Mind, come hither. We must speak of the Dread Session 3.
The Dread Session 3, end of the Trilogy. Dread Session 3 whose notes took me less than half a karate class to turn into graphs.
Dread Session 3, what Tragedy.
No. I mean: tragedy is overstating it. I just wrote afterwards:
"felt like I couldn't hear the players, what they wanted or were getting at—felt like I just said flat no too many times. Too many anonymous openings to other places. Too little player agency. So many 'I'll just watch' scenes..."
The short sense was it felt like I'd set a bunch of traps that I was too much a coward or too distracted to spring.
Being an optimist, I have to paint them as a part of the compost, but please understand that at the end of Session 3, I did not feel like I had done my job correctly. I do think that it was a great test run of both my skills as a story guide and of Corrhéo proper, but I will look back on it as a pretty low high water mark. And I think there could be one, a pretty high one up there on the surrounding sandstone, eventually.
But: into the pond. Into the muck.
Our characters left off in Bero's Boon, just adjacent the Muddyhen Pickets.
TOC - Corrheo Playlog
- Working Player's Survey of Corrhéo
- Session 1 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "To Bero's Boon"
- Session 2 - Corrhéo - West Marches - "The Stakeout"
I think that since this felt like such a drubbing of a session, I'll probably end up needing to self-flagellate a fair bit to get over it. As a result I'll just highlight a variety of missteps I think I made from start to finish and then throughout that a story of what happened will undoubtedly arise.
Foremost:
I planned to conclude.
Neither is a problem in isolation. It is good to plan. It is good to conclude.
But planning to conclude was predicated on an assumption. The assumption that the players were interested in moving on, getting back to HQ, 'being done', 'over it', etc.
The truth of this is that sure, maybe they were: but that needed to be admitted as a possibility, not assumed as an absolute.
The fact of this assumption is fairly obvious from the fact that the only table I generated was a 2d4 Outcomes of if Veel and Huguklah are in the Same Room.
It was actually a fairly nice table. Recall here that our players had staked out the swamp, figured out that this Veel Mulgav character was floating around out there, and then on returning that information to Camp Manager Huguklah, were returned the detail that Veel and Huguklah shared a father and it wasn't pretty.
This all works out cleanly against the secrets I'd rolled up: Veel was supposedly a runaway of sorts who had left a decent career that had been laid out for him and been cursed by his mother as a result, a curse that manifested as his need to sing along with the melancholic tune of the harpies that haunt the swamps.
The point here however is not how it fit in to the existing storyline, but that I was already planning for the fact that Huguklah and Veel would encounter one another and that I would need a decisive action to take place so that I wasn't playacting between two NPCs while the PCs watched. It's one thing if a captain meets a strange hermit and the two have some intermediate exchange in front of the PCs, but to have two half-brothers with a deep past have an exchange is just asking to put on a one-man show, one of my least favorite traps a DM can set for themselves; that I could set for myself.
Enter snare, enter foot.
The table was sort of interesting in that I followed some of ms screwhead's advice to make it 'the most something'. Sample entries: Huguklah kills Veel in a single strike; Veel kills Huguklah in a single strike; Veel sets the swamp range ablaze and makes a run for it through the traps; Trollmage Peern appears with a mocking laugh and summons Veel away; Veel's been mauled by a harpy attack and is bleeding out; Veel sneaks behind to camp and makes off with camp's major treasures!
These were all cool and I liked the idea of each of them happening; but lo again if I didn't roll a 6 as probability projected: 'Huguklah issues a bounty and gives 120g upfront'.
Couldn't have asked for the least interesting of the story ideas I came up with when we got there.
I'm getting ahead of myself but it brings up another major DM choice that I regret now and plan to assess before future sessions:
I set every option on a probability table rather than just picking the most interesting circumstance.
Let's ignore now that I was railroading my players towards an eventual encounter between the two lead NPCs and just say that's fine, we've gone over it.
There still was no reason to make the potential circumstances of that railroading more or less probable, outside of a bizarre desire to keep a world 'more realistic', which is not what excites the mind.
Probability tables like this 2d4 table have been very thrilling for me to write because they are non-linear. I write them from the center of the table (things that come to mind first) out to more rare things or things that take my mind longer to get to, things that as a DM scare me a little bit—what if a God did show up? That would be a wild improbability but to have it as a possibility thrills the part of me that's playing with chance...
However practical that is from a development standpoint, it doesn't acknowledge what I was so proud of, so excited about from last Session which is: put myself in a corner and getting myself out.
At the end of the day, if I'd run a finger down the list of options for what happens when Players + Huguklah enter scene with Veel and said what here is the MOST of these?.. any of the options besides the most common would have been more interesting. Sure, they would have been less realistic given the fact that the players had alerted Veel to their presence, to the fact that he was being hunted or scouted, but rolling one of these 'less realistic / more rare circumstances' would then make it imperative on me to understand / explain / rationalize how it still made sense.
This would have made me, DM, play harder.
So with this poor kindling in mind, I acknowledge that I am staring at my tables now in retrospect thinking: okay, probability when probability is called for, brainstorm when brainstorm is called for. It is fine to brainstorm with probability, but when loosed to the wild of the game table, LET IT GO and pick the most interesting thing as it relates to the characters' current circumstance.
As I go to turn this small series into a module for practice, I will do some conversion.
I think that's all I want to talk about Prep, because I quite earnestly did very little and rolled into the Session on the tailcoat of the previous. Players hadn't moved, Maddeson's player was coming back.
Let's get to how it played out.
Session Play
Like I said, Maddeson was back. You'll summon to your memory how interesting it was last session that characters had spent as much time caring for their AFK Comrade as they had investigating the scene about them. This said something about their investment, you'll recall.
However: huge disconnect!
If a player has been treated as an object, they will never match how they have been treated with their play.
Maddeson should not have been 'allowed' to come back. The moment they became an object in the other players' minds was the moment they could no longer properly inhabit their own body. Everyone else was concerned; this person didn't know how to play into that.
They walked back into Maddeson, Clothchilde of Genemene and essentially said, on prompting: well, I feel fairly ill so I imagine I would lay down again.
Oy, talk about a dud, eh? Everyone else has been scrambling to find herbs, inner powers, whatever they can to cure this sad character's doomy illness, and it's 'well I think I'll keep napping'.
This, as the remainder of the group are tucking in behind Huguklah to go square off against the Big Mystery...
...I'll just take a nap.
Now: (I told you this would be riddled with self-flagellation) I take 3/4 responsibility for this causing issues. One character starting a session with well I just can't be bothered to move is like, THE obstacle a DM must confront with their wickedest tools. If characters wish to move, the impulse is to set things in their way to move around, move through, destroy, step over, leap over, whatever. GET PAST.
But to the character who won't move, who can't be bothered, it is time to bother. The impulse must be 'make this character move'. And instead, I left Maddeson in their tent. I didn't send any stinging insects, I didn't ramp up the fever, I didn't put mysterious sounds in the swamp around them.
My mistake.
But everyone else followed Huguklah into the swamp.
DAMNIT. Again: a mistake. The players followed Huguklah.
Suddenly I had a Company of four following an NPC to confront an NPC who most assuredly had more to say to his half-brother than he did to them. We whizzed through the swamp, collecting the Father Jen Mado too. Everyone met up at the black pond. Zugg the Non-Paladin-Paladin found a hotstring in the dog's hut because I rolled it as treasure. Now I'm adding treasure where there wasn't treasure? I'm being... generous.
Ohboi.
Where are my boundaries?
I roll on the encounter chart: harpy song from the south.
Okay. Fewf. Slow down, Hugh.
Recall that in Session 2 we'd added the Dusksong Passage onto the Muddyhen Pickets as a secondary adventure site. Veel Mulgav's hunter's blind would share an entrance/exit with the Passage, wherein the harpy would be mounted as a static encounter.
So harpy song is cool. Harpy song is cool because Veel and the harpy have become more and more intertwined the longer this development has gone on. Veel has to sing with the harpy, it's his curse.
So now, even though all the players are taking gravewax from Zahir the Half-Orc Priest to protect themselves from what seem quite charming albeit melancholic harmonies from the south, those who are a bit braver are hearing Veel's bass notes mix in to the song.
The Company heads south.
So long ago now, in Session 1, Peets the Rather Young Goblin and Zahir Orc Priest were a turn away from the Hunter's Blind node. Now were headed straight there. I'm hardly describing anything which is bad for business: again; suspense low, DM is towing players where they need to go. Uck.
And when we get there, it's quite lovely, honestly. Cinematic, says Zugg, out of character. The harpy is crooning down to Veel who's high up on a swamp rise dismantling his hunter's blind. She's not a typical harpy, more crow-serpent than woman-crow or woman-bird. A few aspects are human. It's tranquil even, and that's obvious: everyone sits from a far distance and just watches for awhile. The island / rise is something like a wizard's hat in shape with an easy approach and vague exits are described in many directions.
Haguklah stays still. Watches. The song sort-of finishes. The harpy flies off.
I gave up my encounter for no good reason except time had passed without engagement.
Okay, sure: was it supposed to be an encounter with Veel to complete the adventure?
No: it wasn't supposed to be anything.
Remember Maddeson is still sick in their tent. We're halfway through a 3hr session and their player hasn't said a word. Remember the idea is to spur if still. My players are all watching this engagement like, sure, boy is using some beautiful words and descriptions, but ultimately the world is not trying to engage with them. I am not trying to engage with them. I'm taking pretty toys and putting them in various postures in front of them and talking to myself.
I think looking back at my 2d4 'what could happen when Huguklah hits the hunter's blind' probability thing, I should've just run Veel around back to camp. He's not even here in the blind. He's back there with Maddeson, cleaning house, stealing the hundred-some pelts that've been collected. He's burning the camp. Meanwhile, players find the harpy. Now her song gets pointed at them and one of them is seduced. Now everyone's involved and everyone's trying to solve problems. That's what I wish I'd done.
But that didn't happen. Instead Huguklah had to advance (again), call out to his half-brother in a loud voice that alerted the man. Sent him running. Of course the group responded reasonably: they were primed for this. But Veel wasn't a character designed for a 1v6. He's a swamp ranger. He uses traps, camouflage. He takes a Zugg shoulder to the chest. Gets wrapped in a grapple hook. Yields. The combat's over in two turns that don't even feel like turns.
Proceed with me now: characters step off to let Huguklah talk it out with his half-brother; I enter a sort of expository trance explaining everything without dialogue until eventually Veel is melting away into the forest, released by a kind-hearted older brother who explains everything to everyone—that Veel is a bit odd and eco-conscious and lost and that forgiveness is a good thing—and here's a small sac of coin for your troubles.
Oof, friend. It was an anti-climax to beat! My god.
I mean, recall, permutations for this scenario included Veel actually being a doppleganger. Well now that would've been interesting eh? A half-brother acting oddly?
Blarg. It was a bit like those times someone picks on you and an hour later you've got about fifteen gorgeous, vicious, poison-drenched things that you could've said in the moment but didn't.
And as Old Friend Vonnegut said so often: so it goes.
Well, players evaporated from scene, scuttling back to HQ with Maddeson in tow and made decisions that I won't bore you with about finally settling in. Zugg B-D made promises to the Mado Family to return in a couple weeks and help with their ant problem at Wilted Hollow. The team tracked down a bit of gilfern salve at A. Respectable's manor and fixed up Maddeson's buboes, even though Maddeson's player had stepped out early (again, probably a result of the zero-actual-play they did).
Just a damn gold mine of things to avoid doing in the future and I appreciate you sitting through this painful experience.
The long and short remains:
- Players lead. Find a way to make players lead.
- If someone is still, try make them move. If someone is moving, try to make them stop.
- Don't let the principles of probability overwhelm the principle of interest.
- Don't be too hard on yourself.
Players have already signed up for another session. They are aiming to scout the way to the Brunswick Farm Collect in the north near the Grey Misnan. They want to get into a scrape along the way. They want the world to have teeth. They feel like they're getting fat with my generosity.
Okay.
I hear that.
I will grow some teeth.
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