2009-03-15 - Third session

Still in the tunnel from last session. Had plans to go deeper and do more but things fell apart and had to let them out early. Notes:

• Kind of the disaster. Lost track of many of the things I was planning on doing, partly from the confusion from new member of the party.
• Everybody quickly gets bored of adventures that involve only combat.
  
• Even when a character walks into a bad situation, they don't want to be punished for making a mistake. This early in the game, they should be given a little leeway and you should remind them of their get out of jail free cards. Kris got stuck by that guy but didn't get a reward. Make sure he approaches her again later and gives her something valuable.
• Az (new player) likes being involved. Need to give her things to do and problems to solve, by virtue that she's a magical creature and very noticeable. Everyone will always approach her first.
• Role-play element was mostly missing. What role-play we did get into didn't work because me and Az didn't iron that out ahead of time. Bleh.

Session rating: Double-bleh.

2009-03-09 - Second session

Group went into a "dungeon," which was just an abandoned underground storage tunnel used by ancient black-marketeers. Notes:

• Party had fun playing a slaughter event where they overpowered the orcs easily. Shows the promise of doing die rolls in front of the party to show them that they are genuinely going up against a legit enemy.
• Characters molds came out during play. K's character is the lawnmower -- angry and strong, Kris is whimsical and illusory, W is rude and the leader. Need to try to test / play with these roles somehow without taking away the player's fun with that character. Maybe bring out the color of the characters and give them dilemas. K should be sympathetic / have to NOT fight [based on a dream or a situation]. W must be polite to someone and make choices for the whole group [like a group of clerics approach them and W must convince them one way or another for something].
• They like the black-and-white nature of combat but obviously want something more complex that stretches their brains.
• They liked the idea of just making a massacre -- this needs to happen from time to time. They don't want to do this often but they liked the idea of trying to do something and succeeding at it fully. Previous adventures its always been a challange to defeat an enemy so this was a welcome reprieve to give them an idea of just how quickly they can dispatch lower powered enemies.
• They enjoyed the roleplaying element greatly. Need to package into every adventure a little roleplay. Its becoming one of the reasons we play every week. If we have that at the beginning, a tedious fighting session won't be so damaging.
• They may encounter friends, companions, or non-orc race or person who isn't friends (maybe enemies) with the orcs but isn't friends with the characters either- little roleplay to try and get him to help / not interfere

Session rating: Supersweet

2009-03-02 - First session

Just got done with a very prepared tabletop game and moved into the real books.

• Team really seemed to like roleplaying their characters. They've all already come up with colorful, interesting characters and a sense of identity. Think this is going to be a driving force behind the continued fun of the campaign.
• Party paid attention to detail, wanted to know about background, names of towns legends, all sorts of stuff that I cared about but didn't think anyone else would. The progress of the story should go carefully in line with these legends, stories, and backgrounds. No random encounter adventures, except as filler.
• Need to make combat more interesting, detailed, and involved. Obey the rule system as well as critical hits, near misses, other elements that just make sense to combat.

Session rating: Huzzah!