KOLE
2019-02-24, 09:23 PM
(Zak, I know you check the forums sometimes, so if you see this, please skip for spoiler reasons. This doesn't involve any problems I have with you or other players, just a screw up I made.)
Story time, oh boy.
I DM for a D&D 5e group. For four of the five PCs, it's their first ever time playing 5e, for one of them it's their first time playing tabletops at all. Today was our latest session and it went, well, really badly. It was a bad week for everyone, I could tell. Two players seemed exhausted. One of them, my close friend, I knew was having a tough week on top of other tough weeks, and wasn't feeling it. Our rookie player shut down when I asked her multiple times to please quiet down after she'd start OOC conversations with the group which started to go over five minutes each and completely stopped the game in its tracks. I tried to be polite, but she barely talked IC or OOC the rest of the session. All this strained the other player who has been trying really hard to get into Role Playing his character but kept getting shut down by everyone not being very responsive. I couldn't keep my NPC voices straight which just stifled the whole darn thing. It was a bad session. I'm trying to shake it off. But all this contributed to what I think is a big mistake on my part.
Two characters in the party are what my homebrew world call "Dragonkin", a Kobold and a Dragonborn. I won't bore you with the full details of the significance of this as that's not the point of the topic. But suffice to say, their kind is rarer in this world than your average D&D world and some major plot points hinge on both their characters and their race as a whole. Both me and the players have been having a great time exploring this, dealing with being singled out, being different, ominous prophecies about dragonkind, etc.
I'd been planning on introducing a plot point in this session where a very specific profile of victims were being kidnapped from a large town and the group needed to investigate. They knew the primary profile was girls age 11-12, but they were intended to find out through investigations that a large number of Dragonkin had been vanishing as well. So far, so good. Our Kobold player had an unavoidable conflict and could only play half the session. I couldn't leave the character out of the session because of a variety of reasons. So I had a brilliant idea that the group would discover the second kidnapped group when their own Kobold is taken about half way through the session. It seemed like a no brainer: easy explanation for a character absence, nice plot twist and real motivation to pursue the story to save a PC. Problem is, session was taking much longer than it should have, for the aforementioned reasons of everyone not really being on their game. Still decide to pull Kobold nap scene right before player has to leave. Make the situation avoidable to not remove player agency; give chances to escape grapples before being hauled off. Kobold rolls badly and is whisked away. Great!
The plan: The rest of the party find their friend missing, realize this is connected with mysterious kidnappings. Need to investigate quick! NPC Ranger gives assistance to initial tracking of kidnappers (this was actually unintentional- NPC has originally been meant to be a Spy, but found Scout just fit character better at last minute.) They have a head start! This should mean pretty quick for the PCs getting to the bottom of the mystery and sneaking/fighting their way into the underground layer where Kobold PC and other victims are being kept. Next session should pick up a little before or right when PCs rescue Kobold, so the player won't miss any play time! I is genius!
What happened: party finds Kobold missing. Ranger gives them the trail. Rest of party decides since Kobold Player left, we should call it a night. "What a great cliffhanger! Yay!" Want to push it but can tell players are already in bad shape and forcing them forward will only make things much, much worse.
The TL;DR Version: Meant to explain player missing later half of the session by his mysterious kidnapping to kick off plot point. Party instead calls it a night. Will have to play next session either ignoring Kobold for at least first half of session or switching between solo Kobold and rest of Party throughout the sesh and giving Kobold plot dumps and chances to escape. Neither of these seem like fun options for anyone involved. I, the DM, split the damn party. In a major way.
What do? Tips for resolving this? Tips for making a split party session not a pain in the rear end?
Story time, oh boy.
I DM for a D&D 5e group. For four of the five PCs, it's their first ever time playing 5e, for one of them it's their first time playing tabletops at all. Today was our latest session and it went, well, really badly. It was a bad week for everyone, I could tell. Two players seemed exhausted. One of them, my close friend, I knew was having a tough week on top of other tough weeks, and wasn't feeling it. Our rookie player shut down when I asked her multiple times to please quiet down after she'd start OOC conversations with the group which started to go over five minutes each and completely stopped the game in its tracks. I tried to be polite, but she barely talked IC or OOC the rest of the session. All this strained the other player who has been trying really hard to get into Role Playing his character but kept getting shut down by everyone not being very responsive. I couldn't keep my NPC voices straight which just stifled the whole darn thing. It was a bad session. I'm trying to shake it off. But all this contributed to what I think is a big mistake on my part.
Two characters in the party are what my homebrew world call "Dragonkin", a Kobold and a Dragonborn. I won't bore you with the full details of the significance of this as that's not the point of the topic. But suffice to say, their kind is rarer in this world than your average D&D world and some major plot points hinge on both their characters and their race as a whole. Both me and the players have been having a great time exploring this, dealing with being singled out, being different, ominous prophecies about dragonkind, etc.
I'd been planning on introducing a plot point in this session where a very specific profile of victims were being kidnapped from a large town and the group needed to investigate. They knew the primary profile was girls age 11-12, but they were intended to find out through investigations that a large number of Dragonkin had been vanishing as well. So far, so good. Our Kobold player had an unavoidable conflict and could only play half the session. I couldn't leave the character out of the session because of a variety of reasons. So I had a brilliant idea that the group would discover the second kidnapped group when their own Kobold is taken about half way through the session. It seemed like a no brainer: easy explanation for a character absence, nice plot twist and real motivation to pursue the story to save a PC. Problem is, session was taking much longer than it should have, for the aforementioned reasons of everyone not really being on their game. Still decide to pull Kobold nap scene right before player has to leave. Make the situation avoidable to not remove player agency; give chances to escape grapples before being hauled off. Kobold rolls badly and is whisked away. Great!
The plan: The rest of the party find their friend missing, realize this is connected with mysterious kidnappings. Need to investigate quick! NPC Ranger gives assistance to initial tracking of kidnappers (this was actually unintentional- NPC has originally been meant to be a Spy, but found Scout just fit character better at last minute.) They have a head start! This should mean pretty quick for the PCs getting to the bottom of the mystery and sneaking/fighting their way into the underground layer where Kobold PC and other victims are being kept. Next session should pick up a little before or right when PCs rescue Kobold, so the player won't miss any play time! I is genius!
What happened: party finds Kobold missing. Ranger gives them the trail. Rest of party decides since Kobold Player left, we should call it a night. "What a great cliffhanger! Yay!" Want to push it but can tell players are already in bad shape and forcing them forward will only make things much, much worse.
The TL;DR Version: Meant to explain player missing later half of the session by his mysterious kidnapping to kick off plot point. Party instead calls it a night. Will have to play next session either ignoring Kobold for at least first half of session or switching between solo Kobold and rest of Party throughout the sesh and giving Kobold plot dumps and chances to escape. Neither of these seem like fun options for anyone involved. I, the DM, split the damn party. In a major way.
What do? Tips for resolving this? Tips for making a split party session not a pain in the rear end?