playtest session 16 -- scenario M4m1??? begins
12/03/08 -- me GMing for John, Dan and Merlin at John's place
Major Secret Spawning
It's a good thing I wasn't too attached to my pre-campaign prep. If I'd spent more time on it than I did, that time would have been wasted. The door in Elericus's basement is now effectively a Major Secret. Very useful? Check: a portal to various places. Requires lots of sub-quests & components to master? Check: plants and numbers and animals and orders of operations all matter, and the players will learn that in bits and pieces.
So, now I've determined the Minor Secret for the current quest is "knowledge of how plants effect the door knobs". The players won't need to "solve" the scenario to learn that, so I'm curious to see what they do once they learn it.
They're Not Sure What They're Looking For
I've successfully given the players many interesting options of things to do. The interest, though, isn't very pointed -- it's mostly, "Well, we have to do something, and at least with imperial missions we'll make money, defend humanity, and destroy evil." As opposed to, "We want knowledge and power, and we think this particular quest will give us X in furtherance of that."
That latter would be way better.
Now that they've acquired plenty of Roots of Visions, I'm hoping they'll try to dream about the stuff that interests them. Unfortunately, due to the memorable (and slightly off-target) circumstances of the root mechanic's introduction, they've associated the dreams with, "Make nightmares go away when you see evil things." As Dan pointed out to me, they aren't currently pursuing this cave because it's where the eyeball-monster came from. They don't care where the eyeball monster came from.
The dream merely put the cave on their radar, and subsequent conversations piqued their interest.
I think translating "where to go to find more info" as "where it came from" has been an error on my part. If I can equate the dreams more generally with "useful clues", and then follow through on that, the system might work better. For example, when someone dreams about Elericus's door, I'd better be ready with an interesting vision that suggests an appealing quest to a location where there'll be a real, door-related payoff.
Fact Sheets for the Players
Everyone liked my demo sheet for Elericus's door, with boxes and columns for listing what their powers gleaned from it, what they knew about how to use it, related items and curiosities, etc.
I think I should also make a sheet for listing Object of Dream and then Result of Dream, so everyone has an easy reference of where to go to find info on what.
One thing I meant to do but forgot was to create Perception Powers columns on the character sheets, so they could fill in stuff like "red = angry, yellow = protective" etc.
They Finally Started Experimenting With Their Powers
I'd been thinking they'd do this as soon as the powers manifested. Nope. But in this session, John said, "I want to start perceiving the signs for plants whose uses I already know, so I can compare that when I look at unfamiliar plants." Boom, Merlin followed up and started doing the same. The two of them rigged up an ingenious scheme where Roderick (John) used his ability to read body language to guess if Elericus was lying while Jan (Merlin) read Elericus's aura as he answered various questions.
FFW Through Research
I didn't have the fact sheets ready, and I didn't have answers on hand for every perception they tried. Rather than give me time to figure it out, they all said, "you go figure it out; let's move on with our mission."
Same for casually interrogating Elericus: while roleplaying the conversations would have been fun, they all agreed they would rather just know what they learned in the end, and spend their play time seeking dangerous magic caves. Ah well, that's probably to be expected when sticking them on a raft for 7 days with a self-proclaimed magical insider.
Perhaps a takeaway here is:
When new knowledge arrives at the end of a fight with a monster, play through the discovery and savor it! When it arrives after leisurely experimentation or banter, on the other hand, then it's just the facts, please.
Color Sticks Around
I'd portrayed Elericus so strikingly in earlier sessions that this session didn't seem to suffer from my lack of opportunity to do it again. In fact, Merlin made a point of saying he was going to demean and condescend to him to knock him down a few pegs! I had considered forcing them to play through some interactions with him, just to keep the dynamic vivid, but it wasn't necessary.
Travel Food Equation
We spent a little while establishing how much it cost to buy food in towns, how much game could be caught with snares, how much more games could be shot with bows and slings, and which animals would feed how many people. It actually added a nice touch to the unplayed river voyage to know that we spent it eating duck and perch.
Once we've established something, though, no one wants to have to waste time figuring it out again. I really should have a handy reference sheet to calculate what level of provisions + hunting = comfy, and what level = Weakening due to Hunger.
Major Secret Spawning
It's a good thing I wasn't too attached to my pre-campaign prep. If I'd spent more time on it than I did, that time would have been wasted. The door in Elericus's basement is now effectively a Major Secret. Very useful? Check: a portal to various places. Requires lots of sub-quests & components to master? Check: plants and numbers and animals and orders of operations all matter, and the players will learn that in bits and pieces.
So, now I've determined the Minor Secret for the current quest is "knowledge of how plants effect the door knobs". The players won't need to "solve" the scenario to learn that, so I'm curious to see what they do once they learn it.
They're Not Sure What They're Looking For
I've successfully given the players many interesting options of things to do. The interest, though, isn't very pointed -- it's mostly, "Well, we have to do something, and at least with imperial missions we'll make money, defend humanity, and destroy evil." As opposed to, "We want knowledge and power, and we think this particular quest will give us X in furtherance of that."
That latter would be way better.
Now that they've acquired plenty of Roots of Visions, I'm hoping they'll try to dream about the stuff that interests them. Unfortunately, due to the memorable (and slightly off-target) circumstances of the root mechanic's introduction, they've associated the dreams with, "Make nightmares go away when you see evil things." As Dan pointed out to me, they aren't currently pursuing this cave because it's where the eyeball-monster came from. They don't care where the eyeball monster came from.
The dream merely put the cave on their radar, and subsequent conversations piqued their interest.
I think translating "where to go to find more info" as "where it came from" has been an error on my part. If I can equate the dreams more generally with "useful clues", and then follow through on that, the system might work better. For example, when someone dreams about Elericus's door, I'd better be ready with an interesting vision that suggests an appealing quest to a location where there'll be a real, door-related payoff.
Fact Sheets for the Players
Everyone liked my demo sheet for Elericus's door, with boxes and columns for listing what their powers gleaned from it, what they knew about how to use it, related items and curiosities, etc.
I think I should also make a sheet for listing Object of Dream and then Result of Dream, so everyone has an easy reference of where to go to find info on what.
One thing I meant to do but forgot was to create Perception Powers columns on the character sheets, so they could fill in stuff like "red = angry, yellow = protective" etc.
They Finally Started Experimenting With Their Powers
I'd been thinking they'd do this as soon as the powers manifested. Nope. But in this session, John said, "I want to start perceiving the signs for plants whose uses I already know, so I can compare that when I look at unfamiliar plants." Boom, Merlin followed up and started doing the same. The two of them rigged up an ingenious scheme where Roderick (John) used his ability to read body language to guess if Elericus was lying while Jan (Merlin) read Elericus's aura as he answered various questions.
FFW Through Research
I didn't have the fact sheets ready, and I didn't have answers on hand for every perception they tried. Rather than give me time to figure it out, they all said, "you go figure it out; let's move on with our mission."
Same for casually interrogating Elericus: while roleplaying the conversations would have been fun, they all agreed they would rather just know what they learned in the end, and spend their play time seeking dangerous magic caves. Ah well, that's probably to be expected when sticking them on a raft for 7 days with a self-proclaimed magical insider.
Perhaps a takeaway here is:
When new knowledge arrives at the end of a fight with a monster, play through the discovery and savor it! When it arrives after leisurely experimentation or banter, on the other hand, then it's just the facts, please.
Color Sticks Around
I'd portrayed Elericus so strikingly in earlier sessions that this session didn't seem to suffer from my lack of opportunity to do it again. In fact, Merlin made a point of saying he was going to demean and condescend to him to knock him down a few pegs! I had considered forcing them to play through some interactions with him, just to keep the dynamic vivid, but it wasn't necessary.
Travel Food Equation
We spent a little while establishing how much it cost to buy food in towns, how much game could be caught with snares, how much more games could be shot with bows and slings, and which animals would feed how many people. It actually added a nice touch to the unplayed river voyage to know that we spent it eating duck and perch.
Once we've established something, though, no one wants to have to waste time figuring it out again. I really should have a handy reference sheet to calculate what level of provisions + hunting = comfy, and what level = Weakening due to Hunger.