I love being able to run a game! Sharing time: I have a lot of ideas that occupy my brain. Running a game is one of the best ways for me to exercise my creative impulses and quiet things down. I often get to run 2 games a week, which is pretty magical, but running at least 1 makes me a much more pleasant and content person.
This was another great session with the Infinity Tower Crew that reminds me of the most successful way to develop sessions: present scenes and lay out obstacles. Let the players deal with them in their way.
The two examples for this session were outfitting the boat for the journey and the orc raider attack.
Outfitting the boat was a question of resources and interactions. How much did the players want to prepare? Who were they willing to trust? It gave me a chance to give Fang some skill and experience, making him less of a caricature. It also let the players meet the NPCs and make decisions about what resources they would have in the future. I think that's a fun part of gaming, provided that players don't get punished for failing to describe their rest cycles and monitoring their food supplies.
What I did want the players to be able to do was decide how the boat was going to move forward. Who would be captan? Would their be rowers/sailors? How many? How would it affect their speed? Having an NPC tell the players about decisions that needed to be made, then letting the players make those decisions was my attempt to give them agency and allow them to affect the progress of the story. They might have been more heavily armed but less speedy. One captain might accept that where another would not.
The orc raider attack then gave a chance to put those things to work. The players had decided on a skilled captain who liked a fight and a full crew of rowers. That let them easily maneuver in the combat and focus on throwing fire on their enemies.
As an important note, being the DM, I felt like the goal of combat for this session was to let players feel out combat on a boat. Ranged combat is no problem for this party. The orc raiders were easily slaughtered between bullets, elemental attacks and fire spells. Combat on the ship wasn't hard, but there are a lot of friendly targets in a very small space aboard the boat.
I was also really pleased with my simple builds this week. I made 3 ships out of cardboard in pretty minimal time, but they really did what I needed them to for the game. There was plenty of room for all the crew, the players, the orcs, etc. The boats gave some simple above the water visuals and made the combat a little more interesting. I have some great ideas for next time!
This was another great session with the Infinity Tower Crew that reminds me of the most successful way to develop sessions: present scenes and lay out obstacles. Let the players deal with them in their way.
The two examples for this session were outfitting the boat for the journey and the orc raider attack.
Outfitting the boat was a question of resources and interactions. How much did the players want to prepare? Who were they willing to trust? It gave me a chance to give Fang some skill and experience, making him less of a caricature. It also let the players meet the NPCs and make decisions about what resources they would have in the future. I think that's a fun part of gaming, provided that players don't get punished for failing to describe their rest cycles and monitoring their food supplies.
What I did want the players to be able to do was decide how the boat was going to move forward. Who would be captan? Would their be rowers/sailors? How many? How would it affect their speed? Having an NPC tell the players about decisions that needed to be made, then letting the players make those decisions was my attempt to give them agency and allow them to affect the progress of the story. They might have been more heavily armed but less speedy. One captain might accept that where another would not.
The orc raider attack then gave a chance to put those things to work. The players had decided on a skilled captain who liked a fight and a full crew of rowers. That let them easily maneuver in the combat and focus on throwing fire on their enemies.
As an important note, being the DM, I felt like the goal of combat for this session was to let players feel out combat on a boat. Ranged combat is no problem for this party. The orc raiders were easily slaughtered between bullets, elemental attacks and fire spells. Combat on the ship wasn't hard, but there are a lot of friendly targets in a very small space aboard the boat.
I was also really pleased with my simple builds this week. I made 3 ships out of cardboard in pretty minimal time, but they really did what I needed them to for the game. There was plenty of room for all the crew, the players, the orcs, etc. The boats gave some simple above the water visuals and made the combat a little more interesting. I have some great ideas for next time!
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