Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Selkirk" data-source="post: 6495034" data-attributes="member: 6775377">so i just saw this-a play thru of part one of rise of tiamat ...dm'ed by rodney thompson [video=youtube;eq3RpqYe7kM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq3RpqYe7kM[/video]i was pretty interested in this to see how the designers run their own games and in particular this ap. as a showcase of the game the video demonstrates problems i have found with 'modern' game design/dm'ing. there are so many red herrings and dead stops one wonders if the players would have continued if they hadn't been filmed(or weren't employees of wotc <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />). why is the tribe so hostile to the party? the party is repeatedly told to leave the island in no uncertain terms. there is nothing interesting or notable about the tribe and the party has no hooks to continue.  i would have just left the iceburg and flipped a bird at the shaman and the chief. but even given the conceit that the tribe is hiding the dragon how is the party supposed to 'know' that they need to go investigate this building? seemed like sheer luck that it even continued. so the party facing nothing but stonewalling and again outright hostility from the tribe finally gets a way in-they can fight the champion! problem is the champion is unbeatable (90 hps <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" />). i felt sorry for the guy battling the champion-he thought he was doing well and actually was putting up a good fight only to be told that the champion still had most of his hp. you can feel the guy just deflate at this deadend. but the real problem the champion poses(and this goes for many 5e setpieces) is why is the party even there to begin with? the tribe can obviously defeat the dragon if they wanted to (the champion alone could almost take him). the relative uselessness of the party is arguably more irritating than the unbeatable opponent trope.and the party is game and enthusiastic but you can feel them tiring and getting bored/confused. so the party grimly soldiers on trying to find something that will give them a reason to stay on this iceburg.  at this point i have two questions 1) is this actually how most people run this part of the adventure? and 2) why the deadends and walkaways in an adventure? why the railroad? if it had been my party we would have gotten back on the ship and sailed back home. the hook about the tiefling isn't enough to stay.you have convinced a party to undertake a grand adventure and the party's first encounter has so many ways to just end/have the party quit-seems like a failure of design/dm'ing..possibly both.notes-i use the term 'modern' only in the sense that this adventure was published in 2014</blockquote>

Verification