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<blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 8429551" data-attributes="member: 20323">I prepared a <a href="https://slyflourish.com/starting_strong.html" target="_blank">strong start</a>, an idea courtesy of Mike Shea at Sly Flourish, with the group being confronted by thugs of the villain they were pursuing at the riverside. Basically they were simple thugs, but by giving each a feat, lots of background tying into the PCs' own backstories, and making them sympathetic it was a lot more interesting. Definitely aim to use more strong starts going forward.At the funeral parlor I had three bodies with funeral masks and funerary apparel – one of which was the villain, but the PCs needed to discern which was actually alive. They came up with a seemingly fullproof plan – send in the invisible super stealthy cat familiar – but I injected some humor with the cat's favorite food (duck pate) being served as an hors d'oeuvres and offered the warlock player Inspiration if his cat sampled the food. It was a low challenge but tense bit of humor.When they defeated the villain (a suped up tiefling bard), I was pleased to see his tragic villainy and sympathetic motives inspired some debate among the players about how to handle him.After the session, I received feedback one of the players appreciated the forthrightness of these NPCs where they weren't lying, they were either conflicted or believed they were doing the right thing.Reflecting on my own DMing, I notice when I'm not doing it regularly (we had about a month break) that my descriptive language takes longer to warm-up and the first half of the session I felt very &quot;stiff&quot; in terms of my descriptive acrobatics.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Quickleaf, post: 8429551, member: 20323"] I prepared a [URL='https://slyflourish.com/starting_strong.html']strong start[/URL], an idea courtesy of Mike Shea at Sly Flourish, with the group being confronted by thugs of the villain they were pursuing at the riverside. Basically they were simple [B]thugs[/B], but by giving each a feat, lots of background tying into the PCs' own backstories, and making them sympathetic it was a lot more interesting. Definitely aim to use more strong starts going forward. At the funeral parlor I had three bodies with funeral masks and funerary apparel – one of which was the villain, but the PCs needed to discern which was actually alive. They came up with a seemingly fullproof plan – send in the invisible super stealthy cat familiar – but I injected some humor with the cat's favorite food (duck pate) being served as an hors d'oeuvres and offered the warlock player Inspiration if his cat sampled the food. It was a low challenge but tense bit of humor. When they defeated the villain (a suped up tiefling [B]bard[/B]), I was pleased to see his tragic villainy and sympathetic motives inspired some debate among the players about how to handle him. After the session, I received feedback one of the players appreciated the forthrightness of these NPCs where they weren't lying, they were either conflicted or believed they were doing the right thing. Reflecting on my own DMing, I notice when I'm not doing it regularly (we had about a month break) that my descriptive language takes longer to warm-up and the first half of the session I felt very "stiff" in terms of my descriptive acrobatics. [/QUOTE]

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