Back to Thracia
After a month long break for summer, we're back in the Caverns!
Off the bat, it felt good to get back into the swing of things. It hasn't been that long since we last played but yesterday's game felt familiar and easy to pick back up. I think by now the core group is solidifying around the regular players and it does feel like we all have a nice rapport.
The Cult's expansion into the lower levels of the dungeon is well underway now, and they see the delvers not as a threat but as potential scouts and allies against the Beastmen. The players aren't too quick to trust the Cult, but they aren't opposed to leveraging their manpower, especially against larger Beastmen patrols. The situation between the Cult and the Beastmen is escalating though and it changes every session (as it should!). I love how Thracia is keeping me on my toes and has me thinking on how old spaces can be used.
Something I appreciate about the vibe of Thracia is how straightforwardly classic it feels. There is nothing here that will blow the minds of anyone who's played vanilla D&D for any amount of time. That's not to say Thracia does not have it's surprises (it absolutely does) but rather that it uses familiar components to build a complex space. I mean this in a very physical sense. The factions here don't really come packaged with any interiority. There is no NPC relationship map and factional politics can really be boiled down to "Beastmen bad for slaving ppl" or "Cult are bad for killing ppl", "Lizards mostly chill, but eat ppl too" (morally grey?). Of course, nuance can be added either through GM extrapolations or player engagement, which is sort of happening in my game.
My prep focus each week is to keep that factional play juicy and full of conflict. A lot of my interpretations of random encounters are now informed primarily by what the faction situation is and how this encounter might evolve that fiction. As an example, I had set up a territory dispute over the last few sessions. The Cult set up a barricade in front of the temple of Athena to block any Beastmen from pushing through. The Cult eventually wants to claim the temple and use that teleporter to reach the lower level. However, last session I rolled a Beastman patrol encounter and it made sense in that moment to say that the barricade was breached and Beastmen have broken through to chase some escaped slaves. This left the temple open for the taking and the Cult made a push for it with the help of the players. So now the Cult has access to the Level 3 teleporter. Big things coming soon...
From a meta-game standpoint I feel like this Thracia campaign is progressing at a fast pace. I mean this in the sense of player progression and also in how much things are escalating session to session. I like the latter part, though I don't want this to turn into Warhammer two weeks from now. Player progress has me a bit mixed. On the one hand, I love the troupe progression that has been happening. Players went and bought an outpost and now have a warband on payroll to guard the dungeon entrance. I love seeing a group work together to elevate the whole. However, the pace of individual XP progression has meant that players are also rapidly jumping up in levels only a few sessions in.
Frankly, I've come to dislike Shadowdark's XP system. In my opinion it is the weakest part of an otherwise solid package and is a poor fit for the kind of megadungeon game I want to run. It wears the skin of XP for Treasure but really fully relies on GM fiat, with barebones guidance on how to attribute an XP value to treasure finds. I get that it is meant to reduce bookkeeping, but we don't need to be this scared of math. People are all too eager to do basic arithmetic to calculate how rich they are so I don't know what problem is being sold by this abstraction.
I am happy to vibe out a lot of what is happening during the game, but I think XP values for treasure should be concrete. As written, a treasure can have an XP value of 0 for mundane, 1 for a "bag of gold" or something equivalent (???), 3 for magic items/rare trinkets, and 10 for a dragon's hoard/djinni's wish. I do use values between those ranges because if I am going to award XP for magic items then there is no fucking way I rule a +1 sword gives the same XP as a +3 sword.
For this campaign I am currently assigning XP based on gold value brackets so that I can at least have a better gauge on what treasure should award. I also award XP for overcoming challenging encounters, finding secrets and forging bonds. On top of that I award 1XP for mapping and 1XP for writeups each session. Carousing each week is also netting players quite a bit of XP. I may toy with replacing the XP system at a later date if I find that it is getting in the way of running a good game but it will require a lot of fiddling with the game economy and I do not have the energy between the job and the baby to deal with that right now.
What the current XP system has led to is a party that is quickly out-levelling much of the dungeon's challenge. I am not a GM who cares for balance but I do think Thracia needs to challenge players. I think the current initiative system is really being skewed in their favor as they often win and by the time we reach round 2, sleep has gone off and half the opponents are taken out. I am going to toy with rerolling initiative each round, since I do love that as a player and feel it gives a nice tension and dynamism to combat, especially when using a simple system like Shadowdark. It will keep the party on their toes at least, which is how I want combat to feel.
On the table side, I love how communicative my players are! Whether it is discussing plans for downtime/delving, or discussing feedback on the overall campaign, everyone has been great at voicing their opinions and giving space for others to be heard. It is easily my favorite thing about this campaign and not something the system had anything to do with, purely a table dynamic that I have come to really appreciate.
I also love the player writeups. For now they have all been on our discord, though if any of my players are reading this and want to post on their blog, please have at it! You'll still get your XP! (no bonus blog XP tho).
The downtime/town via PbP remains to be a hit for me. It feels really chill and gives me a nice log I can reference each week to see how things are progressing. I also like RPing little scenes every now and then that play out over text. They never get too crazy, but they do have an impact on the campaign which I think makes them worthwhile. It's a great way to get more out of this game without needing to carve out more session time each week. Alas, 2hrs on Monday is all I can get away with and that isn't going to change any time soon. Still, I feel like it's plenty of time for me to get my Thracia fix and the weekly regularity means we do build satisfying momentum.
Overall, very happy to get back in the GM saddle after a month off. I didn't realize how much I missed it even if we weren't gone for very long. It's great to hang out with my Thracian homies again and explore some dank caves.