Dire Portents
I met the guys behind The Gamers at GenCon last week. I know that’s not like meeting Spielberg to most of the world, but I’ve been a fan of these guys since my tenure as president of the Other Realms Science Fiction and Fantasy Club back at Ithaca College circa 2004. Every time a new member joined up, we would replay the movie as a sort of initiation. It was silly, but it meant that we had a common touchstone for our bad inside jokes.
More germane to today’s discussion, it also means that I can now reference specific moments when they’re applicable to the comic. The exposition-from-notecards thing always cracked me up.
You see, being a thing-knower in an RPG is a tricky business. Chances are that you’ve read bits and pieces of the rulebook and the setting guide. However, it’s also likely that your GM knows those details better than you. Where the class fantasy involves dispensing wisdom and esoteric clues to your fellow adventurers, the reality tends to feel more like playing the GM’s sock puppet. And it’s no fun devoting a significant chunk of your class to being a better mouthpiece.
For my money, this is why I prefer to let the lore-knowers in my groups have as much leeway as possible when it comes to making some shit up. As long as it doesn’t break established canon, I love nothing better than rewarding a high Knowledge check with this question: “What do you think? What’s the history here? What do legends say? How did this ancient race die out? What monster is rumored to live nearby? What did the gods do here once upon a time?”
But as much as I love that biz, what we’re seeing in today’s comic is the opposite. As a GM, it’s occasionally necessary to use your PC as vectors for your own exposition. But learning how to do that without the uncomfortable heavy handedness is a very real challenge.
THEREFORE! What do you say we compare our exposition notes? How do you like to deliver your “dire portents” and “important historical details?” Do you hand the PCs notecards? Do you speak for them? Perhaps the player is given leeway to invent their own setting details? Or is there some other secret technique to battling the exposition monster? Hit us with your best tools for the job down in the comments!
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Honestly, I’ve found just sticking with speaking for them works. I don’t really keep short form notes and my handwriting is terribly slow so, unless it’s supposed to be a note *in session*, I’ll just speak for them.
I do have one tool for trying to keep it in character tho. I mostly just use it for online d&d, but if I have something I want a player to say themselves, I’ll just send them a DM over discord…. so basically a digital notecard ;b
It occurs to me that a cheap printer, a pair of scissors, and a little bit of written exposition might be a valuable resource. Really need to unpack my stuff soon….
You missed a perfect visual gag of the cards being upside-down / the text being written on the wrong side.
Unless the DM is good at printing notes in Braille.
Clearly Oracle is dealing from a marked deck.
Shame. 🙁
That prophecy is just vague enough to allow bringing Woolantula the Servile into the limelight. :3
But what class!?
Hmm, well, there’s a few approaches to this. Woolantula is obviously of a lawful alignment and dedicated to serving a master/mistress faithfully. This makes Samurai, Cavalier or similar classes with a dedicated ‘code of conduct’ involving a lord or master viable. They might also be viable as a monk of some sort with their many limbs.
As a servant, slinking out of sight when unneeded but always available to assist is crucial. They might also have a role as an advisor/skill spider, face or even assassin. This makes them viable as any rogue-like or bard-like archetype.
As a fiendish spider-thing, they likely have innate powers that would steer them towards a class. Perhaps he and his many eyes can tap into the powers of psychic magic, specializing as a hypnotic, gaze-attacking mesmerist? The vizier archetype would particularly suit his job as a henchman as well.
Given his wooly, sheepish nature, he might also dabble in the realm of dreams and nightmares, enabling them to be a dream-oriented archetype like the Dreamstalker, or other classes that dabble in the Dream dimension.
Their fiendish blood allows them to tap into the might of a sorcerer. The Dream, Abyssal, Infernal, Aberrant bloodlines are viable.
Being a sentient spider likely means a degree of empathy or control over his kin. A Vermin Druid, Swarm Shifter, Swarm Tamer or other vermin-employing class is viable. They might even have the lofty goal of becoming a worm-that-walks!
And as a player, Woolantula has an obvious ‘player flaw’ they exhibit – despite being friendly, humble and serving, being a member of a monstrous/evil/fiendish race brings its complications – most civilized societies would be terrified of them, or attack/smite them on sight. They might also be innately overpowered as a monster race with class powers (after all, what can bandits armed with shanks do to a spider with DR15/silver&good?), or their servile personality might make them… Well, a bit of a doormat for other PCs.
Another player flaw could be being the ‘Addams’ of any group – a character who regularly engages in morbid, spooky, kooky behavior as perfectly normal – e.g. turning commanding a swarm of spiders to rescue a cat, devouring corpses of humanoids, sucking souls out of enemies, being the party’s cook and cooking up a feast of horrors, brainwashing evil NPCs into good alignments…
I love the concept of “the Addams.” Really good tropesmanship there.
Lemme see what I can do.
Huh, just how far/close is the Demon Web Pit to the Hot & Sweaty Fiendish Heckscape of Unpleasant Scalding? Did Assassin literally faceplant in front of BBEGs throne when Barb let him drop?
Measured in kilometers, they are roughly PLOT CONVENIENCE apart. 😛
More seriously, Handbook-World has always played fast and loose with its planes. From the time The Anti-Party were watching the scrying bowl like a scary movie, we know that there are layers of the Abyss here. Yet the Heckscape (which is what it’s now called [gj rolling that high Lore check]) seems to be nearby. That a Hell if I ever saw one, but it must be somewhat close to the Demon Web Pits.
Maybe we’ll make a map when we publish the setting?
It doesn’t need to be that close.
Everything depends on how far downstream Assassin was carried by the lava / liquid fire after the Anti-Party dropped him into it. 😉 With a strong current, the Heckspace and the Dempnweb Pits could be leagues apart.
And in all seriousness, yes, please publish the setting or at least a gazetteer.
I want a copy. 🙂
No promises. But I will say it’s good to have projects in the pipeline. 🙂
Speaking of Heckscape… Check the scrollover text. :3
The other handbook is bleeding into the Handbook-Prime-verse!
Constantly.
The players roll their checks where applicable, but I deliver the messages of doom(tm).
It’d be interesting if Oracle’s curse is what’s fouling up her visions.
Also, it’d make sense; the powers that be don’t want people to know TOO much, so they regularly mess up genuine seers and provide flawed tools to glean the future.
I’m surprised nobody’s suggested it to her yet.
It’s a good hook for an oracle. I’d play that character. 🙂
Call me silly, but I think this page gives some hope for the Anti-Party:
Their powers still work.
Sorcerer’s could be explained by him having fiendish blood, but could also mean he’s still connected to Handbookworld’s version of the Wesve.
Oracle is still getting visions, and unless she was secretly shilling out to some vile patrons, that means the good(ish) or neutral gods haven’t blocked her number just yet…!
I’m holding out for Necromancer and Paladin rezzing these guys, thus proving the validity of the New Paradigm and giving them a chance to redeem themselves.
Of course Pathfinder doesn’t have a Weave, and Oracles can’t have their powers yoinked like Clerics can.
It doesn’t explicitly not have one, either.
And the visions have to come from somewhere, right?
I’m fairly sure that Pathfinder does in fact explicitly not have a Weave, if only because I’m 90% sure that WOTC trademarked that.
And as for visions, you don’t need a god to get those in Pathfinder.
What’s this talk of Pathfinder? I assure you that I am transcribing visions revealed to me in a trans-planar dream.
Handbook-World is its own standalone plane, independent of Golarion or Faerun or any other fictional place. The fact that their own native Common is being transcribed through the imperfect medium of game rules and English via my own subconscious should not denigrate the inherent seriousness of their own plight re. BBEG and the impending vampire apocalypse.
I’m very worried about my dream-friends, and I’m not sure their campaign will survive this plot arc. 🙁
Here’s a question that only just occurred to me: why did Assassin poison that well? He’s a heartless contract killer who doesn’t mind inflicting collateral damage when it serves him, but afaik he’s not a mass-murderer or serial killer.
Who paid him to attack that village…?
Who indeed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lXdyD2Yzls
It really is handy having the likes of clerics and warlocks in the party… you’ve got a perfect channel for giving pre-determined info when needed.
As to what that looks like — consider just giving the player of such a character a note between sessions, to the effect of “here’s a bunch of info… how did your patron provide it to you?”. It gives them a chance to make up the rituals or whatnots that they use to commune with their ’employer’ (and really, it could be a literal employer; they don’t have to be doing this supernaturally).
I like to give the party an NPC hanger-on for the same reason.
I generally prefer to let my players come up with ideas, but this DOES remind me of an incident in my Battle Network game.
For context, this is the session right after my plans got derailed by a player calling the equivalent to the cops. This new player was, accordingly, the cop being called to deal with the situation. So there’s a few scenes of introduction before I get the new player in there.
Before I do so, I ask all of the other players for physical descriptions of their characters. This is so that I can describe them to the new player. This is the exact descriptor I used: “a rather tall man that looks rather nerdy, a woman with an interesting choice of fashion and an impressive physique, and a man that’s wanted for fraud.”
You may notice one of these things is not like the others.
My best experience in this category happened in Exalted. Appearance is a social stat in that game.
“Hey Exalt! What’s your Appearance?”
“Six foot tall black woman.”
Fucking lost it. XD
Out of curiosities sake, are either you or Laurel playing Baldur’s Gate 3? If so, have you tried to recreate any of the Handbook cast?
Well that is an awesome question. So awesome, in fact, that it just became my monthly Patreon poll.
Will try to do some screen grabs when [Probably Magus] is built.
Rock on. I’ll have to check it out.
Not to take away from your QotD, but I sense another potential issue here.
“To heck with that we’re not even on that plane anyway!” is a really solid point in favor of /shrugging this whole plot. Maybe Heck is interesting. Maybe the PC’s embrace their Heckbound destiny-clearly either The Sorting Hat was broken or they actually deserve to be there, and both things likely require the sort of travel typically reserved for the Denizens of Heck.
Whether for character power, heckish interest, exploring the secrets of the multiverse, or even to just clear their souls of the unjustness of the situation, a scenario like this gives them a lot of reason to hang about longer than dashing back to the prime material with that 1Up they forgot they had.
Or the the danger to the prime material plane is gonna stem *from* the plane of heck, and thus our heroes have an opportunity to stop it from this side of things. It’s always frustrating when the players ignore the the Dm’s plot hooks.
I look forward to my next TPK for a variety of reasons. 🙂
I’m just sayin’, if I’ve been doin’ the HERO thing, and I wind up in Hell, I’m taking a seat to listen to the Time Share Presentation with a side of Powers Demonic, Devilish, and Otherwise Evil since Good can’t be arsed to get the Sorting Hat working.
Good is such a fractious and self destructive lot. :/
Another useful thing about using note cards and the like is that it gives the player they’re passed to the specific ability to share the info as they’re character would (imagine a player taking a basic prophecy of doom and then explaining it as dramatically as a southern preacher, or a bard player adding metaphors and adjectives to a legend), or tell as much information they want from them (or even flat out lie about what they’ve read). I know I struggle to keep a character’s accent when I’m role-playing so if I have a pre-written thing so my brain doesn’t have to struggle to come up with right words to explain things it allows me to indulge in the accent. Sometimes a little structure is good for rpgs.
I tend to write out the important bits of exposition anyway. Why not make it a player hand-out? They always seem more invested when it’s one of their characters doing than talking than VOICE OF GOD from my side of the screen.
And Sorcer getting all cozy with Barbarian makes sense since she’s alot softer to lay on than all the rocks in heck here. Sure, her muscles are probably just as rock-hard, but than they’re just not as rough or jagged as the rocks.
Stop making think of Barbarian in this way! I cannot be feeling these feelings about my own fictional strongwoman.
In my campaigns, honestly, it depends on the situation, the players, and the characters. In a Victorian ghost-hunters campaign, a good roll by the Explorer meant that I simply relayed “As a matter of fact, you recall that…”
One of my favorite tricks is to take a document that needs to be translated and number the individual words that appear. Based on the Decipher Script check result, I “redact” a certain number of the words (every time that word appears) and let them figure the meaning of the text out from there.
In another campaign (3.X D&D), I’d just hand the information page (written in the “inverted pyramid” style, so I could cut off the finer details from the bottom based on the die-roll) to the Bard. What was wonderful for me was never knowing (based on the player’s exhaustion or inebriation) whether he would dramatically read the whole exposition aloud or just skip all the backstory and important details and clues I’d labored over and say “Hey, y’all? I think there’s a back door somewhere over yonder.” Again, he’s the bard; it’s his prerogative to actively choose not to read the note or fail to warn his teammates about traps and/or curses.
That is a REALLY cool trick. I’m use that next time. 🙂
Did you guys have a booth at GenCon? I went and I keep finding more and more cool people that I could’ve seen.
I write for AAW Games. I was at their booth and running games in their demo room.
“Where are Sorcerer’s hands?”
Keeping warm where do you think? This is //hell// and he’s a hot boi. So the flames here run cold for him. Probably uncomfortably hot for Barbarian, but she’s just protecting her clothey party member which is her job as THE TANK.
“How do you like to deliver your “dire portents” and “important historical details”?”
Ah, a mix usually. If I have time in advance and know what the Players need to know 9or more aptly what they’ve found out) I’ll give them a history tome, you know just reams and reams of information. Some useful, some not so useful, whatever I have time to pile on them as homework…
If I don;t have time I do ye olde “tell them at the table” and then let the PC decide what they’re sharing, which since I just said it in front of every one tends to be everything. This by the way is “easier” in Play-by-Post as you can PM the Player with all that info, and then they can actually hold info back.
If it’s not important, or I haven’t made it up yet (that’s a common occurrence) I let the Player make it up on the spot within reason and under guidance (which means if they go buck wild I hit them with a rolled up DMG until they’re under control again).
“Your own personal hell,” huh? That’s a really intriguing concept. You can be in the same place but it’s still tailored to you subjectively.
That’s how I always run “punishment” hells.
Now D&D is actually a bit different, in that they weren’t //designed// as burning pits to punish those who fail to adhere to their religion, it just ends up that way from the other direction (sometimes).
But it always struck me as odd in the one game where I was playing a LN half-chain devil/half dwarf monk who had resistance to fire – just enough as I remember that when we went through a “burning pits” hell that I was quite comfortable – that somehow the burning hecks were supposed to be a punishment somehow.
He was all “I get to fight demons all the time and it’s finally warm enough? Sounds like heaven* to me…”
Sorcerer cuddling up to Barbarian for comfort and her allowing it in spite of her ‘closed off’ body language is very sweet. ^_^
Hell is other heroes. But ya know… In a good way. 🙂
Is that a ship I see being gently launched?
That mess set sail ages ago. 😛
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/origin-stories-the-anti-party
One distinction I like to make is the stuff one person’s character knows, which I like to deliver privately if possible so they can inform the rest of the group, and the stuff “everyone” knows, which I give out as exposition. This distinction is important to set up lies. If you tell a player something in confidence that later turns out to be untrue, they’re likely to feel that you set them up to fail. If something is supposed to be common knowledge but turns out to be untrue, well, that’s a mystery baked into the setting!
Do you run a heavy PVP game? I just tend to shy away from the secrets strat due to some negative past experiences.
Maybe I just need more mature players? (Or ya know… To grow up a bit myself.)
I’v been runnin playin and runnin games since the mid-80s. Some groups love intrigue even if they aren’t doing the PvP, some groups hate intrigue, even any tiniest shred.
If you’re group doesn’t seem to be into it, and they’ll let you know in subtle ways (keeping secrets from each other, getting excited if there’s something they need to dig up on another PC, etc), then don’t even worry about it.
The fastest way to figure out if your group is into intrigue or not is to run an intrigue game. My suggestion, if your Players are into LARP, get them into a V-LARP, those are always intrigue heavy and see if they a) enjoy it, and b) keep secrets from one another OOC about IC stuff.
If they aren’t into LARPing, try Amber Diceless. It’s a big enough rules and genre shift that “the extra secrets and note passing” won’t be the big outlier, but if they seem to hate the secrets and note passing, you’ll find out toot-sweet. If it’s the rules and genre, but they were okay with the intriguing, then you’ll know you can gently start introducing intrigue into your games.
Or just don;t. Like I said, I’ve played with and run for enough groups that hated secrets of any kind that if it’s not your thing or your group’s thing, it’s not a deal breaker and you ain’t playing ‘wrong’.
“For my money, this is why I prefer to let the lore-knowers in my groups have as much leeway as possible when it comes to making some shit up. As long as it doesn’t break established canon, I love nothing better than rewarding a high Knowledge check with this question: “What do you think? What’s the history here? What do legends say? How did this ancient race die out? What monster is rumored to live nearby? What did the gods do here once upon a time?””
Obligatory reminder that there are a substantial fraction of players for whom doing this sort of thing, forcing the players to define or describe information outside their character, will utterly ruin their fun. In particular, for players who are interested in discovery, in solving mysteries and uncovering secrets, this sort of thing completely breaks the illusion, tells them that there were never any secrets to discover or any payoff for their efforts. It’s a lot like realizing that the GM has been fudging all the dice rolls so that you couldn’t possibly lose in combat.
Check out the Description-on-Demand article (#9 on the GM Don’t List) at The Alexandrian for more explanation on why this is a deal-breaker for some players.
Yeah, bro. I was married to one of those players for a lot of years. Still like gaming with her though.
That said, the reminder is a useful one, and the Alexandrian’s point (as always) is well taken.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44891/roleplaying-games/gm-dont-list-11-description-on-demand
“How do you like to deliver your “dire portents””
So this is something for a campaign bouncing around in my head. I like to plant the main plot early in a campaign, and have it come back into full swing much later. Early on in the campaign the party will end up fighting a common foe with a half-dragon going by “Kos”. After the fight Kos will take a ring off the corpse, and if asked avoid giving details, simply saying “don’t worry, family business.” They’ll cross paths with Kos a couple of more times under similar circumstances, with Kos trying to obtain rings from different people.
Much later the party will receive a delivery. A one-time scrying orb, and a note. Kos will thank them for their help, and invite them to watch a ceremony at a certain time. When they watch they’ll see an alarming number of dragons in attendance. “For defeating more of his half siblings than any other, prince Kosandruth has earned the status of crown prince, and will lead the invasion of [the continent the adventure takes place on]!”
If anyone knows what obscure DS game this is an extended reference to, I’ll be very impressed.
“and “important historical details?””
History is a skill. I’ll prompt the players, or answer them if asked and then tell them what the character knows. (Or thinks they know with a bad roll. With a flubbed Religion check a player knew “Tim and Matt were the traditional enemies of the Baha Men. Their dispute has something to do with Tim and Matt letting dogs out. )
Badass plot hook.
What are you gonna do when the players inevitably get suspicious of Kos?
Ya know, I’m starting to think that antiparty might be the real heroes all along.
What ever gave you that idea?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fighter-vs-paladin
😛
Last year (or was it the year before?) when Paladin and the antiparty interrupted the evil ritual