WEEKLY GAMES RECAP - 1st Entry, Welcome!
Hail Adventurers and welcome to The Maze!
I finally decided to launch a website for showcasing my paid TTRPG session recaps, sharing pictures of our table, the heroic deeds of my players, and share insights and advise with all of you. I would love for this to be an open forum to share our love of tabletop roleplaying games, share advise on running games, and to tell the stories of what got us all into games like D&D.
Friday, October 11th, 2024
So, I have been running a paid D&D 5E game for nearly 3 years now. I have a group of six players ranging in ages from 29 to 55. Our oldest player got his start in AD&D in the 80s. Our youngest player has only played 5E so we have a pretty wide range of experience, exposure, and expectations. I find that this diversity in players makes for an interesting dynamic at the table and keeps me on my toes as a DM. Each player is unique and brings their own strengths to their characters, from roleplaying, to problem solving, to completely derailing any plans I had for moving the story forward, but that is what makes it all worth it for me as a Dungeon Master. I find that maintaining a loose structure for the direction I would like to see the story go, but giving my players plenty of free rein to take the narrative in a direction they see it going. I hold to the belief that the story unfolds from how the players interact with the world and the NPCs they encounter and it almost always makes for a better tale than I could tell.
Case in point, our game this past Friday. Our merry band of 11th level adventurers are in a dungeon, a series of puzzle rooms, traps, and dangers that was long ago sealed by what appears to have been a faction within the church of Tyr. The doorways have been sealed by both divine and infernal magics. Polaris, the groups Paladin of Vengeance who follows Tyr, has agreed to help a fallen former paladin of his order, now a Death Knight, as he had made an oath to aid his former friend if he had a need. Torn by his oath and his distrust of his corrupted former companion, Polaris has convinced the party to help in this endeavor, though they do not know what this dungeon hides.
The party has made their way past deadly pit traps, hidden pendulum blades, complex puzzles, and a battle with a Death Tyrant. This session they had to make their way past statues that when approached spoke through the use of Magic Mouth spells, telling the party that in order to proceed past barriers of arcane force that blocked their progress they must each sacrifice a personal item that they treasure. I thought that this would cause some debate and consternation amongst the party, but surprisingly they each parted with an item, some I thought a few of them would never give up so long as they drew breath, but with each item the barriers dropped, six in all. As the final wall of energy drops they see a looming, metallic figure, thirty feet tall, blocking the doorway out of the chamber. The Adamantine Golem lumbers to life and the party quickly moves to fight this construct. The golem proves a tough opponent and the party, failing to act in a coordinated manner, have a tough time of it. The Paladin falls to the hammering blows of the golem. The War Cleric of Tiamat is knocked down when a blast of force energy from the golem finds its mark. The Elven wizard, Joran, polymorphs into a Giant Ape, hoping that the strength of his new form may give the party the advantage, but he too falls to the might of the golem, reverting to his true form. The party finally decides to flee to fight another day, darting past the golem and into the open door, which closes behind them leaving the golem pounding on the wall in an effort to get at his foes.
The corridor beyond leads down further into the dungeon, eventually bringing our heroes to a room with a mural on the ceiling of an angel surrounded by doors. This room was a puzzle / riddle room I found online, one where a mirror was needed for the party to see past illusions to find the key to the puzzle, a series of pools on the floor, each with a door at the bottom. Each door held a trap, monster, or portal to another location. Only one of the pools held the true exit out of the room and to the next area where they can make their way to the next room.
This is where it gets a bit.......sticky. What is the cardinal rule of a party playing D&D? "Never split the party". Well, with this group, that rule seems to be unknown. The Trickster Rogue, who is a Revenant (long story that perhaps I will share in a later entry) cannot control his impulsive nature. I will give him credit that he is predictable, but his antics have landed the party in hot water many times and this instance was no exception. The mirror showed him treasure at the bottom of one of the pools just beyond the door. Without a word, acting on selfish impulse, he jumped into the pool. Swimming to the bottom he opened the door and swam into the darkness beyond, unaware that the portal leads to the Elemental Plane of Water. The party waited for some time, trying to message him, sending a familiar into the dark entry all to no avail. Being undead and having no need of air, the Rogue kept swimming ever further into the Plane of Water in search of gold, cut off from his party with no way back.
After more than thirty minutes, and fearful that following the Rogue may lead to their deaths, the party decides to take the true exit from the room to the next chamber, where the Paladin can use his Channel Divinty to open the door to the next chamber. The Druid, Elswyth, refuses to leave the puzzle room, waiting for Wit, the Rogue to return. The rest move to the next room, opening the door. Avi, the Swashbuckler, refuses to go further without Wit or Elswyth. Even as the door was closing she refuses to go. Now the party is split into not two, not three, but four different groups. *Sighs*
So, my question to you all is, what next? I don't want to railroad the party back together. Part of me feels that while the party is free to choose, they are not free from the consequences of their actions. D&D 5E is set up in such a way that it is very difficult for players to die unless the dice are against them or they make very bad decisions. In the case of this session, despite me warning those that chose to stay that they may lose the chance to move forward, they stayed and now they are in the very real danger of being trapped without a way out. The wizard has a ring with a single wish. He could use it to reunite the party, but would it work on the foolhardy Rogue trapped in the Plane of Water? I feel a bit torn as how to move this forward in a way that makes sense, won't damage the narrative, and feel contrived to keep the characters alive despite their best efforts to get themselves killed.
What are your thoughts? Reach out to me. Join our Discord. I would love to hear what you have to say.
Until we meet next. What twists and turns await us.......in The Maze.
