Thanks everyone for the compliments. I thought it would be really tricky, but it went off great. I can see potential pitfalls were it COULD have gone all wrong, but it didn't.
That One Guy said:
What happened with the Rogue/Hobgoblins?
You mean at the end, when they found out the party couldn't afford to pay them? Well, they were really pissed off and I ran another smaller social encounter. The hobgoblins weren't in good enough shape to believe they could take the party by that point, so the party easily managed to avoid a fight, but the hobgoblins took all the loot from the bodies, moved some ladders around to get out of the pit, and left. (The players left their backpacks up hear the mine entrance, so they will eventually find them seriously looted.) The best result of the social encounter would have had the hobgoblins stick around to help, but the party failed at that.
That One Guy said:
Where (if ever) did the game slow down?
Honestly, it was only slow getting started, as they spent quite a bit of time sneaking across to the platform and arguing over the plan. The orc could clearly see them doing all this from his vantage point at the top tunnel, but he was waiting to order the attack when the party was surrounded and could cut off their escape.
That One Guy said:
Did the gridlessness ever make people confused about their location? If so, how easy was it to bring them up to speed?
I drew the complicated track layout on a small piece of paper and put little dots in pencil on where anyone was at any given point if there were questions. I suppose I could have ran it with figures if I'd drawn it all on a mat, but I like my really cinematic fights grid-less because you remember them as if you were there instead of from a god's-eye view. Also, with the multiple layers of up & down I think it's easier to visualize without a 2D grid.
That One Guy said:
Are you doing any sort of temp/fake leveling up?
I will, but this was our second session of our campaign. They are at about 500-600 XP each at the end of it.
That One Guy said:
Was that the finale encounter?
Nope. The orc-boss was just an underboss for the guy further down. I'd say it's likely to be the climax, in that there won't be a bigger fight next week. I'm not sure I could do bigger.
That One Guy said:
What else happened in the session? How long did that encounter take in game time and real time?
Not much. A bit of role-playing. We had to cut down early as a few of us have wives or girlfriends who are sick and were calling us to come home. My 3 year old daughter is also sick, as well as my wife. The session started late and ended early, clocking in at about 2 hours.
That One Guy said:
If you had tried to run that encounter in 3.x, how different would it have been for you and in what ways? In other words, did the mechanics of the system work favorably towards quick and fun resolutions, or would it have been just as easy (or difficult) to run in third edition?
Hmmm. I have to admit, I'm not a big fan of 3.x. I was really enthusiastic about 3.0 and then again about 3.5 (hoping it would fix everything, but it fixed things that weren't broken, and left other things alone.) So I may be a bit "biased" in my answers, but basically, first off, I doubt I would have attempted it (obviously not at first level). But for the sake of arguement, at a level this big an encounter could be survivable, I think it would have slowed down enough to have players stop paying attention to other's turns, which then bogs the whole thing down. I'd have had a lot of trouble keeping track of all the monsters (Let's see, there were 11 goblin minions, 3 orc archers, 3 hobgoblins, 1 orc commander and 1 ogre - 19 monsters) I think the main problem would have been that I'm not sure you could throw this many monsters at a 3.x party without one of 2 things happening:
1: The party has no chance, and gets killed
2: The monsters are such low CR that they aren't really dangerous, needing 19 or 20 to hit.
This fight was incredibly threatening without actually losing anyone. In fact, the players were REALLY not sure they could possibly survive it, but they all did. (And I didn't fudge anything, although I role-played the goblin minions who ran when the Ogre went down instead of commiting suicide trying to stab at low-hp party members.)
So yes, I think you might be able to do something similar in 3.x if you were well-versed, but not this, and not at this level, and I doubt to this level of success.
That One Guy said:
Do you think that sort of... uber-encounter will be something you'll try again? Is it more suited to big finale fights than lesser fights?
For sure. The variety needs to be kept up, so I wouldn't use it often, and I'd use it for big "set pieces" but not necessarily for finale fights, as I think even those need to jump around between bigger and smaller, or it gets a bit formulaic. (Like in this instance I might make the finale smaller because most of the Boss's big guns are already toast from that fight.)
That One Guy said:
Will you try to employ the multi-layer style into random encounters? If so, will it be timed (rounds-wise) to get more difficult as they fight... sort of like how this one seemed to get bigger and nastier?
Can't say I ever use random encounters, if by RE you mean "Roll on a chart to see what they fight next" If you mean throw unsuspecting wandering monsters into the mix... maybe. I like to often do a delay and add more to an encounter as things progress. It's really a role-playing the monsters thing where I decide their plan, and not everyone acts accordingly. For instance, the Orc archers and the Goblins with the mine-cart arrived at round 3 because the goblins couldn't get the cart moving (as they were ordered to) and had to call the archers back to help them. (I didn't roll for this - I just threw it into the story, part of my out-of-game reason being to escalate the tension, as the elves could hear the cart coming before it arrived, and to give the party a few rounds before EVERYTHING was after them.) Out-of-game reasons and story reasons bounce back and forth for me, so sometimes it's hard to tell which came first
Thanks for reading!
Fitz
