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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Daern" data-source="post: 5643037" data-attributes="member: 81800">The Public Dungeon Master: Encounters at the Red Castle #13At Red Castle Games in Portland, OregonMy final session of the "Dark Legacy of Evard" was strong on players, but the adventure fizzled from this DM's perspective.  Once again I had a table of eight.  This time there were two new  players, a father and son team, and the rest were veterans of the last  few sessions.  When the characters were sorted we had a Cavalier, a  Binder Warlock, a Rangers Hunter, a PHB1 Ranger, a Slayer, a Cleric, a  Thief and a Knight.  Whew!  A full table.  I need a backup DM if these  numbers continue.I opted to move the plot right along and had the ghost of Nathaire speak  to the party, even as he left his body for good.  He told them how to  use the ritual as his last act of repentance for the misery he had  caused.  We then proceeded with skill challenge.  It didn't make alot of  sense to me, this skill challenge, and the players rolled horribly.  After giving the narrative a chance to move a bit, they failed and were  all blasted as the graveyard erupted with Zombies and the ghost of  Vontarin freaked out.  A couple of heroes fell and all were bloodied in  the end.  The cleric was down at the last round, so we ruled that she  died.  Someone had to.  For me, this was an anticlimactic ending.  The last encounter was nearly  identical to the one before though with a less interesting dynamic.   The villain was basically the same.  I changed it around to make the  Wizard a close bursting banshee type monster, but they piled on it in  classic solo fight style.  This battle really should have been a set  piece to remember, with some sort of terrain or mechanic to make it  memorable, but it was more or less a repeat of the week before. I think the similarity of the last to fights points to the major problem  of the season, which is that it featured two villains who were  literally indistinguishable.  Its hard enough for people to keep track  of fantasy names and mysterious plots in these games without twining  them all together in a mush.  It was very apparent to me every time I  recapped the story, that this was a narrative particularly lacking in  clarity.      "So a long time ago there were two wizards, but now there's two  wizards though one is different, and one's possessing the other so  they're kinda the same, but you fight them so it doesn't matter really,  and they have the same stats too."Here's hoping next season is full of clearer goals and benchmarks.Of course everyone had fun and it really felt like enthusiasm is  building for next season.  I have enjoyed this stint of public DMing and  I will continue for awhile.  The interaction with the younger players  particularly reminds me of why I have been trying to break into the  teaching profession.</blockquote>

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