At GaryCon this year during my Conan games I learned the joy and the consequences of giving to the players when they ask if they can have things. While these boons are well deserved and can benefit the players in large ways, they can disrupt or at least derail a game.
At my 9am Conan game, “Ghoul River,” the heroes were hired by the Keshan government to slay a Punt sorceress communing with devils to learn how to kill the goddess Yelaya. Because they were working for the king, a player thought to ask if they could have mounts for the journey.
It would have been really easy to let them each have a riding horse to take them across the savannah and through the jungle, but I thought this was the equivalent of Africa in Robert E Howard’s Hyborian world, so I should bend to the setting.
What would make a good mount?
Elephants transported Indiana Jones and friends in Temple of Doom. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have elephants transport the heroes?
Then I thought of the Conan the Adventurer sourcebook I’d relied heavily on to create this module. There was a stat block for war elephants. They deal 12 CD of damage on a trample. Let’s give them war elephants!
Everything went smooth as the adventurers traveled across the savannah. They were freaked out by tremors that proved to be a family of rhinos running by. They managed to divert the rhinos from the safety of their elephants’ backs, not really in any danger if the rhinos charged through the area. No big deal.
Then they reached the jungle no man had survived traveling through in a hundred years. There was smoke rising from a chimney on top of a hill where there was a cave entrance. The scout found a serpent person on guard and heard the chanting of many more from further inside the cave.
This was supposed to lead to an epic fight in the cave, with poisonous snakes, serpent people and a Child of Set sitting on a pile of pillows.
Instead, the group decided to block up the chimney and smoke out the serpent people. The serpent people rushed out of the cave, and the ranged fighters ambushed from on top of the hill while the others used their war elephants to trample the serpent people to death.
Serpent people in this game are Nemesis. They are very hard to kill. You wouldn’t have known that with how easily the PCs trampled and shot down the ones fleeing the smoke-filled cave.
Once the serpent people were dead, the Child of Set emerged and threatened the party. More trampling killed the child of the god Set.
The war elephants did not weaken the final encounter, because it followed a climb up a 500-foot-high waterfall. There was no way to bring the elephants up the cliff… but the players did think about trying to accomplish that.
My 2pm Conan game, “Owl in the City” involved a thief stealing a ruby that allowed the priests of Yelaya to be able to communicate with her. The thief fled to the city of Zamora, where in the undercity mythical beats roosted. The thief needed a heart of one of these creatures plus the ruby to perform a ritual to resurrect an Archerion sorcerer. They learned the thief fled from Keshan through the Iranistan desert into eastern Zamora and crossed west to the city of Zamora.
At the start of the game, when the players were choosing pregens, one of the players picked up the pirate character, Grim Aurelia. He asked if she had a ship. She was a pirate captain, so I said of course she had a ship.
When the group learned of the thief’s trek through the desert and destination in the city of Zamora, the group thought it would be easier to take Aurelia’s ship up to the Zamoran coast.
I had two encounters planned for the desert trek. Instead we were going on a sea voyage I was completely unprepared for. I knew these players knew a lot of Conan lore and wanted them to encounter a legendary character. Let’s let them get attacked by Belit.
Prisician had established he was lookout. I had him make a roll to see Belit’s ship the Tigress gaining on them. He made it with a Complication. I withheld what the Complication was. I planned for Belit to be smitten with Priscian and demand he be surrendered to him as a plaything on her ship.
When she realized it was Belit, the player of Aurelia asked if she knew Belit. I said for a Fortune point (a powerful meta currency that can be used to alter the narrative) she would.
So, Belit did not end up attacking. Instead, she requested parlay, where she discovered handsome Priscian and made her intentions known. Aurelia agreed to deliver Priscian to Belit at Togruta in a month’s time. Priscian’s player, who knew all about Belit, was quite happy with this fate.
Belit left. The journey was completed. I could return to the text of the module, pleased we’d had an exciting roleplaying scene.
It is a wonderful trait of a gamemaster to say yes to player requests, especially if it offers the potential to enhance the story being told (and if it makes sense in the context of the narrative). However, gamemasters should be aware these requests might later come back to challenge the gamemasters with unforeseen consequences, such as overpowering the PCs or diverting the plot.
