"It Smells Like Death"

[the_gneech]

Well, gaming went pretty well, I think, after what I knew was going to be a slow start. We integrated pholph's bard, "Ulf the Adequate," into the game ... in many ways, he's a worthy replacement for Tateland, camstone's retired rogue. He gives Kyriela grief and Jaer someone to bounce banter off of, and has an interesting set of skills and abilities the group has never done much with before.

The first part of the session was pretty much "shopping." Ulf needed equipment, and the rest of the party had some loot, so there was a lot of "Hmm ... can I afford that? Or if I get that, can I get that and that?" There was also a lot of people wanting to be secretive about their new character upgrades, either in the form of taking a new multiclass, or inventing new spells. Jaer and Kyriela nearly came to blows when Kyriela wanted to stay in Sareden doing spell research for three days. Finally, the characters returned to their new "home town" of Pellak, where a ton of potential jobs were waiting for them.

The "hub" model of adventure design I talked about before, had some interesting side effects. The characters now have threads going off in all directions throughout Bissel they can persue. Their plan: "Do 'em all, in order of urgency!" Thus, the merchant's kidnapped daughter gets first priority, probably followed by the bees in Appletop, then the "mysterious reports of a gigantic creature" to the northeast ... with a possible foray into the city to the northwest the cultists from a previous session claimed to be from.

The question for me is, do I want them to do them all? What events do I want to keep moving forward in the "lesser urgency" threads, and what do I want to keep static? Are the characters going to end up leveling up faster than the scenario difficulties they're facing, by virtue of taking on every challenge they can find?

I've also noticed that I've got a very plot-focused group -- or perhaps I should say goal-oriented. At the end of the evening, after a decent-sized battle against a batch of would-be ambushers, the characters immediately set out to track the kidnappers to their lair ... without pausing to loot the bodies! In past scenarios, they've gone through major sections of dungeon without stopping to look for loot at all. On the one hand, that's very cool ... in adventure fiction, how often does the hero stop to loot, for instance? On the other, D&D is built on assumptions, one of which is that the characters kill monsters and take their stuff. ;) So as time goes on, it may be harder for the party to acquire the kind of equipment they're expected to have to take on the higher-level monsters.

Maybe I should just set up more situations where the treasure comes from achieving the goal, rather than from looting. The merchant whose daughter has been kidnapped has offered them 5,000 gp worth of gems or the deed to a house for the rescue of his wayward child, for instance, so the mooks they wiped out tonight were pretty low on loot anyway (for the metagame reason of not flooding the adventure with too much cash). So even if they don't stop to loot the bodies, they haven't missed that much.

Anyway, it was fun. :) Hope we can do it again next weekend, but that really depends on how much MFM prep I can get done between now and then.

-The Gneech

Comments

[jamesbarrett.livejournal.com]

you know that's funny cause when we're playing my game, I have Kat to play, who naturally loots constantly and yet, for your game, I never even noticed we didn't. Huh. interesting

also, tonight was the first time I realized how hard it could be to play two people at once. While thinking of reactions for one, events past by possible reactions for the other. And when I did get to react, who was that again who said that? -Frisk

[kamau-d-lyon.livejournal.com]

Dang, sounds like you have a great game and group of players. That's the type of group I'd love to be involved with on a regular basis but alas no such luck in my area and with my schedule. I'll keep an eye out to see how this system of yours move on.

[camstone.livejournal.com]

Re: Storyline - I think the issue was one of urgency with the kidnapped daughter in the game, and the one villan who got away - and perhaps killing the girl - that kept us from "looting." I was concerned that the daughter might be in danger, thus "forget the loot, we can buy stuff later with the reward" became my rationale. Also, there was a bit of "revenge" when we fell into that ambush. I wanted to get whoever tried to "set up the bomb" because I figured it was in the genre of the existing D&D senerio. And too, not having someone naturally begin that sequence (eg a rogue who does it as part of their personae) made me miss that cue.

I had actually thought of going over to the wizzard and seeing what he had... but, the urgency of "Get the girl" was first thing in my mind.

Ah well... "coulda, woulda, shoulda"... I still really liked it.