Mazes and Monsters

Me and my Dungeons and Dragons crew have been playing a Forgotten Realms campaign for over a year now. Recently, we've been playing and finished an adventure called City of the Spider Queen. I was curious to try a book adventure to a: give me sort of a little break and b: try out another Dungeon Master's material. 6 MONTHS LATER, we finally finished it, and the results were, well...

Just to give you a bit of background, I've been trying to feel out my DM style for the duration of our adventuring. I started off as more of a storyteller DM than a Referee DM, but I've completely made the transition now. The fun in Dungeons and Dragons is the players being the lords of their destiny rather than me leading them by the nose. City of the Spider Queen taught me how to build an adventure in the referee style.

The adventure itself was very cool and well written. It's always been my dream to coax the players into an epic underdark adventure. Besides, Drow are what the Forgotten Realms are mostly known for.

6 months go by and we're having a lot of fun. I did a really good job, in my mind, of setting up the main bad guy (Ira tsarina) as a really evil person (or elf). The players are progressing and the party becomes level 14. Finally the day arrives, the players have conquered the Undying Temple and they face Irae.

6 months they've been playing to get here, and they beat her without so much as a scratch. The disappointment in the room was so thick, you could cut it with a butterknife. They've killed epic encounters before, and after a harrowing victory they jump up screaming and excited (no lie on this one, remember the shadow dragon guys). Here they killed the ultimate leader of a drow cult and nothing. No screaming, no excitement. I had failed at a Dungeon Master's number one priority - to ENTERTAIN.

The unpredictability of D&D is what makes a true role-playing game irreplaceable. In this case, unpredictability was it's biggest weakness. What's a DM to do when 20's get rolled 75% of the time? LOL (Grats Vogl with the "loaded dice")

We'll be moving on now, and I'm going to construct my own adventures like I used to - using what I've learned in this adventure to strengthen it.

PS - The title of this post refers to an awful anti-D&D after school movie called Mazes and Monsters. If you get the chance, watch it and laugh.