DM Chronicles, Session 4: The Storytellers' Ball, part 1
Image Source: Wizards of the Coast.
Previously in Chatty DM’s game:
The Characters were investigating the source of a new drug called ‘Green Welcome’ that appeared in the Warrens of Ptolus. This drug has a tendency to transforms its users in horrible Plant-like creatures. Following a tip by a shady dealer, our heroes have started exploring a sewer complex. Some resistance was met and conquered.
I made it to Stef’s in one piece. Not wishing to play dice with Fate, Franky actually escorted me most of the way. Thanks pal!
This week’s game was a success. Once again it wasn’t a top 5 thing and I’ll touch on this later, but it sure was a great session for at least 3 players: Yan, Franky and myself.
We settled in, we ordered food and, of course, my order was missing…. (at least it beats a Car Crash or a Tree-on-my-house). Thankfully, Eric shared his plate with me and I never even touched my order when it finally arrived, thanks, you really are a swell guy underneath that Crusty, Damned-to-Hell exterior!
As mentioned in the Adventure Prep post, I wanted to steer the game away from a straight Kill and loot scenario to a more story-based adventure. So shortly after we started again, I had one of the bad guys lieutenants show up with a white flag and attempt parley. When Yan perked up and prepared to make his move to initiate discussions, Eric said the first Out-of-Character quote of the evening: ‘Not another one of those!’
I’ll leave the details to Lillie’s journal, but what followed was what I feel one of my best Role Playing performances in a long time. One of my follow-up challenges to playing Evil characters was to try playing a non-humanoid NPC in such a way that the players knew they were not dealing with a Rubber Suit Human. This is harder to pull off for a gamer like me (i.e Crunch over Fluff).
It worked, perfectly. As you may recall, the bad guys were evil faeries called Spriggans. I don’t have a lot of experience with Faeries but I guess forging through Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norel last year paid off. I played them as egocentric, silver tongued jerks with no need for things like truth and , you know, getting anywhere with a conversation. (Ask Cixi what she thinks of the eight levels of the Heart…) Thank you Mrs. Clarke and thank to you O Muse I call Beer.
Aside: Stealing quirks and mannerisms from fiction characters is a great way to help uncomfortable role players like myself. It sure worked like a charm. Yan told me he could actually see the book’s bad guy while I was deep character.
Aside on the aside: In fact, Yan really nailed our shared style when he said ‘We’re bad role players but great Story tellers’
Yan had a ball interacting with the 2 fairie bosses and expanding his character’s backstory a bit. So did Franky who played Cixi flawlessly, charmed by the Spriggans’ strings of flatteries directed at her, but trying, unsuccessfully, to catch them in their lies.
At some point, while we three were lost in our little improv play, Math and Eric started showing signs of tiring of this charade and pointing out that this discussion could go nowhere other than ‘You stop this drug thing or you die’. At that point, all non RP-ing characters were poised for a fight, covering all of the room’s exits. (I had previously described lights and beast-like noises coming from another passage into the room).
So that was my cue to launch the ‘distraction’ so the Spriggans could reposition themselves in the dungeon (and possibly leave the place): 3 Mike-Mearls-approved Rust Monsters! They arrived right beside the Full-Plate clad Dragon Shaman!!!
They did their job, which was scaring the Shammy and damaging his armour slightly, (I love the new Rustie!) before getting destroyed swiftly. So swiftly in fact that the characters were able to chase the 2 Spriggan bosses into a large Cave featuring a Hemp rope bridge over a huge chasm.
A climactic fight ensued, with a burning bridge collapsing, brilliant use of lights, a bad guy moving at the very edge of the Chasm to painfully backstab the Shammy (he’s quite the tank) and the Crusader plummeting down only to be stuck between the narrowing walls of the ravine 80′ below.
That’s where I made my ‘bad call’ of the night that ended up damping some of Eric’s fun. He wanted his character, Cruguer, to run across the bridge before it collapsed. I couldn’t find the entry on the bridges’s balance check to cross so I initially okayed the move without any rolls. A few initiative ticks later, I found the reference and had Eric retroactively roll, factoring in the very hefty penalty caused by his armour. Even with the use of an action point he failed and fell.
I never really gave Eric a chance to re-evaluate his tactical choice once I told him the difficulty of the task. He had a potion of fly in his inventory and he might have wanted to quaff it instead of crossing the bridge. He spent most of the rest of the fight trying to get out of his predicament. I made a note to make up for it at the next session.
The fight ended with the Big Bad, a soul-eating druid, knocked out and in custody and the backstabbing lieutenant crushed at the bottom of the ravine. The players were battered and a lot lower on their resources.
They turned back into the cave complex to find the actual drug lab… only to be shanghaied by the 9 remaining Spriggans…
To be continued tomorrow!
DM Chronicles, Session 3: Of Pools and Crashes
Image Source: WotC D&D Miniature Game
After having skipped a week from our usual bi-monthly game, I was really looking forward for this week’s. One of our players, Stef, had to stay home because his Wife was away and he was with the kids. So I offered to move the game over there.
So I rolled all the battlemaps I had prepared, packed the ziplocked minis, the adventure, the USB key with DM Wiki, the Core books and a few Splatbooks (Wow, Wikipedia has a definition for everything!).
It’s 4:15 PM, I hop in the car, put on Muse’s last album, real loud, and join the traffic jams that plague the Suburbs of Montreal. (Montreal is an Island, I’m lucky enough to live on it, but all my players live in Laval, a Northern Suburban Island).
At 4h30, I’m sitting behind a Mini-Van and I notice the right lane being free, I switch to the lane and accelerate…. and the van does the same thing 2 seconds later and crashes into my new 2007 Honda Fit. Result: The whole left side of my car is scratched, dented and my driver’s door can only open about 1 foot wide.
Now in Québec, crashes with no victims or ‘Hit and Runs’ are dealt with a ‘friendly’ exchange of information on specific forms that all good citizen have in their cars (I don’t). Anyway, long story-short (from me? HA!) the Mini-Van’s owner had 2 sets, we fill out the forms, we both deny responsibility (as should be) and we go our way.
I just had a car crash but I also haven’t played D&D in 3 weeks. What’s my decision? Screw it, I’ll call the insurance from Stef’s place!
Just so you know, the last time we were supposed to play at Stef’s, there was an Ice Storm. When I got there, I had a message from my lovely wife informing me that I needed to come back pronto because a Tree fell on our house! (True Story!)
Anyway, we ended up starting to play at around 7h00 pm. As promised, I’ll skip on story elements as Yan will tackle them in his player log.
The adventure was about finding the source of a weird creature in Ptolus. The initial investigation lead them to the the slums of Ptolus where they faced a 10-strong street gang. I had the occasion to test the Hit Point Pool approach I stol… huh borrowed from Greywulf.
It worked perfectly! All the energy I usually spend keeping track of individual hit points was shunted towards very graphic descriptions of wounds and deaths. You should have seen my player’s faces when I described heads exploding and Manga-like slicing of bodies that crumpled slowly in halves to the ground. There were a few weird cases where a Thug took an electricity charged arrow in the face and fell from the building and survived only to have his neighbor die from a rather average hit (Oh by the way, the re-vamped Duskblade rocks!!!!). So this house rule is a keeper. It was the best fight of the whole evening.
The players continued their exploration and found a link to the creature’s origin and followed it (yet again) in the Sewers. They quickly discovered a huge natural cavern filled with offals. Since visibility was limited, I described the room in bits and pieces as the players explored cautiously. I ended up pointed out a huge mound of trash and an exit.
I must have mentioned the exit more than once because at that point a player went Metagaming on me and said something like ‘If Phil (that’s me) talks about the exit like that it’s because that’s where he wants us to go…’ Hmmmm that’s grounds for a -2 penalty on Spot checks don’t ya think? (and a warning that I must ‘control the message’ as my old bosses used to say). The penalty was just enough to miss the Otyugh creeping up in the garbage pile and striking the players with it’s filthy tentacle, screaming ‘Trespassers! Me EAT Trespassers’.
Short fight, I mauled the Duskblade pretty badly, I wisely ignored all instances of potential Grappling with the creature’s 4 tentacles. When the players applied various healing powers, I described how the creature seemed to be leaching this energy to heal itself. Yeah, they freaked a bit. Twelve Seconds later, there was Otyugh sushi on the cave floor.
While the Duskblade let his armour regenerate him (The Magic Item Compendium is sooooo cool). Stef went to search the garbage pile, to cries of disgust from the other players. He found some valuables! Oddly enough, no one asked for their fair share… Go Stef, the loot is yours!
We ended the evening with one last encounter, an ambush by some Gnome-like Fey while the party was squeezing in a tight corridor (well, not Lillie the Pixie, but the rest). We were getting tired and the fight was more mechanical than flavorful. The players won and got some sweet piece of magical loot, a Human-slaying sword.
Overall a very fun evening. Now I have to wait until Monday to book an appointment with my Car Dealer’s repair shop.
Lessons learned:
- Hit point pools for mooks rocks!
- Graphic descriptions of a fight makes it a lot better than the actual mechanics (duh! about time I learned that)
What players liked:
- The gore and splattering of mooks all over the Slums.
- My ignoring anything Grappling for once.
- Yan loved that I worked the evil Feys into his backstory and gave him more info on the Big Bad than was warranted by the adventure.
- The Duskblade chucking ranged touch Spell-laced arrows and casting swift spells.
- Stef finding treasure where all others refused to go.
- The story hooked some of the players and they want to KNOW.
- Getting XPs for filling in the Player questionnaire! (I’m really looking forward to posting the other ones).
What players disliked
- The DM’s frequent breaks with immersion to joke around, bring reference from pass session and talk about his blog. (For my defense, I was dealing with a game and the shock of the crash… but I’ll be more careful henceforth).
- The adventure hook was a bit shaky and players had a passive aggressive reaction to it like ‘no we don’t do it, come on boys’ I don’t know if it was that I wasn’t enthusiastic enough or what… (See Yan’s comment, he’s right…)
What’s next:
- I’m not saying anything other than ‘we finish the adventure’.
Overall a great evening. For everything else, there’s Insurance.
DM Chronicles, Session 2: When Cool Meets Satisfaction (Part 2).
Scene 3: Evil is a matter of style
Following the Self-Employed Mensa Troll, who just happened to be going where the map was leading, the PCs came into another burst Sewer tunnel leading into the darkness. That time, the passage looked like it had been man/thing made. This brought the party to a largish Cavern with a natural bridge over a 10′ wide chasm and a Guardpost.
Once there the party spotted a group of thugs led by an elven barbarian. They seemed to be holding a human prisoner. The Troll pointed at the outpost and said, rather forlornly ‘Pay or Die’. (I knew the encounter would lead to a fight, it was it’s whole idea, but I did not want the Troll joining in. I implied by its action and ‘Speech’ that it was playing it safe and not attacking anyone for the time being.)
The party initiated parley with the thugs. That was my cue for my ‘make a believable evil Bad Guy‘ challenge. I described the prisoner as severely mistreated and having a bloody mouth. When the 2 groups met, Baz, the Elven Barbarian leader of the thugs (slavers actually) dismissively greeted the PCs.
When asked about the prisoner, Baz said he was a criminal that was being brought to justice on the surface. (Sense motive rolls vs Thug’s Bluff, yeah he was lying big time). When challenged about this, he shrugged and said ‘ask him yourself’. Of course, when asked the question, the prisoner opened its mouth showing the recent, and violent, departure of his tongue. Smirking, Baz went on about how the prisoner did not seem to want to talk to the PCs. (I could feel the revulsion and the hate seeping in my more ‘moral’ players’). Then I had Cruger (the Hellbred Crusader played by Eric), who was standing beside the prisoner at that point, roll a Spot check. He noticed a dark stain on the prisoner’s shirt. Reaching in he took out a severed tongue attached on a string. At that point another strong point of the evening was reached: Eric went ‘That’s it!’ and picked up his d20. Challenge succeeded!
As Cruger the Crusader was unsheathing his Bastard Sword, the Prisoner gave him a knowing look and adopted a fighting stance too. The fight was a non-event. All thugs were mooks and the leader barely more so. During the fight one player said ‘This is easy’ and then another retorted ‘yes but killing mooks is always satisfactory!’ That’s what I call therapy by wanton mayhem!
The fight ended when the Barbarian was truly skewered and the last Thug fell on her knees, blaming it all on her now deceased boss (Thanks for the Idea Vanir, stolen and used!). Poetic justice was served when the party asked the prisoner what to do with her and he promptly smashed her head with his chains knocking her out (this is called a subverted trope).
Aside: I got to finally see the Crusader in action. The character has a certain number of pre-prepared maneuvers, very much like spells, that I hand to him on a random basis at every encounter. These maneuvers are announced before use and are triggered on a successful melee attack. Eric’s chosen maneuvers ranged from ignoring Damage Resistance (and dealing additional damage) to healing all allies in a burst of divine energy upon striking a foe. But the scariest one he has is a huge blast of divine righteousness that deals an extra 8d8 with no saving throw (they’re 7th level characters might I remind you). And that thing seems to be usable at least once per encounter, if he get’s the maneuver when I randomly hand one to him at each round. On the one hand I love the mechanics and the flavor, but I’m a bit taken back by the damage output from a melee character.
Aside on the Aside: I know that The Book of Nine Swords is a peek at the 4th edition rules and all these damage dealing maneuvers seem to be what will replace multiple attacks in D&D. I’m cool with that but I’m a bit worried that the other players, the Duskblade and the Dragon Shaman in particular might feel they are overshadowed by the sheer power of the Crusader and the Archer.
The prisoner turned out to be a young Nobleman from a House known for it’s shady dealings and piracy past (House Rau for the Prolus fans). Such house so happens to be an enemy of Cixi’s own house (Khatru, Very Conservative Military House). So while the PCs wanted to free him and let him go, at the last minute, Cixi went to him, opened his shirt and ripped out the tongue. They both exchanged a knowing look of hate and respect. Quelling the protests if the other players, the Ex-prisoner left calmly, dignity intact and a few months’ away from having the family priest growing a new tongue. (This was absolute pure Gold, Franky loved this and the players were shocked and appalled at Cixi’s callousness)
After the fight the Quatrzie the Troll re-took possession of the place and invited the PCs to drop by anytime. By super-trollian effort it managed the following speech: ‘Pay or Die….. But… Not You’. Oh the poetry! (I think I got me a new pet NPC). He also gave them a bauble, A carved piece of Spherical Onyx with trees on them.
Aside the second: During planning I decided that all Generic non-coin treasure would have one special flavor to them to be used as future plot hooks or McGuffins. Franky, a long -time Planescape fan, and reader of this here blog, meta-gamed this into ‘Portal keys!!!!’ Oh well…
Scene 4: When payback strike so hard you can’t even find the bodies.
It was getting late, some players were getting bleary eyed, we had to complete this soon. I was tired too and prone to ignore small things like difficult terrain and spot checks (Which is fine by me). The last scene featured a patrolling band of cowed Ratmen pushed by one of the remaining fiends, a Canoloth (think Plate-mail fused to a frog-dog). The players staked out the hideout and determined the perfect point to attack the patrol….
It was a massacre. All Ratmen were blinded by Lillie (Glitterdust is Good-aligned Mookticide). The Canoloth was killed before it could complete a summon by a quadruple assault by the party’s Melee and Artillery .
The Big Bad was found. It cast Darkness and promptly died in one rouind, cribbled by arrows and exploded by Cruger’s Fist of God finisher. Loot was distributed, XPs were given out. Roll credits, Fade to black…
Lessons learned:
- The Rule of Cool worked perfectly for me and the players. The evening was a success.
- The evening was not however a top 5 thing. It felt too easy for the players to generate enough frustration-to-satisfaction energy, especially after last game. But it was meant to be as such. Brilliant planning paid off, mooks were slain and the heroes got to be bad asses.
- I need to better monitor what I say and when I say it. If something needs to be kept a secret I need to moron-proof my notes/mental prep.
- I need to have a chat with the Hybrid characters players (Aravar is a Duskblade/Arcane Archer and the Nogard the Dragon Shaman is a melee buffer) because they run the risk of being outshone more than once in the future.
What players liked:
- The more flavorful NPCs.
- Squishing Mooks
- Having choices that bring low-level conflict
- Being allowed to take control of an encounter through planning.
What players disliked (my
opinion):
- The Duskblade’s lack of ommph skil-wise and combat wise.
- Playing when too tired, I could have left the game a Cliffhanger on the initial spot check leading to the fight of Scene 4 (It was passed 9h30 PM by that time).
What’s next
- We’ll take a break from the Yugoloths.
- Work in the potential new protagonist into the plotline.
- I’ll adapt a published adventure about drug traffic and Ptolus’ criminal underworld that’ll bring the PCs to the 10th level.
DM Chronicles, Session 2: When Cool meets Satisfaction, (Part 1)
Previously in Phil’s game:
The PCs got their asses handed to them by an overwhelming encounter with a group of Yugoloths in an Elven temple. Invited to leave rapidly because of threats of open rebellion and slashed tires, the fiends disappeared in the Ptolus night. Battered and bitter, the PCs meet with Ptolus’ elven leadership to plan their next move…
Last night’s game was much better than the one before. The players and I had a lot of fun. They got to be Grade ‘A’ Badasses and I got to meet the objectives of my 1st DMing challenge. (A tendency for run-on sentences and a deluge of links, welcome to my blog!)
Preamble: New guy joins crew
The 5th player showed up this week:
Cruger: 7th level Hellbred (Fiendish Codex II) Crusader (Book of Nine Swords). Played by Eric. Modeled on the semi fiendish Prince of Persia character from the game. Think dark, tortured Paladin.
Aside: All players but Cixi (The Iron Hero archer) are Neutral Good. Cixi has no alignment and that’s a story for another time. Still, I have never seen an all good party in my 24 years of DMing. It’s going to bring a fresh perspective to the game.
Session 2: When Cool meets Satisfaction or ‘it pays to listen to your own advice for once!’
Scene 1 Planning the Payback!
The scene met it’s objective. The players role-played a bit and planned. I had an NPC from the last session show up, saying he had followed the fiends to a Ratmen hideout in the sewers. He drew a map to get there. I dropped not so subtle hints that the NPC, who was supposedly a somewhat inept Fighter’s guild recruit, seemed more than he was. The Elven leader proposed to finance a raid of the hideout to wipe the fiends once and for all. Sweet revenge!
I also had my first of many Freudian slips and referred to the NPC as ‘The Rogue’ early in the encounter. Ahhhh man, I really gotta either a) Ease up on the beer or b) Give names to all NPCs so I refer to them as such and not as what they are on my gaming notes.
Aside the second: I do this a LOT. So much so that I think my players more or less expect this from me. I can’t keep a secret or a monster’s name for myself for more than 5 minutes.
Then I gave the PCs the money to buy the gear for the mission and the players seemed to enjoy choosing clerical magical items they thought they would need for the mission. Everybody was now ready for some serious sewer crawling.
Scene 2: He’s a f’ing genius!
Shortly after having entered the Sewers, the PCs come to a group of severely wounded (and one dead) Rat Hunters. These civil-servants-turned-bounty-hunters, disguised as ratmen, had just been pulverized by a walking piece of Quartz (a Crystaline Troll, from the Monster Manual III, can only be killed by Sonic attacks). During the fighting, the monster broke through the Sewer tunnel’s walls, falling into a chasm and taking a female Rat Hunter with itself. Halvar, the remaining conscious Hunter implored the PCs to save his girl or at the very least recover her body. He promised them his whole Rat Hunter gear as well as his colleagues’ rat disguises if they recovered Tersa.
Followed a well orchestrated climb down into a Mushroom Cavern. There they found an uncouncious Tersa, whose wounds seemed tended to. They also met with the Troll. After a few tense minutes (and the obligatory Cylo… errr Evil detector, the thing wasn’t evil) the player’s pieced together what happened. When the Troll attempted to ‘smile’ the tension went out.
Aside the third: I played the Chaotic Neutral Troll wayyyyyy too friendly wayyyy too fast. Although I had no intention of attacking the group, I had planned a somewhat tenser scene. Maybe I should have described the smile as a snarl… Except that snarl does not really translate well into French. ‘Rictus’ is the closest I can find right now. Franky (Cixi’s player) later told me that had I not said the troll smiled, he’d have shot before even thinking about parleying… which goes to say that I might have played it right after all.
The next part of the encounter’s challenge was for the Troll to negotiate it’s return to the sewers by offering Tersa back… without having a common language with the PCs. The troll, at and INT score of 6, only spoke Giant which I kept describing as ‘sounding like glass being ground to dust by rocks’. Using signs, it conveyed that it mistook the hunters for actual ratmen and realized its mistake once it dropped in the cavern. The group spontaneously said ‘He’s a f’ing genius for a troll’ and that became the evening’s quote! (Scene successful). I had fun roleplaying a creature using signs only.
Once the bargain was reached, everyone returned to the sewers and Tersa joined Halvar, who promised her a nice little bakery in Ptolus’ mildest neighborhood. One of the evening’s strong point was when the players refused to take the now Ex-hunter’s gear. When Halvar insisted the take the loot, mentioning the bakery, Math, playing Aravar the Elven Duskblade, pumped the air and went ‘All right!’…. Classic RPG moment here.
Aside the fourth: At that point, I realized that the while the Troll’s reason for being in the Sewers was to do some cliché extortion at a nearby underground bridge (as well as some Rat hunting on the side) I needed it to know at least a few words of the Common language for said extortion to have any chance of success. So I reverted to a trick I had used before with the same players…
The Troll (I’ll name it Quartzie I think) then beckoned the players to follow it and said in halting Common: ‘Pay or Die!’ in a bright, hopeful tone. The players groaned and commented yet again on the Troll’s intellect (I guess this is what you call a Trope).
The rest in part 2.
The Rule of Cool
Image Source: The TV Tropes Wiki.
I just found out about possibly the coolest site for failed writers (raises hand), Meta-plot analyst (raises hand… again) and just plain Story-driven entertainment junkies (Me me me!!!).
It’s called the TV tropes Wiki and it may very well Ruin your life. (God! I must be the billionth blogger to use that Schtick). It’s about plot devices and common tricks used in successful TV/commercials /movies. I love this as I’ve always been a great fan of discussing plots and narative techniques in novels and TV shows.
I haven’t yet spent a lot of time on it, but I probably found one of the best rules of adventure design and DMing I’ve come across: the Rule of Cool.
The limit of the Willing Suspension Of Disbelief for a given element is directly proportional to its degree of coolness. Stated another way, all but the most pedantic of viewers will forgive liberties with reality so long as the result is wicked sweet and/or awesome. This applies to the audience in general, as there will naturally be a different threshold for each individual in the group.
To transpose to RPG terms: Your player will put up with almost any illogical or “wobbly” plot devices or encounter as long as things get cool enough for them.
Which basically makes me think that my efforts as a DM should not so much be on far-reaching World Building and tight nitpicking-proof plot lines and such. I should go all out for encounters and role playing that will swamp my players in coolness. Think combat on ice Bridges, negotiating the release of prisoners in a flooding underground prison, hopping from floating island to pieces of flying ruins in order to catch the thieves of the Star jewel of Radnia. Yeah, that`s the ticket!
Enjoy the site, I know I will.
Red Shirts anyone?
See also this as it is where I found what type of DMing I aspire to achieve.
DM Chronicles, Session 1: Harsh Beginnings
This series will be a DM-centric log of my current D&D campaign, it will not be an attempt at telling a story so much as being a ‘lessons learned’ tool for me to reflect on what was good and what wasn’t so good in the last session. It will be mostly about game mechanics, design choices, and a review of the decisions and calls I made. I will try very hard not to let my neurotic side take over and keep the exercise as constructive as possible.
Preamble: Cast and Screenplay
Rules: A heavily house-ruled version of D&D 3.5 with strong influences by Iron Heroes and the Action Points and Death/Dying variants of the System Reference Document (SRD).
Setting: A Home-brewed classic fantasy world with Ptolus added as a port city at the outskirts of a recently fallen Lawful Evil empire. The world is recuperating from a global alignment-based conflict that was a former campaign focus.
Characters (all good alignments):
- Aravar: 7th level male Elven Duskblade (Fighter/Arcane Spellcaster) played by Mathieu
- Cixi: 7th level Human female Archer (from Iron Heroes) played by Franky
- Lillie: 3rd level female Pixie/4th level Sorcerer (Modified pixie progression from Savage Species) played by Yan
- Nogard: 7th level male human Dragon Shaman ( Melee/Buffer character) played by Steph (The Irony of Steph’s choice of name eluded me until it was clearly pointed out to me)
- Unnamed: 7th level Crusader (Holy Warrior) to be played by Eric who was absent from the 1st session.
Campaign Core Theme: A group of Yugoloths is planning an invasion of the war-torn world. The PC’s know about their intention and plan on being a huge nuisance to the fiends.
Session 1: Harsh Beginnings or ‘Even veterans DM screw up sometimes’
If you define a successful RPG evening by having the participants have a good time, the session was a disaster. I had my load of stinkers as a DM in 2 decades but last Friday night is one for the books.
As mentioned before I had designed the 1st session to be a big fight against what was to be the typical antagonists of the Campaign, a squad of Yugoloths. Since I was aiming for one large combat to get the evening started, I had created a group 6 of these fiends averaging a level 10-10.5 encounter. I went for 10 (3 more than the party) based on the following assumptions (which turned out to be wrong on many levels)
- It was to be the only fight of the PC’s day so I could safely go for an Encounter Level (EL) 2-3 over the party.
- The Character’s power had significant power creep (House rules, Player experience, 5 PCs in party) to consider the party to be equivalent to 8th level.
- The players, having about 5-7 years of playing D&D 3.x together under their belt, consistently beat more powerful foes in our last campaign (Iron Heroes).
I also choose to include only Yugoloths, monsters I had never used and had not completely reviewed. Finally, I chose them mostly on their Challenge Ratings (very approximate gauge of individual power) without regards to special abilities.
Following my usual rule of adventure design (a few mooks, 1 brute and 1 boss), I ended up with 6 monsters: 4 Skereloths (Fiend Folio), 1 Canoloth (Monster Manual III) and 1 Piscoloth leader (Fiend Folio).
The game was set up on a D&D miniatures Battle map (Broken Demongate). Cixi, a Ptolus citizen was standing one one side, defending an elven temple who had a portal to the lower planes opened and Aravar, Lillie and Nogard on the other side, having collapsed the portal’s generator and running to enter the temple before the portal’s closure. Between them stood the 6 fiends.
The fight went awfully for the players. On the 1st round, I had all fiends trying to summon more Yugoloths. While the Skereloth, easily dispatched minor nuisances, succeeded in only bringing one more of them, the Canoloth summoned 3 more copies of itself (A CR 5 creature becoming a CR 9 encounter by itself).
For those who don’t have the MM III book (or play D&D) Canoloths are heavily-armored dog-like creatures that have a 20′ long tongue that cause paralysis and can grapple at will (leading to a bite in the same attack), has a good Damage Reduction and has a strong Spell Resistance.
Paralysis, Repeatable Grappling/biting, Spell Resistance, Damage Resistance….
Wow…
Had I been a teenage, power-tripping sadistic DM, I could not have designed a better encounter to piss players off.
For the record, as written, the Piscoloth has 7 more paralysis attacks per turn than the Canoloth, has better Spell Resistance, better Damage resistance and more numerous, effective spell-like abilities…. sigh. Fortunately, I like to believe that I had the decency of playing it only as a screaming, abusive superior to it’s minions and did minor things with it.
So the players spent more than 2 hours getting bitten, grabbed, dragged, escape the grapple only to be grabbed again. The tanks saw their HP dip below 0 and the spell casters had the pleasure of tasting Spell Resistance. Also add to the fact that I play dice out in the open and I kept playing 18s on my d20. It was awful.
I soon realized that the players were not having fun, but I could not for the life of me imagine how I could salvage this and maintain the player’s suspension of disbelief (memo to self, as your player’s written feedback clearly state now, the suspension was long gone after 1 hour). Once one player dropped to negative hit points, and another only one hit away from it, I finally had the Piscoloth scream for it’s minions to follow it and left the temple to cause trouble elsewhere in the city.
It is a testament to my player’s trust and friendship that they never once burst out in open rebellion or anger. Kudos guys, you’re the best!
So for a 1st session that aimed at making the players look like Rock Stars, it failed miserably. Heck, it went so badly that Cixi actually never saw any of the other players during the fight and the party actually failed to meet!
To Keep this post readable, I’ll conclude with a list of lessons I learned in that session.
- Spell Resistance, Grappling, Damage Resistance: Yes, but not on both the Boss and the brutes.
- Nerf summoning for all fiends. As proposed in the Fiendish Codex II, switch it for a feat or a new Special Ability. That way I maintain better control on the encounter.
- Nerf the Piscoloth’s 8 paralysis attacks, the party does not have a cleric and the Dragon Shaman is not yet able to remove this condition.
- Allow players to rebuild their characters and re-purchase their equipment in light of the Yugoloth’s characteristics.
- Drink less while DMing and have a good night sleep (or a good nap) before the game, I would have noticed the dissatisfaction sooner and would have been more flexible to address it faster.
- We all have to unlearn playing like we did with Iron Heroes (the last campaign) where PCs are more competent to deal with all kinds of encounters than ‘standard’ D&D
- The fight was too hard too soon in the campaign. The 1st encounter should have been with a large number of mooks (no brutes and no boss) to allow players to test their capabilities and experiment (and look damn cool doing it).
Post Mortem
What players liked
- The setup: Brining the fight to the fiend’s Homeworld.
- The Loot from the grateful elven priests
- The Dragon Shaman’s immunity to Paralysis
What players disliked
- Casters HATE grappling and Spell Resistance.
- The lousy feeling of braking a grapple only to be snatched by a 20′ long attack of opportunity in the same round.
- Spending an Action points only to fail
What’s next (Spoiler-free)
- Organize a revenge expedition to kill the fiends, giving all the necessary resource to allow the players to plan a kick ass retribution assault.
- Use the Elven leaders of Ptolus to bring the players together by financing the punitive expedition
- Tie in rapidly with the other non-fiend adventures I had planned.
- Consider the party as high-end 7th level characters and not stronger.
