**** ROAD TRIP SPOILERS BELOW ****
**** ROAD TRIP SPOILERS BELOW ****
**** ROAD TRIP SPOILERS BELOW ****
**** ROAD TRIP SPOILERS BELOW ****
**** ROAD TRIP SPOILERS BELOW ****
Wheyhey all!
Well we ran our first game of Road Trip.
As planned we got through the intro adventure and the players had GREAT fun.
The setting got epic enough even in such a short time.
As promised here are the things I ran into as a GM.
Keep in mind that although I have RP’d quite a bit and hosted several games, most of them were “rules heavy” such as D&D and there was a page in a book somewhere covering every instance one could encounter (or nearly so). Monsters/Road Trip is far more “freeform” and as such players tend to get more creative. I’m still learning and my players accept the fact I make mistakes and several quick RetCons were made on the spot.
The players themselves are pretty much new to the Monsters universe but they love their monsters and characters already.
My first mistake is a lack of preparation. Although this is obvious, having 2 very busy work weeks I did not study the characters enough. Road Trip kind of expects the GM to use the setting and do a lot of fleshing out with the info given. This is in no way bad but thinking I could “wing it” wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. As such: lesson learned!
The adventure started out fine enough, the graffiti had them paranoid from the start. Meeting Jack was awkward but the players decided to help him. But they were wary of him from the start.
This was further strengthened by the fact they had not yet seen Basil and the attack of The Red Terror made them feel strongly they were being lead into a trap.
When entering the museum they pretty much refused to enter the display room. Making me use Jack to remove the cover from the statue.
I chose to make them experience Basil being banished but Dagon appearing still made it feel like a trap to them. They started to distrust Jack more and more, despite feeling sorry for him losing Basil.
Here started the main problem of the session: after defeating Dagon they pretty much refused to let Jack go. I did not find a hint on how to let him “escape on his Road Trip”.
I did not expect him to be “guarded” like they did found no good plot twist to let him escape.
Did I miss something vital in that part of the story? Luckily my players were kind enough to let me RetCon him escaping while they were fascinated by Dagon but it felt a tad awkward.
One other smallish thing (but that is most likely due to me trying to wing it), I sort of missed a description of the abilities of The Red Terror and Dagon. This was not a huge problem but for someone less experienced like me it was tough to try and stick to the name of the abilities while not really knowing how to handle them. This was very minor though, so no biggy!
Next up for us is Sucrose Park, *KUDOS* on the postcard handouts. The players are really looking forward to the trip and they have 2 weeks to come up with an idea on how to undertake the Road Trip.
So major thanx for what looks like a great adventure the coming months! We are all really looking forward to it!
Will keep you updated on how it goes!
