EDRulebook: 15 Gamemastering Earthdawn

GAME AIDS

To make an adventure run smoothly, the gamemaster can use several strategies to keep track of story lines, gamemaster characters, combat, treasures, and the zillion and one other things that go into an adventure. The following describes the most useful physical aids in running a game.

DISPLAYS

Visual aids are the most useful game aid a gamemaster can have. They allow the players to see exactly where they are at any point during the adventure, and help settle the inevitable (and distracting) arguments about who stands where, who got hit by what spell or weapon, and so on. Draw the area or location of your adventure on a big pad of paper, or use any of the various plastic mats made for gaming that feature hexagonal or square grids. To show the placement of characters, enemies, creatures, and so on, use 25mm-scale metal miniatures. These add a lot of atmospheric detail and are small enough so that you don’t need an auditorium to display a battle.

MAPS

Maps are powerful tools. A map of the area where the adventure takes place, even just a simple sketch with shapes showing landmarks, is darn near essential to the smooth running of a game. Try using two maps: one to show the explored area that everyone knows (share this with the players) and another that shows the locations of all those secret places you want to send the characters (keep this one to yourself). As the group discovers these secret locations, they can add them to the “public knowledge” map.

Maps of smaller places in which certain events take place (buildings, neighborhoods, and so on) are also important. Draw them or borrow them from other game adventures. Don’t be afraid to re-use them—just as in the real world, many buildings in Earthdawn have similar floor plans. Heck, if you’ve seen one cheap inn, you’ve seen them all.

GAMEMASTER CHARACTER FILES

Complete dossiers on generic gamemaster characters and/or the major gamemaster characters in a specific adventure can also help the gamemaster a great deal. Use a card file, notebook, computer database or any other efficient system to store profiles for supporters, family members, lovers, people with special skills or talents (magicians, merchants, sages), important gamemaster characters in your game, or any other character likely to play recurring roles in adventures. Easy access to these characters lets the gamemaster throw his players plausible left curves and helps keep the game moving.

If the profiles that FASA publishes keep showing up as characters or opponents again and again, players eventually become familiar enough with the bad guys’ stats to defeat them regularly, so creating your own variations on such character profiles pays off for your game.

AWARDING LEGEND POINTS

Players use Legend Points to improve their characters by increasing Attribute Values, adding ranks to talents, buying skills, advancing to a higher Circle, and so on. (See Building Your Legend) They earn Legend Points according to a gamemaster system called Legend Awards.

When designing an adventure, the gamemaster calculates the potential number of Legend Points each character may earn for the whole adventure by taking into account four elements: completing the game session goal, defeating creatures or opponents, acquiring treasure, and completing the overall adventure goal. Depending on how well the characters fulfill these elements, characters earn

Legend Awards, a number of Legend Points determined by the character’s Circle. Characters also earn Legend Awards for creative roleplaying and heroics, but the gamemaster determines these awards at the end of each session, rather than when designing the adventure. (See Assigning Legend awards).

The gamemaster awards Legend Points at the end of each game session, determining how much of the calculated Legend Award each player character has actually earned based on the events that took place during the session and how the characters handled those events.

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ASSIGNING LEGEND AWARDS

The Legend Award Table below provides the gamemaster with a standard for determining the Legend Point value of the four elements mentioned above, and for evaluating characters’ creative roleplaying and heroics during the session in terms of Legend Awards. Guidelines for determining specific Legend Award numbers for any of these elements appear in the descriptions of those elements following.

Based on a character’s Circle, a single Legend Award should award a number of Legend Points that falls within the range given in the Legend Award column. For example, a Second Circle character should always receive between 75 and 100 Legend Points per Legend Award. The total number of Legend Points received from all Legend Awards in any one game session should not exceed the upper limit given in the Total Legend Points Per Session column.

LEGEND AWARD TABLE

Circle	Legend Award	Total Legend Points Per Session
1	50–75	100–450
2	75–100	150–600
3	125–150	250–900
4	125–200	400–1,200
5	200–300	600–1,800
6	300–500	1,000–3,000
7	500–750	1,500–4,500
8	750–1,000	2,000–6,000
9	1,000–1,500	3,000–9,000
10	1,500–2,500	5,000–15,000
11	2,500–4,000	8,000–24,000
12	4,000–7,500	12,000–40,000
13	7,500–10,000	18,000–60,000
14	10,000–20,000	25,000–100,000
15	20,000–30,000	40,000–150,000

For each game session, the gamemaster should design a Legend Award for each character for each of the following elements, described in detail below.

1. Completing session goals
2. Completing the adventure goal (give the character a bonus of 2 Legend Awards)
3. Defeating creatures or opponents
4. Acquiring treasure
5. Creative roleplaying and/or heroics (one-half Legend Award for heroics, up to a full Legend Award for creative roleplaying)

Completing Session Goals

Most adventures last for more than one game session. A session goal functions like a chapter break in a book; the story has not been resolved, but the current action reaches a conclusion. Session goals may be simple objectives such as the following:

Reach Parlainth
Contact the Guild agent in Bartertown
Win the airship race
Eat supper with the Prince without committing a serious social blunder.

Sessions may also be cliffhanger ending points, rather than objectives. Examples include:

Discovering the secret door leading down into the labyrinth.
Flying the airship into the heart of a storm to shake off Theran pursuit.
Uncovering the identity of the traitor in the ork scorcher tribe.

When the characters reach a session goal, the session ends. If this leaves your players clamoring for more, then you have them right where you want them—but not until next session.

Completing Adventure Goals

The gamemaster should design adventures around goals toward which the player characters strive, and each game session should bring them closer to achieving these ends. The overall adventure goal could be retrieving a specific treasure, producing evidence of treachery, discovering the identity of a murderer, or convincing an ork cavalry tribe to work for your village rather than for a rival. Achieving the goal is the climax of the adventure.

Give your players the Adventure Legend Award at the end of the session in which the characters accomplish the adventure goal. Do not award a Session Legend Award in the same session in which you bestow the Adventure Legend Award; the adventure goal becomes the goal for that game session. Because most session goals represent steps on the way toward fulfilling the larger adventure goal, accomplishing the adventure goal earns the characters 2 Legend Awards.

Defeating Creatures And Opponents

Characters receive Legend Points for defeating creatures and opponents—and defeating them does not necessarily mean killing them. If the characters defeat creatures that you have set up as their opposition, award Legend Points for defeating them. If the player characters engage in wanton butchery of creatures or gamemaster characters never intended as opponents, you should cheerfully ignore their indignant pleas for Legend Points.

The number of Legend Points that each creature is worth appears in each creature’s description in Creatures. The gamemaster should distribute Legend Points earned by defeating creatures and opponents evenly between all player characters, dividing the number of Creature Legend Points by the number of characters in the party. At the gamemaster’s discretion, if one or two characters in the party contribute little or nothing to the defeat of the creatures or opponents, the gamemaster may divide the total Creature Legend Award by the number of characters who actually did the work.

In the only exception to the above rule of thumb, if a player character defeats a creature in single combat, with no help from any other character, the character who defeated the creature receives all the Legend Points for that creature.

Each session should provide about a Legend Award’s worth of Creature Legend Points per character. If all player characters in a group hold the same Circle, simply choose an appropriate Legend Award from the range given for that Circle in the Legend Award Table. If the characters hold different Circles, determine the average Circle number of the players and choose an appropriate Legend Award for that Circle. For example, if a group of four player characters are all Circle 5, the gamemaster consults the table and decides that the Legend Award for creatures will be 250 points per character. This means the gamemaster should include creatures worth a total of 1,000 Legend Points, or 250 x 4, for each session. The gamemaster should feel free to adjust this formula to suit his game; the ranges given on the Legend Award Table simply provide a good benchmark.

Acquiring Treasure (versus Loot)

Everything your player characters carry away from defeated creatures or other opponents is loot. However, treasure is the only kind of loot worth Legend Points. Characters acquire treasure through heroic acts; characters who claim legendary treasures soon become legends themselves. Treasure is represented by goodies that people expect heroes to acquire; bits of nasty monsters, forgotten items from legend, magical weapons or talismans, gems snatched from the hoard of a Horror. Every sentient inhabitant of the world of Earthdawn recognizes the presence and power of magic, and regards those who wield magic weapons and talismans with the awe and wonder befitting a living legend. Characters do not acquire treasure by lopping off an ork mercenary’s head for his pay. That isn’t heroic, so that silver doesn’t count as treasure—it’s plain old loot, and carries no Legend Points.

An adventure should provide a payoff of one Legend Award’s worth of Treasure Legend Points per character, and should include the treasures that many creatures possess. When you are deciding what creatures you want the characters to meet, remember to note any treasure those creatures carry and include it in your total Treasure Legend Points. Creature treasure is listed in each creature’s description in Creatures.

Creative Roleplaying and Heroics

Players sometimes play their characters with particular zest, entertaining the group with their antics and coming up with ingenious ways out of difficult situations. If you feel a player contributed something special to the game session, award his character a number of Legend Points up to one half of a Legend Award for that contribution. We suggest two categories in which players can earn bonus Legend Awards for their characters: creative roleplaying and heroics.

Creative roleplaying includes coming up with good ideas, plans, or tactics for the group. Players who deliver a magnificent line at the right moment, solve the puzzle, or discover a particularly twisted use for a spell would all qualify for this bonus. Gamemasters can also give characters bonus Legend Awards for sticking to their character’s personality traits even when doing so puts the character at risk. A player who keeps his character true to himself only when it is safe to do so is missing part of the point of roleplaying. Award characters up to a full Legend Award for convincing roleplaying.

Heroics are the actions of high adventure; running underground rapids rather than taking the roadway, or holding off orks by setting a bridge on fire and then fighting the enemy on the burning bridge until the last possible moment. This is the stuff adrenaline rushes are made of. The gamemaster may build opportunities for heroics into the adventure, or the players may discover them on their own. Any character who throws himself into heroics should earn up to one half of a Legend Award.

Total Legend Awards

The gamemaster should give Legend Awards for reaching session goals, defeating creatures, obtaining treasures, and creative roleplaying/heroics on a session-by-session basis. Make the adventure goal Legend Award only at the end of the story; don’t give partial Awards for approaching the adventure goal. This “lump sum” Legend Award emphasizes the story’s climax; the big finale gets the big award.

Each character should earn between 2 and 6 Legend Awards per game session. Characters can only earn the maximum of 6 Legend Awards in the session in which they accomplish the adventure goal, and then only if all of the characters play well. On average, players should earn 3 or 4 Legend Awards per session, including one for achieving the session goal, one for defeating creatures and opponents, one for acquiring treasure, and up to one for creative roleplaying and heroics. Adjust the Legend Awards to suit your gaming style; for example, you might want to award more than the suggested Legend Points for acquiring treasure and fewer for defeating creatures. Remember, however, that keeping the per-character Legend Award total within the bounds described here will help you maintain the balance of your game.