Saturday, October 24, 2020

Felltower Tomorrow!

Hurrah, Felltower is to The current plan seems to be one of raiding the orcs, killing the lightning wyrm because it may have loot, or finding a way to open the orichalcum doors. One of the players referred to them as the "obsidian doors" and justified that by saying everything obsidian wants to kill him. Thus are rumors and Delusions born.

Intrestingly, the players opined that there are very few options for things to do in Felltower at this point. From my side of the GM screen, there are so many things left undone . . . and my "undone" list doesn't fully encompass their "undone" list. Some things they see as unfinished I see as unimportant, and some things they see as unimportant I see as unfinished. This tells me a couple of things:

- my players are morons!

- I need to be better at conveying hints, details, and useful information. I often default to "tell once" when "tell three times" is better.

- what you see depends on where you stand.

I am curious what will come tomorrow. I'm ready for all they mentioned, which means they'll find option D instead of A, B, or C and we'll see if I'm ready.

8 comments:

  1. Even the old adage "tell them three times" doesn't allows work. Sometimes it takes more than three, and sometimes it takes 'telling them' in three //different// ways.

    At times like this I'll sometimes just "drop the screen" and be frank about what is left untouched that they've straight up discovered and seemingly (as Players) perhaps not noticed or decided is "unimportant".

    I'll also sometimes review things we both consider important, but perhaps "off the table" for ways to 'bring it back on the table'.

    Granted, the group might be feeling gun shy, after all how many things handed Vryce and the Wonder team their butts that are still lurking down there waiting for a smaller, weaker team to come stumbling into and be destroyed by? I've heard this can be the eventual downfall of megadungeons and marches games. Once the easy areas are "played out" and everyone has been reset to 'newby' Characters, it becomes harder and harder to make headway or steel oneself to take on those rough areas.

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    1. The last bit is somewhat true. People get careful and cagey, and want to find "easy" loot but progressively find less and less "easy" loot. Any losses or difficulties along the way seem to ratchet up the perceived needed point level and resources. So if you try something with five 275 pointers and fail, that means six 300 pointers shouldn't go anywhere near it, and so on. Eventually, things get looted out, or worse yet crossed off the list of "doable" and pushed to the side and not considered.

      But it's gone 9 years of gaming and 139 sessions so clearly it takes a bit of time finish that downfall.

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    2. 139 session. Even at 1 a week, that would be almost 3 solid years. That's longer than any sit-down campaign I've ever been in has lasted. The only games I've had last that long (or longer) were LARPs and Play-by-Post games.

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    3. It's gone a long time. I'll have to dig out my old session summaries from when we played weekly GURPS games. I'm sure we did a lot more than 139 sessions over that 10-year campaign, but it also had several long hiatuses towards the end as I was living abroad. Still, I'm please that we've gotten in 140 sessions so far. 141 is in two weeks, unless we play Gamma Terra instead I suppose.

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  2. Have you considered having a natural (or unnatural) disaster such as an earthquake literally shake things up? Suddenly, old passages close, new ones open, the denizens are disturbed, rumours abound of dark rituals gone wrong, and everything old is new again? I've done it before to liven up a campaign that is growing "safe".

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    1. I have, but I feel like it means a lot of changing things on my end, plus mapping changes, only to have the same things happen again on a changed map with changed encounters. "Where ever you go, there you are," basically.

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    2. Yeah, seems to me that that sort of thing might work better, and more believably (?), in a Marches game. Overland hex crawls more easily lend themselves to 'new areas with weak challenges.

      I mean, you do still have The Lost City, though it sounds played out? Though how much is "played out" and how much is "PC keep working the same limited areas" is beyond me without map access and beign there (it one thing to read a session, it's another to play/run it and now where they've gone).

      You also have Swampsedge, though that is 'played out' until they decide they can decidedly deal with the Evil beneath the temple or go dragon hunting.

      There is still the Caves of Chaos. From what I remember of your crew's adventures there, they barely scratched its surface. There should be 'low-level' areas still virginal and the plundered holes should have restocked by now...

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    3. There are things to do in the Lost City, a couple things that could be done from Swampsedge as a base, and almost nothing to do in the Caves of Chaos. Felltower, conversely, is chock full of things to do. The PCs came up with an expanded list by email, which was helpful. There are a lot more things to do than people are willing to do.

      I'm basically done creating side areas for "easier" pickings unless I absolutely have to.

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