Sagiro's Story Hour Returns (new thread started on 5/18/08)

[Droid101]

Dranko stuff

Fair enough. At least you are staying in character. What else can a DM ask for?

 

[Zaruthustran]

So on the other side of the curtain is a horrible creature that has a thing for torsos, huh? I think I may know what it is.

-z

Grandmother alert: there is a PG-13 word in text on other end of link.

 

[StevenAC]

He turns to face the Black Door, and through it he takes one certain step.

Absolutely inspiring writing, Sagiro.

Inspiring enough, in fact, to prod me into completing the latest installment of the Collected Story Hour, which takes the story up to just before the Company's arrival in Bakersfield. Happy (belated) birthday!

So, are there any special celebrations planned for when the campaign celebrates its tenth anniversary in November?

 

[Everett]

Curious to know - does someone among the players often run Step and the other NPCs in the party, or does Sagiro run them himself? It seems to me that to run an NPC with such a clearly defined personality would be quite a task for the DM....

 

[LightPhoenix]

Not the first time has ever brought a tear to my eye, and certainly not the last... but damn Sagiro, that was incredible.

 

[Len]

Curious to know - does someone among the players often run Step and the other NPCs in the party, or does Sagiro run them himself? It seems to me that to run an NPC with such a clearly defined personality would be quite a task for the DM....

No reason the DM can't be as good a roleplayer as the players. My DM played a particular NPC cleric so well that we dumped him (the cleric, not the DM) and hired a different one.

In our group, cohorts are run by their leader's player and other tag-along NPCs are run by the DM.

 

[Sagiro]

Curious to know - does someone among the players often run Step and the other NPCs in the party, or does Sagiro run them himself? It seems to me that to run an NPC with such a clearly defined personality would be quite a task for the DM....

At a guess, I'd say that Step has been run by a guest player about 15% of the time (most often the husband of the player who used to play Kay), and Flicker has been run by a guest about 10% of the time. The rest of the games, they're mine. Morningstar's player and I tend to share Snokas -- I do more of the role-playing, but she handles him in combats and other tactical situations.

So, are there any special celebrations planned for when the campaign celebrates its tenth anniversary in November?

We've talked about renting a cabin, either in the mountains to the north, or the cape to the south, and having a marathon weekend session. But it's a hard thing to organize for a group of players as real-life-busy as we are. (And it's recently become harder, what with Aravis and Me/Kodiak having babies.)

And while I'm here: thanks again for the great PDF's! I still use them a few times in almost every planning session I do.

So on the other side of the curtain is a horrible creature that has a thing for torsos, huh?

Au contraire! Whatever's in there tends to take off the limbs and heads but leave the torsos. Not that that's more comforting to the denizens of Bakersfield.

-Sagiro

 

[Sagiro]

OOC, Sagiro, while the groundwork for Het Branoi was obviously laid a long time ago, I'm curious how much you knew when in what degree of detail. Were the Slices always part of the plan, or was it just created as random, unspecified dungeon site? Was Sagiro's specific fate as pawn of the Red Eye always intended? Did you always know that this room right here was the fulfillment of Step's prophecy?

I'm always very curious about how these things develop in long term story arc'd campaigns.

Fajitas, I’m going to answer you. But first, a warning. Readers who’d be happier not getting a glimpse of my game’s “sausage factory” may not want to read this post. That includes my players. While I confess I do a fair amount of long-term planning and foreshadowing, I don’t think I do as much as you probably think. This post my help confirm or deny your suspicions.

That said, I’m not about to say anything shocking, like “I decided what Het Branoi was in the half-hour before the Company went in, and was making up each Slice as they went.” And my players won’t be spoiled, though they may be disillusioned.

I'll put everything after this in a spoiler tag, so folks only read it if they really want to.


[sblock]
So...regarding Het Branoi: The very first time the Company heard this term, it was when the Green and Purple Eyes spoke their prophetic bit about needing the third Eye to “travel nowhere.” At that very moment, all I knew about Het Branoi was that it was a) a dungeon-like environment, and b) that I wanted it be an extended adventure. Also c) It was in Kivia – thus, the “beyond the Gate of Fire” reference. And d) of course, which was: there was an Eye of Moirel in it.

That was it – there weren’t 5 Hets back then, and I didn’t know what the Black Circle was doing in them.

At that point I knew the game was years away from the inside of Het Branoi, so I didn’t bother worrying about what was in it. As the moment grew closer, my first idea was that it was like the old “Baba Yaga’s Hut” module from Dragon Magazine – a bigger-on-the-inside house with a bunch of weirdly connected rooms. I even borrowed the issue from Dr. Rictus and had read through it, intending to keep the geography and refill the rooms. But as the day grew closer, and I had thought more about other parts of the plot, I realized that the module was insufficient for what I needed it to be. I knew then that there were many Hets, and I knew what the Black Circle had been up to. Het Branoi needed to have specific relations to the Abyss, and to Cleaners, and Baba Yaga’s Hut didn’t seem like it could do. So, I decided to keep the “bigger on the inside” thing, but expand on what that meant, and how to design it. I ended borrowing from the first computer game I had worked on – Ultima Underworld II – and started designing Het Branoi for real. By the time the Company got there, it was pretty much ready to go.

Regarding Sagiro: Similar thing. When he was knocked into the river and swept away, I knew I wanted him to come back after a very, very long absence. My first thought was that the fall gave him a knock on the head, erasing his memories and breaking him out of Darkeye’s thrall. I’d have him rescued by farmers and the Company would find him working in a field someday. But, heck, that was boring. Instead, I had him finding his way back to the Sharshun. When I thought about his relationship to the Sharshun, I realized what mission they would send him on: go get the last Eye of Moirel they needed to change history. Now, this was back when Het Branoi was Baba Yaga’s Hut, and I imagined that Sagiro had gone in (without an Eye of his own) and become captured by some power, and that the Company would find him, whimpering in a dark cell, but with knowledge about how to find the Eye. When Het Branoi changed, Sagiro’s role changed too. I had two main reasons for giving him his own Eye: 1) Having a hostile Eye gave me an excuse to “tie up” the two friendly ones, so as to answer more plausibly the question “why don’t the Eyes just solve the end of the dungeon for us,” and 2) so that I could pull the “you think you’re finding the Eye you’re after, but ha ha! It’s a different Eye!” trick.

Regarding Step and the Lightless Room: Ditto. When Step first shared his prophecy, all I knew what that there’d be some dark room in Het Branoi and that he’d have to do something heroic in it that would probably cost him his life. Because I didn’t tie myself down to details at the time, I was able to develop what that meant to mesh nicely with all the other ideas I had about Het Branoi in the interim.

So, the clear lesson here is: only flesh out the details when you have to. The longer you wait, the more creative flexibility you give yourself, and the more integrated you can make your plot.

Which is not to say, though, that there aren’t some story elements that I really did plan ten years ago, and which will soon be coming full circle. [insert evil laughter]
[/sblock]

- Sagiro.

 

[coyote6]

Sagiro, that's the way to do it, IMO.

 

[Everett]

Regarding the end of that spoiler, I just have to tell you that you're insane. Not that others haven't, since they have. But sometimes you have to say these things your own self.

You're not sane. There are elements of that which is generally felt to be sanity that do not commingle with your intentions behind this campaign. Which is to say that they aren't there. Not present. Lacking and underdeveloped.

You might want to know.