CoD 1: Session 01: Opening on a ship
Prologue
A flyer traversed the docks docks of the Capitol amongst billowing winds. A boy’s hand reached out and grabbed the thick quality paper, with its ink still readable despite the salty sea scent. It read:
Attention adventurers big or small, green or grey, brave or just wants to make a quick buck! The Empire has recently discovered off the West coast an island where the Cave of Dreams reside! A magical cave that is a treasure trove of otherworldly artefacts, riches, and encounters! An access to to exotic creatures, romancing sagas, and far-flung planes that will make you the hero of any tavern! Swords of strange runes, shields of magical jewels, and armour of peerless power can all be yours if you take the dive! Ask the official harbour master at the Capitol docks for a ship to Cavesmuth, the frontier town servicing all expeditions into the cave, sponsored wholly by the Empire. Board the ship now for the Cave of Dreams! Make your dreams come true, adventurers!”
Pre-scene Notes
The prologue would basically be the premise of the campaign, and for a GM, what you may post to recruit players to join your game. For authors, there are enough opinions out there on the whys and whats for prologues. The objective I think are the same for both purposes. It is to provide a hook for anyone looking to engage, and should give the promise of what this campaign’s theme or mood is about. Any hints of background or characterisation is just a plus. Eg if the prologue is an action scene, the campaign should deliver a fast-paced exciting drama. If the prologue is an political rebuttal, the campaign may be more of a court intrigue type of thing.
The prologue is obviously here as this is the first scene, but all subsequent posts will be set out in the following distinct sections:
Pre-scene Notes: Basically author’s notes and ramblings, or need to know about the scene. May not exist with each post as I do not plan to waste space on recaps.
Scene setup/conflict: The former is required from Mythic, and later is what every novel needs. Every scene in a novel should have a conflict, or at least a reason to exist to move the plot along. In addition, Mythic rolls for altered/interrupt scene, which I will also insert here how I interpret the roll results for those who are here looking to see how Mythic is used in an actual game.
Scene: Main body of the campaign and meat of what actually happened. Any GM/Author notes will be highlighted as a different colour. I may provide screencaps instead of descriptions, which serves as substitutes to descriptions. The screencap is also a good placeholder for novelization later as descriptions/motifs can be fleshed out later in the edit/rewrite instead of interjecting during solo gameplay.
Scene close-out: Per Mythic rules, this is when the sheets gets updated for threads, characters and chaos factor. For me, this is when I update my spreadsheet.
Post-scene Notes: Again just author’s notes and ramblings, as sometimes I can’t say something before whatever happens in the scene is known.
Let’s begin!
Scene setup/conflict
The ship to Cavesmuth still has not arrived days after the expected journey time. Food and drink had started to be rationed and sailors acting weird.
Altered scene: Stop Opulence. This was the first spanner in the works for me. Thinking as a GM, I had planned for all campaigns in this setting to start with all PCs around the breakfast table for introductions. But going with the roll, instead of being called for breakfast as PCs had expected, no crew called them today and each PC rolled with Mythic questions to see how they react to this unpredicted event. First PC to act was the one who rolled highest imitative per DND mechanics.
Scene
As no crew came to fetch him for breakfast at the usual time, Zar Onu came out of his cabin first and headed to the usual dinning room anyway. It was quiet in the quarterdeck outside his room and he did not see the other three travellers that were with him. Although he had been travelling with them on this sea journey for the past week or so, they did not converse much and sometimes even ate at different times. He figured they might be other adventurers attracted by the promised riches of the Cave of Dreams. Moving towards the ship’s stern and opening the doors to the long dinning room, he found it empty of both food and people.
Weird Elf Yankovic heard someone moving outside his room and did the same, reasonably thinking it might be the crew. Going into the dinning room to find the paladin he had seen a couple of times before during this journey, he greeted, “Hey there big guy, you looking for breakfast too?”
Zar turned around to greet the other passenger who had entered, recognising him as the weird one. He was weird in the fact that most elves had pale white skin, or dark elves had black skin, but Zar at least had never seen one with his distinct red and purple hue. His eyes were definitely red though, and not just a reflection from his red battle robes or redwood beard. Zar had thought he was tall himself, but the elf could easily match his eye level. He was lean like all elves but not frail like the magical or arrows types. Zar could tell from the emblem on his shield he was some sort of cleric, following the God of War, similar to others Zar had came across previously. His church’s seemingly standard-issue warhmmer, heavy armour, and crossbow suggested he would be good in a fight. Zar and the elf had never been introduced, but he figured it might be a good time to do so now as his premonition was acting up.
“Greetings. I am Zar Onu. Yes, I came to see about breakfast, or lack thereof. And you are?” A natural level of intimidation extruded from his green lips and protruding bottom canines.
“They call me Weird Elf,” Weird Elf flourished his pony tail as if in demonstration. “Dorma Yankovic if you’re also from the Xanthia church, but looking at you… forgive me, which deity does your symbol represent?”
The outwardly middle-aged elf looked at the half-orc. Zar looked enough like a full orc, but it was neither his cleanly shaven face or chopped hair that gave him away. It were his black eyes, although donning the bloodshot look of a typical weary adventurer, lacking direction like the youngsters Yankovic tried to recruit back at the Capitol suburbs. There were very little scratches, dents, and tears on his ornate-looking paladin garb over his chain-mail. The only thing that did look of any age was the very rusty longsword on one side of his belt. The other side seemed to hold his actual combat sword, which looked at least more used than his other equipment.
“Paladins don’t have to follow a deity, as long as they have a belief.” Zar gave no indication he wanted to pursue the topic though and asked, “Do you know what of the crew?”
“Not any more than you,” Yankovic did not think he would still have to continue his youth recruitment programme for the church even on a ship to his new assignment, but tried anyway. Stretching his stiff limbs, which he accounted to ageing, he reached back in his backpack and took out a form. “So you don’t have a deity? A strapping young man like you seems like a prime candidate for the church of Xanthia! Specifically, the sect of the Red Princess, the beautiful Goddess of warfare and strategy!”
Zar looked deadpan at the holy symbol, in the shape of a princess from a dragonchess piece, on a chain the weird elf had tied to his wrist beyond the recruitment form. He wondered if the elf’s overzealous recruitment technique to strangers was the reason his church sent him on a trip to a frontier town. “Even I had heard of the in-fighting between sects within the Church of Xanthia, and they are indeed always looking for recruits. But no, thank you.”
“You can’t be a good paladin without a deity! You can’t even name yours!”
Zar growled but their conversation was interrupted by another entrance, albeit from the other side of the dinning room.
In solo actual play, I very much did not journal this much. I had just gone back and wrote out this scene for the purposes of this post. The scene between Zar and Yankovic is more introduction and as I was the one who created the characters, all I had to do was record one paragraph. It included the information given to both characters (eg class, deities and some background) and general feel the two characters had towards each other. Obviously, if you were the GM running this campaign, you would allow the PCs to introduce themselves as they saw fit and watch it play out. For novelization, the ‘show don’t tell’ rule should apply in some form to avoid these chunks of description, as well as find ways to leak background motivations (eg Yankovic’s church or Zar’s swords as I had peppered in.)
A woman with white long hair under a purple witch’s hat came in from the door leading to the rear balcony, who must have been here through the conversation. She was very short compared to the men, with a sallow face but looked anywhere between thirty to sixty years old.
In solo actual play, it would just be what the avatar looked like. I’d found finding a good avatar helps make the background of an NPC very much. For a GM/author, you may want to give a more detailed description and again leak some tell-tale signs of backgrounds. I guess one thing missing from solo play is that PCs won’t ask too many surprising follow up questions that players may don in an actual campaign, as you are all of the GM, PC and NPC.
“And who may you miss?” Yankovic asked, looking for another church recruitment form. He also recognized her from meals in previous days. She looked a lot more like a scholarly sage than an adventurer, but considered Cavesmuth likely required more than adventurers to get up and running.
“I am Stella,” her wasp of breath sounded like book pages turning. She worn long purple robes, and under one sleeve she produced a fey tarot card. It was the Card of Fog. “From my readings, it seems like things will not be going very well on this vessel… And there should be one more of you. Has he already fallen?”
As a GM, this should be when your third player should be included as s/he had just been waiting as the other two PCs would have had a good RP session, purely just based on one initiative roll. The interruption was also a good chance to progress the plot so PCs are not talking for the whole first session. This was why as seen in my screen cap, Stella had already been stationed out in the balcony at session start. Having NPCs stationed in off screen locations can very much help resolve situations or be used to respond to surprising rolls.
#
This was the another surprising roll. This PC had rolled through Mythic that he would not investigate out of his cabin to the dinning room like the others. Considering he was more timid, this was also logical and instead I had to decide then what he was going to do. As a GM, you have to be weary there can be players who basically say they don’t care about breakfast. The scene opening was a conflict, but not a motivation. This may be easier after the first scene as threads are established, and why it may be good to have a thread for each character at the beginning.
Phillipe Fallafo II, aka Filli, decided to stay in his cabin and looked out the window. It was still fog as far as his eyes could see like the past few days. (A very high Perception roll meant) he overheard some sailors talking on the deck above. He could make out something about ‘they’ve fed the ducks fat enough’ or ‘it’s time to eat, who knows how long there’s left till reaching land’, or ‘if only the captain didn’t gamble away the down payment they would have stocked more food as contingency’, then ‘this damned fog prolonging the journey and getting lost did not help’.
Filli did not rule out the possibility the men were literally, and not metaphorically, going to eat each of the passengers.
I had done minimal editing here from my actual play journaling, in contrast to the passage before for Zar and Yankovic. Not because Filli was an NPC or unimportant, but it was the bare bones to record how the plot got moved along. As an author, recording the roll also meant you can go back later to give more description and logic to actions/how things turned out. Also, as there were no other (N)PC interactions here, descriptions can follow later. As a GM, this was a natural cut to bring the party actually together for the first time as the others would want this information formally. All in all, this was more following the pace of the solo play so for another campaign or novelization, this pacing may be reconsidered retrospectively.
#
“Fallen is a bit harsh just on speculating, Miss Fortune Teller,” Yankovic shook his head. Yes, I do remember a total of four passengers on the ship apart from the crew. Why don’t we get the fourth wheel and talk this through?”
“Agreed, strength in numbers after all.” Zar turned back as the two headed to where they had thought the other passenger’s cabin was. “You coming?”
Stella shook her head. “I hope you can push past this obstacle. From my readings, if you are able to succeed past this hurdle, you will become legends. Or else, you will be nothing…”
Zar left the pretend enigmatic witch with a grunt and closed the dinning room door on her.
If you have not guessed by now, Stella is the ‘fail-safe’ NPC. I had created a high level divination wizard character sheet on Roll20, and would be using that and her list of spells to reasonably play this out. Eg, from now on, Stella was going to use Major Illusion spell to hide out in the rear balcony, and Arcane Eye to the upper decks to see what was happening. In the end, her motivations were also to stay alive and escape the ship and not saving the PCs, though she had a lot more tools in her spellbook and is not an evil alignment. It may seem superfluous to go to this extend for an NPC that might not be used, but as you’ll see, something unexpected happens.
#
On a knock on the door and a call from Yankovic, Filli answered very quickly hearing it was the other passengers. He whispered what he had overheard of the crew’s schemes.
I had fully allowed for a fight to happen, but Mythic rolls dictated Filli was going to open the door freely, and therefore I provided a reason for the roll in Filli must have recognised Yankovic’s voice. Using reason to fill out Mythic roll results were the core of using that oracle system, but also for novelization, ensuring no glaring plot holes develop without motivations/justifications. I am also adding the following paragraph to give a description of Filli for the purposes of this post. For a GM, this would be allowing a PC to describe his own appearance to others.
Filli was clearly a mixed race of some sort, but of a rare combination without a human component, considering his short height. The teenager appeared even shorter with the massive backpack that overshadowed him, and Weird Elf could see what looked to be a gauntlet sticking out one pocket and a tinker’s hammer the other. Apart from his blatantly oversized scale mail dragging the floor, he had a cute little hat with what looked to be a small glowing amber ball dangling from it like an angler fish.
All three of them agreed to now form a party and Zar suggested to discuss what each person’s strengths were in battle.
As a GM, this would be when I would allow the players to actually get to decide each others’ battle roles, and a very clear flag that a big fight was coming up. I literally had a ship full of three different types of enemies for them to fail at, not for game over, but possibly walking the plank. For solo play, it was more a moment where what I knew as the GM and the PC had been given a reason to merge.
Zar also suggested to try and convince Stella again to join the party for more help. Filli agreed but more so she did not get hurt if the crew were hostile. Yankovic agreed.
Although as a GM I knew Stella would not join them, this suggestion aligned with both Zar’s personality of being cautious and Filli’s of wanting to help others. For novelization, this was a clear example of how to show not tell, and recording it here would help the editing process.
Scene close-out:
- Chaos factor up to 6
- + party thread: Pirates may wanna eat them
- + party thread: Find Stella
- + character thread: Each of the three PCs has an overarching thread to start with related to their own character history. Currently undisclosed but pre-populated so Mythic to roll onto if it comes up.
Post-chapter Notes
This is it and please leave a comment if you have suggestions. Please support by sharing to anyone you would think may be interested or your usual forums to help this site reach as many as possible. I look forward to hear from you.
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