There have been more deaths in Abermawr. These have been discussed and analysed sufficiently in the past, and I see no reason to add to any previous memorials.
But the adventuring doesn't slow down. New characters are rolled up, backstories compiled, adventurers take over empty rooms in the slowly accumulated compound. The newcomers pick up the notes of the previous party and pick up where they left off.
Who is briefing them? The domestic staff? Magical familiars? Friends and family? How would they come to know all this? A little unlikely. (Not that that this quite matches the Three Mile Tree scenario at present.)
A thought crossed my mind: what if one escaped? Maimed, injured beyond the level of fighting-fit, but possessed of all the knowledge needed to set up a new party of adventurers. If an agreeable trajectory for players is full-blown establishment and possibly even retirement, it should be no surprise that someone becomes a manager.
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| The most ghastly fate of all. |
The process is thus: TPK. GM taps Player A on the shoulder, asks her if she wouldn't mind having Character X stick around via a tiny little Retcon as M to a pack of 007s*. (The less flattering comparison is presumably the maimed recruiting sergeant in Starship Troopers). Player A says Yes; off-screen Character X crawls out of the dungeon minus left hand, right leg and fearfully scarred over the left eye. Character X takes over HQ duties, including bringing the newcomers up to speed.
Does this appeal? Certainly, if this was a new season of a television serial or Book Five of the Chronicles of XYZ, the reappearance of Star-Captain Fletcher Irving or Lady Steelheart might delight an audience. Master Bernardus escaped from the Platinum Immortals of the Supreme Syndic and has undergone a change in appearance, mannerism and motivation....allowing his actor to display a greater range.
Would such a thing work at the tabletop? Well, recurring figures in campaigns can delight the players. If your mysterious employer in the concealing cowl turns out to be our old friend Ajax Barjazid, it could do likewise. If cleared with Player A, who has fond memories of Ajax's STR 18 and CON 17, and doesn't appreciate this shabby resurrection.
But cue the seeking of magical solutions: Get Barjazid a healing miracle! Get him a magical iron hand! Tear it off a god! Let's Corum that beautiful bastard Barjazid! That might even be an interesting quest, but this is all in some sense the same as bringing them back from the dead.
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| Mike Mignola's Corum. (Looking less than delighted by the Eye of Rhynn and Hand of Kwll.). |
Anyway, if the Adventuring Party is in the sort of frequent deaths-no resurrections arrangement, I at least like the image of a scarred veteran directing the next generation (though perhaps a surviving NPC is better). But this is the sort of thing where tastes will differ, and there's probably something I missed.
*Or whatever the collective noun is. A martini of 007s? An Aston? An innuendo?
As with time travel stories, there is a small but meaningful variety of ways in which to solve the problem. I'm forever haunted by the solution Dave Wesely implemented in his boardgame, Source of the Nile. If your adventurer forges into the heart of Africa, but dies before all the witnessed mountains, forests, peoples, and waterfalls can be reported back to Europe, then all discoveries are erased and that section of the continent re-set to blank. Nothing ever existed, except as a "discovery," an ontological imperialism that the 19th century itself could never even dream of.
ReplyDeleteThat's a fascinating element! You don't even get a popular history book a century later arguing you were the first one to the Source of the Nile - it all just slips away.
DeleteA little more difficult to erase notes or maps at the table, of course - and a GM editing a party's shared documents online strikes me as a bit of a breach of trust.
Of course, I should specify that I'm thinking of a phlegmatic Mission Control type, rather than an interventionist GMPC Elminster.
ReplyDelete