Did that just happen?

Here's the thing are you guys still enjoying the session - cause it seems like I've heard a lot of complaining recently about multiple things that aren't going the way some of you think they should - if you don't think I'm treating you fairly and it's effecting your enjoyment of the campaign talk to me about it, give you an argument from RP or mechanics and I'll consider it.

The fact is this is supposed to be fun for everyone involved (including me), and recently its just been me feeling like I'm defending every decision I'm making. I'm just trying to make an Interesting, but also Challenging game that's is balanced by the mechanics as I understand them.

I usually put at least 4-8 hours every 2 weeks between updating this blog and preparing for the game itself to make sure what I'm doing is fair balanced and you have every opportunity to understand what is going on and evaluate it for consitency as well as make comments or suggestions for the direction for your character or campaign - generally the fact of the matter is you don't and aren't supposed to know everything about the world in its entirety, if you did there would be no decisions for you to make and might as well be reading a book or playing the game solo - thus there will be times when you are just going to have to trust that I'm trying to make a balanced campaign and not trying to screw you over and that even in the darkest hour I've built ways for you to succeed (though there has to be cause and effect that may eventually lead to your failer or demise - ie. you level 1 try to take on the great wyrm), if you can't do that at this point then I really don't need to be running games for you guys.

I will accept responsiblity for not having prepared to guide you all in a specific direction for the session outside of picking out a variety of monsters you might fight, I expected that you all would come to some conclusion amongst one another relatively quickly, or if you didn't have a clear plan in mind that you would roll a check to see what your character would think to do or try based on their motivations. I also expected to tell you that with regard to the captains if you kept off radar you would likely have "days if not hours" before the captains lives might be in danger, given what your characters should know about the logistical consequences of yet another group failing to defeat all of the gatekeepers, thus putting pressure on you to move forward quickly or emerge to the cercators again so that they will have reason to continue forward with the current cycle.

At the same time I hope you guys would recognize the contributing factors, when we are 2 hours into the session and no decision has been made and not a single roll has been made, all I have left is the infamous duh check, in this case it was for the most likely character to know of a potential fast way to travel - your arcane knowledge based wizard. With the knowledge from previous sessions imparted by other characters (TJ) most of you would know that the Cercators are based in Rygenhijo, being months from the Lolth tower his character would be able to put together that there should be a teleportation circle nearby to get to such an important place quickly.

I will accept blame for not explaining specifically where the portal leads in Rygenhijo; I expected if anyone wasn't certain or wanted to know more they would make a check, again no checks were rolled at all. I knew when I told you guys there was a portal, where I would have it go. Everything the Cercators do revolves around Lotus and the Nobunaga, knowing that it would be logical to infer that the teleportation circle would from it's last use go to a protected or Cercator controlled location and not just out on the streets somewhere in the city - a conclusion that if you didn't come to on your own might have if a roll was made - not everything is going to be a passive check when there are heavy consequences involved.

You all were heavily pressing for combat this session to test out your abilities, well I saw this as a way to do that and then get you right back on track with trying to stay in the shadows - you can't be in the shadows and low key if you are looking for direct combat out of game. The plan once I knew you were going, was to have you get to have a combat with something new, including undead and a hollow, showing you a preview of what is to come at the heart of the Cercators - the alarm was meant to give you the option for combat but not want to hang around long enough to see who you've alerted, given you all said you wanted to be off radar and alarms sounding doesn't exactly fit with being off radar - no one puts builds and alarm that takes over 10 minutes for something or someone to show up and check it. I am not going to tell you guys how to run your characters, if you in character want to ignore alarms go off to find out more about where you are that's fine, I'm going to give you the chance to do so and if it is a really dangerous place I'm going to try to give you time to reconsider the decision.

In this case you had and have a great deal of time given that the character the party chose to interact with ran off shutting down the entrance exit gates behind him, giving you even more time to think about and give clues to where you are or how difficult your path is. Even so far as to rethink the questions that were asked of the hand of fate where I according to it only have to have it point a direction I don't have to give any explanation at all as to why, I was trying to explain the answers so you guys would make the most informed decision given what your characters might be able to interpret from the hand choosing what it chose given the questions that were asked.

At any rate if you guys don't like what went down this session I don't care if we scrap the whole session, or if you guys aren't enjoying what I'm doing for and with your characters I'm fine with someone else running or just going to Friday Night Magic or xboxing. I run because it's fun to create something and see you guys get into your characters and play through them to see what new and creative ways you can come up with to defeat the challenges I create, but if all I do is defend what I'm doing and feel like you guys aren't enjoying it, then I really don't have any reason to do it, because it isn't fun for me at that point.

So post your opinions comments and etc. we'll go from there.

I don't want to make a big deal out of nothing, ordinarily Geoff doesn't leave the house out of session to chat, which leads me to believe some of you guys were not happy with the session, and from running for you guys for awhile now I realize the seemingly small margin for error and heavy intrigue campaigns aren't up you guys' alley which is why this one isn't that way, and has a much larger scope for success, but as I mentioned parts of the storyline have been again advanced more quickly than I anticipated and am balancing those things out, but that results in there being areas or potential paths that will have much small margins for success, this current through the Cercator HQ being one of them.

Anyhow I'm just tired in general, been busier than usual, without the time to prepare for what I can't predict what you guys will do, and each time I don't the game suffers or has some issue or another, I would just like to get through a session where I get to wing it, everyone have a good time, and there not be an issue afterwards. I could just be getting burnt out, previous years the DM's would swap who was running to try to keep that from happening, but with TJ gone and no one else really having the time or desire that's been kind of hard, so to help me out I'm asking for a little extra slack.

I'm going to hit the sack but I'll check this some time before next session and see what all your suggestions or comments are.