This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.

Emmett & Joshua are seeking ancient truth in the scrolls of the Lime Nomads, in a pink Routemaster autogolem. Joshua wants to cross the Final Barrier and be able to raise the dead. If only they could find the Pine Clan?

Story

Where are they? Emmett and Joshua were told they could find the Pine Clan here, but the steppes are empty. The only thing going on is an occasional flash of sunlight from the cliffs on the other side of a wide valley.

In lieu of a better option, they follow it. The weather gets worse as they approach, extinguishing the light, and making ascending the broken ground of the valley side difficult. They elect to stay in the autogolem and take a significant detour to approach. They get to the high ground to discover a mess of columns and hoodoos.

And a huge vome, spawning smaller ones that circle a larger rocky outcrop, where the Pine Clan are encircled!

There are dead vomes around, but the larger one seems entirely undamaged. It looks like the Pine Clan have been unable to stop it attacking. Happily the autogolem didn’t approach too quickly and nobody is aware of them. Yet.

The party have a debate how to perform a devastating single attack, using the autogolem’s size and weight. They decide to ram a rocky pillar near the mother-vome, and hope it squashes it.

This plan goes perfectly, and the Pine Clan sally forth to help clear up the remainder! They are incredibly pleased to see Joshua & Emmett and promise them a party.

Tools

Unchanged.

Lessons learned

I wanted a big set-piece scene here. Not necessarily a massive battle, as the players are good at finding alternatives to violence, but something grand and complicated.

The problem with trying to do this as theatre of the mind is that nobody’s mind-theatre was agreeing. I thought I had described the situation1 and then the players would say “can we do X?” and I’d be confused as I didn’t see how it helped.

I see a few options, all good:

  1. It’s fine, don’t get stressed
  2. Describe scenes better, especially complicated ones
  3. Don’t do big complicated scenes like this
  4. Have an actual map of the scene to refer to, at least a vague one
  5. Whatever the players imagine, that’ll do

I think #3 is the best, although #2 if I’m tired or something would be fine. But at the absolute worst, don’t get too complicated, or be okay with complicated scenes needing explaining. I think they’d definitely need drawing as I describe it, something Foundry is surprisingly bad at.

Finally, if my players have to ask me what the weather is like, I’m really not where I want to be in terms of describing the situations they’re in for the senses. This isn’t a huge problem, but a reminder. I want players to know what the characters are smelling and hearing as well as seeing. I need to be telling them the weather for that.

  1. Specifically here, where the various pillars were, what their sizes were, what you can drive an autogolem-bus into without ruining it, etc. ↩︎