Vampire battle

[ralphmelton]

Tonight is the big vampire battle in my D&D game. I feel pretty well prepared. Hopefully, I'll still feel afterwards that I was adequately prepared.

I've been obsessing about this for a month now. Really obsessing, to the point that my thoughts drift to that in the middle of other conversation. I wonder if I'll be able to stop obsessing about it after tonight. :-/

The good news is that my players are clearly pretty engaged with the game. There have been at least a hundred messages about battle plans on the game mailing list. These have included some nice bits of roleplaying and character development, as well. I've enjoyed reading about Kyle's moodiness, Turok's brooding about the thought of becoming a vampire, and Larissa's emotional preparations. Even some of the ghosts NPCs have gotten more of a personality, including Charlos' reckless dedication and Delyan's extreme bitterness.

And some of the players are very worried about the outcome, which is another sign of being engaged.

What I want most is for the battle to be exciting. I do care about whether the PCs win or lose, certainly, but I care more about having the players on the edge of their seats. What I fear most, on the flip side, is an easy victory. If the PCs can win this battle easily, then it probably means that I basically won't be able to threaten them in this campaign. (In which case, it's probably for the best for them to make such a major step towards ending the campaign.)

If the players don't win a complete victory, on the other hand, it's likely to change the course of the game very substantially. This will probably mean lots of new topics for me to obsess over. :-)

Comments

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Is this a face-to-face game? 'Cos if it is, I'd like to know more about the mailing list and the uses it has.

If it's not... ah hell, tell me anyway.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

It is a face-to-face game. But everyone has e-mail, and mailing lists are handy.

Most sessions, the list gets used for 'game on Thursday, please get sandwiches as usual.'

For some sessions, like this one, it gets used for an orgy of planning. I just refiled 136 messages to my 'game messages' folder from the last two weeks. Not all of those where from the mailing list, but almost all of them were provoked by stuff on the mailing list. That mail has been full of tactical planning, rules questions and judgments, and a bit of characterization of some of the NPCs.

There's also an LJ for the game, at ralph_dnd. I meant to have episode summaries in that journal, but I've been negligent there. I've got a few posts of rulesy stuff, but most of the posts are cellio's wonderful posts of her character's IC journal.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Strikes me that mailing lists could be useful for my campaigns. Neither of them feature that level of planning, but there's definitely room for better organization that way.

Must ponder this.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I'd certainly recommend it. But then, I'd recommend it even if it's only used for 'Reminder, game on Thursday', because it's easy to make one.

But it was pretty key for talking about the planning; without it, my players would probably still be discussing plans.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

The organization thing would be hugely useful, yes.

And I could see it being handy for character development, too.

I shiver, with antici-

[sethcohen.livejournal.com]

I look forward to reading about the results.

[jeliza]

I must admit, that if I see things heading toward an easy victory that shouldn't be, I am quite willing to use the mighty power of the DM to decree that sometimes, the dice I roll are not the dice I roll (gm screens are nice for this) -- if the NPC really needs to not get a critical failure, numbers magically adjust. The same for some close calls on PC rolls - if they don't know the difficulty in advance, point-shaving can restore tension to a cake walk.

I think you should throw in the housecat, too.