Last time, we played a brief session one which was cut short by technical difficulties; the player characters were approached/kidnapped by Thomas, a cantankerous dwarf who explained that a barrier between the gods and the physical world was weakened, and he wanted them to destroy that barrier to allow the gods access to their world. But then Aurix, an awkward human/kobold rescued/kidnapped them and explained that Thomas was in fact a red dragon who couldn't be trusted. Aurix let slip that they were a gold dragon and that the other good dragons were divided, asking for help bringing the others together. Aurix also suggested that the group, who seemed to be designated by fate as those who would decide the outcome of the situation, leave the barrier damaged, which would empower the good people of the world to be strengthened by leaking divine power (even though this would also means that evil people would be empowered too). Tired of strange people directing them, Aururoa teleported herself, Brokk, and Lethanin to the realm of the silver dragon, believing that the silver dragon would be the close ally of Aurix's they mentioned, and arrived in Talon Gorge. This was a surprise, as they knew that Aurix's ally, Wing, was to be found in Vestry, a city to the east of Talon Gorge. Nevertheless, the group decided to investigate Talon Gorge and search for the silver dragon.
When we picked up this session, the group pressed on into Talon Gorge, seeing lots of destruction and marks of conflict; they also saw a concerted effort amongst the citizens and guards of the city to rebuild and begin again. Curious, the group asked a nearby ranking guard, Amber, about what had happened in the city. Amber explained that the city had seen a complicated civil war--fearing an assassination plot, the former king of Talon Gorge had invited many new guards into his official entourage of palace guards. But some of the new guards were infiltrators who assassinated a few members of the royal administration and later killed the king. Unable to permanently resurrect the king, the city fell into chaos. Some of the guard and citizens fought to defend the old kingdom and raise the queen to power, and others fought to bring down the monarchy in favor of an anarchist city. In the end, a massive battle raged that destroyed a great deal of the city, and the eventual compromise was a representative democratic council and a great purging of corrupt guards from the government. She also mentioned that during the battle, which happened largely around a clocktower at the center of the city, a great silver dragon had appeared and fought in the battle. [These events were the outcome of my first serious campaign, and my players at the time divided over what to do, leading the royal supporters and anarchists who fought.] Amber asked the group to help in any way they could with the rebuilding of the city. The group asked about the dragon and the clocktower, requesting access to investigate the clocktower; Amber was willing to give her name in support of their investigation, especially after Aurora cast a spell that magically restored a great stretch of the area's roads and buildings. Along the way to the clocktower, Brokk helped several people who were struggling to help rebuild parts of the city, impressing a decent number of people they encountered. Aurora grew wary of the situation, and she and the others asked what was really going on with the situation they'd become embroiled in.
They arrived at the clocktower and used Amber's name to get access; Brokk also had to do some smooth-talking to get the guards positioned at the clocktower to allow them past without too many questions. Brokk acknowledged that they were looking for signs of the silver dragon, and one of the guards requested that if the group found the dragon that they punish it for the damage done to the city. At the top of the tower, little was to be seen apart from a panoramic view of the city and its surroundings. Seeking a direction, Lethanin began to play a magical song that helped him to spot chips in the stonework that suggested a melee took place at the top of the tower, which corroborated Amber's report that some members of the civil war fought there. Lethanin also noticed that the top of the tower was not maintained and thereby wasn't frequently used, but also found a spot where the shape of a bedroll had been laid out for a long time, though the bedroll itself was missing. Lethanin turned his attention to the countryside around Talon Gorge. The sea to the west, the ocean to the north, and the broader continent to the south were not helpful in terms of information, but he did spot a large walled estate in the middle of farmland to the east. Hoping to confirm that this strange estate could be worth investigating, Aurora cast a spell to track the silver dragon's location, and her spell indicated that the estate to the east was related to the dragon. Lethanin, looking to further investigate the tower, detected magic on the tower and saw a powerful magical aura where the bedroll had been, a mixture of bardic arcane energy with a bit of divine magic mixed in. Aurora and Brokk discussed the possibility that a member of the new council may be the dragon, given that powerful people tend to seek more power.
The group left the clocktower and was immediately approached by a young half-elven woman who introduced herself as Ollie. Ollie asked how they'd gotten access to the clocktower and what information they'd been seeking. Brokk was suspicious of her but could not tell one way or another whether she was being manipulative, so he suggested trading questions back and forth. Ollie called this a game and grew very excited to play. After a few questions, Brokk said that their reasons for investigating the tower were a secret, and Ollie grew even more excited, demanding to know the secret. Brokk insisted on privacy, so Ollie led the group to a quiet inn to talk. At the inn, the group paid for rooms and asked for access to the attic for privacy, which the innkeeper granted. In the attic, Brokk explained what Aurix and Thomas had told them--there is a leak in the barrier between the gods' realm and the physical realm, and they were seeking dragons to help deal with it. Ollie asked why they wouldn't just let the fissure in the barrier remain, suggesting that some of the more good-inclined gods could balance out the more evil gods. Brokk asked if she wanted Hextor, god of oppression and tyranny, around, and she called Hextor "an asshole." Aurora grew suspicious of this answer, asking about this strange way of talking about a god; Ollie said she knew Hextor followers who were assholes, but Brokk could tell she was being indirect. When the group became more direct and almost aggressive with their questions about her, Ollie said she felt threatened and asked to leave without their attacking her. Both the group and Ollie threw around some accusations--they claiming that she was playing games with them, and she suggesting that they meant to harm her and would seek help if they tried to attack her--and eventually, Ollie did slip out of the attic and disappeared into the city. The group discussed this strange encounter and considered the information they had at their disposal, coming to the conclusion that getting eyewitness accounts of the silver dragon's attack could be helpful. Aurora was very tense, believing that Ollie was up to something and couldn't be trusted, and Aurora instructed her cat familiar, Pumpkin, to stay at the inn and watch to see how many people came and went over the course of the day. The group resolved to return to Amber to get direction on finding a witness to the dragon attack.
They crossed the city and returned to Amber, who was directing the finishing touches on a clinic that Aurora and Brokk had helped to reconstruct. She thanked them heartily for their help. Aurora asked Amber to identify Ollie by presenting a magical image of Ollie, and Amber said she'd never seen anyone like that, which seemed odd given that Ollie had described herself as a concerned citizen--why would a citizen involved in the city's reconstruction be unknown to a major player in the rebuilding effort? Amber asked about what the group had learned, and they explained that there had been indications of a fight at the clocktower's top and then asked about the estate to the east they'd seen. Amber said it was just a shut-in, a hermit who the city couldn't contact. The group also asked Amber about eyewitnesses to the dragon attack, and she became deeply unsettled, explaining that she had seen the attacks in-person. Horrified by the memory, she described seeing scores of guards killed with precision by the dragon, and her shock at later piecing together that the guards killed had all been corrupt and violent towards citizens. The group asked more about the new system of government--she told them that each of the city's seven districts elects a representative to the council, who makes decisions for the city collectively. The group was in the dark about how royalists and anarchists fighting resulted in a democratic council, and Amber said it was a compromise that actually served the city's population. She mentioned Tru'usk, the key figure on the council who had led the city from toppled kingdom into rebuilding democracy, and that he was a former adventurer who'd become a philanthropist after retiring in Talon Gorge. The group decided to speak to Tru'usk, and Amber directed them to the new seat of government just further into the city. On the way there, Aurora tried to magically locate Ollie, and the spell indicated that Ollie did not exist, which she conveyed to the group, making everyone wary that someone or something was watching them.
The group arrived at the government seat. Tru'usk was hearing individual cases, helping an apartment building owner with rebuilding measures and directing a poor mother of two to community resources for food--Brokk also gave the mother a gold piece to help her get the food she needed for her children. Tru'usk then spoke to the group. Aurora gave a very silly introduction, which irritated Tru'usk, who was intent on helping people in an efficient manner and asked for what he could do to help the group. All three members of the party gave strange or evasive answers about their aims, and Tru'usk grew more frustrated. Lethanin asked about Tru'usk's commitment to the city, and Tru'usk gave a curt answer, clearly upset that his loyalty was being questioned. Tru'usk acknowledged that he had personally helped some of the guards who would go on to try to overthrow the kingdom and took personal responsibility, considering it his duty to help where he had done wrong. When Tru'usk patience wore thin, the group finally asked if he knew Nasimar, the name of the dragon they suspected they were chasing, and he said he'd never heard the name. Just as Tru'usk was losing his temper, Brokk and Aurora revealed that they'd helped with the rebuilding efforts, and Tru'usk apologized for being harsh but did insist on being allowed to help people with real issues. When asked, Tru'usk said that the hermit in the estate to the east was communicated with via notes on their gate. The group decided to leave, and Tru'usk attended to the now-long line behind them.
Still concerned about Ollie, Aurora tried again to track her, this time by determining her identity through a spell. The spell simply said that Ollie was a supernatural phenomenon, leading Aurora to conclude that Ollie was a god, a dragon, or a fey. The group ultimately decided to follow up on the hermit and drafted a note to them which read, “Greetings. We are an interested party hoping to obtain an in-person audience with you. What assurances would you need to facilitate this? Cordially, Twinkles, Strings, and Muscles." (Twinkles is a nickname Lethanin gave to Aurora, Strings is a nickname that Brokk gave to Lethanin, and Muscles is a nickname that Lethanin gave to Brokk.) The group decided to split up, with Brokk leaving the note at the hermit's estate and watching to see what happened while Aurora and Lethanin were to further investigate Ollie and the city. Brokk went to the hermit's estate and tacked the note to the gate, then hid across the road and settled in to watch for what would happen, planning to be there for 24 hours. But within minutes, a half-elven woman smoking a cigarette appeared and read the note, chuckling. She turned and faced Brokk despite his effective hiding in bushes and called him over to talk, saying she assumed he must be muscles. She agreed to speak with the group the following day on the condition that the group come alone. She identified herself as Jarvia, and she and Brokk spoke about the giving and receiving of chosen and given names. Brokk headed back to the city, seeking a smith to get a new weapon since he'd left his home without his trusty battleaxe.
Meanwhile, Lethanin and Aurora asked the innkeeper where they were staying about Ollie--when did she leave, and where did she go? The innkeeper insisted that they'd come in alone, gone to the attic, and that no one had left until they did so. When Aurora asked Pumpkin about who he'd seen come through the door, Pumpkin confirmed that Ollie had gone out and that only a few other people had passed in or out while the group was gone. Lethanin suggested that Ollie had been a projection or illusion of some sort and tried to trace the source of the projection, but he learned that Ollie had had a corporeal body when she'd been around them and was not a projection. Aurora admitted to Lethanin that Ollie could be a fey and was seeking Aurora, or perhaps was connected to a group of people who were looking for her, discussing parts of her backstory in relation to her knowledge that people are after her. Unsure of how to proceed, Lethanin and Aurora decided to go to a bar and grab some mead; Lethanin played a song to determine where to go and saw a vision of a tavern called The Ripe Peach next to a smithy called The Forged Hammer. They set out to find the tavern.
At the same time, Brokk reentered Talon Gorge looking for a smithy. He found a district that had been a whole row of smithies, though many had been destroyed, and one promising smithy was run by a racist Daltoner who was harassing non-human customers. Brokk decided that his best option was to go to a smithy run by a young dwarven girl named Moira, who waved him down. Brokk asked for a custom orcish-styled battleaxe, which Moira immediately began working on. The two talked while Moira quickly made the battleaxe with expert skill; Moira worried that creating weaponry did not help as much as it hurt, and Brokk worried that he, as someone made as a living weapon, was only able to do so much with intention, but Moira pointed out that the metaphor was flawed, as tools have purposes they cannot help but fulfill, and people have intention, which will always grant them choices. As Moira worked quickly and expertly, speaking all the while with comforting wisdom, Brokk began to grow suspicious that she was more than she appeared to be--Moira simply said that she could see her was uncomfortable and told me to keep doing the right thing since good surprises exist as much as the bad ones he was worried about do. Brokk paid Moira the very small sum she asked for in return for the battleaxe, which came out beautifully, and anxiously left. As he did, he saw that the smithy's name was The Forged Hammer, and Lethanin and Aurora ran into him on their way to The Ripe Peach.
And that's where we left off. We agreed that the characters catching each other up on what they'd learned in their time apart would be a good way to bring the players themselves back up to speed at the beginning of their next session, which it looks like may involve some shenanigans in the city and likely the meeting with Jarvia, the hermit outside the city. One thing that doesn't come across in this recounting of events is the mood of the session and the player reactions to NPCs. At the beginning, there was a kind of excited nervousness at the digital table--the players were itching to get going, learn things, and find the silver dragon. When Ollie wanted to know their business, they shared basically everything they knew. But after Ollie seemed strange and unpredictable, and as they learned she was more than meets the eye, things started to change. The player characters would scarcely share any details about their aims and knowledge with anyone. They grew nervous, suspicious, sometimes outright panicked. Aurora's player remained anxious out-of-game for over an hour after the session ended. The atmosphere was really tense in-game, and the players did a lot of nervous laughing and shaking their heads.
This was absolutely intentional. I've been dreaming this campaign up for a long time. Years, really. I have gotten so used to these games where the players are far more powerful and capable of anyone they meet, except potentially for a big bad who'd precisely matched to their level and capabilities. One thing I hadn't run, and haven't really seen a game run that has the players wildly outclassed. The idea for me stems from the notion that I like roleplaying as a style and dislike running combat. So how do you incentivize players to roleplay and investigate and avoid combat? You can talk to them out-of-game, sure. You can choose players who you know prefer roleplaying and dislike pure combat. But I dreamed of a campaign where talking and thinking were the only options, where combat was basically off-limits. And having a campaign where it's obvious that even though the player characters are very powerful (they're level 12 as of this session) but are still scarcely powerful at all compared to the people they're up against means that the players have to engage in a different way.
And let me be clear here--at no point in this campaign has a single NPC tried to overpower the player characters. Last session, Thomas was threatening, but he didn't take any actions that actually would have hurt the player characters. It's not that the player characters have been given reason to fear people around them. (And again, they're level 12--they shouldn't really be afraid of anyone in normal circumstances.) It's just the knowledge that things are weird and foreboding. They know that they're dealing with dragons. They suspect that the gods are involved. They don't really have any information on what's happening with concrete details. I mean, even just having Ollie defy explanation and the knowledge that supernatural things are afoot made the players pretty panicky. What I'm getting at is this:
This was our first full session. No combat happened. No threats were made. And by the end, a 7-foot orc-demon was terrified because a smith was really talented and kind. This is the kind of thing that's possible with the right campaign setup. With some creative engineering of the stakes and the storytelling, you can get genuine and strong emotional reactions out of your players without being overtly scary or over-the-top. I've argued that you can do it in the past while throwing in occasional combat and genuine threats, but this session has proved you can do it without anything but storytelling alone. We all know that most GMs get a thrill from getting a big reaction from players, from making the player characters have strong feelings about things--imagine the thrill I got to have watching three level-12 characters shaking in their boots because a couple strange people talked to them. This, to me, is what tabletop games are all about. We did some intro sessions to make the players see that their characters are powerful, and I dropped them into something that's a bit confusing and very hard to pin down, and they're in it. These players, all of whom are experienced, capable gamers, are freaked out in a way we all dream of achieving.
So what am I getting at? If you are a roleplaying-focused GM like me, don't discount the power of a good situational stressor. Aurora's player has been playing D&D for over a decade, and an NPC who she can't explain with the threat of the supernatural looming overhead made her freaked out out-of-game for an hour after the session. Brokk's player, a longtime player and DM, was reduced to nervous laughter when someone helped Brokk. And this is only the beginning. I can't wait to see where it goes from here. Just put your faith in your story and invite your players to meet you where you are, and you may be surprised by what comes out of it.
Next time on Of Gods and Dragons, the party will discuss options and meet with Jarvia, and who knows what else? I planned the very first session, but I went into this session with zero preparation. It's impossible to know what comes next. I know who Jarvia is as a character and what her motivations are, but everything else will be as improvised as this session was. I really can't wait. Until next time, happy gaming!
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