Isekai Campaign Session 4 Report

This session turned out much better than I expected. We ended doing about half of what I had planned, but that turned into more than enough.

Last session, they rescued the daughter of a blacksmith from goblins in a dungeon.

The morning after, the blacksmith gave them a ride to town in his carriage so he could make a report to the guild. I used this opportunity to talk to them in his voice and tell them about dungeons. So this was a lot of info dump. When they got to town they registered as adventurers and I got to work in two anime/isekai clichés: the receptionist fawning over one of the adorable adventurers, and the adventuring "senpai" trying to bully the new adventurers. One of my players called them out on the clicheness of the situation (which gave me an idea for later and made the campaign better). Another player wasn't feeling well today, which she worked into her character not feeling well, so she threw up on one of the bullies. The receptionist came back and told the bullies to get out.

Then I ran into my first obstacle, they sold their goblin cores for some silvers, then wanted to know a bunch of details of how money worked in this world. I had to step out of character and explain to them that BESM doesn't really have a money system set up, and I hadn't prepared prices for most things. I told them that I wouldn't track expenses for things like food and inns (which is part of why I expect Mark McKinnon didn't put money in the system) and that the money would be to save up for extra expenditures, like if they wanted to buy new armor or something. Once we got that out of the way, the story continued.

The guildmaster wasn't going to take the word of non-adventurers about a new dungeon. So the receptionist took the blacksmith aside and explained that there was an adventurer in town who could make the report, and guide the new team from bronze to silver level adventurers. I had some fun with this. When the party entered the tavern "a mysterious cloaked figure was watching them from the shadows." This turned out to be their contact. The blacksmith told her to stop being so dramatic, so she took her hood off and turned out to be a catgirl. She agreed to guide them if one would spar with her so she could test them.

This is where the idea I had earlier kicked in. I quickly made up a new battle map of a clearing in the woods. They were about to spar when the bullies from earlier came by with a few friends. We then had a fight where no one was allowed to use weapons and they fought until the bullies were unconscious. This made for a much more satisfying ending to the campaign than a little scuffle between two members of the party and a couple of bullies. The sick PC threw up on the same guy again (I said he had changed his clothes, so that was two sets of his clothes she'd ruined). At the end of the fight, the adventurer who was originally going to spar with the PC jumped out of a tree she'd been watching from and announced that she was satisfied and she would lead them through the dungeon.

Expected highlights:

- Using a cart ride as an infodump

- Lady receptionist teasing our swordswoman for being cute

Unexpected highlights:

- One player working her real world sickness into the game for humorous effect

- Explaining to my players how I wasn't going to track all their expenditures so they wouldn't have to worry about it.

- A big fight with the bullies and their friends to make the focus of the session.

I think this was our best session yet.

Edit: I forgot to mention that part of what made combat better this time was I prepared a spreadsheet with how much damage everyone did so I didn't have to calculate it each time, which made things move faster. For next time, I'll make another spreadsheet to calculate initiative more quickly.

Second edit: how could I forget the Wind Hawk our Beastmaster bonded with? He has a wind attack which knocks the enemy back. Our Beastmaster had fun knocking bad guys into trees.