During the prep, I developed two primary paths the PCs could take; one would lead to Goodman Games’ Dragora’s Dungeon, the other, to some other, swampy content. I had one NPC advocate one choice, a second NPC wanted the other. While I thought the arguments were fairly balanced, it only took a moment for the decision to be made. On one hand, that’s good because there wasn’t frustration… on the other, there wasn’t the sense of genuine dilemma. These guys are heroes, after all. If there’s an option to solve something themselves, that’s what they’re going to choose.
While I’m pleased with the real option, I’d like to improve my dilemma level.
During the prep, the PCs did some minor bullying of court employees in order to provide themselves with a financial tip. Two of the three succeeded, the last did not, and the transaction ended. This ‘encounter’ was completely unexpected and I think I did a good job of inventing an NPC on the spot and running the interaction which included some skill rolls. The group gained solid advantage, but didn’t succeed completely – it even made sense that the character with the low charisma is the one who failed.
To provide some context, the PCs recently arrived in a small pocked dimension and found themselves in the court of Elwind the Matriarch. In the night, powerful magic hit the castle, sending everyone asleep, except for the two PCs who made their saving throws. Everyone was able to wake except for the highest leaders – the Matriarch, her cabinet members (including Mr. Fromell, the Tiefling minister introduced to the earlier) and the captain of the Zain-kin guard pledged to protect the land.
The Zain-kin are a species of large, military monkey-men; the last known clan of them lives in one of the town’s neighborhoods. As a whole, they are allied with Elwind.
As they prepared to seek out the caster of the spell, I wanted to spare them from another tracking skill challenge, so I offered to send a guide along. Only then they researched the magic as provided for in the module, and the guide became superfluous. The PCs still insisted on having their guide, so I went along with it. I planned to send him home when they reached the mouth of the dungeon, no biggie, I thought.
I didn’t put together, however, that I had planned an encounter of raiding Gnolls from the nearby demon controlled region. I quickly downgraded “Scotch” the Zain-kin guide to minion, added an extra gnoll minion, and made sure that poor Scotch didn’t survive the battle. Problem solved, with only minor complaints that they were issued a defective ape-man.
I also didn’t really expect them to fight the Gnolls. One of the PCs has a fairly high passive perception, so they were able to hear the monsters coming. Since the gnolls had nothing to do with their mission (I included them in order to set up future conflict with that region), I thought they might hide from sight.
One nuts and bolts lesson from this encounter: when I drew the (impromptu) battlemap, I should have positioned the characters better, from a practical standpoint. They started at the bottom center, and the gnolls started in the left edge (all relative to me). This had the affect of making much of my terrain irrelevant and made the outside battlefield seem artificially small. All in all it didn’t matter much, but could have been better. My balance of bushy ‘obscuring’ terrain and 5 and 10 foot rocks worked really well. There was cover, and climbing, and hiding and all that good stuff.
I probably should have accelerated the damage at the end of the fight: the toughest mob, with the most hp was saved until last (wisely on all sides); yet there was no doubt how the battle would end. Gnolls don’t run (as a rule) and the PCs had plenty of firepower; not to mention it was the last encounter of their day. I could have easily increased damage by .5 on all sides when the outcome became assured…
The last big takeaway came when they got to the first encounter area of the module. Even though the book is divided into sections, very often the different sections are encountered simultaneously. For example, in our session, as the PCs rappel down to a ledge, the ropes are cut and rocks are hurled at their heads. No problem, however, in the next section of text, you learn that the ground they have just reached is trapped. The lesson here is that good DMs, like good facilitators, good writers, good managers etc… really need to understand how the parts interact and affect one another. This requires some forward thinking and some time spent paying attention to the details.
50 Years of Easter Egg Hunt Trauma
3 weeks ago
