Caliban Postmortem

(2:22am at the Sam Ramon Marriott Hotel time to pack up and head home...)

The quest into Caliban, 5th Edition mod, was entertaining for sure. My good friend Ickbard took the reins to DM much of the scenario (his first convention run) and, man alive, does dude know his 5e!

We had a 100% show with Chris, er Bill (j.k.) running his fighter, Albort's halfling sorcerer, Dan the eldritch knight, Matthew's half-tiefling lycanthrope barbarian, Tiffany's lawful good cleric, Rob's fate spinner (ha, damn that class is a pain in the ass for dungeon master's), Jeff and the halfling rogue, finally Eric with Sven the Champion!

Other than the noise and side-bar conversations it seemed to run well and everyone stayed to the 2:00am end, which is unusual for a Friday night convention game. I am very appreciative of the group for sure!

So thoughts number 1, the overland and dangers outside Caliban went very well. Got the players where they were supposed to be and properly set the mood of the unnatural-ness of the tower even in an average fantasy world.

Second, though, the interior had too many empty spaces for a convention game. I had supposed "neutral" descriptions for the vacant rooms which everyone (including Joe) played around with for awhile. Unfortunately, no treasure in these places so, well, there you go.

Thirdsies was that the dungeon could have been deadlier except I didn't understand enough about the fate-spinner to figure out how the baddies would counter some of the spinner's effects which were pretty profound.

Last, I have come to the conclusion that running for 8 players, in a convention setting where folks may not know each other and I certainly don't know them, is probably more difficult than it needs to be getting everyone engaged. Probably a hack and slash would be easier, but investigation relies heavily on the sneaks and investigative types for long stretches between combat which can detach more combative types.

Next Year:

1. Run for no more than 6 players and keep a grip on side bar convos;
2. Make sure encounters link up with mostly quick interludes (may be room for a sneaky bit, but make it the exception rather than the norm);
3. Ha, and still this is always my Achilles heal, try to balance out some concluding encounter that starts to manifest around midnight.

Preview for next year? Maybe I'll run Under the Storm Giant's Caste? "Pins pins kill the pins!"