DM Chronicle: Session 5, Alien Feys & Whiskered Pirates, Part 1

Previously in Chatty’s Game:

Our Heroes battled a pirate Scholar and her Dragon Pet only to see her escape at the last second before defeat.  Alone against a city of angry Ape Men, they almost managed to turn them to their cause only to be defeated by a crazed zealot and his retinue of elite fighters.

Returning to their home base, they were informed of their patron’ s kidnapping by the pirates of the Crimson Fleet. Knowing where the airship that had the patron was moored, our heroes started planning a rescue mission…

I was really looking forward to this week’s game, as my numerous adventure prep post in the last week could attest. I had four players show up: Mike (Takeo the Dragonborn Warlord), Franky (Masaru, Eladrin Warlock), Yan (Bjerm, Elf Fighter) and Stef (Rocco, Halfling Rogue).

This was to be the final game of this year’s 1st D&D 4e campaign and possibly the year’s last game. Its harder and harder to get players on Friday nights when the holidays loom closer, Office Xmas parties tend to interfere.

Anyhoo, the session didn’t turn out as expected.  The final faceoff against the pirates turned out to be a very challenging, gripping combat and made the session a success overall.  However, I was disappointed with how the Role playing in the 1st half turned out.  Also, one player, due to a very bad dice streak and some in and out of game issues became very frustrated and this affected the group’s dynamics.

(Fortunately we talked about it after the game and we worked out the reasons and how to avoid a repeat, more on this below).

Let’s get into it now shall we?

Mike showed up at my place at around 4 PM. I work from home on game days, allowing me to finish work early and dodge traffic, I’m such a lucky guy!  Since Mike had yet to perform his leveling up to level 3, I decided to fire up Wizards of the Coast’s Beta character builder and show it to him.

I was impressed!  We made Mike’s character in mere minutes and printed it out rapidly, power cards included.  There was one noticeable bug as his level 3 power came out wrong but overall I was impressed (plus it features the Artificer and the Swordmage, woot!).

All players ended showed up early enough.  In fact, we demonstrated once more the gamer law that states that The last player always shows up when you start a pick up board/card game!

I’m sure that’s, like, a fundamental rule of reality!

Anyway, we started playing early.

Scene 1: A father’s past and Instant NPC Soup.

We summarized the last game, going over the expanded regional map.  It now covered a series of volcanic islands and an archipelago surrounding a gigantic maelstrom south of the Coast.

On this archpelago, the Dragonborns of the campaign  are based on a large island around a city called Draconis. The pirate’s airship was moored on the opposed side of the maelstrom, on a small island featuring a thin spire around which a pirate community called Wyrm’s Tooth was built.

The PCs mission was to find a way to get there and fast before the pirates executed their patron and came back to destroy the city of Hobble’s Point.

As discussed in the weeks leading to the game, we had agreed that Rocco’s father had one last favor (out of 3) from the fey that he (or his descendants) could “cash in”.  We played a short scene where he gave his son some sort of coin that had to be broken (Think Tai Pan) inside a fey circle to summon help.  He also gave some dire warnings about dealing with the Fey.

After the players wanted to plan their rescue mission so they asked me if there was some ex-pirate they could talk to.  I was a bit embarrassed as I hadn’t planned any. Good thing I had just posted about spontaneity.

I made up this ultra decrepit tavern owned by an ex-pirate from the early days of the Crimson Fleet.  The party discussed how the pirate hideout was setup and learned about caves found under the Spire that could lead up to the airship.

The PCs were ready to summon some Fey.

Scene 2: Alienated Expectations

I hit one of the game’s snag early in the next scene and, at the time, I didn’t understand the issues behind it fast enough to fix it.

I described the Fey ring situated by a Seaside cliff and how Rocco broke the coin to summon the Fey.  I described a wooden ship mounted on a gigantic tree appearing out of nowhere, sitting right by the edge of the cliff, the Eladrin crew hailing the PCs.

So cool huh?

That when Franky, who plays a Fey Pact warlock, exclaimed somewhat annoyingly “Just like that we get a ship?”

What the?

I floundered a bit, describing the weirdness of the crew and tried to get the PCs to get involved with them.  I ended up making the NPCs too alien and creepy for the players to successfully interact with them.

It turns out, when I discussed with Franky, that he expected to have some kind of scene where the summoning would bring Feys to negotiate with the party and getting the ship being the culmination of the scene.

As the game was not progressing as planned and I couldn’t understand why at the time I decided to move things forward (always a good idea).  I revealed that the ship’s captain (and whole crew really) was in fact an exiled Trent cursed with insatiable wanderlust. The “crew” was actually made up of puppets of former passengers that the ship copied from the emotions he bargained from each in return for various favors during voyages.

I then decided to move on to the next scene.

In hindsight, I ‘got’ what went wrong.  For a roleplaying scene to work, especially one where players are not familiar with the NPCs they are to interact with nor the stakes of the scene, there needs to be clear reference points the players can identify  with.  You need to create links to the PC’s backstory story or to the situations so that players can grab them and use them to initiate roleplaying.

I didn’t do that.  I focused on a cool ship and I overloaded the creepiness factor, making the scene into a ‘museum piece’ limited in interactiveness.

I should have built on  Franky’s character extensive knowledge of the Fey and brought a NPC that somehow ‘knew’ Masaru (possibly the Fey force behind his pact) and could have negotiated the favor that lead to the introduction of the ship with the appropriate introduction to “get” its weirdness.

Up next: Dragons & Pirates II, the PCs revenge!

Credits: My Airship, by ShAwNKun