Session 1 saw the party enter the swamp, meet some heretic cultists and some spider-loving witches. It was bog-standard D&D. In my mind, I'm sitting there wondering "is this place *fun* enough? there's nothing *happening*..."
I worry about that a lot. When writing fiction, I think about drama. When I'm writing a film I think about the fun. The scenes, set pieces, characters. And I think, in that regard, an rpg adventure is more like a film. And instead of putting them in an order that already tells a story, you lay them out in a way that they, when interacted with by the party, can create a story.
But in past adventures I've written, it was often about *that* scene. By that I mean, the particular scene the party was in. The party goes somewhere, meets a thing, interacts with it, drama, then they move on. And each scene is beneficial to the last only by how, together, they tell a story about a location. If the party decided to dig, they would find the web that connects it all.
So after the first session of MUCK I was worried. "Is this fun?" The spider witches gave the party a fetch quest to earn safe passage. "Go get some feather from a Maneater Crow," the head witch said. The session ended with the party member who stayed up for watch, snuck into the witch tower to investigate. He was caught.
THAT'S what I mean by the players interacting with things makes the story. But even then, I didn't know if MUCK was worth the price off admission. Would the party leave this place saying "eh, whatever"? I thought about this while writing stats and shit.
Then session II came along. And a lot was revealed to me.
Muck is made up of factions. Humanoid factions, of varying degrees of *cool*. The spider witches took their friend to a place to marry him to a witch. "If you bring us the head of the punk witches, we'll let him go." Another fetch quest. All of these faction have fetch quests. They all want *someone* dead, and are in such a state of stasis that they can't do it themselves.
This place is sort of locked in a cycle and the party is who breaks it up.
And by breaking it up, they start to spin plates. They are spinning the plate of the Heretic Cult and the Spider Witches. That's two plates. A fairly easy task for charming adventurers. That's why I worried about the un-fun. They had just begun.
Throughout session two they gather more plates. They're spinning the betrayal of the spider witches, the friendship of the punk witches, the secret assassination of one of the punk witches, the knowledge of trapped demons, the spider wedding, the Dumb Metal Angel on her tower that reads "DOOM TO US ALL", and then the Goatmen who run the catacombs, a literal heart turned into a cave.
They have A LOT of fucking plates to keep balanced.
And as I learned--the fun of spinning plates is watching them all come crashing down.
So MUCK testing is good. These two sessions show me that I need to do a bit more graphic design when it comes to this one. I need to present these plates in a way to show how dangerous it can get. A chart for the party to keep track of who they meet and what they owe them. And also a kill-tracker for those parties that come in here to just slaughter witches. A forward about the dangers of spinning plates, and writing everything in a way that makes it easy for the DM to learn the factions wants and dislikes.
This will be my most ambitious project to date. The biggest by far. 20 locations, over 50 statblocks. Shit.
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