Notes For The Last Two Sessions + Commentary (Patreon)

Patrons already saw most of these, but here's all of them, available for everyone!

My commentary;

The Spring

I invented the Balance Spring and the idea of someone trying to steal the Chronicle for two reasons.

1: I wanted to reinforce "The City of the Great Game" notion. The idea that Capital is a city of action and intrigue.

2: I wanted to make sure the players understood "there are a lot of factions." Not just the seven that run the city, there are MANY thieves' guilds and wizards' orders and churches and you can't ever assume you know all of them.

I did not intend the encounter with the Spring to advance the plot. I just wanted it to help set the tone. I think it did that pretty well! I had no idea WHY someone might want to steal the Chronicle except my awareness that it is one of the most valuable non-magical tomes in all Orden, for reasons we discussed onstream last night. I still don't know. I still don't know who hired them. I may never know, although this is unlikely. It's more likely I'll be working on some other faction and go "Ah-hah! It was these guys!" And the players will never know it wasn't them all along.

Because the Spring uses "makeshift boys," I knew there was no danger the PCs would learn too much about this guild. But I also wanted to make sure they'd learn a little. 

They got to "meet" the guildmaster; Grandmother, aka The Watchmaker. I like making sure the players meet lots of different kinds of people, different ages, different backgrounds, so deploying a wizened old crone was a lot of fun. A farcical, comedic stereotype, but that's something else I enjoy. They meet "real" people like Captain Cinzia, and they meet cartoon people. It's still D&D, after all. :D

Downtime

Getting the players from the Interrogation Scene to the Pharaoh's Dream was rough, it felt undramatic and I was conscious of how unwatchable those scenes were. But I can't be too bothered by that, I don't find D&D very watchable in general.

But once the players were at the Dream I felt like things picked up. They got answers to a bunch of questions thanks to the Concierge, and then got a bunch of offers and I just really like playing all these NPCs. Just improvising dialog and personality is a huge part of the fun for me. 

Something you folks missed was the players, after the stream, trying to sort of reason out who works for who in the city and they were using the Broadsheet as the source of some of this information.

They just assumed that what they read in the Broadsheet was true, that the quotes in the paper accurately represented those nobles points of view. And this was JUST AFTER saying "everything they said about us was lies!" Which is not strictly true, as you know. :D

I found that delightful, and said so. "How fairly do you feel YOU were represented in the paper?" That shifted the entire conversation as the players refactored everything they read through this new perspective. For the first time, I think they started to see Capital through a political lens. Anna put together that the Broadsheet Guild is a different major power from the Fulcrum. So what you read in the paper is going to represent the Broadsheet Guild's interests. That was a huge leap forward, I think. The players are starting to "get" Capital.

Finally, Lars had something of a revelation last night after the stream. He said "I'd been thinking our goal should be to unite these different factions against Ajax."

I said "Lars, you've played a lot of Diplomacy. How do you win a game of Dip?"

That was another paradigm shift. Boots would say "Unite them? Hah! You might be able to conquer them..."

Many Jobs, Many Factions, No Right Answer

I also explained for the benefit of the new players how I run D&D;

"There are three jobs in front of you. And many factions vying for your attention. There is no 'correct' job. There is no right answer. Any job you pick, I will do everything I can to make sure there are complications and unforseen consequences. That's my job, as DM. If a job looks straightforward, it absolutely won't be. 

There is no correct faction to work for. House Alvaro may seem like a good choice, because they are Anti-Ajax, but you will discover that in fact they are Pro-Alvaro. Each faction has their own agenda, but each agenda comes after "we want to win."

Also, the clock is always ticking. If you take one contract, maybe the others will still be available when you get done. But the plot will have advanced.

This is about setting expectations. It could be fun for the players to discover all this stuff, but it could also be really really frustrating. "We did X because we assumed Y!" My days of being "Ah-hah! Now you're stuck with Z!" Are long past. I think the fun is everyone seeing the complications arise, not in screwing players who didn't know any better.

Hope you folks have fun watching. See you next Wednesday!