Last Friday we sat down for another session of our Summer mini-campaign set in our homegrown setting of the City Within the Dungeon. See the reports of the last session here and here.
The Myth Debunked.
Franky: “Phil, based on some comments we’ve read, many of your readers seem to think that we’re this kind of super awesome group that roleplays like gods and ace all combat encounters. You don’t really write about all the horsing around we do at the table”
Chatty: “That’s the joys of being a writer, I’m free to spin it in whatever way I feel like”
Yan:”You’re also free to get the facts wrong…”
Chatty: Huh… Shouldn’t we start playing already?
Our gaming group, probably like most, is prone to distraction, juvenile humour and geeky digressions about the latest version of Windows or the decline of good Sci-Fi on TV. It becomes especially true with the advent of the summer months as we are more laid back and care more about hanging out than game.
This last session was very much characterized by very high social energies. We didn’t accomplish all that much, but that’s fine, we had fun all the same.
Ret Con for Great Justice!
I started the session by telling the players that a slight revision was to be done to the story so far. In order to add more breathing space for the PCs (and the DM), I explained that the Lava filled fissure that appeared on the lowest level of the City would not progressively flood the whole city with lava. Instead, if by the end of the 5th day the customary payment/sacrifice had not been done, a volcanic eruption would destroy the city and a portal would open and send the city’s ruins to the Elemental Chaos.
Yan: That’s sounds fun, let’s do that!
Sigh… Anyway, I felt the PCs were rushed enough by the other storylines, thus they could now focus on other plots without having to weigh every decision vs how many thousand people would be killed. Now I know that it would have made for great drama and difficult choices but I didn’t really want to destroy my beautiful city just yet.
I usually wait for the final session of a campaign to do that.
Pushing a moral quandary too far
I don’t know if it’s the geek in me but sometimes I latch on to a point of view and don’t let go of it until it’s too late. At a certain point in the evening PCs discussing what to do with the Drow elves they had captured. They learned from them that they had a group of Buddies sitting in a Cavern outside of the city, maintaining a grand illusion that thousands of Spiders and Drow Infantry were waiting for the order to invade.
The PCs had gotten their hands on a pair artifacts that could imbue up to 5 bodies with a sliver of the 5 original souls that created the City (and the first 5 souls that joined the Dungeon). They had also gleaned from ancient texts that a sacrifice of the 5 original souls would prevent the Volcano’s eruption and bring back the Nexus.
The players started arguing about the relative merits of using the 5 captured Drow as the sacrificial vessels. The debate was polarized by Franky’s PCs who was against and Math’s who was for. That’s when I committed the sin of DM interference.
I don’t know why I did it, maybe because I was annoyed about how callously people were talking or maybe I was worried that players would solve the adventure in a few minutes. I don’t know, but I butted in the debate in a passive aggressive manner and said “Not that I care about what your PCs do but you’re seriously considering sacrificing those 5 drow?” When Math said ‘Sure, I mean they’re freaking Drow right?”, instead of letting it drop I went on “But come on, these guys are just Hustlers that got caught!” I kept returning to the argument instead of shutting up.
Then Math launched into a tirade about moral justification and how unaligned heroes in a fantasy world have have no trouble doing such an act, etc etc
I realized that I had gone too far, this kind of debate should have been between the Players as they roleplayed PCs with me as moderator. Instead it became an argument between DM and player about things likely to revert to defensive justification. I freaking hate those.
Needless to say that this exchange affected my perception of the game and I played the rest of the game in defensive mode, saying ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ and pushing the players toward a pre-destined path instead of letting them choose. i.e. I reverted to my natural, instinctive style of DMing.
And even today I remain unsatisfied about the game session because of that. Not the actual argument, that’s irrelevant, but the fact that I allowed it to disturb my emotional balance.
Yeah, that whole ‘being human’ is annoying sometimes.
Zombie Sit Rep
As the PCs were arguing about the Drow, I once again pulled on Franky’s sleeve and started wiping my nose.
Snotty kid: Sir? Sir? (Snort) When are you goin’ to check with mah Papa?
Franky: WTF man! He’s supposed to be under constant guard! That’s why there are zombies all over the place, he’s the one spreading the plague!
Shortly after, an out of breath Sergent came, apologized profusely and took the child back to the shed he had been confined to. That’s when the PCs decided to check on the Tavern. They learned that the town’s militia had managed to contain all zombies within by barring all windows and doors of the Tavern.
Then, the officer in charge gave Jaiel (Deva Avenger) a message. It was a summon for the whole party, at the Jaiel’s convenience, to the hidden headquarters of the Foundation (a secretive pro-city faction).
Before heeding that summon, the party swung by the University Burg which had been run-over with Zombies (and into which one of the Original 5 devas Jaiel was looking for was). The whole burg was being contained by the Sunless Knights, the city’s equivalent to an elite police force.
Content that everything was under control, the PCs made thier way to the city’s central park where the Nexus (a huge floating piece of Crystal) was located. (While the Crystal was still there, the energy within it, the actual essence of Erathis the Goddess of Civilization, was gone).
A Dry surprise
Jaiel led the party to a secret entrance under the Nexus that opened onto a Temple of Erathis filled with scholars and agents working fervently. A vault door, akin to the one seen in the first Harry Potter movie stood half-opened in the middle of the complex. (It was usually held close by the energies of the absent Nexus) The PCs were ushered in it and got to meet someone sitting at a desk, deciphering various prophecies stored all around his cluttered desk.
The PCs reached the desk and saw that the person sitting there was a Dwarven Lich, the city’s founder.
“Ahhh Jaiel, so good to see you. Your present form becomes you. I finally managed to decipher the final passage of the prophecy, you and your friends will be the one to destroy the Dungeon once and for all…if you can manage to break this tedious 200 year cycle that keeps interupting my studies”
Up next: Players “rebel” and decide to fail a skill challenge on purpose (It wasn’t as bad as it sounds)
Morality is a big thing at the table, especially when you’re the DM. Sometimes your sensibilities as a human being just make you want to smack your players. It’s all fun and games of course, but when you’re seeing players justify “unaligned” (and in 3.5, chaotic neutral) as the “I am an amoral sociopath, my enemies regardless of their circumstance will have their throats slit and their corpses used as furniture” it can get heated.
Especially if, like me, you enjoy your settings with a lot of religious stuff. Religion plays a bit part in my setting for example. I don’t know yet if I’m ready for any possible moral/religious debates that may occur in playing my setting, though thankfully none have yet to occur. I still really like the idea of clerics wielding maces so as not to literally shed blood, for example.
Yet, I also like evil games when the player-DM social contract dictates that you are all going to be evil bastards and that yes, the suggestion box is for sacrificial virgins. Weird.
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In a normal campaign, I would not have a problem with Unaligned PCs proposing to use captured Drow as sacrifices in the circumstances described. It (presumably) saves innocent live in circumstances where the PCs don’t have a lot of time or resources to devote to finding an alternative.
That seems like exactly the sort of pragmatism that an Unaligned PC should have.
However, it seems clear to me that Franky was thinking of ‘Drow’, not ‘Primal/Within Drow’, probably as a result of long exposure to classic drow and little exposure to the campaign-specific drow that Phil is using. The racial overtones are completely different.
I put it down (at least in part) to misunderstanding.
@Colmar: Just to clarify Franky was against the sacrifice where Math was pro stating that they where Drow he was the most vocal about it. I was also leaning on the pro sides for other reason…
You see, so far no other alternative had been found and a sacrifice seamed to be mandatory in order to save the city. With this in mind, I would rather sacrifice a criminal than myself or innocent bystanders. If other means to solve this are a possibility it is not obvious.
Yeah, sorry, I got the names mixed up.
The “they’re drow” seems the clincher for me. It plays on stereotypes rather than past actions, suggesting that Math was judging these drow against the yardstick of classic “most evil race under(ground) under the sun” drow rather than simply as the swindlers Phil intended them to be.
Of course, I could be wrong. You and Phil were present 🙂
Your discussion abour alternatives is exactly the pragmatism that I referred to in my first post. We need to sacrifice someone. Better these guys than some innocent citizen.
Like I said, to me the argument was immaterial. I was mostly annoyed about having put the players in such a situation in the first place, and then getting caught in the argument. I have no stomach for torture or sacrifice so I shouldn’t put those elements in my game in the first place…
In fact the whole sacrifice thing was supposed to be amiscomprehension of what ‘tribute/sacrifice’ meant. The old record were mis-translated or mis-repropduced. I wanted Yan, whose PC is heavily invested in the game, to sweat about the possibility of having to sacrifice his PC.
Given the small number of available solutions, discussing sacrifice was unavoidable. So I don’t fault anyone but me in this situation.
That being said, I’ve already envisioned how to end the adventure and to do it in such a way that I won’t have any moral qualms about the whole thing.
And Colmar, you are entirely right that my campaign’s Drow were meant to be hustlers and small time crooks instead of the the classic sadistic CE jerks…. except I never told the players that.
In fact I now realize that what was supposed to be a light summer game is turning out to be much more about world building and Campaign background than I initially anticipated.
Then again, I never got the hang of the whole ‘KISS Principle’ thing.
Unless you’re making stuff up in your blog posts, you DID tell them about your drow’s flavour. No need to beat yourself up over that. However, it’s hard to overcome decades worth of ingrained stereotyping.
About the only thing I can think of that you really did “wrong” is to use the term ‘sacrifice’. That opens up a whole lot of doors, most of which you obviously didn’t intend to open. A better phrase would have been ‘willing sacrifice’. It’s more in tune with heroes fighting to save a city, and opens up interesting situations where the heroes need to Diplomacy, Bluff and (perhaps) even Intimidate others into willingly sacrificing themselves to save the city.
You’re right I did imply they were low class mercenaries and ruffians. As Yan said, the Drow = easiest choice was the evident one to make.
And I agree that I should have phrased the whole thing as ‘valiant Sacrifice’ or ‘willful sacrifice’ to hint at some sort of heroic deed as a solution.
Articles like this, and the actual game podcasts go a long way to show that even games run by great DMs aren’t the perfect, laser-focused sessions we might imagine. And that there’s nothing wrong with that, and I think is an important part of the social aspect of the game.
And while that moral discussion might have been something you’d have prefered happen ‘in character’, it’s the type of discussion that I love having with my friends, and which works a lot better around the game table than that same discussion works in the average Internet bulletin board. Don’t think I’ve ever been called a Nazi at the game table.
.-= pjstoneson´s last blog ..DM Briefing Room: DDI Compendium In Action =-.
OK, I probably shouldn’t say this, because I don’t think it has been played out yet, so I’m going to be making a comment that could potentially be played out in the next game session. But here goes…
I understand the moral dilemma with the Drow. They may seem to be scum, no matter how sadistic and evil they really are (and in this case, they don’t appear to be that at all, but who knows?? They COULD be anyhow). They could very well become allies of the city and party also. Who knows? I mean, they are just trying to make a living, basically, right? That doesn’t make them bad… just they do some ‘bad’ things. My point is that they may be redeemable. There are choices that can be made with the Drow that could be a GOOD thing.
However, there are a bunch of animated zombies running around that can not be redeemed. There is only one way out with them: destroy them. Why not lure 5 of them out to a ‘controlled’ location and use the artifacts on them? And then lure them to the big bads waiting to ‘collect’ the tribute? Sure, they won’t be ‘willing’ sacrifices like this. But, they are not going to be UNwilling either. Whatever fight they put up will more than likely seem like a natural reluctance and reflex. I think it would work, unless the artifacts can’t hide the undead taint. haha
The party still has to deal with the zombies anyhow. Plus, there is still a hungry dragon waiting for its next snack.
We though of it but Phil said something akin to they are already dead and therefore could not be used as a sacrifice.
The drow is the only thing so far that can work we’ve investigate all kind of solution which ended up as dead ends.
Reading the game report and the comment here hints at some stuff that might work but this was not there during the game.
In any case it might have troubled Phil but we had a good session none the less and laughed like crazy with the antics been said around the table.
@pjstoneson: Like Yan said, it was a good session, there just a few things off about it for my own tastes. But if you judge an evening by the number of times we laughed and the fact that players moved forward in the story, then it was a success.
@Tiorn: The players did propose the zombies and in hindsight it would have been a great idea but at this stage I was still on the defensive and I said ‘no’ to the idea.
The great thing about where we left off (as you’ll see in part 2) is that it’s not too late to recoup on the whole thing and set a satisfying finale in the next session.
@Yan: As we discussed, there are some cool ways this can end. And yes, I’m being too hard on myself. That’s one of my trademarks 🙂
Still I look forward to seeing this adventure through.
@ChattyDM, RE: The Myth Debunked
Wait, you guys do the same thing we do?
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..An interesting lunch with ChattyDM (did I post this too early?) =-.