The previous post in this series was about session 2. I didn't write a post about sessions 3 and 4 for a number of reasons. While that includes lack of free time on my part, another reason was that sessions 3 and 4 pretty much went by the book, with the players following the events of the main story. The only notable deviation was at the end of session 4, where they had the option of fighting a high-level, but weakened, assassin in order to save the king's traitorous sister, so she could be brought to justice in a more legal way, and decided that this wasn't worth the hassle. With that ended the Island at the Axis of the World adventure.

In session 5 we started The Dying Skyseer adventure. This is one of the most complex adventures I've ever played, as it puts the players really in the role of a police force in a fantasy world. So in session 5 we didn't have a single combat. But we had a crime scene investigation yielding a huge amount of different clues leading in different directions. This will get more D&D-like, and some of the clues will lead to combat encounters. But this session played more like CSI than like Lord of the Rings.

Fortunately I was on top of things, having already played the adventure as the DM once in 4th edition. I had prepared lots of handouts, including a stack of cards with clues that the players could gather at the crime scene. We played for about 4 hours, and then we stopped, because the players felt they needed a break to sort through all this information. It is kind of a sandbox adventure, and that is a bit harder on players than the more linear ones. But I think I managed to DM this in a way that the world appears rich, alive, and full of mysteries. That's a success in my book.