This series of actual play reports concludes the ‘Ruiner’s Gambit’ prelude adventure to my new Gears of Ruin clockwork D&D Campaign. The action continues where it left off last time…
Behind the Scenes Jitters.
I did precious little prep in the last 2 weeks, partly because a lot of the work had been done, but mostly because I had to prepare the many training seminars I’m going to teach over the next 4 months (including one starting this week).
The little prep I did was to flesh out the elements that the players could explore around and within the Baron’s Factory/Mine. My dungeon map was a flow chart made of ‘areas/scenes’ (You can download it here to see what it’s like). Each area was a potential scene where I described a list of props, likely occupants and, more importantly, a list of what could help PCs (friend/info) or hurt them (Foe/Hazard/trouble) should they attempt any skill checks.
The one rule I gave myself was “Shape the adventure based on the questions your players ask you” and “When in doubt, ask for a skill check”.
It worked wonderfully. So much so that my first true sandbox dungeon adventure probably felt like a seamless linear adventure narrative to my players who probably thought they were just following the path I had made for them.
Chgowiz would be proud.
Incompetence is the best disguise!
As the PCs rested for a few minutes after the last fight, they starting rooting around while I described that the ‘agent’ was also rummaging in boxes and under tarps. The PCs found ammunitions for the Titan Clank cannon, Thuderwave missiles, a replacement head for the Claw-Crane and drums of highly flammable clank engine oil (yeah, don’t Fridge Logic that one please).
I was secretly setting the Rule of C4 for the players, but oddly enough, they chose to focus on something else instead.
Eric: So what does the agent do really?
Chatty: Kinda hard to say, he makes sure you only see his back.
Yan: Of course, he’s doing spy work
Math: Good work Sherlock!
Eric: Can I try to work out what he does (Rolls Insight, gets a moderate success)
Chatty: He seems to be approaching his secret agent Life-watch against things he looks at but you detect that he’s also leaning in toward whatever he’s ‘watching’ with his other arm too.
When they approached him, I played the agent as so clueless and unable to explain how his watch worked that most of my mastermind players (in the Myers-Briggs sense) players dismissed him as incompetent and ignored him for the rest of the adventure.
At that point I decided to set one of my side plots in one direction…
He he he. Gotcha suckers! (Not that it changed anything really)
Being Deadly Cool on a Mound of Corpses
Instead of lingering near all that explosive goodness (then again, who would?), or exploring the crane by climbing it (they thought about it), the PCs went toward the awful stench and circling buzzards they saw in the factory’s southern courtyard.
There they observed quite a gruesomely well staged scene. A huge mound made up of thousands of humanoid bodies was being ‘worked’ by a group of frakensteinian-undead constructs (Blasphemes from the Open Graves sourcebook) suited up in Clanks that featured giant chainsaws as right arms and large vice-like hands on the left. They were busy cutting up body parts and throwing them on clockwork rail carts that brought the gory cargo into the factory periodically.
The Chain-Loggers as I called them were accompanied by a pair of Blaspheme Disciples (Artilleries) that kept a large number of slobbering Ghouls at bay! Finally, little Foulspawn Chiurgeons were running around the place cutting bodies up for good organs and packing them carefully for later use.
Yeah, many players were grimacing in mild disgust by that time.
After a short survey of the area (I drew a battle map to show how things looked but wasn’t sure how I’d play the scene yet), I had the group roll a group perception check (i.e. you need half the group to succeed) and announced that they spotted a body wearing an Agent uniform (i.e. my ‘fork in the story’ I chose earlier) lying near the top of the mound.
You know what happened next right?
Well think again…
Credit: Steampunk Chainsaw (sans chain) art by shaddam89
Great post, as usualy, Chatty!
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Sunday Clockworks Game Recap =-.
Chatty, thanks for sharing that PDF! I tend to be very structured in my dungeons/adventure areas with lots of pre-planning, but more open with the story. I’d like to try something like your flowchart sometime to make the dungeons and their exploration more sandbox-y.
I absolutely love the raw and uncontrolled imagination behind this campaign. Naturally, various bits of me seethe with jealousy, envy, and other impressive virtues, but most of me is just so impressed by the otherworldy alienness of the setting.
How much fun would it be to explore something this wild?
How amazing would it be to sit at the table, discovering these gruesome and loathsome sights?
Finally, and most importantly, how daunting (yipes, my insides curdle at the thought) would it be to RUN this game?
Too much, too much, my brain just ran away.
Well, good job Phil, you just sucked away an hour of my day by linking to tvtropes again. Thanks…
Very cool. I love the sandbox outline PDF, it’s a very good illustration of a process I really want to have mastered, the ability to write a modular campaign, hybridizing pure sandbox and pure linear gameplay to create an interactive yet manageable and directed story. I’ve actually been advising my World of Darkness group’s Storyteller on this, so that he has easier prep without having to account for every possibility we might spring on him.
Oh, and the gruesome fleshyard? Nice touch.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..The Journey System: Rolling Dice =-.
@Bartoneus : I’m starting to think I’d actually save time by writing a firefox component that blocks tvtrope links…
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Hocksprocket Corporation’s Claw of Elevation [R&D Report] =-.
>You know what happened next right?
Well, I’ve run Foulspawn chirurgeons before, and they’re pretty brutal. My guess is, your characters got gutted where they stood?
I was away all day, thanks for the comments guys.
@Mike: Thanks for reading man. I appreciate it 🙂
@Virgil: It was the first flow chart I used in a long time. It really helped me shape how I saw the area while giving my players many ways in. I didn’t prepare of them, just the ones they were most likely to hit in a given game. I may make a post about making them. (I used Microsoft’s One Note’s very basic drawing features to make them)
@DIxon: Wow man… thanks for the praise! Do note that my game reports pass through the writer’s filter and are presented in a somewhat better light. I must admit that it is so far my favorite hoemgrown game ever. I feel so free to do whatever I please and the 4e ruleset feels like putty in my hand to deliver the experience I want from it.
As for running it? (Shrug) I guess it feels a lot easier when you wrote the material. 🙂 It sure is a lot of fun.
@Andy: Let me know how this works out for your WoD group. I find it really amazing to hear from so many of you non 4e guys and girls telling me you’ll borrow my stuff for other games… Thanks!
@Bart and Eric: The label is on the can guys, it’s not like I rick roll you into Tv Tropes. 🙂
@Cynicaloptimist: Lol! Yeah, they initially looked feeble on first read and then I read the encounter power correctly… yikes!