The Rest of Hedathase - One-Shot Retrospective

[paneerakbari]

I’ll be doing a few totally new-to-me things when I GM The Rest of Hedathase at Great Oaks Tavern and I want a place not just to note how all that went, but especially to get the other players’ feedback and opinions

The First Big Thing:

This is the first time I’ll be running an adventure entirely of my own creation, and it’s only the second dungeon I’ve written. The folks who were gracious enough to join me for Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury (my first “proper” adventure series for more than one player) are likely to find numerous deviations from and embellishments to the actual text of those adventures, likewise for Luna Park (my rename for the personally-recommended ZODIAC Tales).

I hope we all like it, especially me

Dy-na-mic!

I ran Sunless Citadel with unnaturally rigid “firewalls” between rooms, with adversaries basically just chilling in their own rooms waiting for something to happen. Forge of Fury got a bit less static but its big opening fight got away from me and felt like a grind. Anyone present for that series probably knew straightaway that I took it another direction entirely.

Well, this time I’m intending to take a more structured approach to imbuing more dynamism to the dungeon experience, inspired by Justin Alexander’s excellent guidance on Dynamic Dungeons (check out his book So You Want to be a Game Master and let’s talk about it!)

I’ve been pretty vocal on my feelings about most combat encounters, so this is a real growth-edge for me.

Who’s Turn is it Anyway?

I hate D&D’s Initiative. It’s messy, annoying, cumbersome, and - worst of all - boring. It starts with everyone shouting numbers out at me, involves a sorting algorithm, has terrible tool support (wtf, Beyond? You had one job), and acts as a three-word activity limiter. When I say “roll for initiative” you say “kill them all” - and I want to embrace and empower more creative solutions than simple “whack-a-gobbo.”

5e Initiative (as it’s usually run) is poorly-suited to sudden heel-turns, provoked NPC hostility, and unexpected acts. Players want to interrupt the sudden-but-inevitable betrayal with all sorts of actions, GMs want their baddie to get a cool move in, and the tension between those two impulses invites toxicity.

Nothing says “thrilling action” like the dramatic springing of an ambush followed by… three minutes of shouting and sorting numbers. I’m all for keeping players in suspense, but this ain’t it.

Two changes for this session: First, we’re rolling Initiative in advance; second, players will each get an ordinal - “first”, “second”, “third”, etc. - tent card to mark their turn order. I’ll be asking for Initiative rolls at the top of the night and at the conclusion of each fight (should any occur). Monsters will all take their actions on my turn.

I anticipate some moments of re-calibration on this one - perfect! let’s always be thinking and improving and iterating toward better states of play, even at the risk of mistakes.

It Didn’t Happen if You Didn’t Write it Down

Tell me where I mess up, how to do it better, what never to change, and how much you love and adore me. Especially that last one. This machine runs on adulation.

[paneerakbari]

Much gratitude to everyone who came out to play, it was an absolute hoot.
I was overjoyed to see some friends I haven’t in too long.

I have my own observations and opinions on how the adventure went and ways to both improve that particular adventure and my own practice as a GM.

I’m still very much interested in what worked and didn’t for the other players, and I hope y’all will share your observations and opinions with me.

[Drew]

As for a first original work, amazing job! Well crafted details! Interesting design.
I think it’s no secret that you and I have traded DMing tips/tricks/thoughts/gripes/debates as we have gone along. Ranging from Drew’s distaste for markup to grapple/nick 2024 mechanics and everything in-between.

What kind of feedback does Chris want? Well knowing Chris, he wants a good deal. Having stream-of-consciousness manifested this write up I think it bends somewhat from a direct review to include many of my thoughts as a novice GM with about 10 sessions under my belt but here it is without significant editing.

The pre-rolled initiative:
Liked it, 0 notes. Um actually notes, stream of consciousness in 3 paragraphs below.

All baddies going on “DM’s turn”:
Thoughts: Given what I saw in the skelly classroom I have concerns that it unbalances and might end up with more disjointed uneven combat which might get tedious for players. We didnt encounter it last night but how would you handle and encounter say with a Bandit Brute, 3 regular bandit red shirts, and a pair of lower bandit casters (a tough fight at lvl 3-4 but doable if party is balanced and it’s not the 3rd fight in a day)?

Hot Take from me is that I don’t want all of them going on one turn aka the GM’s turn in initiative. Firstly for the selfish reason that I, as GM, dont want to have to take 6 individual turns back-to-back potentially. Definitely not if I have 3-4 different types of enemies. No time to plan and strategize what is going on, less time to think of novel approaches or spell/ability uses. It would probably lead to me playing my monsters worse which is not the goal at all. Secondly, I am not sure I want the players sitting there un-engaged short of telling me their AC for 10-15 minutes while my baddies pummel them to death. In the hypothetical encounter I created, at a minimum I would break the GM’s turn into a section for each type of baddie, so the brute has his initiative, red-shirts get a different one, casters on a third different initiative. This breaks the GM’s turn up so that ideally while players are doing their turns, I can reference what spells the caster’s have, read up on those mechanics. If the enemies get clustered in the initiative then the dice did it- not me. Also we didn’t see it but how would you determine the order of your enemies if you had 3 types? Does it go Brute, then caster, then bandits? I assume you wouldn’t want to be changing it once you set it? As the DM I have to track that - well now I am right back to where I was with an encounter tracker - which means I don’t know that the dynamics got me anywhere.

Following that thought, Prerolling the initiative doesn’t work if I want my enemies on different initiatives as GM. Do I need 2 slots for enemies? Do I need 4? Thinking back to the naga encounter I ran in Luna Park - I had 5 different kinds of monsters in one fight, then only one monster in the next fight. I guess that could get dealt with mechanically ie - always roll myself 5 slots but that feels overly clunky. What if the GM just had “turns” preset initiative? So maybe 20,15,10,5,0 - roll one D6 for each group of mobs to see which slot they get?

Anyway skelly room probably kills 1 if not 2 characters if they had been first in initiative. If two characters went down that probably would have been TPK depending on how the initiative worked out.

Regardless of me trying to reinvent a wheel, I think all monsters on GM’s turn would lead to way more player deaths as my hot-take. Is it more realistic? Actually yes i think so. Does it make for improved play? Eh, i tentatively think not but that’s subjective. I think encounters would have to get balanced (if we believe that’s possible) differently with all enemies on one initiative. If no one has noticed, I am retooling nearly every HW encounter, if I had all my enemies on one turn I would certainly do it differently. Differently as I think it would balance different, and differently in that I would likely not set myself up with 5 different types of monsters, who of which are casters with different spells (Naga fight in LP).

TLDR; As a player, dont think I mind “GM’s turn” but could get wonky. As a GM, I dont think i would do it.

Drew’s thoughts re: mapping/exploration/dungeons:
We’ve all sat at the table and been through “you are in a room, its features are blah, there is an exit to the blah and blah, GM describes exits”. This is purely my hot take, but I think theatre of the mind dungeon delving sans reference has challenges while playing in a busy environ. I think it only works if you have a Steersbird taking the map down as they go and that only works if you have a player willing/capable to do so. I think it bogs down play as the map maker is asking questions, clarifying what the GM said in a noisy bustling environment. Maybe that works differently if playing in a quiet office/living room? Also cartography lend’s itself to the character of Sara’s Steersbird. If she were out with a migraine am I making the map as we go? Then I am thinking well, dungeon delving is a skill Salvo has but map-making isnt really in his character - is Drew keeping the map or is Salvo keeping the map - those are two separate things, if Drew is mapping, is he playing Salvo? Drew has sets of skills that he brings but those should not be Salvo’s and to that end I, as a player, am attempting to be more conscious of that distinction.

Anyway, suffice to say with my purchase this week of new maps, I have been considering the mapping vs my artistic abilities(lack thereof) vs my time. Even considering that I have an old 30in tv downstairs that could be the map potentially and how could I as a GM make that work. How would I handle the fog? OMG the dungeons we could delve if not limited by my left hand, a dry erase marker, and what I can get done in a week. Instead take advantage of the nearly limitless maps available online, throw them on the TV laid out in front of your players . Does it save me time? Does it improve play or is it one more thing for the GM to juggle?

Back on track, as a GM I made some decisions that if playing in bustle and in “exploration mode” that we would always have some sort of reference. Because if I don’t, Sara (or someone else, but really mostly Sara ) will have it mapped better than I do, catch me in an error which then I have to rectify, which takes more time, more processing on my part, processing that takes away from me trying to create fun and interesting scenarios. Taking that time removes time for advancing plot, creating unique RP experiences, leaving space for Doug-OG to drop a one-liner like an assassin, or trying to kill my players which ultimately I think is more fun than “which way did the tunnel bend?” I have been thinking about how do I streamline the game to create the fun situations, how do i offload processing from Drew’s brain onto tools (my notion is becoming an amazing tool) such that my brain then has the cycles to devote to the fun situations, quirky moments, working in some backstory, setting up plot points that I intent to pay off 3 sessions later. How can I use the tools to capture info and those nuggets so that I can pay them off? Something that sticks in my brain likely paraphrased from a Jeff Cannata interview, what i grasped was that he took a shotgun approach to set-ups. If you set up a hundred things potentially, you only have to pay off a dozen to look like a master story-teller.

I do have a few interesting thoughts that i have been considering as a GM next time around:

Death saves are rolled but not shared with the team. Mechanically, how much sense does it make if everyone saw their teammate go down but then doesn’t do anything immediately because they have saves? I think preserving that drama between player and GM only might make things more interesting.

More might percolate through the day…

[Drew]

So a funny thing that happens is Drew’s brain continues working through scenarios and permutations after he lays out his initial thoughts. Especially if I am doing a mind numbing task like dishes, mowing, or sleeping (this is a blessing and curse).

So working through scenarios with the “GM’s turn” vs my proposed “every type of enemies gets its own initiative slot” vs “every enemy gets its own slot”. I think the comparison is unicycle>bicycle>tricycle in terms of degree of skill/luck needed to balance the encounter for a successful outcome. In this instance success defined as players were challenged but survived encounter to continue campaign; ideally at some point mortal peril was flirted with to the point players are talking about it post-facto.

1. GM’s turn would be the most finicky and require the most skill but when done correctly might be the most impressive (like a unicycle). If the GM is very skilled/experienced it’s probably quite easy for them. For the Players this probably holds true also. If you, as GM, have a table full of seasoned vets who play multiple times weekly, go to cons, etc “GM’s turn” is fine because your players probably need less margin for error to have successful encounters; they, whether conscious of it or not, are likely to make optimized decisions in that battle. It raises stakes, but in doing so lowers margin for error for both player and GM this lower margin of error offsets somewhat by experience around the table. A wrong/ineffective spell or action during an encounter probably goes wronger, faster, with steeper consequences.

2. On initiative per monster type gives a DM / Party more margin for error but also depending on the encounter. It obviously has same characteristics as the GM’s turn if there is just 8 bandits for instance. I think it probably strikes the balance between the two styles.

3. One initiative per monster I think gives the largest margin of error for both the GM and the players. It can potentially be the hardest to track for the GM up front but allows amateur players and GMs wider latitude to have successful encounters. It gives novice and occasional players wider latitude to make some inefficient decisions in combat without the stakes of TPK slapping them right in the face.

(not that TPKs are to avoided at all costs, they can certainly be part of story, just that a TPK would generally not be the intended outcome of the encounter presumably)

I think the piece i was missing yesterday was the players. Player decisions made for option 1 probably change from decisions made in option 3. Experience playing with style 1 probably also lowers the degree of difficulty though i don’t know that it would fully offset the increased risks.

It would be an interesting test to re-run the HW Brute/Bandit encounter with the 3 different styles and see if it proves out my theories. If this were a network problem, I would bust out a VM and my network simulation software, build the model, run the simulations, log results to see how it stacks up against my hypotheses. This isn’t a network problem so i guess are there simulation software for this? There have to be right? Part of my laughs the there are so many GM’s trying to use numbers, spreadsheets, and math to create balanced encounters when part of me notes that might be a crutch and that this is often more art (by feel) than science (by the numbers). Of course, I am no master DM so wtf to i know.

Also i DEFINITELY looked at TVs the other day. A TV as the battle map would cost as much up front as two or three Loke’s map books. I am really thinking about whether I can make this work.

[paneerakbari]

These are all good notes, and actually strike directly on some things I was feeling before, during, and after the experience myself.

Mapping

Yep. I simply did not prep this part of the session at all and dropped the ball. A future iteration of this dungeon should have some more assets or resources for players, they were omitted this time largely because I started materializing this dungeon (map, design, narrative) on a Wednesday to run it on a Friday, with plenty of other obligations in between. Excuses, excuses… that’s all I’ve got - but I agree that, at the very least, a “room at a time” diagram of some sort would improve the player experience (especially vs the background elements of our regular, public locale).

Expectedly, I have a lot of thoughts on the notion of at-table maps, but I lean toward preferring and tacitly encouraging players to be making their own maps of the environment. I don’t regard this as “meta” in the slightest and have found it a staple of the adventure RPG space across media for decades. But visual aids of any sort are preferred.

Initiative Pre-Rolls

This one’s tricky, and what we ran with is not the final form. When I want to try some new mechanic or process at table, I try to run it in the most stripped-down way I can devise. I want to see it get probed and exploited by players, I want to see where it fractures and where it holds - those desire paths are more useful and convenient than my attempts to anticipate them.

Double-digit headcounts of monsters was a stupid design decision. It really should have been, at most, a single mob of up-scaled “skellys” - but what a stress test they made!

I really like your idea of reserving the 5-Spots (0/5/10/15/20) for different “action groups” of monsters and will trial that approach in future.

This time, I went with the “all monsters on GM turn” because there are multiple encounter-paths through this dungeon and I had no way of knowing which way the party would go at any point. In a strictly linear dungeon, this would be much, much easier as I would know exactly what the next encounter would be.

Adversaries on GM Turn

You nailed it. It’s a big trade-off between quickly ripping through a combat encounter and having a rich tactical experience. I knew I wasn’t providing visual aids, battle grids, or adversary markers so I went with the fast-and-dirty this time.

Initiative Standees

I’m keeping these, regardless of when we roll initiative. I took [what I remembered] of this tool from an Alphastream video. That guy’s great and I didn’t acknowledge him in the original post.

Tech at the Table

I’m a big-time advocate for tools of all stripes, and I’ll go so far as to build my own when I have to. The weird thing is, I keep gravitating away from technological tools while running a game primarily (entirely?) because of the prep-cost: I’m not willing to delay the game because my toys aren’t working right, so (for me) it doubles the time investment of prep because I want to be ready to run it with or without the extra devices.
And I hate carrying a ton of gear around - it’s why you won’t find me dragging a pelican case of dozens of minis into the space.
And I’m wary of losing the other players’ attention to the device doing things. Background activity, devices, neurology, cross- and side-chatter… I just can’t compete. Purely personal taste.