What Went Wrong?

As I said in my previous post, "The Mists of Lamordia" has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start. I'm hopeful it can recover, since I have a fairly clear idea of what to do with it, but the question remains: what went wrong? And, more importantly, what should I do differently in future?

I think the problem is really threefold:

Lack of Action

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. In a dungeon design, most rooms will feature some sort of an encounter. In a mystery adventure, the dungeon rooms are replaced by the nodes of the investigation. Consequently, most of these should also feature some sort of an encouter. Unfortunately, while I did a good job of constructing the mystery, I neglected to insert appropriate encounters.

An Urban Mystery as the First Adventure

That said, I'm inclined to think it was a mistake to use an urban mystery as the first adventure. I would probably have been better to insert a more combat-based adventure, ideally in a wilderness/dungeon setting, prior to reaching the town. (And then using the mystery. It's not a bad adventure; it's just the wrong adventure at this time.)

I think a key part of the problem here is that PCs act differently in a 'civilised' region than in the wilds - in a dungeon they're happy to kick in the door, kill things, and take their stuff; in a city they're much more aware of social nuance and less prone to those decisive actions.

(That said, maybe one of the things I should have noted up-front is that while they're in a 'civilised' region, it's not that civilised. And, indeed, part of the joy of being a PC is the opportunity to be Batman, Dirty Harry, or other not-quite-legitimate authorities. So, actually, it is appropriate for them to throw their weight around. Even though, or perhaps especially because, it's not something they would ever do in reality.)

Anyway, I digress. Basically, I think I went for the wrong adventure at the wrong time.

Lack of Investigation Skills

One of the things I really considered, and then decided against, was advising the players that there is a set of knowledge/investigation skills in the game (Arcana, History, Investigation, Medicine, Nature, and Religion; and to a lesser extent Deception, Intimidation, Perception, and Persuasion), and that it would have been really useful if they'd tried to have someone with proficiency in each of these.

Making sure they collectively had a grounding in these subjects would have gone quite a long way to helping get information into their hands, and information is absolutely key to dealing with a mystery adventure. (And since the entire campaign is, to an extent, one big mystery adventure, that's a bit of a weakness!) As it is, the party is well versed in a few of these, but sorely lacking in several others.

Still, I might have a quiet word with a few people, and maybe suggest some gentle tweaking of the skills list to help cover the bases. And I'll also make sure to provide more information associated with the areas they're strong on than I otherwise might.

All in All...

I think perhaps the biggest problem is perhaps one of improperly set assumptions - given that I didn't mention that it would be good to have coverage of some specific skills, they didn't realise the benefit of doing so; and given that it's entirely realistic for people to operate differently in a 'civilised' region than an untamed wilderness, of course they did exactly that.

For next time, then, the main thing that I need to do is to properly set expectations. Where there are particular skills that would be especially useful, these should be flagged up. Where there are things that are counter-intuitive, it wouldn't hurt to actually mention these. And so on and so forth.

And, yes, run an initial adventure somewhere suitably isolated, so the party get to know their own skills and interactions before they have to deal with a whole world!