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Post by Rigil Kent on Feb 21, 2013 13:22:12 GMT -6
Heh. I think you just agreed with me. You see my point, though, right? If you say you have a plan, then you damned well better. In your case, you did a great job of leaving enough holes in the "plan" that pretty much anyone could have been responsible, which meant you didn't have to actually have a plan. But if you had intro'ed a mastermind, you better have some idea about what he wants to do, is capable of doing, and is doing...
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Post by Rigil Kent on Feb 23, 2013 0:46:52 GMT -6
Heh. That ending works perfectly for what I have in mind for the session.
Interestingly enough, both LabRat and WxMAN provided me lots of plot threads to touch on, whereas Giger not so much. What's up with that?
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Feb 23, 2013 11:09:25 GMT -6
I think he was looking out for himself in the long run...didn't want to provide you with more rope lol...if it helps, my run probably won't provide a lot threads for nate lol
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Post by Gigermann on Feb 23, 2013 13:20:23 GMT -6
Interestingly enough, both LabRat and WxMAN provided me lots of plot threads to touch on, whereas Giger not so much. What's up with that? There are plenty that I've started, or touched, just nobody's doing anything with them
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Post by WxMAN on Feb 23, 2013 13:45:42 GMT -6
Interestingly enough, both LabRat and WxMAN provided me lots of plot threads to touch on, whereas Giger not so much. What's up with that? There are plenty that I've started, or touched, just nobody's doing anything with them I could work an entire run from what Giger has provided... I think he left plenty on the table to use... and I guarantee ChrisIII that I could use your threads, I have faith
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Post by Rigil Kent on Feb 23, 2013 13:58:13 GMT -6
I should have phrased that differently - what I should have said was "Interestingly enough, the plot threads that interested me the most and work with what I had in mind have come from LabRat and WxMAN's runs instead of Giger's."
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Post by LabRat on Feb 24, 2013 16:28:25 GMT -6
So I have spent some moments breathing sighs of relief, but I figure I need to give one last critique for me (for now). If you don't have anything specific to say about the last session, I would welcome your opinions about the campaign as a whole.
So I put a dungeon crawl in there just so that I would be able to GM a dungeon crawl. I think on the whole it went very well. It wasn't a large dungeon but it was very compact in terms of encounters. I tried to pick creatures in the caves that would make sense of being there instead of trying to justify why X creature would live with y Creature right next to it. So hopefully that didn't feel forced. I also tried to put in different types of encounters so that it didn't feel old hat after a while.
I toned down the final battle way, way down. I originally had a character that would have some magical abilities that would make life rather difficult. However, considering that you might have someone that was transforming into a Vargouille at the moment and may have just faced a Mimic, I backed off some, and I think in the end, it was the right decision.
I limited the number of traps because I knew that Waylen wasn't an expert in trap finding, so hopefully that helped a bit.
I liked the idea of having a "mini map" to refer to when going thought the cave, however, redrawing sections of the map seemed to slow down the game a bit. Hopefully it wasn't too bad.
I wanted a cliffhanger that would be able to fit in anywhere in case the campaign ended up somewhere I wasn't expecting. Hopefully it was kind enough in the fact that you could do a lot with it, but yet interesting enough so it isn't blase.
There isn't a whole lot of new critique I could give myself that hasn't said before. I think now it is just a matter of practice and refining mechanics, game flow, etc. Overall, I wanted to provide you with a storyline that could easily "stand alone" but tie in with the rest of the story. I wanted to create characters that were memorable, add in a dash of humor, and yet provide something that would help with the overall plot. Two things I wanted to experience as a new GM was a bar fight, and a dungeon crawl. So I am glad I got to pull those two things off. Hopefully I achieved that in a way that was satisfying to both player and GM. Overall, I think I did well for my first time. I certainly surprised myself in how at ease I feel now with GM-ing. It really isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Though I think I prefer to be a player, I can certainly take up the mantle should there be need of it.
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Feb 24, 2013 16:57:48 GMT -6
In an overall review of the run, I really enjoyed it...from a strictly players POV (since I have yet to be behind the screen) I can't say anything bad overall, there might have been some slow points here and there, but that happens just about every week regardless of the GM, seeing how well yours and WxMan's runs have gone...I'm looking forward to my own run
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Post by Rigil Kent on Feb 25, 2013 17:15:17 GMT -6
To be perfectly honest, I'm kind of at a loss as to any constructive criticism. As with WxMAN, you impressed me with your ability to jump in feet first and manage your own adventure arc, and I think that, as with him, only time and experience will improve your ability behind the screen. One thing I suspect still bothers you is the inability to relate some of the backstory you developed (specially for Ilde and the king) to the PCs. WxMAN made a good point earlier in the discussion about not overthinking character backgrounds, but with something like this, you might have taken a different route to pique the interest of the characters/players to delve a little deeper. For example, knowing what I know thanks to PM, I think I might have suggested you had Idle overreact a little bit any time the king was brought up or perhaps even have her take actions/say things that would hint at some connection. An exchange could go like: - GM: Ilde gets defensive. "What? Is he too lazy to get off his butt and find out himself? Or is he too afraid to face me after ... no. Never mind. Who the hell are you?"
Or something like that. Obviously, I'm not always successful with taking my own advice as I quite often end a session with a "Shit. I forgot to do X." or "Dammit, that's how I could have hooked the characters!" As a player, I'm actually trying to be a little more proactive myself and pushing for additional information or actions during character interactions, but I've only been partially successful of late. I'm afraid that we, as a group, are still too passive and are waiting for the adventure hooks to be handed to us on the silver platter.
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Post by LabRat on Feb 25, 2013 21:47:00 GMT -6
Obviously, I'm not always successful with taking my own advice as I quite often end a session with a "Shit. I forgot to do X." or "Dammit, that's how I could have hooked the characters!" As a player, I'm actually trying to be a little more proactive myself and pushing for additional information or actions during character interactions, but I've only been partially successful of late. I'm afraid that we, as a group, are still too passive and are waiting for the adventure hooks to be handed to us on the silver platter. Honestly it was my own fault due to inexperience. I shouldn't have gotten so grandiose, but sometimes I get inspired by a certain character and ust go with it. I just didn't give enough proper hooks. Hopefully I can remedy that. As a player, I too need to be a bit more proactive with picking up plot hooks. And honestly since I am rather CHA oriented, I SHOULD be more curious about other people. I hope to be a bit more proactive with that during your run.
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Post by Gigermann on Feb 25, 2013 23:26:20 GMT -6
I shouldn't have gotten so grandiose, but sometimes I get inspired by a certain character and ust go with it. Don't smother the creative process. Now that you've had the experience—and assuming you have it again —remember it. If you have all this information about a character, think about how you can invite the PCs to find it (and if they don't, how you can throwit at them). If it's interesting and/or entertaining, then its worth knowing, and a better game for it.
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Post by Rigil Kent on Feb 26, 2013 17:21:21 GMT -6
As we've all seen though, while GMing, it is way too easy to have a buttload of information you want to relate and then just get overloaded and forget to relate a pertinent detail or three. Which is why I'm trying to be more proactive on my end as a Player ...
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Post by Rigil Kent on Mar 2, 2013 13:36:15 GMT -6
Adequate. That's how I classify the session. As is all too often, what I intended and what actually transpired weren't the same.
Intent: flow from previous session into a quick adventure that would allow the characters to expand their wealth and kick some booty before transitioning into the second half of my planned adventure (still forthcoming.) At the same time, I could actually get the ball rolling for Alain's intended alignment shift as well as him becoming interested in religion, which hints at his coming entry into paladin status.
Actual Result: A disjointed, chaotic mess that wasn't as well handled as I would have liked. The group as a whole was really unfocused and distracted and I did an inadequate job of focusing everyone back to the adventure (and, to be perfectly honest, contributed quite a bit to the distraction myself.) In retrospect, I also thought the actual push toward the dungeon was a bit too railroadey, which frustrated me a bit.
Some other comments: given the group's lack of religious types (no cleric, no healer, no favored soul, etc.), I thought it wouldn't make sense for Alain to just suddenly decide to become a paladin after 4th level, hence my decision to introduce a third party - Sister Jenya - who would at least set his feet on this path. And since none of the other characters would really be involved in this and I didn't want to bore you with a "And then, Alain does X" because that would Gary Stuing my character, I decided all of that would take place in the background. Effectively, she's setting the groundwork for his alignment shift so I intend to play him (in the future) as a bit softer (more Good than Law.) I also didn't want to saddle any other players with running him, so removing him that way seemed logical.
Metzli's lightning teleport thing was handled very badly on my part (IMO) and failed to convey what I intended. I should have emphasized some elements of it better so as to point out better that she was about to spill the beans on someone, and that someone is evidently very powerful. How many of the players even remember that Metzli said, right before she was zotted, that "she has found me"? Intent was to set up future plots (and give the tiefling a chance to come back some time down the road), but I felt that I again didn't do a very good job with that. It was too rushed, too ... disjointed.
Budah's shit-tastic Perform rolls was something of a surprise, but at least (hopefully) reminded him (or informed him if he was unaware) of a perfectly opportune money-making opportunity. Bards shouldn't pay for room and board - they should Perform to avoid paying for it.
"Buzi" the Glintaxe was simply a revision of the original adventure and would (hopefully) serve to give Uzi some roleplaying opportunities. It is up to Giger how he wants to proceed, and I figured that, at the very least, he's got some family heirlooms in his possession now that might allow him to be more proactive or something. Yes, according to the rules as written, resurrecting Buzi would be nearly impossible, but if he actually wants to do something like that, I'm certain we can find (and exploit the hell out of) a loophole somewhere.
Which leads me to the gelatinous cube. After having given it some thought, I've decided to award WxMAN a bonus Action/Fate/Bennie/Wish Point (to replace the one he expended) because he had Bruno do something unbelievably stupid (charge the cube and then stand there and fight it) ... which was completely and utterly in-character. So yeah, he's still mostly naked and down a couple of javelins, but I didn't think it was right to totally shaft him just for wanting to protect his weapon of choice. So there.
Next week will see the introduction (presumably) of a new PC and replacing the existing NPC who showed up at that very spot with this new PC made perfect sense to me.
So yeah. Adequate. I've done better and hope to do better next week. I can't give myself more than 5 out of 10 for this session. I wasn't abysmally disappointed, but I certainly wasn't enthused.
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Post by Gigermann on Mar 2, 2013 14:49:34 GMT -6
In general, I agree with that assessment: - I don't think anyone has been fully satisfied with their first session
- Behind the big-screen, nobody wants to be the wet blanket when the conversation drifts off-topic. Ultimately, I think we need to police ourselves—which is harder than it sounds. As GM, I've toyed with the idea of coming to an agreement beforehand that I will be keeping us on course, so that when I gavel the group to order, everyone says to themselves, "I asked him to do this," rather than feeling like they're being "corrected"
- Behind the screen, you're probably thinking that you've given us no choice but to hunt the kids. On the other side, I felt like it was the "Golden Path," not the only thing that could be done. That said, this group has developed a habit of following along, which has its good and bad points—during my run, I was expecting us to not do that, but it didn't work out that way. What to do? At the least, I'm hoping that the lack of that sort of intentional structure in my PA concept might help break that habit
- Úzi will definitely be wanting to present Búzi's gear to the family, which I was afraid would mean that we need to turn around and go back to Dwarfmount—but I think he'll hold to his banishment, and do that upon his return
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Mar 2, 2013 15:11:20 GMT -6
there were times the session had a "herding chickens" feel to it, but overall (at least until the point where I had to leave) it was very enjoyable
there were some times where there seems to be a hiccup in the train tracks but I don't feel that if affected the overall flow of the evening, I know that I have moments of ADOS and it appears that we as a group also have that, but that comes and goes week to week
It wasn't up to par with some of your other runs, but I'd still give it at least a 7 overall
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Post by WxMAN on Mar 4, 2013 11:31:31 GMT -6
It seems the first session is very difficult to get right... So first session flubs are to be expected and forgiven as such... I do agree though that getting us to the town did feel a bit railroady, but I think some of that can be attributed to Player v Character knowledge... our character's (or at least some) would of immediately known the closest town but since the player's didn't it was immediately obvious to us where to go, meaning the only option presented by the GM is the 'right' path and thus making it feel a bit forced.... Not that there is a way to easily fix it, just that may be part of the issue
I don't know what happened but Friday night we were like herding cats... Ordinarily I think self policing would work but for whatever reason we all were in a mood to BS, in which case no one can police since we're all all over the place...
I think the Sister Jenya introduction was well done and a clever way of introducing religion to Alain, though for him to reach a Paladin drive I would think it would take more than a couple days of Sister Jenya preaching at him... IDK, I've always seen Paladin's as the religious of the religious and to go from 0 religion to super religion is tough over the course of a run.... (not that I care if 100% justify your Paladin turn, just letting the thoughts pour from my head)
I actually did follow your intent on the lightning strike, but I agree it was a bit rushed...
There are a ton of things that we as players tend to ignore/not know/not use a lot of different things our characters may. Being originally inspired through war gaming D&D tends to not handle social stuff all that well... So we do tend to avoid it... I also am kind of stuck as a 'forceful personality' and taking a non-social character, not really knowing how to handle it... I try to stay out of the social things featuring Bruno would tend to stay in the background and keep quiet, but at the same time I don't want to seem like I am uninterested/not paying attention... I don't know what to do...
Regarding the gelatinous cube and 'in character' reactions... man are they hard to deal with... Every thought in my brain was telling me that is was incredibly stupid, but I couldn't justify a person who's whole fighting style is run up to the things and hit it as hard as possible with as big of weapon as possible to not continue that process... next time Bruno faces a gelatinous cube he will likely be intelligent to know discretion is sometimes the better part of valor.... but charging that thing and then standing tall when it absorbed Bruno could have very easily killed him...
It may be prudent if we begin to favor PC's not knowing the monster manual to either show the PC's an example of what a monster can do (ie, we could have seen the kobold workers get 'eaten' by the cube), start with a weaker version of the monster (maybe a baby cube or something that isn't so easily fatal), or have it be (like it was kind of handled) a big fricken deal...
Shelley asked me after the session if I was trying to kill Bruno, which wasn't the case at all... I guess this all comes down to another issue of player vs character knowledge and how difficult it is to separate them... Not only is it difficult to ignore the knowledge you as a player have, but you can also "over compensate" and not allow a character to act on something for too long (if at all) just trying to separate them....
I thought overall the session was just fine, especially for the first run which, as mentioned, rarely goes as intended... I thought it was one of the best runs we've seen during this campaign and it really felt like the differences between someone who's run many many times before vs us new folks has become very very obvious to me....
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Post by LabRat on Mar 4, 2013 11:37:24 GMT -6
H'Okay, I think you hit the nail on the head when identifying the biggest problem of the night. We were waaayyy too unfocused. I know I was as much to blame as anyone. Sometimes though, that's okay. If you were cool with it as GM, then no worries. If not, then next week we will do better. I think we should have reined it in a bit during the 'important' bits, like the opening sequence. It is really hard telling of a pivotal plot point when someone wants you to look at, oh I don't know, a youtube video of a squirrel riding a badger. If we aren't focused then communication is going to break down. So I think that is where most of your problems lie.
Honestly, I was feeling like crap, so it was difficult for me to focus anyway, or do any sort of critical thinking. That's why I was rather passive about the plot railroad. If the GM was dangling a carrot, I would have taken it instead of trying to go and look for an apple.
I think you handled your character nicely. It would have been difficult to have another GM give you a plot hook that would segway your character into following religion when we aren't really a religious party. Honestly, I was trying to think of ways it could be done during my run, but I couldn't figure something out without it looking rather forced and obvious. Even though I have a personal taboo against focusing on your character's goals while you are the one running, I feel like this needed to be done and it was done well.
I liked Buzi's story honestly. It was fun, and fit in with the overall feeling of the campaign. Plus it is nice when the GM surprises the player with a potential plot hook. Between this and Alain's story, it makes me believe that I need to figure out what I want to do with Maia story-wise. She just feels awkward to me, and I think that is because she's my first spell caster, and the fact that she is rather one dimensional (no real story, motivation, or goals). Sorry, I digress. But it is something for me to think about.
Gelatinous Cube= awesome! I was this close ::squinches finger and thumb together:: to putting one in my campaign, but I was worried that it didn't fit the environment. Bruno and the gelatinous cube was even more awesome! I still wonder what would happen if Maia would have cast grease on the thing. Ah well, it still was fun to encounter one.
Overall, I think it would have been much better if we were more focused. Yeah you could have yelled at us to pay attention, but it seemed like we were okay with being off topic on Friday. Next week will be better and I am sure you will be up to your old standard of excellence.
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Post by Gigermann on Mar 4, 2013 11:38:00 GMT -6
In retrospect, I should have Bennied the Dungeoneering roll, so everyone would know what they needed to about the cube
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Post by LabRat on Mar 4, 2013 11:45:55 GMT -6
In retrospect, I should have Bennied the Dungeoneering roll, so everyone would know what they needed to about the cube Meh, no harm, no foul. Well actually there was a little harm. Bruno now has to make an effort not to show off his naughty bits. Still, our characters now know what a gelatinous cube can do.
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Post by WxMAN on Mar 4, 2013 12:14:05 GMT -6
In retrospect, I should have Bennied the Dungeoneering roll, so everyone would know what they needed to about the cube Hindsight is 20/20, did you expect me to have Bruno charge in there like an idiot? Bruno now has to make an effort not to show off his naughty bits. Bruno is a honey badger as far as that is concerned... WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE YEAH!
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Post by Rigil Kent on Mar 4, 2013 15:41:22 GMT -6
I don't know what happened but Friday night we were like herding cats... Ordinarily I think self policing would work but for whatever reason we all were in a mood to BS, in which case no one can police since we're all all over the place... Yeah. I suspect that this week will be better since we've all observed how cat herding it was like. No, that is certainly not the planned extent of it, but rather, the first step. I have some things planned during my run that will cause him to do some self-reflection and then, hopefully, other GMs can pick that up and add things as well that will further advance the plot, but I never meant for it to be just a bit of preaching and then BAM! insta-paladin (just add water!) because I hate how television (especially Trek) would do that sort of thing. Which, to be honest, also causes some issues for me because I go back and forth about what to do with him. In any social situation, he's always the odd man out ... which I hate because it leaves you out and I want to avoid that. Agreed, which is why I felt it appropriate to return the Fate/Action/Whatever Point because you played Bruno "to the pain." There was every possibility he could have died ... and in retrospect, while reviewing the stats again, the ooze's acid was done incorrectly. You should have taken ... 20 points a round while engulfed (which was fortunately only one round), but could have been really ugly. We'll have to agree to disagree then cause I actually thought the other sessions were superior (but hey, I'm always really harsh on myself so there ya go.) Between this and Alain's story, it makes me believe that I need to figure out what I want to do with Maia story-wise. Well, apart from "need for him to get religion so his transition to paladin makes sense", I don't have a lot of really big goals for Alain story-wise. Considering it has a Dex of 1 ... that would have been very interesting... Wait ... when I did I obtain that standard?
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Post by WxMAN on Mar 6, 2013 14:30:54 GMT -6
insta-paladin (just add water!) Better be holy water Which, to be honest, also causes some issues for me because I go back and forth about what to do with him. In any social situation, he's always the odd man out ... which I hate because it leaves you out and I want to avoid that. But who's fault is it that Bruno isn't social... it isn't the GM, it is the person who designed him (me in this case)... Unfortunately in social situations it seems like there can easily be 'too many cooks in the kitchen' especially with a system not really made to adjudicate social interactions well... I don't know what we can do to fix it... while reviewing the stats again, the ooze's acid was done incorrectly. You should have taken ... 20 points a round while engulfed (which was fortunately only one round) I will adjust his HP accordingly at the start of Friday's session...
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Post by Rigil Kent on Mar 6, 2013 16:23:49 GMT -6
insta-paladin (just add water!) Better be holy water LOL. No need. That was my screw up so clearly this gelatinous cube was totally weak - let's say that Bruno's massive damage dealt prior to his absorption drastically reduced the acidic damage (because there simply wasn't enough left to do more than the 1d6 or whatever I dealt.) "Editing mistake in your favor."
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Post by WxMAN on Mar 8, 2013 9:14:42 GMT -6
Also, something we forgot to handle during the giant jello shot incident...
Things vulnerable that Bruno was also carrying: Backpack Bedroll Carrying Pouch (Fancy) Courtier's Outfit Rope, Hemp Waterskin Book Snuffles
What would you like to do about those items?
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Post by Rigil Kent on Mar 8, 2013 10:58:56 GMT -6
Let's see... So I suspect that since you failed so badly (it was a 2, I think, right?), most of that stuff would be consumed. And that will probably make Bruno very angry. You wouldn't like him when he's angry... I wouldn't be so heartless as to "snuff out" poor little Snuffles, though. He/She/It is fine.
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Post by LabRat on Mar 9, 2013 13:35:28 GMT -6
So normally I wait until the GM posts their critique but I have the time so I figured I would go ahead. Last night I got to experience a fight that pretty much took up the entire session. So that was interesting since it was a new experience. This brings up the question of whether or not it is better to go ahead and condense a dungeon crawl to one room, or have the traditional room by room method.
Last night gave me some insight on what it is like to have an entire dungeon crawl in a single room, and to be honest there were a few problems with it. The main one being that it took a long time between turns. At one point I took note at the amount of time it took between one round and it was around 25 minutes. To me that's just too long. And it puts a lot of pressure on the GM because he is keeping track with so many enemies. I don't know if it would have been better to maybe let the players play a few mooks to keep us engaged, because I was certainly zoning out towards the end of the night.
I missed not having the room crawls and potential problem solving that went along with that. I think that is one of the reasons why dungeons are divided up in such a way, because fights are smaller and therefore more manageable. To me that brings better balance to the game. I think the reason why you didn't have a traditional dungeon crawl was because it is a pain to draw out all of the rooms if it is a large dungeon. Plus if they were just kobolds then the individual encounters would become rather repetitive. Its is a difficult decision to make, as I don't see a clear right or wrong answer, merely one based on preference.
I felt like the fighting took away from some of the story elements. Since it went on for so long, we kind of did the quick wrap up, so we didn't get a chance to speak to the bard or the kids. I felt like the story elements were a bit lacking. But then again straight hack and slash tend to bore me overall, so I think it is just personal player preference.
I liked how you played the kobolds. They always seemed relatively weak as individuals so their strength has always been in numbers. That was very apparent.
The excuse for a bard to be there seemed a bit contrived to me. If I was a low level character and saw many kobolds take some kids into the ruins, I would go and get reinforcements instead of trying to rescue them myself. Anyway, that is just my reasoning for what it is worth.
I liked story line of the god waking up and giving Uzi all of these awesome avenging powers. That was pretty cool.
I don't know really how to rate this. I mean everyone likes a good long fight but I felt like a lot of story elements, player decisions, and tension spikes were not really there. I think you overall did a good job managing a large scale fight scene. It just wasn't my type of encounter.
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Post by Rigil Kent on Mar 9, 2013 17:01:56 GMT -6
Well, as is usually the case, my intent didn't quite mesh with the result. As has I think all of the GMs, I again underestimated the combat capabilities of the group (while perhaps overestimating the bad guys) and what was intended to be a "oh, crap, we might actually all get TPKed here!" big battle turned into a long, boring, repetitive slog. The original intent was thus: - Initial Wave of Kobolds - PCs hit them and are slowed. Some damage is dished out. No real problem.
- Wave 2 of Kobolds - PCs suddenly find themselves facing twice the original number and it is looking a little dicey. Still doable, but slightly worrisome.
- Wave 3 of Kobolds - PCs are heavily outnumbered and are being flanked as hostiles (including some tougher than average bad guys) come up from behind. Things look very dire.
- Wave 4 of the Kobolds - The King enters the fray and the Dark Smith stirs. By this point, I expected the players to be wondering if I was mad or had screwed up the CR of the encounter. As the Smith stirred, things would start to change though. Even in play, there were elements I forgot - Uzi was supposed to find himself Healed when the rage kicked in and I forgot to do that.
- Wave 5 isn't actually kobolds, but instead, it would be dwarven Undead long buried and abandoned in their crypts by the kobolds ... and they would be targeting the kobolds. The original plan was for the players to see the undead, think "WTF?" and then, when the Undead hit the kobolds (I wasn't planning on actually rolling for that ... although afterward, when I was trying to get my head straight and was reviewing what I did wrong and what went right, it occurred to me that I could have had the players run the undead. The appearance of the undead would actually surprise the hell out of the kobolds as well since they weren't expecting it. Once all of the kobolds were slain, the undead would all sort of turn toward Uzi and wait until he answered the Dark Smith's offer for allegiance. (Which is still on the table, but I will probably pick up next week still in the dungeon, just after the fight is done and the looting is complete.)
But, as is sadly par for the course, my intent and plans didn't quite mesh with what happened. I experienced a couple of brain cramps along the way (more on that later) and it turned into the slog we got. As to having the big fight instead of the dungeon crawl, I tend to see both sides of the argument. If the hostiles were actually a viable threat, then dumping them all into a single room is a recipe for a TPK, but at the same time, it never makes any sense to me for the hostiles to just stay at their posts and let the PCs come to them. Plus, if a bunch of bad guys live in a certain place, always trapping the shit out of it is just stupid because that is just asking for accidental (and constant) workplace deaths. In this case, I wanted to try something slightly different, but it didn't work out quite as well as I would have liked. Lesson Learned. Regarding the bard, there's one of my numerous brain cramps for the night. Originally, when I thought we were getting a new PC for the group in the form of Danny, I stopped reading any and everything about the bard NPC in the adventure. I fully intended on making Danny come up with the reason he was alone in the dungeon, defending the kid. I think it was mid-week before I knew, 100%, that he wouldn't be joining us for that session and I didn't refresh my memory for the NPC's story during the week (because of how stupid busy I've been) - it turns out that he was originally part of an adventuring group that was captured by the kobolds; he's the last survivor and managed to escape. During his attempt to escape, he ran into Kimi, who had also escaped from some inattentive kobolds, and then, very shortly after that, the crap hit the fan. So my quick off the cuff contrived reason for his presence? Totally wrong and I apologize for that. I was mostly satisfied with some of this, less so with other parts, and am sorry you did not enjoy yourself as much as you would have liked. Also, I might not get the synopsis up until Monday or Tuesday due to an unexpectedly busy weekend...
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Post by thedefiantbudah on Mar 9, 2013 19:20:17 GMT -6
the elongated fight didn't bother me as much, I rather enjoyed it...although it did seem to drag on after a while, but still had fun...I could potentially see the bard running in alone (kinda like "imagine the stories and songs that will be sung of my bravery" type of thing) but it would also depend on how many enemies he witnessed going into the dungeon...the timing of the rounds did seem to drag on at times, but that is to be expected with that many characters involved in the fight
overall, I enjoyed the session
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Post by Gigermann on Mar 9, 2013 21:14:27 GMT -6
I don't mind a mega-fight now and again. 25 minutes, though…
Now that most of us have some big-screen–time, I have a question for all of us: how would you speed up that process?
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Post by LabRat on Mar 10, 2013 9:46:12 GMT -6
I have a question for all of us: how would you speed up that process? The main problem I think we were having was our lack of proper positioning. We were at a choke point, which from a fighting perspective was awesome, but in terms of time, it would slow things down to a crawl because we would only be fighting a few mooks at a time while the others would wait their turn. If I wanted to have a TPK like atmostphere, I would have the initial mob of guys hang back a little and then bring in reinforcements from behind us. This would probably push the squishy ones into a seemingly safe pocket until the initial wave would start moving up again. This would cause some of the heavy hitters to move back to help characters like Maia and Walen. I would continue with this push/pull until I could move players into the center of the room, where they would essentially be surrounded. I would then cue the entrance of the king, the dwarven god would wake up, Uzi would become bad ass, and then cue undead helpers. Then it would just be mopping up, and looking heroic while doing it. Once the players see that they are friendlies, I would then have the players run some of the undead to help speed things up. Another way to handle it would to have been only a few fighters on the far side of the room with the bard. The characters would advance into the room thinking that they could easily help. This would get them out of the choke point and then have the kobold reinforcements show up, effectively surrounding them. Since there were kobold fighters already in the room with nothing to do, we held our ground and then they came to us. Thereby locking us in. Or I would include some archers, that would force the players to keep moving, because they could easily pick them off, if they are standing still. Then you could cue the chain of events and then wrap things up rather nicely. Then if I were GM, I would try to move as fast as humanly possible. Like the mooks that were fighting the bard, I probably at most would do high-low rolling, so there wouldn't be much thinking. To me during the round the time it takes for the GM to go vs. the players should be no more than 50% of that round. So if the GM is taking forever to get through his turn, while the players are only taking a fraction of that time, then I would try to make some adjustments.
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