Notes from my Campaign

[RangerWickett]

Excellent stuff. In hindsight, yeah, Gillie Dhu gets burnt too easily. I probably should've had him take less damage per burning square.

Um, let's see, in adventure two . . . people might drown, get blown up, be burnt alive, be crushed under a collapsing roof, fall 1230 ft. to their deaths . . . so yeah, the environment still is hazardous. But with higher-level parties come the ability to throw larger groups of enemies at them, so hopefully the PCs will actually defeat most of the bad guys.

 

[TarionzCousin]

-I realized early on that I hadn't told them anything about the "weak spot" in the city wall during the briefing. I retconned this rather than try to think of a clever way to introduce the knowledge late in the game. I this would be a pretty obvious "ENTER CITY HERE" sign, but no.

It sounds like your players don't trust you. Have you, perhaps, misled them in the past?

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 2
Session 1

We had a few weeks to wait for the adventure to release (especially since we're playing the PF version!) which worked out pretty well... it always takes a while to get my players to do that which they need to, so extra time meant extra character depth. Oh the perils of being busy working adults!

In any case, by the time I read Dying Skyseer I was ridiculously excited to run it. My enthusiasm spread and my players came into the game fresh and ready to go. The session went splendidly, and we had a great time as they played CSI: Flint and tried not to trod on too many diplomatic toes. Watching as they gathered evidence, evaluated scenarios, and discovered that Lebrix was lying was tremendous fun for me. They found most (but certainly not ALL) of the evidence at the scene of the crime, and left with more questions than answers.

In typical "my game" fashion, that was all we had time for, but it was enough to hook us and I can't want to see how the investigation goes.

- The PCs had some entertaining internal discussions about calling Lebrix out on his lies or not. They decided to "play that card close" and keep silent, since they didn't think they'd get anything else out of him.

- RangerWicket: everybody at the table got a huge laugh out of the Thinking Man's Tavern reference. Half the table are regulars, and accused me of modifying the name for them. As if I would ever change something in an adventure!

- We roleplayed almost everything in this investigation, which was fun. The character they currently think is waaaay more important than he is: Braden (the guard).

- They never got around to questioning anyone else on the staff, so they didn't pick up that the chocolates were drugged. Fortunately, I have an Alchemist as a PC who I suspect will follow up on the invisibility potion to lead them down that thread.

- As soon as we wrapped, half my players stayed later to start building their "murder board". Oh yes, I think they liked it.

 

[Morrus]

- As soon as we wrapped, half my players stayed later to start building their "murder board". Oh yes, I think they liked it.

Now that is astonishingly cool!

 

[RangerWickett]

I wonder where I can get a board like that. At least 3 of my 5 players watched The Wire, and they'd love a prop like that.

 

[Morrus]

I wonder where I can get a board like that. At least 3 of my 5 players watched The Wire, and they'd love a prop like that.

They're extraordinarily common. Try any office supplies shop. They're very cheap, too.

 

[ridingsloth]

Adventure 2
Session ...more sessions

Wow, it's been a while since I posted an update! With the holidays intruding on our scheduling, the game took a hiatus for a couple months, but we're back to regular games now and proceeding nicely with Dying Skyseer (plus, Adventure 3 has already come out while I was gone, so that's awesome! Great job guys!).

I think I can sum up the last few sessions in a few bullet points:

* The party investigated. They continue to LOVE the police-work parts of this adventure.
* In the course of their investigations, they split up. And then split up again. For the last several sessions I've been running between 3 and 4 separate "parties" of 1 to 3 players each. This is slowing the game to a crawl, but it's coming back together soon.
* The Smuggler's path is proceeding very slowly. They found the alchemist but didn't get anything out of her (or suspect her of anything). I ended up giving those PCs an order from Delft to get them out to the Reformatory and get some clues. They were basically convinced that was a wild goose chase and had resolved not to check it out.
* My Vakeshi Mystic PC headed out to Nevard alone, hoping to get some "alone time" with Gale and give her the mirror. Alas, it is not to be. And she'll have a surprise waiting when she returns from the Cloudwood because...
* The "Weight of Crumbling Stone" killed 3 of my PCs[0]!

So yeah, that happened. Everything was going smoothly (give or take). They had gotten to Herr Doctor without too much trouble, but there were only three of them in that particular sub-set of players. When the sneaky attack from "Officer Porter" came, they got completely outclassed (although this had as much to do with terrible dice rolls as anything else) and ended up without the doctor, but with the documents. The rest of the encounter went about as expected: they held out the documents until "Phase 2" when Heward Shechim was trotted out. Finally, they agreed to hand them over, but of course, poor Heward was killed anyway and the firedust casks were brought forward.

Thinking cleverly, two of the PCs ran to the back of the church (yay! Smart!) while the final one tried to shoot those carrying the casks. He missed. So the other two came back to the door (boo!) and tried something else:

PC1: I shoot my wand of magic missile at the nearest cask to me
ME: That's pretty close to the entrance, and you'll have to stick your hand out the bars to do it.
PC1: No worries! It'll explode right?
ME: Uh... sure? Seems reasonable. Where are the rest of you while this happens?
PC2 & PC3: Right behind him!
ME: *sigh* Oooooookay. You set off the explosions early, messing up the intent of collapsing the face of the cliff and killing several of your enemies. In the meantime, a large explosion goes off right next to you. You take *roll* a mess of damage!
PC1 & PC2 & PC3: Oh. I'm dead.

The good news is that all three of them (none of my veteran players) are way more excited about their "new recruits" than they were about the old characters.


[0] This is an unfair characterization of the encounter. In truth, my PCs killed themselves.

 

[RangerWickett]

I just realized we need a Death Roster of all the PCs who've died in the various ZEITGEIST campaigns people are running.

 

[gideonpepys]

Your wish is my command

I just realized we need a Death Roster of all the PCs who've died in the various ZEITGEIST campaigns people are running.

Good idea! (Scurries off to start one.)