DM Diaries 1

DM Diaries

Welcome to DM Diaries. Here, you can find my personal thoughts and opinions on things like PC, direction of the campaign, individual sessions, and so on.
DISCLAIMER: These articles will reference specific players by name, as well as events that occur in sessions or reviews. Please be aware that this is not made to offend anyone, and if it does, feel free to let me know. If these articles become a problem, I will gladly take them down.

DM Diaries - 1

GROWING PAINS


OVERVIEW

As with anything new, nothing can be expected to run smoothly in the beginning. There are always kinks to be worked out, folds to be ironed, and so on. I'm still rather new to DMing, and at that, I'm still quite new to TTRPGs and Pathfinder as a whole. I don't know all the rules, or how to properly balance things. I don't always have the confidence I need to run the sessions. But I am trying my best, always, and I always try to take the feedback from reviews into account.
COMBAT
Our combats in particular still have some serious issues to be worked out. For starters, its so. slow. I know it's because we have so many players, but it isn't helped by the fact that some of us are new.. Karna, I hate to do this, but I'm looking at you here. Spellcasting early on isn't easy, hell, it's hardly even fun, but taking an extremely long time on combat turns inevitably slows it down for everyone. On that note, Viv, I understand your frustrations with early level spellcasting. But, here's the problem: I can't knowingly buff your spells when we are aiming for most of our time spent in high levels - you will literally be an unstoppable monster. For now, you kind of just have to deal with it. Sorry!
On a different note with combat, there are always going to be problems, and most of the time, they're caused by me. A good example of this is Session 4, where the stats were clunky due to how I accidentally gave the party the equivalent of level 10 Nourishment. That was totally my bad.
Another place that's 100% my fault is Litia's damage numbers. In our previous campaign, I had told you guys you could buy any starting items, so long as you could afford it, and that it was of your level. . . It was that last part that I forgot to specify this time around, which led to Litia purchasing a level 4 rune, with spiked her damage like CRAZY. This has proven to be pretty troublesome for me, because it leaves me with some hard decisions to make:

Do I buff HP on the enemies you fight? It drags combat on

Do I add more enemies and not touch HP? You still one shot them before they can act

Do I make you fight higher level enemies? Then saves and AC are too high. The only fix there is to spend more time planning to fix those numbers

Do I take away the rune? It's my fault she has it in the first place, so that feels unfair

Do I focus her in fights? Then she might feel unfairly targeted

As you can see, my own mistakes turn into absolute nightmares sometimes. And it'll take some time for me to fix these problems, so just bear with me!
PLAYER CHARCATERS & ROLEPLAY
When it comes to PCs and roleplay, I have some seriously mixed thoughts. There are some characters who have really surprised me in a pleasant way - the star for this category in my eyes is Stumpke. I find her to be a fairly diverse character with really interesting roleplay, despite being played by one of our quieter table members. Some characters feel like they have really amazing potential - Anya and Rakki are notable here for me - but still need some time to develop and become themselves. There are some characters who I find to be rather lacking in roleplay - mostly Grim and Karna here.
And then there's Viv. In concept, she is so cool. Her story potential is through the roof, and ties into our main story. In actuality though, I'm not sure where things are going wrong. She seems quiet, and unwilling to do things that she isn't comfortable with (example: the athletics skill challenge in the cave). I understand that that's how she would act, but it makes it unfun to play with, I guess. I'm not super sure how to remedy this; she doesn't want to interact with others when given the roleplay time, but then also doesn't want to participate much in combat or other activities.
Just another one of our growing pains, I guess.
SESSIONS AS A WHOLE AND STORY DIRECTION
So far, I think our campaign has been going well. It very much has 'beginning-of-the-adventure' vibes to it. We've explored a cave after being unfortunately locked in it, met a fun NPC, and have made it to our first small town. There's a ton of story hooks to be explored, and I'm truthfully excited for it. I feel far more confident in this campaign than our last, and I feel like that shows even in things like how I play my NPCs.
As far as story direction goes, it's going to take some time. Our grand mission, if you will, is a nuanced story that has a pretty hardcore commentary on government and society as a whole. And, for those of you itching to get into that right away, my best advice to you is to hold your horses. Your first quest has you traveling to Harcross, a city that, on foot, is roughly two weeks travel.
CLOSING WORDS
This was my first run at a series of articles we're going to be calling DM Diaries. It's meant to give you guys some amount of insight into how I'm feeling about the direction of things, characters, and so on. I won't be writing these after every session, but more likely after every few, where I can actually discuss any substantial changes that have taken place. 
So please, if you've made it this far, feel free to let me know what you're thinking after reading all of this, and don't forget that the purpose of this article isn't to call anyone out or intentionally hurt them.