SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. To be fair I’ve not been thinking much about the next session. That may sound lazy, and that I’ve lost interest. But in reality that’s not true. It’s been more that I’ve not had that point in time of when the next session is to focus on, and drive the creative process. Which was true until just over a week ago.
Finally the players have managed to pick a time and date for our second session of the campaign. This part of playing D&D is proving to be extremely frustrating. I’m glad I offloaded the process onto the players. I was getting very annoyed with a couple of the group, and the lack of information about when they were free. It felt like, and still does when I read the attempts to choose a date, like they are playing a game of “we are thinking of a number between 1 and a billion, can you guess it?”
At the current rate our third session will be in the new year. Which isn’t acceptable really. I know that the rest of the group also feel the same. Ideally we need to get the sessions to fortnightly.
So how to handle this?
I think at the end of the second session there needs to be time given to a group discussion about this. It needs to be handled delicately, with no finger pointing and blame.
On the planning front of the content for session 2 some of that is a carry over from the first session.
The party still have to clear the third level of the pirates lair, which is a single combat encounter, and a simple trap. Then they exit through an abandoned tomb, which potentially has a combat encounter. But that is already planned.
I have started to create item cards to give to the players for items they got from the pirates treasury. I googled a card template off the internet along with images of the item to use.
Now I have a Viking fishing village to populate. Followed by the town Queen’s Cove on Mintarn.
I already have some adventure hooks created. These hooks set up session 3. So I won’t know until the end of the session which one to prepare. I just need to make sure in the meantime any ideas for those hooks get noted in my GoodNotes file.
But I know session 2 will feel completely different to session 1. The encounter focus is different. Where as session 1 was a small dungeon crawl through the pirates lair. Session 2 is more social encounter oriented. There is the group challenge for rowing a row boat across a section of water between 2 islands.
The party also hit a level up point during session 2. So I need to decide whether to leave the levelling up until the end and let the players do that between sessions, or do the levelling up mid session. And if it is mid session how to add that to the narrative of the session.
Anyway with a date set in “stone” for the 21st of this month, you will be once more getting more of these posts again.
This is difficult to write as I don’t usually read the blog if it has a spoiler alert, but on this occasion, I need to address something that’s been bothering me. I will also bring this up at the second session. I did write a BGG blog post about it but, in the interest of ‘getting it out there’, I might as well copy and paste that blog post here.
It has been quite annoying that some in the group just do not provide suitable dates to meet despite asking again and again. There is far too much time between sessions. That said, here goes with my copy and paste job (at least everyone will know how I’m feeling):
“Fenland Gamers have started running Dungeons and Dragons. To be fair, we have been running a regular session for the last year or so, but I have never been involved.
However, I had a chance to play my very first Dungeons and Dragons session. It was OK, but I don’t quite see what the fuss is all about. So, what am I not enjoying about D&D?
1. The sessions are just too long for my liking. The first session of the campaign ran for 4 and a quarter hours. Honestly, I was expecting about 2 to 2 and a half hours of playing. I don’t like playing long board games (over 2 hours is starting to push a game) and I don’t really want to lock up my Saturday afternoons playing D&D, when I could be mowing the lawn. Seriously, I feel that I could be spending better time with my family.
2. It is just too confusing. I am told to roll for this and roll for that, but I am still at a loss as to what figures I’m supposed to be checking. There are far too many stats to keep track of. Can’t understand why they can’t just make it easier.
3. As a newbie player who has never played the game before, I actually find the rules complex (and it’s mainly to do with the stats involved). It’s like playing a new board game where one player knows how to play, but is keeping the rules secret. I can’t make head or tail of the Player’s Handbook!
Will I keep it up? Probably not. I’ll give it a one or two more sessions, but it’s just not as enjoyable as a regular board game.”
So with that, at least others will know what I think of my experience with D&D and why I probably won’t continue for much longer. I love gaming, but I just can’t see the point to playing RPGs, and if I’m giving up time, I really want to enjoy the activity i’m doing.
Jonathan, thanks for the frank and honest feed back. The easiest of your points to deal with is the duration. We can set a session time limit. I don’t see that as an issue.
Not sure about what we can do about the stats, and players handbook. I suppose we could try to see how you get on with the cut down guide from the beginners box set.
The real problem is that I’m not physically enjoying it. I doubt the session length will solve this. I don’t like the role play aspect the same as one or two others really enjoy (I’m not willing to get into character; that’s just not me), and I don’t see what RPGs offer that’s anything better than playing a regular board game (something I do enjoy).
With regards to the session length, I am pretty sure others would have continued even longer, but I’m not willing to spend that long playing a game that I don’t understand or actually enjoy and as mentioned above, I doubt it’ll solve the issue of enjoying the game. And, if we’d limited the game to a couple of hours, I doubt we’d progress through the adventure at a fast enough pace.
I can’t stress enough how much the ‘roll for this’ and ‘roll for that’ baffles me. There are so many different numbers that I’m simply confused. As I’ve mentioned in the past, if it was simply Skill, Stamina and Luck, and perhaps Magic (the classic Fighting Fantasy traits) then I’d probably understand. But I don’t think it’s purely down to the stats the reason I’m not enjoying it. It’s a combination of all three perhaps? Maybe it’s the sandbox nature of the game?
Which is fair enough, as we know not every game is for everyone. No point doing something if you are not enjoying it.