Lessons Learned

Thursday D&D is now my oldest campaign.  Running since my inception into the Questers' Way model, they've been fighting cultists, talking to dragons, crushing beholders, and squaring off against Ancient Ones riding gargantuan titans for nearly 3 years now.  And last Thursday marked the close of the final arc of the story.  
  We'll have one last dungeon crawl at level 20, 5 years later, as our epilogue next week.  After that, 150 years pass into the fourth age of Io, and we start anew at Level 2.  It's been quite a journey, and they're not the easiest group to run ;), but the lessons are real with this crew and I've changed a lot since we started.  
Here's what I picked up.

Homebrew Small

When I started the Thursday game, I was coming off a blend of 10 years running and teaching Pathfinder, and though I fell in love quickly with 5E, I had made some assumptions regarding its player options.
  The system is deceptively simple and highly accessible, but I had listened to the cry-babies online declaring it "D&D Basic," and decided to create specific Prestige Classes based around lore and player discovery.  It created a very special and unique option inside my custom world, where "secret" classes actually existed that could augment player builds, and could only upgrade through experimentation, player exploration, and discovery into the deep layers of the world's history.  I still think it was a great decision.  It adds a lot of rewards for players that invest of themselves in the history and machinations of this fantasy you've spent so much time on.
  But after two years of deep-diving mechanics, game mastering, game design, player-master interaction, social development, and the study of flow...  I realize I made a boo-boo.  Not a mistake in flavor, nor in reward, but in mechanics.
It's a little thing, and the more you do the more you realize that "it's the little things" that matter most.  In this case, my Prestige Class of the Aegis - a powerhouse of a Cleric that wields the souls of the dead to unleash fury upon her enemies - and the final form of a Ranger with a Legacy Bow - a weapon that levels up with you; semi-sentient and created by a god - created an issue with Action Economy and TMRPA (Too Much Rolling Per Action), respectively.  
  The Aegis's main mechanic involves gaining Furies - souls of dead warriors unwilling to pass on - and spending them like Ki Points to unleash powerful attacks, augment healing spells, and create more options.  Unfortunately, as long as you have Furies to burn, there's no limit to their use, and at high level in any class, you're already managing so much...  It eats up time easy when you're able to summon an Action Surge every turn AND cast AND fight.  On the other side of the table, the crazy-bow-now-living-winged-armor attached to the Ranger added an extra attack, but the main time suck is derived from two main extra elements in play: the bow requires a Con save when it hits or the target takes extra necrotic damage.  It's also got a crazy bonus (with a high level character with max Dex), so hitting is often, mean more rolls for me.  On top of this, IF she rolls a natural 20 on the bow, she rolls Constitution damage on the target, on top of everything else.  Moving forward, leveled up weapons will deal static numbers, instead of rolling more...  And in terms of time, it always feels more effective in flow and execution to have a power spike (the awesome power of rolling 8d6 for a Fireball) than many small spikes of damage, so if I can eliminate the parceled rolls where I can, everyone still feels effective, but turns take less time.

In the fourth age, Io-Shar, though it is a more industrial time period of naval exploration (after the world flooded), home-brew materials are much tighter and more balanced; action economy manipulations have higher costs, and there's less compounded rolling.  The bonuses are also much more subtle; there isn't a need to add a whole new system to track when it could be as simple as a palette swap in damage type.  New age, new prestige classes and custom feats open up (hello, Knife Expert), but this play test has heavily informed what special elements are extended to the player.  A little goes a long way - there is an elegance in that design, and it keeps the playing field even across the table.
  I look forward to the interesting things I can give them this time around.  :)

Self Actualization / Player Agency

NPC's can be tricky business.  
  Introduce them as careful lore drops, powerful relationships, killer resources...but never have them solve a problem for the players.  Good gods.  Holy cows on toast with mayonnaise.  Don't do it.  
NPC ex machina is not the way to go if it comes out of nowhere.
  Well-established order of guards and officers?  Sure thing.  Sudden mass teleport wizard is sudden.  If it feels like a puzzle to the players and they're enjoying solving it, don't help them with an NPC.  Hints are fine, solutions can hurt the party.  
​...Unless they're utterly lost and confused.  Help them along, but don't do it for them.  EVER.  If you do, you run the risk of insulting them and equally "playing without them."  And that's just rude.  ;)

Clear Intention Of Background

Some players want their background conflicts resolved in the grand arc of the story, while others use their backgrounds predominantly to inform their play style from session 1 and need it no longer.  
  Now, this group in particular was one where I didn't get that feel easy from most of them.  With a high mix reactive players with a few proactive ones, some offering extensive background information while others offered a few sentences explained away, the hindsight of the matter is obvious but the player execution and my observations were misunderstood often.  When you give a hook that to you is obvious, but the player misses completely, and therefore doesn't pursue it, one might assume that the view of their background fits into the former category.
  Compounding confusion, still, are those that feed very little into the overall narrative, but then wonder when "their story" will be featured, but say nothing - instead assuming they were forgotten.  Please talk to your DM; I won't be offended - it's much worse if you don't approach the issue until the end of the campaign and I wonder why NO ONE SAID ANYTHING.  :)
Like many GMs out there, I'm not a *dick*, but I can't read minds.  There are so many stories of a player misinterpreting a DM's intention, or of the GM making an assumption about a scenario that ended up being incorrect, or seeming to ignore obvious intentions.  In the same vein of: "if I knew it was a problem, I would have fixed it right away," though we can intuit quite a bit the longer we're at the table, our human nature begs us to err.  We miss things, we get caught up in the narrative, and we lose sight of players.  I am imperfect, as are we all, so open communication helps everyone.  Also, GMs, CHECK IN WITH YOUR PLAYERS MORE.  I picked this up as a requirement when I started Gray Owls and OH MY GOODNESS is it an essential element at every table.  I don't know how it took me that long to put in my workflow OMG.  
Moving forward, with each new campaign, I've started to put together a few questions for character creation; some fulfill the essential detail of world building, while others touch on player intentions - what do they want to get out of this experience?

1. Where was your character born?  Describe it as best you can; do you reflect on this place positively or negatively?  Would you ever want to return?  Why?  Do you have a family there?  How did they treat you?  Were there any important people in your life growing up?  Why did you leave?
2. What is your character's goal in life; what do you seek?  When did you "grow up" and start taking care of yourself?
3. What emotion best describes your character?  What emotion do you bring out in others?
4. How do you carry yourself?  What are your means/dress/attitude as you move through life?  What do find valuable?
5. What is your comfort zone?  What is your greatest fear?  Personal tastes, quirks, and opinions?
6. Player: What kind of story do you see your character fitting into?  What role do you see them filling?
7. Player: Please weigh (3 being most important to you, 1 being least important) the Three Pillars - Combat/Social/Exploration
8. Player: How do you interpret your play style?  What are your pet peeves?  What do you respond well to?
9. Player: How do you want your character to die? (this is more important than you think; it strikes at the heart of our own values - your story could end abruptly, and if it did, how would they meet that end do you think?)
10. Player: Do you want your background details to be referenced or hooked into the story?  You can always change your mind - just let me know.

Now, especially number 10 I can see a few of my fellow GMs hemming and hawing over.  "You mean we have to bend over backwards to make this character's weird backstory fit into OUR GRAND NARRATIVE???  How dare they assume they'd be so important - they should be happy just to be playing!"  ...Hmm.  
  This is a group game, and it's really important that everyone understands the type of experience they're getting into.  Clear expectations are a good thing; Trust and Empathy are two main factors to building a great table of play.  Now, do I have to make that character's stuff the most important element all the time?  No.  Absolutely not.  But I can give them sprinkles of content more directly spun into the story.  It won't happen all the time, and sometimes it might not even come up, but IF I KNOW going into this that there is a clear desire to wrap up a specific story thread, I can find more ORGANIC ways to weave and tie these disparate threads together.  It might even be a limiter of location; hints of the conflict in the north (echoes of another character's story), but we don't need to go there now.  It's just a sprinkle.  
Everyone's connected to something.  Everyone's from somewhere.  We don't know everything going in; the mystery is the fun part, and some players want their mystery.  Others don't care for it; I need to know which one you are.

Players Learn Too, And Comfort Tells Stories

And when they do, their real play styles come out.  It's amazing what comfort will do for the table, and how much it reveals what a comfortable player actually WANTS to play, and if that concept doesn't jive with how their current class works, there will undoubtedly be a desire to play something different. 
  The more this group learned about how the game works, the more effective they became, but also the more some of them drifted toward other builds, concepts, and ideas.  This type of momentum is helpful to notice; in a way, it reveals a player's true nature.  Like the first campaign was our test run.  The next one is where we're going to really shine; players and DM alike.  We take what we learned about the game, ourselves, our styles, and how to advocate for the experience we want...and finally, just PLAY.

See you at the table.
-Adamus

Writing this blog each week takes time, energy, and focus.  If you enjoy reading it, maybe consider taking a look at my Patreon, and helping support its creation.