Lessons learned from Intrigue at the Court of Chaos (part 2)

At the end of the last session, the party had completed about half of the module and was close to claiming the Yokeless Egg. They had been beaten up pretty badly in the Judgment room, and were feeling less headstrong and more cautious as they prepared to enter the last puzzle. This was a really interesting change in the game's tone. I think there were two things happening: first, four sessions in we had spent enough time with the characters that we were becoming attached to them; and second, through a series of close calls it was becoming very apparent to the players just how deadly old school mechanics could be.

Here's what happened next (spoilers ahead!)

At the start of the third session, the party took on the final puzzle room: Construction, though they didn't know the name going in. This is a fun little puzzle, an iron room with a 100' gap of open air separating them from the exit door, and a set of colourful potions presented without explanation that can have odd effects if drunk in the wrong order. There were only a couple side effects as they puzzled through the solution. Fiona the Cleric drank the Crimson potion out of order, so that her blood boiled and she had to call on the unholy power of Ahriman to heal herself. And Malachai the Halfling drank the tangerine potion, becoming pregnant, though he didn't notice any effect in that moment or for the duration of the module. Alva soon figured out that the colours (tangerine, azure, etc.) were actually the colours of the rainbow, and drinking them in sequence cried a rainbow bridge that allowed the party to cross to the other side.

With the puzzles complete, a glowing, spiral staircase rose to a trap door in the ceiling, and the party ascended with the azure key in hand (from the Judgment room). The key unlocked the final door of the Cataphract, leading to a wide open walkway suspended over an infinite starry void. There they were confronted by mirrored versions of themselves that were stronger, more perfect and sworn to guard the Yokeless Egg.

What followed was the longest and most complicated combat sequence we have had to date. In the first turn, Mirror Keira the Fighter used her Mighty Deed to pitch Real Keira the Fighter off the platform and into the starry void. I allowed Keira to make a Reflex Save to grab onto Mirror Keira, and when she succeeded both warriors tumbled down into the abyss. The party proceeded to slim down the numbers of their Mirror Selves, but not without cost: the two 0-levels a player was running went down quickly, and Seocan was also felled by an arrow

In the midst of the whirl of combat, Malachai the Halfling grabbed the Yokeless Egg from its pedestal and bolted out of the room for the spiral stairs. Mirror Seocan gave chase, and the remaining party members and villains all piled onto the staircase after them.

What came next was a raucous, swashbuckling fight on the staircase, with characters swinging between flights and jockeying for the egg. Malachai was cut down by Mirror Seocan, and dropped the egg, which hit the stairs loudly but didn't shatter. At last, Fiona shoved Mirror Seocan and they both tumbled off the staircase, Fiona succeeding on a Reflex Save to catch herself on the next flight down, and Mirror Seocan falling 180' to his death (splat!).

All seemed lost for Malachai, who had burned off most of his Luck in the combat. But he managed to succeed on his check to Roll the Body, and was restored to a single hit point. Seocan also fell in the combat, but because his player was away for the session I ruled that he would automatically succeed on his Roll the Body check (we've stuck with this ruling in future sessions).

That's where we ended the third session, with the party battered and bruised but in possession of the Yokeless Egg. The fourth session started with Keira, separated from the party and falling through the infinite void, locked in combat with her Mirror Self. Her story continued in parallel with the main plot, but we'll pick that thread up in a separate session report, because I want to talk more about why I love splitting the party and some techniques I use to do it effectively.

Meanwhile the main party was arguing about what to do with the egg, with no clear consensus. They all agreed that they had lost too many friends and were loathe to give the Egg to the Lords of Chaos, but none of the other options seemed appealing. While Fiona the Cleric invoked the power of Ahriman to heal the wounded, Alva the Thief tried tapping on the Egg with her knife and managed to produce a crack. Having confirmed that they could break the Egg, they decided they would try and use the threat of breaking it open themselves as leverage to get the Lords of Chaos to send them back home.

Descending from the Cataphract to the grassy plain below, they were engaged by the prism sentinels: flying, crystalline monstrosities of Law with the singular goal of wresting the Yokeless Egg from the party. The combat was swift, and the party triumphant, though one zero-level perished.

Towards the end of the combat, Sven the Dwarf, a secondary character they had rescued off the Starless Ziggurat and that I had been quietly running as Judge in the background, tried to steal the Egg for himself and flee from the party. They managed to bind him and gag him with rope, but not before he insisted that all their scheming and planning to use the Egg as leverage would fail before the power of the Lords of Chaos, and the most straightforward path was the only one that guaranteed they would be returned home safely: to give the Egg to the Court as a whole.

With the prism sentinels dispatched and Sven the Dwarf a prisoner, the party returned to their starting point and plucked the Black Chaos Rose that would return them to the Court. We ended the fourth session there.

Lessons learned from running the module

One of my favourite bits of tablecraft that I use frequently is Jason Cordova's Paint the Scene technique. It works like this: the Judge, instead of describing everything themselves, asks the players a leading question about the situation, and has the player add a relevant, descriptive detail. I find this is more engaging and meaningful for the players, and also generates new and creative ideas I could never have come up with myself. I planned to use this technique twice during Court of Chaos, once when they were given luxurious bed chambers by the Court, and once when they met their perfect selves. These worked great as character-building moments, though you can use the technique for other purposes too. Examples:

• The central table is spread with a lavish banquet. What favourite dish of yours is on the table here?
• Answer: Malachai the Halfling saw a spiced paella dish he had once had before settling in Burle, and that he remembered fondly.
• Answer: Keira the Fighter described a simple dish of baked apples from her hometown in Burle that was a special treat for her and her brothers.
• The foes facing you are yourselves, but better in every way. Tell us, what do we see that tells us that these are your perfect selves?
• Answer: Mirror Malachai wore an elegantly tailored suit and sported the nicest pair of gloves Malachai had ever seen.
• Answer: Mirror Keira had perfectly polished, high-quality boots.

On a different tack: because I had retainers in the party, I made the most of it by having a few of them behave obviously suspiciously: sweating nervously, refusing to make eye contact, whispering conspiratorially in small groups, etc. This seeded the idea with the players that the Court had made private offers to the secondary characters too, and, I think, increased their sense of paranoia. This also meant that when Sven the Dwarf tried to take the Egg for himself, the betrayal had already been set up and didn't feel cheap. In terms of tablecraft, I was quite direct in hitting these character beats. I told the party that Thom the Guild Beggar (they/them) was refusing to make eye contact, and when the party confronted them, they tearfully confessed that they had been visited by one of the Lords and commanded to steal the Egg. On top of the in-play beats, we have a group chat on Discord to stay in touch between sessions, and where I had previously posted a two paragraph nightmare sequence from the perspective of an unspecified retainer. Thom's confession lined up with the nightmare sequence the players had already read, but that their characters didn't know about. This was an obvious bit of meta gaming, but I love using cut scenes like this to generate dramatic irony and enable players to connect the dots around plot elements. Here's the text of the nightmare sequence:

The hands, the black hands… Clasping, clawing, drawing me down into the foul Pit. Seven long fingers wrap around my ankles, and the scent of foul ichor overwhelms me as I’m pulled into the inky, tartarian blackness. A blackness deeper than deep, that clouds the soul and shatters the mind so that I can do nothing but scream and scream until my lungs burn and my eyes roll back in my head. I will not go to that place. I will not let the Pit claim me. I will take the Yokeless Egg and present it to my master and He will save me. And the Fiends of Hell damn any of my so-called friends who stands in my way.

Lastly, because Keira the Fighter was knocked out at the very top of the fight with their Mirror Selves, I gave her player several of the baddies' character sheets to run. This worked great--the player had something fun to do for the combat and I got to reduce my own cognitive load from running an entire party with all their abilities and spells (see next paragraph).

Questions I have for experienced Judges

The final battle in the Cataphract with the party's body doubles felt like a slog to me. My players insisted they loved it, and doing a long, involved combat helped us dig into the mechanics and spells, which is helping us develop rules mastery. But it took most of an entire session and I felt like my own cognitive load was heavy since I was running a full party of enemies with abilities and spells. Luckily I was able to split up the Mirror Party with Keira's player. Are there other things experienced Judges have done to make this final combat go faster, and ease their own mental load?

Seocan's player was away for the long combat with their Mirror Selves, and when Seocan went down in the fight I wanted to make sure that he didn't lose his character in such an unceremonious way. In the moment, I ruled that if a character was reduced to zero hit points while their player was away, the character would automatically succeed on their Roll the Body Check, and so be restored to 1 HP without penalty. That felt fair, but I'd be curious to hear how other Judges do it.

Lastly, during the combat with their Mirror Selves, one unfortunate player again lost all her zero-levels (due to bad luck and some poor rolls, she had previously lost her zero-levels twice in Sailors on the Starless Sea). The other players agreed right away to donate the four remaining 0-level retainers, which gave her characters to play for the next sessions. And we all agreed that our table goal for the session ahead was to keep at least one of her characters alive through the end of the adventure so that she could finally level someone up. But what would you have done? As written I don't believe the module intends players to have retainers along, and the Plane of Law is so sterile that it seems fictionally difficult to have new party members just appear. Has this happened to other Judges, and how did your group resolve this?

Hit me on Twitter with your thoughts. I'd love to hear about your experience with Court of Chaos. How has the module played out at your table? What did you learn from the experience?