Meatspace D&D - June Ed.

The the first round of the our Meatspace D&D game was played back in April. Six human weeks usually pass without much note. As a DM though, six weeks between games can feel like an eternity. Given more time than I need, I plan bigger and more detailed story and encounters by the day. Something I hope is not lost in bloated expectation for my players.

This past Friday night I hosted round two of our game. When the dust settled I had three encounters, role playing and puzzle solving planned out. I also added an additional chair to the table when preparing, as Chuck joined our game to round out the party to five. Everyone showed up at 7:30 pm and we started off the night with a door puzzle I found in an old Traps and Treachery book. There were consequences to getting the puzzle wrong, but I made it a little too easy and it ended up being relatively un-noteworthy. I have thought of a dozen other ways I could have made it better since Friday, but that does me no good now.

Thankfully the first encounter went much better, there was a fair amount of challenge and lots of "should we use are dailies so early" conversation to be had. The next encounter made use of a trap to separate the party and stealthed baddies to get their blood flowing. The final encounter was my first opportunity to try out a custom monster. His abilities were cool and his place in the story fit, but I needed to adjust his health or defenses a bit. With two strikers in the group now the party can put out some pretty sick damage in a round.

When we end our first game at 11:30 pm because I had not planned for anything else, I felt like I had squandered an opportunity. With our game nights being so spaced out, not using the night to it's fullest sucks. So this time I planned a little too much. We called it just after 1 am and still felt like I rushed the last hour of the night. I almost forgot a big plot point, before being reminded by the players and quickly going through it. I'm sure it lost some impact, but hopefully I can tie up loose ends via Email in the coming weeks. All in it was a great night of tabletop gaming.

Update: Just got a picture of the game night from Ethan. Bogged down by things behind the screen I forgot again to take pictures of the folks on the other side.