So we are playing season of ghosts in Japan, trying to follow the real world calendar meaning tonight’s equinox starts book 2, Let the Leaves Fall. In order to make sure we clear the important content to stay on track with the calendar, while I did let them know that the fall season of the adventure involves side questing to prepare for winter, we also need to make progress as soon as possible on chapter 2 and 3 content. So in terms of scenes, Ol’ Matsuki (provisional governor in our game) let them know the autumn season goals, I introduced Yami but since one of the players is playing an awakened shiba-inu it turned into an impromptu dog-cat chase scene and they didn’t make friends, and then met with Shinzo who recommended some of his silvered weapons for purchase in our first section of the session. The players then went and performed the ritual to open the wall of ghosts and closed out the session by playing out the scene within… a really amazing and intense sequence of events!
Okay, now to feedback of running this with demiplane:
- Several “rules” I wanted to quickly look up this session included: prices for silvered weapons, the level based DC table, etc. … I again petition for a GM screen
- One of the players decided to add more coins to the eternal lantern (book 1 chapter 1) and we had kinda lost track of which skills we added permanent buffs to up to now. I didn’t look at how they were doing it specifically but it would be good if when they add custom modifiers to their skills that they can note the source.
- We didn’t have anyone with expert in religion or occultism so I kinda had to fudge that bit of the Open the Wall of Ghosts ritual. It was my first time to really run a ritual this intense so we kinda winged it a little but I think we all had fun by running it fiction first (mechanics second).
PF2e GM growth rabbit trail (not about demiplane…): In a similar way, the impromptu chase and later the haunt in the Pilgrim’s Path were “fiction first” above the table and mechanics of points were mostly kept “behind the screen”… as I get more experience with GMing PF2e after transitioning from 5e about a year ago I’m starting to get a better feel for the balance of presenting obstacles in a way that fiction is first but the mechanics are clear enough that players can use all their feats, etc. What I mean is that the players need to know a few of the skills and relative difficulty of DCs in order to make use of the choices they made in their character build, but without me listing the skills given in the adventure in a way that limits their creativity to just the skills the adventure wants them to use to solve something. If I narrate first and offer a few in-narritive suggestions connected with skills I’m looking at on the chase/haunt/etc. stat block, and then use hero points to reward creative solutions, or allow players to spend spell slots/hero points to adapt the narritive, it really runs smoother and more immersively at the table than to simply list the skills that are in the stat block. I ran up against this really artificial scenario recently in the SKT campaign with the chase in the opening to Book 2 Chapter 1, you go through this big complicated series of obstacles with narrow range of options to pass them in the stat blocks and then at the very end, say that along the way based on the successes/defeats you’ve accrued nd6 damage. It felt really artificial. Looking back I think it would have been better to run it narritive first, and assign some damage along the way at each obstacle as they are failed… At the same time though, I need to let players know a little mechanical information in case they have relevant feats… my thaumaturge needs to know what’s going on is a “haunt” because there’s feats they have that are triggered. So that’s the issue for me I’m still working on… running narritive first, mechanics mostly behind screen but also presenting enough mechanics that players can tell me when they have an option that applies… and most of my players are also fairly new to PF2e…
Okay too much rambling on the back end there. Anyway, thanks for making Demiplane! Really enjoying playing PF2e here.