Bad Gaming Session
For those non-gamers, you might want to skip this post.
I had a bad gaming session last night. I put my party up against two encounters that were less than straight up fights and took out a PC in a manner that shut her down for the entire session. It was a challenge for my players, but they were ultimately frustrated because they felt, and rightly so, that I didn't give them enough information.
The first encounter involved them entering a sea hag's cave. The two boats used for crossing the cave were tied up on the other end of the cave. They sent out one of the PCs to go get them, but she rolled badly on her save and was effected by the hag's evil eye. She's cursed and dazed for the next three days. The hag ran out of uses of her evil eye and decided to try and weaken the whole group in one shot. One shot is what it ended up being, because as soon as she revealed herself, they skewered her.
The party retreated to a defensible position and holed up for the night until they could revive the cursed PC. In the middle of the night, the party was attacked by a group of vampiric mephits. The encounter was difficult as the mephits were able to dominate the fighters and send them after the spellcasters. After the domination was dealt with via a circle, the mephits decided to play hide and seek with the party. Their good hide check combined with the parties poor spot check meant that the mephits would keep winning that battle. When the mephits were spotted, they cast stinking cloud and hid in the vapors. Finally the mephits attempted to gang up on a pair of the weaker PCs and were dispatched.
However, had they known that the mephits were some form of undead, they could have dealt with the problem with little difficulty - a quick turn check and the mephits turn to dust. I didn't spefically tell them that they weren't undead ("They're mephits...") but I didn't describe the mephits in any level of detail that would have indicated to the party that they were undead. In fact, I forgot that the mephits as undead were not able to be sneak attacked, giving credence to the just a mephit line of thinking.
I know that, as a DM, one of the things that I need to work on is my use of description. We frequently play module-based campaigns where I tweak the source material to better fit my party. My best descriptive passages end up being the ones that I read from the book. The next best ones involve effect of the party slicing its opponent into tiny pieces. A very distant third would be a description of the rooms that they are in, the monsters that they face. I also have a problem with dialogue which means that we spend a lot of our time role-playing by description or roll-playing. I need to get better at my role and I know what needs to get done. I just don't know how to do it.
I had a bad gaming session last night. I put my party up against two encounters that were less than straight up fights and took out a PC in a manner that shut her down for the entire session. It was a challenge for my players, but they were ultimately frustrated because they felt, and rightly so, that I didn't give them enough information.
The first encounter involved them entering a sea hag's cave. The two boats used for crossing the cave were tied up on the other end of the cave. They sent out one of the PCs to go get them, but she rolled badly on her save and was effected by the hag's evil eye. She's cursed and dazed for the next three days. The hag ran out of uses of her evil eye and decided to try and weaken the whole group in one shot. One shot is what it ended up being, because as soon as she revealed herself, they skewered her.
The party retreated to a defensible position and holed up for the night until they could revive the cursed PC. In the middle of the night, the party was attacked by a group of vampiric mephits. The encounter was difficult as the mephits were able to dominate the fighters and send them after the spellcasters. After the domination was dealt with via a circle, the mephits decided to play hide and seek with the party. Their good hide check combined with the parties poor spot check meant that the mephits would keep winning that battle. When the mephits were spotted, they cast stinking cloud and hid in the vapors. Finally the mephits attempted to gang up on a pair of the weaker PCs and were dispatched.
However, had they known that the mephits were some form of undead, they could have dealt with the problem with little difficulty - a quick turn check and the mephits turn to dust. I didn't spefically tell them that they weren't undead ("They're mephits...") but I didn't describe the mephits in any level of detail that would have indicated to the party that they were undead. In fact, I forgot that the mephits as undead were not able to be sneak attacked, giving credence to the just a mephit line of thinking.
I know that, as a DM, one of the things that I need to work on is my use of description. We frequently play module-based campaigns where I tweak the source material to better fit my party. My best descriptive passages end up being the ones that I read from the book. The next best ones involve effect of the party slicing its opponent into tiny pieces. A very distant third would be a description of the rooms that they are in, the monsters that they face. I also have a problem with dialogue which means that we spend a lot of our time role-playing by description or roll-playing. I need to get better at my role and I know what needs to get done. I just don't know how to do it.
posted by mypetrock at 10:55 AM
1 Comments:
Being one of the frustrated, and having had time to reflect, there is a core factor for frustration we tend to overlook: by D&D standards, we're barely better than complete noobs. Even worse, we're comfortable enough with how we've structured things to date that we don't do enough thinking/questioning for our own good.
To draw a parallel: It's said that the first time you architect a solution it will work because you stick to the tried-and-true way. Your second architecture tends to fall flat on its face as you reach too far and try to encompass every cool thing you can think of without ballance; heck, you've done this before. Finally, with more experience, you learn to curb your enthusiasm, don't try to reinvent the wheel, but do try to take it places it needs to go with style!
From the player side of the relationship, we're basically stuck in the 2nd architecture. We tend to want to play "fun" or different characters. We think we know how to handle situations -- and when we get it right I'd hate to be on the other side -- but we've forgotten that there is a balance.
The group's chemistry works. Some nights are better for socialization, some for getting stress off our backs, and on a rare occasion we actually game well. It's unfair to have one person, even if that is the DM, take all of the responsibility for the struggle.
For my part in overly voicing my frustration at that particular moment, I need to apologize. The frustration was real, but I didn't need to voice things strongly before having proper time to reflect.
Besides, the author of this module is a (arrExplitives[math.random()]) ba@#%^&
Game On!!!
Aerstis, Mystic Theurge in training.
Post a Comment
<< Home