Game Lessons #1

I have a mostly-weekly Pathfinder campaign that's been going on for a couple of years now; the players have made it to level 14, with a mythic tier of 7, plus some things that aren't entirely in the rules of the game. They've gone from a group that was a pair of orphans, a runaway kobold slave, and an exiled tengu to a trio of demigods who've set themselves in opposition to the Last Mother, a goddess who was supposed to birth the next world when the current one dies, only to be corrupted by the Outer Darkness when she tried to go back and see how the current world was made by walking in the timeless void. The player of the tengu left the party, and the group voted to finish the campaign before we try to add a new player.

In the Game Lessons set of posts, I'll mostly talk about the weekly sessions and how things went, although without spoiling anything. I can usually keep ahead of my players, but sometimes they throw me for a loop. There's usually something that can help other GMs - and other players - in their own game prep and design, I think, so that's what we'll focus on; some of the questions may be prompted by one of my players, who is aiming to start his own campaign soon.

This time, I'm just going to illustrate the importance of getting someone to do a campaign log, something that can be highlighted simply by including the campaign log done by one of my players for the current game. Logs done by players are pure gold for GMs - they tell you what players have figured out, what they're getting wrong, and what hints you've dropped that they've either picked up on or missed entirely.

More importantly, they serve to remind you about things you're going to forget. It doesn't matter how good your memory is, unless you're one of the unfortunate people who suffer from eidetic memory, you will forget things - names, plot hooks you threw out that people seemed to ignore until they decide to pursue them a year of real time later, when you've let the hint drop off your radar, all sorts of things that you'll want to look back at and refresh your memory about later.

Best of all, if you have someone who gets into it and provides the log in an in-character fashion, you get a window into how the game is being seen through the eyes of at least one player. If they're expressing boredom or confusion, you can take steps to fix the problem. If another player is being a problem, the stresses will show up in the journal and give you a warning that you might need to quietly take steps to mitigate it. It'll also give you a feel for whether or not you seem to be neglecting any players, which can lead to boredom and people falling out of a group.

When you're GMing, even if you take notes (I am notoriously guilty for only rarely logging things that happen in the game), it can be easy to forget to write something down if you're busy with an intense scene or while running a combat. Getting a player to log things will do wonders for your own ability to recover and recall things; even if they're completely off-target, their recounting will help trigger your memory.

So, Game Lesson #1: Logs are your friend. Players who do logs are your friend. Bribing a player to keep a log is worth the trouble. You won't regret having it available, and the odds are you can find a would-be author in your group willing to take the task on.

Campaign Mode: Supers!

There are several games on the market that can emulate the genre of superheroes and supervillains; they range from the crunch-heavy HERO System where building a character may potentially involved advanced mathematics (but you can build a character to do exactly what you want) to the relative freeform of Mutants and Masterminds or the looseness of a superhero-modified Cypher System. Why would you want to play such a game?

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Emulating comic books can be fun

Let's face it, most of us at some point wanted to be Batman, Spiderman, Black Widow, Wonder Woman, or the like when we were growing up. People in the modern world with powers well beyond the normal are just cool - and these games give us the chance to emulate that and build our own stories that can match the drama and glory of the comic books - only without the certainty that everything will work out in the end, because the story gets written as we play it.

For some, the thrill will come from rebuilding the heroes they love from comics - building Hulk or Supergirl in the system's format and enacting their adventures with familiar foes and friends. Others will want to make it completely their own, building characters that let them do what they always wished they could growing up.

The power dial has a much finer value

In most fantasy games, the power dials starts low and gets cranked up hard as a game progresses; you go from essentially a farm boy to a demigod if you follow the full progression. It can be drawn out, amped up, or adjusted, but the baseline value always goes the same way. Sci-fi tends to either be over-the-top all the way through (space opera) or solidly realistic and low-power, without too much flux between the two. Either way, the dial tends to stay put in that genre most of the time.

Superhero games can be set anywhere from street-level, where you're essentially a skilled normal person out fighting (or causing) crimes with your wits and maybe one or two low-grade special tricks, all the way up to cosmic-level superpowers where the the fate of entire star systems hinges on the outcome of phenomenal struggles between near-gods - and it has settings at every point between the two, from wise-cracking experts with a limited power set to Superman and his equally outrageously powerful foes.

It comes in a wide range of flavors, all with ample source material

Want to play a bunch of over-the-top heroes having wacky misadventures? You can pick up any Silver Age comic book and see adventure and character seeds strewn through the pages. Grim vigilantes fighting crime because the cops are corrupt and the nights are blacker than black? Iron Age comics with plenty of black leather and chains to inspire you. Mature themes rich in nuance but still able to face the world with a grin? Most modern-day comics will give you a good source to work from.

You can go from being as silly and outrageous as you like to the darkest and most grim of plots, all within the same system and sometimes even with the same characters, just tweaked by the progress of time. Compare the Adam West Batman and the Nolan Batman to see just how far apart the exact same character can be without ever changing the functional concept of the character.

From beer and pretzels to deep intrigue on a dime

Just like you can dial the power level and the flavor of the game much more handily in this genre than in most others, it also lends itself to everything from light-hearted beer-and-pretzels gameplay (I don't recommend HERO for this) to the most intrigue-laden roleplay-heavy campaign you can cook up. Superhero stories thrive on mixing up the intense action that most people think of when they hear about comics with light-hearted comedy and well-built emotional scenes, often within a single monthly issue.

Built to be modular

Most game systems make it tricky to tell stories that are either episodic, since most characters require a lot of forethought and work to build and don't really change quickly, or truly long-term, since really long-term plots require a commitment from players and GM alike that they might not be able to sustain. The superhero genre works well for either of these extremes, though, with episodic games matching up well with the frantic pacing of a comic, and the long-term able to be handled even as players drop out due to life or new people join. The original heroes retire, new ones join the team, and if someone comes back then the retired hero makes a comeback or has a protege who steps in to fill their place.

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This  post was originally slated to come out on Friday.

Campaign Mode: Colonization

The recent release of a Colonization update to the game Starbound, plus having been playing some of the Civilization games, prompted me to think about reasons why you might want to play a game about founding a colony. This was followed up by someone complaining that Starbound had dared to use the word 'colonization' for the update, and the rest followed from my bafflement.

So here's my take on why you might want to try playing a colonization or nation-building campaign.

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It's a new kind of challenge

Even stepping away from the standard adventure model where a group of would-be heroes undertake quests and looking at the wider spectrum of game types, this kind of game is unusual. You're not dealing with a villain or villain group. You're not interacting with an existing civilization (well, you might be, but more about that later) or relying on the support of a pre-existing industrial base. The player group is going into a wilderness area - possibly just untamed wilderness, in a fantasy game, but with a sci-fi game we might be talking the colonization of an entire new world. They won't have anything more than limited and infrequent support from 'back home' in the best of circumstances.

The GM should allow a larger-than-usual starting budget for players in this kind of game, with the exception of exile-style games (more on that below). This allows everyone to feel satisfied that they've prepared for things as best they can, and can let the GM see what kind of challenges they're expecting to face. For most games, groups should have at least a rough idea of what's in wait for them - climate and terrain, possibly a map of some level of detail. A fantasy game is more likely to just have a rough lay of the land than a sci-fi game, since with sci-fi the settlers can dispatch probes that travel just a little faster across the interstellar distances and get to collect years of information on climate, large-scale maps, and so on.

Everyone should get to have a hand in creating the colonists; players get to have a tie to at least some of the NPCs, linking them together with the PCs and other NPCs and giving themselves a sense of investment in the game from the get-go. At the same time, this is where the biggest challenges are going to come from. There will be unforeseen personality conflicts, challenges to authority, illnesses, and more. What will the PCs do when the settlement's only blacksmith or medic cracks under the stress and runs off into the wilderness? What about when two of the most charismatic members of the colony break off their relationship and try to rally everyone against the other, threatening to tear the settlement apart?

The land is unknown and dangerous

Even in a far-future setting, there's a limit to how much information can be gathered and how detailed it can be. Short of seeding the world with nanotechnology that effectively builds a civilization before the colonists arrive, there are going to be threats and risks from the environment of the new land. Everything from unfamiliar terrain to aggressive wildlife that doesn't fear humans can threaten people. Even if the PCs enact curfews and defensive perimeters, people will get drunk or bored and decide to go sneaking out, leaving the characters with a choice of risking the wilderness to save the missing or being accused of abandoning them to the wilds.

Even just attempting to explore and settle the area right around the initial base camp has the risk of numerous dangers - discovering that the woods that were going to be a source of raw materials for building have a cave entrance that's home to some big, hungry predator demands a quick response. The discovery that the base camp is right in the middle of a migration route for a species of large herd animals that think 'walls' are just things to be pushed through can make it necessary to quickly pack up and move, or else make an effort to drive the creatures to the side of the settlement.

Native plants can wreak havoc among attempts at farming crops. A rash of weeds with a foul odor and oil that causes an itching rash at the slightest touch can make life hell for everyone, requiring characters to think creatively to come up with solutions, and the insects that feed on those weeds may carry some unknown and nasty illness that healing magic or modern medicine doesn't have the ability to treat without spending a lot of time and effort on research - time and effort that has to be diverted away from other tasks.

Every player can find something to do

People on the Method Actor end of the scale can indulge in the interactions and politics of the settlement, from simply settling disputes and arguments to running campaigns about issues to handling setting up a government and running an election campaign. Those on the Tactician end of things can enjoy planning the layout of the settlement, arranging the defenses, organizing scouting parties, and handling the more violent disputes that crop up. Explorers have everything from an isolated wilderness to an entire planet or star system to dig into the mysteries of.

Combat hounds can find themselves in the role of law enforcement, dealing with everything from belligerent drunks to hostile wildlife - or possibly even hostile locals or later colonization efforts. The roguish types can put their inclinations to use scouting, hunting wild animals to feed everyone, and keeping tabs on malcontents around the settlement. Those who prefer to delve into lore can dig into their surroundings, either via magic or science, assembling information to help the colony out - and giving the player a chance to help build some of the lore of the area, if the GM asks them beforehand what they're looking to find, and building the answer on what their skill checks produce.

Potential conflicts on a new level

There's the chance that the colony might not be the first into an area - or not the last to arrive. If there are others there ahead of them, there's a question of whether they're natives to the area, or perhaps an earlier colony that might be better developed. There's a chance that peaceful contact might be established, arranging trade and aid between the groups, but also the distinct chance - particularly if the cultures differ - for hostilities to commence.

If the group is indigenous, there's the question of how they measure up technologically and resource-wise against the new arrivals - and which side has the deadlier diseases in their systems against the others. A sudden illness seizing the PC settlement after first contact, threatening the death of many unless the players can either devise a treatment or make peaceful contact with the natives and get a treatment from them to help minimize the impact and damage.

If they're earlier arrivals, there's a chance that they might be wildcat colonists - people who went to settle their own land illicitly, without any support or writ from the original civilization. They might even be settlers from a nation hostile to the one that the PC colony comes from - so what do the players do when disaster strikes in the form of a massive earthquake, torrential downpour that causes flooding, or even something like a meteor impact or volcanic eruption, leaving both colonies in shambles and likely to die unless they work together?

And what do they do when a later colony effort shows up, outraged to discover someone here ahead of them and more than willing to initiate hostilities with the PC colony over what they see as 'their' rightful land? Do they try to make peace and relocate, fight to the last to defend their new homes, or resort to more nefarious means to secure their safety?

A reason to be central without being heroes

If the PCs are the organizers or the chosen authority of the colony, they have a reason to be at the center of the action without the story needing to revolve directly around them. The individual stories of the other colonists can be woven around the PCs, making them central to everything that happens without any of it actually being about them.

Two families come to them to ask them to settle who has a claim to a particularly fertile stretch of land. A child goes missing, run off into the woods, and someone has to organize the search effort and go looking for them. A pack of hungry predators show up and menace outlying farms, and someone needs to go drive them off or kill them. The list goes on - once things are settled, those who relied on the PCs early on start to agitate to displace them, or talk a portion of the other colonists into abandoning the settlement and going into the wilds to make their own encampment where they can enact rules that the PCs have been denying.

Mysterious mysteries

Perhaps there are secrets hidden beneath the pristine wilderness. Someone exploring finds a crevice in a hill that leads to a building buried completely underground, the interior suggesting a whole new civilization that no one has ever heard of before. A scout finds an ancient machine of unknown purpose, which has been laying still for so long a tree has grown up through it. A lake turns out to have unnaturally regular lines, and one side turns out to be an artificially crafted dam.

Or perhaps the PCs decide to create things themselves that will one day be the mysteries of the past - a temple to the gods they left civilization to be free to worship, hidden in the deep forest, or a statue in their own honor raised in the middle of their town. The colonists who split off to do their own thing are found - or the ruins of their attempted settlement is, with no trace of the colonists who founded it.

Building a new campaign world

Finally, after a colonization campaign comes to a close, the group has created a new place to play in during later games, seeing how things play out in the future. The small town they painstakingly built becomes a metropolis, the quarry they set up becomes a lake when it runs out, or the temple they built becomes the center of a kingdom's faith. The wilderness falls back, and they can come back to the other, more familiar game types, but now they find streets named after their old characters, monuments they built still standing - or standing in neglect, in need of a new generation to revitalize them.

All of the familiar pieces of gameplay, but now every bit has had their hands involved shaping it, making the world that much more real for them as they build their next character to fit into it.

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So consider giving a colonization game a try; it might just be worth the effort!

Exile's Cypher: Born of the Vaal

The last couple posts in this vein have been on already-existing Foci and how to fit them to the themes of Wraeclast. Today we'll look at new Foci for the campaign - specifically, ones that relate character to the nightmare ancestral power whose fall condemned the land to be cursed, the Vaal Empire. The creators of the Virtue Gems, masters of forbidden sciences and dark arts, the Vaal today haunt the rest of the world as the darkest of boogeymen.

Touched By the Vaal

You have been touched since you were young with a connection to the mysteries left behind by the Vaal when they once ruled over everything. It manifests as whispering voices that offer insights and advice, not always pertinent to the situation you're in, and a natural instinct for the things the cursed empire left behind. You tend to be drawn to ornate clothing with strange symmetries hidden in the design, in lurid colors that draw the eye to you, and you likely delight in the attention.

While any Type can benefit from this Focus, those who focus on Intellect will find it more valuable than others.

Additional Equipment: You have a compass of sorts; fashioned of faintly luminous metals and crystals of unknown composition, it points to the largest Vaal-crafted relic within a month's walk of you.

Minor Effect: Corrupt energy courses over the area around you out to a short distance, stunning enemies and leaving all rolls against them modified one level in your favor.

Major Effect: An unnoticed Vaal construct surges to life for a moment and lunges at a foe, immbolizing them for a round before it crumbles into fragments.

Tier 1 Whispering Darkness (Intellect 2): You reach out with your psyche to listen carefully, gaining an asset on all initiative rolls and Perception tasks to detect creatures or Vaal relics for the next hour.

Lore of the Vaal: You are trained in all skills related to information about the Vaal Empire and the relics it left behind.

Tier 2 Corrupt Aura (Intellect 3): You channel the corrupt energy of the cursed land, creating a bubble of darkness that grants you +1 Armor and adds 1 point of corrupt damage to your melee attacks.

Tier 3 Army of the Vaal (Intellect 2+): For every two points of Intellect you spend, you animate a level 2 skeleton warrior that claws out of the ground and fights for you for the next three rounds. Alternately, you may spend 4 Intellect from your pool to summon a level 4 skeleton archer or sorcerer who can make attacks out to long range for the same duration.

Tier 4 Malachai's Touch: Your form corrupts and twists as you become closer to the source of your power, gaining an inherent +2 Armor bonus; this results in a visible and disturbing transformation of some kind - scales or chitin covers your skin and your body becomes emaciated and subtly deformed.

Will of the Vaal: You gain +4 Intellect.

Tier 5 Name of the Corrupt: You are considered an Abomination for all effects that enhance or heal such creatures, and they regard you as one of their own, leaving you in peace unless you attack them.

Howl of the Damned (Intellect 1+): You unleash a shattering scream from your augmented lungs and throat, dealing 2 damage to everything out to a short distance from you; every 2 Intellect you spend past this increases this damage by 2 points.

Tier 6 Blasphemous Apotheosis: You are considered a Vaal Construct for purposes of effects that enhance or heal such, and such things will regard you as one of their own unless you attack them. You gain an additional +2 Armor, and your Recovery rolls have a +1 bonus. You no longer even vaguely resemble your birth form.

Malachai's Blessing: You gain a melee attack that functions as a medium weapon of slashing, piercing, or bashing type (your choice), and it deals an additional 2 poison damage on the round following a successful blow.

Blessed With Virtue

You were born with an attunement to the Virtue Gems the Vaal first created; you can wield them adeptly, and have little to fear from the corrupting aspects of their fragmentary forms. You likely favor crystalline appearances, sewing reflective things to your clothing and delighting in gemstone jewelry.

Any Type can benefit from this Focus easily.

Minor Effect: A pulse of energy among your belongings conducts along your touch, augmenting whatever you were doing to be slightly more effective.

Major Effect: One of your Virtue Gems spontaneously activates without a need for a depletion roll, directing its power to best benefit you in the situation.

Tier One Capacity: You may carry an extra cypher safely.

Infused with Virtue: You gain an additional five points to distribute among your stat pools.

Tier Two Gembond: You are considered trained in all tasks relating to cyphers and artifacts.

Virtuous Power: Any Virtue Gems that deal damage deal one additional point when you invoke them.

Tier Three Gemseed: You may pick a single cypher you carry and embed it in your flesh, gaining the effects of it as a personal power. GM discretion on whether or not a cypher can be utilized in this fashion.

Crystalline: You gain +1 Armor.

Tier Four Virtuous: You gain +2 to each Pool, and a +1 on Recovery rolls.

Tier Five Fueled by Virtue: Whenever a Virtue Gem would be depleted, you may opt to instead move one step down the damage track instead; you cannot recovery from this state until your next ten hour rest. You may use this as many times as you like, but dead is still dead.

Tier Six Gemling: You may choose a single Virtue Gem; it becomes a permanent part of you, never suffering depletion rolls, and you additionally gain +2 to each Pool and +2 Armor.

Eclipse Phase: Before the Fall Setup, Part 3 - The Klayman Family

This post details the rough information available to the UN Peacekeeper Task Force when the Before the Fall game commences.

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The compound is owned by the Klayman family, a family line that got their start cheerily collecting ourageous fees for representing conservative group from the beginning of the 21st century; the founder of the family fortune got his start with die-hard conservative groups in that time, setting a tone of exploitation and extortion that has kept the family well-funded into the present time. Careful investments conducted through obfuscated means have given them a share in most megacorps, as well as a sizable interest in forward-thinking hypercorps already setting up habitats with intent to lease portions to the extremely wealthy. The family's influence keeps pushing to do things cheaper, even if it means skimping a bit on safety measures.

Lawrence Klayman is the current patriarch of the family, inhabiting his second morph and enjoy the revitalized youth and energy it gives him. Although openly a bioconservative, he's not the least bit against benefiting from the fruits of modern science as long as he's able to avoid being called out on it. As such, he has a full complement of cutting edge technology built into his new body. He pretends to be his own grandson when out in public, keeping his original body around on ice to be controlled via puppet sock on occasions when the world needs to see him. His children are less than thrilled at his new lease on life, and he suspects all of them of being involved with a plot to kill him and take over the family business.

Marcus Klayman is the first son of Lawrence, and up until his father got copied into a younger, fitter morph he was expecting the old man to eventually retire and pass it along to him. Well into his eighties by this point, he indulges in various biotechnology to keep himself looking and feeling like a man in his 40s. Involved with several extermist groups in his youth, he appears to have mellowed out and cut his ties once he reached middle age and started studying to inherit his father's position. He's divorced, his wife having taken both of his children and moved to live on Luna, well out of the family's influence.

Maria Klayman is Lawrence's daughter, and the second in line after Marcus. Married to a megachurch pastor who goes by John Blessed, she refused to change her name and risk losing direct access to the inheritance when she got married. She rules her household with a steel fist, despite appearing to be demure and obliging to her husband in public to help ensure his grip over the ultraconservative congregation of his church - nearly a million people disenchanted with their place in the world and certain that John's teachings are the way to glory. Several small terrorist groups in the area claim to be founded on the tenets of what John teaches, although both Maria and John publicly disavow all knowledge of the groups. Their two children, James and Mark, have been groomed to take over the megachurch when John decides to retire; both have spent time extensively learning how to be leaders - something that Lawrence is paranoid about, as either could easily lead a terror group in a raid on the family compound if Maria has decided she wants to take the legacy over.

Jeremiah Klayman is the third in line and appears to be a dilettante, but while he doesn't seem interested in running any of the family business, he's extensively invested in several cutting-edge hypercorps with his allowance, and stands to be fully independent of the family legacy if he so chooses. His children are the result of cloning experiments courtesy of his investments, resulting in two daughters and a son - Brenda, Kathy, and Walter - who have a wide variance in personality despite being gene-tweaked clones. All of them are heavily augmented and more than capable of defending themselves in a fight, but none seem to have any known connection to any groups that might be willing to attack the Klayman family. At this time, all three children are off-world attending lunar universities in pursuit of degrees in advanced genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Jeremiah still resides on the family compound, but has a personal spaceplane that can make LEO stationed at the nearby airport.

Last in line is Matilda Gruzman, who decided to take her hsuband's name on the understanding that she was unlikely to ever need to consider trying to run the family. She and her husband Harold are childless by choice, but more than willing to pretend to be the parents of her father in his new body. Both are hedonists, experimenting with the latest in recreational chemistry and augmented reality whenever they don't need to be in the public eye. They're also the only family members to openly be outfitted with cortical stacks, making them the apparent black sheep of the family; that their 'son' gives the appearance of going to more pure and conservative route (despite the contrary being true) reassures the supporters of the family that the family is still properly under Lawrence's control.

John Blessed is the very image of a total hypocrite, and everyone outside the control zone of his megachurch knows it. Augmented with numerous pieces of cutting-edge technology, he's in an early-model Sylph morph with numerous tweaks to max out his ability to be charming, suave, and persuasive. Anyone not coming to a meeting with countermeasures will find it hard to dislike the man, and might find themselves considering his rather dubious rhetoric. His history has been carefully obfuscated with numerous plausible rumors and confusing paper trails, with alternate trails that suggest he may have been an assassin, a con artist who took world leaders for billions, a serial killer, the only child of climate refugees who simply made it good, and the only survivor of an airplane crash.

James Blessed is a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, second in command to his father and direct heir in line to take the church over. Genetic modifications before birth assured that he was effectively born in a sylph morph, enabling his easy rise to dominance over the other children around him. This group, the Guardian Angels, serve today as his personal bodyguards whenever he needs to go out in public. No data suggests that he's anything other than he seems.

Mark Blessed serves as a pastor in the Blessed Church of Christ Ascendant, but less frequently than his older brother. Although he also effectively lives in a Sylph morph, his personal aptitudes make him much less inclined to charisma and manipulation by force of personality, instead having an aptitude for figures and logistics that has seen him come to be in charge of the business side of the megachurch, and more recently picking up the Blessed-Klayman portion of the Klayman family fortune to manage for his parents. He has known investments in numerous hypercorps, including several private security firms and armament manufacturers; the equipment carried by the Guardian Angels has been acquired through his contacts with these groups.

Numerous other individuals reside on the family compound - security forces, attendants, more distant lineages of the family, and the like - but this covers the family members presently in the area at the time of the game start.

Deus ex Machina, TPKs, and what to do when Things Go Bad

There's a certain school of GM thought that says you're not doing it 'right' if you've never had a Total Party Kill; at one point this was a dead serious and far-ranging school of thought in the hobby, and there was a certain feel that the GM and the PCs were adversarial. The GM, of course, has to self-limit, because GMs have absolute power over the game world. There's nothing stopping one from pulling the eternal joke of 'rocks fall, everyone dies' save that such a GM will quickly have no players left.

On the other extreme, there's the Monty Haul style of GMing, where players are rarely challenged by anything, treasure and experience and other rewards flow like water, and if anything really threatens the players they've probably got a god waiting in the wings to save them from doom. While it might be fun once in a while, this pretty quickly gets as boring as most of the adversarial games where the GM seriously thinks he's the foe of the players.

Neither TPKs nor Monty Haul games are much fun for extended periods; the GM generally walks a fairly narrow line balanced between mild forms of the two extremes. What's fairly easy at low levels - if a challenge is too easy, the enemies get some unexpected backup, if it's too hard the creature turns out to already have been wounded - becomes harder as characters gain in power and groups develop and refine their tactics. What was a case of a front-line fighter charging back and forth to keep opponents focused on them while the wizard lobs plinking spells from the back gives way to combats opening with earth-shattering explosions of magic and the charging warrior plowing through entire squads of enemies as they try to pile onto the character.

The GM's job becomes increasingly tricky, as most groups become finely tuned to the point that anything they're expecting will get torn apart, but things coming at them from the side will take them down like a cat pushing glass jars off a shelf. With luck, the players can recognize a situation gone bad and retreat when they need to do so, retooling their approach as needed, but sometimes that won't be the case and the GM is faced with the choice between a ridiculous Deus ex Machina event or a TPK.

I tend to lean toward permitting the TPK, on the grounds that a party being wiped out doesn't mean the story - or even the party - is actually done for. Many methods exist for letting players keep going with a few tweaks even when it seems like they've been wiped out. Enemies might stabilize them and drag them back to be tried according to the laws of their people. They might arise as the living dead, a hunger for revenge burning in their otherwise still hearts. Less cautious foes might loot them and leave, assuming that they'll bleed out, only to have the characters awaken, stripped of their gear and miles from any kind of safety, their only hope being to hunt down those who nearly killed them and reclaim their belongings.

Or you might give the players themselves an option; if there's some great conflict between good and evil, light and dark, law and chaos, or whatever, the godlike beings involved might be championing the characters and turn up after they've died to offer them a choice - remain dead and continue on to their reward, or go back to all the strife and pain of life to keep fighting. What you shouldn't do is force the choice one way or the other, in this case - and not to make a habit of it. Gods only intervene for the greatest heroes and villains, and anything less than that cheapens dramatic moments that can make stories that get told for years.

As always, GMs should err on the side of the best story; sometimes that means finding a way to save the characters, sometimes that means rolling up new characters to go get revenge for the lost, and sometimes it means recognizing that a game is done and moving on to the next campaign.

Fate of Exiles: The Shadow

The Shadow is a class that sits between the agility of the Ranger and the intellect of the Witch; a cunning and graceful murderer for hire, this class more than any other has little odds of being able to claim a noble background, although there are always those who find their way into horrible situations despite the best of natures and intentions. The Shadow is, essentially, an assassin who, in the wake of performing a job they were hired for, found themselves sacked and tossed onto the next ship to Wraeclast's shores. They can be forgiven for being more than a little miffed about the situation.

As example Shadows, we have the Merciless Killer, the Repentant, and the Hapless Slayer. The first is a person who might be willing to take a life for the price of a beer; the second has, in the process of being exiled, found regret that their life has led to this and now they seek to atone; and the last is the poor strange fool who found their natural talents to be aimed at the death of others, yet the rest of their life is at odds with such a profession.

For High Aspects to define these individuals, we have The Hand of Death or Remorseless Murderer as simple, matter-of-fact descriptors for the Killer; The Penitent One or Sorrowful Sinner have a flavor to match the Repentant; and Jack of Blades or The One They Never Suspect hint at the happy-go-lucky nature of the Hapless.

For Troubles, we have Nobody Pays For Things Around Here as a perpetual complaint that troubles the Killer, The Dead Haunt Me for the Repentant plagued by the ghostly voices of Wraeclast's damned souls, and Touched By Dark Whimsy for a Hapless who simply doesn't connect the fact of killing a person with them being dead.

I Always Make My Target, I'm A Professional, and There's Always Another Knife are additional Aspects for a Killer, both improving their ability to deal with things in their chosen trade and marking out how bad they are at things like small talk or putting people at ease. Violence Is The Last Thing On My Mind, Onward Until My Debts Are Paid, and Desperate Times Call For Desperate Heroes call up the desperate determination of the Repentant to redeem themself and atone for the deaths they've caused. I Dance With The Dead, Memento Mori Knick-knacks, and Laughing With The Damned evoke the macabre, twisted, and sometimes almost childlike nature of the Hapless.

Fight and Sneak are key skills for any Shadow, although a Repentant might prioritize Empathy and a Hapless Rapport to play up the nature of their particular inclinations. Notice, Will, and Athletics are all also key. A Shadow who specialized in ranged assassination might have Craft (for creating poisons and antidotes alike) and Shoot as high skills, as well. A Hapless might have a decent skill in Lore, representing the strange facts and tidbits they've gleaned while skipping and dancing through the bloody aftermath of their jobs.

Stunts will likewise tend to follow the particular nature of a given Shadow; a Killer might have Knife In The Dark, granting them a +2 bonus on a Fight or Shoot roll (depending on the relevant skill) made while concealed by Sneak. Apothecary might be something a Repentant has, allowing them to spend a Fate Point to get an automatic success with no shifts on a Craft skill to create an antidote to a poison they've used in the past. Fool's Grace for the Hapless gives them a +2 bonus to Athletics checks to Defend against surprise attacks made on them, representing their twisted fate and monstrous luck.

All in all, a Shadow is a class that can fit numerous character concepts, from unrepentant murderers turned hero by necessity to those who seek redemption for their sins; even the kind of person who plays D&D's Chaotic Neutral alignment as Chaotic Insane can find something on offer here, without needing to twist anything out of true.

Next week we'll look at the last class of Path of Exile, the Scion - a noble child condemned to the cursed shores for the crime of refusing to belonging to the civilized cruelty of Oriath's upper echelons.

Exile's Cypher: Modified Focus

Some Foci will fit into Wraeclast just fine with just a little tweaking. Only a few need this tweak to be ready to play, so this will be a relatively simple conversion post. Most of these tweaks will simply be in favor of the flavor of the setting, but a few will be more deeply mechanical in nature. So, without further ado, let's get straight into it.

Channels Divine Blessings

This focus is perfect for those who want to be the rare truly innocent soul cast into Wraeclast by the machinations of a corrupt Inquisition.

At Tier 1, the Focus is modified in that there is, for this world, only one god; all the blessings come from this unnamed divinity. Addtionally, neither the Death/Darkness nor the Trickery/Greed/Commerce Blessings are available.

Tier 3: This tier's power specifically effects the undead (zombies, skeletons, ghosts, and the like) and all Vaal Abominations.

Tier 5: The improved portion of this power is always twisted by the cursed nature of Wraeclast, injecting some unwanted side effect into the result as if a GM Intrusion had been produced.

Tier 6: Vaal Abominations struck by this power act as if they were one level lower on the following round, as the divine power briefly stuns them.

Consorts With The Dead

Cursed Power: At any time that the character has a necromantic effect active, they're surrounded by thin, swirling wisps of dark energy, and they leave bloody footprints wherever they walk.

Necromantic Abilities: In addition to the other effects of this ability, each power so modified is accompanied by the keening wail of cursed souls when activated.

Controls Beasts

Beast Companion: This is a rhoa (an armored, flightless bird that attacks by charging opponents and ramming them, then tearing into them with its beak), giant scorpion, giant spider, sand spitter (a vaguely crablike creature that scoops up rocks and sprays them from its proboscis as a ranged attack), monkey, or large spitting serpent.

Crafts Unique Objects

Replace each reference to 'artifacts' with 'Virtue Gems'. This character has some knowledge of the dark process by which Virtue Gems are crafted, and at Tier 6 may even implant a Virtue Gem safely into a person, transforming them into a Gemling.

Hunts Nonhumans

For the sake of this setting, Vaal Abominations and Gemlings are valid choices as a dedicated foe.

Shepherds Spirits

On a GM Intrusion, the powers of this character draw the attention of the many, many unquiet ghosts that inhabit the land of Wraeclast, and may call spirit-eating cannibals to hunt the character.

Works Miracles

Another good choice for a somewhat pure character unfairly cast into Wraeclast, this one is even more proactive than one who Channels Divine Blessings.

Miraculous Power: All effects the character wields are tinged with a golden or silvery light, blatant evidence of the character's miraculous abilities.

Tier 2: The character gains a Disciple, a level 2 creature who follows the character around and acts as a loyal servant due to the character's miraculous powers.

Tier 4: Casting Out the Unclean - (4 Intellect) - The character radiates sacred energy out to a short distance, inflicting 2 damage to any undead or Vaal Abominations in range.

Tier 6: The character's Disciple become a level 5 creature, ready to defend the miracle worker against most threats.

Villainous Intent: Motivations Past The Twirling Mustache

There's a certain trend in many games to have an absolutely bombastic and over the top villain in charge of the adversaries in quite a few RPGs, and it's honestly understandable. Having an outrageously evil person behind all the trouble the group faces makes the task of fighting them something everyone can get behind; it removes troublesome shades of grey and moral quandaries that most people don't want to have to deal with when they just want to escape reality for a few hours during the session.

There's nothing wrong with such an outrageously evil mastermind, either, but 'evil for the sake of evil' gets kind of silly if you take any time to step back. Even the most vile mustache-twirling caricature of villainy is going to have some greater motivation than "I will be evil to be evil!"  It might be something as simple as having been raised in a particularly ugly, brutal, and malignant faith that taught them that devotion to their god comes before all else and that acts of xenophobic hate please that god, leading them to raise armies of similar believers and unthinking horrors to march on others as an act of devotion. Or they might be convinced that the secret to immortality requires an immense sacrifice of living creatures, and perhaps they figure they can atone later once they've got eternity to do so.

Or perhaps they're more nuanced than that. Every day in the real world there are news stories of people who are convinced they're doing the right thing for the right reasons when everyone else is horrified by their acts; a man bombs a medical clinic that offers abortion services, and despite now being a murderer, arsonist, and terrorist he believes he's a hero. A priest chokes a young woman to death on a mix of water and salt in an attempt to drive out demons. A man whose racist beliefs lead him to go on a killing spree is convinced that he's defending his way of life from corruption. All these are acts of evil, with only the excuse that the perpetrator sincerely believes that they are doing the good and righteous thing to defend them.

They're still evil. They're still monsters. But you can see what motivates them and that turns them from a two-dimensional cardboard cutout with a looped recording of diabolical laughter into a realized character with motivations and drives. You can still set the players up to fight them with no regrets, but now those motivations drive what they're doing. A villain who marches on enemy nations and their own civilization with an army, intent on genocide in the name of racial purity, sees themself as a hero, even as the behave like a horrible and merciless monster. They're unalloyed evil, but their motivation makes them more complex. They may unexpectedly spare some groups or individuals, leading the players to question what's going on.

Then there's the impersonal evil - things put in place by people who just don't understand or care about the damage they're causing. The lord of a city who passes laws into effect that make life hell for people is a good villain for low-power campaigns. You can't just barge into their home, behead them, and saunter off with your job done in a case like that; such a campaign may end in an attempt to hunt the lord down to face a trial, but only after establishing things to make the aftermath better. A king might need to be deposed by a cadet branch of the royal line, more amenable to the plight of the common folk for having grown up closer to them. A priest, raised by the temple, might declare horrific edicts and need to be kidnapped and taken to live among the people their decrees hurt simply because they don't know any better.

All of these people are evil by accident, attempting to do what their job is and harming others horribly by simple fact of ignorance; given that they've never learned any different. Players can fight this kind of evil in numerous ways, all the way from organizing a rebellion down to orchestrating a kidnapping and forcing them to see the harm done by their actions, giving them a chance to correct their own actions without going straight to homicide.

While a far cry from the kind of hack-and-slash superheroic style of fighting an overpowering epic evil who is evil because evil, it allows for more complex and potentially satisfying campaigns, when, rather than simply putting down a rabid beast, players have the chance to see themselves triumph over an ultimately human kind of evil, one that they may recognize and be frustrated by in the real world - and really, that alone may provide more satisfaction and elation than any number of victories over cosmic forces of darkness.

I don't recommend it for brand-new groups with brand-new players, but it's definitely something for more experienced groups to consider for the next campaign.

The Godless World

In the core assumptions of pretty much every fantasy system that isn't brutally low-fantasy, there tends to be a premise that there's at least one god, or perhaps a full pantheon of gods, who are behind the world as movers and shakers on a level that mortals can only hold a vague hope of one day brushing the lower echelons of. A few have usurped this to some degree - in the D20 system, the settings of Eberron and Dark Sun both did away with provable active gods - but this tends to be the default state of fantasy games.

There's nothing wrong with it in general, and quite a lot of exciting stories can be told where such being are either the source (an ancient evil god seeks to return, a new evil god is going to be born, a good god or alliance of good gods deputizes some mortals to go fight the minions of some evil gods or other horrors, and so on) or only involved as much as the player with a priestly character calls the god's name when calling on the god's power.

Still - there's something to be said for worlds where there's absolutely no divinity; not even the vague "Well, maybe, because these priests are getting power from somewhere, right?" of Eberron. There are almost certainly going to still be religions, but there's nothing to back them up. If the setting has things like angels and demons, they're just another kind of life - possibly from another universe, possibly lurking in unusual places and using the beliefs of mortals to their advantage.

This premise opens up a whole host of new possible stories. If there are no gods, and the players all know it even though faith and religion are still things in the world, how do they react when two different priests of the same faith beg them to help deal with the other as a blasphemer and traitor (possibly over some minute difference of belief that seems absurd to anyone outside the faith)? What about if they come across a village that worships the statue in their shrine as the avatar of a god, and it seems to grant them miracles (perhaps a restless ghost, seeking to incite the villagers to finish what  tasks it had, is behind it. Perhaps an angel or demon has decided to 'prove' the god is real by working miraculous effects in the name of it. Perhaps the villagers themselves are unwittingly possessed of some unusual power that collectively lets them bend reality together, and this is how it manifests.)?

It also opens up the question of players deciding to take advantage of the situation. Charlatans and miracle-peddlers who intend to never come back could easily have a campaign built around their misadventures, with angry former customers hunting after them as they go from town to town, leaving emptied coffers and broken dreams behind, along with the occasional genuine bit of good. Perhaps the players are the charlatans, always trying to stay a step ahead of their vengeful former customers, or perhaps they're a band of people cheated by charlatans hunting after them.

All in all, a godless world poses quite a lot of unusual ideas and plot hooks that could provide a wide range of fodder for stories and plots. One-shots can be built around scenarios like the ghost in the statue or two competing bands of false priests arriving in a town, while a more complete camapign can build on any number of ideas, including a 'war in heaven' between angels and devils, with some renegade factions trying to reveal the truth to the mortals.

Certainly seems like something worth giving a try.

Exile's Cypher: Focusing In

The Focus is the verb part of the one-sentence summary of a character that sits at the heart of the Cypher System; in adapting it to fit the setting presented in Path of Exile, we're going to have to remove some Foci, change others, and add a few. Given that this could be said to be the meat of the conversion, from a player's perspective, this will like be a series of posts on the subject, along with a look at the 'flavors' offered and how they might fit in. We'll start by looking at the list for those Foci that simply don't belong in the dark fantasy world depicted in Wraeclast.

Battles Robots and Builds Robots are clearly out of place in this, although you could make an argument to convert the latter to something like 'Crafts Golems' or the like. For the purposes of this conversion, however, we'll just mark them both off - the undead, wild beasts, and other exiles amply fill out the options for potential minions, and the undead should satisfy people who want something clearly artificial as a servant.

Calculates the Incalculable, at first glance, sounds like something that might not belong here, but what it describes isn't against the nature of the setting; a character of incredible intelligence has an obvious reason for being exiled, when their intellect results in them noticing flaws between the rhetoric of the Holy Church and the behavior of those who serve it.

Conducts Weird Science, on the other hand, has too much of a modern/sci-fi flavor to really fit; we'll revisit it as one we can revise to make it 'Conducts Strange Sorcery' for people who want a half-mad arcane savant, as the other options along that vein are more controlled than the way this focus feels.

Fuses Flesh and Steel and Fuses Mind and Machine are both out; the fantasic setting doesn't really half half-constructs aside from a few Vaal-era abominations that are dangerous as much for their absolute madness as for their power, and the bias is toward magic that destroys those who treat it as a science, rather than forms of science that can make magic safer.

Interprets the Law is out simply because, in Wraeclast, the only law is that of survival; likewise, the desolate nature of thing discards Is Idolized by Millions, while the fantasy setting sets Is Licensed to Carry aside. On the other hand, Metes Out Justice remains because the search for justice is a thing that exists even when there is no law to describe it.

Operates Undercover is out; it implies a form of society exists that Wraeclast just lacks. Pilots Starcraft is out for obvious reasons, as are Talks to Machines, Travels Through Time, Works the Back Alleys, and Works the System. Of those, the only one that could be argued in favor of is Works the Back Alleys, but the Stealth flavor covers it well enough that no need really exists for a thief-like Focus.

The last one that we could easily discard, Would Rather Be Reading, will remain - stories of this kind are full of the irreverent scholar who learned things and asked questions that those in charge of dogma would prefer remain unknown and unasked. This kind of like scholar-hero can make quite an interesting experience, and easily fills a role for the kind of person who likes to be a clever supporting-role tactician kind of character.

Some other Foci will need modified, even if they seem to fit just fine at first glance; we'll cover those in the next Exile's Cypher post.

Fate of Exiles: The Duelist

Equally at home in a one-on-one duel over honor, the gladiatorial arena against a gang of thugs, or in the urban jungle of a city, the Duelist might seem out of place in Wraeclast at first glance. Often suave, charming, debonair, and as skillful at cutting people with their words as with their blades, they're perhaps the character with the most social backstory in Path of Exile, other than the Scion. Still, they shouldn't be discounted by any measure; becoming an expert in the art of combat means they have the lean strength and agility necessary to survive the dangers the cursed land can throw at them.

Halfway between the warrior might of the Marauder and the agile grace of the Ranger, the Duelist rarely cares for magic unless it can hone their skill as a warrior. Whether they began as a noble looking for sport, a commoner blessed with natural gifts of physical speed and power, or someone who tries to fall back on the sword only when their tongue fails to get them out of trouble, Duelists rarely back down from a fight.

Sample Duelists include the Noble Gladiator, who took up the art of the duel to find a way to enliven their life; the Dancer, who came from a life of poverty and won fame and fortune with charm and lethality; and the Charming Vagabond, who prefers to charm people first and resort to violence only when their charm fails to get them their way. Plenty of others exist, of course, but Duelists will generally be people familiar with the ways of civilized bloodshed common to the upper echelon of Oriath's society.

High Aspects will reflect the origin of a Duelist and the reason they fight; Thrillseeker With A Sword or Honor's Grand Champion might fit a Noble Gladiator. Grace With A Razor's Edge or Steel Ribbon-Dancer might fit a Dancer kind of character. Silver-Tongued Stranger or Just Another Charming Knave might fit the Vagabond.

Troubles will tend to be things that the Duelist brings upon themselves; a Noble Gladiator might have My Family Spoke Against Me At Trial or Fallen Into Disgrace, a Dancer might have A Magpie's Eyes or Gracelessly Debauched as possibilities, and a Vagabond might have something like Running From My Past or Manners Like A Drunken Goat as a difficulty.

Only The Finest Blade, Captain Of My Own Soul, and Born With A Silver Spoon all work as possible added Aspects for a Gladiator, while Quicker Than The Eye, I Don't Know Nuffin', and As Wary As An Alley Cat all work for a Dancer, and A Winestain Birthmark, Widely-Traveled Heathen, and I Always Cut Deep make appropriate options for a Vagabond.

Fight is a given as a prime skill for a Duelist, along with Physique and Athletics. Rapport, Empathy, Provoke, and Deceive are all useful skills for the charming Duelist who prefers to try to talk more intelligent foes down, strike up conversations with those creatures who can talk, or harass a potential foe until they lash out and given the Duelist an advantage in the resulting fight. Contacts, Notice, Will, and Stealth are all good additional choices, depending on the flavor of the Duelist.

Stunts will tend to echo a Duelist's focus on wit and skill. In Honor's Name might grant an additional two shifts once per scene on a successful Fight roll against an enemy with an Aspect indicating they're dishonorable. On The Razor's Edge grants a +2 on Athletics rolls when moving along dangerously narrow places, like tightropes and narrow ledges. Clever As A Raven grants a +2 when using Provoke to annoy someone into attacking the Duelist while making it look as if the Duelist is blameless.

Duelists are a good choice for anyone who likes the idea of a charming rogue who isn't afraid of a fight, whether they're going to be the gung-ho sort who demands a duel to satisfy honor at the drop of a hat, a showy actor who thrives on adulation, or the disarmingly friendly stranger who only reluctantly strikes opponents down.

Next time, we'll look at the Shadow, the next to last of the class options from Path of Exile - a character somewhere between a thief and an assassin, as complex as the shades of moral grey that fill their world.

Convention games, and how they can help your home game

While I missed it this year due to a confluence of events - new ownership at work, my wife suffering near-fatal illness, and the resulting financial issues of both - for several years I've attended Paizocon in Seattle and run games at it each year. I learned some useful lessons from those games that have some serious merit with home games, and I encourage everyone who goes to conventions with tabletop games to try their hand at it - either as a player or a GM, because both sides have lessons to teach. I'll be speaking solely to the GM side here.

Make sure you're rested.
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's surprising how often we GMs will try to run games when we're in no state to do so. At Paizocon, I had one year where I tried running an adventure for Kobold Press with something of a hangover because I'd been incautious and not gotten enough rest or water. The players still had a good time, but it wasn't anywhere near my best, and I knew it the whole way through; I was lucky that I had a couple players who were on the ball and kept things going when I stumbled.

Likewise, you need your rest if you're going to run a home game. If you're not rested and healthy, your ability to run the game will suffer and your regular players will feel it. If it's a regular game, missing a session won't kill it; if it isn't, ask if anyone else has something in their pocket to run instead so that you won't feel the night was wasted.

Keep an eye on the attention level of the players.
At the 2014 Paizocon, I ran the Eclipse Phase adventure Continuity and wound up with a table of around ten people; this is pretty near my maximum limit, but it did a wonderful job of underscoring exactly how important it is to keep the players engaged with the story. The ten of them naturally split up into pairs and trios as they investigated the mystery of their environment and why things were so wrong from what they last remembered, and I had to keep jumping from group to group - sometimes even as the groups shifted in size and composition.

I got each group moving along until they hit a spot where they needed to do something among themselves, and then jumped to the group that had been idle the longest, who were almost always ready to act on what they'd worked out. At my home game, this lessons applies to each individual player - don't let anyone go too long without throwing them a line to draw them back into the action. Some players take to this more readily than others - the oratory-happy near-thespian is going to delight in the chance to give a speech and show off, while the somewhat shy person may take some regular hooking to keep active.

Don't overdo it, and don't do it if it interrupts the flow of a particular section. Use notes, text messages, and the like if you need to; letting the quiet person spot something while the others are discussing something intensely lets you keep them in the action and interested without disrupting the scene with the hand of GM Fiat.

Let the players tell part of the story.
This ties back to the last entry, on how your plot won't survive contact with the players. When a player is particularly interested in some side-line of the scenery or bit of stage-dressing fluff, run with it. A con game where the players were simply supposed to enjoy the sights of a gnomish city and then save their employer from a devil-worshiping chocolate-maker took a lengthy side route when they decided to go rescue some other people from the city's diabolists; I could easily have told them that it just wasn't covered in the plot and glossed over it, but I had a warehouse map handy and they all seemed keen on the idea, so off they went to be heroes.

In my home game, the entire story is wrapped around their characters outside of the rough original framework. One character started off with no one but another PC as a friend; over the last couple years he's discovered he has an actual family, that his memory of his childhood wasn't quite accurate, and that people aren't always either fearful or hateful of him, but respectful. Another has rejected the course fated for him, setting aside his role as a god-touched champion to fight for the people rather than the warlords. Each of them have, through their decisions, shaped the story and become woven into it. Generally, when each week rolls around, they're eager to get going, even as menace keeps stacking higher and higher as the months of game time roll past.

Play styles differ, and they differ hugely.
At a con, you can get people with wildly different play styles lumped together at a table. A method actor, a roll-playing tactician, and a rules lawyer will end up sitting together at the table, and it becomes your job as the GM to engage all three of them - and everyone else at the table, too. You'll get everyone if you run convention games often enough. You need to give the method actor some moments to engage in their character's persona, provide moments for the tactician to shine in combat or during other intense situations, and engage the rules lawyer somehow (try including a situation that requires precision knowledge of something, and ask the rules lawyer to lend a hand adjudicating it, perhaps).

The take-away here is to give you an appreciation for each style of play, to learn which ones mesh and which don't, and so help you better judge what players will work well in a given group and who you should politely ask to not come back the next time. A group that's happy to not have a map half the time will frustrate a map-happy tactician to no end, a method actor will be bored to tears in a group of gung-ho tacticians, and the rules lawyer will tear their hair out in a group that relies on the Rule of Cool.

Making sure your group is personalities and play styles that mesh well is the most important thing you can work toward as a GM before the game even begins. They'll work together, bounce ideas off each other, and manage the GM Nirvana where they're busy discussing and role-playing without you needing to intervene far more often when the group is compatible.

When they do, enjoy it.

Play different things.
No, really. Conventions are your chance to give games you like the idea of a test drie to see if they'll mesh with your gameplay style. Most players are, understandably, happy to stick with systems that they know, so that they don't waste the time making characters when the game is going to turn out to be bogged down and die an early death because the rules don't work to fit your style of game. When you find something new and exciting that you want to pitch to them, it helps to be able to present them with an after-action report from a con game to reassure them that you know the system won't turn out to be a disaster.

Different systems and their mechanics are good for producing ways of thinking that are out of the box that you can then apply to your home game, adding in the exciting and fun parts while discarding the baggage that weighed it down. It has the added advantage that if a game system sucks for you, you'll have found out without committing more than the prep time and a single slot of game time to it. Finding new favorites and discarding lemons before they get to your group outweighs almost any other benefit that con games offer.

So get out to your nearest convention and play some games. It's worth the trouble.

No Plot Survives Contact With The Players

There's a saying that generally gets recognized as a truism that says no plan survives contact with the enemy. This is equally true in RPGs, both for players (because the situation is never exactly what you expect and plan for) and for the GM, whose modified version is that no plot ever survives contact with the players. Inevitably, the presence of a few other clever and creative minds will disrupt whatever plan the GM had in mind. You get some GMs who lament this fact, complaining about how their carefully crafted masterpiece is wrecked by the players who don't respect their brilliant plans.

This is, frankly, so much bullshit. If a GM's plot is so inflexible that it can't bend to accommodate players being living, breathing people, that isn't a plot for use in RPGs; it's the plot of a novel, and the GM should go write it. Any plot should be able to bend to some degree, at least enough that if players go west instead of north, the plot turns out to be on the west road instead of the north road. Unless there's some deep metagame reason for it, the Wicked Wizard of the Northern Wastes can easily be the Wicked Wizard of the Western Marshes or whatever.

Of course, this is just the basic level of flexibility a plot needs to survive contact with players, and it's still easy for players to break it. Your plot calls for them to fight the Wicked Wizards minions to the death, but they take the first patrol captive and want to use social skills to convert them to allies, or they decide the Wicked Wizard sounds like a decent employer who might be willing to pay adventurers to adventure for him, or some similar thing that hares off at an angle from the expected course of action.

Quite a few GMs will knee-jerk respond with, "You can't do that!" Why not? Because they didn't prepare for it. Honestly, those GMs have my sympathies, but that's it. There's no reason they can't respond instead with, "Okay. I wasn't expecting that. Let's take a ten minute break while I figure out what to do." Then take those ten minutes and figure out, quickly, a rough idea of what will happen from that course of action. It doesn't have to be anything complex or deep, just solid enough to let you keep moving things forward. Maybe swap the motivations and desires of the original good guy faction over to the Wicked Wizard, or have the minions be press-ganged into service and all too willing to defect - or at least crafty enough to seem willing to defect.

Then there are those players. The ones who hear about the Wicked Wizard and decide they want their character to be the estranged child of the Wizard, when part of what you had planned was for the Wizard to be seeking a partner so as to have an heir; or they're a former minion of the Wizard turned against them, despite the fanatical loyalty of the Wizard's minions. Or the character is a former slave determined to free all of their people from any bondage to anyone other than their own species including simple loyalty.

At first glance these ideas seem like they completely wreck your plot, but they're an opportunity to make it stronger and to make it personal for the players. Why is the child of the Wizard not the heir? Does the Wizard know they exist? Were they born under the auspices of some mystical sign that makes them ill-suited to be the heir? Did the former minion turn before the Wizard perfected whatever ensures the loyalty of the remaining minions? Are they still partly hampered by an incomplete loyalty spell? Do they have family who do serve the Wizard loyally, and how will that family deal with the renegade coming home this way? What about the former slave? What if the minions don't want freed from their service? What if they try to convert the escaped slave to their cause? What if the Wizard is one of the ex-slave's race, disguised by magic?

Draw the players in like this and your story gets stronger, and gives the players a measure of authorship in it that will have them looking forward to seeing how they'll get to impact the world next. Let them write the legends of their characters and build them into your plot - not as decorations, but as the underlying structure of it.

You won't regret it.

Exile's Cypher: On Descriptors

Descriptors - the 'adjective' part of the one-sentence character description at the heart of an Cypher System character - come in a wide range of flavors and effects. They can be positive - things like Charming, Fast, Intelligent, Perceptive, or Tough - negative - such as Craven, Doomed, Impulsive, Mad, or Tongue-Tied - or simple flavorful - Exiled, Jovial, Mystical, or Weird. All of them have statistical impacts that help define the way your character is unique in contrast to a 'basic' version of whatever Type you choose.

Descriptors can impact whether you have training or an inability with a kind of skill, modify your stat pools to some degree, grant some small but helpful ability or a lasting effect the GM can use to invoke to bring your character into problematic situations, grant extra equipment or remove resources, and - perhaps most importantly - suggest ways to tie your character to the initial events of a game session or campaign.

As such, it might be helpful to touch on a few additional Descriptors (and modified versions of the core book ones) that are particular to the lands of Wraeclast. Modified descriptors are Doomed, Exiled, Spiritual, and Weird; additional ones are Cursed, Forgotten, Outcast, Pious, and Touched. As you might expect, given the cursed nature of the world these are helping describe, each one has downsides to go along with the benefits they offer.

Modified descriptors will just have their differences from the core versions noted, while new ones will be detailed in full.

Cursed

You're condemned and you know it. You were born under an ill sign, touched with dark powers and fated to come to an ill end of some kind. Your entire life has been lived under this cloud, leaving you waiting for the other shoe to drop. Of course, there's always the danger that the curse doesn't mandate a bad end for you, personally, but for those who'll have to deal with what you may become.

Fatalistic Reserve - You gain a +2 bonus to your Might Pool.
Dark Lore - You are trained in religious knowledge, history, and knowledge related to Virtue Gems and magic.
Inability - Your resignation makes you slow to react to threats; all initiative and Speed Defense rolls are modified by one level to your detriment.
Condemned Fate - Every other time the GM uses an Intrusion on you, you gain one XP to give away to someone else, but none for yourself. You are allowed to spend XP to refuse the intrusion still.
Burdened - Your curse takes precedence over all other ills against you; any time something attempts to place a long-term negative effect on you, rolls involved in it are modified one level in your favor.
Cosmetic Effect: You have some visible mark or item you can't be rid of that signifies your curse.

Doomed

Inability - Effects that would grant you a lasting benefit have all their rolls modified one level to your detriment.
Voices - You hear the call of the closest voices of death; you can spend a minute studying a choice ahead of you to sense which one has the stronger taste of doom about it (in game terms, the GM gives you a vague idea about what way ahead of you leads to the highest-level opponents.)

Exiled

Bond of Wraeclast - You are trained in all tasks related to Virtue Gems.

Forgotten

Your exile included a condemnation from the Arch Inquisitor himself, commanding that your name be struck from all records and that all who knew you must never speak of you again. Your deeds are gone, your past erased, your course wrenched from the path that fate had laid in for it. Even the auguries of your birth no longer apply to you.

Flexible - You gain +2 to a Pool of your choice.
Raw Talent - Your newfound freedom has forced you to become better at looking after yourself. You become trained in running, jumping, and survival.
Inability - Being wrenched out of the world has wrenched it from you, as well; everything outside your life since the condemnation is a blur. Any rolls involving lore and history not directly related to you is modified by two steps to your detriment.

Outcast

Your crimes, whatever they were, are the stuff of whispered legend; where others were condemned to exile or cursed to be forgotten, you have been cast out. In the eyes of those who once knew you, you are no longer human - no longer anything but a terrible beast, a danger to all around you. Perhaps the crimes you were cast out for were true, perhaps not; it doesn't matter. On the cursed shores of Wraeclast, you have no choice but to become what you have been accused of being, if you want to live to see another day.

Enduring - Add +2 to each Pool.
Survivor - You are trained in all survival skills.
Outcast's Mark - All social skill are modified by two levels to your detriment.

Fallen Virtue - All tasks involving resisting temptation are modified by one level to your detriment.

Hunted - Even in Wraeclast, your past haunts you. Someone has followed you to these cursed shores, or another exile has decided you are too dangerous to let live. GM Intrusions involving you will sometimes involve this foe's appearance, or at least indirectly be the work of their hands. If another player is also Outcast, this may be the same foe or two different ones who may work together or be at odds.

Pious

Even in Wraeclast there is grace and glory, and you know that you have been touched by it. Whether you came here voluntarily to see to the needs of the exiles or you were unjustly exiled by rivals jealous of your blessed state, you are one of the few that the land's stain cannot tarnish. Of course, this makes you a magnet for the corrupt minds that linger in the darkest parts of the continent, as your grace is a burning light to them.

Piety - Add +4 to your Intellect Pool.
Purity - You are wholly unable to use any item of Vaal origin, as the corrupt nature of it burns you.
Sanctity - Any attempt to deceive others is modified by one level to your detriment.
Sacred Ward - The blessed nature of your being gives you +1 Armor.

Spiritual

Spirit-Talker - You are trained in all social interactions with ghosts and other spiritual beings, including the strange things raised by the Vaal.

Touched

While not exactly stained by the curse of Wraeclast, since you woke up on the beach there's something not quite right about the way your mind works. You know you think differently than others, but whether or not you try to hide that fact is up to you. It does give you some small advantages on these shores, even if you've got a hard time trying to understand the concerns of other exiles.

Flexible Mind - Add +2 to your Intellect Pool.
Distracted - You have trouble picking up cues of danger; initiative rolls are modified one step to your detriment.
Scrambled Thoughts - All skills related to knowledge are modified one step to your detriment, as you can't collect your thoughts into a form that you can express.
Altered Insight - You are considered trained in all perception actions.
Causeless Effect - You have trouble connecting effects to causes at times; whenever a GM Intrusion would be triggered by something you directly did, you can't spend XP to refuse it. You do gain XP as normal, however.

Weird

Rather than an affinity for the supernatural, you are attuned to the presence of the Vaal; replace all mentions of the supernatural with Vaal.
Gemling - You are considered trained with all Virtue Gems and Vaal items.

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Next time we visit Exile's Cypher, we'll start looking at Foci, seeing what existing ones will work in Wraeclast, which need tweaked, which need removed, and what new Foci might be available.

Exile's Cypher: Welcome to Wraeclast

The cursed land of Wraeclast changes somewhat when put through the lens of the Cypher System; where Fate focuses on how to render it into a story-format that provides everyone with building blocks to create the story, the Cypher System tends to be more freeform; outside of the characters and their defined abilities, everything in the Cypher system comes down to a thing's level and the set dressing hung on that detail.

Characters in the Cypher System are comprised of three parts - an adjective (descriptor), a noun (type), and a verb (focus) that are strung together to form a description of the character. For Exile's Cypher, there's a need for special attention to the first and last of those components, to allow for the nature of the setting to be played out as players see fit. Interestingly, while each of Path of Exile's character classes has a decided flavor, you can thematically construct them with any of the Cypher System's four character types, even though the flavor varies significantly with each.

Descriptors are essentially single words that serve as an adjective to make a given character more unique, modifying the basic statistics of a given character by providing extra skills, equipment, features, and flaws to shape how the character interacts with the world. A Brash character who has the same Type and Focus as a Quiet one will interact with the world very differently, much less in comparison to one who is Cursed or Forgotten.

Types are one of the four things that function as the closest thing the system has to a character class. Coming in flavors of Warriors, Adepts, Explorers, and Speakers, each one can offer something as the base for building a PoE character; some obviously make more sense than others (a Marauder makes more sense as a Warrior than as an Adept, at first glance), odd-looking combinations can be fruitful ground (a Speaker built as a Marauder may persuade the spirits to aid them, and talk the more intelligent foes down from hostility, while a Warrior built as a Witch may be an elemental force of destruction, smashing through all who oppose her in wrathful fury.)

Foci are the real workhorses of the game system, providing a tremendous amount of flavor and specialized capability to each character; this is where the power of a given class will come into play, and is the component most likely to have several posts fleshing out versions for use n Wraeclast; each of the varieties of character can be described through Foci in the form of a verb statement such as Communes With Spirits or Commands The Elements.

Put together it forms a complete one-line description that gives a concise feel for what the character is like; a Brash Warrior who Commands The Dead is a warlike Witch who wades into battle alongside their raised minions, heedless of personal danger, while a Cursed Adept who Fires Runed Arrows is a Ranger whose very existence draws the attention of the lands of Wraeclast.

The next post in the Exile's Cypher line will look at Descriptors, and how much the existing ones need added to or modified for the purposes of this campaign.

Eclipse Phase: Before the Fall Setup, Part Two

Before the Fall, the Earth is still habitable, if well on the way to becoming an absolute disaster. Off-planet migration is well under way as people sign up with megacorporate interests and newly founded hypercorps to get offworld, often signing away decades of their lives with contracts that can be indefinitely extended by forcing people to pay for the resources they used at arbitrarily high rates. Even with their rise to relative prominence, the UN and the newly organized Peacekeepers are a finger being used to plug a single leak in a crumbling dam.

The climate is sliding into chaos, entire ecosystems sliding into collapse despite the best efforts of environmental scientists and genetic engineers as some areas flood under torrential downpours and others bake for months under relentless sunlight. Refugees are fleeing the less hospitable parts of the world, stressing the still-stable countries willing to let them in and forcing others to militarize to keep them at bay.

Some areas find their governmental structures dissolving, with new countries arising and falling in a churn as people struggle to stabilize things and old animosities boil up, augmented by the power of new technologies. Terrorists with access to nanotechnology find it possible to commit atrocities on scales never seen before, and the UN Peacekeepers find themselves busy responding to dozens of small-scale terror threats, any one of which might have a much vaster danger hiding inside it.

So it is with the first mission of the campaign, as the team is scrambled to the personal compound of a would-be dictator with ties to several megacorps and hypercorps that help fund the UN; death threats have been made by unnamed terrorists, and so despite the understanding that nothing is likely to come from it, the team must treat it as something deadly serious. Complicating the matter is the fact that the man is a colossal jerk, a bigoted scumbag the world would really be better off without. He has a large staff of personal guards, none of whom he trusts to not being conspiring with the terrorists against him, along with an extended family who all have reasons to resent and fear him.

The compound has several AGI tasked to manage the private security systems, each one set up to be destroyed at his whim if he thinks they might be betraying him, even as he skimps on actual security systems in favor of getting the UN to look after him. As such, the compound is curiously compromised, with absolute surveillance and very little ability to do much of anything with it, amplified by the grudging compliance of enslaved intellects.

And, well, there's always the chance that the terrorist threats are actually real, delivered by someone with access to technology and firepower sufficient to make good on them.

Next Setup post will look at the compound itself, with a look at the floorplan and defenses that the players will have access to during their investigation.

Story Time: Night of the Kobolds, or How I stopped being a 'Nice Guy' GM

So today I want to share an anecdote. A story, really, of the pivotal event that set me on the road to being the GM that I am today. It's from the days of 2nd Edition, with all of the silliness involved with restrictions around races and classes trying to keep everyone from being a Wicked Cool Sun Elf Paladin With Holy Vorpal Sword. Those involved will not be named, although they may recognize themselves if they come past this post; and if they have any sense, they will strive to remain anonymous, as the only defense for anyone in this story is that we were all fresh from high school.

It began, as these stories often do, with character creation; the three players, who I will refer to as Smash, Pony, and Stick for the rest of the post, were informed that I was planning a new campaign where the first adventure would see them sent off to a kobold warren to look for someone kidnapped from Generic Village (not the actual name, as nothing was actually named.) and to plan their characters accordingly.

Smash made the sensible character; he made a half-elf ranger/cleric with a mace, to ensure the group both had muscle and healing. Of course, he rolled an 18 for his Strength and promptly broke the rules by rolling exceptional strength for himself; in those days anything over an 18 was reserved solely for fighters. After hearing the other two characters, I let him slide on the exceptional strength rule-breaking; the reason will be come obvious.

Pony decided that, after hearing about how she was going to be sent into the cramped, twisting, narrow, lightless warrens of a kobold tribe, she would play a centaur fighter specializing in archery. Let that sink in a moment - going into twisty little kobold-size tunnels, she wants to play a huge horse-person with a bow. Clearly we're going places here, right?

Stick decided he, like Smash, wanted to make a half-elf ranger. Sensible choice - two-weapon fighting, sees in the dark, and with something like a 17 Dexterity he'd have a good chance of not getting hit too badly on the front line. And then... He picks his weapon, and chooses a glaive, because he's a Sailor Saturn fanboy and imagines her giant sharpened G on a stick when what he's actually buying is basically a great big knife-on-a-stick. It's a polearm, not something you take into a tight, cramped, twisty-turny kobold cave.

At this point, because I'm still the kind of GM who caters to xer friends at this point, I revised my estimate of the kobold encampment so that they lived in a dormant volcano, with lava tubes large enough for the centaur to walk down and fire her bow down. I didn't give her anything to alleviate her absolute lack of ability to see in the dark, that was on her to solve. These days I'd get the characters first and construct the game from there, but that wouldn't have helped this game at all.

So they head out with their mission from the townsfolk to rescue those kidnapped, journey for a day or so, and arrive at the entrance to the kobold warren - a large, circular passage leading into a looming, jagged peak with a broken top. They head inside and find a branched path; one slopes up and to the right, with nothing standing out about it; one goes straight, with water trickling out of it (since then, I have come to a better understanding of geology and why this wouldn't happen, I swear.), and one to the left that slopes down, with stains from smoke and soot along the roof.

When I've presented this over the years to others, most pick the path to the left because the soot stains suggest signs of something civilized. Most of the rest pick the middle way, straight ahead, because most life tends to go for water, right? A very few decide what these three must have, which is that the right path - something I had added because I had a blank space on my map paper - was so boring and thus conspicuous because it wasn't conspicuous.

So off they go; I'd drawn a chamber with a pit, and so had to think fast about what it might be (other than a chamber in the heart of the dormant volcano) - and I came up with the idea of it being used by the tribe for waste disposal. I told them they smelled something foul in the air, like a lot of rot and decay, and so Pony declares that her centaur - who has just the one solitary torch that she needs to see - is going to throw that torch up ahead. Stick, in his one reasonably wise decision the whole session, declares that he's making an attack roll to block it and gets his one good roll the entire game, a natural 20 that lets him smack the torch down.

Pony spends the next several minutes confused, asking why he did that, until they sort things out and keep going to emerge in a large chamber with a huge pit in the middle, filled to about 20'-30' below the rim with all kinds of rotting waste and a horrible odor. These days, the torch would've started burning blue quite some time earlier, but at the time I didn't blow them up for bringing a lit flame into the presence of a giant chamber full of methane and oxygen.

So, it's a pit full of trash. Anyone with sense would see this and leave, right? Not these three - they take leave of what collective sense they have as Stick declares he wants to go trash diving and they promptly lower him down; I require a Constitution check that he passes, only losing a few HP and the contents of his stomach due to the absolutely atrocious odor. I let him scavenge a couple copper coins - a mistake, I realize now, as it cemented the idea that the pit had Treasure in it - and they haul him up.

Smash decides to repeat the diving experiment, makes his Con check, and gets a few more cruddy copper coins. Then Pony - the half-ton three-quarter-horse-half-human - decides that she needs to go dumpster diving, too. They spent the next half-hour working out how to arrange a pulley-like system with their ropes and the stalagmites (Yes, I know, magma chambers and stalagmites don't coincide. I didn't at the time, that's my only excuse.) in order to lower her down, and then only Smash's exceptional Strength score kept them from dropping her straight into the filth.

Honestly, these days I'd have had rot grubs attack Stick the moment he went diving. Instead, she got a couple of arrows covered in flaking paint, warped and bent from all the damp and decay; she decided the paint meant they must be Magic Arrows and resolved to use them when it was important. They managed to haul her up without giving anyone a hernia by grace of Nice Guy GM power and finally leave the trash behind to continue their explorations.

At the three-way fork, they turn down the central passage, eventually coming to another split; one way is the direction the water is coming from, and they can hear kobold voices coming from the other direction. Naturally, they decide to keep following the water, because there might be treasure they'll miss if they go do the kobold part of the adventure first. What they find is a chamber blocked off, mostly, by large rocks, with a kobold-size hole near the top and water flowing around the small gaps at the bottom.

They hold up the torch, even though two of them can see in the dark, and they see three half-starved, mangy giant rats huddled on a dry spot, surrounded by stones that are slick and shiny with splattered water from the trickles splattering from cracks in the roof. Stick, naturally, hears 'shiny' and misses 'because the rocks are wet' and declares that he's going to wriggle through the hole to go get that treasure.

He then fails his Dexterity check to keep his balance on a bunch of wet, slick stones, falls down, and gets torn into by three very hungry rats that drop him to 1 HP; Smash says he's staying outside the hole, while Pony says she's shooting the rats with her Magic Arrows. Being cruddy, half-rotted, warped wooden arrows, she takes a sizable penalty and misses the rats completely; Stick spends his round scrambling frantically out of the hole.

Smash uses one of his two spells for the day (the character had a high Wisdom, even if Smash might have been a little lacking) to heal Stick and they decide the kobolds might be safer than three starving giant rats. They head back, take the fork with the voices, and head down until they see the dim glow of a cookfire and see some shadows moving.

At this point, they have the drop on the kobolds. Pony could easily charge in and got wild, kicking and stomping while Smash comes in with his dual light maces and Stick follows with his knife on a stick. Instead... Stick declares that he's going to yell a warcry and charge in, rolls a natural 1, trips over his glaive, and falls on a sleeping kobold. Smash follows him in and puts his exceptional strength to use, clubbing kobolds left and right, while Pony...

...Pony stands in the passage and dithers, because she's an archer and she shoots things and she can't see because the cookfire is too dim. She's half a ton of horseflesh and kobolds die if you sneeze on them, quite literally the weakest creatures in 2nd Edition. She could trot in and shoot things at point blank inside the circle of light cast by her torch. She could go in, grab a sword from a kobold that Smash has killed, and stab things with her new dagger. She doesn't, she just prances around in the passage and chooses not to do anything but call out to the others.

They manage to defeat the kobolds - or rather, Smash defeated the kobolds while Stick repeatedly tripped over himself, rolled natural 1s, and otherwise continued to fail to contribute anything but a target for the kobolds; beaten, somehow, down to half his HP by angry flailing kobolds, he roots around the trashed mini-camp to look for treasure, turning up only the four kobold-size short swords; rather than decide to wield them as daggers, or Pony taking them up, Stick and Pony decide to sling them from Pony using the same rope they used to lower her into the trash as treasure and trophies.

By this time, I have begun quietly scratching out portions of the map that would clearly be too much trouble for these adventurers. Things like mazes would no doubt result in them circling for hours. As a result, they make it to the next post - originally on the far side of a trapped maze - right down the next passage. Here's a chance for them to learn from their mistakes!

They, of course, do no such thing. Stick once again charges in, Pony once again dithers about, and Smash clubs half a dozen kobolds because his illicit Strength gives him a hefty to-hit bonus. Stick goes down to 1 HP, Smash refuses to heal him, they collect the swords and fail to equip them as anything other than a fancy belt on the centaur, and I mark off most of the rest of the map because by this point I'm pretty much done. It has been hours and these three were still at the original beginning area, essentially.

So they go along and find a blatant trip-rope stretched in front of a blatant pit - the chieftain's lair, because the chieftain likes to show how unafraid he is by not needing any cunning traps. Stick ignores this and walks right in, falling into the hole as he tries to insist I never mentioned it, only to be told by the other two that I had. He passes out, rather than dying, and Smash steps around the whole thing.

There are torches! There's light! Surely this means Pony will finally do something, right? And so she does - she grabs a kobold sword off her new belt, cuts the trip rope, and uses it rather than the 150' of rope coiled around her to try fishing Stick out of the pit. Smash, meanwhile fights the chieftain and the shaman, beats both, uses his healing spell on himself, and finds the treasure - three potion bottles, two identical red-orange syrupy fluid and one a fragile vial of oily transparent liquid waiting to be smashed. Stick and Pony each claim a colorful bottle despite having contributed literally nothing thus far, and they proceed out the other side of the cave.

Behold, an altar! With a young woman from town tied to it, bedecked in crude copper jewelry! Success! They just have to free her and leave, now - so Stick goes and tries to pry the jewelry off. Yes, confronted with a young woman tied to a sacrificial altar, alive and trying to beg for help through the gag in her mouth, he tries to steal everything she's got on that might be worth a coin or two. A true hero, that ranger with the glaive.

Smash grabbed a kobold sword from Pony and cut the girl free, helped her up onto Pony's back, and shoved Stick up after her, arranging the ropes to hold the girl in place on the centaur's back. At last, we can conclude the adventure and be done with this farce.

Only... Pony says, as they head out the exit and find themselves at the three-way fork, that she's going to tear a strip of her shirt loose and wind an arrow in it, then light the arrow from her torch; Smash apparently sees what comes next on the way and takes off running, while I listen to her declare that she's firing a flaming arrow up the sloping path.

Up the path to the pit full of rot, methane, and so on, waiting to be set off explosively. She rolls a natural 20, so I describe, as she then takes off at a gallop, how there's a moment of silence as the arrow flies, followed by the top of the mountain blowing off completely and the plug shattering, turning the quiescent volcano into a highly active one. Chunks of stone rain from the sky for miles around, the village folk try to hide inside, and the shattered volcano belches out a stream of molten rock flowing straight down the valley after the three fleeing heroes, because by this time I am done with being nice and this may have been the crowning moment of absolute nonsense on top of the entire game.

Stick falls off the centaur, limps along after with his glaive as a crutch, and throws caution to the wind, gulping down the potion he get as loot. Surprise, it's a potion of extra-healing, bringing him back to full HP. He takes off running, keeping up with the others by virtue of it being a downhill slope.

Pony, in an attempt to double down on the sheer ridiculousness of her behavior, hurls her potion at the oncoming lava that she had just released. The potion disappears in a puff of steam and a momentary dark patch on the lava flow; when Stick asks why she did that, she shrugs. "I thought it might be a magic lava-stopping potion." Because the kobolds, living in a completely dormant volcano, needed to be on guard against a spontaneous eruption, I guess?

The ground shatters open around them, leaving them on a crumbling pillar of rock and earth as lava flows into it and around them, sweeping down toward the hapless village below. Seeing the inevitable, Smash shrugs and smashes his designed-to-be-smashed bottle, triggering a teleportation effect that, originally, was going to take the three to their next adventure, but now it just deposits them somewhere in the Underdark, never to be seen again, safely sealed away from where they can do more damage to the rest of the world.

And that, dear readers, is the story of how I stopped being a Nice Guy kind of GM, and became one who will let you try most anything, but with consequences appropriate to the action.

The Night of the Kobolds, a gaming story that has never once failed to bring discussions of problem players to a screeching halt as everyone in the discussion stops to marvel at this horrific misadventure.

I hope you enjoyed it.