Last night was the 15th session of my ongoing Legacy of Fire Campaign. This was a bit of a landmark I guess, and the game seems to be going well and bubbling along nicely. The session was a bit of a later start as one of the players got held up at a local miniature wargames convention. It was alright though as it gave us the opportunity to explain the basics of combat to one of our less experienced role players in order to help her get her head around some of the more “interesting” issues of Pathfinder. Upon the arrival of the delayed player, things started quickly into where we had left off at the end of last session – COMBAT.

There seems to be a lot of combat in this campaign, whereas at the start, there was a lot more opportunity to Role Play. I suppose introducing players to the NPCs encourages that sort of thing, but its one thing I would like to see more of as combat tends to disrupt the flow of the story.

Right from the start I decided to introduce Hero Points into the campaign to encourage “flair” in combat and make it more of a story telling tool rather than a straight out “Roll-Dice-a-Thon”. Unfortunately, players seems to use the Hero Points to save themselves rather than be creative which means I’m now asking myself, am I making combat too difficult?

I had this same issue in my last campaign, and am beginning to think its something I’m doing wrong. I want the players to enjoy themselves and feel challenged, but I don’t want the heroes to just walk all over the bad guys in the story like its some type of school excursion. So my question is this: How do I make the game more interesting, without becoming deadly, and allow my players to interact more with the idea of combat being a story telling tool, rather than a case of the question being asked – “How will the GM trying to kill us this time?”

This is probably where I have my greatest concerns. I love Role Play. I always have. But my games seem to be more about the latest “Moster of the Week” than to be about the story. I have been throwing elements of the story at the players when I can for sure, and the players seem to spark up at that moreso than they do with the latest combat encounter. I’m open to suggestions…