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By Justin D Jacobson I’m going to be posting about my Ptolus campaign, which kicks off tomorrow. I will not be posting as a blow-by-blow recounting of events for entertainment purposes. The purpose of this log is to highlight the pragmatic considerations for DMs running a Ptolus campaign. I will endeavor to note elements that work well and those that don’t, tricks I develop along the way about using the material generally and about specific items, pitfalls that can crop up along the way, and high points of play that might be replicated. Sort of a how-to for Ptolus DMs.
By way of background, I’m an -- ahem -- experienced DM. I’ve been playing for some 20+ years. I’m one of those guys that always ends up DMing. Alas, I haven’t DMed since our last campaign ended approximately two years ago (due to player exodus combined with the requirements of my game publisher hat and, oh yeah, a baby). Out of the blue, my best friend’s nephews (3 of them) got interested in the idea of playing, and my best friend suggested I start up a new campaign. Given my still-existing time constraints, we’ll be playing one Saturday a month. (God bless the wife for allowing that much!)
The participants:
- Dave - The aforementioned “best friend”, 35, chiropractor, experienced, playing a male human paladin who was a member of a mid-level noble house and was “exiled” for consorting with Fes Balacazar with whom he is in love.
- Mike - Another old friend, 35ish, political officeholder, experienced, playing a dwarven gunfighter. (He’ll have a super-detailed backstory when Saturday hits, you can be sure.)
- Mark - A co-worker, 40ish, attorney, our last campaign was his first D&D experience, playing a male gnome druid. He’s the son of a “famous” criminal investigator who was killed mysteriously while investigating one of the noble houses. He’s focusing on poison and taking material liberally from Poisoncraft. I’ve allowed him to dump the classic 2-4th-level druid abilities for a feat from Poisoncraft at 2nd and 4th level.
- Steve - A longtime friend, late 30s, attorney, experienced but has never played with our group, playing a male human barbarian. He’s an actual barbarian, i.e., from the Eastern Hordes, who was banished for freezing when attacked while on watch. (We’ll be running NoD, so this will be fun.)
- Jake - One of the nephews, whippersnapper, student, total newbie, playing a male human sorcerer. Killed his parents in a maelstrom of fire when his magical powers first came to the fore.
- Jack - One of the nephews, whippersnapper, student, total newbie, playing a male human urban ranger. Previously suffered from a psychotic break, now recovering but suffers from bouts of amnesia. (Used to run with the Pale Dogs but doesn’t remember that time now.)
- Jim - One of the nephews, whippersnapper, student, total newbie, playing a male human rogue. Has his hands on a mysterious amulet that he doesn’t quite understand.
Initial Prep: I previously mentioned my general lack of prep time. So, I quickly decided that I would be running the Chapter 33 adventures and then segue into NoD. Given the party’s relative strength in melee combat and the fact that they don’t have a cleric, I decided on a Spire-based campaign. So, after NoD, we will move to the Undercity, the Spire, and ultimately Dreta Phantas. This is a general outline of course. I think one of my GMing strengths is my ability to subtly railroad a campaign. However, it’s utter folly to try and plan out an entire campaign from the start. We’ll get to NoD and see how it goes from there. I expect that the character backgrounds may move to the forefront and send things in vastly different directions.
In preparation, I decided to skim the entire book. I knew I didn’t have the time to read the whole thing. In my experience, it’s better to have a broad overview of a lot of things than in-depth knowledge of a few things. As the players developed they’re backstories, I read up on the various organizations and places they included, e.g., the Balacazars, the Pale Dogs, etc.
The Chapter 33 adventures seemed fairly simple and straightforward. However, I thought the opening encounter required to much deus ex machina for seven PCs. So, I developed a pre-adventure encounter. In short, all of the PCs are having dinner or a stiff drink at the Ghostly Minstrel. A small group of Pale Dogs tries to hold up the joint. I envision this as the hold-up from the opening and closing scene in Pulp Fiction. Yes, the idea of holding up a restaurant full of seasoned adventurers is the height of stupidity. This scenario allows me to accomplish a few things: (1) I can start in media res, and there’s nothing better than a ginormous bar brawl; (2) many of the patrons will endeavor to escape, hide under tables, or die in the uprising, whereas the PCs will be naturally drawn together by their response; (3) Iltumar Shon just so happens to be present, thanks the PCs for their help, and offers them a discount at the shop as a reward; (4) the hold-up is a cover for something else, i.e., a Balacazar operative uses it as a diversion to ransack one of the PCs rooms; and (5) it will give me an opportunity to realistically have the party together when the assault on Phon goes down, e.g., after they all leave the Bull and Bear. When creating your own encounters, it’s invaluable to consider what the function of the encounter is in the context of the campaign. This one serves a lot of goals for my group.
I don’t expect to get any further than the first adventure and possibly the first interlude. So, I’ve read through those thoroughly. When running an adventure, even one you’ve written yourself, keep an eagle eye out for possible pitfalls and how you might be able to handle them. As others have mentioned, the only real hole I’ve identified with the initial adventure is if the Pale Dogs in the first encounter get away scott free. Certainly, there are ways to get the party back on the trail, but I think these solutions will be awkward at best. I’ve decided that they will attempt to escape and, if successful, will still lose the sheet with the warehouse instructions during the chase.
Concerns: I have a slight concern that I’ll overlook some of the foreshadowing events. I love using foreshadowing events. My concern here is that, because I don’t know the setting material like the back of my hand (as I do when I run my own campaign world), the events will either be jarringly obvious or become so inflated as to distract from the primary adventure. I will make sure to err on the side of subtlety, which is always a good idea with a larger group of players anyway. All it takes is one player to pipe in with an “Oh yeah, I remember that guy!” to make it all worthwhile. With foreshadowing events, the DM’s goal should be to make them as subtle as possible without being utterly forgettable.
Ironically, my other, slightly greater concern is that I’ll stumble over the little stuff, e.g., days of the week, names of the coins, relative locations of the districts, etc. At first blush, this might seem like a trivial concern. However, it’s susceptible of two different, equally distasteful outcomes. Either I spend time scouring the book for the official answer, which breaks the rhythm of the adventure, or I use my best guess on the fly, which leaves me susceptible to varying answers over the course of the campaign and diminishing verisimilitude. In the end, there’s not much I can do about this. I will go with my gut on a case-by-case basis. If I think I know, I will go for it; if I’m pretty sure I don’t, I’ll scour as fast as my fingers will allow me.
Nuts and Bolts: When preparing, think about how play will physically occur. Athletes try to envision themselves taking game-winning shots. I do the same thing for running rpgs, trying to envision things as they will take place at the table. It gives me ideas for game aids that I might not otherwise think of until it’s too late. I went ahead and broke down and bought the Ghostly Minstrel adventure tiles from Ed. I have a perfectly fine battlemat, but I figured for our opening salvo it would be nice to have a more detailed floorplan. This may also allow me to encourage the newbies to fight creatively, e.g., using an upturned table as cover, worrying about attacks of opportunity, being able to charge or not, etc. Be organized! I’ve already got minis and counters selected for the various encounters. They are further broken down by encounter. I usually use Ziploc bags with numbered slips of paper in them so I can access the figures quickly, e.g., while the players are rolling for initiative. Think about ways to empower the players in the world-building process. I’ve printed out selected handouts for selected players. For example, Dave’s character is a life-long citizen. I figured he’d know a lot of the information on the Filling Campaign Needs handout. So, I printed off a copy of that and blacked out a few entries he probably wouldn’t be too familiar with, e.g., the Undercity entries. Facilitate role-playing with aids. I printed out index cards with the characters’ names on them to use as name cards to avoid confusion and to encourage the players to refer to themselves and others by their characters’ names. I’m going by the store on the way home to pick up some minis for the newbies. You may have noticed that I’m focusing a lot on the newbies. I’m not worried about the vets: They know how to play, and I know they’ll enjoy themselves. For the newbies, I want to ensure they have a good time from the get-go to get them hooked.
Session #1 - After-Action Report
The first session went very well overall. Reiterating from my initial post, there were some things that came up that surprised me. Fortunately, none of these were large enough to derail the session.
As to be expected, the whippersnappers needed some help finishing up their character sheets. We were scheduled for a 9:00 start. One player showed up at 9:20. We ultimately got started at 10:00. Nothing to lose sleep over, and I expect we’ll start more promptly next time.
The pre-adventure encounter (the stick-up at the Ghostly Minstrel) went quite well. I was particularly pleased that one of the players, almost as soon as they realized what was going on said excitedly: “What the hell are these guys thinking?!” The battle was fun. The adventure tiles from Skeleton Key were worth the price of admission. A few of the players were inspired by the details on the map that wouldn’t have been on my battle mat had I drawn out the space. The whippersnappers picked up combat fairly well. The one playing the sorcerer is certainly an outside-the-box kind of guy; he had his owl familiar pick up a bottle from behind the bar and drop it on a chair and then started a blaze with his burning hands. Of course, the action was ludicrous. Everyone at the table was thinking and a few were saying: “What the hell are you starting a fire for?” (I may have a pyro on my hands as evidenced by some other comments he made during the course of the session. Excellent--I can use that.) (Un)fortunately, he lost his spell when he failed his Concentration check as he was harried by one of the Pale Dogs. The whippersnapper playing the rogue dove over the bar and threw his dagger at the pistol-wielding leader (but missed). The one playing the urban ranger, failed his Will save after the fight and blacked out; when he woke up, he didn’t remember anything about the fight. I think he enjoyed that. Mechanically, if he encounters any of the Pale Dogs, he has to make a Will save or risk short-term temporary retrograde amnesia. Try to develop a mechanical representation for important character features. These mechanics shouldn’t drastically alter the game. However, when you use mechanics to tie it in, it becomes something more than just color. In the case of this character, I call for the check after the battle is over; making him miss out on the battle from the start wouldn’t be much fun.
There was some other fun fallout from the brawl. The watch was called in and, of course, asked everyone for their papers. The barbarian is using forged papers. Fortunately, for him the officer failed his Spot check. I had the proprietor of the GM make it quite clear (when he peeked his head out of the kitchen after the brawl was over, of course) that by operation of Ptolus law all possessions of the criminals become property of the owner of the establishment where the crime occurs. Still, the dwarf gunfighter aced his Sleight of Hand check and managed to palm one of the bad guy’s dragon pistols without anyone noticing. The charismatic sorcerer bluffed the owner into thinking that one of the Pale Dogs’ coin purses was actually his and he was just getting it back.
In my prior post, I mentioned that the goal of the foreshadowing events is to make them as interesting as possible without derailing the adventure. The corollary to that is: The greater the number of players, the greater the risk of derailment. Similarly, The greater the number of players, the more difficult it is to get the party formed and get the adventure going. In retrospect, it occurred to me that I’ve never DMed a campaign for a group of players this large before. I’ve done one-shots, sure, but those don’t suffer from the derailment issue that a free-form campaign does. This is something I’ll have to keep in mind; I’ll really have to firm up my hooks.
As I mentioned, I’m a bit rusty. Nothing went too horribly, but I did make one unfortunate error. The druid was sending his viper companion into every battle. He took a nasty blow in the GM brawl and was dying (didn’t die thankfully). But everyone in the group, myself included, was chiding him for doing so. At first, I suggested that he couldn’t flank the enemy because he must be too small; I told him not to roll separately for the snake’s initiative; etc. This was born from wrong-headed thinking. In retrospect, it occurred to me that I’ve never had anyone play a druid in one of my campaigns before. I was coming to the situation from the perspective of a mage’s familiar. After the session, I went back and reread the animal companion section. Well, I’m dead wrong. There’s a pretty big difference between the druid’s animal companion and a mage’s familiar. Even experienced DMs have things they can learn. I owe Mark an apology and will work to correct the issue in future sessions. On the other hand, this will make for some nice roleplaying opportunities as the druid tries to convince the other characters that he knows what he is doing and the snake earns his stripes so to speak.
Additional fallout from the large-party issue: Combat was marginally more difficult to keep track of. Generally, when I run combat, I simply use a legal pad, write down all the participants in initiative order and keep track of other notes on the same sheet. New combat, new sheet of paper. We ended up doing 3 combats during this session. They went fine, but I think it will be less chaotic for me if I make it into a form. Nothing fancy. Sometimes, just the act of typing stuff out makes it more orderly. If you do something repetitively, make it into a form.
One thing’s for certain, given their greater enjoyment from the battles than from the investigation aspects and given the party’s large size, I will definitely have to ramp up the combat. Next session, they will be facing off against Toridan Cran. You can bet I’ll be adding in some snipers from across the street and a couple of bodyguards patrolling the perimeter. (Which will also solve the problem I anticipate with the smallness of the quarters for a group of this size.)
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