Regaining the touch

One of the troubles with DMing - and yes, there are many - is that every so often inspiration fails. For week after week, the adventures you present your friends with are repeats of the last, which wasn't so good in any case.

My definition of a "bad" adventure is one where the PCs kill monsters for no good reason and take their stuff, without having to think at all. I'm very good at giving my players bad adventures. Why should the players have to think? I didn't when creating the adventure!

(Incidentally, this is one reason I've been running RPGA and other published adventures for my other groups - designing adventures for one group is difficult. Doing it for all of them is near impossible, at least for me).

I really am best when I have several sessions of lead-up preparation work done. When the campaign's NPCs are realised in my mind from having used them many times, and when there are many plot threads weaving in and out of the sessions. Just starting off cold is something I find difficult.

A couple of months ago, two of my friends moved to Melbourne, and a third suddenly discovered that being at university required study - so the group was cut in half. This disturbed what I was planning. Then, one of the other characters turned really evil, and was retired - and the rest of the party fled the kingdom. Hmm. Only two continuing characters, and they were no longer in the area I'd been running. Yes, that stopped my plans dead.

For the next few weeks, I ran several bad adventures - either expeditions into Castle Greyhawk (Greyhawk Ruins), or another dungeon of my own design (Maze-Tomb of Karak'zhn). Most notably, I did hardly any preparation, there were no interesting NPCs, and very little thought was required from my players.

Eventually, even I woke up to the fact that the games weren't really that fun. I'm not above using published modules, and there was one I really wanted to use: Gary Gygax's Necropolis. Yes, it's a killer dungeon, lair of the dread Rahotep, but I think it's an entertaining one... and there was a gimmick I thought of to get them there.

That gimmick was the Stargate. Once upon a time, back in the early days of 3e, I created a Stargate-like artifact for my PCs to discover. In fact, they discovered several of them around the Flanaess. We'd never quite used it to its full extent, however.

This time around, I'd have an invasion begin from there. I was helped greatly by Sandstorm here. There's a great prestige class in that book: the Walker of the Waste. Eventually the walkers become undead "dry" liches who want to expand the desert. What a system of minions for Rahotep to use!

So, the PCs learnt of the Bright Desert beginning to expand from the local druids (Gofa's new PC is a druid). Of course, they went to investigate...

That made the next session good, didn't it? No, it didn't. For all the interesting encounters that were there, I'd forgotten an important factor: this is a RPG.

Role-playing is not always the thing that makes a memorable session, but it helps. It helps differentiate between all the encounters that are just "slash and kill".

Luckily, I remembered that for the second session of the adventure. The first encounter they had - as they pursued the track of the Salt Mummies deeper into the desert - was with a Androsphinx named Andre. That was fun, and my players enjoyed it. Immediately, they were more interested in the adventure.

Then came Sir Ulric, a Knight of Rary the Traitor, and finally a big combat with the Walker herself - one that slew a PC and saw the Walker escape. Next session I hope to actually have her say something to the PCs, and thus engage their interest further.

The campaign is looking up again. One wonders what they'll do when they find the Stargate?