Cavcari's Last Invocation

I was recently reminded of one of those "Campaigns That Never Were". In this case, it was a Forgotten Realms campaign that lasted all of two sessions before crashing and burning. And, if I'm honest, I was glad of it - I just didn't have the time or inspiration to give the campaign my full attention, and I didn't want to just run something substandard. (Incidentally, it's worth noting that there was very little about the campaign that meant it had to be Forgotten Realms - I only used that setting because one player was particularly keen to do so. That said, I did make sure to throw in one or two Realms-y bits to ground it.)

The campaign kicked off with something that had very little to do with the main plot. The initial setting was a trading post at an oasis in the desert, a city of tents, where a murder most horrid had occurred. Obviously, with the desert being a hostile environment, anything that breaks social cohesion cannot be tolerated, and so 'justice' was swift and decisive. So when the wrong man was identified as the murderer, the PCs were compelled to step in and try to keep their friend alive. That then led to an expedition into the desert to a downed Netherese sky citadel (one of those Realms-y bits - in another setting it would have been an abandoned dwarven fortress), and then the campaign died.

But the ultimate ending for the campaign that I had conceived was the discovery and manipulation of "Cavcari's Last Invocation". Cavcari was set to be an ancient archmage who, way back in the mists of time, had laid down various enchantments that had actually come to define the reality of the world. And his Last Invocation was a simple but profound edict: everything that is born must eventually die. Which of course meant that true immortality, even through undeath, became impossible... but in the Realms it would also mean that at least some of the deities (Midnight/Mystra, Kelemvor, and Cyric among others) who were previously mortals would also be finite. (Of course, this was before Mystra got killed off again, and other shenanigans.)

I hadn't quite worked out all the details, of course - there's no point in plotting the end-point of a campaign months or years in advance if you don't have to - but the final conceit was that the players would eventually have some means to adjust or apply the Invocation in order to change their world: they could use it to compel the end of some Big Bad perhaps, or they could revoke the Invocation, or... something.

Which, by this point, is largely irrelevant. I mean, who cares about a campaign I didn't manage to get off the ground a decade ago?

But the campaign does illustrate something that I think is important, especially with a game like D&D: by the time the PCs near the top of the level range, they are amongst the most powerful beings in the world. And as such, their effect on the world should be equivalently powerful. That's something I've tried to emphasise in campaigns I've run since then: in "The Eberron Code", the PCs eventually cleansed the taint from the Silver Flame; in "The Company of the Black Hand" they liberated the home town Denberg from the tyranny of Lady Aum and her allies; and if "Eberron: Dust to Dust" runs to its completion then that campaign will also leave a mark on the world - and a mark that will then carry over into any future campaigns I run in the setting (whether in 5e, 3.5e, or some other edition or game entirely).

Adventure Design: Talking to the DM

I've been embroiled in a discussion of late about a published adventure in which a particular group are accused of some crimes. A whole bunch of villagers proceed to accuse them, indicating that it's typical of members of that group, while one particular NPC suggests that perhaps there's more going on here than meets the eye.

And, sure enough, it emerges that there is indeed more going on - the group in question are responsible for the crimes they're accused of, but they have a motive beyond the standard "we're evil; it's what we do".

Leaving aside all of the other stuff that surrounds the adventure, it does highlight something that a lot of adventures do... or rather something that too many adventures don't do enough - talk to the DM.

An awful lot of adventures are written and plotted like novels - they're telling a story where you are introduced to a bunch of characters, those characters tell you a bunch of things, and later on it turns out that some of those things aren't entirely true. Which is okay, I guess.

But published adventures aren't novels. They're game products that the DM is supposed to be presenting to his players. And as such, the DM really needs to be briefed on what's really going on. If the villagers are not being objective because they're being racist then the adventure should say that to the DM. Don't leave it to be implied, and don't leave it as a revelation to be discovered on page 32. Likewise for a mystery adventure, the players should perhaps be surprised by the big reveal of the bad guy at the end, but the DM should not.

And, actually, it's pretty much as simple as that: at the start of the adventure text, and potentially at key points later on, the DM should be comprehensively briefed about what's going on and why.

Cuckolds & Coquettes

This was originally going to be a rather longer post, but I've realised that I don't really have time to assemble the whole together, and it's one of the lessons from "The Man in the Iron Mask" that I want to capture before my memory fades.

One of the things that is quite evident throughout the Musketeers saga, but most especially from "Louise de la Valliere" and "The Man in the Iron Mask", is just how much of the storyline is driven by characters being involved in various sexual relations. (It's actually impressive just how extensive this is, given that at no time does Dumas describe any actual sexual activity - it's all implied. And when compared against the reality of Louis XIV and Louise de la Valliere, even the implied stuff is positively tame.)

And yet, that's something that tends to be missing entirely from RPGs - even if there is a romance in place, it tends to be the only such romance to feature in the campaign, it tends to be of the generic "rescued princess and her hero" variety, it happens almost entirely off-screen, and it tends also to proceed in a fairly idealised manner. Part of which is entirely appropriate - a sixteen stone bearded Scotsman tends to do a poor line in rescued princesses!

Yet I think the game misses a trick here, especially as regards "courtly intrigue" games - the interplay of personalities in the novels makes for some really intriguing plotting, and can add an entirely wealthy dimension to events in a campaign. The PCs may not be able to approach the King directly, but if they know that his mistress is partial to a particular type of chocolates...

(Where this post was going to be longer was that I was thinking of proposing some sort of construct for such a game. But, as I said, I haven't had time to work on it. However, one thing I would suggest is that each PC and each major NPC should probably have some sort of record of three key connections - Patron, Spouse, and Lover. Obviously, one or all of these could be empty. But the key is that each of these connects the character to one other NPC, serving to build a network of such. But that's as far as I got.)

Anyway, it's something to consider.

You Should Play This Character If...

A "GM trick" I've seen recently (though not for the first time), and one I really wish I'd thought of myself, comes from a one-shot game being run with pre-generated characters. In addition to the brief two-sentence background for the character, each has a three-point list of reasons why a player should want to play that character. Thus, without needing the player to understand anything about the mechanics of the game, it becomes easy for the players to select their character from the list provided. Very neat.

And that's all, really. Sometimes, everything that needs said can be said quickly!

Cancelled Before Its Time

I've placed my "Firefly: the Lost Episodes" game on an indefinite hiatus due to lack of interest in the upcoming session. This probably (though not definitely) means that it's at an end - it won't resume until after the house move, and after the house move I suspect that I'll be less keen to hold the game due to the travel involved.

Which in some ways is a perfectly appropriate end - just as Firefly itself was cancelled before its time, so too has my Firefly campaign come to an end. And, actually, I'm a little glad that it happened now, and not in two episodes time when we're deeper in the Westlake arc - I wouldn't want to start that and then drop the game.

Still, it's a shame. I actually really enjoyed the last session and I was just hitting my stride as far as building episodes for the game was concerned. But never mind - I can just add the remaining ideas back into my recycling pool.