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fergo
2015-02-10, 02:37 PM
Last night was the third session of an rpg (WFRP, if anyone’s interested) ran by my friend for me and two other guys. For the last week, since the previous (and very fun) session, he repeatedly mentioned that he was really looking forward to this session and that he had something really cool planned for us. It didn’t go exactly to plan.

Ok, ‘disastrous’ might be a little strong. Perhaps closer to “I really wanted toast for breakfast this morning but we ran out of bread,” than, “volcanic eruption,” on the universally accepted scale of disasters. But I think I’m right in saying that the session was disappointing for all of us, which I feel especially bad about because the GM seemed so excited about it beforehand, so I decided to post on here to see if anyone had any advice as to what I can learn from this session to make the future campaign more satisfying for everyone concerned.

Firstly, a small amount of background. Before this campaign, I ran my own campaign in the same setting, with the same players (plus a couple of others). The party as it stands has me (generally decent at close combat or shooting), a barbarian-type guy (good at close combat but pretty much nothing else—but is also resistant to magic, which will be relevant later), and a wizard (with almost no spells that are directly useful just yet). None of us are particularly good or evil—selfish and ruthless, perhaps, but we don’t kill people just for fun or anything like that.

I’ve pinpointed a few points that I think me and the other players were at fault, but I’ll save that for a comment so you guys (with far more RPing experience than any of us) can give feedback with as little bias as possible.

The Night Before

The last session ended with us falling asleep in a small fishing village. We were there to recover a scuppered ship on behalf of an alcoholic pirate NPC called ‘The Captain’. The mayor of the town said we could pay someone to do it for a large amount of gold (beyond our budget), but we decided to wait for a shipwright to come up from our Secret Pirate Base (TM) to do it for cheaper—we’ll still need the mayor’s cooperation to get supplies and access to the ship, though. Oh, and the GM has told us out-of-character that he intends for this ship to be the only ship we have access to this early in the game. So we have several days to kill while our shipwright arrives, and it’s time to end the session anyways—so we go to sleep.

Oh, and one more thing from the campaign so far: our GM has a nasty habit of throwing us into fights where we get our arses kicked (or at least don’t win as easily as he was expecting) and then complaining that our characters are no good in combat, and that we won’t stand a chance against some of the nastier foes he has planned for us. I chalked this up to him being new to GMing and having trouble balancing encounters against the strength of the party. However, he also tends to go on about how difficult he’s going to make our campaign and how we need to roll up back-up characters for when ours inevitably die—I’m not complaining about this per se, because it’s fun to have a real sense of danger in every combat, but coupled with the balancing issues it’s kind of worrying.

Who ya gonna call?

In classic roleplaying fashion, we wake up the next morning somewhere completely different, with strange magical rings on our fingers and with the ominous cackle of magic filling the air. So far, so good—all par for the course for a party of adventurers. I don’t know how anyone else would respond, but my instant priorities are (a) work out what’s going on and most importantly (b) get the hell out of here in one piece as soon as possible. (c), getting revenge on whoever or whatever put us in this position, is pretty far down the list right now, at least until I know we’re safe. I mean, we just woke up in some completely unfamiliar location with a magical ring we can’t remove on our fingers—we’re going to be bloody terrified. Oh yeah, and the wizard recognises the rings as the kind that will slowly turn us into mindless automatons. Lovely.

We wander around the city and talk to some people and quickly realise that we’re in a plague town we heard of last session—except everyone’s acting as if it’s just before the plague hit. To make matters worse, the barbarian is seeing things slightly differently—he’s seeing everything as slightly run down, and the people older than they look to me. Great! I’m starting to really get into the mystery of the thing.

We head to the city walls, but we physically can’t walk towards them without our rings contracting and causing us unbearable pain. We head away, find a private spot, and our wizard decides to chop off his own finger to remove the ring. Suddenly, he sees the city as it really is—tumbled-down houses, the stench of death in the air, and all of the people we talked to are zombies! Awesome!

He tries to cast a spell which sets off some alarm, and we get attacked by a swarm of zombies and skeletons. There are about twenty of them, so we run away—but it emerges that they’re only chasing the wizard. I fire an arrow, and suddenly they’ll all chasing me. I duck into a house and they stop chasing, but while I’m in there I meet an NPC from last session, completely out of the blue.

To make matters short, he’s one of the pirates from our Secret Pirate Base (TM) and he attacks me. I kill him and am told that if I don’t remove my ring immediately, I’m at risk of my Willpower characteristic being halved (basically making my character an almost braindead coward). So I chop off my finger as well, which I was trying to avoid because, you know, people don’t usually chop off their fingers as if it was nothing, and it is revealed that our NPC friend was a zombie, and looks like he was recently buried.

Ok, so everything’s pretty cool so far. Being forced into chopping off my finger is pretty mean, but fair enough. So what’s next?


An Unlikely Escape

In-character, want to try and leave the city again, now all of us are short a finger and are no longer affected by the rings. Out-of-character, I’m happy to be persuaded to investigate the castle at the centre of the town, as the wizard can sense bad magical mojo from thataway. Also, we gather there may be a vampire involved in this somehow.

We walk up to the castle. There are two well-armoured skeletons on the gate. Now, remember that apart from that one time we directly attacked them, everyone in the city has interacted with us as normal: so I decide to go up and try and talk to the skeletons. They instantly attack me.

Except these aren’t normal skeletons. They’re wights (not that our characters know what the difference is). I shoot one in the face and roll pretty high, and fail to do any noticeable damage.

That’s the most successful thing to happen that fight: although we all roll pretty well, the wights manage to block every attack we make, seriously wound me, and all but kill the barbarian. So we run away, again.

So… hmm. Well, nothing wrong with tough fights, or with being forced to run away. The party being reduced to minimal fighting effectiveness because our toughest member is almost dying sucks, but we can deal with that—it’s only a game, after all. I have to admit, though, the two other players seemed a bit frustrated. They weren’t necessarily directing this at the GM, but there was a slightly tense atmosphere.

So we head back to a ruined house to recuperate and plan. I fully intend in trying to leave again the next day, which should be a fight in itself—the walls are not only defended by the rings we had been wearing, but loads of skeletal guards. Also, we almost got killed by a couple of guards—we’re definitely not up for fighting a vampire or whatever else is in that castle.

Except we never get a chance to scout out the walls, make a plan to escape, or even take a shot at finding a slightly less direct route into the castle. In the middle of the night, a trapdoor opens in the middle of the room and out pops that alcoholic NPC I mentioned earlier, the Captain. He says that there’s a tunnel running all the way out of the town, and oh yeah, it was the mayor of the fishing village that betrayed us and sent us here, as he has a deal with the vampire to leave his people in peace. Never mind what are the odds that there just happens to be a secret tunnel out of there in the very house we’re sleeping in, or that a friendly NPC just happens to pop his head out while we were there…

In one stroke, the DM has robbed the story of all mechanical tension (we’ve lost every fight so far, but that’s ok, because this NPC will save us!) and all narrative tension (what is the mystery behind this place? How did we all get here? Where can we start investigations to find out? No worries, here’s a drunk idiot who knows all of the answers to these questions, who pops up exactly when he’s needed, and also forgot to mention the risk of the mayor betraying us when he sent us to the village in the first place!).

I would assume that this is all part of the plot and there’s a nefarious in-game reason for the Captain knowing all of this stuff and just happening to be there at that time, but, firstly, the GM later revealed that he couldn’t think of any other way for us to escape and so used the Captain, and secondly, it’s obvious out-of-character that he hopes that we’ll see the Captain as almost a fourth member of the party because he keeps on mentioning how he’s a secret badass and stuff.

I mean, if he was going to come up with a deus ex machine to save us, he could have at least came up with a really cool one, not just a random guy appearing and giving us an escape route.

And the Rest is History…

So we leave, of course, after having the wizard mentally scan for dangers. We come out on the other side of the walls and see a group of people entering the city further away. Well, maybe we should have, I don’t know, investigated them or something, but we’re kind of in a hurry to leave before anyone notices we’re gone, so we head back towards the village.

So, the other players want to go straight up to the mayor and kill him. I argue that it’s too dangerous, because we’ve lost every fight we’ve had so far, have no idea how tough the mayor is, or what other guards there may be around—we should just get out of there. Besides, remember that NPC I killed that turned out to be a zombie? He was meant to be back at our Secret Pirate Base (TM), so I suggest we return there to see if everything is all right.

Everything is all right there. The DM ends the session by talking about how we’re all terrible in combat, and I snarkily reply that if that’s the case, maybe my guy should just retire and take up a less dangerous profession than adventuring, since he’s obviously not cut out for it (which is nonsense, because he’s more or less above average for a starting PC). I also snap at the DM when we’re discussing other ways to get our hands on a ship, and he interrupts my suggested plan (to use our wizard’s ability to summon lights to make it look like a ship is floundering at night time, and draw some slavers into a trap—admittedly, it was more complicated than it needed to be, but it sounded fun to me) by suggesting that we just go to a random port city and steal one (because that’s not a fantastic way to get blasted to pieces by every other ship there). I shouldn’t have got frustrated, but I don’t think it’s a DM’s place to ridicule a player’s plans unless it’s completely off the rails and stupid.

Playground... I'm genuinely feeling bad about this. I just came out of running a campaign myself and know how frustrating it is when players mess up your well-laid plans. But, apart from us getting a little frustrated by our bad luck (or our enemies' good luck) in combat, I really can't see what else we could have done to make the session go better--unless our GM had some very specific idea about what we were meant to do upon waking that we completely failed to do.

Do you feel we acted badly or out-of-character, insofar as you can tell from this account? Should we have taken a more proactive approach to investigation, instead of just trying to leave? What can I take away from this session to make the campaign more enjoyable for all of us?

BRC
2015-02-10, 02:57 PM
I would talk to your DM, see what he is expecting.

It's a common new DM mistake to write out an Adventure like a story without factoring in the likelyhood that the players will do the next step you have planned out, or even realize it's an option.

I can see more than a few points where the DM failed.

1: The Rings. Unless he wanted you all to cut off your fingers, he probably had some plot hook ready to go that would get the rings off. I have no idea what he was expecting you to do, but I have a feeling he had some plan. Maybe he was expecting you to say "We go look for a way to get these rings off" or something.

2: The City itself. Once again, he must have had some plan for you guys to get out, but he failed to hint at it in any way.

3: The Castle. It's hard to know whether he thought you could fight your way past those guards, or if he wanted you to sneak in, and simply gave you no indication that these guards were too tough for you to handle.

Basically, it seems like his problem is one of communication. He is writing problems with specific solutions, but not giving you a trail of breadcrumbs to follow to find those solutions.

Unless he expected you to immedietally storm the castle and kill the vampire, thus destroying the undead in the city, with the Rings as a ticking clock to force you to act fast.


Either way, I would talk to him about how he expected the session to go, see if you can get a better idea of how he thinks.

ellindsey
2015-02-10, 02:57 PM
What you can learn is that you have a bad, railroady GM, and need to find a better one.

DireSickFish
2015-02-10, 03:19 PM
It sounds like your DM has interesting ideas, as you yourself said. He just needs to work on thinking on his feet. Making mistakes and having you point them out, and tell him what he could have done instead is a great way to mold him into a better DM.

Let him know he can take a break (weather that is 10min to collect his thoughts or end the session there) when things go to far off course or he can't think of what to do next.

Let him know the parts of the session you did enjoy. Sounds like he set a good atmosphere and had a nice mystery to solve. Let him know that.

Ask him what he expected and tell him what you saw when it was presented. Did he expect you to win those fights? Then help him craft better balanced encounters. Did he expect you to find some McGuffin to get the rings off your fingers? Then give a hint as to how they got there.

If he just wanted to get you out of the town then whatever your next attempt to get out was have it just work. Find an IG reason for it to do so.

Let him know what worked and didn't work. For the stuff that didn't work make sure you have a future solution for it rather than just complaining. Maybe share a story of a time players have screwed up your best laid plans and you reacted poorly.

Vidrina
2015-02-10, 04:13 PM
Talk to your DM! Like the others here have mentioned, talking to the DM about the issues you're having is the first step of action. It seems like he knows what he wants, but not how to get you there, and wound up railroading and stuck in a corner. Players make the decisions they do, and there's never a real right or wrong answer. If your DM is saying otherwise, talk to them, and maybe they'll get where you're coming from.

A mistake on your part, however, is the fact that snark is not the best way to respond to your DM at this point. It will only cause more grief and lead to hard feelings later on. Stay civil, and try talking to your DM away from the group if they seem defensive; they're supposed to be 'in charge', and confronting them in front of everyone may seem threatening. Give them a chance to figure things out, as they seem new.

However, if your campaign continues to run like this over the next few sessions regardless of your conversations with the DM, it may be time to find a new group. D&D is supposed to be fun - railroading and blaming players is not fun.

neonchameleon
2015-02-10, 04:21 PM
Honestly if it wasn't for your comments and the GM's I'd assume that that was a fine game of WFRP, which is intended to go pear shaped. But it sounds as if your DM wants something a bit more like D&D rather than its gritty cousin in which, far from being good at banishing vampires, the communion wine gives you the Galloping Trots.

Lord Torath
2015-02-11, 09:51 AM
It sounds like your DM has interesting ideas, as you yourself said. He just needs to work on thinking on his feet. Making mistakes and having you point them out, and tell him what he could have done instead is a great way to mold him into a better DM.

Let him know he can take a break (weather that is 10min to collect his thoughts or end the session there) when things go to far off course or he can't think of what to do next.

Let him know the parts of the session you did enjoy. Sounds like he set a good atmosphere and had a nice mystery to solve. Let him know that.

Ask him what he expected and tell him what you saw when it was presented. Did he expect you to win those fights? Then help him craft better balanced encounters. Did he expect you to find some McGuffin to get the rings off your fingers? Then give a hint as to how they got there.

If he just wanted to get you out of the town then whatever your next attempt to get out was have it just work. Find an IG reason for it to do so.

Let him know what worked and didn't work. For the stuff that didn't work make sure you have a future solution for it rather than just complaining. Maybe share a story of a time players have screwed up your best laid plans and you reacted poorly.In addition to the excellent advice from DireSickFish, direct your DM to the Three Clue Rule (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule). He really needed to give you more clues as to what he wanted you to accomplish and how to do so. A few more clues about how the guards would react differently from the "average zombie on the street" would have been helpful, for example.

Knaight
2015-02-11, 10:41 AM
I suspect what happened is that the GM is used to more powerful characters, and keeps accidentally running into issues where your set has trouble. The loss of all drama seems like it was said GM trying to get themselves out of a corner they painted themselves into, because the players were feeling down and the opposition they had set up was too powerful.

So, what you can learn here is that people error, and there's the occasional flop session even with good GMs, particularly when they're trying something ambitious - when it works it works beautifully, but it's flop prone. The GM tried something a bit harder to pull off, failed, and has probably improved a bit because of it.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-02-11, 04:04 PM
The impression that I get is that the GM thinks that WFRP is supposed to be like D&D, when it's really more like Call of Cthulhu. In a game that leans more on gothic horror than sword & sorcery, if you try and run things like D&D, you'll end up with a lot of dead PCs. The GM needs to adjust his expectations about the kind of game he's running if he wants you guys to survive to see out his plot.


In addition to the excellent advice from DireSickFish, direct your DM to the Three Clue Rule (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule). He really needed to give you more clues as to what he wanted you to accomplish and how to do so. A few more clues about how the guards would react differently from the "average zombie on the street" would have been helpful, for example.

I think you're totally on the right track, as I was about to post that very same link. Basically, the OPs GM sounds like a guy who came up with a really interesting mystery and a way to solve it, but the only ways for the players to solve it would be by using their psychic powers to read his mind. When they go off the script, things go pear-shaped and he has to lay down some rails to salvage things. I've been there, done that, co-wrote the sourcebook. I only wish that I had heard of the three clue rule myself years ago, it would have saved me a lot of trouble.

Keltest
2015-02-11, 06:49 PM
As others have mentioned, you should talk to your GM. Make sure he understands that the players will absolutely NEVER ever do what you want them to do and he should plan accordingly. You should also point out that maybe the combat difficulties are not the sole result of PC deficiency, and that he could do a better job of tailoring them to be feasible. Alternatively, offer ways beyond combat to resolve the encounters. Nothing says fun like dropping a net on a bunch of people and setting it on fire.

fergo
2015-02-12, 04:48 PM
Hey guys,

Thanks to all of you for all of your feedback :smallsmile:. Lord Torath, the three-clue-rule thing looks really useful, and it's definitely something I'll be using in any future games that I run.

So I sent my friend an email suggesting that he share how we was hoping the session to go. He was good enough to do so, noting that as a first-time GM he's learning the ropes slowly.

He says that his plan was that we would remove the rings by chopping off our fingers, and then we would be able to sneak out of the city. Once out of there, we would run into some of the villagers bringing our crew to the city. He hoped we would launch a rescue attempt and then return to the village for a fight with the mayor.

So, yeah. As I said all along, he had a great concept here. He seems to need to work on a couple of things.

Mostly, he needs more experience in improvising (and God knows that's not easy, especially for someone just starting out). The most frustrating thing is that his original plan needed us to leave the city after removing our rings--but we were about to do this when he pulled out the whole 'NPC appears from nowhere to save you' thing. We had literally just talked about trying to sneak out of the city. Obviously he panicked and thought that the Captain was an easier option than having to improvise to whatever plan it was we came up with.

In hindsight, he could have also gave more of a hint about what the group of people we saw entering the city were--but we also could have been more proactive in investigating it when he told us about it.

In any case, I think we all learned a lot and hopefully he'll have learned from the experience :smallbiggrin:.