2023-02-04 After the session

My wife fell asleep on the sofa and I covered her with a blanket. Now I just need to finish typing this up…

I seem to have settled in a nice “one page a day” routine with Knives. I’m not sure how many more pages there will be. Something about players gaining a talents. Something about them making plans. Something about finding campaign goals.

Knives

Anyway, this is about daydreaming between sessions.

Between sessions

Adalric and Brunhilde spent then night up in the mountains, managed to run from the wolves, met the marmot man and were courteous and he let them gather some Blue Roaring Ears if they brought back Little Man Moss to Ulrike and made sure she taught it all she knew about botany for a year and a day. They agreed to that and went back, convinced Ulrike to take the little green creature, got the book, brought it to Lady Trudeberg, and Adalric was invited to read some books along with Little Man Moss and Brunhilde was invited to come train with Lady Trudeberg’s daughter Waltrud.

The sessions, people go home or log off, and Claudia is daydreaming about the game. Time to think about all the non-player characters and add some notes. Are Ulrike and the Marmot Man friends or foes? Maybe a competitive relationship? Power over the plants and mushrooms? Is there a passage to Myrkheim and the Ur-forest of the mushroom king? Which side would the players pick? If they meet again, Marmot Man is going to send them on a mission to Myrkheim. Ulrike is going to tell them how to steal the secret of sleeping spores from the mushroom king and the players will have to decide where their loyalties lie.

And what about Ulrike? With Sleep-6 she must have been to the dreamlands, maybe she had a long love affair with Orpheus himself which ended in opium-fueled nightmare battles and charms and counter charms. And finally she left, retired to this place, started weaving a net of plants and charms. This would be something to discover. What would be the little secrets along the way? Orpheus’ ring. Also a great treasure that somebody might want to steal – a new secret society, perhaps? Books of nightmares and curses, dreamland violence. Those books might be there for Adalric to discover, to ask Ulrike about them, to see her mien freeze and hear her speak in the fell voice of Cold Charm��

Claudia is throwing out words without knowing what they mean, but it’ll be easy to add more words later, once she knows that the players are in fact going to be interested. She just wants to stay one or two steps ahead. If more stuff gets added wherever players look, that also means that stuff remains open and vague as long as nobody is looking. For now, she needs more seeds of conflicting loyalties, of love interests, of envy and jealousy…

Lady Trudeberg and The Brothers and Sisters of Horned Mask, what about them? Claudia reviews her notes and sees the grape was supposed to grow in the ruin of Hawk Rock, which didn’t make an appearance and that the “forest creature” there hates all humans. Since Claudia had forgotten about it, Hawk Rock must be a ruin somewhere else and the forest creatures is probably a bugbear. She prepares bugbears and rolls on the Nightling table again: Damage-5 Endurance-3 Life-5 Fight-9 Attack-9 Escape-9. Quick to attack, quick to run, squishy, that’s the local bugbears.

What about Urs and his love interest? Claudia doesn’t want to add domestic violence to the game, so perhaps the girl is Krimlind, daughter of Krimhild, and there should be a scene where The Brothers and Sisters of Horned Mask meet and some potion is shared, and Krimlind is there and looking at Adalric and Brunhild across the room. Let’s see if either of them reacts.

​#RPG ​#Knives