Hello students. Crunch here with your look behind the GM screen for Wrought Iron episode 15. All of these articles deal with facts from the episodes, but this one talks about a major spoiler. If you haven’t listened yet, I highly recommend that you do so before reading further.
This was a tough episode to edit, product, and write about. It was even worse to play in the moment. As you know by now, this episode delivers a devastating blow to the party with the death of Tilly. We’ll get to that in a minute.
This episode was all about consequences. Some were fairly straight forward. For example, when Arahamie failed her check and fell into the sinkhole. When I created this environmental challenge (even if I didn’t do it very well, as I discussed last week) I decided to commit to its reality. By this I mean that I decided that I would not change the nature of the danger to accommodate the survival of the PCs if it came to that. However, I did make the DCs rather easy in an attempt to let the story move forward and help the PCs survive.
But I also decided to bypass some potential consequences. After Cassander figured out the pattern of the sinkholes, I just let everyone follow his instructions and move through the dangerous terrain. My reason for doing so was that I realized in the moment that I had not designed this challenge correctly at all. So instead of continuing to deal with a problematic situation, I just let the narration carry us through. Plus, I knew that what was about to happen was far more important to the plot and I did not want to cause any additional distractions.
The scene of discovering Tilly’s dead body was painful. You might have heard a change in my tone in the seconds leading up to it. My goal for this game session was to end with tragedy. When Arahamie’s parents and Tilly were kidnapped, I planed for someone in that group to be killed. Last week, I explained the chase mechanic I was using for this session. As it happened, the monster got to 20 before the PCs could catch up. When that happened, I rolled randomly for who would suffer these consequences. You all know the result.
My intent at the start of this campaign was to create a world where the PCs had strong connections to the NPCs in the starting environment. Thanks to the skill of the players, that was very clearly apparent. My next goal was to introduce consequences that had a serious impact on the game world. This is the result of that plan. I never set out to create a love interest and then kill her off. Scott created Tilly and generated that relationship. I played off that dynamic and increased its importance when we announced that Tilly was pregnant during the dinner party (which I did clear with Scott immediately before the game).
All of these factors made this NPC death very real and emotional to me and the players. When I rolled that die to see who would die, my heart dropped. I considered for a quick moment changing it. The players didn’t know what was happening. The end result of introducing serious consequences to the game still would’ve been accomplished. But I had decided at the start of this game session that I would not flub any of rolls for the chase or the death, if it happened.
The PCs had a chance to get to the monster first, but it just didn’t happen that way. If it had, they would’ve killed the creature and saved the victims. Then I would’ve figured out another way to get to that impactful consequence that I needed. But this is how events happened. As a GM, I had complete control of everything, but I made the decision to let random chance take charge. Ultimately, it was a devastating and game-changing moment, but it shaped the story in a way that I could not have otherwise planned or predicted.
I don’t think we’ve ever encountered this type of emotional impact in a game here on the Academy before. We’ve had big important moments, but our games tend to lean towards silly and entertaining. I was not going into this game trying to break the mold and change everything. But I was trying to create a real game world that had real consequences. Unfortunately, death is a part of life and it can be unexpected and horrible.
I”m not happy about what happened. But I know it made for a great moment in a great story. The way this one single event has impacted and changed the game going forward is fascinating and exciting.
This episode ends with a very simple battle. As has become typical in this campaign, I was very fluid with combat rules. I needed to give the PCs a quick victory so that the emotional impact could be focused on. If you’ll notice, I tried to give Deign a successful attack, but Scott accepted the miss and continued on. I think this moment reflected the chaos the character was experiencing. The two most important part of this combat was how the monster reacted to Arahamie’s magic and what happened with Deign’s sword. I came up with both of these elements in the moment. The reaction to Arahamie’s magic fits into with a larger part of the story that I’m still developing. As of now, I really don’t know what the bit with Deign’s sword means. I have a vague idea how this will factor in later, but I was also trying to at least somewhat balance out the tragedy of what happened.
I’m also trying to be better at layering in more clues about the larger mysterious plot. As I am still developing parts of it, it’s a slow process. But based on what’s happened, I have some very clear ideas and I am doing my best to include some details that I hope will make sense when other things are revealed.
In conclusion, I hope you are still enjoying this campaign, even with the tragic occurrence. I think this will take the story in a new direction that is much more interesting and entertaining. I also hope that this episode demonstrates the strength of the role playing game format for creating real, emotional stories. Yes, big epic games full of adventure, combat, and jokes are always entertaining. They’re a great escape from normal life. But they are also a valid area to explore important emotional events.
The next episode will still be a bit of a downer, as it wraps up what happened here and on the rest of the Reforged Isles. It also includes a lot of interesting information about what’s really been happening. But the party is only starting to glimpse the grander story that they are now a part of.
