I ran two RPGs on Sunday. The first was our final session of the D&D 4e module “Demon Queen’s Enclave”, which ran for about 2-1/2 hours and was mostly taken up by one combat. An extremely entertaining combat, but nonetheless mostly a combat. 

With reference to my recent posts on adventure pacing, when you’re going to end a D&D adventure, a 2-1/2 hour combat is not a bad thing. You’ve gone through all the lead-up, so they pay-off better be good. One spell going “the PCs win” is not a good ending. 2-1/2 hour combat where the PCs only just survive? Yeah, that works for me.

The second session was my first running the Serenity RPG. It is actually the fourth in the campaign: I missed the first, I ran a PC in the next two sessions, but as the GM was struggling with adventure ideas he passed the reins over to me. I’ve been dubious about the actual resolution system in Serenity, but everything ran smoothly this session.

How smoothly? Well, I’d rate this session as one of my Top 5 RPG sessions of all time. Yes, it went well.

The major reason it went well came down to the players: they were all prepared to roleplay, and they were prepared to do it with little input from me. It was Sarah’s first session of the game, and Mick (the previous GM) was also introducing a character. I sat down with them just before the session and worked out a few basic points about their background to ease them into the crew of the “Jailbait” and they took it from there. 

Note to GMs: Nothing derails roleplaying in a session quite so much as a PC whose background and personality makes them withdraw and not connect with the rest of the PCs. You need reasons to interact! Sarah, Mick and I managed to set up the skeleton of those reasons ahead of time, and then their superb roleplaying skills fleshed everything out in play.

So, the first half-hour or more of the session was Sarah and Mick introducing their characters to the rest of the crew. And very entertaining it was too. Then came the first complication of the session, and we got an additional hour of unbelievable roleplaying with hardly the need for me to be there at all.

It’s worth noting that while I introduced the complication, I wasn’t the one to explain it. When I was planning the session, I realised that one of the things I really hate in RPGs is when the DM has to do all this exposition of things that really should be explained by one of the PCs in character. You know the type of thing: the wizard makes a Knowledge check and then the DM tells him (and everyone else) what he knows. However, that reduces the roleplaying effectiveness of the wizard immensely: if the wizard’s player could be the one to impart that information, it reinforces that character.

So, I told Jesse (playing the ship’s pilot) ahead of time what the problem was and what he knew of it. That is, I told him before the session started. Jesse’s playing in his first RPG ever – so, this was his fourth session. He handled it superbly. Indeed, he took the ideas I’d given him and built them up into something more than I expected. And that fueled more roleplaying between the characters. 

Eventually, I needed to take a more active role as the players actually properly started to solve the problem, and the intense roleplaying of the first part of the adventure dimmed, but it never faded away. After another hour of this, they’d solved all their problems (well, the immediate ones) and they could continue on their voyage. The session had taken 2-1/2 hours, as long as the D&D 4E one earlier in the day. (None of the Serenity players had participated in that one). There were quite a few players surprised to find that the session had only gone 2-1/2 hours. It felt longer, so full of roleplaying and incident as it was.

It really was a privilege to be involved in this session. There have been very few in my life that have been so good. There’s something very special about seeing five good roleplayers working together. (It’s also a reason why I prefer to be behind the screen: I’m an ok roleplayer, but I’m not exceptional. It works much better if I’m enabling the action rather than directly participating in it).

It’s worth noting that the session had no combat. It had some dice rolling, but not much. The challenges came from the situation but didn’t derail the roleplaying: the group could chat about the challenges and work out the best way to overcome them. Or one character could take it into his head to do it his way, no matter what the rest of the group thought. Either way, more roleplaying.

At one point, Mick flubbed a roll to get some information vital to the flow of the session. Using the idea that failure just means something unexpected happened, instead of retrieving the information for himself, he managed to broadcast it… another PC picked up the transmission and relayed it back, and the upcoming Alliance cruiser also picked up the transmission…

The question now is this: How do I get the flow of this session into a D&D session, where combat provides far more significant breaks in the storyline and flow of the session? I’m not quite sure yet, but there are a few things I’m going to try.

For those interested, I reproduce below the adventure notes I made in preparation for this session. You’ll note little note of Sarah and Mick there, because I wasn’t sure they’d be playing. As it happened, they turned a workmanlike session plan into one of the best sessions I’ve ever played.

Aboard the ship; discussion between the Captain, Grant and Derek, when suddenly the proximity alert goes off. Grant goes into flashback, and Jesse announces they’re about to crash.

Fixing the signal requires disabling the sensors. There’s some source relatively nearby emitting a distress beacon which is causing the sensors to misfire. If they continue, they’ll be without sensors – very bad if a rogue asteroid comes upon them. Need to find the source.

Skill checks: Technical Engineering (turn off siren); Pilot/Technical Engineering (location source of beacon).

The source turns out to be a derelict Federation scout, tumbling through space.

Pilot check to dock with the derelict scout. No life signs (Perception/Pilot/Technical Engineering). Once aboard, find the crew lying about the place, dead – shot with bullets (not lasers). Videocam monitoring the airlock has been shot out. (Perception)

Time of death: not more than a day ago (Medical Expertise). The derelict has been stripped of useful gear, although the group can find some loot if they look hard enough (Perception – 1000 credits). Access to the flight deck is blocked, and as the group try to get in, a structural failure causes air to leak out of the ship. Survival to stay conscious (1 Stun point per round), Mechanical Engineering to fix leak, or Covert to gain access to flight deck.

Flight deck reveals the log (Technical Expertise): prisoner transport to Osiris – of William Goodwin (Billy). It also has the controls of the malfunctioning beacon. Turning it off is Technical or Mechanical Expertise.

It also causes the sensors to start working again – and a Federation Cruiser approaching the Derelict!

Next bit up to the players. There is a videolog of the attack that can be retrieved by Technical Expertise or Covert; they can negotiate with the Feds (Captain Benjamin Harcourt) and get away, or they can run for it. Running for it will bring the ship under fire. Piloting checks to avoid fire – failed checks require Mechanical Engineering to repair the damaged systems so they can get away.

Heroes get away; Grant wakes up and wants to hear about their adventure. Video of the “attack” shows the scout coming to assistance of a small civilian ship – only to have armed soldiers attack from within. Last bit of the video shows a man with mustaches and a top-hat shooting the video-cam…

No adventure survives contact with the players. I altered a bunch of things from my plan as the adventure went along. I’d thought to have air escape from the main body of the ship when the bridge was reached; instead it was a hole in the bridge that let the air out. The video was broadcast and revealed earlier in the episode, rather than being left to the epilogue. Act 4 was very sketchy in any case, and Sarah talked the Alliance cruiser into leaving, aided by Jesse’s on-the-spur invention of a set of “Salvage” documents.

Note that I keep calling the Alliance the Federation in the notes above – I haven’t seen that much of Firefly myself (silly, really), and I keep confusing the Alliance with the Federation from Blake’s 7…