So, after all my elaborate thought and preparation, as well as a couple of "really good ideas" I thought I had, last night's session turned out to be largely mediocre. There was still fun to be had, but it was fun generated by the players bouncing off one another, rather than due to any brilliance in adventure design - with another group, that session could well have sucked.
What went wrong?
Well, I think there were four things:
- Firstly, there turned out to be a single "right" answer to the puzzle - repair the ring first, then as much of the hull as can be done quickly, and then leave. Oh, and don't bother releasing the elemental, because it's nigh-impossible to restrain it once that's done, and it's the difference between 4 hours work and 8.
- Secondly, it turned out that they just had too many resources for the job. So it wasn't really a choice between "work quickly" or "maintain security" - they could do both. Oops.
- Thirdly, the random encounter table, small as it was, was a mistake. I had a couple of encounters in mind, and then filled out the table with some other stuff; sure enough, it was the "other stuff" that came up. Additionally, I need to learn to ignore 3e's theory that 16-18 orcs makes for a valid encounter for 8th level PCs - in fact, it requires hundreds of orcs to be a valid challenge. (However, the Ettins did rather better.)
- Fourthly, I did a fairly bad job of changing the situation as things unfolded. So, they worked on the ring, and faced an encounter. Then they finished off the ring, and faced an encounter. Then they worked on the full, and faced an encounter. And then they left.
Fortunately, as noted above, the session was a success despite these weaknesses. But I was left rather dissatisfied. I'll need to revisit this topic, because there will be more challenges in a similar vein coming up and I want to do a better job, and also because I hope to have some significant non-combat stuff in Nutshell, which means solving this same problem.
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