All my whinging today about D&D and online play aside, I really wanted to share about my recent experience from this weekend, with a gigantic lore dump of exposition about the campaign, first. Y’all were forewarned :) I’ll, uh, toss a line break in when I get to my actual session, hahaha
Origins of the Big D&D Campaign
So, I’ve talked quite a bit before about Raleigh Tabletop RPGs’ Semi-Organized Play campaign format – multiple GMs collaboratively build a setting/work out a plot/write sessions within that structure, then run 2-4 tables simultaneously each session that players sign up for based on which ones sound interesting to their characters (so a big group of PCs get mixed and matched every week), all to tell a short-length story over the course of 3 IRL months, then wrap it up with a big cool finale, and hopefully bring that setting back the next year if it was well-liked.
For years, a defining trait of the program was that we didn’t really have a traditional d20-based fantasy game. I mean, first and foremost, Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurer’s League kinda fill that niche already (albeit without structured “season” arcs and the metagame elements our SOPs include like building up team bases or befriending longterm NPC allies). But also, RTR is pretty heavily on the “indie RPGs and horror games” side of the TTRPG spectrum, so, our initial forays were in systems like Chronicles of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu, and has variously included options like Fate, Mouse Guard, and Mutants & Masterminds over the years.
But, hey, it turns out, if you’re the first google result for “raleigh dnd group” or whatever, newcomers pouring into the hobby via things like Critical Role, The Adventure Zone, Stranger Things, etc., want some D&D, man. So, a couple of years ago, leadership pulled together a team to develop a D&D 5E SOP.
That was spearheaded by my good buddy Justin, who I’ve described before as my favorite GM ever, and certainly the most talented at the craft I’ve ever played with directly. He was showrunner for one of our most popular SOPs and a cornerstone GM for a few others besides over the years; definitely a pro at that development process.
Then, right in the middle of the planning stages, Covid hit, and the team splintered. Justin rebuilt it with one of the remaining GMs, backing away to more of an advisory role due to some health issues. Eventually, he had to step away from RTR entirely, but not before he’d helped build out a really compelling, cool “smalltown level 1” type setting for the players to run around in for Season 1, which wound up running with a small team of GMs last spring. They had a ton of interest – way more than the diminished team could really fulfill with just 2-3 tables of 5 players a week – including a lot of new people, a couple of whom have stuck around and become good community members, and in general, I think it was very successful. People loved the worldbuilding and cool high fantasy shenanigans, and the fact that it was a little bit of a crunchier system than what we usually run.
In Which Mando Joins Up And Doesn’t Know What He’s Gotten Himself Into
For various reasons, I found myself with an opening in my calendar this year, and heard that the team for that game, called A Dream, Awakened, was kinda struggling with another member having to drop out due to a newborn, so I offered my services as a mercenary drop-in DM in late January. The season was set to start in early April, so I figured, hey, they’ve got most of it done by now, but I can run some tables they don’t have a warm body to sit in for to help fulfill demand. The showrunner was very glad for the offer and pulled me in right away.
And, uh, oh buddy. Seems like since last year’s season, not a ton of work had happened. In pursuing a lingering mystery from the end of last season, the PCs were set to strike out for the capital city, leaving behind their small town lives, so this was gonna be a whole new setting, and apart from a couple-page doc (of which 25% was just a big, unlabeled map, lol), there was basically nothing in their shared Google Drive about the new city, Evershoal. And an extremely vague multi-season outline of a possible story, with no real details about the driving conflict for Season 2. From the sound of it, the showrunner there preferred to run a very loose ship, trusting each DM to run a good session on any given week without a ton of central guidance, which is pretty unusual within the SOP program.
Now, that – obviously – made me nervous. Worse, I was a total newcomer here in more ways than one. I didn’t play last year – I preferred to leave the limited RSVP slots to newcomers. I didn’t run last year, either, obviously. So, I had very little idea what had happened that might influence things to come in S2. One of the really nice things about the SOP program is that the campaign can acknowledge individual character accomplishments and relationships in ways that, say, Adventurer’s League really can’t. Not knowing any of these characters or what they’d been up to, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make the world feel responsive to them and when I checked the team’s “PC Information” spreadsheet, like 60-70% of the fields in it for things like “backstory connections” and “character background” were left blank. Oh buddy.
Doing Way Too Much Work No One Else Bothered With/Wanted
So, in a fit of moderate anxiety combined with avoiding really unpleasant work commitments I didn’t want to think about, I started writing. Like, a LOT. And I’d keep checking in with the other guys on the team – hey, does our big bad have any lieutenants yet? any henchmen he’s using to make his plans work? what about the secret society of watchdogs that the players are being recruited by – do we have any established NPCs for them? a home base they operate from? – but generally speaking, the answer was always, “Nope, we haven’t thought about that.”
Now, thankfully, we had a couple of productive webconference meetings in February and March to flesh out the season storyline a little more, and I got the Showrunner to write us a nice little doc on “what would happen if the PCs never interfered” to kinda give us the 10,000 foot view of the villains’ plans. That revealed some really cool potential political intrigues going on here, which is great for “the big fantasy city” season of our D&D game. And the ideas other DMs pitched for possible sessions to fit into that milieu were really cool and flavorful, and we hashed out some fun connections between them to tie things together more, creating a more cohesive whole to work from.
But, still, I wound up writing out more or less the entire setting doc of NPCs, enemies, locations, and organizations. Checked in with Season 1 players to help tie in elements where I could – the temple of Moradin one armorer had trained in in the big city, the criminal gang that had betrayed another one when he worked as a fence, the theater company that had kicked another out for being a self-centered jerk. Even went so far as to record a video RP guide for some of the major NPCs, so we could all be on the same page when portraying them to players each week.
And then, ugh, there’s 5E GMing. I ran Pathfinder 1E for years in one-shots and a campaign alike. I had a few abortive attempts at starting 3E and 4E games many years ago when I was much younger, but nothing that lasted more than a session or two. And it’s been years since I was running PF. Mind, I play in a 5E campaign, and have been in a few more besides. How hard could it be? Cue a few weeks of consuming a fuckload of 5E-focused Youtube content. Jesus lord are there a lot of insufferable-ass dudes yelling about 5E on the internet, haha.
Then, hey, we’re still online in RTR’s public games, so, hell, gotta figure out 5E via Roll20. I tend to run very theater-of-the-mind-y games, but wanting to engage with the system as it intends, I knew I wanted to have some fights in my sessions, and wanted to use stuff like grid-maps to let the more munchkin-y players get all their neato ruler-requiring jollies. God, crafting a 5E NPC/monster is so much more draining than Fate or PbtA. Nevermind that all of my 5E investment was in D&D Beyond (no more room for physical books in my house, lol), so I was stuck relying on basic OGL Compendium content within roll20 unless I wanted to figure out how to dump in monster stats from the 5E books I “own” in Beyond. And of course bugging people to get me character art for tokens, setting up a good safety tools deck, making a nice little playsheet for scenes without combat. . . I’m actually pretty proud of how this looked!
The Game Itself
First, some gratuitous VTT porn.
The Inspired token is actually a Roll20 “deck” so the cards can be flipped from side to side to reflect who’s got Inspiration. Players write in their own Traits in their card areas; the rest of the text is largely baked in.
Hello yes I totally ripped off Gilmore’s from CritRole C1. Also check out them snazzy modified Compendium baddies + the entries for every active player in the campaign!
lol even more NPCs and location handouts
Anyway, I ran my first session last Friday night for five players – 3 Rogues and 2 Warlocks, one of whom acts like a Rogue (the other’s a magical girl, yay). Three were returning from last year – Mari the magical girl, Quincy the failed fence, and Farrival the disgraced actor – and two were newbies to the campaign and the group as a whole – Rolen, the tragically orphaned former noble, and Frederick, the city-guard-turned-smalltown-PI who’d come back into town to solve the murder of his former mentor.
The premise was pretty straightforward. The Harpies (totally not The Harpers), the secret society of brave souls that safeguards the micronation of Hallea against threats domestic and intraplanar, were not entirely prepared for like 16 randos from the middle of nowhere to show up on their doorstep looking to help investigate the nefarious machinations of Elliot Staten, preeminent Evershoal businessman. As in, their safehouse, the Celaeno House in the city’s dark and gritty Underhang district, was completely out of food stores and, more importantly, coffee.
Luckily, there was a mostly reputable merchant/smuggler/fence down by the docks who’d always cut them good deals in the past, but he’d mysteriously vanished a few days ago, so, two birds with one stone, they sent the PCs out to restock supplies and find the missing merchant.
They stumbled and bumbled into an ongoing gang turf war down by the docks, as outside interests had paid off enforcers to centralize control of the criminal underworld there for as-of-yet unknown reasons, and Elliot Strangford, the Harpies’ favored shopkeep, was holding out against the violent advances of the infamous Read Nell gang, run by equally infamously illiterate ex-librarian-turned-gangster Nell.
The party managed to break into his fortified magic shop despite Rolen faceplanting onto the street outside from a second-story window, snuck past his protective enchantments, and convinced him they were on his side, then sent out Farrival the actor dressed up as Strangford to lure the Read Nells into a nearby alleyway for an ambush. Well, until he rolled double-nat-1’s on his Performance check and failed to convince about half the gang he was the real article (mind, between Proficiency, Expertise, and a Disguise Self spell, it was still pretty effective even with the 1s), so, cue a two-pronged fight as half the thugs walked into the alleyway trap and the other half started axing down Strangford’s front door.
It was pretty thrilling and we had some real close calls – Quincy nearly got his head bit off by Nell’s beloved pet panther Gettem and had to action-roll off the side of a roof to get away safely, and Frederick was slinging crossbow bolts and insults like Strangford’s life depended on it to keep the gang distracted. The party managed to eventually down most of the gang members and even the big scary cat, but Mari the magical girl felt bad and magically healed Gettem back to consciousness, then befriended her with the help of her own familiar, Orion the pseuodragon and a rubber bouncy ball.
Nell, recognizing his number was up with most of his gang dead or scattered and his beloved kitty playing with the enemy, gave up and helped them get the drop on the nasty enforcer pulling the strings on the docks. She coughed up the name Staten before begging to be allowed to skip town before she got off’ed for giving up her secret boss.
The party chased down a few personal leads – Rolen’s got the name of another noble family mixed up in courtly intrigues like the ones that got his parents killed (???); Frederick’s got the name of a dirty Slatebearer (city guard) who was bragging about covering up his mentor’s death; Farrival’s got a new best friend/frenemy/crush(???) in Strangford; and Mari’s now a serving girl at a local tavern run by Linthel Dannisin, an elf who bears an alarming resemblance to Eeyore, so she can pick up rumors – and then we wrapped up.
The Importance of Player Feedback
All in all, things went really well, apart from one thing. Rolen’s player Jon made a couple of remarks in the vein of “I’m going to do everything I can to protect Mari, because she’s so pretty I just can’t help myself!” despite the fact that the healer-Warlock was probably the most combat-capable person at the table with her 17 AC, 40 HP, and 2 1d10+4 eldritch blasts a round. Apparently while I was away during a break, he kept pushing that point OOC, too, in a way that felt a little creepy.
In the SOP program, we always do a post-game survey with our players to collect feedback and shape the rest of the season, and I’m honestly super proud that, in addition to Mari’s (female) player, two of the other guys at the table also noted in their feedback that Rolen’s behavior made them uncomfortable and they’d like us to talk to that player.
Luckily, dude was super receptive to feedback, felt absolutely horrible about how he’d come across, and agreed to tweak his character and behavior alike going forward to, you know, treat female characters like people instead of fainting daisies, and I think we’re gonna be all good there.
Players have been following up on leads all weekend long in our group Discord server, and the other DMs are jumping in with their own clues and foreshadowing for future sessions they’re gonna run now – everyone’s energy levels are super high! – and it’s feeling like all that anxiety-inducing work I did to try to get things in a better place might have actually paid off. People loved the NPCs and new setting and weren’t sad at all to have left their smalltown origins from Season 1 behind (though they can always write letters home for Inspiration points, if they want).
So, to brag a little, gonna drop some of the feedback that really, really made my night.
And the kicker at the very end:
I’m on the hook for a couple more sessions this season – a classic dinner party with the nobility drenched in intrigues and plotting, and a daring high-stakes heist mission aboard the huge steampunk cable cars that carry people and goods up the 1,500 ft cliffs looming over the undercity – and gotta say I’m really, really excited to see what comes next :D