Bogged Down

I mentioned in my previous post that I had made a mistake in "A Quest for Memory".

The problem is fairly simple: I built up to the first crucible, locked the PCs into the dungeon... and then the whole thing bogged down. They've reached a point where they're on hostile terms with all the factions within the dungeon, so now it's a case of explore a bit/fight/explore a bit/fight/repeat. There's not a huge amount of interest left there, I could really use an opportunity to organically write one of the characters out, but because they're locked in we're all somewhat stuck.

There are two big lessons to learn from that:

Firstly, don't lock the PCs into a location for very long. Keep the crucibles short!

Secondly, make sure there's plenty of interesting things within the dungeon, so that even if the PCs do get locked in the whole thing is less likely to come to a grinding halt.

As regards the current campaign, the way forward is relatively straightforward now - cut a lot of the unseen material (or at least gloss over it) so that the PCs get out of the crucible and on to more interesting things as quickly as possible. That feels like a bit of a cheat, but on the other hand it's preferable to spending another six sessions stuck.