Previous plays with this group:
1. Monster fight on the Open Sea!
2. Badger, Goblin, Fight!

Before Play
I discovered a great resource for printing up battle maps called DungeonForge. I also printed up stats for the anticipated monsters.

Spiders!
We dove right into the combat we'd started last session. Two characters were caught in webbing with four spiders launching their attack. The party was victorious, but not after sustaining some minor damage.

The fight was easier than I expected, and it's mostly due to my new-ness at competitive combat DMing. It wasn't until halfway through the fight that I realized the spiders could throw their webs! And I didn't want to slow things down by looking up those rules, so I ignored that. D'oh!

Two Clans in the Plaza!
I wanted to encourage the players to make a decision beyond "here's monsters, fight!" To that end I used DungeonForge to create a Plaza battlemap with three entrances: One for the players, one for the goblin death cult, and one for a separate goblin clan.

Before the encounter started, I told the players that their characters could hear the two goblin clans arguing with each other. Using the d20srd's Encounter Calculator I created an overwhelming amount of enemies in the two goblin groups. My hope was that the players would have to side with one clan or the other. Unfortunately, the players adequately sized-up their opponents and figured they could handle them all! Five goblins, one dire rat, one goblin cleric (2nd-level, water & death domains) and two zombies all went down.

It was fun to play with the cleric's spells, but not very effective. An obscuring mist spell served to protect the goblins from ranged attacks, only to be slaughtered when melee ensued.

Random Encounter: Bugbears!
We had thirty minutes left after the slaughter and ensuing level-up (third-level, now), so I decided to throw a random encounter at them. I used the Encounter Calculator to decide on four CR 2 monsters: Two bugbears and two worgs. We threw down a battle map from the D&D Miniatures line, and started a fight.

The worgs and bugbears were brought down so very fast! One player added a level of barbarian to his PC, so he not only has a war dog mount with the Spirited Charge feat (x3 damage), but can Rage as well. Combine this with a Ride-By Attack, and he zips past a worg, deals 26 points of damage, and is on the way to the next, all without provoking an attack of opportunity!!

After the combat, it was pointed out to me that when the gnome rages, his AC drops a ton. So I should have directed attacks against him. This is an important queue: The players want a challenge, so they're cooperating with the DM in order to make their combats more difficult! I couldn't ask for a group with a more solid gamist agenda.

Lessons & Thoughts

• Understand Your Monsters: Granted, the DM has more juggling to do, what with playing different monsters all the time. My trouble with the spiders and worgs showed me that I need to not only print up the special abilities (which I did), but also print up any pertinent rules (which I didn't). If I had the net-throwing and trip rules laid out in detail, I could have better utilized the monsters' abilities.
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• Know Your Party: With three fighters and one cleric (war domain), all optimized for combat, I have to get more clever than "pick some CR-appropriate monsters". A gamer friend here at work told me that fighters have trouble with immobilization and Reflex-saves, so I'll definitely look towards that route. I don't want to kill my PCs, but I do want to keep things challenging.
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• Keep Talking to your Players: I can't emphasize this enough. Several times a session I ask questions or remark on possible changes to our play style. So far it's keeping us tightly focused on what everyone wants. Namely, a thin veneer of story over a tactical combat game.
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• Directed, Not Railroading: The players know full well that they're being moved from one battle map to the next, and they're totally okay with it! This is because we had established a method of play up front. In fact, this session, I asked the players, "Would you rather have a dungeon map and move around? Or do you like the battle map route?" and the answer was unanimously scene-to-scene battle maps.

d20 Questions

• Burning a Web: The rules say that you can burn a 5' square of webbing in one round, but we couldn't find any information on the flame spreading. We ruled that it spread out in four directions (non-diagonally) across the web every turn, marking the burning spots with red counters.
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• Obscuring Mist: We had trouble ruling on this one. Do attackers inside the mist attacking outward also receive the 20% miss chance? I had trouble figuring on the strategic value of this spell, especially if its centered on the caster.

Keeping Things Interesting
My primary concern, now that we're comfortable with the basic rules, is to keep our interest going. I don't want to keep throwing goblin horde after goblin horde at the PCs. There are two things I'm going to try:

• It's a Dungeon: To make things easier, I've been allowing the PCs to go back to town, buy new equipment, etc. between each combat. Now that we've learned the basics, it's time to keep them down in the muck. D&D consists of a lot of resource-balancing and risk assessment, which hasn't been an issue in our previous battles. The players even brought some attention to this, saying that it'll be more challenging (i.e., fun) when they can't "recharge" between fights.
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• Repercussions of Combat Decisions: Now that the PCs attacked another goblin clan, perhaps both clans are going to bolster their efforts. They may even ally against these invaders from above. I want to provide further combat choices that push the development of the scenario.

The thing about gamist play is dead PCs are just part of the experience. True, you shouldn't direct GM resources with the goal of 'Kill off a PC' (Unless, of course, that's what everyone wants, yada yada), but if the players or characters mess up or simply get unlucky, then gamist players tend to get annoyed if they get an unearned 'Out'.

I don't think you were planning to fudge the rules, I just thought it was a facet of gamist play that was different enough from narrativist play it rated a mention.

Obscuring Mist: We had trouble ruling on this one. Do attackers inside the mist attacking outward also receive the 20% miss chance? I had trouble figuring on the strategic value of this spell, especially if its centered on the caster.

Before the encounter started, I told the players that their characters could hear the two goblin clans arguing with each other. Using the d20srd's Encounter Calculator I created an overwhelming amount of enemies in the two goblin groups. My hope was that the players would have to side with one clan or the other. Unfortunately, the players adequately sized-up their opponents and figured they could handle them all! Five goblins, one dire rat, one goblin cleric (2nd-level, water & death domains) and two zombies all went down.

After the combat, it was pointed out to me that when the gnome rages, his AC drops a ton. So I should have directed attacks against him. This is an important queue: The players want a challenge, so they're cooperating with the DM in order to make their combats more difficult! I couldn't ask for a group with a more solid gamist agenda.

Directed, Not Railroading: The players know full well that they're being moved from one battle map to the next, and they're totally okay with it! This is because we had established a method of play up front. In fact, this session, I asked the players, "Would you rather have a dungeon map and move around? Or do you like the battle map route?" and the answer was unanimously scene-to-scene battle maps.

It's a Dungeon: To make things easier, I've been allowing the PCs to go back to town, buy new equipment, etc. between each combat. Now that we've learned the basics, it's time to keep them down in the muck. D&D consists of a lot of resource-balancing and risk assessment, which hasn't been an issue in our previous battles. The players even brought some attention to this, saying that it'll be more challenging (i.e., fun) when they can't "recharge" between fights.

To add on to that, one thing I don't think you've realized is that while you've been trying to teach your players narrative play, it looks like they might be trying to teach you gamist play. :D

Narf: Very true. The players are under no illusions that I'm trying to save them. It'd "ruin the game" (regardless of what the DMG says) if I fudged any rolls.

Ricky: Thanks! I'll definitely use it in this way. The clerics could stand to bolster their comrades before sending them off to die.

Callan: I like what you're saying about "win conditions," since those are the terms our group is using. "How do we win this encounter?"

I don't quite get what you say about dealing with loss vs. cooperation.

I get you on the encounter reward with resource management vs. "power up in town". In addition, our encounters have been x2.5 XP & GP rewards to vault them out of 1st level. This last session we agreed to go back to normal rewards, so I think the X encounters before town can be thrown in there, too.

Narf: I didn't ever try to approach it from a narrativist agenda; it was always going to be MONSTERS FIGHT!! I initially wanted more interest in the relationships and events surrounding the encounters, but the players have been happy with battle maps + miniatures so far (even with chances to provide input, they haven't been interested). I've had one player mention that he hopes play will move towards more roleplaying in the future, once we all get tired of simply fighting all the time, but while we're all settling into the system, he's still having fun.

Note: I may be unavailable for comment for a month pretty soon here (awaiting the unpredictable arrival of a child). I hope to get on the Internet sometime during the hiatus, but just in case ...

Zak wrote: I don't quite get what you say about dealing with loss vs. cooperation.

Callan: I get you. What are my play goals vs. what they think are my play goals. I'll have to bring this up. I've told them I'm trying to kill them, and one has mentioned that it's most fun when you've almost died. So my guess is that they want potential player death as a facet of the experience. But! Saying I guess is the same as I assume I can read my players' minds.

Zak wrote:
Callan: I get you. What are my play goals vs. what they think are my play goals. I'll have to bring this up. I've told them I'm trying to kill them, and one has mentioned that it's most fun when you've almost died. So my guess is that they want potential player death as a facet of the experience..

Callan: Okay, you've made yourself clear this time! If I went to the table and said, "I'm so going to kill you, using the rules provided." and my players said, "We're so going to everything you throw at us!" That would be two comparative goals.

My "kill the players" goal is to follow the guidelines set up in the DMG. An average of so-many Very Difficult encounters, so-many Challenging encounters, etc. With Very Difficult meaning a good chance that someone will die. Challenging meaning that they will lose 1/4 of their resources. Etc. etc. (that's off memory, I can't remember what they actually are). And then using the resources provided to me by the DMG's guidelines to kill the party.

So, in reality, while I'm trying to kill the players, none of us are expecting them to die with every encounter. The problem I've been having with this is that the the D&D rules don't provide a solid method to measure "Challenging" or "Very Difficult" against a non-standard party. (I don't know how it stacks up against a standard party, but I assume they playtest the hell out of their rules)

There's something about 'kill the party' that isn't sitting right (with me, anyway). Take chess for example - the rules are very explicit about how your out to beat the other side. This also means that if the other guys taken most of your pieces and you just don't think you can win it, you can give up and concede defeat (concede the other guy won). You can concede that and stop playing immediately and that's a perfectly functional conclusion.

But take your 'kill the party' goal. Suppose you just find them unkillable and want to concede defeat/stop playing. What would happen if you gave up and stopped after say, an hour of play?

Is it prepped in each players mind that that would meet the point of play and be a functional conclusion? Including your own mind?

Support note: With chess, I think someone could force you to keep on playing even after you conceded defeat. But the king falling into check at the end - it's just a configuration of playing pieces on a chequered board. There's no meaning to it - conceding defeat already happened and that's the meaningful thing. The interesting thing I want to note is how you could continue the session, moving pieces around, using tactics and going for check, but there's no gamism involved at all. It's completely hollow. Tactics and relatively efficient system use can be going on, but with zero gamism involved.

Getting too far ahead here, but I'll suggest this: Instead of being forced to play on after conceding defeat, what if you didn't have the option to concede to begin with? That'd probably mean all system use in a session would involved no gamism at all. What do you think?

Zak wrote:
d20 Questions

• Burning a Web: The rules say that you can burn a 5' square of webbing in one round, but we couldn't find any information on the flame spreading. We ruled that it spread out in four directions (non-diagonally) across the web every turn, marking the burning spots with red counters.
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• Obscuring Mist: We had trouble ruling on this one. Do attackers inside the mist attacking outward also receive the 20% miss chance? I had trouble figuring on the strategic value of this spell, especially if its centered on the caster.

D&D goody goody :)

I think you are taking a somewhat large portion of the game out, with the battle maps. By simply moving from battle to battle, you are avoiding all the fun parts of exploring new ground so to speak.

D&D doesnt have to be hack and slash all the way through, and can be just as rewarding as any game, and the DM surely can work with the players to make everybody have fun. I myself dont like the concept of going home to town to recuperate, between fights. that works fine for D&D gladiaor combat, but a story simply cant be supported on it ( IMO) I mean the time it takes to travel to the city to recuperate, what happens in the dungeon, dont they figure out their lair has been attacked, and up the security.

secondly if you have a group inside enemy territory, then remember that the enemy is on its home turf, they should be able to throw any player for a nast curve, traps, falling logs and the likes. Get creative.

I was a part of the playtesting group of 3E, and although i didnt really like 3E after the change from 2nd to 3e i have had numerous fun sessions under the D&D rules, some has been intensive some has been battle hardened, while others have been more like whodunit stories, and others have just been bizarre in the extreme.

Now ask yourself, why did the character go to this goblin dungeon? the ought to have a purpose coming to this dungeon, a dungeon is never just a dungeon, but should serve a purpose, in the story.

Best wishes
Chris