Truename's DM commentary on Scouring of Gate Pass

No session this week because I'm sick. I'll have to wait until next week to see how the PCs get out of this one...

(I came up with some neat post-TPK stuff that I'm looking forward to trying... the PCs will be taken hostage; there will be some banter between the bad guys that will provide clues, some rituals, and of course the always classic "you two redshirts go and fix the broken door and look for the beast [Druid] that got away". I'm thinking they'll find him. )

Session 4 (Scene 2-5, 3-2, 3-3)

My players continue to surprise me. I was convinced we were on our way to a TPK last session, but the dice turned and they pulled out a narrow victory. By the end of the fight, four of the six players had been dying at some point. One of them rolled a 20 and recovered, one of them had been healed, and two were still dying. Aspetra had a nail-biting moment where she had failed two death saving throws in a row and no one close enough to activate her second wind. Luckily, she made her save the third time, and was brought back the next round.

So all the cool TPK stuff I had planned didn't happen. No escape from restraints, no discovering the link between the Black Horse and the Ragesians. Instead, the players looted the place and then decided to go warn Erdan Menash of the plot against. Luckily, I had my RP stat block for Erdan prepared, as well as a couple of whimsical items. (My favorite was the sword cane with carefully placed holes that whistled a dirge when you drew the sword.) Here's the stat block:

Appearance: Extraordinarily fat human, moves with grace of a walrus.
Voice: High-pitched, wheezing.
Key Traits: Infectiously enthusiastic, easily distracted, unabashedly mercantile, savvy
Goal: Do what’s best for long-term
Motivation: Free trade, happy populous
Fears: Foolish council, invading army
Weaknesses: Out of options, ready to grasp at straws

I didn't do the skill challenge--I've always found RP skill challenges to feel forced at best, and high complexity ones (this one was supposed to be 8 successes before 3 failures) just don't have enough interesting elements to sustain the number of checks required. Instead, we just played it free form. I had a lot of fun with this--my notes on whimsical items plus the bulleted list of the events of the attack the night before gave me lots of things to throw in.

The PCs got here before escaping the city was a major concern, so they didn't ask Erdan about his help. I was nice and had him volunteer, after appropriate probing. I figured that they were generally nice to him, delivered the warning, and also killed the wyvern rider--that was enough of a success for me. He told them to visit Cpt. Harreman when they were ready to leave.

I also had Erdan probe for their destination, but they didn't trust him enough to tell him, so he didn't give them the Dianoem. I guess time will tell as to how much that matters.

The party druid noticed the ambushers from scene 3-3 on the way back to the temple. He told Volk, the barbarian (ostensibly in charge in Torrent's absence), who turned with a wonderful "What the f--- do you want!" rather than the subtle approach the rest of the party wanted. I gave him a Fate Point for that one.

It was daylight and the party was able to cow the would-be ambushers, so they defeated that encounter without a fight. The encounter with Rantle went uneventfully, and they returned to the temple. We ended with them successfully assisting in the ritual to heal Rivereye. Next time, we'll start with Torrent's report of what she found at Gabal's School.

Here's Rantle's RP stat block. I didn't expect to need it today, but luckily I had done this one in advance.

Appearance: tall, dark-haired, roguishly handsome human. Goatee and greatsword.
Voice: Very slightly over the top “hero” voice
Key Traits: Scoundrel, self-absorbed, charming, defender of common man
Goal: Have party deliver letter to sister Katrina
Motivation: Genuine love for sister
Fears: Sister is in real trouble
Weaknesses: Overestimates himself

Overall, a fun session. It went much differently than I expected, but I knew the adventure well enough to roll with the punches. That was nice--there's enough background detail in WotBS that I feel like I can improvise when I need to. It's a big difference from Scales of War in that regard. It takes more studying, but the result is far richer. My players seemed to really enjoy tonight's session.

I think the Dianoem is important.
If you feel like you want them to have it, you have another chance with the Dwarves in The Chasm Gate.

After running Street Ambush, I realized I did it wrong. It's an encounter that should scream TPK and at the last minute Rantle would rush in to save the day.
That way, they could be thankful of him and that would be a good start for their relationship/frienship.

How did the meeting with Rantle went with your players? Did they agree to take the message to Katrina?

Session 5

Session 5 (Scenes 2-6, 2-6-2, 2-7, 2-8, 2-9, 3-1)

This session had some pacing problems. It was all roleplaying, no combat. Some of the roleplaying dragged--I didn't get much sleep last night, and . I've noticed that a good night's sleep is the best predictor of how well a session goes; when I've slept well, I'm quicker on my feet and better able to respond to surprises.

Another problem was that this section of the adventure isn't very well laid out, and there's some inconsistencies in the editing. For example, the assumption seems to be that the players get the case (it's a major plot point in Fire Forest, with Kazyk), but the way the adventure is written, the default path (the skill challenge with Shealis) has her keeping the case, but promising to share its information later.

Finally, there isn't much combat in this section of the adventure. Shealis, as a level 10 controller, just isn't a fun combat encounter. The players would miss almost every attack, and she has more hit points than my entire party combined. And the encounter in the spy headquarters only happens if the players defeat Shealis in combat (unlikely) or fail the skill challenge (also unlikely, given the low DCs).

I think this section illustrates the biggest weakness of the WotBS 4e conversion: poor balance in combat encounters and skill challenges. However, it's a weakness I'm willing to put up with. Shealis would have been much better as a lower-level solo--she still could have been a difficult or even overwhelming opponent, but without the boring "you can't hit me" aspect.

Anyway, on to some specific comments.

I cut out Scene 2-6-1 (Dead Rising) because it didn't add to the plot and seemed cliche. (Also, my players asked me to accelerate leveling through the heroic tier, so I'm looking for encounters to cut.)

Scene 2-6 (Diogenes) went well. I played him as being quite bitter and jealous about Shealis, while still charming. They clued in and played him nicely.

Scene 2-7 (Shealis) dragged. I skipped the skill challenge here (as I've said, I've never liked social skill challenges, and 8 successes before 3 failures is just too many for that sort of challenge) and just role-played. I had decided that Shealis had some fey politics that made her want to keep the case out of Shahalesti, so she was interested in bargaining. After testing the PCs for a bit, she offered them a bargain.

This is the part that dragged. They were very skittish about making another fey pact. Two of the players refused, the others went along. None of them were very interested in negotiating. If I were to do it over, I would make it less contingent on group consensus, and instead design the bargain so that each individual could accept (for an individual benefit) or decline. Eventually, they agreed, and Shealis took them to the spy headquarters to retrieve the case.

Scene 2-8 (Elven Ghetto Hideout) was uneventful because Shealis was with them. I hinted at Kurychek but saved him for later.

Scene 2-9 (Spy Headquarters) was a neat scene. As you may recall, the PCs had previously made a fey bargain with Larion to kill Shealis, and he was waiting at the headquarters. Everyone else had been sent away. He gave the group the signal and moved to strike... and they chickened out at the last moment. I had dropped a lot of hints about how powerful Shealis was, including a blatant mention of her level in response to a monster knowledge roll, but it was still a near thing.

I'm very happy they didn't try to attack Shealis. She completely outmatched them, and there's no way it would have been fun with the amount of missing they would have done.

But once they decided not to attack, the session took a fun turn. Larion was sent to fetch the case and the artificer tried to subtly hint to Shealis that Larion wanted to kill her, but Shealis wasn't getting it--so the artificer spent a fate point, tagging Shealis' fey appreciation for subtlety. That did it. Shealis told the PCs to pretend to attack so she could see Larion's reaction.

He fell for it and I had a nice little scene where Larion was "banished from Summer" and cursed to wander until he loved three times was loved three times in return. His hair turned red and fell out, and he fled into the snow.

After the group left the spy headquarters, I introduced Kurychek. I had a lot of fun roleplaying him, but the group had cleverly hidden away the case, so Kurychek couldn't tell they had it. They dismissed him out of hand and Kurychek went invisible. He's too fun not to bring back, but I'm not sure exactly how.

We ended with the group back at the temple, deciding how to escape the city.

All in all, a lot of talking. This session was supposed to be the big payoff for the whole fey/Shahalesti/case subplots and, although it had some good moments, it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I asked my players about it afterwards and they were mostly okay with it, but I could tell it wasn't keeping their attention as usual.

If I had it to do over, I would have introduced some combat to break up all the talking, thus spreading the scenes over two sessions. But it was nice to see so much progress on the plot. The next few sessions have the climactic "leaving the city" scenes (since they already talked to Councilman Menash) which have some easy combat sequences.

sfedi said:

I think the Dianoem is important.
If you feel like you want them to have it, you have another chance with the Dwarves in The Chasm Gate.

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I dislike the whole Chasm Gate section of the adventure--the plot, skill challenges, and characters all feel contrived to me. So I'm probably going to skip it and just have a brief encounter on the bridge.

I saw hints that the Dianoem is important in Adventure 3, so I'm going to have Menash send it to Cpt. Harreman for the PCs in lieu of the treasure parcel described in the adventure. He'll have done his research and know that the PCs are heading to Lyceum.

How did the meeting with Rantle went with your players? Did they agree to take the message to Katrina?

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No problems. They thought "Katrina" was actually a fence, but they liked Rantle and agreed to do what he asked. The offer of immunity from the local thieves' guild (at least, that's how they took it) was a big draw, and they were interested in his offer to create a diversion at the wall, too.

Session 6 (Scenes 3-X, 3-3i, 3-4)

No big surprises this session. It was paced very well and ended right on time. There was a nail-biting combat sequence that the players seemed to particularly enjoy.

We picked up with the end of Scene 3-1 (Bad News). The players had decided to use the Capt. Herremen route Erdan Menash offered them in Session 4.

As they left the temple, I had Kathor waiting for them. He felt a sense of obligation for how they treated him and his men last time, so he warned them of the Black Horse ambush. This was also an opportunity for the PCs to befriend Kathor. I dropped several hints that something was unusual about Kathor--the druid picked up that his raven was unnatural; the arcane users recognized it as a familiar; the goliaths who had been in Ragesia recognized his accent as Ragesian--but they didn't take the bait. They asked Kathor to reveal when and where the ambush would be, but refused to betray his comrades. So they made vague threats and that was that.

A little disappointing, but overall it's good my players don't pick up on every clue. It makes me feel that there's the right mix of easy and hard clues.

The Interlude scene (3-3i) went smoothly. I used this as an opportunity for them to get the Dianoem they missed when they first talked to Menash. They didn't think of pushing for the patrol to leave earlier, despite knowing an ambush was planned, so they won't have a chance to get the drop on the Black Horse.

Finally, the bulk of the session was taken up with the Scene 3-4 (Magic Mayhem) fight. This was a real nail-biter; the monsters seemed way overpowered for their level. Level 3 skirmishers with a 2d6+2 damage attack, 1d6+2 on miss, recharge 4, plus 1d6 for combat advantage? Multiple daze (save ends) powers? Yikes.

I played it as written, though, not having had time to review the combat before-hand. My players loved it. Three of the six characters were below 0 hp during the fight. The barbarian went down twice. Feris recognized them, and shouted to the others to do non-lethal damage, so that eased the tension somewhat. Also, Torrent was there and her healing made a big difference, although she was dazed most of the time and couldn't do much else.

Overall, although the fights have been much harder than their level indicates, that seems to be compensated for by the presence of Torrent and the "Do Something Awesome" bonus encounter power I provide, as well as the easy access to fate/action points that I provide. The druid tagged his 'loyal' trait with a Fate point so he could use the Heal skill on two characters with one standard action, for example.

Once they took down Feris, the surviving highwayman stood down and the storm mages tried to escape. I played them as impressionable young women, students of Feris. The players blocked the exits and the students surrendered. They begged not the 'guards' (the party) not to turn them over to the Inquisition. I played them as a bit naive: "Feris has us come with him as he goes around to various shops, where the shopkeepers give him money." The players took pity on them to the Resistance safe-house with the shop owner.

The interrogation of Feris went well, too. He was fierce in his opposition to the Ragesians, contemptuous of the Gate Pass citizens that wished to throw magic users to the wolves (as so clearly illustrated by the mob previously outside the shop), and disgusted with the PC's cowardice. I think he impressed the PCs. They agreed to let him go in exchange for a promise not to harm or steal from Gate Pass. They even gave him back the Staff of Storms I had included as treasure!

I liked the way the roleplaying and combat combined in this scene. My players loved the dangerous combat (Scales of War was getting a little easy for them) and the segue from combat to post-combat roleplaying was nice and smooth. The scene with the angry mob outside was a nice little touch--I particularly liked that it wasn't a full-blown skill challenge, just a bit of flavor. That combined with the students' fear of being turned over to the Inquisition and Feris' fierce desire to go down fighting to provide some great war flavor and remind the players how dire the situation was.

A good session.

Truename said:

A little disappointing, but overall it's good my players don't pick up on every clue. It makes me feel that there's the right mix of easy and hard clues.

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This.

I use myself that same criteria, and for other things other than clues as well.