EDRulebook: 15 Gamemastering Earthdawn

CREATING ADVENTURES

The denizens of Earthdawn live in an exciting, dangerous time filled with opportunity for adventure. The player characters live for adventure; the prospect of journeying into danger and triumphing over it lures them like the song of a siren. Whether searching for a forgotten kaer, guarding an embattled prince against enemies, or confronting a Horror in its lair, the player characters prove themselves the heroes of this age. A gamemaster must create adventures that challenge the players’ wits even more than their characters’ swords and spells, and should reward good roleplaying as generously as lucky dice-rolling.

[Swordmaster] As soon as a gamemaster assembles a group of players, he should determine their interests so that he can tailor adventures to appeal to them. A gamemaster who creates adventures solely for his own enjoyment may find that his adventures flop. But because the players probably know less about the game universe than the gamemaster, they may have only vague ideas about what they want to do—don’t expect complexity and depth at first. Your carefully crafted adventure may lead the characters on a wild goose chase, but if they would rather go straight for the treasure than explore the world of Barsaive and they find a way to do so, you as the gamemaster must let them play it their way. Once they get a few adventures under their belts, and their characters’ life stories take shape, the players will gradually develop better-defined goals and ideas. Rather than just looking for treasure, taking on a Horror, or dealing with the Blood Elves, they may want to hunt down a particular enemy, find a lost love, take revenge on a troll clan that did them dirty, or find a specific teacher or special piece of equipment. The gamemaster can and should build his players’ ideas about and goals for their characters into major themes in his adventures.

Encourage the players to write out their characters’ histories, including background on each character’s family and friends. In addition to using other sources, the gamemaster can draw on those histories to develop adventures that get everyone involved.

Though experience is by far the best way to learn how to write a good adventure, the following suggestions and tips may help the gamemaster take care of certain vital story elements. The main elements of an adventure include objectives, motivations, and opposition.

OBJECTIVES

The most basic goal of every character in any adventure is survival. Beyond that, the team usually accepts a specific task: find a lost artifact, rescue a kidnap victim, pay off a debt, kill or capture a villain, or foil a villain’s plan. The stated objective or objectives may differ from the real objective; in fact, the group often changes its goal in mid-adventure. For example, the adventuring group may believe they were hired to accompany an emissary from Throal to a troll clan in the Twilight Peaks, until they discover that the emissary plans to betray the clan. If one of the characters belongs to that clan, and perhaps even if not, the team adopts a new objective: foil the emissary’s plan.

When writing an adventure, keep track of the group’s objectives and give characters a chance to meet them. Offer them assignments or let them find clues that reveal the objectives. Characters who accomplish their objectives earn Legend Points, and so fulfilling objectives becomes an important aspect of the game.

MOTIVATION

Suppose the gamemaster creates an adventure and sends a messenger to the group with an offer that will catapult them right into the middle of it all. After listening to the messenger, the characters say, “Thank you for the intriguing offer, but we cannot accept it at this time.”

If this happens, the gamemaster needs to ask the players why they don’t want to tackle the adventure. Is it too dangerous? Does it offer too little reward? Some characters might prefer payment in kind to silver. Magicians may ask for teachers or supplies, Adepts may want training, a Weaponsmith might bargain for the use of a smith shop, and so on. If the whole premise of the adventure bores the players silly, it may be better to scrap the game in favor of a bull session on the kinds of adventures the players want their characters to get involved in.

The more information players give the gamemaster about their characters’ lives, beliefs, and psychology, the more material the gamemaster can work with to build motivation into the adventures. As the players get more involved in the game, their characters will acquire friends, enemies, and obligations, and probably develop quirks. All these factors make good motivators for the adventurers, and the gamemaster should keep them in mind.

OPPOSITION

Most adventures involve opposition, and the world of Earthdawn provides a wide array. In some adventures, the opposition may be as impersonal as an impenetrable forest, a curmudgeonly innkeeper, or an obscure magical effect; these obstacles may have nothing to do with the goal the adventurers strive for, but simply exist to make their lives difficult. In other adventures, the team may need to face and defeat a personal enemy in order to achieve their objectives.

Opposition from individuals or small groups roughly equal in size and power to the adventuring group can get personal very quickly, and a good enemy becomes a valuable resource for the gamemaster in writing future adventures. Depending on how thoroughly the adventurers trounced him, such a foe may want to repeatedly oppose the team simply to get revenge. A personal enemy can turn adventures into a series of duels between the player characters and their relentless foe, building up to a final showdown. The same enemy may also show up in unrelated adventures, just to strike at the characters any way he can.

Gamemasters may find the following descriptions of typical opposition useful.

The Horrors

The most obvious, and probably most frequent opposition in Earthdawn are the Horrors. These dreadful, other-dimensional beings ravaged the world during the Scourge, and many of them managed to remain behind after the world’s magic ebbed. Though most Horrors have a bestial shape and nature, they possess great intelligence and cunning. They create schemes, lure victims into danger, and perpetrate a multitude of evil acts. The Horrors know no bounds.

The Theran Empire

Though the Therans no longer have free rein to force their rule, customs, and desires on the people of Barsaive, they remain a strong presence in the southern part of the province. The Therans control virtually all of Barsaive’s southwestern corner, and gather reports on the rest of the province from numerous spies and agents working undercover in Barsaivian cities and towns. The Therans want to regain total political control over Barsaive, and will attempt any action that might advance their goal of domination.

The Mad Passions

Though your player characters would stand no chance against the Mad Passions themselves, they may meet and battle questors of the Mad Passions who work toward wicked ends. The questors of Dis, Raggok, and Vestrial willingly use whatever methods necessary to promote worship of their patron Passions. Though not a common situation, some questors of the Mad Passions serve Horrors. Some of these individuals have been corrupted by a Horror, and some simply follow their own misguided ambitions.

Foul Folk

Tragically, a number of people all across Barsaive have felt the Horrors’ touch and some have succumbed to these corrupt masters. These foul folk act toward ends no one understands, and often their seemingly innocent behavior lures adventurers to their doom.

DEATH AND EARTHDAWN

Death is a touchy subject in any roleplaying game. Nobody likes it when their favorite character pushes up daisies. In Earthdawn, flowers can spring up almost anytime and anyplace. Characters can die before they even figure out what is happening. Despite all the special rules designed to guard against dying, and despite the advantages of magic, player characters will die during an adventure.

If necessary, the gamemaster may cheat to keep characters alive. If the gamemaster believes that a character did everything right and the player just had bad luck rolling dice, the character need not die. Knock the character out! Break one of his limbs! Whatever! Don’t let a well-developed character die just because the player rolled a 4 when the character needed a 5. The gamemaster can and should decide that such a character survives long enough to get medical aid.

The same goes for the best gamemaster characters. If a villain you spent hours designing gets hit by a lucky blow, bury the body under a collapsing building or make it suffer some other disaster that “no one could possibly survive.” Then bring the villain back a few months later, ready to wreak revenge against the player characters. (Remember, if you didn’t find the body, he isn’t necessarily dead.)

FLESHING OUT THE STORY

Now that you’ve written out the basic building blocks of your adventure, you need to bring it to life. Adding color, controlling the characters’ preparation time, creating gamemaster characters to fit various situations that may come up, and deciding how much to tell the characters about what’s really going on will help turn your story outline into an exciting roleplaying adventure.

Adding Color

A good roleplaying adventure must engage the players’ imaginations. Players need to see the scenery, hear the thwack of an arrow striking near their heads, feel the sweat trickling down their necks. Some players embrace this part of the game and end up doing most of the work. Other players refuse to play along, and make the gamemaster want to tear out his hair. Most players fall somewhere between these two extremes. A wise old gamemaster once said, “Don’t tell them what’s happening, show them!” Avoid reciting descriptions in a dull monotone. Overact! Ham it up.

When possible, illustrate the characters’ surroundings using a display with miniatures. It takes much less effort to draw a wall with a door in it than to explain the layout verbally. Visual aids will help the players keep track of where they are, and cuts down on the arguments about who is standing where, who gets trapped by the Fire Wall when the magician casts it, and so on.

Use props to add a realistic feel to the game. For example, when the group finds a scroll outlining an evil Nethermancer’s plans, don’t just read it to them. Write it out before the adventure and hand it to them. If it suits your own plans or allows a character to use a skill, make parts of it illegible or missing. Every such prop speeds up play and adds color.

Make the gamemaster characters as colorful as possible. A lot of gamemasters act out their gamemaster characters, complete with funny voices. Being a ham helps. Steal material, attitudes, and speaking styles wholeheartedly from comic books, movies, television, and fiction. If you want to play one of a character’s supporters as Groucho Marx, go ahead.

The way the players roleplay their characters should also add color to the game. Players should try to create a distinct character and stay in it. Adventures can also incorporate subplots to advance the adventurers’ life stories when they are not fighting Horrors or researching magical items. Does a certain character have a love life? If not, does he want one? Who do the characters hang around with? How do they spend their spare time? Try to develop a few of these details in each adventure to add color and depth to your story.

Masterminds And Equalizers

The gamemaster can create two specific types of gamemaster characters: masterminds, to add complexity to the story, and equalizers, to give himself options for getting players out of a tough jam.

Consider making every adventure you write, even the small ones, part of some vast conspiracy. The mastermind behind the conspiracy could be an individual or an organization. Drop occasional clues for the player characters that hint at such conspiracies, even if a particular adventure has nothing to do with any far-reaching dastardly scheme. As ideas for the mastermind(s) present themselves, make notes. Eventually, the group may encounter the mastermind directly, and will be more than a little surprised to find that their latest opponent already hates their guts because they have unknowingly spent months foiling his plans.

Sometimes the characters get into more trouble than they can handle alone. If the gamemaster wants to bail them out, he can add an equalizer to the adventure. An equalizer can be a friendly member of an angry mob, a wandering Swordmaster, a former enemy turned traitor, and so on. The gamemaster should have a set of pre-generated characters able to step in and tip the balance in favor of the player characters should an emergency situation arise.

The equalizer can also cover for missing players in a pinch. Say the player who runs the group’s magician is sick and does not show up. If the team stands to land in serious trouble without a magician, the gamemaster can substitute a handy gamemaster character magician to work with the group.

The gamemaster may try letting a player run the equalizer, but should be ready to take control of the equalizer’s actions if the player does not remain in character.

Preparation Time

Once the characters receive the message (or see the injustice, or meet the maiden in distress) and accept the objective, the players will want time to prepare for the adventure. By this time, of course, the gamemaster should have finished all his preparation. Most players want to spend a lot of time getting ready to take on anything that looks like a tough job. If allowed, they may easily spend a whole game session just getting ready. Don’t let them.

In the world of roleplaying games, player characters rarely book adventures in advance. Most adventures take place in response to a message of distress or some urgent matter. In these cases, the gamemaster should limit the players’ preparation time to make the game more realistic. But even for adventures that the characters plan for their own benefit, shortening the actual time spent preparing makes the game more immediate and therefore more exciting to play. Unless the players really enjoy the research-and-report process, and you don’t mind giving them that opportunity, have a certain amount of information available for them. Rather than letting them spend time hunting for it, pass it on through a supporter or a friend. If the characters want to double-check what they hear or do their own research, compress the time in which this occurs. Have a character who wants to conduct research or talk to supporters make an appropriate test and use the result to decide how much info he or she finds. Then cast some doubt on the credibility of the information. Like most people, characters must guess at whether or not what they’ve seen or learned represents the truth. If characters want to acquire special equipment to deal with a potential problem, send them to the shops and decide for them whether or not they find the desired equipment in the time available.

Ideally, you should give the team a little prep time, but don’t let them keep the curtain from rising. If they’re working under a time limit, let them know. After all, how long will it take the hypothetical evil Nethermancer to complete his summoning ritual? The characters can’t wait too long to stop him. If they’re not moving fast enough, turn up the heat. Give them an overriding reason to get the heck out of town. Perhaps they are one jump ahead of arrest and execution for a crime they can’t prove they didn’t commit, or perhaps some deadly enemy has discovered their whereabouts and is closing in. Whatever the reason, make the team want to get going as fast as possible.

Secrecy

Many situations in an Earthdawn game benefit from a bit of secrecy. Sometimes simply announcing a Difficulty Number for a particular test tells the players an important piece of information that they shouldn’t know. One way to avoid revealing the gamemaster’s secrets in such a case is to have the player roll the appropriate dice for the test and announce the results. Without disclosing the Difficulty Number, the gamemaster then determines if the test is successful and describes what happens.

However, even asking a player to make a dice roll can give away information. For example, if the gamemaster only asks for a Perception Test when the characters are about to trigger a trap or ambush, the players will soon figure out that connection and will know what to expect the next time the gamemaster asks for the test. To keep the players guessing, it doesn’t hurt to occasionally ask every player to roll dice for no reason at all: nod sagely at the results, or say “Hunh, I thought so.” A little secrecy can be a powerful tool for helping a gamemaster stay ahead of his players.

You can also keep the players guessing by avoiding too much detail in describing important people or things. A wealth of detail about an object, person, or place tips off the players that the gamemaster spent a lot of time designing him, her, or it, and may let them know what to watch for before the gamemaster wants them to know. For example, when the team meets three gamemaster characters of whom one is the villain and the other two are just his goons, refrain from saying, “You meet three fighters from the troll clan. The one on the left is wearing expensive, well-made clothes and an opal ring on his left ring finger, and is carrying a large battle-axe. The other two? Oh, uh, they’re obviously fighters, too.” This kind of description immediately tells the characters to watch out for the troll on the left. Either describe all three in relative detail, not revealing which character to watch, or introduce all three as “troll fighters, you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all,” and let the players ask for more information.