ZEITGEIST (Spoilers) Secrets of the Skull

RangerWickett · Nov 14, 2018

Stanfield benefits from the miniadventure Bonds of Forced Faith, and possibly from getting blown up and resurrected in adventure five.

arkwright · Nov 14, 2018

I did run Bonds with my group, though to avoid metagaming and spoilers I excised a decent chunk of his backstory from his character sheet. Maybe it's my fault.

On the bright side, I got to invent and then hint at Stanfield's former relationship and failed sinister plans with the Red Contessa, which led to her long vendetta with him.

Andrew Moreton · Nov 14, 2018

My plan for Stansfield is to show his philosphical similarities to the Ob. He knows what is best for Flint and Risur, no one else is capable of the same long term view as him. The way that he accepts the ruthless exploitation of the workers of Flint because he knows that in the big vision of the future he has this is the necessary price of progress. This the view that my players seem to be building of the Ob they are certain the Ob has a big picture plan and they suspect it is idealistic rather than just world conquest they base this on the fact that people like Lya and Ottavia are apparently genuinely good people who want a better world, however they think the Ob are clearly of the 'Can't make an omelette without....' and 'The end justifies the means ' schools of thought based on their actions in Flint.
Ideally when Stansfield is revealed they players will spot that he has always had the same goals and ideals as the Ob even while hiding his membership.

Zipster · Nov 17, 2018

One thing I've recently incorporated into my game that sort of ties in with this is that my PCs all have a sort of "legendary save" or action; a single-use, campaign "Oh

" button for the character; could prevent a death, land a needed hit as a crit, make a save or something along those lines when the tension is high and tough. No one has used it yet, but when they do I will flash them forward in the narrative to the battle on Reida against the Voice of Rot. The idea behind it all being that the PC, in the future, is seeing parts of their own time line, and at a penalty in their fight against VoR they can aid themselves in the past, in a moment they thought was critical. The descriptors will all be ominous and vague, never saying what or where exactly they are, but more along the lines of "You couldn't have thought things would go like this; but now, with this strange sky full of stars around you, and the massive skeletal monster before you, the severity of the situation dawns on you." Then, tie in the moment in game as to why the PC acts at that one moment in history.

My hope is that it'll do a bit of foreshadowing, and give me more ways to tie in VoR and the aforementioned writing on the bones and eschatol stuff.

Tormyr · Nov 17, 2018

Zipster said:
One thing I've recently incorporated into my game that sort of ties in with this is that my PCs all have a sort of "legendary save" or action; a single-use, campaign "Oh " button for the character; could prevent a death, land a needed hit as a crit, make a save or something along those lines when the tension is high and tough. No one has used it yet, but when they do I will flash them forward in the narrative to the battle on Reida against the Voice of Rot. The idea behind it all being that the PC, in the future, is seeing parts of their own time line, and at a penalty in their fight against VoR they can aid themselves in the past, in a moment they thought was critical. The descriptors will all be ominous and vague, never saying what or where exactly they are, but more along the lines of "You couldn't have thought things would go like this; but now, with this strange sky full of stars around you, and the massive skeletal monster before you, the severity of the situation dawns on you." Then, tie in the moment in game as to why the PC acts at that one moment in history.

My hope is that it'll do a bit of foreshadowing, and give me more ways to tie in VoR and the aforementioned writing on the bones and eschatol stuff.

Oooh, shiny! Let us know how that works out when it finally happens!

Andrew Moreton · Nov 17, 2018

I have been using hero points in my campaign and this sounds like a good explanation for them. Just need to think about retroactively giving some sort of feedback to the pc's who used them