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Alright, after numerous starts and stops due to players missing, leading to cancellations, we've finally gotten through what should (I swear) have been a one or (at most) two session battle against what amounts to a medusa. In the game, she was a cursed former empress acidentally released by the PCs from her forgotten cell under the palace.

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For those of you not familiar with my game's history, you should check the following links. The basic run-down is thus: I'm running Narrativist 3E game, possibly vanilla (with a hint of chocolate), and I've recently discarded the XP system in favor of one more like TROS' Spiritual Attributes; we play on-line via mIRC chat for a couple hours once a week.

Previous threads in this series can be found here, in descending order (newest first): http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10824">Pseudo-TROS SA's in D&D, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10717">Braving the Wrath of Dav, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=7167">Narrative 3E: Real Time & Effects on Play, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6218">"No Myth" with D&D, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5000">More Player-Driven 3E, http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=4003">Raven's 3E Game, and http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=3544">Non-silly D&D.

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The whole fight actually took four sessions to get through (keeping in mind our sessions are around two hours apiece, and run on-line via chat). I'm wondering if the problem is that I'm too clever for my own good? That is, when there were advantages, such as the possibility of escape, the enemy took them, instead of sticking around and attacking the party full-on.

I worry that setting things up that way would have just seemed hokey to the players? They really wanted to kill the thing and get done with it, and they approached the situation with admirable caution, rather than rushing in with their swords swinging. But, that led to my taking the advantages the creature would have taken in the situation: attempting to flee, using hit-and-run tactics, hiding and using terrain and movement to its advantage.

I could have simply had her rush the characters in the environment they found her in (the holding chamber), and had the battle take place there, but I felt (at the time) it wouldn't be realistic -- it would look like exactly what it was: an attempt to have the fight right then.

So, maybe I'm getting my CAs confused in play. I knew dragging things out wasn't any fun for anyone, but I went ahead and did it because "it felt more accurate." And boy did that kick me in the teeth, because I became frustrated with how long it was taking very quickly.

During the final session, where they finally managed to put an end to this part of the game, things were running slowly because of problems at my house regarding children (who were supposed to be in bed) and one cranky baby, so what I figured would take a little over an hour ended up lasting the whole two-and-a-half hours. But I've found I'm exceptionally crappy at judging how long a thing will take, so maybe it wasn't the distractions (and keep in mind, I run this via IRC, so no one else was being distracted by my children specifically -- and they had no idea my children were being a problem).

After an already lengthy bout of the session, and half-way through the final combat, two of the party were turned to stone. Had I been thinking more clearly along the lines  of myth and curse, I could have solved that problem by making the curse affect only men, as per the reason for her divine punishment in the first place (the affected characters were both female). However, it was far too late for a correction like that (previous sessions had established that numerous women had been turned to stone).

You could hear the, "Oh, crap...now what do I do for the session?" from the affected players. A few rolls into the combat after that event occurred and I realized the game was going to go quite slowly for those not involved. So, this is where I get to cheer that there were NPCs along for the ride. I suggested the players who were out of the session each choose to play one of the remaining NPCs involved in the combat, to get them back into play.

This worked, and they got into it, using the NPCs to help the surviving PC and finally manage to regain their advantage (by covering the creature's head with a handy tapestry) and subduing the creature.

(( Best & Worst moment of the evening: I am rolling attacks for the NPCs, and one comes up as a critical threat. I then roll the threat as another critical threat (ie: double 20's). Jokes are made about how the nameless NPC guards are better than the player characters, but (of course) I whiff the miss check I must make, since the attacking guard can't look at the medusa or risks being turned to stone. ))

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The session following this conists of almost entirely role-playing (ie: I felt it was like the old Muppets joke, "Because it's plot exposition, it has to go somewhere!"). We've been consistently "bogged down" by role-playing sessions interspersed with the more action-oriented sessions, though we seem to consistently fail to manage to do both in the same session. Oft-times it seems like an either/or situation.

I admit, I fucking hate role-playing. Really! After years of it, I'm utterly drained of any remote enjoyment of such a thing (by which I mean "bouts of in-character dialogue between NPCs and PCs"). Why? Dialogue always seems to be something that slows the game down, that gets in the way, that isn't ACTION itself, but only leads to it. It isn't the "good stuff." It isn't the "right here, right now, this is immediately important" kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, at least one member of my group really likes that aspect of play, so it can't just go out the window. Now, I know there's a way to make the dialogues compatible for both our goals -- there's a way to have the dialogues, and yet give me (and the players) the action and tension of "something important happening right now" that we all also want, but I'm not sure we've been able to really quantify how, yet.

My group and I have been trying to interject more game into dialogue-heavy scenes, by including more rolling for the social aspects of play: Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, etc. -- so that these talking points have actual goals and stakes -- but I, for one, feel like we're stumbling around in the dark, or fumbling virgins trying to unhook their first bra in the dark, because it isn't something we know how to do, and we just fall right back into old, frustrating patterns too quickly.

Mainly, we forget to use those tools, and when I recall that we should be using these things (since we all agreed it was something we wanted to do) I feel as though I am imposing on the player and chicken out. Perhaps I have to be a little more hard-nosed about it until we start remembering to do so on our own?

Quote from: greyormI could have simply had her rush the characters in the environment they found her in (the holding chamber), and had the battle take place there, but I felt (at the time) it wouldn't be realistic -- it would look like exactly what it was: an attempt to have the fight right then.

So, maybe I'm getting my CAs confused in play. I knew dragging things out wasn't any fun for anyone, but I went ahead and did it because "it felt more accurate." And boy did that kick me in the teeth, because I became frustrated with how long it was taking very quickly.  

Interesting.  I am reminded of how the fight dragged in my http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11633">Conan Test Run (cf that and previous thread for the results).  However, for your CAs to be confused, that would mean that the right thing for Narrativism would be to have the fight feel forced and artificial.  I wouldn't think that's true.  

My conclusion from my problems was that I have to learn the system a little better.  (This had been the first time I'd GMed a D20 game, though I had played D&D3 some.)  If you are going to stick by the rules of a system like D&D3, then the way to improve the pacing of your fight scenes is to understand the system better and work with it.  The pace of the combat is controlled by expected damage.  If you lower the monster's hit points and AC, but raise it's damage, then you can get an equivalent challenge with faster pacing.  cf. my essay on http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/genre/pacing.html">Techniques for Action Pacing in RPGs.  

Quote from: greyormI admit, I fucking hate role-playing. Really! After years of it, I'm utterly drained of any remote enjoyment of such a thing (by which I mean "bouts of in-character dialogue between NPCs and PCs"). Why? Dialogue always seems to be something that slows the game down, that gets in the way, that isn't ACTION itself, but only leads to it. It isn't the "good stuff." It isn't the "right here, right now, this is immediately important" kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, at least one member of my group really likes that aspect of play, so it can't just go out the window. Now, I know there's a way to make the dialogues compatible for both our goals -- there's a way to have the dialogues, and yet give me (and the players) the action and tension of "something important happening right now" that we all also want, but I'm not sure we've been able to really quantify how, yet.

My group and I have been trying to interject more game into dialogue-heavy scenes, by including more rolling for the social aspects of play: Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy, Gather Information, etc. -- so that these talking points have actual goals and stakes -- but I, for one, feel like we're stumbling around in the dark, or fumbling virgins trying to unhook their first bra in the dark, because it isn't something we know how to do, and we just fall right back into old, frustrating patterns too quickly.  

Well, if you have a problem with this, I think the first thing is for the dialogue to have very important consequences.  For example, in my Conan convention game, the PCs dialogue with the empress literally meant life or death to them.  Make social interaction have very real and permanent impact on the game.

QuoteI could have simply had her rush the characters in the environment they found her in (the holding chamber), and had the battle take place there, but I felt (at the time) it wouldn't be realistic -- it would look like exactly what it was: an attempt to have the fight right then.

So, maybe I'm getting my CAs confused in play. I knew dragging things out wasn't any fun for anyone, but I went ahead and did it because "it felt more accurate." And boy did that kick me in the teeth, because I became frustrated with how long it was taking very quickly.

I think roleplayers as a whole have a hard time realising this small thing: Elements of reality do not automatically make good game elements.

For gamist, it can really gum up the works (eg, being bitten by a normal cat and dying of infection is not 'step on up', its 'step on me'. I take this example from a D&D article thats on the WOTC site)
For sim, realistically you should be playing one of a billion ordinary joes that are on the planet. But no, usually sim play is about playing someone out of the ordinary. But the situation just has to be realistic, even what your allowed to play isn't?

Rubbish. A million 'average joe' medusas might act realistically. But just like the out of the ordinary PC's, the NPC should be out of the ordinary too. I mean, hell, its already foreshadowed...she was in a forgotten cell, she's not going to be very sane, IMO. Well, my opinion doesn't matter, but foreshadowing does...you can get where to need to be with foreshadowing.

There are a few other things I'd comment on, but I notice I've already posted once in the past.