D&D Adventures

[Grimmie]

Okay, so my first forray into Dungeon Mastering is coming to an end. It's been interesting to see the game world from the other side (and experience update apathy first-hand) and come up with stuff on the fly, as the players demand it - for instance I had no details about Wildemill prepared beforehand, and had to make the inn, festival, and social structute of the place up as Bart and Forenrond explored.

I also managed to mess up the spider swarm, by only checking to see if my players could actually hit them when they were starting to try and hit them. I guess if I had made sure they were squishable beforehand then the entire church might have been saved from an inferno.

Firstly, I'd love any feedback you have to give, positive or negative. Too much detail from me, or not enough? Should I have barred the church door or would it be more dramatic for Bart to have knocked it down? Was Wildemill one-dimensional and boring, or somewhere you'd like to explore in the future? Fitzroy and Anson, good characters or boring questgivers?

Secondly, I'll be taking four players out for the next adventure. We have a few queued up (people that have sent me their character sheets): Baliame, Roman Totale, Shot2Bits, Fatherjack. I know there are other people interested, but you'll have to wait till I get a bit more experience under my belt.

There's a few ways the story could go next, but I'll be asking Dog Pants and Joose what direction they want to take when they (finally) get back to the church.

[Roman Totale]

From the perspective of one who wasn't playing, I still enjoyed it.

For future campaigns, I still get confused about which dice to roll and which modifiers to use, so if you could continue to remind us that would be super!

[Dog Pants]

You ran that like a pro. The spider thing just comes down to gauging monster vs player, and not everyone gets it right. At worst give the players a little get-out clause, but be careful not to make it look like deus ex machina. In this case setting fire to the church was a nice side effect of us bailing out.

The brief was fine, as was the setting. Nothing's really caught my attention so far, but that's fine for a first adventure as we're all settling into our characters.

You'll have to get used to things progressing slowly. More people will help, but often you'll find there's only one or two people progressing things. In a forum game that's not too bad as the people who aren't don't get bored like they would in a tabletop game. Of course if there's one or more players who are never doing anything you might have an issue;

You're not giving them stuff to do - If a player has a niche and never gets the opportunity to use his speciality then they'll get bored quickly.
They've gimped their character - If a player has created something that just doesn't fit the campaign or team, they're not likely to find a lot to do
They're not interested - Might be the setting, the campaign doesn't interest them, their character has no hook. Whatever you do they'l not get involved and putting stuff in for them is only going to grind everything to a halt.

[Grimmie]

Thants!

[Joose]

Of course if there's one or more players who are never doing anything you might have an issue

Yeah, sorry about that, entirely my fault. I've got waaaay to many things on my plate at the moment and im afraid D&D kinda fell out the bottom. More than happy to step away and let others take my place, there certainly seems to be enough interest.

Other than that though, I thought it was a good first run. Like Doggers says, everyone gets the monster vs player balance wrong sometimes, even experienced people. In my games, if im not sure about the balance, I do a little trial run of the combat. Get the players character sheets, and just run through a few turns having their characters do what they are likely to do. There has been a couple of times in SR where I have done this and subsequently beefed up or toned down the baddies.

[Grimmie]

It turns out that if you have an illegally procured set of plate armour and a tower shield, not a lot can hit you.

[FatherJack]

I enjoyed reading it, and after having been through the character creation process and re-reading it it was fairly clear even to me where the stats and rolls played their parts and what the two guys were roughly good at.

I'd encourage anyone who enjoys reading these to make a char, even if they don't plan to play, as it gives you an insight into what's going on. There's a generator here, or you can just fire up D&D Online and make a character in that (although they give you more points than you would have ordinarily).

I'd have liked to know a bit more about the characters, either from the introduction or through dialogue between them. Of course with there only being two players, one of whom was busy a lot of the time, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for that. I think that above all is what has me most interested in this now, whereas I've previously avoided it.

While creating my character background I had an epiphany. Instead of focussing on (what I personally found) the uncomfortable aspects of pretending to be a character, I realised I wasn't doing that at all - I was telling a story. And I love stories. And a big part of what makes a good story is the characters and the dialogue.

[Joose]

And a big part of what makes a good story is the characters and the dialogue.

This. If you look at that PAX D&D game video, on a fundamental level all that happened is they rocked up in some hell dimension and hit some people. What made it fun is the "flavour" that was put into the characters and the dialogue.

It goes both ways: Players need to have fun fleshing out their character with personality, but DM's need to do the same. DM's are essentially just another player, but with a *lot* of characters.

[Grimmie]

I wrote up stats for Anson the other night, and realised he can do cool things, hopefully I'll get to work this into the story some time and give you a flavour of what the protectors of the faith at your church are capable of.. But you'll have to wait and see when that happens

[Roman Totale]

It's not just you Joose - I was reading back Inch from Eden the other day, and I just disappeared half way through. Not sure I did anything for the conclusion. Bloody life getting in the way!

[Joose]

I wrote up stats for Anson the other night, and realised he can do cool things, hopefully I'll get to work this into the story some time and give you a flavour of what the protectors of the faith at your church are capable of.. But you'll have to wait and see when that happens

aaaah, the curse of the GM: Coming up with cool things that never see the light of day.

[Grimmie]

Ah Inch from Eden. Bertha's christening shots. Memories.. *Distant gaze*

[HereComesPete]

It's not just you Joose - I was reading back Inch from Eden the other day, and I just disappeared half way through. Not sure I did anything for the conclusion. Bloody life getting in the way!

+1

Tanks and yet another new job role are sucking my time away like a toothless granny sucking on a boiled sweet.

[Roman Totale]

boiled sweet.

Is that what you're calling it now?

[HereComesPete]

I still prefer the term love pump.

[Dog Pants]

It's not just you Joose - I was reading back Inch from Eden the other day, and I just disappeared half way through. Not sure I did anything for the conclusion. Bloody life getting in the way!

I posted the BPN on Team8 here if anyone's interested. I don't think it gives away any major plot, and it might provide an insight into how I write and run a BPN.