Wingin' It

Ugh. So, to compliment my lack of preparation, a few things went off the rails that were out of my control. Namely, my fourth player that was supposed to be introduced in yesterday's session for the first time couldn't make it because of a mis-communication and conflict with work. The deeper problem with this was that I had planned to use his introduction into the campaign and to the rest of the players as a bit of an adventure hook for the game. Instead of the usual, generic "you meet at a tavern and for some demented reason decide to go off on quests with complete strangers" setup for getting new players in with the group, I had planned for something a little more dramatic.

See, the original three players were traveling toward a port town a good 150 miles away, with a small settlement town in between. On their way to the town, I had planned for them to stumble across the fourth player, an eladrin bard, and his NPC fiance' being accosted by highwaymen. In a robbery gone bad, one of the bandits has rough hold on the bard's female companion, who refuses to give up a broach around her neck, and manages to stab the bandit deep in the thigh with a hairpin. The players were supposed to stumble across this as it was happening, and by this point it was supposed to be clear that the bandits were actually arguing with each other - with the leader trying to maintain control over his men. Finally, the hairpinned bandit releases the woman to the eladrin, but out of spite shoots her in the back with a crossbow and kills her.

From this point on, chaos was to break out - with the bandit leader killing the wounded bandit soon afterward, enraged that it had come to bloodshed and that this woman had been killed. He would then toss the bag of coins he liberated from the eladrin into the middle of the road in disgust, setting this bandit leader up as a sort of tragic antihero - a swashbuckler that steals from wealthy travelers, but never, ever wants it to come to violence. This action prompts some of the other bandits, who are falling under the sway of a rival of sorts of the current leader, to take up arms, and a chaotic exchange of crossbow fire was to break out, killing several on both sides, before the bandits melted away to settle their differences elsewhere.

You know, a nice, dramatic, and tragic enterence for a new player. Of course, it was also a prime adventure hook. So, without him, I had to wing it. I had to play the part of his eladrin bard, as well as everyone else in the encounter. It didn't go as smoothly as I had anticipated, and one of the more overzealous members of the party tried to intervene, but thanks to careful placement of figures on the battle map and a bit of forethought, his impact on the scene was negligible and amounted to the deaths of 2 minions for 88 XP.

I guess the one thing I learned out of all of this is that you will almost always have to "wing it" sooner or later, and if you remember that you are essentially the god of this world you've created, you'll be alright. Just do it with confidence and your players will pick up on that. It also shows the risk of basing adventure hooks off of individual players - it's satisfying, but involves that X factor.