Underlabyrinth DnD Group 1 Session 5

[jack]

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We ended up adding two new players, Liv and someone from the interested group, when a couple of players weren't sure if they could come. This ended up pretty well, and we had a really good session. I was really glad I'd been able to play with Liv, because I'd been hoping I would be able to and I wasn't sure.

The week leading up to the session I'd ended up a bit stressed by the logistics. I'd tried to structure things so it was fine if I didn't know exactly who would be there and I didn't need to worry about it until Monday, but it didn't work out that way. I kept wanting to do prep to make sure I was ready for any of the players, and to make sure I didn't have too many players if I invited more, but that meant players vanishing into various crises affected the planning more than I'd hoped.

What Went Well

I did too much prep, but I think it was the right sort of things that helped build the campaign.

We started off with a little war council of the players and a couple of NPCs. This took a little long, but everyone got a good sense of what mission they were planning, what the alternatives were, what they hoped to achieve, etc, and I don't think I could have cut it much shorter. Everyone had good intel on possible alternate missions.

Several characters brought up possible clues which they'd had in session 1 and I'd been prepared to remind them of if needed, and several characters followed up on things I'd expected to come up like "did we get a more full translation of that inscription"?

They chose the mission I expected, and weren't as on board as I hoped, but I think they were reasonably happy with it. This was, "collect bounties for track down fungus creature who'd invaded the mines and killed miners, and the traitors who'd let them in". I'd only imperfectly managed a balance between establishing a status quo and keeping events moving, so the mission didn't feel as important to them as I'd hoped, but I think it at least had reasonably clear rewards, both tangible and intangible.

They also had several other quests they were quite eager to work on, exploring the river, looking for most lost civilisation, looking for the remains of the navigation device, plus a few private ones, so I hope that might come up next.

The new navigation rules didn't come up much, but seemed to work well. I hope as people get more familiar with them, they'll make the players feel more able to make sensible trade-offs about which routes to take.

Several things I'd been trying to bring up came up, like J's character Lucke getting to use his spellthief ability. The party revisited the square where they were first ambushed by rock bears, and were attacked by a lone rock bear who was totally outclassed. They're getting used to always looking up, I'll need to give them some more competence moments, and then maybe some curveballs :)

C's character Sammy did several awesome combat stunts, using his amazing dexterity to drop from the ceiling impaling the rock bear, and leaping onto the back of a fungus-zombie ogre. And using his parrot to scout.

And AGAIN he used thunderwave to completely take out a small squad of kobolds, because it's area of effect, and guarantee of doing a small amount of damage to everyone in a group, is perfect for taking them out. I loved this so much: I couldn't have arranged it better, and it's really satisfying.

What I could have done better: planning

I should have got the regular players to make a firm decision in advance which mission they'd pursue, so I could double check my plans for that specifically. I tried to do this, but I wanted to have the characters invested in the alternatives which meant it was hard to do in downtime, and I wanted the players I wasn't sure if they'd turn up to have some input. Even if in practice they'd usually go along with what everyone else wanted I wanted them a bit invested. But maybe I should have accepted it was too hard to make that happen.

What I could have done better: communication

If I'd done that, I should have thought through a few alternatives of how the session was likely to go. I had a vague plan, but I made the mistake of focussing too much on what I'd imagined happening, and not imagining several variants. In particular, I keep making the mistake of not thinking, "if it all goes wrong and they end up in a brawl with superior forces, what's likely to happen" despite that often being the most likely way things will go wrong.

I need to prepare more ways of giving information. When they got close to the fungus lair, the first thing they saw was some kobolds nervously watching round the following corner, waiting for someone. And I'd envisaged almost exactly that, but I didn't stop to think "what do I need to convey? I need to convey what's going on here, the kobold leader is infiltrating the lair, and the rest of her squad are waiting for her" and making sure (a) that I had some ways that would be obvious and (b) a firm idea what I needed the players to know. If I'd thought this through more specifically I probably would have done, but I didn't.

I'd thought, "the kobolds are watching nervously and whispering, there's clearly something round the corner, probably the fungus lair", and "once the players are cautious, they'll be able to scout more and find out what's going on" and "even if it goes wrong and things get into combat, they'll realise they might need to retreat"

But I hadn't realised, my planning was still quite vague. The players understood there was something round the corner, but it didn't make sense to them that it might be dangerous but the kobolds were still waiting there whispering quietly, instead of retreating further away. I thought I'd conveyed this enough with, "you don't know what might be there, it might be something dangerous the kobolds aren't running away from for unknown reasons, it might be a big squad of kobolds, it might be the fungus lair you've come looking for". But the situation had already tripped the player's "this doesn't really make sense" meter, so (I think?) they felt there was no point trying to understand it, so they felt like the whole thing was GM fiat, and they might as well just attack because no other course of action was possible.

I've had this problem in several games, and my players have been (not a lot, but somewhat) frustrated. I've been sending off "don't hold things up, just attack" signals to the players, even when I think I'm sending almost the reverse. But it's hard to know what to do to NOT do that, when it's not something I'm consciously doing. Maybe I need to explicitly check in, "my read of the tactical situation is this, what's yours? ok, I now I hear that I realise I missed some things out". I was already trying to do that but maybe I need to do it more.

But this has happened sufficiently often I'm clearly doing SOMETHING wrong, but I'm not clear what. Each case is almost the same. I set up a difficult opposition, I expect the players to sneak round and ambush them, or sneak and steal their stuff, or come up with some quirky implausible plan, or SOMETHING. And then, the players end up in a head-on combat, and because I was trying to communicate "it's not safe to attack head on", it's a really bad head on combat. Twice it was an ambush, and I tried to ask "if you sneak round behind them you'll probably do well, if you rush in, it'll probably be too hard to win", and the players said that sounded to them like I was saying "hurry up, just attack". This time, I'd communicated that the fungus lair might have too many enemies to follow a "kick in the door, kill everyone" strategy, but I hadn't communicated that "you're looking for a fungus lair, you see some kobolds in the vicinity, peering anxiously at something you can't see" that the fungus lair and "the thing you can't see, that might be for instance the fungus lair" might be the same thing.

I think part of it is I need more straightforward head-to-head combats so players get to know what enemies and terrain advantages they can take head on and which are a challenge but if they're in combat it's worth persevering, and which they need to run away from, and then when they see something new, they'll really-know-in-their-gut not just in-theory-know, what they can handle and what they can't.

Another part of the problem is, they'd previously rescued the lost miners from a large organised force of kobolds, in a situation where the kobolds were clearly the aggressors, and I'd underestimated how much that would make "just kill them immediately" the natural reaction, without caring whether that forwarded any particular goal.

This is partly the fault of time constraints. They'd seen quite a few animate creatures they didn't need to fight, but maybe not enough. And a lot is the fault of dnd mechanics: first mover advantage in combat is so powerful, retreating, or doing anything other than a coordinated immediate attack, is so likely to get people killed, it feels futile to even consider.

It's not bad if the party sometimes get in over their heads. But they've had a few really difficult encounters recently, and I'd hoped for something easier, it feels like they feel completely without agency. It's fine if the party do get in trouble, it's that sort of game. But it was supposed to be when things go wrong in character, not when I accidentally mislead the players. I did wonder if the players would rather be playing a purely hack-n-slash game where you DO attack everything you see, or a more social game, but It feels like the style of game I'm playing actually is suited to the players, but too often something goes wrong and it doesn't work out like that.

Also, unrelated to the combat specifically, there were several plot or background worldbuilding developments I'd hoped to convey this session, but hadn't had a chance to, but I think that contributed to a session where it felt like some things happened but not that much. I'm not disappointed, I should feel happy with "reasonably good" sessions, but I'd hoped the sessions would all be as good as the last couple, and I felt I still have more to do to beat that bar.

Still, I think I am learning rapidly, I hope that now, future sessions will be clearer. I will report back. And I'm really, really glad I did make time to try running a complicated campaign, the lessons are useful for all sorts of games, and for real life!

Is there any other advice I should be trying I've not already mentioned? Or any players want to chime in with what seemed to go wrong (if anything)?

What I could have done better: combat

Once combat started, it was still just a bit slow. I thought I had all the relevant stats to hand, and had the initiative order working smoothly. But it still takes a fair bit of time. The combat at the end was fairly busy so it's not bad that it took longer than others, but both the easy combat and the hard combat took more time than they might have done, mostly due to me looking stuff up, not due to player hesitation. And the same for navigation.

What I could have done better: pacing

This is more nebulous, but after the last session, I'd wanted more little victories along the way, which I think make the session feel a lot more satisfying to the players. The previous session for this group, that was the mini-investigation into "how did the funguses get into the mine", with a lot of incremental, "find out about this guard, ask someone else about what they found out, have a few pieces, put them together" worked very well.

Sometimes this worked well: it felt like the war council, although a bit slow, gave the players some satisfaction in actively choosing the mission.

But I'd hoped that the rest of the session would too. I'd hoped that "trying to track the funguses", "successfully navigating the regions we're already familiar with", "winning an easier version of a combat that previous went badly", "putting together the probable location of the fungus lair, and reconnoitring it" would all feel satisfying in the same way, but it felt like it didn't really. Like, not badly, but it felt like the players felt they were just being shepherded from one to the next, without ever really doing it under their own power.

I was already trying to make this work. I think the main thing to change is, even for simple sessions, try to explicitly think through which bits are likely to feel "goal-like", and try to bring them up. Like, suggesting the PCs be actively tracking earlier, so when they found a clue it would feel like they'd been working towards it. Having the NPCs ask about the location of the lair, have the PCs relay their guess to them, so they were prepped for "we think it's here but we really hope we're right". I think some of that worked, but I could have done it better.

I think practicing this in both campaigns and one shots is really useful. One-shots are easier in that you can prep a much more focused suite of potential stuff. But they NEED you to get it right because if it doesn't happen in three hours it doesn't happen. Campaigns have more latitude, but it's easy to end up with this stuff never really gelling and only happening over a very long run.

I'm not sure if I need to get better with time management in sessions. I had an idea of how long things would take and it only ran a little slow. But I didn't want to skip over things and make the players feel like they had even less agency, and ignore the navigation risks on the unexplored parts of the route.

Is there any other advice I should be trying I've not already mentioned? Or any players want to chime in with what seemed to go wrong (if anything)?

Saying yes, saying no

I've got better as "saying yes", that is, when a player suggests something cool, embracing it, rather than reflexively saying that's impossible. Quite a while ago, I learned the principle of WANTING to do that. But I've slowly learned some practical skills in making it happen. One is, a mechanic for "combat stunts" where "I jump off the ceiling and drop-attack the rock bear" is possible and effective, without breaking the regular action economy.

Another is, letting go of stuff I'd planned. I don't want to make things too easy or hard if the PCs suggest something which would change the status quo. But I almost always can re-use ideas if they don't come up, so if something would be cool, but it needs me to give up something cool I've already thought of, I need to be brave and do it more often than not.

 I also need to be better at handling players keep wanting to do but don't quite fit into the rules, like "can I do that" when it's a specific class feature of another class. Like, rushing up and rapier-ing someone and running away, or having a pet they keep wanting to treat as a familiar. I think, if it's fun, I need to find a way to make it happen. But I feel like if I just let them have it as a bonus I'm borrowing trouble if they end up with more abilities than other players, even if they don't use a lot of them. I think I need to let them have the extra, and rebalance it later only if needed.

ETA

Talking it over with Liv, I realised two important things. One was, there was an awful lot that went well that I'd started to take for granted as part of running a session at all, but that's still quite good, even if I feel like I want to consistently do better.

The other was, when I was offering warnings, my voice is often a bit tongue in cheek, and this came across as sarcastic, like I was telling the players, "not this" or "something like this, but not". That's a shame, but it's actually really good: it's nice and specific so it's hopefully easy to avoid.