Good morning.
Last night, I was the Dungeon Master (DM) for my home group of a Tabletop Role-Playing Game. We’ve been playing in this campaign for over a year and a half, and finally, FINALLY, the group is beginning to get some answers to the quest they’ve been on.
Throughout the time, I’ve had two players switch characters they’ve been playing, and one player drop out. Their “abandoned” characters have each had their own reasons for leaving the party and going on their own more personal quests.
Since they left however, no one from the original three who started the quest remain, and only one who joined the quest after the first adventure remain. Thus, it was Callie, my girlfriend, playing as Catrana Half-Leaf, the half-elf druid, who knows what’s been going on for a majority of the campaign. The one new player, and two new characters have had to learn the story so far, through a wonderful telling of the tale by Catrana during a meeting with an Ancient Brass Dragon.
In last night’s session, they finally discovered the source of nearly all the adventuring they’ve done so far, and we ended on a wonderful cliffhanger for next week. They learned who a mysterious letter writer is; someone who wrote letters and sent them, along with dark journals to seemingly random peoples for unknown reasons. Next week, I suspect they will ask questions to finally get some answers.
I’m so thrilled that the party is finally at a point where they might begin to understand why they’ve been doing what they’ve doing for over a year and a half of real time, and over three months of in-game time. It’s like the author of a book receiving feedback that someone is finally getting to the point in a mystery novel where the guests of the manor are beginning to suspect that one of the house guests, or servants were the ones to commit the murder. But who? And why? Well my party will find out next week.
As a writer, it’s a joy to walk people through the world I’ve created, and it’s even more exciting for me to finally reveal secrets that I’ve kept for over a year and a half. It’s mysterious and illuminating, both for my players and for me, given that this is the longest running adventure I’ve ran, and that I’ve known the answers to some of their burning questions for over a year.
In the spirit of revealing information, I’d like to start writing small posts, similar to this one, that outline the story so far of The Dark Journals, and I think I’ll be doing so not here on the blog, where poetry, personal updates, and daily musings have come to be expected. I’m also making an effort to do as many poetry posts as I can. So I think I’m going to write, and release my game adventure stories on my Patreon.
It is my hope to eventually develop the stories into a full campaign module, but for now, hopefully a thematically appropriate recounting of the stories might be enough to make people curious.
If you’re interested in reading about the home campaign I’ve been running for over a year and a half now, please visit patreon.com/skoda and become a Patron, where you can show your support for my writing and creative efforts, and get Patron-Only access to the short posts where I will outline the events of The Dark Journals Campaign. Those posts will begin to get published starting on Wednesday January 1st 2020.
There are many times as a writer, that I feel my work goes sort of under the radar. It’s alright, since I write my blogs for whoever will read them, but it’s so different when I’m writing content for tabletop RPGs. I know that my players will experience what I’ve written at some point or another. Some content goes unseen because I write far more than I need to and my players don’t always explore everywhere or talk to everyone. More often than not, they walk through that which I have created, and it’s my job to ensure they have an engaged experience.
It’s also been fascinating for me to watch them get clues about the identity of someone mysterious that they haven’t met or come across until last night. The clues were far and few between, and not ever enough for them to be able to pin down a particular individual. However, they were sufficient for the party to start to get an idea of who or what might be involved, though it seems they had not. Callie said she had a hunch when they began to venture down a concealed spiral staircase to a meeting chamber, but up to this point, they had not connected the dots, which was partially my intention.
I do as little railroading as I possibly can in my role as the DM. For those who don’t know, railroading is when a DM shoves and forces their players to take a particular path through the story. If for instance the players want to leave an important city, all they need to do is hop on a boat and change from brave adventurers trying to save the world, to a band of pirates on the high seas. A DM who has written a brilliant story within the city, may railroad the party by preventing them from getting onto a boat, or stopping them some other way. I think that this takes away from player agency, and in a world where you’re pretending to be someone else, living a different life than your own, it doesn’t feel good to be told what to do and where to go.
Of course, railroading can be easily avoided by creating a compelling story, with hooks and leads that make the players want to take actions that drive them further along the plot and to the people and locations a DM has painstakingly woven together. Between small clues, obviously lead plot hooks, and some time where the players could decide to do whatever they wanted for a few in-game months, I think my players have had reasons to follow along, and their own reasons for using their time as they pleased. In a vast created world, some places are too dangerous for characters of lower levels, and thus when they had a few months to wait, they elected to visit a particularly dangerous island simply to explore. It was not meaningless, despite not being related to the primary quest line, but they underestimated the challenge of the island, and overlooked some of the story leads and unrelated yet undiscovered knowledge and items found on the isle.
My players prefer a story line that grips them tightly and compels them to act along it. We had a discussion after the island venture, and my players don’t value being able to go wherever and do whatever as much as I do when I’m a player. Finding the balance between railroading and the experience your players want just takes time, and since we’ve been playing together for so long I’ve got a good handle on it now.
Writing for this group is excellent, because they’re a good mix of people from experienced to budding intermediacy, and they all pay attention to slightly different things and their characters have a diverse take on things they see and do. It’s a dream for a DM and a writer to have players and readers who are really interested in what they’re writing and creating, and who want to have reasons to be escorted through the story. It’s particularly excellent for me now that I get to begin to share some secrets that I’ve had to keep hidden for so long.
If any of my players read my blog, thank you for being excellent, and patient. It can be frustrating to not have all the answers, but you’ll have answers to so many questions come next week.
