Still recovering from my time manning the post at NJGAMERCON, but I’m ecstatic from my time running my one shot, The Shrine of Fallen Snow.
I almost had my hopes dashed as there were no signups until 10 minutes before my game was about to begin. I thought I had brought graph paper, books, screens, pens, dice, and swag for my players all for naught, but it was not the end. Very quickly my spots filled in, and I was pleased with the group selection: a couple veterans, a new young adult player, and a couple kids, mostly all new to RPG systems in general. There were 6 in total. It was a decent spread, and a good test bed to see if I had something for everyone and I could hold the interest of old and new players alike.
There’s always a little anxiety as a session or new campaign gets started. Sometimes it takes a few pulls on the rip cord to get the engine going and traction in the wheels. Going too slow in a new one shot with strangers often loses their interest, and going too fast can mean leaving them behind as they still need time to connect with the story and the place they’re in. Real role cannot take place until everyone is there. In my experience, no amount of prep or writing ultimately determines a successful read of the room. Whether its strangers at a con, or friends you’ve been playing with for years, a lot is determined by how people feel on that day. Carefully, everyone is corralled into the quest. As the game started and my players met their quest giver, I knew this game’s speed would have to be adapted.
The Shrine of Fallen Snow begins on black shores, awash with salt and ice deposits. Beyond, the country is white with snow, and a great Himalayanesque mountain range looms in the distance. The Everest of these mountains is Mathalgris, “Mother of the Sky” to the Snow People, and “Cradle of the Star” to the Frost Giants. Though these two tribes debate many things, they agree that a Great Elder Wyrm sleeps named Ataru, coiled underneath the roots of the mountain. The last of its kind, an uneasy truce between the Snow People and the Frost Giants keeps the dragon asleep so that they may worship at the foot of the mountain. But something disturbs the tranquility of the mountain. The wyrm stirs in its slumber, and the tremors of this disturbance have been felt far and wide across the realm. You and a band of adventurers have been sent from different kingdoms across the realm by Chief Kalal Sar of the Snow People to investigate the mountain, and ensure the Elder Wyrm is not disturbed again.
I enjoy how direct this is. The call to be answered by Kalal Sar can be great and wide, or direct. Nearly any player character, of any alignment, can find reason for needing to be here on these shores, whether by concern for others or themselves. The call to adventure is for everyone, and you have answered the call.
What follows has no regard for spoilers so… read at your own peril.
From here, Shrine of Fallen Snow has a few modes or speeds. How long do we want to be in this village? How much information do we give the players, and what do we make them work for? There are multiple areas to expand on. We could investigate the start or cause of the tremors, visit local townsfolk and crime scenes, or even do a small mini-quest to hunt with a local tanner for the furs or food needed for survival in the country beyond. We could do this everywhere throughout this story, but these are just the starting examples. Personally I wanted to tell a self contained story that I could complete in 3 or 4 hours. So much of these questions were answered for me when we wondered what we wanted to do. Equipment and information were provided. The real work for the players was going to be a trek with a small taste of survival decisions, and a climactic battle at the end. It played similarly to a “choose your own adventure novel” with multiple forks and pitfalls in the road helping or hindering the party in preparation for the moment they faced their ultimate foe, which was a demon. See? Spoilers.
Of course letting the party know that too early, even for this small one shot, wasn’t going to do. I couldn’t have the players spending a whole session investigating, but knowing what awaited them in the wilderness would make players too anxious or bored to get things over with since nothing would be left to figure out. So employing some misdirection was needed. This is a common tactic in film. That meant the suspects for what was causing these tremors stayed in and were crossed off little by little. The people have an uneasy alliance with the Frost Giants, and so the players’ first thoughts will go there. But that would be too easy. Next the players are told of an old hag who chooses to distance herself from the village and still lives in the nearby forest on her own. Naturally we begin to think she’s the cause of the trouble, as ignorant or fearful townsfolk are ought to do. But again, this would be too easy. If the players are brave and empathetic during their confrontation with the old hag, they learn she’s really a druid who practices the original religion from which the Shrine was built, and warns them of the creature that is the ultimate cause of the peril. I love the archetype of the medicine woman who can act as sage or oracle. From here the players are on a hunt to shape up the “creature” spoken to them by the old woman. Is it a beast or something more?
Again everything comes down to player choice, and a fight or bad confrontation anywhere can drain the party, making the end fight very difficult, maybe even impossible. I wanted that to be a feature of the one shot, and not a bug. Decisions, I kept warning my players, would have life and death consequences, and there were many moments that would decide if they had the tools or resources to escape the doom waiting for them. Everything needs to be up to the players, and I felt I gave them the information they needed to survive or die.
I really enjoy the design philosophy of a “living sandbox.” Once the scene is set, the signs posted, it’s nice for the players to poke around and explore on their own. The “living” part of this sandbox, is that NPC’s are not for decoration. They are not a fixture on the map or belong to the background. This I followed through with to the end, as I stalked my players once they neared the Shrine with the demon. Waiting in lairs is fun and all, but tired and expected, and it was fun to meet the players where they were. Sometimes I’ll make a checklist for NPC’s and run through their motivations as story moments or conversations pass, but near the shrine it was just me, the predator, and them, the prey. The players would decide where the fight was going to go down. I conceived of them spending the night in, or barricading the Shrine once they were in it. Part of me was hoping they would. The other part was hoping I could draw them into a fight where death would be much more present, and it was very close by. Either way the space for the climactic confrontation would be dynamic, subject to weather, positioning, and resources, but the players would choose their battlefield.
Whenever I plan for an encounter, I like making the environment the unspoken other character in the fight. It’s important to me that players interact with more than the monster, and I try to do the same. My demon, after all, did have a decent intelligence. It could strategize. The pillars of the Shrine, the snow, a frozen river. All of these are weapons too, especially to a demon that lived like a hermit out here.
The next question is balancing. Much like reading the room, this is another area that I feel must be fluid. Leading up to a fight, a monster must be finely tuned. In future runs of this one shot, I’d like to set the demon in stone, so players truly can’t defeat it unless they are at the top of their game, providing a quest that has replayability. The reality as a DM is of course, if we wanted to, we could very easily kill the entire party. That’s not our job. Our job here is to test the party, and make them feel like the battle was hard fought. I’ve done my job right if things felt they could go either way, and things that saved the players’ lives were their choices. Knowing this fight could likely be their only encounter, the shadow of the demon loomed large, and since this was a one shot, I knew everything in the players could be spent by the end. If it were going to be a doom though, the players needed to feel that the doom was one they walked into. So we threw down in a final fight, a confrontation we had been building to. Some strategic choices by the younger players were questionable, but I held nothing back, as I felt it was important to teach them that their actions had consequences. Of course being cruel to younger players is something I would never do. My choices were motivated simply through role play, and in the end one of the kids ended up dying. What was great though is everyone was very supportive of the kid and taught him why he died, and it came almost entirely down to where he chose to stand. It was a difficult fight, and by the end, none of the characters kept their blood from spilling on the battlefield. At great cost, they made a hard fought win.
This alone is victory for me as a DM, but even here too we want to keep the players’ interest. Combat encounters, particularly boss combat encounters, can drag on for an hour at least or more. And so a twist here too is often needed. But what would our twist be? That and more I’ll save for the ultimate release of the one shot.
I would call this first official play through of my small campaign a success, and a suitably epic albeit short one shot, with high stakes and high drama. It was fun, even at a con in such a short time, to leave the players feeling like they were doing something that really mattered, more than clearing out the “local dungeon.” I was very humbled by my players’ handshakes and nods of approval as they stood up from the completed game. It was ecstatic to hear how they enjoyed it, and how pleased they felt when I told them of all the ways things could have gone down. As a bonus and an extra thank you, one of my younger players left me with this doodle of the final fight, which I think was his way of saying thank you as well.
TJRM
