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| Please note me and M's despair and anguish. |
So our past session was a bad session. While people still had a good time in each other's company, the actual tabletop role-playing didn't go well. There were some stellar moments, but in general it was worse than last session. There are two components which probably lead to us being worse off and I hope anyone reading this can learn from these mistakes. Below will be a summary of the session, issues with the players getting into the proper mental state, and my flaws in communication and poor usage of negative space.
Summary
After spending another night in Ozborn, Alexander Exquilin recieved two packages. The first is a letter from Wulgang requesting his assistance, the second was the bloody skin of his old donkey Stupes. Carved in Stupes's flesh was a letter from another assassin from the House of Gossamer and Glass. It identified the writer as the Pangolin and informed Alexander Exquilin that she was going to kill him.Meanwhile Ramona Watts, searched Ozborn for a blacksmith who would repair her urumi sword. After meeting with several, who were unable to repair her blade, she finally found one who could. While inside she met a woman named Jasmine who wore a cloak made entirely of iron spikes. She spoke with Ramona about her urumi, mentioning that her friend wielded one and that she hadn't seen her in three months. Ramona understood that she had killed her friend and stole her sword. Ramona surmised that that Jasmine works for the House of Gossamer and Glass. Ramona spoke with her longer and learned that she was in Ozborn looking for Alexander Exquilin, Ramona then lied to Jasmine about Alexander's whereabouts and the party met up.
The party spoke and decided why to visit Wulgang and see what he wants. The 6 party members traveled to Fort Woe and spoke to Wulfgang. Wulfgang and Aquarias Kari informed them that Erasmus, the famed mage of Ozborn who has written a dozen grimoires, descended into the depths of the the Goblin Keeps and hasn't been seen in seven months. He often had descended into his tower for months at a time, but he would normally after a period of 3 months with another grimoire written. In his absence, many pretenders and posers have come forth and in his absence fight for the title of the A E S C E T I C. They practice sorcery openly in the streets, spilling blood freely. Wulfgang offers the party Erasmus's weight in silver for either his return of proof of his death. The party seeing a chance of wealth, have the discussion illustrated below, choosing to descend down to look for Erasmus.
Leaving their War-Cart and hirelings outside of the entrance and they go forth into the Goblin Keep. Inside, they stumble around in the dark and harass the Ax-Gang. They waste a great deal of time wandering the lengthy corridors and locked doors of the first level of the dungeon and finally discover how go deeper. During this time the party encountered a Grue. I feel that the Grue encounter and it's subsequent following of the party was the best encounter I think I've ever ran. One of the goals of this dungeon was to teach my players the last few important aspects of dungeon crawling. The Grue, with it's mocking of the party; constant following ever so slightly out of their peripheral vision; and 5HD and 3 attacks which only occur when the party has no light source and and get a -4 to their Attack and Defense scores, was an excellent teaching tool. The party began tracking their own light sources, terrified of having a lone member of entering a dark room, and conscious that of all of the resource management integral in going into a murder-hole.
The party then kept going deeper and deeper into the Goblin Keep. They again encountered the shadows of goblin's past but by using their light could keep them at bay. On the third level of the dungeon, they began encountering pretenders of the A S C E T I C and their lackeys. Alexander Exquilin all the while had been using the power granted to him by his Giant's Belt to rip doors off of the walls and was getting frustrated with few answers. He had began throttling the overly verbose pretenders for information. Unfortunately for Alexander Exquilin, they did not take this to well and began fighting back. Most of the party was able to overwhelm them, but when the pretenders began using their magical abilities some of the party became injured. Alexander Exquilin now has a gaping hole in his stomach and his entire left shoulder and arm are stained with a transcendental blue. Alexander Exquilin, bloody and dying on the floor of the dungeon due to the eldritch might of the pretenders, finally asked of Queen Mab, for her assistance. She agreed that for a 50% penalty to all further XP, she would cast him and his members away from this place and heal his wounds.
The following are all assumptions that I thought the players had. I'll make sure to emphasize these to the party next session. The adventuring party is a group of people who enter murderholes (dangerous locations which go into the earth) in order to plunder them for riches. Murderholes are dangerous places and one has to take proper precautions to return alive with riches. These precautions are not purely the accumulation of physical resources of torches, rations, ropes, thieves tools, ect. The accumulation of information about the murderhole you are going into is vital as well. Murderholes are filled with murderous beings of ill intent which have ears, if you are loud inside, they might hear you. Murderholes are proportionately filled with danger the deeper they go. Treasure and danger are also propotional so a floor 5 levels deep will have much more dangerous things guarding greater treasure waiting that for you than a floor 1 level deep.
After the session ended, a few of the Goblin-Hack group went out to get some drinks and I took about an hour to be sad and gloomy and think much to seriously about what I did wrong and how to not have another bad session ever again. With I and G's help I went through all of the aspects of my refereeing/dungeon mastering skills and learned that my usage of evocative descriptions were one of the reasons the corridors were so mind numbing. To quote G: "You have some encounters and moments where we get a whole lot of really good description and generally have an 'oh shit, this is awesome moment' because you usually save those descriptions for something so important. This means that things which lack these descriptions aren't as engaging to us because we don't care about them as much."
When I prepare for the session the majority of my time is spent on positive space. I prepare descriptions of monsters, NPC's, vistas, and areas encountered so that when the party encounters one instead of saying "you find a troll" I can say "In the dull light of your torch, you see a hulking figure emerge from the tunnel. His flesh green as grass at the dawn of spring and covered in warts. A nose the size of a cucumber juts from his face and two yellow eyes squint at you. Fetid breath and the scent of rotting flesh spill from his open mouth, filled with ragged teeth. He roars a challenge to you drawing his arms back, and sinking forward as if to charge." In my opinion, there is a fundamental difference in immersion and visualization/engagement between those two encounters. The second one being straight up superior.
However, by not focusing on the negative spaces I unintentionally created a vacuum where those segments wouldn't be as good. In the session which we played, the majority of the time spent in those negative spaces reduced the enjoyment for everyone. Going forward either the number of negative spaces have to be reduced, or their quality has to be increased. I know in the Masked Giants Complex, I made sure to give vivid descriptions of the negative spaces. Perhaps if I continue to do the same, the next dungeon will be more enjoyable. Further negative space in art is a consequence of scale, which would be a good way for a referee to view it.
The party then kept going deeper and deeper into the Goblin Keep. They again encountered the shadows of goblin's past but by using their light could keep them at bay. On the third level of the dungeon, they began encountering pretenders of the A S C E T I C and their lackeys. Alexander Exquilin all the while had been using the power granted to him by his Giant's Belt to rip doors off of the walls and was getting frustrated with few answers. He had began throttling the overly verbose pretenders for information. Unfortunately for Alexander Exquilin, they did not take this to well and began fighting back. Most of the party was able to overwhelm them, but when the pretenders began using their magical abilities some of the party became injured. Alexander Exquilin now has a gaping hole in his stomach and his entire left shoulder and arm are stained with a transcendental blue. Alexander Exquilin, bloody and dying on the floor of the dungeon due to the eldritch might of the pretenders, finally asked of Queen Mab, for her assistance. She agreed that for a 50% penalty to all further XP, she would cast him and his members away from this place and heal his wounds.
Player mentality of play
Our groups scheduled time of play is 6 pm every Sunday. Due to a family obligations, we met for the session at 7:15 pm. People came in excited to play and as we prepared to play people were noticeably more rowdy, partially it was the lateness of this session. In retrospect, I usually make an announcement to the group for everyone to get into the Tabletop RPG mentality, but this time we didn't take a pause and simply jumped in with no gap between socializing and playing Goblin-Hack. I think the lack of a "okay guys, stop goofing off let's play" discouraged proper play. In my ideal campaign/my ideal DMing style is one where people are focused on the game, seek to roleplay their characters, characters making jokes instead of the players, and act with sincerity. While two of these happened there was a great deal of issues in my opinion of players being unable to focus on the game and players making the majority of the jokes. I need to figure out how to include a rule/enforce a manner as to how to avoid people shouting over each other/people having side conversations. For the dungeoneering portion of the dungeon itself, I elected a caller; but in retrospect, I realize I didn't properly explain what that meant. One of my pet peeves is players making jokes rather than the characters. M is most often guilty of this most vile sin and what struck me most is that last session he didn't do it at all instead making his character make all of the jokes. The entire time the group was making these jokes and talking over each other. I feel that this greatly contributed to the "we're here to hang out not to play Goblin-Hack". I would suggest to other Referees that they make sure their players settle themselves first for beginning play. Further I would suggest (I am going to do this myself next session) that they pause for 5 minutes for every 55 minutes of play. This would result in a structured release of tension and allow for player's attention span not to decline and get to bored. Further people wouldn't leave the table to get drinks/food/go to the bathroom during play.Communication and Negative Space Use
So the first major reason for the session being a bad one was poor communication from me (as the referee) to the players. The party gathered no intelligence on the Goblin Keeps or Erasmus before going into the Goblin Keeps. I made sure to ask if they wanted to purchase supplies before entering the dungeon, but looking back I should have asked if they wanted to gather intelligence. Before the party went to the Masked Giants complex, I had their employer pay for them to go to the Library in November and each had a chance to gain information about the dungeon they were going to go into. Looking back not prompting the party with their ability to gain information was a mistake. The party claimed that there were no signs within the Goblin Keep on where Erasmus was and felt lost wandering around a bunch of corridors. They claimed that even the Scooby Doo Gang got clues, and it was poor form of me as a Referee to not give them clues. In my eyes, this is a false understanding of how dungeons work and poor communication on my part.The following are all assumptions that I thought the players had. I'll make sure to emphasize these to the party next session. The adventuring party is a group of people who enter murderholes (dangerous locations which go into the earth) in order to plunder them for riches. Murderholes are dangerous places and one has to take proper precautions to return alive with riches. These precautions are not purely the accumulation of physical resources of torches, rations, ropes, thieves tools, ect. The accumulation of information about the murderhole you are going into is vital as well. Murderholes are filled with murderous beings of ill intent which have ears, if you are loud inside, they might hear you. Murderholes are proportionately filled with danger the deeper they go. Treasure and danger are also propotional so a floor 5 levels deep will have much more dangerous things guarding greater treasure waiting that for you than a floor 1 level deep.
After the session ended, a few of the Goblin-Hack group went out to get some drinks and I took about an hour to be sad and gloomy and think much to seriously about what I did wrong and how to not have another bad session ever again. With I and G's help I went through all of the aspects of my refereeing/dungeon mastering skills and learned that my usage of evocative descriptions were one of the reasons the corridors were so mind numbing. To quote G: "You have some encounters and moments where we get a whole lot of really good description and generally have an 'oh shit, this is awesome moment' because you usually save those descriptions for something so important. This means that things which lack these descriptions aren't as engaging to us because we don't care about them as much."
Negative Space
After some clarification it led me thinking into the usage of negative space within tabletop RPGs. First I want to make a dichotomy of negative and positive space first. In visual art, positive space art refers to the object or scene depicted. Negative space refers to the the space around and between the subject of an image. In Tabletop RPG terms positive space would refer to any moment where things are changing or there is an chance of failure, while negative space would refer to moments where things are not changing and there is no chance of failure. A more specific example may be found when looking at the 1e Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide gives a percentage of which rooms of a dungeon are what based on a 1d20 distribution. As 1-12 refer to empty rooms, these would negative space, while 13-20 would be positive space. Interestingly this corresponds with the room being filled.When I prepare for the session the majority of my time is spent on positive space. I prepare descriptions of monsters, NPC's, vistas, and areas encountered so that when the party encounters one instead of saying "you find a troll" I can say "In the dull light of your torch, you see a hulking figure emerge from the tunnel. His flesh green as grass at the dawn of spring and covered in warts. A nose the size of a cucumber juts from his face and two yellow eyes squint at you. Fetid breath and the scent of rotting flesh spill from his open mouth, filled with ragged teeth. He roars a challenge to you drawing his arms back, and sinking forward as if to charge." In my opinion, there is a fundamental difference in immersion and visualization/engagement between those two encounters. The second one being straight up superior.
However, by not focusing on the negative spaces I unintentionally created a vacuum where those segments wouldn't be as good. In the session which we played, the majority of the time spent in those negative spaces reduced the enjoyment for everyone. Going forward either the number of negative spaces have to be reduced, or their quality has to be increased. I know in the Masked Giants Complex, I made sure to give vivid descriptions of the negative spaces. Perhaps if I continue to do the same, the next dungeon will be more enjoyable. Further negative space in art is a consequence of scale, which would be a good way for a referee to view it.
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