{"id":29146,"date":"2020-12-10T16:03:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T05:03:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=29146"},"modified":"2020-12-10T16:03:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-10T05:03:50","slug":"lost-christmas-a-scenario-of-elves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/lost-christmas-a-scenario-of-elves\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost Christmas: A Scenario Of Elves"},"content":{"rendered":"
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To use this scenario for yourself, you might want to hit the “Print friendly” button at the bottom of the post.<\/p><\/div>\n

\nThis post has been badly delayed by a drunk driver who connected with a power pole this afternoon. To work on the damaged utility, the power supply had to be disconnected for several hours – and when the lights came back on, they didn’t bring my internet connection with them. At this point, I can’t tell when I’ll get the connection back and be able to actually publish this. The fact that you’re reading these words is a strong indicative that the problems have been solved. though!<\/p>\n

    \n

    \n(Actually, they haven’t – I’m posting this from an internet cafe)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ol>\n

    The following was written to run as a Christmas Special, a one-off completely separate from my regular campaigns.<\/p>\n

    Since I ran it over the weekend just passed (as I write this), I can now share it here for others to do likewise before Christmas arrives. When I ran it, it was with only three players (a fourth was invited but couldn’t attend, and neither could the player invited to replace him at short notice).<\/p>\n

    This adventure will be presented exactly as I ran it, warts and all, but with a few notes from the actual play session boxed off in blue, just like this introduction. Paragraphs marked with a triple asterisk (***) are not meant to be read to the players but are directions to the GM, which he should interpret into in-game narrative as necessary. At the end of each such paragraph, there is an unstated direction to permit roleplay\/response. Where two paragraphs in a row are marked, the next paragraph may contain directions for handling that roleplay.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Players were told that they had to generate an Elf, but each was required to select a game system different to each of the other players – a first-come first-served approach would apply if needed. All varieties of D&D and Pathfinder would count as “one game system”.<\/strong> You want variety of Elf.<\/em><\/p>\n

    \nIt will also be useful if one of them has some means of understanding written English (even if it’s with a spell and a little hand-waving on the GM’s part).<\/p>\n

    In Saturday’s game, I had an Anime Elf (BESM) with a Fairy Dragon companion, an Urban Elf (GURPS) and a Realm Runner (Original TORG) – who spoke and read English. The fourth player had intended to run a D&D\/Tolkienesque Elf. The players were also told to bring the core rules of the game system from which their Elf derived (in case we needed to refer to them – which we did, a couple of times).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Act I: The Top of the World<\/h3>\n

    Each player should determine what their PCs were doing, which should be something that they would normally be<\/em> doing, based on the game system from which they have come and the normal things that people do in that genre before play starts. Nothing more – yet.<\/p>\n

    \nIn particular, the GM should shut down any discussion of names, backgrounds, etc – he shouldn’t know and the other players definitely<\/em> shouldn’t know.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    *** All PCs (Elves) appear simultaneously in a frigid environment, no matter where they were or what they were doing. -40?F (with wind chill), sleet, snow, the whole nine yards. Dwell on the weather for a moment.<\/p>\n

    *** Go around the table, get PCs to describe what they are wearing, what they were doing, and how they are reacting. If they decide to cooperate with each other, permit the exchange of names.<\/p>\n

    A large snow-covered igloo is visible to the North.<\/p>\n

    *** None of them know each other, and there are physical differences between all of them – some subtle, some not. Accentuate these, especially ears, height, hair color, skin color, and clothing. Then hint that the landscape looks like it belongs on a Christmas Card to any PC with the background to appreciate the fact. This should prompt an introduction\/synopsis of the concepts of Christmas for those Elves whose cultural backgrounds don’t include such.<\/p>\n

    \nThis worked a treat in my game – the Realm Runner was familiar with the story of Christmas and was able to outline it for the other PCs, who were not.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    *** Entering the igloo (which is just barely big enough for all of them), they find two buttons on the wall, one red and one green. Nothing but frostbite will happen until the red one is pressed; when that happens, the floor will begin to descend into a much larger structure, in fact it might just be the biggest building any of them have ever seen before.<\/p>\n

    Benches are lined up, row after row of them, all showing colorful flashy things that are half-made. Working on these flashy things are a bunch of small, green humanoids wearing a lot of red and white with black belts and boots. At least, you assume that’s what they are doing – none of them appear to be moving at the moment.<\/p>\n

    Closer inspection shows that many of them are bowed or draped over their workbenches like marionettes whose strings have been cut. What’s more, they seem to have a number of physical characteristics shared by several of you, though perhaps not all.<\/p>\n

    To one side of the lines of benches and their motionless workers stands a house that appears to be made of gingerbread – a dense, cake-like material, for any of you whose characters wouldn’t know what gingerbread is. Peppermint frosting outlines windows and doors, and there is a chocolate stable to one side, in which six deer munch contentedly on carrots. One has a strangely red nose.<\/p>\n

    \nThis was the first place where the adventure threatened to go off the rails, as the Anime Elf used a ‘speak with animals’ spell to communicate with the Reindeer, which threatened to preempt the in-game plot briefing I planned to provide. I solved it by making the Reindeer relatively thick (even for reindeer) and totally captivated by the carrots they were eating. The character then decided to buy some goodwill by magically creating some extra-tasty carrots for them, a decision that paid off later in the adventure.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    The door opens, revealing a very large woman. “Oh thank heavens! I wasn’t sure that I had set the Elf-finder, correctly, Nicky’s machines are all so complicated. I’ve brought you all here because I need your help. The rewards will be vastly more than you can imagine, but time is short, so I can’t possibly explain everything, I don’t understand it all, myself, anyway, but where are my manners, you must be starving, come, eat, drink, fortify yourselves for whatever you may face!”<\/p>\n

    *** Mrs Klaus will introduce herself when prompted, but is otherwise too busy doling out eggnog and cookies and Christmas cake to offer explanations. When she persuades one of the PCs to sit at a table with only two chairs, they will discover that there’s magic in this world, because it instantly grows so that there are still two empty place settings.<\/p>\n

    “I have gathered you all here temporarily to deal with an emergency. You have to save the spirit of Christmas! You see, my husband has gone missing….”<\/p>\n

    *** Under questioning, the story starts to come out, in bits and pieces and in slightly jumbled order.<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Her husband, Nicholas, is an old man kept alive to embody the spirit of a season of hope and goodwill called Christmas.<\/li>\n
    • He gathers the accumulated goodwill of children the world over and concentrates it to give hope and acts of charity to people the world over, while converting leftover belief into gifts for the children, sustaining their faith in the good of mankind for another year.<\/li>\n
    • He does this with five antennae hidden around the world – she’s not sure exactly where, but that’s not an insuperable difficulty. These antennae are shaped a bit like an extremely thick shepherd’s crook and are red-and-white striped. They are invisible to the general population of this world for most of the year, only being activated when they won’t seem out of place.<\/li>\n
    • The antennae get out of alignment due to everything from continental drift to teething elephants (very big animals if you don’t know what they are), so a month before the big day, Nicholas goes out to realign them, clean things up, and get things ready. The antennae aren’t normally visible until the approach of the season (when they fit into the general decor).<\/li>\n
    • This year, he did exactly that, the same as he always does, taking half the reindeer to pull his sled.<\/li>\n
    • And then, he just vanished, and so did they. She knows that he vanished because he didn’t come home, and because the Elves, which are powered by his internal store of goodwill, all stopped working. Even the naughty-nice tabulator stopped working!<\/li>\n
    • A long time ago, in a remote kingdom of another world, Nicholas negotiated a labor contract with the ruling population, who were called elves, which permits him to employ no-one else; in exchange for this exclusivity, they support him with magic, and are granted effective immortality, and all the cookies and eggnog that they can eat. His labor needs have grown somewhat, and so he got them to build an Elf Recruitment Machine to hire more workers – but they had to self-identify as elves, under the terms of the labor contract.<\/li>\n
    • Mrs Klaus used this device to “borrow” elves from other realities, whether those realities enjoyed the Christmas season or not – not all worlds do, and sometimes it’s called something else. She needed outside recruits because they wouldn’t be bound to her husband, the way the worker elves were.<\/li>\n
    • She doesn’t know what has happened to her husband, but she needs the PCs to find and rescue him before it’s too late. They don’t have another sled, and six aren’t enough to pull the big sleigh, but the reindeer will carry you bareback if you’re nice to them. She doesn’t know where these antennae are, or what you will find when you get to them, but the Reindeer can at least get you there. They’re a little magical too.<\/li>\n
    • The reward: each of them will become a beacon of hope to those around them when they return to their worlds, a self-fulfilling promise that things can and will get better. If they decide they like it, they can sign up to be part of Santa’s rounds every year just by spreading the tale – and by eschewing any personal claims to being the instrument of hope responsible, of course. Or she can send you home now with nothing but the cookies and eggnog as compensation for at least considering her proposal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      *** The date: It’s December 22nd, about 3PM. ‘Nicky’ has been missing for 4 days. It will take the Elves about 48 hours to finish making the gifts. And all the action happens on the night of Christmas Eve – the actual 25th is too late. That gives a deadline of only 9 or 10 hours for the rescue.<\/p>\n

      Act 2: Exploring the world<\/h3>\n

      *** Roleplay a brief sequence in which the PCs choose reindeer (or the reindeer choose PCs). The reindeer ‘run’ on air, providing a ride that is completely gentle. There is a hatch in the ceiling of the big building that retracts to permit them to fly out, and then closes to look like a tiny frozen lake. The reindeer then set off in a generally southwesterly direction.<\/p>\n

      Antenna #1<\/h5>\n

      *** Improvise traveling scene as PCs ride bareback on Reindeer. Anywhere is about 20 minutes away by ‘reindeer express’.<\/p>\n

      Antenna #1 is located on the roof of the world’s largest toy store, located in New York City.<\/p>\n

      *** Use descriptions of the city to establish that it’s the 1950s on Earth – be vague about the date. Describe a Santa on a street-corner, collecting for charity. This rams home how difficult it will be to locate the real one.<\/p>\n

      The reindeer land on the roof. It’s flat, with various things sticking up out of it, including a locked small building that probably contains stairs down into the building. The Antenna looks like part of the Christmas display. It’s red-and-white candy-stripe motif blends in perfectly.<\/p>\n

      *** There are signs in the snow that Santa was here, the antenna has been properly aligned, but he was being watched by someone who chewed pistachio nuts. The PCs will then be attacked by rogue toys – soldiers and tanks and model aircraft firing cherry bombs.<\/p>\n

      *** NB: No fight should take more than 20 mins to resolve, except possibly the last one! And don’t neglect the risk of injury to the reindeer.<\/p>\n

      \nOne of the PCs took refuge in the stairwell, so I had to invent additional toys-come-to-life: Barbie dolls with plastic (but functional) chainsaws, GI Joes filling a portable swimming pool with water, and a homicidal garden gnome with an electric-powered lawnmower trying to drive the PC in that direction, amongst others. It helps if you’ve seen the Gremlins movies, especially the first one.<\/p>\n

      I described “plastic” as ‘a sort of somewhat-flexible thin bone’ for the benefit of those who hadn’t encountered it before.<\/p>\n

      The Reindeer can’t skip ahead, they only know the course by rote.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Antenna #2<\/h5>\n

      *** The second antenna is located deep underwater at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Fortunately, the PCs can breathe and withstand the pressure – as long as they are mounted on magic reindeer.<\/p>\n

      *** Santa was here, too, and so was the watcher (pistachio shells in the mud). There are signs of a scuffle, and some brightly-colored metallic paper has been dropped by the watcher.<\/p>\n

      *** PCs are then attacked by 3 miniature submarines (about a foot long, and still in their cardboard boxes) with an infinite supply of flechette torpedoes. These have a 2m explosive radius and ignore armor of any sort. Worse, they can cut that armor – even if it’s elvish mail. This significantly ramps up the danger levels..<\/p>\n

      Antenna #3<\/h5>\n

      *** Located in Japan, hidden inside an active volcano (Mt Fuji), which it keeps from erupting, and mounted on a 1m x 2m flat steel platform; the antenna also acts as a heat-sink to keep the metal from being. more than red hot. <\/p>\n

      *** The reindeer will deposit the PCs on the platform and then fly off for the mouth of the volcano. Anyone not wearing thick leather soles will be very uncomfortable. And if those soles are held on by metal nails (most will be) they might as well not be very thick at all.<\/p>\n

      *** PCs are attacked by a giant (12′ tall) robot. (Use toy robot image) before they can examine the antenna for clues. Robot’s object is to swing wildly and knock a target off the platform and into the magma. Worse, it has limited capacity for self-repairs. There is only one enemy, but make sure it seems more dangerous than the submarines or toys.<\/strong><\/p>\n

      *** When the PCs overcome the robot, they will be surprised by a trap mounted on the base of the antenna – a pot of boiling liquid of some sort, very dark in color. Any sort of contact will cause it to vomit acid into the air, splashing on one or more people, and able to eat through almost anything.<\/p>\n

      *** This antenna is more-or-less aligned. There is no sign that St Nick had to do anything here, and there is no sign of a watcher – but someone<\/em> left the Robot here to ‘discourage’ rescue attempts. It’s pointless searching for pistachio shells, they would have been incinerated by the magma.<\/p>\n

      Antenna #4<\/h5>\n

      *** Located deep in the jungles of Central Africa, underneath a pyramid that has a group of archaeologists salivating over the significance of the find because of its distance from Egypt. Lots of wildlife paying no-one any attention at all – Lions, Zebras, Elephants, A Hippo, etc.- are around a nearby water-hole. It’s around noon.<\/p>\n

      *** The smartest of the Reindeer will tell the PCs that the humans shouldn’t be able to see the pyramid at all, it should be hidden by the antenna within. Entrance to the pyramid is on the far side (relative to the archaeologists), in an entrance that has been deliberately constructed to look decrepit and collapsed; the others lead to nothing of any importance. PCs have to drive the archaeologists away before they can enter the structure.<\/p>\n

      *** It’s easy to find a panel that depresses, permitting the 1′ thick stone door to roll to one side on stone runners and steel balls about 1.5 inches in diameter (BIG ball bearings). This reveals a set of stone stairs going down, covered in a layer of sand and dust. Footprints show that someone descended into the pyramid, followed by someone else. The reindeer will refuse to go down.<\/p>\n

      *** Inside, they will find signs that Santa had a scuffle with someone wearing very big shoes. A Tracking roll (or equivalent) shows that after the scuffle, big-shoes deliberately kicked the antenna out of alignment. More pistachios are found where he was hiding.<\/p>\n

      *** Someone will find (Searching for Pistachio shells?) a bunch of red sticks with string in their ends leading to a clock. Anyone with any sort of technical familiarity will recognize the ‘clock’ as a timer counting down; it currently reads ’14’. Some of the strings lead under the sand to the stairway at the entrance with footprints showing that at least one PC set foot on them when descending into the pyramid. The explosives are more than enough to bring the pyramid down on whoever sets them off.<\/p>\n

      \nThis encounter is designed to utilize a different skill-set to the encounters thus far, while again increasing the danger levels. The bomb has to be disarmed or thrown out of the pyramid into the nearby waterhole. The antenna then has to be realigned – this can either be done by sensing the magic getting ‘in tune’ or can be done by consulting the reindeer, who can sense the magic of the antennae, or by a PC waiting outside and reporting whether or not they can still see the pyramid.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      *** The antenna is mounted on a multi-axis rotating arrangement with three axes of rotation: around, up-down, and around it’s axis. So trial-and-error might take a while.<\/p>\n

      \nThe other purpose of this encounter is to provide a change of pace, backing things off just when the PCs would expect more combat. This deliberately manipulates the intensity of the game to build up to the big finish.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      Antenna #5<\/h5>\n

      *** Hidden deep in Southern Siberia, near the Asia\/Europe Border, in a crater that a nearby road bypasses.<\/p>\n

      This antenna has not been realigned, but you do find a sack bearing Santa’s red-and-white motif, the missing sled, and the other six reindeer.<\/p>\n

      *** Unfortunately, something seems to have driven them wild; they will attack any PC or reindeer that approaches them. Their eyes are wide open with pinprick pupils and their movements are jerky and relatively uncoordinated. Anyone with herbalism will suspect that they have been feeding on something they shouldn’t. Half-eaten apples lie on the snow nearby; there are no prizes for guessing how the poison has been administered.<\/p>\n

      ***Once the drugged reindeer have been handled (which should be fairly easy), the signs of struggle can be interpreted as before, and will suggest that Santa was bending over the antenna base and preparing to realign it when someone beaned him with his own toy-sack.<\/p>\n

      *** Underneath the sack, one of the PCs will discover a small piece of soft colored paper with writing on it. Any PC that can read English will be able to read what it says – “Admit One” on one side, and “Apollo Th—- Hollyw—–” on the other.<\/p>\n

      Act 3: The Apollo Theater in downtown Hollywood….<\/h3>\n

      …is actually on a backstreet that sees very little traffic. The billboard says that they are currently showing “Miracle on 42nd street” – and have been for the last 50 years. Or, more likely, they aren’t showing anything, and haven’t bothered taking down the marquee, which would go along with the rundown condition of the building.<\/p>\n

      *** Let PCs find one or more ways in – front entrance, rear entrance, rooftop.<\/p>\n

      \nAt least one of your PCs is likely to be adept at sneaking around and breaking into places they aren’t supposed to go, and they might not have had a lot of opportunity to shine until now. Time to make up for that before its all-in for the final mayhem. But make sure that the whole group are in a position to hear the final monologue and don’t let anyone do anything to interrupt.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      The Final Monologue<\/p>\n

        \n

        The hooded figure looks upward and addresses the bound and gagged Spirit Of Christmas, “Isn’t it a sight to behold, old friend? We were always equals, but lately you’ve been getting too big for your britches, thanks to the meddling of those blasted toy stores. Whenever anyone does anything good around this time of year, what do they say? ‘A Christmas miracle’, that’s what! ‘The spirit of Christmas’! “Santa came early!’ You get all the credit, hog all the glory, well No More!”<\/p>\n

        (voice muffled by hand) “Mmm-mmm-mmh-hmm!”<\/p>\n

        “But soon, it will all be over, Santa. The gifts for all the little kiddies created by my tinker-gnomes will be spread world-wide by my Dwarves through their metaphysical tunnels.”<\/p>\n

        (voice muffled by hand) “Mmh-hmm!”<\/p>\n

        “What? Did you think I dug all those tunnels myself? I outsourced that drudgery long ago. But I shouldn’t let you distract my like that, or we’ll be here all day. Where was I?”<\/p>\n

        (voice muffled by hand) “Mmh!”<\/p>\n

        “Oh yes, that’s right – thank you for reminding me. Your reputation will be ruined, all that undeserved adulation, gone just like that, pfft! The world will embrace a more wholesome celebration, MY celebration, and at last I will get the adulation that I deserve!”<\/p>\n

        (voice muffled by hand) “Mmm-mmm-mmh-hmm!”<\/p>\n

        \nFor this next bit, channel Davros, if that means anything to you.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        The hooded figure rises and casts aside his hood, concluding his deranged monologue in a torrent of rising mania: “For I am the one, the only, Easter Bunny!” With one hand he lights a match against his thumb and brings it to a fat, half-burnt cigar that obligingly ignites into glowing embers and clouds of smoke, while with the other, he grabs an opened bag of pistachio nuts with brightly-colored metallic paper binding the bag closed.\n<\/ol>\n

        \nAll eyes should have been on the monologue\/big reveal. Reward any player who listened but carefully looked around with additional descriptive tidbits: a number of tunnels leading away from the room that weren’t evident from the walls on the outside of the theater, even though those walls were only an inch or so thick; and leaning against one wall is a large A-frame ladder, which is obviously how they got the cage up to the ceiling.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        The Big Finish<\/h5>\n

        *** Final fight. The Gnomes will assemble hand-built weapons from the toy parts. Most of these will backfire immediately, leaving them a negligible threat, but one or two will work and be dangerous. The Dwarves will draw their axes and back off, leaving clear passage for the Trollz, who are a far more damaging enemy. Every round, 1\/3 of the damage done to them regenerates, and d3 rounds after one is killed, it will rise anew, seemingly unharmed. Only fire damage doesn’t vanish\/regenerate in this way. Any other burn won’t cut it.<\/p>\n

        *** When he realizes that this is an attempt to rescue Santa, the deranged rabbit will start hopping on the spot and pounding his size-four fists to the ground, “No, no, no, no, no, you’re going to ruin everything, everything!”<\/p>\n

        *** After the first of his ‘guards’ goes down (or at any other appropriate moment), he will start to recover from his hissy fit, “Dwarves! Bring The Sacks – it may not be as magnificent, but it will still be enough to taint this so-called ‘Spirit Of Christmas!” He will then attempt to retreat down one of the tunnels through the theater walls (that didn’t exist on the outside of the theater), followed by several of his Dwarven employees, each pair lugging a sack many times their size, shielding the insane rabbit from anything the PCs might try.<\/p>\n

        *** If Santa has been released from the manacles, however, he can twist space to prevent the escape. If he has been, the rabbit will charge down one tunnel only to emerge down another back into the Theater, skidding to a halt in front of the portly humanoid figure. He will try a second time, but the same thing happens. By now, Santa has dressed himself.<\/p>\n

        The Denouement<\/h5>\n

        The rabbit’s shoulders slump as he realizes that he has been defeated. “Poor bunny,” says Santa, as he drops to one knee and looks the villain in the eye.<\/p>\n

          \n

          “You’ve been very naughty, haven’t you? Look at all the trouble you’ve put these good Elves to. And all the worry you will have caused Mrs Klaus. Did you even think of that, hmm? What did -she- ever do to you but feed you eggnog and cookies and fruitcake, hmm? So you must be punished, like all naughty boys.<\/p>\n

          “Here, then, is your punishment: I forgive you, and you will have to remember the humiliation of my doing so, forever. You and your tinkers will help my Elves, who will now be back at work, make up for lost time. And next March, when Easter draws nigh, I will help you capture the reputation that you deserve.<\/p>\n

          “Why didn’t you come<\/em> to me, when it started to be a problem? Hmmm…. I know a number of chocolatiers – perhaps eggs made of chocolate instead of simply painted hens eggs…”\n<\/ol>\n

          From an inside pocket, he produces a handful of small cardboard signs with rope loops that he couldn’t possibly have prepared in advance.<\/p>\n

            \n

            “Here you are. Now put that on, and give one to each of your Gnome Tinkers, too. Union contract, you know.” The sign reads, “Acting Elf – on probation”.\n<\/ol>\n

            As soon as the sign is donned, however reluctantly, the wearer begins working as fast as the tinkers were before, but there is a far more wholesome quality to the toys being produced.<\/p>\n

            The Epilogue<\/h5>\n

            Santa then turns to the group of you, pausing to look at the burned remains of the Trollz. “Poor boys, they didn’t deserve that, but it had to be done. I’ll have to think of something to do for them. Maybe immortalizing them in toy form? That might take a while, but it seems appropriate.<\/p>\n

              \n

              “But what of the [#] of you? I must thank you for your aid in keeping alive the spirit of goodwill. I am sure that you all had busy lives that this experience has interrupted. Here, take these tokens of appreciation,” he says handing over small sacks. “Don’t open them until the day after tomorrow, wherever you come from, and you will receive the rewards to which you are entitled.<\/p>\n

              “And when they ask you – and they will – and you tell them the story of this day, the spirit of the season of goodwill shall take hold and take root in those around you, whether the tradition already exists there or not.<\/p>\n

              “Oh, and one more thing: Merry Christmas, Ho Ho Ho,” he says as you begin to fade out, returning to whence you came.\n<\/ol>\n

              The End<\/h3>\n

              \nWith three players, and two rest breaks, this took from about 2PM to 7:30PM to play through. As you can tell, there’s a lot of ‘directed improv’ – necessary because you don’t know what “elves” the players will come up with.<\/p>\n

              In many respects, that makes improv an easier option than pre-scripting everything – since you don’t know what to expect, almost everything you prepare will not be right for the PCs you have to cope with!<\/p>\n

              The backstory plays fast and loose with real world history but mostly in areas that won’t show readily – the largest toy store in the world might not always have been in New York City, and I’m not entirely sure when Chocolate Easter Eggs were first introduced, for example. I’m fairly certain that the commercialization of Christmas preceded it, though – and that’s what I’ve hung the premise of the scenario on.<\/p>\n

              You may have noticed that I haven’t provided any stats for, well, anything. For the most part, common sense is all you need, and an understanding of how thick water is, and how good at slowing different things down.<\/p>\n

              Oh, and one more thing: Merry Christmas!\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

              This post has been badly delayed by a drunk driver who connected with a power pole this afternoon. To work on the damaged utility, the power supply had to be disconnected for several hours – and when the lights came back on, they didn’t bring my internet connection with them. At this point, I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[67,70,74,89,12,94,96],"tags":[155,172,218,282,250,261,232],"series":[],"class_list":["post-29146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dnd","category-gm-ing","category-mike","category-npcs-etc","category-pcs","category-ideas-and-inspiration","category-write","tag-dd","tag-npcs","tag-pathfinder","tag-pcs","tag-resources","tag-seasonal","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1toiD-7A6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29151,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29146\/revisions\/29151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29146"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=29146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}