Shackled City Postmortem

Comments on the book:
- The campaign remained fun for most players all the way through, but could have gotten old. It was fun to play all the way from level 1 to 20, but Catherine got bored mid-game due to the poor narrative flow and the abrupt transitions. It would help to have a random bard give prophecies to tie the adventures together into a coherent whole.
- The best parts were: deciding on what to do about the smoking eye at the end of chapter 6, the vorpal sword quest as a whole, some of the puzzles (the fire room in the vorpal sword quest; the mirror in chapter 5), the great dungeon crawl that was Jzadirune, the chapter 1 boss fight where the mooks just kept coming, the assassination of the rakshasa near the end of chapter 6, and allowing Kate to play the session she attended.
- The worst parts were: some of the boss fights were lame, especially the Adimarchus fight. Bosses needed more assistants, like in the Kaurophon fight at the end of chapter 11. There wasn't enough tailoring to individual characters' backgrounds or enough individualized sidequests. Not enough cool and special items (like the Maul of the Titans). Enemies didn't always use intelligent enough tactics, so certain characters were rarely threatened as the game went on.
- Book NPC's: There weren't enough friendly wizards. There weren't enough recurring villains -- some were resurrected, and some appeared a couple times, but by the time we found out the Cagewrights were a problem, we were already busy killing them off. Would have been better to have the Stormblades play a more recurring role, and also to have the Blue Duke, the Cagewrights, and the Last Laugh meddling in our affairs for a while before we wiped them all out in chapter 8. There were too many NPC's to keep straight, and only a few of them really stood out (but Crazy Jared was cool.)

Comments on Tom as DM:
- The game was too easy. The DM could have made harder encounters and made enemies fight harder/smarter/more clever. For the most part, the enemies just let us come to them and attack on our terms. Garlen made the party even more powerful.
- Some players followed the storyline OK while others were totally lost. It was a challenge, but could have been done better.
- The DM gave new players a big leg up in terms of making good character choices. Tony was also a big help.
- Garlen was cool to have along. Provided a fun level of interaction with the DM.
- Use more immersion -- speak in voices, hand out props, dim the lights, play background music, etc.
- Let Scott roll more. It doesn't matter if it's a DC 20 check and he has a +35, just say "roll a die" and then say "you found..."

Comments on Catherine as DM:
- Her sections were better laid out. The dungeons were more sensible/logical and the bad guys followed better algorithms.
- Tom was better at keeping Scott involved and building up the party, while Catherine was better at building encounters and pacing them well.

Comments on the players:
- Tony was very helpful in terms of party strategy and character development.
- The party worked together very well as a whole. There wasn't any lame/pointless rivalry. Everyone was willing to share. The party made good choices overall.
- Tony was good at breaking fights.
- Scott and Jeremy were very good at the "role-playing" parts of the game. Their characters had great personality.
- Having been through the game once, everyone feels inspired to develop neat characters for Black Sands. Now that we know how to be mechanically effective and play the game from start to finish, it'll be easier to work toward good character concepts.