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Planning Scramble!
Okay, this week, I am going through a situation that I'm sure every DM faces on a pretty regular basis. It's the holidays, my life has been slammed with stuff to do and so I've neglected my session planning. To make matters worse, tonight's session is set to involve multiple new NPCs and lots of roleplaying encounters. Suffice it to say, I'm nervous.
Anyone have any tried and true methods for quickly pulling together fun sessions on short notice?
Here's a rough outline of how I expect tonight to go based on my players' out of game discussions.
Scene 1: Shopping! Do I even bother trying to spice this up with shopkeepers, etc. or do I just let my players descend on my game books to unload all their recently acquired coin?
Scene 2: Meet their new contact and introduce a new PC. There's a gnomish explorer in town with information on their next adventure. The players want to try to convince him to ferry them around the continent in his airship. The problem I see looming for this encounter is that the players just rescued an NPC, Prince Steponas, who is in possession of information and an artifact this gnomish explorer wants. I fear having the bargaining session break down into a conversation between NPCs as my players watch me have a conversation with myself. The PC is a member of the ship's crew.
Scene 3: The players either commission the airship, or preferrably convince the ship's captain to meet them down the road after they have recovered the Prince's. In which case, they would use the city's teleportation network to get out of town. (I'm considering throwing in an easy fight with some agents sent by the vampire, whose house they just raided... just to make things more interesting. Think Han & Luke getting out of Mos Eisley in Episode IV.)
Scene 4: Arrival back in Prince Steponas' kingdom where his estate is in the hands of his brother's men. Begin plans to infiltrate &/or assault his own home to acquire the artifact. Again, this scene could devolve into a conversation between NPCs if the PCs don't take an active role in the planning... ugh!
Anyway, maybe I just needed to write stuff out, but I'm still definitely nervous about not having my NPCs fleshed out, and about inadvertently putting my players in a corner.
Anyone have any tried and true methods for quickly pulling together fun sessions on short notice?
Here's a rough outline of how I expect tonight to go based on my players' out of game discussions.
Scene 1: Shopping! Do I even bother trying to spice this up with shopkeepers, etc. or do I just let my players descend on my game books to unload all their recently acquired coin?
Scene 2: Meet their new contact and introduce a new PC. There's a gnomish explorer in town with information on their next adventure. The players want to try to convince him to ferry them around the continent in his airship. The problem I see looming for this encounter is that the players just rescued an NPC, Prince Steponas, who is in possession of information and an artifact this gnomish explorer wants. I fear having the bargaining session break down into a conversation between NPCs as my players watch me have a conversation with myself. The PC is a member of the ship's crew.
Scene 3: The players either commission the airship, or preferrably convince the ship's captain to meet them down the road after they have recovered the Prince's. In which case, they would use the city's teleportation network to get out of town. (I'm considering throwing in an easy fight with some agents sent by the vampire, whose house they just raided... just to make things more interesting. Think Han & Luke getting out of Mos Eisley in Episode IV.)
Scene 4: Arrival back in Prince Steponas' kingdom where his estate is in the hands of his brother's men. Begin plans to infiltrate &/or assault his own home to acquire the artifact. Again, this scene could devolve into a conversation between NPCs if the PCs don't take an active role in the planning... ugh!
Anyway, maybe I just needed to write stuff out, but I'm still definitely nervous about not having my NPCs fleshed out, and about inadvertently putting my players in a corner.
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I have one, and I'll eat it.
Because I am hungry.
As the players enter the shops, the shopkeepers are all dressed very oddly, and it is revealed that this is some sort of merchant's holiday. Perhaps there is some sort of scavenger hunt on, some simple carnival acts and games, etc. One of the merchants is not in his store, but has gone off to enter a drinking contest at the tavern. In order to buy what they want, the players have to go to the tavern and drag him back to his store, perhaps only being able to do so by beating him in the drinking contest and making his appearance at the store (and a decent discount on his wares) the prize for victory.
Gnunn I agree with Dusk, sounds like you've got quite a bit going on there already. If you need a little more add a random combat encounter. I always feel like some of my best (or at least most memorable games) were ones where I improvised anyways.
Good luck!
I love Dusk's "carnival" concept. You could literally make the whole session a series of "mini-games" that your players have to compete in to get shop keepers to give them access to their wares. Maybe it is frowned upon for anyone to engage in business on this holiday, and your players have to figure out creative ways to "trick" businessmen into "accidentally" doing business with them? That could be a couple hours of gameplay right in town trying to shop...without even realizing it because they're fully engaged in the festivities.
That's awesome.
You have to trick the merchants into selling to you.
Now this works in a white wolf rp setting. I'm not sure that it would with D&D. Too many numbers and monsters and OMG! A Dragon!
On a side note, my D&D group killed a red dragon the other night. Was kinda fun. Note to self, never stand in front of the dragon.
I ended up not including any combat encounters, but the roleplaying timed out perfectly. They shopped, convinced the new contact to ferry them out to the wastes on his airship, teleported to the prince's base of operations where they planned their assault to retake his keep. I even managed to wrap up the game by giving the group their in-game Christmas present. The prince told them that if they successfully retook his old estate, he would put them in charge of running the partially ruined keep he now occupied.
I believe there was just one moment of, "aw crap! I'm not prepared for that!" when the newly introduced PC revealed that he had grown up near another PC in a part of my gameworld that I hadn't yet fleshed out. I didn't have the name of the city they grew up near, so they started saying, "You're from Blah? I'm from Blah, too!" So I decided that the city was actually called Blau... because it is by the ocean.
Therefore, I hand this thread over to others to vent their own fears of unpreparedness to the internet ether.
I recall that once, the power went out in my house, and my family gathered in the living room, made shadow puppets on the ceiling with flashlights, and generally bonded and enjoyed one another's company more than we usually did. When the power came back on, there was relief, but also a bit of regret. We regained our freedom, our power, our TV, but at the expense of some charming little thing that we knew we'd later miss. My dad, recognizing what was happening, told everyone to stay put, went to the breaker box, and turned the power back out in the living room, just for a while longer.
This is relevant. Trust me.
Early on in my DMing adventures, I ran a session of a game, naming an npc Drow Arthakis Fa'Dir. It was a spur of the moment name, because I neglected to prepare for anyone to bother asking for his name. The next session, I couldn't find the paper I had written his name on (this was before the age of Obsidian Portal, mind you). So, when I stumbled on his name, one of my players started calling him Dum-Dum McGee, just to irritate me. When I found the paper and informed everyone of the real name, there was an atmosphere of regret. One player asked whether we could make Dum-Dum McGee his nickname, and I complained that it would ruin the atmosphere of the game. 16-year-old Duskreign meant business.
Now, I kind of wish I had rolled with it.
Also, I really miss my dad.
There's nothing wrong with 16-year-old Duskreign meaning business - it means that Modern-Day-Duskreign has learned his lessons, and while he might not be running Dum Dum McGee any longer, there's bound to be more scenarios where rolling with it will happen, simply through the benefit of hindsight.
I love the idea of Blah becoming Blau, because it's very easy to see that sort of mispronunciation - maybe the characters had accents that made it sound different than it actually was!
Currently, for the nWoD campaign that I'm getting ready to kick off, with Dusk, Poutine and Taki, amongst others, I have a very loose framework in mind, because I don't know how everyone's play styles are going to mesh. I suppose I'm nervous because I've never played with any of the group before, and I'm trying to make sure it's entertaining, but that sure as heck is difficult without knowing what entertains everyone.
The scenario: The party will be arriving in a particularly nasty desert wasteland at the end of a long air ship ride. They will be rolling into the main camp of a half-orc "tribe" A particularly charismatic full-orc leader has been uniting the orcs of the Waste and purging the tribes of racial impurities. These half-orcs have banded together and fled to a particularly inhospitable corner of the Waste in order to survive. The air ship is running weapons and supplies to the tribe in exchange for information on sites of historical and arcane significance.
Here's what I'm trying to figure out... I want to devise some sort of skill contest that my players, as outsiders must complete in order to be allowed to stay with the tribe in peace. The simplest thing I can think of is to have the 1/2 orcs make them prove their strength by fighting orcish prisoners of war, gladiator style... however, they already have a combat encounter that will definitely happen tomorrow, so it might be nice to change things up. I am hesitant to throw them individual contests, because there are seven of them, and that could take forever. Perhaps 3 tests for groups of two or three would be fitting... in which case. I'd love some recommendations.
The party members are a monk, wizard, sorcerer, rogue, paladin & her unicorn, cleric & bard.
Some thoughts for alternate challenges include a music contest... I think a "half-orc haka":http://youtu.be/mOa7qtH4ZBs would be totally badass. The tough part about performing contests is that our bard has a ridiculously high perform skill... granted, it's in stringed instruments, so I could make him attempt a haka untrained with crazy penalties... which would be amusing, because he is an aasimar.
I also thought about a race, or climbing competition for the monk, or some other display of agility and physical prowess.
Anyone have any ideas?
In fact, just do a more serious version of "this":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTDESXFCtKc&feature=related
Also, that party sounds very, very close to the cast of the 80's D&D cartoon. Which isn't a complaint, because I enjoyed that show.
I love the "climb the chute while boulders are rolled down on top of you" competition.
muahahaha! I'm hoping this will turn into bull rush city. Oh. Each tower also has either a boulder, or a pot of boiling oil on top of it. I also intend to have some of the orcs launch body slam attacks from the tops of the towers.
:P
I felt really bad for the party cleric in a campaign I was running a long time ago-- he was due up as the last PC to face a challenge (the other party members had all done well, with the exception of one pc who was in a coma). I knew the last challenge was the easiest-- basically a completely open ended philosophical question with some stage craft surrounding it to make it fantasy-RPG-ish and appropriately awe-inspiring.
When faced with the challenge, the player panicked and drew a complete blank. Luckily one of the other party members polymorphed into a gecko (after casting speak to animals on the hapless cleric) and climbed up his robe to whisper an answer towards his ear. Kind of cheating, but I allowed a die roll to see if the cheating was noticed (which would disqualify the entire party from being chosen). Luckily, she rolled high and the NPC didnt notice the lizard whispering an answer to the cleric. The cleric earned himself a new party nickname too after that-- Moonbeam.
We did have the fight against the wyvern-riders on the airship though. That turned out to be pretty epic, especially when our monk made use of my "'Yes, but' rule of awesomeness":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/the-westerlands/wikis/risk-and-reward to enlarge himself using his custom earring of embiggenment (we just call it Santiago's earring in game), charge across the upper deck and vault off the ship's crane onto the back of the wyvern to bring it crashing to the deck. He rolled a ridiculously good jump check and a 95 on the awesome check percentile roll... I'm pretty sure there were flips involved. If the word 'rad' existed in my campaign setting, that moment would have been it.
Oh, also the player who used to run our dwarf warblade has switched to a wizard and was making excellent use of some under-appreciated spells during the fight. He blasted a wyvern and its rider with glitterdust before they even reached the deck, blinding them and causing them to bug out. When another wyvern grabbed the gnomish pilot from the ship's helm, he hit the gnome with a grease spell so he could wriggle free, and he went on a rampage with defenstrating sphere, which is a globe of whirling air that knocks over medium or smaller creatures if they fail a save. If they fail a second save, they get chucked into the air and hurled in a random direction... Super useful when flying at several thousand feet.
Poutine whimpers a bit and puts his chin to his chest, "I want an awesome session," can be heard by those close by in a whiny voice.