[Elfs] Slavers beware!

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Yes, I played some more Elfs last week. It wasn't with the same group as described in the [Elfs] Serpent cults and repressed priestesses thread, but rather with my usual group (Tod, Maura, Julie). They hadn't played the game before, but since our Tunnels & Trolls game is played with a strong spin toward the Elfs-y side anyway, they were prepared. In fact, Maura's character Henk in T&T was, for all intents and purposes, an Elfs character already.

This post concerns a very distinct feature of the game which came to my rescue (and relief) during play. For those who don't know, Elfs is a dungeon-crawl or classic-wilderness or town "adventure game" - the characters are basically defined by acquisitiveness, ruthlessness, and roaming. I can't help myself from mentioning, oh so casually, that its publication precedes Rune (the RPG anyway), Munchkin, D&D 3.0, and Hackmaster. But even more importantly, the game is supposed to be played, if possible, with reference to an old-school adventure module, which is what we used to call "scenarios," "sourcebooks," or "published adventures." Most modules were transcripts and revised versions of tournament rules from the heyday of D&D tourneys in the middle-late 1970s. They were built to be played simultaneously by many different groups, overseen and timed by official referees, and scored by kill-count and money gathered. They demonstrate a surprising blend of clever and thoughtful scenario design with rather appalling assumptions about player-character activity (which is expected and encouraged to resemble what the alien invaders do to human civilization before the humans get their shit together and team up to strike back).

Anyway, I was using "A1: Slave Pits of the Under-City," mention of which probably brings tears of nostalgia to the eyes of anyone who was playing AD&D back then. This was first of four quite famous tournament modules, all involving a weak plot of a band of mercenary adventures hacking, killing, and looting their way through the various fortresses of "slavers" (which makes everything the heroes do totally OK, you see). As problem-solving and combat challenges, they are superb; as fodder for Elfs, they're even better.

What you do with Elfs, you see, is to go through one of these modules carefully and write down all the factions, groups, and little social gatherings you can see among the NPCs. Assign to them any kind of priority or goal you want. You also find any NPC who seems to be distinctive and give him or her an overblown personality. The point is that all of a sudden, most of the beings in the module are no longer interested in simply killing the player-characters, at least not immediately - they want to talk to them for reasons of their own. Most of the module can be left as is in physical terms, for all of the internal justifications presented in the text: "This trap door is guarded by two orcs, one of whom will blow the ox-horn to warn the garrison ..." and so on. But it's fun to imagine the disgruntlement of those two orcs, especially if one of them is a frustrated poet and the other one is about to strangle him because he's sick of being asked about rhymes, and both of them resent being stuck at this dumb-ass guard duty job.

What did I come up with for good ol' A1?

1. The ruined church used as the base for this band of slavers includes an altar with a god, Gnokk, orc-ish slaver god dude. Ha! No problem. There's a female human priestess who is to be fought (according to the module) with a bunch of half-orcs in this room. But hey, I think, look. The orcs (not the half-orcs) have their lair in the sewers below, and they have a shaman ... does anyone sense half-orc to orc religious schism here? H'm! OK, the half-orcs have declared the true name of the god to be "Gnokki" and their hot-babe priestess has taken over! And the orcs are all grumpy about that, down in the sewer, as who wouldn't be.

2. There are four doppelgangers in the module, all of whom seem obsessed with taking over the identity of a player-character. What are they doing there, otherwise? Module doesn't say, but it's easy - they're just trying to get out, dammit. But this is Elfs, so frankly, they're not very good at what they do (imitating people).

3. The slavers are also making use of the "aspis," basically walking ant-men, and that includes the aspis lair down in the sewers too. No problem here; I decided to have some fun with the concept of "hive mind," and since we haven't really seen the aspis much in the game yet, I'll hold off on my ideas for that at this point.

4. And why not put the D&D player-characters in there too? Well, to some extent anyway. There they are, thumping and assaulting and occasionally tip-toeing through their adventure, and meanwhile the elfs are raising havoc. This is cool too, because the context of the module includes a lot of slaver tricks to try to identify and trap the invading attackers.

The most fun about playing Elfs in one of these modules is that the player-characters universally wreak havoc on the tourney assumptions. The more cleverly-laid the trap, the more cunning the ambiguity about "who's really the enemy" ... the more the elf characters simply make a hash of the situation. Their farcical impact on anyone's control over of given piece of information or terrain is truly astounding in play. My fingers rebel from recounting the events in detail ... although when confronted with the classic "choose between your friend and the doppelganger who's impersonating him," it's heartwarming that the players involved relied on a random roll to decide which was which, before throwing the offender into the acidic sewage. Or Maura's elf, Bimmy, leaving little yellow footprints all over the place after screwing up a spell.

Back to the point: there we were, late in the session (and I was also fighting a neck/head injury that made it hard to concentrate), and the characters have hit one of the "stumpers" in the module. They are deep in the sewers, and one set of passages leads to some blocked-off corridors. Another, the way they came, goes back to the aspis lair, and they know they don't want to go there. The third way leads up through some watery-passages and the players decide they don't trust it (quite rightly, in fact; that was the orc lair even though they didn't know it). There's a secret door in the blocked-off area that leads right into the slave pits, which is pretty much their best bet. And the players are going, "H'm, we're blocked."

I thought to myself ... well, I can have an aspis just poke his head through the secret door and reveal the "way out," now can't I. But that sucks! That's the GM making stuff happen so "the story" can happen, which is lame, stupid, and absolutely unacceptable in a Gamist context of this sort. I hate doing it, I hate it when a GM does it when I'm a player, and it's especially dumb with Elfs, which is best understood as a "players push" rather than a "GM pulls" sort of game.

Here it is, the big point: all was well. You see, the scenario had already provided the solution. The sewer-denizens (and this is right out of the module, OK?) had placed a big washtub upside-down under a dripping part of the ceiling, so it goes "Toom toom toom" all the time. They use it as an alarm; when someone moves it, that alerts them. And had our heroes moved it? Why, yes they had! They had done so just moments before!! So in this case, the aspis does stick his antenna'd li'l head through the secret door, in response to the alarm, and there you go.

I can't imagine how to put it any clearer than this: when you play Elfs, there are three sources of "make stuff happen." The one source, and by far the strongest one, is the energy and verve of the player-characters themselves, armed with astounding abilities to exasperate and attract the attention of everyone. The second source is the personality profile of all those NPCs, which is a big part of prepping for the GM. After a couple of scenes into play, quite a few NPCs will be running about, prompted into action by the elfs' actions and by the secondary effects of those actions. Finally, the third source (and this is really cool) is the internal logic of the published module itself, which in these publications, occupied a great deal of time and effort on the parts of the creators. They really wanted the hydraulics of the sewer, for instance, to make sense. The old church would have had a stable, and hence that's a weak point in the building's defenses, and hence it's guarded. That sort of thing. All of this is solid gold for perfectly internally-consistent and basic events.

So whenever one feels a bit tired or stumped, as I did for a minute or two, just tap into any of those three sources ... and don't forget #3. The module will help you, and as I just discovered, often already has by that point.

Best,
Ron

[jrs]

... the players involved relied on a random roll to decide which was which ...

Hey!  It wasn't a roll.  It was the time-honored tradition of "Eeny, meenie, miney, moe" that determined the outcome.  

Julie

[Ron Edwards]

Oh yeah. Good point. That's way different, obviously.

At least from an elf's point of view. "It wasn't a heartless, venal, and random decision! It was a heartless, venal, and personal decision!"

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

Hey!  Slavers!  I used to have those (never ran them, but had it.)  The third one is unique in that it is the only tournament module (in my recollection) to feature an encounter where more can be gained by sane, rational discussion than wanton slaughter.

The fact that you're supposed to parlay with giant, sentient mushrooms will be overlooked.

yrs--
--Ben

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ben,

I think you're thinking of A4, not A3. A3 is the weakest of the bunch - a set of pretty bogus rooms in a row, with the post-tourney additions being a singularly unconvincing town adventure. A4 is the one where the characters start naked, weaponless, spell-less, and groggy in a very interesting, extremely well-written and well-designed lower-power dungeon.

Watching 9th-12th level characters struggle their way through kobolds, swim through water-filled tunnels, and try to communicate with the aforementioned mushrooms is amazing fun. It's definitely the "handicap" adventure from a tourney D&D standpoint. I've read this module to pieces over the years; the text in the beginning about not listening to the players' aggrieved pleas for "but my sword!" and "just one spell ..." is very entertaining.

Incidentally, I'm not planning to play all four modules for this Elfs game, just the first one. Using all four would require a little more prep-meet and quite likely an introductory adventure to get them into it on more basis than just "wandered in."

Best,
Ron

[Ben Lehman]

I think you're thinking of A4, not A3.

BL>  You are, of course, correct.  Serves me right for giving those away years ago and not keeping them for reference :-)

yrs--
--Ben

[Maura Byrne]

The fact that you're supposed to parlay with giant, sentient mushrooms will be overlooked.

Sentient, shmentient - do they keep?

Channelling Bimmy already.  This can't bode well.