A D&D Update

As I have mentioned before, I am playing D&D with a friend group. I am the Dungeon Master (DM) and the game is Avatar the Last Airbender themed. It takes place after Korra, more specifically, after her death. Currently, I am typing up the adventure as we play along. Even if we stop playing, I will finish this story. But that's not the point of this post.

What I want to talk about is how happy I am with my players. I don't want to name names, so instead I'll call them Knowledgeable (K), Wild Card (W), Play Safe (P), and Learning (L). These names fit their play styles. K has a good understanding of D&D, so when they play they do try to have fun with it and attempt with role playing. For instance in the last session, K decided to go to the kitchen for food because their character was hungry. Great D&D play, people get hungry, sounds reasonable, I'm a fan. With W, they come up with good ideas and bad ideas, and it really is fifty-fifty on how it will play out. They generally try to be stealthy and clever, but that isn't what happens all the time, and that's okay. We roll with the dice, literally.

After starting this campaign, I was actually worried about P and L. From watching P play, they generally stick to the main objective and follow along. Which is fine normally, but this lacks initiative when given opportunities to be creative. They are creative during combat, giving extra flair when attacks land, but I want that flair during non-combat encounters. With the last session, they did just that. When all other players decided to rest, P was the last one awake. In my head I was thinking that this trip on the zeppelin will be over and they will just reach their destination. But then P decided to take initiative and investigate. Back story, they are with this important person on the zeppelin, but he's in his room with guards in front. Plot twist, it's a fake and the important person isn't really there. I gave small clues that something wasn't sitting right, but I wasn't going to straight up tell them the dude was a fake, that's no fun. If they decided not to investigate then I was going to leave it as that, but P knew something was up and I'm proud of them for investigating. Which ended up with the group believing the important person was a fake, but they didn't know for sure and had no evidence.

Now what L did took me by surprise. The group does not have a leader, so sometimes decisions can be split. I do have my own character with them, a spirit cat, but I try not to give a direct opinion to influence their decision. If they ask my character for their opinion, I tell them important details my character knows, but try to leave it for them to decide since they're the main players. L is generally new to D&D. They've played video games like Baulders Gate 3, but actual real life D&D not so much. So because of this, they don't know exactly what they can do while playing and follow along with the others who have more experience. But this time, L took charge. They led the group with their idea and took a hard turn I was not expecting. When speaking to a guard in front of the room of the important person, they accused the important person of sexual harassment. This led to the guard informing them that the person in the room was actually a fake. L kept pushing to actually see the fake, but they were using the same argument so I didn't feel right to reward them with more. After the session, we talked about this specific situation and I explained to them that the argument worked, but they needed to do more or something else to learn new things. 

I can tell L was frustrated that nothing more came out of it. What they don't know, is that this situation did change a future plan I had for them. Nothing major, but it now leads to a scenario that I believe L will be pleased with. Sometimes with D&D, you don't see the results until later on in the story.