Subject: Re: [UA] Terminus, GA

[Mike Dewar]

As regards your concerns that it may smack of railroading - there's a
certain UA-y goodness to railroading when it's supposed to exist in the
setting. 

If the players get frustrated because there's no way to avoid a D&D subplot
by a bossy DM - that's railroading and annoying. But watching the characters
get frustrated because chance and happenstance (ie. the Statosphere or
Terminus, in this case) are conspiring against them - that's interesting and
spooky. 

As regards the city - would you intend the PCs to be born and bred
Terminians, or visiting weirdos who get trapped? 

I'd strongly support the idea of the PCs having been born and grown up in
this city - it gives more impact to the "falseness" if they start to realise
that their entire home is a lie. The fact that they become aware of the
inconsistencies might also be related to the city's "suicide" - perhaps it's
deliberately trying to find suitable candidates to help it with mystical
euthanasia. 

And I love the idea of the city trying to kill itself. You end up with a
antagonist who's simultaneously alien, tragic and not conventionally "evil"
- it just wants to end its suffering, and its residents are necessary
losses. 

Plus, imagine the moral consequences of the final sessions. The PCs probably
spend a long time labouring under the belief that something nasty is trying
to destroy the city, and then when they find out it's the city ITSELF - what
do they do? Try and help it end its pain, even at the cost of their lives
(and a lot of other peoples)? Try and convince it somehow to keep on living?
Or maybe try and find away to safely "evacuate" the citizens? 

I'd be inclined to avoid making the city too much of an adept-magnet,
though. Give it the usual collection of weirdness you'd expect in a big city
(maybe slightly more because of increased unnatural phenomenon), but if
there are too many freak-jobs roaming the streets, you'll detract from the
city's own strangeness. 

- Mike