Things that make a player say WHAT!

One of my goals in running any RPG is to get that player reaction where they go, "Whoa!"  "Sweet!"  "That's freakin' cool!"  Apparently I like my players to be from 1996, but so be it.  

My last game, I had one such moment where I did something cool, and I wasn't planning it.  One of my players wanted to use his Cleric's daily power, Dismissal, on the big bad.  He rolled big; my villain was doomed. Now, usually we use a marking system I first saw on Sly Flourish, where you use bottle rings to mark your enemies.  They were trying to figure out which color to mark him "Dismissed", while I looked at the objects behind my screen.  Glittery heart stickers we used to use to show bloodied values, transparent post it tabs, dice, wipe off markers, note cards - wait a second.  Dice.  I had a clear box that my newest Chessex set came in.  I quickly dumped the dice and put the clear case right over my poor tiefling necromancer.

 

"Oh shit that's cool," was the response I got from the other lady at the table.  Later, there was much laughter when the big bad came back from the Dismissal and ended up with so many status effects on him the figurine almost fell over. 

The moral of this little story is: visuals work.  Sure, D&D is a story telling adventure where your players engage their mind in a rollicking imagery adventure led by your descriptions and navigated by the depth of their imaginations.  But sometimes, it's awesome to put down a good visual representation of what's going on.  Also, crafting is fun!  Don't be afraid of found objects.

We've been doing the Wizards module H3: Pyramid of Shadows for the past - well, time doesn't flow normally in the pyramid, and apparently neither for our games.  It feels like decades.  It's hard for me to recommend the module- it's long, and while it's packed full of interesting tidbits, it's rather confining for the players.  As one player simply put it, "I can't wait till this is done and the most important decisions I'm making is not just whether to go left or right."  

 Our final word today is a couple quotes from my gamers:

"You can't spell Necromancer without ROMANCE.  I'mma give him my loooove..."

"I'm sorry- I'm riding Marmaduke into battle?!"

Next up on Dice & Drama:

• MARMADUKE: What happens when players do something on a whim on game 1, and it's still effects them at level 11.
• Players possibly escaping the dreaded module pyramid
• Running a 1 shot for my family - Mom & Dad's first D&D!
• Possibly Incorporating a flashback into my campaign

Comments

[drew]

Pyramid of Shadows is an interesting concept but ultimately it's flawed in its design. The review I'd heard of the H-series of dungeons basically claimed that they were all way too similar and that the encounter design was sub-optimal. Take a look at the design for the Abomination fight; it was one guy in a square room with a mildly annoying trap. Taking out the trap took out the only thing that kept that fight from being a big old dogpile-the-boss situation.

Also, I've said this before but it seems like without a lot of work on the GM's part, as you have done to your credit, the NPCs are severely flawed. The Head, for one thing. My God, the Head. So. Annoying. For another, as I've stated it feels like there's literally no reason to trust anyone in here - everyone is just waiting for a chance to stab us in the back if we make an alliance or eat our faces when we show up, if for no other reason than we're disturbing their complacency.

And complacent really is the right word - I'm relatively sure that the eladrin party, for example, could have done a lot more in terms of plowing through the dungeon, but given the way these modules are designed, and the mode they're trying to emulate, I'd bet money that there's nothing in the module about them doing anything except sitting around and guarding the entrance to the dragon.

As I said, to your credit you clearly layered information on top of what's been presented. (I doubt that there was a section titled "how these NPCs are connected to Drew's character," after all.) However, because of the disconnect between the module and the plot of the story arc, the additional information is easily noticed when it comes up.

Is it bad? No, not really bad per se. Is it flawed? Absolutely. Can it be made to work well? I think so.