Godsgrave Session 2 Pre-Game

Hello Lovelies!

Quick reminder for our next session, please level your character up to level 6 before coming over. If you need any help with leveling up, let me know. We are using the hit dice average for leveling up, not rolling. (If you're not sure what that means, ask one of the players you don't know so well.) 

The people of Sorefoot Sanctuary are grateful to their saviors, and have helped patch up some of the damage to the Well of Souls Temple. They are now also worshiping you, once a week. You know when it is worship day because you feel a rush of energy, almost like you were holding your breath without realising, and taking a deep lungful when they begin to pray.

They need about 1,000 GP to help them rebuild their town and recover from Golgoltha. Please decide if you would like to donate them that money.

All of you who would like to have taken turns studying the Well of Souls. It has revealed to you three demigods who are within your power to defeat.

1) Moradin, God of Dwarves, dwells in a vast Dwarven Stronghold to the Southwest. He is desperately attempting to prepare the dwarves for the apocalypse, abandoning the majority to save a few.


2) Corellon and Lathuan, God and Goddess of the elves, are leading their people to accept the end of the world with grace and dignity. The dwell in a forest to the West.


3) Rimblatook, God of Gnomes (and now halflings) has gone mad. He killed and ate the god of halflings, and is building monstrous Golems and experimenting on his people to change them into a form that can survive the coming armageddon. He watches over his people in a giant airship that circles the desert in the far south.


Please comment below with:

1) MANDATORY: Which God you will face next.

2) OPTIONAL: Will you donate money to the people of Sorefoot Sanctuary?

3) OPTIONAL: A brief description of what your character has been busy doing for the past month.

Godsgrave House Rules and Update

3 quick things

1) You can choose to fail a saving throw if you want.

2) I'm adopting a friend's houserule: Your familiar can concentrate on a second spell for you, as long as it meets the regular guidelines for spells you can cast through familiar.

3) I'm considering doubling short rest resources for fights. We will see if that is necessary as the game goes on, this is just a heads up


Namjoon's player wasn't happy with their out of combat God Power. Their new Power is:


Heart's Desire: You can find out the greatest love of a person by touching them.If you use this power on someone, you have disadvantage on attack rolls and deception checks against them.

Godsgrave Session 1 Thoughts

So with the next session barreling down on me I thought now would be the perfect time to post my thoughts and feelings about the first session.

Recap

The session began with the party of newly-minted demigods protecting the well of souls from an army of emaciated bandits. Everyone showed up in a dramatic and kick-arse fashion. Good stuff.
The party then descended Cloudpiercer Mountain to investigate the warcamp set up at the base. There they learnt that the bandits served Golgoltha, who had been a minor god of feasts and festivals, and he had settled in the town called Sorefoot Sanctuary.

The party travelled to Sorefoot Sanctuary, noting starving farmers working tirelessly to send wagons of food to the town.

Golgotha sat in massive tent, being constantly fed by an army of cooks overseen by a famous chef (was hoping he'd be a person of interest but my group was laser focused on their goal)

Party cleverly set up an ambush attack on Golgoltha and pulled it off, Golgoltha downed one party member and nearly downed another (raise threat level for next game)

Once Golgoltha was defeated, Power rushed into the group, and Meena ingested a glowing yellow orb that came from his defeat.

Meena is now the demigod of ancestor worship and feasts and festivals. This has a nice cultural ring to it. (Imagine years in the future, where every feast has one plate set for your ancestors, or saying grace at dinner thanks your grandfather that planted the orchard you now rely on for survival. Properly Miffic!)

Thoughts

1) I'm very lucky to have the players I have. 9 people is an insane number to run a game for, and it is solely thanks to the quality of player that it is even doable. People were engaged with other peoples' turns, nobody tried to hog the spotlight, and there was a general air of positivity and cooperation.

2) Starting a campaign with a combat is brilliant. It gets people involved straight away. Introducing the players one by one, turn by turn, was also great as everyone got a turn in the spotlight, rather than rolling through character introductions all at once. However, some people had to wait a really long time for their turn in the spotlight, and spent probably the first hour just watching the game. (Sorry!)

3) My descriptions still need work. I wanted the temple to be clearly ancient and crumbling, with snow drifts built up where there are holes in the roof, and a general feeling of ancient times and neglect. Missed that. I think the players got the feeling of the cold, sunny day, and I think I described the ruins of Sorefoot Sanctuary and the Obese Demigod fairly well.

4) Everyone said they had fun, but my usual DM paranoia has me keen to make sure noone gets neglected next game (to the best of my abilities)

DM Tips: You are a seeing-eye DM

I'm writing this mostly for my own benefit, to warm up for some freelance writing, and as a reminder to myself. I'm no Matt Mercer, but I like to think i'm a decent Dungeon Master. I've learnt a lot mostly through trial and error, having been my various groups' forever-DM for the past.... 15 years? But there are lots of different ways to improve your DMing skills

A great way to learn about DMing, especially if you're used to always being the DM, is to take a turn as a player, and noticing the things that other DM's do that you like or dislike.

Which brings me to the lesson I learned about DMing by playing in a game with my Dad as the Dungeon Master.

We were exploring an ancient underground city, as you do, and my wizard was walking around the edge of an open air, exposed atrium, on a covered walkway. The DM told me I spotted someone or something in the middle of the atrium square, and asked me what I wanted to do.

I told my dad I wanted to walk over to the object of interest and investigate it. He responded:

"You step off the walkway and fall 20 feet, landing on the ground, taking...(dice rolls) 14 damage"

Now some of my imaginary readers will be wondering why I was dumb enough to step off a second storey walkway. Hopefully a few others are wondering this 20 foot drop came from, as I was at the time.

I asked my dad what the hell just happened, and he told me I had been walking on the second floor of the atrium walkway. I told him I hadn't realised that, and thought I was on the ground floor, and asked if we could rollback the action. He's a bit more of the old-school, adversarial DM style, so my wizard, for no reason, faceplanted onto the ground.

This left me feeling like I'd been asked to do a trust fall with someone and they had walked away as I fell back.

Which leads us to the importance of descriptions. Let's say the players are searching a dungeon for a magic artefact, a green crystal.

 You can over-describe : 

"You are in a 20 foot by 15 foot room, a magical workshop of some kind. The stone brick walls are made of a dark stone, weathered with age, but the mortar is holding strong and not crumbling. On the floor is a periwinkle blue and gold carpet, going slightly threadbare in the right hand corner, with a depiction of 2 peacocks and 3 peahens in masterful embroidery. Lining the western wall are 3 bookshelves, crammed with books of various ages and colours. There is a desk in the western corner, beside the bookshelves, made of solid oak wood, with an alembic, mortar and pestle, hookah pipe, 3 books, "A history of herbology"  in a green leather cover, "Wyverns and how to raise them" in a faded tan paper cover, and "Collin's Curious Cantrips" in a bright purple, and stacks of papers scattered across it, as well as a leather pouch of gems, some of which have leaked out, a brilliant tigers-eye, a few sparkling rubies, a green crystal, an opal, and four glittering emeralds. Hanging above the desk is a copper bracket with dried herbs hanging off it, lavender, thyme, frogwort, and sage. In the northern corner...."

I got bored of writing this, I wouldn't blame you for skipping that paragraph, or my players for tuning out either.

You can also under-describe:

" You are in a 20 foot by 15 foot stone room, a magic workshop of some kind. There is a desk in the corner and some bookshelves on the walls"

I tend to be guilty of under-describing, for two simple reasons:

1) I like to give players room to imagine their own version of the world I present for them. If I describe everything in too much detail, that gets lost.

2) I'm lazy

You can have a very clear picture of the landscape in your head, but if you don't effectively communicate it to your players, they will have a very different picture, so what's the solution?

For me, it's quite simple: If your player tells you they're about to do something that seems totally illogical (calmly stepping off a balcony) stop and re-describe the scene and ask them if that's still what they want to do.

This is slightly different to the DM code-phrase: "Are you sure you want to do that?" which really means: "You're probably going to die if you try that". This is just making sure your players have the information they should have before they make a decision.

You are the eyes, ears, hands, and nose of your players. If they do something insane, or seem to be missing something obvious, make sure they're seeing what you think they're seeing.