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.
10 Sessions In, Many More to Go
It's been a bit of time since the last DM Diaries, so what better a time to sit down and write one now that we're officially within our Holiday break period? For the most part, I'm pleased with the course of the campaign thus far. I've got a halfway good idea of what the next leg of our journey looks like, which always makes anticipating what I need to plan a bit easier. To be totally honest, though, planning sessions has become a real hassle. Sometimes, it feels like such a huge undertaking, even with the bi-weekly play schedule we're using. I couldn't begin to tell you why it feels that way, but it does. The hope is that this break (though more or less mandatory) will help me reset a lot of things in my life, both Pathfinder and otherwise.
WHAT'S WORKING
So far, I think we've all come to grow as players at the table. Roleplay is better, for the most part, and certain characters have continued to shine. Serpica, Gorlac, and Gruuk have all come to be strong members within the party, and as such they're some of my favorites. There are also strong supporting characters in Litia, Anya, and Stumpke -- though these three don't necessarily feel like "the main characters," if you will, I think they've come to be valuable counterparts to those who are comfortable being in the spotlight. And, just a note to those three - I promise I mean this in the nicest, most appreciative way possible!
I think most of our fights and quests have made sense so far (minus the druids, they were awkward to have but like.... they provided some drama I guess???). Combat feel better balanced, though it still does drag on. Aside from literally breaking the economy in Session 10, I'm in the opinion that most things have been on the up-and-up, from fights, to loot, and NPCs.
WHAT ISN'T
Buuuuuuut, even though some things have improved, we still are encountering some growing pains, and that's okay, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be addressed. As mentioned in the last DM Diaries, certain characters feel really underwhelming at times. Namely, they're the characters of the players who tend to be in the least attendance: Grim, Karna, Viv, and Rakki. Disclaimer for Viv: she has her awesome moments, but can be very quiet. Like I said before, it's alright not to be comfortable with roleplaying, but I do ask that you try to flesh out your characters. That's kind of the point of the roleplay questions within the reviews - I won't say who, but certain players still are not putting much thought into these questions, which, honestly, is really disheartening. I don't want to sit here and easily be able to pick out the least engaging characters so easily :/ The idea behind the roleplay questions was that the player would write as though their character was answering -- I understand not everyone is comfortable within roleplaying at the table. By answering those questions, I was hoping to learn more about your character, and thus be able to slot you into session events more easily. Hopefully that changes in the future.. Also, Rakki, I know you can't join for a hot second here so no flame to you for more recent sessions lol ily.
Another pain point has been table attendance. I know stuff happens, that life takes priority. But I am setting up this game for all of you, so it kind of sucks to know that some of you have missed half the sessions or more. I feel like I've said this a thousand times, but please let me know as soon as you know that you won't be attending. We've had a lot of last minute drop outs for sessions, which is just so... annoying, I guess? Mostly, it's been for life stuff, which, like I said, I get it. But when you know you have a birthday or an event to attend on a session day? Please just tell me you won't be there, instead of canceling two hours prior. It's getting old.
Also, gold star for Stumpke. She's the best at telling me when she won't be there <3
Finally, the last pain point is still combat. I totally have a part in this being an issue - I am not familiar with the rules, and that shows. For that, I'm sorryyyyyyyyy. I'm working on it, I promise. For the most part, consider this as a friendly, and hopefully not too salty?, reminder to familiarize yourself with your abilities. Gorlac and I have been catching a LOT of errors recently, and thus have been looking into things. Please track your spells and focus points. Please. I feel so awkward calling people out when they're doing something wrong - I want you guys to have fun, but some of this stuff is game breaking. I guess I don't really know where to draw the line and just man up and let you know what's going on? I don't want anyone to take it the wrong way D:
FUTURE ENDEAVORS
So, we're ten sessions down. What are we looking at for the future?
For starters, we have at least two players who are moving for 2022. Both of them have requested to join our sessions virtually, which I'm willing to facilitate. My initial thoughts are to have everyone at the table join discord and mute each other, so that those who are virtual can hear you, but those of us in person won't. Furthermore, I plan to stream the roll20 screen for our virtual folks, as well as invite you to listen along in Spotify (best feature discord offers, fight me) or have a discord bot come in and play the music.
Hero Points are something I want to increase access to, but I'm not totally sold on how I want to do that yet. I know many of you want art as an option, but half of our table claim to have no artistic ability, and I don't want to single them out. Right now, I'm leaning towards awarding them in game in addition to our normal reviews.
Dual games is also something we're looking at come 2022. Gorlac's game should be good to ship in January, should everything go to plan. The idea then is to play Week1 for my game, Week2 for his, so on and so forth. I'm not super sure how else to make that run smoothly, considering we only have the one day of the week to meet. Understandably, this schedule won't be perfect, and we know not everyone can afford the time or money to meet every week like that. We'll sort it out as we get into it, but that's the idea currently.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Running a game for ten people is really, really hard, and sometimes I feel like I have to give certain characters special attention because they're unwilling to act unprompted. Kinda sucks sometimes, but we're working on it. Please bare with me as we work out the kinks of everything - there are a lot of moving pieces, all the time. Moving forward, we will be needing to have more conversations in regards to C0v!d and our expectations, considering the policies set in place by the location we are playing at. So. That'll be.. fun.
Overall though, I'm having a good time, even if running the game can be frustrating sometimes, or difficult to build literally every session. Either way, the outcome is usually pretty pleasant. So please, take my thoughts into consideration, but don't feel too attacked, I guess?
Oh, and..
Do your review. Nerd.
Comments