“Tropes are story telling devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members’ minds and expectations.”

You know, like when you are following a story, and it goes in a direction you didn’t expect, and then you find out it was All Just a Dream.

Or when the heroes are trapped in a locked room with no windows and the only way out is the Air Vent Escape. Or the only way in is the reverse of this.

In the Dungeon Divas (and perhaps D&D in general), I’ve been thinking that the story line follows a Jigsaw Puzzle Plot. This is a plot with many story arcs that intersect, thread together, and create a large Myth Arc. Of course, that’s just the story the way we’ve been playing it. At other tables, and even within this story, there are always opportunities for the heroes to battle against a Monster of the Week.

Back when the Divas discussed what we wanted out of gaming, we agreed that role-playing was more important that roll-playing. We wanted there to be a connected storyline, and for everything to relate. But if we wanted to do something off-track, we should be allowed to do that on occasion.

The Shackled City is a series of adventures by Paizo publishing. It starts with Chapter 1 and the characters at Level 1. Eventually, it travels to Chapter 12 and the characters at Level 20. We’ve been playing every week for two years and we are now in Chapters 8 and 9 with Level 13 characters.

It’s a pretty famous storyline and it’s been played by a lot of groups. We’re pretty dedicated — about 3+ hours a week for over 100 weeks — and we’re only 75% through the story. With such a complicated plot strung over a long time, it’s easy to imagine the risk of Continuity Lock Out. New players joining us have no idea what is going on. Even our Diva Charter Members can get lost in the intricacies of a plot this lengthy.

In our most recent episode, we encountered The Thirteen, and participated in The Reveal. Here we learn that the group’s main goal is Breaking Out the Boss. Now this could be a spoiler, except that in classic Jigsaw Puzzle Plot fashion, the Divas have been gathering evidence for some time. At this point, they’ve put enough of the pieces together that they can guess what the final picture could be. A classic Recap Episode, it serves as a great opportunity to review and introduce.

And what did we learn? The evil Lord Vhalantru, is not the Big Bad we thought. No, The Man Behind the Man is this group of Thirteen. And we get to utter the Arc Words “Everything is connected” as a parade of familiar faces comes to the meeting. The horrible people the Divas have been following were just Mooks. The Dixie Mattress Company, once thought as just The Convenient Store Next Door, was actually a centerpiece of villany. No, this Villian Episode did not provide a lot of opportunity for Evil Gloating but gives us a lot of information.

But does it give too much information? Of course not. Because the beauty of this scenario is that it follows the classic Xanatos Gambit. The heroes are supposed to find out the plot. How else to motivate them to action? And we know it works, because you can see an index of successful gambits, and that’s not even revealing too much because Xanatos Planned This Index.

And of course, as a DM, I must be well-versed in the Evil Overlord List of all the tropes to avoid.

This quilt started in August of 2007. At a guild meeting, everyone was supposed to bring several strips of fabric 3.5″ wide. These strips are cut from the width of a bolt of fabric and usually range from 42″ to 60″. Then we played Strip Poker. Ante up your strip, whoever wins takes the pot.

I won a bunch of strips and then I put them together into the background of the quilt. At that point, I had a pastel quilt that I had no idea what to do with. Then I was painting minis at an event and got to talking with another gamer about my quilting. He suggested that a great quilt would be a traditional “grandma-looking” quilt with a bad-ass red dragon on it.

During a weekend beach trip with my small quilt group in January of 2008, I started designing the dragon. I needed to learn a lot of new techniques to put this together. Since this is a gaming blog and not a quilting blog, I won’t go into detail. But I will say that buying a new sewing machine made quilting in all the details a lot easier.

This quilt was always intended as a gift for Angel, the owner of Guardian Games where we play our weekly game. The challenge was how to work it into the story. A “small token of appreciation” from the town nobility turned out to be perfect.

Putting it all Together
So let’s take the last encounter as an example. The Divas want to get into the Temple of Wee Jas and blow it up since their investigations have shown that Jasidian clerics are behind the assassination attempt, and because the new construction is blocking the rising solstice sun from shining on the Church of Pelor. The written scenario assumes the Divas will come to the Temple of Wee Jas, but also assumes: a) they are 12th level characters (they are 11th), b) they can break a DC 40 lock on the door (they have no rogue), and c) they have no intention of burning the place down.

a) Encounter Level – The Shackled City wants this to be Encounter Level 13. Using the Encounter Calculator, a party of 6 12th level characters would be 13.2, so this is reasonable. But my party is only 12.2, so I need to take this into account. I decide these are hired guards who won’t fight to the death. Their orders are to try to capture the PC’s, or draw them to the real fight deeper in the Temple. This makes the encounter a bit easier. Then, reading about Stone Giants, I realize their only real tactic is throwing rocks and melee fighting. Not good for capturing. But, if I make them Elders, then they get some spells and can use them to trap the PC’s. But this makes the encounter harder. So I lower the level of the fighters. In the end, I have a level 13 encounter using 2 Stone Giant Elders (CR9) and 4 half-orc fighters (CR6) to make my encounter. Challenging, but the fight is not to the death, so probably okay.

b) The Lock – I don’t have a rogue, so I make the front doors unlocked. But then I need to add some guards, so I do that. I make these half-orc fighters (CR 4) since they are there to deflect the attention of regular citizens. The Divas can certainly come in and get captured.

c) The Unexpected – I have a paladin who thinks the temple destruction is dumb, so she’ll be missing. Oops. Now we’re down a character. The Divas are planning to blow up the temple, so there may not be a “real fight” to draw them to. Oops. Need to adjust. After all the fun role playing, the encounter starts at 9:00. Oops. Too early to stop, to late to start. Well, let’s go for it.

Improvising
Since they are going to blow up the place, I decide to make this encounter the “real fight” and scale down the following one. I don’t change the strategies of the enemies though since they don’t know the plan. Since I’m doing this at the last minute I add some extra fighters. And, since the Divas’ plan is to bluff the guards away, and they’ll likely succeed, I add 2 more fighters, figuring they can bluff another two out of there. And even if they don’t, these are more people to question before blowing the place up.

Learning From Experience
There’s still things I would keep the same. Making the stone giants elders is something I would definitely keep. That mud geyser was fun. It’s also very fun that one of the giants got turned into a cat. It completely foiled the plan to stone shape walls around characters, then turn the stone to mud miring the characters, then turn the mud to stone trapping the characters, but hey, turning a giant into a kitten is hilarious! And, I would have still started the encounter one week and finished it the next. It was an experiment, and it’s good to know it’s doable. Not a good routine thing, but good to know.

To do things differently, I would not have added the extra fighters. Since the last battle was so epic, making another large fight right after was exhausting for everyone. Also, I misjudged the Divas. I didn’t expect them to really kill everybody. My fighters didn’t have a place to run. Worse, there was no one left alive to question. I should have kept the Divas on the original track to blow up the place. True, there was useful information and plot elements to find, so it’s good for them to search. But, in hindsight, they can blow up the place – there’s always another way to gain information.

Ah, live and learn.

The most important lesson here is this: Just because the Divas changed the scenario, doesn’t mean the scenario needs to adjust. Players should be rewarded for creativity, initiative, and zeal. They want to blow up the temple, they should be able to. Remember the brilliant plan to walk around the Lucky Monkey and go in the back door? I didn’t adjust that encounter and it was awesome. Remember the crazy idea to investigate Orak’s rat problem? Killing 30 goblins was a blast.

I’m awarding myself 4000XP for this encounter.

Taj bought him some dice and a calculator as a welcome present. As Susan said, “It takes a big man to roll tiny dice.”

And they are tiny. But they get the job done!

I admire Tad; I remember those first few weeks of gaming. I was nervous about playing, about making a mistake or casting the wrong spell at the wrong time. So for him to sit down with total strangers is awesome. He picked a good group. Since most of us are still pretty new at the game, so it is easy to incorporate another newbie.

Now that he’s getting some of the tools of the trade, he needed one of Michelle’s famous dice bags! The irony that Tad was wearing brown and carrying a banana was not lost on us.

When Tad arrived at the game this past Wednesday, he’d been struggling with leveling up Alek. If you remember, Alek is a NPC. And in true form, he is a level 6 paladin/level 6 aristocrat. Verrry useful. At a cocktail party, this guy will rule. So Tad’s dilemma: another rank of Paladin or Aristocrat?

He & Michelle took some time before the game to look at Alek’s stats. Tad realized that he could take a level of Fighter or something to add a little more zing. In the end, they decided on another level of Paladin.

It kinda worked out well, at the end of the night because Alek got killed. Now Tad can roll a new character.

So, meet the new guy. Yeah, guy. His name is Tad and this is a crappy picture of him. I know what you’re thinking — The Dungeon Divas let a guy play with them? It all started innocently.

We’re playing a few weeks ago and, as sometimes happens, a person sat down to watch for a few minutes. We play at Guardian Games so we’re used to that. It’s kind of fun to have visitors. Usually we’re the only group playing D&D on Wednesdays. The rest of the place is packed with guys playing WarHammer.

So this guy asks if he can watch. And we tell him to pull up a chair. He stayed all night. That was our introduction to Tad. And the next week, he came back! So Michelle asked him if he wanted to play an NPC. He could play Alek if he wanted to….. Tad is a good sport because he jumped right in. Taj loaned him some dice and off we went on our adventure. And he did a perfect job. He sent Alek headlong into battle with the bebolith. Exactly what Alek would do.

Then last week, he came back again! Michelle was ready. She had a full character sheet for Alek as well as background on his character, motivations, fighting style, etc. Poor Tad practically first thing last week, he got turned to stone by the basilisk.

It’ s fun having him around. And Michelle was telling me the other day that in other Shackled City adventures she’s read about, Alek dies at the end of that chapter. We get out of the mirror and he pretty much takes on the three-tailed guy and bites it. We didn’t let that happen and so he’s still around!