One-Shot
I ran a one-shot with only two of my players (they were the most readily available) to try and get the gist of 5Es rules. I personally have an easier time learning when I'm just doing what it is I'm trying to learn. My players seem the same. I also wanted to get those two up to speed, so I could focus on teaching the new players separately once we are running the main campaign. On top of that, we were all kind of itching to play, so it wasn't exactly a bad idea to me.The setup was actually kind of simple, it was a 3 person game, just Maggot, Dunmur, and myself as GM. We generated characters real fast (Fun fact: I generated Maggot's character and had Maggot generate Dunmur's character) and I threw them into a game they had NO CLUE what has going on, and this is intentional. It's intentional because I have a more long-term purpose for this game, and I don't want the player's influencing it too much. That's not to say I'm railroading any aspect of this, but instead I had a simple concept that has one or two important aspects, and I need them there to get this idea to work without a hitch.
Side note: We're playing online using Roll20, the name's I'm using are their online aliases, I know their real names but I don't feel like using them.
Things didn't go entirely as planned but it did work out ... sort of. See I kinda misunderstood the CR guidelines (and forgot that 5E's CRs suck ass), and almost killed both players. The players were on a boat before it got attacked by this giant tentacley kraken like beast, the boat was destroyed and they were knocked out unconscious. Their bodies slipped into the water and as their vision faded to black, something happened. They were taken down into an underwater prison, where they finally awoke inside a damp cell. I was pretty lenient on what they had, most of what was taken from their person was simply weapons or things that could open the cells, I of course made an exception for the rogue's Thieve's Tools.
The first fight was pretty fun, Maggot (our Rogue), gets clever and starts throwing objects at the naga guard he runs into. The two of them gang up on it, take his weapon, and finish it off. In a way, they got a bit lucky since everything went off without a hitch. They round the corner, find their stuff, and turn around to notice that two naga have started coming that way to investigate what's going on. Dunmur (our Bard) is just like "Nah, fuck it, 2v1 I can take both of you!", and actually rolls intimidation to get both of them to come fight him. While Maggot is trying to hide around the corner and slip away, however he doesn't want to abandon the bard, so he stays kinda close. The naga charges up annnnd the next thing I know both of them are at 0 hp. "Uh oh ... I think these guys are a bit much." I took a pause for a second and took a thought. The naga knocks out the bard using non-lethal damage, he's dragged off and hastily thrown into a cell, they don't even strip his gear. The other was dragged off by a civilian that they freed, who knew a thing or two about medicine. He heals him up, takes the healing potion from Maggot's body and administers it.
Skip forward a bit, the bard escapes his cell, and the rogue has been unlocking all the cells while the naga were distracted. They gather all of the men and go for the front door, which is magically sealed. Maggot realizes this and is a bit perplexed, and looks over to Dunmur for assistance, he has knock, right? Nope. He used both level 2 slots in the first fight because, reasons. I make up some bullshit about one of the NPCs knowing how to undo the lock but he needs a few minutes, in which they need to guard him, but Maggot isn't going to sit for 5+ minutes. He wanders off to the side and checks one of the store rooms where there is another equipment chest. I look down at my notes and see that I had an item pile that was meant for the research lab, and realizing that the fight in there will be way too tough for them right now, I just move the item pile to that chest. It has a little circlet, a potion, and some explosives, of course that's the hint for the players to just blow the fucking door up, and they do. They're essentially in the clear all the way to the exit now, so I make things a little more tense by throwing two giant naga at them (for reference I was using a Yuan-ti Abomination, CR 7), and they simply slither towards the party, trying to cut their way through the other prisoners. They scramble around, find the potions of water breathing I left around, and make their escape with some of the NPCs who helped out.
I didn't get to show everything, but Dunmur did clearly ask "wait ... were they turning the humans into those lizard things?", I thought ... should I let him know? Fuck it, why not. I say "yes, absolutely, you guys didn't get to see the rest of the hints but that was the idea". They talk about it for a bit, and Maggot even asked "can you keep that character sheet? I'd actually like to play this character later."
Postmortem
I think the important thing was that the tension was high enough and my GM skills aren't that rusty as I was able to improvise, make things a bit fun, and really make the situation seem doable. They got out alive, had to make sacrifices (they couldn't take all of the prisoners), but in the end, they were free.I'm actually some what excited to potentially play a game with Dograx, the rogue, as he was kind of a neat character. While we randomly rolled most of the characters, Dograx was a dragonborn, rogue who was raised by wolves. Maggot took that as a sign that while Dograx knew some common, he communicated mostly in growls and signals, and did not like speaking if he could help it. I may run a solo game with him provided there is time, and additionally, I have another campaign idea stored away for later that he could be apart, especially since the players were not informed which world this took place in.
I think I learned a lot about CR from this game, and I also tried an important little technique I learned from the well-known Matt Colville. Don't go easy on the players. It's not to say that you can't change things slightly or alter a tiny part of the dungeon, but instead to try and avoid the downward spiral of nerfing everything in your dungeon until it's no longer challenging. I kept a lot of it the same, but changed just a few things and then said to myself: "Nothing changes from here, let them figure out what needs to be done."
In the end? They got inventive, they weren't just doing the "I attack the naga ... again" routine, which I find happens in some of my games as players are trying way too much to play it like a video game where the only thing you can do is try harder until you die... If this weren't a one-shot where the players were stuck in a prison, I probably wouldn't have even let them get away given the fact that it probably would've been their fault.
City Campaign
I have something in the works, a West Marches inspired campaign setting where players are trapped in a large city as part of a resistance force against a massive army. The details are being worked on, but sooner or later I'll do a post about it's success or failure.
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