Session Post Mortem

I'm realizing I never know what to call these posts, Post Session, Post Play and that most people have a name for their campaigns. I have no clue what to call mine, the Noob Meat Grinder? I haven't been able to place a tentpole dungeon yet which is what the campaign names often come from.

So, some reflections on play. I keep a file of tips I run across reading various blogs. Ben Robbins of ars ludi is right on the money when he says "let players see traps." Because my tomb complex is set up in a uniform fashion, my players saw evidence of a trap that had been set off centuries before. This caused just as much tension and drama as having a trap go off killing a party member. More so, I think. There is probably still a place for the awful surprise to a group of a fatal trap, but that is just an instant, and doesn't necessarily mean they understand why the trap went off, leaving them tapping 10' poles everywhere. Knowing there was almost certainly a trap in a certain location left the sense of danger and suspense but allowed for the party to engage the environment and try to find ways around the obstacle.

The statue puzzle was a success, but just barely. Some tips I gather from play, if you are going to have a puzzle with a solution involving steps:

• make sure to signal that there is, in fact, a solution,
• make sure that solution is relatively simple,
• that solution is internally consistent,
• that trying for said solution gives feedback to the players and,
• there aren't too many steps in the solution.

I stumbled on the most important of those by chance, the feedback. I was perusing a list of tips T. Foster had posted on ENWorld about achieving "old school" feel in dungeons while designing this tomb. One tip was to have a puzzle that must be figured out, but more importantly another was a trick or puzzle that has permanent effects. What I did was make a semi-permanent effect each time the characters did a proper hand sign in the wrong order. So what happened was they got some feedback, remembered hand signs that caused something but knew something wasn't quite right about that sign.

A random assortment of observations:

• Zepharia's player was a great player. Maybe a real natural. Of all the people I've DMed since getting back into the game she has been the best by far, careful but not cowardly, trusting there is a sense to my game world and trying to discover it.
• At one point the players asked if there was a latch to release an iron bar trap. This was something I hadn't thought about at all. So I rolled for it and the dice said they absolutely did. Not sure how I feel about that. Related to that, they asked an npc about a treasure item. I ridiculously had not thought out what he might know, rolled, the dice said he knew everything about the item.
• I had completely missed the exceptional intelligence rule for mages and realized both Zepheria and Ehud should be able to cast 2 first level spells! Huge power differential there. On doing so, made the off-the-top-of-my-head ruling that mages can't memorize duplicates of the same spell. Weird, why have I never heard of that option for Vancian magic? Seems logical and will cause mages to use a greater variety of spells.