Our Waterdeep campaign (based on Waterdeep: Dragon Heist) has been going along well and we are about a dozen sessions or so into it. I think everyone is enjoying it. There are, however, a couple of things different about this campaign than with our prior campaigns which will also help explain why I tossed Swansong Post on the end of that title up there.
We are using an alternate experience system where a character gets one XP for each session in which that character participated and need to accumulate a certain amount to go up a level. We are also leveling pretty slowly for the first few levels for a couple of different reasons. It gives everyone a chance to learn more about WHO their characters are as, well, actual people before they have to worry more about WHAT their character is in terms of more complicated mechanics and abilities.
It also gives us an opportunity to do a lot more exploration of Waterdeep than in the published module without worrying about having to ramp up the “challenge rating” of things. So, for example, it takes 4xp (i.e., four sessions attended) to reach 2nd level and 10xp or ten sessions attended to reach 3rd level. It’ll take 18xp to reach 4th level. This is about twice what was required in our prior 5e campaign (which pretty much matched the speed of leveling using the core 5e rules). Once we get in the 5th-6th level range, I’ll likely increase the pace of leveling a bit.
If a player is missing, their character is also missing (and so no XP for that session). We come up with some reason that they had to go off and do something else and then some reason for how they come back in a following session. Given that the sessions have all taken place in the city, it has been relatively easy to do this so far. Combined with our XP system this means that characters are already at different levels due to players having to miss sessions. Some characters are at 3rd level now while others are still at 2nd. One claim I’ve read about 5e is that minor differences in level (at least in the same tier of play) are not quite as problematic from a game mechanic perspective than in some other recent editions of D&D. If the player characters start to vary significantly in level and it creates problems from a mechanics perspective, I suppose I’ll have to figure something out.
Another big difference with this campaign (and the reason for the swansong title) is that I have not asked the players to take turns at writing session recaps. Surprisingly, there has been no hue and cry, uproar, ruckus, or any ado whatsoever by the players over this. I was sure that I’d have a mob on my hands angrily insisting, nay demanding, that I force them to write recaps. Somehow I was quite mistaken on this. Regardless, it means that I will not be posting session summaries here. It was time-consuming enough for me to do it each week with something already written to work with (some requiring significantly more editing to make it comprehensible than others…you know who you are). I’m sure it would be even more time-consuming to do it from scratch (even with the aid of Rachel’s usually quite thorough notes). It would also miss the main point of my having required the player’s doing it previously: giving a player’s perspective on the session…with, of course, my comments added in…rather than just my perspective.
So it is likely that I will post very little here for the foreseeable future…outside of player wanted posts IF we ever need to add some new players to replace departing ones. Until I post again, enjoy!
