City of the Dead, Session 7: Slow Heading Back Out
We played session 7 of my D&D game The City of the Dead on Friday night. It was delayed from a week earlier when one player had a bad work schedule and I was still marginal from a long-running cold. And even this Friday, things went slowly. The group moved slowly and didn't manage to get back to the actual City of the Dead.
What did they do instead? First, they finished up with training and bookkeeping stuff in the home city of Durendal. That wound up taking over 90 minutes. I was frustrated by that because I'd invested a lot of effort in trying to streamline this aspect of the game. See my blogs from recent weeks on What's Your Role-Playing Game About?, Taking it Easy with Encumbrance, and "I Know a Guy. Tony."
The net-net of it for Friday night was I packaged up all the bookkeep-y things the PCs might want to do in town and presented them as menu choices. For example:
Perhaps the problem was none of them (and there are only three) had a strong opinion on what to do. It was that dreaded, "I don't know, what do you want to do?" loop. I ended up being the one prodding them, "Gang, we're spending too much time on mundane stuff. This is designed not to be a hard question. Choose one and let's move on."
I suppose I could have made it go faster by simply telling the players what they do instead of giving them even simplified A-or-B menu choices. That approach really rubs me the wrong way, though, as it removes player agency. I've played in games like that, where, in the name of simplification and streamlining, the GM skips over all the prep choices and says, "Okay, you're here at the stairs to the dungeon, going down." I hated that. But it did forestall the players from going into a tailspin of analysis.
To be continued... the group finally heads back out!
What did they do instead? First, they finished up with training and bookkeeping stuff in the home city of Durendal. That wound up taking over 90 minutes. I was frustrated by that because I'd invested a lot of effort in trying to streamline this aspect of the game. See my blogs from recent weeks on What's Your Role-Playing Game About?, Taking it Easy with Encumbrance, and "I Know a Guy. Tony."
The net-net of it for Friday night was I packaged up all the bookkeep-y things the PCs might want to do in town and presented them as menu choices. For example:
- Everyone wanted to train up for a new level, but you were short on money for expenses from the loot you sold. However you have 3,000 Denarii in the group hopper. You can pull 800 out of there, then everyone's trained. Fair?
- You decided you'd give the fancy suit of armor recovered from the dead caravan to Uncle Keyevan as a return on his lost investment in the caravan. You can give it to him now or later. Giving it now puts you in his good graces now, smoothing the path for you to go back out there. Giving it later... really has no benefit. Consider that Keyevan will soon be aware you've come back with 1,000s of Denarii of loot plus a few magic items, and will be suspicious why you're holding out on him.
- You might want to scribe some spell scrolls to help with the most dangerous part of the mission you know is coming up. (I proposed this because the players hadn't thought of it, and I know they will ask to ret-con it- "Oh, we totally would've scribed scrolls in town before leaving!" when the big combat starts 3 days later.) Here are 3 spells that would help: A, B, and C. Here's the cost of making each. Which do you want to make?
Perhaps the problem was none of them (and there are only three) had a strong opinion on what to do. It was that dreaded, "I don't know, what do you want to do?" loop. I ended up being the one prodding them, "Gang, we're spending too much time on mundane stuff. This is designed not to be a hard question. Choose one and let's move on."
I suppose I could have made it go faster by simply telling the players what they do instead of giving them even simplified A-or-B menu choices. That approach really rubs me the wrong way, though, as it removes player agency. I've played in games like that, where, in the name of simplification and streamlining, the GM skips over all the prep choices and says, "Okay, you're here at the stairs to the dungeon, going down." I hated that. But it did forestall the players from going into a tailspin of analysis.
To be continued... the group finally heads back out!