Foreign.

Welcome to RPG Reanimators, a podcast for GMs where we dissect horror scenarios and campaigns and offer our experiences and advice to reanimate them at the table. Hi, I'm Lex.

I'm Alex.

I'm Holly.

And I'm Nathan.

In this episode, we conclude our deep dive dissection of Impossible landscapes written by Dennis Detwiller for Delta Green. If you are for some reason starting here and haven't already listened to our previous episodes covering this campaign, once again, we highly recommend starting at the top and working your way through these episodes as a series, as we will substantially deviate from the campaign book is written and may make many references to previous sections that could be confusing if you're just starting here. If you would like a by the book summary and primer for this section of the book, Bud's RPG review has several wonderful videos that we will link in the show notes of this episode. Now, without further delay, let's continue our dissection. In this episode we will be covering the core chapter of the End of the World of the End and how to conclude this epic campaign with a Masquerade at the End of the World of the End. So overall, what would you say is the main focus of this chapter?

I mean, you're just wrapping up the campaign, so everything is coming to a head. They've just reached Carcosa and they are going to maybe meet Ambrose, end up at the ball and decide their fate there when the king shows up.

At this point, as they are exiting the Whisper Labyrinth, the agents have the MacGuffin and merely need to deliver the MacGuffin to come to some kind of conclusion. Their journey to actually arrive at the masquerade can be more or less arduous and railroady.

They go through a war zone.

Yeah, they can. They can. I'll say that.

And you jump on a merry, go round to teleport.

But don't forget, whenever you get into a log boat and sail through the clouds and can possibly get eaten by a whale on your way there while you're having gunfights with Byaki or something. Anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself. What would you say is the beating heart and some of the key themes in this chapter that GMs would really want to emphasize?

Get to the party. Get to the party now.

Get to the party.

Oh my God, it really is like the whole bit is you have the bottle, you just gotta get it to the party, have your big climactic encounter with Abigail and the king, and then baal There's a lot of stuff in the middle we'll talk about, but it feels like the interesting stuff is, oh, BAAL is here potentially making it up. I mean, he probably is a. I

would argue that this chapter is the most cosmic horror because that's when you figure out like, everything just doesn't matter at all. You're in a loop or not, and you're powerless in the. In the face of the king.

I think one of the beating hearts of this chapter for me is the surrealism is hitting an absolute fever pitch. The they have been going in and out of parts of the night world that have been more or less surreal. You know, sometimes it's infinite hallways, sometimes it's infinite hospitals, sometimes it's just running through rapidly changing stages. But this is, in my opinion, the place that you can actually have shifting, impossible landscapes. I'm probably going to make that joke at least two more times this episode that the gloves are off. You can do anything that you want because this world explicitly does not obey the laws of reality. Kind of laughs at them.

Yeah. I would say things we would want to emphasize would be for me to make this a satisfying conclusion to the campaign for my players and, you know, everything that they've done and the time that they've invested into it.

Yeah, that's a good point. Kind of focusing on how they'll react to the ending individually too. I find that that's a big like, part that can hit with the masquerade is getting each of them to say, like, well, do you want to stay? Do you want to go? Like, what? How have you changed during the course of this?

I feel like everyone gets a different ending.

Yeah, yeah.

Depending on their actions throughout the campaign that's tailored to them.

And I think that this is the last time that you can really hit home with some Bond based horror. As we have mentioned several times through this dissection that this campaign is really unique because you can bring in and integrate the agents bonds into the plot and have a unique kind of personalized horror over time. Those threads are fraying in all sorts of different directions during like a map made of skin. And it's really unlikely your agents will be in contact with their bonds. So this can be to feel kind of like a. Kind of like the Scrubs finale that like you can show their journey up to this point and where the people they've met along the way have shown up, whether they are here in Carcosa or elsewhere before they then get to the ultimate conclusion of the Masquerade. It can be lots of ways to try to wrap this up, as Holly said, to be satisfying for each of the players. So overall, how do we feel about this chapter as written? Let's start with the positives.

There's a lot of really cool setting pieces here. Like I think Carcosa is decently fleshed out and has some creepy mechanics around. You know, what is living, what is dead, what happens when you're fighting a war that is not, you know, ever going to end one way or the other really, it's that like endless consumption. It's an interesting idea. I don't know that it necessarily hits, but we'll get into that.

Well, it looks like that's all the time we have for.

Well in the Ambrose bit. I know Lex, you've talked about using Ambrose's duplication sort of thing. So Ambrose, one of the the key encounters is that you meet an old guy that has been making the props for your campaign the entire time. So you'll see key items that you ran into like the seer phone or maybe the cube that shows people running from the King or something back from Night floors. Yeah, and that's a fun gotcha.

Yeah, I think Ambrose is. It's one of the few kind of inside group callbacks to previous arc dream stuff. This is clearly from John Tynes's short story Ambrose that this was an encounter I did really like. Mostly because that surreal revelation of everything in the agents lives is being produced en masse and these mannequins are delivering it and placing it in the world, making it feel like every action these agents have taken has been pre planned or at least orchestrated in some way or another. Their free will and agency is going to feel threatened and at risk. That's really cool. Also the short story Ambrose is really fitting for this chapter in my opinion. If you were going to read any of Tynes's fiction to prepare for this campaign, the very dreamy Carcosa state of Ambrose can be nice inspiration to capture the liminality and shifting nature of Carcosa as another positive. I did like the concept of giving the agents different primers on what they know about Carcosa as they exit the Whisper Labyrinth. This is supposed to be based on their corruption. I would just do it based on their interest and like how in it to win it. Are they or are they trying to fight and pull back to give certain characters a little extra knowledge than others, but they don't really know how they got it and what didn't we like

about this chapter I just.

I don't. The idea that it's like nothing matters in the end is really unsatisfying to me. It's like, oh, this was meant to be the whole time and nothing you do matters because this will keep going

and going and going.

I'm like, well, that's great. That's a nice story. I spent a year of my life doing something that didn't matter. Great.

Right?

Yeah. That's tough. That's where I think you hit the nail on the head that it makes a nice story. I think from a literary narrative fiction standpoint, that is interesting. It makes for a fun King in Yellow story with an arc to it, but is fundamentally opposed to a role playing game to give your players some agency with it. This is something we talked about way back in the prologue. But with me, I also really don't like the ending is written that, oh, nothing you did actually mattered. You're just going to do this and then maybe piss off somewhere if you can. Or maybe you'll get eaten by the king. Which, wow, what an ending for a year long campaign that I think trying to set it up as this train has already left the station. But maybe you can try to steer the crash in some way or another to give your players some semblance of agency.

Yeah.

Is at least my compromise for it. But yeah, I agree that it's kind of tough from a role playing game standpoint.

Yeah. And that's not to say that like someone can't get eaten by the king. Just because it's unsatisfying to have this ending as written doesn't mean that. Let me. Let me rephrase that.

Lex is wrong.

No, you're not wrong. You are not wrong. It's. It's appropriate that players should have agency in going for the ending that they want or that they believe they want. It's just that they need to earn it too with their choices. And failure should result in them getting eaten by the king. So you still have those scenes.

Yeah. And just like giving your players choices that still matter in some form or fashion.

Right.

I will just say I really do not have a lot of nice things to say about this chapter. And I don't want to turn this into just a punching bag venting session. So this chapter mostly feels like an extended combat. Heavy slog on a treadmill, that. That nothing you do matters until you get railroaded through combats where you die repeatedly due to frequent gank encounters. Until you get to the masquerade where nothing you do matters again. That's it. That's my.

Yeah, no, totally agree on that. Of. I can forgive a railroad, but it's when it's a long railroad that it's like, come on. Like, why are we doing the lake down to the city through the war zone? Like, yes, fictionally, that's all there. But is it interesting at some point? Or have we completely just. Do we just kind of knock it into our players again and again and again until they get to the tractor factory die? Probably.

I always forget there's a tractor factory.

You've excised it from your game. I want to get off Mr. Bones. Wild ride.

Yeah.

Again, thematic, but is it fun? I don't know about that.

And, okay, fine, maybe I'm not done, but just to kind of build off of that. The war zone thing can be an interesting set piece, but it also feels like massive inside references. The whole the Black Wind. The only time that the agents will get any semblance of information related to a war is. Is from Castaigne night manager's apartment where there are newspaper clippings. There is really no other indication of it except the. The very obscure clue of the tractor box underneath the table in an encounter group setting, if you want to do that. So it just felt very out of left field. And I have long said that if AGM lets their agent die permanently by getting eaten by a sky whale on a magic boat ride and forces them to introduce a new character right at the end, they deserve to get their GM card revoked. I. I cannot fathom it, truly.

Well, don't forget, they could also die by swimming into the lake and plummeting a few meters down to the ground and snapping their neck, which would be almost funnier.

Yeah, it was. Choices were made. Anyway, now let's go ahead and get into our full chapter Deep Dive. And I don't mean to speak for everyone, but am assuming that each of us are going to run this concluding chapter very differently, based on our philosophies of the King in Yellow and Carcosa, and generally what we think will be the most entertaining and engaging for the players to capture some kind of penultimate cosmic horror surreal finale. Do we have any key tenants or themes that we would want to keep in mind for these scenes going forward when we run this?

Yeah, I think for me, if we go back to what I kind of said in the prologue.

Right.

Of what I think is happening is there is that kind of constant combat over who gets to be the King in yellow, the phantom, etc. So for me, one of the core tenants is basically choosing a side in this last chapter. Right. So that's where I'm introducing the choice is they can decide who to give the bottle to, who can be the author, who could be the Phantom, who can rewrite reality, so to speak, even if it may not be real reality or it's a different level of reality. Whatever. The point is, for my tenant, it's they need to see that conflict and decide how they want to deal with it.

I agree. I tried to signpost this very clearly for my players that Emeline straight up told them that Abigail used to be the Phantom and then became the king and that someone is going to need to be the author. And it's only until they found her bottle that she laid all the cards out on the table. The agents knew for a fact someone has to take up these three roles for everything to continue or else the entire universe, everything that this carcosan interdimensional cancer is connected to will collapse, including all of our world and many others as well. So really priming your players on that and making them feel like, okay, we got to pick somebody, Are we going to do it ourselves? That Mr. Wild guy seems to keep helping us out, but I don't know. I don't get a very good sign about that. And trying to decide something from there, I think another one related to my short vent earlier about the Sky Whales. There is no more permanent character death. You can decide this whenever they are in the brothel bin, they'll become repeaters. Or after they exit the Whisper Labyrinth, they'll become repeaters.

But.

But bottom line, these agents are at the finish line. The players have gone through months of investment into these characters. Give them some kind of well rounded conclusion for that character they have invested so much time on. Yeah, it is a waste of time and kind of disrespectful to the player's interest to kill their character permanently right before that finish line.

Yeah, that would be kind of like. You just feel like a lot of threads were left there. At least I would. If I had to make a new character whole cloth, I definitely would go, well, what, is that it? He's just stuck? Okay. Yeah, I guess.

Well, like Holly said, we're already going up against a kind of tall order of the players may be feeling like none of their choices actually mattered in the end overall. So to really make their choices not matter and then say, here's Thomas Wright, go ahead and play him. He's just wandering around. You got it. Go.

Yeah, I would just say like, generically. You know, I think we've been saying, like, the inevitability, the cycle, the. Like, no player choice is frustrating. And then I understand that some people might think, like, well, but that's the point of the King in Yellow. That's the point of this whole campaign, is that it is all inevitable, that it is all a cycle. And. And I would just say, you know, if that's how you feel about it, like, if you want to say that, like, in the end of the day, the players are going to write the play as it has been foretold, still try to find something to make it feel like I made this choice myself, you know?

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So it's like a satisfying story that the player can look at at the end.

Yeah. You know? Cause, like, I mean, we've. I've praised things like Ten Candles, right. Where, you know. But maybe that's the difference, right. You know, going in that everything is inevitable and that you will die in the end and it kind of doesn't matter. But that's also only dedicating two hours of my time, not, you know, 18 months of my time or whatever.

So I do feel like that must be a pretty common Delta Green way to run things, though. Of like. Yeah. At the end, you're barely preventing the apocalypse for another minute. I agree. I don't find that particularly interesting, but maybe there are agents out there who would really vibe with that based on other campaigns.

Yeah, it's weird, right? Like, you know, there are RPG settings, like grim, dark universes and things like that, where it's like, you're not going to save the day. It's not. You're not going to vanquish the King in yellow, and then the whole world will be bright and shiny, Technicolor, and everyone will be so grateful. That's not what this campaign is. But I'm just trying. I want to talk about how we can still make this meaningful and satisfying.

Yeah. I think there's an interesting question I wanted to ask the group here. This, of course, where do we draw the line between what the fiction is and what is fun to play? So in this case, that example of, right, everything's foretold. That's the fiction. It's gonna happen. The fiction is it is difficult to get to the Masquerade, so you have to go through the war zone as a difficult campaign. Right. Like, in theory. Same with the Whisper Labyrinth. Everybody is looking for their bottles and not able to find them. So technically speaking, it should be very hard for the agents to find them, because that is the world fiction. But that doesn't mean it's fun.

Yeah.

So where do we draw the line there? Do we think? And how are there ways that we can think of that we can still get that fictional feeling without, you know, dragging things out too long?

So I am very much of the camp that you can showcase that something is difficult, potentially do a gm, zoom out. Like, you have been opening doors down these hallways for months, it feels. And nothing is happening. You can narratively zoom out and tell the player how their characters are feeling and how long they are staying here without necessarily needing to subject the player to that much time and those pains and frustrations. You can, you know, environmentally describe how difficult something will be to get there without making it a pain in the ass. Because whenever it gets to be a tedious pain in the ass, it may be, quote, unquote, narratively fitting, but it is not fun, it is not entertaining, and you're going to kind of look like a bad GM for doing so. Or, you know, if your players are upset and they're like, well, that's how it is. That's not a very good defense, in my opinion.

Yeah, I just. I want. And I know that this is something we're about to go through. I just want to hear everyone's individual thoughts on, like, we don't want the tedium. Right. But then do you just be like, okay, you're in Carcosa, you're at the masquerade. Like, you know, you don't necessarily want to just like, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip the end, you know, So I want to hear what everyone has to say about that.

I would agree, because if you're, like, cutting too much, the players might feel robbed, but if you're cutting too little, you know, it's going to seem genky, clanky.

Yeah. I've been kind of juggling the idea of maybe once they reach Carcosa, having personal scenes. Right. Splitting them up and saying, like, okay, let's. Let's take a moment and say, like, yes, you are spending a long time here. What are some encounters your player has, like, maybe doing a little bit more, like, building from, like the. The carved from the Brindlewood type things like leading questions like that, that maybe get that feeling. I don't know.

Because, like, as written, you got to use the sanity travel mechanics where you have to fail. Just personally, I would just get rid of that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At this point, like, the gimmicks, you already know the gimmick from Night floors.

And I don't like it being a mechanical gimmick that the players can kind of metagame a bit through. And it's like, okay, I know how this works now. You should never say that in a surreal, focused campaign. You shouldn't know how anything works, truly.

Are you suggesting, like Nathan, that you have like one on one sessions with each of your players and having them have some kind of encounter that's interesting.

I hadn't considered one on one because I think it would be kind of fun to have everybody like, I always like listening to people, but that could be a fun way to really make it a personal experience if you have that kind of table.

Yeah, I think it's going to have to come down to the table. Right. Like I have said before on our Discord server, not on this podcast that like I spent two years playing Shadowrun and boy, sitting there while someone is hacking and spending like an hour just watching the GM and the hacker hack and you just sit there and do nothing is not super engaging or very exciting. So, you know, but if your players are into that kind of thing, you know, then yeah, you know, I think it's just gonna depend.

I think that some of it will depend on the GM and their style and ability to control and shift the narrative. As someone who currently has all of his agents are alone in the night floors and I am doing individual scenes with them, I think that something like that really requires not only each scene being engaging and interesting in some way, but continually shifting that focus, finding some uncertain moment to then shift to someone el so that people are still kind of hanging on to finish that up. Don't just do one person's thing at a time, because that is extremely boring.

Yeah.

Do you feel like when the players arrive in Carcosa that they are separated from each other? And yes, I understand we're like shifting the spotlight, but are you separating them to have their own experiences?

I haven't before, but I'd be tempted to if I was going to have these individual scenes. Right. As maybe when they come down through the clouds, they break off. And that would let you use some of those locations based on what the player had kind of brought to the table too. I could see people that, I think, Alex, you'd mentioned having players that are very static, protocol tied in. They probably would encounter the war zone. Maybe a more lineage based person who's, you know, anyone who's sure that there's some behind the scenes royalty line, they might meet the other castane who floats around and Tells them things. Just, you know, it's a little more involved.

So I think kind of expanding on this idea. This is something that sounds interesting to you, dear listener. I would be more inclined to have all of the agents, they're gonna exit the whisper labyrinth together and start wandering through the misty fields of Carcos beneath the twin sons of the Hyades and all that good stuff, but allow them to describe some area, some setting around them related to the agent. You can ask them this before the session. If you could describe one last moment that would be the most meaningful for your agent, describe that at least in a paragraph that the GM could then kind of warp that this would be. I have always viewed the night world as something kind of like a poisonous flower that is putting out these pheromones and nectar that is constantly trying to draw things in, but it is still poisonous at the end of the day. That it would give a very real feeling manifestation of this key moment for the agent. And having the other ones, there may be enough to keep pulling them away from it. Otherwise they would become stuck in Carcosa. And you could take a page from the graphic novel where black stars rise and the scenery, the environments, the trees, the light pole, they're all people who became stuck here because they couldn't remember their purpose and they decided to stay at this level. That this is really like they're in a Venus fly trapper. I don't know, a glue trap. Take your pick of metaphor. Overall though, Holly, to your initial question for this is, as a gm, how do we balance, you know, if we just cut everything that's tedious and sucks, do we just them right up to the masquerade ball and to that? Again, I think that that should be up to the GM. I personally tend to think of GMing as you are collaboratively building a movie in your and the players minds. This is shared storytelling and you are setting up engaging and interesting encounters for the players as they are going through it. They should be invested enough that their agents would try to make decisions along the way. You can fulfill a narrative, add some tension, some surreality, horror, you name it, during that process, until you feel that cinematically they should be reaching some kind of conclusion. You know, we've gone through this part of the journey. Let's get to the finale. And not be beholden to mechanical die rolls for if, when and how they get there, but just really focusing on what is the most engaging, interesting story that we can tell at this moment, because it's almost at its end or its Beginning dun dun, dun. So, based on this discussion, it really feels like each GM is going to run this last chapter very differently and. And at least none of us are going to be very beholden to the book itself. For this reason, we thought it would be helpful for each of us to talk through how we have run or would run this final chapter whenever we get to it with our players. Nathan, do you want to kick us off?

Sure, sure. So in this final chapter, I cut quite a bit of the war zone, right? I might have wild pass them through. The focus I have is on the masquerade. I want that to be kind of the big finale, and there should be enough temptations for the players to stay in Carcosa. That. That's a big question in that finale, right? Is do we give the bottle to JC Linz and leave? Are we sure life is better out there? Right. You can give temptations throughout of, well, wait, maybe my bond is here. And they say this is the real world. Whether you believe or not that Carcosa is underlying everything, I think is a really interesting dilemma for the character because they don't know if this is real or not. Right? They could be going, this is entirely made up. None of this is real. I just got to get out. Or they could be believing that this is the base underlying reality. Do I want to forget that and go back out into the world, or do I want to just accept that it's bad, but I understand it and stay here? So I think coming in with that energy and then really giving them the option with the bottle to say, look, you're going to give this bottle to somebody, right? Somebody is going to write the play. Who is it? Is it one of you? Are you going to, like, try and create your own world? Yes, but that would make you the king in yellow. And do you want that? Right? Like, would your agent give themselves up to that total loss of control? Do you give it to jc who just perpetuates what you were through, but you might get out. Do you find someone else like Lex, your Emmeline Fitzroy, I think, is a great sort of example. I've used Witwer as well, as he's gone through with them and been a candidate for the king, and they can kind of decide, like, do we want to doom this person or try and find a different way out? I've also had agents just shatter the bottle, which I think is a really satisfying ending, even though it's not in the book at all. Of, like, what do you do when they try to break the system because that gives a lot of agency to the players. And I think they, even though the endings were negative for their characters, they personally found it very satisfying that they had that choice at the end to break the cycle. Also, I like having Abigail be really scary when you beat her as much as I can possibly make her of having that conversation. Be less of a scared woman who kind of found herself here and it's trapped and more of like a master manipulator who has done all of this and just all they have to do is give Jaycee the bottle and she'll let them go. Because it's a fun subversion for the agents who maybe have been thinking this whole time that they could save Abigail and that she needs saving. And I, I think, at least from my interpretation, she doesn't need saving at all. She's right where she wants to be.

Yeah, I do really agree with that as I think throughout 99% of this campaign, Abigail Wright is seen as the victim, the dare I say, damsel who needs rescuing. That they keep chasing after her to try to rescue her in some way. And then for them to be confronted with her, I have her be like, oh, it's so nice to see you. I'm so sorry, I know you've been through so much, but I just need you to give that bottle. And if they ask any questions to really find that she is in fact quite cold and calculating, she just says, well, this needed to be done. And you were right here. I chose you to do this. Are you going to fail me now? And that's when you notice guards and things are coming in closer around them. That she does not actually have any care or compassion for the agents who may have been trying to rescue her.

Yeah. If you really want to get kind of nasty with it too, is you can show that she has been transformed as well. I believe there was one of the endings has the king swallowing people as they realize, oh, it's a porcelain mask. I made that Abigail for this example. Right. Like, there's still the king, he's still there. But she's also a legitimate physical threat as well. So that the agents don't just go, well, I can just shoot her. Does that solve anything? No, no, that should. That doesn't seem like an interesting solution to me. Yeah.

And I know that for your conception of impossible landscapes, you were really nesting this in the dreamlands that you viewed this as the play itself may not actually be world consuming and ending. It just tells you and convince, convinces you that it is Are there any hallmarks of the Dreamlands that you try to bring into this final chapter that you might Recommend for other GMs to consider? Like, sense of sleight of hand, man. Is that a source of inspiration or.

Yeah, I think it's pretty dreamlike to begin with. Just. I mean, Carcosa is that way. Logically, I think the biggest way that players see that is. Is probably in the finale of those who escape, right? Is if they leave, they might find themselves in a world where they are escaped from an asylum. You could have them appear in a world where no one has been chasing them. Like, they went on a. They took a plane to Boston and they went off the grid for a few weeks, and now they're, you know, hunkering down under an alleyway like, I don't know, just out of their mind. And then they get that question, like, was this real? Was it not? I think that's kind of fun to play with.

So I am curious and also dating myself with this here, but whenever we're talking about the endings of this campaign potentially being unsatisfying for players, are you concerned about some players being dissatisfied, not only the one who survived, but everyone else who may have died or stayed and wondering, did we just get vanilla skied?

I haven't found that to be the case, but that's because they'll usually have opportunities to still engage in this world. Right. So if we've got players that decide not to escape, the Dream Lands aren't tied to one person, Right? Like, that is that person's personal choice to stay there. Alex, I think you stayed and became a demon, if I recall correctly. Did you die?

I rewrote the.

You might have rewrote the play, but, yeah, exactly. Like, their choices still matter towards that, and they can kind of determine, like, if they get consumed. That's probably the least choice they have because they got E.T. but beyond that, I think there's still enough that you can feel satisfied. But I'm. I'm open if other people say gnarly, because that's always kind of a juggling act with this finale, is making sure that everybody feels like, okay, I contributed in some fashion.

I'm helping.

I shot somebody. Did that help? Well, doing my part.

You shot me. Well, Alex, you said that your character stayed and wrote the play within Nathan's campaign. How would you stay and rewrite the ending of your. You see that segue?

Yeah, pretty good.

So I cut out the super lethal parts, and I had it more. Be more of a sandbox A tiered sandbox. So you couldn't get to the deepest parts of Carcosa without going through the initial parts first. But they had a choice of where they wanted to go. Did they want to go to the gallery or did they want to see Ambrose? And I would signpost like, this is what you hear. This is the type of building for the war zone. I'd let a put back in between these initial places and the palace, so it would provide as an obstacle and a challenge for the players to get through because they did still want to get to the ball. So they got their invitations, got their Quest items or McGuffins to get in and break into the ball after doing that. It's. I had it be basically a battle royale of who gets to go to get to the typewriter first with the model. Right.

Oh, that's fun.

So they all enter this ballroom at the same time and it is crowded, filled with people. And then they see the king manifesting above that crowd and they see the typewriter near the throne. That's where they need to go. So the idea was clear. I had two agents immediately turn on one another because they were both working for Wild. And while I was like, oh, you're going to work for me. You got to eliminate everyone else.

There can only be one.

Exactly. I do have a story, but I'll save that for more stories. So, yeah, their goal is to get to the typewriter with the model or not wanting to force them into anything they could try to escape because that's also a valid action. So I had the players aim for what they want, adjudicate if they pass or fail, depending on their roles or their actions. And then I assigned an ending accordingly.

You mentioned showcasing the like the Gallery of Shades and some of these other extra areas on their way there. I'm really curious, did your agents choose to explore those at all? Because I really feel like at this point the players have been through so much and it's just like limping to the finish line.

Yep.

And I didn't feel like my players would be very interested in exploring very much. Did they. Were they interested in exploring these places? Did you focus on them at all?

Yeah. So my players were more. So I gave them a choice between the Gallery of Shades and Ambrose's like, workshop, and they chose to go to Ambrose's workshop because using the information they had, the context clues, they thought that was just more interesting. So I wouldn't say it's exactly linear. It's more designed like a dungeon where I have either the Gallery of Shades or Ambrose's workshop. Then after either of those, you can access the war zone, and then after that, you can get to the palace. So they had an option of what to do, and that's what they decided to go with. And as a gm, if they don't, if the players decide not to engage with, like, a side element, you just. You got to be comfortable with throwing it out.

Yeah, that's the way the story goes. Like, can be something to wonder on later. How did the very hectic battle Royale combat go in that moment? Were you just flinging dice all over the room? Was it just more describing people grabbing plates, shattering it, stabbing each other with the broken ceramic? How did that play out?

Pretty much exactly what happens when you fire a gun in, like, a crowded room and. And then summon a haunting horror.

I haven't done that myself, so could you enlighten me?

Well, it's like, yeah, so it was pretty chaotic. I had one player character who was like, fuck this, and try to just find an escape. And then I had one player summon the hunting horror when the king in yellow showed up. Haunting horror comes in, rips open the roof, sees the king, immediately turns around.

I ain't getting paid for this.

Exactly.

Like the Grandpa Simpson gif.

Walk in, pick up your hat off

the coat rack, put it back on,

and you hear the hunting horror subtitled, man, fuck this. And then it flies away.

And then I had two player characters immediately get into a gunfight with one another. And then, like, after icing Aravandi, they spot each other, and they both killed each other, which is crazy. And then one player actually got to the typewriter, and I give him the homeless crazy ending when they rewrote reality.

Yeah. It's a good moment for PvP, if your table's okay with that, I think, because it's really thematic. And also it's the last second.

Right.

Like, I like that a lot of that kind of King of the Hill feeling of, like, right. Right there. That's the typewriter. Everybody sees it. Everybody.

But only one person.

Yeah. And you can have all the other factions you've had throughout the play, like, asa, they're going for it too. Yeah, yeah. And then you get those decisions of, do I ice Asa or do I try and make myself, okay, I gotta kill him. Priority one.

I remember when I was playing in your campaign. Oh, my God. He was on site, like, killing, like,

three times,

waited for him to repeat, then killed him again.

The pickaxe. Yeah. Yeah, he. He did take a pickaxe to the

give him a lobotomy in my campaign.

It was a putty knife for some reason.

Fucking putty knife.

We need that inception bit of we mustn't worry to dream a little bigger pickaxe.

Well, Holly, what about you? You were a player in my first run of Impossible Landscapes and so haven't had a chance to run this yourself, but kind of based on your read of the book and your GMing style, what are your general thoughts for this finale? How would you try to run it? Or at least what kind of advice would you give for others?

I think so. And this is coming from just my personal thought. I have never read the King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers. I have not read any of the associated fiction written by Arc Dream. So reading this last chapter was just really like. I felt like I was just out of the loop and I was like this just feels like a giant reference. I don't understand. So with that in mind, I thought maybe, you know, whoever ends up with them in the Whisper Labyrinth, Roark, Emmaline, whatever could maybe be a guide through some of it and you can just pick your favorite scenes of what's available to you or Lex, you pulled something from the fiction, right? Of.

Yeah, I pulled a lot from the fiction. Which is very unfortunate that you haven't read any of the Chambers. Cause that's like all I was aiming for. But I'll get to that in a second.

Yeah, so but then you can kind of like mitigate it when it's like because like if I ran this at my table, none of my players have ever. I know they have not read any of the fiction either. So you could try to at least shed some light through an NPC like Emmaline or Roark or something like that. Yeah, I just pick, you know, one or two encounters that really spoke to me. Ambrose's workshop is just kind of cool, you know. And then I actually didn't hate some of the encounters in the war torn city. It just. Just like I was just confused by all. It just felt like such a weird tonal shift. I was like what is. I don't understand what I'm. What is happening right now?

I have heard a lot of good things about GMs using the. The family with the hoods. Yeah.

I was thinking the family very specifically. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Xander said that that was a really effective manifestation. But like just the super deadly machine gun immediately opens up on you. Roll lethality. Then they can dodge. I. Not about that life.

Yeah. I wouldn't belabor The. The railroad of doing everything, for sure. You know, once I feel like they've gotten a sense of the strangeness, the carcosa. I think I almost want to say that Ambrose's workshop is almost, like, unmissable, because it's such an interesting bit of, like, this is. This is where it's all been coming from, or something like that. Just personally, when they get to the Masquerade, I thought it would be interesting to have their closest bonds that have been so deeply pulled into all of this being there, you know? And I think that at that point, the best way to give your players agency is really to make it clear that, like, you can continue the story. That is how it's supposed to go, but that's not what you have to do, right? Like, you can hand off the bottle to Emmaline or someone else or Jay Z Linz. You can do it yourself, or you could not. And you could end everything here, which is actually what I. I try to. You know, when you talk about, like, players losing sanity and losing sanity, and, like, by the end of this, they're probably, like, halfway mad, if not all the way there. And I thought about, like, what. What would my character. How would my character kind of manifest in this? And I can see that, like, some people would fully embrace, like, I am the king in yellow. It's me. I am the author, you know, because you're.

You've.

You've gone mad. And I thought for my character, it was more like, I'm the only one that can end this. And if you know, a world where you're living in this loop is not a world worth living in. Even if you don't realize you're in it, even if you're just living a life and you never realize that you're in this loop, it's like, that's not a world worth living in. So I genuinely wanted to end it. And then I thought, I don't, like, narratively, you know, you. Sometimes you got a metagame, and you're like, I don't. I don't. I don't want to break the game. I don't want to do something that's not right. So I kind of shifted to, like, okay, we can give it to Emmaline and just keep the whole thing going. But I would say, like, giving your players that power of, like, you can. You can end all of this and maybe just be ready to figure out how to do that.

You know, Would you give your players the World Without Doors book? Like, would you give reminders of that? Because that seems like it ties in nicely with what you're saying of kind of giving that choice of, like, okay, do we depose the king? Do we put Emelina? That sort of thing?

I feel like you could even kind of like, spot, like, almost literally. This is like a play, right? Put a spotlight on the typewriter, and it's like you have the play or you have a world without doors, and it's like you have the choice.

Yeah. That was a reason why I made Emmeline such a. I'll say, crucial npc, because she was one of the few reliable fonts of information for the players in this instance. And like everything that was hinted at in A World Without Doors, after they found Emmaline's Soulbottle in the Whisper Labyrinth, she was able to listen to it. She basically was able to lay out everything as it was and just said that these three roles have to be filled or else everything will break, that this is what will happen. Like, everything will end. Because I wanted my players to make informed decisions. And I think to Holly's point, you know, I did expect Doppler to try to burn it all down and smash it. It was the reason why I wanted to show, like, the floor is cracking and the palace is lifting and kind of drifting off as the world is breaking around them. And then you gave it to Emmaline and she was writing and bringing the stones back together as she was writing the world back together again. That it could be a very exciting moment of PvP if you have one player who is like, no, fuck, you can't end this.

Yeah.

And others are saying, I won't let you kill everyone I've ever met, and then let PvP it out because this is truly that cutthroat finale.

Did you find that your players trusted Emmaline pretty well, or were there ever questions of, you know, because her and Abigail are very similar and they're both telling you different things. Did they ever question one versus the other?

I don't think that they did because I gave a lot of context clues. Emmaline never had anything malicious or suspicious to hide. And she was saying, I don't know what Abigail is doing, but she is there. You know, we need to get there. And it was whenever I gave the reveal that Abigail is much more of a cold mastermind figure that indicated, oh, we should really trust one over the other, because one of them hasn't tried to steer us. That is the thing, though, is that Emmaline is. She's still kind of a young girl, and she does want to save the world as much as she can, she would be fundamentally opposed to ending everything. So, like, that would be another source of conflict. If you had an agent try to do it, she would try to stop them because she doesn't want the entire world to end. So it's kind of the trying to be good also does not lead to a particularly good ending.

Yeah.

So what would you do if your players decided, like, no, it is better if this is all ended. And, like, how do you end that?

You know, for me, when they did that again, I'm kind of going off that dream sort of thing is everything starts to collapse around them, and they essentially get shunted out to various other versions of Earth, so to speak. So I had some players end up on, you know, the bridle bin sort of Earth, which is a little rather. It's more aces Earth, so to speak. Like, the buildings are all strange. And he's very clearly the emperor of the United States of America. Like, he's in charge. And I believe the player then immediately offed herself because she's like, nope, not. Not living here. See you. Yeah, but I think, yeah, having it very clearly a. You're throwing yourself into the maelstrom of the end of the world. You don't know where you'll end up, and it probably won't be home.

Yeah. Personally, what I would do is if they were to stop the cycle and the lore has been established that the king is the world, and there is no world without the king, then there's gonna be a scene where everything just shuts down, and then you get a very legati, like, just.

Yeah.

Blackness. Nothing. There's nothing anymore.

An empty soprano forever.

Oh, God. The soprano ending. That's kind of what.

And then the king. Thank you for playing impossible landscapes.

That's kind of what I imagine, though.

No, I would just let them sit in nothing. Like they've destroyed everything in order to

stop it, and you can't go back.

Yeah, yeah.

But they don't even exist anymore. Nothing exists anymore. That's very cosmic horror as well.

That's kind of what I imagine. Like, if I had were to run this and I had a player do that, I'm like, well, you. You're just. Because that's kind of what's foretold in a world without doors. Right. You are destroying every reality, everything.

I think for me, in this instance, the kind of snippet that I had written down just to prep for if you did break everything and the world was ending is I would then cut from these surreal discussions of the Masquerade Ball and everything. And it would be back in New York City as construction is completing on a new renovated apartment building. And then in that space that warps into the shape of the McAllister, and with a ripping sound from behind the air, it turns into nothingness and implodes, describing all of these locations around the world. That these locations are ripped into themselves and that people and everything are screaming as essentially black holes keep appearing across Earth. And the Earth is destroyed because the Carcosan infestation became integral to our reality stability. And it just kind of deflated like a balloon without it.

Yeah. If I had players, too, kind of thinking from the side of, if the play is lying to you. Right. If we're going from that and it's not all of reality. If the players have kind of deduced that right, I might have them narrate a scene of, yes, your agent is gone. They do not reappear. But your bond, that person you were closest to that was being pulled in with you, escapes. What does a scene from their life look like? Like, how is their life impacted by your agent never coming home?

Or what if the agent never existed?

That was what I was gonna say. I'm like, yeah, what does their life

look like if you never existed?

Your agent just ceases to be.

Yeah, it gets fiddly where it's like, is it a dream? Is it real? I kind of like playing with it where it matters, but I do that would be kind of appealing to see that world where it's like, how are they happy without you? Or something? Because that feels very delta grain to me of like, yeah, they could be happy if you weren't there. Damn.

Yeah. There's still ways to kind of deliver that dark end. I mean. Yeah. Like, if your players decide to destroy the world, that is a dark ending. Like, there is nothing left. You know, there's really no way to. Again, nobody's winning this, Right. And, you know, if you feel like you're a purist and you're like, no, the whole point is like, you know, bad ending. It's like, well, there is no winning this. It's just your players can get the ending that feels satisfying to them.

At least they can choose what color of the mass effect ending they want.

Yeah.

Yeah, Nice.

So buckle in, because I get to monologue for a while. To me, this campaign follows a general structure of open in New York to narrow within the night floors open or within Boston, narrow within the Dorchester open kinda end map and then narrow into the brawl bin. But then it stays narrow, narrow, narrow between the brothel bend into the Whisper Labyrinth. And it just felt like a continuous railroad. And so I really wanted to make the beginning of this chapter feel more open again before it narrows around the agents throats. Particularly because all of the open locations have tended to be outside. It was important to me to make the opening of End of the World outside and to showcase the scenery and environment and some impossible landscapes. My goal in all of this was to pull out all of the stops and couching this ending in Raymond Chandler's source material as the true originator of this Carcosan mythos. So to do this, the agents were intended to move through several set pieces from Chandler's key King and Yellow stories in a roughly chronological order. As they stepped out of the Whisper Labyrinth, they were standing in a field shrouded in mist underneath the twin suns, black stars, all of that good stuff. They get the information and can start wandering. I chose to start with the Demoiselle d', Iise, and I'm so sorry to everyone who speaks French, but whatever. The character wanders lost until a rabbit runs through the grass, A falcon swoops down, grabs it, and they interact with a woman who is a falconer. She leads them to a castle where inside she says that we're going to try to find out where they're from. She hasn't heard of America. And trying to help them out. Inside of the castle they are attacked by dozens of snakes in the grass and succumbing to the poison, they then pass out. They wake up with the sound of a screeching rusty hinge as the castle is ruined around them as if they've been asleep for centuries. And behind a red door in the corner of this courtyard, Ian de Craig in his full Joliet prison jumpsuit, sneaks out of the door which was his escape, and then closes it and then demands that they take him to the king. This is his escape from Juliet before he then winds up at the brothel bin later. So, you know, fun little side character. But eventually they can find that on top of a stone there is a woman's ballgown glove. It's Abigail's glove. She was playing the role of the Demoiselle dais just to ensure that the agents arrived and to try to guide them on where to go next. The glove smells like cinnamon and dried flowers as an early indicator of the King in yellow during the masquerade. From there they step through the crumbled walls and they can go kind of Anywhere I had several options that they could go to. Like, Alex, you mentioned it being kind of like a dungeon where there's multiple areas. The players can choose what is of most interest to them.

Right.

There could be a forest if you wanted to have some of, like, the golden animals and little things in there that you can tie in a reference to the mask or the maker of moons. And eventually, one way or another, they can make their way into a city. Kind of an old Gothic type city. I think of Yharnam and Bloodborne that is going to contain several set pieces. As they are walking across these streets, they can hear a scream echoing off the cobblestones and see a young woman in a white nightgown like screams and passes out hanging over a windowsill as there's a doughy dead guy who is driving a hearse and someone's screaming inside. This is a reference to the original, the yellow sign story. There is a cathedral that is playing very spooky organ music that they can enter and go through. A kind of reference to the Court of the Dragon. And then as they kind of make their way through the streets, one way or another, they can see various bonds or NPCs that they have encountered, particularly people in the real world they have shown the yellow sign to. They can see them in the windows of some of these apartment buildings and things through this city.

Yeah, yeah.

And one way or another can make their way to a storefront that has suits of armor in the window beneath a sign that reads Hauberk Armorer as a reference to the repairer of reputations. They can be guided here by an NPC or, you know, whatever, as long if the players are interested in it and can go inside to interact with Mr. Wild one last time. In my run, the agent who loathed Darabondi for repeatedly trying to kill his kid brother requested Wilde help him kill Darabondi and ensure his brother's safety. Wild did promise this. So he guided them into the back, gave them some overcoats, and I had them do a quick kind of side vignette of they opened the door onto a train platform and they went through the scene. That is in the timeline where Wilde sent hitmen to kill Kid Darabondi. De Craig had private detectives to help protect him. And in this, the hitman died. But the agents are different. So they can go in and kill Kid Darabondi and then make their way back out. And by the time they come back out, the one agent said, like, okay, where's my brother? Is he safe? Wilde says, yeah, of course. Your brother's fine here. You can see him right through here. And he opens the door and his brother is wearing a lavender suit and his fingers are wet and pruny. That truly he just shoved this agent's brother into the same role that is required for this story. So already trying to give a monkey paw indication that like, wild can get things done, but it may not be very good. Eventually they can make their way to the shores of the cloud Lake of Hali. I thought that the wooden boat scenes were fine and so just kind of did that. They get into the boats, it autopilots them down. Cause it's a weird, surreal scene. I included the sky whales as a callback to the Dorchester Library museum encounter that I had where that was a skeleton suspended above them. It was just kind of a neat scene. Until their boat lands on the opposite shore where they can see combat and hear the thuds that looks like fireworks around the golden city of Alar. Then they can see as they get closer, it's mortars and gunfire all around them. As their boat parks on the shoreline in front of this battlefield, Emmett Mosby is standing there holding a sign with each of the agents, real names, like some kind of chauffeur. And then just says, Ms. Wright sent me to escort you and guide you through this bit so that we can get you into the ballroom on time.

We gotta bypass this section.

Yeah. And hands them each invitation. So then Mosby, who the players have every reason to distrust, is guiding them through this battlefield, telling them when to walk, when to nod, and guides them to the Chateau de Port. From there, I prepped a really cool handout where I went through the initial recordings of our sessions and isolated just their agents talking in character, and then played that back to them as if they were hearing their agents voices. From the first time they entered Abigail's apartment, that was a really cool, surreal moment for them. And then Emmett can open a door within the chateau and it leads them into the quiet city of Alar. He points them to go over to Mr. Ambrose to get your attire for the Masquerade. You can't show up wearing that. And so then they interact with Ambrose, get the cool scene, everything has been set up, and then just make their way to the Masquerade. Finally, at the Masquerade, I intended to have all of the main bonds that were of key interest and relevance to the PCs there that they could interact with as well as Abigail. So then, as the Masquerade is continuing, it's harder for them to control their characters. I asked them to continue spending willpower to not just dance away with everything, not just keep drinking the champagne and get swept away in this dance, because that's everything. Just feels like they're completely drunk at the moment. We were, at this point, running out of time. And so this is where we sped things up a little bit. And eventually they decided to smash J.C. lynn's bottle in front of Abby because it was clear she had manipulated them the entire time. And as I mentioned, everything in the castle suddenly pitched forward in front of them. And then the floor started cracking as the entire world was literally breaking apart around them. Abigail was screaming at them, what have you done? What have you done? And they eventually got his typewriter briefcase open, and Emmaline started writing, which literally stitched the world back together again. At this point, she told them that someone needs to take in the role of King. And I don't remember who it was that ended up volunteering for that. You know, they got all shriveled and gross and took on that role. And then she said at this point that, like, we can tell the story that we need, but we still need someone to deliver the bottle. It's an integral part of the play. And it ended intentionally with the agents creating their new yellow sign from this loop, as each loop is indicated by a unique yellow sign. And then I believe it was Holly's character who we had, like, a final kind of epilogue scene of Doppler was the Handler introducing a new set of agents to Operation Alice as a way to show that the story still continues. It's just a little different than before.

Really effective, too, I'll say. Because like I said multiple times, my agent was the one that was so hell bent on ending this.

Yeah.

Taking everything down with me. So that's like, a really effective ending.

So I know, Holly, you said you hadn't really read King and Yellow as, like, the. The original there. Did you have other players that had read that, Lex, when you ran? Like, you have a lot more, like, original references in here, by which I mean original text to the book.

I actually don't know if the other players had read Chambers stories before. I had mentioned that it could be helpful for them going into this last chapter, that I was going to include a bunch of references. I can't say for sure if they actually read them, Holly. I'm really curious, though. As someone who had not read any of the Chamber stories, was everything that I just described a big waste of time? Did it just feel like references you weren't hitting and wasn't interesting?

No, I think that, like, it did feel like, you know, I feel like this is a reference to something is what I kept thinking. But it wasn't like uninteresting or unenjoyable. I just like I was engaging with it and enjoying it and then in the back of my head thinking, this has gotta be a reference to something I just don't know about. But. But it was enjoyable all the same.

Okay, so I guess if you do have players who have read Chambers stuff, this could be really interesting. In my current run, I have a couple of players who have read his works multiple times and I'm really excited to have them go through this because again, one of the players eyebrows shot halfway up his head as soon as I mentioned the night manager, Mr. Castell. So your mileage may vary.

I have a sense that this run is going to be more satisfying for you, Lex, than my particular run was.

Well, at least this time I'll be able to keep better track of time. I felt really bad because I had prepared so many reunions with various NPCs and bonds for you all to interact with at the Masquerade. And we just kind of had to speedrun through it and kind of like, okay, well, shit's hitting the fan, so the world's breaking. What are you going to do? Are you going to give it to Emily? Knock on. The world gets come back together. And it wasn't as dramatic as I had intended. So yeah, just also time management in mind. You can have all of the cool set pieces you want, but be sure you get your players to the Masquerade with at least an hour or so to spare.

And I think that this also speaks to our prologue episode of making sure that people can commit to it. Because our campaign run was just mired with problems with scheduling. And at the end it was like, God, we have just got to finish this or it's never going to happen. And that's not really where you want a campaign to be at the end, where it's like, we've just got to finish this, Just finish it, you know? So, yeah.

And on that chipper note, as all of the agents are eventually going to end up at the Masquerade. We have mentioned each of our endings and how we've holistically run this chapter. I feel like the Masquerade is really the penultimate location that you want to make very memorable for your players and their agents. Do you have any thoughts or advice on how to GM the Masquerade to really get it set up into something your players will talk about for, dare I say, years after the campaign is over. Maybe I'm being optimistic.

I think at least personally I think the base description's pretty good. Right? Like creepy old party, everybody's kind of weird. There's royalty that you don't know. Which by the way, a lot of this, when we get to the references and stuff, I gotta be like, it's too much. Right. Like, unless I have players that really, really care there, it's just like, man, it's royalty. I'm not gonna tell you it's Casilda, Camilla, whoever, whoever. Like you don't care, right? Like your person doesn't care necessarily. So trying to keep it focused on them. And then I don't worry too much about setting a clock. I usually try and do about two hours for the the Masquerade, but I also cut down more up front. So time wise it's probably about a

wash. Yeah, I like I said set aside at least an hour. That that was a true bare minimum. That I think two hours is a lot more comfortable and would give your agents more time to explore. Particularly if you are going to have more bonds be nestled around there. I do slightly disagree on the note of like, don't worry about Camilla and Casilda because at this point they've read the King in yellow. You've had tons of references to them. So this could be like people that they have met in the past. Maybe Cynthia Lachance just randomly shows up and like I'm cazilda.

It was me the whole time.

Yeah, like bring in.

I don't know.

I feel like this should be a time to.

Not for Cynthia.

Sure, sure, sure. I was giving that as a hypothetical but like I feel that this should really tie up most of the loose ends that the players have encountered. One of the reasons that I completely skipped the gallery of shades is I did not want to introduce them to any new faces at this point. I wanted it to be tie ins to bonds and finishing up this story. They are not gonna care about Lady Trifoni at this time if I have not brought her up before. And same thing with the other castane and stuff like that. I would really focus on. This is where you try to wrap up this campaign, truly.

Yeah, I could see that then of using the people as like ways to bring in and finish off threads. That that makes sense. I think my main concern is. Yeah, that that bit of like here's a person. Get it. See, take a picture that they were.

Did you happen to read Sosotra? Did you?

Isn't that fun? Neat. All right, let's keep it. Yeah. Keep it focused on the agents at least a little. Like. Like, I don't mind having the flavor of it there, but that's probably not what your players are there for, is to hear you talk about all the references.

Wait, I resemble that remark a little bit. After everything I just said.

Oh, no. You know, I think there's a big difference between doing that in the climax and then spending the time ahead of time on it. Right. Like. Like having a referential bit makes sense if you're not trying to focus on action.

Right.

Because I. I really feel like cameos. It can just feel like a Marvel movie where it's like, hey, look, Leo DiCaprio pointing me. Yeah, he. He smacked Thanos, like in issue. Whatever. It's like, I don't care. Like, it doesn't have that emotional impact for me, because I don't. Yeah, right.

Other players, it might be different.

Well, right. Yeah.

Personally, I'm in Nathan's vote.

You don't want the too many cooks. Like, throw it all in there. Just get all the people in.

Unless it's like, well built up before, like Nathan said. Unless you're like, making references every chapter. I think that would make a better impact. But, like, I. I'm. I'm assuming the way Lex runs things, he's gonna name drop all of the Casilla, Camilla. All of the cast. No, all the. Yeah, all the.

Like, all the roles in the play. Yeah.

They're going to be dropped into the game chapters before this even happens.

So I'm sure it's. It's going to be fantastic. No pressure. Well, Alex, is there anything that you really recommend trying to do for this chapter to really make it matter for

the players, to make it thrilling, tense?

Oh, yeah.

That's what we always aim for here at RPG reanimators.

So one thing that you can do instead of using, like trying to rely on your own pacing for GMing, you can set a timer. And this is regardless if you have something more combat planned for the finale or something more narrative and roleplay heavy. Having a clock introduces tension into the scene, even without combat bat. So one thing I did personally for my homegram is once I got to an hour mark, we had an hour of the session left. I took out my watch, showed it to everyone, saying, hey, once this hits an hour, that's it. That it's going to hit midnight and things are going to. And I set the watch down, it's important. It's important that you show it to the players and you have that in front of them because that builds dread, it builds tension. If you don't want to. If you don't own a watch, that's fine. What you can do is you can take a D12 and periodically count that down from 12, flip it to 11, flip it to 10. Alternatively, if you don't even have die, not gonna judge. You can draw a circle and split that into wedges and then fill in a piece of that wedge. As time progresses, you want something that the players can see that builds up.

An hourglass would actually be pretty fun too. Just like watching it all trickle away,

like, oh, it's gonna hit midnight.

Uh oh. I also really like the advice to use a D12 because you could also start it at 8, and that is also not dependent on actual time. If your player is like really good on a tear, interacting with someone, and then you can turn it from 8 to 9 to 10, but you can do that cinematically to really showcase that time seems to be slipping away. If you go 9 to 10, like really quickly, the players are going to be like, oh, shit, this is not in our control. This is moving really fast. We need to finish this up. That, yeah, it's things happening around them that can cause them to speed up. This is something that I try to do because I really like willpower as an expendable resource. And so as I mentioned earlier, I made my players continue to spend willpower in order to act lucidly and not just start dancing and get swept away in this masquerade ball. Because that's. That's very not ideal. So trying to say you are quickly running out of this resource. If you're going to do something, you need to do it now or else you are going to be caught in this tide. Well, dear listeners, that gong seems to indicate the end of our time with this play taking an extra step back and looking at Impossible Landscapes as a whole. Is there any overall GM advice that you would try to impart to someone who is preparing to run Impossible Landscapes?

So, despite all of our complaints and the nitpickiness, run the campaign. Yeah, it's worth running. It's good experience for the players. It's a fantastic campaign. At the end of the day, it's one of the better ones that exist. And there's nothing that hits like it. That surrealness, that conspiracy. It's just like the perfect blend of elements that personally, I like. Yeah, so, yeah, don't be afraid to let the reins loose a little and really follow what your players want for this campaign.

Yeah, I fully agree and despite my numerous criticisms of certain parts of this campaign, this is my favorite RPG campaign ever that I have read or ran. I think that it is really terrific and absolutely worth running if you think you have a group of players who would be interested in going through it. As Alex said, there really isn't anything like it and it has a lot of opportunity for unique kinds of character, role playing and horror that you really aren't going to find elsewhere. And as you have probably seen from our discussions between the last chapter and this one, much of this campaign is extremely loosey goosey and up to the GM to build and run the world, around the world players based on their decisions and to include set pieces, NPCs, events and so on that will matter to your players and their characters. The book is huge, has a ton of information and on a given run of it maybe 40% will never come up. It is there as a resource that you can look at if that is a direction that your players are going in. It's really helpful to read this book cover to cover at least once before starting to take notes on it, just because it really behaves as a holistic entity since time doesn't matter and you can have references and introduce things at any time to keep your players on their toes and emphasize that surreal horror. But that doesn't mean that this is as difficult to run as all that. It may take some practice and finesse,

but let's say if I could run it multiple times, you can too.

That's right folks, you heard it here.

If Nathan can, anybody can.

We said it in the prologue, but it's actually a pretty hard campaign to screw up because the timey wimey ness of everything. I would say though, if you're the kind of GM that preps the book and then kind of shoots from the hip and goes from there, this may not be the campaign for you. Because to have those payoff moments, you do need to pay attention to what your players are doing and saying and take those notes and refer back to those notes. So you know, that's just something to consider is you really do want to note what your players are doing and the decisions they're making and even sometimes the things that they're saying and to add to that.

Right. The more you put in, the more you're going to get out of this campaign.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I think for my final thoughts of this is this book is one of those achievements in writing and editing that I think is incredibly impressive. It is like candy for a lot of GMs. If you're a specific kind of GM, you'll know when you read the book that this is fun to read.

Yeah.

And it is a puzzle box that you can return to again and again and get new things out each time. I think the hype that that builds is a positive thing. Like, I mean, hype is in. If you get excited by this, you're gonna get really excited by this. And I think that's huge for a campaign is, you know, campaigns live or die based on GM enthusiasm. So I think this does a really good job of. Of pushing for that. The danger there is, of course, kind of what we were referencing. Right. Is just because it's a fun read doesn't mean that's going to make it fun to play. So you do have to be judicious in what do I use on the players right now? What do I worry about? And limit it because I. I agree. I don't use a good portion of this book on every run through intentionally just to keep the scope focused and moving because, yeah, scheduling can be so difficult that I don't want this to go too long. So keeping it a little bit focused. And then guess what, you can run games more than once. And each time I've run this, I've completely focused on a different section and it works absolutely fine. Yeah.

No two runs of this campaign will be even remotely similar. There will be some set pieces and interactions. But besides that, as we mentioned in the prologue, this is the most abstract campaign that will morph itself around your players and their characters, lives and choices. And I think that that's something really

unique and special and to that degree too is let your enthusiasm for this really take you to other places of research. An example I had mentioned before is I had a player that thought, well, if there are demons, there must be angels. So that opened up a really fun avenue for me to look into, well, what are the counterparts of these angels here? Who could they summon? Who could be this particular angel here? And really refitted the idea of that onto people like Ava Lundin. And I think having that excitement and how malleable this is, you can really chase that and be rewarded for it.

And thus concludes our deep dive dissection and reanimation of impossible landscapes. We hope these discussions are helpful for you as you prepare to show your players the yellow sign and plunge them into this surreal nightmare outside of time. Although the story is not quite over yet as we have one more episode left in this series, an epilogue where we interview several lost souls forever drifting in the mists of Carcosa. That is several other GMs whom we have asked to share their overall thoughts, experiences and personal advice from how they have also run this campaign. Until then, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode for links to purchase a copy of this campaign for yourself. Bud's RPG Review Overview videos for the sections that we've discussed here, other RPG resources we've mentioned, as well as an invite to our lab's Discord server to discuss more reanimations. We also post these episodes and resources to our Patreon that's free to follow. Or, if you like, you can make a charitable donation to help us stalk the masquerade balls that happen every night before the end of the world. Again, you would not believe how expensive all of those pallid masks are, and we would like to extend a special shout out of appreciation to our Patreon interns, Beth, Zander, Sawyer, Scott, Chance, Jan, Born to be wrong J.S. weston, Allison, Sick, Daniel, Oliver, Cableman, Corey and Nick. Thank you all so very much for supporting us. So until next time, thanks for listening to RPG Reanimators where your games can

die or live in Lost Carcosa.

Sa. Has anyone read the whole book? I. I mean, the whole. The play. What happens at the end? No, don't, don't. Don't tell me. I don't want to know yet.