Session 8 Report Hole in the Oak
Previous session report can be found here. First session report can be found here. Next session report is here.
Overall
On Friday, October 24th, I ran the eighth session of my Hole in the Oak game for OSE via FoundryVTT. In this post I’ll recap what happened, and note down my lessons learned.
The PCs continued in their dungeon exploration from the room with the black skeletons that they’d found last time. After more trepidation, one of the players decided to specifically spend a turn to go check the walls for secret doors. That was a great move, because they found the hidden pantry stuffed with jars of hair, nails, and teeth. Fortunately, they’d run into Hazrad the Unholy in a random encounter in a previous session, so this time, when they found the note “For the collection of Hazrad the Unholy”, they could immediately link the two.
They quickly clocked that the door to the north was a one-way door, so carefully made sure to keep it open. I was very happy to see they thought of locking the door in place somehow, and could point out that this is what iron spikes are for. When faced with spectres locked in combat just beyond it, they decided to engage with the pair. I was quite pleased to see that they put together the rumours and info they research earlier, about the White League, to identify who the figures fighting were. In this case, a member of the White League and a lizardfolk antagonist. So, they went to attack the lizardfolk in help of the White League ghost, and quickly took care of business.
In their further exploration, they pieced together that the route to the left would lead them to Tom Fool, whom they’d met last time. So, they decided to head to the right side, and start knocking on some doors there. Since I was getting tired by this point, that’s where we cut the session.
What Went Well
Using a Dungeon Time Tracker
I felt like I had a better handle on dungeon time passing, because I was using a dungeon time tracker again. Essentially, it was a set of boxes that I could tick and annotate, but it helped me remember what is going on when. It also helped in negotiating the passage of time with the players. Frequently, I asked something along the lines of “Okay, while the thief is doing that, what is everybody else doing?”. That question really helped clarify what action was going around the table, and helped structure the play.
Being firm on what I expect of the hirelings
Again in this session, it came up that one of the players wanted to ask a hireling for additional information. Learning from last time, I simply said that they’re the players’ characters, so they know as much as they do. If they want the hirelings to do something, they should just announce that they do things. One of the players started incorporating that a little differently after, stating that their PC would ask the hireling to do something, and then move the hireling themselves. I think that’s a great way to incorporate the hirelings, and I was happy that it created a bit more clarity as well.
Lessons Learned
Keeping a consistent time across sessions
In using the time tracker, I did realize that I’d not used on a few sessions but also used a separate one when I did use it. As a result, the PCs essentially had a magically-resetting lantarn, because we never got to the oil running out in one session. So, instead, I realized I need to have a singular tracking system that stays with the players across sessions.
The “Player-facing” map is not fully player-facing
Even though the adventure I run comes with what it calls a “player-facing” dungeon map for digital tabletops, it isn’t fully. Specifically, the one-way door was marked on the map itself, which meant that one of the players could see the arrow pointing. As a result, it was easy for him to conclude that they needed to take extra care. Now, I’m not one to be interested in creating a “gotcha” for the players, but it could have been a nice surprise.
Take care of who I have selected in FoundryVTT
For this adventure, I roll for random encounters every turn (as indicated by the module, to make more weird stuff happen more frequently). Unfortunately, in FoundryVTT, it always takes the token you’ve selected as the person rolling the die. Now, that was fine for as long as I was rolling in DM-only visibility. But, somewhere along the session, I set my rolls to public. On top of that, I selected a “heretic gnome” in the next room over, because the players were asking some questions about what they could smell and hear there. So, as I rolled the next random encounter, it broadly announced to the players that the Heretic Gnome rolled a d6. It’s, of course, my fault in this case, and I should pay a bit closer attention to what the settings are before I role. Overall, not a terrible thing, but still something that I could have looked out for.