Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 misterfido_dup Sep 25, 2008 15:14:23	I ran one group through the Mourning, by starting them 30 days before the event itself, and leading up to it through several ominous moments (listed below). Now, it really suited our campaign and fast-paced group, but I'm running a new campaign with a new group and want to retread the same plot (mostly because this new group is unfamiliar with Eberron, so I want to show them what the prophecy, alignment ambiguity, war and the Mourning were all about, right off the bat). So what follows is a list of what I did BEFORE, followed by a list of ideas I've had for THIS time around, and I invite anyone to propose ideas for how to make the Mourning even more of a jarring, frightening experience. * I told them, right from the start, that there would be skill challenges that would result in at least one player dying, if not the entire party. I told them it would be pretty obvious which ones were lethal, but they should not expect a deus ex machina if a skill challenge looks like it MIGHT kill them on a failure; they will die. * Two weeks before the event, all seers (save for one, who uses a very foreign sort of divination method) went insane. This paritcularly struck home for one eladrin player, who had written up his family as a family of mages, and I had mentioned off-hand while roleplaying them that they were designing a new sort of divination spell. And then, he's in the woods, lost in the mists, and he finds his father, crumpled up and not recognizing him and mumbling incoherently... * At the same time, a silver fog covered Cyre, which warped the terrain--they were actively adventuring to negotiate a peace treaty with some Dhakaani warriors and hunt down some House Tarkanan bandits (long story), and what was once a short trip in the woods (complexity 1 skill challenge) was suddenly a journey which teleported them from their hometown to the sea shore on the tip of Cyre to the Karrnath border to Khyber and then back home again (complexity 5 skill challenge). It really gave them a sense of disorientation, especially since they couldn't just say "I head north!" to get back home, they had to say "Well... I retrace our steps, travel out of the mind flayer caves, through the woods, down the steps of the king's castle, swim back across the beach, and try to find my way from the front door of our inn again." * Being good characters, they had to try and drag the town--kicking and screaming--out of Cyre. And on the way out, they met one Bulwark and his troops, and fought it out until they heard a loud explosion off in the distance, with a blast wave that was getting closer, and they made a break for it. * The town contained a number of people sick or weakened from the mists, and the party had to figure out whether they should leave the feeble behind to die, or take them with them. And when they got to the lightning rail (below)... there wasn't enough room for everybody. Bulwark and his warforged got to go because they had swords and military experience and--thus--proposed to just murder any breathers who tried to keep them off the train. So the party had to figure out... who in their home town lives, and who dies? * Finally, they got on a lightning rail to try and outrun the blast wave, with the front of the blast wave tearing up the tracks behind them, tossing the train itself back and forth... and without a pilot for the train, they also had to do a social encounter with the elemental to keep it from saying "Screw you guys, I'm going back into Cyre and I'm taking you all with me." Okay, so, that's what I did BEFORE. Here's what I was thinking of for the future campaign, though: * Slow up the destruction of Cyre, and don't provide the easy lightning-rail route. Have the blast wave arrive in several stages and flavors: the first would be instant, and afflict Cyre with the terrain-warping, no-healing, no-rotting magical affliction we're used to. This forces the players to crawl their way out of Cyre, fighting tooth and nail, to escape alive. Each subsequent blast wave would warp the inhabitants of Cyre more and more. People caught casting spells during one wave, for instance, might create a living spell. Each wave injures anyone in the open, forcing players to seek shelter--or just weather the storm and hope they don't run out of healing surges before they get to the edge. Skill challenges, fights with strange mutated monsters and living spells, and all that jazz later, and the players have one final blast wave: This one is bigger, brighter, and is sucking up all the silver fog with it. Anything caught in this last wave dies... * Use of the spellscarred rule system as a basis to mutate players and NPCs. One of the things I've always found deeply compelling in one of Keith Baker's novels (I think it was his novel at least) was characters who were horribly disfigured from the blast in very profound ways. * No villains like Bulwark to get in the way. I introduced Bulwark in the former campaign because I have this very convoluted time-travel plot where he becomes the Lord of Blades, and the players level up alongside him, they all become demigods/other epic destinies together, and they travel back in time to pre-Mournland to fight it out, and the death of a demigod is such a cataclysmic event that it starts the Mourning. And then, I'll make sure that a lot of the things the players do at 30th level are paradoxes: for instance, at 1st level, the players found some corpses, investigated the murderers, couldn't find them but it DID lead them to some important plot-related details. At 30th level, they could be traveling through town, and rescue an old lady from muggers or something--leaving those corpses for their past/future selves to find. Anyway, in this next version, I don't intend to do the time travel plot, which hurts my brain less, and it also brings up a very interesting theme: The players aren't fighting another PERSON to survive, they are fighting the LAND ITSELF. Much... grander, and more frightening. * The village will be at risk with everything they do. I will include some more "Who lives and who dies?" choices, but... if the party is leading the town over a hill, and they see a living fireball circling around them and they don't run to meet it head on, it'll undoubtedly attack the village's survivors from behind, where there are no defenses. And every time hte party decides to weather the storm to keep pressing towards Breland, people will suffer, and mutate, and maybe die... but the question will come up, is it better to let a few die in order to speed up the saving of the entire town? Or do you seek shelter at every danger, and possibly risk losing everyone... Anyway I'd be interested to hear anyone else's ideas on how to make the Mourning much more of a jarring, gritty, horrible experience... the sort of thing will grab the attention and empathy of even the most plot-uncaring players... I'm not really very good at creating horror/apocalypse games though, so I value input.
#2 skrap-san Sep 25, 2008 16:03:39	I know this isn't really what you asked for, but holy smokes that first part sounds like one adventure I would love to participate in.
#3 ChrisTheS Sep 25, 2008 16:32:25	Does this group know anything about the setting at all? If they don't even know what the Mourning is, you're going to have to find some way of introducing the idea of the impending apocalypse without giving too much away in order to convey the same sense of rushing headlong into doom that a Mourning game would provide for someone who does know what the ultimate outcome is. I suggest taking some cues from season 1 of Heroes: some sort of dream, Prophecy reading, or other divination that suggests very strongly at by the end of the month, there is no future. Play it up and make it seem bigger than it actually turns out to be (perhaps make it start to BE bigger than it's supposed to be, and have the PCs' actions result in it being confined to Cyre... which, while being a half-way victory, will still help drive the horror home). Again borrowing from Heroes, perhaps one session could involve them being transported into the future and experiencing the Mournland as it appears now (with no way of knowing that it doesn't cover the whole of the world).
#4 misterfido_dup Sep 25, 2008 17:30:18	I know this isn't really what you asked for, but holy smokes that first part sounds like one adventure I would love to participate in. This is why my groups always unanimously decide that I shall be their DM =P
#5 misterfido_dup Sep 25, 2008 17:41:24	Does this group know anything about the setting at all? If they don't even know what the Mourning is, you're going to have to find some way of introducing the idea of the impending apocalypse without giving too much away in order to convey the same sense of rushing headlong into doom that a Mourning game would provide for someone who does know what the ultimate outcome is. I suggest taking some cues from season 1 of Heroes: some sort of dream, Prophecy reading, or other divination that suggests very strongly at by the end of the month, there is no future. Play it up and make it seem bigger than it actually turns out to be (perhaps make it start to BE bigger than it's supposed to be, and have the PCs' actions result in it being confined to Cyre... which, while being a half-way victory, will still help drive the horror home). Again borrowing from Heroes, perhaps one session could involve them being transported into the future and experiencing the Mournland as it appears now (with no way of knowing that it doesn't cover the whole of the world). I was thinking the simultaneous coating of Cyre with magical, reality-warping mist, and the driving of every seer insane, would be a big enough clue something big is going down =P Oh, and I forgot to mention: In this new campaign, I'm also having the villain be a member of House Thuranni. One level before the Mourning, he--and all his companions--are going to poof out of existance. Add this to the one seer who IS allowed to see into the future without going crazygonuts, even if his predictions are remarkably vague, and I think there'll be plenty of forewarning that something BIG is going down. Soon. Mmm... I like that idea of making the Mourning bigger than it is, and having the players reduce it... but that implies that they'll figure out what caused the Mourning, and that sort of bothers me. I'd much rather it be a mystery--at least for the heroic and possibly paragon tiers, at least.
#6 durskut Sep 26, 2008 10:26:36	i seem to recall this thread from a while ago, it doesn't expressly deal with premourning times, but it might give you some ideas on what these were like before the mourning, or just have them handy when it does go down. 1001 Mournland Horrors http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=407341&highlight=1001+mournland+horrors
#7 ChrisTheS Sep 26, 2008 10:43:15	Mmm... I like that idea of making the Mourning bigger than it is, and having the players reduce it... but that implies that they'll figure out what caused the Mourning, and that sort of bothers me. Not necessarily: the cause and the cure need not be directly related, especially if you're going for containment rather than prevention. For instance, you could have an eldritch machine that shifts the entire nation of Cyre a split-second forward in time at the critical moment, thus creating a dimensional barrier (the mists) and preventing the effect of the Mourning from spreading. No need to have any idea what the cause is.
#8 goblin_pride Oct 01, 2008 8:02:00	No need to have any idea what the cause is. I had an excellent explanation of what caused the Mourning in my game. But my players were too scared to go anywhere near the Mournlands after their first encounter. When they freaked out after an encounter with Dhakaani goblins (3, to be exact), they weren't about to let me subject them to something unexplained anywhere. Show If you're looking, you're obviously curious. The Mourning in my game was a fence magically augmented with changeling blood. Cannith built it and it was supposed to let the rulers of Cyre open and close the borders by allowing them to litterally change the land if they wanted. It would've allowed them to raise and lower mountains, shift forests around, alter the course of rivers, and so forth. The only problem is that a changeling actually has to think about the form it's holding. As long as the engine is still running and no one is in control, the country is in a sort of involuntary amorphous fluctuation.
#9 PJammaGod Oct 01, 2008 9:06:54	All in all you've got a great concept going there Misterfido. The idea of having to battle against a rather angry and assertive landscape (which is implacable and probably unstopable) works quite well. But as Chris pointed out, if the players are completly unfamiliar with the setting you may have to be careful in doling out the right information to the players, bite-sized chunks so they can digest the information slowly and get a feel for the game before being thrust into the cluster f-bomb that is the Mourning. Other than that, compelling stuff, I'm sure your players will like muchly.