We gamed last night. I won't lie, it was pretty cool. Everyone seemed to like the additions to their minifigs. I found a company that makes weapons for Lego minifigs like lugers, missile launchers, grenades, revolvers, etc. Its pretty cool stuff and I'm glad everyone liked them.
The flash cards were well received. I was concerned that some people would be offended, particularly John and Martel. There's were sort of poking fun at their playing style, but there was no malice whatsoever intended. I just wanted to do something goofy and fun to let everyone know that I am paying attention to how they play the game. This flash card thing with abilities is actually going to be a reoccurring thing. I've been trying to find a way to reward people for coming that doesn't horribly penalize those that don't. I can't charge people levels, because if you're sick or have something important going on you come back to the sessions feeling weaker than everyone else which makes the whole experience something of a drag, no one likes having to be the figurative princess waiting around for a plumber while everyone else is the plumber. What I am going to do is come up with flash cards based on the occurrences in the scenarios. These flash cards offer fun little abilities, usually to turn a failure into a success on a skill check. They're not game breaking, but it is a nice little reward type thing. I dunno. I'm working the kinks out. The danger is having everyone in the group with multiple cards allowing the group to basically obliterate any sort of skill based challenge, so its something I have to think about and tweak a bit.
The music...it went ok. The horse thing seemed to be more amusing than anything else. The final music file, the ritual chant that I set to slowly fade-in over the course of an hour went extremely well. It got to the point where people couldn't hear me very easily and it was so repetitive and irritating that I think it began to seriously affect people (plus some were exhausted) in terms of concentration. That was exactly what I was going for.
John seemed to really like what I did for the called shot system, I think he said it was basically exactly what he was looking for and that was a very cool thing to have happen. Knowing that I've made someone's session or made the game more enjoyable is a nice thing to feel and it is something I definitely consider to be one of the DM's duties.
Everyone seemed to like the scenario as well. I'm not sure if they understand what was going on, at least no one said anything like "Hey, I think this is happening here." The main thought seemed to be that zombies were assaulting the town or something, that was what I was going for. I sort of built the scenario in my head to be a zombie attack situation, as a previous post indicated, but I ended up going with weird rituals because sorcery is very important to this particular plotline thing that I'm working on, so the guys need some exposure to such things. The main point of the scenario was to let the PCs know that some Fell-Humans (the kind with weirdly twisted and glowing black bracelets of strange metal) have the ability to use sorcerous rituals to drag meteors and asteroids and other heavenly rocks in close proximity to the planet from their orbits and into the cities of Kusseth. Kudos to the guys for preventing the destruction of Tolon. You guys were heroes for once.
Tangents. If I were a ranger, I would choose Tangents as my Favored Enemy. ...I think I just levelled up in terms of nerdiness. Heh. We went off topic on Fred and his enmity for Wil Wheaton (evidently a Favored Enemy of Fred's)for like half an hour. Totally irrelevant and it began with almost no prompting. I'm not pointing fingers because we were all off our game a bit that night and even I have a hard time not commenting when we get off topic. I just don't know how to make it stop. Eric and I discussed the fact that the size of the group is the problem, there are just so many of us (seven when everyone comes) that everyone has a little comment about something off topic, and it can just become a deluge of irrelevant stuff. These people are my friends and I like bullshitting with them, but our sessions tend towards length and tangents increase this. I think next time I'll set our sessions for two again, whether its a Saturday or Sunday, and maybe have us sit down for an hour or so and just catch up and bullshit and see if that helps. Barring that, I think the only solution is to tell people to shut the Hell up or split our sessions into two smaller portions done over the course of a Saturday/Sunday Weekend Gaming Extravaganza.
Or I could make smaller scenarios, but I guess I don't know how. I felt like the scenario we ran Saturday night was pretty stripped down, and I removed a fight for time's sake. I also just "called" fights like I've heard suggested on EN World. If the enemies get down to twenty hit points among them, just call it. The rest of the battle is just going to be an at-will slog fest. Why prolong it and annoy/bore the players? I've also seen it suggested that you make the player's pay a healing surge in those situations, but I'm not sure how they'd feel about that.
I just don't know what to do to keep us on task? I honestly wonder if it is my DMing style, but no one really says that the scenarios are super long. When we discuss length it is usually tangents that come up as the culprits, tangents and people generally being unprepared for their turn, although that is a lot better than it has been in the past.
We also went over the questionnaire thing I had sent out and the feedback is glorious. John and Fred had some pretty interesting things to say and their comments were pretty helpful in their respective emails, but its was nice to have four of us in the room talking with each other. Some interesting stuff was said and talked about and I'll be doing my best to incorporate it into future sessions. I probably should have written some of it down, heh.
Final thought: good times.
Music: MC Frontalot - Penny Arcade Theme
Music: MC Frontalot - Hassle: The Dorkening
Music: MC Frontalot - Braggadocio
Music: MC Frontalot - Is It Pitch Dark?
Music: Radio Free Burrito #19 - Wil Wheaton
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