Since I’m running a D&D 4e home brewed adventure for my gaming group this week, a lot of my creative energies will be focused there for the next few days. A guy needs his priorities straight and my D&D game is pretty much at the top of my ‘use of free time’ list.
This means that I don’t plan to post some monster article about any special subjects this week (and I didn’t build a buffer of posts over the weekend like last week). I will be spending my evenings on prepping and once I hit my daily targets, I may fire up the ole blog and write a few lines about stuff I realized or thought up during my work sessions.
As things stand, my players will summon a Fey Airship and will need to negotiate (Skill Challenge) with the ship’s crew for passage to the Pirate Fleet’s Airship mooring point. Brandobaris, the party’s patron and main McGuffin of the adventure is being held on the pirate vessel.
I’ll be missing 2 players so I would prefer that the adventure not take more than one session. My plan therefore goes like this:
- Scene 1: The Fey Favor and summoning of the ship
- Goals: Storytelling, exploration of setting
- Scene 2: Negotiations with the Fey (Skill Challenge)
- Goals: Storytelling, roleplaying
- Scene 3: Aerial Attack: Something big and flying spots and attacks the PCs.
- Goals: Butt Kicking, brilliant planning, power accumulation
- Scene 4: Boarding the Pirate Ship (Stealth and/or short fight)
- Goals: Brilliant planning, supercoolness, minor butt kicking
- Scene 5: Showdown on the Pirate’s Bridge! (combat vs pirates guardians and big reveals)
- Goals: Storytelling, butt kicking, power accumulation
- Scene 6: Return Home, Closing Credits
- Goals: Storytelling, campaign conclusion
Since an extended rest is assumed in the story between Scene 3 and 4, I’ll but a big nasty there… possibly something linked to the game’s name.
As for Scene 5, I have to factor in the group’s tiredness and the time of the evening, so I’ll probably make the fight less complex than what my original plan for the story called for (Dragora, her dragon, the ship’s captain and officers and Brandobaris). I’ll probably settle for something challenging yet simple enough to be completed within one hour or so.
For both Scenes 3 and 5, I will want to establish cool battle maps and create at least one or two battlefield elements that players can use to spice up the fight. As I write these lines, I can totally imagine some sort of magical Harpoon guns mounted on the gunwales of the Fey Ship. I’m open to suggestions of things you might find on airships (Structures and cargo) that could useful in a fight.
Scene 6 will be the campaign’s conclusion. The Heroes have either failed or return victorious with their spoils (which could be surprisingly large). We’ll conclude the campaign and I’ll start asking players what they want their characters to do in the near future, before the next campaign starts (which could be with the same or different characters).
Now depending on how players react and the choices they do, I might drop scene 6 and stretch the campaign for one more session. For instance, if the PCs want to seriously dent the Pirates’ strength, we might decide to plan another adventure in the same region. I’m perfectly willing to meet my players here, we basically have 2 or 3 sessions planned before year’s end anyway.
Wish me luck! I think this will be a good game
I was wondering how your players felt about you writing about their game beforehand like this.
I’m working up the courage to attempt DM for my regular group myself and I’d love to post about it, but I’m not certain I should.
Are your players disciplined enough to to peek beforehand? Do you let them know that there might be spoilers online?
(Oh, and you mentioned skill challenges again – I’d love to hear more about these, if you’d like; not enough examples in the DMG for me to get a good enough hold of the concept and actually try to use it…)
Eric Maziades last blog post..I want to play a genasi jedi knight!
@Eric: The players are aware of these posts and are invited to read them as teasers and some minor spoilers. One of the lessons I’ve learned in the last few years is that keeping everything secret from the players is not always worth the effort.
So these posts are like trailers. Sometimes I don’t mention much, sometimes, like this time, I make it sound like I gave away the whole movie. I don’t mind if players think so.
The players are aware of what’s coming up but don’t know the actual NPCs involved or the plot points or precise elements of combat.
That being said, I’ve seen some people actually write the adventure prep post in advance but post them after the game occurs. I haven’t started doing that yet as this blog is pretty much a live Stream of Conciousness thing.
As for Skill Challenge, if this one works well, I’ll post about it in my play report next week. In the meantime, have a look here for some examples:
http://at-will.omnivangelist.net/?cat=38
@Eric: I don’t mind it as the other option would mean Phil sending me Gtalk message saying oh I had this idea for the game and basically say the same thing he just wrote here… :p
We all crave validation and talking of your game usually reduce the interrested public to your players. Unless you transform it into teaching material (which is what Phil is doing here).
I fell in love with airships after playing the old final fantasy games on Nintendo… FF2 comes to mind. I plan to incorporate these in my campaign eventually.
As far as cool stuff on an airship… magical cannons that shoot fireballs come to mind…. and an airship flanked by a couple of red dragons is a kick ass visual….
newbiedms last blog post..Keep on the Shadowfell final thoughts
I too like Airships a lot. The challenge in such a balanced game as D&D is that you need to be careful because you might end with a party owning an Airship…
My character are level 3 and I really don’t want to have the discussion of selling an Airship for some high level loot.
Don’t even ask Yan!
🙂
@Chatty: Thinking about it as a trailer makes sense. I suppose you’d usually wait after the game for the nitty gritty details, should there be some for the sharing…
I’ll check up the link for skill challenges. I have a feeling that I’ll like this once I wrap my brains around it. For example, the whole ‘lets find where the missing children went’ section of my session with the kids might have been closer to the flavor I was looking for with a well crafted skill challenge.
@Yan: I hear you! Though, I must say that I find a well written recounting always entertaining… somethings it seems that our host here is managing to do quite well 😛
Eric Maziades last blog post..I want to play a genasi jedi knight!
Six scenes in one night? Wow! I’m lucky if I can get three in.
@Starvosk: Don’t try that at home we’re professionnal… 😉
In my mind, scenes 1,4 and 6 are going to be very short, 15-20 minutes each. Also the four players present are all my early players, which means we might start playing before 6h00 PM so chances are we’ll make it.
I also expect the fights to be about one hour long… But we’ll see how it pans out.
Oh BTW welcome to the blog Starvosk. Don’t mind Yan, he’s feeling snarky today.
ehehehe i was wondering if Chatty may post (after the campaign of course) some papers he made about the campaign.. to show how his material is collected and.. how he is organized 😀 this time not by saying it but showing it 😀 eheheh 😉
Oy Vei, I’m not sure if I’d be ready to show these to the world. My personal prep is part in a moleskin notebook, part on Microsoft one note (Monster stat blocks) and part in my head (Roleplaying and info).
I’ll see what the mess looks like once the campaign is done.
This article is exactly my cup of tea;
Both me and my group often have lost most concentration in the evening, that’s why the endings always get out of hand in a “we gotta get home, let’s kill stuff” spirit.
I can’t seem to cut my games into scenes like you, beforehand. I’ve come to expect that some things just arise and I can’t stop them, say interparty confilct over improvised coca-cola cans.
I also have a tendency to write out sessions in a very open-ended way, not really expecting the players to stick to my expectations. Whatmore I add a lot of possible crossroad situations in the middle of the game, technically preparing 1.5 sessions in one 😛
I envy your ability to expect player actions.
Well, we’re a GM friendly bunch.
We know what each other expects from the game and talk a lot between games of where we expect the game will be going, what we did not like, etc…
It might remove a small part of the discovery but it has the added merit of reducing Phil’s work and enhances every one’s enjoyment around the table after an hard days work…
As Yan mentions, we are used to playing together, we have been for almost 10 years now.
There’s also the fact that we play on Friday nights, where our energy levels are rather low, so I try to aim for elements that all players (including myself) will enjoy.