DM Thoughts Train Sessions

The lightning rail is pretty iconic for this world, and it seemed like a cool way to get the party to Sharn. I used a bunch of grid paper to make a bunch of narrow (20 ft wide) train cars, revealing/swapping out the paper on the table for the current car as the party progressed. Since this was a train, there was really only a 5' wide unhinded path through each car - though there were tons of booths, compartments, tables.. etc depending on the car.

My original assumption was that the party would take cover; the ranged players would attack from a distance and the bruisers would leapfrog up the car from one piece of cover to the next until they were able to close with the baddies. I don’t think that possibility ever even occurred to them. Instead, doors would open, and it would immediately be a mad rush to the fight.

I wanted to try to make a constrained encounter area, and still have interesting fights, but as mentioned above, they kinda turned into a cluster. My planning was done when we had stronger ranged options (see my assumptions above)… but then the ranger rerolled in favor of a melee fighter, so we had 4 bruisers (monk, barbarian, fighter, rogue) and one ranged (wizard, technically the rogue still had a bow, though it was unused).

I was caught flat-footed by the party’s insistence to interrogate their antagonists mid-fight. I think they may want an arch nemesis, and expected some kind of recurring Big Bad to be introduced or mentioned here. Their decision to go all Batman on this group and turn them into the authorities was unexpected – as they were just throwaway baddies. There is the possibility of these warforged (well, their group) returning, but I have other things planned currently for this arc...

For rewards, the party got a guided tour of Sharn, and I encouraged them to look at the wiki on Sharn; how helpful the tour actually was, was essentially up to them. (I don’t think anyone actually looked at it.) For apprehending the warforged leader, I set them up with House Ghallanda, who would help introduce them a bit to the world and ground them a bit.

For the next campaign arc, I wanted to shake up a bunch of stuff from a DM perspective. I’ll have more on those things in another post; this is just thoughts on the session.