Building Bhakashal - Rolling on the Plume - Randomization and Role Play
In the short term this didn’t matter, but in the long term it became predictable for the PCs and boring for me. So I started to introduce more randomization to my game. Two tools in particular became important, encounter reaction rolls and assigning a weighted range of responses to the results of these rolls.
My Wednesday group had an interesting experience with this recently.
They had made off with Wave, a powerful artifact from White Plume Mountain
Before getting to the artifact, they had been ambushed by Sir Bluto Sans Pite and his men. The party was large enough that his two sets of henchmen had snatched the first two sets of PCs, but another set appeared afterwards. This last set tried to convince Sans Pite to spare their friends. When the party tries to reason with a NPC I roll an encounter reaction. In this case it came up strongly positive. So I was forced to interpret this result. Why would a flunkie of Keraptis, who has bagged tons of adventurers before, react positively to a request to stop an ambush?
The module hints at an explanation, Sans Pite was laying low in the dungeon after doing something bad. I decided on the spot he had hidden here for a year, the heat was off, and he wanted to leave, but Keraptis wouldn’t let him. How would this cash out at the table?
I came up with a short list of possibilities:
He would offer to accompany the party to help them achieve their goal if they would help him leave
He would give the party intel about the rest of the dungeon and offer safe haven to them in exchange for helping him leave
He would help the party to create a distraction to allow them all to escape
I then had to assign odds to these options. Sometimes I don’t have instincts one way or the other and I do an even split, in this case none of the options were jumping out at me, so I rolled a d6 and came up with the distraction. The most obvious one is hinted at in the dungeon, breaking the skin holding back the volcanic lake and flooding the dungeon. Sans Pite suggested this course of action to the party, if they would do this he would let them go. They agreed and he let them flee, heading to the exit to prepare for the distraction to cover his escape with his men.
Later they encountered Snarla and Burkett, and they told the pair of their bargain with Sans Pite, would they throw in or not? I rolled an encounter reaction for that as well, and they had a positive reaction. This one was easier to interpret, as there is text in the module that suggests that Snarla isn’t happy in her lot. So in this case I didn’t come up with any options, I just had them throw in with the party with the positive roll. They helped the party to jam open the flood doors so the dungeon could be flooded.
The party collapsed the skin holding back the volcanic lake and flooded the dungeon as a cover for everyone’s escape. And it worked, with everyone ending up outside of the mountain in two groups separated by about 50 feet or so.
The party had mounts and the NPCs did not. Their NPC allies asked if they could join the party on their mounts fleeing before Keraptis appeared. In Bhakashal there are a number of fantastic mounts, the party had giant lizards, a giant white tiger and giant boars as their mounts, as well as two “extra” mounts for supplies. Most of the mounts can carry more than one rider. Admittedly they can’t travel as fast when they do, but they had room for everyone but the ogres, and the ogres could run along beside them. The NPCs wanted to get away fast before Keraptis could send anything after them. The wizard would clearly be enraged by what had happened, and likely knew of Sans Pite and Snarla’s dissatisfaction, so he would want to punish them.
The party said no to helping them escape. They didn’t want to be slowed down, and they didn’t trust Sans Pite and Snarla.
Now, I had to decide. What would the NPCs do? The players had ideas about that, and talked about it openly when they decided to say “no” to the NPCs. I listened to their ideas. I added my own. The NPCs might just flee, fearing Keraptis’ wrath so much. Would they attack immediately, band together to ambush the party later? The party had Wave, and a bunch of loot from the dungeon, would the NPCs want that? Would they ride off into the sunset as fast as they could, would they go back to Keraptis and beg for forgiveness?
When PCs forge alliances with factions, then break those alliances, the encounter reaction roll guides the referee to a response. It isn’t entirely clear what is the best course of action for the NPCs here. Many refs would default to a fight to keep things “dramatic”, but it isn’t clear what is in their best interest, and the dice solve this problem by picking a result that the referee has to interpret.
I made an encounter reaction roll to see what they will do. The roll came out as slightly negative. So not an immediate attack, but clearly the NPCs were not happy about the decision.
Next step has me interpreting the negative reaction, I came up with a list of possible negative reactions to the party. The players suggested a few when talking. Several thought the NPCs would attack right away if the party said no, one thought they might leave and hide and ambush the party later.
The idea is not for the ref to make the decision.
Instead, you set up weighted odds and roll, and then you accept the results and interpret them. The ref’s job is to set up the range of options based on their knowledge of the environment and the player’s actions and ideas. I find this approach saves me tons of time and helps me handle situations where the path forward is not obvious . There is nothing in the module to guide me here. Sometimes there is, but often not. My players give me ideas from their banter, and I can usually think of a few on the spot quite easily. That’s all I need.
So I came up with a list of interpretations of the negative roll:
1: Continue to parley and try to convince the party, while positioning to attack if they say no
2-3: Attack now
4-6: Leave and prepare ambush
They had tried to parley and it didn’t work, and they weren’t close enough to get to the party before spells were cast, so I weighed that option low. They might choose to continue the argument, but it wasn’t the most likely option.
Attacking the party now was dangerous, first they had Wave, not to mention the party had four spellcasters. Also, Sans Pite and Snarla would not want to take any casualties, as neither had access to any healing magic. So skirmishing with the party in the open might lead to victory, but at the cost of allies they would need to escape Keraptis. So I weighted that higher than continuing parley, but not the highest.
The last option was to flee and prepare an ambush, this would give them the biggest advantage, and if Keraptis sent anything against the party, they might be able to show up afterwards when they were weakened and loot them. I weighted this the heaviest of the options.
Once you have assigned odds your involvement ends. I chose to weigh an ambush the highest, but I make sure to assign other possibilities so my preferred option isn’t guaranteed.
I rolled a 4, and that meant an ambush. Ambushes are often frowned upon in D&D because of the information asymmetry between the players and the referee. The referee has “perfect knowledge” and could “unfairly” ambush the players. But in this case it was a sensible response to the situation. The party has four spell casters, and in an open area where they are free to cast those spells they have a strong advantage. Flight and ambush made sense.
This idea, Roll Randomly Then Explain It, RRTEI, is the heart of improvised play for a sandbox game
To interpret the “4” I decided they were afraid of Keraptis sending out something to get them, so they wanted the party’s mounts and loot for a fast escape. If they could get their mounts and leave Wave with the party, they were confident Keraptis would chase the party, rather than them, to get Wave.
Taking their mounts meant that the party was more likely to be caught in their stead, and it would allow them to get as far away as possible. And I decided that the loot would help Sans Pite and his men to buy passage on a ship or buy a ship outright and sail away, with Snarla and crew on board. This plan fit perfectly, Sans Pite wanted out of the dungeon, he didn’t want to lose any of his men, and he would have to flee far to escape Keraptis, hitting the ocean would allow him to flee far enough that Keraptis might lose interest. They had the coin to do it.
So this reaction roll immediately forced me to define some things about the NPCs, and that created context for later decisions.
What I love about this is how these rolls do the worldbuilding. In seeking to explain why Snarla and crew would ambush the party, I have created a set of motivations and background for them, I have developed them as characters in the game world. I don’t do this by creating an elaborate role playing backstory for every NPC and assign them various character traits ahead of time, instead I come up with a list of weighted options on the spot based on what courses of action would make sense, without concern for exact motivations, roll between them, and then interpret what I find. It is one of the reasons why I can create adventure scenarios so quickly and improvise things so easily. Rather than spending the time to make complex, layered NPCs with deep motivations based in the lore ahead of time, much of which will never be used as the NPCs are either avoided or slain outright, I can improvise that at the table with an encounter reaction roll and player thoughts as prompts.
So the NPCs took off, and the party left to get their mounts, and on the way there a demon appeared, summoned by Keraptis, to get Wave back. It flew through the air and spotted the party from a distance. The party cast Wall of Fog then crawled up into a Rope Trick to hide. The demon dispelled the fog but couldn’t find them, and eventually left (the summoning spell wore off). The party emerged, traveled to their mounts, and headed toward home.
While the party spent their hour in the Rope Trick space, Snarla and Sans Pite set up off a main road a few miles away, they figured the party would either get slain by one of Keraptis’s minions and they could go back for the mounts or they would survive and be ambushed, weakened, on the road. Once the party started off on their mounts they decided to go to the road to get away the fastest (travel through marshland is slower off road), so the ambush was on. When they arrived at the designated spot, Snarla summoned an owlbear and sent it out of the forest to attack them as they passed.
The owlbear lasted 3 rounds, dismounting a few party members and doing some damage to the now armorless party tanks. Then Sans Pite, Snarla, the ogres and Sans Pite’s men emerged from the forest, their crossbows trained on the party. They demanded the party give up their loot and their mounts, or they would cut them down. The party started to negotiate, and eventually I rolled an encounter reaction roll. The result was neutral, so the conversation continued until one of the party fighters tried to bolt. His plan was to get their attention on him so their spellcasters could cast something, but a bad initiative roll meant that Sans Pite’s men fired off their crossbows at the fleeing fighter before anyone on his side could react.
8 shots, he was unarmored (lost his armor in the White Plume copper plate corridor room), when the bolts stopped flying he was below half of his HP. Two of the other party members were hit by shots that missed him. I roll everything in the open, so I don’t tailor these results, it was crazy. Sans Pite told him to surrender and he would be allowed to live, that he wanted the party’s cooperation so neither his men nor the mounts were damaged. The party fighter chose to keep fleeing, and another 8 shots were made. When the second round of shots was over he had 1 hp left, and a few crossbow bolts in his body. Another party member had taken a bolt.
It was all rolled in the open so it was super-exciting, they thought they were watching their fellow party member get pincushioned to death.
Sans Pite had boots of striding and springing, so he leapt over, landed and approached the fighter, saluted his courage and offered him a place at his side, “I can always use a man of determination”. The party member turned him down, and Sans Pite laughed.
The party decided they were not going to fight it out, the ranger shouted out to Sans Pite as he dropped his share of the dungeon loot, everyone did, then they all dismounted and walked away slowly. They left with Wave and a party fighter with his 1 hp. I decided that Sans Pite would let them go without a fight to reduce the odds they would seek vengeance for the theft, and he just wanted to get out of there before Keraptis’ next minion appeared. They took the party’s mounts and left.
The party had the artifact and they eventually found a Jugyi fishing village by the river. They approached them openly and asked for shelter. They all had a gem on their person, they dropped their loot from White Plume, not the gems they brought to the adventure. They offered one gem as a thank you for being allowed to stay. They laid low there for four days helping the locals fish and prepare fish for market. The Jugyi spoke to traders and other villagers about Sans Pite and his crew in case they came back, and the party ranger with his Eyes of the Eagle climbed trees and looked to the sky for retribution from Keraptis every day. None came (I rolled for that too!)
After four days of helping with the fishing and healing up they set out on a river barge with several Jugyi, heading to the city with barrels of dried and salted fish for sale. They wanted to stay on the down low, and a slowly moving fishing barge was a perfect option. They had two encounters on the 3 day journey. The first was a boat filled with Saan pilgrims heading to a religious event. The party priest insists on getting to know pilgrims whenever they appear, so they stopped, talked to the pilgrims, swapped stories and prayed.
The second encounter was with a pan lung dragon on a searing hot day, the encounter reaction was mildly positive, so they saw it dive into the river several times to cool off, then it flew away, steam coming off its back. They all breathed a sigh of relief on that one.
Sans Pite and his men + Snarla, Burkett and the ogres are riding to the coast to find or purchase a ship. You can bet your sweet bippy I’m adding Sans Pite, Snarla and the crew to my random ocean encounter tables, so one day the players in my Wednesday game, or the players in my Tuesday or Friday game, could encounter them. They are now part of the greater game world, liberated from the dungeon by a party of adventurers, and soon to be the crew on a galley at sea.
NONE of this would have happened without randomization, when the adventure started I had no idea of making Sans Pite and Snarla into allies or runaways. None of this was planned or expected. It happened when they parlayed with the disgraced knight and the encounter reaction roll came up strongly positive. I had to interpret that: I decided that Sans Pite had hidden in Keraptis’s service after his disgrace but longed to leave and feel the sun on his face again. It made sense, it was actually kind of evocative and compelling
That led to the alliance, the breaking of the alliance, the ambush, the almost slaughter, and Sans Pite letting the fighter go with the party rather than slaying him. All of that happened because of the PC’s decisions and interpretations of randomized reactions.
This method of play, which I have been using for the last three years in my after school program games, sustained over 500 hours of table play between 7 groups last year, all done in a piecemeal way, with some published and some home brew material, lots of tables and factions.
The players will hopefully make it back to the city alive with Wave, and Quin Faal will have another mission for them. They were actually the second group to go to White Plume, my Tuesday group went there, lost a few henchmen and almost a PC so they noped out and Quin Faal sent my Wednesday group in instead. They made it out with Wave. They could choose to pursue Sans Pite and Snarla. Keraptis will be sending out agents to get Wave back, so that will happen at some point.
There are also old threads from previous sessions, there is a pair of NPCs (an illusionist and a priest) that have a bead on the party with a crystal ball, they are due to show up again soon. Every few sessions their actions leave another thread behind to be pulled. They are surprised, I’m surprised as well, as I don’t plan this out, I react and it runs itself. I don’t think there is a limit to how much D&D you can run this way. I haven’t found it yet. The players are LOVING it, I’ve added new players to all three of my regular weekly games over the last four months.
Somewhere in the next week or so, Sir Bluto Sans Pite, his 8 henchmen (“Big” Barinth, Veena, Bogral, Krisen, Y’na the Bold, Waintor, Bju Rumatha the 2nd and Carolis), Snarla, Burkett and the ogre brothers Bavneeg and Borneeg will be loading their mounts on to the merchant Ship Knight’s Errand…
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