General Feedback Thread

[quasadu]

Use this thread to post your feedback on the campaign; in particular, feedback on me as a DM and how I am running things. Was there something amazingly awesome that you want more of? Was there something amazingly unfun that you want less of? Was there something in between? A ruling you disagreed with? Etc.

I promise to consider all of your feedback - I may or may not make changes based on it, but if I don't make any changes I will try to explain why.

[Liz]

I didn't have a problem with the mechanics of fight we just had. I don't think it was a puzzle fight at all, either. (If anything, the Mind Witness and golems(?) fight is far more likely to be a puzzle-fight, assuming us having the Lanthorn doesn't make them our allies or something.)

Maybe we should have decided to buff more ahead of opening the door, maybe instead of jumping straight to combat we should have tried to talk to the vampire. She probably had some interesting information we won't get now. Hell, instead of bothering with Bane I could have cast Shadow of Moil and been a big difficult to hit target while dealing the lantern. But that was on the players not the DM.

I got the impression from frustrated comments were made because some folks felt they couldn't contribute well to the encounter given the layout of the chamber. And I get that frustration but sometimes it happens.
(I seriously considered dropping the Web spell and imposing disadvantage on the vampire but I was afraid even if she did fail the save she would them bamf away on damage and then everyone left in the area would still be stuck, and the webs don't just dismiss.)

[Jordan]

As I said during the session, I had two issues with that encounter. I'll also explain why Tsojcanth has been such a pain for me.

One was that there were parts of it that felt very non-interactive, such as the walls of the globe being impossible to ascend without very specific forms of magic (combined with the vampire's ability to completely ignore those restrictions). I don't mind tricky encounters or encounters that require specific tactics, but I was wracking my brains throughout the combat to figure out how to deal with that, and for the most part I came up blank or could not actually execute what ideas I had (throw something onto the surface to help, jump near enough to the vampire to immobilize her, etc). That was probably the combat where I spent the most time coming up with out of the box ideas to contribute, and it didn't feel like they really mattered.

This feeds into the second issue a little bit, which is that the challenge I issued didn't really impact things. I didn't need it to do so, but the initial presentation of how the vampire responded made it feel like it would. Instead, she attacked me a couple times and then ran away the moment I was able to strike back. The jump attack after her was cool, but it's something I could have done any time she got close enough to my platform, so it still felt like the challenge had been undercut after her initial response to it.

Regarding Tsojcanth in general, the issue I had was that the perceptions of how an RPG world works are inherently unreliable--the only way I have to ensure that what I'm envisioning is what I'm "interacting with" in the fiction of the game is the DM's narration, so unreliable DM narration like the space warping and stuff has the potential to flip some switches in my head that really cause it to wig me out. It's like a spatial uncanny valley almost. I don't know how to describe it better than that, but I need to be able to trust narration, at least as far as mapping goes. I can deal with an illusion of a different person or monster, I can deal with secret doors, I can deal with most stuff. But this stuff just was hitting some nerve.

Since I don't want my feedback to be purely negative about a great game, I will add that I am super hyped about returning to Highport, as the detour we took there recently was fantastic and all the setup we've had over time felt delightful. I also love that Tsojcanth has been seeded for so long and so thoroughly. I don't know if the ability score-raising books are in the module by default or not, but if you added them because of my request to see them in game, I appreciate that. And I love seeing obscure but cool monsters like yugoloths, so that's awesome (some kind of celestials for me to smite at some point would be solid as well! )

[Blitzkraga]

While I strongly empathize with and commiserate Jordan's frustration, I'm going to expound upon a point of Liz's: It's on US the players, not the DM.

I think I'm easily the worst case in all of these. Most of us have regularly stopped thinking ahead or ignored thinking of how we can set up each other's characters to shine. Our "at the table" etiquette has slipped with the increased communication difficulties. Sometimes we seem to set ourselves up to fail, I know that I just straight up planned Haust, and his items, badly. BUT on good days, none of that matters.

I'm being very critical here, but I really like you lot, DM and players. It's a rough time out here now, and that just makes it easier to accidentally blame others. I don't want Dave to be a target for that.
-Grant

[Jordan]

While I strongly empathize with and commiserate Jordan's frustration, I'm going to expound upon a point of Liz's: It's on US the players, not the DM.

I think I'm easily the worst case in all of these. Most of us have regularly stopped thinking ahead or ignored thinking of how we can set up each other's characters to shine. Our "at the table" etiquette has slipped with the increased communication difficulties. Sometimes we seem to set ourselves up to fail, I know that I just straight up planned Haust, and his items, badly. BUT on good days, none of that matters.

I'm being very critical here, but I really like you lot, DM and players. It's a rough time out here now, and that just makes it easier to accidentally blame others. I don't want Dave to be a target for that.
-Grant

First off, it is not an either/or situation on players and DM here. I am specifically mentioning ways I tried thinking ahead, trying planning ways to help out, and tried out of the box thinking, and was unable to execute them. I am not asking for an automatic "gimme" on my plans from Dave, but I think an increased "help me help myself" approach would be better. An example of when he did this well was allowing me to jump farther to do the midair attack with an Athletics check. More of that sort of bending the rules or scene ever so slightly to allow for lateral thinking when the straightforward approach doesn't working is all I want from that point. An example of something that would have made me much less bothered is if my idea for using flipping out the rugs to use as an alternate surface for climbing had worked.

Secondly, there is no need to blame anyone. Not yourself, not Haust, and not Dave. My goal is definitely not for Dave to be a "target" here. This is already feeling like a bigger deal than I meant to make it. Dave is a fantastic DM, and I've told him as much on multiple occasions. A bit of frustration here and there does not change that. But it also doesn't mean that if there's something frustrating happening and blaming Dave is the wrong response, that there is any need to blame anyone. There isn't! As Liz said "sometimes it happens." My only comments are directed towards, where possible, making it happen less.

Ultimately, neither players or DM are wholly responsible for any given aspect of the game--it's pretty much always a collaboration. Dave is providing great material, and I'm trying to do the same. What friction there is between us seems to me just a matter of making sure our styles mesh properly. That's all.

[Douglas]

So far, the only "I don't like this" thing that I've taken issue with is similar to Jordan's assertion with regard to the Narrative v 'Reality' situation. I know it breaks some immersion, but I would much rather prefer seeing the actual map Scanned, drawn, etc form the modules/ your (the DM's) hand. I feel like Mike does an amazing job, but there is/was a large portion of our time taken up by just... try to figure out where in the heck we were.

If it was rooms moving or teleportation or something else, that's fine with me, but not being able to know where we are in relation even to ourselves was really frustrating. Which I guess means I'm not nearly as much into the idea of a campaign around Planescape as I originally thought I might be.

I understand that the 'puzzle' of it was added to make it more crazy, etc.. but I think it ultimately took the fun away.

Me personally, I liked the vampire fight. Was it frustrating to be shut down for most of the fight? yes. But, that's exactly what we endeavor to do to the baddies. It was a good thing, because I was really trying to come up with ways to get her ass out of the fight. and/ or develop a real "floor" for people to fight on.

Fights that are designed to play to our parties' weakness are always interesting to me, because I feel like we usually tend to have a "We got this" attitude toward stuff and it take someone saying something like "I'm leaving without you" to make people remember we can retreat, lol.

I'm also aware that creates more work for you, Dave, so I get it if you're not into that.

[Joe]

I don't have anything super specific, I've generally enjoyed the modules all around. The last couple of fights definitely were of the extremely dangerous/lethal variety - so long as that's deliberate, that's cool, though I would be curious to know how common the "You will potentially die suddenly by surprise" will be in upcoming fights.

As for the Vampire fight, certainly if I was in charge of other people's characters, I'd have done some things differently - some of which are more obvious in retrospect. But I chalk that up to the same kind of thing that got Phaerus killed when we split up to explore / draw out the marilith. Certainly the latter worked, and it was the point at which we discovered the spatial distortion, so there were certainly benefits.

I'm down for whatever comes next, and look forward to what we'll see in Highport. I also look forward to playing Verthas again, even if it's way less stress to play a silent, stoic observer.

[quasadu]

Before I go into a long winded response, let me first say that the point of the thread isn't to assign blame or say "you did a bad thing and you should feel bad and apologize." This is for constructive criticism. My goal as Dungeon Master is to create a game that is fun, challenging, and memorable. Honest feedback just helps make sure I'm doing more of what works and less of what doesn't.

And of course opinions will vary - what one player finds frustrating, another might find exciting. Now with that said...

As I said during the session, I had two issues with that encounter. I'll also explain why Tsojcanth has been such a pain for me.

I do appreciate the feedback and I have been thinking about some of this since the session. First a disclaimer - some of my responses will probably sound like I am trying to negate your experience. I'm not; your opinion is valid and you feel the way you feel. That said, I think I can offer some insight into my process for encounter design and execution that might, in future encounter, give you some encouragement.

Full disclosure: I did not design the encounter entirely. The spherical room with perfectly smooth and unclimable walls; the wall-crawling, flying vampire-warrior with an intelligent sword - those were all in the module. Gary designed the core "home field advantage" aspect of the encounter. That said, I love the way it's set up, but I didn't think it would be challenging enough for 5th edition characters - especially ones as high level as this party. So I added things like the "Misty Evasion" reaction and the Lair Actions from the Lanthorn (which I thought you guys dealt with beautifully).

One was that there were parts of it that felt very non-interactive, such as the walls of the globe being impossible to ascend without very specific forms of magic (combined with the vampire's ability to completely ignore those restrictions).

I usually put a lot of thought into a big set piece encounter like this, and try to consider how well the party is equipped to deal with the challenges at hand. And I've had three years to think about this one.

The walls were definitely designed to make life difficult for melee characters, but they weren't impossible to deal with. Yes, most of the obvious solutions involved magic, but there were more than just a few options there - jump, levitate, fly, spider climb, polymorph, misty step, dimension door, far step, enlarge, and many other effects could mitigate the problem. I can also think of several other creative uses for magic items and spells; imagine drinking a potion of diminution and then having an ally throw you at the villain; Or slapping the portable hole on a wall and using it as a ledge to stand on. Or turning the folding boat into a makeshift ladder.

As for mundane means, a rope and grappling hook would have at least allowed you to move around the ledges (or pull the Lanthorn over and swing around on the chain like one of the Horsemen did). Or using the decorative screens for climbing might have worked. Or even something like standing on Haust's shoulders while another character up on a ledge reaches down to pull you up.

And, as a party, I thought you guys did use some creative solutions that sometimes worked (jump smite) and sometimes ALMOST worked and could have, under slightly different circumstances (Bigby's hand to shove her into melee, Orianne's grapple and drag idea, etc).

My point is that I gave this design a lot of thought before running the encounter, and I concluded that there were plenty of ways to deal with the sphere that I didn't need to make climbing the sides easier than the module suggests. In the past, when there are situations where I do think the possible solutions are too limited, I usually will change the encounter to create some other options.

I will also say that not every character is going to be able to contribute equally to every encounter. This was also something I took into consideration. For Reasons, I was more concerned in this instance with making sure Orianne and Phaerus had a chance to shine. I didn't give Orianne the spider-climb cloak specifically for this room, but I knew it was going to give her an edge when I did, which I felt was a good thing. Phaerus, on the other hand, I knew could have been the MVP due to the extra value of control powers in this fight... he just got unlucky with the confusion effect and was out of the fight most of the time. C'est la vie.

There have been plenty of other encounters where other PC's got to be MVP. And that's probably going to happen more often than not, because of either design or luck or a combination of the two.

This feeds into the second issue a little bit, which is that the challenge I issued didn't really impact things. I didn't need it to do so, but the initial presentation of how the vampire responded made it feel like it would. Instead, she attacked me a couple times and then ran away the moment I was able to strike back. The jump attack after her was cool, but it's something I could have done any time she got close enough to my platform, so it still felt like the challenge had been undercut after her initial response to it.

This one I think is just a matter of expectations. It makes sense that Eodric would think the way you did, but she was not the type of creature that conforms to Eodric's worldview. She was a chaotic evil vampire with a high Intelligence, high Wisdom, and high Charisma. It was only her ego and overconfidence (at that point you guys hadn't really hurt her at all) that allowed the challenge to get under her skin enough to put herself into melee with a paladin; who she knew damn well would be able to wreck her if she tried to go toe-to-toe with him. I wouldn't have even allowed a skill check for that, but I thought that your RP in that moment was too good to ignore. The dice handled the rest. I felt that having her be taunted into getting close just for one round was appropriate, but when she started taking radiant damage (the only thing that really scared her) she was back to business. She had more pressing matters - she was intrigued by Phaerus, her sword had a hard on for Alina (who she also knew might be deadly if left unchecked), and Orianne had the Lanthorn.

Regarding Tsojcanth in general, the issue I had was that the perceptions of how an RPG world works are inherently unreliable--the only way I have to ensure that what I'm envisioning is what I'm "interacting with" in the fiction of the game is the DM's narration, so unreliable DM narration like the space warping and stuff has the potential to flip some switches in my head that really cause it to wig me out. It's like a spatial uncanny valley almost. I don't know how to describe it better than that, but I need to be able to trust narration, at least as far as mapping goes. I can deal with an illusion of a different person or monster, I can deal with secret doors, I can deal with most stuff. But this stuff just was hitting some nerve.

I can dig it. I normally don't do this sort of thing when I'm running a module - but in this case I was trying something different. I did want it to be a puzzle and to be a bit disorienting. I wanted it to feel different than your standard dungeon crawl, and I wanted the whole "planar nexus" aspect to mean something. I probably could have come up with a better way to handle it. Regardless, it's not something you should expect to see very often, or even at all, in the future.

Since I don't want my feedback to be purely negative about a great game, I will add that I am super hyped about returning to Highport, as the detour we took there recently was fantastic and all the setup we've had over time felt delightful. I also love that Tsojcanth has been seeded for so long and so thoroughly. I don't know if the ability score-raising books are in the module by default or not, but if you added them because of my request to see them in game, I appreciate that. And I love seeing obscure but cool monsters like yugoloths, so that's awesome (some kind of celestials for me to smite at some point would be solid as well! )

Highport should be fun. It's going to be challenging to run, as city adventures always are, because of the "open world" nature of them. But I'm looking forward to it. And I think you guys are going to enjoy sacking the Temple of Iuz...

The ability score books are in the module. I have known those were coming your way eventually, and also that the fruit in the grove of Tharizdun was there. That's why I haven't gone out of my way to toss a belt of giant strength or similar item into the game.

[Jordan]

Minor request that just occurred to me, but since we don't have the handouts folder, could we see more of that stuff posted here in general? Magic item handouts and the like for any new stuff come to mind, as do the various character portrait images you have.