I recently ran through the whole catalogue of The Lazy DM's (Mike Shea) "DM's Deep Dive" podcast and the topic of Episode 3 got me thinking a bit. Shea was talking with that episode's guest Shawn Merwin- and the topic was "how to run the most effective 1 hour adventure." Within their discussion they started talking about how to run a game with the time constraints of a convention (like through the Adventurer's League). They iterated a few items that make for a less than good convention Dungeonmaster- and I realized that I had experienced some of these bad tactics in my first and only AL game.
At Garycon X, my friend and I wandered about the sea of tables looking for the appropriately labelled one for the first part of City on the Edge. In the farthest corner of the room someone was facedown on the tablecloth- not looking up or acknowledging that other humans had come into proximity. Unfortunately, after searching around a bit more we determined that this table was flagged as the table for this particular session and slot. I didn't want to sit down at this table and risk disturbing this seemingly exhausted fellow con-goer, but I didn't want to miss my chance to grab a seat for the game. We sat down and started getting ready for a game and they soon lifted up and started doing the same.
Over the next 10-15 minutes more people came over, grabbed seats, chatted, and shuffled around materials gaming- but at no point did one of this assembly say "I'm So-and-So and I'll be your DM today. This table is for Such-and-Such adventure..." I didn't realize that the aforementioned facedown con-goer was running the game until they started referencing the printed adventure in front of them. They didn't have the bearing or trappings of a DM that almost every other table seemed to have- no screen, or battle mat, or minis (alright maybe only of those three things is emblematic of a DM, but it seemed like they were just ill-prepared).
"The first thing I will do is take control of the table. I will be the first one to speak at the table and it will usually be... 'Oh, hey thanks for coming. Thanks for playing' ... Start by taking control of the action at the table..." -Shawn Merwin
The adventure was off to a dash action, but I quickly found- after the introductory paragraph explaining what quest giver needed us to accomplish what objective- that I was not tracking the narrative very well. If this was supposed to be theater of the mind, then I would have liked it to be much more descriptive- and I don't fault the written adventure because it seems like boxes of flavor text were just being skipped.
We were told that we were approaching the entrance to a smuggler's hideout and asked to roll perception. There was a cave entrance with a few bandits standing watch, but there wasn't any description of how far we were from the enemy or what the scenery really was. I was fairly certain that we were in the jungles of Chult, but after a dull combat encounter full of things like: "You miss" / "Take 8 damage" / "They made their save" / and other non-descriptions- I said "We should hide the bodies in the undergrowth of something and maybe move elsewhere for a short rest." It was then clarified by the DM that we weren't in a jungle, but instead that this was (apparently I guess) right by the docks of Nyanzaru... I guess whatever passes for the harbor watch in Chult is pretty lasseiz-faire when it comes to murder in broad daylight.
"... starting the game reading the little box text slowly, calmly..." -Shawn Merwin (on pacing)
"Don't skip over sections of flavor text wholesale unless you are going to summarize or alter the description. If you're going to attempt to run a game theater of the mind- you need to describe combat and the field of battle with at least enough detail that your players can follow along." - Critthulhu (on this DM shortcoming)
After a brief dungeon crawl we came to what should have been the boss fight for the adventure: On the other side of a set of double doors there were some more bandits and a tabaxi standing at the top of a staircase headed down. I asked "What is the tabaxi wearing? Leather armor like all the others?" which thankfully got the info for the table that in fact no this cat-man was wearing robes. "A caster? Alright let's target him first."
A few short rounds of combat later the tabaxi was dead and (even though we had time left in the slot) the DM declared that we would win and that we should just call it there for the adventure. These bandits were brutal during our first encounter. They dropped 1 or 2 PCs to unconsciousness and ate up precious few low-level resources- I'm not sure that you should just handwave combat with them like they were some sort of Challenge 1/8 woodland critters.
"I absolutely effing hate it when DMs say 'We're going to call the combat right here...' Nothing breaks my immersion faster than the DM stepping out of the camera- usually at the middle part of- where the peak of the battle is just breaking out..." - Mike Shea
DM: "You find an egg that you know will hatch into a baby raptor, X gold pieces, and a potion of healing. If you can agree who gets what that's fine otherwise roll for it." That's pretty much how the session ended.
Where did we find this loot? What was down the stairs that lie beyond the cat-man we slew? What did the quest giver say when we returned? What more did we learn about the note that we found at the start of the dungeon delve? Why would I want to play 1-2 City on the Edge?
I felt unsatisfied not having the answers to any of these questions. Session over. Write down your rewards and go about the con. I won the roll off for the healing potion, but that was really the highlight of the experience.
This adventure is up on the DM's Guild for $4. Maybe I should buy it and see what I missed out on?
