On the Importance of Wasting Time

Yesterday's Pathfinder game was mostly about marking time than about adventuring... and I'm happy with that.
One of the important things about running a role playing game campaign, particularly when you're working with published adventures or adventure paths (interconnected adventures that advance a character through a significant adventuring career with a drawn out plot), is to allow for character down time, reflection, and exposition. I think these elements help build depth into the campaign so that players have more opportunities to embed their characters into the situation. If there are riots on the docks between noble houses trying to flee the city, the players can decide how their PCs feel about it which helps them develop their characters and their relationships with the game world. It also helps me foreshadow information to them, in this case, that there have been more murders of noble class offspring and heirs, sparking at least a couple of families' efforts to leave the city and a minor riot over who could get space on a ship leaving the port.
Campaign downtime also allows the calendar to advance. In the current situation, a moderately expensive magic item had been commissioned and required time to complete. They really wanted that in their possession before sparking any more trouble. So we came up with things for the PCs to do to chew up the time in a realistic manner. That allows the item to be completed, but it also allows me to report on other things going on in the background without compressing the timeline too much (something that happens a lot in campaigns). I always felt that Pendragon's wintering phase was always a nice way to handle things like this. You go on an adventure which is usually assumed to take the bulk of the good weather seasons and then spend the winter holed up in your home base recovering, expanding your skills, and spending time outside of the rush of the adventure.
Finally, the great thing about playing low-adventuring time is that you can have plenty of research and exposition. One subplot I've introduced to the Council of Thieves campaign is heavily inspired by a plot element in one of my friend's long term campaigns. In that one, a character had recovered an artifact when he was a low level adventurer - a purple gem that showed you a vision of yourself as ruler of your homeland when you looked into it. In that campaign, the gem was a lynch-piece of a greater artifact - a magical weapon known as the Helix. In the Council of Thieves, I drew some inspiration from the Ghost Tower of Inverness and called it a Soul Gem - the Imperial Soul Gem to be precise. Drawing more on the Golarion campaign setting for Pathfinder, I worked up a series of Soul Gems (one believe to have been in the possession of Galap-Dreidel of Ghost Tower of Inverness fame) that served as the inspiration of the ioun stones of D&D tradition. I related the notes recorded by a Pathfinder Society Venture Captain on the legend of the Soul Gems (all devised while I was out shoveling snow one day - physical home labor is a great time for thinking about this stuff) so they have some ideas to chew on. Ultimately, the Soul Gem subplot is tangential to the main plot of Council of Thieves, though any of the gems would be helpful if used by a PC to achieve the campaign's goals. This subplot, should they choose to pursue any of it, gives us things to do when the main plot of the adventure path is resolved (and being 2/3 of the way there at 9th level, they'll probably resolve the plot around 12th level).

The real trick with playing up the downtime and exposition without adventuring is to not do it too long for your players. And so next week, we're on with more of the main plot action as the PCs try to intervene in the Council sending a hushman to quiet an informer...

It never ceases to amaze me how determined gamers can be to keep their characters from being dominated, charmed, controlled in any manner, or imprisoned. I shouldn't really be amazed. I expect I'm about the same way. But it sure is fascinating when you get reminded of it and, yesterday, it was my turn to be reminded of it.

One of the subplots I've got going in the Pathfinder Council of Thieves campaign that I'm running involves a succubus. One of the characters, ahem, got it on with her in order to obtain an object important for achieving the goals of the chapter being played out. She, in accord with her nature, dominated him and even bestowed her profane gift upon him as well (he chose +2 to his Strength). And, being someone who also DMs a lot, the player was willing to see where this was going to go. For my part, I was determined not to abuse this but milk it for all I could get out of it.

The other three players, however, when they figured out what was going on were determined to get the dominated character free of the succubus's influence. They tried multiple times to break the dominate spell, failing each time due to poor caster level checks. Admittedly, the spell was cast a higher level than the witch trying to dispel it and that means less than a 50% chance to succeed. But the dice were not being lucky in the slightest. Knowing this can't keep up, the succubus managed to dominate the witch a few days later. But now that TWO characters were under domination, breaking the enchantments became priority #1 - with a bullet.

That's all fine with me. I can do other things with that subplot and it may decline in prominence in favor of other subplot options. All gamemasters have to come to terms with the possibility that their prep work and plans will have to be put aside because the players decide to go off on a completely different tangent. That's part of what's so fun with role playing games. You try to predict what your players will do so that you can plan most likely contingencies ahead of time and be ready at game time. But no matter how well you know your players, you'll never be able to think of everything they can, you'll never have the exact same priorities as they have, and they'll always find ways to surprise you... at least a little bit.

I know that there are some sorts of game master who really don't believe that or who feel they need to plan or prepare for everything. I acknowledge that's fundamentally a difference in gaming style, but I can't resist saying that those GMs really need to stretch themselves a bit more in service to their games and their fellow players. Some of the best gaming experiences happen when players go "off script" completely. You may worry that doing so will disrupt the game (sometimes it can if the events lead to hurt feelings or abuse of other players) but usually that's not the case and a bit of creative work by the GM and other players can make a shift in directions an opportunity to shine.

As an example, back when I ran Oriental Adventures in the late 1990s, the characters were on a long slog through jungles and other rough terrain to find the general of a lost army who had gone nuts and cut a swath through the peasantry before heading out into the hinterlands. One obstacle they needed to deal with was a deep and wide river. Rather than look for a ford or boat, some decided to swim. Unfortunately, there were also venomous snakes in the river. The evil samurai in the party was stricken but was brought to shore alive if in bad shape. Now, this samurai had a pair of evil spirited blades that were, frankly, a bit scary. One of the characters decided he had to do something about it and stole the blades, intending to hide them in the reeds along the river so they wouldn't be found. He found help from at least one other character and they concocted a story that the blades were lost in the crossing. For a samurai, this theft wouldn't be a mere faux pas. This is serious business. The wu jen (wizard) in the party realized this and, while the party slept during his watch, used his magic to recover the blades. He returned them to the samurai who decided to keep them hidden. When they finally returned to the samurai's homeland a few weeks later, he said "Well, I can't be seen without these now," pulled out the blades, and put them on. When asked how he found the blades, the samurai returned "They found me!" And we (me the GM, the wu jen's player, and the samurai's player) watched the other jaws drop in amazement. And this event that could have split the party and derailed the campaign turned into a crowning moment of awesome for the samurai.

That's one of the major reasons I play RPGs. Those crowning moments of awesome.

Two years?!? Really? Two years have passed since I posted anything here? Where did the time go?

Ah, well.

So, I said I'd be posting stuff about the Pathfinder game I'm running. And while I sit here, digesting lunch, I'll spend a few minutes doing so.

We started playing an adventure path published by Paizo called Council of Thieves. And without giving away too many spoilers for the players of mine who may be checking out my post, the general plot involves a large thieves' guild going through something of a leadership coup and the implications that has for the politics of the city at large. So far, the player characters have gotten themselves through 2/3 of the intended path. Only 2 major chapters remain.

I started running adventure paths for the Sunday Night game on a bit of a whim. We weren't sure what to start playing next at one point, so I grabbed up my hardcover compilation of The Shackled City adventure path that had originally been published in serial form in Dungeon Magazine. My players were interested and I've been running adventure paths ever since. Granted, since they can take a while to play out, this is only the 2nd one we've done. There's a lot of content to get through in a weekly 4 hour game. It takes many weeks to finish.

One thing about adventure paths, as published adventures, they can be pretty generic. They have to be designed for groups who play with a variety of styles and you never know what sorts of characters people will play. All humans, maybe an elf or two? Fighters, wizards but no clerics? Maybe all rogues? The rigors of the game itself will push players to adopt certain roles within the party - having someone good at hand to hand combat is usually good, same with magic, healing, and so on. But there are many, many ways to accomplish this that the original publishers can't account for in any specific fashion.  That's the job of the group's referee - the Game Master. And I try to take that responsibility - customizing an adventure for the players - seriously.

I've created a few sub-plots not related to the adventure path directly and also expounded on other things going on with the player characters to add to the experience. I've stolen from other games I've been in and done so shamelessly. It's all part of the fun.

The party, first of all, is made up of a variety of short individuals. At first, it started with two players making up halflings - one a ranger/barbarian, the other a rogue. Halfling rogues are pretty traditional and date back to earlier editions of the D&D game. Ranger/barbarian halflings are a bit different because, given their size, they're usually at a disadvantage in hand to hand combat. In this case, he's mostly a slinger. Problem partly solved.

Then another player started looking at playing a gnome witch - mainly a user of arcane magic - the witch also has some healing powers and oddball hexes that act as supernatural abilities rather than spells. That's another short character. So I started joking about it and how the players should make up a party of all small characters. The fourth character did things a little differently and made up a dwarf monk. Dwarves in PF are technically medium sized rather than small, but they are still shorter than your average person on the street. He's also a hand to hand combatant, filling the niche left open by the ranger/barbarian's focus on the sling.

As a result of having a 3 out of 4 small characters, I had to think about how to get them appropriately-sized treasure. Most treasure found in hoards in your typical D&D game includes medium sized gear - weapons and armor, mostly. That stuff's too big for a halfling or gnome to use. So I took a potential secondary story line from the first chapter of the Council of Thieves and expanded on it. Whitechin, the goblin king, has a domain in the sewers of the city of Westcrown, the site of the adventure. Goblins are small like the halflings and hoard some treasure. Ergo, the Whitechin subplot would be a good method of funneling some appropriately-sized treasure into the hands of the characters. Fortunately, I've been able to keep Whitechin on the lam so I can use him again when I feel it's time to inject some more gear into the PCs' hands. That should be soon, as well.

That's probably enough for a first outing, or more accurately, return to this blog. More in the not too distant future (I hope).