Chatty DM (wiping laughter tears ): Guys! Enough with the nipple jokes! I think I’m going to put that into the game report’s title.
Mike: You’d never dare, this stuff is always left out your reports.
Chatty DM: Just watch me…
This last game session was a strange, strange beast. On the one hand, we had fun, laughed our butts off and ended the session on a high note. On the other, the adventure unraveled itself within the first hour. My patching it up caused some players to get longer spotlight time than the usual, leaving other players to be spectators for a bit too long. This caused increasing tension and came very near the breaking point.
Fortunately, the adventure recovered after that first scene and everything went fine after.
In order not to make this into a 6 part monster, I’ll focus on summarizing the adventure and then I’ll address the game’s main issues/highlights. It will give a negative tinge to the report in part 1, but it gets much better in part 2.
Storming the Overmind’s Castle: The Digest.
Our heroes crawled out of the overflowing Vats pursued by a chariot-sized squamous monster of vaguely draconic origins. The party ‘lured’ it to an acid-damaged part of the city where they promptly collapsed a building on it. Wielding their acquired Spirit, Arcane and Divine Powers, they remodeled the monster into a 20′ high Divine Angel of Vengeance and drove it on a path of destruction toward the Overmind’s Castle.
They momentarily lost control of it to a Neogi Slave on a Bridge leading to the Castle, but the Slaver was rapidly tossed into the water and the Angel proceeded to storm the Castle’s front gate.
During the assault, our heroes sneaked out behind the Castle, crossed the moat and entered through a mystic gate using the 4 part key they had recovered all over the city.
When The Railroads Hit Differential Expectations
A series of issues struck the game early, threatening to derail it badly.
Issue #1 Overselling the game
I really did. I encouraged players to come up with a plan to lure the Monster all over the city and some good suggestions were passed around by email. Then, when we started the game, I asked Math to show us a few selected parts from Akira (a 20 year old anime where a teenager develops psychic powers and then grows into a stadium sized blob). This crystallized player expectations about the game to come
Thus, when I described the Vats monster as being ‘Hummer’ sized, you could hear the expectation deflate at the speed of plot. The ‘let’s crash it in the Castle’ players were disappointed and lost interest.
Damn, I lost a great opportunity here.
The way I had planned the game… the monster would be restrained and controlled. Then it would grow as it ate people and buildings and eventually became a 50′ monstrosity that would shape encounters as they occurred (like eating parts of the battlemap).
Yeah, maybe I put too much shine on them rails. I should know better huh?
So as the players were re-calibrating their expectations and were getting ready to fight the monster, the Shaman and the Invoker managed to collapse a whole building on the monster, stopping the fight (it was stuck under a ton of rock).
According to my plan (At that point I had not yet realized that said plan was going offroad ), immobilizing the monster was the encounter’s goal. So once again, expectations were jarred from those expecting to kill it.
At that point the level of jokes and inter-player ribbing started to rise.
Issue #2, Use the Force Conan!
One of the things I’m starting to regret about this campaign (I’m thinking of concluding it soon) is that I developed these Mystical plot elements where PCs manipulate the flows of Arcane/Spirit/Divine energies with the mere roll of a skill (i.e. without rituals). This ‘Force Use’ often comes up as skill challenge where the Shaman, the Sorcerer and the Invoker weave energy flows to achieve a specific end.
So I presented such a challenge to allow players to control the monster or kill it (since part of the group wasn’t all that interested in using it anymore). They chose an interesting compromise (making it into a 20′ high Angel of Erathis).
What I failed to realize is that such a Skill Challenge more or less pushed away half the party, who don’t have the skills to participate. And that was another cause of frustration.
Issue#3 Don’t you touch my fluff
While the Barbarian and Rogue were starting to get impatient, the Shaman, Sorcerer and Invokers were involved and seemed to appreciate it. (In fact Franky, the Shaman’s player loved it) The Warden (having the nature skill) also participated in it.
At one point the challenge was about stripping ‘trapped’ spirits from the monster. The Shaman and Warden were tag-teaming at it, the Shaman working on the spirits and the Warden providing a spirits Shield to let the Shaman work in peace.
Then, Franky, who was really into his character, started telling me how he would coach the Warden about manipulating spirits to help him free the spirits faster (there were 5 of them).
And then, the Warden’s player, our dear instigator friend, dropped this bomb…
Fangs listens politely to the Shaman’s explanation but he knows how it works (rolls the dice)
I could hear the loud record scratching noise in Franky’s mind.
Oh shit… That’s when I finally noticed that, beyond my own disappointment and confusion about the game’s direction, I had a player revolt brewing.
Now Franky has a very strong backstory based on communing with spirits and how he can interact with them. He also strongly associates doing that with what a Shaman is in 4e. So when Eric (the Warden’s player) said that, it dropped a huge rock in his puddle.
Yet, as I see it, a Warden also deals with spirits. He internalizes them and takes their shape to protect his allies. So I think that Eric’s PC also had a valid reason why he could participate in the challenge, except it wasn’t presented as such… just ‘oh I know how that works (clatter clatter).
So Franky’s expectations were now shattered, he was annoyed, most other players were impatient and the ribbing they were trading was starting to get ugly to a point I expected an outburst.
So I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts. Looked at the situation and had an idea to save the game.
I recently wrote: no matter how bad your game goes, you can always save it by making it more interesting for everyone.
And thankfully, Stef and Yan sent out poles for me to grab on.
What a game…
In part 2: How to do Cursed items in 4e, Battle on the Bridge and the vagaries of being a Big Picture DM.
Great post Chatty! Sorry that you had a rough start of things. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Maybe this will be addressed in Post 2 or probably isn’t even possible in your game, but the thing I would have done for the Barbarian and Rogue is give them something to do, like keeping the random guard or two off of the magic users while they are channeling or whatever to control the monster. Or having them save people from falling debris from the monsters path of destruction.
Once again Chatty I applaud your ability to share your mistakes and hard learned lessons while DMing!
.-= wrathofzombie´s last blog ..Pathfinder Bestiary Review =-.
Had I been less concerned about saving my derailing plot and more focused on the player’s reactions, I’d have dropped a few more critters for the FIghters to deal with while some casters focused on the trapped monsters.
But it got a lot better in the second half. 🙂
Even the best need a little warm up time!
.-= misterecho´s last blog ..So you thought Cyberpunk was dead? =-.
Or even the best sometimes get caught with their pants down due to communication misfire. 🙂
I have so many thoughts here, but they all come down to this – I wonder if there are too many pregenerated things – pregenerated character backgrounds, pregenerated plot points, pregenerated expectations.
This follows a discussion that I wish had continued elsewhere, where a blogger said “The Prince who the future of world depended on, might have died.”
To which I responded “That’s awesome! So if he dies, then the PCs have to come up with a NEW way of saving the world. Or maybe they don’t and now they have to survive the apocalypse! It makes me want to push that Prince off the cliff to see what happens!”
That’s the danger (as I percieve) of huge pregenerated, out-of-game determined backgrounds and plots – in-game stuff can cause them to blow up.
Instead of having a big background, if Franky had already seen Warden do his thing with spirits in game, he wouldn’t have had that huge expectation. Or maybe Warden and Franky would have needed to work together to make it happen? That way, in-game, they’ve learned how to cooperate.
My players in Dark Ages are starting to come to that whole realization. It’s neat to see.
You, sir, have to stick to your buildups! 😉 If you advertise a building sized monster, you better deliver… or give a good reason why it’s now a Hummer size. Perhaps baby got loose and momma is close behind? 😉 Or perhaps after the building collapsed – THEN it blew up to building size cause now it’s mad – and you wouldn’t like it angry?
This is also why I’ve become a big believer in Ben Robbin’s “Player driven plot West Marches” – the players drive themselves. Or sometimes they don’t, but then that’s what the players want to do.
I’m looking foward to hearing your tap-dance conclusion, because I know you did it! 🙂
.-= Chgowiz´s last blog ..Handing out cookies… =-.
And note that “tap dance” comment is said with all respect, because I know you’re an awesome DM that can dig your way out of trouble – we ALL have had to do that dance… and man, it can suck or be awesome.
.-= Chgowiz´s last blog ..Handing out cookies… =-.
wait, what the hell? I thought this blog was about the swine flu?! That’s it, I’m never reading this blog again.
.-= walkerp´s last blog ..episode 6 – an interview with Barbarians of Lemuria creator Simon Washbourne =-.
@Chgowiz: As usual, I take your suggestion with serenity and open mindess. The problems aren’t inherent to the game but my structure of it. I think I’ve been working at cross purposes. On one side I sell a sandbox game and then I have an idea for a cool series of scene that goes against the initial idea.
It’s not the first time I paint myself in a campaign corner. And I’m glad that I managed to get out of it.
While I’m no fan of sandboxes, I will take your wisdom to heart for my next games.
@Walkerp: That my friend, wins you the Super Secret Bacon Prize. Well played!
I’m looking forward to part 2 of this: as much as I like hearing about all the great new things that can be done in an RPG, not much attention seems to be paid to what to do when things go wrong (which, for me as a DM, is a more frequent outcome than getting it right).
.-= silent stone´s last blog ..Hecatonchires: A NaNoWriMo Project =-.
@Silent: I have a rep for telling it when it goes great and not so great. 🙂 I’ll try to write part 2 tonight because I want to tell about the great save that everyone worked hard to achieve.
This is why I come up with bigger stretches of what the skills do in 4e so that they could be used in more expansive situations. One thing I might have done at that point (and you may have done this and left it out, I’m not sure) is to have the physically-minded players rolling Athletics and Acrobatics skills to represent their beating down on random thugs near the rampaging magic-beast, to keep them from disrupting the other players. Or rolling Endurance to represent some other physical effort that could’ve helped the endeavor, like maybe grant life force to the magic-thing to make it rampage harder, or to channel their physical combat prowess into the beast to have the giant thing do a tide of iron and push a building over. But this is a suggestion made with huge holes in what was going on.
Also I very rarely tell players what I’m planning because I don’t like giving them false expectations (in case I mess up later) or any expectations at all. I like for things to unfold for them just as their characters experience them – with no insight at all in any way into what their decisions lead them to, unless they’re casting divinations or something. It may leave player input out of the picture in some ways, but I’ve found it helpful as a GM. I can always take their feedback after the fact and use it as input for some other time.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..The Clouded Palace: Part 1 =-.
@Chatty
What? What? You had a cool idea for a scene and built a game around it? What’s that? A summer blockbuster? What?
I have a tendency to grab onto my lovely crafted scenes as if my whole game depended on its success (basically, a big part of how it died :P)
Can’t wait to see part 2 where you gather your wits and vanquish that beast!
(You know how much I like stories about how things didn’t go according to plan but got fixed on-the-fly by quick-witted people :P)
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
Wait… So you let them have Godzilla to attack the city and your players weren’t happy with this? o.O I’m confused. 🙂
Edit: Mostly teasing. Just had to say it though.
@Wyatt: That’s a failing of mine. I sometimes become very excited about my own cleverness and I show my hand too soon. That will teach me better.
@Eric: Har Har Har… yes I sinned at the altar of Michael Bay but didn’t double check the script 🙂
@Lanir: Ha ha ha. They were happy getting the 20 foot Angel… getting from the Chevy Van to Susan (Alien vs Monsters) was what sapped part of the fun from it.
@Lanir:
I think he made them expect Godzilla, but gave them the two tiny twins that can summon Mothra instead.
Mooooosurraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..On the road to Spellgu- postmortem =-.
HA! The true story is that I sold the Monster as being immense… then 2 days before the fight I looked at the monster’s stats and noticed that it was ‘large”
Now instead of ignoring this and making it at least Huge, I had a brainfart and made an Asspull (Retcon to save a writer’s story, irrespective of jarring the audience). The monster would START out smaller and GROW!
And the audience was jarred all right. 🙂
My mental image of this was an encounter with us against enemies and the Monster as third party figuratively a wall which was going forward at slow speed after the player. While running away from it, the enemies would have been trying to block us. During that the monster would make attack against a random target or the last person that attacked it. I also see the possibility to make Athletic/acrobatic stunt to make hit an adjacent target or use the mystical stuff to try to alter some aspect of its form.
Obviously when I saw the size of things I was one of The ‘let’s crash it in the Castle’ players that was disappointed. Ok then plan B lets kill it! We know how that ended…
That was the plan… in the 3rd scene. I had 3 scenes planned where the monster, growing progressively bigger, stopped being a combat threat and became an environmental one.
I need to finish writing that last part and soon 🙂
The problem with growing thing is that from a character/player’s perspective is… If it’s growing in size/strength you have all the incentive to destroy it right here and now before it becomes to strong to handle.
If it his big and strong you have all the incentive to lets somebody else do the softening… 😉