Rel
Liquid Awesome
I've been in a bit of a crappy mood all morning and I think it is because of the game I ran last night. I've been GMing various games for over 20 years and I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at it. But I guess I'm bound to have a bad night now and then and last night was certainly one of those. I didn't like how the game flowed and I'm especially bothered by the fact that I went to some extra effort to make it a fun, exciting and memorable game and it still seemed to fall flat. I'll try to sum the situation up:
The party (10-11th level characters) had an NPC friend of theirs get transported to Hell along with a group of allied orc-warriors. The players told me at the end of the previous session that it was a priority for them to go into Hell to rescue these NPC's. A means to transport themselves into Hell and back was readily available and they also had a bit of an idea as to where they could find the NPC's once they got there. I'll note that this "rescue mission" is not the primary goal of the party at the moment but they were a bit lost as to what to do next in pursuit of the primary goal and this seemed like a worthwhile activity to engage in in the mean time.
In preparation for the session, I wasn't exactly sure how involved I wanted the rescue mission to be. After some consideration I decided that I wanted it to be relatively brief (taken care of in a single session preferably) but I did want it to be exciting and memorable (it isn't every day that you rescue your friends and allies out of Hell).
When the party arrived in Hell, they found that the NPC's they were there to rescue were not where they thought they would be but instead were battling for their lives atop a giant pyramid that, until recently, imprisoned a fallen god. As such, the sides of the pyramid were encased in a powerful anti-magic stone but the tip top had been broken open and was a place where magic still worked. A geyser of "god power" was shooting out of the center of the top of the pyramid and causing a planar rift above it into a chamber back on the material plane, but into an area that was protected by a Forbiddence spell. A steady trickle of Devils were scaling the sides of the pyramid to attack them but were hampered by not being able to use thier supernatural abilities. Sounds like the stage for an epic battle, right?
Things went fine in the early going as the party flew (thanks to a Feathers spell by the Druid) over to the pyramid and were unceremoniously dumped on their butts when they came within range of the anti-magic field. They took a bit of damage and then proceeded to charge in to the rescue. But after that things seemed to take a turn for the dull. The main problem in retrospect was that there were just too many combatants. The "Good Guys" consisted of a Barbarian, a Shaman, the Orc Commander and about half a dozen Orc Warriors. The "Bad Guys" consisted of around 2-5 Devils at any given time, mostly Hamatulas and Barbezu.
For the first few rounds, before the PC's were actively engaged in combat against the Devils, I just rolled a single d20 for the "Good Guys" and another for the "Bad Guys" and let them serve as a general guage for how the battle was going. But after the PC's got directly involved, I felt compelled to roll more specifically for each combatant. My reasoning for this was that it became more important to know when each foe was downed and whether that particular foe was damaging or killing any of the Good Guys, especially the main NPC's or the PC's.
The problem with this of course was that I had 12-15 other combatants sprinkled amidst the 5 PC's. Most of these combatants had 2 attacks and even though I was very cavalier about determining their bonuses and damage, this took a lot of time. In just a couple of rounds, I found that the players were losing interest and were thumbing through books and holding side conversations with each other. This of course further contributed to the problem because when their turns came up they had a less than perfect grasp of the current situation and it took longer for them to decide their own actions.
All of this was compounded by the fact that while the party had a fairly set plan of action for how they were going to extricate themselves and the NPC's from the situation, the NPC's weren't in on the plan. It took several extra rounds to communicate and coordinate all of this and these were LONG rounds. I probably added to the mayhem by having one of the NPC's (who didn't know about the Forbiddence) suggest that they try to exit via the planar rift.
Anyway, the net result was that we spent all night on this single battle which was only "epic" in terms of length, not in terms of fun or excitement. I am not in any way angry with the players, even though if they had payed more attention things would likely have flowed better. I think that I botched the situation during the setup and execution and I can't blame them for not paying more attention. I probably would have done the same thing.
I'm not exactly sure whether the purpose of this post is just for me to blow off steam or if I'm searching for ways that I could have done things better. If you have comments either way, I'd be glad to listen to them.
The party (10-11th level characters) had an NPC friend of theirs get transported to Hell along with a group of allied orc-warriors. The players told me at the end of the previous session that it was a priority for them to go into Hell to rescue these NPC's. A means to transport themselves into Hell and back was readily available and they also had a bit of an idea as to where they could find the NPC's once they got there. I'll note that this "rescue mission" is not the primary goal of the party at the moment but they were a bit lost as to what to do next in pursuit of the primary goal and this seemed like a worthwhile activity to engage in in the mean time.
In preparation for the session, I wasn't exactly sure how involved I wanted the rescue mission to be. After some consideration I decided that I wanted it to be relatively brief (taken care of in a single session preferably) but I did want it to be exciting and memorable (it isn't every day that you rescue your friends and allies out of Hell).
When the party arrived in Hell, they found that the NPC's they were there to rescue were not where they thought they would be but instead were battling for their lives atop a giant pyramid that, until recently, imprisoned a fallen god. As such, the sides of the pyramid were encased in a powerful anti-magic stone but the tip top had been broken open and was a place where magic still worked. A geyser of "god power" was shooting out of the center of the top of the pyramid and causing a planar rift above it into a chamber back on the material plane, but into an area that was protected by a Forbiddence spell. A steady trickle of Devils were scaling the sides of the pyramid to attack them but were hampered by not being able to use thier supernatural abilities. Sounds like the stage for an epic battle, right?
Things went fine in the early going as the party flew (thanks to a Feathers spell by the Druid) over to the pyramid and were unceremoniously dumped on their butts when they came within range of the anti-magic field. They took a bit of damage and then proceeded to charge in to the rescue. But after that things seemed to take a turn for the dull. The main problem in retrospect was that there were just too many combatants. The "Good Guys" consisted of a Barbarian, a Shaman, the Orc Commander and about half a dozen Orc Warriors. The "Bad Guys" consisted of around 2-5 Devils at any given time, mostly Hamatulas and Barbezu.
For the first few rounds, before the PC's were actively engaged in combat against the Devils, I just rolled a single d20 for the "Good Guys" and another for the "Bad Guys" and let them serve as a general guage for how the battle was going. But after the PC's got directly involved, I felt compelled to roll more specifically for each combatant. My reasoning for this was that it became more important to know when each foe was downed and whether that particular foe was damaging or killing any of the Good Guys, especially the main NPC's or the PC's.
The problem with this of course was that I had 12-15 other combatants sprinkled amidst the 5 PC's. Most of these combatants had 2 attacks and even though I was very cavalier about determining their bonuses and damage, this took a lot of time. In just a couple of rounds, I found that the players were losing interest and were thumbing through books and holding side conversations with each other. This of course further contributed to the problem because when their turns came up they had a less than perfect grasp of the current situation and it took longer for them to decide their own actions.
All of this was compounded by the fact that while the party had a fairly set plan of action for how they were going to extricate themselves and the NPC's from the situation, the NPC's weren't in on the plan. It took several extra rounds to communicate and coordinate all of this and these were LONG rounds. I probably added to the mayhem by having one of the NPC's (who didn't know about the Forbiddence) suggest that they try to exit via the planar rift.
Anyway, the net result was that we spent all night on this single battle which was only "epic" in terms of length, not in terms of fun or excitement. I am not in any way angry with the players, even though if they had payed more attention things would likely have flowed better. I think that I botched the situation during the setup and execution and I can't blame them for not paying more attention. I probably would have done the same thing.
I'm not exactly sure whether the purpose of this post is just for me to blow off steam or if I'm searching for ways that I could have done things better. If you have comments either way, I'd be glad to listen to them.
I still remember the final session--the characters kamikazed (sic) themselves on a Cthulhu beastie for the simple reason that the players were sick of the game.
