Drink Talk Roll Extended #2: Weekend at Khorr’s

The masked man fled across the continent and the party followed. Thus, began the sophomore episode of the Arretin campaign.

Fake It Until You…Fake It Some More

I can definitely say that this session did not go as expected and that started before even the stream itself. Due to personal issues, Pleiades missed the session leaving his player Khorr without anyone at the controls. His absence was in flux until right before the show so I just had to make plans for either possibility. Luckily, we had discussed his curiosity and how it gets him intro trouble during character creation. I was able to use that as the basis for him literally sticking his nose where it didn’t belong and getting magically knocked out until whenever it’s convenient. That will probably be when Pleiades returns in the next session. (Knock on wood).  

The other thing I didn’t expect was Amra’s behavior at the Sapphire Bond restaurant. I think Manuel thought he could get out of paying for an expensive meal if he tried something but failed to realize that with the fixed menu, they paid ahead. Also, that the chef and maître d’ would be so insistent that the hair would never be allowed in their food. Then, he just got really petty and decided to steal silverware. It was kind of funny seeing a grown Elf throwing a temper tantrum in what is essentially a Gordon Ramsay 3-Star restaurant and it was over quickly enough that barring a cover fee next time to cover the cost of potential lost silverware, he may be allowed back in the restaurant if the players ever visit it again.

I also talked about this when mentioning my other campaign during the break. This was more having a basic idea of the arc of the campaign but making up the general events that lead to that. I compared it to the Monster Hunter series. The players get to faff about for a bit doing whatever random things I can think of generally inspired by whatever media I’ve consumed recently.  

I occasionally find ways to connect them and advance the plot like when Col. Mustard from the Clue inspired adventure decided to by up the spaceship that crashed into the planet in an earlier mission, launched it into space where it crashed back into the ocean. The area where it landed had merfolk pirate attacks so he needed a crew to defend the ship that would be sent to retrieve it from the ocean floor. This ship got hijacked by a group of hags and a vampire looking to retrieve their leader’s coffin from the seafloor.  (Yes, this is a JoJo reference.)

While I do love planning a grand arc where even the little things like say, the courses at an expensive restaurant the party eats at in the second session, can be full of hints at future events, I do enjoy this episode nature because it lets me try out some out there ideas without having to worry about how it initially factors into the overall plot.

The Name of the Things

One of the funniest moments of the last session for me was when Hao said something like “Where do we find St. Jimmy’s?  And don’t tell me track six [four on the deluxe edition] of a Green Day album.”  As he realized, the Temple of St. James which the Ikana locals sometimes derogatorily call “St. Jimmy’s” is named after the song/character from the album American Idiot.  There are actually a bunch of references to the album scattered across parts of the campaign world and info I provided them. This is just the first that someone’s pointed out and that got me thinking about my process of naming things. I talked a bit about this in the Session 0 article from a month ago but I wanted to focus more on naming characters and smaller places.

I find naming characters during planning to be easy. I either just have a name I already want to use or have an inspiration whose name I will borrow and maybe modify. For example, Elder Brandon Alvarado isn’t based on any character. It was just a name I came up with because it’s the names of three streets in my hometown in the order I usually see them when heading out of town. He’s only a Dwarf because his brother Carlos is named after the Dwarf that Daniel makes for his first D&D game in the last episode of Freaks and Geeks.

Cephandrius is actually named after a couple of characters. His first name is taken from an alias a character in some of my favorite books used. His last name is taken from best girl Stephanie Dola from No Game No Life. I decided to combine the two names because I imagined him as a being intelligent in his element but almost entirely clueless outside of it like Stephanie and “Ceph” sounded sufficiently magical and enough like “Steph”.

Some are just simply names and basic personalities ripped straight from the source. The newsies who serve as a small information network in Ikana are basically just a combination of the Baker Street Irregulars and the title characters of Newsies that’s why they’re leader is named Jack like the main character of the movie and speak with my poor attempt at New York accents. From there, I just kind of improvise the personality. I figure these kinds of kids won’t be very easy to win over. They’ve seen it all and the sequel too but when money’s on the table, they’ll talk about whatever you want.  

However, naming things, especially something made up during the session, has got to be the bane of most dungeon masters. Luckily, there are tools for that. When I had to name the restaurant that the party ate at, The Sapphire Bond, I was bring up a name generator on my other screen and running it until I finally got one that sounded nice. Somehow, I had gone through the process of planning an intricate five course meal based on traditional Italian lunches (at least according to Wikipedia) but I never decided to name the place.

A good piece of advice for this that I’ve seen before and would like to reiterate is using a name generator or just coming up with a long list of names for yourself, be it of people, places or things, writing them all down and keeping them somewhere you can easily access during the game.  Then, when you need a name, pick a suitable one off the list and cross it out/erase it. It’s a little bit of prep that can go a long way.

Well, that’s it for this episode’s Drink Talk Roll Expanded. Next session, the players get to figure out what exactly happened in that warehouse that left its floor covered in blood and bodies. I think you’d need to be clairvoyant to see what’s coming next.

-J.D.