Lack of Maps and Enthusiasm

I thought last night was a particularly good session, at least from my perspective.  The party is still making their way through the caves. Their first obstacle last night was an underground lake. Tyr shifted into a crocodile, Hal road on his back, and Carter waded through the water a ways until they discovered a boat where the water started to get deeper. Hal is still in possession of the demon dagger and so the demon Agiel tried to have him stab Tyr while riding on his back but Hal was able to overcome its influence. Tyr remained a crocodile and when a boat of drow came their way he flipped the boat of them and drowned the two who didn’t sink under the weight of their armor.

The dagger is an extremely fun tool to me. You see Hal’s not happy about my not using maps and using theater of the mind instead and he’s just not engaging in the quest like the others. Having the dagger forces him to participate more, though not necessarily in the manner the others would like him to participate. Later as they worked their way into a cobwebbed part of the cave the dagger compelled Hal to let out a wolf-like howl, alerting three driders to their presence. The battle was pretty intense and Hal was one failed death saving throw away from the character grave yard. They narrowly defeated the driders and made it to the entrance of the drow town they are searching for.

I’m at a loss though for how to really handle Hal. He never takes the lead in any situation and usually, when he does weigh in on a scenario it’s just to shoot down ideas without proposing an alternate course of action. How do I get him into the game? I understand he’s a combat, combat, combat kind of guy and I try to split my quests into part combat and part roleplaying so it’s not always his favorite style. It seems like since I’ve taken away the maps from combat that I’ve ruined his favorite part of the game. The thing is I hate using maps and they really aren’t doable for the situations/terrain they are playing in. Things are climbing on walls and ceilings and the terrain isn’t a level flat plane. There are too many objects around for me to portray them in a map. I just can’t make maps work for this and honestly I just don’t want to. By not using them I’ve discovered just how deep my loathing is for them. Tyr has said flat out that he is preferring the theater of the mind. Carter has said he’s enjoying the game. I sent him a text this morning asking him directly how he feels about the map situation. If he would prefer maps then I may have to consider going back to them later. Honestly I think Hal is out voted because I know that Carter is enjoying not having to deal with the whole moving his token problem. Carter is frustrated with Hal and I’m afraid that if I don’t find a way to get Hal more involved then Carter will get to the point where he just doesn’t want to play. I’ve got to give this some thought.

Demonic DM

Last night we had the joy of all of us being able to play in person instead of over Roll20. Carter was home, as he is once a year, so we made the drive to pick up Hal and we all got together to play. It was the first time Carter and Hal got to meet in person. It was definitely a memorable night full of complex decisions and DM treachery.

Normally I’m pretty straight forward with encounters. I put a baddie before them and they engage it, but last night I was more devious. Several times during the night they had to decide if they would engage what lay before them or find some other way to handle the situation. They managed to navigate things well. Instead of attacking the deep gnomes they bartered with them to pass through their territory. Instead of taking on waves of duergar they snuck through the outskirts of their underground town. Narrowly escaping detection.

One of the more interesting battles was against a group of drunken orcs fighting each other over water skins. First, from behind cover, they took out the alpha orc. Then I treated the remaining orcs, now fighting amongst themselves in complete chaos without their leader, as a swarm. Not technically how one should play it but these were untrained orcs, with little more sentience than a dog, who were more concerned with fighting each other over the water skins than the outside threat. After defeating the orc swarm the group discovered that three of the water skins actually contained healing potions.

Most memorable of the night is e magic items they found in a chest. Judgeing from the tracks two duergar had dropped the chest and ran back towards the duergar town. After looting the chest the party discovered the likely reason the duergar abandoned the chest; an umber hulk. For those interested here is a list of the magical items they discovered.

Amulet of Guen ~ an amulet containing the eye of a displacer beast. It allows the wearer to use the beast’s displacement ability as a reaction once per encounter.

Winged Boots ~ these were for my halfling who was having a little trouble keeping up with the party. They are a set of boots with small hawk wings on the side that allow the player to move as per the Fly spell once per encounter.

Mage Bane Armor ~ this is a set of studded leather armor. The wearer has resistance to any spell that requires an attack roll. The wearer has disadvantage on casting any spell that requires an attack roll.

Short Bow of Bestow Curse ~ this was for my monk who uses his bow as a melee weapon in close quarters combat. When the player uses the bow for a melee hit on a target the target becomes cursed and takes an extra 1d8 damage anytime it is hit with an attack.

Hand Axe of Ensnaring Strike ~ twice per day when a target is hit with this weapon it suffers the effects of Ensnaring Strike as per the spell. It regains this ability after a long rest.

Dagger of Agiel ~ this was my favorite one. Taken by Hal, when he picked it up all he knew was that it gave him a +3 to atk and dmg rolls. Turns out the dagger houses the soul of the demon Agiel who now can control Hal’s halfling. When the demon wants to take control of Hal’s character Hal must roll a wisdom saving throw with a DC 17. If he succeeds he fights off Agiel’s influence but if he fails he must do whatever the demon commands. The dagger cannot be destroyed, put down, or be given away. The only way to get rid of it is for someone to cast remove curse.

My players were dumb struck that I would give one of them a cursed item. They are on their way into the underdark, none of them can cast remove curse and they’re moving into hostile territory where there is no one who would be willing to help them. They are on a covert mission, which just got infinitely harder since the demon can take control of their barbarian at any time.

It was so much fun to play in person and I wish we had that option every week. There’s just something about playing in person and rolling real dice that makes the game so much more interesting. I’ll be sad to go back to Roll20 but at least it’s a way for us to play with all of us being in different areas.

More on Roll20

We didn’t play last night because Carter was traveling, instead, when he’s in town this week we are going to try to all get-together and play on a real table top. Since I don’t have any fumbling halfling stories to share today I thought I’d talk a bit about how things are going on Roll20.

Over the last month or more we’ve been encountering problems as we play on roll20. Roll20 crashes mine and Tyr’s browser at least once a night forcing us to restart our computers. No clue why it’s doing it. Our connection is fast and reliable so the net’s not dropping out and we’ve tried using different browsers. Hal, our resident techie, can’t figure it out either.

Dice rolling issues, we’ve had a couple. There have been a couple of nights where the site won’t roll weapon damage right, but it was only doing it for me. Tyr, Hal, and Carter’s characters were all rolling their damage fine but for some reason every single roll I made resulted in 10 after 10. I had to break out my real dice and roll with them for my NPC’s. The most infuriating dice rolling problem is the initiative. Hal is a supporter of roll20 and the rest of us have free accounts. Over a month ago we realized that the initiative roller wasn’t working. It gives just a straight die roll and doesn’t add the initiative mod. All four of us were having this problem. Hal wasn’t feeling well so one Monday I decided I would report the problem instead of asking him to deal with it. I spent over an hour and a half going back and forth with one of the mentors. He started off telling me I was crazy and that we couldn’t possibly have that problem. I wound up sending him about five screen shots showing him that it wasn’t adding the mod. All I got from him was attitude. In the end, another mentor came on and said that the character sheets had been upgraded to fix that problem but only the mentors had the fix at that point and everyone else would get it in a couple of days. Sure enough, a couple of days later the character sheet was updated. Now Hal can roll initiative because he’s a supporter but we on the free accounts still can’t roll initiative. Since my first experience reporting the problem was so bad I won’t waste my time going round with them again. I’ll just roll actual dice.

Carter plays from an iPad using the roll20 app. It’s glitchy, he gets kicked out a bit but no more than Tyr and I. His main problem is that it very often won’t let him move his token. There’s usually some cursing and then I just move his token for him. It’s not a big deal but I really dislike anything that takes us out of the moment and forces us to focus on the real world.

Speaking of tokens I’ve also had problems getting tokens to tie to character sheets. I’ve gone through and set the token all up tied it to the sheet and when we go to play every time I change to a new map I’m constantly having to go in and adjust who’s allowed to move the token. It only takes a moment but it breaks the flow of things and I hate things that waste time and break the flow of the game.

We’ll keep using roll20, it’s free and easy enough to use. I’ve looked at Fantasy Grounds and Steam but those options can get pretty expensive. Since we’re in different states we’ve got to use some online method and overall roll20 gets the job done. I find that abandoning encounter maps and just using theater of the mind helps to eliminate some of the bumpy parts. Without them no o, e has to move tokens and without tokens the initiative feature can’t be used anyhow. I like my games to be smooth so that my players get immersed and reality is suspended.

I also want games to be smooth because at some point I may try to turn our sessions into a podcast. I’m going to research what all I need to do that and maybe when we start our next campaign if everyone is agreeable I’ll try to do that. I haven’t run the idea past Hal or Carter yet.

The Flailing Barbarian

Last night's session began with a plague of technical difficulties which put us all in a flippant mood. After we got over our microphone difficulties we discovered that roll20 is in the middle of revamping their character sheets so all of the player characters and my NPC's were all messed up. We overcame these issues and moved on with the session. It was just one of those nights though.

They began the night on the outskirts of the surface drow town they had been hired to go to. In order to get there, they had to cross a less than spectacular bridge. This began Hal's night of horrible rolls. Near the end of the bridge he fell through. He then failed his check to grab onto the bridge as he fell. He did manage to grab onto some rocks on the side of the cliff to keep himself from falling to his death. Then he failed his dex check to retrieve his rope and hook from his backpack and lost his rope down the chasm. After all of this Tyr lowered his rope over the edge allowing Hal to grab on and be pulled up. There was some joking and some cursing, during which Tyr rolled a sleight of hand check to tie a rope onto Hal's belt, he then proceeded to kick the halfling over the cliff and let him dangle a moment before pulling him back up.

They took care of the niceties in town and then headed off into the cave system. The cave opens into a dwarf mining operation that has a series of catwalks leading all over it. Our pour halfing was as nibble as a rhino on rollerskates. Again he failed his check to make it across the crosswalks. By this point Carter had had enough of the fumbling barbarian and picked him up and carried him across the remaining catwalks.

The group then encountered a group of goblins who demanded gold from them in order to pass. Figuring they'd be able to make quick work of goblins they declined to give up any gold and engaged them. For the most part, they did well but then the goblins started to make mince meat out of Tyr, hitting him several times in a row. In the end, only the goblins died.