Truename's DM commentary on Scouring of Gate Pass

[Truename]

SPOILERS ahoy! (And players in my Portland game, stay out!)

My players and I just started playing WotBS 4e last week and I'm already enjoying it a lot. I've liked Durn's and others' reports of their experiences, so I thought I'd share mine as well. I intend to focus more on what's worked well and not worked so well from the DM's perspective.

The characters, along with their DMG p.8 archetypes:

Cwndydd (SOON-duth), an Eladrin Hybrid Swordmage/Paladin. Her player enjoys system mastery and creating optimized characters.
Keothi, a Goliath Warden. I'm pretty sure her player is a Watcher.
Aspetra, a Deva Artificer. Her player is a Thinker.
Khansi, a Warforged Assassin. Its player is a hard-core Instigator.
Volk, a Goliath Barbarian. His player is probably closest to Slayer, with Instigator tendancies.
Theren, an Elf Druid. His player leans Storyteller.

Our previous game was Scales of War, and we played it for a year and a half, through to the end of the Heroic tier. The players enjoyed it a lot, but I got bored. Most of them were looking forward to playing Paragon tier, so they were a bit disappointed about the idea of starting a new campaign. We compromised by agreeing to come back and play the highlights from SoW as a pure beer-and-pretzles beat-em-up. It should make a nice break from the intensity of WotBS.

For most of the players, my game is their first significant RPG experience. SoW is a combat-centric game with minimal roleplaying, so the roleplaying aspects of WotBS are new to most of them. SoW is also heavily railroaded, so choices with meaningful results are pretty foreign as well.

I've emphasized that the strength of WotBS over SoW is its freedom of choice and role-playing elements, and the players have dived in. They've all created interesting character backgrounds and personality aspects and they're making a real effort to stay true to their character identities at the table. I've provided each with an individual background sheet that gives inside information (gleaned from the campaign guide and first two modules) that's unique to each PC. Most of them have also read the Player's Guide thoroughly--several actually gave an impromptu lecture on how Gate Pass fits in politically with Ragesia and Shahalesti tonight.

In terms of house rules, we're using three major house rules:
1- Everyone has a "Do Something Cool" at-will power for stunting. It provides 1[W] damage (or equivalent) and a minor effect.
2- Everyone also has a "Do Something Awesome" encounter power. It provides 2[W] damage and a minor effect, or 1[W] damage and a bigger effect.
3- A fate point system inspired by Spirit of the Century, where people can tag/compel character aspects to gain advantages/disadvantages. Fate points are a superset of action points.

And off we go! I hope you'll share your suggestions and ideas along the way.

 

[Truename]

Session 1

We played the first session last Tuesday. It was pretty much by the book. I did mix scenes 1-1 and 1-2 together using flashback vignettes--we started with the combat, and then after every round, I flashed back to the PCs meeting each other. There was a great moment (worked out in advance with Theren's player) where I described a great ram bursting through the window and knocking a thug to the ground, which had everyone flabbergasted until they figured out we were introducing one of the players.

The flashback system worked very well considering the situation. Everybody's new to player-to-player roleplaying, so it was fairly awkward at first. Having the roleplaying vignettes mixed in with combat allowed me to bounce back to the comfortable, familiar combat mechanics.

That said, there wasn't a whole lot of introductory roleplaying, and the players ended up punting on how to escape Gate Pass. Mostly, I think it was a sense of awkwardness about the roleplaying and unfamiliarity with the campaign. They kind of decided to try to convince the mages at Gabal's School to help them escape, but didn't go much further than that, and didn't ask Torrent any questions about what she knew.

They managed to capture Kathor during the fight--they routed the thugs easily, then surrounded him before he could get away. He surrendered without a fight. There was a nice scene where Cwndydd, the Paladin/Swordmage rescued the unconscious thugs. (All of the enemies were knocked out rather than killed.) Then they decided to let to let him go after a bit of questioning, and getting him to agree not to follow them.

They thought Kathor was just a bounty hunter of no consequence, so it will be fun when they meet up with him again. I've decided that their honorable behavior has improved Kathor's attitude to "Indifferent," and that he'll repay his perceived debt by warning them away from the Gauntlet encounter. They'll have a chance to turn him to their side entirely in that scene.

Then we went through the city scenes, which went over well, and ended at the Depository. The sense of urgency worked well in those scenes and they didn't stop for another short rest, despite taking damage, and also spurned Corian, Kiki's owner.

 

[Truename]

Session 2 (Scenes 2-1 and 2-2)

This was a neat session. It dragged in parts, but the player's choices in this one should reverberate. They've also managed to go way off the rails of the plot.

A bit of background: in prepping for this session, I decided that Larion was a misogynistic and cruel, but experienced, fieldworker who resented Shealis and her silly decision to send a talkative Solon on a covert mission. He wishes to supplant Shealis and take over as head of the Gate Pass operation.

I've also decided to play the Shahalesti as a very fey race, with Jim Butcher and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell touches. So the fey are subtle and dangerous. Tie in Cwndydd, whose player has gone along with this characterization full bore, and we have the recipe for some intrigue.

So before the session, I prepared some notecards. I decided that, if the players managed to capture Larion, that he would try to make a fey bargain with the players. Of course, the best fey bargains are like The Monkey's Paw--dangerous and destructive.

To make it even more interesting, I decided that Larion would address the Shahalesti character in "court eladrin" that only an eladrin would speak. To simulate this, I handed Cwndydd's player prep-prepared notecards rather than talking. I created bastardized versions of the card for those that spoke elvish.

Here are the cards:

Card 1:                                 "Translated" Card 1:
Agent of Winter, perhaps we can         Cold Servant, I give to thee what thou
exchange favors.                        give to me.

Card 2:
I will tell you the location of the     Three for three, binding in law. I give
case, the name of its possessor, and    the queen and her scepter, and a boon yet
will grant my assistance with one       shared.
other thing, which I will tell you
before we are agreed. I ask three
boons in return.

Card 3:
First, agree not to speak of my terms   Lowest, share not thine tongue an they
to anyone, unless they are present      also share it with thee, lest the donkey
with us here and have similarly         cry.
agreed.

Card 4:
Second, release me and promise no       Middling, let me and my children, and my
retribution for my actions here         children's children, fly free.
tonight.

Card 5:
Third, you and your companions kill     Highest, smite the queen, who holds the
she who ordered me here, and who now    scepter.
possess the case.                          The boon yet shared is a wasp, hiding
  When you do, my third boon is this:   amongst the drones.
I will strike from behind,                 Agree, now!
unsuspected, and aid you in the
attack.
  Are we agreed?

They did capture Larion, who told the Solon to return home, and then made his offer. This is the part that dragged a bit, because several players didn't have anything to do while the eladrin considered his cards and what to do next. But eventually they all understood the deal and, to my utter amazement, they accepted the bargain! I made a big deal about them ritually shedding blood, and warned them that their agreement was magically binding, but they agreed to it in an instant. Only one person balked.

I had Torrent express discomfort with the idea of murdering someone, but she eventually went along with it too.

I have to admit, this surprised me. On the other hand, I think it's a good way of introducing that their decisions have consequences early. I'm going to play up Shealis' willingness to discuss giving them the case when they meet her. And if they back out of their agreement--well, then there's Monkey's Paw-style results that can come along later.

In retrospect, I think it's because they knew the Solon was a good-aligned creature, and they thought the Solon was with Larion (rather than Shealis). I had them roll an Insight check when the deal was done, and they did well, so they saw a flash of "mouthful of jagged teeth" in Larion's smile when he left... that left them a bit uncomfortable with their decision. When they meet Shealis, I'll be sure to convey that Solon is Shealis's familiar, not Larion's.

 

[RangerWickett]

Man, you put a heck of a lot of effort into that. Sounds very cool. And my inner language geek went all smiley at your cards.

Please, keep it up.

 

[Burchard]

In the event that my PCs don't slaughter Larion and decide to interrogate him, I'm totally stealin' your idea!

I just printed up a page for the Court Eladrin speakers (we have one eladrin in the party), a page for elvish speakers (we have two) and a page in elvish script for the non-elvish speakers (we have two). If it comes to this, it would be great!

 

[Daern]

Great stuff! I was really worried my players were going to want to follow up on the "Singing Chasm" escape route so I made a whole plan for that in case they get too friendly with the Eladrin.

The theme of sketchy high elves is definitely one of my favorite parts of WOTBS and I like how it carries through in #2

 

[Truename]

Great stuff! I was really worried my players were going to want to follow up on the "Singing Chasm" escape route so I made a whole plan for that in case they get too friendly with the Eladrin.

My players perked up when they heard about the Singing Chasm and started talking about using that to escape the city. What was your plan?

The theme of sketchy high elves is definitely one of my favorite parts of WOTBS and I like how it carries through in #2

Yep. From reading the campaign overview, I get the impression that the players get to choose their favorite nation in a future adventure. So I'm going to make them all morally grey.

 

[Daern]

Hmmm, I can't find my notes, but I think I basically planned to use the "Travelling Through The Mountain" skill challenge from DMG2 and prepare a couple delve style encounters. Travel through a Fungus Forest would be cool. Myconids would preview the Myconids in WOTBS#2... I was thinking that they could encounter Duergar at the exit who might make an offer similar to the Dwarves as written in the module, a sort of hostile negotiation with a superior force... (maybe steal the fortress from Thunderspire Labrynth!)
All that stuff requires level adjustments, but I like to tinker and mix-n-match with published material.
Also, it might be a good opportunity to throw in some references the Trillith deep beneath the earth...

 

[Truename]

Session 3 (Scenes 2-3, 2-4, and 2-5)

Well, that was a surprise.

I expected this session to be fairly uneventful. After last session's intrigue-heavy (and somewhat poorly-paced) content, I thought some nice, unambiguous beat-downs would be fun for the players without being a lot of work for me. Nothing went quite like I thought it would.

First, Flaganus Mortus. I thought the players would try something creative to save the baby, but they were feeling a bit squirrely, or something. They didn't believe Flaganus's threats, and taunted him: "Go ahead, kill the baby. You'll be the next to die." You know what happened next.

I played up Torrent's reaction afterwards a bit, describing them as finding her with tears streaming down her face, saying, "I couldn't save him. Maybe that's what Lee meant... I focus too much on fighting, not enough on saving."

The scene at the temple went pretty well. I ran the Mulysa encounter and Cwndydd "defused" it by first trying to complement her--she just lashed out verbally in response--and then by slicing the strings of her lute with his sword. I had the teens come in at the same time and start harassing her. Cwndydd interposed himself and Mulysa slouched away, muttering "no house, no lover, no lute... I guess I have everything I need now."

The roleplaying stat blocks I made in advance really paid off in this scene. There was some free-form roleplaying and I felt like I knew exactly how to respond. I think Mulysa's final comment hit home for the players that these characters aren't just two-dimensional antagonists--that their motivations run deeper than "give the players an obstacle to overcome."

For reference, here's the stat block I used:

Appearance: Dark-haired, dark-skinned female half-orc
Voice: Rough, angry
Key Traits: Grieving, miserable, lashing out
Goal: Misery loves company
Motivation: House bombed, lover missing
Fears: What comes next
Weaknesses: Passive aggressive, socially inept

Finally, we played the warehouse encounter. I started by playing up Torrent's concerns with the party--a few of them stumbled into the meeting at the Poison Apple, and one of them is Cwndydd, the eladrin that negotiated the fey bargain in our last session. I took two of the players aside and had Torrent tell them that she didn't trust the others and feared the fey bargain had involved them in something dark and dangerous. She was going to go scout out Gabal's school on her own, and wanted the party to do the warehouse mission as a sort of test.

The encounter itself... well, the party is the victim of bad editing and my rushing, unfortunately. The encounter is marked as being 1,200 XP. I have six players, so I added another guard and bandit (275 XP) to balance it. Unfortunately, that took this from a N+3 encounter to an N+4.5 encounter. When we stopped, we were well on our way to a TPK.

You see, the actual encounter budget is 875 plus two 100xp pit traps (which my players avoided). So the correct scaling factor should be one extra monster, not two. If I hadn't been rushed, I would have noticed that adding one PC shouldn't add two new monsters, but I was doing it on the fly during the game. Add in some bad tactics and some very bad rolls, and we've got one PC down, the leader out of healing, two other PCs on the ropes, and the two heavy hitters split off from the party. It's not looking good.

I think a big part of what's going on here is my players are still used to the consequence-free railroad of Scales of War. They're not taking the world or its characters seriously and they're stumbling into all kinds of problems as a result. That's even true of the warehouse encounter. In SoW, the adventures followed a very predictable difficulty curve--throwing in a really hard fight as the first fight of the day just wouldn't happen, at least not until the adventure's climax, and they underestimated it.

The good news is that I think they're starting to notice, and I think they'll realize that they can't just be a bull in a china shop. The game will be better as a result.

As for the TPK... if there is a TPK, I think I'll have the terrorists knock the PCs out and summon the Black Horse to come deal with them. Kathor will recognize them and free them out of a sense of reciprocal duty. They'll have a chance to talk with him and win him over to their side at the same time.

 

[Daern]

I think taking them hostage is a great idea. They can wake up having been bought by Kathor...