Work in Progress
Doorways is an introductory adventure for Witchgates, a ttrpg that asks “what if magic came to the modern world.” The adventure follows the simple goal of fetching a missing person so that they may uphold a corporate contract. Following this premise, Doorways provides a window to a magically-altered yet familiar world. The adventure provides obstacles, but players will need to create their own solutions. While pursuing their goals, the players should watch for clues for what is going on behind the scenes, or otherwise risk losing their promised reward.
Tools to Start
- 2-6 friends to play. One player takes the role as the Game Master (GM) to narrate scenes and act out all non-player characters. The other players take the role of mages and witches within the world, using one of the premade characters provided or with a character they themselves made.
- 3 6-sided dice per player with at least 7 6-sided dice available for all players to use.
- The rules found on the witchgates website.
Preparing for Doorways
Before starting Doorways, all players should understand the core game mechanics and what is on the player character sheets and how to create and cast spells.
The Game Master should also understand how to run a game and read through Acts 1, 2, and 3 to fully understand the adventure itself.
Once players have a solid understanding of the game itself, it is time to have a session 0.
Since Doorways is a pre-made adventure, the GM should ensure that all players are alright with the story’s themes. In addition to normal session 0 activities, Doorways specific activities should include:
- The GM should share the Story Setup as provided in the below section.
- Players should discuss where they want the location of Doorways to take place and add to it as per the world building section. The acts within the adventure involve an airport, a forest, and a city between the two, but does not have strict requirements as to scene specifics.
- As per the story setup, the players start the game on their way to learn about, and hopefully accept a contract from Tsunami Airlines. Each player should work with the GM to determine why their character is considering the contract. These reasons work great when explicitly tied to a character’s background and knives. The motives can also create PC goals which provide additional XP when accomplished.
Some general motivations include:- Blackmail: The employer has blackmail on the PC and will destroy it if the player completes the contract. Or the employer offers blackmail on a PC’s nemesis
- Favor: The PC wants to gain the attention of the company to have a powerful ally in future dealings.
- Reward: Tsunami Airlines has something you want that they are willing to give you if you finish this contract for them.
(If the reward is monetary, discuss with the GM before hand on what your character’s lowest accepting price is, should negotiations go poorly for them). - Assistance: The PC is there to support another character.
- Replacement: Tsunami Airlines asked someone else to do the job, but for some reason the PC is taking that person’s place. Maybe they stole the invitation to take advantage of the opportunity, or maybe the original person was otherwise occupied and passed the job along to the PC.
- Other: (Aristotle: Ethos, Logos, and Pathos) The PC has a moral, self-interest-focused, or emotional need to complete the contract.
- Players with characters using spacetime magic should be forewarned against openly discussing or using such magic at the airport, where such magic is seen as a valuable resource to be exploited.
Story Setup
Doorways contains the following key elements:
- Negotiation: players will be expected to negotiate deals with several character throughout the adventure.
- Puzzle Solving: the adventure provides puzzles without specific solutions. Players should use a combination of wit, skill, and magic to overcome challenges in their way.
- Combat Optional: the adventure does include several encounters where direct combat is possible (and maybe likely), but none of the written encounters include goals that require direct harm towards another. “Winning” an encounter does not require harming the opponent. For example: escaping with an item, capturing an enemy, redirecting a beast elsewhere, etc.
Setup
When people lost trust in empty rural roads and when planes no longer could claim the safest form of transportation, a few airlines stepped in with a solution; portals between the major cities of the world. Eventually the protected airway followed, allowing self-defended airships to slowly travelling across well watched routes.
Tsunami airlines formed in Seattle as the merger of several airlines united to avoid bankruptcy from the city’s crisis and other hardships. For some reason, an executive named Anthony Pearson has reached outside of the company to each of you for an unknown job, each person given a personalized offer should they accept a to-be-disclosed contract.
“I have an unfulfilled warranty on an item I bought, and I need magical assistance to call it in.”
The details of the contract will be laid out in person during a 1 pm meeting at the airport. Before then, a driver has been sent to pick each person up so they can get to know each other on the way to the meeting.
Below this point, only the GM should continue. More explicitly, the GM should be the only person to read the pages for Acts 1, 2, and 3.
Story Structure
Doorways can be broken up into three acts: the Negotiation, the Retrieval, and the Return. Generally, each of these acts is expected to take one session, but should players take longer, the GM should aim to have at least one narrative beat hit per session.
Doorways is not a rigid adventure but does assume the players will aim for the objectives of each Act. That is, it is expected that the player characters will accept the job, meet with Mr. Castrol or an alternative solution, and return to their employer for a reward. However, the NPCs are given their own motives and abilities, and are expected to continue acting on those motives regardless of the PC actions.
Each Act contains specific details at the top of the page, before delving into the story in detail below. These details include:
- Key Goal: The key goal that should be accomplished before the next act is started.
- Act Atmosphere: Each act has two atmospheres that it shifts between as the story continues.
- A Summary of the Act and the challenges inside.
- Clocks: The time restraints pushing the PCs to take action
- Locations: Each act has a list of settings of where events may take place.
- A list of core NPCs and parties within the Act.
Note: Despite having 3 Acts, the Acts do not perfectly pair with those in a “3 Act Story Structure.” In relation to the 3 act structure, session 0 and the Negotiation match Act 1, while the Retrieval covers most of Act 2, and the Return directly relates to Act 3, unless the improvisational nature of the game leads elsewhere.