thomaszwanzinge
2019-01-14, 05:12 AM
Hi Everybody,
I am about to wrap up/have a first climax in my first campaign with new players in my next session. I am satisfied how things came together. Thanks for the help I received from the forum.
I used the 3-clue approach from the Alexandrian (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule) in order to have the players move from location to location and it somewhat worked. However, here I see potential for improvement on my side:
Last session my players realized they cannot do anything to stop the coming attack on their home village. For evacuating the villagers they moved too slowly, and also for stopping the attacking force coming to the village they were too late or knew too little. It did not bother them too much save one player that stated that "probably there was nothing they could have done to stop the attack anyway". Which bugged me 'cause it revealed I had either not given them enough information or was not clear on the information enough. From my point of view they could have had a shot at both (exclusively). The attack will be epic though, so I think there was no harm done overall.
My group plays in 2-3 week intervals, sometimes up to 4 weeks e.g. during the XMas weeks. What I learnedis that it is natural that my players simply forget what happened last game. Having a player explaining the events from the last session is mandatory, but during the progress of the campaign I felt that it was insufficient:
Some clues I did not "write down" in the sense that the clue was a written document; I prepare those. All other info always got lost in the next session; repeating them in order to prevent this by myself really felt like hitting them with a "sledge hammer" on the topic
Written information on the other hand was up to an A4 page long; valueable information was hidden in prosa text trying to invoke flavor as well
Of course, they did not get all clues I prepared because e.g. they never left a Goblin alive I threw at them, so no questioning them
So even though I blame some information lack on the clue distribution, I am feeling there is still a lack of something. One time I started marking all story progression relevant terms in yellow on the printed pages so they knew the most relevant sections. Helped a little, but not too much.
There is also, now that the campaign wraps up, a lot of open threads being left. Some are delibarate and will spark new adventure or act as an adventure hook in the upcoming sessions, some I simply added because they were cool e.g. a natural portal to the plane of air on the top of a wizards tower; I have no concrete ideas what to do with it, but it sounded cool, so why not.
What do you do in order to have your players remember the clues you presented to them? How do you remind them on interesting locations or items they left behind because they were in a hurry?
Best idea I came up so far is to actually prepare a list of "open stuff" for them they can (if they choose to do so) come back to at a later point in time. Maybe same with the clues, really list them one by one. Maybe one for open questions they came up with but never really thought through?
Or am I coddling my players too much :-) Is it too computer-gamy?
thanks for your input,
best regards,
Thomas
I am about to wrap up/have a first climax in my first campaign with new players in my next session. I am satisfied how things came together. Thanks for the help I received from the forum.
I used the 3-clue approach from the Alexandrian (https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule) in order to have the players move from location to location and it somewhat worked. However, here I see potential for improvement on my side:
Last session my players realized they cannot do anything to stop the coming attack on their home village. For evacuating the villagers they moved too slowly, and also for stopping the attacking force coming to the village they were too late or knew too little. It did not bother them too much save one player that stated that "probably there was nothing they could have done to stop the attack anyway". Which bugged me 'cause it revealed I had either not given them enough information or was not clear on the information enough. From my point of view they could have had a shot at both (exclusively). The attack will be epic though, so I think there was no harm done overall.
My group plays in 2-3 week intervals, sometimes up to 4 weeks e.g. during the XMas weeks. What I learnedis that it is natural that my players simply forget what happened last game. Having a player explaining the events from the last session is mandatory, but during the progress of the campaign I felt that it was insufficient:
Some clues I did not "write down" in the sense that the clue was a written document; I prepare those. All other info always got lost in the next session; repeating them in order to prevent this by myself really felt like hitting them with a "sledge hammer" on the topic
Written information on the other hand was up to an A4 page long; valueable information was hidden in prosa text trying to invoke flavor as well
Of course, they did not get all clues I prepared because e.g. they never left a Goblin alive I threw at them, so no questioning them
So even though I blame some information lack on the clue distribution, I am feeling there is still a lack of something. One time I started marking all story progression relevant terms in yellow on the printed pages so they knew the most relevant sections. Helped a little, but not too much.
There is also, now that the campaign wraps up, a lot of open threads being left. Some are delibarate and will spark new adventure or act as an adventure hook in the upcoming sessions, some I simply added because they were cool e.g. a natural portal to the plane of air on the top of a wizards tower; I have no concrete ideas what to do with it, but it sounded cool, so why not.
What do you do in order to have your players remember the clues you presented to them? How do you remind them on interesting locations or items they left behind because they were in a hurry?
Best idea I came up so far is to actually prepare a list of "open stuff" for them they can (if they choose to do so) come back to at a later point in time. Maybe same with the clues, really list them one by one. Maybe one for open questions they came up with but never really thought through?
Or am I coddling my players too much :-) Is it too computer-gamy?
thanks for your input,
best regards,
Thomas