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Deviation Actions
These will mean absolutely nothing, and probably less, to anyone but me. They're just some of my favorite parts of the session I ran a few hours ago. I'm running a cosmic horror/ survival horror/ghost story right now with a solo PC named Alpha, and, so far, it's been a ride. (If you are a DnD afficianado, you might find these highlights funny or fascinating, but you might not. I don't know; I don't own your lives.)
Scene/Highlight one)
PC: I look through the captain's bedside tables, do I see anything?
DM: Make a DC15 check, for Investigation.
PC:*rolls* 18
DM: Alright. Wwwell, you see a small book, the one you found earlier. The one with the lock of woven ebony hair for a book mark. Your nose twitches, detecting a lingering scent. It's flowery, like the nondescript letter you found when you scoured the captain's desk.
PC: Ssso, it has the same scent?
DM: Yes, the same as on the letter.
PC: Was there anything in that? Anything suggestive, you said it was just a note from the first mate to the captain, but you also said it had lipstick and perfume?
DM: Thhat's all it had, otherwise it was just a normal day-to-day report of details on the ship. You flip over the letter, though, and you notice that it's tinged navy blue. The face of the letter, where the message is, is yellowed with age; you have a nautical background...?
PC: Yeah, I'm a pirate.
DM: So, yeah: you know what exposure to salt air does to paper; this is just that (I think). You put it at no older than, maybe, a month or two old. The paper, you notice, is creased and folded, worn soft.
PC: Oookay...what's in the book?
DM: Iiit's a bodice ripper.
PC: *buffers* Oh!
DM: There's woodcut illustrations inside, very tasteful.
PC: *laughs!* Oooh, no!
DM: Twin apples burn on each of your cheeks; you snap the book closed! You notice it's a hard-backed, plain-faced book. There's no writing on the cover; it is, however, embossed with a mermaid.
PC: *giggles harder*
So the woman in the diary I found...?
DM: You saw two sketches, one was chicken-scratched from memory, that was of Camilla...
PC: And the one I saw, the detailed one, was the woman mentioned in the letter and diary; who was being held prisoner, because there was a shackle-like design sketched around her neck...you said the lock of hair in that diary was red...?
DM: Auburn, a deep auburn, but, yeah: red, basically...
PC: Sssso that lock of hair in that diary couldn't be Camilla's; she has dark hair.
DM: Her hair is ebony, black like indian ink. You did see that in the sketch of her, so, that's correct.
DM edit: That might seem convoluted or confusing to someone without all the context, but this moment sent chills up my spine; because Alpha was following the bread crumbs! She was puzzling over the evidence on hand to suss out new facts. I was super psyched that I gaze her a mystery she wanted to, HAD to solve.
Scene/ Highlight two)
DM: You bolt down the stairs, veering into the ship's alley and see the boy! He's pinned down. Blood wells around the knuckles as a woman--her hair flaxen, cobweb-thin, falling out--thrusts her fist deeper into his mouth to stop him from screaming; as the man kneeling over the boy, rail-thin, eyes gleaming with manic delight, pushes his knife into the boy's forehead, starting another leg of The Yellow Sign.
PC: Iiii'm, uh *giggles nervously* (I'm going to do something yyyou might think is crazy.)
DM: I never think anything you do is crazy. Eccentric? Yeah! Never crazy.
PC: Ssssure.
DM: What're you gonnuh do?
PC:I scream as loud as I can. (I want that Revenant to hear me!)
DM: (Hhhhe certainly will.) You feel your throat tearing in two as the scream reverberates through the ship--the man and woman snap their necks in your direction. The man stalks toward you, brandishing his knife, soaked, drooling thick with blood.
"He doesn't have an invitation! He must to join the King's feast!"
PC: I point to the Yellow Sign on my forehead. "I'm his invitation! Get away from him, now!"
DM: "No, no, no! He must have an invitation; all must bow before the King! This is treason!"
PC: Okay, I'm not going to let them harm a kid. I go for it!
DM: Roll a 20 sided die--
PC: Are we fighting?
DM: Roll a 20 sided die--
PC: For initiative!?
DM: *mentally squirms* (Yyyyyes, but I'm trying to cut back on jargon, so you can be more im--yeah! I mean, yes. Roll for initiative, please.)
PC: *rolls* 8!
DM: 16. He thrusts at you! (Let's see if it lands.) *drops the die* You side step, whipping your arm away just in time; the knife slices through thin air!
PC: I attack!
DM: Alright you need to beat his armor class, roll!
PC: 16!
DM: Roll a six sided die minus one for the mace.
PC: 4!
DM: Your mace slices into his midriff--he's winded, his knees crash to the floor--
PC: I aimed for his head, actually.
DM: *buffers for a split second* As he thrusts his knife, shaving thin air, you hammer the top of his crown with your mace! He slams to the floor!
DM edit: That was partially my fault for taking the liberty of describing the action, but that is DnD tradition. It's not always intuitive when the DM narrates or the PC does. Some PC's/DM's prefer the PC's to narrate everything they do while the DM just handles the non-playable characters (the civilians, the minions, the BBEG, etc.); sssso, in the future, I will ask 'Where do you want to hit?', so I know I asked, and I know she specified.
It's a bit awkward, but, the important thing is that she was psyched out of her mind to hit someone, to be badass, and I got to enable that high. That's my job.
DM: The woman rushes forward, knife in hand. *rolls* She thrusts, you twist away--now it's the boy's turn... *rolls* Oooh. (I rolled a NAT 20.) He screams "JACK!" You feel your ears perforate, and your feet quake! The ship physically rattles as, leaping up the stairs, slamming to the deck--you feel its planks ripple beneath you--Jack stands up, to his full height, 7 and a half feet tall; and he glares at you, the boy, the man and woman. His eyes are electric blue, burning with cold light; they flash and the knife drops from the man's hand! He shudders visibly, his breath shallow and his eyes wiiiide.
PC: Was that the death stare thing...!
DM edit: Under no circumstances do I answer that question. She KNOWS it is, so I let her know it intuitively. As much as she wants me to, I refuse to take the mystery, the mystique, from her.
DM: What're you gonnuh do, Alpha?
PC: I bolt down the alley way--I am not getting killed by that thing! *nervous giggle!*
DM: The man is paralyzed, so it's the woman's turn. The woman tears up the stairs on all fours like a cat; Jack barrels past the boy, up the stairs after her. (Because [Pale] Jack doesn't care about the dude; the dude is paralyzed, he's fucked! Jack can murder him at his leisure.)
PC: *laughs!*
Scene/Highlight three)
DM: "Smoke writhes over the boy's fingertips--it's dense, coal black, oily--like the smoke from a tire fire--it collects in his upraised palm, swirling so fast it appears as a solid ball.
"Duck!"
You drop to the floor of the ship's cabin, hands on your head; splinters pelt your fingers, your exposed ears, as the door shatters!"
"Was that eldritch blast...!"
DM edit:
I repeat: Under NO circumstances do I answer that question! (Yes, it was eldritch blast.)
Scene/Highlight four)
DM: "As you poise your hammer over the piton, your heart hammering behind your ears, desperate to brace the door, it rattles in its frame; as a heavy mass collides with it--"
"I duck for cover! Do I see anywhere I can find from the Revenant...!"
"Well, there's Camilla's bed, her wardrobe, the curtains by the windows of the cabin--the wardrobe is massive, rococo, very stylish--"
PC: "I hide in the wardrobe!"
DM: "You leap into the wardrobe, worming through a dense curtain of clothes as the door bursts. Through a haze of splinters, the Revenant snarls, his electric blues eyes, blazing with cold fury, interrogate the room...and then...his eyes grow wide, his face slack. He staggers forward, shivering, as he sees, bloating in the brass tub, her naked corpse boiling with flies, [his ship mate and secret lover] Camilla....aaand that's where we'll pick up next session!"
PC: What!? Come on!"
DM:
The session in retrospect:
I get so anxious and, consequently, lazy before a game. I'm always buzzing with second thoughts, tempted to just back out, because I don't want to be anxious so I don't want to play. It's one of the reasons I only DM every other week on Discord, because so much (I hate to say it) "emotional bandwidth" gets poured into the game. The best part of a one-on-one narrative RPG is that you only have one player to please, it's easier to tailor the game to them; but, the worst part is you have ONE PLAYER to please; so, yuh better damn well make 'em happy! That can be nerve-racking, to say the least.
Not every session goes exactly how I'd prefer, but that's honestly how I prefer it. Matt Coleville said it best, "My job isn't to solve the character's problems, it's to solve their solutions." Thinking on my feet is genuinely really fun. It's infuriating, sometimes, inventing ways to reasonably not kill a character when they flub a dice roll, or your baddie rolls a Nat 20; and I get a much-needed buzz every session when Alpha gushes about how scared she was, how she thought her character, for sure!, was going to die; and declares me her number one favorite DM.
NGL. It might be hard, building NPC's, adlibbing dialog--inventing their affections, accents, tiks and mannerisms--minimizing jargon to immerse the player--only to have the player be flabbergasted and second guess you--because you can't explain the trick, because mystique is expensive but answers are cheap--and all you want to do is make the game feel as little like a game as you possibly can--but that recharges my batteries every time; just hearing those smiling words, "You're far and away my favorite DM!" I don't know, am I not supposed to be gratified by that?
I am happy that she finally found all the super cool shit I planted in the game for her--letters, diaries, eldritch baubles called "gab stones" that recorded the vocal dictations from all the major players on the ghost ship--and all manner of thematically-pertinent knickknacks designed singularly for one fucking purpose: to organically build a mystery worth solving. A mystery it felt at times was being completely ignored as it shuck and jived in front of Alpha's character. A mystery that, nevertheless, found a way to unfold; in a way that I think was actually quite poignant.