The Darkness of The Mountain - 20240427

After over six months of not GMing, I have finally joined up with my local Adventurer's League to run some games. And as it turns out, GMing is not like riding a bike, and you can forget a lot of it. But, in this attempt to give one hundred percent in everything I do, we shan't be deterred by not being as good as we remember, and shall instead aspire to be even greater. I want to keep updates here as to how each Adventurer's League session goes, and to monitor my progression across a set of criteria to help me improve.

I've taken some perfunctory notes on the first session, and distilled those thoughts down into some specific criteria to discuss and expand upon, so we're gonna use that this time. However, if we find these criteria to be lacking and need to add or remove or change them, that is not off the table. This is a tool to refer back too so I can improve in the future, so if we need to change it we will. These are in no particular order.

Criteria 1 - Consistency of Energy

A big reason I wanted to get back into GMing, especially at AL, is because I found that as a player I had the best sessions when the running GM had a consistently high level of energy the whole game. The games I attended where this wasn't the case seemed lacking to me because I found my high energy as a player falling into a void of sorts, which meant an overall lack of back and forth, which is really what I'm looking for in an AL session. It's because of this I was upset when I caught myself about halfway through the session having completely lost the energy I had begun with. After I had noticed this, I really pushed myself to maintain a high energy for the rest of the session, complete with acting out getting hit, sound effects, and asking questions of the players. But it bothered me that I had lost all that without even realising.
Thankfully, I had an excellent debrief with the auditing GM there who helped me unpack why this was. It is deceptive as a GM how much cognitive load you are really taking on. The NPCs, story beats, improv challenges, and even keeping a track of things like initiative all weigh on your brain pretty heavily, and your vision begins to tunnel towards just the tasks required of you to keep the game going. Unfortunately, this will include the flair of being a punchy GM.
After thinking about it for a bit, I believe the way to improve here is actually an awareness of engagement instead. Being engaged with the players themselves and what they're doing should lead to my energy naturally remaining high for the whole session. Of course, the trade off with that kind of engagement is losing a handle on the overall combat or story as a whole, only being able to react in the moment as opposed to planning for the future.

It's a balancing act for sure, but one I think I could certainly get better at with time and practice.

Criteria 2 - Player Engagement

This might be one of the harder criteria to judge, and I expect it will either be completely reworked by the next session, or completely unchanged. Whilst "player engagement" might seem like something out of my control for the most part, and might only be accurately recorded with testimonies from the players themselves, I still think it's valuable enough to pay attention to in order to become better. And while the players engagement certainly involves them in a major way, as a GM, I believe there is a ton of things I can do to encourage engagement between players and the game world.

A strategy I love to do is the relationship rolls, which I did at the beginning of this session, but became irrelevant pretty quickly. These details provide a huge window into the players themselves and their motivations for playing, and can become a very useful tool in your kit for that session. I think that the "same roll both come up with something together" options should be a bit more geared to BOTH parties giving up a piece of information. So what that might look like is a separate list for double ups and individual rolls. Expanding on this, WRITE DOWN THE SECRETS/RELATIONSHIPS/INFORMATION, prompt players by referring to them later in the session. As a GM in AL you have no knowledge of the characters backstory unless you ask, but the players themselves will be obsessed with their characters backstory. And you can use that obsession. To zoom in even further, Franchesca was a mead brewer and trader, and when she asked if the NPCs had heard of her, you said no! Don't say no to something like that, USE that backstory instead of being afraid of it. If the players are obsessed with their characters, you can have the world be just as obsessed with them (within reason of course).
As for some more positive feedback, I loved how theatre of the mind worked, and how you worked theatre of the mind. I think this was helped a lot by keeping the combat simple, and we saw how simple didn't have to mean one enemy. The use of the rain as an exhaustion tactic, the multiplying creatures, the tethers and roots and seeds, all of these were happening in tandem, but because they all made sense and contributed to the scene, they weren't overwhelming or forgettable. I think you can really refine the 'in it, out of it' strategy into something really dynamic. Even using language like "you pushed him out of it, he's gonna take a turn to get back into it" work great as snappy and dynamic ways to describe the battlefield. Keep this up and it is sure to be a hit.
I think you have always had a bit of a weakness with NPCs, not just in your delivery of them, but in their motivations and quirks. Having a cheat sheet of important NPC traits and motivations I think will go a long way in helping you be consistent with them and make them memorable for the players.
Finally, I think a big part of keeping the players engaged in the world, especially during combat heavy or single player heavy interactions is a tight control of the spotlight. This is something I remember being good at before but I definitely felt was lacking in this last session. This is something that I'll improve on with just time and awareness, and keeping notes on successful and unsuccessful uses. For instance, last session I think I left Arthur out quite a lot during the fights, but I managed to have a nice transition to Zaal's POV in a climactic moment which i thought worked well.

All good points for sure, but I would love to look into more ways to actively keep a track of this. Perhaps I'll take real time notes on misplays or successes, or perhaps take the plunge and write a survey to give to the players. Wouldn't that provide some interesting feedback.

Criteria 3 - Understanding of Module

Probably the broadest criteria here, but I promise it's not just a bunch of miscellaneous points, it does circle around the need to correctly understand the module. Let's start small with something I noticed myself not doing so well on at times, which was referring to the game world with confidence. Whilst it didn't come up often, I felt as though the times where I had to pause the game in order to check the module for a place name or a character name lessened the players immersion within the world. I believe a big part of being a GM is putting on an all knowing front. Maybe not with rules, gods know I'm much more prone to 'roll first, wait there's rules for this? later', but certainly with places and names and directions, being immediate and confident with those answers gives the impression a lot more is going on behind the screen. This in turn, supports the players belief that this world exists, and isn't just being invented by some schmuck on the fly. While this might be solved by simply having an improv sheet to work off of, and not being about understanding the module specifically, I think it fits here as a general push toward knowing module details inside and out. Or at least writing up a cheat sheet in the future.
The other half of understanding the module is knowing (or prepping) the adventure in such a way as to allow for chopping and screwing mid game to have the adventure come to a close within the session time. This game certainly I found myself having to make some rather large edits on the fly to account for the quickly approaching end of session. However I think I did this rather well, both when planning the module (in that I made sure there were ways to shorten or lengthen the story at specific moments) and when running the session (deciding to shift characters or scenes around in order to keep the story moving). This is something I would like to continue seeing from myself, and something I hope to tighten up even further in the future. In this session I had to shift a crucial NPC somewhere a little deus ex machina-y in order to maintain flow, and I think with the right story design I could've kept things feeling realistic and deserved without sacrificing that narrative flexibility.
A final note here, one that is a bit too binary to be considered a part of the criteria, but the auditing GM pointed out its always a good thing to check first if anyone has any hard time constraints on the end of the session. We had a player leave at 1700 and didn't finish until 1730, if I had known this in advance I could have tightened up the adventure further.

That's the end of the criteria there. I cannot think of anything more I wanted to say about this session outside of these things. Perhaps in the next post I'll try retelling what occurred in the adventure whilst peppering in the critique. That would probably make it less of a dry read, and differentiate it a bit from the Draft Diary. We shall have to wait and see.

The Ghost Ship's Sting - 20240709

discussion of module

Lets start with something really big that doesn't have much to do with improving as a DM (maybe it has relevance as an ALDM, but for the most part, this is just something I really wanna talk about). This module was, by an extremely far margin, the best module I have run so far. It completely changed my attitude towards what a AL module should be. Before I was so keen on writing sprawling adventures that would just barely fit into the AL format, but the way to play is so clearly single session dungeons with a bit of story. It worked PERFECTLY. More than perfectly. And I think the game worked better because there was nothing to pull the players focus around. It was a single dungeon, with a somewhat clearly telegraphed goal, that didn't have any potential paths leading away from it. What I mean by that is, at no point did the adventure feel open ended, or so wide that I had to describe specifically what the players should and shouldn't focus on. This meant that all the time I spent DMing was taken up describing what the *players* asked about, as opposed to what I needed them to focus on. This differs a lot to the last few adventures I've played, which required me to describe what was important, and leave less important bits on the floor. I think this improves the adventure because it lets players and characters get closer to each other emotionally. If you are having to act as your character who just happens to only be interested in the plot relevant stuff the DM has talked about, while also having to pretend as your character that there is a whole world out there unrelated to the plot that you just aren't focusing on right now, I think you feel detached from your character a little more. Their problems aren't really your problems, they're the problems the DM has given you. But when you and your character work in tandem. When their issues match your issues by way of there's no "pretending theres a greater world" out there, that strengthens the player's bond with their character, and thus, their engagement.
Also, the structure of the module, from "beginning bit" to "major puzzle bit with some encounters" to "big end battle to go out on a high" I think worked really well. I know a lot of AL modules are laid out like that, but this is where I felt it the clearest for sure. I'd like to remember that pacing and use it again, see if it fits on other adventures that advertise the same structure. I wanna know if this one was just very cleanly put together, or if I just happened to nail a pacing that can be used again and again.

I did a few times have to check the module for names of places and stuff, which I remember talking about last time. I really do think it detracts just a tiny bit from the facade you try to put on as a DM, which is that this is a real extant world, and that you are merely describing things which are true, as opposed to reading off a sheet of notes. But my biggest blunders in checking my notes was when a combat encounter or specific scene would suddenly arrive, and I would pause the game for like a full minute to essentially throw up a loading screen whislt I refreshed myself on the details. This really breaks the immersion, and in the times it happened most recently, even broke the flow of play, which I think is a big nono. Perhaps I will not be able to completely memorise the entire module and recall it with absolute clarity, buut, I did have the idea of creating Encounter Flash Cards that I can use to look at and download all the relevant info into my brain really quickly. That way, when an encounter arrives, Ill just check the flash card for motivations, enemy numbers positions or environmental points of interest, and then rocket into the encounter. Checking info like monster stats along the way. Maybe the flash cards can even have the monster stats (and name of encounter) on the reverse side, so all that information is really quickly referencable. I'll try do this for my next game and report back how it goes.

discussion of players

As good an idea as I thought they were, the relationship roles just aren't working. The point of them is to build camraderie and rapport between the players, and get everyone engaging on a deeper level than "we're a bunch of adventurers who happen to be in the same room today". But as much as people seem to enjoy coming up with stories at the beginning, I'm finding that those relationships aren't being referenced throughout the module. I will say that I did try to reference back to a particular relationship roll, but neither player who was involved it it reacted very strongly. I will mention that the relationship rolls of this session did happen to revolve around one of the players becoming the leader and lynchpin to the group, and some players did reference this throughout the game. But it wasn't something I actively set up, like, if memory serves the roll description was something like "you brought someone else into the group, who was it and why". I'll have to think about why that happened that a little more.
I do want to brainstorm a few other ideas for making this concept of speedrunning-a-campaigns-worth-of-relationships-in-five-rolls-at-the-start-of-the-module, but one I came up with was about my other guiding light, Character Obsession. Fundamentally, this AL group is a bunch of strangers coming together to play a game, and why would they care about a bunch of strangers characters? They do however - understandably - care about their own. In my next bout of what I should start calling "opening rolls" or "character rolls" (that 2nd one is kinda cute I just came up with that), I'm going to ask questions about the characters themselves, and frame them as something like "tell us a story about your character, that your character would have told the group during your travels". I want to see if this a) more individual character focused and b) more passive way of inviting interaction, makes a difference on the camraderie between players, and see if people reference these stories (be it the player who told it or the players who heard it). And maybe even add a question into my questionare about other people's characters (although thats a spoiler for later). Also, last point on relationship roles. MAKE SURE YOU ARE DOING THEM AFTER EVERYONE HAS BEEN INTRODUCED. I think I have been doing this, but I cannot for the life of me remember. Just in case I haven't, I've written that in all caps.

A little bit of good news, I think I did a much better job of getting obsessed with the players characters this time around. I really got into their silly moments, like when our plasmoid Dollop (great name) found 50 gold inside a locked chest and slotted them out one by one, and their serious motivations, our Tiefling Monk attempted in every fight not to initiate violence, and I had a bit of an RP moment with them with someone who thought that was pathetic, and I hope it steeled our Monk's resolve. I even got in a few 'I feel like x is a lot like y, so they're feeling z.' which I think is key to getting obsessed with the player characters. I'm pretty sure I've spoken about the importance of this already, but this not only helps them getting into the adventure, but seriously keeps my energy up as a DM. And on that note about energy, the fact that I have completely changed the layout of this post is basically down to the fact that all I have to say about "consistency of energy" is that I managed to keep it up really well. I was even so good about it that I felt myself getting a little lower and called my 10 minute break then and there to not get to overloaded or burnt out all of a sudden. This allowed me to return to the game with a renewed sense of excitement. And thats it. Clearly worth the format change.

Finally, but a pretty big one for a finally, I am 1000% going to do questionares at the end of these sessions. I think there is no better way to find out how the players are feeling than to ask them directly themselves. BUT. I have been doing a lot of thinking about this, because just asking for direct feedback is not going to work. I know this because I was a player in a game I actually didn't like recently, and when asked what I thought about the experience, what do you think I said? Of course it was "yeah that shit was great I loved it". When players look to a DM, I think most of the time they are aware of the work the DM puts in, and what a seemingly big sacrifice they have made by being the DM (this probably stems from the fact that a lot of people see being the DM as a necessary evil, when we know thats not the case) and of course they don't want to give actual critique, they want to be nice to the person who was so nice to them. So I will be devising a cunning plan to weasel true critique out of these innocent players... in the form of... POSITIVE QUESTIONS. Yes thats right, I'll ask them about all the stuff they liked and were excited by and remember the best, and structure those questions in such a way to expose potential weak links. This is gonna require a LOT of thinking and a LOT of planning, but I reckon that the data I gain from doing something like this will be worth its weight in gold. Currently I'm working on a list of very specific info I want, and then will be transforming that into my list of positive questions for the questionare. Maybe I'll even scan in a copy and post it up here! Just as an example.

There was one outright moment of confusion among players based on mechanics I had introduced, and that was a failing of the In and Out system. I don't know if I've spoken about this before, but in short, its a way to sort out DnD combat without a battlemap. Essentially it works by describing players and enemies as "in it" and "out of it" with anyone "in it" being within melee range of each other, and anyone "out of it" needing to use their movement to get into it, or being able to attack from range. This works for most abilities fine, but in this particular example a player wanted to fight a ranged attacker that was 'out of it' who was sort of rolled 'into it' without any movement being expelled. I think this constitutes a new, simple rule to add to this abstraction, that being a "one on one". As in, if a player is in a one on one, they are out of it compared to everyone else, but if more people or enemies join in there, then it creates... another instance of in it? I don't think so. I think enemies who are out of it don't interact with a one on one, and more than one player (but not the majority of players) being in a one on one doesn't change that it's not 'in it'. Hopefully that solves this issue, but I'd like to do some more brainstorming to sort this out once and for all, and have a simple and straightforward system that continues to make battlemaps utterly pointless for me, how I like it.

Aand thats it. I have my next AL game coming up next week so I'll be sure to try take plenty of notes for that, as well as prepare all my extras. I might even have to invest in a folder instead of carrying around a bulldog clipped together ream of paper. Either way, this feels really important in my journey to becoming a really, really, really good DM. See you next week.

20241119 - Life's A Party

I think the way to talk about this session is to recount what happened, and then as we go through the adventure, take some asides to discuss some important blog points. Not only will this make it easier for me to recall, but also I think it might make a better reading experience.

So without further ado,
We find our heroes on their way through the City of Hillsfar to Bert's Potion Shop, home to a wealthy goblin potion maker who's hosting a celebration for 10 years without the "Great Law of Humanity", allowing non-humans such as himself to own land and operate business in the greater Hillsfar area. He has tasked our heroes with five tasks, to collect fireworks, ale, pastries, and a fancy ring, as well as hand delivering an invitation to Captain Wyatt whom he doesn't know the location of, but prompts the heroes to ask around. All of this is to be done before the celebrations begin at 6pm (its 9am currently). Now Bert doesn't specify an order to these tasks on purpose, though there certainly is an order they have to be done in. This is mostly because Bert is a mischevious guy, but in theory it serves the makings of a great puzzle and an even greater Adventurers League Module.

Now I'm gonna use this chance to talk about AL one-shots, because I think there is a winning formula to them. I've spoken about this earlier, but AL Modules don't have time to let the players wander. Everything even merely mentioned must work towards a cohesive whole. The best one shots are like four hour puzzles that the players work on throughout the session, with each combat and roleplay encounter and riddle working toward the solution. And this module (after some rewrites and cuts) does that to a tee. You see, the players have 5 activities to complete, all of which must be performed in a specific order. And they only have a limited amount of time to do it all in. Ideally, our players figure out there is a specific order partway through using up their time before the party, and then they have to plan the rest of their movements carefully to solve everything just in time. So they slowly realise that these are not disconnected events, but really, one large interlocking puzzle! Now admittedly, in the as-written module there were not all so joined together, but surely you can see the vision of something so cool and perfect. (which, side note open letter to all AL writers, you should start stating your intent for a module IN THE MODULE. this is not a story you are writing it is a technical document for delivering a performance. guh!) How well this panned out is up for debate, although I'm not sure if I was expecting players to drop an "OMG I GET IT" moment at the catch there.

Unable to discern Wyatt's location from random citizens, although learning the fact that he is crushing on Lady Eckermann, they head to her estate first. A bit of roleplay teaches them that Eckermann did not receive an invite, and after opening up Wyatt's letter in front of her, shows that he has a special envelope which allows a plus one. The players cleverly and quickly deduce Bert's little joke to get Wyatt and Eckermann to the party together, and they leave with pastries in hand.

Another quick note before we continue, building on that "no room for wandering" point I made earlier. In the module as-written there is a whole love triangle between Eckermann, Wyatt, and another bloke who also happens to be Bert's rival and a racist to non-humans. But this third wheel literally never comes up in the story outside of those details as well as the party at the end of the module. For the sake of focus (as well as my mental load) I cut this plot out completely, as well as cutting out the party and a lot of excess characters and recurring bits. And herein lies a huge difference between DMing for AL vs DMing for a campaign. In a campaign, the DM has the room and the time to put in a bunch of self referential characters and side stories. God knows I love doing that to keep myself entertained. But in a one-shot there is *no time for that shit*. Even with major characters. Major characters here are puzzle pieces first, and then are fleshed out to support that puzzle. And if you absolutely must have Toguro prefer orange juice, keep the details light. This love triangle had no relevance and the time taken to explain it and act it out is much better spent on things the heroes actually care about, which in this case surprisingly was a horse's obsession with oats.

Next they made their way to the brewery House of Happyness (still looking for Wyatt) only to find they could not collect the ale without proof of Bert's trust (implied strongly to be the ring). And it was around this point where the players figured out there was a real order to the steps. But they managed to discover a clue to Wyatt's location from the brewer, as well as deciding that Wyatt would help their case in collecting the ring from the bank. So they arrived at the Temple to Tempur where they accosted the stand-in Acolyte there, unearthing his underground fighting club. It had been a lot of roleplay up to this point, so finding a place to fight excited both characters and players alike. Here, they had to fight their way through two challengers to challenge the reigning champion Wyatt, whereupon they planned to give him the letter.

One of our players (who I have played with before and knew their style) took the lead and jumped into the ring. As much as I appreciate taking the initiative, this player had been doing a lot of pushing the narrative forward, and we had another player who hadn't yet gotten a big win, so with a few lucky rolls and some upped stats on the second challenger, that player was knocked out of the fight, paving the way for that quieter player to demolish his two opponents and enjoy a fun performative fight throw with Wyatt. Its this kind of on my feet thinking I really pride myself on, as well as sharing the spotlight around like that. I admit that my micro spotlight sharing could use a lot of work, but in the macro, I was very proud of how this played out.

Moving on to the bank, they solved a math puzzle to retrieve the ring, providing a nice lull in the action before going on to collect the ale and then fireworks through one more fight. I will say that there was supposed to be some kinda puzzle in the queue to the bank, and whilst I found the idea of a solution to a puzzle being *spending* time in a macro puzzle about *saving* time, it proved to be a little too obtuse to be any real fun, and certainly could've been cut. This is also when a selection of players split off to collect the fireworks, and found out about that blacksmiths ale requriement, thus locking into place the order of events needed. Collecting the fireworks through a den of spiders that had taken up residence in a garden shed worked well as a proper bit of combat for the players. The whole thing really lasted around 5 or 6 rounds, which is perfect in my book. It was also just the right amount of stressful as people took damage and fell unconcious. After this, our heroes returned to the party with about three hours to spare, and I described the narrative of the party being good and their matchmaking skills paying off, as well as a joke from Bert about mixing up the order of things.

There is a lot more to talk about about the specifics of this module. The overreliance on text boxes to read out, the absoluteley inane number of if-then statements for responses to specific actions the heroes could do or say (just trust I can improv dammit) as well as the whole final act being simply bumming around a party. But despite that the possibility of this module and what it can teach us about AL modules as a whole I think is immensely valuable.

I'm so glad to have written this, and I'm so glad to be back in the saddle of DMing. Hopefully there are many more of these to come at a more frequent rate.