(Spoilers galore ahead)
Hi all,
I've been GMing for a while, but it's all been custom campaigns I've put together. Been with the same group of players (high school buddies) since mid 90's. Recently my group and I decided to try Rise of the Runelords because of all the good things we had been hearing about it.
I know I don't have a lot of experience with running premade campaigns, but we're about halfway into the Skinsaw Murders (Foxglove Manor) and I just feel like I'm having a hard time keeping the group's interest with several sections. I feel like I'm out of my element, like something just isn't clicking like it should be.
Some context. I guess my PCs aren't really into a whole lot of RP and theatrics; I had a really difficult time at the beginning establishing Sandpoint because my players just weren't interested in a whole lot of NPC banter. I read the AP as putting a lot of emphasis on establishing the major players in town during Burnt Offerings, but my PC's felt like the initial Swallowtail Festival was kind of aimless w/the speeches and whatnot, and not having a clear direction until the goblin attack. I ended up kind of railroading them until the glassworks, and then they got frustrated with all the time spent exploring empty rooms therein. Seems to be a pattern in dungeon design with of a lot of empty, seemingly pointless rooms, like in Thistletop. The murder investigation went well at the start of Skinsaw, but now that we're in the Foxglove manor the PC's are complaining that every room they go into is predictable, with a haunt mechanic that they have to roll for, and there are just so many rooms that by the end of the session, despite how flavorful the text was, the players were fatigued by the repetitive and predictable nature of the haunts.
I'm not complaining about the PC's or the AP, I'm just questioning my own GMing and wondering if I'm not really running the AP right. I know I should be kind of tailoring the adventure to my players, but I don't want to leave out the important flavor text and development. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with a group / the RotRL AP? I just want to know if there's something I can do to make it a better experience for everyone, instead of the slog that it kind of feels like during some parts.
Thanks in advance!
I am having a hard time understanding from your post what type of thing these guys DO like to do in game. I am guessing that all that is left is a standard kick in the door and fight something and everything else is dull.
There gets to be more of that in the future of the AP, but there will always be the pointless rooms (if by pointless you mean things that would make sense in a building of that sort like a kitchen or bathroom rather than just something set up for a combat).
The point of the haunts is to be creepy and create an atmosphere as well as get some of the history across. If that isn't happening then either this group just won't enjoy story or you are focusing on mechanics to the exclusion of the story (which your group doesn't like anyway?).
Anyway... if your group just wants kick in the door and fight things then running a game with plot and a variety of encounters in and out of combat is just wasting their time and really you should look at something else.
Sean Mahoney
As a first time DM, I've been running into a lot of the same problems, and, being up to the same place as you (having just finished Foxglove Manor myself), I don't know how much my advice is worth...
I myself glossed over the speeches, and only really play up the character of Belor Hemlock, the rest falling by the wayside. My PCs have only really taken to a few NPCs, Ameiko, Shayliss, Daverin... but that's okay, that's how it goes.
If you can find some other way to acquaint PCs with the rest of the town, great. I propose a bar crawl, because I have real trouble getting my own PCs to leave the Dragon. I also found a fantastic additional encounter somewhere on the RotR forums (which I heartily reccomend scouring for every ounce of content you can find, with nearly five years worth of community content and input, its an absolute goldmine) called "A Night at the Opera", which looks like a lot of fun. In short, I think the right approach to making Sandpoint more engaging is to have the PCs explore the town itself, and form friendships with a few choice npcs (at the expense of others).
Another problem is the amount of flavor and background text you, as a DM, are given. Your first instinct is to try and offload this to your players, but as we got further into the adventure path I saw when and where this information is spoonfed to them, and they were so bloated with irrelevant crap that they'd forgotten it anyway.
As for the dungeons, they really call for a different approach. A room-by-room methodical sweep isn't particularly important when you're there with a purpose in mind (such as, say, eliminating the goblin threat). Remember your monsters can easily move around, and tell your PCs that they can bypass these rooms. The dungeons themselves seem to lead you by the hand to most of the important bits, anyway. I made the mistake of trying to get my relatively few PCs to explore every inch of Foxglove Manor, which ended up extremely repeditive and altogether boring. Later, after I'd spooked them upstairs, I found the very door they'd been trying to pry open hid a haunt that'd have sent them fleeing upstairs anyway, and many of the haunts would, for lack of a better word, seek THEM out. If I hadn't been so hamhanded with it, the manor could have been over in a session and a half, rather than three, and fleeing danger at every turn is much more exciting then a methodical sweep of the rooms bit by bit...
But altogether, my players had the same reaction to the haunts, and having the target of Aldern's obsession be a certain characters background npc (a huge mistake on my part, in retrospect) and having to spread each different haunt type over my three characters, it ended up a confused, repedative mess.
So what I suppose I'm getting at is that a group of pro-active PCs (I'm fortunate enough to have just one, but he keeps managing to seperate from the main group in his schenanigans) should be uncovering things on their own, pushing deep into the heart of enemy territory rather than poking their heads into all the closets... and altogether getting the most out of the adventure path.
... christ, that's a lot of rambling. That's what I get for giving advice before breakfast. Also check out the RotR forum, but this will likely be moved there eventually anyway. Best of luck!
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It sounds like you have a lot of combat oriented players, that prefer dice rolling and action over RP and investigation. Unfortunately, the first half of Book 1 and the entirety of the Foxglove manor site is going to be boring for them. Its all mystery, horror, and investigation. I had a hard time instilling fear and scariness in my group because there were nine players, of which one was always making a joke that broke the mood. You simply have to change things up. Make places scary based on bad things that can happen.
Note that I had to change up some encounters since my party was larger than normal, so since I was already adjusting things, it was easier to change tactics. Instead of using suspense and dramatic tension to build fear and anxiety, I used suprise and fear of bodily harm.
I had ghouls attack the players in the first room of Foxglove manor, coming out of the chimneys. I let one of them cast deeper darkness off a scroll. During a pitched battle in which the cleric was targeted, the ghouls manage to paralyze him, and then deeper darkness went off. When they finally got the room lit back up, he and the other paralyzed characters were gone, and the tracks led to a hole in the floorboards and a tunnel leading down into darkness. Now I had their attention, and now they were scared. Just a matter of which devices you use.
You might want to describe in gory detail what the ogres are like in Book 3 also if you want to get their attention. During a game session in which we were missing half the players, I ran a sidetrek where each of them was a 2-3rd level ranger or fighter that was part of the black arrows, heading into a fatal (they didnt know this though) encounter with the Grauls. After this, the didnt want their main characters anywhere near the Graul farm.
Thanks so much for all of the feedback, guys. I appreciate it very much.
I am having a hard time understanding from your post what type of thing these guys DO like to do in game. I am guessing that all that is left is a standard kick in the door and fight something and everything else is dull.
I'm trying to pinpoint whether it's a certain style of session they prefer or if they're just fickle. I don't think it's just hack and slash they want; it's surprising to me which sections have been most effective. They loved the murder mystery on up through the series of encounters at Hambley Farm, for instance, and I actually got them to do some hearty RPing during that span.
I think they're just not used to the pacing of the AP. Part of the problem is that we only play once every few weeks because of schedule conflicts, and I think the guys just want more gratification per session. Also, since we're all close friends outside of the game, I think immersion might be a challenge as well.
Don't get me wrong, they aren't like actively complaining, and as a whole they're enjoying the AP... They're just saying some of the sections seem to drag on a little bit more than necessary. Like at the manor, they were all digging the first few spooky haunt encounters and the flavor but by the end of the session, after like 9-10 rooms of haunts, they would open the door and just kind of sigh and be like, "ok, so whose roll is it in this room..." The initial tension just kind of dissipated.
Twigs, thanks for relating your own struggles. It's good to know that someone else is encountering some similar roadbumps (well, not good, but you know what I mean). I think it may do me good to spend some more time on the RotRL forums as well.
Redcelt, that makes sense about how you changed up your encounters to accomodate the group you were with. I think I may try to do something similar to how you added the ghoul encounter, just to add some variety. I may end up condensing some of the adventure as well, even if I have to accelerate the XP gain a little to compensate.
Thanks all.
Try not to laugh at this, but although I'll be running this AP for the very first time (and it'll also be an actual AP for me, not just me making up a story and making up creatures etc), could you not use films to influence how you put across certain aspects of in game sections?
Say for example the manor:
Instead of the characters thinking "Oh no, it's just another room with another haunting", mix things up a little. Don't make them do a save (is it Will? I haven't started this campaign yet, but read a load of the Burnt Offering's book in preparation). Instead, make them do a perception and use horror films or something like Ghostbusters as a reference where you can say "books fly across the room", or a reflex save to say "weapons were randomly thrown at you, but there's no sign of where they could have come from".
I mean you could even say "a face appeared right next to your own, glared and snarled, then vanished"....or "You see 5 bodies hung up by the neck with rope, swinging from a chandalier above" and then have the bodies disappear as they're ghosts, and have the chandalier drop as they approach (maybe without the reflex save to keep it unexpected).
On top of this, you could get them to do a perception when they go in, add sound effects with your own mouth/voice as a DM/GM and just randomly make noises and keep the room everyone's playing in at low light.
You could say you hear a noise, it gets louder as they go in a certain direction, then it stops and you as a DM screech really horribly. So you'd be scaring them as well as the story, and setting the theme up in the real world to help immerse them.
I've learned more through playing than I ever have from just being a DM, and all of these ideas are my own.
I may be a noob, but I'm imaginative in ways, and I think that helps to ensure a successful, fun and mysterious campaign.
I really didn't know about the haunted manor before this, but it sounds really fun with preparation.
Corridor of blood from The Shining anyone?
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Thanks so much for all of the feedback, guys. I appreciate it very much.
I am having a hard time understanding from your post what type of thing these guys DO like to do in game. I am guessing that all that is left is a standard kick in the door and fight something and everything else is dull.
I'm trying to pinpoint whether it's a certain style of session they prefer or if they're just fickle. I don't think it's just hack and slash they want; it's surprising to me which sections have been most effective. They loved the murder mystery on up through the series of encounters at Hambley Farm, for instance, and I actually got them to do some hearty RPing during that span.
I think they're just not used to the pacing of the AP. Part of the problem is that we only play once every few weeks because of schedule conflicts, and I think the guys just want more gratification per session. Also, since we're all close friends outside of the game, I think immersion might be a challenge as well.
Don't get me wrong, they aren't like actively complaining, and as a whole they're enjoying the AP... They're just saying some of the sections seem to drag on a little bit more than necessary. Like at the manor, they were all digging the first few spooky haunt encounters and the flavor but by the end of the session, after like 9-10 rooms of haunts, they would open the door and just kind of sigh and be like, "ok, so whose roll is it in this room..." The initial tension just kind of dissipated.
Twigs, thanks for relating your own struggles. It's good to know that someone else is encountering some similar roadbumps (well, not good, but you know what I mean). I think it may do me good to spend some more time on the RotRL forums as well.
Redcelt, that makes sense about how you changed up your encounters to accomodate the group you were with. I think I may try to do something similar to how you added the ghoul encounter, just to add some variety. I may end up condensing some of the adventure as...
Sounds to me like they just may need something tangible to figure out and an exciting fight against a foe at least once per game session. I know my group suffers from that as well. I have several players who need the thrill, and several who get cranky if they don't get a couple NPCs to have an interaction with socially. It is even worse if you don't play every week (we play every 2 weeks) because its longer in between that each style doesn't get their "fix" if its not in that game session.