We are happy to announce the return of our Intermediate Writer’s Workshop. A new quest begins: to empower and inspire the next generation of writers. Our intermediate workshop is for students with some writing experience – whether from our Dungeon School program, or elsewhere – and are welcome to submit one short story upon registering for the workshop.
Classes will be hosted in the Bespoke Legends’ Imaginarium
Intermediate Writers‘ Workshop Dates : Sundays March 12th – May 21 Excluding : April 23 Time: 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM
Students will build the world for this campaign using their work on assignments, all of which will be woven into a single overarching meta narrative in a setting that grows alongside the students’ work.
We will begin our studies by delving into Character and Conflict, followed by World Building and Plot, and a climax studying Structure and Themes. We’ll be looking at these elemental forces that drive a narrative and how to leverage Dungeons & Dragons (and other RPGs) to streamline this process.
Meanwhile, the role playing game component will bring their work and writing to life in front of them, as our gaming experience explores a world built from and peopled by their work.
Participation in assignments is semi-mandatory (at least half of all assignments), but group workshop time is optional. Students are welcome and encouraged to bring their own dice, books, writing materials, but will be provided with any gaming supplies they need.
No previous experience with role playing games required.
Please contact us at BespokeLegends@gmail.com for further information or details.
Foundry10 is a Seattle based education research organization that has a wide variety of experiments into alternative learning models. In fall of 2021, I had a the honor and pleasure of being a part of their pilot classroom test of their table top role playing game based marine sciences curriculum, Endless Blue. The game’s plot focuses on the recovery of Amelia Earhart’s long lost aircraft, allowing the players to take on one of a variety of roles to explore the deep sea, rescue wildlife, and preserve the marine archeological site. The book Foundry10 has available on their website for Endless Blue contains a number of plot hooks for catching players interest. I selected the three most location dependent and used those as a module-style framework for introducing the more sub-plot appropriate hooks. I added a cantankerous captain to give the players someone to unify against, as well as a love triangle, and an anime smuggling ring to pull in specific players’ interest. Using Endless. Blue in the classroom was easy. Where the game or the story wasn’t a player’s cup of tea, the science would usually pull them in. The result was a weeklong adventure that brought to bear social media management, oceanography, and lab skills both simulated and actual.
This was the second project I’d gotten to work on for Foundry10, and was gloriously close to my heart. Using simulated experiences as framework for generating student engagement, and converting that engagement into learning, is at the heart of our Dungeon School program. This was my first chance to apply my decade of experience using role playing games in the classroom using someone else’s curriculum. My usual focus on writing and art was replaced by a tour through the regular classroom teacher’s notes for the class and my dusty memories of long ago marine science and south pacific anthropology classes. As an added bonus, the game mechanics themselves are simple, innovative, and player progress focused, making it easy to adapt to classroom management and curriculum delivery.
There’s a lot to love about what Foundry10 is doing with this game, but I have a special place in my heart for opening our imaginary foray into the south pacific with a land acknowledgement. Placing this right at the front of the book showed me that Foundry10 has appreciation and respect for the peoples who will inevitably end up being represented to some degree in the future play throughs of this game. My understanding is that they have and will continue to include indigenous peoples of Polynesia in the review of the content and intentions of this game.
The character creation process is remarkably straight forward, with the skills and attributes both combining in clear and intuitive ways within the fields of expertise, but also providing interesting secondary skill options to round out a character or fill skill gaps in the party. Everything else fell to the captain I added, who provided support when needed to keep things moving. Equipment, which necessarily plays a tremendous role in the game, clicks into the mechanic as smoothly as skills.
The fields of expertise themselves do a pretty good job or capturing most of what Foundry10 has listed amongst the possible marine science careers on their website. They also do an excellent job of modeling the many roles and skills it takes to make marine science expeditions happen. A power couple Photographer and Science Communicator proved as instrumental to our success as the Ocean Engineer’s piloting and Oceanographer’s lab work. I wouldn’t mind seeing ‘Mermaiding’ add to the list of available skills, though I’m not sure what exactly it might bring in gameplay.
The mechanic has a significant de-emphasis of physical skills and abilities, which speaks to its focus as an academic simulator. The lack of mechanical, ‘physical’ conflict makes it difficult to leverage a more traditional combat focused model of role playing games, but I think this is a huge advantage to the intention of the game. Without fighting as a mechanic for resolving problems the players are forced to try to analyze their difficulties, and communicate their needs and interests. Even then, we were still able to include some action sequences – leveraging the Submersible Piloting skill when a player wanted to ram a falling wing segment to prevent it from falling on their archeological site, and its cephalopod inhabitants.
The game really came to life when I incorporated the daily topics and overall curriculum structure from the classroom teacher. It was a revelation to be able to twist the narrative around what the students had learned that morning, or fit the activities that afternoon. We were able to perform PH tests, examine rock and mollusk samples from comparable sites to those in our narrative, and identify actual shark specimens in class to determine if they would pose a threat to our imaginary octopus friends. There was even a real time zoom visit with Foundry10’s marine science submersible team aboard the Nautilus, allowing the students to imagine even more vividly the experiences their characters were having.
I always like to draw on white boards so that I can make it easy to understand exactly where the character’s are and what they’re seeing. In Dungeon School this clarity usually comes in the form of models and miniatures, but I didn’t have time to assemble and destroy a model Lockheed Elektra (though I would have loved to) for this class. The modular nature of the narrative structure and the player led nature of the exploration made it easier to draw on the fly anyway.
I picked the Palmyra atoll as the location of the crash site because there was a wildlife refuge there, allowing us to tie in a sub-plot of rescuing an injured reef shark. The most exciting part of this was that it sparked a wave of player led research into the legal status of the site due it being, not only a potential national historical landmark, but also to determine what the consequences of disturbing the family of octopi they found living in the wreckage. When pirates tried to steal a part of the wreck while the players were distracted by the reef shark rescue, their research reached a fevered pitch as they worked to determine which local, federal, and international agencies could be brought to bear (or at least named to threaten the pirates).
The height of the narrative to real science experience for me came on the final day when gentle study of live samples of the octopi captured in the airplane wreckage revealed that they had an extraordinarily high density of chromatophores. We then moved to the classroom where dissection of squid specimens allowed us to study real chromatophores in action. There was even a squid paper model building activity for students who chose not to participate in dissection.
It was a privilege to teach and learn with these students as we encountered this new kind of education together. A truly adaptive, hybridized model of simulated experiences that brings remote reality in the field into contact with imaginary recreation of those experiences, and real classroom experiments performed on samples taken from the places we were pretending to visit. This is a new kind of educational gaming, leveraging play to inspire students to learn by doing.
Our penultimate session begins with the dragon chasing our heroes down the hall, followed by a small legion of invisible, puppet-armor assassins. At the end of the dormitory hall, in the dean’s private study, Deamon Chord awaits their attempt to escape via the Statue Gate. Outside the windows one observant student spotted a displacer behemoth pacing the grounds. Fear rose in all their hearts at this news, for the ferocious regenerative powers of the creatures has so far proved unstoppable…
Alamazoo the celestial beetle and his swarms of vassal scarabs attempt to slow the charge of the enraged dragon.
The dragons breath sent scorching hot beetle corpses sailing down the dormitory to pepper our heroes and their foes alike. Alamazoo’s celestial light was seen to flicker and spark as he collapsed beneath one of the beds.
With their celestial allies scattered like coals from an overturned brazier, our heroes dash between the towering puppet-armor, whose whirling blades broke through more than one hero’s defenses.
The ophidiman fighter was picked up by the dragon and flung down the hall, falling unconscious for the third time during this escape.
A few straglers try to catch up, pursued by the thundering steps of the puppet-armor and the skittering of invisible assassins creeping around the sides of the room.
Meanwhile in the office, two students previously knocked unconscious are being dragged by the head to Deamon’s work bench, where he donned shoulder length white gloves. He placed his hands on the halfling sorcerer’s chest and pushed them inside his body, without a trade of blood or harm. A moment later, he pulled out a small crystal that had been embedded under the halfling’s sternum.
One by one, those already captured are dragged to have strange crystalline objects removed from their chests by Deamon and his eerie gloves. When asked what the crystals are he only answered: “The price of loyalty.”
The second victim woke up during the procedure and tried to question Deamon. The rogue in question was convinced the extractions were meant to be helpful to them somehow… Deamon would say so, but the players will likely not.
With the last of our surviving heroes making their way into the office, the battle becomes fierce, as the limited space, and still locked cage around the Statue Gate, prevents actual escape. Will they be able to break the heavily enchanted cage and escape Deamon’s clutches at last?
Somewhere in the depths of the eastern sea, the tattered remnants of the Elder Shark’s spirit body disintegrate as the warped currents that had supported it’s incredible mass unravel along with it’s flesh. Within that whirling slurry of shark, our heroes struggle to save Gorvinahth, the Statue Gate, while surviving the onslaught of the enraged Elder Shark.
The rival masses of flesh still churn the waters as those impacted Contagion, wrestle with those that still hold some measure of the Elder Shark’s true essence.
As she passed from consciousness, Gorvinahth had one last Meta Mechanical action. The players chose Aid, which brought the sharkfolk pirates and their leader Lorenzini back into the fray. The blue-figurined forces spread out across the area under the players direction.
In the heart of this chaos, with one ally already trapped inside the Elder Shark, the barbarian manages to take hold of one of the war sharks and swing it around like a club, shattering it’s spine against it’s own god.
Lorenzini chases the Elder Shark around, trying to reason with his god, as it continues to call upon the power of the sea to slaughter all who dare to disrupt his power. The sharkfolk pirate captain persisted in begging it abandon it’s rage, for the heart is set free and the oceans can return to balance.
As it circle the area, the Elder Shark again used its summon ability to bring forth a wave of elder water elementals.
In the background, the elder elementals spread out as the Elder Shark circles around for another attack while the sharkfolk spread out to defend Gorvinahth and our injured characters.
Meanwhile, the sharkfolk partner with the druid in his fanged fish form to bring down one of the stealth sharks, while the rest surround the surviving war shark.
The sharkfolk turn on their own as needs be. Caught up in the Elder Shark’s blood lust and rage, their cousin cannot calm himself and when one of the pirates dies, the rest claim vengeance.
Lorenzini (face down after breaking off of his stand) slammed into the war shark, finishing it off and sending it spinning away into the depths.
With a single session left, our heroes are nearly routed: pinned down, or eaten alive, mortally wounded, or barely standing.
The wounded defend the unconscious amongst the promethean mechana as their survivng foes circle ever inwards.
Meanwhile, in the Elder Sharks belly, the war cleric and barbarian struggle to escape while facing the last of the Megamegaladons essence.
But they’ve taken hold of the Statue Gate, and hope to activate it, before the Elder Shark strikes again. Will they be able to triumph? Who will survive?
Next Week in the Accursed Currents Finale: We’ll let the dice decide.
With Sev’rence’s body still cooling in the drow ruins behind them, and terrors beyond reckoning ahead, our heroes can only fight to survive now. The horde of skeletons pouring from the bone pit beneath the demon preacher’s platform, presses constantly towards them as Fox splits her form to finish her sigil as swiftly as possible.
From armies of skeletons, the Demon Preacher graduates to a interlaced bone worm. In place of a head it has a jagged mass of spines.
Beyond the waves of skeletons, the fetid, wet-rotting, flesh of zombies began to rise from the pit. Two of heroes were knocked unconscious as they were run through by the huge lashing bone serpent.
While his star-twin was run through and dying overhead, Guinea smashed the back of a giant skeleton’s skull in, sending shards flying out through it’s eye sockets as it fell forwards.
By the skin of their teeth our heroes managed to keep the mass of bones from pressing forwards enough to reach and disrupt Fox’s spell. With the Sigil complete, the Demon Preacher’s possession begins to leave the Bishop’s body. (Thus revealing the ghost bishop from Act 2, who thanked them for helping to purify his temple and his people’s graves, whose body had been missing from his sepulcher)
Alias and Adrara (our rogue and tank) are run clean through and dangling limp against the serrated mass of the bone serpent’s spine.
After smashing the giant skeleton’s skull in, Guinea leaps high into the air, what’s left of the head beneath his feet exploding as he sails aloft. Just befoe hitting the ground, he shadow steped above the bone serpent. (We had decided in a previous session that one maintains momentum through teleports)
With all his allies down, Guinea fights desperately to save who he can.
The force of the gnomish monk’s fury struck the bone serpent, setting the whole thing to clattering as it shuddered with the impact. The spine broke free as Guinea’s blade swung down and finished the job.
The huge spine spun on it’s way to the ritual chamber floor, decapitating the last of the giant skeleton’s on its way. The heroes still pinned to it, of course automatically failed death saves…
The spine landed with a thunderous crunching of bones as the last of the skeletons’ right flank literally collapsed under the impact. Again with the automatic death saves fails…
With the armies of skeleton’s crushed and Fox’s Sigil nearly complete, the survivors cling desperately to the hope that Canar and Fox can tame the Demon before the next wave of the undead hits. The stench of rot and spoiled meat pours up from the pit as the zombies pile atop one another in their desperation to reach the living.
Her Sigil fully formed, Fox refracts into two sets of twins, one Fox, one Woman, while her spirit body holds the golden glyph steady. Her energy seems to be focused on the Demon Preacher, who has show growing doubt in light of Canars arguments against the logic of his goals.
His demon skin shed, his stolen body reunited with his lost spirit, the Bishop of Oolloon is unleashed. He healed our heroes and brought them under his protection as the back wall broke to reveal at last, the true star thieves and Xetric himself, the third fragment of the divine essence once trapped therein. (This being the back story of two of the players)
These crystalline beings are the closest I could get to the personal plot line created by the players of Guinea and Alias in their art and writing. These beings inhabit a cosmic realm, not unlike an actualization of the concept of a ‘crystal sphere’ (to use the D&D parlance anyway). They have the feel of archonic angels in the writing, which required something beautiful and terrifying. I’ve had these figs hidden for the last six months waiting for this reveal. The last of the three star fragments they’ve been hunting this year stands before them. The three could merge, with Guinea argued passionately. When Xetric argued that they should join with him, to be so much more than they might in equality.
Beneath the fallen star, the fractured shards of the crystalline realm sing to raise the star again by their power, but it is lacking. The samurai who had escorted the Demon Preacher in the very first session have their loyalties revealed at last! (if only someone had translated the scrolls they carry)
At the peek of his individual power, Xetric cannot imagine being lessened by the parts of his full self that fell away with Guinea and Alias. With power gathered by the manipulated faithful, he stand prepared to absorb our heroes and rise as a true god, a living star, and master of the world.
(Pay no attention to the tool pile in the corner!) Xetric’s fragmented essence shards are elemental horrors and divine spell casters ready to beat our heroes senseless to drag them before their soon-to-be-god, if necessary.
and then it all went sideways… because: players are silly and the dice are cruel.
Xetric burns from within, taking his lesser forms with him.
Skaren, our halfling sorcerer, is impulsive as ever, and with the first utterance of tyrannical tendancies, or a desire for dominance, he summoned a being for fire from the elemental realms. It smothered Xetric, who stands paralyzed by the streams of power flowing into him. Sacred flames poured back through those links, however, cracking the gemstone body of one of the three priestesses standing on the long stone dais before him.
Next week: Our Penultimate Session!At the last moment, the Spider Goddess, grown even more powerful since she abandoned our heroes to die in the caverns beyond the drow ruins, arrives to claim the third stone for herself. Will our heroes be able to defeat both their greatest enemy and the divine gem extrusions of an erstwhile god?
Today’s exercise was about editing at the sentence level. Each student contributed an element of the scene and we wrote and edited sentences with the goal of making the Action of the scene really pop: with short, declarative sentences.
In a campaign with 14 players, just rolling initiative can be a laborious process if the players want to make it one. These guys had a rough start this year, but have really come to be champs, managing three to five turns depending on how engaged they are during the topical and workshop time, which has also been really nice. I always love workshop time, and working with elementary age writers is a both a joy an a great responsibility. At this point in the year a lot of kids who were there just to play in the first place have had enough of me pushing them to turn in art and writing, so this kind of exercise helps to exercise those creative muscles before we get going. It always pays off in the focus department.
Dr. Bear takes hold of the rift with her bare hands, grasping an the shredding threads of reality to hold the broken fragments together long enough for the students to force the Hydra beasts into it. As she begins to heave, the grasslands begin to shrink, twisted away from the rift by brute force.
The upper right hand corner holds the grassy plains outside Valencia, where minotaurs and hydresques rush to escape the collapsing landscape as Dr. Bear twists the world back into place from the Rift.
Our heroes broke into teams to face Goblin King, to negotiate with the alliance nobility, the frost giants, and the minotaurs, before Dr. Bear is overwhelmed the world collapses in around them. Two players managed to make their way past the scattered courtiers and guards left behind as their ‘noble’ hosts teleport away. At the back of the tent they found it was easy to climb into the cage with the statue-gate, but that the inside was another place entirely. An eternity of swirling orange light and Deamon Chord (from the Wednesday game) waiting for them. “You’ve come here earlier than your class was meant to.” I told them, layering metagame over the dialogue. “Impressive. Persistent. What would you have of me?”
You’ll have to wait for next week to find out how they respond.
In the abandoned tent of the nobles, the recently rescued civilians (in solid blue and gray) are shocked when their savior vanishes into the cage at the back of the tent. Goblin Prince smirked knowingly at the strangers, while offering them a seat and perhaps a nip of wine for their nerves…
While the Huge Hydresque fails on it’s back, a rogue and a bard fight the beast from inside it’s belly. It’s gut is lined with thousands of tiny versions of it’s own head, which spit acid at our heroes as they try to cut their way free.
Enemies of the goblin court pouring from all sides, while their mechanoman siege armors wrestle with minotaurs and the hydresque. The queen has so far, slept through the whole affair. Seriously. The players who made friends with her before have almost convinced her minions not to kill them.
In the shard of tundra where this whole mess began, Bjoldgud Cynfldoon is being ritually deposed. Two of our heroes work to distract the giants and help them see that maybe it’s kingship itself that’s the crux of breaking this terrible curse..
We had a delightfully huge amount of material to workshop this week! At the top is a student’s outline built up into a larger story. We talked through his outline and I was able to leverage a few passages to talk about this week’s topic: streamlining language. We focused on how to increase the intensity of action scenes with short sentences. What read’s fast, moves fast, so: tight descriptions, well chosen verbs and multi-purpose metaphors are what makes a final draft final.
Meanwhile, in Deamon Chord’s fortress academy, our heroes fight on to escape the tiny laboratory in which they have been trapped. With the dragon bursting down the wall and puppet-armor pouring in from all sides, they made for the yellow portal, hoping to create a bottle neck in the relative safety of the dormitory wing, or at least a way to reach the statue-gate…
Deamon’s Meta-Mechanic ability ‘Distort’ came into play this session, allowing him to collapse the yellow portal’s ley lines, folding the intervene space away so that the dragon left behind in the hallway is now looming through the door.
Our heroes have only just begun to fight their way free of the laboratory and into the hallway where the portal leading to the only escape lies.
The laboratory itself is nearly deserted as a result, with puppet armor marching out towards the blue portal in hopes of cutting our heroes off…
Even after the last of our band escaped through the portal, Deamon’s forces pressed on. The folded space of Chord’s Distort effect transformed the door leading out of his office into the one leaving the laboratory. Alhoon, their celestial beetle ally, desperately tries to slow the dragon while the rest fight their way from the portal room.
The cleric tries to roll under the shield armor. Natural 1. He sails towards the dragonborn warlock, who rolls a dexterity save! Natural 1. They hit the huge ophidiman fighter and the ranger just as the later cast the spell jump. Neither of them make the save…
The force of the spell propelled the lot of them into the air. This was my favorite thing that happened this session (and for awhile in this campaign). This is what makes letting the dice and the players lead the narrative creates.
The ball of heroes flying through the air gave me an excuse to drop them into the yellow portal, rather than getting bogged down fighting the army pouring into the hallway behind them. And so our band is reunited, with their foes still hot on their heels…
The distorted school halls now have the dragon and puppet armor riddled laboratory feeding directly into the dormitories. Those who came tumbling out of the yellow portal were only just saved thanks to the Distort effect bringing Alhoon and his swarms of celestial beetles back to the front.
The whole scene is at last revealed as the barbarian (armored orc fig) saunters away, betraying the rest by taking advantage of earlier roleplaying. On his way out he spies one of the infamous displacer behemoths outside patrolling the grounds…
Once again half the group is unconscious or captured, but this time their teacher is dead, and their other allies held at bay.
As the treacherous barbarian follows, a huge puppet armor drags two of his erstwhile allies by their heads.
Though he saved his classmates by distracting Chord, the sorcerer paid dearly as the upperclassfolk knocked him unconscious and carried him away.
The traitor looks into the main office of the dean, where the statue-gate stands imprisoned. He fully expects it will be opened for him on request.
The battle rages on as our heroes try to fight their way to, and find a way through, the statue gate. With only two sessions left, can they escape the army at their backs, force the cage around the statue and escape?
In the isolated parts of the school, trapped within Deamon’s folded Distort displacement, the remaining forces try to find a way to reactivate the yellow portal.
Alhoon’s beetle masses take the brunt of the dragon’s breath-weapon, though the surrounding library fared far worse…
These warriors never slow down, not even to aid an ally, or secure a rear guard.
Our penultimate session begins with the dragon chasing our heroes down the hall, followed by a small legion of invisible, puppet-armor assassins. At the end of the dormitory hall, in the dean’s private study, Deamon Chord awaits their attempt to escape via the Statue Gate. Outside the windows one observant student spotted a displacer behemoth pacing the grounds. Fear rose in all their hearts at this news, for the ferocious regenerative powers of the creatures has so far proved unstoppable…
With the last of our surviving heroes making their way into the office, the battle becomes fierce, as the limited space, and still locked cage around the Statue Gate, prevents actual escape. Will they be able to break the heavily enchanted cage and escape Deamon’s clutches at last?
We had a delightfully huge amount of material to workshop this week! At the top is a student’s outline built up into a larger story. We talked through his outline and I was able to leverage a few passages to talk about this week’s topic: streamlining language. We focused on how to increase the intensity of action scenes with short sentences. What read’s fast, moves fast, so: tight descriptions, well chosen verbs and multi-purpose metaphors are what makes a final draft final.
