Welcome to the fourth set of game notes of our The Rime of Frost Maiden campaign from a player’s perspective. We’ll discuss the pre-game, the session itself, the post-game and what I’m taking into the next session in each of these posts. The aim is to provide a diary of the experience from a player’s perspective.
Disclaimer
These posts are written from the perspective of a player who has purposefully not looked up spoilers. I am enjoying the game. These thoughts are my own and I can’t speak for my fellow players.
These reports are written close to the session but may not be released immediately after.
The sections
The pre-game
I’m going to be honest, I was a bit off going into the game. I’ve started to realise a number of barriers kick in for me with respect to this game which are nothing to do with the game itself.
It’s online. The fact it’s online means it never feels the same as a face-to-face game. As a result, I find my own role-playing is somehow lesser. It just doesn’t feel the same. Everything feels less organic. It’s not that it becomes uncomfortable it just becomes less comfortable. This has been the case across the three experiences I’ve had including one with me GM’ing.
Evening games are an issue. I find it astounding now that we played a number of our much-loved campaigns bi-weekly on an evening. I just don’t find that the same now. I enter games on an evening with substantially lower energy than I do weekend games. This tells me I’m not the person who will be filling his dance card with online evening games anytime soon and GM’ing something online on a weeknight might be an aspiration best avoided.
I’ll admit I went in tired. A bit feeling like I didn’t have the energy to live up to my end of hitting my character’s home town. Even a bit, can’t I just chill and do nothing? Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with the game just something I’m finding I have to fight each and every time due to it being on an evening.
Key points
The session had the following key points: –
- We found the guy who committed the murder in the first session
- The murderer was like the Night King without raise dead
- Lonelywood wasn’t its normal, vibrant frontier town self
- Knowing of the White Moose we went to kill it
- There was an ancient elven temple, it may have had more going on
- Never open a sarcophagus as it undoubtedly has a Mummy within it
- We killed the Moose by making it run through a fiendish Druid spell
- We let the evil Druid go who seemed to be corrupting things for the lols
- Adastra the Hag made contact with Cole; this was intriguing
- Adastra the Hag is watching Ash and is aware of her daughter’s return
- It seems Ash’s parents have split and her mother has travelled south
I’ll admit I was surprised Adastra the Hag actually made an appearance. It’s great that she is actually a thing now it just makes it feel different should conversations come up about her in the future.
The session
Lots to discuss so this has gone a bit long. I’ve split it into key topics.
We slowed down a bit. Just a bit. It doesn’t have to be much. It showed. I think the session was much better for it. It started to show some embryonic character dynamics. This will make the game richer overall. The WHY of things is everything, without it you are just ticking things off a list.
The Branwin and Ash scene. I authored in a Branwin and Ash scene which was great just because I actually did it. It probably didn’t have as many descriptive elements as we’d normally do, as normally we’d even establish what the set looked like to establish character, for example. It certainly borderlined on being a lore dump. It happened though, that’s the key thing. Also, hell, doing these things that come naturally around a table with people you’ve played with for a while (if not decades) have a slight uncomfortable factor with a new group and online!
All the dangerous creatures. I’m spoiler-free so I can only go on what is presented at the table but the creatures in this module have the potential to really hit hard and screw with you. We’ve had paralysis a number of times. Paralysis combined with being grappled. An ageing attack. Now, with the Mummy, we’ve had a very dangerous ‘mummy rot’ in the context of the multiple fight model in D&D. While we’ve not got ourselves into serious trouble it seems there is the potential to get into serious trouble.
The Godamned spells. The reason why I’d never run D&D #102. The annoyingly useful spells that force an arms race. They always feel unique to D&D, some class abilities fall victim to this as well. The monk’s stunning strike. It could even be said the Paladin’s smites if you’ve only a small number of encounters. One got introduced in this session, the Druid spell Spiked Growth, it’s going to be interesting moving forward. This is why I like the fiction first approach to spells and powers as it tends to remove these sort of on the knife-edge of being fun sponge situations. There are ways around it, mostly around a more complex field of battle.
Fights are short. An observation. Not a complaint. All three D&D games I’ve played in have had short fights. They tend to last three rounds, four if you’re ‘lucky’. This has interesting dynamics. You have way more tools than time to actually use them. Bursting early is the way to go. Long-term advantage spells like Bless have limited utility due to a limited time horizon. I need to get use to just smiting even without a crit as time means you’re just best getting them in. It’s weird because no one wants long fights, but the outcome is a small window to squeeze abilities in.
The post-game
..and relax. It’s done. People started interacting. We slowed down. We started exploring the edge of why each of us may actually be in Ten Towns doing all this stuff. Hopefully, this will be the start of something that just becomes part of the game.
Another thing I learned, even though I was shaking my own head at myself for not getting some more flashbacks in as that seemed to be an accepted method, it probably didn’t matter though it would have been cool. It would have just extended the lonely fun as no one can react to them moving forward.
Stars and Wishes
At the end of each session, we can list stars (things to keep doing) and wishes (things we want to see).
My internet got cut off some way through the post-game discussion so there may have been a bit discussed that I missed but I think there was universal approval for the uplift in the time that was found to at least start forging relationships with each other and the setting and to eventually give each of us a reason why we are wandering around risking our lives together.
Plans for the next session
I don’t have one and this is a good thing. It seems I really wanted to get out of that lonely fun zone.