Mythology of the Table

[Cognisant]

Just to annoy you

And I tried the open ended approach in the first session you were all overwhelmed with choice.

You still don't know what was actually going to happen in the drow city, I was going to do an introductory session, give you a range of plot hooks and then plan my next move based on what caught your fancy, so even I didn't know what was going to happen in the session after.

I stand by my exposition dump, a game needs a setting and "vague high fantasy" is not a setting, I need to be able to refer places/people/events relevant to the world without having to explain it all on the spot, I need some time to write my little heart out so I can tell you with certainty you're in this place, at this time, with these people, doing this thing and if you ask why I'll be able to tell you because I'll know.

Anyway it's not like information is a limited resource, you could go into the drow city and never meet any of the people I wrote about but your experience would be all the richer for knowing they're there, at very least you wouldn't be worse of, and if you think there won't be many more secrets to uncover remember I'm an ENTP (apparently) I have an endless supply of ideas.

 

[Cognisant]

Also, the whole oozes battle was terribly immersion breaking when I mentioned the guards that were supposedly coming with us, and you just brought them in without saying anything other than "...oh yeah"; could have said they were just lagging behind, exploring another part of the dungeon, etc., their entrance into the battle could have been dramatic, showing up just in time to save us... Then, having them all suddenly be dragged to the depths was, at least on a practical level, useful to move us forward, but the way it was executed was extremely poor. It came across as "DM is over his head, so encounter randomly and conveniently ended" instead of "Cursed oozes, we battled them in a frenzy but they managed to kill most of the guards. Then they lunged at us savagely and dragged the remaining ones deep into the pool, their bloody entrails smeared across the floor, desperately thrashing and screaming in the water, until the bubbles stopped and the pool returned to an eerie calm". Then legends would be woven by the townspeople about the guards' restless spirits haunting the tavern basement for generations...

By all means show me up, I've never played the game and it was my second time being DM if you can do better by all means, hell you can take over this one if you want. I know it's far from perfect, hell I'm struggling (failing) to even successfully run a complete session without multiple things going catastrophically wrong.

 

[redbaron]

QFT

I, for one, would prefer to stick to what we're doing and just work out the kinks of the way, instead of dump all the effort and start something else from scratch, which will probably also be dumped... Goddamn NTP give up if not instant success attitude.

To be fair the only reason I offered to do one is because I thought Cognisant didn't have the physical means to keep doing this one until next month. Although the idea kind of took hold and I'm keen to do one eventually, but I'm not really looking to abandon the current one either.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'm happy to help with any new campaigns etc. I even have the first few sessions of one already written up (would need to adapt to characters though). I like the idea of having multiple players fulfilling DM roles. We've got a lot of people wanting to play, and not much experience going round. DMing is hard to do alone, because there's always something you don't know enough about.

I disapprove of sharing the story Cog, it sounds really good, but it seems to me you need to think more about how you immerse us in your world. It can be annoying when you don't get to have your players discover every facet of your story, but you can always reuse material, or steer them towards it later.

I don't like creating new content for players in their first go around, particularly when the DM is new too. You tend to end up with shallow characters with no longevity. If you want to be creative with the rules, it's better to do it from the DM's side where any commitment in character creation only lasts until the end of the encounter. Being a living weapon would be awesome, but it'd likely get old quickly.

Blar I mirror the sentiment of sticking with the one system, I'm already perpetually confused switching between 2nd, 3rd, and pathfinder. If there were any more D&D rulesets I had to memorise I'd suffer a meltdown.