GM's notes from putting together the 7th Sea Ussura campaign:
Note: This page has multiple spoilers for the 7th Sea campaign world, but all things that were revealed in the campaign itself. If you were a player in the campaign in question, you should feel free to read on, since I tried to keep out any spoilers that didn't come up during the game. I do reveal a lot of what was going on in my head behind the scenes, and it's possible that might spoil the feel of the game for you, but I certainly have no problem with you reading it, and indeed, if you feel comfortable doing so, I'd love to hear your reaction.
A long time ago (two years at this point? Three?) I decided I wanted to do a Ussuran adventure. Ussura had captured my attention from the first time the various Thean countries had been described, and I thought it would be fun to do an adventure there. I got the Ussura sourcebook, was delighted with the number of plot hooks in it, and started thinking.
And thinking.
I had some ideas, but nothing that really said, "Campaign" to me. You know, something with a beginning, middle, and an end. I had bits of a beginning, and that was about it. Years passed. Granted, I was also busy moving across the country. Fortunately, my gaming group is online, so I didn't have to leave them behind.
Finally, inky collated a bunch of posts about the 'No Myth' roleplaying style, as articulated by a guy who calls himself 'Le Joueur' (inky's collation is up at http://www.drizzle.com/~dans/rpg/no-myth.html). The 'No Myth' philosophy says, in essence, 'Make stuff up as you go, and it'll all work out OK in the end.' Something about the way he said it was a revelation to me. "Aha!" I thought, "If all I have is a beginning, I'll just use that and go from there!"
So I collected my thoughts about a Ussuran game, and came up with what I thought was some great ideas for a fun game set in Ussura. For the background, there was stuff with music, and magic, and one of the villains from the Ussura book, who the players might eventually confront. For the opening scene, it'd be winter, and the players would all be travelling in a caravan along a frozen river. They'd hear a haunting melody coming from the village up ahead, and then...
Well, in case I ever get to use the scene, I'll stop there. Because the next thing I did was ask people for characters, and from there, things took a left turn, and I never did get to my opening scene. Funny, that. It's a good thing I have an background in Improv.
One of the first characters to come in was one from a previous campaign: Charles Algun, an Avalonian sailor with a great backstory, written up here. The task I set before myself, then, was: what would get Charles to Ussura? The main thing about Charles is his father's death at the hands of Lavache, a Montaignian captain. Perusing his tale, and thinking about it as I commuted on the bus (I ended up doing a lot of game-plotting on the bus), I had a sudden inspiration: in the story, Lavache fires on Charles' dad's ship despite having Montaignian prisoners. What if he fired on the ship *because* of the prisoners? And one prisoner in particular? And what if that prisoner had survived despite Lavache's slaughter of everyone else? And lo, Louis was born. I decided Lavache was too important a villain to tackle in an introductory adventure (and besides, it would leave Charles with a finished tale, which isn't as exciting), so I took a bit character from the write-up (Lavache's first mate Devoe) and sent him to Ussura. And sent Charles after him.
There's an obvious hole in the above story, which I filled in kind of vaguely in my head at first--why did Lavache want Louis dead? From other 7th Sea write-ups, I knew that L'Empereur had killed the Heirophant, but that hardly anyone knew (mostly, I knew this from flipping through one of the sourcebooks at a gaming store, and seeing a picture of L'Empereur pushing the Heirophant down the stairs. I didn't actually buy the book ;-) I decided Louis was a partial witness to the event--he had heard the assassination, but wasn't sure what he had heard. He was getting antsy, and Lavache wanted him dead. Good enough.
Oh, and Charles also gave me another hook on his character's write-up: a disc of drachensian metal which he kept in a locket around his neck. It was fairly early on that I decided it would save him from being shot at some point, and that the heat from the bullet would activate some markings on it. Looking at my notes, it looks like I originally thought to tie it to Pyotr's backstory; I still may, though it's played out a bit differently than I originally thought.
Another character to come in was a new one: Raelynn, a young twice-blooded (Glamour/Porte) Montaignian ingenue with violet eyes. The violet eyes were one of the first things I heard about this character, so I knew they were important. Raelynn also had a nice backstory: a double named Fleur, who had stolen an artifact from her father. Raelynn's husband ran her through a little prologue (online--it's the prolog) where she was captured by Fleur's father's associates (thinking she was Fleur), then when Fleur's father sees her, he realizes it's not her, and tells his lackeys to have her killed (she knows too much, you see). She escapes, and goes on her way.
There were several things I knew I had to tie in with this story. First, and perhaps most obviously, there was Fleur herself. I decided from the get-go that Fleur would periodically be showing up, and I asked Raelynn's player if she would mind playing Fleur (unbeknownst to the other players) now and again, and she agreed readily. Originally, I made Fleur a full-blooded Porte sorceror, so that she could follow Raelynn around Ussura. This changed, later.
Secondly, there was the issue of Fleur's father. I already had one Evil Montaignian, and here was another one--clearly, I was going to have a big ol' Montaignian Conspiracy on my hands before much longer. And hey, Alderac had Montaigne at war with Ussura, so even that fit. So I added Fleur's dad to the Lavache/L'Empereur group in my head. This also changed later, when the conspiracy got too crowded. But I might put him back in again later if it seems useful.
Then there's Raelynn's eyes. This was going to be a Ussuran game, and the connection with 'eyes' and 'Ussura' is Sorcery--namely, a Ussuran sorceror's eyes turn bright green when given the gift of Pyeryem. And here I had a character with unusual colored eyes with *two* sorcerous backgrounds. Hmm. Violet = Red + Blue. Porte sorcerors don't have red eyes, but they do deal with blood a lot. Glamour sorcerors come from Avalon, and blue-eyed tow-headed northerners is certainly somewhat of a stereotype. That'll do: twice-blooded Porte/Glamour mages often have violet eyes, due to the mixing of their magics. I also knew something the player didn't, namely, that the sources of those two magics are largely incompatible with each other in the 7th Sea background. Playing that out could be interesting: the dual natures at war with each other. That hasn't been much of a theme yet, but it's there if I need it.
Raelynn also decided she wanted to be part of Sophie's Daughters, a female-based 7th Sea secret society. That worked out nicely, since the Daughters have a fairly big role in the goings-on in the Ussuran sourcebook. It's also nice because another character I had was Era, another character from a previous campaign, who was also a member. I now had a decent connection between the two, and, while I was at it, with Charles, since he and Era knew each other from Ghogg's campaign.
Now, Era was played by my wife, which actually presented a bit of a problem, namely, that because she and my play styles differ a fair amount (I'm more the sneaky/intellectual type, and she's the head-on Fight The Bad Guy With Something Sharp type) I kind of feel nervous about doing anything with her character. Her background wasn't terribly fleshed out, because that's not something that really interests her very much. And the bit she did flesh out (her family back home) she wasn't interested in me doing anything with. I think she probably doesn't trust me with that, and it's probably because I'm too close. See, with Charles, I feel free to take his father's death and turn it around a bit (have Lavache actually be after Louis). With Raelynn, I felt free to take Fleur and do with *her* what I wanted. But with Era's brothers and family back home, Sara wasn't comfortable with me doing anything with them. So even though she's one of two characters actually *from* Ussura, we didn't do much with that until the very end. But, you know, she's content to wade into fights with sword drawn, and occasionally turn into a bird. So as long as I kept supplying the group with enemies to fight, she was happy. So hey.
Raelynn's player's husband was next, with another character from Ghogg's campaign: Pyotr. Pyotr's a rough-and-tumble woodsman with a bit of a background: 'I killed a noble in a bar fight, and now I'm on the run.' After re-reading the Ussura book, I saw a great place to tie that in, and after a bit more thinking about the resultant situation, thought of a fun plot hook to weave into the adventure. I'm being vague here because while I've stuck periodic hints of my idea into the game, nothing's really come to a head yet. But Pyotr's character also knew Era and Charles, so he was another easy one to rope in to the group.
Finally, a bit late into the process, I got my two last characters: Sebastien and Alixandre. Seb and Alix created their characters together, and decided to be Montaignian diplomats in Ussura. Their idea was that they were sent to Ussura to an embassy somewhere, and then the war broke out, leaving them to be 'diplomats without portfolios', trying to do the best they could. Alixandre also decided to be originally *from* Ussura, but had moved away when he was five. Sebastien, likewise, was not a native Montaignian. So I knew I could do a bit with 'what are you loyal to--your chosen home, or your native land' with them.
These were by far the most different of the characters to try to work into the group, but I found I already had a hook in Devoe, Charles's enemy who I had sent to Ussura. If Devoe was a diplomat, then Seb and Alix might be sent to meet with him. And, hmm, Devoe is already gone by the time they get there! So everyone basically has a reason to go after Devoe after everyone meets. I hoped.
That's basically how things stood in my head once the prologues began. Charles going after Devoe, Era asked by Sophie's Daughters to take care of Raelynn by taking her to Ussura, Pyotr hanging out in Ussura when his past catches up with him again. The four of them meet, hang out together for old time's sake. They'd meet Seb and Alix, and the group would decide to do something about Devoe.
Why had Devoe left? I didn't know. Stirring up trouble, or some such. And my river scene by the village? Erm, maybe after everyone met they'd travel along a river and that would happen at that point.
Charles' prologe was the first one I ran (Raelynn's prologue had been run earlier, but katre had run that one, not I). Ghogg's campaign hadn't actually ended, but it looked like we were headed to Vendel, so I stuck Charles in Vendel, post-whatever-had-happened. Cue Louis seeing him, thinking it's the ghost of Charles' dad (whom he had sworn revenge for, but hadn't actually accomplished) who spooks and runs out. And, uh, Charles shrugs and sits down for a nice cup of ale. Hey, Improv time! Some other players were there, so I shanghai'ed one of them on a private 'backstage' channel (my own innovation, which I ended up liking quite a lot) to play a guy who might give Charles the push he needed to investigate. Hmm, Vendel's known for merchants, so I made him a merchant. And he knows Louis (Improv rule #73: you've known the other person in your scene for at least six months), and, uh, he thinks Louis owes Charles money! That's the way he thinks. Go! With some information-feeding on the 'backstage' channel, we finally motivated Charles enough to investigate, and got sent on his way to Ussura. Mission accomplished! My first time GMing in almost a decade, and it was a reasonable success. At this point, I knew I could probably accomplish what I wanted to accomplish with the game.
Between this session and the next, Charles' player and I discussed whether he had taken Louis with him or not, and he decided he had. Which was a bit of a relief for me, since it meant I could use Louis later for the revelation that L'Empereur had killed the Hierophant. Louis in general has been good and bad during the campaign--good in that he's been in some fun scenes, and bad in that when he isn't a focus of a scene he tends to disappear entirely (like Vaarsuvius's raven in the Order of the Stick). There's usually too much going on as it is that I have trouble sticking Louis into the fray and keep track of everything else. This isn't horrible, but every so often there's a 'Oh, yeah, and Louis, too' comment, and I feel vaguely guilty.
In the same session, I then played out Raelynn and Era's meeting. First I got the two of them to meet, then I had them attacked by more people looking for Fleur. The attack was nice because it served three purposes at once--it convinced Raelynn that even Eisen wasn't safe enough for her, it laid the groundwork for Fleur's continued appearances, and it brought Charles into contact with them in a context where Raelynn was more likely to trust him (I had him appear as they were being chased, and he came in to help with the fighting). Actually, make that four purposes: it kept my wife entertained ;-) Then they, too, were bound for Ussura.
Seb and Alix's introduction came next. I went ahead and started from the very beginning of their story: arriving at an empty embassy and hearing about the war for the first time. One of my ideas here was that a legal loophole had given them ambassadorial powers until they reported to Devoe--and there was no Devoe to report to, so they still had ambassadorial powers. I tested this out by having them report to the city's ruler (Dauntania, the sister to the Knias), having her realize this, and giving them a treaty to sign. I was thinking about the divided loyalties at the time, too--how might they handle this? Surprisingly (to me), they both responded by saying "Yikes! No *way* are we signing anything! That's crazy!" so I knew I had to back off on that front. Another thing that surprised me about these two was something one of their players had mentioned in passing, but hadn't shown up on their character sheets, so I had figured it wasn't going to be used: both of them were very, very foppy. This turned out to be hilarious, and it's entirely something they usually bring to the table: I set up something (almost like a straight man) and they bring their foppiness to it. I've been wondering whether or not I shouldn't do something more with that aspect of their characters myself, but I think it's been working well enough as it is, and that I should just keep doing what I'm doing.
About two days before I ran this introduction, I finally figured out what Devoe was up to. I was reading through the Ussura sourcebook again, and came across the tidbit in the GM-only section that the Knias (Tamara Rissanova)'s brother Dreng who had previously attempted to assassinate his sister and been sent to a Sud'ya monastery had recently escaped. Perfect--that was what Devoe wanted to do: help Dreng escape.
After this session (on the bus again), I wondered what I should do about that treaty Dauntania had given them. Following the 'No Myth' (and Improv, actually) dictum: "what's happened is true, and everything else is up for grabs," I had the following to work with: Dauntania had given them a treaty, and this was highly inappropriate. (It hadn't been inappropriate until I saw their reaction.) What could I do with that? Clearly, Dauntania had given them the treaty for some other reason. And if it wasn't to be a treaty... it must be a coded message. For who? For someone in Devoe's retinue. A scene popped into my head where the fops finally caught up to Devoe and showed him the treaty, and some guy in his group was keenly interested in it, scanning it for the secret message. Perhaps the message would be a list of spy-ish contacts in Breslau. This idea lay dormant for quite some time, though it did pop up again at the very last session. By that time, the idea had morphed a bit. And actually, I almost forgot about it entirely, but I thought it made a decent capstone, tying in what happened at the very beginning to the very end.
The second part of that session was our final introduction: Pyotr. I wanted to play this for comedy, to emphasize what a mench Pyotr was, so I had a bunch of low-level peasants attack him after seeing his face on a 'wanted' poster. I again recruited player who weren't doing anything else, which turned out to work much better than I had hoped. I got everyone set on the #backstage channel, then let them loose. At one point, I had to leave for a while, and everyone carried on without me just fine, which was fun to see. This became the origin of the phrase, 'Pyotr the Murderer', which became a common refrain as the campaign progressed.
Finally, I had everyone together aimed at the same spot. In session three I started off joining Pyotr with Era, Raelynn, Charles, and Louis and had them go to the embassy where Seb and Alix were. Seb steps outside, and Louis shouts, "There he is!" To my players' credit, they played along nicely.
After a bit of fisticuffs, introductions and some milling about, I introduced my first Clue, dreamed up in general strokes between sessions: a secret room in the embassy, and a guy from Devoe's retinue (Marceau) who was still hanging around. Papers in the secret room mentioned Dreng and the Sud'ya monastery where he was being kept, which got them thinking along those lines. Pyotr went into the city to check out if Devoe & co had bought anything recently, and I thought, "Hmm, that's a good idea--what would they have bought? How about climbing equipment? If Dreng is supposedly a prisoner there, it makes sense that this place would only be accessible with equipment." And so it was. The group then managed to capture Marceau, and the mood of the story at the time made me make Marceau simply give up and confess that Devoe was heading out, hoping to free Dreng. I also introduced a twisted piece of metal with markings on it in the secret room, and I must confess--if I had anything in mind for it, I have long since forgotten what it was. I think it mostly seemed like 'something that would survive a small fire'. Much later, I finally decided to tie it to a bit of the backstory from my original idea, but there's a lot of leeway left there, and I could change it again without too much trouble.
I'm realizing as I write this that I had, at that point, given the party, as items, two different encrypted clues that I didn't know what they would say when unencrypted. That's kind of handy.
Between sessions (on the bus again), I reconsidered what was happening. It all seemed a bit too pat. So again according to the 'No Myth' rule, I considered what had actually been seen: Notes that linked Dreng and Devoe, climbing equipment, and the testimony of Marceau, a man in Devoe's employ. So, what if Marceau was not exactly trustworthy? I knew I wanted Dreng and Devoe linked, so that was fine. What if he had *already* freed Dreng, and was now ready for, uh, 'Stage II'? That just left the climbing equipment. Think, think, think. Suddenly, I had it: Breslau is described in the book as being atop a cliff with Rissanova Castle at its top. Voila: Devoe planned to climb the cliff from below and assassinate Tamara, leaving Dreng free to take control.
I had ended session three with a cliffhanger. Raelynn's player had missed this session, so I took that and used it to my advantage: she arrived, breathless, just as the party's interrogation of Devoe's flunky was ending, saying 'Help me.' Secretly, of course, I wanted this to be Fleur instead.
Between sessions, I fleshed this out a bit more in my head. Fleur had been following the party with her Porte skills, her dad had tracked down where she was, and was trying to get the Ussuran government to relinquish her, claiming she was a dangerous criminal. Now, I hadn't fully decided what the government would actually do if they got her, but the ruler of Gallenia is a reasonable woman, and would probably have tried to get to the bottom of it all. But the first thing would be to take the woman in for questioning, so the guards were out looking for her. And I should have realized that once the guards are looking for a party member, they're 'bad'.
So, as session four started up, I added Raelynn's player to the 'backstage' channel, quickly explained that she was Fleur, and on the run from the Ussuran guards. I forgot to tell her that she was deliberately trying to get the party to help her because she looked like Raelynn, so she just acted like she needed help, and didn't really try to fool anyone. Not that it mattered, because everyone was fooled anyway. Not only that, but Pyotr (who had taken 'hot-headed' as a Hubris) immediately went out and decked a guard. And with that, the party decided the guards were after all of them, and they quickly gathered their stuff and high-tailed it out of town. But not before I managed to orchestrate Fleur and Marceau running off together. Heh heh heh.
GM note to self: if you want the party to leave town, have them see a policeman walk down the street knocking on doors. He could be looking for a cup of sugar, but the party will invariably assume the worst and run away.
At any rate, I now had the party all together, and travelling during the wintertime. This was pretty much exactly what I had wanted originally, to show off my Cool Scene. But, well, that seemed a bit moot now. So I threw a Mysterious Encounter at them and left it at that. Zzzzzip, fast-forward to the cliffs of the monastery, they enter, and that's where we ended the session.
You'll recall that by this time, I had already decided that Dreng was long-gone. Between sessions, I worked out some of the details of this: the monastery had been attacked by wolves some weeks ago, and Dreng escaped in the confusion. Wolves working for the wrong side was part of my original idea, and it seemed to fit here. I kind of knew that the party would be able to figure this out, but I didn't know how they'd go about it, so I didn't prep much else, and played it pretty much by ear. I ended up in the fifth session with a nice scene between Raelynn and a monk, and another scene with another monk named Palech, who increased in significance as we went along, but originally sprang into existence because the characters sat down at a table and started to talk to someone.
(Side note: I'm horrible at names, and http://www.sca.org/heraldry/paul/ was a lifesaver in this regard.)
At the end of this session, I had wolves attack again. Mostly just to get a battle in for Era. Era surprised me, though, by not attacking at all, and instead managing to stop some of the wolves from attacking. That was a cool character-defining moment for me.
So far, so good. The group had figured out a fair amount of the timeline, though they were still confused about what it all meant, but things were progressing, and I was getting some nice scenes out of it.
In the sixth session, Era questioned one of the wolves, and then she and Raelynn followed them back to their lair, with Era shape-shifted into a wolf. This was another great scene for me, with petite Raelynn, a supposedly sheltered Montaignian noble, trekking across the snow-covered Ussuran peaks in the midst of a pack of wolves. I hadn't decided what they'd find at the cave (though I knew in general what it had to entail) and at the last minute it came to me: they had gotten wolf-speech instructions to attack through a bowl that was identical to a Syrneth artifact that Jota (Charles' player) had invented when he had GM'ed a previous campaign that acted sort of like a telephone. It was a fun little call-back. The rest of the group, meanwhile, got more information out of Palech (who now was trusting them more, since they had defended the monastery). Then the monastery-group went out to find the wolf-group, and I threw Mysterious Encounter II at them just to keep that thread going. (I'm being vague here because none of the players yet knows what's up with those, and probably won't for a while.)
At this point, I wanted to send the group to the 'Thrice-Tenth Kingdom', or the part of Ussura that's more fairy-tale. For one, it was cool, for two, it again tied in some with my original idea, and for three, I had an idea of how to bring in Louis's story I wanted to try. I didn't want to railroad the players, though. But I'm afraid I basically did anyway. At some point in here, I finally figured out what Fleur's artifact was: a knife that would allow her to bump up her Porte level such that she could Walk instead of just Bring. That way, I could have her be twice- blooded as well (which would explain the violet eyes, too). I also had decided that Fleur had blooded Raelynn's dagger during Raelynn's prolog. That scene in my head was kind of cool--Fleur sneaking back to her father's mansion, perhaps because she needed some arcane book of lore she hoped would tell her how to use the knife she had stolen. While there, she observes through a window Raelynn being brought in, and realizes they've got the wrong girl. In a flash of inspiration, she plots to use this confusion to her advantage: she finds Raelynn's dagger (which had been taken from her), and notices that it's blooded. Perfect--she simply bloods it herself. From there, she follows both the dagger and Raelynn, takes out a guard or two herself to aid Raelynn's escape, and leaves. This way, she figures, if there's two of them, her father is only half as likely to get her.
In the meantime, though, Devoe's lackey has taken her with him to go see Devoe again. And, heck, maybe Marceau and she have become an item (though I didn't end up bringing that back in during this campaign. And, dash it all, I didn't have Marceau at the final confrontation. Er, and now I'm getting an idea about where he actually was. OK, never mind, problem solved. Isn't writing stuff down great?) At any rate, I decided to have Devoe send Fleur after the group to steal their climbing equipment so they couldn't leave the monastery (and as a bonus, so a few more people could scale the cliff with the assassination team).
So, session seven started off with Fleur appearing in the middle of the night--played by Duchess (Raelynn's player), of course, with more #backstage prompting. Charles, the only one up at the time (the group had decided to keep a guard) didn't figure it out in time (a deliberate choice on his player's part, I believe, for whatever reason), so Fleur escapes with the stuff. I had kept the possibility open that a quick-thinking group might stop her from escaping, and who knows where the adventure might have gone if that had happened, but as it was, it worked out as I had envisioned the most likely scenario to go.
At any rate, I then sent in Palech with The Bait and The Pitch: Devoe and Dreng had been seen with an army/mob heading towards Breslau. (Note that what had previously been an assasination attempt had just morphed into an army attack plus an assasination attempt. If I recall correctly, I invented this new fact at just about the same I told the players about it.) If the group wanted to intervene, they could only get there in time if they travelled through the Thrice-Tenth Kingdom. The players shrugged, said, "OK", and headed out.
GM note to self: This is an easy group to railroad, so don't abuse that power ;-)
Between sessions, I tried to come up with some good fairy-tale challenges for the group, and had a couple ideas, but nothing really solid. I read a bunch of actual Russian fairy-tales, so I knew the sorts of things that Questers had to do. I did have one specific test (a test of Loyalty) I thought was pretty cool--but I didn't end up using it. I winged the whole thing, instead. So, in session eight, you can see me improvise some obstacles for the group--a snowdrift, a hawk/rabbit battle, a chasm, and a large painted egg. This last I had had some idea I wanted to end with, but the fact that it was a puzzle with riddles was as much a surprise to me as it was to my players. And it also meant I had to come up with riddles fast. I was reasonably proud of the first one:
In the dark, it grows.
The sun feeds it.
The sea surrounds it.
The tooth will free it.
The second one I didn't think was as challenging as it could be, and instead simply foreshadowed the fact that they were about to be taken into the past. I guess I should say that I did indeed have the idea that *after* the group passed these challenges, they'd be taken to three places before being dropped off near Breslau: first, to a place in Somojez where Alixandre and Sebastien were asleep and on their way to meet Devoe--and about to be attacked by bandits while sleeping. Second, to Louis's memory of the day the Heirophant died. And third, to meet up with Montegue and tell him what they had learned. Well, I was actually a bit hazy on the third--another idea was that they'd be taken to defend a mountain against a bunch of giant bugs, something I again stole directly from the sourcebook.
At any rate, session nine went pretty much as I had planned, and the players were even so kind as to realize the significance of the second riddle and quote it during the session, so I was pleased. The scene in Louis' memory in particular played out almost exactly as I had envisioned it in my head, and it was (I hope) a suitable combination of being odd, disturbing, and revelatory.
The discussion afterwards took me by surprise, though, since my players brought up a timeline conflict between what had been revealed in that session and what was stated in the sourcebook. I cracked open the book and saw that, yes, the Heirophant had died a mere two years earlier, instead of the 8-10 I had been assuming. I did some internet research on the real-life Avignon Papacy, read the book again a bit more carefully this time, and came up with a revised version of the history of Thea that seemed to satisfy my players. Whew.
At this point, Real Life started to intervene, as one of the players (Alixandre) was becoming less and less available at the times everyone else was. So, I read over his background, thought about stuff, and came up with an idea for a side-adventure for him. I established some conflict, some enemies, and some allies, and set him out. Some other people were hanging around watching so I let them play the bad guys for the last scene we got to. This didn't finish (and as of this writing, the two of us haven't gotten back to actually finishing the side-scenario, which I feel bad about), but the player's approach to solving the conflict surprised me. I hadn't really perscribed any particular approach to the conflict, but the two approaches I had thought might work were force or trickery. Instead, the player tried diplomacy. Blink. And then, I realized, duh, Alixandre is playing a diplomat. A clear case of thinking about stuff from my own perspective instead of from that of my players. When I have time to get back to this and finish it off, I'll have to keep that in mind.
At this point, I had hoped to have Alixandre back with the party, but again the player was unavailable, so I had to stall. I'm not really sure where the genesis of this idea came from--all I can remember is a time when I hadn't thought of it, and a time when it was a fully- realized idea in my head. The idea was that the players would meet and rescue a woman from Cathay, on the run from Bad Guys, who escaped through the wall of fire. The twist would be that it would turn out that later in the adventure, they'd meet the woman again as an old woman, who would help them in some manner. I also had fun with another idea that again sprang fully-formed from the ether: I'd type out stuff people said in Cathayan as nothing but punctuation. On the whole, this adventure turned out basically as I'd envisioned it, with the caveat that the players motivation for protecting the woman from the people chasing her was a little weak (and was commented on at the time). I tried to allay that a bit by spontaneously giving the woman the ability to speak a bit of Fhideli; enough to know the Fhideli name for Matushka (Haimati), but it was still a little weak.
Time passes some more, and again, Alixandre's player can't meet up with everyone, so I have to again stall. At this point, I'm feeling guilty about what I'm starting to think of as the 'GM Slide Show': The egg takes you here! See this cool scene I thought up! Now the egg takes you here! Another cool scene I thought up! And now it's taking you here! Blah blah blah snore. So I went into the next adventure thinking, "OK, if they want, they can go on to the next bit, but if they want to stall another session, I'll use my aliens/mountain scenario." Charles ended up wandering off from the group, so for fun I gave him the choice early, and he blinked off to the mountain first. Then the rest of the group came back, I gave them the same choice, and they chose the mountain. OK, one more slide, but at least you asked for this one. ("No, really, dad, show us North Dakota.")
It turned out kind of fun. My basic idea was that they would fight these alien bugs in a mountain pass against overwhelming odds, and eventually be overcome and die--only to end up back in the egg again. As such, since the outcome of the battle didn't matter as much I experimented a bit with throwing out some of the 7th Sea rules for combat (which, while kinda fun, are pretty slow at times), and winging it a lot more than usual. All in all, this allowed some good descriptions of the tide of the battle, and incorporated most of what the characters wanted to do (though I'll have to ask 'em what they thought--I think some might have taken to it more than others). As the battle neared its end, Charles picked up an alien energy weapon, and tried to use it. "Good golly," I think, "that means I have to think up rules for its use, and how much damage it does, and, oh wait! I don't have to do any of that! It has a self-destruct module on it if someone other than an alien uses it! And! If the player throws it at the bugs, it can blow up the cliff, blocking any more of them from coming!" Zip, my ending vanished in a puff of improv, and instead, Charles wins the day. Laziness is the mother of invention.
Oh, and I also incorporated a bit of stuff with Montegue here, setting up an obvious future adventure. I'm kind of enamored of the logic that put him here, but since it's kind of spoiler-y, I'll not reveal it here.
Finally, everyone ends up being able to make the next session. Hooray! My basic plan for the session was to start them off between the soon-to-be-attacking army, and the city, then see what people wanted to do. They had information to impart, and could probably gather more information; either would be fine. They ended up doing a bit of both, and the scene where Alixandre barges in to a group of soldiers, accusing one of them of stealing his love from him (as a distraction so Pyotr could get more info from the main tent) was one of the funniest in the game. Again, just-in-time worldbuilding was in use here, as just as Pyotr snuck up to the tent to listen to what was inside, I realized that Fleur would be there. I made it so she was working for Devoe under a certain amount of duress, and that Devoe wanted her for something in his assassination attempt. I didn't know exactly *why* he wanted her, but I had some vague ideas, and perhaps more importantly, I trusted myself by this point to come up with a decent idea before it became important. So, the group returned successfully, and we closed the session.
One of my original ideas here was that the fops would show up at Devoe's tent and say, "Hey, we found you, we're reporting for duty," etc. etc. and that that would be the time Dauntania's secret agent would get the info and stuff. But that never seemed to cross anyone's mind, so, you know, I let 'em do what they wanted to do instead. And perhaps more importantly, I let them succeed. Rule #1 of improv is "Accept and build", sometimes illustrated by the phrase, "Yes, and..." The GM presents a challenge, the players respond and add by dreaming up a way to overcome the challenge, and the GM responds by building on that. This last response could technically be "You fail because..." but that's fairly dangerous in terms of momentum. It's much easier to just say, "OK, here's how you succeed, and here's your next challenge." I found I couldn't really go wrong just having the players succeed. (Not automatically, of course, but making their general approach be fruitful with a few decent rolls here and there.)
As we opened the next session, I was prepared for the players to take action and storm the castle, as it were. But everyone started saying things like, "I need a drink," and, "I don't think we've slept in 48 hours." It seemed the group needed to settle down and assess the situation on their own terms, so I went ahead and let 'em. I considered having Devoe's Defector show up in the city, having followed them from their earlier skulking about, but that felt a bit contrived, so I just let everyone work stuff out. I prompted here and there when I could in response to die rolls people wanted to make, but mostly I just sat back and let everyone work things out.
This had an added benefit, because for the next session, I was more than prepared, since I knew exactly what the players wanted to do, and how they were going to do it. By this time I had worked out what Fleur's role in the final confrontation was going to be: in another steal from the book, it had been prophesized that Tamara would 'die in darkness', so they decided they needed something to cover the window when they tried to kill her (since the firewall provided the castle with continuous light). You can't lug a huge curtain up a cliff, so he wanted Fleur to 'Bring' it once they got there. Voila! I also brought Yin back to from four episodes ago, only as an old woman. I knew I wanted the final confrontation either on the cliff or in the castle, so I didn't have their immediate plan succeed, but I did give the group some significant successes so they wouldn't feel gyped. One was that they found the large swath of velvet, and another was that they found a map of the planned attack on the city.
It was nearly a month between that session and the next one, and I knew we were heading towards the ending. It was at this point that I started writing up this document, and I also found wrote up descriptions of the players, and of their play style. One bus session, I finally sat down and listed all the characters and tried to come up with something for each of them to do or be revealed in the final confrontation. Something to give each satisfaction and closure. My biggest success from this exercise was with Era. Sara and I had talked about how she wanted to spend her XP, and she said she wanted to take 'cat'. So, I was trying to figure out a way to have her a) find a cat, and b) have that be useful. I've mentioned earlier that part of Era's background was 'lots of brothers', but that Sara had been unwilling to have me do much with her family. Then, as I thought how to flesh out Devoe's traitor, it hit me: the traitor was one of Era's brothers! And since I had been doing a few different things with spirit skins for this adventure, I figured he could be the one to give Era his cat spirit skin. I envisioned a scene where they confronted the group, Emet (as I named him) helped them in some way, but then Devoe stabbed him, leaving him for dead as they fled. Era rushes to his side, he gives her his cat spirit skin, and she's able to use her new cat form to follow Devoe.
That, uh, didn't happen. But, you know, you have to keep a reserve of cool scenes in your GM bag-o-tricks. And many of the essentials worked out.
Here's the list I ended up making:
With this in hand, I was all set for our next session to be the final one, so of course the group didn't even catch up with Devoe by the end. Which was just as well, since Alix's player forgot, and Sebastien's player had to leave a bit early. The group ended up sending Era off to deliver the map to the city guard (in bird form), while everyone else headed for the cliffs. Once there, the group was being all sneaky, trying to climb up behind the bad guys. This was fine for a while, but geez--I had to have a battle on the cliff, already! Then I remembered: the GM can spend drama dice just like the players can. Duh. I rolled two extra dice as part of some unspecified contested action, then had the player who rolled the lowest (Raelynn, as it happened) get bonked by a falling rock and say, "Ow!" Now I had an excuse for the guys above to start throwing rocks at the party below. I made up some rules for the people trying to catch up, made up some more rules for the guys throwing rocks, and had a nice little cliff battle. It wasn't quite as gripping as a cliff battle might have been, but since it was the opening salvo in the final confrontation, it didn't quite need to be. One interesting bit of this was when Charles had just climbed up to where a bad guy was, and the bad guy attacked him with a sword--and got an incredible roll (67, I think). I blinked a few times, thought hard, and finally decided that he had stabbed through Charles' hand, pinning it to the cliff. That's not really in the rules, of course, but I figured I had to have something happen as a result of an unusual roll like that. If I have one particular regret about the cliff battle, it's that it was over by phase 7, and Era's three actions were '8 8 9', so she didn't get to do anything. Note to self: make sure all battles last at least one full round, or at least that everyone gets at least one of their actions in. (Actually, I found one round to be a pretty good length for a 7th Sea battle. Much longer than that, and I found myself getting bored. At least with 6 characters all with Panache 3.)
And speaking of battles, we've finally arrived at the final session! And everyone could make it! As we started, I didn't really have a good idea of what was going to happen, but as the party took off tracking the bad guys, a secret passageway to Tamara's room seemed apropos (and logical, since it was her brother who was the antagonist, and he had lived in the palace some time and would know these things). Things bogged down a bit when the party started rolling poorly, missed about five perception checks, and missed the subtle clues I tried to give them, but finally Raelynn pitched in with a sixth perception check and succeeded handily, so I didn't have to resort to anything drastic to get the party onward. (inky has mentioned the not-so-greatness of perception checks, and this was a good illustration of that principle-- if everyone had failed, what then? I figured with six people rolling, it wouldn't take much, and I'd just give it to the best roll, but I don't think anyone rolled much above a 10, and a TN 10 secret door is not much of a secret. Anyway.)
Once the party made it to the top, I fleshed out the specifics of the scene for 'em above the basic idea I had had in my head (Devoe, Fleur, a few bad guys, Emet, Tamara, someone covering the window with the velvet). I suddenly realized that having Tamara herself around was going to seriously imbalance the scene, since she's pretty powerful. So, faster than you could say, "GM Fiat", she became unconcious for the scene, and had Devoe hold her at knifepoint. I also realized that the palace security should probably put in an appearance, so I put a couple dead guards in the door. Having Devoe holding Tamara at knifepoint also allowed a few rounds of repartee before the inevitable melee, so that was nice. Sebastien was the first to come up with a plan here--it mostly came out that Emet was a good guy in disguise, and in their repartee, Sebastien started getting beligerant, so Emet had a good excuse to whip out his sword. Then Pyotr (bless him) took a deep breath in-character, told everyone out of character, "this is your official Pyotr Causing Ruckus Alarm, this alarm will not be repeated," and threw his axe out the velvet-covered window. Charles whispered to me about then something *he* wanted to do, so I announced, "At this point, several things happen at once," and took a roll-call of intents. Everyone had good ideas, and I tried to craft together a scene where all of them could be implemented. I had the two people that needed to roll something roll first, then described the resulting scene where everyone's actions happened at once. When Charles' thrown dagger pegged Devoe in "the arm", I took that as a perfect time to mirror what had happened to Charles earlier, and had Devoe's hand pinned to the chair behind him. I asked Sara (in person), "So, if you could turn into a cat now, would you?" "Don't I have to meet the cat first?" she replied. "I have something in mind. How about it?" "Sure, why not," she said. So for her turn, I had her brother bequeath her his cat spirit skin in a little bit of text CGI, which was fun. All in all, it was one of my favorite moments of the campaign.
(I should note that, thinking back on it, the coolness factor really outshadowed logic with Era's action. I mean, if you were attacking a bad guy, would you rather be a wolf or a cat? Right. But the important thing was that we were both on the same page, and it was a fun scene. And it led to a fun denoument later, too.)
From there, I had people roll initiative, and as it worked out, all the PCs rolled low (meaning they went first) and all the NPCs rolled high. This was a bit frustrating to me at first, but I quickly noticed that this meant that if I wanted to have the NPCs do something interesting, all I had to do was wait for the later phases, and there would be no way for their actions to be contested. Muha muha muha. So from there, my goal was mostly to keep Devoe and Fleur free to act. Duchess intuited this to some extent, and moved to grapple with Fleur. Those moves were an interesting give and take, and it played out with dice and drama dice. I made it clear in an early roll that I wasn't adverse to adding drama dice to Fleur's rolls. Now, of course, as the GM, I have about 10 times more drama dice than Duchess, and what's more, every time she spent another one it would go to me. So I could pretty much easily override her wishes, here. But, at least in my head, if Duchess had been willing to spend a few drama dice herself, I planned to back off. I had an idea for what to do with Fleur, and spending a few drama dice was my way of indicating to her, "I have an idea here if you'll let me do it." If Duchess had responded with dice of her own, I would have taken that as a counter-offer of "I have my own idea I want to do," and I would have backed off. I still might have been able to bring about my idea in the end, but was willing to play along with what she might want to bring to the scene. And as it happened, she didn't roll all that well, and elected not to spend more drama dice. I don't know if what was going through my head matched what was going through her head at all (or what was being spoken between she and katre at their house), so I guess I'll have to ask ;-)
So finally, all of the PCs had taken their actions, with the exception of Sebastien, who had held his. Now was my chance--Devoe threw Fleur the Porte knife, and Fleur smirked and jumped out the window (interestingly enough, with cat-Era on her head). Cursing, Devoe followed. Then, to my great delight, Alixandre jumped out, too.
The cool bit about Alixandre jumping out, to me, was that up until that moment, none of the party had known (in-character) that he was even Ussuran, let alone that he could shape-shift. So here we were, at the climax of the adventure, and he's finally gotten to the point where he feels he can trust his secret to his new friends. It was beautiful. Not that anyone actually commented on it in the game. But it was beautiful to me ;-)
So now we have, for me, the Best Scene Ever: four characters plummeting off a cliff. How cool is that? Before Fleur portes away, Era has to decide what she wants to do, and let me tell you, she was sweating. After agonizing over it for a while, she finally decides to let Fleur go. Then Alixandre, shifted to a kite, has to decide what to do, too. I think he was about to decide to let her go as well, but I whispered to him, "Going into the portal would be a good excuse to miss the next campaign..." (Sargent, you'll remember, was the person who had had the most trouble with scheduling, and had almost dropped out entirely the previous month, before being convinced to stay the few more sessions it would take to make it to the end.) "You'd be OK with me going into the portal?" he whispered back. "Sure! ;-)" I replied, and with that, *zhoomp*, into the portal he went, followed closely by Devoe.
That was just awesome. I have no idea what's going to happen next, but I know I'll have fun figuring it out.
From there, it was all over but the shouting. I almost forgot to bring up the treaty-as-secret-message thing, but remembered at the last minute, finally deciding what the secret message actually was--a pass-phrase to let other double-agents in Dreng's ramshackle army know it was time to defect. I let Emet be the main source of information about Lavache for Charles (though I couldn't actually tell him anything, not having thought that part up yet--the one piece of information I did give him I had stolen from a google'd map of France two seconds before I told him what it was ;-), and answered other questions as best I could.
So, if you compare my notes from beforehand to what actually happened, you'll see that maybe half of the things I thought might come up actually did, some of them in a different form than I had imagined previously (Alix going after Fleur, for example, instead of Charles, who had the highest personal stake in the matter, and usually behaves the most impulsively in areas like this). But in all, it worked out pretty well.
You might also note that there were several points at which different character actions could have significantly altered (if not derailed) the plot as outlined above. Had Charles been a bit more on the ball at the monastery, for example, he might have caught Fleur. Even at the very end, one scenario I had imagined was the players cutting out the blooded spot on the swath of velvet, so Fleur would only get the small swath instead of the whole thing. But that's the beauty of making stuff up as you go--you don't have to worry about the players derailing anything because you're laying track as they move.
I have one last piece of advice for potential GMs out there: Get your plots from the player's character sheets. Sure, you can have general ideas for times when that inspiration runs dry, but if you have creative players, that won't happen all that often. Rule #7 of Improv: respond to the last offer given. I believe the resulting plots will engage your players a lot more than the generic adventure you'd come up with on your own.