The Spark

I have absolutely no recollection of what spark led to the development of this adventure, other than some pretty ordinary tropes associated with witchcraft. The adventure has a timeline in the background, which the bad guys aspire to keep—that’s always been true. The player characters have the opportunity to interfere with this timeline if they can. The timeline may be the only bit that has existed from start to finish, though minor changes happened in the last cycle.

As a concept, for me, a timeline works well as the basis for running a game, especially when you plan to improvise up from simple details. That’s always been a handy approach for me. I like to have a set of events, personalities and locations, along with endgame outcomes and goals that should never resolve if the PCs have anything to do with it.

Pacing

In a much earlier article, I referenced the possibility of using a countdown mechanic. However, I think it could be simpler to use a calendar and clarify that if you travel around London looking for vague clues, you can expect to spend a morning or afternoon doing just that.

It compares well with my current GMing of the Delta Green campaign Impossible Landscapes; to acquire some clues, you must invest a swathe of game time in the search. The outcome will be one piece of information. In that time, you will have sorted through ninety-nine pieces of dross to find that one thing. If you want a clue, your agents will need to work for it—what do you want to do?

That research approach also needs clarity on the who and the where, when, and why. For example, do you assign more than one Agent to a search of the docks? Is there any particular street or establishment that you include—or, indeed, anywhere that you exclude? Does the search occur at night when the neighbourhood clientele will be notably different to early morning or mid-afternoon?

Adventure Time

I’m enjoying the process of making the focus and approach of each adventure for The Dee Sanction a little different.

While Ex Libris has a linear path and a map, Window of the Soul had a map with events and no clear direction. Gong Scourer has a hidden course (the timeline) with a web of potential information sources that might be accessible depending on the who, where and when of activity. And, of course, Lost in Translation (in the Core Book) was a mystery site/escape room.

This has also always been true. We’ll see whether I translate other old playtest adventures into new published mysteries and investigations.

Release

This third stretch goal adventure, The Gong Scourer’s Baby, has been released to Kickstarter backers of The Dee Sanction.

It will release to Dweller and higher tier Patreon supporters in a week.

It will release to the public in a couple of weeks through the DriveThruRPG website.

Once all five stretch goal adventures have been gathered together, we’ll see release as a single volume (PDF) on All Rolled Up.

In that iteration, you rolled 2d6 and needed to roll a 7. Simple.

I wanted a game that had a mechanic that clearly set out the stall for the sort of characters you be playing. Ordinary people with less hope of survival than your average fantasy hero.

For a little while, I tinkered around with poker chips, beads, handmade cards, playing cards, and even the possibility of a special die. At a session in Milton Keynes—one of those infamous Concrete Cows, so worth attending—I ran a session with Phil Masters and I think he was the one who commented on the poker chips. Or something else that I was using at the time.

The comment was perfectly valid—that you should avoid using some element for a game that isn’t going to be easy to bring along for an ad hoc session. If you need to remember something special, then you probably will lose a chance to play—or whoever owns the game will.

It probably wasn’t poker chips. I can’t recall.

That being noted, I have since focused on trying to make the game as accessible as possible by keeping it simple. The current game uses polyhedral dice—the sort a gamer will have—but will work as well with a deck of cards. The rules are pretty simple and you can probably improvise characters if you don’t have the rules with you.

Three Resources, three broad Abilities/Skill (linked to a Background, an Occupation, and a Focus), a special Favour or talent (like a minor power or a simple cantrip), and three Hits. Go.

If you’re feeling generous, the group have enough opportunities to re-roll a bad throw as there are people playing at the table.

Oh, and let them have the kit they need to be useful, but something personal that has some special meaning but little value.

Simple. But it has changed so many times to reach this point, and only this year have I finally settled on a static version of the system. I’m happy with it for now, but you never know.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK. 

I ran two adventures, both of which I’d run before. ‘The Gongfermor Deception‘ has been run at least four times now, and I don’t think it has proceeded the same way on any of those occasions.

The adventure has a timeline in the background, to which the bad guys aspire to keep. The player characters have the opportunity to interfere with this timeline, if they can – though it depends on what information they can uncover.

I think I could benefit from applying some kind of countdown mechanic to this game so that I have the timeline forefront in my mind and give the players a greater sense as to their progress. I daresay seeing the counters slip away would add to the stress. The actions they take along the way occur within a confined location and getting a grip of distance and time expended wouldn’t be too hard.

I recently read (and posted a review at RPG Geek of) Levi Kornelsen’s Mechanisms For Tabletop Roleplaying. The short supplement offers five interesting mechanics to add elements to an existing game, one of which is a Countdown Stack that might work well in introducing this. I’ll have to give it some consideration.

The other adventure – ‘The Holy Wax Infant of Prague‘ – has more of a sandbox environment within which the events unfold. The characters have less pressure to face, but a wider range of options to consider. In investigating the mystery around the disappearance of an important relic, they have a whole valley of suspect people and locations to consider.

I ran this adventure at Dragonmeet and it ended quite differently to the one this weekend. It ended with a very different culprit to the original – and in writing this up, it will be very much a place with a detailed list of places and possibilities. I allowed the players this weekend to guide their own destiny and their actions gave form to the outcome.

In the end, they found themselves running for their lives from the rending claws and gnashing teeth of evil spirits. Finding solace in a church, they desperately called for the intervention of the angelic host to save them – and pulled off a credible success by slaying the unholy host with heavenly fire.

Both adventures ran well to time. The ‘Infant‘ ran 5 minutes short of the 3-hour slot, while the ‘Deception‘ closed 15-minutes off four hours. In both instances, the players managed to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

I really like the way the second session (Deception) ended, as it would have made the perfect start to a campaign, while definitely offering a single-session conclusion. The characters discovered a place of significance that could have served as the basis for long-term investigation and complications. Here, they walked away as Walsingham’s agents sealed the way with a thick black wax disc, bearing the insignia and motto of The Dee Sanction.

Quite satisfying.