Way Off-Topic: Question for RPGamers

[honorentheos]

Hi Xeno -

Hey Honor, thanks for checking in. I had planned to post today anyway as we had a nice long session yesterday but you definitely help give me some talking points.

You've got a lot of sound observations there and most of them are spot on:

You're correct that the druid and cleric are able to now split the brunt of front lining while still keeping a lot of the utility in their kits. This was a pretty big game changers for how fights are being managed, although we've taken far less unnecessary fights this time around due to some better choices and much better rolls.

Our Necro player said they had done several campaigns with it and wanted to run it with this modified ruleset so we trusted them. It has gone very well for us. To your level point the game does go all the way to twelve and you can very easily hit five before the end of act one, opening a lot of power up for the classes fairly quickly.

I'm not entirely sure on arcane trickster yet but it seems good to me, although I'm uncertain if I just lucked into a few things that make that so. You're right that out of combat obviously feels nice: mage hand, charm, and disguise self have all been very useful so far. Although you can play combat centric you'd be surprised how many non-combat solutions you have available to you if you put in the effort for it. A CRPG could never fully capture the vast number of options that a human DM could grant you but so far we've been able to be quite creative. I'm sporting an amulet that grants me misty step and a bow that recovers a spent spell slot on crit that have allowed me to put in more combat work than I would have expected (pure luck, I've no idea what I'm doing). Couple that bow with an illithid power you pick up in the game that guarantees one critical hit per long rest (and thus at least one additional spell cast) and I'm feeling quite powerful. I've no idea about the power curve though and I'll be interested to see what the scaling feels like in the rest of the game. I opted for magic missile for that first wizard spell but I'm not sure if that was the right play and I've thought about swapping that for fog or find familiar.

All in all we are having a blast. Good company does that but I have to say this is one of the best video games I've ever played. There is an extreme attention to detail in the world that still catches me off guard at times. The story-telling and world building is well done and I've been insanely impressed with how impactful your choices feel. From the big things like which groups to help but also to the much smaller like which entrance to a town is your first or whether you pet a dog as you passed (yes really). The visuals are nice, the hits feel chunky, and it is obvious that Larian understands the table top world and manages to do a damn fine job translating that to the computer. I've mentioned liking some of their other titles but this one is a step above so far.

The only downside I'm seeing in our 4-party team is we are missing some additional interactions with the characters in the world that would normally join your party in a solo run. They'll join your camp and you can still gain access to their dialogue and fellowship but it isn't quite the same when they aren't regular members of your party. They feel a bit like tag-alongs. Just there to serve as story drivers and lore dumps.

Some additional highlights from last night with hopefully not any real spoilers:

• Opening a random door to a bugbear and ogre in a... compromising position. Hilarity-> quickly turns to a tougher fight than expected-> fades into the feeling that you just murdered two lovers just looking for something nice in a bleak world.
• Convincing three ogres to band together in the fight against a goblin camp with promise of a delicious meal, namely the dead goblins. Getting to watch those ogres hurl giant stones at goblins was very satisfying.
• Managing to successfully help both of a competing set of NPC groups, we had a narrow path for the "win-win-win" scenario and we were all really pleased when we pulled it off.

Hey Xeno,

I'm curious how the campaign is going / went? Did you manage to get though the game without reloading a save point?

[Bret Ripley]

... it is obvious that Larian understands the table top world and manages to do a damn fine job translating that to the computer. I've mentioned liking some of their other titles but this one is a step above so far...

Hey Xeno,

I'm curious how the campaign is going / went? Did you manage to get though the game without reloading a save point?

I am also curious about how things are going/went. (for what it's worth: I am 100% positive I would not have the discipline to stick with "no reload" after the first several hours of play. If I'm 30 hours in when things go sour you would need tranquilizer darts to keep me from trying to reload.)

My nephew has organized a BG3 multiplayer campaign with some gamer friends who have little-to-no RPG experience, and it's been fun to listen to his updates. He's been playing BG3 (single player) since pre-release and was already familiar with portions of the game, but is keeping quiet to let the others drive the action. He makes a point of saving the game before difficult encounters. His friends are obviously intelligent and good at puzzle solving, but with little RPG experience "Plan A" sometimes involves little circumspection: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

I'm almost-but-not-quite dying to play BG3, but my clockwork GPU isn't up to snuff; I am too miserly to upgrade just to play one title. I'm glad you mentioned you liked some of Larian's other titles, because I found Divinity: Original Sin 2 (Definitive Edition) on sale and am having a blast. I was initially a little put off by some of the setting/lore choices, but the writing and execution quickly won me over -- if BG3 is better than this, then ... wow.

[honorentheos]

I'm curious what their response to your question was (regarding how much players in a game miss that a DM has prepared), cause if it isn't "every damn session" they likely should take a turn on the other side of the table. It certainly was an eye-opener for me.

Our work game's last session involved an interesting twist on this. The party had previously defeated the Grinning Sinners in Palisaides and claimed the animated portrait that was their goal. The guild's master of ravens had been an double agent, unknown to the Sinners as well as the party. But I'd left a bunch of clues for them to find in the form of both received and unsent messages that the party discovered while ransacking the guildhouse. They started the next session discussing the content of the messages which included messages about their own involvement in discovering an artifact of power, and that there were mindflayers involved somehow. But also, there were hints that there were also messages about the sinners and what Gwish might do to use them for other ends.

The party mused over the hints but didn't come to any clear conclusions while deciding they would return the portrait to the Daegr and probably then leave the City for parts unknown. When they did so, the demon lord Graz'zt used the portrait to bypass the City's enchantments preventing interplanar travel to speak with them and the Daegr. I had prepared extensively for Graz'zt to both let the party know there were other copies of the Mallus Deus still loose as well as let them know more about who had them and where in exchange for the good faith return of his grimoire in a year's time. But the party decided that Graz'zt was untrustworthy (of course) but also that the Daegr weren't competent enough to partner up and dismissed Graz'zt initial proposal before he could offer more information. I'm a believer in not forcing things on players and took their hint, having Graz'zt slyly leave with a shrug. But now what? I had a lot of material prepared that had just went down the drain, right?

Well, the party left the Daegr and decided that they wanted to follow up on something mentioned in the notes from Gwish about a secret organization called the J'A.I. Tum. Two of them went to a library to research what they could about them while the bard hit up the bar scene to see what she could find out. I had a bit of lore about the J'A.I. Tum in my backpocket that I was able to share that hooked them and they decided they wanted to find out more about them. WIth their research they learned about the organization having been the single coherent remnant of civilization that had held society together after a major catastrophy a thousand years before which resulted in their being perennially concerned with destabilizing forces from behind the scenes. Now here was a group the party could respect and want to work with. The bard made a few connections and gained the attention of a rep of the J'A.I. Tum who invited them to a discrete rendevous where the party shared the information they had take from Gwish as well as the tidbit from Graz'zt. The J'A.I. Tum had information on the cult that Gwish had been part of, and this led the party to working with them and heading out on a mission to track down the loose copies of the Mallus Deus in one city while also taking care of some personal business from one of the PC's backstories.

It' was very much in the vein of D&D where I would have guessed wrong 100 out of 100 times what they party chose to do before hand, but having story breadcrumbs and hooks led them to doing something far cooler than I had thought of. I love the J'A.I. Tum so it's pretty cool to me that the party has teamed up with them. Wish I'd thought of it, actually.

[Bret Ripley]

At our family's Thanksgiving gathering, the gamers in the family put our heads together and decided to schedule our next game: we'll be slinging dice on 12/9. We'll pick up where we left off after session 1, having just liberated the redoubtable Nana Harbuckle from the goblins of Spindledrift Mountain (or possibly vice-versa). It sounds like they plan to forego further exploration of Spindledrift and follow up on another hook: press on to the next town to deliver a sealed message to a Lord Cecil, a task given them by the dodgy duo Cornelius and Bonvenides. This is a perfectly safe course of action and nothing bad could possibly happen.

[honorentheos]

Bret, I'm excited to hear the gang is getting back together to continue the story.

Now, I know some of my more experienced players from days gone by would view a sealed message to be an invitation to test some of their more deception-based skills. But my work group is more cautious and might not even consider attempting something like opening and resealing the message. And you know? I kinda wish they would. So I hope shenanigans are in your future.

[Bret Ripley]

Bret, I'm excited to hear the gang is getting back together to continue the story.

Now, I know some of my more experienced players from days gone by would view a sealed message to be an invitation to test some of their more deception-based skills. But my work group is more cautious and might not even consider attempting something like opening and resealing the message. And you know? I kinda wish they would. So I hope shenanigans are in your future.

Heh. I know exactly what you mean. Frankly, I don't have a good feel for how this group will handle the 'sealed message', assuming they don't get sidetracked on something else.

I plan to let the players know up front that we are shifting away from 'one-shot' mode -- where there was an agenda according to which the evening was always going to wrap up with "The End" and credits rolling -- to a more open style of play that gives the players more freedom to drive the narrative in whatever directions seem fun to them.

To your point regarding shenanigans: as a concrete example of a difference between these game 'modes' I can point to an instance from Session 1 in which the rogue successfully made the skill checks necessary to sneak into the unoccupied tent of an important NPC. In the event, he had only a few moments to look around before hearing approaching footsteps which encouraged him to vamoose. On his way out he saw what he took to be an encoded message, which he decided to leave alone. I had hoped the players would be suspicious of this character, so this detail served the immediate narrative purpose and the 'encounter' ended there almost out of necessity -- in a more sandbox-y setting, this would have been a more lengthy and interesting scene but could conceivably have resulted in the players not leaving town with the troupe. While this would have been perfectly fine in a campaign setting, it could have caused the evening's planned adventure to jump the rails before it left the station.

So, for the one-off I found myself in the uncomfortable position of /wanting/ to reward the rogue's pluck and successful stealth/investigation checks but overriding that impulse due to the inherent time restrictions of a one-off. In a one-off, time is the "big bad."

[Bret Ripley]

We picked up where we left off in ... February? We started with a much-needed recap.

The previous session ended just as the players completed a raid on a goblin lair, and I was a little surprised when there was no talk of looting. I had one of the NPCs root around and find a trinket, but the players still showed no interest in obtaining treasure. (I mentioned this to a co-worker who DMs, and he laughed and said he's seen this happen with some groups "until they start to approach it more like a game," as he put it.)

They decided to forego further exploration of the goblin lair and head straight to the small city of Dymble, where they were supposed to deliver a sealed message. The instructions they were given regarding this delivery included a curious condition: delivery should not occur until after a specific date, and they arrived with a couple of days to spare. Enough time to get into some trouble? Oh, yeah.

While snooping around the Halfling rogue (Pil) made the acquaintance of a professional burglar named Skeeve. After 'talking shop' Skeeve offered to arrange an introduction to the Thieves' Guild as an 'audition' our rogue was to assist Skeeve with helping to cover the exit route for a burglary job to take place that very night.

Instinctively wary of some sort of trap (but rolling way too low to actually notice anything fishy), Pil went along and walked right into a trap – one that had been set for Skeeve. Skeeve’s talk of introducing Pil to the Guild had been a ruse to involve a gullible Pil as a patsy – someone who didn’t know anything at all about the gang but who could be knocked on the shin and left behind as a distraction for any pursers. In fact, Skeeve was part of a small gang of freelance thieves, and that night's burglary job turned out to be an ambush arranged by the Guild. Skeeve (and presumably other members of the gang) ended up dead while Pil made a lucky escape. Pil was largely ignorant of what was actually happening – all he knew was that the burglary had gone terribly wrong -- and as he made his escape he turned to flip off some pursuers, unaware that he was giving Guildmembers a good look at him. Remember: Pil thinks he was auditioning for the Guild, and still hopes to join.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had been generally scoping things out and keeping their ears open for rumors. One of the rumors they heard concerned a witch that recently took up residence in an old house on a crumbling estate just outside of town. The players thought the stories were interesting enough to investigate (I mean, why *not* visit a witch? Right? She could even turn out to be one of those hot witches) so next day they made their way to the witch’s estate.

Wandering among some of the estate’s ruins they met a shortish, humanoid-shaped construct-y looking thing made of a sticky brown resin. It looked like a 5-foot-tall gingerbread man ‘in the round’; its face was featureless except for two holes for eyes, and where its mouth should be bubbles sometimes formed and burst, making barely vocalized “blurp, blorp” noises. It was difficult to tell if it was trying to talk, perhaps unaware it was gifted with less vocal equipment than God gave a frog. Its only clothing was a pair of shallow wooden boxes fastened to its feet that served as shoes. It smelled kind of funky.

It gently gesticulated at them with hands that could double as ping-pong paddles. Its head erupted “blerps" and "blubs” at them for a short while before turning and walking away. The players followed at a distance as it walked toward a house; they could see smoke rising from one of the house’s chimneys.

Sticky resin dude clomp, clomped its way up the steps to the front door, pushed it open, and disappeared into the house. The group gathered on the threshold. While the two fighters and cleric waited outside, the druid and rogue slipped inside and found themselves in a large entry hall. From an open door at the far end of the room they heard an elderly woman’s voice: “Ommitt? Is that you, Ommitt? What’s that? Visitors, you say?”

The stooped figure of an old woman soon appeared in the doorway. As they took a closer look, they could see the upper part of the woman’s face was bound in grey rags and around her neck she wore a string of eyeballs. (“So … not a hot witch, then?” muttered a disappointed rogue.)

With a wave of her hand the front door slammed shut, trapping the druid and rogue inside. “Who are you, and for what purpose do you disturb the home of Zenobia?”

That’s where we stopped. Next session is not firmly scheduled, but New Years Eve is being considered.

[honorentheos]

Love the update, Bret. It also raises a question for me: how do you handle the party splitting up in game?

[Bret Ripley]

Love the update, Bret. It also raises a question for me: how do you handle the party splitting up in game?

I'm glad you asked -- because it reminded me to ask you that same question.

Back in the day, the thought of splitting the party was enough to give me a nervous eye tic. Bored players, timeline challenges, players acting on information their characters couldn't have ... bleah.

I suspect you may have picked up on something I mentioned almost in passing: the death of Skeeve. Having the rogue stumble across Skeeve's fresh corpse was a reminder that the world can be a dangerous place for lone wolves. I think it was also the first NPC death of the campaign: nobody mourned Skeeve's homicide, but for the new players it was the first hint that there can be 'stakes' of sorts involved in player actions. I don't think the 'stakes' lesson was lost on the rogue.

Because we have newish players who are still learning the game, I'm probably approaching split parties rather differently than I would with experienced players. For example, I'm not discouraging the 'spectators' from making suggestions or asking questions -- with experienced players I would probably have played the "you're not there" card a couple of times by now. So far, nobody has tried to act on knowledge their character doesn't have, so that's been a non-issue. So far.

Splitting the party can easily be a drag for those players with nothing to do but watch, or possibly even be asked to wait in the next room. It's early days, of course, but each time the party has split it has been initiated by one or both of the experienced players. The 'spectators' were generally those who are least familiar with the game mechanics, and everything is still new enough to them that just watching others play is interesting. It may have been interesting in any event, because the guy playing the primary instigator (the rogue) is intrinsically hilarious. We had to very briefly pause the game a couple of times because folks couldn't stop laughing. (I was one of those folks.)

When the action switches back to the inexperienced sub-group ... well, they're still finding their RPG 'sea legs' and are not yet confident enough to get up to shenanigans of their own. So far, they have mostly been happy to describe their sub-group's actions in broad strokes until such time that the party is back together. As they become more comfortable playing their characters, they will have more persistent roleplaying opportunities placed in their paths; but for now, the pressure is being kept relatively low as they soak things in.

I should note that the party splits that have occurred so far have taken up relatively little table time. Even though the players have (so far) been tolerant of these splits, I'm mindful of the possibility that those not directly involved in the action may become bored. I try to keep split-party actions interesting for everyone by either fast forwarding through parts that are likely to be dull -- skill checks seem like a convenient shortcut, here -- or by trying to crank up the pressure and add some suspense, or perhaps a sense of urgency.

Anyway -- we ended last session with what is potentially another split party situation: the two experienced players are in the house with Zenobia while the other three stand outside. I kind of feel overwhelmed with the possibilities, here: an encounter with a mysterious witch they know nothing about on her home turf. And then there's this Ommitt critter, who is also in the house. Ommitt may be a kind of wildcard, here: the resin 'golem' is actually a person ... or at least includes a person as part of its makeup. (When worldbuilding I try to leave space for Absurdity and Tragedy to get together for date nights: Ommitt is their love child.)

I have some ideas about things that could happen at the beginning of next session, but nothing is set in stone. If anyone has any fun ideas, I'd be happy to steal them. If I use your idea, I might name an NPC after you.

But more importantly: how do you folks deal with split parties? Any tips for avoiding them, minimizing their disruptive effects, or keeping things interesting?

[Physics Guy]

I never found good ways to handle party splits, but my DMing days were all before smartphones. I'd be tempted now to try giving the party some magical way of communicating with each other, so that they could at least exchange information while split.

"You found a door with a rune? Send a picture!" It's kind of sad for an obvious solution that we all take for granted in real life to be impossible in a magical fantasy world. So magic smartphones of some kind, I reckon.

If that worked to keep people plugged-in to what the other characters were doing at their other location, then it might allow fairly rapid flipping back and forth between the sub-parties, so that no timeline got too far ahead of the other.