D&D 5E RoT: Disappointing first council session

[robus]

I had high hopes going into this that it would be fun and interesting (even prepped some visual aides to up the interest), but it all fell terribly flat.

Everyone in the room was dull and it was over quite quickly. Basically there wasn't much for the PCs to push against. No particularly interesting decisions to make, they're there to dump information and receive new orders.

The fact that the mission to the Sea of Moving Ice doesn't come from the council is weird. It makes things seem much more suspicious than they should be (helping the PCs to jump to conclusions).

I really felt uninspired in the moment

So has anyone had a satisfying first council session? And any tips for making future ones better?

(The issue was probably compounded by the fact that the PCs joined HotDQ half way through).

 

[iserith]

I haven't run it, but when I read it, it struck me as just an exposition dump and not a challenge that invited spirited PC interaction as they strove to achieve a goal. If I were to run it, I would just narrate it and move on.

 

[robus]

I haven't run it, but when I read it, it struck me as just an exposition dump and not a challenge that invited spirited PC interaction as they strove to achieve a goal. If I were to run it, I would just narrate it and move on.

Yeah - that's pretty much what happened. Thanks, I feel a bit better now

 

[MonkeyWrench]

I just narrated each council meeting. As written, you could have 9+ NPCs arguing with each other and "involving" the PCs or just introduce each leader, summarize their stance on a given issue, and then give the party a brief description of the events of the council.

Incidentally, between the NPCs in the adventure, other allies of the party, and retired PCs, our Council meetings ballooned to 23 members.

 

[pukunui]

We had the first council meeting last session, and I knew going into it that it was basically a big info dump with little input from the PCs. I did get some of the NPCs to interact with the PCs a little during the recap of HotDQ - like, I had them ask who had struck the killing blow on Rezmir and such.

I also changed things up a bit so that Lady Silmerhelve didn't know all about the draakhorn and instead just pointed the PCs in the direction of the Arcane Brotherhood. Lord Neverember then crafted them a letter of introduction to give to Zelenn the White, one of the brotherhood's Overwizards and his old buddy from Neverwinter who helped him become Lord Protector.

I then had Leosin show the PCs the old Moonstar portal from Waterdeep to Luskan, and they went and met with Cashaan the Red and Zelenn the White, who told them that Maccath is the one who would know about the draakhorn but alas ... and they agreed to go and find her. The council's role here was more "Go and meet with the brotherhood and find out more about this draakhorn thing".

 

[cmad1977]

I added two other quests during the first council.
1)Dragon Egg Hunt:
The heroes return to Greenest to recover the eggs they left in the Keep. But the army of the Dragon Cult approaches...

2)Waterdeep Security
How are the cultists infiltrating the mighty city of Waterdeep?
I don't know if that helped but it turned out ok.

I'm also having a 'mini-council' receive the players whenever they return to Waterdeep. It includes the relevant NPCs whose quests haven been finished discussing priorities. Hopefully this keeps some of the NPCs in players heads.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk