Momentum is starting to grow for Encounters at my local store. We started out at three, and this time we get five! We’ve got a group of regulars who are starting to show up to each session, which is awesome. It’s a real treat to watch players having fun and coming back! I had to miss session 3 due to family issues, so I will resume my chronicles at session 4 of the Dark Sun Encounters season.
First, I will speak about what I didn’t do: closely review the adventure. This is relevant because this encounter was brutal. I think it was even more savage than first encounter in the Dark Sun Encounters. Surprise round hilarity and monsters capable of doing solid damage in bursts equals a ridiculously strong encounter. Had I taken a more in-depth look and passed thee encounter through my sanity filter, I could have been more prepared to deal with it, toning the encounter done or leaving other mechanisms in place to make it easier to deal with. I didn’t though, but I was forced to improv a solution in the form of a dwarf.
The “pre-encounter” involved the players meeting a dwarf mage named Rallo. He spoke with the players when their foes interrupted with an attack, and he was still standing near the end of the encounter. Rallo had no powers or abilities statted out, so was really just there to get beat up by monsters. In round two I realized the players where getting ready to go down so I executive-decisioned that rallo would have powers, specifically, a one-shot auto-heal to help the players out. This worked really well, as in the fourth round all but one player was face down in the sand. Rallo dramatically called for the players to not give up, and spread arcane healing energies over them. This one surge was all that the players needed, and the PCs rose from near defeat to victory. It was a tense situation that everyone enjoyed. I was able to do it seamlessly so that it felt like something Rallo could do.
Tip: Take Ownership of Fun
This brings me to a point: via the magic of the internets, I saw that a lot of people were pretty sore at WotC for that encounter. There weere a lot of TPKs off of this encounter. To that I say….take ownership. If you are running a game, you are the CEO of fun at that period of time, not WotC. I understand that the encounter was a touch unbalanced, but there are ways that you can make that encounter fun for everybody. You try a solution like mine, or what about selling the TPK? A dramatic, mournful finish can soften the blow of character death. I’ve seen pickup games where the GM killed all the PCs and concluded with “Ok, that’s over. Sorry guys!” To me that’s just a wasted opportunity. Even a TPK has a chance to be awesome. Have the players discuss last thoughts of the characters. Describe the consequences of the failure; what happened to the world now that the players aren’t there? Make their passing felt. Even though the players died that death will still have meaning and still be dramatic and awesome.
Whatever you do, don’t just accept what’s going on around you. Don’t say “there’s nothing I can do!” Of course there is! As GM, you have access to the pulleys and levers. Pull the right ones to make the game mean something.
As always, I run Encounters at Myriad Game’s Salem Store.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
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