Brahamut
2014-04-15, 09:56 AM
I'd like some advice on dealing with a couple of issues as a DM. I've been running a 4e campaign for a little over a year. I have six players, one with previous DnD experience (my wife). When I suggested DnD to these friends, I explained it thus: Imagine if LoTR were a group of people sitting around a table. Tolkien has descriptions of the world and controls Gandalf plus everyone who's not a member of the fellowship. The other people at the table each have one member of the fellowship. LoTR is a record of the adventure they had. I'd be Tolkien - I have a setting, some bad guys, some friends for you, and background characters. You guys would each make a character more like the hobbits: they have a background, but their adventuring experience is limited to things like stealing carrots from the neighbors farm, or traveling a few days with a caravan. I let them sit on it for a few days and come back with character concepts.
One of my players came back and said "can I play Tom Bombadil?" ... No. He's like the most powerful character in Middle-earth. You can use him as a basis for a goal, but you can't start like that. "What if he's limited his power so he can adventure with mortals for a time, or what if he's lived a simple life for so long that he's forgotten who he is?" We can go with that - he's realized that he's forgotten who he is, so Goldberry has encouraged him to go out and rediscover himself. "Ok, cool. I'll make him a bard. And he's a pacifist, so I'd like to change all of his abilities so that they do no damage, just status stuff like sleep and fear or whatever." So we ended up creating a character for him that's a pacifist, with a focus on diplomacy and knowledge skills. The rest of the characters are more traditional.
Because of his focus on diplomacy, that's his solution to basically every problem. We get in an encounter, he'll spend a round or two doing buffs and debuffs until he can identify a "leader." He then always tries to negotiate. I try to strike a balance between "you've just killed half their forces, they're willing to stop fighting in hopes of surviving" and "fanatical/enraged fight to the death." But when he starts talking, the game basically stops for everyone else. I've talked with him about this, and he says that he's ok if diplomacy rarely works, or if the rest of the party says "forget talking, let's finish them off," but we all have a difficult time internalizing this and no one wants to stop him from being effective. So the general question here is "How do you balance wildly different play styles?"
The other issue is generally maintaining momentum. We play once a week, generally for five to six hours. We're mostly college students and we meet on campus. We've missed a few weeks this semester due to snow days and exam/project crunch. We had a stretch where we missed every other week. Because of missed days, bad die rolls, and bad strategy, we spent 7 weeks (four sessions) in a single combat encounter. The session we finished, I lowered the monsters defenses and HP just so we could get it over with. The first session was exciting - they felt time pressure from an encounter they'd bypassed and the monsters fighting them had some challenging tricks, but the other three we just slogs with long strings of misses or very low damage rolls. The 3rd session, only two attack rolls hit, and one of those was the rogue with CA who rolled all 1s for damage. After spending half the semester like this, no ones excited to play. One of my players approached me yesterday and said that he's planning on stepping out two sessions from now (which is the last week of the semester). I'd like to be able to change his mind, but I think he's pretty set. If he leaves, his GF will most likely go with him. That'll put us down a paladin and a druid, leaving us with a rogue, ranger, wizard, and pacifist bard. I don't know that I can salvage this campaign with the loss of two players, especially considering that the one who's planning to leave is the most invested player. So after a rather grueling semester, what can I do to reinvigorate my game?
One of my players came back and said "can I play Tom Bombadil?" ... No. He's like the most powerful character in Middle-earth. You can use him as a basis for a goal, but you can't start like that. "What if he's limited his power so he can adventure with mortals for a time, or what if he's lived a simple life for so long that he's forgotten who he is?" We can go with that - he's realized that he's forgotten who he is, so Goldberry has encouraged him to go out and rediscover himself. "Ok, cool. I'll make him a bard. And he's a pacifist, so I'd like to change all of his abilities so that they do no damage, just status stuff like sleep and fear or whatever." So we ended up creating a character for him that's a pacifist, with a focus on diplomacy and knowledge skills. The rest of the characters are more traditional.
Because of his focus on diplomacy, that's his solution to basically every problem. We get in an encounter, he'll spend a round or two doing buffs and debuffs until he can identify a "leader." He then always tries to negotiate. I try to strike a balance between "you've just killed half their forces, they're willing to stop fighting in hopes of surviving" and "fanatical/enraged fight to the death." But when he starts talking, the game basically stops for everyone else. I've talked with him about this, and he says that he's ok if diplomacy rarely works, or if the rest of the party says "forget talking, let's finish them off," but we all have a difficult time internalizing this and no one wants to stop him from being effective. So the general question here is "How do you balance wildly different play styles?"
The other issue is generally maintaining momentum. We play once a week, generally for five to six hours. We're mostly college students and we meet on campus. We've missed a few weeks this semester due to snow days and exam/project crunch. We had a stretch where we missed every other week. Because of missed days, bad die rolls, and bad strategy, we spent 7 weeks (four sessions) in a single combat encounter. The session we finished, I lowered the monsters defenses and HP just so we could get it over with. The first session was exciting - they felt time pressure from an encounter they'd bypassed and the monsters fighting them had some challenging tricks, but the other three we just slogs with long strings of misses or very low damage rolls. The 3rd session, only two attack rolls hit, and one of those was the rogue with CA who rolled all 1s for damage. After spending half the semester like this, no ones excited to play. One of my players approached me yesterday and said that he's planning on stepping out two sessions from now (which is the last week of the semester). I'd like to be able to change his mind, but I think he's pretty set. If he leaves, his GF will most likely go with him. That'll put us down a paladin and a druid, leaving us with a rogue, ranger, wizard, and pacifist bard. I don't know that I can salvage this campaign with the loss of two players, especially considering that the one who's planning to leave is the most invested player. So after a rather grueling semester, what can I do to reinvigorate my game?