This is How we Role – Aetherseed – Homecoming Arc

I know, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything. This entire year has been about pursuing other projects and not pay that much attention to the blog. Among those projects is the ongoing D&D campaign set in my own campaign setting of Aetherseed. It’s the campaign I’ve spoken of in the past–though from the past posts you might be confused since I used the name Telia, but that’s just the name for the world.

Why didn’t I use the name Aetherseed from the start? I didn’t have a name then, and it took a while for me to go through all my ideas for campaign setting names to land on one I really liked and this was it.

But that’s now what we’re here for today. No, it’s time to discuss the latest big story arc we went through in the campaign: Homecoming.

The story arc kicks off with Ando getting possessed by his ever present evil entity and convincing the party to head to the village where Ando’s entire arc began, seeking answers. Of course, things get complicated along the way, and not just for our possessed fighter.

The Homecoming arc had two major goals:

  • Escalate Ando’s storyline and bring the possessing entity into the forefront: Ando had already given consent to being possessed, so it was only a matter of time before the entity began to take steps to take over, perhaps permanently. It’s a situation that unless it advanced, changed, escalated and became actually dangerous, it would become stale and the characters’ interest in it would wane.
  • Take elements from every other character’s backstory and personal arcs and kick their butts with it, not just advancing them, but also creating fresh twists and complications for them. Kalani and Ravaleth felt this the most. Venadikt on the other hand had the least impact, because his story arc has always been a slow burner with many moving pieces.

This was our first major character arc, and one thing I wanted, if everything went well, was for Ando’s arc to be resolved, either with him dying and being taken over or with vanquishing the entity. As much as I loved roleplaying the dark being, it was nearing its expiration date. And with the party closely involved in the process it would lead to very interesting and powerful moments. I also wanted to give Ando resolution and the opportunity to be in a new character arc, to look past his, well, past and try to build something new. He’s now on a new arc where the player doesn’t know anything since there is no backstory involved, it’s all happening session to session, so it’s kept fresh and it depends on his own curiosity to advance it, which is a nice change of pace for him, but we’ll discuss that when I talk about the next story arc once we finish it.

Though honestly, the best things about this arc came from player decisions and the roll of the dice. In fact, some of the best and coolest Ando moments in the entire arc came from things I had thought about but not set in stone because they depended exclusively on dice being particularly bad. And they happened.

There was a sequence that happened in real time, we had a stopwatch and without Ando’s poor decisions and Nicki’s terrible rolling, that would never have happened and the entire arc would have taken another direction. But because it went the way it did, it created so much dramatic tension that everything was much more intense.

As for Kalani, this arc introduced Rivain, his old friend, someone Kalani left behind and who is key to what happened to our sad little Eladrin. But I can safely say that Kalani’s player, Nate, didn’t see Rivain’s attitude coming and it’s something that comes back to something I repeat almost as a mantra: Stories don’t happen in the void.

What I mean about that is that while you create a complete backstory for your character and you give them people they know and love and set a status quo for their relationships, those characters and the places they live in don’t stay static, they don’t remain that way, they don’t exist in a bubble suspended in the void. No, they’re alive and exist and have their own dreams, feelings, thoughts and relationships and those will change and they will change with time as well. Maybe some distance makes the heart grow fonder, but it can just as well create resentment, or jealousy or depression. The only way for the characters to remain believable is for them to live, even if that makes them completely different people to what’s on the background pages.

Characters mentioned in a background story or description are two things:

  • Written from the character’s point of view (most of the time), so it’s a subjective view on the characters and will be missing personality details that I, as the storyteller can extrapolate.
  • A snapshot in time. Time moves on and so do the characters.

And all of this kind of explains things for Rivain and the people Ravaleth has been looking for, especially that one Gnome with the stabby knife! In the latter’s case, her player gave me pretty vague information so I can do whatever I want with them and I’ve made sure to make it mysterious and perhaps even a bit grotesque, because I know the player will allow me to go that way.

After this story completed, I put a shiny door in front of them and they just couldn’t resist going through it. They had no reason to, no compelling need, but they still did it, and it’s one of those cases where I put things in their way but I don’t want them to take it, I want them to pursue any of the stories they already have on their plates.

But nope, they went through it and now they’re stuck in a dungeon crawl, suffering for their choice because my dungeons are not easy.

But I think we can discuss the dungeon after we’re done with the current arc, The Old Roads

This is How we Role: Aetherseed – Homecoming arc encompasses episodes 17 to 24 and you can find them all on this playlist (episode 16 acts as a rest episode between arcs)

You can also watch us play every Sunday on The Lawful Geek Twitch channel!

This is How we Role – Episode 10 – Holy Day

So, I know I’ve kinda been missing in action, with no new posts for most if not all of January. There’s a reason for it. Continue reading This is How we Role – Episode 10 – Holy Day

Dungeon Master Writer – How RPG Storytelling can improve your writing – Part 2: Adaptation & Characterisation

Weeks ago, I spoke of how much I enjoy storytelling and my love for being a dungeon master. I do really love creating and playing in fantasy worlds and taking players through perils and adventures.

But even though I consider myself a storyteller first, writer second, the art of storytelling, specifically being a Dungeon Master—or any kind of RPG narrator, again just using one of the most popular titles—has had a profound impact on my writing, as I’ve learned many things in taking people through the theatre of the mind.

I began this series last week with lessons on Knowing your Audience and Sensory information. Here’s part 2 for your enjoyment!

Continue reading Dungeon Master Writer – How RPG Storytelling can improve your writing – Part 2: Adaptation & Characterisation

Dungeon Master Writer – How RPG Storytelling can improve your writing – Part 1: Audience & Senses

Weeks ago, I spoke of how much I enjoy storytelling and my love for being a dungeon master. I do really love creating and playing in fantasy worlds and taking players through perils and adventures.

But even though I consider myself a storyteller first, writer second, the art of storytelling, specifically being a Dungeon Master—or any kind of RPG narrator, again just using one of the most popular titles—has had a profound impact on my writing, as I’ve learned many things in taking people through the theatre of the mind. Continue reading Dungeon Master Writer – How RPG Storytelling can improve your writing – Part 1: Audience & Senses

Resuming Fiction!

It’s been a while since I posted my last short story, or even a proposal for one. I’ve been busy, stressed, ill, dealing with issues and many more excuses you really don’t want to know about.

In the past couple of weeks though, as things have cleared up, I’ve managed to finish up a first version of one of the stories I proposed oh so many moons ago:  The Song, a Sci-Fi Noir story. The bad news is that I’ve decided to do something else with that particular story as soon as I’ve put it through a few revisions and test reads. I’ve never submitted a short story for publication in a magazine, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do but I’ll admit that it terrifies me. I don’t know if I’m even half the writer needed to pull that one off. But you know, fear is the mind killer after all, so I won’t let that stop me. Continue reading Resuming Fiction!

The Witch of the Wilds

My son, if you’re reading this, then it’s your turn and I’m not around to take your place.

But despite the pleas I’m sure you’re hearing now, urging you to hurry and join the rest of the hunters, I beg you not to follow them, not yet, not until you read this. For in these pages you’ll find something you’ll need if you are to survive the night in the woods, if the spirits and monsters don’t devour you first. Continue reading The Witch of the Wilds

Storytelling – Expectations and Emotional Impact

In an earlier writing guide, I mentioned the importance of proper building for emotional impact, how showing character traits instead of mentioning helps readers form the crucial connections that will enable them to feel whatever it is you want them to, from humour and attraction to anxiety—and if you can manage it, fear.

But there is something to say about expectations. With any genre, emotion and well, story, knowing what is coming or at least having a hint can derail whatever the storyteller attempts. It’s why, for example, horror novels don’t faze me. I have never felt fear from a book, not even a Stephen King novel. I’ve felt revulsion, anxiety even, but that cold drip of dread I have never suffered. Continue reading Storytelling – Expectations and Emotional Impact

Detectives & Dames – Writing the Hardboiled Genre

During my holidays between Christmas and the end of 2016, I decided to jump into one of my story projects and get it going. I had my second novel to finish editing (second draft at around 40%), but decided to instead push on one of the story premises I’d posted some time ago, the Sci-Fi noir “The Song.”

As I sat at home, thinking what I should write, which story to pursue, this one kept coming back to me, with new details, new side-stories that branch off from the main one as the character listens to more of the same hypnotic melodies.

The Song is different to the other premises in that I had already written a few pages of it before I proposed it as another one-shot, and going back to it and advancing I remembered just how difficult it is to write Hardboiled stories, a genre I often and wrongfully call the same name as its film counterpart, “Noir.” Continue reading Detectives & Dames – Writing the Hardboiled Genre

Summersalt – Tracer

According to the latest census by the Summersalt Ministry of Commerce and Security—it makes sense in Summersalt, but nowhere else—the city-state is home to more than 700.000 beings, with humans being the majority. This census is the most accurate report on Summersalt population, if you forget that it ignores all mutants, saltbabies, horrors and aberrations born in the depths and slums, most of them from exposure to some form of raw salt.

Twenty percent of the population make up the upper neighbourhoods, where the Trade Princes, nouveau riches, big merchants and old school nobility live. But among them is a family with enough skeletons in their closet to beat the census by at least twice its reported amount, and enough secrets to burn the city itself a few times over. Continue reading Summersalt – Tracer

Igniters – Planning Stage

Last week I spoke of Igniters and how I had to scrap this series of Star Wars novels for legal reasons, or maybe just to avoid having any legal reasons to begin with.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the best way to handle it, what the setting should be, and how to turn what was once Star Wars into a new idea, something that suits me. Continue reading Igniters – Planning Stage