Through Ultan's Door Session 3: Pulling Punches

Sidney Syme

In the third session of my Ultan's Door campaign, the PCs went way off the map. This was exciting because I got to use some content I had developed myself; it was also challenging because I had to improvise a lot of things on the fly, which is not my strong suit.

The party found the Great Sewer River which lies at the edge of the map in Through Ultan's Door #1. They took a boat and rowed it upriver, which eventually led them to emerge from the dungeon into the streets of Zyan Above. Some of the party got captured by a group of paranoid Zyanese warriors, while one character made friends with some priests. At one point the party was split into three groups which was quite difficult to run. Eventually, through some fast talking and leniency on my part, they managed to bluff their way into escaping and took the boat back down the river to where they had started.

Overall the session was a success, but there were a few points where I think I could have done better. I felt like I pulled my punches a lot when the PCs were interacting with the paranoid Zyanese. The PCs willingly gave up their weapons and let themselves be captured. Based on what I had established about the Zyanese, it would have been reasonable for them to kill the PCs or at least imprison them indefinitely. Instead I let the PCs get away with some fairly outrageous lies.

I think I was reluctant to make 'hard moves' because I was improvising (therefore the danger was not set in stone like in the dungeon areas I had prepped) and because I failed to properly outline the stakes to the players. Two of the players who got captured were new to this campaign and their idea of D&D is shaped largely by a) comedy D&D podcasts and b) my old Dungeon World campaign. Because of time constraints I had neglected to give them the full 'OSR spiel'. I think they were still in the mindset of "we can say silly things to these NPCs and we might get captured but we'll get free somehow" - which was reasonable, because I had not properly set expectations.

In hindsight, I wish I had explicitly framed the stakes before the PCs gave up their weapons. I should have said: "Look, you don't know who these people are, but they look threatening. If you let them take you captive, you might end up imprisoned or executed. At the very least they will probably take your stuff. Are you ok with that?" Then if the players persisted, it would have felt fair if they got killed.

The other weak point in the social scenes was the lack of dice mechanics. I had been set against using Charisma checks because I wanted it to be OSR style - "you just say what you say and the NPCs react accordingly". But there were several spots where I genuinely didn't know how the NPCs would react, and a roll would have come in handy there. I might start using "reaction roll modified by Charisma" to resolve these situations.

Aside from those points, though, the session was a success and I'm excited to see how the campaign grows from here. Depending on what the players want to do next it could stay as a dungeon crawl, or evolve into a citycrawl/political game.