DM Chronicles, Session 4: The Storytellers' Ball, part 2

See here for the 1st part of this DM log.

So the characters, victorious over the Big Bad and his sidekick, were battered, bruised and the players were showing the 1st signs of being tired (it was getting close to 9 pm). I still had 9 Spriggan mooks and a lab to go through.

That’s when inspiration struck me… I wanted to give the players an opportunity to ‘defeat’ the mooks without a fight but still at the same time to have a credible but short scene.

Once again, I’ll let Lillie handle the details (Yan told me he’s hard at work on his account). I basically started the scene with the Spriggans, now freed from the clutches of their evil boss, with two items on their agenda.

• Get out of the parley alive.
• Be freed of their slavish bonds to the Pactlords of the Quann, a Ptolus Monstrous organization bent on destroying all humanoids.

It worked really well, and Yan had, once again a ball. The scene, which was a success, lasted only a few minutes.

The characters got directions to the drug lab and set out to go, lower resources and all. Up to that point, all rooms with a potential combat encounter had been represented by either a D&D Fantastic Location battle map or a drawn map on my various blank maps (see here for my list of tools).

Contrary to the rest of the dungeon, the drug lab was a ‘normal’ dungeon room (i.e squarish, not a Cave). Since I had run out of blank maps, I had previously decided that it was a good time to test the D&D Dungeon tiles. I was able to easily create a faithful rendition of an alchemy lab (the Arcane Corridors tile pack helped).

The high-color visuals helped refocus the players and when I started describing the large Cauldron-Mecha Contraption charging them, I had their attention all right. When it grabbed the battered, level-drained, and rusted-out Dragon Shaman and dumped him inside his Drug Filled belly, groans were heard all around the table.

By that time, all players had reached the leveling up point and ended spending most of their remaining Action Points, which was good. Although I realized that the players focussed on using the points for an extra 1d6 on d20 rolls where in fact there is so much more that can be done and I noted this for later.

…it was another short fight. The damage dealing potential of the Crudader/Archer/Duskblade trio is phenomenal. All that was left was a dismembered construct and 3 very happy, newly-liberated Gnomish alchemists.

A general cleanup of the dungeon was done, magic items were distributed and the Big Bad’s extremely complete journal was found and read. End of adventure, roll credits.

Aside: Why the hell do bad guys keep such complete ISO-compliant journals? Is it a way to allow all the juicy Adventure Background the authors slaved on to be given in one serving to player if they somehow missed it?

Lessons learned:

• Storytelling scenes are absolutely great when they work, but they can drag on and on if the participants are the group’s extroverts. Such scenes can gain from being shorter.
• Improvising is fun!
• Give tactical players and Butt-Kickers sufficient time to gauge risks before asking for a dice roll. A player will reflectively roll a dice when prompted by the DM, this ‘reflex’ must not be abused.

Aside: Let me be clear on something though. In a game like ours where character death is nearly absent, failures do and should happen so it can create a certain sense of frustration in players. However, I believe that risks should be clearly stated out to the players so they can make an informed decision and better accept the consequences of failure. I strongly believe that frustration and the following release upon achieving success is one of the key drivers of successful Role-playing games.

What players liked:

• The storytellers absolutely loved interacting with the Evil fearies.
• Sending the lieutenant into the ravine.
• Cixi’s 3 critical hits.

What players disliked

• Crueger’s unnecessary fall in the ravine (see above)
• Math’s strings of bad d20 die rolls. Fortunately, the Duskblade has a combo of Swift True Strike (Which I now allow once per encounter) followed by an arrow-borne Shocking Grasp helped Math get ‘back in the zone’.
• Stef’s character was brutalized pretty badly in this game and while the Dragon Shaman is a great passive buffer… he lacks the oomph of the 3 fighting classes and the flexibility of being a flying, invisible, sorcerer. While Stef has yet to complain, I might give his character an extra nudge in his breath weapon and or more hit points to truly assume his role as the group’s tank.

What’s next:

• Ding! Level up to 8. Finally!
• Adapt part two of the campaign arc. A dungeon crawl in Ptolus’s Cemetary. The adventure needs some serious Bling upgrade and I’ll tweak it to make my Butt-Kickers and Supercool players really shine!
• Go over the action points rules with the players.
• Set the stage for the passage to Planscape!

Thanks for reading! As usual, feel free to drop comments and thoughts!