Session 03: Player's Thoughts

Contributed by Chris (Immortal):

Though it’s great to get the DM’s thoughts on the session to the players and the world, I thought that this week it might be a fun idea to get my own few words out to our fans. At the time of this letter, it’s been four days since the last session, which is enough time for memories to fog over for me. The thing is though, is that the basics that one often remembers or remembers not are those die rolls that make the difference, or the ones that didn’t. For example, we usually remember that sudden super critical hit we had to bring down the colossal spider. But we rarely remember that 7 we rolled instead of the 8 we needed to hit, or the accidental extra 5 feet of movement we used at a certain part in the session. Where I’m going with my words is that, there really wasn’t any of those numerical moments to really recall. Rather the entire session WAS a moment. It was a part of a story that everyone told and everyone created. It’s likely that the session summary hasn’t yet been posted, but basically it was one of those very rare times when not a single attack roll was made, nor were any skill checks necessary (though a few were rolled anyway). Yet the five hours of D&D was just as fun, and even more so than many of the sessions we’ve had in the past. There were some key elements that made it right in every way and I’ll try to go through them, without spoiling the story for those looking forward to the session summary.

First off, the idea of starting the day with a meeting between some of our favorite characters that will be making an appearance in the Savage Tide was just great. We talk often of our great characters, with the Cauldron and Diamond Lake parties being some of the best of our many years of playing the game. The meeting was with Pellegri (Bob’s character), Eadfrid ( Eric’s character), and Scatterspells (Chris’s (my) character). What was predicted to be a simple hour long conversation between these three and two other NPCs (Meerthan and Jenya), turned into something of a debate, argument, acceptance, match of words. We really try to become our players, which makes for, at times, truly realistic reactions to the point of sometimes even being borderline offensive to the actual player. Through the transition of Shackled City, through Age of Worms, to the coming Savage Tide, all our characters have evolved through each stage. In this past session, that evolution really shined in the face to face meetings of three who, in game terms, hadn’t met in many months, if at all. What do you get when to put a level 24 priestess of Pelor telling a level 25 Archmage with his level 25 mummy companion in the same room, with the Pelorian saying that all is doomed and the mummy and mage should cease all they have been accomplishing over the last two years? I think we all played the situation perfectly, given all the background stuff we’ve had our characters going through. It simply can’t be a situation where one person’s character says “It’s the end of the world, so says I and my God. There is danger and you are all partly going to be the cause of it. Stop everything, ” while the other two say, “Sure, no prob, we’re with you.” It had to be something that had to be debated on like the politicians of today do. And that’s why it ended up becoming a conversation of 2 ½ hours before we came to a semi-understanding between our characters. For me personally, I just found it to be so much fun. In Shackled City, I went into the campaign, hoping that Scatterspells might rule the city he started in, but also wanting to play him diplomatically throughout the campaign. It just felt awesome being able to get back into that rollplaying mind set, especially seeing as how I’ll likely not have that chance again for a long time, given my characters after his creation.

Once that part was over, we resumed our rolls of Olmans, 1500 years before the meeting we had just rollplayed through. Eric’s mindset had to suddenly go from a mindless mummy to a young shaman leader. Bob’s had to go from Voice of Pelor, to a ranger with many people following her. And I had to go from a power speaker of a mage, to frenzied berserker with a flaw that makes him more likely to kill his friends than did Anzak (See our Age of Worms page). And though we played different people, and different personalities, that joy of rollplaying remained constant because of our earlier character interactions. (I’m trying to make this opinion letter not-so Quintin Tarentino-like, but don’t think I’m succeeding well). The players all went back to their Olman characters, but the drive for words instead of swords just seemed to stay with us the entire time.

I do have in mind several instances where the session was pretty much all that. The first was the party at Lady Thifirane’s in our Shackled City campaign (Mark as the DM). The second was a similar instance with the Prince Zech party in the Age of Worm (myself as the DM). Both times worked out okay, but in my opinion, that’s all they were “okay.” Both of these occasions, were sessions we knew in advance would be rollplaying sessions, which meant that there really wasn’t much choice in the matter to go through with them. In a sense, we had to force ourselves to rollplay through those hours because if we didn’t, then there just wouldn’t have been much for the players to actually do on that day. This last session though, it was a conscious choice by all of us to simply talk. We could easily have gone to the underwater city to hack and slash our way through the aboleths, or abandon the other Olman’s to their fate while we try to leave the isle. Or perhaps even throw ourselves into the gas, just to see what would happen. Yet we decided to collectively think outside the box, to what a true hero might do if such a disaster would fall upon them. Only in this D&D fantasy though, as there is a parity to some current real world events which have no justification, nor righteousness about them.

But I digress.

The point is that it was an all-round great session. With amazing NPC actions, a sense of true uncovering of truths that were not as easy to find as a letter written to a mindflayer from Loris Raknian of the Greyhawk Gladiator Games. There was no sense, whether it be intentional or not, that our DM was trying to guide us in another direction that would lead to more diplomacy checks.

Having said all that, I gotta admit that I’m just itching to dust off that d20 to cut some aboleth membranes out in session four.

Win or lose, the Olman pre-campaign idea of our DM Mr. Mark was indeed a spectacular idea of his that should definitely be considered for any other DM reading these words. Take it from me on a players view, the Savage Tide for our main characters is going to be a much, much, much scarier moment when it hits.

The Aaahhh factor might even come close to surpassing the Aaaahhhhhh of an eruption of green worms from a single dragon egg perhaps? Tsk, good luck with that Mark.