Ravenloft Al modles Jasper questions and rants. Spoilers
Ultimately, it's up to you -- but keep in mind that when the spell says the humanoid rises as a zombie, it means that the creature that returns to the combat has the zombie's stats, not the original humanoid's stats. So unless the weapon has a plus to attack, the weapon attack will still only have a +3 attack bonus.
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Pauper
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Pauper
Page 13 -- under the How Do I Use This Locket sidebar.
It is an action to present the locket in a way that draws the Evening Glory from Esmae.
It's a DC 15 Charisma save for Esmae to avoid having the Evening Glory removed from her, and the DC increases by 5 for each additional attempt made by the PCs. Note, however, that Esmae's Legendary Resistance allows her to automatically succeed at this save even if she fails the roll, so the PC with the locket will likely have to spend the entire combat doing nothing but trying to pull the vestige out of Esmae, as she has three automatic successes 'baked in' to her writeup.
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Pauper
It is an action to present the locket in a way that draws the Evening Glory from Esmae.
It's a DC 15 Charisma save for Esmae to avoid having the Evening Glory removed from her, and the DC increases by 5 for each additional attempt made by the PCs. Note, however, that Esmae's Legendary Resistance allows her to automatically succeed at this save even if she fails the roll, so the PC with the locket will likely have to spend the entire combat doing nothing but trying to pull the vestige out of Esmae, as she has three automatic successes 'baked in' to her writeup.
--
Pauper
jasper
Rotten DM
The Dark Lord. The villain wins! I have just discovered how to get the villains to win. Give the McGuffin to the person who does not pay attention to what the dm says even if the dm repeats himself.
First problem, I had players trickle in form 630 to 7. Second problem, I did write up 2 info dumps of what Sybil, and Jenny Greenteeth were going to say. Even players who had been playing through most of the season did not pay attention to the write ups. (I even did 1 copy per player since one player complained the week before about every player not getting a copy.) Third problem which is minor but I had another dm bring a ninth level pc in just to farm the bracers/magic item.
Story problems. During the Horseman both the Aya the elf, the wearer of purple, and the PC holding the Amber Locket (McGuffin) died. The PC was not raised due to background reasons, and the party did not care. Here is where the villain won. I grabbed an extra prop locket from my bag and told the player this was the locket of the Amber temple / clue episode. And it a focus item too. (Just said it was focus item to move the game along.)
The party had problems since they had ninth thru fifth level pcs and 6 players making it a strong party. I threw in 2 mobs at the village to get the action started and get the players attention. They blew thru the mobs and really started the game. The combat between the big kid and his naughty bear was easy for the group but they took the first short rest here. Since the group had no living female spell caster and the males pass on it. I took the ghost option. The rogue had the ghost with the blue gown from the Amber temple. So I had the player stay in the casting circle. The rogue could make attacks but movement was 0. They blew that encounter easy escaped thru the portal. AND TOOK a short rest outside the castle. Even with bumping the fights on the first floor, and letting them by pass the tower fight, the most damage done was with the traps.
The final fight. As I have done before, if there a timed component in the boss fight I will shorten the boss fight. This time I shorten the time of the final ritual from 9 rounds to 3. The party stack up on the stairwell to boss fight and could not get rid of the animated armour. On the third round they were able to knock the armour thru the door and gain access at the bottom of turn 3 (the ritual is now complete). Again, I told the monk the “locket is burning. Do not attack by present the locket”.
Monk turn. Player is so worried about attacks of opportunity or taking damage, they swung at any critter that could hit the pc. And then missed Esmae on its final swing. I waited one more initiative then had Esmae throw the group a kiss and step thru a magic door. I then ended the game.
Things that worked and not. Or things I discovered. General thoughts.
The props for magic items worked. And taking pictures of me giving it to the players is working.
I was offering a prize at the end of the season, this did not well. I was passing 1 token for showing up, 1 for final strike on BBEG, and 1 for MVP. This was in hopes of having a core group through the season. This did not work due real life work problems, personality conflicts, and people getting tired of 3.5 months of play. The winner did get her some “Auburn” dice. Note Auburn is a local college American football team.
General props did not work. Or were too much of a hassle.
I need to work on both my game rules knowledge and AL knowledge. And module knowledge. Even with a week between games, I still miss stuff like the DC on the Amber locket.
Taking all my lead and plastic figures does not work. I am down to 1 tackle box of figures. Plastic, cardboard, and some lead.
The location being in a busy Friday night game store with D&D, Magic and some pickup games does no work well. I will have to insure the players with hearing problems sit next to me.
Not having my own copy of season was an issue. I did not want to write notes on the store copy. And bring the whole binder did not work. It got dumped to the floor twice and stuff was torn.
Writing up a quick after action report and pictures and posting to face book works. I include the xp, Gp, renown, and downtime given. So if someone left early they know what they get.
The title card works. Title card has in bold letters and font 16 plus, the title and number of adventure. My DCI on top half of sheet. Below the fold has the xp, Gp, renown, downtime, story awards, and magic item write up. This way I can pass around the table at the start as I get people logged in. At end I can fill in the blank and pass around the table as I packing up.
My current load out is. Small AWOL bag – books, dice, small pencil box with sharpener 2 pens and pencils, loose book marks. 1 tin with my pc figure. Big AWOL bag- closed outside slot tact titles, big monster counter, unsharpened pencils, and give away dice. Mesh side outside slot wife makeup bag with pens, pencils, sharpener, erasers, dry erase markers, dry eraser, and timers. Inside bag throw blanket used as table cloth, module, Bag of hard candy cough drops, giant figures, miscellaneous. Prop bag – prop, roll of paper towels, roll of tp (in baggie), Lysol, Windex. Tackle box of figures.
I do get some feedback, but more is needed. How I can get more, I do not know.
Thanks Pauper and you others for answering questions and giving comments.
Pictures and write ups of my games are on Facebook. I think it is Montgomery River Region Adventure league.
First problem, I had players trickle in form 630 to 7. Second problem, I did write up 2 info dumps of what Sybil, and Jenny Greenteeth were going to say. Even players who had been playing through most of the season did not pay attention to the write ups. (I even did 1 copy per player since one player complained the week before about every player not getting a copy.) Third problem which is minor but I had another dm bring a ninth level pc in just to farm the bracers/magic item.
Story problems. During the Horseman both the Aya the elf, the wearer of purple, and the PC holding the Amber Locket (McGuffin) died. The PC was not raised due to background reasons, and the party did not care. Here is where the villain won. I grabbed an extra prop locket from my bag and told the player this was the locket of the Amber temple / clue episode. And it a focus item too. (Just said it was focus item to move the game along.)
The party had problems since they had ninth thru fifth level pcs and 6 players making it a strong party. I threw in 2 mobs at the village to get the action started and get the players attention. They blew thru the mobs and really started the game. The combat between the big kid and his naughty bear was easy for the group but they took the first short rest here. Since the group had no living female spell caster and the males pass on it. I took the ghost option. The rogue had the ghost with the blue gown from the Amber temple. So I had the player stay in the casting circle. The rogue could make attacks but movement was 0. They blew that encounter easy escaped thru the portal. AND TOOK a short rest outside the castle. Even with bumping the fights on the first floor, and letting them by pass the tower fight, the most damage done was with the traps.
The final fight. As I have done before, if there a timed component in the boss fight I will shorten the boss fight. This time I shorten the time of the final ritual from 9 rounds to 3. The party stack up on the stairwell to boss fight and could not get rid of the animated armour. On the third round they were able to knock the armour thru the door and gain access at the bottom of turn 3 (the ritual is now complete). Again, I told the monk the “locket is burning. Do not attack by present the locket”.
Monk turn. Player is so worried about attacks of opportunity or taking damage, they swung at any critter that could hit the pc. And then missed Esmae on its final swing. I waited one more initiative then had Esmae throw the group a kiss and step thru a magic door. I then ended the game.
Things that worked and not. Or things I discovered. General thoughts.
The props for magic items worked. And taking pictures of me giving it to the players is working.
I was offering a prize at the end of the season, this did not well. I was passing 1 token for showing up, 1 for final strike on BBEG, and 1 for MVP. This was in hopes of having a core group through the season. This did not work due real life work problems, personality conflicts, and people getting tired of 3.5 months of play. The winner did get her some “Auburn” dice. Note Auburn is a local college American football team.
General props did not work. Or were too much of a hassle.
I need to work on both my game rules knowledge and AL knowledge. And module knowledge. Even with a week between games, I still miss stuff like the DC on the Amber locket.
Taking all my lead and plastic figures does not work. I am down to 1 tackle box of figures. Plastic, cardboard, and some lead.
The location being in a busy Friday night game store with D&D, Magic and some pickup games does no work well. I will have to insure the players with hearing problems sit next to me.
Not having my own copy of season was an issue. I did not want to write notes on the store copy. And bring the whole binder did not work. It got dumped to the floor twice and stuff was torn.
Writing up a quick after action report and pictures and posting to face book works. I include the xp, Gp, renown, and downtime given. So if someone left early they know what they get.
The title card works. Title card has in bold letters and font 16 plus, the title and number of adventure. My DCI on top half of sheet. Below the fold has the xp, Gp, renown, downtime, story awards, and magic item write up. This way I can pass around the table at the start as I get people logged in. At end I can fill in the blank and pass around the table as I packing up.
My current load out is. Small AWOL bag – books, dice, small pencil box with sharpener 2 pens and pencils, loose book marks. 1 tin with my pc figure. Big AWOL bag- closed outside slot tact titles, big monster counter, unsharpened pencils, and give away dice. Mesh side outside slot wife makeup bag with pens, pencils, sharpener, erasers, dry erase markers, dry eraser, and timers. Inside bag throw blanket used as table cloth, module, Bag of hard candy cough drops, giant figures, miscellaneous. Prop bag – prop, roll of paper towels, roll of tp (in baggie), Lysol, Windex. Tackle box of figures.
I do get some feedback, but more is needed. How I can get more, I do not know.
Thanks Pauper and you others for answering questions and giving comments.
Pictures and write ups of my games are on Facebook. I think it is Montgomery River Region Adventure league.
That's a challenge in a public play environment, especially one where you get new players relatively frequently (because new players often don't know or misremember the game start time). With a regular group, I've found that waiting until everyone shows up to start the game is a great motivator, because peer pressure comes to bear on the folks who show up late so that game time doesn't get wasted. Not sure what to tell you for the irregular group you seem to be running -- Season 4 just doesn't seem a good fit for that kind of table.
Long NPC narratives are a sure way to get some portion of your players to check out of the game -- they'll hit their phone to check Twitter or something, or start having a side conversation. If there's stuff the PCs really need to know, let them know at the time they need it.
Again, another way in which Season 4 really isn't a good fit for the table you were running, since ideally there's some foreshadowing that players who are paying attention can use to their advantage, but if nobody knows or remembers it, it's pretty much wasted unless you remind them.
I've been noticing this as well in the few walk-in style casual games I participate in -- that a group of 6 PCs can't be below 'average' strength despite their level make-up makes for some odd balancing options. The best solution I've come up with is to simply ignore the provided advice and use DM Empowerment to add a thematic monster of low CR to later encounters if the party defeats the early encounters at 'normal' difficulty too easily.
It's certainly not an ideal solution -- if anything it makes the problem of struggling to get above minimum XP for a large table even more acute -- but I find there are a lot fewer accidental TPKs that way.
Interesting wrinkle. I think the intent was that the PC loses the possessing spirit as part of the 'cost' of the ritual, but I think your option works if the PC doesn't want to give it up. Will consider using that as an option when I get to this adventure.
That seems way too much of a reduction, given that Esmae has three uses of Legendary Resistance and can thus automatically save versus the locket's effect three times -- the party needs at least four actions (and probably more, since she might not have to use Legendary Resistance on the first or second save) to have any chance of extracting the Evening Glory.
If you didn't allow Esmae to use her Legendary Resistance on saves versus the locket, then I guess that's OK -- the party would at least have had a chance to reduce her power before the ritual was completed.
Props are cool if you have the time and ability to do them regularly, for everything that's significant. Handing out a prop only occasionally makes them seem less special, paradoxically.
I think this is a generally true statement for all AL DMs -- the last time I played with a DM who I thought had all the rules knowledge 'in-head' was Greg Bilsland, and that was an atypical situation.
Absolutely -- hauling around your entire collection (or a sizable portion of your collection) sounds good, but makes for an unwieldy pile of crud to haul into the store and sit around your end of the table. There's a reason that AL tries to set things up so that a DM only needs the adventure and a Player's Handbook to run a game.
Agreed -- having a place where you can publically re-post the rewards and remind folks what happened is a good thing and really helps cut down on post-game questions when the store owner is just trying to close the shop and get home.
Thank you for posting -- it's always good to get some idea of how these adventures are being run 'in the wild', not just for authors to get an idea for what mechanics work or don't work at the table, but to give other DMs an idea of what to focus on or avoid to help their games be as good as they can be, given circumstances.
--
Pauper
jasper
Rotten DM
The typed up encounter sheet worked. Ex. Part 1 Into the woods. ORC AC 15 HP 22. Special Monster page 24 AC 15 HP 55. My font was 16+. This allowed me have the monster preset and cross index to back of the module.
The riddle through out the adventure did not work. Since it was horror type movie theme. I had pc eyes go white and spout out some prewritten bs. Some of the bs was a season long riddle. If the group guessed correctly at the end of season I gave out 2 great potions of healing each to the pcs. This was failure. One I made sure I was not going to track the riddle parts and repost to face book. Two the person who accept the task of tracking the riddle did not keep a weekly posting schedule. So that is out.
The riddle through out the adventure did not work. Since it was horror type movie theme. I had pc eyes go white and spout out some prewritten bs. Some of the bs was a season long riddle. If the group guessed correctly at the end of season I gave out 2 great potions of healing each to the pcs. This was failure. One I made sure I was not going to track the riddle parts and repost to face book. Two the person who accept the task of tracking the riddle did not keep a weekly posting schedule. So that is out.
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