Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be diving back into The Legend of Vox Machina, and seeing how our ragtag heroes are faring in the wake of their battle with an active volcano. Keyleth’s literal trial by fire proved an excellent vehicle for improving her confidence, with the distinctions in form between this task and the Briarwoods arc demonstrating the importance of tailoring your conflicts to the players they’re prioritizing.

Percy’s trial spanned a full arc, involved a massive amount of active roleplaying, and resolved in more of an emotional victory than a tangible, mechanical one: an ambitious demand for any player, and thus a challenge that could only be set before a particularly confident one. In contrast, Keyleth’s victory was more sidequest than main arc, its challenges mostly involved performing well in combat, and its conclusion was marked by the super-tangible awarding of fire mastery, all choices better-suited to a player who needs some encouragement, and perhaps doesn’t want to be put on the spot for big speeches. You can theoretically apply a generic adventure to any party, but the best adventures involve meeting your players where they’re most comfortable, and giving them the tools needed to shine in their own way.

Well, that’s the theory, anyway. I’ve been doing my best to apply that logic to my own campaign: my lore-focused player has been deeply integrated into the political tides of the region, my mechanics-focused player has been given lots of flexible combat abilities to express himself with, and my shy player has been afforded more skill-based abilities so they don’t have to roleplay as much. My only real problem at the moment is the player who thinks DnD is a comedy improv hour, and we’re, uh, working on that. But enough about me, let’s get back to Vox Machina!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to dive back into Vox Machina, wherein Vax just received a grim premonition regarding some world-ending calamity. With the continent already beset by a horde of dragons, adding some additional apocalyptic threat just seems like poor sportsmanship, but I’m sure Mercer’s got a plan here. Either way, last episode also provided plenty of useful lessons regarding both hiding the inevitability of a conflict that’s largely on rails, as well as splitting the party between two simultaneous conflicts, so I still had plenty to munch on.

As for my own campaign, I am happy to report that we’ve had two outstanding sessions since last I checked in, as my party journeyed west to gather allies for their own calamitous conflict. The first session was a uniquely tricky one, as it involved the party stopping by the family estate of one of my player characters, thus necessitating a fair amount of side prep with that player. I was worried introducing a whole family at once would be too busy and that some characters would get lost in the shuffle, but the event turned out to be a total hit, and we actually ended up running long just because people wanted to see the ending. I think I’m generally getting a better handle on the exact degree of prep writing necessary to smoothly direct a quest, and am thus able to channel all my energy into crafting atmosphere within the moment, making my prepped work land with that much more impact. But I’ve rambled enough about my own efforts – Vox Machina have a quest to finish, and I’m eager to see them through it. Let’s hunt some dragons!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to grab my dice and roll back into The Legend of Vox Machina, wherein our party are currently facing potential tragedy in the Tomb of Purvan. Having established both our seasonal character conflict (Vax’s overprotective feelings towards his sister, and her resultant frustration), as well as the fact that we’re exploring a monument to the Goddess of Death, we concluded the last episode by entwining those two threads. Vax got fussy, Vex got angry, and one hasty tomb check later, it appears our half-elven heroine has gotten herself killed. Maybe your brother had a bit of a point, Vex?

All in all, Vox Machina’s new adventure is proceeding swimmingly. Beyond that, I’m happy to report my own house campaign is also going well, and we’ve run through three successful sessions since I last checked in. With the party traveling through a particularly post-apocalyptic territory, I ran through first a Seven Samurai-style base defense, then a good old-fashioned battledome, and finally a riverboat gambling scenario, wherein my party had to dispose of a hijacker and ford a river brimming with flesh-eating manatees (“maneaties”). All of these adventures served as experiments in encounter design – first an encounter that’s being fought on two fronts, then an encounter with limited sightlines, and finally an encounter comprising both a normal battle map and a larger ship to be navigated. All three experiments were a success, and I’m eager to apply all this new technology to future quests, but that’ll be a story for next time. For now, let’s check in with Vox Machina, and see what can be done for Vex!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to The Legend of Vox Machina, and see how our heroes are fairing in their quest to regain the important magic doohickeys. From a point of initially, emphatically demonstrating that Vox Machina lack the strength to fight these dragons, Mercer has steadily guided the party from “we need to gather an army” (Whitestone) to “no army is willing to assist you” (Vasselheim) to “only the Vestiges of Divergence can stop these dragons” (Slayer’s Take). By splitting these directives among multiple characters and separating them by travel and trials, he’s effectively masked the inevitability of this quest, arriving at that sweet alchemy of the players collectively “choosing” to do the only thing you had written out for them anyway.

It’s a good thing I’m taking notes, as I’m at roughly the same point in my own players’ campaign. Just a few hours after I write this article, we’ll be conducting our second session since picking back up, wherein I plan to guide my party through a destroyed city and into a riff on Seven Samurai. I’m not sure my party’s feeling quite the same sense of urgency as Vox Machina, so I’m eager to see how Mercer maintains momentum and perspective as the gang wanders off on this new adventure. Let’s get to it!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to reach the conclusion of Vox Machina’s first season, and perhaps even more eager to share my own campaign updates. After several sessions of going on various adventures in and around the city of Yhaunn, my party was invited to a royal ball at the castle, necessitating more prep work than I feel entirely comfortable acknowledging. I had to build out the relationships of the royal family, then sketch out roles and personalities for all of the city councilors, then sculpt the personalities of the two delegates from each of half a dozen different nearby regions, then figure out how to give this mass of new characters some narrative structure, lest my party be entirely lost in directionless decision paralysis.

And yet, it worked! It all worked! That session was one of our most successful so far, the party never seemed overwhelmed by the opportunities in front of them, and they even made some personal connections with several of the country’s attendant luminaries. Lightly guided by the attendees they’d met previously, my players made a successful dive into this campaign’s larger political reality, with Captain Chaos himself actually forging some of the strongest bonds with my new characters. It was a clear and profoundly encouraging demonstration of how much my group and I have grown into a functional campaign, with the story finally starting to feel like something they are truly interwoven with, as opposed to something that’s merely being forced upon them.

So yes, I am feeling pretty proud at the moment, and eager to make use of all these new connections the party has made. I might end up posting some design docs eventually if people are interested, but in the meantime, I’m also quite excited to see how Vox Machina’s first season comes to an end. We’re in full boss battle mode at the moment; Vex and Vax have reconciled, Cassandra has been rescued, and Keyleth… well, Keyleth’s in a bad spot, I admit. Having her leap in front of a blast meant for Vex was an exceedingly noble conclusion to their mini-arc, but also very stupid, given she’s now the group’s only healer. Please, druids and clerics, do not leap in front of your damage-dealers, that is partially what they are there for. Let’s see if Keyleth ever gets the chance to make use of that lesson, as we explore The Finale of Vox Machina!

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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to The Legend of Vox Machina, and perhaps glean another tip or two to carry back to my own tabletop misadventures. To be honest, things have actually been moving quite smoothly in my campaign; we reached my invented capital city a few sessions ago, and the players have since then been having a great time exploring this playground of bounties, quests, and colosseum challenges I’ve built for them. I’m too much of a narrative-minded guy and too poor at improvising to provide a truly open-ended sandbox, but I think we’ve hit a good compromise between freedom and guide rails, and my individual encounter design sensibilities are improving all the time.

As for the hapless members of Vox Machina, we last left off on a moment of shocking betrayal, as Cassandra sided with the Briarwoods over her long-lost brother. It seems beyond question that this is in some part a result of the Briarwoods’ foul sorceries, but it’s nonetheless a bold play by Mercer. Within the list of Possible Complications offered in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, “the party is betrayed by a former ally” is the only entry complimented by “(use this one sparingly)”, and for good reason – if the party begins to believe they can’t trust any of the characters around them, or that established characterization might be reversed at a whim, their investment in the world will drop precipitously. That’s obviously not going to be a problem with a committed group like this, but it’s an example of a conceit where exploiting it simply to increase dramatic volume might actually provoke the opposite effect. Player investment in non-player characters is hard-earned, so think twice before you betray that trust!

Alright, that’s more than enough narrative design preamble. Let’s get back to the action!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you one dungeon mastering session older and hopefully wiser, having tackled my campaign’s second session, and the first including our entire four member party. The dynamic was significantly more chaotic with four players, mainly because that fourth player is the embodiment of chaos itself, but I think I did pretty okay. Bounties were pursued, festivals were attended, and the whole gang found themselves embroiled in some kind of folk horror forest ritual situation. With me being me, I’m sure it’s no surprise that my first setpiece is drawing heavily from The Wicker Man and its spooky compatriots.

Our second session also provided plenty of trial-by-fire lessons for me, ranging from the diverse nature of player investment to the setting of expectations regarding player agency. Successful DMing requires paying close attention to player desires, and often coming to understand what they want better than they themselves do. In our last campaign, our DM attempted to ameliorate Captain Chaos with more mechanical tools, which only slowed down gameplay – in our campaign, I’ve instead been giving him greater range of creative self-expression, which has resulted in player satisfaction with no added complexity. On the other hand, my initial use of a heist quest to debut the game has set some perhaps untenable expectations regarding players’ ability to pre-scope any combat encounter, which may result in some inescapable friction down the line.

It’s all an impossibly complex network of mechanical, creative, and personal concerns, all of which only makes me more impressed by Mercer and crew’s ability to navigate this conceptual labyrinth. Last episode saw Percy assuming his destined mantle of Savior of Whitestone, only to immediately about-face back into his Dark Avenger persona. Such deliberately anti-party-unity behavior makes for great drama, but difficult campaign writing, making me further suspect that Mercer and Percy’s player essentially co-wrote this whole arc. The dungeon master’s guide suggests DMs create separate results for success, partial success, and failure in any event, but with all respect to the dungeon master’s guide, that’s fucking stupid and not at all the way stories work. Complex narratives require some degree of player predictability, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on how Mercer fixes the scales as we continue our journey. Let’s get back to Vox Machina!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I come to you just two days after my last D&D update, with jubilant news regarding my campaign’s first session. After a somewhat halting start, the rest of my session went absolutely fabulously, as I steered my players through a multi-step heist mission. Having spent a year wishing our previous campaign had more complex battlefield dynamics, I was delighted to find that the party immediately latched onto my gestures in that direction. Rather than simply throwing players into rooms full of enemies, I let them plan their own route towards and through encounters, giving the team a far greater sense of ownership over their choices and results.

Our session also served as a nerve wracking reminder of just how tricky it is to ensure unpredictable players somehow receive a coherent and reasonably paced narrative experience. The party sailed right past the point where they were supposed to meet a key contact, forcing me to slot that character into a later encounter with as much grace as I could muster. And during the party’s first sneaking mission, properly seeding the quest’s final villain required our rogue to succeed on several stealth checks and then fail the final one – a non-inevitability that I quietly engineered through bisecting stealth checks into smaller and smaller sub-motions. Coherent, exciting narratives require a degree of coincidence and timing that is almost impossible to arrive at by chance, making me ever more impressed with how well Vox Machina manages it.

Because yes, it is indeed time for more Vox Machina. With my mind so overstuffed by D&D trivia, this seems like the perfect time to continue the assault on Whitestone, and perhaps learn a thing or two about managing my own party. The ultimate truth of D&D, something I’m begrudgingly coming to accept, is that any adventure will be what your players make of it – I can’t steer them entirely, I can only set the stage. As a refugee from the land of traditional fiction, this is all extremely stressful to me, but I can at least recognize and admire the clear synergy between Mercer and his players. Let’s see what trouble they get up to this time!

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