Literally everyone else in the world
Feb. 8th, 2026 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseSomewhere on YouTube - I have no idea where, because I don't look at YouTube very often (unless i am unusually stressed, in which case I reach for the video of d'Artagnan singing Bist du bei mir, which I have bookmarked) - there is a very funny D&D song about being the GM. Well, DM, technically, but I prefer the term "GM" as it's wider in scope; by no means all D&D action takes place in dungeons. This song is called "Literally everyone else in the world"... and, as GM, that is in fact what you are. The same group has done several other funny D&D songs, but I can't remember what they're called. I just remember that they all sing in character, and their bard is a half-orc, which I find rather hilarious. (Bards, in D&D, rely heavily on their Charisma score... and half-orcs have a racial penalty on that.)
Yesterday we wrapped up our mini-campaign; I'd been a little afraid I wouldn't be feeling well enough to run it, but I was, more or less (and, fortunately, at least one of my players is encyclopaedic on the rules, so if I forgot something because I wasn't braining properly due to having a head full of gunk, he was able to help me out). That went very well indeed. It fitted perfectly into two sessions; at the very end of the first session, the party managed to find the lost signet ring which was one of their goals; and by the end of the second, they'd cleared all the dire rats out of the cellars, found where they were getting in, blocked off the tunnel (though not before our halfling rogue had made a potentially suicidal exploratory foray into it - I was very tempted to use the classic GM line "well, yes, you can do that, if you really want to!"), and even fast-talked the lord of the manor into paying them a bit extra. (Note to self: our bard has excellent Bluff. Maybe bring the party up against something like a mimic next time.)
So, next week, the main campaign starts. As I've mentioned before, the campaign and the book run sort of in parallel, so the party will be hired to find his lordship's Uncle Algy... but things are going to be pretty different right from the start. In the book, Glodric the wizard is able to locate Uncle Algy immediately by scrying, though it does take him a little while to get all the detail he needs, since poor Algy is sealed into his coffin (D&D vampires are able to assume gaseous form, so to ensure they can't get out of their coffin you have to make it airtight, and wax will see to that easily enough - then you just strap or weight the lid down so the vampire can't force an exit). But Glodric is at least 20th-level, whereas our intrepid party are only 4th-level, and scrying is therefore not an option. They're going to have to go and find out some information before they can proceed.
So I'm sending them to the town square; I had great fun drawing a little map of that last night. There are shops, plus the inevitable tavern, all round the square; there are four roads exiting the square, each leading to one of the town gates (if they discover Algy has been taken out of the city, they will then need to find out which one of these to use); there's a lane by which they enter the square; there are a few market stalls ranged around the outside of the square; and, right in the centre, there is a bard who is just starting to draw a crowd, and I'm very interested to find out how our bard is going to respond to that. There are lots of people milling about, currently all designated by various letters of the alphabet, some with subscripts; I need to decide who they all are (or, at least, the more important ones), which directions they're moving in, and who has useful information (or, at any rate, knows where to point the party to ask for it).
It's not even just a story. It's an entire superposition of stories. There are quite a lot of things that could conceivably happen... though I'm not going to go into what any of them might be, just in case any of our players are reading this! And I strongly suspect it'll take me the whole of the intervening week to get it all tweaked to my satisfaction. I'm not going to be preparing to quite this kind of level every week, but I do believe in getting a campaign off to a good start.
And, meanwhile, although I was quite determined not to start the sequel till after I'd finished writing the next readthrough script, somehow or other I've already written nearly two chapters. It was a question of "I'll just establish the situation to make it easier to come back to it later..." Fellow writers, that is a siren song. Listen to it at your peril!
Yesterday we wrapped up our mini-campaign; I'd been a little afraid I wouldn't be feeling well enough to run it, but I was, more or less (and, fortunately, at least one of my players is encyclopaedic on the rules, so if I forgot something because I wasn't braining properly due to having a head full of gunk, he was able to help me out). That went very well indeed. It fitted perfectly into two sessions; at the very end of the first session, the party managed to find the lost signet ring which was one of their goals; and by the end of the second, they'd cleared all the dire rats out of the cellars, found where they were getting in, blocked off the tunnel (though not before our halfling rogue had made a potentially suicidal exploratory foray into it - I was very tempted to use the classic GM line "well, yes, you can do that, if you really want to!"), and even fast-talked the lord of the manor into paying them a bit extra. (Note to self: our bard has excellent Bluff. Maybe bring the party up against something like a mimic next time.)
So, next week, the main campaign starts. As I've mentioned before, the campaign and the book run sort of in parallel, so the party will be hired to find his lordship's Uncle Algy... but things are going to be pretty different right from the start. In the book, Glodric the wizard is able to locate Uncle Algy immediately by scrying, though it does take him a little while to get all the detail he needs, since poor Algy is sealed into his coffin (D&D vampires are able to assume gaseous form, so to ensure they can't get out of their coffin you have to make it airtight, and wax will see to that easily enough - then you just strap or weight the lid down so the vampire can't force an exit). But Glodric is at least 20th-level, whereas our intrepid party are only 4th-level, and scrying is therefore not an option. They're going to have to go and find out some information before they can proceed.
So I'm sending them to the town square; I had great fun drawing a little map of that last night. There are shops, plus the inevitable tavern, all round the square; there are four roads exiting the square, each leading to one of the town gates (if they discover Algy has been taken out of the city, they will then need to find out which one of these to use); there's a lane by which they enter the square; there are a few market stalls ranged around the outside of the square; and, right in the centre, there is a bard who is just starting to draw a crowd, and I'm very interested to find out how our bard is going to respond to that. There are lots of people milling about, currently all designated by various letters of the alphabet, some with subscripts; I need to decide who they all are (or, at least, the more important ones), which directions they're moving in, and who has useful information (or, at any rate, knows where to point the party to ask for it).
It's not even just a story. It's an entire superposition of stories. There are quite a lot of things that could conceivably happen... though I'm not going to go into what any of them might be, just in case any of our players are reading this! And I strongly suspect it'll take me the whole of the intervening week to get it all tweaked to my satisfaction. I'm not going to be preparing to quite this kind of level every week, but I do believe in getting a campaign off to a good start.
And, meanwhile, although I was quite determined not to start the sequel till after I'd finished writing the next readthrough script, somehow or other I've already written nearly two chapters. It was a question of "I'll just establish the situation to make it easier to come back to it later..." Fellow writers, that is a siren song. Listen to it at your peril!
