Bioshock Weapons

WrittenBy:Ayman Dweck
A fine quality everyDM must cultivateis the ability to escalate at the right speed. This applies to everything, from the development of the plot, to the introduction of increasingly more dangerous opponents, to the big reveals, plot twists and surprise endings. If you time things poorly, or playyour hand to early, youwon't thrill your players, and lose much of your tensionand atmosphere. So how do you escalate successfully, how do youspecifically continue to raise the bar? I'll go through a sample scenario in this post, and show you how by careful manipulation you can escalate like apro.

Ina previous article I detailed a caravan of NPC's that yourPC's were accompanying through the wild. The PC's are charged with protecting this caravan as it crosses dangerous territory. How can you make this experience themost fun? Simply throwing all the bad guys at the caravan right away willresult in a huge battle right out the door, and then nothingmuch until they reach the next town. You'll catch them by surprise, sure,but then you won'thave anything to follow up with.

Instead, raise the tension. Describe how beautiful everything is during the first day, allowingfor RP between the PC's and NPC's. Have some backgrounds be revealed, and then asnight falls, everybody will be more engaged. During the watch, have a single monster approach the camp. This should be something horrific, something the PC's have never seen or heard of. It approaches, a twisted aberration, only to be cut down by the party. They examine thefallen body,mystified and disgusted, and suddenly the forest seems alien and dangerous. Nothing else happens that night.

The second day they travel further. Either have more RP occur between the party members, perhaps due to Tadro stealing some equipment, or Gregorio casting Charm Person on increasingly larger numbers of the caravan. Then, as night falls again, things become increasingly menacing. Wolves can be seen, and as they make camp, the wolves make an attack on the camp. There are many of them, but half way through the attack, the wolves begin to whine and flee. Mystified, the combat ends for the PC's, who suddenly see another aberration approach. Just as they think it's going to be another repeat of the night before, suddenly another thirty of them step out from the trees. The camp is going to be overrun, and everybody killed if they stay. Luckily the aberrations move slowly, so the PC's can outrun them.

What can generate even more tension is having some of the men decide to stay back. The owner, Vercrezzo, decides to stand his ground, causing Isaac and one of the half-elves to also choose to stand with him. Do the PC's stay and die, or run and abandon them? Tadro and Gregorio are off, along with anybody else Gregorio has charmed.

As you can see, this escalation builds the situation until it explodes. You presage events with hints and omens, and then build up the tension until you allow everything to burst in the final, major battle.