Thread by @hexcrawl

At the bottom of Betrayers' Rise in CALL OF THE #NETHERDEEP, the PCs run into a pre-scripted cutscene.

(Or maybe the cutscene runs into them? Either way.)

Aloysia Telfan shows up with the Rivals and says, "Gimme the McGuffin!"

Things assumed by this cutscene:

1. The PCs have the Jewel.
2. The Rivals aren't dead.
3. The Rivals aren't working with the PCs.
4. The PCs aren't working with Aloysia.

(Oddly the cutscene DOES provide a contingency plan for Aloysia being dead -- her understudy shows up and read her lines -- even though I see no plausible way for her to BE dead in the adventure as written.)

We're continuing the Let's Read that started a few days ago. If you want to start from the beginning, jump over there and we'll see you back here in a few minutes.

https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1505005530112307208

Remember how I said the book is set up to make it overwhelmingly like the Rivals are dead or allied with the PCs, but then assumes neither of those things is true?

https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1506356471482699778

And that NPCs are constantly offering to work with the PCs -- including Ayo Jabe and Aloysia Telfan -- and then the book just assumes that the PCs never agree to this?

https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1506981142272086019

All of that converges on this moment, where both of these blindspots collide in a spectacularly misguided fashion.

If you peel back all the layers, though, the fundamental problem here is that Call of the #Netherdeep forgets that the DM exists.

(Art: Anthony Cournoyer, Magical Kitties Save the Day)

You have dynamic, interesting NPC Rivals.

You have multiple factions investigating ruidium (ideally for clear-yet-distinct reasons; the adventure falls down here).

If the book presented these as toys for the DM to actively play with, it's a situation rich with possibility.

But what the book does instead is try to pre-script everything like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

And so the unpredictable dynamics -- which should be an amazing opportunity -- become a massive liability.

The result is muddy, confusing, difficult to use, and (more often than not) completely broken in actual practice.

It's easy to look at a moment like this and say, "Well, the writers can't possibly account for every possibility!"

And you'd be right.

Which is why you focus on giving the DM -- who CAN account for what their group has done -- the tools to do so, rather than hamstringing them with an unusable script.

Here, for example, you can just say: "Once the Jewel is in its Awakened State, Aloysia will try to steal it."

You can help the DM by offering some suggestions on how she might do that:
- She hires the Rivals and follows the PCs.
- She asks politely to examine it, then teleports away.
- She turns invisible and attempts to steal it.

You'd go into a bit more detail with each of these, but the focus is on TOOLS, not contingencies.

You're not scripting outcomes; you're giving the DM the tools they need to actively play the game.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/3742…

The same thing is true with the Rivals, except at the scope of the entire campaign.

Broadly speaking, there are five courses of action for the Rivals:
- Working in partnership with the PCs.
- Convinced the PCs need help even if the PCs won't let them, thus following the PCs around.
- Independently trying to figure out how to help Alyxian.

- Concluding this isn't any of their business and exiting the campaign to go do other things.
- Seizing the Jewel (and possibly killing the PCs) and taking charge.

There's also the possibility that the Rivals could end up with the Jewel, the PCs respect that, and the PCs volunteer to work for them. (But that's relatively unlikely without rewriting some stuff early in the campaign.)

The point is that you lay these options out and then trust the DM. (You can still interject cool ideas about how the Rivals could be used in specific circumstances: Aloysia could hire them! They could be trying to simultaneously break into this building! etc.)

So if you ARE the DM of #Netherdeep, I wouldn't spend a lot of time trying to follow the scripted events in the book. Because they don't make sense most (or all) of the time.

Focus on tracking the Rivals' attitude and just roleplaying them truthfully.

The Let's Read continues over here as we head to Ank'Harel.

https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1508099167398289408