Welcome to the sixth 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
Do you know what one of the minor consequences of bi-weekly play is? When you cancel it’s a month since you played last! As it happened it was really easy to get back up to speed. Refreshing our list of achievements and next actions didn’t actually take much. Which was great.
Key points
The session had the following key points: –
- We travelled to Easthaven
- The Duerger we hoped to find had already left
- We spoke to a Spectre of the lake
- We set off to find some missing fishermen
- The caves across the lake were the home of a Sea Hag
- We escaped a Frost Giant Skeleton
- We bob-sledged out of the caves in a cauldron
- We gifted Easthaven the cauldron of plenty!
- The secrets of Rowley and Branwyn were shared
Yes, a Hag has been directly encountered in the game! While not Adastra herself, it did present an opportunity.
The session
We encountered a Sea Hag this session, which was exciting as I had zero idea there was an adventure featuring a Hag in the adventure module. So that was cool. I didn’t exactly maximise the opportunity though. Despite my character having hag ancestry and this being my character’s first time seeing an actual Hag of some sort all I did was kill the creature like any other monster.
Why did I let the opportunity just pass by?
The answer to that can be found in another strange quirk of 5E, the fact we are using inspiration and, like virtually every other time we’ve played 5E, we always completely forget it exists and we don’t use it. This is for two reasons. First, inspiration has a sort of passive use, the equivalent of a bonus on a die roll. Second, there is no real way to earn it so it isn’t a circular economy that causes the players to focus and double down on a certain element of play.
It’s so passive it gets ignored.
The reason I didn’t push the drama of my character’s first encounter with a hag is I just played to what the game focuses you on. Let’s look at what this might have looked like in a different game, let’s say Fate since I’m very familiar with it. There would be an Aspect on my character sheet related to the hag ancestry and it would have certainly been compelled by the GM or self-compelled by myself. Since there is a signal on the character sheet this is what the game is about and it can be mechanically used to drive the story to earn more fate points to drive the story further it is ever-present and would have got used.
This isn’t the case in 5E. Not only aren’t such rules present the feel and fabric of a 5E game is to beat the encounter and pushing the dramatic story in the encounter can feel indulgent and risky as there can be serious consequences as some of these creatures have seriously dilapidating abilities and players don’t choose when their character dies like they effectively do in Fate. So while it’s not that you don’t do it, it’s not the highest priority in your mind as the rounds unfold, the damage is taken and the creature’s potentially very dangerous abilities are used.
So, that’s why, when my character was hit with the Sea Hags’ magical glare of some sort, even though I succeeded at my save, I didn’t use it to drive a dramatic moment. In another game mechanics would have kicked in, whether Fate compels or success with a consequence, to drive that home. I’d also go further and in a different system the encounter would have been constructed entirely differently and the Hag’s ability would have been less likely to be an attack to weaken the enemy’s resources and have been something more like a psychic attack to drive home dramatic issues like forcing the protagonists to deal with a fear or drag out some traumatic memory, etc.
Basically, the system in play doesn’t mean this stuff can’t happen, but it certainly helps to make sure it does a lot of the time. System matters.
The post-game
We have reached level four, we completed chapter one and more of the issues each character is dealing with were revealed.
Reaching fourth level presents me with a choice, as I get an ability score improvement, which I can use to improve my ability scores exclusively or instead purchase a Feat. I’m not 100% sure what I’m going to do at the moment but I think I am leaning towards getting my Charisma to the next bonus bracket so that my aura is better when I get that a few levels later.
The completion of chapter one is a bit more nebulous, but the vibe is it’s like reaching a new tier in play. We cease to become heroes helping out the towns with their issues and instead we head off to investigate bigger and bolder environments with more fiendish encounters. Basically, if this was a game of 13th Age we’ve gone from adventurer tier to champion tier.
Another conversation in a pub revealed that Rowley is actually the son of a Duke, not just an itinerant con man and rogue and Branwyn wasn’t sent out with a mission to solve the existential crises facing Icewindale but left of her own accord having failed at her fated purpose within her society. It’s interesting how the character stuff is being layered in, it’s playing out in a way I’ve seen old-school D&D players talk about it. The character drama happens in the downtime between adventures, as once you’re on ‘the quest’ you’d be a professional and put that stuff to one side. I’m not sure that’s what we are doing consciously, but it’s effectively what we are doing in the pattern of play.
Stars and Wishes
At the end of each session, we can list stars (things to keep doing) and wishes (things we want to see).
We discussed what we liked, no wishes came up.
Plans for the next session
I have no specific plans for the next session. We are setting off to look for someone at the black hut (or something).