are effectively unbounded. Sooner or later, in all my campaigns, I place a tapestry which has a plot function – either providing a vital clue, or posing an unusual difficulty, or containing a long-forgotten spell (the world’s biggest scroll), or, well something.
• Macguffins: There is, it follows, some relationship between the previous category and this one. A tome of knowledge Man Was Not Meant To Know, or a potential weapon, or the physical expression of a secret – the equivalent to the components of a nuclear weapon or new missile design in the modern world – these are mundane knickknacks that exist for no other reason than to be the subjects of a contest, chase, hunt, or mission. There is even an implication that the players can’t or won’t want to keep the subject object at the end of the mission, so it’s not even especially game-unbalancing (provided the PCs succeed)!
• NPCs & Followers including Servants, Apprentices, etc: Indirect access to resources, servitude and assistance are another reward that bears contemplating, and by their nature, they carry a whole world of plot hooks. Every character has a story, and the lives of one or more PCs have just become entwined with that story. Decide what the NPCs story is, and you have a plotline.
• Perks, Rights & Privileges: These often make the best rewards because they are intangible and hence make the smallest difference to the capabilities of the PCs – and at the same time, provided they have an impact in play they can be amongst the most appreciated rewards by the recipients. That alone makes them desirable by all concerned; but each is also an ongoing plot thread because each brings with it a new avenue of interaction between the PCs and one or more NPCs. When offering this type of reward, the GM should construct a network – something like a family tree – describing the new relationships. Some of these will be positive, some will be negative, and some will be neutral in tone – if all the relationships you describe belong to only one of these stripes, think again!
• Player Rewards: At first it might seem like this is the one type of reward that has no bearing on plot. Rewarding the players and not the characters is an often-overlooked manner of reward, but it can be an extremely valuable one; falling into this category are rewards such as an in-game justification that permits a player to take the class or ability or cast the spell that he really wants, for example. The reason that this reward type can serve as a plot device is that it establishes a new conduit of contact between the GM, the game system, the campaign background, and the player – and that can be exploited by the GM to funnel plot hooks to the PC that the party would otherwise be unable to receive. A long time ago, a passing acquaintance once told me about a campaign he had played in, in which the treasure was randomly generated, and by stint of improbable die rolls, no magic swords ever materialized on the treasure tables – except for two which turned out by cursed – in over five years of weekly play (plenty of other magic weapons, but no swords). After a couple of years of this, the GM decided that it was too unlikely for it to be a coincidence in the campaign world, and built a subplot into the backstory about a group methodolically destroying magical swords for some reason. This turned the PCs desire to obtain such a weapon into a plot point on its own; eventually, the GM deliberately ignored the random tables and salted rumors of the presence of a cache of such weapons in a dungeon some distance away as a reward to one of his players. The acquaintance was desperately waiting for the opportunity to go after the cache in their next game session, and discovering who or what had been destroying magic swords, and why, at the time of relating the tale. Every game has some analogous element (rarely used the same way as the example in the story) – it could be a ‘radiation accident’ to permit the player to redesign a character that isn’t quite right in a superhero campaign, or some unlikely magic item, or a unique character class that the character wouldn’t normally be permitted – one of my players in Shards Of Divinity is currently in the process of becoming a half-dragon by means of that exact logic.
• Recognizable Resources – Mines, Deeds, etc: For these to function as a plot device, they either have to be treated as material objects in the same way as the entry on Mundane Knickknacks, or there is something wrong with them – which is another way of making this a reward with one or more built-in plotlines. I once designed a castle (for a campaign that never got off the ground) which had thirty-two plot hooks embedded into its walls – everything from a secret passage, to a strange cult, to a caged monster that could free itself for a few hours once a month, to a sinister secret, to a ghost, to an unstable tear between this world and a demonic one (which occasionally became large enough to let something out), to a hidden treasure – the entire campaign (except the opening sequence) was to take place within its walls. Title to the castle clearly qualifies for this category, and this example amply demonstrates the story potential of this type of reward.
• Social Rewards – Reputation, Fame, Respect, Validation by NPCs: Another type of reward that is often overlooked by GMs, or underappreciated in terms of story potential. But if a character in one of your campaigns gains a rep for having the Wisdom Of Solomon, the most difficult and inscrutable puzzles should get dragged onto his doorstep. If a character becomes famous as a slayer of ghosts (whether it’s deserved or not), who you (or your NPCs) gonna call? I never permit an elevation of reputation or fame without carefully pairing both a positive benefit with a negative consequence – and they are both sources of plot hooks.
• Trade Concessions: Everything that I said with respect to Mines and Deeds applies to trade concessions. These can be problematic for some GMs, as they shift focus on the economics of your campaign – this is great if you have the answers to those difficult subjects nailed down, and a nightmare if not. I once played in a Traveller campaign that shut down because the players wanted to trade instead of becoming revolutionaries – the GM had visions of a Star Wars -style Rebellion and Empire conflict, and the players wanted to be Lando Calrissian (or maybe Han Solo), and he was unable to use the trading activity as a springboard into adventures. He kept dangling plot hooks in front of us, and we kept refusing the bait. It was that experience, in a way, that led to my becoming co-GM of the pulp campaign he created as a replacement for the Traveller game.
• Liquid Assets – Coinage & Currency, Stocks, Bonds, and Finances: Another type of reward whose story potential is often overlooked. Consider a collection of coins with a curse on them – gold will flow like water through the fingers of the possessor of one until they are all returned. Or they have a magic mark on them that permits the owner to scry on them. Or perhaps the dragon’s hoard consists of 63 extremely rare gold pieces – worth 1,250,000gp to a collector – imagine the player’s faces! Open almost any issue of the National Inquirer to determine the sort of nonsense that the very wealthy are exposed to.
• Fixed Assets – Land, Major Equipment, Vehicles, Furnishings, Satellites, Starships, etc: This category overlaps with the section on Deeds and Mines, and most of what was written in that section is also relevant. And who can forget the Armoire from KODT?) – check out The Bag Wars Saga if you don’t know what I’m talking about…
• Treasure – Magic & Tech Treasures: Too many GMs simply hand out the goodies. Every magic item should have a history, and may well have hidden capabilities. Sometimes these will be dull and un-extraordinary – but sometimes they will be more substantial. I hate the “Identify” spell because it voids half of this potential, if not more. Of course, the ultimate examples of this type of treasure are the Legacy Items created and featured in our forthcoming e-book (almost done now!) Assassin’s Amulet.
• Information: The category most GMs think of first when it comes to Loot as plot devices; information generally has no purpose OTHER than as a plot device. One of the major conceptual planks of my Shards Of Divinity campaign is an attempt to extend that – one player has information no-one else in the game world has concerning the origins and history of the game universe, and sometimes that has proven valuable – and at other times its gotten the players in over their heads. Either way, it’s a definite plot device.
• Knowledge: The same player also has received this type of award; in Shards, magic is running out and becoming unreliable, unless bolstered by the drawing of magic circles etc (beyond the requirements stated on the spell). As the campaign progresses, this effect will become even more pronounced; it started as a 1-in-20 failure rate and is now a 3-in-20 for spells of 5th level and higher. Because these reinforcements were discovered through empirical research and are not understood, even by practitioners of the art, when the character figured out why they work (using the information mentioned in the previous section), he was able to achieve the same benefits without losing a round or more per spell level drawing circles and symbols in the ground (or running the risk of spell failure). That renders the knowledge that he has obtained a definite and legitimate reward, reflected in game mechanics – but it is also a plot device, because sooner or later people will start to recognize his infallible spell casting. In order to make this type of reward effective, it will often need to be reflected in house rules, either conferring an additional benefit on the possessor or avoiding an additional penalty applied to the general populace.
• Maps: Another type of reward that obviously qualifies as a plot device, this category brings me to another tale from Shards Of Divinity. Because I knew that a major treasure cache was going to appear at a certain point in the plotline, I looked for dangers and difficulties to justify it (and to protect it). In order to justify a cache of the size that seemed reasonable, in game terms, I had to load in the treasure that the PCs expected to receive in a completely different set of encounters – so they loot a high-level dungeon (well, they survive it) and their reward is a map to the treasure cache, which is protected by an entirely different dungeon. The ultimate payoff was fair, and the amounts were rational and reasonable (nil and plenty, respectively) given the nature of the locations. Tale #2: There is an NPC in that campaign who is seeking a big payoff, which is protected by 1001 false maps to the location of the cache. Everyone else in the world has given up, but he thinks that if he can find ALL the false maps, he can identify the region they don’t point to – putting him closer to the treasure than anyone else. He has expended his fortune and health and friends and favors gathering in some 604 of these false maps, and now has to resort to stealing them when another is found. The PCs have never met this character, but eventually they will – shortly after coming into possession of just such a false map. That’s right, even false maps qualify as a reward under this paradigm!
• Adventure Hooks: Maps are an indirect way of packaging an adventure hook as a reward, but why not skip the middleman and simply give the players a new adventure hook as a reward for completing their last adventure? After all, the ultimate purpose of the game is for everyone to have fun – everything else is simple a watered-down reflection of this type of reward. Watered-down with verisimilitude, perhaps, but diluted nevertheless…

Final Word

A lot of GMs report having trouble hooking the players into their plots from time-to-time. Making the loot a part of the plot, even if only occasionally, furnishes another avenue to involve the players in their surroundings, a new set of baited hooks. Time to go fishing….

Credit-where-it’s-due-department: This artwork was inspired by an illustration by Tommy Castillo for the Kingdoms Of Kalamar module, “Coin’s End”, unfortunately no longer available from Kenzerco. Click on the image to look at some of their other products, and tell 'em that Mike sent you!

Last week, I gave you the backstory behind the creation of Cyrene, a deity of Life who figures prominantly in our forthcoming game supplement, Assassin’s Amulet. This time around, it’s time to followup that post with an edited excerpt from AA describing the lady herself…

Cyrene (Greater Deity)

Titles/Incarnations: Giver of Mercy, Weaver of Nets, Handmaiden of Death, Shelter of Travelers, Queen of Dolphins, Bringer of Rainbows, Pool of Reflection, The Final Justice, The Last Judge; member of the Celestial Tribunal (Arbiter of Life).

Cyrene is a complex deity whose worshippers derive from as many lifestyles as she has incarnations. Her province is life itself in some of its many aspects, and this makes her both feared and revered.

The Lesser Aspects

In her aspect as the Giver of Mercy, Cyrene is believed to spare the dying from pain and suffering, and a slow death is considered a sign of her disfavor. Many with suffering relatives and loved ones will donate to her temples and pray for her to relent. Those granted quick and painless deaths are considered to have been in her favor, and it is tradition to make a token offering at her temples by surviving friends and relatives of the departed.

The Giver of Mercy aspect is considered a Handmaiden of Thanastis, God of Death. She is believed to spend her time weaving and repairing death’s net, “the net that catches all in the end.” This leads to Cyrene’s third incarnation, as the “Weaver of nets.” Since it is believed she will permit death to take none before their time, this combination has made her a popular deity for fishermen and sailors, many of whom attend services regularly when not at sea, and make offerings before every voyage—the more dangerous the journey ahead, the greater the offering.

This belief has expanded slowly through the wider community, giving rise to her newest title, the Shelter of Travelers. It is said that, on occasion, lost and weary travelers near to death (but whose time has not yet come) will stumble upon a rich estate, where the mistress of the household (a woman of great dignity and beauty, well spoken and of gentle demeanor) will offer shelter for the night.

She will heal their wounds and host a great feast. When the travelers awaken the next morning, the estate and manor house will be gone, but they will be refreshed, have had their provisions resupplied and will be on or near the path to their destination. However, should any attempt to abuse the hospitality offered, they will be trapped within the estate when it vanishes and never be seen again. Because of this legend, offerings to Cyrene are now commonplace before any journey.

Fishermen also know Cyrene as Queen of Dolphins, for they believe such creatures to be animal-form incarnations of the deity. They say she sends her subjects to protect those who would otherwise meet an untimely end at sea. Some believe that being rescued by dolphins earns a debt that must be repaid with a year’s service in the temple in whatever menial capacity is necessary; some never leave this service and go on to become lay preachers.

Hathandros, God of Storms and Seas, is considered capricious, ill-tempered at best, and resentful of those who intrude upon his domain without paying the proper respect—a standard that notoriously changes with his mood. When Hathandros is in “one of his moods,” only the intervention of Cyrene can save those who have angered him. Some theologians cast Hathandros and Cyrene as husband and wife, but many dispute this. Nevertheless, it is also believed by some that Cyrene sends rainbows as a sign his ill temper has passed. Others believe Cyrene sends rainbows to mark individuals as especially blessed or in her favor to pique Hathandros’s jealous nature and permit him to show off his power and manliness.

These beliefs give rise to the last of the lesser aspects of Cyrene, that of the Bringer of Rainbows. This aspect is much beloved by children, and it is believed by others that Cyrene herself is barren and can bear no children of her own, the price of some terrible struggle in the past. Some suggest she sacrificed this aspect of her femininity to acquire the power she possesses. In either regard, she is said to derive great enjoyment from the playing of children, and is believed to spend much of her life near playgrounds and parks. Certainly, this is a popular location for the establishment of temples and shrines erected in her name.

The Pool of Reflection

The myth

There are some who claim the Pool of Reflection is merely another of the wonders to be found on Cyrene’s estate grounds. Others claim the estate exists merely to house the Pool, but the majority believes the Pool of Reflection is an inhuman aspect of the deity, and hence can appear anywhere.

Those who gaze into the pool at their reflections are able to perceive every significant moment of their past lives, recognize their contributions to life, society and history, glean a hint as to their role in the greater story of the world, and gain a sense of how much of their accorded lifespan remain.

The experience tends to humble the arrogant, educate the humble and bring about sudden changes in personality in many, as those who have achieved much (whether they knew it or not) are given recognition of those achievements by the gods, and those who have squandered their lives are given a final warning.

The facts

GMs are free to choose the true nature of the pool:

• An artifact that wanders the world aimlessly and randomly, teleporting from place to place, a magical quality that temporarily transforms ordinary pools of water
• A magical pool located upon the estates of Cyrene
• An incarnation of the goddess herself
• Something else.

Those who look into the pool and gaze into their own reflection must make a Perception check at DC20. Success in this check imparts recognition of the true significance of the achievements of the individual’s life, stripped of all ego, vanity, self-deception and bias, and permits a second Perception check at DC25. Success in this second check gives a general sense of the time-scale of the remaining years in the individual’s life: none, years, decades, or centuries.

Success in the first check also confers a permanent +2 Wisdom ability score increase, while success in the second confers +2 Wisdom, in addition to any recieved from the first check.

The combination frequently leads individuals who experience it to make radical changes in their lives or experience radical shifts in personality.

Success at the second check also permits some individuals (at the GM’s discretion) to make a third check at DC 50.

Should this succeed, the individual is accorded a glimpse of the most notable achievement to which they can aspire in the remaining time allotted to them. Success in perceiving this is worth an additional permanent +4 Wisdom ability score increase.

Failure to pursue this potential achievement, once it has been revealed, earns the enmity of the gods. We recommend you determine the substance of the possible achievement in collaboration with the player of the character responsible rather than foisting a destiny on the character that does not accord with the player’s wishes. These achievements might be mundane or even seemingly trivial, such as raising a large family, marrying the perfect mate, owning a business empire, or even living a life of destitute poverty but with spiritual grace. The achievements should not be guaranteed to happen, either. The character should have to actively work at achieving the goals.

The Final Justice

The last incarnation of Cyrene is also the most feared. As the Final Justice, Cyrene dictates whose life has run its course and whose has not. The elderly and infirm frequently make offerings at her temples. Some seek an extension of their lifespan, some a quick release from their lives and others are simply grateful for one more day. In this incarnation, God of Death Thanastis serves Cyrene, visiting those to whom she directs. This gives some indication of the complexities of their relationship.

No matter how evil or good one’s life, how rich or poor, the Final Justice is meted out equally to all, and all will face judgment before the Celestial Tribunal. In oppressive regimes, it is believed the common folk attend services in Cyrene’s temples to pray for the death of their ruler. The more enlightened amongst such rulers consider this a means of releasing anger and hostility that might otherwise lead to rebellions. The more shortsighted perceive this as fomenting such rebellions, and often seek to quell the worship of Cyrene, harassing her priests and burning her temples and shrines.

Both reactions misjudge the patience of the goddess. All will be at her disposal at their allotted time, regardless of rank or social status; she will neither hasten nor delay that moment without good cause. Temporal events are but trivial moments passing by in the interim, and eventually, those responsible will face judgment for their actions.

The Unnatural Extension of Life

The greatest crime in the eyes of Cyrene is the extension of life beyond the allocated span. There are means, arcane and spiritual, those with the knowledge and power can use to forestall the appointed hour. The priests of Cyrene preach there is but a finite amount of life at any given time, and that such blasphemous actions rob another of their turn at life. Every stillborn child is a sign that someone, somewhere, has extended their lifespan beyond its allotted years, and that the individual should be sought out and overcome by those with the strength and means to do so.

It is occasionally rumored that Cyrene’s followers include in their numbers a secret order who take a more direct hand in finding those who perpetrate such blasphemies and bringing them to an end. However, nothing has ever been proven, no evidence has ever been found.

Cyrene and Undeath

While Cyrene and her followers consider undeath to be unholy and blasphemous in its own right, they perceive this as forestalling judgment and not forestalling death itself. They will not go out of their way to destroy the undead, but feel a kinship with those who do, and will support such endeavors undertaken by others.

The Celestial Tribunal

Cyrene is a member of the Celestial Tribunal, which judges each soul’s fate after death and award it a place in what they deem an appropriate afterlife.

The other members of the Tribunal are:

• Averinis, the God of Justice (presiding and non-voting)
• Pellina, the Goddess of Virtue, and
• Lashinus, the God of Vice (who is frequently represented by his wife, Doravia, the Goddess of Temptation).

Cyrene rarely sits in judgment on the tribunal, nor argues one way or another. Her role is to report the facts of the individual’s life to the tribunal, and hence remains impartial and neutral. Only in the event of tribunal deadlock will she be called upon to cast the deciding vote, which she will seldom directly do. Instead, she will place before the spirit being judged a challenge to test its worthiness.

Occasionally, she might demand an Afterlife Quest to undo some wrong or achieve some great deed in the name of the tribunal, successful completion of which will earn her favor.

The exception to this neutral posture comes when judging one who has blasphemed against life itself, either by the unnatural extension of life, or by the restoration of a life that had ended. In such cases, she is a hostile vote.

Once in awhile, one of the other members of the tribunal will abstain, and the tribunal will again be deadlocked. Since the God of Virtue and Goddess of Vice never change their votes once cast, Cyrene is the swing vote. This is the other mechanism by which an Afterlife Quest may be ordered. In effect, Cyrene demands the spirit undertake a quest to earn her forgiveness for its blasphemy against her domain—something she will not begrudge lightly.

Temple Relationships

Priests of Hathandros, God of Storms and Seas, often bicker and dislike priests of Cyrene, though this enmity can be set aside at need.

Priests of the other members of the Celestial Tribunal in general respect Cyrene’s priests, but individual personalities might overrule this broad principle.

Priests of Thanastis, God of Death, consider themselves allies of the priests of Cyrene, as do priests of Lumina, Goddess of Life. Since these two temples are often opposed to each other, they frequently call upon Cyrene’s followers to act as a go-between when cooperation is necessary.

Priests of Cyrene find followers of Doravia, Goddess of Temptation, manipulative and hence consider her priests unwelcome.

Priests of Calumnus, God of Knowledge and Magic, are frequently opposed to the Priests of Cyrene.

Other temple relationships are neutral unless an event occurs to change the status quo.

That’s as much as we can share on the subject without compromising the secrets and plot twists within the game supplement, I’m afraid. Hopefully it’s enough to inspire you, or at least give you some ideas.

Layout work continues on the supplement itself, now entering its final phase of preperation before the big announcement…

UPDATE: Assassin’s Amulet is now available! Priced at a mere $20, you can get your copy by clicking on this link!

Some backstory:

This month’s Blog Carnival – hosted here at Campaign Mastery – is on the subject of “Making The Loot Part Of The Plot”. There’s a reason for that – Johnn & I were debating what makes the best subjects for carnivals shortly after we last hosted one. His contention was (in essence) that the best carnivals focussed on a relatively narrow topic, while I held that a carnival that was capable of multiple interpretations and was more inspiring in theme would garner more and better submissions.

Ultimately, we reached the point of challenging each other to back up our assertions, but past history didn’t provide enough evidence either way to reach any firm conclusions. Since Johnn wanted our sister-site, Roleplaying Tips to host a month of the blog carnival anyway, and the following slot was also up for grabs, we decided to put it to a back-to-back test.

Along came Assassin’s Amulet, and the whole plan got kicked into a cocked hat, as every opportunity that was available got subordinated to the marketing and promotional needs of that megaproject. Johnn was able to change the planned subject of Roleplaying Tips’ carnival at the last moment – in fact, after I had written CM’s entry for the carnival! – and the rest of the story you know.

So here we are, a comparison without a referant. Good thing we both insisted that the subjects be worthy topics of a Blog Carnival…

Making The Loot Part Of The Plot

In “old school” GMing, as exemplified by the few commercial modules that I had purchased and by the games that I had played, the Loot was a payoff and a bribe to the PCs to keep adventuring – simultaniously a score-keeping mechanism and a tool to enhance and upgrade PC capabilities, a byproduct of the adventure. This model was later adopted by computer-based RPGs like Diablo.

One of the first changes that I made to my DMing style was to attempt to go beyond that model, making the Loot an essential part of the plotline. It’s ironic that in modern times, one of the biggest complaints that I hear about new players coming into the game is that they have this same attitude, deriving from their computer-based gaming experiences. Tabletop RPG’ers have no-one to blame for this situation but themselves.

So, what sort of specific subjects am I hoping to see in this month’s Blog Carnival?

• Loot as an aid to tone setting
• Loot as a plot seed
• Conecting adventures through loot
• Types of treasure – non-material rewards
• The consequences of possession
• Connecting Treasure to campaign history
• The difficulty of maintaining mystery concerning the capabilities of loot
• You have it, they want it – people who want to share the wealth
• Treasure maps – making and interpreting them
• Writeups of rare knicknacks & other mundane treasures
• The valuation of loot
• 101 uses for a monster carcass
• The impact of rarity on value
• Loot placement
• Safeguarding the loot – the art of trap emplacement
• Original Artefacts
• The impact on campaign history of Artefacts
• Loot that’s not for everyone – treasures that require skill to utilise
• Indirect Buffing of characters
• The power of plus 1
• Tightening Focus in loot capabilities vs Smaller more generic abilities
• Power Standards in Treasure Ability
• Loot Superstitions
• The absence of Loot – reducing payouts without annoying players
• The economics of Loot

….the list just keeps growing

And, of course, here at CM, we’re still in Assassin’s Amulet mode – so I’ll be talking about Legacy Items. But I also have something to say on most of those topics – and nowhere near enough time to get to all of them in the month. In fact, it occurs to me, looking over that list, that there’s room out there for a blog that does nothing BUT talk about loot in all it’s manifest forms…

I look forward to reading the posts!

Recalling the creation of a Divinity

We’re continuing to build up to the big release of Assassin’s Amulet, and my excitement is reaching fever pitch (I can’t speak for Johnn & Michael). As part of that buildup, next week I’m going to present you with another excerpt from the book – but before I do, I wanted to tell you a bit about what you’re going to read, and what you aren’t – and why not – because it’s relevant beyond the boundaries of this one game supplement.

Concept Origins

Today, I’m going to be telling you about Cyrene, a Greater Goddess and part of the original Pantheon that we’ve created for AA. Cyrene started as a cipher, a name that Michael included in his product pitch to the two of us. Supposedly, the Assassins of the game supplement’s title carried out their bloody work in the name of this being – whether she was the Guildmaster, or the Goddess, or some pretender, we had no idea.

What’s In A Name?

To confuse matters still further, in the various places where she was referred to – or he, Gender was still uncertain at this point – her name was spelt in two different ways:

• ”Cerene” (rhymes with “Serene”), and
• ”Cyrene” (suggestive of “Siren”).

It’s true that to some extent, we could use any name we wanted to, since we were creating the concept of this entity from scratch. But we were concerned about the subtext and associations of the two names, as indicated above, and debated at length which one was more appropriate – Was “Cerene” to be a Deity of a placid, Elysian afterlife, with the suggestion of calm waters and endless late-spring days , or a more dangerous creation, who led men to their dooms (using ‘doom’ in it’s older sense of destiny – I was re-reading Lord Of The Rings at the time)?

A web search eventually settled the matter, when I discovered that “Cerene” was already in use, and was an existing and legitimate female name. But there remain aspects of Cyrene that date back to that alternative spelling; and I thought the anecdote worth sharing with our readers as an example of the logic to be used in choosing a name for significant NPCs in your games.

No Stat Blocks

What you won’t find, either here or in Assassin’s Amulet, is a stat block for Cyrene. One of the greatest ongoing annoyances to me is the use of stat blocks to describe Deities in various gaming resources, going all the way back to the original version of Deities & Demigods by TSR, in games which permit PCs to exceed the capabilities of the Gods as shown by the Stat Blocks. – A problem that was only compounded by the incompatability of the Epic Level Handbook and the 3.x version of Deities And Demigods. This annoyance has translated into formative influences in each of my campaigns, all seeking to address the central issue of the differences between a PC, no matter how powerful, and a Divinity.

• In my Fumanor campaigns, the Gods were granted additional character levels and additional powers based on their province and portfolio within the Pantheon. Even if a character achieves or exceeds the stated power levels of the Gods, they would lack those additional abilities; they would also lack the restrictions that apply to divine beings. Freedom of choice is a mortal burdon, not a Divine one. In these campaigns, there are no such things as Demigods – but there are various other varieties of being of near-divine power or even divine-plus power, each with its own characteristic traits and limitations. One of the ongoing “jokes” within the campaign is that Lolth has spent most of her existance attempting to bridge the gap to Divine status (even claiming it when it was not so) because she percieved them as having more power than she did; having now achieved that at the end of the first Fumanor campaign, she may now be regretting that choice as she is no longer in total control over herself and what she does. Ultimately, she was better able to achieve her ambitions and goals the way she used to be; but she cannot go back, and has been hoist on her own petard. If the PCs have their way in the Seeds Of Empire campaign, this limitation will ultimately be her downfall – making her achievement the ultimate in Pyrrhic victories.
• A similar approach is employed in my Superhero campaign, in which Gods not only get more character points to be built on, they get various cost reductions due to their natures, and get a whole slew of things for free that PCs have to pay good points for (and a lot of them). But, at the same time, there are restrictions imposed on Gods and the exercising of their powers, and some additional vulnerabilities that mortals don’t have to worry about. Demigods and half-divine beings fall somewhere in between. Once again, the concept is that Balance is achieved through a combination of restrictions and additional abilities; but this campaign doesn’t even pretend that Deities are built to the same restrictions and standards as ordinary PCs and NPCs.
• The difference between a deity and a PC of the same levels was a central theme in the Rings Of Time campaign, something that I’ve documented at length in the past (‘A Monkey Wrench In The Deus-Ex-Machina: Limiting Divine Power‘). Suffice it to say that the ‘Gods’ were very respectable in that campaign (just ask them) but used mortals directly to do all their dirty work, making them not very admirable. They did have some genuine awesomeness up their sleeves, but if they ever used these abilities, the other side would also be free to do so. Hamstrung by this celestial Arms Agreement and Test-ban treaty, most of their supposed power was PR hype and spin and the hard work of a few cat’s paws – including the PCs. This was Erich Von Daniken meets D&D!
• The PCs have slowly been learning, in my Shards Of Divinity campaign, that the Gods are even more hamstrung by their natures than they are in my Fumanor campaign, something they didn’t think was possible. One of the PCs expressed a desire to aspire to Divinity; the others (metaphorically) battered him around the head as a condemnation of the sheer stupidity of the notion. In this campaign, the Gods are atavistic representations of primitive dreams which can never progress or improve beyond the primitive definitions which described them early in their creations. The converse of the power they grant their priests and clerics is a total subjugation to the wildest imaginings of those priests and clerics. The gods have endured this treatment (lacking an alternative) for over a millennium and are suicidally bored to tears by it; but so long as their priesthoods remain active, they have no choice but to continue. Small wonder they act like spoilt brats and slip the leash at every opportunity! Their only hope is that the priesthood – which they have no control over – will start selecting priests for secular purposes (greed and property management) and not actual religious activities, letting them experience a quiet fading into nonexistance – or that the PCs take the burdons of power off their hands.
• Although the question has never directly come up in the Adventurer’s Club campaign, the implication is that since the Power Of God is real (one of the PCs can manifest it) and so are the powers of Nameless Things Man Is Not Meant To Know, God is equally real – but existing on some completely seperate stratum of reality that can never be reached by mortals, because it doesn’t fit the genre for it to ever happen. Whether or not belief alone is the source of power or there actually exists some avatar with a reality external to that belief is one of those questions the campaign will never answer.

We havn’t strayed from the topic; I was explaining why there are no stat blocks for Deities in Assassin’s Amulet and why there will be none when I present Cyrene as an excerpt next week.

Stat Blocks are Inadequate

Stat blocks for Deities are, quite literally, more trouble than they are worth, because they are always subjective and have to be reinterpreted every time for each different campaign. No stat block for any deity has ever been sufficient to totally describe the powers of that deity in any of my campaigns. Or the restrictions. Or the nature of the “species” (for lack of a better term).

Stat Blocks are Straightjackets

At the same time, A stat block defines and confines and restricts the expression of the deity within the game system – so they are not only inadequate to the task at hand, they force the GM into that mould of inadequacy.

The Absence Of Wonder

The final crime inflicted apon a game when the Gods are given Stat Blocks is that they actively discriminate against the perpetuation of a sense of wonder. Deities should have an aura of mystery, and power, and awesomeness in which they cloak their every appearance.

The mere knowledge of the existance of a stat block undermines all three of those elements. Mystery? The answers are written down somewhere, in black and white; you just have to read the book. Power? the limitations and vulnerabilities are written down somewhere in black and white, and the players are fully capable of exploiting those restrictions and handicaps. Awesomeness: as soon as a character is subjected to a Stat Block, they become Just Another NPC. That’s not awe-inspiring to anyone.

A conceptual approach

Instead, what we have chosen for Assassin’s Amulet, and for the entire Legacies series, is to adopt a more conceptual approach. We describe the Deity, as he or she usually manifests; we describe the titles, incarnations, and offices within the Pantheon and Cosmology that the Deity posesses; we describe the concepts that drive the deity, and the personality, and the relationships; we describe the demesne of the deity.

We do everything but define the concept in hard numbers and game mechanics, because a Deity will either be above the level of game mechanics, capable of doing whatever is in their nature to do, or the GM will have his own system for devising and determining such game mechanics – or should have such a system.

For the most part, everything that we do descibe is written from a character point of view. These are the myths and legends and publicly-ascribed personae of the Deity; the reality may be something else entirely, and the core of Chapter 6 is how to go about replacing Cyrene to make Assassin’s Amulet fit within you campaign.

What can the deity actually do, and how easy or difficult for them to actually do it? That’s up to each individual GM. Suddenly, the players cannot know the answers – Mystery is restored. They do not know the flaws and foibles and limitations, other than by hearsay that has been deliberately ‘spun’ in various directions – the deity can have effectively unlimited power, at least relative to the PCs. Power is restored. The final leg of the trio, Awesomeness, depends in part on the circumstances of the encounter and the GM’s roleplaying abilities – but at least he has a fair shot at achieving it.

At the same time, the Gods usually work through mortal agencies, with all their shortcomings and flaws and inadequacies. PC interactions with those agencies are at a far more prosaic and mundane level. Church politics and greed and practicalities and compromises and relations with civil authorities and errors of judgement, all come into the picture – and a much darker, seamier and seedier picture it is, as a result. Gods may or may not have feet of clay; their clergies definitely do.

Around The Periphery

At least, this is the approach that we have taken when describing a Divine figure that is central to the game materials. As a member of a pantheon, no such Deity exists in isolation; to provide context, it became necessary to offer at least thumbnail abbreviations of some of the other members of the Pantheon, and describe the relationship between them and Cyrene. Also, and quite seperately, we described the relationships between the priests of Cyrene and those of other faiths, because these can quite often be completely different to the relationships between the deities.

Deities in future Legacies products

It is our intention – but not necessarily our commitment – to detail at least one additional member of the Pantheon in each new Legacies product. Slated (at this point) to appear in detail in Legacies #2 are both Pellina, the Goddess of Mercy, and an as-yet unnamed God Of War.

As the series proceeds and expands – for however long it does – these will form pieces of a Jigsaw representing the complete Pantheon and its place within the Legacies cosmology.

When that is mostly complete, we may or may not (depending on demand, amongst other things) put out a compilation ebook excerpting each Deity and filling out their rosters with new material – descriptions of temples, temple practices, and the like. (Let us know if you would be interested in such a product, if and when it becomes a viable proposition).

Next Week: Cyrene Revealed

Intro

Rather than present another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet, I thought that today I would take the time to extract a few valuable lessons from the experience of writing it. Several reasons commend themselves for doing so:

• first, there are some ideas there that we would be happy to see adopted by our peers in the industry;
• second, it gives a different segment of our readership something of value;
• third, it opens a window of insight into the content (and might lay to rest the concerns some people have concerning that content);
• and finally, many of these lessons – if not all of them – are applicable to campaign creation and administration.

Did I say a few? I’ve actually come up with a list of eighteen… which means that I won’t have time to look at any of them in great depth in this one article. Never mind, that just increases the likelihood that there will be something of value to everyone in the pages to follow….

1: Inspiration is where you find it

Every major project has its launching point of inspiration, but that is rarely enough to sustain anything large all the way to completion. For AA, it was the map of the Assassin’s Lair by Michael Tumey. The plan at this point was to provide a key / adventure skeleton to accompany that map, plus a collection of advice to the GM about how to handle Assassin NPCs.

Phase II of the development of AA drew its inspiration from the context with which we surrounded those elements, especially the new Pantheon and associated Cosmology and Theology, and was initially aimed at providing something of value to both players and GMs alike. From a book about generic Assassins in d20 Fantasy, this was where we started putting a unique and original spin on proposed content. In addition to generating substantial new content, and completely usurping some of the intended content already scheduled to appear (like the map key / adventure skeleton), this required us to revise what we had already done; but instead of replacing what we had done, we quickly decided to supplement it instead.

Phase III drew inspiration from the bigger picture. Was this going to be first of a series of works? How were they to be connected? What was the bigger picture going to be? By now, regular readers will know that the answer decreed to the first question is “Yes”; and the second is a new category of Magic Items called Legacy Items. AA contains a system for generating new examples and a number of fully-worked samples. Beyond that was the whole concept of “Legacies” – leftovers from the past that have an impact on the modern game world. This concept went through at least a dozen radical revisions before arriving at its current form; integration with AA took place prior to that final form, so this is very strongly an add-on to the book except in terms of the general principle of “Legacies from the past”.

The results are the 277-page monster we’ve entitled Assassin’s Amulet.

One point of inspiration wasn’t enough, we would have run out of steam long before we came anywhere close to the current page count; but three in succession got the job done.

2: Big Picture before detailed portraits

There were a number of occasions during the writing where we found that we had to junk something we had been working on and redo it virtually from scratch, simply because we were deciding the “big picture” after we had done the detailed work. There were times each of us lost track of where we were in the project as a result of this factor alone; writing to a concept that had been rendered out-of-date by big-picture ingredients.

This is a mistake that a lot of GMs make in their campaign creation process as well. This mistake kept biting us on the tail throughout the development of AA; each of the three phases of product development described above was characterised by a bigger picture or context being created and applied retroactively, and revisions and backtracking. Some components of the e-book became so muddled and muddied that it was necessary to lay them in front of a third party who could wring some coherence from them.

That won’t happen next time; we have already decided on the grand plan, and the bigger picture, and how the content ingredients will fit into the resulting context. We expect this alone to save us at least 3 months of writing time – the literary equivalent of prep time.

3: Have a plan to follow

The content list for AA just sort of grew on its own. Each of us was throwing every idea we had into the pot, willy-nilly. No structure, no plan. It was only when we got it organised into a plan that we knew who was writing what and how it was all going to fit together.

4: Have deadlines

We’ve had deadlines for every activity we’ve undertaken in the development of AA. Sometimes, the mere fact of an imminent deadline prompts creativity that you didn’t know was there! Deadlines keep you from wasting time on irrelevancies, focussing your attention on what needs to be done most urgently at the minute. They also encourage concision. These are acknowledged benefits when it comes to any project and AA has taken full and shameless advantage of them during its genesis.

5: Be willing to break them

At the same time, it must be admitted that AA has never yet managed to meet a single one of its deadlines. There was always a good reason for each violation, and AA is bigger and better than it would otherwise have been as a result. You should always be willing to violate a deadline if the result will be a measurably better outcome for whatever project you are undertaking.

This point, and the one that preceded it, definitely apply to game prep in general. I have a deadline of 8 PM (sometimes 10 or 11 PM if I know there’s a lot to do) the night before we are to play. By writing to that schedule, even if I miss the deadline, it’s usually only by an hour or so. As a result, only rarely do I find myself still plugging away at 3AM or 5AM on the morning of play. But I always make allowances for the possibility that I might have to do so.

6: Contingencies are never wasted

It’s a waste of time having deadlines if you don’t have a prepared plan of action for coping with a failure to meet them. This necessitates an intelligent analysis of the requirements that have to be met in order to achieve a deadline; arbitrary limits produce arbitrary outcomes. The absence of such a plan means that more time must be wasted in formulating one at the worst possible time, ie when the deadline is violated, then communicating it to everyone else involved, then putting it into motion.

The deadline for the first draft of a post-production AA manuscript, with layout, fonts, and artwork in place, was the Friday before last (my time); there was a plan in place for delivering most of the content using dummy graphics if that deadline was exceeded. As a result, a first draft was delivered within 24 hours of the deadline with 75% of the completed product’s functionality in place. The deadline for a second draft was last Friday; immediately that deadline passed, a contingency plan that had been formulated in advance came into effect. As a result, within 48 hours, I expect to deliver a second draft that will contain more 75% of the work that wasn’t done for the second draft.

The third and final draft is due on the Friday coming, and even though I have missed the deadline for the second draft, there was sufficient slack built into the schedule that it is STILL on schedule. And even if it is missed, we have an extra 48 hours up our sleeves – which can be stretched to 72 in a pinch. And, if even that is insufficient, we have an alternative marketing schedule up our sleeves that will give us a whole extra week.

Readers may question the title given to this section, thinking that if I had actually met one of the deadlines, the planning that had been put in place would have been wasted; such opinions are flawed, because there is ALWAYS another project on the horizon to which the plans can be applied. If a plan isn’t used this time around – or if it is, and works – it can always be used as the foundation for a similar plan on the next undertaking. And if it is used, and doesn’t work? That lesson, too, can be applied in the future. Contingencies are insurance policies – they are never wasted.

7: Something for everyone

The best game supplements have something for everyone – players, GMs, even something that can be adapted to other game genres and campaigns. Unfortunately, not every publisher follows this recipe. Our philosophy was that ensuring AA contained something for everyone was a necessary first step to making AA value-for-money for everyone. (If anyone’s not interested in the theory of e-book pricing, they should skip to the next section at this point.)

Of course, you can never guarantee that you can achieve the ideal of value-for-money, but you can ensure that you have a fighting chance at meeting that standard for the majority of your chosen submarket. The only alternative is to slash the price so drastically that people will take a chance on buying it.

AA was conceived from the start as a premium product – we have attempted to provide $2-value-for-every-$ charged. That leaves room for some of the content not to be relevant to any given GM within our target market while still achieving the broader objective of being value-for-money.

The final, absolutely essential, step in achieving this goal is to demonstrate that value. I have seen product previews that were so limited that they served no practical purpose – being utterly dependant on material from elsewhere in the product in order to be useful as anything more than a source of inspiration. Our plan for AA mandates that whatever excerpts and previews we offer must be essentially complete, containing everything that is needed to make practical use of the offered content. The best example is the Fifty Assassin Hooks. These are an excerpt, and an edited one at that – a chosen subset of the entirety of what is offered in the game supplement, but they are still usable in and of themselves and representative of the larger whole.

8: Expect reversals of fortune

In any project, no matter how small, there is a risk of unforseen difficulties. The larger the project, the greater this risk (because it is more complex) and the more opportunity there is for these risks to manifest. Thus, the likelihood of a setback or reversal is proportional to the square of the project scope. Or more.

At some point, a critical threshold is achieved where the probability of such reversals of fortune becomes greater than unity – at least one such problem is virtually guaranteed to occur, the question then becoming, “how many of these disasters must we endure – and how can we prepare for them?”

Too many organisations of all levels have inadequate disaster recovery plans, as anyone who looks into the subject will quickly discover. Bearings Bank, Lloyds Of London, the recent Economic Meltdown, even the financial woes of certain European economies – they were all the results of a reversal of fortune for which the target’s disaster recovery preparations were inadequate.

We certainly had our fair share whilst writing AA. You’ll read about some of them in the course of this article! And, in most cases, our disaster recovery plans were barely adequate – at best. AA has taken at least 6 months longer to produce as a result; depending on how you define “disaster,” even a year can be written off as a result. And that’s not counting the three months I reported as lost a few paragraphs back.

That’s right, if everything had gone off without a hitch, AA would have been released in June-July 2010. Or sooner (and considerably smaller in size and scope). But that’s the thing with creative people: give them some more play on the leash while coping with a disaster. and you will often get back more than was required to meet the objective. As a result, you can make lemonade from lemons. As they saying goes, when it all hits the fan, there’s only one thing to do: sweep it up and sell it as fertilizer.

9: Don’t solve problems, build a system for problem-solving

As a matter of principle, in developing AA I did not try simply to solve the problems we encountered, I attempted to construct a procedure or system for solving that problem that could spit out the answers anytime it was confronted with a similar problem.

The most obvious example of doing so is the system for constructing Legacy Items. We could have simply presented the products of that system – eight items that fall somewhere between lesser Wondrous Item and Artefact/Relic (depending on your preferred usage), that start small in effect and accumulate powers as the wielder gains in levels even as they shape the mind and soul of the wielder to their own ends. Occupying 31 pages of the e-book, these examples – together with half a dozen more typical pieces of arcane equipment – would certainly have satisfied our demand for a range of new magical items in Assassin’s Amulet. But we wanted to go one step further and presented the system itself.

There are other examples I could point to, but I think the point is made.

10: More is better

There are an infinite number of solutions to the “value-for-money” goal I espoused in section 7. Even defining AA as a premium product, ie one costing more than $10, still leaves a lot of headroom.

It’s my theory (and my co-authors may not agree) that the tipping point of prices for e-books start at a (theoretical) price-per-page of US1$ at a total page count of zero, and that this price per page declines with an increasing page count in a non-linear way. Above this price, the work is no longer considered value for money; below it, and it is.

But this won’t capture every sale that’s possible; it will only put the product on an even playing field with everything else that’s competing for the customer’s dollar, or time, or whatever manner of investment you want them to make. After capturing that percentage, it is necessary to steadily discount the product to increase its competitiveness, first by 10%, then 15, 20, 25, x, and finally, 50% or more (with x being a value somewhere between 25 and 50 – some say 30%, some 40).

The more content a product contains, the more resilient its price is – in effect, you’ve already applied one of the discount brackets I’ve cited in order to generate word of mouth and an easy purchase decision. The goal is to make up in volume of sales for the reduction in profit-per-sale. By providing 5% or 10% or whatever extra content, over and above the value-for-money maximum, you effectively discount the base price that you could have asked by that amount, yielding the actual price you are charging. In the process, you also move that value for money maximum, so that the effect is actually greater than the extra content ratio.

In theory, a standard dumbbell probability curve should describe the result of sales multiplied by profits-per-save; there will be an optimum point at which further reduction will not increase profitability. It should only take a quick glance at the graph above to see that the maximum profitability is exactly midway between the maximum price you could have asked and the minimum price (usually zero or virtually so).

That was the line of thought that led to the goal of $2-value-for-every-$-charged.

Of course, reality is more complicated. For one thing, “value for money” is actually a perceived value, not an actual one. There are other factors that pull or push that midpoint up or down – publicity, reviews, award nominations and wins, reputation, and a whole heap of other variables. But one of the biggest ones is the first one.

You have to assume that not everything that you include is going to be valuable to every reader. The “perceived value” will almost always be lower than the theoretical value by some unknowable and variable percentage. It follows that the more value-for-money you can build into a product, the more likely you are to push the perceived value beyond the asking price, even after that discounting takes place.

Bottom line: the more content you can include for any given price, the better your sales are going to be, and the longer you can wait without discounting the asking price. You can never include too much content.

Here’s another way to look at the question: How many 1-4 page PDFs could you create from the master document at 25-50 cents per page? An average of page-count / 2.5 – but some of that space would be taken up with overhead: logos, legal, and so on, so the actual number could be as much as 40% higher. If your actual price is less than or equal to (page-count x 1.4 / 2.5) x $0.50, you should be somewhere at or below the critical price threshold . The further below that calculated maximum price you are, the greater the allowance for perceived value and other such variables.

Assassin’s Amulet weighs in at 277 pages – a theoretical maximum value using the small PDF model of $77.56. It’s actually higher because there is reinforcement of value due to commonality of theme. Half that gives a price point that should be somewhere in the vicinity of the maximum profitability – $38.78. The lower you drop the actual asking price relative to that total, the more of your content a reader can find valueless to them without impacting the perceived value-for-money of your product.

Of course, we’re talking actual content, not filler, and that requires an act of creativity on the part of the authors. For that reason, we listed every subject related to Assassins and Assassination that we could think of and then set about writing one or more articles on each of them. In every way, we tried to exceed requirements. When all is said and done, almost half of Assassin’s Amulet is such bonus content relative to the theoretical price point calculated in the previous paragraph..

11: Core values give a creation heart

At the start of this article, I described the first phase of development of Assassin’s Amulet. The results were scattered, with no unifying theme, just a subject in common, until we entered phase II. With the creation of the Goddess Cyrene and the definition of her relationship with the Assassins, and the resulting redefinition of the Assassins (I’m being careful to avoid revealing any plot twists!), there was suddenly a context into which all the content could be placed. From a scattered collection of disparate articles, there was unity.

12: Buzz, Promote, Market

We developed a three-stage marketing plan for Assassin’s Amulet. Step one was to generate buzz about the product with blog posts of excerpts and other word-of-mouth-generating activities. Unfortunately, circumstances have left Johnn & I with too much to do just to get the product out the door to have implemented everything we wanted to do. The cover contest wasn’t originally part of the plan but was incredibly successful in this phase – so much so that we may well run other contests in the future when we have a Legacies product about to hit the digital shelves.

Stage two will be a limited public release and the generation of a number of free extras, as well as the creation of one or more sample PDFs and a few other activities to ramp up the excitement prior to the general release.

Stage three will start with the general release and will be designed to further boost public awareness. We might also be able to increase the number of formats in which Assassin’s Amulet is available – Johnn is keen on a Kindle version, and I would like to get AA hooked up for print-on-demand. How far we go in this phase depends on sales.

13: Modular thinking

A logical consequence of the notion that not everything in AA will be valuable to every GM is the corollary that GMs will want to cherry-pick what AA-content they integrate into the campaign. This can often be a nightmare because slices of an e-book (or printed game supplement) are mutually dependant, so tightly integrated that it can be difficult extracting just the pieces that you want to use.

We wanted the integration without the difficulty of extricating.

The stylistic and structural changes that had to be made in order to achieve this, which we dubbed “Modular Thinking”, proved to be far more straightforward than we expected. We had dedicated an entire chapter to the subject of integrating the different elements of Assassin’s Amulet in an existing campaign in a piecemeal fashion, with the intention of contributing to it with every section of content as it was completed; we ended up needing two pages. The rest was achieved by compartmentalising and structuring content as we went. The only reason it remains a chapter in its own right is as a reflection of the importance we attached to the subject.

It was so effortless, in fact, that it astonishes us that more publishers don’t make it a priority; we can only assume that their assessment of the difficulty mirrors our own initial expectations and not reality.

Assassin’s Amulet is seamlessly modular; everything within it can be included, or excluded, by the referee as he or she sees fit.

14: Identify problems, devise and present solutions, then analyse for common threads

A major effort went into brainstorming the problems that GMs experience when running Assassins, either as PCs integrated with the rest of the adventuring party, or as NPCs (the more common situation to be encountered), then devising solutions and advice to cover those problems.

Problems were identified at a metagame level, at the Player level, at the Campaign level, at the encounter level, at an organisational level, at a social level, even at a theological level. In each of these cases, we had to confront assumptions that we had made, and that other authors addressing the subject had made in the past. Through such analysis, we learned that the problems were not inherent in the class per se, but were all connected to the integration of the class and its corresponding social and organisational structure with the rest of the game world.

Even if the more traditional approaches to the concept of Assassins that we had held in Phase I of the writing of Assassin’s Amulet are retained by the GM, the problems involved have been identified and resolved for the GM – making it possible to employ the class without the problems that usually corrode verisimilitude.

While it would be going too far to characterise this content as ‘easy’ to create, this was – ultimately – a simple and straightforward task compared to the problems that we expect to encounter with Legacies #2, where fundamental questions and assumptions of morality and chivalric behaviour and alignment will be squarely at the forefront. We expect the work on the problems with Assassins to prove itself a valuable warm-up when the time comes!

15: Work both sides of the moral straightjacket

Assassins are inherently evil, aren’t they? What about ‘honourable hatchet men’? And exactly what is “evil” anyway? These are just some of the moral “background” issues and assumptions referred to in the previous section that we had to confront in writing Assassin’s Amulet. Rather than burying them and hoping these difficult questions would go away if we ignored them assiduously enough, we chose to confront them head-on, deliberately moving beyond these traditional interpretations of the role of the Class. In this case, we looked at what happens when you answer that first question (“inherently evil”) with Yes, with No, with Maybe, and with Sometimes.

And, as usually happens, we found that simplistic preconceptions conflict with complex and realistic characterisation and character behaviour. Deliberately working both sides of the moral straightjacket and challenging our assumptions proved to be liberating, as it almost always is.

16; Don’t be afraid of scope

One of the most fundamental transformations in AA, from its initial vision to the final product, is the scale and scope of the product. When we started we were looking at one band of Assassins, possibly atypical, in isolation, with the intent of providing the GM with everything needed to handle that one isolated group. This is not unusual, in fact it’s typical of such game products throughout the industry.

With every step toward satisfying that brief in full, the scope of the work we had undertaken grew. If there is a fundamental difference between AA and everything else on the market, it is the depth and scope with which we have attacked the subject.

Sure, it’s more work – but it lets you really get your teeth into the subject, achieving insights and verisimilitude that simply can’t be bought with a more superficial approach. We don’t want to tell other publishers out there how to do their jobs, but we hope that the willingness to enlarge the scope of a project, as opportunity presents, will serve as a positive example to others.

That’s not to say that AA contains everything it possibly could – it doesn’t. It holds everything needed to cover the principle subject, and anything at the immediate periphery of that subject; it rarely treads beyond that limit. The idea is that each Legacies product will do the same, slowly building up a mutually-consistent jigsaw of background content. This is scope in a different direction, and we wish we saw it more often – if it is presented in a modular, a-la-carte fashion.

In other words, not only is AA bigger than we expected it to be, it is but a part of a still larger structure that will span multiple products and game aids. How many? That depends on sales, to be honest. But that scope also carries a corresponding responsibility, which demands a commitment from us as the authors, so here it is:

We give you our word of honour, here and now, that you will NEVER be asked to buy a second product in order to use something you have bought from us.

The idea is that customers who have purchased AA will gain access to an added layer of value when they purchase a subsequent Legacies product, not that they will be forced to buy AA in order to use Legacies #2. We would rather give away any essential content for free, or duplicate it in Legacies #2. Each piece of the jigsaw will be self-contained.

17; Tools must be reliable, everything else is negotiable

When we started working on AA, we needed a platform through which to collate, coordinate, and discuss our efforts and ideas. We started by using a platform called ClockingIT, which not only contained all the functionality that we thought we needed but some extra bells and whistles that proved extraordinarily useful. It was the price (free) and the functionality that had led us to this choice.

The only problem was that it was intermittently unreliable, and this period of the development was characterised by a steadily-rising level of frustration. Eventually, this reached the point where we bit the bullet and migrated the entire project, and every word that had been written about it, to Google Docs. This lacked some of the essential functionality, and some of the bells and whistles that we had started to exploit; but it worked reliably, and that was more important.

That migration took weeks – two or three months, in fact, plus time spent getting through the learning curve of mastering the operations of the new platform. One of the things we had liked about ClockingIT was that it was so instinctive to operate that there was virtually no learning curve. I took advantage of the necessity to organise and structure the work that had already been done, which proved very helpful in the end, so it was not wasted effort by any means – but it was several months during which development came to a standstill.

Let’s be clear about this: For my money, ClockingIT was the better platform, but Google Docs was the more reliable. If we could have hung around until ClockingIT solved their problems, we would have done so. There were two hard lessons for us in the migration: (1), Organisation pays for itself in reduced development time in the long run, so don’t put it off, do it first! – and (2), Tools must be reliable, everything else is negotiable.

18. Standard Content, Custom Content

When migrating our development work to Google Docs, I took the opportunity to organise it into two categories: content types that would appear in subsequent Legacies products (if any – we had not committed ourselves to anything beyond AA at that point), and content that was exclusive to the subject of Assassins and to AA.

For example, the offering of Plot Hooks is something that we expect to repeat in each and every Legacies product. “How to terrify your opponents with Assassins” is not going to have any equivalent in Legacies #2; instead there will be something else in the content list that is exclusively relevant to the subject of that product, just as “terrify with Assassins” is relevant to AA.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned

Whew! The end at last!

There are lessons for us as producers of game products in the 18 points above that we have learned the hard way, and lessons that we discovered because we went out looking for them. There are lessons that are applicable to other producers of RPG supplements, some positive suggestions and some cautionary tales. Most of these topics are at least loosely analogous to campaign development lessons that can be learned. Every d20 campaign has some “standard content” and some “custom content”, for example – questions that have to be resolved each and every time a new campaign is started.

Hopefully, the preceding has given you some insight into the development and content of AA and whetted your appetite for the actual content. Or at the very least, offered some solutions to problems you didn’t know you had.

And now, back to work…

Our Biggest Contest Ever?

I want to take a moment to thank everyone who participated. Unless I am misremembering, this is our biggest contest ever with 102 entries – if not, it’s certainly right up there.

The Results

After tabulating all the votes, including the preferances of Johnn and myself, Cover #6 has won the day, but it was tight going. It would repeatedly pull out a lead only to see #5 skulls, claw its way back to somewhere close to even terms; but ultimately #6 (Streets) was in the lead throughout.

Ultimately, it recieved a total of 49 votes. Skulls, the runner up, received 31; Orb (which Johnn and I ranked didn’t expect to rate at all) managed a respectable, but distant 14 votes; Dagger got 7, Blue 5, and Curtains – alas! only 1.

Things become more interesting when those who nominated a second choice are counted. Streets was – literally – streets ahead in this area, polling a massive 23 votes, while skulls received 7, orb 3, Dagger 2, Curtains 1 – and this time it was Blue that brought up the rear managing not a single vote.

A significant number of people thought that Streets worked better as the back cover than the front (something I personally agree with), and I think that is reflected in those numbers. We always intended to use the second most popular image on the back cover, and that will work, too.

And The Winner Is…. (drumroll please!)

The Inventor!
Congratulations! As soon as AA is ready to be served up with the public, we’ll make arrangements for you to download your free copy.

Following the comments and feedback recieved in the course of the contest, what is presented below is a slightly tweaked version of the winning cover. This is how it will appear when Assassin’s Amulet goes on sale in a few all-too-short (from our point of view) weeks!

Here’s another excerpt from Assassin’s Amulet while you’re all waiting for the announcement of the winner of the cover contest. This is taken from the GM Advice chapter and first appeared in this week’s Roleplaying Tips.

Many GMs struggle with running killer NPCs. One big goal of the book is to arm you with enough actionable advice that you’ll scare the crap out of your players if they ever catch wind of an NPC assassin ever again.

Part of this GM training involves learning some general principles of engagement when running assassins.

We hope you find this advice useful.

Chief caveat for assassins in combat situations: avoid combat if possible.

The most favorable combat situations involve fighting with allies. However, assassins tend to work alone, which causes tactical problems.

In all the tactics below, hit-and-run is the only reliable method to combine with any combat tactic. Using an assassin’s amulet in combination as a means of escape makes this even more reliable.

1.Maximize Sneak Attack Opportunities

Sneak attack is the best option for assassins in combat. Do anything you can to give NPC assassins this opportunity so they can cause damage while trying to get away.

It is difficult, though not impossible, to flank an opponent without an ally – anything that removes an opponent’s Dexterity bonus or causes him to become flat-footed will grant such an opportunity.

Feint/Improved Feint: using the feint option of the Bluff skill, the assassin spends his first round trying to cause the opponent to be off-balance or otherwise unready.

This denies the opponent his Dexterity bonus to his Armor Class on the assassin’s next attack, giving the killer a sneak attack.

This tactic provokes an attack of opportunity, so use it carefully. Give the assassin the Improved Feint feat when it becomes available.

Foes defeat this tactic using Sense Motive, if they have that skill, or a raw check aided by their Wisdom modifier.

Therefore, an assassin should scout out foes to determine their ability to sense others’ motives or see through such tricks as feinting.

The killer must know in advance if a foe can defeat feint. This saves the assassin a full round of futility plus exposure to a potential attack of opportunity.

Invisibility: except for class dipping with caster levels, which is not recommended, becoming invisible means using a magic item and the Use Magic Device skill.

An invisible assassin initiating combat denies their opponent a Dexterity bonus to that attack, and so the foe must suffer a sneak attack.

Blindness: like invisibility, if the opponent is blind, the assassin is effectively invisible (see above).

Possessing the feat chain Critical Focus and Blinding Critical is helpful, though unreliable, as the NPC must engage in at least one round of combat with no advantages, and he must succeed on a critical hit, which can never be counted on.

Eggshell grenades-pepper (from Oriental Adventures) are a mundane device that require use as a thrown weapon. With a successful hit affecting a five-foot area, the opponent is blind, though he gets a save to avoid the circumstance. Any magic item that causes blindness will also do this.

2. Single Striking

A one-shot kill relies on high Strength combined with Power Attack and using a two-handed weapon, granting half-again Strength bonus on attacks. Unfortunately, Strength is generally a tertiary stat for assassins, following Dexterity and Intelligence.

Focus on causing as much damage as possible with a single attack using magic, magic items and equipment to eke out all the extra damage you can.

Enhance this tactic with Dodge, Mobility and Spring Attack, as well as the vital strike feat chain. While this is feat intensive and takes away valuable feat slots to make an effective assassin combatant, the three feats mentioned allow him to strike without attacks of opportunity, so offer better survivability.

Having the Quick Draw feat also gets the weapon in hand quickly. Combine this with sneak attack and this could be a one-shot kill.

3. Two Weapon Fighting

Using two weapons in combat means more opportunities for sneak attack. The assassin should possess the Weapon Finesse feat to rely on the character’s Dexterity instead of Strength. While effective, this combat tactic does not cause as much damage as the single strike tactic, though it uses far fewer feat slots for combat.

4. Sniping Using Ranged Weapons

If the assassin can prepare to choose a hidden spot to attack from this can be an effective combat tactic. However, it requires time unseen to prepare such an opportunity.

The assassin must hide, shoot at their target, and then move to another location to repeat the process. The assassin must be skilled with ranged weapons and will spend his combat feat slots doing so.

This tactic does not accommodate being caught unawares and forced into melee, so the two previous combat tactics are more reliable.

Take the Arcane Trickster prestige class instead of Assassin so ranged sneak attack is possible to make this a more viable combat tactic.

5. Using Traps

Indirect combat offers a usable strategy, but also requires some time in preparation prior to engaging in combat. Simple is sometimes most effective.

For example, tossing caltrops in areas of expected movement for oncoming combatants or use of tanglefoot bags.

Consider allowing assassins to use portable traps either mundane or arcane, where the assassin can arm, disarm, move and rearm such a device in a move-and-wait or move-and-run-away tactic.

Always consider poisoning any blade, ranged weapon or traps to improve damage and escape chances, as well.

Bonus! Extra tactic not included in the e-book!

Assassins are at their best and most dangerous when dealing with their opponants one-on-one, under circumstances of their choosing. 90% of their planning and tactics should be aimed at achieving this goal.

That means manipulating the target to get them to a specific time and place of the Assassin’s Choosing.

It means having misdirections and tactics in place to distract and remove others – especially bodyguards and other such companions – from the scene.

The obvious approaches are some manner of implied or third-party threat, and espionage directed at the target.

Implied/Third-Party Threats

A cutpurse snatches the target’s coin pouch just clumsily enough to be noticed – obviously, the bodyguards/flunkies/companions will give chase. A couple of drunken thugs take exception to the target without good reason. A mysterious bang and flash of light erupts from around the corner. A disguised fellow assassin throws a dagger – rather obviously – at one of the bodyguards and runs off (it’s good to be in a Guild!).

Often, the bodyguards will be less protected than the target. It might not be possible to poison the target due to his paranoic use of food tasters – but poisoning the bodyguards might not be so difficult. Since assassins will kill someone they are not contracted to terminate only if forced to, this should be some non-lethal poison – but bodyguards who are busy throwing up or running to the nearest rest-room (or equivalent) are not protecting their assignment.

Divert the bodyguards and hangers-on, and the road to the target is open.

Espionage Directed At The Target

Knowing the personal habits of the target will frequently reveal times and places where the intended victim voluntarily seperates himself from his protection. Few will keep their bodyguards in the room when liasing with their mistress or lover. Fewer still will have these companions in the toilet with them when doing the necessary, or in the bathhouse when bathing.

Patience is a virtue, but it’s also an essential tactic for the successful assassin to master.

For anyone who came to this article directly, you should check out our other previews of Assassin’s Amulet:

50 Assassin Hooks Assassins make awesome NPCs. Thing is, they often have paper-thin character development and cliched plots. Fix this problem right now by giving your next assassin one of these tasty hooks.

How to Roleplay Assassins Assassins should be compelling in every encounter in which they appear. This excerpt describes how to run assassins as compelling characters to roleplay and deadly adversaries to fight.

And don’t forget to !

An edited excerpt from the upcoming book for game masters, Assassin’s Amulet.

Assassins make awesome NPCs. Thing is, they often have paper-thin character development. Well, you can fix this right now. Start by giving your next assassin one of the tasty hooks below.

Some hooks concern motives, others personality traits, and others situations or objectives. Use your chosen or randomly selected hook as a starting place to help you run a deeper NPC.

Be sure to combo your hook with these assassin roleplaying tips.

Below are but a few of the hooks we created for Assassin’s Amulet. There are over 125 hooks in the book, but we can only reveal some of them here because of spoilers (and we even had to edit several of these 50 to make them safe for public consumption).

We don’t want to ruin the cool twists and turns we’ll arm you with to surprise and shock your players.

Assassin Hooks

1. An assassin takes on contracts but always tries to find a way to save the victim.
2. This assassin founded a suicide cult involving family and friends but could not go through with his own death, and as the sole survivor, his twisted spirit now seeks solace in the killing of others.
3. Deeply in debt, an assassin struggles to earn enough from killing to fund his paradise getaway and retire.
4. By day, this assassin is a timid scribe; at night, wielding his intelligent sword Black Razor, he kills without mercy.
5. At three feet tall, nobody suspects this jester of being the infamous Nightstalker.
6. The assassin’s day job is as the commander of the day shift of the city watch.
7. An assassin delivers fresh milk daily to the homes of the wealthy, enabling him to monitor the health and activities of those who can afford to flout the law.
8. A member of the watch paid to have a romantic rival eliminated, but he short-changed the payment. Now the assassins must punish the cheater without arousing the wrath of the watch.
9. An arrogant noble has cheated the guild and thinks he has gotten away with it by becoming a vampire and surrounding his castle with dangerous creatures. To reach him, the assassins will pose as porters for a party of adventurers (the PCs) hired by a third party (actually the assassins) to rid the land of the threat posed by the vampire and his pets.
10. A mage who has dabbled in dark powers seeks to avoid paying his debt to a devil, which is disguised as a lay preacher, by sending the assassins’ guild after him.
11. An assassin has travelled from a far land to sell a rare gem, the payment for his last commission, only to discover it is a fake. Without funds, he must start building his reputation all over again, in a land where (as a foreigner) he is already a subject of suspicion.
12. An assassination is paid for with a magic item, but the command word given seems to be wrong. The assassin has to get the (very recognizable) item identified without revealing his identity.
13. The most famous bard of the realm receives an unexpected commission to compose music to honor a particular baker, and becomes suspicious when the baker’s income far outstrips his profits from selling bread.
14. A consignment of rare spices is purchased by a secretive party (the assassins’ guild) from afar; the PCs are hired to guard the shipment.
15. Noble sons who frequently relax at the highest-priced brothel in the city are surprised when a mason and candlemaker become regular patrons of the establishment.
16. The King’s pastry chef is renowned as the best cook in the kingdom, and regularly receives commissions to cater feasts for minor nobles and wealthy merchants on the side. However, he has never been asked to bake a cake with black icing before….
17. A glutton is furious when a rival outbids him for a consignment of rare Green Dragon Pate, and hires the Hands to punish the rival and retrieve the rare food.
18. The Count’s son is tired of waiting to inherit his father’s estate. The father suspects his son’s plans and hires the Hands to stop him.
19. A Baron has many children, all of them spoilt rotten. He hires the Hands to try to kill them, one by one—they will prove themselves worthy by surviving.
20. The Captain of the City Watch is a semi-retired adventurer who fears losing his edge, so he hires the Hands to stage a series of mock assassinations. One of his lieutenants wants a promotion and has paid the guild to make these attempts more real than the Captain is expecting.
21. A wealthy merchant’s business is under threat from a new trading consortium. He hires the Hands to disrupt the trading consortium.
22. A collector of art hires the Hands to assassinate the painters of several of his pieces to increase their value.
23. The Captain of the Guard is pressing for permission to launch an official search for the rumored assassins. He secretly desires to destroy the proof that he paid to have his first wife assassinated. The Hands might leak the information to discredit him, but the contract was organized through a third party, so they do not know what they have and are puzzled by his motives.
24. A somewhat paranoid assassin out to enhance his reputation hires the PCs to scout the defenses of his next target. He poses as a member of the target’s household concerned for his safety.
25. An assassin’s wife is discovered having an affair. Distraught, he performs an unsanctioned kill, before fleeing, disguised as a guide or porter working for the PCs, and is now hotly pursued by the Hands….
26. The merchant who supplies the hidden assassins with additional foodstuffs on the side contracts the guild to watch over his son, who is a hotheaded lothario, certain to end up in a duel and get himself killed without protection. The guild assigns several of their members to watch over him and intervene as necessary, but one of the assassins falls head over heels for the amorous son.
27. An assassin’s daughter, whom he loves dearly, is kidnapped by someone who then forces him to divulge guild secrets and kill on their behalf. Knowing he cannot turn to the guild for help because he has betrayed them, he hires the PCs to rescue his daughter and kill the kidnapper to protect the guild secrets he has divulged. Unknown to him, the daughter gave him up to the enemy in the first place in a bid to attempt to force him into an honorable line of work, and the kidnapping is a sham. She does not know her naivety is now being exploited by someone she trusts and confided in.
28. The enemy took his girl and he doggedly pursues her while working for a secret organization of killers.
29. Thieves’ guilds and assassins guilds frequently make uncomfortable bedfellows, sharing information sources and hidden paths through the city—the sewers and rooftops. Eventually, one of the two tries to take exclusive control of these vital resources, and an underground war breaks out.
30. The wife of a guild victim becomes an amateur assassin herself and begins staging a series of murders to raise public outcry against the guild.
31. The half-crazed partner of a victim of the Hands was made penniless years ago when the trade coalition put together by the victim collapsed in the wake of his death, and was left to rebuild his fortune in a foreign land. Now armed with wealth, exotic powers and abilities, and a completely new identity and appearance, he has returned. His mission is threefold: to expose the Hands, discover who commissioned the contract on the victim, and kill them and their families in revenge.
32. The 10th anniversary of the Guildmaster’s achievement of his rank approaches, and the members of the guild have begun shopping for appropriate gifts and planning a social gathering.
33. It has become traditional for the guild to gather for a celebration following the completion of a contract in a certain inn in the city. Unknown to them, their most recent victim turned the tables on his would-be killer and used magic to take his identity. The PCs just happen to be staying at the same inn as the (private) celebration gets underway….
34. The assassin was the King’s champion until a setup caused his downfall; now he seeks vengeance against his foes. Note: this hook can be interpreted either as a member of the Hands with a preference for certain types of target, or as an assassin who is saving what the Hands pay him until he can purchase contracts of his own against his enemies. If the latter, it should manifest as a subplot while the assassin is gathering funds, and the main plot should be the carnage he has purchased.
35. The King’s men killed his parents, and after years of training, the assassin is finally ready to exact revenge, but the King and his family are now more powerful than ever.
36. He founded a death cult but was converted by a paladin, so now an assassin targets the cult at every opportunity. Note: this implies that Cyrene also has an order of paladins in her service for more public activities. You should think carefully about how these paladins will interact with the Hands of Cyrene before employing this hook.
37. The assassin cuts an ear off every victim and keeps them at home to remind himself he will one day find and slay the torturer who sliced off both his ears years ago.
38. On a recent mission everything that could go wrong, did, and a relative nobody did not merely thwart the assassins, he humiliated them, without even noticing that anything was taking place. Now the assassins want to reclaim their pride and dignity by targeting the nobody, who has taken to hanging around a group of adventurers (the PCs).
39. Dovan the Sage, aka The Beloved of Dragons, was paid to lie to the guild to protect one of his customers from assassination. Dovan the Sage is now a dead man walking. However, his nickname is a bit of a worry….
40. The PCs encounter a skilled but young street urchin and pickpocket. A little later, they see an older man hand the child a small pouch of coins and lead the boy away, hand-in-hand. However, this is not what it might seem to a modern audience: the older man is an assassin, and the young boy is going to be the guild’s newest recruit. Will the morals of the PCs lead to a confrontation with the bringers of death? Alternatively, if they do nothing and later encounter the young assassin on the job, will they blame themselves for what he has become?
41. A freight hand at the docks is a slow-witted but strong brawler. When a fight breaks out between a stranger and another dockworker, he intervenes in what quickly becomes a general melee that draws in all those nearby (including the PCs). In gratitude, the man—secretly a member of the assassins’ guild—takes the freight hand into the guild.
42. Still an apprentice to the world’s greatest assassin, a trainee secretly takes small contracts to pay for extra equipment, special herbs and magic.
43. Thinking they are chasing a would-be thief, the PCs become embroiled in a race across the rooftops as assassins are trained to navigate the city this way.
44. A poisoned trainee assassin must follow a series of clues to decipher the name of the antidote he needs before it is too late. He inadvertently involves the PCs in his desperate search when he mistakes one of them for the next link in the chain.
45. After an especially messy public assassination, the guild needs a fall guy. They choose a member of their order who is suspected of taking commissions on the side. They manufacture evidence of his being the lone assassin and arrange to have it fall into the hands of the PCs. The difficult part will be ensuring he can never reveal the secrets of the guild, so another guild member poses as a long-lost relative of the deceased who is obsessed with revenge (and who can take out the fall guy at an opportune time).
46. The assassin slew the previous Guildmaster but could not hold power and now hides from his enemies and former allies; he only takes work after thoroughly investigating clients for fear of a trap.
47. A mercenary at heart, this assassin is willing to accept higher payments from victims to return and slay the one who placed the original contract; he is happy to bounce back and forth several times until somebody gets killed at the end of his bidding war.
48. The assassin specializes in sending a message with his killings according to his employer’s wishes, but secretly he is a frustrated and underappreciated poet who cannot make a full-time income from his books.
49. A drug addict, and dulled because of it, an unskilled assassin feeds his need by taking on work from clients too poor to pay killers that are more competent.
50. A famous bard, and friend to the PCs, is known to possess a Hat of Disguise, which he uses in his role as the greatest stage actor in the kingdom. An assassin has decided he needs that hat to fulfill a difficult contract, but the bard will not give it up willingly.

Did you hear about the cover contest? Hurry up if not because it ends Thursday. Tell us which cover you want most for Assassin’s Amulet for a chance to win a copy of this awesome book. Enter now.

Assassins should be compelling NPCs in every encounter in which they appear. This article, an excerpt from the forthcoming Assassin’s Amulet, describes how to run Assassins as compelling characters to roleplay and deadly adversaries to fight. And don’t forget to vote for the cover!

Step 1: Pick an Archetype or Example

Creating an assassin NPC personality becomes a lot easier if you have a character concept already in mind. This provides a framework to which you can just add flesh. To mask your inspiration so players will not recognize it, layer on a couple of differences or twists. You are welcome to build a complex NPC from scratch, but if in a hurry, pick a character from a book or movie to model.

Quick archetypes to mimic: James Bond, Drizzt, Chuck (from the TV show), Rorshack (from the Watchmen), Batman.

Even people you know might make excellent candidates. Consider your neighbors, relatives, co-workers and other people you frequently see.

Step 2: Add Personality

What makes the character interesting and different? Make a list of about five notable traits and behaviors. How do they act and talk? What seems to motivate them? What do they own? Who are their friends and why?

There are two kinds of NPC traits: normal and extreme. Extreme traits include strange quirks, bizarre attributes and rare personality disorders. You do not want to give every NPC an extreme trait, else your campaign becomes comical or bizarre. You need normal—but interesting—NPCs around so the extreme ones stand out.

If you run a single assassin in your campaign, go ahead and give the NPC an extreme trait plus a few normal ones. If you run several, such as the Hands of Cyrene guild, give a quarter of the group unique extreme traits plus normal ones, and the other half just a variety of normal traits.

Step 3: Pick an Assassination Style

This further distinguishes your NPC and set him apart from other assassins in the campaign. Some example styles:

• Rambo
• Master of disguise
• Tough gunfighter or swordsman
• Sniper
• Knife and hand-to-hand fighter
• The master poisoner
• Explosions and mayhem

Step 4: Pick a Personal Style

Form a personal style for the NPC out of the unique blend of archetype, traits and assassination style you have created for them. There are a few different approaches you can take when crafting NPCs, but for assassins you should design a distinct style for him and make his roleplay and game presence all about that style.

Another word for style is flavor. What kind of impression does the NPC give—first and last? If you can define a distinct flavor, then roleplaying the NPC will be fun, easy and memorable.

• Where does he live and how does he live? Perhaps he prefers grungy inns, or maybe he lives under an identity in luxury.
• How does he dress? Does he wear different clothes on the job versus off? If so, create a common element that reflects his style that is present regardless of how he is dressed, such as a color, a scarf, special glasses or a stubby cigar.
• How does he walk? Give him a swagger or special gait.
• What is his attitude towards others in general? Is he mean, kind, egotistical or indifferent?
• Does he have a catch phrase or special mannerism? Perhaps he salutes everyone, or says “death and taxes” in conversations like it has a special meaning.

Step 5: Create a One Sentence Style Summary

String a few adjectives together that describes him well, and perhaps mention the character he might be based on. Boil down what you have created in the first four steps into a short and compelling summary.

During the game, read the summary to get into the character’s headspace before you start roleplaying him. The one sentence summary is short enough to read quickly, which is why it is important to keep your summary down to just a few words.

In addition, the summary should be punchy and descriptive enough so you can get into character in an instant. This is why you went through the first four steps. You needed lay out a bunch of details first, to get an idea of just who this NPC is, before you distilled him down into a compelling summary.

In play, make all the NPC’s aspects mirror the style defined by the summary: methods, equipment, appearance and mannerisms. Quite often, you will improvise new features and traits as you GM. The inspirational summary will guide you so the NPC develops consistently.

• “Speed and smooth moves combined with feigned indifference, he is actually quick to judge, get offended and hold grudges.”
• “Spotless, impeccable, professional and polite, he delights in inflicting pain of any kind in others.”
• “A giggling flake and womanizer with a drink always in hand, he never leaves home without 10 knives secreted on his body ready for sober action at any time.”

Additional Traits to Consider

Training

How did the assassin acquire his skills? Was he self-taught? Did he have a mentor? Was he a member of a guild or society of assassins growing up? Perhaps he acquired the skills of killing or stealth first, before recruitment.

Each situation could leave a different imprint on the NPC’s personality. For example, a situation could make one NPC individualistic while another becomes reliant on a team structure.

Money

How does he spend his money? Where does he live? Does he make much income as an assassin? Does he need another job or income source? Does he live in poverty or affluence? It might be interesting, for example, to have the NPC dressed as a slob in tattered clothing but brandishing an expense of magical dagger in his belt.

Motivation

Why is the NPC in the business of killing? You might consider starting with the NPC’s motivation and working his other personality aspects out from there. For example:

• Career—he is good at it, he enjoys it and he wants to excel at it
• Fun—he likes the chase, the kill, the power or a bit of all three
• Psycho—his motives are irrational, perhaps stemming from a mental disease or drama experienced earlier in his life
• Fell into it—his first job was an accident; he likes the money and plans on doing it for a little while longer
• Forced into it—he has a debt to pay off, his employer is blackmailing him or perhaps he is a slave
• Does not know anything else—he is good at his job and does not think he has any other useful or marketable skills, so he is trapped into making a living this way.

Identity

A key question that will dictate much of the NPC’s behavior: does he keep his identity as an assassin a secret? James Bond, for example, rarely hides his identity; but he does not act like a killer, so he can mix with social company without fear of retribution unless he is recognized by an enemy.

Mafia hitmen do not hide their identities either, and instead build reputation and tradition so there are other options than killing to get business done.

Assassins who keep their work secret will need to create at least one alternate identity to get by with in life to do such things as shopping, romance, religious services and socializing. In most cases, this identity is different from a disguise, and gives them a way to separate work from personal time.

Create a contradiction

This is true of any compelling NPC, but an assassin has hardcoded into his profile a feature that is easy to contradict: he kills. Look for a character trait that seems at odds with this fact. Perhaps his hobby is painting, or he is a doctor or he has a young daughter he must sometimes take on the job with him.

Surround him with normal people

Add common people, real people, in encounters where you need to roleplay the assassin. Assassins must seem special, even if it is just in your mind. If everybody in the encounter is special or extreme, you lose a lot of the roleplay flavor with the assassin. Normal people help provide contrast so players can notice the roleplaying queues you make.

As an advanced technique, put the assassin as a mundane person amongst the PCs and other extreme-personality NPCs so the assassin appears to be the normal one. This creates a bit of irony, as well, which can make the scene a lot of fun to roleplay.

I’m as proud as punch to announce the forthcoming release of Assassin’s Amulet by Michael Tumey, Johnn Four, and myself. Currently weighing in at well over 200 pages (we’re still doing layout so there’s no final page count yet), this game supplement will give you everything you need to integrate assassins into an existing campaign. There’s so much content that I hardly know where to begin!

Chapter 1 contains an Assassin’s Lair that can be hidden in any urban area, maps of some locations in which assassination attempts can take place, and a number of game aids and props – some specific to AA and some that can be used generically to spice up your campaign.

Chapter 2 contains the key to the Assassin’s Lair, with advice on how to customize it each time you use it – so that the Battlemap can be reused time and time again.

Chapter 3 holds 16 articles of GM advice concerning Assassins in general, including over 100 adventure seeds, combat strategies for Assassins, and how to set a fair price for an assassination contract. In coming weeks, we’ll be excerpting some of these to preview the game supplement without giving away plot twists and other surprises.

Chapter 4 contains no less than 5 different Assassin subclasses – one core class and four prestige classes – plus a new character class suitable for use as the Arch-enemy of a band of assassins. All of these are suitable for use by PCs, regardless of party alignment. It also contains multiple NPCs, including Cyrene, the deity who stands behind the Assassins, and the pantheon to which she belongs. There is specific advice on Assassin personalities and details of the broader nation- or even continent-spanning organization that is an Assassin’s Guild. And a whole lot more, including one NPC presented at six different character levels so that he can be employed in a campaign at any point within his personal history.

Chapter 5 offers new equipment for use by Assassins, a number of new magic items, and a new category of magic item. Named Legacy Items, these are the glue that will bind AA to a number of planned sequels. There are full game mechanics for the construction of balanced Legacy Items that will grow and acquire new abilities as characters develop and gain additional character levels. This subsystem permits the generation of anything from the One Ring to the Orb Of Aldur to lesser items. Bridging the gap between Relics / Artifacts and existing Wondrous / Magic Items, these can be introduced into any campaign.

Chapter 6 is campaign oriented – how to mix and match the content provided, leaving out the parts that don’t fit an existing campaign and how to reconfigure any part of the material provided to suit your needs. This looks at the bigger picture behind the Assassins of Cyrene.

And all this is fully Pathfinder and 3.x compatible, and cover-to-cover will be Open Game Content!

Robert W Thomson of Four Winds Fantasy Gaming has graciously accepted an invitation to write a foreword for us, in the process helping us out of a scheduling jam – special thanks, Robert!

A Contest

Hopefully, all this has everyone salivating to get their teeth into Assassin’s Amulet, but there’s a problem. We have too many covers to choose from!

We want to make AA the biggest success story it can possibly be, and the cover is a vital tool in that quest. It has to stand out, arouse interest in the product, communicate something about the overall contents, and yet not give away anything that should be kept secret from players. That last factor is what scuppered our original plans!

Pick The Cover

At the end of this article, all six covers are presented for your consideration. Each has been given both a number and a name for identification. All you have to do is tell us in a comment which one you choose as the best cover for this particular product. The most popular will be the winning cover, and the second most popular will be used on the back cover. The other illustrations will be used as internal artwork, so nothing will go to waste.

The Reward

All the names who enter – whether you vote for the choice that is ultimately the most popular or not – will be placed on a list, and the winner will receive a free copy of AA when it is published – our way of saying thanks for taking the time to contribute.

Closing Date

We need to finalize the cover design next week – so the contest will close, and the winner be announced, at Midnight (Mountain Daylight Time, -0600 UTC) on Thursday Sept 22nd. That’s right, you have just 11 days to get your entry in!

The Contenders

There are six designs to choose from. Each is shown as a thumbnail below, with its name and number. These are followed by larger images showing the contender in detail.

#1: Orb	#2: Blue	#3: Dagger
#4: Curtains	#5: Skulls	#6: Streets

#1: Orb

#2: Blue

#3: Dagger

#4: Curtains

#5: Skulls

#6: Streets

The Contest Is Declared Open!

300 and other landmarks

This is our 300th post here at Campaign Mastery! Over the last couple of months we’ve seen a number of other landmarks come and go, but this is the biggest of them. While we thought about making a fuss over the others, it just didn’t seem that long ago that we were last celebrating – 150K back on February 8th. So here we are, just seven months later.

200K Visitors!

As of this writing, Campaign Mastery has had 212,982 Visits. Seven months ago, that total was just 150,466. That’s 8,930 visits a month! Our thanks to everyone who stopped in to take a look, whether or not you stuck around.

125K Unique Visitors!

Again as of right now, Campaign Mastery has had 128,637 Unique Visitors – up from 90,906 in February. 5,390 A month! But more significantly, that means that of the 212,982 Visits, Eighty-Four Thousand-odd were from repeat visitors – 84345, to be exact – or 39.6%! For the last 7 months, the difference is 24,785 out of 62,516 or 39.64% – an amazing level of consistency. It wouldn’t be possible without the readers who find something worthwhile here, week after week – we thank you all.

300K Page Views!

This figure is no less remarkable: 394,444 Page views, up from a mere 280,735 seven short months ago. That’s 113,709 in seven months, or 16,244 a month! This shows that our content – as we had hoped an intended – is overwhelmingly of an evergreen variety, still relevant months or years after we’ve offered it to the public. It’s one thing to promise that, or list it as a goal; and quite another to deliver it. And if any of our readers haven’t gone exploring in the archives, here’s an invitation to do so.

Just Around The Corner: 400K Page Views and 225K Visits and 150K Unique Visitors!

Those seven months were just 182 days long. At that rate, it won’t be very long before the next set of milestones roll around. 400K Pageviews will obviously be the first to arrive – that’s due in a mere 9 days!! 225K Visitors won’t be far behind – a mere 35 days from now, at current rates. 150K Unique Visitors is the milestone that seems most distant – just 46 days away!

Once again, we’d like to thank everyone who’s been here for any part of that 300-post run! We hope you’ll stick around, as there’s exciting news just around the corner…

If that sounds cryptic, here’s a first hint: This month’s Blog Carnival, being hosted by Johnn at Roleplaying Tips, is on the subject of Assassins…

Anniversaries and other celebrations

All this brought to mind the subject of Anniversaries and other milestones. These are something that I like to celebrate in my games when they roll around – the anniversary of the campaign is a time when my players have come to expect something special. It doesn’t always happen, but whenever I can, I do a little something special on such occasions. Nor does it always work out as planned, as I revealed when I wrote about this last in My Biggest Mistakes: Magneto’s Maze – My B.A. Felton moment.

Rather than rehash old soup, I thought it an appropriate time to discuss exactly how I go about creating such a “special” adventure. They come in three basic flavors: Returns-to-theme, Revelations, Spectaculars. Each of these is founded on one of the three attributes mentioned in the title of this article – Returns-to-theme adventures are adventures that are consistent with the campaign’s theme, fairly self-evidently, while Revelations are consistent with the Campaign’s Style, and Spectaculars are consistent with the Genre. These form a hierarchy of narrative structure elements.

As with any true hierarchy, each level is dependant on the next as you travel from summit to foundation. An adventure can be true to the genre without being true to the style of the campaign or the theme; an adventure can be true to the style, which automatically makes it true to the genre of the campaign as well, without being true to the theme; or an adventure can be true to the theme, which automatically makes it true to the other, more encompassing, levels of narrative hierarchy. Or it can be an outlier with respect to all three.

The Theme Layer

Not every campaign has a theme, but quite often even if a GM does not incorporate an overt theme, one will creep into the game anyway. Some campaigns have several themes working in coalition; a campaign without a theme always feels rudderless to me, ‘just a bunch of stuff that happens’. I always try to build a theme into my campaigns rather than letting one develop of its own accord, because a deliberate choice permits me to maximize the adventure potential of the theme. Sometimes these themes can defy easy definition, but they are always there:

• The Rings Of Time Campaign – “The converse of responsibility is authority” and “Morality is relative – but the Gods are absolute.”
• Fumanor: The Original Campaign – A post-apocalyptic fantasy as society struggles to recover from an almost-successful attempt to destroy it.
• Fumanor: One Faith – The struggles of a newly-unified Faith comprising members of multiple pantheons against the political, social, theological, and economic ramifications of that unification.
• Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire – The growing pains of a society that has grown too large and complex NOT to become an empire.
• Shards Of Divinity – The indulgence of individual liberty and the quest for unlimited freedom.
• The Adventurer’s Club – “The whole is stronger than the parts” in a larger-than-life Pulp World.
• Warcry – Destiny collides with Free Will in this time-and-space spanning Space Opera superhero campaign.
• My Original Champions Campaign – Evil believes that the end justifies the means; How far will the forces of Good go to thwart evil?
• Zenith-3: The D-Halo Campaign – If the multiverse needs pseudo-divine beings to order it, can they be trusted? Is it better to destroy the universe than be subject to the decisions of cosmic authority? What is the true cost of “Liberty Or Death?”
• Zenith-3: The D-Regency Campaign – There are a number of themes to this campaign, but it hasn’t started yet so I’m going to keep my powder dry and my surprises up my sleeve. All right, just one: How far should heroes go when confronting the ultimate evil?

A theme is an adventure subject that the campaign returns to, time and time again. Sometimes, the campaign explores multiple facets of a theme within the context of the game world that the GM is using, at other times a campaign is all about the discovery of what has been the theme all along. Themes are usually confrontational in nature because that generates a lot of plotlines, and often have a philosophic aspect, because a philosophy impacts many different aspects of life – which also generates a lot of potential plotlines.

Many adventures that a GM runs may have nothing to do with the theme, included just because they are a good story or an interesting idea or because the GM ran out of time to think of a more appropriate adventure! This can only go on for so long before it becomes necessary to re-establish the theme, and that’s where Return-to-theme adventures come in.

But, in order for these to qualify as a “special” adventure, they have to expand beyond a dramatic recapitulation of the theme, they need to heighten that theme to melodrama. If the theme is ‘liberty’ then it’s not enough for the PCs to encounter a runaway slave, they have to be temporarily deprived of their liberty or strike a significant blow against someone else’s enslavement.

The Style Layer

Some adventures don’t match a campaign’s theme but are nevertheless within the usual style of the campaign. These are either filler (no matter how excellent) or they derive a secondary connection to the theme by means of some revelation about that theme or other content of the campaign. The first anniversary of the teenaged-hero spinoff from my superhero campaign, “Project: Vanguard” contained revelations about the origins of one of the PCs (the results of collaborating with the Player), and a master plan by a mole within the team to capture all the PCs on behalf of an enemy they didn’t even know they had which succeeded – it was only by another character making the supreme sacrifice and by the skin of their teeth that the PCs got out trouble and were able to turns the tables on their captors, and even then they had to work together more closely than they had managed to date.

In many ways, this was a “coming of age” plotline for the PCs, one that meant that the entire campaign underwent a subtle paradigm shift. And that’s a key factor in any Revelation plotline that’s big enough to be a “special anniversary edition” – the campaign has to be significantly altered by it. If the “Revelation” isn’t big enough to have that effect, it’s not good enough for a “Special”. “Revelations” – even off-theme revelations – operate as Specials by changing the context within which the theme exists.

The Genre Layer

I’m not going to go into details concerning Genre; that subject was examined in detail in part one of the series on Pulp Adventures that I co-wrote earlier this year. Adventures that are within the genre but not the style or theme of a campaign are always possible. Just like Revelation plots, however, these need to be something exceptionally bigger and more dramatic than a run-of-the-mill genre adventure if they are going to qualify for a “Special”. Introducing a villain who is going to be central to the next year’s gaming, or a major plot thread – those qualify. Writing a major established villain out of the plotline also qualifies.

As the type of adventure descends the narrative hierarchy, the less of the energy and excitement and significance of an adventure stem from established campaign elements, leaving a greater shortfall for the GM to provide if the adventure is to achieve the same overall total impact. If it’s not an “anniversary special”, this doesn’t matter; this is why such adventures can be designated “filler” (no matter how good they may be), they have no long-term impact. This is no longer the case when discussing specials like “anniversary issues” or “end of season cliffhangers” or “big finishes”. That’s why these adventures have been classified as “Spectaculars”.

The Optimum Source

It follows that the material most suited to big anniversary adventures is material that is both Revelatory AND Paradigm-shifting AND thematically-linked to the overall subject matter of the campaign. Shifting as much of the Burdon of generating significance and excitement off the GM’s shoulders and onto those of the campaign itself not only avoids any suggestion of artificiality to the ‘epic adventure’, it frees the GM to concentrate on all the other aspects of his game, elevating the overall quality of the game session still further.

As a bonus, by causing the GM to touch base periodically with the Theme, Style, and Genre of the campaign, this practice reinforces those all-important aspects of the campaign, permitting the GM greater latitude at other times, confident that such divergence will be only temporary. This liberates the GM to focus on crafting the best stories and characters, regardless of whether they fit the preconceived concepts of the campaign – wherever those goals may lead.

It can take a lot of effort to craft an “anniversary special” or other exceptional adventure, but the rewards are worth that effort.

Campaign Mastery reader D.M. asks the GMs, “I am looking for some suggestions on how to deal with players who like to disagree with game calls. I play D&D 2nd edition with a large group of seven to eleven players from 16 to 60 years old. I have trouble with two players who like to disagree with my game calls. On most game nights, one of the two has to create a disruption over some rule or another. With such a large group I like to keep it moving or I end up with bored players. At the end of each game, I ask players to write down one like and one dislike they had about the game. The rules disagreements always come up in these notes as a dislike from the other players. I alternate DM with another group member and he has the same complaint with the same players. These disruptions are hurting the energy of the game, and with the increase of players I really need to find a way to deal with this. PLEASE HELP.”

Johnn’s answer:

Hi Denise, thanks very much for writing in with your question. I am going to focus on the rules aspect of your query, because I do not think your group size is part of the problem based on what you’ve asked. Large groups do pose problems for GMs, but not necessarily with the rules, so if you feel group size is a separate problem, let us know and we can offer tips on that.

Rules, rules as written (RAW), house rules, and rules interpretation and ambiguity have been a source of millions of words for roleplayers in forums and blogs and Usenet over the years. It is the nature of the hobby and will not go away.

When I GM a new group, I work with them right away to lay down a common agreement for handling rules, rulings and rules disagreements. You want a baseline to set expectations and procedures so the group knows what to do when a situation arises. This causes far fewer interpersonal issues than having to figure out protocol in the heat of the moment.

If you have not done so, I would pause immediately and work this out with your group. Set a global set of guidelines for handling rules, without pointing fingers, and for handling various situations. When a situation comes up that is not covered by the group’s agreement, then hammer a new guideline out and append it to the agreement. The act of establishing the initial agreement should make future updates to it easier, assuming you follow the same process.

Draft up group guidelines

Start with drafting something up yourself. Let it sit for a couple days, then look at it again with fresh eyes and tweak as necessary. Unfortunately, I have not drafted up written guidelines for my groups in the past. I have always given my GM ramble covering this stuff in the first session verbally, and then have not had a big enough problem that required me to document the group’s guidelines.

In your case, you should get it all out in writing so you can refer back to it, because your group has already been gaming together and you are mid-campaign, so you already have habits, precedents and set ways of doing things. It will take a bit to change habits and expectations, and you will need written reminders to enforce the new ways. A written document also makes getting group consensus easier, when you are at that stage.

To help, I’ll summarize my spiel to new groups. I get away with a verbal-only agreement because I tend to vett new players carefully, and with new groups we approach gameplay with fresh and open minds and no baggage with each other. My guidelines:

• As GM, I always makes the final call, even if it’s unpopular with a group member, just to keep the game moving along.
• I am happy to redress GM calls between sessions, if players want to chat about them; and while I won’t redo gameplay to accommodate new rulings, we will carrying on gameplay with the new rulings.
• I will get group input on any rules calls during games and facilitate discussion for a couple minutes or so. After that, I’ll call for group vote and unanimous votes come into play immediately. Failed votings are open to redress between sessions.
• In case of contentious issues, I will exercise GM veto and GM final say, but always with an eye toward fairness for each player and their character (I do not care so much about fairness towards enemy NPCs and monsters as I can tweak things as needed to accommodate new rulings).
• If a ruling takes up more than a few minutes, we’ll park it for group chat by email between sessions and either go with rules as written or GM’s call.
• My main goals as GM are fun, fairness and consistency. The players will have to trust me on that, even if I make a ruling they dislike. My door is always open between sessions and I’m open to feedback, even on a personal level.

It comes off more formal in writing than how I say it at the game table, but that’s the gist of it. A couple of other guidelines have just come to mind as well:

• In case of an important ruling (i.e. a PC’s major success or failure depends on it) we’ll call a break and give the group 15 mins or so to research, present viewpoints and vote.
• Once we make a ruling, it’s that way for the rest of the campaign unless new evidence comes to light, or gameplay reveals an issue with it, such as an exploit, imbalance or backlash.

That last one has helped get players thinking about the bigger picture when discussing and voting on rulings. The new ruling might affect them in the future, and even PC-specific rulings have been known to bite a player who introduces a new character after a character death later in a campaign. Caveat emptor.

In addition to this information, I also ramble on about showing respect for the group and each other by doing such things as showing up for games on time, canceling with at least a couple days’ notice unless it’s unavoidable, speaking low when it’s not your turn, and giving each other positive feedback and trying to work as a team. I end by saying the GM is always open to bribes. Then I say that was a joke. Then I say not really. Then I say haha and ask everyone to roll initiative so we can finally get the game going! :)

Group input

With draft in hand, distribute it to your players for feedback and changes. I would do this in person, as you can position the purpose and process to your group better than by email where things get lost in translation. Face to face, your players can see you mean well and want the group to thrive, whereas an email might be misinterpreted in tone, such as scolding, disappointment or accusation.

Read aloud each point and ask for feedback. Take notes. Everything is under consideration at this point, so you are better off writing down comments and ideas to ponder over a night’s sleep than to pressure yourself into decisions right now. Be objective, gather input, clarify or collaborate as needed.

If you find yourself getting defensive, perhaps because one player only knows how to debate instead of collaborate, or because a player is tired and has an unusually sharp tongue this night, rather than retorting or escalating emotions by getting frustrated or defensive, put it back on the group. Ask them what they would prefer. Ask them how they would handle the situation being discussed.

“That’s an interesting point. What do you think a good group guideline for that problem should be, Johnn?” “Yeah, I created that because rules debates were costing game time and bad feelings. If you do not like the proposed guideline, that’s good feedback, thanks. How would you minimize rules debates, Johnn. You freaking rules law power gamer jerk.” Ok, take that last sentence out. It’s bad for morale. :)

Putting issues back into group discussion takes pressure off you, moves your back from against the wall to give you some objective space again, and gets you balanced and facilitating once more.

Another good facilitator role is depersonalizing negative issues. You want to take anything that gets personal and turn it into a thing that carries no fault or blame, but that the whole group becomes responsible for. This helps keeps others from getting defensive or angry. It prevents escalating confrontation. It allows people to stay rational.

For example, someone says, “Johnn is the one who complains about unfairness the most. He always starts the rules debates.” You want to remove Johnn from the picture (always good advice according to my friends) and put the issue out on the table as a thing to discuss together. So you say, “Well, I think we all have our moments, and I know I’ve done it before so it’s easy to fall victim to. What stuff do you find unfair about the game? Let’s make a list and decide what we’re going to do about it right now.”

Denial

In general, people are unaware of their own behaviour, especially the subtle stuff that peeves others, like chewing loudly. Your pair of troublesome players might have no idea how much they are disturbing the group dynamic. And when a group discussion commences, they might be oblivious that folks are actually talking about them, especially if no one calls them out specifically. Further, even if called out for some reason (not recommended, but another player might do it) and a finger points at them, they might still deny all grievances and claim everyone is mistaken. Denial is just that, even when confronted.

“You always argue when someone tries to grapple you, Johnn. You always say the rules are not clear and the DM needs to run those rules differently. It’s the same argument every time and it lasts like 10 minutes and ends up the same way. Give it up, Johnn, it’s just the way it is.” A then Johnn denies having these debates, or deflects by going into a rant about the rules so, in effect, starting the debate all over again proving the person’s point but oblivious to the irony.

You need some proof. Your first bit of proof comes from counting the number of rules complaints recorded in your session feedback. Congrats for doing those, by the way. Not just to track complaints as proof here, but for using them as a tool for ongoing improvement. Huzzah!

Anonymize the feedback and assemble it into a separate document you can reveal if you need the ammunition. How many complaints have there been about this issue? How many players have complained about this issue at one time or another? How many players, on average, complain about this issue each session? How many sessions have experienced the complaints? Those numbers could be sobering.

In addition, present verbatim feedback to the group around the rules issue. Type out what players wrote down. Change things so no one can figure out who wrote what. Seeing 25 comments on a page all regarding rules issues could sway even the worst denial. And even if the guilty players deny in their minds they are the root of the problem, you’ve got some objective stuff out there on the table everybody is now aware of. Everybody should be more attuned to the bad behaviours in the future, and hopefully, more self-aware.

Edit and redistribute

With feedback gathered, make changes as needed and send the new agreement out to everyone. Email here is fine because the tricky discussion has already taken place. Highlight what’s changed so everyone can get a quick understanding of those changes. Ask for final agreement and sign-off from everyone. If more changes are requested, iterate through those until you have a final agreement. Print the agreement out. get everyone to sign each other’s copy to make it feel official and binding. Keep the agreement handy at every session for reference.

Summary of the process

Whew. That sounds like a lot of effort. It boils down to, get group consensus on how to handle the problems you’ve identified. It can’t be you, as the DM, laying down the hammer. It’s a group game of shared responsibility, and everybody must own their part.

In the past, with similar tricky issues, I’ve spoken to the guilty player(s) in private, one on one. Getting on top of it and addressing it is the only way to make this go away.

I’ve heard of groups doing various acrobatics to avoid dealing with the issue head-on, but that’s a terrible way to handle things. It causes more hurt feelings, lost friendships, social backstabbing and stress than handling things directly. For example, a friend recently told me about his group doing a fake shut down just to get rid of a player. A couple weeks later, the group re-formed without telling the player. That’s not good. The player is going to hear about that. How will he react? If oblivious to the tactic, he’ll ask for an invite or just show up. Then you’re back where you started. If he’s aware of the sneaky stunt, he could act out in a number of ways. Best to hold the difficult conversation or process and handle things head-on.

In-game tactics

The things sorted out in the agreement are just theory right now. You need to put them into practice next. First, be sure everybody has the latest group agreement. Keep your copy in your GM binder for reference during the game. Read the agreement before the game to refresh your memory.

Once play starts, enforce the agreement. Put on your referee hat. Stop play or correct play as per the agreement. Do this in a neutral fashion, from the perspective that you are just enforcing what everybody agreed to. Old behaviours will happen. Do not blame players when this happens, because it’s human nature to revert to old patterns until new ones take hold. Interrupt gently, shift things in the correct manner and resume.

Pocket points

My group uses pocket points, thanks to Dave S. who asked they be implemented several years ago. Each player gets a number of poker chips equal to the number of players in attendance for that session. Each is worth +1 to any d20 roll when bequeathed. Players give them to each other as a game and social reward for good play.

You could offer the same to reinforce positive behaviours. A game should be less about what bad stuff to avoid and more about what good stuff to strive toward. The pocket points let players feel rewarded for good play.

You might consider penalty points for a little while. Any time a player breaks a part of the group agreement, you hand out a penalty point. This gives them a -1 to a roll of your choice. When you apply the -1 you take the point back, the player having paid for their crime.

Apply penalty points for minor rolls at first. The points are more of a group and player reminder when bequeathed, and less about the penalty. There should be a wee bit of short embarrassment when receiving a penalty point, and this should be enough to change behaviour. That’s the true benefit of the penalty points – the social penalty is experienced right at the time of the bad behaviour. That’s the best way to change bad habits.

The penalty points only work if you have universal understanding of expected behaviours and gameplay. That is the benefit of all the work generating a group agreement. You cannot apply penalty points or remonstrations out of the blue. Players need to know what’s expected of them up front so they have a chance for giving feedback and then complying once group agreement has been reached.

Timeouts

When things get heated, call a timeout. Give the emotional player(s) a short break. Ask them to walk away from the table, go outside and take a couple of deep breaths. It is important they leave the table, else they could get sullen and destroy game atmosphere.

Use the break time yourself, if desired, or use it to handle things for which the player on break can miss, such as accounting, a quick character audit or cleaning up the game area in preparation for the next encounter.

DO NOT talk about the player or his character while the player is away gathering himself. It’s insidious to gossip, the player is not there to defend himself, and if the player should overhear you will ruin the relationship. If someone starts – “Johnn sure was being a jerk.” – intervene immediately. “Let’s stay on task here, people. Nobody talks about anyone while they’re away from the table.”

If things get tricky for you, call a timeout on yourself. Not only can you use the fresh air and healthy deep breaths to collect yourself, but you show everyone in the group these little breaks are ok and not personal. You lead by example.

As a subtle measure, put a sign in the break area: Remember games are about having fun. You are hanging out with friends. Enjoy. :)

Kick them out

Worst case, you ask the player to quit the group. Life is too short to have your regular fun ruined. With between seven and eleven players, the group will not suffer if a player leaves, in general. You might have mitigating circumstances, such as a disruptive player being a close relative or spouse or someone you just can’t kick out. In that case, a one-on-one is best, with regular follow-ups until the problem’s fixed.

Otherwise, at your call, kick the offending player out between sessions, or issue them a warning. There are seven to eleven others who play, including yourself, and one or two players cannot ruin the fun for all.

Mike’s answer:

I have to admit that I have nothing to add to Johnn’s excellent answer!