So I’m revisiting Aaron Allston’s Strike Force, the legendary campaign supplement for the Champions roleplaying game, and he’s talking about the PCs’ Hunted. But he’s talking about it in a really weird way: As if obviously every PC is going to have a Hunter. He’s built it into his character creation checklists. It’s baked into his campaign planning.

If you’re not familiar with Champions, let me explain a little bit: It’s a superhero RPG which would later grow to become the generic Hero System. It’s one of the earliest point-buy character systems, in which players are given a budget of points and can use them to buy various abilities, skills, and powers. There are also disadvantages: weaknesses players can pick for their character to give themselves more points to spend on stuff.

One of these disadvantages is Hunted, which means that there’s someone or an entire group of people hunting the PC. But, as I say, it’s just one character option among many. So why was Allston writing not only as if every PC would have this specific disadvantage, but that this would be self-evident to the reader?

My introduction to Champions came through a review of the 4^th Edition of the game in Dragon Magazine, and I later scooped up a copy of the same edition at my local gaming store. Although I was never been able to play or run it as much as I would’ve liked, I immediately loved it and it had a major influence on me as a gamer.

Allston’s Strike Force campaign, on the other hand, didn’t use 4^th Edition. It started as a 1^st Edition campaign when the game first came out. So I went back to 1^st Edition to see if I could figure it out.

What I found is that Hunted hadn’t actually changed much. In fact, it still hasn’t in the current 6^th Edition of the game. But the difference was that, by 4^th Edition, the Champions rulebook was almost 400 pages long. For me, Hunted was just one pebble on a very large beach.

The 1^st Edition of Champions, on the other hand, was only 56 pages long. So for Allston — and, I suspect other Champions GMs of that era — Hunted had a much more prominent position. Both the GMs and the players were much more aware of it, and the result was that it become somewhat central to how Allston ran the game. (I’ve also talked about this kind of mechanical “spotlight” that can emerge in barebones systems in Reactions to OD&D: The Influence of Little Rules.)

In Strike Force, Allston talks about how a GM can/should:

• Check during character creation to make sure you know how a Hunter will be used.
• Use Hunters to pace character arcs and set up campaign finales.
• Age Hunters by combining them, resolving and replacing them, evolving them, or creating spinoffs.
• Incorporate the Hunters from new PCs into a campaign.

It quickly became clear to me that this concept of being Hunted was something that could easily inject interest into almost any campaign, regardless of what RPG you were running. This idea was really the seed that eventually grew into the entire Session 0 Modules series.

HUNTED

During Session 0, ask the players to define their Hunter. This can be done either individually (so that each PC is being hunted by a different Hunter) or as a group (with a single Hunter pursuing all the PCs and/or the organization the PCs belong to). A mixed approach is also possible, with perhaps two or three PCs all being pursued by mysterious organization whose agents wear rose-tinted glasses, while another PC could have an NPC rival serving as their Hunter.

Option: In the spirit of the original disadvantage, you could instead offer Hunted as an option to the players in exchange for some boon or benefit. (Maybe if they choose to be Hunted, they gain a powerful Ally. Or a powerful artifact. Maybe it’s actually the artifact that the Hunter is seeking?)

CREATING THE HUNTER

If the players have a strong vision of their Hunter spring full-blown from their brow, that’s fantastic. They should write down every awesome idea that they have. But whether you’re looking to brainstorm a new idea or fleshing out an inspired one, you can use this semi-formal cycle of question-and-response to develop the Hunter.

GM: Who is the Hunter and why are they hunting you? (Player responds.)

Player: How often does the Hunter hound me? (GM responds.)

GM: What do you think is the most frightening or dangerous aspect of the Hunter? (Player responds.)

Player: What weaknesses does the Hunter have, if any? (GM responds.)

GM: When you think of the Hunter, what is your most powerful memory of them? (Player responds.)

GM: Who is the Hunter and why are they hunting you?

The GM will ask this question and the players should answer it. If you’re the players, you don’t need to produce a full dossier here. You just need to sketch in a broad concept.

If multiple characters are being pursued by the same Hunter, then the players should all have a part in answering the question. The GM can help them all have a creative stake in their Hunter by spreading some or all of these supporting questions around the table:

• What do they want from you?
• When did they first start hunting you?
• What’s their modus operandi? How do they threaten you?
• Why haven’t you been able to escape their pursuit?
• What do they look like?

The term Hunted lends itself to characters like Kraven the Hunter or the Black Riders from Lord of the Rings — i.e., characters who are literally hunting the PCs and want to kill them (or worse). But the stakes don’t have to be life-or-death. For example, being pursued by authorities who want to arrest them — like U.S. Marhsal Samuel Gerard from The Fugitive or Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard — are often a good fit. It can also include rivals like Gary Oak from Pokemon or someone obsessively pursuing the PC romantically like Lwaxana Troi from Star Trek. J. Jonah Jameson’s antagonism towards Spider-Man is another good example.

The important thing is that the Hunter makes things difficult for the PCs and/or impels them to take action (regardless of whether that action is fight or flight).

If it’s appropriate for the campaign, you might even be able to make the Hunter more abstract. Maybe there’s some strange plague that haunts the PCs’ footsteps, for example. Or the Nothing from The Neverending Story.

If the Hunter is an organization, however, consider giving that organization a “face” — an NPC who is most likely leading the efforts to hunt down the PCs. This NPC might not be present every time the organization show up, but they show up often enough that the PCs can form a personal relationship and antagonism with them. Think about Agent Smith is the face of the Agents from The Matrix, for example, or Prince Zuko’s role as the face of the Fire Nation in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Player: How often does the Hunter hound me?

Will every session of the campaign be like an episode of The Fugitive TV show, with the only question being when — not if! — the Hunter will show up? Will they show up to complicate things every few adventures? Or are they more of a looming threat that will only show up (with likely catastrophic intensity) once in a blue moon or at major turning points in the campaign?

See “Triggering the Hunter,” below, for more details on Hunter frequency. Setting this frequency will be partly about what effect you want the Hunter to have on gameplay and partly about how interesting you think the Hunter and/or the threat of the Hunter will be to the narrative of the campaign.

(If you don’t think the Hunter is interesting at all, that may be a sign that you should veto the Hunter and try to come up with a new one that everyone is interested in.)

GM: What do you think is the most frightening or dangerous aspect of the Hunter?

The answer to this question may be emphasizing an established characteristic of the Hunter, but this is also an opportunity to raise the stakes by adding some new and terrible facet to the Hunter: Yes, the FBI is chasing us, but did you also know that Agent Keighley is secretly a werewolf?

If multiple players are being pursued by the same Hunter, have each of them give a separate answer. Ideally, each of them will come up with some new addition to the Hunter’s danger, but it’s okay if they both fear the same aspect of the Hunter, as long as they can give it a new twist or explain why it particularly resonates with their character. (Or both.)

If you’re struggling to think of an aspect, you might consider:

• Unique technology the Hunter possesses
• A supernatural ability
• Official authority and/or pervasiveness in the campaign world
• The minions they control
• What makes them so hard to kill
• How they threaten to transform/ruin/remake the PC

Player: What weaknesses does the Hunter have, if any?

Werewolves are vulnerable to silver. FBI agents can only directly pursue you in the United States. Prince Zuko’s ship is slower than the Avatar’s flying bison. The PCs have a double agent in the Hunter’s ranks. The Hunter doesn’t know the PCs’ true identities. After unleashing their Cerulean Minions, they have to recharge their lunar batteries in the light of the full moon.

Whatever the weakness may be, it should give the PCs a meaningful edge, loophole, or leverage against the Hunter. This also means that the more powerful or all-encompassing the Hunter is, the more significant the weakness should be. (On the other hand, the Hunter’s weaknesses probably shouldn’t turn them into a joke, either.)

Tip: If, during the course of the campaign, the Hunter manages to neutralize their weakness, this will likely make them FAR more dangerous to the PCs. This means revealing their plans to do so can be a VERY effective scenario hook: Give the PCs a chance to make sure their identities remain hidden; prevent the satellite network from neutralizing kryptonite worldwide; stop the ritual that will allow Agent Keighley to turn into her werewolf form any time she wants to. If they succeed? Great. If they fail? Have their Hunter push them to the edge.

GM: When you think of the Hunter, what is your most powerful memory of them?

Try to make this memory something specific. It should be a distinct, concrete event — maybe a fleeting moment (e.g., when Agent Smith caused your mouth to disappear); maybe a prolonged incident (e.g., the Texas Affair); but not simply a general impression.

Here are some supporting questions you might use if you’re having difficulty brainstorming a memory:

• When did you first learn that you were being hunted?
• What’s a time when the Hunter injured you?
• How has the Hunter affected the other people in your life?
• What major life event was ruined by the arrival of the Hunter?
• When did you receive a warning or realize something was wrong, giving you just enough time to slip out of the Hunter’s grasp?
• How has the Hunter scarred you?

Your primary goal here is to weave the Hunter into your character background, but you may also discover something new about the Hunter or add lore to them as you’re fleshing out this memory. That’s just fine. Ideal, even.

Option: If you’re creating a Hunter who will only be introduced after the campaign has begun — as part of the first session, for example — then simply skip this question.

TRIGGERING THE HUNTER

Hunters should, of course, show up during the campaign. They are, after all, pursuing the PCs.

In some cases, you might have an entire scenario dedicated to dealing with the Hunter when they show up, but it’s usually more effective to add the Hunter as a complication to other scenarios:

• The PCs need to find the Ruby of the North in the Labyrinths of Omarrat, but now the Blightborn have entered the dungeon, too, and are trying to track them down.
• Melissa has been kidnapped by the Mystic Triad and the PCs need to save her! What a terrible time for Quartz to show up and pick a fight!
• The Maltese Falcon has appeared in Hong Kong in a 1980’s pop-up juncture and now the PCs, the Eaters of the Lotus, and all four of the Four Monarchs have teams scrambling to nab it for themselves. Of course Gorok the Cyber Ape, who has been hounding the PCs for months, is getting in on the act!

Procedural Check: Instead of or in addition to arbitrarily deciding when the Hunter will show up, you can make a check once per session or once per scenario. Think about how often you want the Hunter to appear and set the odds of the check accordingly.

If the group have three or more Hunters, I recommend having a 1 in 1d6 chance to trigger the Hunter.

If the group only has a single Hunter, I recommend using a 2 in 1d6 or 3 in 1d6 chance.

Having the Hunter show up as a procedural element in the campaign is fun because (a) it provides you with a cool creative prompt and (b) it can really enhance the feeling of the Hunter adding complication to an existing situation. Keep in mind that a Hunter’s presence doesn’t have to hog the spotlight: It might even be entirely incidental (a letter from a PC’s friend mentions strange men asking questions at their old school; they see Quartz fighting a different superhero on the TV news; etc.).

Of course, if circumstances dictate that the Hunter couldn’t possibly show up at this particular point in time (e.g., the PCs have been teleported to the far side of the galaxy by the Neutron Crystal) or vice versa, then you can obviously ignore this check.

Design Note: The Hunted disadvantage in Champions defaults to a roll of 8 or lower on 3d6, but a player could increase this target number to 11 or 14, causing the Hunter to appear more frequently (but also earning them more points to spend in exchange).

The Omnipresent Hunter: Hunters will generally be a light spice for the campaign, but in some cases you may find them so compelling — or so overwhelming in their scope — that the whole campaign becomes about them. As an extreme example, consider the players proposing that their Hunter is a zombie plague which is slowly spreading across the land, with the inevitable conclusion that the campaign will turn into The Walking Dead.

If that sounds like an awesome campaign to you… well, fantastic! Leap at the opportunity! You’re never going to have players more invested in a campaign than that.

But if you, or the other players, aren’t okay with a Hunter dominating and/or defining the campaign like that, then you’ll need to either veto that Hunter or figure out a way to alter the Hunter to figure out a different path forward.

EVOLVING & RESOLVING THE HUNTER

Hunters, and the characters’ relationships with the Hunters, should ideally evolve over time: Yes, Lieutenant Gerard showed up at the end of every episode of The Fugitive and the Joker always pops back up with a new scheme to challenge the Batman, but even those characters have had their stories brough to a conclusion. (Even if they come back again the next time the franchise reboots.)

Escalation: If the PCs feel as if they have their Hunter under control or that the Hunter is no longer posing a threat, you can find a way to escalate the danger they pose. For example, a vampire shows up with a coterie of newly turned husbands in tow; Agent Keighley reveals that she’s a werewolf for the first time; the lich-king obtains the Crown of Sizzerak; the FBI puts the PCs on their Most Wanted list and now there’s a larger task force assigned to their case, plus they’re being recognized and reported by people on the street.

Combination. If the PCs have multiple Hunters, a specific form of escalation can be for their Hunters to team up. You might also reveal that these Hunters have always been working together, possibly as part of a larger organization. For example, Spider-Man’s foes team up as the Sinister Six; the Fey Queen who has been pursuing the PCs imbues their other Hunters with faerie magick to form a Wild Hunt; or it’s revealed that the Sith and the Trade Federation have been working together this whole time.

Defeat. Perhaps the most natural resolution for a Hunter is their defeat: The PCs track down and kill the Man in the Silver Mask whose mercurials have been hounding them. Or they reveal General Lee’s crimes and watch him get hauled off in handcuffs.

If the Hunter is connected to a character, then the defeat of their Hunter is likely a major part of their story arc or even its conclusion. So you’ll want that to either line up with the end of the campaign or, in a more episode campaign, be prepared for that character to either retire or start a whole new arc.

If the Hunter is pursuing the whole group, then the same thing but even moreso.

Changing the Face. If PCs are being hunted by an organization, they can enjoy a measure of success by defeating the Face that’s been pursuing them. But even with the Face gone, of course, the rest of the organization can reorganize and redouble their pursuit.

Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to give the PCs a respite from their Hunters as a reward for the setback they’ve inflicted. But when the Hunters come back, you’ll likely want to escalate their threat and definitely set up a new Face for the PCs to build a relationship with. It’s best to not just retread the narrative beats the PCs have already experienced, though, so try to find some way of raising the stakes, letting the PCs get closer to a final victory over their adversaries, or transforming the nature of the threat posted by the Hunters.

Tip: As a variant here, you might introduce a brand new Hunter … only to reveal later that it’s actually the SAME Hunters with a new M.O.!

Spin-Off. Another variant here is that, after a Hunter’s defeat, the PCs might be confronted a spin-off Hunter: They kill Dracula only to discover that his wives are seeking revenge; a criminal discovers a cache of supplies left behind by the Hunter the PCs sent to prison and emerges as a new supervillain; or they discover that defeating one Predator only means that you’ve been identified as an even more desirable prey.

Success. Of course, it’s also possible that the Hunter succeeds: They kill the PC they wanted to kill; they steal the magical artifact the party was trying to protect; they arrest the PCs in a massive sting operation and lock them up in prison. This is definitely a subversion of expectations, but when we play to find out in RPGs, that happens all the time.

If the Hunter’s success takes the form of death, that’s pretty final. (Although not always, of course.) But other Hunter success stories may just post massive setbacks for the PCs or turning points in the campaign (e.g., I guess this game is about breaking out of prison now). Or maybe not: A tragic ending can be just as satisfying as a happy one.

Heel-Face Turn. For a more positive conclusion, maybe the Hunter switches sides. That might be a supervillain inspired by their PCs’ example and wanting to help the world with their powers or a dedicated U.S. Marshal who realizes the fugitive they’re pursuing has been wrongly accused.

Alternatively, maybe only the Face of the Hunter organization might perform the Heel-Face Turn, becoming an ally of the PCs in their fight against the rest of their organization. (This can be a great replacement character for a PC who’s died or a cool roll for a new player to step into.)

Back to Session 0 Modules

One of the inaugural products of the D20 license, Death in Freeport is possessed of some wonderful strengths… and some disappointing weaknesses.

Review Originally Published February 12th, 2001

When the 3rd edition of D&D was released in August 2000 at Gen Con, everyone in attendance knew that the rules of the game had changed: Not just because the line for the Player’s Handbook stretched around the Castle and out of sight (that was expected). Not just because it was the steadiest, loudest buzz of the con (that was expected). Not just because the words “D&D” dominated every program and announcement (that, too, was expected).

No, people knew the rules had changed because Atlas Games had released Three Days to Kill (reviewed here) and Green Ronin Publishing had released Death in Freeport — the first two modules produced under the D20 System Trademark License.

As an inaugural product of sorts, Death in Freeport has its share of rough edges. But it’s not distinguished only because of Chris Pramas’ good sense of timing. It also contains some laudatory gaming material which you might want to take a couple of minutes to check out.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Death in Freeport. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

Death in Freeport takes place in the City of Freeport, an old pirate den which has since become a bustling island metropolis. The first six pages of this module are, in fact, dedicated to describing Freeport’s history and background – sketching in the broad outlines of an interesting gaming venue which can be thrown down along the coastline of any traditional D&D fantasy world.

The story itself involves a priest named Lucius. Six years ago, Lucius’ body was taken over by a mysterious power. Four years later, Lucius awoke to find his body returned to him – in his absence though, the power had done all sorts of strange things of which Lucius could remember nothing. Despite this, Lucius was still able to resume his former life, up to a certain point.

Then the dreams came.

Lucius would wake every night screaming in strange tongues after seeing visions of bizarre rituals. As a result, he began investigating what “he” had been up to during those years of possession. Two nights ago Lucius disappeared.

Which is where the PCs come in: Brother Egil, a friend of Lucius, wants to know what happened to him – and the other members of the order, uncomfortable with Lucius’ strange behavior of four years ago and his new inquiries into that time period, don’t really seem to care. Egil asks the PCs to investigate.

THE INVESTIGATION

This is the core of the module: The PCs will investigate Lucius’ house. If they make some successful Search checks here they will turn up a “to do” list which will lead them to the Bloody Vengeance, an orcish pirate ship. If they manage to work their way through to the captain of the Bloody Vengeance they will learn… absolutely nothing of consequence.

But eventually they may think to check out the church where Lucius and Egil work. If they do so, they’ll meet with a guy named Milos who will stymie their attempts to learn anything else. Shortly thereafter, they’ll be attacked by some mercenaries and, if things play out the right way, they’ll get the address to a tavern. If they stake out the tavern they might spot Enzo, who will lead them back to a bricked up building. (They might also find the temple if they decide to follow Milos for some reason.) The conclusion of the adventure takes place here.

Frankly, this is the biggest problem Death at Freeport has: The structure of the adventure is tenuous at best. If the PCs miss a die roll, the adventure is derailed. If the PCs don’t make a questionable leap of logic, the adventure is derailed. If an encounter goes just slightly wrong, the adventure is derailed.

A successful investigatory adventure requires multiple paths of inquiry to be present: You can’t expect every player group in existence to perform like Sherlock Holmes. Death in Freeport makes the assumption that the players are capable of reading the author’s mind – and that’s a bad position to but the DM in.

AN ANCIENT EVIL

What lurks in the bricked up building? Nothing less than a temple dedicated to an ancient god whose last appearance upon the Material Plane nearly destroyed the world. (You ever notice how evil cultists never worship the gods who make your socks disappear from the drier? It’s always World Destroying Evil™ they go after. Why is that?)

Years ago, before the humanoid races settled upon the world, a vast continent spread over the area where the Serpent’s Teeth islands exist today. (That’s where the City of Freeport is located.) This continent was known as Valossa, and was home to a race of serpent people whose magical sciences and natural sorceries were vastly advanced compared to those of today.

However, the serpent people was brought low by the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign, who summoned forth their nameless dark god. This Great Old One tore Valossa asunder, and forever destroyed the civilization of the serpent people.

Unknown to the younger races which have grown strong upon the world’s surface, the remnants of the serpent people remain: Barbaric degenerates still live beneath the surface of the earth, while an immortal upper class of sorcerors still cling to the old ways in forgotten corners of the world.

Worse yet, however, the serpent people walk among us: They have the power to assume human form, and they are out in force in Freeport.

The bricked up building the PCs will, hopefully, reach is none other than a temple of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign – still worshipping the ancient god who was once responsible for the downfall of Valossa. At this point you have a fairly standard, if abbreviated, dungeon crawl through the Temple of the Unspeakable One, at the end of which the PCs rescue Lucius.

This, in short, is the greatest strength of Death in Freeport: A rich gaming environment, with a backdrop of ancient mysteries, strange magicks, forgotten races, and arcane gods. Fans of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard should get a special kick out of all this, and anyone who enjoys Kenneth Hite’s Suppressed Transmissions should feel right at home.

OTHER NOTES

A handful of miscellaneous notes to wrap this review up: Death in Freeport also contains four pre-generated characters, presumably for use by play groups who don’t want to generate characters. In my opinion, these are a waste of space and the two pages they took up could have been dedicated with far better purpose to just about anything else.

The new stats for the Serpent People, on the other hand, are very much appreciated (and surprisingly accurate, given the fact that Death in Freeport was developed before the release of the Player’s Handbook or Monster Manual).

On the other hand, Death in Freeport demonstrates its pioneering spirit in the fact that it takes up a page and a half with the licensing agreements – something which later D20 releases quickly learned to work around (by shrinking the type size considerably).

It should be noted, in closing, that Death in Freeport is the first in a trilogy of modules (to be followed by Terror in Freeport and Madness in Freeport, in that order). Several minor details of “local color” in Death in Freeport acquire a sinister significance in the later adventures – a nice way of balancing the necessities of a trilogy’s continuity with the autonomy of a stand-alone product.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Grade: B+

Author: Chris Pramas
Company: Green Ronin Publishing
Line: D20
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 0-9701048-0-4
Production Code: GRR1002
Pages: 32

“A successful investigatory adventure requires multiple paths of inquiry to be present: You can’t expect every player group in existence to perform like Sherlock Holmes.”

What you’re seeing here is very nearly the origin point of the Three Clue Rule. The specific formulation of Three Clues and the refinement of the technique was still in the future, but it was while remixing and running Death in Freeport that I very specifically identified the problem

I used Death in Freeport to launch my second D&D 3rd Edition campaign. It’s a campaign that still lives fondly in my memory, and that may or may not color my opinion of the adventure (which remains quite high). I liked it enough to run it again as a one-shot, also to great effect. When I attempted to use it to launch a second campaign, however, the results were not so satisfactory. (You can read about that in Bumbling in Freeport.)

The adventure itself has been reissued several times, including a 20th Anniversary Edition compatible with 5th Edition and the most recent version, which is compatible with Shadow of the Demon Lord. (I haven’t checked out these specific versions, but have no reason to doubt their faithful rendition of the original. Although I will note that, for whatever reason, 5th Edition versions of the sequels were never produced.)

Next Freeport Review: Terror in Freeport

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

One of the things I learned on a primal level while playing the 1974 edition of D&D was how the rules of an RPG can influence and shape play, often in ways that the GM and players don’t even fully comprehend. This can seem surprising or even nonsensical to those who believe that RPG rules don’t matter and who try to play and run D&D and Vampire the Masquerade and Blades in the Dark as if they were all the same game, but these are, in fact, the people most likely not to reflect meaningfully on the choices they’re making. (Which, of course, makes them highly susceptible to being influenced.)

Paradoxically, the fewer rules an RPG has, the stronger the influence of those rules can be.

To demonstrate what I mean, consider that basically all of the rules for dungeoncrawling in 1974 D&D can be found on pgs. 8-9 of Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures in a section titled “The Move/Turn in the Underworld”:

• How far you can move in a turn/round
• How often you need to rest
• How long it takes to search/ESP
• How to detect secret doors
• How to open/shut secure doors
• How traps are triggered
• How to listen at doors
• Light sources and infravision
• Torches can be blown out by gusts of wind
• Two options for adjudicating fireball and lightning bolt spells in enclosed spaces

While introducing new players to my OD&D open table, I would make a point of walking through these rules. (It was part of discussing the ur-game nature of the rules.) Then I noticed something interesting happening: In what was, at the time, 60+ sessions of my Ptolus: In the Shadow of the Spire campaign using D&D 3^rd Edition, the players had listened at doors to see what might be behind them maybe a half dozen times.

But these exact same players in OD&D?

They listened at doors all the time.

The notable thing here is that, obviously, rules for listening at doors didn’t disappear from the game. But, of course, in newer rulebooks these rules are lost in a deluge of mechanics filling hundreds of pages. In OD&D, by virtue of being included among a very short list of mechanics, they assumed a central importance and the concept of “you should listen at doors” became a pillar of play.

Am I saying that no D&D 3^rd Edition group ever made “make sure you listen at every door” a part of their standard operating procedure? Of course not. There are all sorts of ways that a group could start doing this. This is about influence, not mandates or requirements.

This is also why, surprisingly, these influences can often escape the games which give them birth: Having learned to listen at doors in OD&D, you might find your players more likely to listen at doors in D&D 5^th Edition. Or Shadowrun. Or Paranoia. Each time with the behavior being modified by the rules, setting, and narrative structures of the new game, and sometimes being snuffed out because of its irrelevancy in the new context.

You can, curiously, find bibliographic evidence of this endurance in these same OD&D rules, where Volume 3: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures reads, “Also, torches can be blown out by a strong gust of wind.” Due to the prominence of this rule, if you look at adventure modules from the 1970’s, you’ll find strong gusts of wind all over the place blowing out your torches. It was a ubiquitous part of the D&D experience.

What’s interesting about torch-extinguishing winds is that, by 1979, they were gone from the rulebooks. (D&D 3^rd Edition included rules for this, but if AD&D did, they’re buried so deep that I can’t figure out where they are.) Despite this, torch-extinguishing winds continue cropping up in published scenarios for several more years before slowly fading away in the mid-‘80s.

There are several possibilities for why this might have happened. But I’d like to propose that Occam’s Razor suggests that this bibliographic trail indicates that the playing style of including torch-extinguishing winds faded away because the rules were removed from the rulebook. But, notably, those who had already had their style of play stamped with torch-extinguishing winds continued to use them even after they moved to new rulebooks and new games.

MECHANICAL INFLUENCE

My theory is that, if you have a completely neutral rules-light system — maybe a universal mechanic and little more — then you won’t see much influence on the players. Similarly, if you give the players a panoply of mechanical support, you won’t see much influence on chosen actions because the menu of options is so large.

But if you takes a rules-light system and, like old school D&D, bolt on just a handful of specific mechanics, then the players are going to grab onto those mechanics like a drowning man reaching for a life preserver. When they pick up a new game and begin running or playing it, the players are looking for guidance on how this game is meant to be played, and these scarce mechanics become beacons guiding them through the dark.

This can be a positive thing, but it can also be a negative one. For example, D&D 3^rd Edition’s combat system included a small list of specific maneuvers and provided concrete mechanics for each one. As a result, players have a tendency to latch onto those maneuvers and do just those and nothing else.

OD&D combat, on the other hand, didn’t give you anything more than a universal “point and hit” mechanic. As a result, I see players in OD&D campaigns try all kinds of wacky stuff. (Similarly, when I run D&D 3^rd Edition for new players or players less familiar with the specific combat rules, they’re generally far more flexible and creative with the actions they choose. As they learn the specific mechanics, though, I see a lot of these creative players zone in on those mechanics.)

This doesn’t mean Mechanics Bad™. It just means that you should be aware of the influence mechanics — particularly a small number of mechanics focused on specific activities — can have on the players, and make sure that it’s an influence you WANT them to have.

Conversely, if you’re a GM or a player and you’re aware of the influence different game systems can have on your roleplaying and scenario design, then you might also realize the advantage of playing lots of different RPGs: Each one will teach you new things about playing RPGs, giving you new angles for viewing the experience and new solutions to the problems you might run into at your table. Some of those influences you’ll want to discard. Others will only be appropriate for the game they’re designed for. But you’ll find that others endure, being carried from one game to the next and enhancing all of your campaigns.

There is also, of course, the influence of much larger and significant rules. (Or perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to them as sub-systems.) But those wield their influence differently, and usually more noticeably, then the little rules.

Back to Reactions to OD&D

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 43E: Snakes in a Whorehouse

They found a secluded corner on the northern side of the building, well-shielded from prying public eyes, and drilled through. They found themselves in a long hallway that looked to run almost the entire length of the building. On the long opposite wall of the hall were roughly a dozen secret doors – or, rather, the back-side of secret doors. Although their construction clearly indicated that they were designed to be lay flush with the wall on the opposite side, from this side their nature and operation were plain. The hall was capped at either end by similar doors.

They had finally breached the walls of Porphyry House.

“The Porphyry House Horror” is an adventure by James Jacobs published in Dungeon Magazine #95. I scooped it up when I was looting scenarios from Dungeon during my original campaign prep: I skimmed through 40-50 issues, looking for stuff that I could incorporate into the campaign. While the PCs ended up skipping several adventures I’d pulled for Act I of the campaign, there’s a bunch of cult-related adventures that I used to add depth to Wuntad’s conspiracy/gathering of the cults in Act II.

(For some reason I started referring to the adventure as “Porphyry House of Horrors” in my notes. I had a real Mandela Effect moment when I went back to reference the original magazine for this article.)

I thought it might be useful to take a peek at how I went about prepping this adventure.

The original scenario was 30 pages long. My prep notes for the scenario, on the other hand, fill a 45-page Word document. That might sound like I completely ripped the module apart and put it back together, but that’s not really the case.

• 25 pages of my notes are actually handouts I designed for the players. (I’ll talk more about these later.)
• 10 pages are stat sheets for the adventure. This was partly so that I could use the stat sheets for easy reference (instead of needing to flip around in the adventure), and also because I wanted to adapt the stat blocks to an easier to use format.

So you can see that only about ten pages of material was actually making substantive changes to the module. And most of that was mostly dedicated to adding stuff. “The Porphyry House Horror” is just ar really great adventure. There’s a reason why I snatched it up.

LINKING THE ADVENTURE

After making a list of all the cult-related scenario nodes in Act II of the campaign — some pulled from Monte Cook’s Night of Dissolution, others from Dungeon Magazine, a couple from Paizo adventures, several of my own creation — I went through and made a revelation list with all the leads pointing from one scenario node to another.

While getting ready to prep Porphyry House, I went through this list and wrote down all the clues that needed to be available there, forming a clue list for the adventure:

• Porphyry House to Final Ritual.
• Porphyry House to Temple of Deep Chaos.
• Porphyry House to Kambranex (Water Street Stables).
• Porphyry House to White House.
• Porphyry House to Voyage of the Dawnbreaker.

(Actually, a couple of those may not have been on the list yet. I may have discovered them while prepping Porphyry House and then added them to the list afterwards. If so, however, I don’t recall which ones were which.)

At this point, these connections would have been almost entirely structural. They represent my broad understanding of the macro-scale connections between the various cults — i.e., Porphyry House is using chaositech that would be sourced from Kambranex — but I don’t know what the specific clues actually are yet. This is functionally a checklist of blank boxes I need to fill while prepping the adventure.

INTEGRATING THE ADVENTURE

With these links forged, I made a copy of “The Porphyry House of Horrors” and slid it into an accordion folder along with other adventures I had sourced for the campaign. I then didn’t touch the adventure two years. There were, after all, a bunch of other adventures for the PCs to tackle before they would get anywhere near Porphyry House.

According to the file info, I began prepping my notes for Porphyry House at 7:56 PM on August 15^th, 2009. This makes sense: That’s also the date that I ran Session 41 of the campaign, during which the PCs decided that they wanted to go to Porphyry House. I would have written the campaign journal that session, and then begun prepping the scenario.

(It’s likely that I had actually reread the original adventure after Session 40, when the PCs first heard about Porphyry House. At that point they would have clearly been just a couple sessions away, and so I would have begun preparations.)

The first thing I did was figure out how to integrate the background of Porphyry House into the campaign. In this case, it was pretty straightforward:

• Porphyry House is a whore house.
• Wuntad’s first chaos cult was based out of Pythoness House, another whorehouse.

Sometimes integrating a published scenario into an ongoing campaign is tricky. Sometimes it’s more like drawing a straight line.

• “The Porphyry House of Horrors” is set in the town of Scuttlecover. I just dropped that material and picked a location for Porphyry House in Ptolus.
• I also dropped the entire original adventure hook. (I knew that the players would be getting hooked in to the cult’s activities there via the leads from other cult nodes.)
• The original Porphyry House cult was dedicated to Demogorgon. I simple palette-shifted that to a Galchutt-focused chaos cult.
• Erepodi, a minor background character from the Pythoness House adventure, was made the founder of Porphyry House. (I knew I would need to add her to the scenario.)
• Wulvera, the cult leader from the Porphyry House adventure, was given a tweaked background that synced with the lore from Ptolus and my own campaign world.
• I also knew that I wanted Wuntad to keep a guest room at Porphyry House. (This would be a useful vector for clues, and also be in accord with the Principles of RPG Villainy.)

With those details determine, I put together a very brief (roughly half a page) timeline summarizing the canonical version of events for my campaign. The original adventure also included a Gather Information table, and I adapted this to fit the new lore. (This filled the other half of that page.)

ADVERSARY ROSTER

The next thing I did was the adversary roster.

The first step was simply reading through the adventure and listing the location of every denizens. Sometimes this is all I need to do to have a ready-to-use roster, but in this case there was a lot of tweaking and adjustments that were made as I was developing the scenario. (For example, I was adding Erepodi to the adventure.)

The most significant change I made here was deciding that Porphyry House would have a different adversary roster during the Day than it would have at Night. This sort of major shift in inhabitants can be a huge pain in the ass with a traditionally keyed dungeon, but is incredibly easy with an adversary roster.

The roster was quite large, so I put the Day Roster on one page and the Night Roster on another.

PREP NOTES

I then worked my way through the location key, making diff notes as described in How to Prep an Module. In an adventure with 46 keyed locations, I made changed to 15 of them. These were almost entirely:

• Adjusting lore (e.g., shifting the original Demogorgon references)
• Adding handouts (see below)
• Making the adjustments required for integrating the adventure (as described above)
• Adding clues to flesh out the adventure’s revelation list (mostly relating to the horrific ritual Porphyry House is making preparations for)

For example, in the original module there are four rooms all keyed to Area 16:

16. DOCUMENTS AND LIBRARY

These rooms store both idle reading material for the yuan-ti to relax with, as well as exhaustive records of their guests. None of the records have any indication that Porphyry House is anything other than a well-managed and profitable brothel, although the documents make for interesting reading; it seems that the yuan-ti keep records on everything their customers ask for…

I took advantage of this by re-keying these rooms as 16A through 16D:

• 16A was the Customer Records
• 16B was a Dark Reading Room
• 16C was Wuntad’s Guest Quarters
• 16D was Erepodi’s Quarters

In re-keying these chambers, I did things like:

• Flesh out the customer records to (a) add clues to some of the central revelations in the scenario and (b) add leads pointing to other cult nodes (e.g., sums being delivered to the Temple of the Fifty-Three Gods of Chance and “Illadras at the Apartment Building on Crossing Streets”).
• Add a selection of chaos lorebooks to the Dark Reading Room.
• Add some of the items Wuntad took from the PCs at Pythoness House to his guest room.
• Added a handout depicting a mosaic floor (with chaos cult symbols).

And so forth.

One other interesting change I made here was greatly increasing Porphyry House’s size through the simple expedient of changing the map scale from 5’ per square to 10’ per square. (I liked the slightly more grandiose dimensions this gave Porphyry House, and it also better fit the dimensions of the building I’d selected on the Ptolus city map for the location.)

HANDOUTS

Anyone familiar with the Alexandrian Remix of Eternal Lies knows that I love props. (I created over 300+ of them for that campaign.) I love handing stuff to the players because the players love it when you hand stuff to them.

For Porphyry House this included:

• A map showing the location of Porphyry House.
• Magic item references. (I frequently write these up — often including an image of the item — for any magic items the PCs find that aren’t from the DMG. It’s a fun way to make the loot feel extra special, and it’s a super useful reference the player can use for their new items.)
• Graphics depicting various NPCs and monsters. (Got a cool picture in your adventure? I will not hesitate to rip it out and give it to my players, including Photoshopping it if I need to.)
• Various bespoke lorebooks, such as Wuntad’s Notes on the Feast of the Natharl’nacna and Wilarue’s Flaying Journal. (As noted above, there were also chaos lorebooks — copies of which were spread around throughout the campaign — to be found here.)
• Various correspondence, such as Letter from Shigmaa Cynric to Wuntad and Instructions to the Madames.

Prepping handouts like these is often the most labor-intensive portion of my scenario prep, but it can also be the most rewarding.

WRAPPING THINGS UP

In practice, of course, a lot of this work is iterative: I’m updating a room key, taking notes on the handouts found there, and then bouncing back to work on more room keys. Or maybe details in one of the letters I’m writing will cause me to go back and add additional details to the background notes and timeline.

But, ultimately, this is pretty much all there is to it. At the end of this process, I had a really fantastic adventure that felt as if it had been custom-written for my campaign and my players.

Campaign Journal: Session 44A – Running the Campaign: TBD
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 43E: SNAKES IN A WHOREHOUSE

October 25th, 2009
The 24th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

INTO PORPHYRY HOUSE

They found a secluded corner on the northern side of the building, well-shielded from prying public eyes, and drilled through. They found themselves in a long hallway that looked to run almost the entire length of the building. On the long opposite wall of the hall were roughly a dozen secret doors – or, rather, the back-side of secret doors. Although their construction clearly indicated that they were designed to be lay flush with the wall on the opposite side, from this side their nature and operation were plain. The hall was capped at either end by similar doors.

One of these doors gave out into a large, vaulted chamber decorated with hangings of red and blue curtains, risqué paintings, bonsai trees, and erotic statuary. The floor here was covered with a deep, soft carpet that felt as if they were walking across a very firm, forgiving bed. The air was filled with the subtle scents of jasmine-tinted incenses.

In one corner, a stair of intricately carved porphyry curved up through the ceiling. Along one wall a large, elegantly curved desk of gleaming mahogany extruded itself from the wall. And at the far end of the chamber broad, curved steps rose up to a massive pair of daised doors.

The door they had come through was, in fact, disguised from this side. There was also another door of polished wood not far along the same wall. They had clearly entered the “public” area of the brothel.

Crossing the luxurious chamber they ascended to the double doors and eased them open, only to find themselves entering an even larger chamber. The massive hall was dimly lit with glowing tiles in the ceiling and a set of four braziers around a wide, shallow pool of water. Several other pools of heated water off to one side bubbled away, filling that end of the room with misty vapor. Dozens of large cushions were strewn here and there. At the far end of the chamber was a raised balcony lined with a wall of tall of mirrors. The place smelled of sweat and deeper, muskier odors.

Directly opposite their entry was a matching set of doors. Passing through these, they found themselves in a second antechamber similar to the one they had passed through before. Tee even confirmed their suspicion that there would be a matching secret door in the far corner of the room.

Poking around the desk in this room they found papers detailing registrations for various orgies held in the house. Oddly, despite regular orgies scheduled multiple times per week, there was a gap in the registration records indicating that no orgies were currently being held. The next orgy – which was apparently going to be of prodigious proportions – was scheduled on the 18^th of Noctural.

(They noted that all of the records here were for female participants, but a quick double-check in the opposite chamber found that a similar gap existed in the registration for men.)

The secret door in this room also passed into what appeared to be a service hall. A quick check through the other door revealed a luxury-filled hallway lined with matching doors, leading them to conclude that the secret doors probably led into the individual brothel chambers. They didn’t see any need to go into those, and they were fairly certain that what they were looking for wouldn’t be found in the brothel’s public halls.

A little way down the luxurious hall, however, Tee found another secret door in the wall opposite the doors they suspected led to bedrooms. This seemed likely to take them where they wanted to go, so she slid open the panel.

This revealed a large, barracks-like chamber containing four beds (each with a large chest at its foot). The creatures lying in the beds, however, were serpentine monstrosities.

Tee pulled out the onyx ring Nasira had enchanted with an aura of magically enforced silence and motioned the others into position. As the serpent-men started stirring, Agnarr and Tee moved to one bed; Tor to another. While Nasira kept a watch in the hall, Tor swung his blade down and sliced the serpent-man in half.

Despite its  rapid dismemberment, however, the blood-spewing thing’s upper half squirmed towards him. Agnarr and Tee managed to destroy the one they had chosen by slicing it into ever smaller portions, but the arterial sprays of blood were beginning to wake the others—

And magical darkness suddenly descended on the room.

Tor felt his way over to another of the beds and started hacking blindly in the darkness, but the serpent-man who had been bedding there managed to slip away.

Tee stumbled out the far side of the darkness zone and found the two remaining serpent-men trying to regroup by the far door. One of them had grabbed a small bag of black leather and silver stitching that had been slung over one of the bedposts. Now that it was open, the bag glowed from within with a neonesque, blood-red light. The serpent-men were dipping their weapons into the bag and as they drew the weapons out they were drenched in the living light.

Tee, unwilling to give them a chance to slip through the door and raise the alarm, threw herself at them. With their backs literally to the wall, the serpent-men fought with desperation – and the red light on their blades burned her blood where it struck. But Tee was able to hold them long enough for Tor and Agnarr to join her, and then the tide turned and the serpents were cut down.

They took the strange bag to Ranthir, who identified it as a witchlight reservoir. Such reservoirs were designed to hold small quantities of naturalistic magical energy. Empowered with exposure to sunlight or moonlight or with sacrifices of blood or wine, such reservoirs could fuel minor effects. This particular reservoir, as they had seen, was designed to graft its power onto melee weapons. Ranthir was also able to determine that it was currently empowered with human blood, which raised some unpleasant questions about where such blood had come from.

They quickly stripped down the room. They found several small caches of gold, but were deeply impressed with the high magical quality of the equipment they found. (In many ways, they were thankful that they had surprised the serpent-men while they hadn’t been wearing or using any of it.) It was somewhat disturbing, however, to see that each of the serpent-men had a suit of the porcelain-and-gold armor they had seen the human guards wearing at the front of the building (complete with human vizor). Were those guards also serpent-men? Somehow disguised in plain sight by their armor?

They locked the door the serpent-men had been rallying near (in the hope that it might slow down any accidental discovery of the blood-stained chamber), and headed back through the orgy registration rooms to what they believed would be a second, mirrored barracks on the opposite side of the building.

They did, in fact, find a secret door where they had expected one. But on the other side, instead of a second barracks, they found an opulent lounge of low-lying couches. On one of these, another of the serpent-men lounged, a hookah lying at its side.

Tor leapt forward and beheaded the creature while it was still trying to rise out of its drugged stupor.

With the onyx silence ring still on her finger, Tee moved to one of the doors on the far side of the lounge. Easing it open, she peered into the galley of a long kitchen. Around a table at the near end two more of the serpent-men were playing a desultory game of cards.

They rushed the table: Tee’s blade literally pinioned one of the serpent-men to the table, while Tor chopped off the head of the other.

Heading further down the length of the kitchen they discovered that it opened up into a larger area with a dozen or so humans sleeping in rags on the floor. All of the humans wore bands of green stone around their wrists, which Ranthir identified as slave rings. A slave owner wearing a master ring could use these slave rings to deal out punishments (including death) and even look through the eyes of his slaves.

Waking the slaves, therefore, was too dangerous. They decided to quietly retreat out of the kitchen before they alerted the entire compound.

Running the Campaign: Prepping Porphyry House – Campaign Journal: Session 44A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index