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The Denizens of the Library (March 4 2025)
Mar. 5th, 2025 09:29 amLast night's session with the 13th Age Library Kids had some fun bits I wanted to share on the nature of gamemastering.
For some framework, the PCs are members of an off the books troubleshooting squad overseen by a high ranking member of the imperial court of the Dragon Empire (called the Denizens of the Library as they clandestinely meet with their patron in various rooms of the vast imperial library). Their first story arc (first session July 13, 2023) opened with them picking up some people from the Scholia of Law, a temple of Ptah in the far northern edge of the Empire with instructions to bodyguard two of them back to the capital city of Axis.
This location came from an adventure published in a 1986 issue of Dragon Magazine (The House in the Frozen Lands by James Adams), which I've been holding onto for 20+ years and never had the chance to run. It's an investigative module where the PCs are sent to collect a wise teacher from the Scholia join the court of a newly installed nobleman, only to find that teacher missing and everyone acting oddly... because the temple was taken over by the Sept, a tribe of northerners led by a wizard (and weretiger) who made strategic use of a mirror of life trapping.
These sorts of investigative adventures from the 1980's... well the thought technology on how to design and present them to the GM to present to the players hadn't been built yet. We get a LOT of detail on the Sept, it's history, its internal conflicts, and other things that the PCs might learn through judicious use of spells too high level for them to cast, but no instruction on how mystery stories work, which require changing gears from an emergent story to a more traditional narrative.
So in order to make my life easier if and when the game got to the point where I would run it, I decided to set it up: the PCs are picking up the future heir to the Empire (who is incognito) and a daughter of the Sept, which has just made a treaty with the Empire. Now if I do pull the trigger on this the Pcs know the place, the players, some of the background, and have a decent chance of solving things.
Anyway, this last session: the Pcs have again encountered daughter of the Sept, who is now an agent of the Archmage and much less of a bigoted jerk. She has asked them to resolve a local mystery in a northern city. One red herring in this led the players to a vampire crypt where they saw the vamp had both a temple to the same pantheon that the Sept worshipped and a big silver mirror. I'm running this from the adventure Practical Magic by Jason Nelson, Dungeon #113 and while I did change the deity in the module away from the Greyhawk pantheon to the Finnish one worshipped in the North past the Empire, I hadn't even noticed the mirror being there until we were playing and I reread the adventure.
Even that might not have mattered except one of the PCs decided to go talk to the Sept member about the vampire and her temple, which got the Sept member deeply interested, especially when the mirror was mentioned. The PC helpfully sketched out a map of the lair, where everything was, and agreed that the Denizens shouldn't move on the vampire until they completed their more time critical mission.
Had I planned for the eventual "Just before the coronation the future emperor sends the Denizens to the Scholia to fetch his old teacher only to find their old acquaintance has taken it over"? Yes. Had I planned for them to become kind of allies with the old acquaintance? Not really. Had I planned on the PCs FINDING THE MIRROR OF LIFE TRAPPING FOR HER? No. No I had not. And one of the players who's PCs wasn't in the room asked "Why is she sounding like she's been looking for that mirror her whole life?"
There are reasons, Mr. Banks. There are reasons.
My biggest problem now is wrapping this up, doing a brief interstitial, and then getting to the pre-coronation adventure before the two kids who are seniors this year move off to college.
For some framework, the PCs are members of an off the books troubleshooting squad overseen by a high ranking member of the imperial court of the Dragon Empire (called the Denizens of the Library as they clandestinely meet with their patron in various rooms of the vast imperial library). Their first story arc (first session July 13, 2023) opened with them picking up some people from the Scholia of Law, a temple of Ptah in the far northern edge of the Empire with instructions to bodyguard two of them back to the capital city of Axis.
This location came from an adventure published in a 1986 issue of Dragon Magazine (The House in the Frozen Lands by James Adams), which I've been holding onto for 20+ years and never had the chance to run. It's an investigative module where the PCs are sent to collect a wise teacher from the Scholia join the court of a newly installed nobleman, only to find that teacher missing and everyone acting oddly... because the temple was taken over by the Sept, a tribe of northerners led by a wizard (and weretiger) who made strategic use of a mirror of life trapping.
These sorts of investigative adventures from the 1980's... well the thought technology on how to design and present them to the GM to present to the players hadn't been built yet. We get a LOT of detail on the Sept, it's history, its internal conflicts, and other things that the PCs might learn through judicious use of spells too high level for them to cast, but no instruction on how mystery stories work, which require changing gears from an emergent story to a more traditional narrative.
So in order to make my life easier if and when the game got to the point where I would run it, I decided to set it up: the PCs are picking up the future heir to the Empire (who is incognito) and a daughter of the Sept, which has just made a treaty with the Empire. Now if I do pull the trigger on this the Pcs know the place, the players, some of the background, and have a decent chance of solving things.
Anyway, this last session: the Pcs have again encountered daughter of the Sept, who is now an agent of the Archmage and much less of a bigoted jerk. She has asked them to resolve a local mystery in a northern city. One red herring in this led the players to a vampire crypt where they saw the vamp had both a temple to the same pantheon that the Sept worshipped and a big silver mirror. I'm running this from the adventure Practical Magic by Jason Nelson, Dungeon #113 and while I did change the deity in the module away from the Greyhawk pantheon to the Finnish one worshipped in the North past the Empire, I hadn't even noticed the mirror being there until we were playing and I reread the adventure.
Even that might not have mattered except one of the PCs decided to go talk to the Sept member about the vampire and her temple, which got the Sept member deeply interested, especially when the mirror was mentioned. The PC helpfully sketched out a map of the lair, where everything was, and agreed that the Denizens shouldn't move on the vampire until they completed their more time critical mission.
Had I planned for the eventual "Just before the coronation the future emperor sends the Denizens to the Scholia to fetch his old teacher only to find their old acquaintance has taken it over"? Yes. Had I planned for them to become kind of allies with the old acquaintance? Not really. Had I planned on the PCs FINDING THE MIRROR OF LIFE TRAPPING FOR HER? No. No I had not. And one of the players who's PCs wasn't in the room asked "Why is she sounding like she's been looking for that mirror her whole life?"
There are reasons, Mr. Banks. There are reasons.
My biggest problem now is wrapping this up, doing a brief interstitial, and then getting to the pre-coronation adventure before the two kids who are seniors this year move off to college.
