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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 2820189" data-attributes="member: 11">Commentary on Sessions #79 through #81These might have been the most frustrating sessions for me as a DM for the entire campaign.  I think there was a certain point there when I was not having very much fun waiting for the PCs to figure out what they were going to do, as they changed their minds several times.The party being split up didn’t help at all.  I wasn’t sure what affect that would have, but I did hold out some small hope that split into two groups the individuals might argue less and be more decisive (which was kind of the result in Dybbuk Akvram – when Beorth, Jana and Martin went off to find the pendant of undead control and Thomas, and ended up fighting a bunch of bugbears and monks), but that was not the case. Anyway, I am getting ahead of myself.  This was a couple of sessions where I had to do a lot of “behind the scenes” thinking.  In other words, I had to think about what the Company of the Impervious Ward and the other people who were local were doing when the PCs were not around – which led me to have to carefully considered not only the personalities and motivations of those involved, but what resources they had available.Roland and Ratchis went to go meet Gunthar, but I knew Gunthar wasn’t going to be showing up.  But not liking to meta-game things and tell them that the out of game reason I was keeping Gunthar out of the picture (at least for a while) was to allow Logan to assimilate more into the Keepers of the Gate without the contention of their conflict.  As I have mentioned in passing before, having Gunthar be a pain in the ass to the rest of the party was no trouble since the players all knew what they were getting in for when they allowed him to come along, but once I saw that Logan/Gunthar was going to be a recurring problem it did not seem fair to keep inflicting that on Logan’s player – so at the first opportunity that made sense I got rid of him.  I could not simply have him wander off or get killed off (unless that was how the dice fell) because he still had a role to play in the broader plot of the game.However, when they ran into Tyluk, I was hoping that I might be getting their natural suspicions going and convince them to return to the temple earlier, or perhaps even try to follow him and see what he did next.  Tyluk who was Archet’s local snitch and busy-body was good at reading between the lines (high sense motive skill) and if you go back and look at the conversation in Session #79, he basically decided from Ratchis’ response that the watch-mage and the others were at the temple of Bast.  (It is important to note that even though he had never met the party before Tyluk knew something of them from local rumors and stories).  Knowing the Company of the Impervious Ward was looking for them, he made his way to Summit and told them his suspicions for some extra silver.What he was doing when he did that was corroborating what Josef (of the Shepherds) had already told them, with the added benefit that if they hurried the party would be split up and might be easier to get without too bad of a fight.  And in case it was never clear in the story hour before, Josef was something of a weasel. Not a bad guy, just with a certain about of self-interest and a lot of self-justifying.And so, Inquisitor Clerebold decided to head for the temple right away without doing what he would usually do (i.e. send scouts to report back and make a plan), hoping that haste to catch the party split would prevail, but it would turn out to be a grave miscalculation.Once at the temple and their quarry having escaped to the caverns beneath the catacombs, a simple augury spell let them know that it was better to hold the temple and wait than to go after them.And now a few words about those catacombs/caverns: Way back around Session #13 or 14, when the party first arrived in Summit, I first set out the bait of the villager disappearances. I put it all out there and let the players make their own connections between what was going on.  I expected the PCs to investigate the disappearances before trailing after whoever had caused the mayhem in the Sun’s Summit Inn (and ending up with the gnomes for a few months), which would have led them to fighting gnolls who were in the employ of the false priest of Bast in the local temple.  This was the adventure that I eventually had the Shepherds accomplish.  It was meant to have an old school dungeon delve sense, with areas of unaffiliated monsters in the caverns, but mostly places to camp and recoup before moving on to defeat the bad guys. Thus, I made the caverns very big.Amid those caverns I placed the troglodyte priest.  I decided that when the Shepherds were there they never discovered him or his egg-chamber.  However, when the adventure was meant for the PCs to play, he was meant as a neutral NPC that might be won over for aid and information – as long as his tribe’s eggs weren’t messed with.  You see he was one of two male troglodytes that were the last of their line (trogs, like dwarves, being a dying race in Aquerra).  The other was Snorri, who is actually part of the Circle of the Thorn (the cloaked druid with the reptile feet the party met).  You see, before Jeremy died (the first time) and the Urn of Osiris was used, I had the idea for the Circle of the Thorn jotted down as notes (after having read the Dungeon adventure I yoinked them from), but wasn’t sure what role they would play.  I just knew I wanted a chance to have the PCs meet them, and I figured Snuchri (the trog priest) might provide a lead to that circle of druids.  Even if they didn’t use the info right away, they might eventually follow-up on it, especially if they found out that Glamorganna’s lair (the green dragon) was in that forest (which you might remember they found out in the Map Room under the Pit of Bones).So, when Martin, Kazrack and Dorn ended up wandering around the caverns, looking for a way to escape, suddenly the nature of their possible meeting changed as soon as Kazrack started endangering the caverns (something Kazrack wouldn’t have even been capable of the first time I expected them to be there).  Even without the egg-chamber being nearby, Snuchri would have seen the creation of a new way in and out of the caves from the surface as a threat to his eggs and his habitat.However, once Martin used his ability to scry to view the worship chamber and the egg chamber, I thought they might seek out the trog to negotiate with him (gotta use them ranks in diplomacy for something), but it didn’t happen that way.  Now, I am not saying they should have known to do this, or that it would have even been guaranteed that the troglodyte would have believed them or help them, but it was another option there.  Also, Snuchri being of a line of priests of Geb who served Hurgun in the distant past, he would have had lore about the Maze and about the so-called Key Room.Actually, this was potentially a big “ah-ha!” Rat Bastard moment I was trying to set up from the beginning of the campaign.  I figured if the PCs did do the adventure with the false priest of Bast and worked so hard to keep him from opening the portal, and then later in the campaign realized that they had to go through that very portal, it would have been one of those moments when they curse at me good-naturedly, and I love them for it, because then I know I did my job right.It is times like these that I feel like I messed up as a DM and did not provide the clues clearly enough.  There is a fine line to be walked between being too obvious or too easy and being too obscure or having your red herrings be too attractive.As for Logan’s player idea of hit and run tactics, I think that would have worked if they did it intelligently.  The three PCs on the outside were the best suited for that kind of thing, and there were several times they could have caught the Company of the Impervious Ward in a vulnerable position.  Again, this is another example of the “avoid and delay” attitude that was prevalent at the time, and what was causing me so much frustration because we spent three sessions (halfway through #79 thru halfway through #82) dealing with this situation.  But I don’t lay this just on the players, I think it has equally to do with my DM style and what they had come to expect as players and as characters because of that.  And as long as none of the players are complaining that they aren’t having fun, I will hold my tongue about it as I know things go in phases and eventually it will all be clicking for me once again.Oh, and one other thing: About the NPCs.  I had Norena be gone for a while because I get tired of expending the energy of realistically playing NPCs without the conceit of just ignoring their being there (and anyway, some snotty player is always certain to mention them or ask about them).  When the assault on the temple happened, I had Razzle and Cordell go down the other hallway below to second set of catacombs that was mostly unconnected with those Kazrack and company were in.  And then I had Richard just disappear, but now that I think about it, what I should have done was use Richard’s “ethereal condition” work towards keeping the two halves of the party communicating with each other and as a means of keeping tabs on what the Impervious Ward was doing. Perhaps a plan of attack would happened more easily and quickly, but at the time I was thinking of Richard the Red as “another annoying NPC I have to run when I already have to worry about forty mercenaries” and not as “the solution to my problem about keeping the action going”.But it all worked out okay, as you have seen from the first half of the fight, the Keepers of the Gate have things well in hand, and soon get back on track for entering Hurgun’s Maze and completing the campaign.</blockquote>

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