I really enjoyed reading about how the players reacted in the earlier part of this thread. Are they still on the edges of their seats?
RC
Not a chance, this is there second session of D&D ever- they're old hands by now, approaching jaded.
Actually if you follow it to the end of this fight you'll see they're smarter than lots of players, and in only their second session.
But in answer to your question, seriously, during this fight, after Dirty ran into the second encounter, the initial mood was- 'good, some more bad guys to smush...'
They have a business like manner at times with combat, interspersed with pockets of glum and glee.
In general they're still excitable fools, even to this day, moments that stand out from the 2nd session were-
"What do you mean he's disappeared?" when Agrid the Gnome at the Dragon Burial Site vanished for a bit- that seemed to rile them, don't ask me why but they took it personally.
There was a lot of blue-air (foul language) when Phrenic dropped in the first room proper in the Keep on the Shadowfell, after McGyver bit the dirt in the first session they're very keen for Phrenic to survive.
Same when they got the surprise round in the Torture Chamber, it has to be said they love to fight, they carry their anger well- so they get ticked off in one encounter (Phrenic getting reduced to 0 HP, and the Rat Swarm proving difficult to kill) and have to find some bad guys as soon as to take it out on. Thus the Hobgoblin Torturer and his pals became public enemy no 1. before they had even met them.
Because they don't know the rules, and can't guess what comes next, then a Hobgoblin Torturer wielding a red hot poker is the ultimate bad ass, even if only for a few rounds.
I think in the later encounters there are times when they miss, and they're so angry that they've missed- generally because they've figured out their next move and now they're all backed up, that they spend Action Points in an attempt to preserve their plan. Never Action Point angry, I seem to remember in much later sessions (on at least two occassions) d20s were sacrificed- thrown out of the window of a third floor flat once, for failing to turn up the right result, and after Action Points were spent and wasted.
As I said above they're an excitable bunch, well at least two or three of them are much of the time, the fight they're in generated a fair amount of tension but nothing to compare with Irontooth. The key to that encounter was the fact that for a while they all thought that none of them would survive.
These initial sessions however IMHO are often the golden moments, particularly for brand noobs for whom everything is new, and more often than not cool, or freaky, or weird, or...
Especially if you (the DM) play on those moments- so the Hobgoblin Torturers armour (Bloodcut) as I described it in game- bled out and then gave off an eerie scarlet glow, the creature than growled a lot pointed at whoever it was (usually Phrenic) and made various threats. They love this stuff, and I try to act up whenever I can, particularly when there's a leader type on the map. One of the main reasons I stopped playing a very good Maptools campaign was around the table, with an audience, you can really go to town- ham it up. I spend my days at work in lecture theatres and classrooms where you have to be entertaining, and informative, and be able to hold a narrative.
Having said all that they still just love killing stuff, whether it's a bunch of Minions caught in a fiery blast, or when Irontooth finally gave up the ghost- although that victory took a while longer to celebrate.
In D&D, like life, small victories make for happy players.
Thanks for still reading, I still think looking at it on the page this stuff looks at times like chess moves, although with flaming spheres and the like.
