Fall approaches for us in the northern hemisphere, and we’ve just had our second session of the roguelike campaign!

Here, I discuss the preparation and running of sessions for my roguelike-style D&D campaign.

Session structure

In this campaign, our sessions occupy two 3-hour blocks of a day. The first block is the combat section, where the player characters fight their way through rooms of a dungeon with randomly generated monsters. They acquire magic items and resources as they go. The second block consists of roleplay and preparation. The characters can interact with NPCs in the tavern as they compare notes and attempt to figure out what’s going on.

In this session…

This time, the group made more progress through the dungeon! They reached a shop where they could exchange certain resources for additional loot, and past that is the boss of the first floor. They fought very well considering the difficulty of the encounter. I think they’ll be able to defeat the boss in the next few runs, which will open up the next floor!

People are still getting used to the format of the roleplay section. Having certain scenes and interactions planned to drop in to the session when things slowed down worked pretty well. I also made sure that something was happening in each area, which cut down on some of the dead space in the session.

For next time

Using Astral Tabletop to set up a visual aid and stream it to the players worked pretty well! I think I’ll be able to get more of it prepared beforehand so I can cut down on time spent setting up the map.

The players also articulated some interactions they wanted to see between certain characters, so I can prepare for that as well.

I’ll also need to make sure the second floor is ready in case they make it up there!

One other thing I’ve been putting off is pulling more magic items into the available pool. I think I’ll just need to set some time aside to slowly add more so that it doesn’t get repetitive.

Things went well this time, so I’m pretty happy! I hope my players continue to have fun in this campaign.