campaign log
A referee’s perspective of campaigns I’ve run
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Dragonbane – The Secret of the Dragon Emperor #4
After the disaster in the depths of the Riddermound, dawn finds two battered survivors huddled in the antechamber beneath the hill. Luna and Thromli have escaped the slaughter in the Dragon Knight’s tomb, but only just. Around them hangs the stale air of the mound, the smell of old earth and dried death, and beyond
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Children of Fear – Episode #6
24 September 1923. The morning arrived without drama, which in its own way felt like its own kind of warning. No one woke to missing possessions. Zahra’s carefully prepared invitation, her ghazal baited with blood and sincerity, had not been taken in the night. Kulou House held its quiet, rain-dim composure, and for a few
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Children of Fear – Episode #5
23 September 1923. The expedition’s timetable said Sian was a pause. The last city with General Wu’s escort, the point where the university cars would turn back east, the place where arrangements with Mi Han would be made before the long pull toward Tun-Huang. In practice, Sian behaved like something else entirely. It offered the
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Children of Fear: Who’s Who in the Midnight Society Expedition
For readers of the Children of Fear campaign, here is a short profile of the investigators introduced so far. The campaign uses both Open Table and Troupe play so the number of player characters is probably larger than most campaigns. Hopefully, this serves as a useful guide for those following along the story. Miriam Ashcroft
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Children of Fear – Episode #4
23 September 1923.The gate’s echo was still in the investigators’ bones when Sian closed around them. Rain hissed on brick. Steam lifted from cookshops. Lanterns tilted in the wind like watchful eyes, and the city seemed to breathe in bells and coal smoke. Mi Han’s runner, quick, unremarkable, and certain of every turn, pulled them
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Children of Fear – Episode #3
22–23 September 1923. Peking fell away behind the convoy under a low, rinsed sky, the city wall shrinking to a pale bruise against the rain. General Wu’s escort moved with competent purpose. Trucks that coughed and rattled, carts and canvas covers tapping like loose drumskins, flags snapping in the wet air. The investigators sat among
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Children of Fear – Episode #2
21 September 1923, Peking. The morning after the lecture carried the familiar texture of routine. Breakfast trays, soft voices, the faint clink of cutlery. Yet it landed wrong. Too many of the investigators had woken with the taste of their visions still on the tongue, the sense of having been briefly displaced into somewhere real
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Dragonbane – The Secret of the Dragon Emperor #3
Morning in Outskirt comes grey and damp, the sort of light that makes the palisades look taller and the hills beyond a little less inviting. Inside the Three Stag Inn, the smells of porridge and smoke do their best to make the world feel normal again. Silas sits with his grief and a mug he
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Children of Fear – Episode #1
20 September 1923, Peking. In the Foreign Legation Quarter the air always feels a little staged, as if the city has been asked to stand politely behind a rope while the West takes its tea. Outside those streets, Peking is vast and alive and complicated. Inside them, the rules are clearer, the uniforms sharper, the
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Dragonbane – The Secret of the Dragon Emperor #2
After the adventurers arrive at Outskirt in the Misty Vale, they make straight for the Three Stag Inn. Warm light and pipe smoke spill from its open door, the sound of laughter and clattering tankards cutting through the chill evening air. Inside, they are greeted by Vagnhild, broad-shouldered proprietor and de facto leader of the
