Hello students, Professor Crunch here. Welcome back to both the Wrought Iron actual play series and the articles that dig into the games.
This episode served to transition from that horribly awkward dinner party to a big action scene that will answer a few questions and set more events into motion. As I’ve said before, I run these game sessions with a very minimal amount of preparation, with the intention to improv as much as possible in the moment based on player input. But I do have expectations going into our sessions. Thus, I really expected the players to start some investigation and detective work to see what was going on based on that note that they obtained. Instead, they decided to make a decision and follow their instinct.
This could’ve caused problems. The events that I had planned were set on the island’s docks. I might have been able to relocate the happenings to where the players headed, but that felt like it just wouldn’t make sense. I could’ve encouraged some additional investigation. Or I could’ve dropped that magical flashing neon GM sign in the sky. Instead, I got lucky with Scott deciding to check out the temple. I used that opportunity to provide the information that pointed the players towards the docks.
The important GM tip to take away from this is knowing when to be flexible with your plans and when to keep them set. Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter where something occurs in the game. It just matters that it happens. But other times, the location is just as important as the encounter. The difference depends on your story and style.
Ultimately, I should’ve done a better job of establishing where things were happening on the island. I could’ve laid things out more clearly with a map and some environmental or situational clues. We did edit out some of the table talk discussing where the PCs wanted to go to make for a more coherent episode. This type of discussion will always happen in home games, so just let it happen. It’s important to keep the plot moving, but it’s equally important to let players talk about what they’re doing. Plus this gives the GM a moment to take a break and possibly steal some ideas from the conversation. I did take advantage of things like Deign’s observations at the temple and Cassander’s animal companion to help get things moving.
And speaking of that animal companion, yeah, we made a mistake there. If it wasn’t obvious from the game, Matthew is playing a druid. In older editions of the game, druids always had, or at least had the option of taking, an animal companion. When we started Wrought Iron, we just made the assumption that based on the flavor of the genre, druids would have such companions. Of course, according to the rules of 5E, they do not. It didn’t really come up until this session, when it was called into question what kind of details the the eagle would be able to relay back to Cassander. Instead of changing the details or retconning it away, we decided to continue with the animal companion as we had already established her. Yes, we’re changing the rules a bit, but not in way that will unbalance anything. Instead, it’s more fun and strengthens the flavor of the game.
When the PCs arrived at the docks, the players decided to split up. It’s not always a smart move, but from a narrative standpoint, it was great. Jumping back and forth between characters heightens drama and tension and allows events to unfold from multiple perspectives. It’s more work for the GM, but I think it provides a more rewarding player experience.
I used the events at the docks to reveal a lot of details about what’s really been happening on the Reforged Isles. I’ve hinted towards it many times in game. And in these articles, I’ve said several times that I need to improve my skill at playing out a mystery game and revealing clues and information. I don’t think I’ve done a perfect job in this game, but I certainly saw an opportunity when Casander decided to investigate a warehouse after turning into a rat. Maybe that’s the secret to mystery games. You have to lay out clues, but players don’t follow along with an outline. They make their own decisions. So a successful mystery is founded on you as GM knowing all the necessary facts and recognizing when to hand them out based on what players are doing.
I really loved that Matthew got to transform and explore. It was a fun way for me to reveal a lot without it being super boring exposition. And being able to turn into an animal is just plain handy. Of course, you will soon see in a future episode that I will forget how useful it actually is when being an animal makes a chase scene a little too easy. That’s a teaser for you.
You might have noticed that I gave the players a lot of details about the events at the docks without asking for perception checks. I did this intentionally. I wanted the story to move past the details to the important events. I didn’t want to get bogged down with trying to figure out what was happening. Also, I wanted to respect the competent abilities of these characters. The d20 system can make simple things like observation far more challenging than it needs to be. Sometimes it’s good to lock info away behind a skill check. For example, when the PCs are about to be ambushed and you want this encounter to be surprising and exciting. But other times, it’s more worthwhile to just tell the players what’s going on around them.
Knowing when to distribute details about the story is an important skill to develop as GM. Too many skill checks to do simple things, like just looking around, is frustrating. But simply telling players everything gets boring. There’s a fine balance between the two extremes. As I said earlier, the right balance is based on your story and style.
One really fun part of this episode that I wanted to point out is the slow reveal of Arahamie’s new powers. I mentioned this briefly in a previous article. Some of the class choices that Michael made needed to develop in the story, instead of simply being announced. There’s a lot of debate over what it means to level up a character. Taking another level of an existing class typically makes sense, as it can be argued to be an advancement of skill. But multiclassing or taking abilities outside of a class’s normal range gets tricky. Did the character start practicing something new or encounter a new teacher? Is it retconned to say that the character was picking up tips and tricks over the course of the entire adventure? Did the character simply manifest a new power from no-where?
There’s no right answer, as is the case with most of what we talk about on this site. In this case, however, the specific new abilities are tied to a major plot point. When Michael brought up how he wanted Arahamie to develop, he made it clear that while he had taken the feat that granted the new abilities, he didn’t want to simply drop them into the game. He wanted them to reveal themselves organically. The events at the end of this episode that take us towards the next are how I decided to make this happen. We were happy with it. What did you think?
And that wraps up my thoughts about episode 11. Episode 12 has some exciting combat and it gets the story moving towards something that was equally surprising to both the PCs and the players.
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