Shawn and I do this thing while we're texting with exclamation points and deliberately make a point of putting ones in among the exclamation points even though the keys are far away from each other (at least on my phone, and now it has occurred to me that he does not have a Rumor, so his ones could in fact be the same key as his exclamation points). I enjoy such things.
I'm having some scenario issues. I have the Kusseth scenario pretty much done and came up with a neat idea for a "tough fight" inspired in part by Mike Krahulik's (Gabe of PA) freefall scenario. It is in no way as awesome as that encounter or as unique, its sort of a vertical chase battle is all. I dunno, its something different, not mold breaking, but definitely a bit spicier than my utterly mundane horizontal battles of the past. Its also entirely possible that they will not engage in it because of certain choices they make. I'm getting along very well with the Kusseth scenario, it is very much more akin to the second scenario where the guys walk around doing shit talking to folks, rather than storming a former dwarven outpost and then having to fight their way out when the current brigand denizens returned from their evening business. I like it and its becoming very much what I want Kusseth to be, the difficulty for me is giving them a believable hook to head to Hell, not just "The DM wants us to go to Hell so we go there." For my part, I need their characters to be motivated to go there independent of the metagame intent. I somehow need to make Hell more appealing than Kusseth, which is impossible, so I just need to hit them with the "There's more for you to do in Hell." bat this scenario, or run them out of Kusseth with the law yapping at their heels. I'm also pretty pleased with the Traith scenes, he's there, but he's not showboating and his part to play is short. I get to go, "hehe, there he is, my guy." but not steal the focus from the players. I do that plenty with a chunk of the thing being completely about Spineplate.
On to the writing it out. My thoughts for the fifth scenario were much like the third scenario, the guys get involved in something inadvertently on their way to another destination. The premise was going to be that they roll up on a town in lieu of a traveler's rest. (Or did we agree to retcon those into being called traveler's roosts?) The town is bigger than Kemmel, as far as population and residences. Kemmel was a bigger border town, but a lot of it was taken up by the foundry and warehouses and much of its population spent the majority of their time in the mines so it was hard to convey it as a bigger city, and Mesl was essentially a barracks the size of a small town with no real non-soldier population. Its a bigger town, the claims to fame are potatoes and pigs. Feral pigs are fairly common all across Kusseth and pork is a main staple of the diet for the country. The town is in pretty bad disarray, the potatoes are uncared for and the pigs have basically the run of their pens. It looks like any deserted border town in a western, except there is blood and body parts everywhere. The whole shtick of the scenario is that somewhere nearby is some manner of malicious sorcerer type that was run out of town for a spell going screwy (as they are prone to do in this hemisphere of my world), as is typical he/she/it has decided to take vengeance and is plaguing the town with zombie attacks. It is nearing nightfall, which is the typical time of attack, and the PCs have the option of getting the Hell out or sticking around to fortify the town. Basically this portion of the scenario would involve Skill Challenges to put up barricades, get argumentative townsfolk to shut the fuck up and get to work, and to pry necessary supplies out of the greedy hands of merchants. Then next portion is the attack itself, which would consists of a endless stream of minion heavy combats with a few set pieces with memorable scenes or foes, something in the vein of Left 4 Dead where you're just mowing down enemies until you hit a Tank or Witch or whatever and shit rapidly goes south if you're not on your toes. The next portion is clean up, and making sure everything is dead and then either getting the Hell out of town, or attempting to locate the lurking sorcerer.
Its definitely something I have not done a million times before, which is a theme I'm trying to hang onto in this campaign. I'm not sure if its working, as no one has really given me feedback other than the fact that they like the variation of the second scenario and how there was more than just endless fights to do. My issue with this particular scenario is that it kind of needs to be cinematic, in a video game or movie this would be a grand adventure, but DnD is not exactly cinematic. There isn't heart pounding action or shit jumping out at you. In game, in your imagination it is, but I think the disconnect between us and our characters is too great for that sort of thing to work.
To make an interlude and basically paraphrase a conversation I had with Tony earlier today, its why Ravenloft would never work in our group. Ravenloft is an awesome concept, the most evil, grim, and dark place in the cosmos with the most evil, sadistic, and just plain mean bastards imaginable all cooped up into one demiplane. Everything is grimdark and dying and good is smudged and dirty so much as to be inseparable from neutral. On paper it looks good, like my scenario. I can paint the picture of women being raped and good men dying scared and alone and babies being eaten by shit without name or defense against. There are even rules mechanics to track how fucked up your characters get by being exposed to this filth so often. I can make floors creak and creatures stalk the players in the night and make villains laugh as their psychotic ploys reach fruition despite the best efforts of the players, who can at best gain only a half step against the forces of evil, if that. I cannot disconnect the part of your brain that hears my words, combines it with the fact that you are moving a plastic figure across a laminated piece of paper and rolling a d6 to determine how scared you are of Clint's fake laugh, and decides that all of this is (to quote Jeremy at one point) "patently ridiculous." Basically, I cannot build fake tension, I can paint a picture, but I can't make you buy into it enough or get you invested in your character enough to really care that there is something out there in the night killing shit while it waits for your eyelids to droop for a second too long to give it the time it needs to come at you. As it stands, the group has been walking around with a metal monstrosity made by a race of undead that supposedly have animated it via rituals that involve pieces of dead shit being bound up within it, except that is lacks the word echoing multiple speaker voice others of its kind supposedly possess, and once in battle its chest was cracked open by a blow and sparks of electricity shot out of it. No one cares, no one has asked it anything like, "So, you're metal. What's that like?" or "What'd you do to end up in Beltan?"
This is not a rant against the guys. I like the guys and we are all having fun, at least I am. This is not a complaint or a mockery, this is an explanation. The guys don't do anything unless they're told to. They don't make Insight checks when someone their characters have never met before asks them to go do something so see if maybe they're not being told everything, they don't ever use Diplomacy to barter or get a better reward. They just go and do what they're told to and assume they're doing the right thing or what they should be doing. In my experience they don't think or act on anything unless you beat them about the head with it, and that doesn't work with Ravenloft. To go, "Oh, by the way, you guys should be scared now." totally goes against the idea of a horror campaign. The point of a horror campaign is to fear the threats out there because they mean a gruesome end for the character you've grown to love, you can't be told to fear for your PC, you need to be shown that you should and feel it. You're tense because every roll of the dice could mean you beloved character's mind just gave up and now he's trying to eat your companions while they sleep, or something just ate his mind and crawled in the empty skull and now you have to play that thing and do so without letting the other player's know. Nobody invests themselves into their characters enough for that to matter in our group. That's not how we roll.
Now, that's sort of a side issue to why I don't think the zombie attack idea will work. Its a neat enough concept and I think everyone will appreciate it, but I think fundamentally it will just be the guys going to Fight A, Fight B, and Fight C. No one is going to picture themselves standing atop a barricade putting rounds into zombie faces, or screaming at citizens to hold the line and have a bit of steel in their spine or some other inspiring warcry. They're just going to make their attack rolls and their Diplomacy or Intimidate rolls and apply the appropriate penalties and modifiers, because that is the game. Perhaps its my fault that they don't see that, or perhaps they do and just don't make a big deal out of it. I guess when I see a twenty rolled the impression I get from everyone is, "Cool." and not , "YES! D'Alton just removed that dwarf's spine, bring on the next fucking stumpy, I'll gut every kneebiter it takes to get out of this fucking hole!" I dunno, perhaps the scenario would be amazing and I've blown my load by not surprising the guys with it and left it here for two of them to read. I have another idea and I think it will work just as well.
Music: Murmaider II: The Water God - Dethklok
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