This article is likely to ramble a bit. There will be times when I have to talk around the subject so as not to give away any surprises to my players, or to provide a proper foundation for the point of discussion. That’s an unfortunate reality for life as an RPG Blogger; the only alternative is to wait until secrecy is no longer an issue – by which time the inspirational juices needed for a good article may have run cold. Every blogger pays his money and takes his (or her) chances; sometimes, I’ve voted one way, and sometimes the other.

In this particular case, the subject matter is complex, so I want to at least have a stab at getting a coherent narrative down before I get distracted – so I’m going for the publish-quickly-with-secrecy-and-caveats approach.

The Magician’s Force

When I was about eight, I started studying stage magic. I got reasonably mediocre at it, too, which was quite an achievement for a shy kid.

One of the lessons that I learned, which has stood me in good stead as a GM on a number of occasions (and in life) was about something called The Magician’s Force.

That’s where the magician appears to give the audience a choice, while actually getting them to choose the option that they wanted selected in the first place.

A really crude example: The magician writes the name of a card – the Jack Of Spades, say – on a piece of paper and seals that paper in an envelope, which he gives to a member of the audience to hold for him (so that he can’t tamper with it).

He then takes a deck of cards and fans them out so that the audience can see that there are no obvious gaps. He then shuffles them, every now and then fanning them out (face side down) for the audience’s benefit (while saying things like “you can see that all the cards are still here”). In reality, when he does so, he’s looking in a concealed mirror to see which end of the deck his chosen card has ended up.

He then splits the deck roughly into two and has a member of the audience pick one of the piles. If the chosen stack has his target card in it, then that is the deck that has been chosen; if not, then that is the deck that the audience have chosen to discard.

Repeat this three more times. Make sure you have an engaging patter to keep the audience distracted – it can even be good to interrupt to show off another trick. I also got good mileage from deliberately messing a trick up at this point, which makes the audience feel smugly superior, and sure that if the magician does anything he shouldn’t, they will catch him.

So you’ve gone from 52 to 26 to 13 to 6 to 3 cards. The mirror will easily show which of the three is your chosen card – lay all three down on the table in front of you. Then perform some psychic mumbo-jumbo and push the ‘chosen’ card forward. Get the audience member to open the envelope and read what’s written there. Flip the chosen card over, triumphantly.

Now, the audience may well have caught on to what you were doing with the magician’s force – it’s fairly obvious when done this overtly. So, now for the real trick.

In a self-confessing tone of voice, admit “I wasn’t entirely sure which card you would pick.” (flip over the other two cards) “So, just in case, here’s one I prepared earlier,” and from a pocket, produce another envelope – with the name of one of the other two cards on it. “and here’s another,” and from somewhere else, produce a third envelope – with the name of the third card on it. Those who were so sure they knew how the trick worked are amazed and dazzled and everyone forgets that the only envelope the audience had control over was the one that you obviously steered them to.

How do you do it? A magician’s not supposed to reveal his secrets, but just this once: I prepare multiple sets of envelopes and hide them in different places. Four suites, so eight sets is optimal, but six can be managed. 13 cards in each suit, less the one chosen as ‘the fall guy’, so six stacks will have about 8 envelopes with the names of cards, each. Memorize which ones are where VERY carefully, and be very careful about the order you put them in, too – and make sure that they can’t be seen. It’s an easy thing while you’re making your patter and turning the face-down cards over at the apparent end of the trick to count through the seven or eight cards with your fingertips and carefully only draw out the exact envelope that you want. A little talcum powder rubbed onto the envelope helps ensure that they won’t stick together.

So far as the audience knows, there are only three envelopes. And they have the impression during the trick that it’s all about the cards. It’s not, it’s about the envelopes.

The GM’s Force

It doesn’t matter what the players choose if all choices are equally good from the GM’s point of view.

Read that again, and let it soak in.

It’s that simple.

Of course, like all good ideas, the execution can be messier and more complicated in reality than this theory makes it sound.

I have two examples to offer, real-world ones from my superhero campaign, but the source doesn’t matter – the rule applies to all genres and all campaigns.

A Choice Of Horses

I’ve mentioned a time or two that I did extensive prep for the PCs upcoming choice of vehicles. Two used car lots, a total of 163 specific vehicles, about 120 data points for each, all in a sortable spreadsheet, plus a text file with history and vehicle extras, from the used-car salesman’s point of view.

I was then able to present the players with a set of 13 small cards that I had made up, each of which listed a criteria that the PCs might use to make their choices.

Some of the cards had sub-options for the PCs to choose between. This was a trick that one of my university buddies had shown me a long time ago for simplifying complicated choices. All I had to do was suggest that someone had shown the trick to a PC, and we were off to the races.

Step one: pick the three least important criteria and discard those cards.

Step two: from the cards that remain, pick the most important single card and the least important. If there are sub-options, pick the one that’s most important. If you want two sub-options, use a blank card for the second one – but that requires you to discard another of the cards in front of you.

Repeat step two until all ten of your chosen cards are in priority order.

Now normally, you would simply compile the results as a reminder of what was more important, but because this is an RPG, theater of the mind, and because I had that spreadsheet, i could go further.

I sorted the spreadsheet in sequence of the 10th most important parameter, then ranked the cars from 1 to 22 (that was just how it worked out). Cars with the same score in that parameter got the same rating. If the next-worst car was not very different to the one just ranked, I incremented the ranking by 0.1; if a bit more, by 0.2, or 0.3; if substantially different, by 0.5 or even by a full 1.

Repeat for each of the other parameters, using the same scale of 1-22. A low ranking should always be better than a high one.

Now I applied a bias, to reflect the sequence of importance. Scores in the tenth-most important parameter was multiplied by 0.1, scores in the ninth by 0.2, then 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, and so on. These were then totaled.

I also calculated the minimum total and the maximum.

I subtracted the minimum from the Score, and divided by the difference between minimum and maximum. Multiplying the result by 999, and adding one, gave each car a score from 1 to 1000.

Using so many parameters, and giving them different weights, meant that no two cars got exactly the same score, but that cars that were almost as good got almost the same score.

I was then able to do exactly what the PCs would have been doing, picking the best combination within their budget according to the criteria.

Unsurprisingly, certain makes and models floated to the top, because they were very similar from generational year to generational year. To ensure a bit of variety, I cheated and had some of the obvious bargains sold before the PCs could close the deal. My objective is to offer the PCs a choice of combinations that met their demands and let them make the final choice from there.

Combination #1 is all about Car A, which chews up most of their budget. Car B, the other half of the combination, is simply the best of what’s left that is within the total budget.

Because Car B is more likely to be sold than Car A, Combinations 2 and 3 are Cars A and C, and Cars A and D, chosen in exactly the same way.

Combination 4 splits the resource pie more evenly, with cars E and F. Combinations 5 and 6 replace either of those with car G or car H, respectively (so they are really combinations 5, 6, 7, and 8). And, if they need it, the next best choice is to replace either car with car B, (combos 9 and 10), then car C (combos 11 and 12), then car D (combos 13 and 14).

Then you get to the more complicated compound options – replacing car E with car G and then replacing car F with the first available of Cars H, B, C, or D, or vice-versa (combos 15 and 16).

So I’m giving the players plenty of choice, while narrowing the field from a HUGE number of choices to a cherry-picked short list.

I’ve even written up a nice bit of narrative explaining the options to them.

But here’s the thing: I don’t care which of these combinations the players choose. I didn’t care which of the parameters they chose to prioritize. I made sure that all the choices were interesting choices, with their own stories to tell, just by doing some basic research into the history of the most popular cars of the era.

That makes this whole exercise a GM’s Force. Totally NOT railroading the PCs in any way – I have acted as their humble servant, filtering the many-fold possibilities as they would have me do, loading in some realism (cars sold from a busy car yard should not be a surprise; cars not being sold at such a car yard should be). But every choice leads to some interesting narrative, and some interesting roleplay.

I am treating these cars as though they were NPCs in their own right, with their own personalities and quirks and flaws and strengths.

For the record (in case you ever want to do something like it for yourselves), the criteria offered (with sub-options), in the sequence selected by the players runs (I’ve indicated players sub-option choices in bold):

1. Economy
   • Urban or Highway
   • Current or After Tune-up
2. Overall Condition (a poor condition impacts on price, horsepower, economy, top speed, cruising range, and braking distance).
3. Highway (Cruising) Range
4. Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
5. Low Urban Range (how far will you get on a tank in stop-start city traffic)
   • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
6. Rust (calculated as the Rust rating plus 1/10th of any % value lost due to rust)
7. Size (a highly artificial measure based on interior space, length, width, and body shape, but it ranks each car numerically from 1 to 7.5, with low being tiny and high being enormous. Busses and the like would be 8-10 on the scale).
8. Height There’s nothing worse when you’re doing a lot of driving than not having enough head room. Surprisingly, this almost certainly varies a minuscule amount from model year to model year even if nothing else but trim details change – possibly just so the manufacturers can claim that it’s not the same car as last year).
9. Price
   • Sticker Price or Estimated Bargain (the latter is how much you can hope to save through sharp negotiating and is based on the dealer’s willingness to do a deal on that particular car, which in turn reflects customer demand and condition and rarity and original quality, which in turn reflect a whole bunch of other things – but ultimately, the better bargains float to the top with this parameter)
10. Top Speed
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
11. Horsepower
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
12. (rejected parameter) Acceleration
    • Original Condition, or Current, or After Tune-up
13. (rejected parameter) Age
    • Maximum Age, Minimum Age, or Current Age
14. (rejected parameter) Gearbox/Drive-train
    • Manual or Automatic,
    • 3-, 4-, or 5- gears, or don’t care
    • Exclude front-wheel-drive or Exclude nothing

What’s more, if they had really wanted it, I could easily have dropped in some other parameter like engine size, or fuel tank size, or the price to refill a tank. I would have had more trouble with some of the other parameters like ride height simply because the manufacturers didn’t always make that information available. But I chose the ones that I expected them to find the most meaningful, and got no complaints.

If someone really wants me to, I’ll insert at this point a full list of the spreadsheet’s parameters and where the information came from – in some cases, it’s random, as described in How Good Is That Rust-bucket In The Showroom Window?; in some cases, it’s research; and in some cases, it’s calculated).

—- INSERT (IF ANY) GOES HERE —-

A choice of Bases

The reason the team need the cars is because they are in deep cover and scouting for a new Base Of Operations (BOps) from which to occasionally carry out missions that would be politically unacceptable if their true identities and affiliations were recognized – an occasional side-campaign within a campaign.

Their step-parent organization (a complicated relationship!) has recommended choosing a location in Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, or Nebraska. They know that they will eventually meet their contact for a detailed briefing on the current emergency in Oklahoma City, and were told that they should get out of Texas ASAP – from which they have inferred that the plot that they have to unravel will be centered in southern Oklahoma or Northern Texas, and possibly more West than East.

So, they are planning a road trip.

Which means that I am planning a road trip. A BIG one.

Three-to-four days in each state, to be spent visiting as many communities as they can in search of a place to sometimes call home.

They intend to split up, so as to cover more ground.

What I have done so far is to gather a selection of links about each state, in particular on the pros and cons of living there, and to the Wikipedia pages of greatest relevance. For the first state, I have translated that into a summary. I have arranged for them to get their information from (mostly fictitious) guidebooks as they travel because the alternative was to make decisions based on about 18 seconds of research per location, based on the time allotted by them and the scale of the job.

I have compiled maps at a fairly detailed scale into enormous maps that I can make (digital) notes on, show routes, track how far they’ve come, etc.

Using those maps and a logical search pattern, I have laid out a course for each group to follow over their three days. At the end of it all, I want each team to have a little less than a handful of possible options, which the players will then collectively get down to the best three.

Then they will do the next state, add another half-dozen or so possibilities, and then whittle those down to the best three or four.

Repeat for half the next state, and half of Nebraska, the final state. Why? Because, while choosing one of the four recommended states might be convenient for the current mission, they have no idea where the mission after that will take them – but it’s about one in fifty at best that it will be where they are based. That means that it’s worth them contemplating a few choices outside the box, like Detroit, or Chicago or St Louis. Transport hubs where they can come and go without too many questions being asked.

At the end of it all, they will be left with their top three or four picks.

I don’t care what they pick. Why? The GM’s Force. I have a list of 31 types of location (some may recur more than once), and any of them would make an interesting and fun location. Each time they pass through a town that sounds like an interesting place to put one, and that has a reasonably unique name, I seed it with a contender.

It doesn’t matter what they choose – my ends (interesting location to serve as the foundation for this side-campaign) will be served.

I have also amassed a list of 21 encounters (and counting) to take place along the way – plus the guidebooks and touring the places themselves, and the synchronicity of two teams effectively leapfrogging each other for the campaign spotlight, plus the potential for the memberships of each of the two groups to vary from state to state, allowing differences of focused interaction to occur between the PCs. And, on top of all that, some of the places the PCs will visit may have the potential to raise interesting questions for the PCs to discuss in-character. And – this being a superhero campaign – there may even be the occasional Close Encounter Of The Villainous Kind.

The reality is that it will probably take 2-3 game sessions per complete US state to explore it all and deal with the fun and games along the way. There will likely be 1/2 a session left in Texas before they get underway, and 1/2 a session traveling to their split-up point, where they will camp for the night – Dalby Springs (which they don’t realize is a ghost town). Whether or not I’ll do anything with that fact remains to be seen! But, at the very least, it should set things off on ‘the right foot’ so far as plot is concerned.

So that’s 1 session to get them to the point of entering Arkansas, 2-3 sessions in Arkansas, 2-3 sessions in neighboring Missouri, 2-3 sessions in Eastern Kansas and Eastern Nebraska, and one session exploring wild cars, 1 session setting up their new homes, 1-2 sessions establishing their cover identities and getting them some superhero PR the best way they know how (taking down some bad guys somewhere, in full view of the Press), then they can meet their contact and the real Adventure can start – and will probably last two Game sessions, maybe three.

Add those up: 1 + 2-3 + 2-3 + 2-3 + 1 + 1-2 + 2-3 = 11-16 game sessions. We get 11 game sessions a year. Best case scenario, this adventure will see out the current gaming year. Worst-case scenario, it will also fill half of next year.

Here’s the thing: with so many variables, as with multiple dice, the likelihood of the average goes way up. That’s not the whole story of course, but the average is 13.5 and we have 10 game sessions left this year – which would mean that their final act for the year would be choosing from amongst the many alternatives I have put before them.

But that’s fine, because this part of the adventure isn’t about the end, it’s about the road to the end. This is a superhero road movie – not something that comes along every day.

What’s more, as soon as it starts to get boring for anybody, i can start hand-waving time (and I expect to do so) with increasing frequency past the first game session or two. Establish a pattern then skip to the interesting bits, in other words. Like a side-trip to this Mississippi towns of Hot Coffee and Coffeeville (one of the PCs is a coffee addict). I’m not sure I can squeeze in both side-trips, but I should be able to get one in – it all depends on which location will be the most interesting in terms of interaction with this particular PC.

Another thing that I want to build in is something specifically targeted at each of the characters, to give them a chance to show off a side of themselves that doesn’t get displayed very often, or that will otherwise be interesting/fun – like that side-trip. Between them, that will soak up a game session – but I expect hand-waving to clear four or five game sessions. So 13.5 + 1 – 4.5 = 10. Remember how many game sessions I said were left in the year?

I’ll be trying hard to clear SIX sessions, not four, with hand-waving – simply because that will give me a game session in hand, and mean that the year won’t end with the conclusion of this adventure but with the start of the next, which will re-establish the regular campaign.

A Road-trip Concordance

It’s not relevant to the subject of today’s article, but – for the benefit of anyone else who’s ever confronted by a similar challenge – I thought I would spend a bit of time spelling out just how I go about marrying up the different aspects of the road trip.

Note that if the PCs decide stop anywhere that’s not on my schedule, that’s fine – I will just adjust the relative times given on-the-fly for a little while and then have something delay the other group for just the right amount of time to get things back into sync. I guess in that respect, this is just another example of a GM’s force!

The Route Plan

So, at the moment, I have a route plan that looks something like this:

109. Crossett -> North to Fountain Hill, NW then West to Johnsville, North
110. Warren -> NW via New Edinburg
111. Fordyce -> North via Ivan
112. Sheridan -> NE then East through Center Grove, ESE through White Hall, SE
113. Pine Bluff -> South then East
114. Star City

Each of these is a ‘Leg” and contains routing instructions to the next target destination, that being a location where the PCs might find a potential BOps. The “1” in front of the Target Location signifies that this is the route being followed by Group 1.

At the same time, I have a second route for the other group (whose locations start, strangely enough, with a two):

209. Center Point -> Highway 278 NNW
210. Dierks -> Highway 76 NNE to Highway 278 (exit on the left), NNW then NE then NNW
211. Umpire -> continue on Highway 278 West
212. Wickers -> NNW then NE on Highway 88 via Hatton, Vandervoort, Cove, Hatfield, Potter Junction
213. Mena

Note that these start where I am up to in my research / prep – I’ll be taking notes in this post’s draft as I actually do the work. You can also see how my ‘best practice’ evolved as I went along – the first groups’ routes have directions and way-points, the second groups adds Highway numbers. For the sake of clarity, I am referring to all Arkansas Highways as “Route #” even though it’s not strictly accurate.

The Notepad

I also have a notepad. On it, I track time – group one on the left, and group two on the right.

Leg 108 for Group one was from El Dorado to Crossett via Strong. The entry on the pad for this leg reads:

• +6 +7 -> 108 *El Dorado* = 5+41
  • +14 +24 = 6+19 -> Strong

And the next line (the first line for the next target) reads:

• +28 -> 109 *Crossett* = 6+47

Let me walk you through this, because it packs a lot into a very compressed format:

“+6” – it took the team an estimated six minutes to evaluate location 107, Smackover, Arkansas.

“+7” – it then took the team seven minutes to travel to location 108, El Dorado. Which means that they got there 5 hours 41 minutes after departure at the start of the day.

“+14” – the team spent an estimated 14 minutes evaluating El Dorado – which probably means that either the place is very big, or that they found a possible BOps, or both.

“+24” – it then took them 24 minutes to drive to Strong. Strong is what is going to be referred to as a “Drive-through Evaluation”, for towns where they don’t expect to find any potential BOps to consider (but they’ll look as they pass through town, anyway – and sometimes that will bear fruit).

“= 6+19” – if you add 14 minutes to 5 hrs 41 mins, and then add 24 minutes to the result, you get 6 hours 19 mins.

“-> Strong” – means that at time-hack 6+19, Group 1 reach the outskirts of the community named “Strong” on the map.

“+28 ->” – The presence of only one time interval – twenty-eight minutes in this case – means that no time was spent exploring Strong, that there was nothing there of interest to the PCs.

“109 *Crossett* = 6+47” if you add 28 minutes to the previous time check of 6+19, you get 6 hrs 47 mins – so that is the time when this group reaches the outskirts of Crossett.

Told you there was a lot packed into just a few lines!

The other side of the list deal with group two, who have a most recent time-check of 6+0 at location 209, Center Point.

I also bear in mind that overall, group one are supposed to ‘hit’ 45 stops with a roughly-estimated 14.8 hours of inspection time, or about 20 minutes per target, and a total driving distance of 928 miles; group two have a distance of 1132 miles to cover, 9.7 hours (estimated) to inspect targets, and 69 targets to inspect in that time.

Step One: Google Maps

If you type a location into google maps, and then ” to ” and follow that with another location, Google maps will show you routes from A to B, with the distance (and the driving time under current conditions, which is not very useful in this application). You also have to option to add more destinations to the chain – but there is a limit.

So the first step is to break the route up into segments on different roads, using the Driving Directions if necessary to get distances to turns. I also adjust both the starting point to somewhere in town if time was spent exploring it, and the ending point of the trip to the outskirts of the next town.

I have set a speed limit of 60 mph on the interstates (in theory), 55 on the Highways, and whatever-you-feel-safe-at on anything else – but I am making notes on what speeds feel or are unsafe on each road. Speed through towns is usually 35, sometimes 25, and occasionally there’s no posted limit.

Applying the appropriate speeds gets me a time-to-landmark from the distance-to-landmark data. I can vary the ‘safe’ speeds as I see fit (remembering that this game universe experienced a cataclysm six years ago, game time, from which it is still recovering).

Add those up, and one of two things will happen: you’ll either get the time interval to the next Location or to the next Drive-through Evaluation.

Advance whichever time-check is earliest until you overtake the later time-check.

In this case, with Group 1 at 6+47 and Group 2 at 6+0, I have 47 minutes of Group 2’s time to fill in before I catch up.

Almost certainly, location 210 will precede location 109 – and quite possibly 211 and 212 as well.

Steps Two and Three: The Research

Locations are described in my research in sequential order. I use a nested layout for the details.

So far, I have compiled 19,100 words. I got a bit ahead of myself and have partial work done on targets 109-116, in addition to full details of 100-108 and 201-209. So part of what I do is to integrate work done with new research, compiling the two into a blow-by-blow narrative.

The first part of the research derives from “The Guidebook”. This starts with information on the community from Wikipedia, but that’s often not enough, so I will follow up with a Google Search, which usually leads me to more information. “The Arkansas Encyclopedia” has been especially helpful, but there are several other sites that provide snippets of information. I’m very much just hitting the highlights, the same way that someone skimming through the interesting parts of a guidebook would.

Occasionally, all these sources will fail me, in which event I resort to the GM’s prerogative – I make something up.

I try to estimate the population level as it was in 1986, based on the censuses of 1980 and 1990, and any causes of change described. I also factor in the differences between real-world history and campaign-world history – a massive physical catastrophe impacted the entire planet about six-and-a-half years ago, and it caused an economic crisis almost as deep as the Great Depression. As an indicator of severity, Japan sunk (most of the population were saved by transforming them into mer-people) – so no Japanese industry, and limited infiltration of the American Markets by small cars (and most of those are European). But they have retooled their industrial capability, and are soon to make a big re-entry into the world economy!

I’m lazy enough that I take most of the demographics unchanged from the 2010 census, and only modify if I have to. I note median age, and the number who live below the poverty line, and a very broad racial breakdown. I document any physical features described by Wikipedia (often not many except when it comes to the largest communities), and any social features of relevance, and I sequence it all into a readable narrative. I often have to look elsewhere (as described) for the history, which I synopsize heavily.

Steps Four and Five: Images and Getting A Feel For The Place

The “guidebook material” then segues (often in a very blurred fashion) into what the PCs see and any impressions they get when they drive into town. I write this material as original narrative, based purely on the most relevant images that a DuckDuckGo Image Search offers me. If I don’t get enough good stuff to get a distinctive flavor, I may also hit Google Images. As I find and open images in new tabs, I try and sequence them into a narrative, which then becomes the basis for my text. Above all, I’m looking for the answers to the key questions that the PCs would be asking – “What’s this place like,” “What would it be like to live here,” “Are there any obvious possible BOps depicted,” and so on.

Sometimes, a town or city won’t leave a strong impression – which means that it’s worthless for my adventure purposes. Sometimes, there may be obvious reasons for saying no to somewhere – the PCs don’t have any dark-skinned members but one is posing as a Hollywood Talent Scout (and Danish Expat), another is a Kzin Tourist, and a third is British and proud of it (and, supposedly a prospector) – any of which might trigger the locals. The nondescript French Heiress, the West-Coast Bounty hunter, and the Norwegian Ski Instructor and Championship Woodlogger are less likely to arouse the locals.

I save those images that support the narrative.

Step Six: EVALUATION & VERDICT

I then write the narrative text that has been inspired by the image search under the subheading “EVALUATION” (in all caps so that it stands out even in a plain-text document).

If there location has enough character to be distinctive or interesting, or if the image search turned up a viable BOps, I write that up under the sub-heading “VERDICT”, and then add any information on how the group located it under the “EVALUATION” sub-heading.

If it seemed likely that there would be somewhere from the research, but nothing came up, I decide if the location is interesting enough to delve into my list of quirky BOps location ideas. If so, I perform a more specific image search for whatever I need to illustrate it.

I want to provide just enough information that the team can make a decision on whether or not it goes on the short-list at the end of this state’s road-trip. If it does, that’s when I’ll generate a lot more information about it for use in the final evaluation – all information that the PCs supposedly gathered during their evaluation.

Step Seven: Encounters/Events

If there’s no potential BOps, I consider whether or not the location is interesting enough to merit one of my list of “On-The-Road Encounters”. I have, as I said earlier, 22 of these and counting – and some may occur more than once. With three game days traveling through each of a pair of states, and another three game days through another pair of states, and any travel to curve-ball locations after that (another three game days), and then travel from the new BOps to Oklahoma City, I have to spread these over ten or 11 game days – so that’s one per car per game day, and more as I come up with new ideas. If I only have one shot at each traveling group per game day, I want to make it count, so – so far – there haven’t been any dropped in, but I did spend some time on Lunch.

Most of these won’t happen in an actual community, they are going to be out on the open road (but there are some exceptions, like the house on fire, or a driver getting lost). In all cases, it will be up to the PCs what they make of the situation – they can choose to do nothing, or try to lend a covert hand, or make a public debut. You can lead a PC to plot, but you can’t make him Adventure!

If there is to be an event or encounter, I make appropriate notes either in the description of the route after the target location or in the target location description itself under an appropriate sub-heading.

Step Eight: More Encounters/Events

After I had written most of this article, an important afterthought came to me.

During the cataclysm 6.5 game years ago, which took the form of a variant on the Norse Ragnarok, a neighboring dimension was reduced to primal energy which was used to reshape the reality, internal physics, and history of our universe – but before that happened, the ruler of most of their Milky Way Galaxy equivalent used the resources of his government and society to relocate most of the population to other worlds in the primary space-time of the campaign. While some of these relocations have been overt (there are dinosaurs in Central America), and some are globally known because of their immediate impact (the saving of California from a massive shift in the San Andreas fault, the sinking of Japan and salvation of the population through a transformation into mermen), others have been more subtle. A lot of humans simply settled into communities of survivors and became part of their new communities, which has become a driving force in American politics. In some countries, these newcomers used arcane abilities to become warlords. China put up what has become known as The Bamboo Curtain – no news comes out of there, these days, and no-one knows what is happening. Some uninhabited worlds were terraformed/altered to make them compatible with non-human species – there are human-sized sentient ants on Mars, for example.

A few such imports were more covert – the PCs recently met an alien octopoid race that were saved in this process who have been very quietly living in southern Mexico, and negotiated the precursor to an eventual treaty with them for mutual coexistence. And a lot of other obviously non-human species and individuals quietly began lives for themselves in various wildernesses.

The PCs are going to be driving through a couple of such wildernesses. Where are those encounters?

This thought started with the idea of a troll who has felled a tree across the road, charging a toll (payable in consumables, not cash) to lift the tree long enough for vehicles to pass – which was conceived of as simply another road encounter, to be added to the list. Reflecting on it overnight, though, I realized that this was actually just the first example of a whole new class of encounters, most of which would be more likely to transpire when the PCs were camping at night and not whizzing past at XX or XXX miles per hour.

It took less than an hour this morning to add another 22 ideas to this second encounter list, most of them one-offs, but a few of which could recur. Many have two forms – drive-by encounters (spotting something exotic) and more substantial at-rest encounters. That’s enough for one or two per game-day. There’s also some scope for these encounters to interact with some of the ones listed in Step 7 in interesting ways – it’s one thing to see a hitch-hiker raising a thumb for a ride, and another to do so after seeing evidence of giant spiders in the vicinity. If the PCs are traveling in the right direction, that just makes it a lot more likely that they’ll stop and interact with the hitch-hiker. Things become more difficult if the hitch-hiker is trying to go the other way.

The reason this becomes critically important right now is that in the work that has already been done (and which is described below), I’ve already described the passage of the PCs through a number of these low-population areas that would be havens for ‘strange imports’ – and not only has nothing been described, but no time has been allowed for the resolution of such encounters. Neither seem all that reasonable.

So I’m going to have to go back through the work that I thought had been done, seed in a couple of these encounters, estimate how much time the encounter will probably take (even if the PCs just slow down to gawk, or stop to take a look / a photo, there will inevitably be some delay), and then adjust all the subsequent time-checks to include that time-loss. That will mean redoing my note-pad’s contents and ‘re-synchronizing’ events.

Which brings me to what used be Step Eight….

Step Eight Nine: The Timing

It’s important to carefully translate the EVALUATION/VERDICT material into a time frame that describes how long it took. What’s the game-time interval between one image and the next, in other words. I do this in minutes and then add them up, and bear in mind the evaluation time-frame – but the first time an evaluation goes over-time (and I deliberately let one do so), I let the PCs explore two different philosophic responses to the situation and then choose how each team will deal with those situations. In a nutshell, they can try to make up time by cutting other evaluations short, or they can eat into the allocated personal time or their next meal-time. It’s another GM’s Force in that whatever they choose works for me, I can feed it into my narrative..

I also estimate how long any encounter is likely to take to resolve.

Next comes calculating the distances and routes – or rather, this is where I put the information that I calculated earlier, under the sub-heading Directions (usually not fully capitalized because I started doing it the other way when I got ahead of myself and decided that consistency was more important). This is the final word on a target – how to get out of town and where to go once you do.

And then it’s time to move on to the next stop.

Drive-through Evaluations

As a general rule, there’s less information about these, and so shorter text and a more casual narrative, but the process is pretty much the same – but with lowered expectations. They are indented so that they stand out.

I also give them the “location number” of the preceding Location – so “Louann” is considered part of Target 106, Camden, but actually gets visited after 206, Horatio, and 207, De Queen.

Directions stay with the main location, but a copy gets appended to the end of the Drive Through Evaluation as a reminder. The original is “this is what your plan calls for”, the subsequent entry is “this is where you go from here.”

Step Nine: The Notepad

The final step is to take the timing data from Step Eight and add another entry to the concordance notepad, so that I can see which route will next reach somewhere notable.

Destinations Done So Far

Here’s a list of the locations described so far in my notes, just because people might be interested: If you aren’t, skip down to the next section.

• [Texas]
  • 100 Dalby Springs, Texas
  • 100 Simms, Texas
  • 200 Texarkana, Texas
  • 100 Corley, Texas
  • 100 Maud, Texas
  • 100 Redwater, Texas
• 201 Homan
• 100 Texarkana
• 202 Hope
• 101 Bradley
  • 202 Columbus
  • 202 Saratoga
  • 101 Lewisville
  • 202 Tollette
  • 101 Stamps
• 203 Mineral Springs
• 102 Waldo
• 203 Ben Lomond
• 203 Wilton
• 204 Ashdown
• 104 Mount Holly
• 105 Stephens
• 205 Foreman
• 106 Camden
• 206 Horatio
• 207 De Queen
  • 106 Louann
• 208 Lockesburg
• 107 Smackover
• 108 El Dorado
• 209 Center Point

And the ones that have been partially done. Some of these places may even no longer technically exist! Talk about a road to nowhere…! “Partial” means that I’ve looked the location up on Wikipedia and made notes accordingly.

• (108 Strong – partial)
• (109 Crossett – partial)
  • (109 Fountain Hill – partial)
  • (109 Johnsville – partial)
• (110 Warren – partial)
  • (110 New Edinburg – partial)
• (111 Fordyce – partial)
  • (111 Ivan – partial)
• (112 Sheridan – partial)
  • (112 Center Grove – no data on Wikipedia)
  • (112 White Hall – partial)
• (113 Pine Bluff – partial)
• (114 Star City – partial)
  • (114 Relf’s Bluff – no data on Wikipedia)
  • (114 Montongo – partial)
• (115 Monticello – partial)
  • (115 Lacey – partial)
  • (115 Fountain Hall – no data on Wikipedia)
• (116 Hamburg – partial)

Sample complete entries

I waited until I got a set of good ones, then copied the work that I had done as a way to wrap up this article – bearing in mind that it’s already twice the usual Campaign Mastery length before this inclusion! (I’ve also formatted it a lot more than I get to do with the plain-text editor that I use to write with).

I should start by apologizing to anyone who lives in any of these communities who is offended by my generalizing and interpreting and projecting of various assumptions onto their communities. Remember, the goal is to create an exciting and interesting game, not necessarily an accurate one!

109 Crossett

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Crosset has a population of 6,500 occupying 5.79 square miles of land, making it one of the largest communities that you’ve visited in Arkansas; it’s actually large enough to have suburbs. It’s taken almost half an hour to drive here from Strong. What’s more, the city is about 7 miles wide (E-W) and 3½ miles deep (N-S) – exploring it fully will consume quite a lot of the advantage that you had built up since just crossing it once from NW to SE will take about 15 minutes. Realistically, 45 minutes to an hour can be consumed poking around just the key points of a city this size – which forewarns you of what it will be like when you have to evaluate Little Rock on Day 3. And that’s before you spend any time considering possible contenders, and you are sure that there will BE some in a city of this size. Still, that’s what the saved time is there for!

There are four properties on Main Street in Crossett listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as well as the Crossett Experimental Forest, located 7 mi (11 km) south.

60% of the population are White, 39% Black, and 1% Hispanic/Latino. The median age is 38 years and there are 83 adult men for every 100 adult women. 17% of the population are below the poverty line and 30% of the children, both notable lower than many other places within the state. Politically, the city only leans conservative, making it one of the most progressive locations in Arkansas outside of Little Rock. This attitude is the legacy of the founders of the city who forged an official relationship with the School of Forestry at Yale University in 1912, and the lumber companies in the region became the leading employer of Yale-trained forestry graduates, which resulted in improved manufacturing and farming practices. It was the Yale influence that led to the creation in 1934 of the Crossett Experimental Forest.

As calamities unfolded in the first half of the 20th century, Crossett seemed to dance between them, untouched; the Roaring Twenties, Great Depression, two World Wars and even the Civil Rights upheavals of the 50s came and went without major disturbance to the community. Following the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision in 1954, leaders in both the black and white communities engaged in talks which finally resulted in the integration of the Crossett schools in 1968 without incident.

The climate is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters. October, May and April are the most pleasant months in Crossett, while July and August are the least comfortable months. It is located just nine miles north of the Louisiana border.

The major employer in the town is the Georgia-Pacific paper mill and allied industries make up a substantial portion of what’s left.

Property is very expensive here, with some homes priced at more than $500,000. Most homes in the city are priced below $79,000.
However, the cost of living is almost 30% lower than the USNA average.

The city is large enough to have a zoo and a first class airport, capable of handling small corporate jets on its 5,000 foot runway.

EVALUATION:

The welcome sign is, appropriately, beside a pine nursery and a stand of old-growth forest preserved from exploitation. (0 mins) (11-109a)

The main shopping center is neat and modern, and there are very few empty storefronts. (Ignore the too-modern cars). (5 mins) (11-109b)

The public library is reassuringly large and well-maintained – in fact, you’ve seen smaller county administrations. (10 mins) (11-109c)

While the edges of the roads have an ‘unfinished’ and untidy look to them, and most are unmarked with center-lines (and sometimes narrow), the verges are very green and shady, and homes are well-separated. Large blocks of land appear to be the norm. As with other towns you’ve looked through in this part of Arkansas, there don’t appear to be very many fences between properties, creating a stronger sense of a local community – that might be problematic for the keeping of secrets. (15 mins) (11-109d)

The Post Office still manages to retain a ‘municipal building’ feeling to it – the locals’ progressiveness appears to have its limits. Bonus points for incorporating the town logo into the sign, however. (20 mins) (11-109e)

Rather more modern and not far away is the Biedenharn Museum & Gardens. This is a city which thinks there’s more to culture than country AND western. (25 mins) (11-109f)

Some houses are small and designed to use the size of the blocks of land to create greater privacy. (35 mins) (11-109g)

CONTENDER #1:

Many take advantage of the space available to accommodate 5, 6, 7, or even 8 bedrooms. Some are clearly built on double-blocks. This plain and unassuming brick dwelling is a 7-bedroom and on the market for $612K (40 mins) (11-109h)

CONTENDER #2:

This looks like a 4-bedroom until you notice the extra rooms on the second floor. A very unpretentious 7-bedroom house, then – again on a double-block, to have such a vast lawn. It would set you back $605K. (45 mins) (11-109i)

CONTENDER #3:

There are two properties that are even larger, and in danger of becoming excessively run-down; both need renovating to at least some degree. The first is the Old Rose Inn, which was damaged during Ragnarok and never reopened after the subsequent death of the owner. It’s $725K, and would probably need $125K in repairs before it could function as anything more than a private residence. But it seems a shame for it to go to waste, it still has hints of past greatness about it. With 28 rooms per level, and some extras on the third level, even if you removed every second wall to open the rooms out into private suites, there is still more than enough capacity for the team. (52 mins) (11-109j)

CONTENDER #4:

A little smaller and quite a lot creepier, but with even greater hints of former glory is the Hotel Crossett. Now quite dilapidated, it would cost $600K to acquire it’s 23 rooms and probably another $4-500K to refurbish. It does occur to you that you could hire an army of workmen to restore these places and have a perfectly-obvious justification for not being around while the repairs are carried out. This place is probably old enough to be on the national register of historic landmarks but its condition seems to have precluded that. Restoring it would erase some of the historic value but preserve what’s left. Although the building looks to be in rough condition, closer inspection shows much of the damage to be cosmetic, but not all. Probably 1/2 of the building is still structurally sound, quite enough for you to use as temporary accommodations. Alternatively, you could buy it and leave it like this for a while until ‘the blueprints are finalized’. (70 mins)

VERDICT:

There are four contenders here with varying shades of appeal. #1 is only just big enough but it is modern and new. Perhaps a 3½ out of 5.

#2 is slightly bigger in capacity but the rooms are smaller; it is modern and new, and traditional at the same time. Same score, but for different reasons.

#3 is a lot of work but more than big enough to house the team in luxury and deserves to be saved. Probably a 4 out of 5, maybe even nudging toward 4½.

All of which goes double for #4. It’s so good that it even generates its own cover stories! If it had already been refurbished, it might be a 5 – but as it stands, it’s only a 4-to-4½.

Directions: North on Route 133 to North Crossett then Route 133 to a right turn onto route 8 to Fountain Hill, highway 425 into Fountain Hill, then NW then West on Route 160 then Route 8 to Johnsville, North on Route 8 to Highway 63 to Warren.

• 4.3 miles in Crossett, to North Crossett @ 25 mph = 10 mins
          Subtotal to North Crossett 10 mins
   
• 12.6 miles through North Crossett on Route 133 @ 95 = 8 mins
• Turn right onto Route 8, 3.8 miles @ 75 = 3 mins
• Turn left onto highway 425
          Subtotal to Fountain Hill = 11 mins
   
• 0.8 miles through Fountain Hill @ 25 mph = 2 mins
• Turn right onto Route 160, 10.7 miles @ 75 on Route 160 to Johnsville = 9 mins
          Subtotal to Johnsville = 11 mins
   
• Stay on route 160 to drive through Johnsville and then turn back to the NE through back streets to join Route 8. 0.3 miles @ 25 mph = 1 min
• 13.2 miles on Route 8 @ 80 mph = 10 mins
• Right turn onto Highway 63
• 2.5 miles on Highway 63 to Warren @ 55 = 3 mins
          Subtotal to Warren = 14 mins
   

212 Cove

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

5 minutes after Vandervoort, and just as Team 1 reach the Crossett shopping center, Team Two drive into the community of Cove.
.
360 people in 1.6 square miles – which actually is an extremely low density for a town. 95% of the population are White, 4% Native American, and 1% Hispanic or Latino. Which leaves the Black population lost in rounding errors, it is that low. Median age is 32, and there is something close to equality in gender.

14% of homes have someone over 65 living there.

Per Capita income is $4000 less than the typical level even in these small towns, and 29% of the population are below the poverty line.

Cove is located at 1000ft above sea level in the hills of the Ouachita Mountains. May, September and October are the most pleasant months in Cove, while July and January are the least comfortable months.

A post office was established in 1897. For about a year, it was known as Venice, but the name Cove Station was chosen in 1898 (‘Leroy’ was also considered). The name was eventually shortened, and applied to the business communities that had sprung up around the railroad station, which was a mile from the previously-existing settlement; this is now known unofficially as “Old Cove” and as a result, Cove juts a finger almost all the way to the Oklahoma border. Cove now contains two grocery chain stores, a convenience store, a Mexican restaurant, a bank, a hardware store, and two automotive care businesses. The post office, a popular series of hiking trails, and a Baptist church also continue to operate.

VERDICT

If it weren’t for it’s proximity to Zone Red, this community would deserve a far closer look than it is going to get under current circumstances – but an insular community “Old Cove” sounds like the perfect place to find what you’re looking for. But, under the circumstances, it doesn’t merit much of a first glance, never mind a second – you already have much better choices on your short list. (No Pics)

212 Hatfield

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Hatfield is just 5 minutes past Cove. The name immediately conjures up images of the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, but you have no idea if the two are in any way connected. The population of this Hatfield is 410 and seems fairly stagnant and unlikely to change from what you are reading. It’s another 96% White town, and that in combination with the size and the proximity to Zone Red makes worthwhile targets unlikely.

The town is contained within 1.3 sq miles at typical small-town population densities. The headquarters of the Christian Motorcyclists Association is located here, which is an interesting blend of conservative and radical – but suggests that less desirable blends of those traits might also find a home here.

VERDICT

Unwilling to waste time on so unlikely a prospect, you blow straight through town without stopping, just as Team one are looking at the Crossett Public Library.. (No Pics)

212 Potter Junction

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

It takes an enormous 11 minutes to reach Potter Junction, which is where the road from the nearby town of Potter joins the highway. It is also known as Old Potter, and that name gives the history of the place – the railroad must have passed near here but not through here, and so the nearest railway station became the center of a new town, with everything that was here migrating to there. So that becomes Potter, and this, Old Potter – technically part of the same settlement, but in practice, it’s own unincorporated community. Located at 1030 feet above sea level, part of the hills of the Ouachita Mountains.

You slow for the speed limit through town even as Team one are busy driving around Crossett, looking for landmarks, contenders, and just getting a feel for the place.

Potter, according to your guidebook, has almost 900 citizens; so far as you can tell, Old Potter would struggle to hold a tenth of that.

But that doesn’t really matter, because from this point onward as you approach the more substantial community of Mena, the highway contains one roadside business after another. Eventually, Old Potter will become the Mena City Limits. But this is a conservative part of the world, so that might take a few decades. They are technically considered to be separate communities some five miles apart, but human nature and opportunism is no respecter of lines on a map.

First there’s the Fish Net Lodge, before you even get to Old Potter. Then the Creative Touch Florist, which is followed by the Loaves & Fishes Christian Book Shop, the Outback Barn (a barn construction company that is housed, appropriately enough, in a large barn), the Humane Society of the Ouachitas, Copelin Motors, Mena Feed & Supplies, The Pleasant Hills Animal Clinic, and then the official Mena city limits sign.

That is followed by the South 71 Church Of Christ, A&J Offroad Rentals, the Polk City Fairgrounds (visible in the distance), the Southside General Store, Architectural Salvage by Ri-Jo, and the Ozark Inn, all before you see any substantive difference between Old Potter and the city of Mena, all 200-400m apart.

Certainly, there was no change in the speed limit from the time you entered Old Potter until the time you officially entered Mena – and no prospective contenders, either.. (No Pics)

213 Mena

GUIDEBOOK/NARRATIVE

Mena’s shape is roughly circular, approx 1.5 miles in radius, with four extensions – one along route 88 to the east, one along route 8, one alongside Polk Road 76 which runs parallel to route 88 north, and one, of course, along Highway 75. That means it takes about 7 minutes to traverse it – and it has a lot of streets to traverse in its official area of just under 7 square miles (18 square km)!

Looking at a map of Mena and Surrounds, it’s obvious that there have been two phases of construction – the heart of the town is on a NW/SE orientation, while the outskirts and surrounding roads are on a north-south orientation. (11-213a)

Of course, you’ve been in Mena unofficially for about 5 miles before you even reach this point – that’ so far to the SW that it won’t even fit on that map.

Mena is the county seat of Polk County, and is surrounded by the Ouachita National Forest; it serves as the gateway to some of the most visited tourist attractions in Arkansas. It was founded by Arthur Edward Stilwell during the building of the Kansas City, Pittsburg and Gulf Railroad (now the Kansas City Southern), which stretched from Kansas City, Missouri to Port Arthur, Texas. Train service to Mena began in 1896.

Like Vandervoort to the south, this was named for the wife of Jan De Goeijen, a friend of Stillwell, or more exactly, for Stillwell’s nickname for Folmina Margaretha Janssen-De Goeijen. Janssen Park in the center of town is also named for her.

It took less than a year for Mena to become incorporated as a second-class city, and a year later, the Bank of Mena was founded. A year after that, the county seat was moved from nearby Dallas to Mena. Two years later, the population was 3,423. In contrast, Dallas has never grown larger than an unincorporated community.

A black community called Little Africa developed on Board Camp Creek east of Mena. The community was small, with a population of 152 in 1900. In 1901, a black man, Peter Berryman, was lynched after an alleged altercation with a white girl. No one was arrested. Several other instances of racially motivated hate and violence toward the Black community had been noted; this, combined with declining job prospects, drove most Blacks to leave; by 1910, only 16 remained. Ten years after that, the Mena Star was advertising the town as “100% white”. A local chapter of the KKK was organized in 1922. Five years later, the commercial club created advertising which used “No Negroes” as a selling point. Even today, the city has far less than 0.5% Black residents.

In the 1950s, a government program to stockpile manganese led to the reopening of local mines closed since the 1890s. The program ended in 1959, and the mines again closed.

In the early 1980s, drug smuggler Barry Seal moved his operations to the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport, where he owned and operated many planes and helicopters, as well as advanced radar equipment. He was taken down last year by the Crusaders, their third visit to the city. In 1985, they ripped apart a White Pride gathering, demolishing the town convention center in the process, and in 1984, they attacked the fourth of July parade after a neo-nazi affiliated group, the Freedom Brigade, were granted permission to march. 87 were hospitalized, about 1/3 of whom were not part of the Freedom Brigade. While the first two actions won them few friends in the region, greater forgiveness was shown after the third. Not that there’s any evidence that they care.

In 1911, a damaging tornado struck the town. It typically snows 5 months of the year, though in three of those months the average amount is 0.2 inches. In the summer months, the average temperature is in the low 90s(F) (33C).

There are currently about 5250 citizens. With such a large population base, broader statistical determinants wash out much demographic individuality; median age is a little high (41 years) but otherwise the population is right on the state statistical medium.

An estimated 1.2 million visitors a year come to Mena to enjoy its nearby natural features which include a scenic drive and state park. Camp Pioneer is a 163-acre Boy Scout camp east of Mena, and Camp High Point is a Girl Scout camp also located in the area.

Population density is relatively low, about midway between a small town and a densely-packed city like Texarkana.

The only indication that you’re entering Mena is that the speed limit drops from 55 to 45 mph. (11-213b)

EVALUATION:

The problem with vital, active communities is that available properties get snapped up fairly quickly. In effect, they are all desirable real estate, only the degree of desirability varying. And there are locals with the money to snap up anything desirable. Combine that with the proximity of Zone Red, and it would be easy to vacillate between abject pessimism and wild-eyed optimism. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to either yourselves or the city of Mena not to give it a thorough evaluation. As usual, you start downtown, getting a feel for the prosperity of the location – and eyeballing the windows of every real estate agency you pass. Mena looks fairly unremarkable at first. (3 mins) (11-213c)

It’s only when you discover two antique shops side-by-side that you begin to appreciate that Mena has qualities unlike everywhere else you’ve looked. (5 mins) (11-213d)

Mena appears to have an upper class who are seriously interested in the finer things in life. The Arts shop just down the road would be remarkable in any city for its size, but when you put still another antiques dealer right next door, it establishes a pattern. (6 mins) (11-213e)

The first church that you come across is tidy and unspectacular, suggesting that the community are more secular than most. (8 mins) (11-213f)

But the next one is far more lavish in scale and decoration – (11 mins) (11-213g)

And the third one is positively opulent, even architecturally grand, more deserving of the title “Temple” than mere “Church”. (15 mins) (11-213h)

Still, this fits the pattern that you have begun to detect – there are people with money here, and they aren’t afraid to show it – but at the same time, utility is not something they willingly sacrifice for appearances. The County Court House is neat, tidy, utilitarian, but with a couple of almost understated artistic flourishes, like the band around the second story ceiling. (17 mins) (11-213i)

It’s a similar story when you come across the National Guard Armory – the more time you spend looking at it, the more expensive it begins to seem as stylish design flourishes begin to accumulate. (20 mins) (11-213j)

.It is into this context that you start your search for potential Bases. Some of the houses on the outskirts, where you hoped land would be cheap enough that someone would build big, are rustic cabins (but the vehicles on display still hint at wealth). (24 mins) (11-213k)

But most are neat and tidy, if small – and way too small for your purposes. (27 mins) (11-213L)

Even when you find a bigger house, closer inspection inevitably shows that this simply means that the bedrooms are bigger, not that there are more of them. (32 mins) (11-213m)

Some carry even this trend to extremes like this one-bedroom offering. (37 mins) (11-213n)

There are a few larger buildings, but they are not available. For example, the Elks Lodge, which was lent to the community to serve as the local hospital between 1935 and 1951, but was then handed back to the local chapter of the Elks. (41 mins) (11-213o)

For those who don’t know, the Elks started as a social club in 1868 for minstrel show performers, and borrowed rites and practices from Freemasonry, including racial and gender restrictions on membership. The former lasted until 1973, the latter continues to this day. Over time, they became the socially-acceptable face of ultra-patriotism. They have participated in a number of national programs of civic benefit over the years, in a similar fashion to the Rotary Club. Presidents Harding, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ford were all Elks members, as were General Douglas MacArthur, General Frederick Funston, General Patton, and General Pershing. Other famous Elks include Lawrence Welk, Will Rogers, Jack Benny, Clint Eastwood, Gene Autry, William F Cody (Buffalo Bill), Buster Keaton, Vince Lombardi, Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, and Irving Berlin. Also not available are this magnificent Victorian home, recently restored – (46 mins) (11-213p)

…and this more modern offering…. (50 mins) (11-213q)

…or this privately-owned mansion. (53 mins) (11-213r)

VERDICT:

Ultimately, Mena was another dry well, but it helped crystallize in your minds the observation that there was a demographic ‘sweet spot’ that optimized the prospects of both a location of sufficient size having been built, and being on the market, and of sufficiently-recent maintenance and circumstances that it would be a viable choice. Every one of those failures just underlined that the right place IS out there, waiting to be found. If it hasn’t been, already! Besides, there is always the proximity of Zone Red and the activities of the Crusaders to consider – that alone is enough to put even a perfect choice onto shaky ground.

EVALUATION REDUX:

But Mena has one more surprise to spring. Just after crossing the city limits…. (54 mins) (11-213s)

…you find this former sawmill, which has been fully converted into a large home, ten upstairs bedrooms and several big rooms – a kitchen, a dining room, a sunken open-plan living room, a spa, four bathrooms. Fully furnished, and on offer for just $880,000, it’s a few miles out of Mena, and extremely isolated – maybe even isolated enough that you could ignore all the Zone Red down-checks. (60 mins) (11-213t)

VERDICT REDUX:

It’s not quite perfect, for that reason, but it’s at least the equal of anything else you’ve seen, even with the prominent negatives that come with the location. And one final thought: In their real superhero identities, the team are well known to have inclinations toward small-l liberalism; while this set of identities have yet to establish a reputation, this is quite possibly the LAST place on earth that one would expect to find a pro-liberal superhero team. It’s just one more layer of protection for your assumed identities. And that might just be worth the risk of the Crusaders coming back to town. A 5 out of 5 – if the Crusaders Question is disregarded. And where there’s one, there is almost certain to be others to find – perhaps without that drawback! You still have several more states, and more than half, of this one to explore!

Directions: Route 88 East then Highway 71 North to Acorn (total 5.4 miles), then Highway 270 East, North, WNW, NE (15.3 miles) to Y City. The road skirts through a valley between two mountain ranges of the Ouachitas.

• 0.4 miles exit Mena @ 25 mph = 1 minute
• 5.4 miles to Acorn @ 55 mph = 6 mins
          Acorn Subtotal = 7 mins
   
• 0.5 miles through Acorn @ 25 mph = 1 min
• 15.2 miles to Mill Creek Township @ 55mph = 17 min
          Mill Creek Subtotal = 18 mins
   
• Turn right onto Highway 270, 0.1 miles to Y City @ 30 mph = 12 seconds
          Y City Subtotal = 12 seconds

Commentary on the example

Okay, let me talk for a few minutes about these examples.

To start with, I’ve given you two principle evaluations and a number of drive-through minor evaluations so that you can see the difference in how they are handled. The latter are literally driving through town and keeping your eyes open! But I especially want to call attention to the way I have combined research results from multiple sites, then blended those results with fiction of my own creation. Sometimes, it’s abbreviating the truth, or obfuscating it; sometimes it’s inserting game history impacts, especially the impact of Ragnarok; and sometimes it’s inserting something new made from whole cloth. But I would expect even locals from the places used as examples to be a little unsure where the lines are blurred.

Second, I wish I could enrich the article with the illustrations that the players will see at the time. Their absence greatly diminishes the text, which is designed to operate in tandem with the visuals. But copyright violation is something I take seriously.

Next, it’s my intention to have an NPC in each car, at least at the start of these investigations – which means that there will be two PCs in each car to interact. Since the two female characters will stay together, that goes a long way to defining the personnel breakdown – without going all the way of dictating to the players. If they insist on the two NPCs sharing a car, well, Okay then. The key point in terms of the adventure is this: the ratings and verdicts offered are the opinion of the NPC that is assumed to be in the car. If there’s no NPC in the car, those opinions will be withheld, forcing the players to make up their own minds. The relevant point in terms of this article is that this is a GM’s Force – I don’t care what they pick, I can build interesting adventures around any of the contenders that are on offer. I separate the chaff from the wheat (or the fish from the squid, the Kzin equivalent) by restricting the possibilities that come up for consideration in the first place.

Fourth, this extraction comes at an important point in the overall structure of the adventure. Early drive-throughs weren’t “No Pics”, they were illustrated, even if there was just one image. But as these searches continue, the intention is for more and more of the uninteresting stuff to be hand-waved. By this point, the pattern will have become ingrained, so this is where that hand-waving starts; it will only get more prominent from here. I can fully imagine that a later Drive-through appraisal might read “60 residents, nothing interesting.”

The GM’s Force. It doesn’t matter what the players choose if all choices are equally good from the GM’s point of view.

Remember it, because it will be useful.