Well, we had our first adventure and after throwing out a mock combat (the team against a group of 3-5 level Kobolds) that allowed our new players to essentially see the mechanics of the thing and get a sense for what combat in D&D is like, we started up the campaign.
And of course things quickly went sideways.
What was supposed to be a night composed of a skill challenge, some general roleplay and 2 (possibly 3) encounters instead turned out to be a skill challenge and around 4 hours of roleplay as the party did some CSI like investigation into the death of a doppleganger that was following them and general exploration of the city of Sharn. This wasn't my intent but they circumvented the two encounters by either going in the opposite direction or talking their way out of combat.
It was pretty cool, all said, and the party seemed to be really enjoying themselves. They really loved the hybrid version of the Skill Challenge that I've swiped from Dave.
All in all, my players kept me on my toes, did things I wasn't expecting and roleplayed like we never have. Despite not getting to the Encounters that I was looking forward to seeing played out, I'm putting this night in the win column.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Sounds like it went sideways in a good way, though. It's always rough when you spend a lot of time planning and they dodge those encounters, but it sounds like you got to do some improv GMing and you and the players had a good time.
ReplyDeleteThat's cool.
I'm a huge fan of the "stay frosty" model of GM'ing. My typical map for a story is a few circles on a large sheet of paper with plot actions on them. Not NPC's, not encounters, not reveals but what I want to show in the world or game that night. So I might write down something like "Intelligent Elementals Bound to Airship". Then I make sure that somehow, someway the players go aboard an Airship and are shown that the engine behind them is actually enslaved. I also keep a name generator up or a long list of names printed out so that when they decide to go into the store I put no work into I can give the shopkeeper a name other than "Joe" or "Fred".
ReplyDeleteMy point, I left it here somewhere, is that it sounds like you did a great job keeping on your toes. To me, that's one of the core elements of being a good DM. Congrats!
So Kevin, if you were to post that name generator (or list of names) up on this here blog, I'd be grateful. It's one of those things I've always meant to do, but it gets lost in my various other preparations.
ReplyDelete