Convergence DM Log - Session 7 - 1/5

 Preamble

The holidays were the holidays, a time of family gatherings, last minute meal prep, and getting away from "all the things".  For the Convergence family that meant a few weeks on hiatus as we followed our various and varied holiday traditions.  But then, as though we had never left, we were back at it, trying to figure out who this strange woman was and what part she played into the bigger picture.

Yes, but where's she from?

One thing I've never put too much work into as a DM prior to streaming was my voice work.  I might change the pace of my speech or add physical mannerisms but accents and voice were not a focus.  Sure, Steven the Guard had a lisp, and a few characters from time and again would have very affected language, but until I dove into Arabelle, the Vistani teen from my Curse of Strahd game, I really didn't put much there.

And I really should have as the night that Arabelle made her entrance was a rough one.  My accent for her flittered to and fro, from French to Eastern European to German.  It was, frankly, embarrassing as a DM.  We laughed it off but that week I was dedicated to learning the Eastern European accent so that Arabelle would have a voice truly distinct when she was speaking and to separate her from Ireena who had also joined the party for a bit.  I watched every Twitch streamer I could find with my free time who was from that part of the world.  I listened to "tips for accents" videos in the car.  I practiced line after line, even making a point to think of phrases for Arabelle that emphasized the accent itself.  The "th" and "w" sounds don't translate well to a East European voice box and thus come off as heavily accented.  A nice tool, if you will, to clearly be in that character.  "Ve must let Zat go and make Zese our only wakinG goal."  Clearly not the way Ireena would say it.

For "Clarise", I did not know until about 3 minutes before game time what her real name was.  For much of the week prior to this session she had the rather Steam-punky name of Helena Atwater, and a matching properly British accent.  Then for a spell she was Claudia Vicanya and had a more Romanian voice.  Briefly I toyed with the name Clarise again, but this time with a French accent.  All of which lead to the other question I struggled with:  how had someone with this particular accent ended up in this part of the world?

The British worked for me as did the French.  Perhaps in what ever reality she and her family had come through, had been one where either of those nations had simply never given up their claims to North America, of particular the region at the "top" of the various lakes and straits that lead inland from the ocean.  Or perhaps she was simply the descendent of Earth Prime parents who themselves were travelers and thus taught their children in a manner that maintained the familial accent.  The Romanian accent simply was a challenge to justify from an RP perspective. 

As a small possible spoiler, I don't know how much more interaction with Helena the party is going to have which has also put me in the spot to "save" this accent for a later character, much as one often saves favorite names.

A whole lot of exposition

The session was a lot of in character question, answer and out of character brain storming.  What remained relatively unanswered was the exact nature of the shard in question.  But there were good conversations, very realistic, about the gnolls, their power structure as well as insight into how the party might move against them if they so wished.  There were also chances to talk about the nature of convergence events, alternate realities and even alternate selves.  What did not come up is the very good chance that in this reality Aveline, Kati, Sam and Syb all exist as a duplicate, either as the resident of Reality Prime or having arrived through a different convergence event.  After all, what if Sam's self from Aveline's reality also came through with her but on the other side of the event?

There was a capstone moment that doesn't happen at too many tables:  The players stop and ask "Why are we doing this?"  Usually it's straight forward:  We're getting paid, we need to for survival, it's about purging the world of evil.  But here, the fighting between factions north of the Imperial city really isn't critical to any of those factors for the party.  Sure, the gnolls are evil and scary and likely to slaughter them given the chance.  On the other hand, is that a good enough reason to go make war with them? 

Of Mice and Men

A little fun fact:  The title of the novel we all read about bunnies and itinerant farm labor is taken from the saying "The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray".  

When drafting the original outline of The Convergence Season 1, the goal was for the party to follow a pretty DND standard series of bread crumbs.  They'd get a mysterious crystal and then take it away from town to "keep it safe".  While wandering the northern lands, they'd encounter an encampment of Gnolls that needed to be cleaned out of their hive.  While fighting the gnolls they'd discover that the gnolls paid homage to some "thing" living at the back of the mall they'd turned into a haven.  This would then lead the party to face "the thing" and learn even more about the story.

Of course this pretty much went off the rails when the party instead hid the crystal and doubled down on staying in their 7-11.  Thus each week was introducing another enticement to leave the safety of their base and move closer to the former shopping mall that had found it's food court turned into a, well, food court.  But for Gnolls.

Over the first few months I spent a lot of time brain storming ways to draw the party in, be it with an encampment that needed rescue, or just the promise of a bounty for clearing them out.  I didn't want to be as obvious as "Her Imperial Highness will pay a sum of 4,000 gold for the destruction of..." partly out of simple pride:  I could write a better hook than that.  On the other hand, there is something to be said for tropes and clichés.  

That said, the clear statement of "something there wants the crystal and probably knows how it works" was what the party needed to say "let's go find out!"

Enter Another Gnome

As part of the Kickstarter, one backer was able to secure the level "design a major NPC".  And this particular character is just that.  As of now he's unnamed as that is part of the coming reveal.  We also have to give major props not only to the character's designer but the amazing artist who brought him to life on the page.  We don't know much about him yet and that's part of the plan.  But he's living in a movie-plex at the back of a mall over taken by gnolls where he's passing himself off as some form of god to encourage them to bring him a converge crystal.  

And I feel like that's knowing a lot.

Looking ahead (minimal spoilers)

Throughout the game so far the party has more or less wandered.  But this gnome will be the first to say "here's a thing to do and you should do it post haste".  This will of course take them on a journey across the land, possibly even back to the Imperial City.  The chances for side quests as side quests opens up.  There is room for Syb to bump into a former fellow long runner.  Kati might find more signs of her God, or maybe just bump into Mackenzie again.  But our little Usher-God will have a clear plan for the characters to consider and some true enticements to get them on board.  Of course it will also help if they can keep him alive.

Conclusions

It's not often we conclude a night's game without once rolling initiative but I'm glad we did.  It's a little harder on the stream because it felt very much like we were all on all the time.  Oddly enough combat can provide a break and put each person on stage for a brief period while everyone else breathes, checks their notes and catches up on chat.  It was a good session that we needed and now the game can finally....

... Begin.