Ran a dissapointing game last night

4th edition dnd.

Every once and a while I run a game which I consider, bombs.
The story looses prominence and momentum, Characters start moving against moving forward, players are distracted from the outset and impossible to focus, and combat becomes a little bit of a slog.

I can blame it on a surprise member which resulted in 6 players instead of 5, but I'm sure there is something I could have done better. Firstly I was ready for a game of 5 players, and another turned up without notice. Now at 6 players I had to help 2 players roll characters. One was a paladin, who's personality was vacant mindedness (player personality). The other was a mage who insisted on fighting with his staff unless absolutely necessary. The last adventure had resulted in the Fighter dying and the party was looking for resurrection. So one player was sitting out and it was like moving through mud to get the game rolling. 2 new characters introducing, and all other party members introducing. A few rather keen players were taking the inniative and coming up with all sorts of things they were doing at the time, and how it effected the party, but this did nothing to progress the story.

Story:
The party fought some mercinaries last adventure resulting in the fighters death. They tracked one of the mercenaries who ran, a witch, to her home where they found a scroll nobody could read (rez scroll). So they headed to the nearest town Winterhaven. Unfortunately the town was under martial law, due to what the party find out to be a murder in town. They are turned away at the gates and met a merchant. Being cheapskates they try to convince the merchant to give them free food dispite having plenty of gold. He declines their attempts to score a free meal, and the party is left to starve all their way to Fallcrest in search of a Wizard. They meet the Paladin at the Winterhaven Gates and the wizard on the journey down to Fallcrest. They talk to the local mage who uses the scroll to ressurect the fallen friend. The mage gives them a mission involving the adventure in the back of the DMG. Kobold. They spend the next 3 hours hacking through the dungeon. Get to the gates of the White dragon, and spend all dailies to kill the kobold mage and friends. We call it quits before they can confront the dragon.

Overall I was run down by the adventure. I tried to push them so hard to keep the game flowing that I just got exhausted. Each decision by a party member took longer and longer, I forced delays onto players 4 times because they couldnt' come up with something in 15 seconds. It wasn't an uninteresting fight by design. It just resulted in exchanging of weak hits for ages just to drop a kobold.

In this circumstance I started killing Kobold before they really died when I saw that the party would overwhelm them next round. But damn it took some time. I think the problem was that I was spending too much time managing that I didn't make the battles sound exciting, and didn't get the atmosphere going as much as I could have.

Any suggestions with regards to 6 player parties, or what to do when neither the players or the Kobold are dying but just going round after round exchanging blows.

I'm assuming this was Fourth Edition?

I'm not sure the game runs real well when you have players who, for instance, insist on playing wizards who prefer to use their staff to attack rather than, say, magic missile. It's about as effective and interesting as it was in every other edition - that is to say, very dangerous and pretty boring.

Yeah, but surely there are methods I could have used to increase the potency of the game. I think its a matter of learning how to increase the challenge of the game effectively 'on the fly'.

My idea last night, add one more kobold skirmisher for every encounter. Though I realise I was wrong here because 4 out of 6 players were level 2 characters. Now I'm concerned that the dragon fight lvl 3 solo isn't difficult enough for the party.

I should have increased the damage kobold or something, but its hard to come up with increased danger on the fly without making them look inconsistant. Problem. More hit points was not what the Kobold needed, they needed to be a bigger threat. Thats what I think. Maybe I should have given them exploding pellets in their slings.

There's a really neat chart on page 57 of the DMG dealing with xp budgets for parties of different sizes.

So, I would start there. Look at the encounter you're running, and the total xp for it. Look at the chart to see what it should be for the number of players... then I'd look at the xp cost of the various baddies in the encounter and add another couple of whatever to get to the right number (or remove some).

As for running groups of 6 versus 5 or 4... the biggest problem seems to be keeping everyone involved. I try to make it a habit of working my way around the table to check with each player about what their character is up to.

For instance, I ran a brief encounter where the group was trying to buy some information from someone in a bar. That really only took one or two players (one to negotiate, one to serve as bodyguard in case there was a fight - they were in a bar afterall, and there are always fights in bars). I had 6 players, and in the middle of the negotiations, I would pause and ask the other players what they were up to. Sometimes I get "we're going to try and steal that guy's wallet." and sometimes it's "I'm going to sneak into the warehouse across the street and poke around." In my starwars game, I had a couple characters decide to kidnap a bunch of jawas... so instead of running the game I had in mind... we ran the jawa roundup.

Thinking over the session you described... while some members of the party were trying to negotiate a free lunch, what was everyone else doing? If it had been my group, I guarantee you someone would hae robbed the guy blind - or tried.

As for the upcoming solo... look at the xp of the solo... look at the budget for the group given the number of players and level. Then, if you needed more, I'd throw in a couple lower level kobolds to the mix. There was an article in one of the online magazines at Wizards on kobolds recently that might give you some ideas to make that more interesting. And I believe Mike Mearls blog at the wizards forums has some suggestions on how to make that particular encounter a lot more interesting by changing up the terrain.

FIrst, six players are definitely tough to run. Not an easy task. It's a challenge no matter what.

Second, if you're having an encounter that's sucking wind, don't be afraid to throw the thing out the window and shake things up. Suggestions include:

• Dropping in a surprise monster out of the blue -- such as, have a bullete suddenly burst out of the ground - causing the kobolds to run and everyone to suddenly retool what is happening. Big, dumb monsters like Ettins are awesome. Gets their blood going.
• On the fly, give the monsters - such as the kobolds - better chances to hit the PCs - but lower their AC too. That way they get hit easier - and thus they get killed quicker (but they do more damage so they give the PCs a little more of a scare). If players complain, ignore them! Just say, that's what's happening. Deal with it!
• Kick the PCs butts! Have something jump out and pound some of the PCs - make them get their crap together. And don't be afraid to kill someone (of course, maybe have a raise dead scroll in the bushes for them to find).
• Shift an encounter -- let's say you just had a lame kobold encounter. And there's three more on the agenda that look far too similar. Maybe make up a quick encounter - making the next one an Ettin or whatever so they PCs don't run into the next room and say, 'Oh great, more Kobolds.' Or if you have a different kind of encounter - say a trap or a puzzle set for a later in the adventure - move it up to break up the proceedings.
• Pass a note to someone in the party - say something like 'You start feeling very weak.' Don't do anything about it more than that. Just creep everyone out - make them wondering what's going on (which is nothing!)
• It's going to happen. Some games go badly. People aren't meshing. Sometimes, just skip things and go to the main fights and get the adventure done. Accept it was a bad day - and TELL PEOPLE WHY. Tell them that next time you need to know who's showing up. Don't let the late show up drag down the game (I know, easier said than done).

Just some thoughts.

Tell the Wizard player to shape up. Its hard enough running a 6 person game on its own, and it doesn't help make combat exciting when one player is voluntarily choosing to not use their class abilities.

You need more advice than just that, but not allowing a player to voluntarily take up time being ineffectual is a good start at making combat fun.

Next time you could have the other players help the new guys build their characters while you work on scaling the encounters appropriately (using the DMG guidelines). When they're done, just double check their sheets if you're worried they might have made any mistakes and have them give a brief description of what the new PCs look like and where they might be. Their characters personality ticks can be discovered along the way and can end up being a pleasant surprise for you as well.

With the dragon encounter, you could have some kobolds come up on the party from behind using the logic that they were returning with some loot to give to their dragon master, found the decimation left in the party's wake and are running to tell their master what has happened. Having the party surrounded in such a small environment would make the fight potentially that much more difficult. Also, you could use some of the kobolds from the recent article to make new different than what the party just slogged through.

mhacdebhandia said:

I'm assuming this was Fourth Edition?

I'm not sure the game runs real well when you have players who, for instance, insist on playing wizards who prefer to use their staff to attack rather than, say, magic missile. It's about as effective and interesting as it was in every other edition - that is to say, very dangerous and pretty boring.

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Not true. In past editions, there were plenty of buff spells to make a melee wizard possible, as well as multiclassing from earliest levels with Fighter (in 2E and 3E, at least). i don't see why it has to be boring, either.

ReillyMcShane said:

FIrst, six players are definitely tough to run. Not an easy task. It's a challenge no matter what.

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Absolutely. Six is just about my upper limit for how many I'd ever want to DM in a game.

ReillyMcShane said:

Dropping in a surprise monster out of the blue -- such as, have a bullete suddenly burst out of the ground - causing the kobolds to run and everyone to suddenly retool what is happening. Big, dumb monsters like Ettins are awesome. Gets their blood going.

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If the encounter's been too easy, sure. But I thought the problem was they were getting dull and slow, just pounding away round after round? Just cause that's happening doesn't necessarily mean the PCs haven't expended healing resources.

ReillyMcShane said:

On the fly, give the monsters - such as the kobolds - better chances to hit the PCs - but lower their AC too. That way they get hit easier - and thus they get killed quicker (but they do more damage so they give the PCs a little more of a scare). If players complain, ignore them! Just say, that's what's happening. Deal with it!

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Mutually increased lethality (wow, that sounds like a technical term!) is more harmful to the PCs than the monsters, especially since the monsters in 4E will often outnumber the PCs (and thus get more attacks in each round), so I wouldn't do a 1-for-1 trade off. Maybe the Kobolds gain +2 attack, but -3 AC.

ReillyMcShane said:

Kick the PCs butts! Have something jump out and pound some of the PCs - make them get their crap together. And don't be afraid to kill someone (of course, maybe have a raise dead scroll in the bushes for them to find).

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Someone already died, DM's clearly not afraid to do this.

ReillyMcShane said:

Shift an encounter -- let's say you just had a lame kobold encounter. And there's three more on the agenda that look far too similar. Maybe make up a quick encounter - making the next one an Ettin or whatever so they PCs don't run into the next room and say, 'Oh great, more Kobolds.' Or if you have a different kind of encounter - say a trap or a puzzle set for a later in the adventure - move it up to break up the proceedings.

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Good suggestion. Multiple similar encounters in a row is almost always boring.

ReillyMcShane said:

Pass a note to someone in the party - say something like 'You start feeling very weak.' Don't do anything about it more than that. Just creep everyone out - make them wondering what's going on (which is nothing!)

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This might work well the first time. But after a few sessions, passing little notes falsely hinting that something's wrong is just going to annoy the players, even if done sparingly. Not only that, it might even condition them to think such notes are always fake, leading to metagame thinking when confronted with an actual potential status effect. If you do this, make sure a fair amount of said notes are used when there actually is something going on. I've seen a friend of mine use similar tactics in his "famous" one-shot, Dungeon of Fear, except he uses notes and taking players outside to tell them things the character hears/sees in order to try and make the party turn on each other out of paranoia that they're going to be betrayed and need to strike first. Works nicely.

Cadfan said:

You need more advice than just that, but not allowing a player to voluntarily take up time being ineffectual is a good start at making combat fun.

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Playing a mage who fights up close with his staff is a pretty classic trope, there's nothing wrong with a player for wanting to play such a concept, and I don't like how you're judging his playstyle to make the game not fun. The melee Wizard just needsto pick appropriate feats, powers, and multiclassing to accomplish what he wants to do. If he can't because the system won't support it, you could always say...houserule in some things.
If the player has no interest in casting at all, and JUST wants to melee, he probably didn't pick the best class. The OP should try and help him find a better fit.

Final Attack said:

So they headed to the nearest town Winterhaven. Unfortunately the town was under martial law, due to what the party find out to be a murder in town.

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Off-topic, but I'm curious. Why did a single murder bring the town under martial law? Curfew, I understand. Being distrustful of outsiders that recently showed up and treating them with disdain, sure. But martial law?

For me wizard melee was a last resort cuz I ran out of spells and things were WAY too close for comfort. Are there really that many feats that make a wizard a real melee option at this point in time? Play a different class. I think it's reasonable, esp if the party expects you to be playing a more standard role and you don't dissuade them from the idea.

Martial law>The mayor or sherrif being killed or an influential rich person maybe?

So, the fight was unexciting because of a long exchange of weak hits...sounds like my first couple of 4e games!

I learned after running a few sessions that many of my players didn't "get" their classes. So they were doing the same things over and over, because they didn't know what else to do.

So, in my most recent game, I went over some of the "cool" stuff each character was capable of. I sacrificed a lot of game time to do this, but it really paid off. For example:

• I explained how the Warlock's curse ability worked, and why it was advantageous to do it every time. I also explained how teleporting around the battlefield was key.
  
• I took the wizard aside and explained how magic missile did more damage, but cloud of daggers could force someone to move from a specific square.
  
• I really explained to the Warlord how his abilities worked and where he should be in the party formation to be the most effective.

After a quick run-down of just a smattering of how people's powers worked and a few broken combos that could be performed with complimentary powers - most people got it and combat went much more smoothly.