Session Recap: The Silly Romperoo

All of three hours to kill one (very tough)
Draug and see down a few hallways.

The silly romperoo is a project I started to practice GMing online and to help new players have an easy way in. I've run one other game online in theater of the mind mode, and I've played in a Roll 20 game, but this is the first time GMing one. The session had a lot of bugs, owing to inexperience and miscommunication, so even though there wasn't a lot of playtime, there is a lot to learn.

Cast

There are a lot more characters signed up, but these are the ones that were involved for the large part.

Provided portrait.

Alisa 

A Paladin of a death god. Fights with a flail and shield, and has decent armor.

Provided Portrait

Isaac

An unusually youthful student of the Kabbalah, a fact hidden by his head of grey hair, Isaac Cordovero was amongst the most gifted students of the lot, displaying an affinity for the Sephirah Chokhmah to the extent of displaying talent even in the most hidden arts. However, his relative inexperience with life - not even forty years of age - had him passed over for the position of Rebbe at the Yeshiva and told to experience life to its fullest in order to gain a complete understanding of the nature of Ein Sof, as required of the greatest thaumatologists.
Brashly confident in his powers, Isaac chose to join an adventuring party, hoping to bring fame and glory to the Yeshiva and, above all, to the thaumatologist's art. He crawls dungeons, the loot secondary to his greater aspirations.

Summary

The candle maker's daughter goes missing and the party is tasked with rescuing her from the abandoned sewer works that have since been replaced with better technology. Alisa and Isaac crawl around cautiously before they are overheard speaking about money by a dinoman thief. The party sneaks around overly cautiously before the dinoman sneaks up behind them with backup, an undead draug. The fight is long but Alisa makes two good hits against the skull eventually, bringing it to an end. The dinoman cowardly scampers off, the party not able to keep up, decide not to follow it.

After Action Report

• Successes
• The game was thought up earlier this week and was ready to run in less than a week
• All the players who wanted to play were able to make a character sheet well before the game to help with planning
• The combat balance seemed good, though the party was a little lucky. A hit from a draug, who happens to have over 20 ST is not a small thing. CER seemed a success.
• Lessons Learned
• I thought it was discussed, and was agreed that this game was to be a text only game. I do not know if it was imagined, or I just made the assumption, but this was a big surprise to one of the players at the beginning of the session.
• I was a bit generous with light penalties as pointed out after the session by one of my players. A torch does not mitigate 100% of darkness penalties.
• Really big maps make roll20 run not great. It is probably better to make a bunch of small maps (or a map with several floors) than one gigantic floorplan.
• The game seemed somewhat slow. I think this was a weird communication problem that comes from being online. From my perspective the players were being overly cautious and not moving through the dungeon fast enough. From their perspective, it looked like not enough was happening to them. I think I need to clarify that being super duper careful isn't a matter of moving the pieces slowly, but skill rolls when they come into a situation where being careful is important.
• Higher Purpose is something that I've passed up a lot, but it helped a lot specifically today in the form of "slay undead."

Other Thoughts

If any new players are interested in joining a very low pressure game where its ok to make mistakes, find me on Discord.