At the end of virtually every session I post a recap, often including some DM notes. These posts include things I thought went well, things I will try to improve on as a DM or even retconning little things that I forgot to reconcile in-session. I apparently lost most of my notes on the earliest sessions (part of the reason for starting the blog, so that we could have a good record of the events), but these posts should capture the gist of it, even if a few details got muddled. Going forward, I should have good recaps and notes for each session. Below are some summarized thoughts on our first session.
The Intro: I wanted to avoid a typical intro like “you all meet in a bar,” or some such, and tried to introduce each member in a more unique way. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best way to kick off the campaign. (The guy playing Zyn sat out half the session before we got to introducing his character...) The layer introductions was nifty, but took too long.
The middle: The campaign turned into a bit of a railroaded dungeon crawl (with no long rests, due to Bearchief's silliness in Session 2), and a bit of a slave to grid-based D&D. My bad there. New DM errors. We mix it up pretty well these days.
The end: I'm not a good RP'er, and I should have put way more effort into playing their first Big Bad. To complicate matters, I lost all of Brenda's talking points somewhere, so this was even more excruciating that the record now shows. I'm slowly getting better...
The arcs ended essentially how I wanted them to, with a big, memorable end battle, and with the party betrayed and on their own; beholden to no one, and ready to explore the world as they see fit (off the railroad tracks).
Bearchief actually moved away about a week after the arc concluded… The party wanted to continue the campaign but was a bit worried, having now lost their primary healer AND primary tank… but I discouraged people from rerolling solely for party composition. This was D&D! They should play as they want and anything should be possible, right? …Right?
The Intro: I wanted to avoid a typical intro like “you all meet in a bar,” or some such, and tried to introduce each member in a more unique way. In retrospect, this probably wasn't the best way to kick off the campaign. (The guy playing Zyn sat out half the session before we got to introducing his character...) The layer introductions was nifty, but took too long.
The middle: The campaign turned into a bit of a railroaded dungeon crawl (with no long rests, due to Bearchief's silliness in Session 2), and a bit of a slave to grid-based D&D. My bad there. New DM errors. We mix it up pretty well these days.
The end: I'm not a good RP'er, and I should have put way more effort into playing their first Big Bad. To complicate matters, I lost all of Brenda's talking points somewhere, so this was even more excruciating that the record now shows. I'm slowly getting better...
The arcs ended essentially how I wanted them to, with a big, memorable end battle, and with the party betrayed and on their own; beholden to no one, and ready to explore the world as they see fit (off the railroad tracks).
Bearchief actually moved away about a week after the arc concluded… The party wanted to continue the campaign but was a bit worried, having now lost their primary healer AND primary tank… but I discouraged people from rerolling solely for party composition. This was D&D! They should play as they want and anything should be possible, right? …Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment