D&D General How Was Your Last Session?

[Nebulous]

It requires MUCH LESS PREP; and my kids loved it. It was fine, but I'm ok with seat of the pants coming up with stuff, especially in a D&D type fantasy world. If your jam is to spend a lot of time designing things in advance and having everything prepared; would be tougher.

For better or worse, I do like having maps and such prepared, which wouldn't be so bad in person, but on Roll20 it requires some thought. At some point I'm going to run it with no prep or framework once I'm done with Cinder Queen, just to see how it goes.

 

[ccs]

My last session? In a word, annoying.

Several sessions ago the players knowingly went into the Fire Giant chapter of SKT (slightly modified to fit into my campaign world) under-lv.
They managed to NOT get killed by the yakmen, succeeded in rescuing a # of slaves, & fled. They even came up with a fairly decent plan to evade the yakmen pursuing them. From the slaves they learned the gist of what's going on. Then, once the slaves were a "safe" distance away, the PCs doubled back so that they could infiltrate the FG lair. The Fighter player also wanted the slaves to relay the situation to the local Lord & hopefully get some additional aid sent.
(This is an annoying theme with this player. He always wants NPCs to come in & solve the problems.)
It's a good 6-8 day round trip between the nearest town & the adventure site.
So the rescued slaves head back to town, the yakmen search the wrong area of the forest, & the PCs infiltrate the mines/forges.

This past session?
The PCs infiltrate the mines where they spend about a week skulking around, gathering info, determining that they cannot take the giants in any sort of stand-up fight, & hiding out in the empty mine lvs.
Then things get exciting. The NPC "army" arrives upstairs & a good # of the giants are drawn away to deal with the attack. This leaves things that the Ps can handle - mostly orcs/ogres/etc (and a single giant) - to keep things running down below. So the PCs venture into the forge lvs.
They have 3 objectives:
1) locate & recover the Iron Flask, then use it to re-trap the fire elemental. Without the fire elemental a huge wrench will be thrown into the giants plans.
2) rescue more slaves.
3) Escape - What they do not have is any actual plan of escape. They know this & decide that they'll wing it.....

Things go well enough. They fight assorted orcs/ogres/salamanders etc, avoid fighting a hoard of goblins in the kitchens, free some more slaves & stage them in a "safe" room, explore a bit looking for the Flask.... And then they find the assembly room where the giants are constructing their Vonidar(sp?) super sized dragon killer golem(?).
All thoughts of the Flask are immediately discarded as they decide crashing this thing to the floor is the new best way to sabotage things.

At this point the session goes from alright to annoying on my end.

They partially manage this, attracting the attention of the last giant & virtually all of the remaining enemies. And then, mostly at the insistence of the Fighter, they run away with the slaves (who are in no condition to fight) into the mines as the enemies are distracted by the crashing construct. The intent is to work their way back up through the mines, link up with the "army", get some healing, & come back down....
It's never occurred to them that:

• this NPC "army" will not be the victors. Despite me telling them, & demonstrating in the past, that NPCs will not solve the adventures for them.
• It's not occurred to them that this armies function story-wise is to be the Dues Ex that'll allow them a chance of succeeding/escaping despite them being too low lv vs fire giants.
• Minor physical sabotage (toppling the construct) will only slightly delay the giants plans. But stealing the magical fuel (the fire elemental) that makes it all possible....
• As a party, they do have the gear, info, & class abilities to quickly find the flask, capture the elemental, & effect an escape.... They just aren't using them.

So. Instead of just finishing up the adventure they spend almost 45m doing anything but & in ways that aren't going to be effective, based on OOC assumptions that given the past they know are flawed (at best).

So instead of being able to prep a new adventure? I'm stuck dealing with something that should be done already.

 

[Reynard]

It was okay. We did the hellwasp best in BGiA. Dungeons full of nothing but one monster type are pretty boring, especially when there are next to no other features of interest.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

My last session? In a word, annoying.

Several sessions ago the players knowingly went into the Fire Giant chapter of SKT (slightly modified to fit into my campaign world) under-lv.
They managed to NOT get killed by the yakmen, succeeded in rescuing a # of slaves, & fled. They even came up with a fairly decent plan to evade the yakmen pursuing them. From the slaves they learned the gist of what's going on. Then, once the slaves were a "safe" distance away, the PCs doubled back so that they could infiltrate the FG lair. The Fighter player also wanted the slaves to relay the situation to the local Lord & hopefully get some additional aid sent.
(This is an annoying theme with this player. He always wants NPCs to come in & solve the problems.)
It's a good 6-8 day round trip between the nearest town & the adventure site.
So the rescued slaves head back to town, the yakmen search the wrong area of the forest, & the PCs infiltrate the mines/forges.

This past session?
The PCs infiltrate the mines where they spend about a week skulking around, gathering info, determining that they cannot take the giants in any sort of stand-up fight, & hiding out in the empty mine lvs.
Then things get exciting. The NPC "army" arrives upstairs & a good # of the giants are drawn away to deal with the attack. This leaves things that the Ps can handle - mostly orcs/ogres/etc (and a single giant) - to keep things running down below. So the PCs venture into the forge lvs.
They have 3 objectives:
1) locate & recover the Iron Flask, then use it to re-trap the fire elemental. Without the fire elemental a huge wrench will be thrown into the giants plans.
2) rescue more slaves.
3) Escape - What they do not have is any actual plan of escape. They know this & decide that they'll wing it.....

Things go well enough. They fight assorted orcs/ogres/salamanders etc, avoid fighting a hoard of goblins in the kitchens, free some more slaves & stage them in a "safe" room, explore a bit looking for the Flask.... And then they find the assembly room where the giants are constructing their Vonidar(sp?) super sized dragon killer golem(?).
All thoughts of the Flask are immediately discarded as they decide crashing this thing to the floor is the new best way to sabotage things.

At this point the session goes from alright to annoying on my end.

They partially manage this, attracting the attention of the last giant & virtually all of the remaining enemies. And then, mostly at the insistence of the Fighter, they run away with the slaves (who are in no condition to fight) into the mines as the enemies are distracted by the crashing construct. The intent is to work their way back up through the mines, link up with the "army", get some healing, & come back down....
It's never occurred to them that:

• this NPC "army" will not be the victors. Despite me telling them, & demonstrating in the past, that NPCs will not solve the adventures for them.
• It's not occurred to them that this armies function story-wise is to be the Dues Ex that'll allow them a chance of succeeding/escaping despite them being too low lv vs fire giants.
• Minor physical sabotage (toppling the construct) will only slightly delay the giants plans. But stealing the magical fuel (the fire elemental) that makes it all possible....
• As a party, they do have the gear, info, & class abilities to quickly find the flask, capture the elemental, & effect an escape.... They just aren't using them.

So. Instead of just finishing up the adventure they spend almost 45m doing anything but & in ways that aren't going to be effective, based on OOC assumptions that given the past they know are flawed (at best).

So instead of being able to prep a new adventure? I'm stuck dealing with something that should be done already.

TPK is an option on the table?

 

[Imaculata]

My players sailed to a new city, ruled by a religious sect of paladins. They came in the hopes of perhaps making a new ally. But as they spent more time in the city, they start to realize that their possible future ally has some extreme tendencies that they are not okay with; People being beaten in the streets for herecy by priests and priests emptying a house and burning magic books. Hopefully though, these are just rare extremist elements, and their religious leader is a bit more reasonable. But all of this did not leave a very good first impression.

They are also intrigued by the violent attacks on the local lumberyard. It would seem a group of druids are responsible for marking targets with piles of inscribed stones, to guide some kind of horror from the forest to attack the innocent lumberjacks. As is often the case in my campaigns, there aren't obvious good guys and bad guys here. It is entirely up to the players to seek a solution.

 

[Nebulous]

Curse of Strahd! Oh man, it went well. They never killed Doru in Barovia, so he made a surprise appearance and threw his father's severed head at the party. Poor Donavich. But I think he makes a much more interesting dead NPC than a living one.

I've been following a couple Reddit walkthroughs, and it has massively helped now that they've reached Vallaki. From here on the campaign blossoms into a big sandbox and I can't wait to see what happens. I made a bunch of new maps, including one for the town square that seems like such an important location.

 

[cmad1977]

Curse of Strahd! Oh man, it went well. They never killed Doru in Barovia, so he made a surprise appearance and threw his father's severed head at the party. Poor Donavich. But I think he makes a much more interesting dead NPC than a living one.

I've been following a couple Reddit walkthroughs, and it has massively helped now that they've reached Vallaki. From here on the campaign blossoms into a big sandbox and I can't wait to see what happens. I made a bunch of new maps, including one for the town square that seems like such an important location.

Vallaki is really where our game took off. The cleric Reaaallly wanted to go to the midnight mass so a few of the PCs were in the church during the attack. One of them lost an eye and one of their NPCs was killed.

 

[Nebulous]

Vallaki is really where our game took off. The cleric Reaaallly wanted to go to the midnight mass so a few of the PCs were in the church during the attack. One of them lost an eye and one of their NPCs was killed.

Yes, I can see how it could go so many different directions. The Reddit also offers new locations, such as an orphanage and a reformation jail that both have extensive backstories.

 

[Richards]

Last night's game session was much shorter than anticipated because the players were rolling hot and the DM's dice betrayed him at every turn. Therefore, we chewed through the opponents he'd set in our way at top speed. Not that that's a bad thing.

Johnathan

 

[Eis]

well....I am happy to announce that we are no longer naked at the bottom of a 100 foot pit.....so it went pretty well I think