Visual aids, Old-School Thief Role-Play, and Other Take-Aways from 11/20/18 D&D AL Session

Gosh, after weeks and sometimes months between Five Take-Away posts, it's incredibly surreal to be blogging another a week after the previous installment. Gaming regularly beats knowing you can game regularly. While late November into December is the time of year where weather and the holidays can put a crimp into gaming, it's nice to game on consecutive evenings. Just finished a Tuesday night Adventurers League (D&D 5E) at my favorite comics and games store. As much as I stated I felt I could keep blogging my five take-aways on regularly basis last week, didn't feel as confident earlier today. As fate would hold it I managed to come up with some.


What the dice gods giveth, the dice gods taketh away
Last week, I remarked how my new halberd-wielding fighter was an engine of death. Hitting and rolling maximum damage consistently. Ability checks, only high DCs were the problem. Tonight, the dice were against me. The die roll would frequently result less than ten. Multiple tries were needed before a single success. Fortunately for my PC, the module wasn't too die roll dependent so he wasn't hurt too much. Except maybe his pride. Maybe serving on Waterdeep's City Watch isn't so bad?


Sometimes dialogue and incremental character development is the best role-play
When you're participating in an Adventurers League session, you're under a time crunch. There isn't always time to engage in deep immersive role-play. Hate to admit but my role-play suffers as a result. However, after a new player (and another new-ish) player, distinguish their PCs by dialogue (both how they said things and what they said) I realize I was mistaken. There's always time for dialogue. After all, characterization occurs more frequently through dialogue.


Another role-play consequence of Adventurers League episodic nature is there really isn't much room for character development. Not only is there not enough time but like the good ship Enterprise the PCs find themselves on a new adventure each module. Character development is hard under those circumstances. However, not if it occurs incrementally. PCs don't have a patron diety? Well, in a module where dieties are discussed, you can elect to have your PC declare his/her patron. Tonight, a couple PCs not declared their patrons but made known what they thought of a specific non-patron diety.


New players enhance game play in ways experienced gamers don't
I sat at a table with a player brand new to the game. Several other players probably haven't played table-top RPGs for more than ten sessions. There's a degree of openness to experience and less reliance upon the rules that simply isn't present with experienced players. Rather nice to witness someone going 'I do this' versus 'because of this rule chain my PC is...'. Always great to see new players learn the game, while challenging preconceived notions...


Speaking of which....


The 1st level Rogue was played like an old-school Thief!
The newbie played a rogue. Anyone who's familiar with old-school Thief rules (pre-third edition) could tell you actually succeeding at one's Thief's skills was tricky in itself. You were lucky if your 1st level PC had greater than 50% chance to succeed. Odds are your thief had less than 50% to pass the check! I played a thief PC in AD&D 1E whose top thief skills were around 30% if I recall correctly. With such a low chance of success, you only used your thief skills when you either absolutely had to or felt confident you'd succeed given the circumstances. Otherwise, the thief player role-played themselves out of situations using cunning, wit, and charm. Tonight, the new player of the rogue pretty much did that exactly. Granted, it could've been the module itself. However, quite a bit of humor and ingenuity were deployed tonight. Furthermore, much of the action was propelled by the rogue much like the thief of old would do.


Visual Aids Enhance and Immerse Players During Puzzles.
The module was a puzzle module... They were the kind of puzzles where verbal descriptions would complicate the puzzle more than it really should be. Furthermore, my table included quite a number of players, who like myself, hate puzzles. There's a puzzle? Oh I suck at puzzles! Normally, once a puzzle starts stumping us, I lose interest. Unless the DM forces my involvement, my mind wanders and it's up to everyone else to solve it. Fortunately, the DM had a solution to both. He created a visual representation of the puzzle AND allowed us to take notes. A picture is worth a thousand words. Much of the time, I can't visualize a puzzle and lose interest. The DM's visual representation gave me something to focus on. Plus, since we could take notes, we could decipher where we were wrong. Quite frankly, if you module contains puzzles and time is limited, please incorporate visuals. Enhances the play experience immensely.


Happy Gaming! See you all next Tuesday Night!