Aww, gee. That sounds bad when put that way. It's a valid question. I will do my best to answer, and to fix this, going forward. I would say the biggest thing Sandoval did was shout "Strike colors!" and this had an effect on the Pirate captain (he seemingly surrendered and offered to help steer the ship). This was one of my favorite moments in the session so I would emphasize it. I know that sounds like a really small action, but it was a key point of the session and fulfilled where I asked Players to use the Pirate vocabulary. The other major section of gameplay did not involve action, but just outlining a chart of the 6 different lizardman factions and starting to figure out who-is-who. That took some time in the session. Also with low attendance at the start of the session, plus Hans missed the previous session, so the beginning hour was a lot of catching up & casual side conversation (talking about Europe geography, where Hans lives, and so on). And then I had 2 players read their journals (Gray and Solid), the main reasons were to give those players some Voice time, and also to help everyone recap the previous session. I had actually planned for a long period of combat in that session.... Where some combats we can see the party will win and I speed things along ("Everyone roll your attack again"), I knew in advance that the Pirate Captain would be a tough-mother, and he would call his pirates and lizard-friends to come from different doors on different sides of the ship deck. So I knew it would be a longer combat scene with round-by-round actions going around the table. The combat ended up taking about 4-5 rounds, and each round took several minutes to resolve, so that took up a period of time. It happened that I had ruled Sandoval would climb for 4 rounds, so you were just climbing for the entire time of that combat. I could have managed that better and said that you climbed before the battle started, that way you could have done more actions. That is how it happened. I will make an effort to make sure you and everyone gets more time for talking, roleplay, parlay, actions. Journals in these conditions Looking to write a journal and you might be short on paragraphs? Take a different approach this time. Write your Journal about Pirate terminology (Where did Sandoval pick up "Strike colors" and know how to say it at the critical moment?). Or, write your impressions about the 6 factions of lizardmen. Who do you think the 6 factions are? What are the motives of each? Which are potential allies, which are sworn enemies, and which are "in the middle" who can be swayed, parlayed, convinced, persuaded, intimidated, tricked, or forced into doing right & good in the world?
