Shadow Game Campaign post mortem

First an apology for the length, and second some setup…. For the past three and a half years I have been playing Savage Worlds with a group of friends. For those who don’t know Savage worlds is a pen and paper rpg not unlike D&D. The ruleset is a bit different but it plays roughly the same. The overarching story of the campaigns has been a patchwork and collaboration of me, Tay and Tyler, three completely different storytelling Dungeon Maters. It has been going surprisingly well, as we have been striving to work together on the ultimate goals. We each have our own strengths we bring to the table. The challenging part is that more often than not only one of us is DMing so to keep it fun for the rest information passed is minimal which leads to some interesting dilemmas, such as one of my players destroying the origin of all his power because I wasn’t aware that Tay intended the item to function as such. Oops. Still I am proud of the story we have created together and am happy we opted for this route so each of us can play and DM.

As of this past Thursday I have wrapped my four month arc, and can safely say it was a solid success that my players seemed to greatly enjoy which any good DM will tell you is all that matters in the end. It’s not DM vs the players, it’s the DM doing everything they can to increase the players enjoyment. This success was not without it’s worries, struggles or the lessons I learned from my failures before. I can safety say it is true, you learn more from your failures than your successes, but it’s the successes that make failures worth it. So without further ado, my post mortem of my campaign and the process of creation.

Going into creating the story I knew I would be doing a haunted house. Tay said I would be good for it, but honestly I wasn’t so certain at the time. I had recently done two different attempts at a haunted house and both were not exactly horror, or successes in their goals. In the first one I based it off the backstory of one of my characters, but I tipped my hand on that far to soon which turned the haunted house into some bizarre murder mystery/crime boss story. I wouldn’t call it a complete failure, I think a lot of good and interesting story points came out of it, and my players seemed to like it well enough but I definitely took some major missteps which hurt the campaign and the players enjoyment. the second one I did was a lot of obscure mindfuck stuff, which I love to write. Well that works in a novel where you can control reactions and information gained, as a DM I just confused my players into frustration. Although they did get to murder a house of innocents which was amusing. (don’t judge, they were in a time loop) So with the failures of the attempts before and the fact I don’t feel fear in the same was as most other people I wasn’t certain I could pull it off.

My other challenge going into it was I knew how it had to end. my players(or a subset of them) had to be stuck in a never ending war preventing a god or something else from breaking in and destroying the world. Basically I was tasked with writing a story in which the players had to lose.

Initially Tay was going to be a hidden DM, he would be playing and guiding the players to a failed ending. a lot of ideas were thrown around about a house of different rituals where they had to disrupt them, or where they would unwittingly complete them. I don’t remember exactly when but I started to steer a bit from the idea of having Tay secret DM, because of some of the story telling repercussions and how the story was starting to take shape. in the end he had more info than the others, but very little overall as most of what he knew was changed. Given that he was playing a previously known villain, it worked out pretty well.

So with a rough idea and time nearing when I was to start I knew I was out of my depth. My sister was a good help, she sent me a ton of horror resources related to dnd. I’ll pretend I looked at all of them…. some of what she sent was a few modules of horror houses. One of which I ended up using the floor plan although I rewrote a lot of the rooms desc, and changed a few completely but it did give me a reasonable map and a jumping off point for the house. Between the two it helped me get some good examples of what horror looked like in a tabletop rpg and how to build the creep factor. One of them had this doll that would initially just watch them, then had a 20% chance of appearing in each room they entered after that, where it would attack then vanish. There is something wholly amusing watching this evil villain vampire argue with a simple hobbit thief(whose’s player is a total badass) about who would touch the doll. (it hadn’t even moved yet)

The other aspect I needed to nail down was the story. I didn’t want to give the players to much info as to loose the mystery, but I also didn’t want to have some half assed creepy story of randos summoning a monster unrelated to the main story. Lucky inspiration struck when Tay (who was DMing the campaign before me) decided that Tobias one of my villains, had been creating an army of dark and light powered kids. yes this was a bit of a shock to me, not what I had envisioned him doing, but it did open some fun options. I knew Tobias was always looking for that bigger and better thing to solve his problems, so why couldn’t he be involved with my story? That gave me a lot of story tools as Tobias has such a fun and interesting story and enough blank pages to fill in. Plus I had an other character who could see the future (she was supposed to be an npc but turned into one of my played characters) which allowed me some fun little nods and character hints for her.

The characters of my story came from Yugioh. (I am so original I know). It was one of my guilty pleasure shows my parents didn’t know I watched as a child. It was the show that birth my love for ancient Egypt and probably dark twisted things in general as there was a lot of mental torture and supernatural dark themes going on, some of my personal favorites. going back to it as an adult I was able to understand the ideas and themes much better, and discovered season 0 and the manga storyline which was far darker and richer than the Saturday morning cardgame cartoon. the writer had such an intricate story and did a lot of research into ancient egypt before it was spoiled by the corporation. So like all good DM’s I took the characters Marik and Ishizu Ishtar (my personal favorites from the show) and redressed their characters as twins raised by Tobias. (I just told one of my players that they were main characters from yugioh, and he freaked especially because no one noticed, hehehe) I also took the idea of the shadow games and made it a central theme of my story.

In a nutshell I had twins Marik and Ishizu, children created from light and darkness to be able to summon and control demons to fight the great evil who would destroy the world. They were raised as warriors not children, and to better empower these dual children Tobias aimed to separate Marik’s shadow and light self to make them more powerful. it was violent and damaging both physically and mentally, leaving a scarred and dangerous boy who had to be controlled and sedated because you never knew if he would be kind or dangerous. Ishizu was forced to watch her brother slowly be destroyed and be indoctrinated that this was the only way to save the world. In the end you had a girl who would do anything for the greater good, and a boy unpredictable but so desperate for love and to protect his sister from herself.

The final piece of my campaign was from my book, well the research for it. I had been looking into the concept of the soul, and liked the parts of the soul Egyptians had, so I mixed that in to the idea of the shadowgames taking the evil of your true self and using that to destroy you. There was a lot of mixing and adding of my own twisted brain into the mix so now I had my world and my characters, I just needed a reason for the players to be there and a story for them to experience.

For this campaign we had our regular roster of players and had gained a new player named Jeffery, who initially gave me pause because I wasn’t able to go over his character with him before and some of his choices were… odd. That said, he was a real joy to dm.

With 2 weeks before I was to start I had to start writing the story. An idea that came to me about this time, it was a rebirth of the idea where Tay would be a secret saboteur. My twins had opposing goals, Ishizu wanted to control a god to save the world and Marik wanted to stop her and restore a part of her soul she sacrificed to make it possible, future of the world be dammed. So I took a risk and split the players in half. This was where I made some minor missteps. Half of the players were recruited by the sister and brought to their house to help her, while the others were recruited by the brother. each player was done individually and told something different. My missteps were what I told or didn’t tell some of them. some of the players I was able to give a very strong motivation too, but some I ended up dragging in and so they felt trapped and at a loss. This is something I wish I did better, really digging to find how what made their characters tick and utilize that more, this would have helped all the players really feel more engaged and invested from the get go. (lessons for next time) The end result was a group of players trapped together in the house/game with opposing views of who was bad (one or two just wanted to kill both of the twins) and a group of players who didn’t trust eachother. For this campaign I think that helped a lot, I’ve always liked making stories where my players have to make a hard choice, and having a group with different and conflicting information was volatile but fun. since the players were forced to work together with no reason to kill each other they could have arguments and discussions instead of just having a common goal and working towards it. This isn’t something I want to do often, but I think it was good in this case. Also a shoutout to my players as they never took anything that happened in game personally out of game. that is a potential problem with pitting characters against each other.

The house was the first stop in the campaign, I had wrote it with minimal fighting or traps. It was the intro where they would get the most info on the twins. the twins were not with them but they could explore the house they grew up in. this is where the creepy doll was, and the ghost of their nursemaid. I also sprinkled in clues that Tobias and my character Lilith were involved, as well as dropping hints that a particular hell hound that has a special bond to one of my players other characters was there. He was always depicted as a regular black dog in the house, and never named so I don’t think they players put it together until later. The house was very much the intro, the part of the book where it’s slow and your learning about the characters. While they were having fun exploring I knew it was definitely a long way from a success as intro is only good if you have a good pay off. that said I think I had a good balance in the house, they were able to learn a decent amount to have some idea of who they were dealing with but it was vague enough that even till they end the players weren’t certain who was the good guy or the bad guy or what exactly what was going on although they had ideas, some of which changed as the wind. This was good for me, because I wanted that unease and uncertainty, so I was happy how it played out in the house.

Leaving the house they officially entered the bizaro world part of the games. I ran them through an experimental chase where they had to do the prayers from the egyptian book of the dead to get through seven gates or die. Many lessons were learned. I think this was easily the weakest part of the campaign. I’m glad I had the good sense to only do one session but I’m also glad I did it for the lessons I learned especially with the campaign in the afterlife I’m doing later on. (probably late this year or next) The lessons learned here were several, but first is how not to build suspense for a chase. I had a timer but I did so little to describe and impress on them the danger that I think they often forgot they were seconds away from dying until the death on the last gate. the second was how riddles can be frustrating in large groups. some players just didn’t feel like they could help and were just doing rando stuff for kicks while they waited for the others to solve it. A solution for this might be a fight for time, where most are fighting but a few are solving the riddle. if the solvers fail they die, but if the fighters don’t hold them off then they die. Something to test. straight puzzles are boring in large groups because there isn’t enough to do for everyone.

After this they entered the classic dungeon part. for this I had adapted the tomb of horrors from Dnd 5e. in the theme for this whole campaign, I horribly miss estimated the time it would take them to progress through and ended up cutting 2/3rds of the dungeon so they wouldn’t be in there for 4 months. I think this was the right call as they were getting a little restless by the end of the second they completed. the downside to this was at the beginning there is a riddle they could acquire which would provide hints for the entire dungeon. My players thought it was just the first three rooms, so when I axed the dungeon and gave them an updated one they were surprised. Not that it mattered, that ‘aid’ caused them more grief than it did help. they were cursed with overthinking. the biggest example was the five minutes it took them to reach the correct solution of one obstetrical then the hour after of arguing they spent deciding if they should act on it or not. Take note, helpful riddle guides are HORRIBLE. doubt I do that again without making it clear what they pertain too.

A few things happened in the dungeon, first off I had a discussion with my players after one of the sessions to get an idea of where their heads were at. It was in one of those discussions they expressed their confusion and need for more info. Now while it would ruin it to give them everything (as i learned in a previous haunted house attempt) they weren’t wrong and I went over the remaining rooms and rewrote them to more heavily pertain to the twins and their motives and story. This seemed to help out a lot as they were able to piece together more of the story and previous ideas were challenged or reinforced.

The second thing was my players started to die, which opened up the fun little death mechanic I had. they would wake up in a upper level of the games where the twins were, and be able to have a small talk with one or both of the twins before being sent back to the party minus one part of their soul. this did two things, it helped pass info straight from the twins and give an idea of what the twins were thinking, and it hinted at the end result of them being stuck and their souls being slowly destroyed.

At the end of the dungeon part I knew it was time to start wrapping it up. I was really nervous at this point, I had players invested in fighting one or helping one but honestly I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off in a satisfying way so I was trudging ahead a bit blind as I struggled to work out an ending that would make the buildup worth it.

At this point most of the players were leaning towards Marik as the good one. this was mostly because they hadn’t pieced together Ishizu’s goal but understood Marik’s and it sounded good, but there was still a lot of dissection, especially after a funny but pointless fight among themselves over the staff of Set that was possessing them as they took it. I knew I was running out of time to set up a good ending before I reached it, so on one of the last player deaths, (where he flung himself into the void after successfully escaping the death trap) I had him meet with Ishizu where she got him to switch side to save the world and returned him to the group. Right after that they were given choice to declare who they wanted to side with. with that last minute turn and his influence on the group the split was fairly equal with the odd one on Ishizu’s side. Originally they were only going to fight one of the twins, with the ones who sided the other way forced in the battle field, but on the spur of the moment I decided to split them. Best quick decision I made. They fought their foe twin and the session ended.

The next session was so unlike anything I ever done. with the split group I allowed them to have a conversation with their chosen twin, not only did this allow me to pass information and solidify an objective for the players, it allowed the players of similar thought a safe place to talk among themselves. They planned and bonded, something that was sorely missing before. They were then able to come together and discuss who to help. The entire 2 1/2 hour session was everyone talking and discussing who was good and who was bad. Splitting them wasn’t even bad because they had plenty to talk about while I dealt with the other group. I ended up missing most of their talks because in a twist I didn’t dare dream for two of my players decided to backstab the rest and pursue a dangerous summon for a chance of power. It was their decision that gave me the ideal finale… story wise. (I’m still working on my DM combat skills)

The second to last session I had my two saboteurs running about getting what they needed and lying to the group. There was a lot of splitting which is stressful btw for me, because I want to progress each group but I can’t be everywhere at once. So I was bouncing all over. I also missed the exact moment they turned on the group. (bummer)

The last session was just the fight, good thing too, because it ran long. (several players had to leave a bit early…. 🙁 )of course it was a dramatic failure for all, but I had allowed for a win scenario for the respective sides. they were hard but not impossible, in fact the two almost got their dangerous monster under control but the best enemy for the players is the players themselves, as one of their opponents doomed the group.

Overall I’m proud of how it turned out, but probably the biggest lesson I learned from it is the players are as responsible for creating good campaigns and the DM. Just that lesson gives me a better base to create story, where isn’t not necessarily about how good the story is but how much the players/characters invest into it.