Here is my third and final wrap-up post on the D&D campaign. Hopefully this will answer the last remaining questions anyone might have.<\/p>\n
\nWhat would have happened if they didn’t free Mordan?<\/b><\/p>\n
This is a question all of the players and a few readers asked. The short answer: not much.<\/p>\n
This whole campaign was a gamble that hinged on them being tricked into freeing Mordan. If they had skipped Crossway, travel on the roads would have been impossible. They would have met a large group of solders (so many that they wouldn’t think about fighting) and would have been arrested and dragged back to Crossway, where Noreeno would make them a deal in exchange for their freedom. <\/p>\n
But if they had traveled in the wilderness, they could have eventually reached Telwin Port. Assuming they were willing to leave Endo behind, they could have escaped the campaign altogether.<\/p>\n
If they went south, but continued to look for Endo, they might have gotten arrested or met trouble elsewhere. In order to save the campaign, I could have used some yet-unwritten NPC (maybe some other survivors from the ship) to free Mordan, and then had the Queen try to enlist their help. This would have been far, far less interesting. The real hook of the campaign was that they released Mordan, and although it could have played out a lot of different ways, the choces they made in the end were the best, story-wise.<\/p>\n
How much were they “on rails”?<\/b><\/p>\n
I am guilty of passive railroading. I know the guys I game with, and in many cases I can say “If I put them in situation X I know they will do Y.” Once in a while I’m wrong, but very often I can predict how they will react to a situation before I introduce it. The freeing of Mordan was one such case. <\/p>\n
I knew they probably wouldn’t abandon Endo. (But just to be clear: Endo is my character when I’m not the DM, and I was fully prepared to lose him if they didn’t. I would never have forced<\/em> them to rescue him.) Once they recued him he gave them the quest hook of looking for the prince, and I suspected they would bite. It took them a while, but they did. I gave them the book of Norvus, knowing Enoch would translate the sucker. <\/p>\n So I’m a little guilty of “steering” them by putting situations in front of them that will turn them the way I want them to go. The first four sessions had a lot<\/em> of steering in them.<\/p>\n This isn’t railroading in the sense of telling players “You can’t do that”, but putting them into situations where there are only one or two reasonable choices could still be considered a form of subtle railroading. I leave it for the reader to decide.<\/p>\n I certainly<\/em> never would have told them, “You can’t do that, I don’t allow.”<\/p>\n Isn’t his name supposed to be Eomei<\/strong><\/em>r?<\/b><\/p>\n Yeah. Once I got into the habit of spelling it wrong it was hard to stop. My bad.<\/p>\n Any plans for another campaign?<\/b><\/p>\n Well, I don’t have a group right now. Even if I did, I’m not sure I would try this again. It was too hard to prepare for the next game and<\/i> log the last one. I certainly couldn’t pull it off while putting out DM of the Rings. <\/p>\n One solution might be to record all of the sessions and transcribe them once the game ends. Actually, that is probably the only way to do it. I could even edit out the useless stuff and turn it into one of those podcast thingies, which wouldn’t have the DM notes but wouldn’t require a lot of work, either. <\/p>\n In any case, next time I play I plan to take better care of the audio recordings. I can’t believe I lost them. <\/p>\n Still, step 1 is getting the band back together.<\/p>\n Do you ever “cheat” by faking dice rolls to help or hinder the players?<\/b><\/p>\n I don’t roll the dice, get a 1, but then just pretend I got a 15. Still, there are all sorts of ways the DM can nudge things without faking dice rolls. If someone is on a narrow ledge on a cliff-side and they fail a climbing roll (or whatever) I won’t just let them fall to their death. I’ll give them a (reflex) saving throw to see if they can grab the ledge. Missed? Then I’ll give the guy behind him a similar roll to see if he can catch him. Missed again? I’ll give him one last throw to see if he can grab that sticking-out branch on the way down, Wile E. Coyote style.<\/p>\n