Casting Shadows

#RPGaDAY2025 has reached its twenty-seventh day, and the prompt for Day 27 is tactic. On the heels of yesterday’s ‘nemesis,’ thinking about a good tactic now is either madness or genius. Of course, when faced with that sort of enemy, there might be no discernable difference between them!

Day 27 is the first of the final five prompts for RPGaDAY this year. There are four more juicy prompts ahead and then it is all over but the planning for next year. Some people stick to a day at a time, some binge a few days in a row, some do whole weeks at a time to get things done. What is your tactic?

Day 27: Tactic

Throughout this month of prompts, most of what we have looked at which falls outside of the in-session play experience can be thought of as strategy. These ideas have been broad in scope and aimed at how to think of the campaign and its parts as a whole in order to provide a specific foundation to how everything is done.

Today, we can zoom into things a little to examine how that informs a tactic in a session.

In recent posts, the idea of how the Cult of the Sleeper works to change the shape of things, breaking structure down from form to form toward the formlessness of utter collapse and dare I say, relaxation. For this to feature in the lives of the characters and so be an experience of the players, the GM must have NPCs around the characters who can form relationships with them in play. The strategy is to develop stable of characters who interact with the characters often enough over the campaign to be able to form bonds of different types. Over play the cult will work to convert some of them, and they may succeed. New NPCs will come and go. The strategy is to devote time to making them feel like people. Some of these NPC people will be involved with the Patron, but some will be those who hench for the characters. Some will be Allies, and others will be Contacts. Circles within circles of relationships help to ground the characters in a world that is active, present, and both connected to and separate from them.

Eventually, any who are converted might be found out, or might be compelled by their masters to strike a blow, steal a secret, or force a hard choice – actually or potentially revealing their treachery. These things will arise if they arise at all from the actions, reactions, and interactions of play, and from the fall of the dice – not the selection of an appropriate time by the GM. If betrayal is an essential part of the desired experience, then the strategy will dictate having a lot of these NPCs around to be exposed to temptation.

One tactic I can employ before any conversion takes place and also afterward before any betrayal is revealed, is to be helpful. To matter. Much of this, perhaps most of this, will come from roleplay and shared history in the campaign, but a significant portion will come from Ubiquity’s assistance mechanism. These helpful characters can offer dice to tasks and help increase the chance for or degree of success. They don’t have to just be interesting and talk a good game, they can get into the rust and oil or pages and ink of things to help out – with measurable and memorable effects.

The betrayal, if it comes, will be real.

See you tomorrow for Day 28: Suspense