u/Reialgo

Hello good knights, last night I ran my 3rd session where the company ended up facing the clockwork knights as part of the tournament, I had it all planned out that it would be a series of encounters through several days with other intrigue occurring in the seat of power to keep things interesting

Suffice to say it did not go to plan

The company got completely mauled, we had the first death of the campaign and would've had 2 had the fox knight not used their ability to peace out of the arena(the gull knight rolled slightly below average VIG, the Fox has 5 VIG lmao, but all PC at least rolled 5-6 GD on creation), the halo knight is built like a tank with their stat rolls but would've been overwhelmed had it continued. Dice luck definitely played a part here, despite have 18VIG the halo knight has managed to fail the first or second smite roll in each of the 3 combats we've had so far, and the others not much better. I think another issue was that they ended up splitting combat between individual clockwork knights and man, 4armor was an insane DR to pass for the group whose highest dice was an 8, meanwhile the clockwork knights consistently score 4-6 in rolls and grinded them down.

I feel like I'd heard these clockwork knights weren't much of a threat, and was frankly at a bit of a loss for why the fight felt so lopsided. I'm not actually complaining since it's resulted in a fantastic settup for next session but I feel like I failed to properly convene the nuances of combat to the group, what could they have done here to beat the knights? and have you fought the clockwork knights? how did your combat go?

Took the plunge and decided to run MBL after falling in love with the text, but no one else I knew had the opportunity to run it and am really not regretting it 😁

So far we've played just 2 sessions(only 3 hours each with a break) and from what I can gather we've been advancing through myths fairly slowly (only 3 omens from the tournament, though Im thinking of fast tracking this one once the company arrives at the seat of power as per a suggestion on this reddit, and 3 from the blade) frankly though I think this is from the fact that we're all enjoying fleshing out each scene.

I've kind of taken the approach of preparing background elements in the world and how they might interact, such as who rules each holding, their appearance, potential relations to each other, so that I have an idea of SOME elements of the world. But Im mostly coming in to it with a low prep kind of idea, with the goal being that I've set up elements that I can use to spark improv. I also set up some ideas of how the myths can relate to each other and already played out a scene where actors from another myth "starred" in a different one because it made some sense to me, and also because mechanically the company is being pulled towards the tournament and I didnt want to potentially throw them into a gauntlet without actually going over combat proper!

I dont think Im very good at writing up a coherent story and I've made it clear that Im as much along for the ride as players, but Im hoping I can at least lead to satisfying conclusions. And ironically so far they've dodged most of what I've actually prepped anyway and I've really enjoyed just improving where they've gone!

Hello! Im a brand new DM looking to start a campaign of mythic bastionland soon(tripped into it because no one else I know has the means to run this cool ass game damn it).

Im going to be doing a session 0 soon to get my players on the same page, one thing I'm scratching my head at is the dominion part of the game. I've got an grasp of the general gameplay loop but Im not sure of the actual benefits of ruling a dominion, past something like being able to muster a warband. I think understanding it would at least help me set up a functioning court that my players could interact with in the future(tho none of us are particularly game of thrones savy)

My honest to God first impression is a lot of management for not much actual gain? I would love some insight from people that have run the dominion element of the game