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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zephrin the Lost" data-source="post: 3544059" data-attributes="member: 30760">I just made a mistake as a DM (Well, GM- it was D20 Past) that after a good 15 years of running games in various systems, I should have known better. I couldn't run our regular campaign because we were missing two of our five players, but the four of us decided to get together for a little D20 past/Sidewinder action, which I was thrilled about because chances to play are rare. I had a good adventure set up, converting a 1989 Dungeon adventure that featured a diving bell a giant pike and some scrags into a Sidewinder adventure featuring a diving bell a giant pike and some mutated Indians. Stormborn had given me a good solution for Pike vs. Diving Bell resolution and we were ready to go. The game had a slow start as one player needed to make up a character on the spot. Then things moved pretty well but for a variety of reasons the players didn't end up in the diving bell until nearly 10:00 pm (we have a strict 11:00 pm cut-off on weeknight games). They weren't expecting a 20-foot long pike and certainly weren't expecting an water-breathing man, and when the attack on the bell came, they  were suitably shaken, but not terrifically engaged. I had the aquatic Indian make a grab for one of the PC's who almost got knocked from the bell, then swim off. The PC's were able to get the bell raised w/o it being destroyed by the monster pike and the rest of the evening kind of just trickled out. The PC's made camp by the shore of the lake and the Indians raided them, but it wasn't exactly electric. So here I was running a game we play once or twice a year and I'm trying to build tension - offering glimpses of the unnatural enemies and then having them fade away. Screw that, I should have had Indians swarming that bell, climbing up through the port in the bottom and attacking the PC's with knives or their bare hands, all while the Pike hammered on the bell and tried to eat the whole thing-- bell, PC's and Indians alike! That would have been a memorable, exciting episode. It would have snapped the players out of the low-energy mood that had settled over us from the slow start. I was running the first hour of Jaws when i should have been playing the T.Rex attack from Jurassic Park. But I didn't and the evening was never more than interesting at best. So that's my story, and I post it here as a warning to others: A huge, violent, close-quarters brawl in a possible sinking diving bell (or the equivalent) may not always save a slow night, but it's worth trying. I wish I'd tried it. Any other stories of holding back when you wish you'd poured it on?--Z</blockquote>

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