This week's game was a combo of narrative and combat, an odd hybrid that occurred simultaneously in initiative. There’s a lot to unpack here from the DM side of things, so let’s just dive on in. If you ever have questions about things from a specific episode, you can either email me or hit me up on Twitter.

As I've written before, I generally prepare for a game by writing down what I would like the characters (or NPCs) to accomplish during the session. This helps me guide things along without putting the adventure on rails. It’s usually only a few lines; I’ve found that getting into too much detail is an exercise in futility, as the players will inevitably make choices that I never accounted for.

For this session, ultimately I wanted the party to get out of the giant stronghold, rescue Thunuk's family, and to set the stage for the BBEG. 

The first part was easy: they had already started the process of destroying the dungeon last episode. To ensure that there was a sense of urgency to leave, I decided that the hole in the floor would get bigger at the top of every round, and I would fill the hole with awfulness. 

Aside from what the hole is filled with (likely to be revealed in a future episode, so I won't spoil it here), I put the hint of bugs in it, bugs large enough to drag away a stone giant. That will light a fire under almost anyone. 

Now, rescuing Thunuk's family was a different challenge. The party didn't really make any moves to do that, though I did have them tied up with giants and Thunuk's "mom". There may have been some better balance that I could have brought to that. 

Had they not rescued the family, I would have had the family retreat further into the caverns and would have dealt with them later, depending on the party's choices and when it made sense in the story. I couldn’t justify just killing off the entire Gentletrunk clan; I’m not that cruel, and it’s not the game we’re playing.

I’ve mentioned before: it’s important, as a DM, to understand and stay true to the game that you and your players agreed to. If we had started, or decided to shift to, a gritty, everyone dies George RR Martin type game, then sure, the narrative might call for burying a character’s family under a mountain. But we didn’t, so shocking them in this way would be a betrayal of their trust and would take away from everyone’s fun.

Don’t betray your players’ trust for the sake of “story”. It’s no different than a toxic player being difficult because “that’s what my character would do”. It’s an excuse, and it’s a bad one.

But! The opportunity presented itself when Thunuk used command on the night hag that was posing as his mother (the reveal was fun!) towards the end of the session. 

Now, if we were to play strictly by the rules as written, she probably wouldn't have succumbed to the spell, as hags have advantage on rolls resisting magical effects and they can't be charmed. There's also no spell for mass teleportation. And also, hags don't do anything for free. 

But we were nearing time, so I made a call. Maybe the hag had a trinket that allowed her those powers. Maybe she didn't fall for the command, but either used the family as a distraction to escape, or to serve some other purpose in her long reaching plans. 

What's important is that the rules shouldn't get in the way of fun and good storytelling, and it made for a nice conclusion to the scene. So, yeah, I fudged that one.

The rules are there for a reason, though, and you shouldn't let the players run over them. Earlier in the game, Thunuk cast Grasping Vines, and then Wall of Wind. both are concentration spells, and as we know, a spellcaster cannot have two concentration spells going at the same time unless they have some kind of magic item or ability that allows for that.

This was discovered in the following round and was self-reported by Yvan Martino, Thunuk’s player. I also don’t have the seemingly encyclopedic memory for spells the way that Matt Mercer does, and I didn’t catch it either.

Yvan and Cluus (Drenmai’s player) started to retcon this a little, but I had to make a ruling because going back and changing things the way that they were suggesting would have been too much. I allowed that Thunuk cast Grasping Vines to stop “mom” from escaping with his cousins, and then immediately dropping it to cast Wall of Wind to hold her in place. It achieved the same thing, it may have blurred the rules a bit, but in the end it kept the narrative on track.

It could be tempting to allow your players to go back and fix the mechanical mistakes they made, like forgetting to take advantage on a roll, or forgetting an additional attack or effect, but I would caution you not to. As initiative builds on itself, by them changing their actions, it can change all of the other actions that followed by both other characters and NPCs/monsters. If some minor retconning is required (as above), fix what you need to and quickly move on, but otherwise make your players stick with their original choices. I promise you that they won’t be angry.

The narrative for Hugon's conversation with the Red Knight served the purpose of advancing the BBEG storyline. I had three pieces of information that she would be able to reveal should he ask, and I had three scenarios: a) he accepts, b) he says no, and c) he attacks.

So, of course, he chose option D, let me think about it.

So I combined options A and B and put together the scenario we saw play out on Sunday: the offer of great power (the carrot) and the consequences of him not taking it (the stick).

The one thing that I was worried about here was that I would take too much game time away from everyone else to focus on this conversation between the character and the NPC. As they were in combat, and Hugon was not, it was a tricky balancing act. In the end, there was about 35 minutes dedicated to this exchange, which in a 3 hour game amounts to less than 25% of the time, so I would say that I didn’t tip the scales too steeply in one character’s direction.

I’m always trying to balance play time for everyone and concerned when an episode leans toward focusing on one over the others…maybe this is a little anxiety tied to a bad experience with a toxic player I had. But then I remind myself that in most ensemble television shows, there are episodes that occasionally focus on one character over the others, and that’s OK.

One last note about things I’m doing while managing the game: whenever a moment happens or a line is uttered that I find amusing or interesting, I quickly take note of the time on the stream timer in Streamlabs OBS and jot down a note. That way I can go back and grab those clips later, and not bring the game to a screeching halt as I try to clip it in Twitch. Just an idea for anyone who is streaming or recording their game and wants to save those clips for later.