Session 3: Funeral for a Friend

Hoo boy...we left the railroad behind. 2/3 of the party managed to get themselves killed while conducting a balls-out execution mission on Kair'Asshta, who ended up being a White Dragon. Along the way, they managed to kill Luca ir' Wynarn and Vermer the Gnome secretary. Marduk pretty much stands alone after this ordeal. What happens next?

From a meta-game standpoint, this session will end the first arc of the campaign, what I've been thinking of as "bureaucrats' arc". Beyond this point, there will be considerably less foreground emphasis on political maneuvering, deal-cutting, and wrangling information and favors out of bureaucrats. While I really enjoyed manipulating the party (can it be called manipulation if the objects are willing?) and enjoyed the acrobatics involved in keeping multiple agendas in line with the ultimate goal of the box-and-key superarc, it's high time I let everyone off the short leash and actually go adventuring.

So, starting sometime during the events of Session 3, we'll be entering what I've been thinking of as the "explorers' arc". A fitting analogy might be the difference between JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Western offerings like Fallout. Both ostensibly are Role-Playing Games and put you in command of a character, but the way you interact with the world is fundamentally different in either mode. JRPGs like Final Fantasy, especially latter-day efforts, emphasize some kind of heavily-involved story, whereas western games are more about laying down a big map, populating it with a variety of events, and the giving control over to the user.

The goal of the bureaucrats' arc was to set up the goals to be pursued in the explorers' arc and to introduce antagonists that will plague the party for a long time. I couldn't really rely on you guys stumbling on them--I needed to maintain a tightly controlled game that could introduce who I wanted when I wanted. Most of my cards are on the table now. Shuster and his not-cult, the mysterious corpses found in Sharn and Lyssek, Kairasshta d'Medani, Luca ir'Wynarn, Zsasz, Karsus, The Praetor of Lyssek, and others are plot elements that will be better expressed in free play now that everyone has been railroaded into interacting with them at least once. In the future, they'll crop up, but it will be because the party happens to cross their path during while adventuring.

So, to summarize, starting this session there will be much more free exploration and dungeon adventuring. Real dungeons, not the straightline dungeons of sessions past. To conclude, more choices will be given over to the players, but that puts the onus of initiating adventures on the players rather than on me. I, as DM, will become a more passive villain, one snickering quietly from the shadows as these fools bumble about my domain, killing minions as though it were a big deal.