Sean's Campaign - Session #17
I want to rant about something, but there isn’t much I can put on here without pretty much shattering the no religion/no politics self-imposed rule, or repeating myself.
So I’ll go with something relatively minor; being a jerk is not always a bad thing.
I can’t find the source now, but a couple weeks ago I read that Harvard’s Business School is having an issue with their students; they’re too nice and are too willing to compromise and that is not a good thing for business.
Think about that for a minute; being nice is not always a good quality for a business. Hell, in my opinion, being nice all the time is a bad thing period.
I had that opinion for a long time but had never really cohesively thought about it. I have had my share of worthless bosses whose primary mode of motivation was yelling and the rare overly nice ones that would give you a large bit of freedom and both had about the same level of effectiveness. The best bosses were the ones that were nice until being nice wasn’t offering the right answer to the solution.
My father-in-law brought the whole ideal to cohesion with a simple sentence, “Every good company needs one jerk.” Put another way, the person in charge needs to recognize that there is a time to say “no” and a time to say “get to work”.
I believe that on some level, the same thing works for gaming groups, and a lot of other things in life a well.
I am the jerk of our group. I have been a part of way too many groups that simply fell apart by letting the wrong person into the group or by letting everyone have a chance to run their own campaign (none run longer than 2 weeks). Because of that, I’m a bit quick to say “no” to a lot of things.
Now being the jerk is something that I’m a bit overqualified for. But it is a job that has to be done. In a weird way, me being the jerk allows others in the group to relax because they know that I will say something if it needs to be said. I can think of a few examples but it is best I not list those (even if I’d like to on occasion).
On the other hand, I can think of a lot of times where being too forgiving of others or being too willing to be friendly with people has caused problems, sometimes leading to the collapse of a group.
It’s amazing how fast a group can collapse once you’ve invited someone into your group that can ruin the fun for just one person even.
What you’ve done is replaced a good player with a bad one.
If you’re group was going great until the “new guy” showed up, stand up and speak out. Be a jerk if you have to.
Just be careful about it, otherwise the new guy will have replaced you.
My only regret to the above semi-rant is that there are going to be nutbar gamers out there who now think it’s a good think to be a jerk 24/7. Refer to my previous post a few months back about bad gamers. If you qualify for that, do not try to be a jerk.
But anyway, let’s move on to the session’s synopsis.
No Justin or Joy this week. Joy had a going away party for someone at work, so she chose booze over D&D. Justin was a no show, so who knows what’s going on there.
Dale played Ari and we poofed out Trebor as his character sheet hasn’t been updated for awhile now.
I retroactively gave Artemis an honorary title from Maratheelia’s military for his work as mentioned in the previous session. At game time I still hadn’t decided what that title exactly was, and I still can’t think of a suitable title.
If you’d like to offer help for that, feel free to leave a message in the comments part here or send me an e-mail. I’d appreciate it.
The group lost their only scout and that means they are stuck on the path of the pass. And that means they have to go through the DM’s set up encounters whether they like it or not. Railroading, no it’s not. It’s the result of their choices in the classes they took.
First up on their encounters was a simple black pudding, lying still in a chamber. Lindo investigated and then ran away when it attacked him and a sword spider jumped and attacked from its hiding place.
The party finished off those things without issue, but when the balhannoth joined in, that worried the party a bit. It’s a creature from the nearly worthless Monster Manual IV. It has a nice long reach with its bite and tentacles and if it grabs you, your spells are suppressed. Other than the worry and some nice damage from the thing, the party was able to deal with it and move on.
Next on the path was a group of 4 normal umber hulks and one huge umber hulk bursting from the walls. They surrounded the party and attacked. Everyone in the party was easily covered to exploit many attacks of opportunity.
The umber hulks’ confusion ability only worked on Ari, which caused her to run away and talk multiple attacks.
But it didn’t last long. Ari’s fleeing actually helped and when she was given a second chance at a saving throw (from Sorra), she made it. This put her in a better position to cast spells from. The party’s teamwork served them quite well and they took down all of the hulks in just a few more rounds.
The final encounter on the path to frozen north was a young adult red dragon.
This fellow had found a nice spot for his lair and set it up to his liking. He even made a few of those skulls on a spear warning signs just so people would know to stay away.
Those obviously didn’t work.
The party knew something was inside, and knew it was a warm kind of creature, so they cast their preparative spells – including the anti-fire damage spells.
That’s ok; he knew they were there so he prepped up as well. He only had access to first and second level spells, but he put them to good use and upped his armor class to 34.
He toyed with the party for awhile with generic chatting. Then the party had to go and do something rude and cast a spell while chatting.
The party scattered out a bit (invisibly) while he clung to the walls (invisibly), far above the party’s melee weapons but still within reach of his bite.
When Zelast cast See Invisible the fun began, and the dragon started with Zelast.
As much as I’d love to say this dragon took down one of the party, I can’t. He did a good job of corralling the group into the center of his lair, but the lack of the proper feats prevented him from exploiting his terrain well enough. I rolled “1” three times for his breath weapon delay (the party was standing nicely within range of it) and he nearly “sandpapered” away their Protection from Fire spells but the poor dragon couldn’t withstand multiple empowered Orb of Ice spells from Artemis.
The party of course looted his hoard. Yeah, Sorra was poisoned for 15 points of strength, but it wasn’t that interesting thanks to Ysilia and her healing.
After that the party finally made it the frozen north. Well, it was really late August, so it wasn’t quite frozen where the party was. But when kept heading north they found plenty of frozen places.
They couldn’t travel the wide open frozen lands because they had no one with the survival skill, so they stayed along the coastlines. That worked for a few days until even the coast became too treacherous to follow.
They didn’t like the idea of teleporting back to Maratheelia, so they went the only other option; backtracking through the pass and finding a suitable guide in Lataan (birthplace of Lindo and Caspar).
They began their trek back, killed a slug the size of a house, and had nearly made it back to the pass when they smelled fire burning coming from the west.
And that is when we stopped.
It was an action and traveling night without much role-playing.
Next week I will have to prepare for a lot as there are many paths the party can take from here.
So I’ll go with something relatively minor; being a jerk is not always a bad thing.
I can’t find the source now, but a couple weeks ago I read that Harvard’s Business School is having an issue with their students; they’re too nice and are too willing to compromise and that is not a good thing for business.
Think about that for a minute; being nice is not always a good quality for a business. Hell, in my opinion, being nice all the time is a bad thing period.
I had that opinion for a long time but had never really cohesively thought about it. I have had my share of worthless bosses whose primary mode of motivation was yelling and the rare overly nice ones that would give you a large bit of freedom and both had about the same level of effectiveness. The best bosses were the ones that were nice until being nice wasn’t offering the right answer to the solution.
My father-in-law brought the whole ideal to cohesion with a simple sentence, “Every good company needs one jerk.” Put another way, the person in charge needs to recognize that there is a time to say “no” and a time to say “get to work”.
I believe that on some level, the same thing works for gaming groups, and a lot of other things in life a well.
I am the jerk of our group. I have been a part of way too many groups that simply fell apart by letting the wrong person into the group or by letting everyone have a chance to run their own campaign (none run longer than 2 weeks). Because of that, I’m a bit quick to say “no” to a lot of things.
Now being the jerk is something that I’m a bit overqualified for. But it is a job that has to be done. In a weird way, me being the jerk allows others in the group to relax because they know that I will say something if it needs to be said. I can think of a few examples but it is best I not list those (even if I’d like to on occasion).
On the other hand, I can think of a lot of times where being too forgiving of others or being too willing to be friendly with people has caused problems, sometimes leading to the collapse of a group.
It’s amazing how fast a group can collapse once you’ve invited someone into your group that can ruin the fun for just one person even.
What you’ve done is replaced a good player with a bad one.
If you’re group was going great until the “new guy” showed up, stand up and speak out. Be a jerk if you have to.
Just be careful about it, otherwise the new guy will have replaced you.
My only regret to the above semi-rant is that there are going to be nutbar gamers out there who now think it’s a good think to be a jerk 24/7. Refer to my previous post a few months back about bad gamers. If you qualify for that, do not try to be a jerk.
But anyway, let’s move on to the session’s synopsis.
No Justin or Joy this week. Joy had a going away party for someone at work, so she chose booze over D&D. Justin was a no show, so who knows what’s going on there.
Dale played Ari and we poofed out Trebor as his character sheet hasn’t been updated for awhile now.
I retroactively gave Artemis an honorary title from Maratheelia’s military for his work as mentioned in the previous session. At game time I still hadn’t decided what that title exactly was, and I still can’t think of a suitable title.
If you’d like to offer help for that, feel free to leave a message in the comments part here or send me an e-mail. I’d appreciate it.
The group lost their only scout and that means they are stuck on the path of the pass. And that means they have to go through the DM’s set up encounters whether they like it or not. Railroading, no it’s not. It’s the result of their choices in the classes they took.
First up on their encounters was a simple black pudding, lying still in a chamber. Lindo investigated and then ran away when it attacked him and a sword spider jumped and attacked from its hiding place.
The party finished off those things without issue, but when the balhannoth joined in, that worried the party a bit. It’s a creature from the nearly worthless Monster Manual IV. It has a nice long reach with its bite and tentacles and if it grabs you, your spells are suppressed. Other than the worry and some nice damage from the thing, the party was able to deal with it and move on.
Next on the path was a group of 4 normal umber hulks and one huge umber hulk bursting from the walls. They surrounded the party and attacked. Everyone in the party was easily covered to exploit many attacks of opportunity.
The umber hulks’ confusion ability only worked on Ari, which caused her to run away and talk multiple attacks.
But it didn’t last long. Ari’s fleeing actually helped and when she was given a second chance at a saving throw (from Sorra), she made it. This put her in a better position to cast spells from. The party’s teamwork served them quite well and they took down all of the hulks in just a few more rounds.
The final encounter on the path to frozen north was a young adult red dragon.
This fellow had found a nice spot for his lair and set it up to his liking. He even made a few of those skulls on a spear warning signs just so people would know to stay away.
Those obviously didn’t work.
The party knew something was inside, and knew it was a warm kind of creature, so they cast their preparative spells – including the anti-fire damage spells.
That’s ok; he knew they were there so he prepped up as well. He only had access to first and second level spells, but he put them to good use and upped his armor class to 34.
He toyed with the party for awhile with generic chatting. Then the party had to go and do something rude and cast a spell while chatting.
The party scattered out a bit (invisibly) while he clung to the walls (invisibly), far above the party’s melee weapons but still within reach of his bite.
When Zelast cast See Invisible the fun began, and the dragon started with Zelast.
As much as I’d love to say this dragon took down one of the party, I can’t. He did a good job of corralling the group into the center of his lair, but the lack of the proper feats prevented him from exploiting his terrain well enough. I rolled “1” three times for his breath weapon delay (the party was standing nicely within range of it) and he nearly “sandpapered” away their Protection from Fire spells but the poor dragon couldn’t withstand multiple empowered Orb of Ice spells from Artemis.
The party of course looted his hoard. Yeah, Sorra was poisoned for 15 points of strength, but it wasn’t that interesting thanks to Ysilia and her healing.
After that the party finally made it the frozen north. Well, it was really late August, so it wasn’t quite frozen where the party was. But when kept heading north they found plenty of frozen places.
They couldn’t travel the wide open frozen lands because they had no one with the survival skill, so they stayed along the coastlines. That worked for a few days until even the coast became too treacherous to follow.
They didn’t like the idea of teleporting back to Maratheelia, so they went the only other option; backtracking through the pass and finding a suitable guide in Lataan (birthplace of Lindo and Caspar).
They began their trek back, killed a slug the size of a house, and had nearly made it back to the pass when they smelled fire burning coming from the west.
And that is when we stopped.
It was an action and traveling night without much role-playing.
Next week I will have to prepare for a lot as there are many paths the party can take from here.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:20 PM
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