playtest session 35 -- scenario M2m4 aftermath's aftermath
Weird session. Having done something noteworthy in an interesting and accessible location, and having put out a call for visitors, it was only natural that they got some. Each visitor I prefaced with, "You don't have to play through this if you don't want to," but they saw opportunities for gain or for fun in each one.
Unfortunately, bargaining with the useful visitors only added more tools and options onto their already mammoth new pile. This in turned lengthened their list of activities that basically amount to prep: storing valuables in a safe place, figuring out the workings of new items, making tools out of a metal now that they knew how to work it, comparing notes and diagrams on procedures they'd been told of, etc.
Planning -> investigation -> action is great.
Planning -> investigation -> more planning -> more investigation starts getting old.
Also:
Planning -> act on plan = satisfying.
Gathering knowledge -> just knowing stuff for whenever it might come up = unsatisfying.
More generally:
For a good overall session, it seems best if the more leisurely activities lead into some sort of dramatic action.
Why is this still an issue? It's because of all the meaningful decisions that we're not comfortable skipping over. What do we want to make out of our limited supply of unbreakable metal? How much secret knowledge are we willing to share with our creepy pseudo-ally to gain his cooperation?
Two ideas to possibly help:
1) Help the players get better organized. Hand them a grid to fill out with all the stuff they'd like to be doing during down-time. With less play time spent figuring out "What do we accomplish in 3 months babysitting the castle?", forging alodite and verbally sparring with Elericus will be more welcome.
2) Try to enforce "worry about it when you need to". Encourage responsive problem-solving, and discourage pre-emptively milking maximum advantage out of every opportunity "for later".
Basically, "either put in the work between sessions to track your thoroughness, or just don't be thorough." I dunno. #2 isn't really viable, it's more of an argument for the necessity of #1.
Over-investigating
With plenty of ideas in the works, chores listed, and plans in waiting, Dan and Merlin were ready to get to it, but John wanted to work on establishing yet another contact. For no specific purpose. Just because, who knows, it might be useful one day, probably for money. Fortunately they shot him down and I gave him a five-second answer and he let it drop.
Adding yet another opportunity to a field full of them just seems like it would add to indecision.
I told John:
"Write it down so you won't forget it. But don't investigate it until (a) you're hoping to do something about it right away, or (b) you need more options of things to do, or maybe (c) everyone's ready for some down-time in between exciting fights."
More magical unpreparedness
When we tried to rush through alodite-carving at the end of the session, I was only mentally prepared to fast-forward through to the end results. When we got down to the details, I screwed it up big time, describing a phenomenon (gets soft in moonlight) that would logically allow them to make whatever they wanted out of this super-hard stuff. We left things hazy, and after the session, I thought up a solution and emailed them, "The stuff doesn't get SOFT in moonlight; instead, it CRACKS."
This is what they get from a playtest, dammit.
I also had NPCs offer them all sorts of vague knowledge about rituals, alodite, demon-binding and commanding, and the use of a magic scepter. Not having figured out the details of any of these, I was very vague. I subsequently designed the means of operating the scepter, but I still haven't figured out how it's function will manifest in play. It's supposed to "lend guidance and control to a teleport effect". Basically I want it to help them get some (as yet undecided in my head) level of use out of the teleporter door.
More and more I'm thinking that this is the game I need to give to people. This campaign is my opportunity to create, tweak, and integrate a variety of magical devices and processes. On the plus side, the end result will be incredibly valuable. The bad side is that "build your own" will be impossible, at least based on my process. When creating magical secrets, I've done a whole lot of responding to where the players are at and what would be good to learn next. What connections are they primed to make if I lay the pieces in front of them? What new power would add a relevant bit to their toolkit without getting them much closer to being superheroes?
Could I really offer enough help to enable your average GM to do that?
Maybe some pre-built items plus some advice about their interactions would be a nice in-between. "This is what to reveal. The order is yours to decide. here's how you might decide."
Character frugality
The players came up with some really cool ideas about recruiting followers. However, the empire refused to subsidize this, leaving the players with the choice of paying some unspecified amount from their own pockets. Rather than see how little they could spend, they just gave up. Huh? My post-game calculations came out to about 20 shillings. That's been a ton of money for them up until now, but they were just given 100 shillings!
In my post-game email I advised "spending is probably more fun than hoarding". We'll see what happens.
