Setting the Snare: Behind the Screen

Main tip from this session: If your players are travelling to the action, go ahead and adapt the time of the event so that the characters arrive without too much time to spare. If they arrive at the ambush point a day in advance, the table (DM included) can get caught having fruitless, circular conversations about schemes to fill the dead time. If the PCs have dead time, give your players an RP prompt if you like, then just fast forward.

There was a risk of cancellation for this game due to a player being ill, so I didn’t pressure myself to prepare a great amount.

The session went a little slowly, and I felt it took a lot of game time to just get to the fight. The players enjoyed planning the ambush, but the narrative of the journey regularly devolved into planning conversations. It might have been pacier if I had skipped through the journey and instead given the players one dedicated block of planning time ahead of the action? But my attention span was inconsistent on the day, and there’s nothing to be gained beating oneself up over that. Plus is it better for players to plan in bits, or in one big chunk? That depends on the group surely.

Some players would not have enjoyed this session, but my players get a kick out of planning things like the Visage ambush, and I like listening to them plan. It’s an integral part of D&D, and one I could indulge almost indefinitely. For me, it just makes the inevitable action even more tense!

Finally, note that the Mephit messenger referenced the Ice of Ocanthus, the Acheron-based means of memory restoration. The "plane known only for its absence" is Nemausus, formerly the 3rd layer of Arcadia, and now in Mechanus. My players want to visit Mechanus, so Nemausus is replacing Pelion.

I still have no idea how the speaking mannerisms of the ratatosk in the book’s read-aloud text is supposed to translate in practice. Do they all have stutters?  Why would a squirrel have a stutter?

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