See part 1 here.
Scene 3: White Rage!
After a night where the PCs slept warily on the bridge of the ship the PCs spotted a winged creature flying toward them. It was a large White Dragon with a human pirate riding it.
Screaming in draconic about ‘finally getting a prize worth taking’ the dragon charged!
I setup the Paizo Ship battle map (See image) and placed the Dragon about one round away. My strategy was to have the Dragon fly over the ship, drop the pirate (a Hobgoblin archer refluffed as a Human) in the crow’s nest and engage the party.
The ensuing fight lasted about one hour and was a good challenge for the characters. They took out the archer first and then concentrated on the dragon. When the Dragon finally died, it was slowly absorbed by the ship and it gained quite an impressive figurehead. The ship gave out a pair of magical gloves as a thank you.
During that fight, Franky’s warlock missed each and everyone of its attacks. His rising frustration was palpable. After the fight, Franky made an effort to turn his misfortune in a roleplaying scene, asking the Trent why his Fey Pact was not functioning so close to the primal forces that powered both the pact and the ship’s flight.
While I had the ship argue that being an exiled, it was not ‘in tune’ with the Fey Energies of the Feywild, Franky, being frustrated, was rather resistant to accept that.
Then one of the players made a crack about Franky that I missed (possibly about his relative uselessness in the fight) and Franky became livid with anger and basically clamped up for the rest of the evening (It was barely 8h PM by that time).
As I said before, we since spoke about that after the game. We both agreed that we would sit down in the near future and hammer out how the Fey work in the gameworld. Thus, next time we’ll be roleplaying on more common grounds.
Scene 4 & 5: Assault of the Pirate Airship!
After the fight, the ship asked how the party wished to approach the pirate’s base. The party settled for a night run. They were able to approach the moored airship without being spotted. The Pirate ship was a huge dragon shaped vessel with 4 decks arranged around the gasbags (I took the one featured in Kobold Quartely #7) . They asked the Trent ship if it could grab the pirate’s ship and rip it out of its mooring while they stealthily boarded the top deck. It agreed.
As soon as the pirate airship was ripped out of its mooring point and the PCs boarded the enemy ship, the Trent ship faded out, leaving the PCs to their fate.
The PCs sneaked in the ship’s top (control) deck and moved in it until they found the main control room and heard voices arguing, Brandobaris among them. It seemed that the old dog was actually negotiating with the pirates! When the PCs looked into the room through a port hole they saw Dragora (The Scholar Pirate of previous adventures) another pirate who seemed to be the captain of the ship and 4 other crewmen.
Brandobaris was lounging in a chair by a table filled with charts and papers. He was attached to the table by a thin silvery chain on his ankle.
When the party burst in, surprising everyone, Brandobaris managed to recover, smiled and said ‘What took you boys so long?”
When all crewmen turned into wererats, things became…hairier. (Rimshot!) The fight was hard, really hard. Franky continued being unlucky, depriving the party of a striker’s damage output. The flanking wererats skirmisher hurt a lot!
So much so that half the party went down fast (including the warlord, the party’s only healer). While Dragora was dispatched rapidly, at that point things looked grim and I started planning for the party’s defeat. I was thinking they could be jailed in the dungeons under the city and possibly make the next campaign about breaking out.
What a downer ending though, given the mood of some players, I didn’t want to risk it!
Because of that, and since I’m such a softie DM, I decided to do something I rarely ever do, and I started fudging numbers. Not dice rolls, those I always play in the open. I did however cut all wererats HP in half from 48 to 25. Thus the party was able to vanquish them.
At a certain point in the fight, another crewman from the next room came, noticed the fight and went away to sound the alert (and bring the drifting airship back to its mooring point).
As the players managed to beat the last wererats, I decided that they could take a bit more punishing (plus I was hoping Franky’s bad dice streak would start to turn). I had 2 other wererats (un-nerfed) come in. Up to that point I had forgotten to play out the lycantrophes’ regeneration powers so I did with these two, much to the distress of the already emotionally spent players.
As planned, Franky’s luck turned and started to do significant damage. Takeo (Warlord), having spent a long part of the fight dying, was finally healed and joined the fight with most of his powers intact. The party prevailed! At the end of the combat, all players were down to a few hit points, most of their healing surges gone and all powers expended.
Brandobaris cheered them! As the PCs took command of the airship and started steering it toward the coast, Brandobaris revealed most of the “Humans” of the South Seas were in fact Lycantrophes (a fact that goes back to a campaign I played in that region 15 years ago ion real time and 2000 years ago in game world time). When the players asked about the silver chain, they learned that Bradobaris was one too and in fact an old founding member of the Crimson Fleet. The chain was enchanted to cause immense amount of pain to a captured were-creature whenever it tried to do something other than move slowly.
He explained that engineered his kidnapping, making the pirates believe that he was ready to return to the fold and share his ample wealth as an atonement offering. He trusted that the PCs would come to screw the pirates’ plans and for that he vowed eternal friendship and support for his “favorite heroes”.
The PCs returned home, at the helm of the realm’s most fantastic vehicle, leaving the Crimson Fleet disorganized and deprived of its two main leaders and its flagship.
Roll campaign’s credits. Good job guys!
The next campaign, to be played in January, will occur 4 years in the future and will likely be based on Thunderspire Labyrinth and Brandobaris sending in the PCs to establish trading relationships with the Underdark.
Lessons Learned
- When creating a roleplaying encounter, be it Skill challenge-based or otherwise, work in more links between the PCs and the situation so that players have a better chance of knowing what to do and how to react.
- D&D 4e PCs in the hands of experienced players can take a lot more punishment than I expected. I I can afford to put waves of monsters like Mearls did here.
What players liked
- Sneaking in the airship and the Epic fight!
- Scoring an Airship! (No worries, that ship will not feature as a PC possession in the next campaign)
What Player disliked
- The Fey ship scenes, too alien and lacking proper hooks to be enjoyable.
- I need to look into frustration management in regards to low dice rolls. I’ll be discussing a frustration token mechanics with my players and online friends. Heck, I’ll make a Chatty’s question about it!
Thanks for reading! My 1st D&D 4e campaign is complete!
It turned out interesting.
Just one question: why did you plan the campaign for just five sessions? Why not keep it running from here? It would be an interesting chance to build on Franky’s “unluck/curse” from the fey pact!
The term mini-campaign can be somewhat misleading. The idea of this year’s D&D 4e ‘season’, since its our first one, is to allow us to explore the game with as little constraints as possible. One of the things we noticed with our past campaign is that interesting/cool supplement become available much faster than we can absorb them.
In order to allow players to explore more character options, when we complete a mini-campaign, players are free to change PCs (made at the same level the campaign is at) or keep the one they just played (tweaking it if necessary).
The next campaign is in the same gameworld, some time later. So basically each extended adventure is a campaign and a season is a string of mini-campaigns (2-3).
Since Franky is keeping his warlock, exploring this unluck/Curse is definitively an option!
The link to part 1 doesn’t seem to work. 😉
Anyways, I liked reading the campaign very much. I am still yet to play 4e, although we’re planning a little get-together during the holidays, where we will end our current house-ruled 3.5 campaign, (hopefully) start a game in a totally new system, and make a little expedition to 4e as well.
I think frustration management is a hard task. Everyone in the game should contribute to the fun, but when the dice go wrong, or things don’t work out as planned, players sometimes take it out on the DM. Luckily, we play in a group where most people stay reasonable, and blame the dice. This has, incidentally, led to all kinds of crazy dice superstitions where we have “bad” and “good” dice. One guy used to (he and his second personality are less neurotic now) “prep” his dice (a familiar concept to some Rp-ers), rolling them repeatedly and keeping the dice that didn’t get many 20’s, to “save” their statistically high chance of a 20 for later.
Anyhow, frustration management is tough, I think messing with creature stats to lower the challenge a little, and talking to yor players is more than half of the work. I like the concept of rolling dice in the open. I never do, as DM, but I think players would like it, it seems more fair…
Nice campaign, I enjoyed reading.
There are few things I find as frustrating as a player than not being able to contribute.
For combat encounters this ranges from poor rolls, debilitating effects (petrification, death, paralyzation, etc), improper weapons (light weapons vs heavy armor, normal weapons vs lycanthrope, no ranged weapon, etc), alternate tasks (loading a truck w/ mission objectives while teammates hold off the opposition, etc), improper spell selection, out of spells/ammo, and other unfortunate circumstances.
Some can be avoided using encounter design and improvisation. As far as dice go, perhaps some luck mechanic would work. Perhaps a reroll (or additional dice to choose from) after 3 consecutive misses. Or an automatic hit after 3 consecutive misses. Maybe an additive bonus of +1 on each even number of consecutive misses (+1 at 2 misses, +3 at 6 misses).
Low die rolls? In my day we had to save vs Poison at 1st level, 16+ or you roll up a new character (who’s being held prisoner in the next room), in the driving snow, uphill, both ways.
I tell you, we were all quite careful to avoid those sorts of things altogether rather than rely on good die rolls. You didn’t stab a snake for cheap XP, you chucked a big bag on a rope over it, secured it with the aid of pole hooks, and released the now very angry critter into the room of the next thing that might kill you in one roll.
Rolling dice was for when things went wrong, and it was nice to know we weren’t going to get away with it all that often.
The random element of dice really is a gamble (hur hur)! The chance of failure makes success sweet, but the chance of success makes failure bitter. In my group, we would indulge in dice myths, to help situations like these.
“Bad roll *again*?”
“Yeah.”
“Your dice don’t like you right now, try some of these.”
This helped in two ways.
1) It diffused tension by giving the player something to blame: his dice. Not luck, not fate, not the game: those dice. By personifying the dice, it helped give us a blame-able entity.
2) It would give the player a reroll. Some would argue this as “heresy” to the randomization factor, but there’s nothing fun about a long streak of suck, and we’re here to have fun. When the party needs help, and one character has the potential to help but the dice are against him, give him “new dice” until his roll doesn’t suck.
There’s superstition, and then there’s psychological adaptation to stress. The latter when you’re frustrated, the former when you’re having fun.
Sorry for not posting earlier… work piles up faster than I can clear it today!
@Flying Dutchman: Thanks for the kind words.
Its not so much that I feel that frustration is directed toward me, and there’s really not a lot of things that can be done for a bad streak of dice. In hindsight, since Franky is an excellent Roleplayer, I should have spent a few minutes with him at the game table, giving him my full attention, exploring the story implication of such failures.
@Target: I’m thinking of some sort of ‘frustration tokens’ that you collect when you start lining up multiple failures (maybe at the 2nd failure and one more per additional failure)… then at any point where the unlucky player makes a d20 roll, he can add +2 per token but he needs to spend them all..
But even this will not alleviate if the player rolls a ‘one’. Its quite possible that such frustration is inevitable (unless we play some Amber) and as DM I must weave other ‘fun inducers’ to make up for such streaks.
@tussock: I shared some of those days tussock (well the A D&D 1e part). I agree that the “fun” way to play D&D was the one where dice rolls were for near automatic failure and those who reached for them had some sort of Gambler’s delusion going for them.
Alas, I don’t seek this anymore. I want scared players, exhilarated players, I want some low level frustration sometimes to make success taste sweeter. I want rules that helps me achieve that, not ones that tells me ‘you handle the ‘fun’ we just kill PCs”. 🙂
@ Michael M: I’ve noticed a toxic element in (lack of ) frustration management.
The frustrated player will often be tempted to hunker down and become more introverted. Then other players will feel less likely to offer support or help if the frustrated player doesn’t respond to said offers.
What is even worse is when other players fail to pick up (or choose to ignore) on the nascent frustration and make fun of the unlucky player.
Should that be addressed by the DM or should we let adult players deal with it and let the frustrated player simmer down and hope he recovers…
Regardless, I found that talking about it afterwards helps players see the situation in a different light and makes the game more enjoyable in hindsight.
If you need to test some of your frustration management technique, you can simply run another game with me… I have yet to have a single “average rolls” game… So far, they have all been “statistical anomalies” games.
So much for the bell curve.
You I reserve for our first Mutant & Mastermind game!
Only 1 die type, a d20.
🙂
Hi Chatty,
I have been behind on my readings lately, but I always enjoy your thoughts and the chronicles of your sessions, so I’m trying to catch up. 🙂
I do something in my groups that has proven to be very popular with most of my players, definitely turned the tide in a few battles, and can help people having a string of bad die rolls as well. When a character makes an attack or uses a skill, I encourage them to either 1) describe it in detail, or 2) do something cool/unique/outside the realm of “standard” actions. When they do, I award them a “creativity point.”
For example, rather than “I cast Divine Glow in these squares,” the cleric’s player might say “I offer up a payer to my god, and Bahamut’s divine light blasts forth from my hands to sear the undead abominations with holy power!” The fighter might describe a parry and riposte to slash across the neck of a great beast or leap from a ledge to tackle his foe rather than charge up to it on the ground.
When someone does something like this, I hand them a small token. I use decorative aquarium stones that are available from any pet store because they are decent size, brightly colored, and you can get a bag of ~30 for a few dollars (red for action points, blue for creativity points), but any tokens will suffice. I give one to a player each time they are creative or descriptive in their actions, and allow them to have and redeem up to 3 points at any one time.
Each point can be redeemed to add 1 to any die roll (attack, skill check, and I even allow damage), so if a player misses an attack but feels like they were close, they can hand me a stone to add 1 to their result. If it still misses, they can hand me another, then another. However, if they still miss with a +3, they do not get their stones back and have to earn more through additional creative/descriptive actions.
This serves a number of purposes. It gives the players a slight edge in a tough fight; It allows creative players a tangible reward for giving details of what their character is doing and for thinking outside the proverbial box; it encourages the “I attack with my sword” crowd to put some thought into it; it often does the last point of damage to take down an enemy instead of someone else having to spend an action to finish it off; and it turns a fair number of would-be misses into hits…but not enough to significantly affect the overall difficulty of an encounter. If an attack misses by one, I will often say “describe it,” and then keep the stone and let the player roll damage.
I find that this has really helped keep players’ heads in the game during long combats, and helps alleviate at least some of the frustration of missing, especially with encounter and daily powers.
Sweet pair of articles!
Bad luck streaks suck.
I gave magical luck tokens to the kids in my game – 3 opportunities to reroll. Prevented me from playing favorites and they could use it strategically.
Turns out they didn’t need it – but they still used them all in the boss fight and had fun with them.
Perhaps a player in an unlucky streak can help his party in another fashion to boost his sense of usefulness?
I like how Franky used his unlucky streak as an opportunity to role play.
And the extra frustration of not being able to find solace in the actual role playing of the unlucky streak.
His warlock feels like my warlock…. and the warlock that came with the DDM starter pack.
Maybe there’s just a curse on warlocks?
I think I made a good roll with my warlock, once.
Eric Maziades last blog post..Understanding skill challenges
@Brian: This is a great tip! I’ll totally discuss it with my buddies. Especially Franky who often makes an effort to describe how each of his powers work whenever his warlock sends out a curse or a bolt of psychic energy.
@Eric: Who knows? Maybe bad luck is the price to pay for forging pacts with otherworld powers!
@Brian: Wow – I love your concept here 🙂
Our DM actually requires us to role play prayers and spells in order to cast them… Maybe if there was a bonus like what you described, we’d find his non-actor players more inclined to go forth with such creative endeavors!
Nice!
Eric Maziades last blog post..Debunking skill challenges
@Eric: I love your luck re-roll idea. I would modify it as follow:
-each player as one per session.
-It can be use to re-roll an attack that misses from you OR an ALLY.
Benefit, if only one player as a bad night the other can give their reroll to him. If it ‘s more generalized everyone as one for themselves…
It encourage team playing, is simple with little to no book keeping.
I approve Yan!
@Yan: Applying the reroll to anyone is a cool idea 🙂 I originally gave 3 (wanted to make sure there were no dice frustration along the children), but 1 would’ve been enough indeed. Especially with older players.
It was so magical that it even allowed them to reroll damage 🙂
@Chatty: I want to approve someone too!
@Psygnnosed: I approve you!
Eric Maziades last blog post..Debunking skill challenges
No! I approve you!
😛
Oh, and as it’s 4e, you can always just build your encounters from opponents a few levels lower than the usual. The PCs will miss less often, each bad guy will go down quicker, luck won’t be as important, and they can be just as challenging overall by keeping the XP totals the same.
But it depends, are your troubled players focusing on the common rolls, or the rare ones? If it’s the rare rolls, it can be better to make successes rare by using higher level monsters: then every successful hit quickly becomes something to rave about, and the misses are lost in the background noise.
In hindsight (it’s been more than a week now) I think bad streaks are part of tha game and we must learn to accept them.
I also think that my group is due for a combat light game where the dice take a breather and we focus on story.
Right now I’m taking a short break from DMIng and will focus on other things.
I also will have a ‘how do we feel about 4e’ as I’m beginning to detect some issues with the game itself.