Well, there won’t be my usual “Descent Into The Rotting Heart” post this week. We didn’t play last weekend, so I have no new story of adventure, horror, and the prices of each to share. What I do have is some thoughts about my approach to creating a “holiday special” since our next session was going to be on Christmas Eve and our previous session was in the middle of Hanukkah, both of which are major winter holidays and very good reasons for my players to not attend a session of Heart: The City Beneath even if I don’t really celebrate either of those holidays myself. So, instead of starting the next leg of the game and having to stop it partway through a Session for at least twice as long as usual, I’ve decided to take advantage of the fact that the party has gotten split up to do a bunch of smaller one-off sessions with each player. It will also help me solidify the narrative since we’re now about twenty percent of the way through the first (and possibly only) arc and I need to start pulling some of the threads a bit more tightly than I have been up to now. I’ve got a pretty solid base for what I think is going to happen and I’ve sprinkled in enough stuff for each of the players that I THINK I know where they want to take their characters’ stories, but it never hurts to solidfy this stuff hand-in hand with my players [the time between writing and posting this has proven this instinct to be correct since one of my player’s goals for their characters are super different than what I expected].

The basic idea is that the party has to split even further once they get to their next destination. Because the last landmark they were at was swallowed by The Heart during a pulse shortly after the Massive Corp base was incredibly disrupted by the message one of them delivered (the ramifications of which have yet to be fully revealed since it was supposed to be a message but it also exploded like a bomb made of warped, cursed energy that actually didn’t really blow things up like a bomb would), there’s going to be some heavy scrutiny levied against anyone coming from that direction. Plus there’s going to be a bit of a hunt going on for what the Massive Corp (called 3Q) is calling the culprits of that whole event, so the party will need to lay low for a bit until things cool off. This will give them time to do some resting, clearing of fallouts, and pursuing of their individual goals without the scrutiny of the other party members (even if the other players will be able to read a summary I’ll be writing up of each mini-session, since we’re all leaning into dramatic irony so we can make sure we’re building trust and staying safe as a gaming group). In short, it’s a mix of downtime and individual character development.

This way, we can keep the larger narrative in its current place (the party is fractured and needs to reunite following the destruction of a long-standing landmark, character death, and overt action against the corporation bent on exploiting everything they can get their hands on) without losing track of it while we break for the holidays. And, you know, I can get my tabletop roleplaying game fix during a time when it’s normally pretty hard to get groups together. There’s an element of that in the design of this “holiday special” format for sure, but that’s not really the point. It’s just a nice bonus. I’m really just trying to build some dramatic tension, add some stakes to our developing story, and make sure my players get some input into the story we’re building towards. Like I said, I’ve got an idea and there’s plenty of stuff seeded already that I think I could probably continue to improvise my way into a conclusion, but I’ve also never finished a story in a tabletop game of any kind before so I’m also a little nervous that I might stumble at the finish line. Most of my campaigns fell apart due to interpersonal conflicts (sometimes mine, sometimes between players) or scheduling issues, so I’ve gotten pretty good at wrapping things up in a more narrative format than most games allow rather than wrapping them up within any game system.

I’m pretty sure my storytelling skills won’t completely abandon me when I reach for a game’s conclusion, but I’d rather have done more to prepare and have to throw it all out than have not done enough and scramble to fill the dead air as I hum and haw my way through the finale. Plus, I love a good bit of foreshadowing and that stuff can only happen if you’re planning ahead. I want to get the general thrust of this story nailed down enough to start tossing that into the story a bit more consciously than I have been because I’ve put stuff into the game that could become foreshadowing depending on how things play out, but very little of it was put there with the intent of hinting at something bigger. Rather, most of it wound up in the game incidentally and it was only after the fact that I realized I could make something out of it. Which, you know, is probably as good as it gets in most improvisational TTRPGs, but there’s no reason I can’t do a little bit more than that. Nailing down what my players view as their character arcs and the stories they are looking to tell will help with that. And with figuring out what vibe to go with for my campaign playlist. Right now, it’s a bit of a tonally confusing mishmash of positive, negative, hopeful, and horrific songs because I can see a piece of each of them in this story we’ve built so far. It will really depend on which way the story winds up leaning as we continue to play.

Which, come to think of it, probably means that I won’t be able to nail down the playlist until closer to the end of the campaign. As long as I get even one of my goals (which includes just having a fun time with my players), I’ll be happy, so I’m not TOO worried. Only a little worried. The same amount of worried I am every time I cross the street that I won’t have seen a bus coming and will get struck by it. Or that I’ll twist my ankle on a curb and fall into the street right in front of a car because I’m taller than a bike lane is wide. Which isn’t a lot. Those thoughts just sort of pop up in my head when I’m crossing a street and, aside from right now, I rarely think about them and, regardless, don’t really consider them as likely outcomes. All of which is to say that I’m not worried so much as I am aware that I’m not guarranteed a fulfilling and satisfying ending to this game’s story. Anyway, I’ve got preparation and scheduling work to do, so I’ll leave you all with the image of a cluttered, stone-carved city sitting a healthy distance from a crystalline kingdom formed of non-euclidean shapes that bar all but the bravest souls from investigation for fear of what might happen when a body is touched by such imcomprehensible geometries. What might our player characters find therein?