Actual Play - Shadows of Brimstone - Contacting a Fallen Fortress

Kitsune - 1st level - played by Emily
Courtesan - 1st level - played by me


Session 1
Somewhere in the hinterlands of feudal Edo-period Japan, a meteorite made of mysterious dark stone has landed in the nearby mountains. The stone can be forged into weapons and used to perform magic, but it seems to have opened a door to monsters once believed mythical, and prolonged exposure slowly warps its users. Society in this localized region has all but collapsed into chaos. Landowning families have largely retreated into their hereditary fortresses, and the countryside is filled with soldiers and criminals, all traveling in search of opportunity, gold, and dark stone.

Two companions set off on an adventure of their own - the Kitsune, a fox spirit and former guardian of a Water Temple, and the Courtesan, a skilled entertainer bearing a personal letter from the Emperor, thanking her for the afternoon she participated in a tea ceremony at the Imperial Palace, that she hoped would help keep the pair safe on the road. They first set off to investigate a fortress that had gone dark, its fields abandoned, its lanterns left unlit.

The pair entered the fortress, with the Kitsune carrying their lantern to try to hold back the darkness. Courtesan peeked into the next room. Kitsune began searching for evidence of whatever crime had befallen the place. She found a small purse of coins ... and bloodstains and a fleeting shadow that unsettled her. She drew out her ornate comb to smooth her fur and sooth her nerves.

They passed into a dojo, the floor covered with scattered salt. The cubbyholes along the walls were filled with smashed salt blocks, buckets of the stuff were overturned. All of it was mixed with dirt and sand, useless to try to collect. As the pair stooped down though, the moonlight coming in through a hole in the roof was broken up by the shadows of a flock of tengu flying overhead. Fortunately, the flock flew on without landing.

In the next room the far wall was half-filled by a massive statue of some religious icon, a large man that neither of them recognized. The Courtesan had never been a religious woman, and the Kitsune was only familiar with her fellow spirits. As they crossed the room, the shadows seemed to twist with malevolence. While they watched those, they were somehow ambushed by an enormous slug that towered over both of them. The slug reared over them, its thick coat of slime and mucus dripping onto them, but the Courtesan's hidden dagger and Kitsune's kama knives quickly ended its life. Kitsune lamented that no salt had been recovered to use against the pest. Searching the room afterward, Courtesan found dark stone, and Kitsune found a magical Ring of the Yamabushi, which she placed on her finger.

They continued down a hallway where the ceiling collapsed onto them. Kitsune dodged out of the way, but Courtesan was showered with debris, and needed to pause to bandage her wounds. They passed through another hall and into a courtyard where a curse was painted on the floor. An undead goryo, dressed and painted like a kabuki actor snuck out of the shadows and ambushed them. This fight was harder, but the Kitsune's blades struck true, shredding the creature's costume and sending it back to the underworld. In this room Kitsune found dark stone and the Courtesan located a bag of gold dust.

After the fight, the Courtesan was briefly possessed by an angry spirit, cursing the brutal end of its too-short life. Kitsune brought out her ornate comb, and ran it through her friend's hair while speaking words of comfort and encouragement. "There there," she said, patting Courtesan twice on the shoulder, "there there." They both felt a growing sense of dread as the ominous circumstances began to weigh on them.

They next entered a garden courtyard. It was decorated for a party. At last! A clue to show the pair that they getting closer to learning the fate of the palace's inhabitants! Kitsune's quick eyes spotted a secret passage in the wall, but the pair declined to enter it. She also found a pot of soup, somehow still simmering over hot coals. They each ate a small bowl and felt refreshed. Whatever had happened to the residents, it wasn't poison.

The fortress echoed with hideous laughter as they passed into the next room, another training dojo. In the far corner, they spotted a statue of a temple dog come to life and fought against it on mats meant only for practice and trial combat. The stone statue shrugged off most blows, but Kitsune used water magic to deflect one of its own attacks back on itself, turning the tide of battle. Hidden in the dojo, Kitsune found a Yambushi's charm, and Courtesan located a few ingots of gold.

At last they entered the palace's audience chamber. They realized that the fortress's residents must somehow have tried to contact the denizens of an Other World. Every creature the pair had encountered so far came from the Forest of the Dead, a decaying and mist-filled afterlife. A demonic brand burst into flames on the floor, and three crowds of swirling ghosts poured through the gaps in the hastily boarded-up back door. So this was the fate of the fortress's inhabitants! Either slain by spirits or become them. Rather than risk fighting on the burning floor, Kitsune and Courtesan lured the spirits back into the dojo. They were outnumbered and outmatched, with the ghosts seeming to draw strength from the pair's own cunning and spirituality. Although they banished one angry horde of ghosts, the other two knocked the Courtesan unconscious and cast her aside. The Kitsune's water magic helped her hold out a while longer, but soon she too succumbed to the darkness.

When the pair awoke, the spirits were gone. The fortress was still ruined, but now empty. The Kitsune's leg was injured, and the Courtesan's collarbone ached. Both felt corrupted by the unsettling evil that permeated the place. They resolved to travel to a feudal village to seek medical help, and perhaps hire some assistants, before setting out on their next adventure.


Gains
Experience - Kitsune 645 XP, Cortesan 425 XP
Gold - Kitsune 25 gp, Courtesan 400 gp
Dark Stone - Kitsune 3 dark stone, Courtesan 1 dark stone
Treasure - Kitsune found Ring of the Yamabushi artifact and Yamabushi Charm gear.


Losses
Kitsune and Courtesan were both knocked out and injured.
Because the final spirits were not defeated and no survivors were rescued, the mission was a failure.


Commentary
I've played a different version of Shadows of Brimstone before with another friend, but this was my first time as the more experienced player guiding a novice through the game. Technically, Shadows has no game master or referee, but I took responsibility for knowing the rules a little better. Since I often run D&D for relatively novice players, this wasn't such an unfamiliar situation for me to be in. I did make a couple mistakes which I'll correct next time, but overall, I thought it went well - even though we got TPKed at the end.

The gameplay in Shadows is mostly cooperative, but the acquisition of stuff is competitive. Searching a room outside of combat is a solo activity, and the searcher gets to keep whatever they find. After a battle, all players get loot, but again, it's random and individualized. Experience awards come from simply hitting monsters size Large or larger, but only from delivering the killing blow for smaller enemies. Other ways to gain XP include searching rooms, healing others characters' injuries, and casting magic spells. Among the things that account for our uneven XP awards, Emily's character staying alive for another couple rounds of combat netted her quite a bit of experience, even though she was unable to survive the ghosts.

This is a game that requires a lot of pre-play preparation in terms of punching out cardboard tokens; cutting out, assembling, and gluing plastic minifigures; and sleeving and sorting all the cards that come with. The benefit of all that is that it's very good looking, and card draws replace a lot of what would random table rolls in D&D, which both lets the game run without a GM, and probably facilitates the individualized treasure and experience point awards.

What you give up is some of the opportunity for playing the role of your character, and some of the tactical freedom to address the various tableaus you encounter. Simply ignoring whatever it is generally is not an option.

The fact that all the monsters came from the Forest of the Dead was a total coincidence, but it helped create a slightly coherent narrative out of the evening's events, and it suggests that for this campaign, we might focus on the Forest as our primary Other World-ly adversary. The ghosts were a particular bit of bad luck. Some of their combat stats are based on your characters' skills, and ours had high values in just the right places to tip this fight from difficult to impossible. If we are going to fight these things again, we'll need better weapons, and maybe an expendable hireling to help out.

d666 "Powers Checks" for Raveloft

Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque recently posted a critique of "powers checks" in Ravenloft. Jack describes the premise of a powers check, then listed his two key complaints.

"The idea behind the powers check mechanic is committing evil acts triggers rolls to see if your character is warped by the powers of darkness until they ultimately become a villainous NPC. Along the way, a character gains strange powers and finds their body and mind twisted and corrupted."

"The mechanic mostly serves the purpose of enforcing 2e AD&D's sense of morality. The Realm of Terror box set is explicitly clear that powers checks are intended to make players play the game the right way. You can almost hear the beleaguered sigh of the camp counselor as they tell you kids to knock it off or nobody will be allowed to go swimming after lunch."

"If a player wants to lean into the idea that their character has become tempted by evil or corrupted by darkness, the mechanic punishes them for playing in that mode by eventually taking their character away. The road down into the abyss also has a tendency to cripple your character in one way or another."

After reading that, it occurred to me that I'd accidentally introduced a powers check into a game I'm refereeing. In a recent session of my Wizard City campaign, my players found a badass Hell Gun that's supposed to immediately send the gun's target to Hell (and condemn the gun's user to go there after they die too). I loved this idea, but it seemed kind of disproportionately strong compared to the other capabilities of a GLOG character, so I added one more stipulation, a 1-in-136 chance that the gun's user is dragged down to Hell immediately.

The boring way to describe this is to say that the player had to roll 3d6, and their character would be killed on an 18 ... but the cool way to describe it to say that they had to roll a d666 and would be doomed on 666. I assume the original Ravenloft powers check was also something boring like a d100 roll.

So let's convert my impromptu mechanic into a full on powers check by adding two other possible results. Let's also give it a better name, like the Hell Roll, or something. Any time a character invokes a dark power, the player must roll three 6-sided dice:
- on a 6, the character gains a new dark power
- on a 66, the character is corrupted by the dark power
- on a 666, the character either dies instantly or becomes a servant of the dark power

That seems cool, but the nature of Jack's critique wasn't really that d100 rolls are a thematically boring way to represent the exciting danger of using Hell powers. His first point is that he thinks the check is used to force the players to make their characters act like heroes by punishing them if they try to do anything villainous. His second is that instead of cultivating morally-ambiguous heroes who are tempted by the seductive power of the Dark Side, the "powers check" mechanic discourages you from flirting with supernatural evil by making it feel too risky.

To address Jack's first critique, we need to rethink when to make a powers check or Hell Roll, or whatever. In Ravenloft, it sounds like you have to make a powers check when you perform evil deeds like killing people and taking their stuff, which in previous versions of D&D was treated as ... playing D&D. (Sometimes it almost feels like we shouldn't look for moral guidance from a game where you portray murderers, burglars, robbers, and thieves?)

But I would argue that this kind of mechanic is much better if we don't attach it to notions of sin, and instead attach it to ideas about contamination or taint. Without going too deep into theology or philosophy, I think we can draw a distinction between a mechanic that makes it dangerous to perform evil actions and a mechanic that makes it dangerous to get in too close proximity to evil objects.
 
We can imagine sin as something that accumulates when people perform certain acts. Two notable features of sin are that it can be repented and forgiven, and that it only accrues based on what you do, not the tools you use to do it. This makes it a poor fit for this game mechanic for a few reasons.

A sin mechanic doesn't put much constraint on player actions if they can remove it at will by claiming that their characters feel genuinely sorry and are prepared to spend their next downtime action praying. (Especially if your received ideas about sin come from a version of Christianity in which it's enough for forgiveness to come from God, even if the victims of your actions won't - or, because they're dead, can't - forgive you.)

A sin mechanic also appears to punish players for the very same actions that other game mechanics reward them for. This in turn calls for an explanation of why the same actions are only sometimes sinful. I suppose you could put your players in a position where they're doing bad things to bad people for good reasons, and where shouldering the weight of the sin that comes along with doing that is just part of their heroic burden ... but that's not really how Ravenloft used the mechanic. Claiming that doing bad things for good reasons accrues no sin is troubling in its own way though. Trying to justify why killing this type of sentient creature is a sin that requires forgiveness, but killing that kind of sentient creature is a righteous action that pleases the divine starts you walking down a mental path that leads somewhere very ugly very quickly.

Suppose though, that we feel satisfied that this monster really is evil. It does bad things to innocent people, and will continue doing so unless we kill it. Slaying this particular monster is an unambiguously good act. Great! So then why would it be sinful to bite the monster with vampire fangs, or slash it with werewolf claws, or shoot it with a Hell Gun? Maybe others won't see a conflict here, but the version of Christianity that I was exposed to as a child seemed to be filled of stories about how a person with a pure heart can't be made unclean by evil. The evil deeds of others might harm your body, but they can't sully your soul, only their own. If impaling Dracula is good, why should I accrue sin points if I stab him with Jack the Ripper's scalpel rather than a knife that came from my kitchen drawer?

For gaming purposes, if player characters are going to roll dice to avoid being dragged down by supernatural evil, I think it's better to imagine it as a kind of spiritual pollution, or radiation, or poison. For gaming, I think it's better to imagine contamination rather than sin. This kind of evil is like a toxic substance, and it gets on you just by coming near it, moreso if you handle it or use it.

You get contaminated or corrupted by wielding evil weapons, using evil super powers, casting evil spells, reading evil books, invoking evil spirits. Basically, if you could imagine replacing the word "evil" with "radioactive" and have everything still make sense, it's probably okay to roll some dice to try to avoid it.

In fairness, I think this is already the most common way that the risk of being consumed by evil gets used in gaming, aside, apparently, from Ravenloft. Changing the conditions under which player characters accumulate corruption points makes them far more palatable to award during the game.

I would add one final condition as well - players only make powers checks as the result of voluntary decisions. You don't need to roll the dice because a vampire bit you or a werewolf scratched you. That gives you a power, but doesn't put your character's soul at risk. It's only when you use that power yourself that you risk contamination.

(The real-world implications of either of these perspectives on evil can be quite troubling, depending on the situation they're applied to. Imagining that some inner purity or righteousness absolves them of blame for the harm caused by groups that they're members of or benefit from, allows a lot of people to ignore that harm and even contribute to it - in a way that they might not if they perceived themselves as tainted despite their ignorance or good intentions. Similarly, if we apply the logic of contamination to almost any form of abuse, we arrive almost immediately at a very ugly form of victim-blaming. Frankly, this has been quite a lot more thinking about the nature of evil than I really intended to embark on at the start.)

Jack's second critique of the powers check is that it serves to restrict player choices in a couple of undesirable ways. For one thing, it's an attempt to enforce a particular play style using an in-game rule when some sort of outside-the-game mechanism would be better. If you'd prefer to pretend to be dissolute grifters and ne'er-do-wells rather than heroic monster-slaying world-savers, then, idk, maybe don't play the game that says it's about slaying monsters right there on the box? And if your players want to pretend to kill animals and torture villagers for fun, you don't need a game rule to stop them, you need new players, and quite possibly to question the life choices that led you to sit down at a table with that last batch.

The other potential problem is that the powers check might discourage a character behavior you want to encourage - namely pretending to be the brooding sort of hero who fights monsters so long that they begin to risk becoming a monster themselves.

This trope has two components. The first is a kind of evil that it's tempting to give in to. The second is some motivation to resist that temptation. The first component should be supplied by evil powers that are really cool, and substantially more powerful than the available non-damning options. Like, you're not going to use Blackbeard's accursed single-shot matchlock pistol if you've got a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun as part of your starting equipment. You might risk your soul though, if there was a dracolich bearing down on you and those power levels were reversed.

Some of the motivation to resist temptation can be supplied by the players themselves. Again, genre buy-in is important here. Otherwise you might end up with a party of Bella Swans eagerly flinging themselves beneath the fangs of the nearest Edward Cullen, because they want nothing more than to be transformed into a beautiful superpowered monster with no discernible failings. Which could be fun, though characters with an unbridled enthusiasm for condemnation rather miss the mark if we were aiming for brooding or angst.

But even if your players are self-motivated to avoid transforming into full-on monsters, if you want them to use these powers some but not too much, then you probably need to define what "too much" means. But you probably also want the players to feel a little uncertain about where the line is drawn. You don't want them striding confidently up to it without fear of overstepping, you want them to worry that every step might be the one that carries them too far. Which means you need a dice-rolling mechanic. (Well, maybe not NEED exactly, but there's certainly a place for one.)

Offering the players cool superpowers that carry a chance of self-destruction creates a kind of resource management mini-game of risk and reward. The possibility that using your power grants you other risky powers serves to amplify the temptation. The possibility of partial disfigurement serves as a warning sign along the road to damnation. You want to use these powers, but every time you do might be your last. If your regular weapons aren't enough, the only way to kill the monster might cost you your soul. So roll that d666!

Three Books for the Times (April / May 2020) - A Deepness in the Sky, The City & The City, A Song for a New Day

Note: I thought about these books as I thought about the pandemic over the course of a few months, then wrote them up in a few weeks. And because those few weeks coincided with the rise of a new civil rights movement, my list already feels outdated, like it belongs to a different era.

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

Vinge's novel follows a human society, apparently at least somewhat culturally descended from Han China, that exists as a fleet of spaceships. The Queng Ho are traders. They travel the human-settled parts of the galaxy at sub-light speeds, using long intervals of cryogenic hibernation to allow individual members to piece together a hundred-year lifespan over the course of thousands or tens of thousands of years of galactic history.

The Queng Ho see themselves as preservers of human culture. They are too small, with too few people, to train the really large number of specialists needed to create new technology - only a planetary society can do that. But planetary societies rise, collapse, and have to be rebuilt, and the traveling Queng Ho fleet is able to "restock" a rebuilding society with forgotten languages and technologies. Near the beginning of the novel, the Queng Ho gather to try to prevent a society from collapsing.

I actually forget what disaster befell the society, but a point novel raises is that it almost doesn't matter what the disaster is. The planetary society is incredibly advanced, but also incredibly efficient - which in turn makes it incredibly fragile. Everything is made just-in-time, everything is used, nothing wasted - which means there's nothing extra or spare, nothing redundant, nothing resilient. Any disaster that disrupts production will interrupt distribution and result in shortages and privation.

This incident doesn't take up that much of Vinge's novel, but I keep thinking of that when I see empty shelves at the drug store and grocery, when I see that basic supplies like paper masks and rubbing alcohol are still unavailable, that toilet paper and acetaminophen are rationed and in short supply. On the global scale, there's no such thing as "the right amount" - our choice is between "too much" which will lead to wasting the excess, "not enough" which will lead some to some people having to do without (and if the thing being done without is necessary for being alive, then "not enough" will lead to some people dying). Ironically, we live in a world where we both produce "too much" of many necessary things, and where people die from having to do without them, because we live under a system where people don't have a right to things, they only have the right to buy things, if they can afford them.

A portion of the Queng Ho fleet goes to investigate the "On-Off Star", which is a stellar anomaly that burns normally for hundreds of years, then goes cold and dark for hundreds, then reignites, etc. They are met by "the Emergents," a fleet launched by an authoritarian human government that collapsed due to a terrible pandemic, then rebuilt using the Queng Ho cultural broadcasts, but also rebuilt terribly unequal and cruel. While rebuilding, they eventually tamed the illness that destroyed them.

The Emergents ask for diplomacy, and deliberately infect the Queng Ho with their pet disease, then launch a nuclear first strike hoping to wipe them out. A handful of Queng Ho discover the plan in time to fight back, but aren't able to share the news widely. Both fleets take such heavy losses that the only way they can survive is by merging. The Emergents rule the merged fleet, and the surviving Queng Ho are subordinated under the excuse that they launched the unprovoked attack.

The fleet orbits the On-Off Star waiting for it to reignite. Everyone works in shifts involving long stretches of hibernation. Well, almost everyone. The Emergents put some Queng Ho to work creating decorations. They work some people to death, using up their entire lifespans doing unnecessary labor while the others slept. Others are infected with a modified version of the pet virus, which causes neurological changes that leads them to obsessively focus on a singular are of interest - and the Emergents are able to guide the area of focus so that their enslaved workers spend every waking moment obsessively thinking about the work their slavers assigned them.

The way the Emergents talk about these focused workers reminds me of the way Silicon Valley bosses talk about the long hours of overtime their programmers supposedly happily volunteer for. The treatment of the workers given a death sentence so they can carve frescoes remind me of the risks that food service, health care, and beauty industry workers are being asked to take for everyone else's benefit. The Emergents are tyrants who pretend to be victims, who treat all other groups as subhuman, who use propaganda to reject the legitimacy of others' desire for self-governance, who treat all criticism and dissent as a crime, who abuse workers, and who spread disease to others because they believe themselves to be immune. It's hard not to see parallels between them and certain aspects of contemporary American politics.

Aliens live on a single planet orbiting the On-Off Star. Their civilization is somewhat analogous to the Earth during WWII, both in terms of their technology level, and because their world is divided between two main factions. The aliens hibernate underground while their star is dark; they spend the last years for hibernation jockeying for position, each side trying to stay awake and keep their economy and war effort running just a little longer than the other. Again, this reminds me of the way states and countries seem to be vying to keep people at work, regardless of the risk, longer than the others. The multiple parallels make this the book I've kept thinking back on the most.

The City and the City by China Mieville

I've said before that we live in an era that sometimes feels unreal, that feels as though it's can't, or shouldn't, be real. To that, the pandemic has added the feeling of existing alongside other people who live in another reality entirely.

Because of my race, my gender, my age, my income, my education, where I work, what kind of work I do, who I interact with, who I know, who I'm friends with - I live in a world where we fear the pandemic and are social distancing to the maximum extent possible. We also have the luxury and the privilege of working from home, neither furloughed, fired, nor forced to go into an unsafe workplace.

I and almost everyone I interact with, we stay home as much as possible, go to work only when required, go shopping only when necessary, take exercise at odd hours and in bad weather in the hopes of not running into anyone. We interact only virtually. We cancel plans, and keep canceling, as the timeline when we think we can meet again safely keeps receding farther into the future. We skip visits, let our pantries go bare. We do without. We wear masks. We fear not only catching the virus, but spreading it to others. At any moment, I could be sick and not know it.

And yet when we do go out, it's as though the world has split in two. In this store, the other customers wear masks, walk quickly, stand far apart, just as I do. In that store, the walk slowly, touch items and set them back, they talk loudly about how they aren't afraid, how the virus is harmless, perhaps imaginary. They approach me easily, while I feel forced to skitter away as though by magnetic repulsion. In this store, the workers wear masks too, wipe surfaces with disinfectant, stand as far from me as they're able. In that store, the workers wear their masks like necklaces, chitchat with me as they ring up my purchase.

Mieville's story is pure social science fiction. He presents a reality that isn't real, but could be. It requires not different biology or different physics, just different beliefs, following the same rules that turn real beliefs into social reality. The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma are separate because their residents believe them to be separate, and act on those beliefs in a way that makes them real. It's the same way that the townspeople in Lars and the Real Girl treat the doll Bianca as a fellow citizen with an active social life, and in doing so, bring her to life, socially. For as long as the others treat her a living, Bianca occupies the same position as any other townsperson.

Beszel and Ul Quoma occupy the same physical space, but the citizens of each city refuse to see the people and places of the other. In a segregated neighborhood, that's easy, since there's no one there to see; in an integrated neighborhoods, it depends on a practiced eye for un-seeing that the citizens train themselves in over time.

Yes, it's a metaphor made literal - for the way every city is two cities or more, segregated by race and class, full of people who have learned to un-see each other so thoroughly that they do it unconsciously - but Mieville avoids making too-simplistic or too-obvious equivalencies. The comparison more convincing precisely because you have to notice it yourself.

There's a murder-mystery afoot, there's the bureaucracy of border-crossing, there are rumors of a fabled third city that is un-seen by citizens of both Beszel and Ul Quoma who both assume it belongs to their neighbor, and after reaching peak speculation, there's a conclusion that feels realistic by comparison for being relatively prosaic. The real draw here is Mieville's bravura description of the two cities, and his excellent narration of the process of un-seeing.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

Pinsker's novel follows two people, a punk musician living through a moment of rapid and profound social change, and a music fan living after the change has become permanent. The musician comes from our world before the pandemic, from the "normal" we all want to return to. She's on tour when a series of terrorist attacks happening in public places in rapid succession lead to a shutdown of all large gatherings of people - movies, sporting events, concerts. The shutdown happens on short notice, in response to an acute emergency, but then it stretches on, and on, and then it becomes permanent. The music fan comes from farther in the future, from a world like ours could become if our shutdown becomes permanent, if it becomes our "new normal."

Pinsker must have written this book in 2018 or early 2019; it was published in the fall just before the novel coronavirus first appeared. She couldn't possibly have known that coronavirus was coming. She was probably thinking about America's mass shootings, perhaps especially the one in Las Vegas, where a man with a sniper rifle in his hotel room opened fire on a crowd attending an outdoor concert. Her premise in brilliant in its elegance and simplicity. How many shootings like that one would it take before we stopped having outdoor concerts altogether? Before we stopped watching live sports, stopped going to movies?

I left my workplace at the end of a shift, expecting to come back after the weekend. I haven't been back since. At first we were told we'd be out for a few weeks, then for a few months. We're making plans to reopen soon, but we've been warned that we might be required to shut down again on very short notice. No one wants to speak aloud exactly what turn of events would require us have to do that. I'm fortunate. Others have left their workplaces and will never return, other workplaces are no longer there to be returned to. I worry about Pinsker's novel. I worry it will come true.

The music fan in Pinsker's novel grew up after the shutdown. She grew up in a world where people staying at home and never gathering in large groups in person is "normal" and "natural" and unremarkable. She listens to her mother's stories about being in crowds the way we would watch a movie scene where someone fills up their care with leaded gasoline, doesn't buckle a seatbelt, and swigs from a flask of liquor while chatting with a pregnant passenger who's chain smoking and taking "mommy's little helper" pills, on their way to a job at the asbestos factory, and no one is watching the road.

Eventually Pinsker links the two story threads back together. All her life, the music fan has attended virtual concerts, digital concerts, but learns about an underground scene of punks playing illegal live shows with audiences larger than those permitted by law. One of those punks, of course, is the original musician. When I first heard about this book, I expected to feel sympathy for the people trying to rebuild a society where we spend time in groups and crowds.

And in a way, I do sympathize. I also want to be around people again. I also miss eating out at my favorite restaurants, browsing at the bookstore, reading in a coffee shop, playing boardgames with friends, enjoying a slow drink at the bar. I also want to return to "normal." But more than I want that, I want it to be safe first. And so my sympathy is tempered with fear and trepidation. And a worry that Pinsker is right. I worry that when it is safe, that I'll still be afraid, permanently agoraphobic, or that I'll be so used to staying in that the idea of going out in a crowd no longer occurs to me, or that there will no longer be such things as crowds to go out into.

Session Report - 5e Undermountain - Assault on Castle Cragmaw

After defeating the goblin bandits in the Cragmaw caverns, the group decided to pursue the bandit leader by following the map they found, leading to Castle Cragmaw!


Session 5

Cast of Characters
Raku Chilhuly - dragonborn guild artisan, 3rd level battlesmith artificer - played by Emily
Willibald Hornblower - halfling noble, 3rd level college of lore bard - played by Steve
Nehryx - centaur outlander, 3rd level brute fighter - played by Corey
Crow - tabaxi acolyte of Nuula, 2nd level rogue - played by Lindsey

The group hiked a day through the Grosseberg Mountains. Thanks to a well-chosen campsite, they didn't encounter any of the hobgoblin warbands that stalked this part of the range.

In the morning, they found the ruin of Castle Cragmaw. It had seven towers, with only the smallest keep connecting them all. Several of the building walls were collapsing. They circled through the woods around the castle to check for possible entrances. There were a couple obvious ways in, but the group opted for stealth, and Willibald managed to find a hidden passage through the rubble and into the ruined keep.

They arrived in a hallway that separated one half of the castle from the other. The air was filled with echoes of activity, distant shouts and bumps from the activity of the goblin inhabitants. Heavy canvas curtains had been hung as dividers. They checked one set of rooms off the hall, and found another curtain dividing a large bedroom. They could hear voices beyond the curtain and opted to return to the hallway.

Further down the hall they found a door to a room that seemed to be housing a great commotion. Someone was barking orders, and there were rhythmic clangs and grunts beyond the door. Willibald carefully cast an illusionary copy of the door while the group gingerly opened the real one. They couldn't see beyond, but would be able to surprise anyone on the other side by appearing to pass directly though the door itself.

Expecting to find some sort of military drills, the group was somewhat surprised themselves to find a fat bossy goblin in a chef's hat and apron shouting orders as a miserable work crew of sou chefs and cleaners engaged in various preparatory activities around the dining hall. Crow shot the head chef in the back with her shortbow, and he went down with one blow. The others burst through the door, with Nehryx galloping across the dining room to block one of the exits. Strangely, as the other goblins ran around in a panic, they still avoided leaving via the last unguarded door...

Willibald rode on Nehryx's back, and the two were troubled by another group of goblins emerging from the other side of the door Nehryx was blocking. Willibald used his newfound skill in demoralizing commentary to take some of the sting out of the goblins' blows - "You're the cleaners? No wonder they call this a mess hall!" Together, he and the one-man brute squad Nehryx worked to defend themselves from the two groups of attackers, while Crow and Raku sniped from the doorway, keeping the goblins in a state of panic and confusion until the last body fell to the floor.

Gains
400 XP from monsters (eight goblins 50/each)

Correction - Nehryx is the brute squad!

Session 6

Cast of Characters
Raku Chihuly - dragonborn guild artisan, 3rd level battlesmith artificer - played by Emily
Willibald Hornblower - halfling noble, 3rd level college of lore bard - played by Steve
Nehryx - centaur outlander, 3rd level brute fighter - played by Corey
Demic - minotaur entertainer, 3rd level oath of the dragonlords paladin - played by Ben
Crow - tabaxi acolyte of Nuula, 2nd level rogue - played by Lindsey
Owyn Lavashield - dwarven hermit, 1st level druid - played by Eli

The group waited in rapt tension for a few moments to hear if the ruckus had attracted any unwanted attention from elsewhere in the castle. Moments later, they heard footsteps coming from the room beyond the dining hall ... it was Demic and Owyn, enjoying some pilfered snacks. "Were you two back there the whole time? Didn't you hear us fighting?" Nehryx demanded. Demic brushed the crumbs off his hands, then shrugged, "Sorry, we thought it was just the goblins arguing with each other!"

Apparently the castle's other inhabitants thought so too, because no one else came to check on them. Not wanting to push their luck, the group also avoided the door that none of the goblins used, even as they were being slain, and went back out into the ruined hallway. In the hall, they considered clambering up the rubble piles that still acted like walls to peek into a couple of the neighboring rooms. Willibald went up one wall and Crow the other, but neither was able to be very quiet about it, knocking loose debris down into the rooms they intended to spy on. Willibald saw two hobgoblins dressed in their mercenary armor ... and they saw him too! "Hey, look over-" but the sound was drowned out by a thunderous "HOOO!" as an owlbear in the other room spotted Crow and decided to make her a snack. Willibald slid back down the rubble pile and told his friends to make ready. The hobgoblins burst into the hall and were followed not long after by the galloping owlbear.

The group made short work of the two mercenaries. Demic and Nehryx outmatched the pair with their swords, Willibald magically shattered a section of intact wall to shower them with shards of rock, and although Raku had little success with her crossbow, she was able to send in her robot (technically a "steel defender") Darla, who looked like a metallic cat-dragon hybrid. "Robot robot, attack attack" intoned Darla.

After the brief battle, they heard stomping footsteps and a voice approaching from deeper into the secure area. "What's all that noise?!" Demic put on his best monster voice and attempted another act of deception. "Uh, sorry sir, the owlbear didn't like chef's dinner tonight." The voice behind the curtain seemed to find this extremely plausible, perhaps it was a common occurrence? "Well, just try to keep it down out there. I'm conducting important business. If it doesn't like the goblin's dinner, then feed it some goblins!" The footsteps then receded and a door slammed not far away.

The group took a few moments to search the hobgoblins' barracks and the owlbear's keep. Raku spotted a chest sitting atop the last remnant of the old first-floor ceiling, but they decided to retrieve that after dealing with the king of Castle Cragmaw. Before following the voice they'd heard before, the group members refreshed each other with magic.

Crow volunteered to loop around look for a side-entrance into the king's chamber. She found a partially collapsed wall she could clamber up, and ended up in a small room connected to the main chamber. Nehryx planned to lead a charge into the room, but rolled too low on initiative, and ended up going last. "Okay, everyone behind me, on ten! One, two, hey wait not yet!"

Willibald barged in first. He saw the aging bugbear king, a vicious wolf, and an elvish woman who suddenly changed to look like a copy of Willibald. He attacked his duplicate, who attacked him back much harder! As the others hurried in, they made quick work of the wolf and the befuddled king, who scarcely had a chance to raise his morningstar against them before he was struck down by Nehryx and Demic's mighty blows. Crow emerged from the side room to find only the second Willibald remaining. "Hey guys, hey guys, it's me, it's me Willibald, Willibald" the two said in eerie unison. "Ask me something, ask me something only I would know, only I would know!"

Noticing that his double was copying his movements, Willibald lay prone on the ground. His touble tossled with him so that the two kept trading places on the floor. Raku cast a spell to see magic, which revealed which one was false. By shouting advice to the others, she was able to direct them to hit the imposter every time, which proved fortunate, since the strange creature proved able to endure far more punishment than the original Willibald could have. Between these two tactics, the creature was defeated without any of the others hurting Willibald, and before it could change shape again to copy Raku. As it died, it assumed the form of an almost featureless gray humanoid.

With the king dead, and the castle certain to devolve into anarchy when the other mercenaries and bandits in his employ discovered that. A search of the room revealed the king's private stash of coins and healing potions, along with an unidentified map. The group quickly sent Crow up the side of the owlbear's tower to steal the king's treasure, a horde of coins, along with a healing potion, and a pair of scrolls.


Gains
950 gp each from Black Iris
277 gp from treasure (220 silver pieces + 270 electrum pieces + 120 gold pieces)
potion of healing
scroll of revivify
scroll of silence
1850 XP (two hobgolins 100/each + owlbear 700 + bugbear 200 + doppelgagner 700 + wolf 50)

"Robot robot, treasure treasure"

Blogs on Tape 3 - Encumbrance is Bliss?

Nick LS Whelan continues to convert a curated selection of rpg blog posts into audio files for the Blogs on Tape project. I'm a fan! Admittedly, my opinion here is biased by the fact that he's just recorded a third episode reading aloud one of my posts.

My third appearance is Episode 82 - Mechanics for Resource Management: Part 1, The Easy Way. You can read the original entry on my blog here.

My writing previously appeared on Blogs on Tape in Episode 71 - Should We Start Numbering Hallways on Our Maps? (original entry here) and in Episode 47 - Campaigns I Want to Run: Dungeons & Decorators (original entry here).

 

Once again, big thanks to Nick for his ongoing contribution to the rpg blogosphere! You can also check his How to Help page if you want to support this project.

Miniature Miscellany Redux - Fairy Castle, Nutshell Studies, Miniature Offices, Model Trains, Replica Studio, Antique Furniture, Bookcase Nooks, Atalier Dollhouse

Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle
Museum of Science + Industry

"One of the most popular film actresses of her time, Colleen Moore assembled a legion of her industry colleagues to help craft this miniature home of fantastic proportions. She shared it during the Great Depression, touring the country to raise funds for children's charities."

"From the chapel's floor-to-ceiling stained glass to the flickering of the tiniest lights, every inch on display is a study in artistry and craftsmanship. The Fairy Castle is virtually a museum within our Museum, a collection of miniature treasures in every room, from inch-square books signed by the world's greatest authors to statues nearly two thousand years old. Though the Castle's magical residents are never seen, we know for certain they have exquisite taste."

 

Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death
Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Frances Glessner Lee crafted her exquisitely detailed miniature crime scenes to train homicide investigators. These dollhouse-sized dioramas of true crimes, created in the first half of the 20th century and still used in forensic training today, helped to revolutionize the emerging field of homicide investigation."

"Lee is considered the mother of forensic science and helped to found the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University. At the time, there was very little training for investigators, meaning that they often overlooked or mishandled key evidence, or irrevocably tampered with crime scenes. Lee and her colleagues at Harvard worked to change this. Lee was a talented artist as well as criminologist, and used the craft of miniature-making that she had learned as a young girl to solve this problem. She constructed the Nutshells beginning in the 1940s to teach investigators to properly canvass a crime scene to effectively uncover and understand evidence."

"The equivalent to virtual reality in their time, her masterfully crafted dioramas feature handmade objects to render scenes with exacting accuracy and meticulous detail. Every element of the dioramas - from the angle of miniscule bullet holes, the placement of latches on widows, the patterns of blood splatters, and the discoloration of painstakingly painted miniature corpses - challenges trainees’ powers of observation and deduction."

I Turn Work Frustrations into Mini Magic in My Office
Derrick Lin
Bored Panda

Agency Life Told in Miniature Figures
Derrick Lin
Bored Panda

"Sometimes work can be really hectic and frustrating and as grownups, we are expected to be cool about it and keep the whining to ourselves. I work in advertising and my workday is often very chaotic and unpredictable."

"With my iPhone, a reading lamp, and miniature figures, I recreate the imaginary scenes of my honest thoughts in work situations right on my work desk. Pairing each photo with corresponding caption, I post them on my Instagram and Tumblr feeds as a way to document my eventful career. My tiny people are always there making sure I don’t hide my feelings."

How Model Trains Transformed from Cutting-Edge to Quaint
Ben Marks
Collector's Weekly

"In the 19th century, the railroad was the Internet of its day, connecting people with one another and moving merchandise and raw materials across great distances at unprecedented speeds. As railroad tycoons laid more and more miles of track throughout the growing nation, increasing numbers of citizens were able to witness the spectacle of a steam-engine locomotive roaring through their once-remote towns. In an age when few people traveled farther than 20 miles from their homes in their entire lifetimes, the effect must have been thrilling."

"Naturally, children were eager to play with pint-size versions of this new technology, and 19th-century toymakers obliged, cranking out model trains in wood, cast iron, and tin. By the first half of the 20th century, millions of little boys dreamed of waking up on Christmas morning to find a model train tooting around the tree."

"The problem with model trains in the 21st century: technology. Trains haven’t thrilled us for decades. For most of us, our experience with trains ranges from being packed into a crowded commuter train at rush hour to being stuck behind the wheel of a car at a railroad crossing as miles of groaning gondolas and rattling tanker cars rumble by. For the 21st-century kids stuck in the back seat of that car, trains are noisy, antiquated, and irredeemably boring."

Artist Constructs Intricately Detailed Miniature Replica of 1900s Photo Studio
Kristine Mitchell
My Modern Met

"Ali Alamedy has an eye for detail. The Turkish artist creates delightful miniature dioramas that are filled to the brim with hand-crafted items and absolutely ooze with charm. His newest piece is an adorable recreation of a photo studio from the 1900’s. The tiny photo studio took 9 months to complete, and was built using an assortment of materials such as wood, plastic, copper, and paper. Filled with over 100 tiny, period objects, Alamedy constructed each and every component of the studio from scratch. His time-intensive work manages to stay true to the spirit of vintage photo studios, and overflows with small-scale details that show true appreciation for the craft."

Japanese Artist Crafts Miniature Antique Dollhouse Furniture by Hand
Emma Taggert
My Modern Met

"Japanese artist Kiyomi brings some interior design chic to the world of dollhouses, with a range of handmade miniature antique furniture and accessories. Made from various materials including paper, wire, and perspex, her incredibly detailed, tiny creations include everything you would find in an 18th century world. There’s antique, industrial style cabinets and chairs; haberdashery items, such as spools of thread, sewing scissors, and a vintage sewing machine; as well as little shoes and hats, laid out in a tiny clothes store. There’s even a miniature bakery complete with teeny-tiny pastries."

Book Nook Shelf Inserts are Really Cool, and Everyone Should Know They Exist
Christopher Hudspurth
Buzzfeed

If you haven't seen or heard of a book nook before, it's a little shelf insert that goes between books and looks like a tiny door leading to an incredible place, or depicting unique sights.



My Atelier Dollhouse
Hanabira
YouTube


Notes: My previous miniature miscellany got really positive feedback, and several people suggested additional links to check out. I also realized I'd forgotten my friend Derrick Lin's miniature work. Big thanks to astralbath and bombasticus for their recommendations especially.

Advice on Campaign Mysteries from From the Sorcerer's Skull

A little while back, Trey from From the Sorcerer's Skull wrote about how he builds mysteries into his campaign settings, in response to a question I asked him. Ever since, I've been meaning to collect and share some of Trey's other advice about building a mystery-filled campaign.

I first noticed that From the Sorcerer's Skull had advice on campaign mysteries when Trey posted a list of six unknowns in his Land of Azurth campaign, and then a follow-up to check-in on how many his players had solved.

In The Cultivating and Care of Campaign Mysteries, Trey lays out five pieces of concrete advice for creating a mystery-filled campaign:

- Embed the mysteries at the time of setting creation
- Don't decide on all the answers
- Create recurring NPCs to encourage player interest
- Create treasures that connect to the mysteries
- Build on player ideas

The first bit of advice here seems obvious, but probably is worth pointing out explicitly. You need to decide on some secrets early in your setting design process, so that you'll be able to decide on hints and clues to get your players interested. "If you want the players interested in the mysterious background of your setting, it has to be there."

His second piece of advice seems to contradict the first, but I think the idea is that you should decide on questions, but shouldn't decide on all the answers. Some questions your players might never investigate, and so might never need an answer. Other questions, an answer better than what you might have originally thought of could emerge as a logical conclusion during play.

I feel like this relates to the advice to build on player ideas. By that, Trey means trying to connect the player character backstories to the campaign mysteries - giving the characters a stake in the mystery, or using elements of their backstory as clues. But I think building on player ideas can also mean building ideas that they propose while they're investigating. When they describe what they've learned so far, and what conclusion they draw from it, that might sound more correct than what you originally thought of, and that's okay.

Trey's other two recommendations here are to use NPCs and treasures to help get the players involved in the mysteries. NPCs who act suspiciously might suggest themselves as suspects. The search for a famous treasure might reveal clues that illuminate the setting's history. And both NPCs and treasures are things that players want to interact with and learn more about, making them a source for clues that players will want to learn.



This piece ties in well with some of Trey's other advice about campaign setting creation. Adventure Time and Campaign Construction is a defense and explanation of making some of it up as you go along, rather than making it all up in advance. Setting History Should Do Something is a more general discussion of what kind of setting material is most (and least!) useful to make up, regardless of when you do it.

Trey explains his reasoning for not creating too much of your setting in advance:
- The campaign should start simple to make it accessible
- Seeing what the players like and respond to can help guide your setting creation
- The setting should only be revealed a little a time, in ways that connect to the adventure

A lot of the idea here is to slow down the pace at which you invent setting details to help enforce a slower pace of revelation. You don't want to overwhelm your players with too much detail before they even start playing, and if you haven't written the details yet, then you can't over-share them.

In addition to your players proposing ideas and theories at the table, what they're interested in (and what they're not) can help guide you to only create the things they want and you need. Again, you don't want to reveal too much detail during each gaming session; leaving things undecided prevents you from revealing more than you should.

And again, Trey suggests using monsters, NPCs, and treasures as like "hooks" to try to attract player interest and to show you what they care about. When they start tugging on a string, it's time for you to start fleshing out whatever's at the end of it.

The idea here isn't that you make it all up along the way, but rather, you start with a strong foundation and build it as you go, rather than starting with the entire edifice (or starting with nothing!)

When you are writing some backstory for your campaign, Trey recommends that backstory should:
- Reinforce the themes, flavor, or mood of the setting
- Establish constraints or parameters for adventures
- Provide obstacles for players overcome or toys for them to play with
- Avoid describing events that are repetitive or don't directly impact the present day setting

One way to think about this advice is to not write setting material that isn't actually important to your setting; another is to make sure to let your players interact with whatever is important.

Eberron is a bit guilty of violating Trey's suggestions here, with its ten-thousand year backstory, its series of highly similar apocalyptic invasions by varieties of reality-warping demons, and its setting-defining war that's finished before the campaign starts. Carcosa suffers from this too - there are psychic powers you'll never roll high enough to receive, cool alien artifacts you can't use, rituals you're (supposedly) not supposed to perform, and even a titular city that isn't really even there to visit.

Even the core rulebooks of most editions of D&D are guilty of this is in a way - playing the way the rules suggest, by starting at 1st level and likely dying multiple times while trying to level up, the books are filled with class features you'll never receive, spells you'll never be high enough level to cast, monsters you'll never have enough hp to fight, and artifacts you'll never find as treasure. That's not just because there's too much stuff to include it all, but because so much of the coolest stuff is explicitly walled off where most players will never get to it without breaking the rules. (Plus NPCs who sound suspiciously like Gary and his friends - they're more powerful than any PC, and either you'll never meet them, or they'll totally overshadow you if your paths ever cross.)

The way I interpret Trey's advice here is, basically, don't do that. Whether you're laying the foundation for your setting before the first game or adding details mid-campaign, figure out what's supposed to be important, and give the players the opportunity to encounter it right away. Whether that's as clues they keep running into, rumors they keep hearing - or as monsters, treasures, NPCs, or adventuring sites they actually get to see - give them the good stuff. (Because if you don't, a corollary of this idea is that whatever you DO give them is what your campaign is actually about - no matter what you intended.)

In a mystery campaign, presumably that means foregrounding the mysteries, the hints that lead you to wonder about them, and the clues that help you solve them. If you built mysteries into the backstory of your campaign, but the players never learn about, or find any evidence to help unravel them, then they're essentially dormant, and whatever your campaign's actually about, it isn't about solving those (unknown, unrealized) mysteries.



Azurth isn't a sandbox, it's got an episodic, mission-based campaign structure that gives Trey a bit more control over which part of the setting his players are interacting with each session. But he does have some ideas for building a setting where they player are more free to wander around looking for secrets. In The Weird Town: Investigative Sandbox, he offers some ideas for creating a compact setting where almost every major site holds a mystery.

- The town has many distinct secrets to investigate
- The town itself is weird and mysterious (not just a neutral site where crime coincidentally occurs)
- The player characters might be outsiders, but have a connection to town that gives the investigation some urgency



Finally, Trey also has some concrete advice for GMs to use to keep their players' investigations moving along. In The Simple Art of Mystery, he offers seven tips for GMs so they can facilitate (rather than hindering) their players' attempts to solve mysteries:

- Make sure the players want to solve a mystery
- Have a plan but leave some things open
- Always let the players find the most important clues
- Repeated interactions with the same NPCs always reveals new information
- If the players reach an impasse, an NPC will always react to their investigation so far
- Every NPC has a secret
- The players can solve mysteries without being Sherlock Holmes

The first piece of advice here is another bit that seems obvious but bears mentioning, which seems to be Trey's hallmark for starting off these pieces. Make sure your players know they're solving mysteries, and make sure they're on board to do that.

The next piece of advice here is another hallmark, you need a strong foundation in order to leave meaningful clues, but don't fill in every single detail in advance. Your players' guesses about what's going on might supply ideas worth including in the canon, and their actions during the game might cause you to invent details you couldn't have planned to include. When this works, it creates a sense that the players have discovered something true that even the gamemaster didn't realize before. But for that to work, these discoveries probably shouldn't contradict information you planned but never revealed.

Trey places a lot of importance on NPC interactions, which feels appropriate. Your players can search a room and find all the physical objects in it (and if any of those objects are clues, Trey recommends letting them find the object, rather than risking failure with a skill check) - but figuring out the meaning of those objects is probably going to require talking to NPCs. Just like every building in the mystery town houses its own weirdness, every NPC has their own secret. In addition to solving your main mystery, you can also make progress by figuring out what each person is hiding.

You probably learn as much from a clue-object directly as you're going to learn the first time you look closely at it (at least within the game!) - but you can always learn new information by talking to NPCs, even the same NPCs you talked to last time. If you have new questions, they have new answers. If you don't have new questions, because you've hit some kind of impasse, then it's time for an NPC to do something that generates new information. The mystery shouldn't exactly solve itself with no input from the players - remember, they're supposed to want to be here doing this - but it's a classic trope of the genre that having nosy kids start poking around spooks the villain into reacting. Canny investigators sometimes do things simply to provoke a reaction that will reveal a vital clue. Arguably, in fact, those villain reactions should happen with some regularity, even before the players have exhausted all their current leads. Just make sure that however the villain reacts, it actually does generate new questions to ask, new NPCs to talk to, or new places to look for clues.

Which is why Sherlock Holmes is probably a poor model for mystery solving in RPGs. In the popular imagination at least, Holmes is a guy who finds some ash from pipe tobacco on the ground, tastes the ashes, then calls on his voluminous memory of varieties of tobacco and where each type is sold across town and combines that with his vast experience with licking ashtrays to produce a list of tobacconist shops the villain must be a regular at. His shtick is that stuff that you'd normally need a crime lab for, he can do in his head.

But that's not how mystery solving goes at the RPG table. For obvious reasons, the players can't analyze the clues that way in their own heads. What they can do is ask the gamemaster "hey, would my character know which shop sold the tobacco that produced this ash?" But that's not nearly as interesting as getting the same answer by finding the genius perfumer who can discern the tasting notes by sniffing the ashes, then taking their findings to the blustering and self-important tobacco sommelier who knows all the shops in the city. In both cases, the players ask the gamemaster a question and get an answer, but it's so much more interesting if the answer comes out of the mouth of a fascinating NPC than if the GM simply states "sure, your character's a chain-smoker with pica, here's the address." In a game that's not about solving mysteries, maybe it makes sense to do a skill check, get the information, and move on, but if your purpose for being there at the game table is to enjoy the process of the investigation, then I think Trey's right, Holmes isn't a very good model for how that should go.