In this session our party left the pirates lair. Found a row boat. Made their way to a neighbouring island. Got a lift to Mintarn and the town Queens Cove. Restocked some equipment, and accepted a job.
Post-mortem
SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following part of the post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this part of the post and join me in a future one.
There was one oversight in the planning of the session. We hadn’t shared the location! We were back at The Luxe, and not the school. Once that little detail was corrected, we were ready to start playing.
Our session started with a person down. Apparently something had come up, and they couldn’t make it. Only letting the group know at the last possible moment, ie as we were all sitting at the table ready to start.
These things happen, it’s life. But a bit more notice would have been nice.
Before playing those of us present had a discussion lead by Jonathan about his announcement that this was likely going to be his last session (you can read his reasons explained eloquently here). I felt everyone was understanding and supportive, and could see Jonathan’s point of view.
So the actual second session started with a recap of the previous session. I started it off with the Matt Colville words that also give this post its name, “when last we left our heroes…” I then invited the players to recap the previous session. Which I felt was a bit spotty, missed one or two beats. But this was the first time, and I think it will “improve” over time as the group get more comfortable recapping this way.
I also told the players about their magic items. See below about this.
This session from my point of view once out of the pirates lair had a different focus. Where as the first session was more a dungeon crawl, once outside it was more “roleplay”.
As I said in the past more than once, I’m not that Matt Mercer, voices/acting type of DM. It’s not me.
But there was a lot of improv for me to do as the players explored the new locations. Which I felt started off shaky, especially with the jarl. But I felt more comfortable and happier with the Queens Cove interactions.
I managed to seed three adventure hooks, two in Mintarn. Setup a potential two more, although one of those had a warning. A warning that if the party attempted to rob the dragon they would most likely die.
The Angrath storyline was developed, the myth building up, and a rival pirate Vraska was introduced.
The group challenge for rowing the row boat I think worked well, despite the group failing. Blaming the failure not just on strong currents, but having a gnome controlling the rudder and not being able to see which direction they were going.
How did we handle being a player down? Ok! I let the players control the character when it came to combat, or for the group challenge roll for him. I think one of the most damning comments was at the end, when one of the players said (I’m paraphrasing here) that the session felt better without them there.
An adventure hook was also taken off the table for the time being. I think that Jonathan forgot he had the mysterious symbol on a bit of paper. It was frustrating that I could see the paper in front of him and he didn’t think to ask about it with the NPC’s they were interacting with. While Jonathan’s character was alone in Queens Cove I had a NPC bump into him and steal the scrap of paper off him. If he had given chase and got it back, I was hoping he’d start asking about it. But he didn’t. Although now he’s thinking what was so important about the scrap of paper.
As the players made their way through the Matt Colville designed intro adventure (I’d added this as an Easter egg to the groups taster session) they spent more time here than I anticipated. Especially for a dungeon that had literally zero monsters (apart from some skeletons if they triggered them). Which was interesting. The corridor trap from the actual pirates lair that the group triggered on their way out made them a lot more cautious.
This session was always going to be less combat focused and interaction focused. It also determined based on the player’s decisions what the third session is. The third session will see the players travelling to Mintarn as guards to Queens Cove’s tribute. So it will have a similar flow and feel to this session.
At the end of the session the players had passed a level up point. If you remember from a previous post we are using the Adventure League rules for advancement. So the group will be advancing their character to level 2 before the next session.
At the end of the session Jonathan was happier and found some positives.
The first was the session length. We stuck to a 2 hour duration. Which everyone seemed happy with.
We also spent time explaining to Jonathan why we were rolling for certain stats, and which ones. I’m not sure if he found this helpful.
Plus a good sign Jonathan will come back for session 3.
I failed to get some maps printed off before the session (drawback of not having a printer at home) and I felt guilty asking Jonathan again. So I improvised and used my iPad to display the relevant player friendly town maps and the Mintarn cluster of islands. I need to sort this out for our third session. The printer was an issue because I had also wanted to print out those item cards that I’d created. Which needs to be done for the next session.
I did use the initiative order cards from the Essentials Kit. The players liked those. Although I think I’ll tweak the way I use them to after the first round of combat. That way it remains a mystery about where the monsters are in that order until they actually take their turn.
Overall I think the session went well. Despite initial hiccups, being a person down, and implementing some things that made for a better player experience.