D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[doctorbadwolf]

My last session was Star Wars Saga Edition, for the first time in a few years.

It was frustrating. There is a lot to like in SWSE, and a lot of foreshadowing of stuff that now lives in 5e D&D, but the system is just in such a frustrating manner.

From things like skills being quantified down to how much it costs in bribes to verify rumors around town, to the accuracy math being designed to make everyone miss most of the time (meaning many turns get “wasted” on missed attacks), to a couple dozen other little things, it got to a point where my wife rolled a 15 on the die for a 21 to attack, missed, and said “I’m sorry what?” We were level 5, and while she is not optimized for attack, she also isn’t exactly outside what would be normal if we used pointbuy and she was a little more optimized. It was the last straw, after all of us running into the weird action economy limitations of the system, fiddly nature of skills (trying to get information from people with gather information) and force powers (lol sorry you wasted your use of that force power and your entire turn by rolling a 12), and the frustrations of the chargen process, my wife just gave up, and I wasn’t far behind.

I miss Star Wars, but the things that annoyed me in the past are much more glaring now.

 

[Jer]

Only 2 players showed up (we were supposed to have 3 but our third spent the whole day thinking it was Saturday instead of Sunday and they were really apologetic when we texted them to ask where they were). Our rule is that if we get at least 3 out of 5 to a session we continue our current campaign, less than that we run a one-shot. (Normally I have time to prep the one-shot because folks will let me know by Friday if they can't make it to a Sunday session).

So we pulled out their 10th level 13th Age characters from our last campaign and I improvised an adventure where they entered the Dreamlands to find a missing Dreamer who had disappeared. It turned out the Dreamer had been kidnapped into the dreams of a cursed ancient Red Dragon. The Dragon needed a replacement for itself to take on its curse and keep the world it was dreaming alive, so it tricked the Dreamer into entering its dreamworld and switched places with them. The PCs had to figure out what was going on, enter the dragon's lair, and figure out how to get it to go back to sleep (which given that it was improvised and was only supposed to go for a single session, I allowed "beat it into unconsciousness" to work).

They told me it went pretty well. I felt it was kind of weak because I didn't really get to think about clues to plant as much as I'd like for something like this, but everyone had fun and one of them was really happy to play that character again since we only had one big adventure with them at 10th level before we retired the characters. Since these two are the most consistent players I told them I'd plan out some one shots for their characters for future sessions where we don't get a quorum to play the regular campaign.

 

[not-so-newguy]

Only 2 players showed up (we were supposed to have 3 but our third spent the whole day thinking it was Saturday instead of Sunday and they were really apologetic when we texted them to ask where they were). Our rule is that if we get at least 3 out of 5 to a session we continue our current campaign, less than that we run a one-shot. (Normally I have time to prep the one-shot because folks will let me know by Friday if they can't make it to a Sunday session).

So we pulled out their 10th level 13th Age characters from our last campaign and I improvised an adventure where they entered the Dreamlands to find a missing Dreamer who had disappeared. It turned out the Dreamer had been kidnapped into the dreams of a cursed ancient Red Dragon. The Dragon needed a replacement for itself to take on its curse and keep the world it was dreaming alive, so it tricked the Dreamer into entering its dreamworld and switched places with them. The PCs had to figure out what was going on, enter the dragon's lair, and figure out how to get it to go back to sleep (which given that it was improvised and was only supposed to go for a single session, I allowed "beat it into unconsciousness" to work).

They told me it went pretty well. I felt it was kind of weak because I didn't really get to think about clues to plant as much as I'd like for something like this, but everyone had fun and one of them was really happy to play that character again since we only had one big adventure with them at 10th level before we retired the characters. Since these two are the most consistent players I told them I'd plan out some one shots for their characters for future sessions where we don't get a quorum to play the regular campaign.

Gah! Nothing more frustrating for me personally than players that say they want to play then rarely show up

 

[Jer]

Gah! Nothing more frustrating for me personally than players that say they want to play then rarely show up

It's fine - we're all busy folks and the only day that works for our schedules is Sundays, so it's often the case that we can only get a few of us to show up on a given Sunday (I even have to block some of them out for family reasons, so there are days when everyone can play except for me, which makes it frustrating for them since I'm the DM).

This particular day was odd because the friend who wanted to come but then forgot what day it was is usually really good at letting us know when they can't make it and was legit disappointed that they screwed up. Usually I know going in how many players will be there so I'm prepped for it - we've figured out how to make our weird schedules work.

 

[jasper]

The other players broke me with comments about how my Icewind Dale barbarian was handling the cold. Something about cutting grapefruit. yes get your minds in the gutter.
But my netherdeep group out thought me. I stole all the horses in town. All the waterskins. Was looking forward to the exhaustion of no water. They bought a mule and borrowed a 10 gallon pot so the druid can cast create water.

 

[Older Beholder]

I got to play (DM) in person last weekend. It's a homebrew campaign where the characters were resurrected by a cult of 'born again' clerics after a TPK - a tattoo of a phoenix marks their rebirth. We only play once or twice a year, so I aim for 6-8 hrs of game time.

The session began with the party having been drinking at a tavern all night when they heard a commotion outside, the city's defender, a great green dragon had crashed onto the street fighting a group of devils, all of which had already been damaged in the battle. It worked well as an opening scene with the heroes rushing to help fight the invading fiends. The fallout of the event meant that the green dragon had retreated to it's ruined lair to lick it's wounds and the city had gone into a sort of lockdown where it was seen as bad luck to leave town.

I ran a few weeks of downtime activities, the barbarian got involved in pit fighting, the bard performed in taverns and the rogue joined a local thieves guild. It was a bit of a montage with quick skill checks and a bit of roleplay. After that they were hired to find a murder hiding in the sewers in a little mini-quest before eventually leaving town and making their way out of the swamp that surrounds the city. They had to flee a group of Banderhobbs, and finally defeat an unspeakable horror in order to escape the swamp which I was treating a bit like 'Area X' from the Vandermeer novel Annihilation.

It was a good session with everyone having a lot of fun.

 

[Guest 7034872]

Last night went mostly okay, though we went over time by a half hour, and I think probably I should have cut it short to avoid that.

There is one common problem I'm up against: how can a DM best make combat go faster? We spent way too long on a combat interaction after everything went haywire in keeping with my intended plot line. I seriously want to improve my time efficiency here so we can resolve combat in at least half the time it currently takes. Any tips from the experienced DMs?

 

[Bill Zebub]

First session (other than session zero) for a new campaign. Some role playing, some logistics, and the start of the adventure itself, including the requisite ambush by bandits. Good fun.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My last session of D&D was not great.

I think we're nearing the end of our campaign. What started off as an attempt at a low magic, quasi-iron-age type setting has slowly morphed into a pretty standard D&D world. The idea of the campaign was to rotate GMs, and so I expected a little tonal shift or inconsistency from GM to GM. But the most recent GM decided for some reason to run Wild Beyond the Witchlight. So our kind of gritty low magic setting is out the window. Our PCs who were designed for that low magic world are now interacting with a bunch of Alice in Wonderland style characters, and the juxtaposition is not fun, it's jarring.

As a result, the players are less engaged, and then the GM then struggles to involve people, and as a result, he's started declaring actions for characters. And while I get how he may feel the need to do so for someone who's not being very responsive, it started happening more and more and when he did it to me, I had to correct it. I'm pretty easygoing as far as players go, but there are a few things that I can't stand... one of which is when the GM tells me what my character does or says. I don't mind a suggestion or a prompt, but to just tell me "You investigate the closet..." No. No, I don't investigate the closet.

It's a shame because I actually had been enjoying the campaign prior to the introduction of Wild Beyond the Witchlight. And I don't want to blame that adventure... it may be great, and some of the elements seem pretty cool... but it was a total mismatch for the existing world and characters.

I really don't know why the GM didn't just hand off the duties to someone else since we were rotating anyway, rather than deciding to shoehorn in a published adventure.

 

[Stormonu]

My last session was Star Wars Saga Edition, for the first time in a few years.

It was frustrating. There is a lot to like in SWSE, and a lot of foreshadowing of stuff that now lives in 5e D&D, but the system is just in such a frustrating manner.

From things like skills being quantified down to how much it costs in bribes to verify rumors around town, to the accuracy math being designed to make everyone miss most of the time (meaning many turns get “wasted” on missed attacks), to a couple dozen other little things, it got to a point where my wife rolled a 15 on the die for a 21 to attack, missed, and said “I’m sorry what?” We were level 5, and while she is not optimized for attack, she also isn’t exactly outside what would be normal if we used pointbuy and she was a little more optimized. It was the last straw, after all of us running into the weird action economy limitations of the system, fiddly nature of skills (trying to get information from people with gather information) and force powers (lol sorry you wasted your use of that force power and your entire turn by rolling a 12), and the frustrations of the chargen process, my wife just gave up, and I wasn’t far behind.

I miss Star Wars, but the things that annoyed me in the past are much more glaring now.

My eldest son just convinced me to run a SAGA game for his friends; this weekend we made characters and I ran them through a quick combat so they could get a feel and make any tweaks prior to the first full game. I foresee a lot of the same frustrations you saw and I'm looking at 5Eing the system where I can. This is supposed to be a one-shot after all, and I want it to be entertaining and not frustrating.

As for the quick adventure, It is sent in the Mandalorian era, and I opened with the party on the back of an imperial transport/tank (like the one from Rogue One), in binders. As it backed into the Imperial remnant base to be taken away by troopers, the characters cast aside their shackles and started shooting! Their plan was to infiltrate the base, steal a cache of weapons and get out. They found themselves in an escalating firefight as troopers kept showing up to the Imp scout's call for reinforcements. Eventually, an Emperor's bodyguard showed up, akin to the appearance of Maul from Episode I (I even got to play Duel of Fates on his entrance). The jedi in the group got exceptionally lucky - a nat 20 on his Force Push, hurling the bodyguard across the room and taking out half his HP. Even then, the bodyguard quickly rejoined the fight and dropped two characters (but they got to use their Second Winds and a Force point to revive themselves).

In the meantime, the group's droid commando got a lucky crit with a vibrodagger, beheading one of the troopers. The other droid in the group (a scavenged Dark Trooper with claws instead of blasters) started going blender on the bodyguard, finally taking the red imperial down in a wave of spinning claws that would have made Grevious proud. The trooper commander, who was standing nearby coordinating the troopers actions went, "Nope" and left the fight (I'm hoping to have him become a return gag - hanging around and then bravely running away when threatened).

The group managed to clear the troopers and corner the scout to stop him from calling for more reinforcements, just in time for the group to hear the clanking approach of something big from deep within the base's armored cargo bay - a powered up AT-ST! Luckily, the group had located the armory and started hauling out crates of weapons - blasters, grenades and ... wait a minute ... thermal detonators!

One of the characters closed the blast door to the cargo bay, but the AT-ST kept shooting it. As the door started to heat up red, then glowing yellow and eventually white-hot, the group was scrambling to get what they could out, as one PC held back ready to toss a thermo if the AT-ST got through.

As the metal on the door began to melt from the heat, the group made its last trip to the armory, and decided to leave a crate of thermos by the door, with the hope the group's scout could shoot the crate when the AT-ST burst through. However, as the group's laden transport sped away, the AT-ST's blasters finally ripped through the door ... hitting the crate.

The whole base went up as the group scooted away, not looking back at the explosion behind them...