Forgotten Songs Retrospective -- "Finding a Familiar"
Another in a series of commentary posts about Katja's Diary.
My notes about the meeting with the pseudodragon family say "Think of 1950's family or That 70's Show: gruff dad, friendly mom, vain teenage daughter." I thought it was a clever way to play some intelligent monsters, but this may have been a time when my cleverness got in the way of things. It would have been easier just to tell Orion "you summon a pseudodragon familiar" and get back to the main plot of the game. But I tried to see it from the dragon point of view -- why would any intelligent small dragon want to ride around with a wizard who is more than likely going to meet a bad end? So the dragon-dad protested and Emily, the dragon-daughter, sort of "went off to college" with promises to return in a month or so.
Note: had the party been more successful at wooing the parents, Emily would have just gone with them. I don't remember if there were botched roles or just poor role playing or some combination of both, but they caused enough reservation on dragon-dad's part to demand that Emily return. And, given that dragon-dad had a friend that was a full sized dragon, he wasn't one to be messed with.
The only other thing of note in this session was a bit of information given by Vincellus that was never followed up. To quote the diary:
I really, REALLY wanted the party to follow this up. Not only did I have some cool city adventures planned, but this guy would have been full of clues about the Oghma Temple and the Silver Huntress. Duma Fafne was not that far away -- maybe a week from Harcomb. Given that the party had just spent weeks of game time in an adventure primarily so the wizard could get an almost-familiar, I fully expected them to set off on an adventure that actually directly connected with the campiagn premise. Cest la vie.
Does this happen to anyone else?
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| Pseudodragon by "Ceredwyn Ealanta" at http://www.elfwood.com/~ceredwyn/Pseudodragon.2614629.html |
My notes about the meeting with the pseudodragon family say "Think of 1950's family or That 70's Show: gruff dad, friendly mom, vain teenage daughter." I thought it was a clever way to play some intelligent monsters, but this may have been a time when my cleverness got in the way of things. It would have been easier just to tell Orion "you summon a pseudodragon familiar" and get back to the main plot of the game. But I tried to see it from the dragon point of view -- why would any intelligent small dragon want to ride around with a wizard who is more than likely going to meet a bad end? So the dragon-dad protested and Emily, the dragon-daughter, sort of "went off to college" with promises to return in a month or so.
Note: had the party been more successful at wooing the parents, Emily would have just gone with them. I don't remember if there were botched roles or just poor role playing or some combination of both, but they caused enough reservation on dragon-dad's part to demand that Emily return. And, given that dragon-dad had a friend that was a full sized dragon, he wasn't one to be messed with.
The only other thing of note in this session was a bit of information given by Vincellus that was never followed up. To quote the diary:
To my inquiries about the Silver Huntress, the Greyleaf could only give me the name of a sage in Duma Fafne, Bartolus, who studied such things. I was given a slightly magical oak leaf to serve as a token. And this Bartolus was also supposed to know of the priests that fled the Oghma temple.
I really, REALLY wanted the party to follow this up. Not only did I have some cool city adventures planned, but this guy would have been full of clues about the Oghma Temple and the Silver Huntress. Duma Fafne was not that far away -- maybe a week from Harcomb. Given that the party had just spent weeks of game time in an adventure primarily so the wizard could get an almost-familiar, I fully expected them to set off on an adventure that actually directly connected with the campiagn premise. Cest la vie.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I thought we would eventually wind up in Duma Fafne. My memory is fuzzy (especially since I haven't logged every session), but I thought we eventually got there. Katja totally wanted to follow up with Bartolus.
ReplyDeleteNope. Never made it. Never even tried, I think. After the upcoming death of a PC, the temple and all elements connected to it were abandoned.
ReplyDeleteThis happens to all of us, bro. You've inspired me to blog about it at my site: http://weightedd12.blogspot.com/2011/03/critical-hit-of-information.html
ReplyDelete@ Dustin -- Nice post! I certainly learned many things you've posted about from this game.
ReplyDelete