We played our Forgotten Realms campaign again last night. It was a session that I thought went relatively well but that I'm still not completely settled on what I did or didn't like about it. Perhaps a little pontification here will clarify things for me. For those who haven't read all my other threads on this game, I'll put a short refresher here.

Players:
Me - GM. I've been playing since 1989. Age 33.
Trey - A friend I met in the Military and has been playing longer than I have. Age 30.
Fred - Good friend who I introduced to D&D about a year ago. Age 24.
Seth - Another good friend who I introduced to D&D at the same time as Fred. Age 20.

Characters:
Aaron - 2nd Level Male Aasimar Priest of Tyr (died this session) NPC.
Arin - 2nd Level Male Wemic Templar of Tempus (Trey)
Crysaline - 2nd Level Female Drow Swashbuckler (Trey)
Camden - 2nd Level Male Tiefling Rogue (Fred)
Dondarrion - 2nd Level Male Drow Wizard (Fred)
Githyar - 2nd Level Male Githzerai Monk (Seth)
<Forgot Name>- 2nd Level Male Aasimar Druid of Meliekki (Seth)

The characters started out in Neverwinter and were contracted by Gaard of the Many Starred Cloak to take some magical stones found on some marauding Drow to Lady Alustriel of Silverymoon. They traveled from Neverwinter to Nesme and then skirted the northern edge of the Trollmoors on their way to Silverymoon. Along the way they discovered that Gaard was murdered after they left Silverymoon and they are now the chief suspects. One of their NPC friends, a female Barbarian named Soggrin, was kidnapped by Manshoon. They fought a Troll and a Dragon. They were chased by Barbarian tribesmen into a cave where they battled a Basilisk and found a secret door that only the Drow in the party could open. This is where we started this session.

Scene 1:

The party wanted to explore whatever was behind the secret door they had found and so, I let them know that the passageways here looked to be dwarven in origin and then I framed right to their first encounter beyond the door. In a medium sized room with columns reaching from floor to ceiling I had the party roll Spot checks. Only Dondarrion made his check so he was the only party member not surprised in the first round as 6 Drow descended from the ceiling to attack (4 2nd level Fighters, 1 2nd Level Wizard, and 1 3rd Level Priestess). I also had them begin a countdown of round until a reinforcement monster for the Drow would arrive (a Narleth from Creature Collection by Sword and Sorcery Studios).

Thus started the longest single combat of our campaign to this point. It took about 2 hours just to fight this out. Part of it was that both sides had difficulty hitting each other due to relatively high Armor Classes as compared to lower Base Attack Bonuses due to low level. Most of it was due to abysmal dice rolling on each side. A couple of interesting things happened that I will list below:

1.) Camden was hit by a Drow hand crossbow and was put to sleep during the first round before he was able to do anything. This will become relevant during Scene 2. Just keep it in mind now.

2.) The Narleth arrived while only the Drow Priestess remained and she went down the next round. When it arrived the party was in fairly good shape. One member was asleep, one was fatigue (recovering from Rage), and a couple were down a hit point or two but nothing major. After 6 rounds of combat with the Narleth, 5 party members were entangled in webbing, two of those were unconscious from poison (Arin and Crysaline), and Aaron (also entangled) was dead. Only Dondarrion remained free. The Narleth was seriously hurt but it was quite concievable that it could completely destroy the whole party in the next round and that only Dondarrion would have a chance to escape. As it was, Magic Missles from Dondarrion killed it early in round 7 before it could attack.

Despite our Gamist outlook, I was very tempted to fudge rolls during the last few rounds just to keep party members from dying. I didn't (partly due to adopting the practice of rolling in the open) but it was tempting. I did adopt the less effective strategy for the Narleth of spreading out its attacks among the party members instead of concentrating most on a single characters. While this probably saved most of the party from death, it felt like cheating to me, especially since the party was in dire straits due to really poor tactics and failure to effectively utilized their resources and NOT because I miscalculated and overpowered the encounter. It just seemed to deflate the scene for me. I don't know that the rest of the group felt that way but it certainly sucked for me.

Scene 2:

After a couple of days resting up back at their safe spot (they were really beat up), the group decided to continue their exploration. I had the two characters leading the party (Crysalin and Camden) make some checks. Camden rolled to detect the Alarm "trap" that had been set and Crysalin rolled to detect the Drow that were waiting for them. I told them that there were two things at Stake; Surprise or not and the Initial Battlefield setup. They made one roll and failed the other so I ruled that no one was Surprised (good for the party) but that I would set the battlefield (not as good). They run into another Drow patrol similar in composition to the last one and a battle ensues. My observations are:

1.) Camden was hit by a Drow hand crossbow and was put to sleep during the first round before he was able to do anything. I told you this would be relevant now. :) We all laughed a lot at the irony here.

2.) Crysaline and the Aasimar Druid went down to spells and hand crossbows also but Dondarrion, Githyar and Arin worked well tactically together and wiped the Drow out handily.

We called the game at this point and wrapped things up.

End Game:

I did a little wrap up discussion at the end of the game. I had not talked explicitly about the new techniques I had been employing, namely Scene Framing and Conflict Resolution, and took the opportunity to get a feel for how the group liked or disliked what was going on. The concensus seemed to be very favorable. They liked the pacing provided by the aggressive scene framing and they really liked the fact that I was only putting in encounters of EL +3 or greater. They liked it because it added a lot more suspence to the combats and they got more XP per encounter than if they just beat on mooks all day. This pleased me, I must admit. I felt like all this time I spent reading this forum and thinking about how to apply it had really paid off in a big way. None of the players have every even looked at The Forge but that wasn't neccessary since I had and had gotten a real feel for the kinds of things they (and I) would like in a game. Thanks to everyone who put effort into discussing all this theory mumbo-jumbo here. It really does help.

I also let them know that in the next couple of sessions they would most likely reach Silverymoon (unless they just decided to abandon that plot thread and do something else). I let them know that I didn't have anything really planned for their characters for about a year in game time after that and I asked them to be thinking about what kinds of things they would like to do during that time. D&D is one of those games that it is really hard to fly by the seat of your pants with and so I'm trying to get a grip on what they might like in the campaign so that I can plan on incorporating it.

I also let them know that in the next couple of sessions they would most likely reach Silverymoon (unless they just decided to abandon that plot thread and do something else). I let them know that I didn't have anything really planned for their characters for about a year in game time after that and I asked them to be thinking about what kinds of things they would like to do during that time. D&D is one of those games that it is really hard to fly by the seat of your pants with and so I'm trying to get a grip on what they might like in the campaign so that I can plan on incorporating it.

Ralph,

That is a damn fine idea! I'm going to use it. I'll let you know how it goes after they get to Silverymoon.

Heya Ralph,

Valamir wrote: If not, consider offering an XP bounty...sizeable enough to be worth while...for each plot hook they provide that meets your standard (your standard here being hooks that seem like some actual effort and thought went into...not necessarily that you'll use it).

While this probably saved most of the party from death, it felt like cheating to me, especially since the party was in dire straits due to really poor tactics and failure to effectively utilized their resources and NOT because I miscalculated and overpowered the encounter.

Callan,

You are probably correct about the "cheating" bit. I do tend to spread attacks around a good bit when dealing with monsters rather than human/demi-human foes. It was just a little more blatant this time than at others. Normally I would have a monster use all (or most of) its attacks against a single character and then next round focus on someone else, even at the expense of completely taking out the original target. This time I spread the attacks out during each round because concentrating would have essentially killed 1 character per round there at the end.

My big issue was that it really was poor tactics that got the players to that point. The Narleth didn't show up until the Drow were essentially dealt with and the party was essentially unharmed (except for the sleeping rogue). The problem was that for some inconcievable reason (at least to me) the Monk decided to hang back and plink at the Narleth with a sling, even though he had the best AC in the entire party at a 24. On top of that, the Wizard kept trying to hit the Narleth with a hand crossbow round after round instead of doing an average of 7 automatic points of damage with his Wand of Magic Missiles. Those points of damage and the added attacks from the Monk probably would have killed the creature 2 or 3 rounds quicker and the party would have avoided getting into such a bad position to begin with.

However, both the player of the Monk (Seth) and the player of the Wizard (Fred) are still relatively inexperienced players and I didn't feel that having a Total Party Kill would have been the best method of reinforcing good tactics at this point. In a couple of months, when their characters are a little more sturdy and the vagaries of chance play a lesser role in the equation, I'll probably be a little more ruthless.

As for Fred appreciating the irony of the Rogue getting taken out in the same manner twice in a row, there were two reason that went over well. First, Fred has a good sense of humor and he laughed as much as the rest of us. It really was funny. Second, since each player is controlling two characters, it didn't put him out of the action. He still had a character to control during the combat and wasn't just sitting around doing nothing. If both his characters had been eliminated, I probably would have let him play some of the Drow or the Narleth but it didn't come to that.

Ah, I understand you now. This reminds me of a very recent actual play thread: Don't step on my gamism

In that, the players (mostly for lack of PC attachment reasons) got very experimental in their techniques.

I'm just wondering if your new players had a lack of attachment to their PC's, so they were experimenting in non optimised ways, so as to test out something other than the expected.

Not sure what to do about that. Experimentation gamism is valid, but then again to support it you'd be undercutting proper gamism. I think you might want to have a talk, so they declare when they feel experimental and at those times they will be protected from TPK's or some arrangement. You might need to clarify what you mean by experimental...they might not have noticed their own behavioural change.

On the rogue, sorry, didn't notice the player had two PC's. All you did was put more pressure on him (in a rough but good way).