squeen
8, 8, I forget what is for
Played twice (!) this weekend...was Father's Day after all. 
The players managed to leave the Aether Islands with a bunch of loot, and also freed the trapped prisoners (old Wizard's Guild magicians) in the Maze/Tesseract. They even handled the Abomination in the Pit deftly after finding some clues in old books on how the Witch Queen's priests used to wear golden robes and staffs to corral the beast towards its intended victim.
Here's some more Player Feedback I got directly:
EDIT: Last comment: PLAY TEST! You learn so much about what's missing when you play test. Wish I could run the campaign a dozen times just to iron out the garbage and find the holes.
The players managed to leave the Aether Islands with a bunch of loot, and also freed the trapped prisoners (old Wizard's Guild magicians) in the Maze/Tesseract. They even handled the Abomination in the Pit deftly after finding some clues in old books on how the Witch Queen's priests used to wear golden robes and staffs to corral the beast towards its intended victim.
Here's some more Player Feedback I got directly:
- The threat of wandering monsters in the Ethereal Plane (Aether Islands) was too much (too often). They thought that after the top-predator, i.e. the Phase Minotaur, was vanquished, then it would take months to a years for anything else to start showing up. They didn't know this directly, but inferred I was checking much more often: I had local wandering monsters at 1 in 6 per turn, and "Visitors from the Void" arriving at the island at 1 in 20 per turn. ***NEVER ACTUALLY FOUGHT A SINGLE RANDOM MONSTER***
- SUMMARY: They felt pressured by the wandering monster checked and hurried to leave. I loved the heightened tension---they didn't.
- Our thief complained that my more diligent tracking of lightning (oil usage/turn for lanterns, when infravision is spoiled and the limits of it's discerning power, etc.) is "not fun" (hi DP!) and we should hand-waive it more (like we used to). What I noticed was once I started caring about lighting (and who was holding the lantern) then suddenly pints of oil became precious commodities. Also, a small, seemly minor magic item they recovered from the waters beneath the Earth Temple---a tiny glowing brine-shrimp in a amber-egg---has now become one of their most used and mentioned items. It gets "passed around". Silly really, the cleric can cast continual light (but I have a house rule that the spell casters can maintain two "permanent" spells like continual light/invisibility per level simultaneously).
- SUMMARY: light has become a resource. Minor magic is now valuable. I like that---they claim they don't.
- FULL BRYCIAN FORMAT: The areas I wrote up in The Format (see below) were MUCH easier to run. I found myself wishing I had time to clean up everything. It really makes DMing so much easier. No joke. Is you look at this weekend's post Obsidian Keep, you see another example of that format.
- Just what your senses detect first, separated from greater detail below
- blue-text (or underlined) cross-referencing for closer examination
- terse but with evocative details
- LORE segregated from the essential-at-the-table (functional) text
- INSET MAPS: These local zoom-in's are SO helpful for larger maps. They immediately let you know where you are in the text, and organize the content in such a helpful way. When I didn't have it, I was flipping around like an idiot...and I wrote this stuff! On the pages with an inset map, I was golden. I knew immediately where to find the keyed text. I can't emphasize enough how helpful they are.
- SMALL ICONS: Totally working for me. Aren't ugly or distracting. Don't get in the way of the text. Super-valuable for lighting. I'm sold.
- Interesting Treasure: I already mentioned the glowing-shrimp and how it pleased me that something that doesn't lob fireballs is valued. Adiitionally, I also put a stack of gold bars with the stamp from the Treasury in the the corrupted Prince's abode instead of the usual/boring "chest of gold pieces". This had a few effects:
- they wondered (a lot) why it was there --- and tied it to references in the banned tomes about the priests' golden robes. End up melting it down and making their own protective tools.
- made them worry about selling it
- continued to paint a picture of a rotten Prince turned to evil (family theft)---minor, but I liked what they were inferring without being explicitly told. Bryce talks about this sometimes. Show, Don't Tell. This went to the next level when they found his hidden laboratory where he was cutting up cadavers and had turned street orphans into ghouls through forced cannibalization. The player's openly commented on how he's "worse than they thought". Remember these is just clues scattered about the world about Lareth (from T1 and long dead), his outstanding gifts, overwhelming Pride, and fall into depravity. The hated him as a arch enemy, killed him eventually, are masquerading as him currently, following the clues left behind from his inquisitive mind during his youth, and now finally seeing the places unchecked arrogance took him. I think they've gone through a full emotional spectrum with regards to how they feel about this one particular character in the world. HATE-FAMILIARITY-RESPECT-AFFINITY-HORROR. He's been a weird thread tying so much together over the years. It seems like there has got to be SOMETHING universal in Adventure Design to be learned from this. I mean, I never read them some long wall-of-text about the dude. Never! ...And yet, just by thinking through the logic consequences of what it might mean to be "the dark hope of Chaos", i.e. a brilliant and charismatic organizer, and thinking through the elements of his life, they have felt his hand (and other Larger Than Life historical figures) many places. Show. Don't Tell. indeed.
- they've are totally struggling with encumbrance---how to cart large items to some place safe. They are dreaming about owning their own tower/demesne.
- Environmental Clues: EOTB was saying that, unlike the VTT (above), that in theater-of-the-mind style play, that any mentioned detail tends to get picked up as important by the players. Well, mine don't. I don't think that's because they are bad players, instead---when I take the time to really flesh out (write up) an area, and am trying to be evocative (in a show-don't-tell manner)---the little window-dressing details get included to sell the story. I routinely (and my players have started calling it "do your little spiel") try to verbally paint a pitcure of the room and include some of those little scene-setting details. That ends up jumbling up what's important with window-dressing. What I liked from last session was that they entered a hidden room with skeletons hanging on the wall...and completely ignored them until they jumped down to attack (gaining surprise)! Why on Earth didn't they assume that skeletons would attack? Because, there are lots of skeletons, bones, etc. in an old dungeon. They got lured into a false sense of normalcy, and immediately started rifling through the OTHER cool stuff in the room. (Of course, they were kicking themselves, later.) Also related to Environmental Clues is how I am amazed at how often the players pieced together the unspoken back-story---even to the extend of saying out loud what I thought the NPCs were once thinking. Stuff like, "this room is so inaccessible, I'm sure he didn't feel the need to hide stuff in here." My (unspoken) thoughts exactly!
- Open Ended Challenges: They surprised me again and again. Making their own gold-plated weapons. Using Hold Portal in a clever way to over-come an obstacle I had intentionally designed into the scenario to slow them down and limit their success. The list goes on...and I just smile and am secretly both pleased and disappointed they totally bi-passed my mental scenario. DP thinks it's a cop-out to "not draft a proper solution", but heck, there is something to the notion that all you have to do is build the Safe and your players will find a way to crack it open.
- Allies: The players used the Exorcism spell to free the fallen Minotaur from his Curse and gained an ally/local-guide. The have gotten good at leveraging the in-world knowledge of NPCs to avoid tons of pitfalls. Having a local guide is invaluable. There's something fundamental in Grand Design lurking in that notion...I think. Bryce vocally hates "The Tell-All Journal" --- well...how about the Rescued Guide as an information source?
- EOTB-style Illusions: (the long-lost topic of this thread) They totally work. Just treat illusions as 100% real in terms of cause-and-effect unless the PCs take a leap-of-faith action to DEMONSTRATE disbelief (and then, and only then, do they get their saving throw). He's right, half the time, they never knew they were dealing with illusions. You, as DM, must resist the urge to drop obvious hints. There is so much magic players assume the impossible is possible...and react.
- Higher Level Play: It's tough. They players have so many resources at their finger tips. But, again taking EOTB's advice, I just "Let them win". They are starting to really tear it up. He's an example: teleported out of the dungeon as soon as they accomplished their objective (freed the prisoners). Bam! Done. Also, as Huso says: there is no way to challenge them with One Big Baddie---it's got to be waves of attrition.
EDIT: Last comment: PLAY TEST! You learn so much about what's missing when you play test. Wish I could run the campaign a dozen times just to iron out the garbage and find the holes.
Last edited:
