I had a rather odd session of The Shattered Obelisk last night. As some of you may be aware, I run this campaign every Monday night. It has three players and I DM. We play online, using the Roll20 platform as our Virtual Tabletop (that’s what VTT stands for), and using Skype to talk to each other. Due to the quality of my internet connection, we don’t use video.
What was unusual about this session? One of the players had lost his voice, so communicated entirely through text – he’d type into the chat.
Obviously, this wasn’t as fast as actually talking. Probably. It didn’t occur to me until I was writing this, but when you’re talking, people are paying attention to you throughout the process. If it takes you 30 seconds to say something, then people are listening to you throughout. But if you type something in this sort of chat, it only displays when you press submit. You end up with a delayed conversation. The DM says something, and you see the player’s response thirty seconds later, rather than immediately – that takes 30 seconds to convey!
I tried to be very mindful of his messages and to acknowledge whenever he posted something. If you were only listening to audio, it’d be all these one-sided statements. It was an experience I’d not thought to have, and one I don’t think I’ll ever experience in face-to-face play.
Can you imagine trying to do it this way at a real table? Logistically, it’d be so much more difficult. Writing down something and then displaying it to everyone? Very tricky. (Also, we don’t want whatever illness he has). I presume sign language is a lot more efficient at this sort of communication than writing, but I’m not sure.
Erratic Scheduling
One of the reasons that the player did this was that he was sick of missing sessions of the campaign. He’s been busy and has also been ill a number of times recently. But the Phandelver campaign has also been hit by interruptions. We play Mondays, and we’ve had players overseas, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, a player’s wife birthday celebrations, illness, and meteor strikes cause the cancellation of sessions. Well, not that last, though it wouldn’t surprise me.
It was session number 13 last night, which gives you an idea of how behind my session reports are – and how disrupted things have been! Session 7 was November 6th! Of eleven possible sessions between then and now, we played in six of them.
I’ve been running a Monday campaign for a couple of years now, and this is the most disrupted it has been! I’m looking forward to more regular sessions.
I hate missing sessions. One of the reasons that I think my games and groups have their longevity is because we do run regularly. If you’re always cancelling sessions, then it just gives players an excuse to find something else to do. All the momentum of the campaign is lost.
Length of Campaign
My Friday Greyhawk campaign runs fortnightly – that is, every two weeks. It can go for quite some time, especially as we try to get to level 20. In contrast, I’m running published campaign adventures on Mondays, and those are a much more bounded affair (and often finish soon after level 10). The Shattered Obelisk runs from level 1 to level 12.
Once upon a time, Wizards mentioned that they expect characters to gain a level every session until they reach level 3, and to gain a level every two sessions after that – roughly. I run combats quickly, and we rarely dwell overlong on role-playing encounters. When you look at how many sessions it takes us to finish a campaign, most other groups will take significantly longer. At least, that’s my impression. (And that Wizards’ estimate of campaign speed probably is very fast compared to most).
It took us 13 sessions to complete Shadow of the Dragon Queen. The current adventure, The Shattered Obelisk, is taking longer! We’re currently in chapter six of eight – about halfway through chapter six. I’m going to guess it takes about three sessions per chapter, so I’d guess another eight sessions in total, which will bring us up to 21 sessions.
Another aspect of why things go fast for this group is that there are only three players and one DM. For the most part, the length of D&D combat scales linearly with number of players. (There are allied NPCs in the group, so perhaps that isn’t that different from a regular group). But it does mean that out-of-combat discussions go quicker. Fewer people to have their say!
Catching up on Reports and the Future
Now that I’ve finished with the Shadow of the Dragon Queen reports, I’ll be posting two Shattered Obelisk reports a week until we catch up. Which should be in six weeks! And getting very close to the end of the campaign. By the end of March 2024, we should be ready for a new campaign.
The one that is on top of my list to play is Dungeons of Drakkenheim. I’ll see what my players think. The Roll20 conversion isn’t out for non-backers yet, though I think they’re getting close.
I mean, I can run adventures that aren’t converted to Roll20, but it’s nice to not need to take the additional effort.
I’m very aware these days that my time is limited – too many things I want to do! I’ll happily buy the conversion – in addition to the physical and D&D Beyond copies as well. I’m buying time and utility!
Because doing a VTT conversion? That’s takes time – and time on top of what it originally took to write the adventure.
Of course, then my players will say they want to do something different! But I do hope we’ll get a chance to play Drakkenheim.