So it's been a long time since I rapped at ya. Not for a lack of gaming - still playing D&D once every three weeks or so, playing board games every two weeks, painting a couple minis, and the occasional video game. But what has changed is work - I picked up a second client and that's cut into my writing time.
But I got something for you today: Magic the Gathering. Every now and then I get the itch. Well, now is one of those times. I started playing casually with a couple friends and that got me excited enough to fire up the Magic Online account.
Lo and behold, Wizards has now formally embraced the Pauper format. This is awesome. Pauper format consists of only commons. No rares, no uncommons. It's a format that really rewards deck synergy and not bomb rares and $20 multilands. It's really fun, and very, very cheap. The "official" site for Pauper Magic is http://www.pdcmagic.com/.
So today's post kicks off a fun little project for me. I like to take a tournament winning decklist and make the closest approximation out of my generally much cheaper and inferior cards. But now that Pauper is legal, I'm going to take one of the tourney winners and see what I can do with it. I don't know if it'll work with Pauper, but we'll see. Without further ado - here's "It's Just A Flesh Wound", winner of a tourney on 12/18/08:
MAINDECK
Creatures
4 Gravedigger
4 Mulldrifter
4 Oona's Gatewarden
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Warren Pilferers
Spells
4 Agony Warp
4 Terror
2 Unmake
Lands
13 Swamp
5 Island
4 Esper Panorama
4 Terramorphic Expanse
SIDEBOARD
4 Peppersmoke
4 Recumbent Bliss
3 Mournwhelk
2 Oona's Grace
2 Plains
This thing went 6-0. It's a seemingly simple control deck using card advantage, creature kill, and graveyard recursion with comes-into-play effects to slowly beat down an opponent.
Unfortunately, I am missing most of these cards. Now, the nice thing about Pauper is I could run out and get all of them for probably a buck. But that's not what I'm aiming for. Ignoring the sideboard for now, here's what I got:
CREATURES
1 Cabal Surgeon
1 Faceless Butcher
4 Gravedigger
4 Highway Robber
1 Merchant of Secrets
1 Mesmeric Fiend
2 Mistblade Shinobi
1 Ninja of Deep Hours
4 Ravenous Rats
4 Sage Owl
1 Whirlpool Rider
SPELLS
2 Agony Warp
4 Last Gasp
4 Rend Flesh
LANDS
1 Ancient Spring
4 Dimir Aqueduct
5 Island
1 Sulfer Vent
13 Swamp
2 Terramorphic Expanse
It's a much weaker deck, especially on the card drawing and recursion fronts. I try to make up for this with the Ninjitsu cards to get some creatures with comes-into-play effects back into my hand to reuse. Let's see how it does in the Casual room:
Game 1: 0 - 1
Close game though. Something of a mirror-match, the other player had a White-Blue deck with lots of comes-into-play effects and removal. However, he had the awesome card Momentary Blink to get multiple effects. I checked, I don't own it... :( I was simply outpaced in this game.
Game 2: 0 - 2
Red-black aggro. Lots of burn, fast creatures, and some discard. I got stuck with a bunch of 2 black casting cost cards and only one source of black mana. The few creatures I got out where instantly shocked away. Annihilated in 7 turns.
Game 3: 0 - 3
Green-white aggro. Cheap good creatures like Wild Nacatl, Akrasan Squire, and Knight of the Skyward Eye. I had land issues this game as well (again was wanted a second swamp), but put up a good fight with the Sage Owl/Mistblade Shinobi groove going. I had draws of Faceless Butcher, Gravedigger, 2x Sage Owls, 2x Mistblade Shinobi, Last Gasp, and Merchant of Secrets. But only got 2x Islands and 1 Swamp.
Game 4: 0 - 3 - 1
Mono blue. Nothing but draw, counterspells, and bounce. I'm sure there was a combo in there but I couldn't wait - I had brought the guy down to 12 life, but the game was soooo slow and annoying I quit. I'll call it a draw.
Game 5: 0 - 4 - 1
5-color madness deck. The game started in my favor as I beat him down to 7 while he tutored for tons of land and forced me to discard my hand. But eventually he got enough guys on the ground and enough discarded Fiery Tempers to overpower my weenies. Great card advantage clearly overpowered me, and the fact that low toughness guys can't win a long game.
Conclusions
Pauper seems to be a very competitive format. Unlike Casual Standard or Casual Extended, where there are lots of people playing decks with various degrees of efficiency and fun-ness, all the Pauper decks I encountered were well-honed machines. There's no room for tier 2 cards. This is both the appeal of Pauper and what makes it daunting.
Specifically, I think I encountered mana issues which would have been solved with Esper Panoramas and more Terramorphic Expanses. The Dimir Aqueducts were poor substitutes - often a hindrance, particularly when I played second.
I also had a tough time with all the 4-mana cards - I often felt like I had a cluttered grip. 10 4-drops is a lot. The last thing that killed me was card advantage - not having Mulldrifter or Phyrexian Rager hurt.
12.21.2008
9.15.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 3
Teamwork, Teamwork, Teamwork
I've run enough 4e games and read enough blog posts to understand that 4e really rewards players that use teamwork. And by "rewards" I mean, "let's them live". In my brief stint as a player, I was struck by how profoundly difficult teamwork actually is. I've seen my players struggle with it, but now I think I have a better idea of why it happens. I think it comes down to:
1. Know Thyself
2. Know Thy Companions
3. Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses
4. Real-Time Pressure
Know Thyself: clearly if you don't know your own character well, much less the 4e game mechanics in general, then your ability to work in a team is limited. As a player, it is your job to know what you can do and to understand the rules well. Besides knowing your strengths, know your weaknesses. This seems to be a fairly frequent issue.
Know Thy Companions: there is tremendous synergy between classes. If you are playing a Star Pact Warlock and several of your powers will reduce a foe's Will defenses, then ideally the party should be in a position to exploit this. If you are playing a Tactical Warlord and you can give a +5 bonus to hit to an ally, do you know who has the best power to benefit from this? (hint: it's generally not the character who does the greatest raw damage - look for someone with stunning, blinding, buffing, etc. powers, even if it does markedly less damage.)
This can be a bit weird for roleplayers - in previous versions of D&D I sometimes liked to keep my exact abilities and bonuses secret so as to not diminish roleplaying. Having everyone else in the party study my character sheet is a level of transparency that can be discomforting. Especially if I have a concept like a Changling pretending to be human, or a character who wants to keep his warlock pact a secret. Also, there's a tendency for people to focus on game effects over flavor, so when you start to describe your Dread Star invocation in vivid roleplaying terms, the GM is already writing down the game effects and another player handing you the damage dice. That kinda takes away from the immersiveness of an RPG and is a subtle shift towards tabletop wargames.
Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses: probably not the best label for this, but it's what I'm using to describe when a player takes an action that maximizes their potential damage output or potential effects, over doing something that is less impressive but is of greater tactical benefit to the party. There is a certain inertia to bonuses - "oh, if attack this guy I'll do an extra d8 damage, and if I move here I can get +2 to hit", etc... Things like targeting a quarried/cursed foe to maximize damage or targeting a certain foe just to get a better bonus to hit. It can also be a matter of moving into a bad/vulnerable position so as to make an attack, in the belief that making no attack is worse than being dangerously exposed. By maximizing bonuses, a party is quite capable of dealing a significantly greater amount of damage overall (at low levels, I'd say a solid 10 extra damage per round), however it tends to be divided among multiple foes or often the wrong foes. Dealing less but more strategic damage is better.
Real-Time Pressure: the last point is pretty obvious, players are reacting in real-time. Combat should be moving quickly, yet new information is coming at the players really fast, and they have to assimilate it and react to it immediately. And they have a ton of options to choose from. In addition, it’s hard to coordinate in the constraints of the 6-second round. Think of it this way, as a DM, I’ve usually had a chance to spend at least 15 minutes with a cup of coffee, casually reading an encounter description and examining the map and monster descriptions to come up with some tactics. The players tend to get all of a couple seconds between miniatures appearing on the table and the three magic words being uttered: “roll for init”. How spontaneously coordinated can they actually be?
So that's all coming from the player's perspective. What does that mean for the DM? You should encourage them to develop teamwork. Try to have your players create characters together and discuss synergies while making them. My group is using the infamous near TPK incident as an opportunity to build characters that play nicer together. Those who actually regularly read and reply to their email (all but *ahem* two of them. You know who you are.) are going to really benefit from this.
You should also encourage your players to dissect what went right and what went wrong. Many players will do this on their own, but not always. I like to make sure we wrap up a game a bit before we absolutely need to, so that there's time to sit around and chew the fat about the game. I focus on getting feedback on the adventure, but it's also an opportunity for the players to make tactical critiques. And rewarding a player who takes the time to post game summaries and suggest tactical revisions is a great idea (if anyone if my group is reading this, volunteers are welcome).
I think you can also get players to better learn their powers by making it relevant in-game. Many years ago I played Robotech and one of the modules had a series of adventures that took place in a simulator. One of the adventures had the players getting shot at from a random weapon and direction and having to react accordingly. Something along the lines of:
GM: "Klaxons blare in your cockpit. Your radar picks up a missile streaking towards you from the very edge of your radar! What do you do?"
Player: "I, uh, take evasive action and fire a mini-missile at the launch site!"
GM: "What kind of missile?"
Player: "Uh, armor piercing? No, wait, Plasma!"
GM: "You dodge a direct hit from the enemy missile but its fragmentation warhead damages your mecha. Your missile falls far short of the target - your radar has five times the range of your missiles. Do you think it is funny to waste expensive munitions, Private!?!"
Player: "Aaaah! Sir, no Sir!"
It was hard as hell but you learned your mecha's weapon systems really quickly. I think I still have all the sensor and weapon ranges of the Excalibur memorized to this day... Next time I start a new campaign with all new characters, I'll consider finding a way to integrate something like that into my D&D game. Whether it's a retired adventurer taking the PCs under his wings, or a War Mage Academy Illusory Combat training course, I like the idea of finding a way to get characters to quickly learn and choose from their powers in-game. A key part could be including hints in the combat descriptions to guide the players in their decisions - suggesting what a foe's lowest defense is, or giving them objectives like preventing enemy movement, for example.
The last thing that you as a DM can do is be fair when it comes to teamwork. When I DM, boy can I get some teamwork going! The poor players have to shout tactics to each other asynchronously in short 6-second bursts. I have telepathy baby! The Kobold Skirmisher wants the three Kobold Minions to surround the wizard PC, being sure to leave the lower right square open and occupying the upper left square to set up a flank for combat advantage? Oh, and after you get into position, delay your attacks until after the Skirmisher so that everyone gets combat advantage all around? Done and done, without so much as a word.
Yeah, look – it’s really easy to be clever as a DM, you can almost always be more clever than the players*. What’s hard is not being too clever. You need to look at the Int, Wis, and descriptions of the creatures you are playing and be sure to roleplay them accordingly. Kobolds don’t exactly have high Intelligence scores, but they are pretty darn cunning and fight as coordinated mobs so maybe it makes sense for them to work really well together. But you should try and impose some of the communication lags and coordination difficulties that PCs suffer from to be fair. In the game I just played in, the DM did a great job of having rats and their kin behave in combat like rats, not mini-rodent versions of Sun Tzu. Flanks against PCs only occurred because a player was truly mobbed, not because of wolf-pack maneuvering. Rats triggered OAs because they didn't know any better. Great job.
I try to do this too. In my last DMing session, the Kobold leader started shouting out commands. Namely, keep away from the big, armored guy with the sword, and attack the wizard (who had strayed a bit too close to the battle line). But there was a one turn delay before the Kobolds really started to act on it – I tried not to use my instantaneous one-brain telepathy and have them act with some kind of creepy hive mind. (Although, one of my players thought they were still too coordinated, which could be true.)
So there ya go. Those are my thoughts on how hard it is for players to use teamwork and what the DM can do about it. Technically, it's the players' problem not the DM's, but I genuinely believe that any thing the DM can do to make for a better game is worth looking at. Even if it means finding ways to cajole players to learn something as obvious as the rules and their companions and their own capabilities.
* “Almost always" be more clever is an important distinction. Odds are good that your players are clever bastards. The SOBs will regularly figure out your plots prematurely, hijack your story arcs in ways you never imagined, and ask to do ingenious things that aren’t even remotely covered by the rules. They will find ways to skewer your major villain while you are still describing his appearance. Players are remarkably, evilly, clever. They are not, however, consistently clever. Yes, in a 4-hour gaming session, it is practically guaranteed that at least one of your five players will have an idea that is stunning in both cleverness and malevolence. But that’s different from being clever every single round of every combat – the DM definitely has the edge there, simply because he is generally better prepared and is hopefully capable of coordinating tactics with, um, himself.
I've run enough 4e games and read enough blog posts to understand that 4e really rewards players that use teamwork. And by "rewards" I mean, "let's them live". In my brief stint as a player, I was struck by how profoundly difficult teamwork actually is. I've seen my players struggle with it, but now I think I have a better idea of why it happens. I think it comes down to:
1. Know Thyself
2. Know Thy Companions
3. Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses
4. Real-Time Pressure
Know Thyself: clearly if you don't know your own character well, much less the 4e game mechanics in general, then your ability to work in a team is limited. As a player, it is your job to know what you can do and to understand the rules well. Besides knowing your strengths, know your weaknesses. This seems to be a fairly frequent issue.
Know Thy Companions: there is tremendous synergy between classes. If you are playing a Star Pact Warlock and several of your powers will reduce a foe's Will defenses, then ideally the party should be in a position to exploit this. If you are playing a Tactical Warlord and you can give a +5 bonus to hit to an ally, do you know who has the best power to benefit from this? (hint: it's generally not the character who does the greatest raw damage - look for someone with stunning, blinding, buffing, etc. powers, even if it does markedly less damage.)
This can be a bit weird for roleplayers - in previous versions of D&D I sometimes liked to keep my exact abilities and bonuses secret so as to not diminish roleplaying. Having everyone else in the party study my character sheet is a level of transparency that can be discomforting. Especially if I have a concept like a Changling pretending to be human, or a character who wants to keep his warlock pact a secret. Also, there's a tendency for people to focus on game effects over flavor, so when you start to describe your Dread Star invocation in vivid roleplaying terms, the GM is already writing down the game effects and another player handing you the damage dice. That kinda takes away from the immersiveness of an RPG and is a subtle shift towards tabletop wargames.
Inertia of Maximizing Bonuses: probably not the best label for this, but it's what I'm using to describe when a player takes an action that maximizes their potential damage output or potential effects, over doing something that is less impressive but is of greater tactical benefit to the party. There is a certain inertia to bonuses - "oh, if attack this guy I'll do an extra d8 damage, and if I move here I can get +2 to hit", etc... Things like targeting a quarried/cursed foe to maximize damage or targeting a certain foe just to get a better bonus to hit. It can also be a matter of moving into a bad/vulnerable position so as to make an attack, in the belief that making no attack is worse than being dangerously exposed. By maximizing bonuses, a party is quite capable of dealing a significantly greater amount of damage overall (at low levels, I'd say a solid 10 extra damage per round), however it tends to be divided among multiple foes or often the wrong foes. Dealing less but more strategic damage is better.
Real-Time Pressure: the last point is pretty obvious, players are reacting in real-time. Combat should be moving quickly, yet new information is coming at the players really fast, and they have to assimilate it and react to it immediately. And they have a ton of options to choose from. In addition, it’s hard to coordinate in the constraints of the 6-second round. Think of it this way, as a DM, I’ve usually had a chance to spend at least 15 minutes with a cup of coffee, casually reading an encounter description and examining the map and monster descriptions to come up with some tactics. The players tend to get all of a couple seconds between miniatures appearing on the table and the three magic words being uttered: “roll for init”. How spontaneously coordinated can they actually be?
So that's all coming from the player's perspective. What does that mean for the DM? You should encourage them to develop teamwork. Try to have your players create characters together and discuss synergies while making them. My group is using the infamous near TPK incident as an opportunity to build characters that play nicer together. Those who actually regularly read and reply to their email (all but *ahem* two of them. You know who you are.) are going to really benefit from this.
You should also encourage your players to dissect what went right and what went wrong. Many players will do this on their own, but not always. I like to make sure we wrap up a game a bit before we absolutely need to, so that there's time to sit around and chew the fat about the game. I focus on getting feedback on the adventure, but it's also an opportunity for the players to make tactical critiques. And rewarding a player who takes the time to post game summaries and suggest tactical revisions is a great idea (if anyone if my group is reading this, volunteers are welcome).
I think you can also get players to better learn their powers by making it relevant in-game. Many years ago I played Robotech and one of the modules had a series of adventures that took place in a simulator. One of the adventures had the players getting shot at from a random weapon and direction and having to react accordingly. Something along the lines of:
GM: "Klaxons blare in your cockpit. Your radar picks up a missile streaking towards you from the very edge of your radar! What do you do?"
Player: "I, uh, take evasive action and fire a mini-missile at the launch site!"
GM: "What kind of missile?"
Player: "Uh, armor piercing? No, wait, Plasma!"
GM: "You dodge a direct hit from the enemy missile but its fragmentation warhead damages your mecha. Your missile falls far short of the target - your radar has five times the range of your missiles. Do you think it is funny to waste expensive munitions, Private!?!"
Player: "Aaaah! Sir, no Sir!"
It was hard as hell but you learned your mecha's weapon systems really quickly. I think I still have all the sensor and weapon ranges of the Excalibur memorized to this day... Next time I start a new campaign with all new characters, I'll consider finding a way to integrate something like that into my D&D game. Whether it's a retired adventurer taking the PCs under his wings, or a War Mage Academy Illusory Combat training course, I like the idea of finding a way to get characters to quickly learn and choose from their powers in-game. A key part could be including hints in the combat descriptions to guide the players in their decisions - suggesting what a foe's lowest defense is, or giving them objectives like preventing enemy movement, for example.
The last thing that you as a DM can do is be fair when it comes to teamwork. When I DM, boy can I get some teamwork going! The poor players have to shout tactics to each other asynchronously in short 6-second bursts. I have telepathy baby! The Kobold Skirmisher wants the three Kobold Minions to surround the wizard PC, being sure to leave the lower right square open and occupying the upper left square to set up a flank for combat advantage? Oh, and after you get into position, delay your attacks until after the Skirmisher so that everyone gets combat advantage all around? Done and done, without so much as a word.
Yeah, look – it’s really easy to be clever as a DM, you can almost always be more clever than the players*. What’s hard is not being too clever. You need to look at the Int, Wis, and descriptions of the creatures you are playing and be sure to roleplay them accordingly. Kobolds don’t exactly have high Intelligence scores, but they are pretty darn cunning and fight as coordinated mobs so maybe it makes sense for them to work really well together. But you should try and impose some of the communication lags and coordination difficulties that PCs suffer from to be fair. In the game I just played in, the DM did a great job of having rats and their kin behave in combat like rats, not mini-rodent versions of Sun Tzu. Flanks against PCs only occurred because a player was truly mobbed, not because of wolf-pack maneuvering. Rats triggered OAs because they didn't know any better. Great job.
I try to do this too. In my last DMing session, the Kobold leader started shouting out commands. Namely, keep away from the big, armored guy with the sword, and attack the wizard (who had strayed a bit too close to the battle line). But there was a one turn delay before the Kobolds really started to act on it – I tried not to use my instantaneous one-brain telepathy and have them act with some kind of creepy hive mind. (Although, one of my players thought they were still too coordinated, which could be true.)
So there ya go. Those are my thoughts on how hard it is for players to use teamwork and what the DM can do about it. Technically, it's the players' problem not the DM's, but I genuinely believe that any thing the DM can do to make for a better game is worth looking at. Even if it means finding ways to cajole players to learn something as obvious as the rules and their companions and their own capabilities.
* “Almost always" be more clever is an important distinction. Odds are good that your players are clever bastards. The SOBs will regularly figure out your plots prematurely, hijack your story arcs in ways you never imagined, and ask to do ingenious things that aren’t even remotely covered by the rules. They will find ways to skewer your major villain while you are still describing his appearance. Players are remarkably, evilly, clever. They are not, however, consistently clever. Yes, in a 4-hour gaming session, it is practically guaranteed that at least one of your five players will have an idea that is stunning in both cleverness and malevolence. But that’s different from being clever every single round of every combat – the DM definitely has the edge there, simply because he is generally better prepared and is hopefully capable of coordinating tactics with, um, himself.
9.12.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 2
We encountered a What?!?
or
Sometimes it's fun to run away
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got be a PC instead of DM the other day! Yay! It's not like I'm never a player, but it really is like a 90/10 split. So when I do play, it's a big deal for me, and I try to use it as a learning opportunity to become a better DM.
It may seem like I bagged on the DM's black dragon encounter in the last post for not quite fitting in with my plot/balance expectations, but that was just focusing on one particular nuance of the encounter. Another facet of the encounter, namely how absolutely scared s---less we were and how awesome that was, is highly praiseworthy. Let's recap:
The party is off to find a dangerous and evil orb in a cave. The party does indeed find an orb, but it hardly seems dangerous and evil. The orb is suspended by the spray of a magical fountain. It bobs atop the water, and the water is pure and refreshing. The party's paladin and cleric sense no evil. Runes etched into the ceiling contain references to Moradrin and Corellon - the antithesis of fearsome, evil deities (there are also runes for "undead" and "protection" but I just assume - correctly, it turns out - those are related to a trap).
At this point, we think it's the orb we seek, but it just seems too darn "good" compared to what we were expecting. I think too many of us grew up on Gary Gygax modules where the obvious often equated with death. So we decide to press on for a bit, to explore some more and be sure the "real" orb isn't hidden deeper in the cave network. It's still early in the day, so we meander through the cave network for over three 3 hours (big caves).
At this point the DM utters something like "a loud whoosh of air from massive, leathery scaled wings rushes over you" as he places a figure on the table. It's a Black Dragon. "In Draconic, the dragon says 'You have trespassed into my lair - I may yet allow you to leave with your lives.'" Almost everyone succumbs to dragon-fear.
The players begin to chatter amongst themselves (something our characters didn't do, but the DM let it slide) debating if we could take on the dragon, but it becomes clear there's a misunderstanding. "Whups, no - the only Black Dragon miniature I have is medium-sized. This guy is actually large. Here, this is better." as the DM swaps out the 1x1-based mildly alarming dragon for a 2x2-based figure of plastic-injection-molded terror.
Unfortunately, the only guy in our party who speaks Draconic is the not-terribly-bright Dragonborn paladin. While most of the party shakes with puddles of urine at their feat, he summons the courage to overcome the dragon-fear and speak (having worked with reptiles, I'm somewhat alarmed at what might be in the Dragonborn's undergarments). The paladin says something along the lines of "Mighty cousin, we have come here seeking a magical orb of great evil, do you know of this orb we seek?"
When combined with a poor Diplomacy check, the black dragon interprets this as something along the lines of "Cousin whom I insult terribly by speaking to as an equal, we think there is a magic orb in your treasure that we wish to take from you. You cool with that?"
The dragon's eyes narrow and it hisses "I know of many magic orbs, and I see one more that I shall add to my trove. Leave it and I will spare your lives." The dragon was looking at the magic orb currently being held by the party's wizard...
There was some back-and-forth where the wizard genuinely contemplated trying to palm the orb and use Prestidigitation to hand over a fake orb so as to save a few hundred GP and perhaps some dignity. Eventually, however, the sheer statistical improbability of pulling that off made him relent and hand over his orb. The party tip-toed out the way we came in.
That encounter was awesome.
As a player, I am generally expecting to be able to defeat anything we encounter, though sometimes it may be harder than other times. But we're still gonna defeat it. I generally only experience, erm, iris-puckering fear, as it were, when the dice have gone terribly wrong and we're losing to random luck, or perhaps we've made a stupid decision or missed an important clue that is making our fight harder. I never really expect to be just plain ol' outclassed by an encounter. It's frickin' scary.
Sure, we could have taken on the dragon and won, though somebody would likely have died, and if the dice went against us, it could have been a TPK. But it was so much more fun to be scared and to have to turn tail. I know it doesn't sound like much fun when you put it that way, but it was a really memorable encounter. I'm just glad no one did anything stupid. And the DM did a good job of playing up how menacing the dragon was, and gently coaching people about potential consequences.
I might add an encounter like that to my games. The two concerns I have are making sure the party has a realistic out and making sure the party knows what they're dealing with. I'd hate to have the party die due to some failed Diplomacy checks or saying the wrong thing. Likewise I'd hate for the party to die because one of the players unilaterally decides the party can take 'em. In other words, the problem with introducing something that can kill the party into the game is that just might happen.
or
Sometimes it's fun to run away
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got be a PC instead of DM the other day! Yay! It's not like I'm never a player, but it really is like a 90/10 split. So when I do play, it's a big deal for me, and I try to use it as a learning opportunity to become a better DM.
It may seem like I bagged on the DM's black dragon encounter in the last post for not quite fitting in with my plot/balance expectations, but that was just focusing on one particular nuance of the encounter. Another facet of the encounter, namely how absolutely scared s---less we were and how awesome that was, is highly praiseworthy. Let's recap:
The party is off to find a dangerous and evil orb in a cave. The party does indeed find an orb, but it hardly seems dangerous and evil. The orb is suspended by the spray of a magical fountain. It bobs atop the water, and the water is pure and refreshing. The party's paladin and cleric sense no evil. Runes etched into the ceiling contain references to Moradrin and Corellon - the antithesis of fearsome, evil deities (there are also runes for "undead" and "protection" but I just assume - correctly, it turns out - those are related to a trap).
At this point, we think it's the orb we seek, but it just seems too darn "good" compared to what we were expecting. I think too many of us grew up on Gary Gygax modules where the obvious often equated with death. So we decide to press on for a bit, to explore some more and be sure the "real" orb isn't hidden deeper in the cave network. It's still early in the day, so we meander through the cave network for over three 3 hours (big caves).
At this point the DM utters something like "a loud whoosh of air from massive, leathery scaled wings rushes over you" as he places a figure on the table. It's a Black Dragon. "In Draconic, the dragon says 'You have trespassed into my lair - I may yet allow you to leave with your lives.'" Almost everyone succumbs to dragon-fear.
The players begin to chatter amongst themselves (something our characters didn't do, but the DM let it slide) debating if we could take on the dragon, but it becomes clear there's a misunderstanding. "Whups, no - the only Black Dragon miniature I have is medium-sized. This guy is actually large. Here, this is better." as the DM swaps out the 1x1-based mildly alarming dragon for a 2x2-based figure of plastic-injection-molded terror.
Unfortunately, the only guy in our party who speaks Draconic is the not-terribly-bright Dragonborn paladin. While most of the party shakes with puddles of urine at their feat, he summons the courage to overcome the dragon-fear and speak (having worked with reptiles, I'm somewhat alarmed at what might be in the Dragonborn's undergarments). The paladin says something along the lines of "Mighty cousin, we have come here seeking a magical orb of great evil, do you know of this orb we seek?"
When combined with a poor Diplomacy check, the black dragon interprets this as something along the lines of "Cousin whom I insult terribly by speaking to as an equal, we think there is a magic orb in your treasure that we wish to take from you. You cool with that?"
The dragon's eyes narrow and it hisses "I know of many magic orbs, and I see one more that I shall add to my trove. Leave it and I will spare your lives." The dragon was looking at the magic orb currently being held by the party's wizard...
There was some back-and-forth where the wizard genuinely contemplated trying to palm the orb and use Prestidigitation to hand over a fake orb so as to save a few hundred GP and perhaps some dignity. Eventually, however, the sheer statistical improbability of pulling that off made him relent and hand over his orb. The party tip-toed out the way we came in.
That encounter was awesome.
As a player, I am generally expecting to be able to defeat anything we encounter, though sometimes it may be harder than other times. But we're still gonna defeat it. I generally only experience, erm, iris-puckering fear, as it were, when the dice have gone terribly wrong and we're losing to random luck, or perhaps we've made a stupid decision or missed an important clue that is making our fight harder. I never really expect to be just plain ol' outclassed by an encounter. It's frickin' scary.
Sure, we could have taken on the dragon and won, though somebody would likely have died, and if the dice went against us, it could have been a TPK. But it was so much more fun to be scared and to have to turn tail. I know it doesn't sound like much fun when you put it that way, but it was a really memorable encounter. I'm just glad no one did anything stupid. And the DM did a good job of playing up how menacing the dragon was, and gently coaching people about potential consequences.
I might add an encounter like that to my games. The two concerns I have are making sure the party has a realistic out and making sure the party knows what they're dealing with. I'd hate to have the party die due to some failed Diplomacy checks or saying the wrong thing. Likewise I'd hate for the party to die because one of the players unilaterally decides the party can take 'em. In other words, the problem with introducing something that can kill the party into the game is that just might happen.
9.09.2008
Notes from the Other Side (of the DM Screen) 1
I'm almost always the DM, I rarely end up being the player in a campaign. But last Sunday I got the chance to play in a friend's one-off 4e game. I'm in his 1/month main 3.5 campaign but it's on temporary hiatus due to scheduling conflicts and childbirth (or some such lame excuse), so he's cobbled together some of the players from that game and a couple other random people to run short "prequel" sessions in the interim. The results of these games actually have a minor effect on the main game. Pretty cool. The characters were premade - I ended up with the human rogue (level 3) - and the plot simple: fetch an orb from the nearby caves once inhabited by cultists.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
Because I'm fascinated by game design and want to be a better DM, I made some observations from the player's perspective. In this post I want to address the sad fact that players will notice your adventure's plot holes and/or realism deficiencies.
This is unavoidable. Don't feel bad. It's just part of the game. It doesn't matter how much effort you put into your story arc, there is always going to be at least one niggling little detail which makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defense - in other words, none. And invariably someone will notice it.
If you have rats deep in a limestone cavern, someone will point out that we haven't found any organic matter in half a mile that could possibly support swarms of rats. There's a reason a rat infestation will be in your attic, floor, or elsewhere nearby - they live near their food, not an hour-long trek from it. If you run into a dragon as a random encounter (this happened, by the way), a player will invariably voice bewilderment that no one told them about the @$^%! dragon living 10 miles from town which, based on the size of both the dragon and its hoard, must have been feeding on cattle and travelers for quite some time.
This is a problem - suspension of disbelief is important to RPGs. The DMing lessons I learned from this are to never use truly random encounters and to listen to your players and think on your feet.
By "truly" random encounters, I mean when the DM decides the players have been
* pissing about aimlessly and becoming bored to the point that playing Wii Looney Tunes Acme Arsenals begins to sound good (Why do I have this game? Oh, that's right - the guy I bought the Wii from gave it to me for free. Then he gave the sign of the Cross, muttered "Our Father..." and slammed the door in my face. It's that bad.)
* making so much noise that some poor monster trying to get some sleep is going to stomp all the way across the dungeon to tell the party to STFU
* willfully avoiding the GM's carefully crafted plot so that he needs to smack them around a bit to remind them who's the boss
so that the GM rolls on a chart or picks a random mini to keep things moving and/or punish the players. It's the "random" part that I don't like. Because you might end up picking an encounter like, say, a Black Dragon. This happens to present some glaring realism issues ("Dude, how the %^@$& did the mayor forget to mention this?!?") and also plot inconsistencies ("So the mayor is in a tizzy about an orb that might possibly be recovered by a presumably destroyed evil cult who could eventually use it to raise an undead horde that might some day raze his village. He is not, however, concerned about the scaly winged death that could raze his village tomorrow &#^%@ morning. Either the orb is more powerful then the mayor lets on, or the village idiot and village mayor are one and the same.").
If I have enough prep time, I prefer to roll up random encounters in advance and put in a little forethought about how these fit into the story and setting, making changes as appropriate. The technique I use is "3x Why?". Ask yourself "Why?" three times before including anything in your game. If you can't, or your answers don't really work with the adventure, ditch the idea.
For example, just in case I need a random encounter for next week's game, I'm rolling one up now. I put together a short list of creatures based on level and environment and I just rolled... a Shadow Hound encounter. Why is there a Shadow Hound here? Um, it's prowling for food and picked up the party's scent. Why? It got here by slipping into the natural world from the Shadowfell and is lost and hungry. Why? Hmmm... Longshadow's Eve was a mere three days ago. A player with Arcana would know that Longshadow's Eve marks the cyclical occasion when the presence of the Shadowfell is stronger than normal and beings can sometimes cross over. It also explains why there were paper lanterns hanging around all over town - a superstition for warding off ill luck around this time of year.
At this point, I probably won't roll any more encounters at random, but instead choose ones related to the Shadowfell. By asking three Whys, I've shored up the encounter plausibility. More importantly, it's forced me to take the time to think about the encounter and hopefully identify any other issues. As I'm going through the 3 whys I'm checking for logical inconsistencies. And it's given me a new idea for my games - I kinda like the Longshadow's Eve idea and think I'll work that one into my current game...
Back to my other observation - listen to your players and think on your feet. Look, coming up with great ideas all by yourself is actually hard. You know how sometimes you can spend hours and hours racking your brains about a problem, and finally you'll mention it to your wife or someone, just venting not really expecting any help, and within 2 seconds she'll say something like "why don't you try it this way?" and it totally works.
Yeah. As a DM, that happens all the time. At least once per session, a player is going to look at a situation and interpret it in a way you never would have thought of. And frankly, it's often better than what you thought of. If you can think on your feet, it's sometimes a good idea to shift gears and run with what the players come up with.
In our game, the mayor became more and more suspect in the players' minds. The chamber with the orb was clearly not evil, the orb itself seemed to have benign powers, the orb was much better defended where it was than it would be in the hands of the village mayor, and of course there's the little issue of not mentioning the [expletive removed] Dragon living in the caves. For like, years. What's going on? Something's not making sense, so we of course start looking for in-game excuses (as opposed to out-of-game excuses, like it's a only one-session game so the DM didn't go crazy with hours of preparation, so just cut him some slack, shaddup, and roll with it).
Now, I believe the reality was the mayor was a perfectly nice plot-giver and not a villain. The orb is actually a dangerous device in the wrong hands, it's just the way it was described that accidentally made it seem so benign. But as we sat about the table discussing our quandary, we started making a good case for the mayor to actually be a villain. Thinking back to when he sought us out for the quest, we wondered was he being secretive out of fear the terror-- er, sorry -- cultists might overhear? Or was he being secretive because he was furtively executing his own plot? And he clearly knew that only a Dwarven priest of Moradin could recover the orb - anyone else touching it would awaken the undead defenders. What else did he know that he wasn't telling? In our mind, only half-jokingly, we began to think the mayor was actually a cultist and that he was unable to recover the orb himself. So he needed to dupe a dwarven cleric and friends to do it for him.
Maybe I just play too much Eberron, but I think that interpretation is so much cooler than the classic "the mayor asks you to fetch him a nosegay" adventure arc. If I were the DM, I would have seriously considered scrapping my ideas and running with the players' interpretations. I've done that before and, while it's sometimes tricky to think on your feet, it can make for great games.
As a player, I definitely learned the importance of cutting your GM some slack. It's hard work to come up with even a single-session adventure, even without worrying about the ecology of rodents. If something doesn't seem right, unless it's important, let it go. Don't be the Comic Book Guy nerdy complainer of your group.
Don't get me wrong, I had a great time in the game and the DM did a great job running it, especially how he played the monsters very true to their stats and background. He was able to keep things moving in a friendly, efficient way. This post is really more about playing "backseat DM" and wondering what techniques I would copy, and what I would do differently than criticism. It's a great exercise for every DM who gets a chance to see things from the other side of the DM screen.
8.29.2008
Analysis of a TPK
OK, technically it wasn’t a true TPK since one of the characters got away. So I think I can still say with a straight face that I’ve never had a TPK. But to the extent that it wasted a ton of the players’ character development efforts, and a lot of my campaign planning, it was pretty much a TPK. A campaign reset. This is kind of a big deal – it’s not fun for anybody, it wastes a lot of work, and may be reflective of a problem. It’s especially alarming since another character was killed a couple sessions previously (to be fair, that one was just a random crit from a BBEG for a truck-load of damage). So I thought I’d take a little bit of time to understand it.
The background:
The group consists of a bunch of guys who haven’t played an RPG in 1 or more decades, much less 4e D&D. Mortgages, wives, babies, careers, graying hair, the works (I’m the odd guy out – a regular gamer for years, no mortgage, no baby, no gray, and I don’t think you can call freelancing a career. Thank god I’m married though.). We sit around, grill, laugh, drink and game. Their characters are all level 2 and consist of a Fighter, Cleric, dual-wield Ranger, Wizard, and Warlock.
I’m running the players through the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the players get to the kobold lair (spoiler alert, don’t read on if you are planning to play). In the module, the party runs into a large cluster of Kobolds outside the lair, and presumably one of them escapes into the lair to sound the alarm. The party sends its stealthier members forward to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting kobolds, but unfortunately this goes awry as Tostig the Fighter slips on loose rocks near the creek-bed. The party sprigs into action and begins to slaughter the poor kobolds.
I think I play the kobolds as being pretty smart and cunning. They fall back and take cover leaving the PC’s long-range attacks without good targets. They dart out, hurl javelins, and then shift back into cover. Some kobolds start sneaking around the flanks. When the PCs get strung out of formation, they rush forward and mob a single character to maximize their mob attack bonuses, combat advantage bonuses, sneak attacks, and concentrated damage. But ultimately, the characters are Heroes and the kobolds are, well... kobolds. They get mowed down. But the Kobold Slinger gets away to raise the alarm. The party splits up to gather thrown weapons, search for loot, etc.
Red Flag #1: when the kobolds mobbed Tostig, they did a large amount of damage – managing to bloody him. This should have alerted both the players and myself that “Hey! Being surrounded by kobolds just might get you killed!” But other than that one incident, quickly rectified, the kobolds weren’t really a threat.
Red Flag #2: drinking. I definitely enjoy having beers while we game and so do the players. But I do wonder if that clouds our judgment too much and we miss important cues like the above.
Red Flag #3: metagaming. Everyone has now played about a half-dozen sessions of 4e D&D and has come to expect the post-battle recharge – regain all your encounter powers, heal HP, etc. They feel comfortable with splitting up and letting their guard down. What the players don’t know is that when the Slinger ran away, that started a countdown to reinforcements. They aren’t going to get a complete rest and they squandered some encounter powers in the first part of the battle.
A couple rounds later, the first wave of reinforcements comes streaming out of the cave. OK, those of you who have read the module know that I’ve deviated a little from the script. Mid-way through the battle I went back and reread the encounter description. Somehow I ended up with the impression that if one of the kobolds got away to raise the alarm, the kobold reinforcements came outside in two waves. Otherwise, the two waves were encountered inside. Oops. In the module the party is supposed to be able to rest after taking care of the kobolds outside. However, because the party was still kicking ass and taking names, albeit strange hissing- and yipping-sounding kobold names, I didn’t worry about it too much. And the party was already level 2 due to some earlier adventures and the module is intended for level 1 characters. In my head, I decided to weaken Irontooth a bit (those 100+ HP BBEG just get boring to fight after a while anyway) to balance it out.
DM Mistake #1: the first real outright mistake was not giving the PCs a rest between waves. Even with the party being level 2, they just didn’t have enough powers to wade through that many foes.
So, the first kobold wave comes streaming out of the cave. They split up, half engage the PCs directly, the other half move off a ways to hurl javelins at exposed targets. The party is caught out of formation and the kobolds gun for the “squishies” like the Wizard and the Warlock. Thankfully the players are able to get out OK and get the Fighter, Ranger, and Cleric up front. A back-and-forth melee ensues where the players continually cut down the kobolds. The players were continually mobbed by the concentrated attacks of the kobolds, and took a lot of damage, but nobody went down. So the second wave started off a little sketchy but the players rebounded.
When there were a handful of the wave two kobolds left, wave three arrived. At this point, the players were all still above bloodied and handling the encounter fine so I still wasn’t worried (in fact, I was vocally rooting for the kobolds because they were getting annihilated). But the situation went bad really, really quick. The party still hadn’t found a way to restrict the kobold movement. When possible, I had them avoid the axe-wielding armored horror that was Tostig the Fighter, and instead attack the weaker party members. The Wizard strayed too close and got sacked by a mob of kobolds – down he went. The Warlock was mobbed and dropped right after. A couple attempts to heal the fallen members were considered, but the party came to the conclusion that they’d just get immediately killed again, so the healing was reserved for those who were still standing. It was a moot point since the kobolds were finally able to completely surround Tostig and with the massive mob bonuses and concentrated damage, whittle him down. That left the Cleric and the Ranger who attempted to run. The heavily armored Cleric didn’t make it. Surprisingly, Irontooth took so long to wade into the fight that he had almost no impact – he only landed one solid hit.
DM Mistake #2: I don’t yet know 4e well enough to know when the players are in trouble before it’s too late. It’s easy to know the party is in trouble when half of them are bloodied or dead. A good DM knows this is going to happen several rounds in advance, and can take action accordingly (even if it’s only to remind the players that they can attempt to run away).
PC Mistake #1: never let cunning foes get at your squishies. They know this from nearly having lost the Wizard once before. There are a couple chokepoints on the map that the players never tried to occupy that could have limited kobold movement.
PC Mistake #2: party composition. I got the impression that the party had very little battlefield control. There was only one Defender, so the front line wasn’t very “sticky”. Both the Wizard and the Cleric focused more on direct damage powers than they did on control or healing powers. And only one of the characters was a truly melee character, with decent AC and HP. The Wizard and Warlock were of course ranged attackers, the Cleric was OK in melee but had better ranged powers, and while the Ranger had the AC and HP to support a more “front-line” role he preferred hit and run tactics. So this created two major issues: the kobolds could get at the more vulnerable party members fairly easily, and the single melee character was simply overwhelmed without support.
PC Mistake #3: maximizing short-term damage over concentrated fire. This may not be an entirely accurate recollection, but I swear I saw the party members repeatedly choose to make attacks that dealt the most damage to different foes, rather than concentrate fire on a single target till they drop. For example, I believe the Ranger and the Warlock repeatedly attacked targets that were closest to them so they could get the extra damage, rather than attacking the more distant kobold that Tostig had hit. Likewise, on a significant round the Wizard opted to do an AOE attack on a cluster of kobolds, which certainly was a nice amount of damage, it would have been better to pick off some of the wounded ones already engaged in melee. On any given round, the 5 players would seemingly attack 3 different targets.
In summary, I think I made a big mistake, but it was exacerbated by the fact that the players are still learning how to play 4e. They don’t yet have good tactics and party synergy. Interestingly, none of us had much warning that the encounter was going to go so bad – it happened very suddenly. The party went from slaughtering the kobolds to getting slaughtered in the course of two rounds. I think it was a combination of decent rolls and the party running out of steam (encounter/daily powers). Because it happened so fast, the party didn’t even know they were in trouble until it was too late.
I hope you find this review useful. Take the time to review your games, especially when they go wrong. I learned a lot by examining this. As a DM or a player, you will make mistakes. Learn from them.
The background:
The group consists of a bunch of guys who haven’t played an RPG in 1 or more decades, much less 4e D&D. Mortgages, wives, babies, careers, graying hair, the works (I’m the odd guy out – a regular gamer for years, no mortgage, no baby, no gray, and I don’t think you can call freelancing a career. Thank god I’m married though.). We sit around, grill, laugh, drink and game. Their characters are all level 2 and consist of a Fighter, Cleric, dual-wield Ranger, Wizard, and Warlock.
I’m running the players through the Keep on the Shadowfell module and the players get to the kobold lair (spoiler alert, don’t read on if you are planning to play). In the module, the party runs into a large cluster of Kobolds outside the lair, and presumably one of them escapes into the lair to sound the alarm. The party sends its stealthier members forward to spring an ambush on the unsuspecting kobolds, but unfortunately this goes awry as Tostig the Fighter slips on loose rocks near the creek-bed. The party sprigs into action and begins to slaughter the poor kobolds.
I think I play the kobolds as being pretty smart and cunning. They fall back and take cover leaving the PC’s long-range attacks without good targets. They dart out, hurl javelins, and then shift back into cover. Some kobolds start sneaking around the flanks. When the PCs get strung out of formation, they rush forward and mob a single character to maximize their mob attack bonuses, combat advantage bonuses, sneak attacks, and concentrated damage. But ultimately, the characters are Heroes and the kobolds are, well... kobolds. They get mowed down. But the Kobold Slinger gets away to raise the alarm. The party splits up to gather thrown weapons, search for loot, etc.
Red Flag #1: when the kobolds mobbed Tostig, they did a large amount of damage – managing to bloody him. This should have alerted both the players and myself that “Hey! Being surrounded by kobolds just might get you killed!” But other than that one incident, quickly rectified, the kobolds weren’t really a threat.
Red Flag #2: drinking. I definitely enjoy having beers while we game and so do the players. But I do wonder if that clouds our judgment too much and we miss important cues like the above.
Red Flag #3: metagaming. Everyone has now played about a half-dozen sessions of 4e D&D and has come to expect the post-battle recharge – regain all your encounter powers, heal HP, etc. They feel comfortable with splitting up and letting their guard down. What the players don’t know is that when the Slinger ran away, that started a countdown to reinforcements. They aren’t going to get a complete rest and they squandered some encounter powers in the first part of the battle.
A couple rounds later, the first wave of reinforcements comes streaming out of the cave. OK, those of you who have read the module know that I’ve deviated a little from the script. Mid-way through the battle I went back and reread the encounter description. Somehow I ended up with the impression that if one of the kobolds got away to raise the alarm, the kobold reinforcements came outside in two waves. Otherwise, the two waves were encountered inside. Oops. In the module the party is supposed to be able to rest after taking care of the kobolds outside. However, because the party was still kicking ass and taking names, albeit strange hissing- and yipping-sounding kobold names, I didn’t worry about it too much. And the party was already level 2 due to some earlier adventures and the module is intended for level 1 characters. In my head, I decided to weaken Irontooth a bit (those 100+ HP BBEG just get boring to fight after a while anyway) to balance it out.
DM Mistake #1: the first real outright mistake was not giving the PCs a rest between waves. Even with the party being level 2, they just didn’t have enough powers to wade through that many foes.
So, the first kobold wave comes streaming out of the cave. They split up, half engage the PCs directly, the other half move off a ways to hurl javelins at exposed targets. The party is caught out of formation and the kobolds gun for the “squishies” like the Wizard and the Warlock. Thankfully the players are able to get out OK and get the Fighter, Ranger, and Cleric up front. A back-and-forth melee ensues where the players continually cut down the kobolds. The players were continually mobbed by the concentrated attacks of the kobolds, and took a lot of damage, but nobody went down. So the second wave started off a little sketchy but the players rebounded.
When there were a handful of the wave two kobolds left, wave three arrived. At this point, the players were all still above bloodied and handling the encounter fine so I still wasn’t worried (in fact, I was vocally rooting for the kobolds because they were getting annihilated). But the situation went bad really, really quick. The party still hadn’t found a way to restrict the kobold movement. When possible, I had them avoid the axe-wielding armored horror that was Tostig the Fighter, and instead attack the weaker party members. The Wizard strayed too close and got sacked by a mob of kobolds – down he went. The Warlock was mobbed and dropped right after. A couple attempts to heal the fallen members were considered, but the party came to the conclusion that they’d just get immediately killed again, so the healing was reserved for those who were still standing. It was a moot point since the kobolds were finally able to completely surround Tostig and with the massive mob bonuses and concentrated damage, whittle him down. That left the Cleric and the Ranger who attempted to run. The heavily armored Cleric didn’t make it. Surprisingly, Irontooth took so long to wade into the fight that he had almost no impact – he only landed one solid hit.
DM Mistake #2: I don’t yet know 4e well enough to know when the players are in trouble before it’s too late. It’s easy to know the party is in trouble when half of them are bloodied or dead. A good DM knows this is going to happen several rounds in advance, and can take action accordingly (even if it’s only to remind the players that they can attempt to run away).
PC Mistake #1: never let cunning foes get at your squishies. They know this from nearly having lost the Wizard once before. There are a couple chokepoints on the map that the players never tried to occupy that could have limited kobold movement.
PC Mistake #2: party composition. I got the impression that the party had very little battlefield control. There was only one Defender, so the front line wasn’t very “sticky”. Both the Wizard and the Cleric focused more on direct damage powers than they did on control or healing powers. And only one of the characters was a truly melee character, with decent AC and HP. The Wizard and Warlock were of course ranged attackers, the Cleric was OK in melee but had better ranged powers, and while the Ranger had the AC and HP to support a more “front-line” role he preferred hit and run tactics. So this created two major issues: the kobolds could get at the more vulnerable party members fairly easily, and the single melee character was simply overwhelmed without support.
PC Mistake #3: maximizing short-term damage over concentrated fire. This may not be an entirely accurate recollection, but I swear I saw the party members repeatedly choose to make attacks that dealt the most damage to different foes, rather than concentrate fire on a single target till they drop. For example, I believe the Ranger and the Warlock repeatedly attacked targets that were closest to them so they could get the extra damage, rather than attacking the more distant kobold that Tostig had hit. Likewise, on a significant round the Wizard opted to do an AOE attack on a cluster of kobolds, which certainly was a nice amount of damage, it would have been better to pick off some of the wounded ones already engaged in melee. On any given round, the 5 players would seemingly attack 3 different targets.
In summary, I think I made a big mistake, but it was exacerbated by the fact that the players are still learning how to play 4e. They don’t yet have good tactics and party synergy. Interestingly, none of us had much warning that the encounter was going to go so bad – it happened very suddenly. The party went from slaughtering the kobolds to getting slaughtered in the course of two rounds. I think it was a combination of decent rolls and the party running out of steam (encounter/daily powers). Because it happened so fast, the party didn’t even know they were in trouble until it was too late.
I hope you find this review useful. Take the time to review your games, especially when they go wrong. I learned a lot by examining this. As a DM or a player, you will make mistakes. Learn from them.
8.14.2008
SE1: first attempt is a failure!
Huh. You know how I said the timing of the Oracle in City 1 and the completion of the Forge in City 2 is crucial? Yeah, it's a pain in the keshik. Let's review the final steps in the gambit:
1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists
Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!
Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.
A little late?
The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.
So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.
This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.
1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists
Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!
Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.
A little late?The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.
So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.
This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.
8.13.2008
SE1: to 2000BC
Wow, the past millennium just flew by. Not a ton happened. I continued to explore but alas, only one more goodie hut (48 gold). Peter is indeed waaay to the north, so I can ignore him for a while. No religions discovered in my hood apparently.
I built Bombay on my chosen spot and built a Fast Worker. My two workers are rapidly roading and pre-chopping according to plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: I misread the worker's estimated time to completion. When it says 3 rounds to chop down a forest, that means [The Current Round] + [Next Turn] = Finished. So to do this right, cancel the order the very next turn. I had to reload after I accidentally chopped down my trees ahead of schedule.
In fact, I'm really learning to save often - I also nearly missed my chance to stop work on the Barracks in my capital before it was done. If I'm having trouble watching 2 cities, I'm in deep doo-doo once I expand...
Unfortunately, the Civ4lerts mod doesn't seem to be working. In theory, that is supposed to show a blurb whenever your city is about to have an angry or unhealthy person, or the population is about to go up. With the SE strategy, micro-managing is important so it'd be really nice to have...
My research has churned out Bronze Working, Meditation, and Priesthood (just this turn).
Here's my current situation:
Not bad. I'd like to snag those Horses and Copper quickstyle so I can shift to offense.
Next Steps
1. Reseach Pottery, Masonry
2. City 1: queue Oracle after Barracks, whip-finish Barracks to give overflow to Oracle
3. Continue pre-chops and roads
4. Build 1 mine in each city to boost hammers (if time)
5. Chop down forests around Oracle to finish
6. Build Warriors while waiting for research to complete
7. Use Oracle bonus to get Metal Casting
I built Bombay on my chosen spot and built a Fast Worker. My two workers are rapidly roading and pre-chopping according to plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: I misread the worker's estimated time to completion. When it says 3 rounds to chop down a forest, that means [The Current Round] + [Next Turn] = Finished. So to do this right, cancel the order the very next turn. I had to reload after I accidentally chopped down my trees ahead of schedule.
In fact, I'm really learning to save often - I also nearly missed my chance to stop work on the Barracks in my capital before it was done. If I'm having trouble watching 2 cities, I'm in deep doo-doo once I expand...
Unfortunately, the Civ4lerts mod doesn't seem to be working. In theory, that is supposed to show a blurb whenever your city is about to have an angry or unhealthy person, or the population is about to go up. With the SE strategy, micro-managing is important so it'd be really nice to have...
My research has churned out Bronze Working, Meditation, and Priesthood (just this turn).
Here's my current situation:
Not bad. I'd like to snag those Horses and Copper quickstyle so I can shift to offense.
Next Steps
1. Reseach Pottery, Masonry
2. City 1: queue Oracle after Barracks, whip-finish Barracks to give overflow to Oracle
3. Continue pre-chops and roads
4. Build 1 mine in each city to boost hammers (if time)
5. Chop down forests around Oracle to finish
6. Build Warriors while waiting for research to complete
7. Use Oracle bonus to get Metal Casting
SE1: to 3000BC
The first big event was a goodie hut with a Scout in it. Sweet. Followed by a second goodie hut for 46 gold. Then a 3rd goodie hut which gave him XP, and he's now a speedster woodsman blazing through the northern jungles, trying to find more huts and enemy civs.
Reseach-wise, I think I've made good progress:
3680 BC: Agriculture
3280 BC: Animal Husbandry
3000 BC: The Wheel.
I'm now on track to get Bronze Working shortly.
On the diplomatic front, I found my neighbors. Mehmed II is on my west, while Peter is somewhere to the distant north or northwest. This will be interesting. I think both are moderate but not great trading partners, and both are moderately but not exceedingly belligerent. I will try to court Peter and focus on crushing Mehmed as he's the closer threat.
The geography is pretty good. I appear to be in the lower corner of a continent with a big jungle barrier to the north. I can use that jungle as a buffer as I consolidate the south.
Most importantly, how is progress on the gambit? Well, I'm not totally stoked about options for my 2nd city. If you look below, I'm leaning toward the space directly NE of my capital. It'll overlap on a couple forests, and has some +3 Food squares. I think it'll work. My Fast Worker has finished up making a Farm on the Wheat and a Pasture on the Pigs and is now making roads in the NE Forests.
Next Steps
1. Finish Settler
2. Worker builds roads
3. Settle NE site
4. City #1 begins a Barracks but stops just 1 turn shy of finishing
5. City #2 begins a Worker
6. Workers pre-chop 3 Forests pre city (esp. around City #2) but stop 1 turn shy of finishing
7. Research Meditation
8. Research Priesthood
Reseach-wise, I think I've made good progress:
3680 BC: Agriculture
3280 BC: Animal Husbandry
3000 BC: The Wheel.
I'm now on track to get Bronze Working shortly.
On the diplomatic front, I found my neighbors. Mehmed II is on my west, while Peter is somewhere to the distant north or northwest. This will be interesting. I think both are moderate but not great trading partners, and both are moderately but not exceedingly belligerent. I will try to court Peter and focus on crushing Mehmed as he's the closer threat.
The geography is pretty good. I appear to be in the lower corner of a continent with a big jungle barrier to the north. I can use that jungle as a buffer as I consolidate the south.
Most importantly, how is progress on the gambit? Well, I'm not totally stoked about options for my 2nd city. If you look below, I'm leaning toward the space directly NE of my capital. It'll overlap on a couple forests, and has some +3 Food squares. I think it'll work. My Fast Worker has finished up making a Farm on the Wheat and a Pasture on the Pigs and is now making roads in the NE Forests.
Next Steps
1. Finish Settler
2. Worker builds roads
3. Settle NE site
4. City #1 begins a Barracks but stops just 1 turn shy of finishing
5. City #2 begins a Worker
6. Workers pre-chop 3 Forests pre city (esp. around City #2) but stop 1 turn shy of finishing
7. Research Meditation
8. Research Priesthood
Specialist Economy attempt 1: Pre-game
And now for something completely different. There's a crazy way to win at Civ4 where your research slider is at 0% for most of the game. All your research comes from scientists. It's called the Specialist Economy and much info on it can be found at the CivFanatics website.
This as totally piqued my interest so I'm going to try it, preferably using the equally intriguing Oracle/Metal Casting/Pyramids Gambit. This gambit aims to get a Forge super-quick, use an Engineer specialist to then get a Great Engineer, use him to build the Pyramids, and then use the Pyramids to get Representation really early. To pull this off requires ridiculous timing and min/maxy sacrifices with Slavery and pre-chopping of forests.
Game settings
Version: Warlords v2.13
Difficulty: Noble
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Civ: Indian
Leader: Gandhi
To help with micro-managing, I'm also trying out the Civ4lerts mod.
I choose Gandhi because the starting techs are perfect for these strategies. Philosophical appears necessary for a Specialist Economy (SE). I plan on switching Civics a lot to maximize timing of Theocracy/Vassalage benefits for war.
Here's a screenshot of my starting position:
I think that will work. I have lots of 3 Food tiles, lots of Forests, and it appears that I can position my second city on the opposite side of one of those forest clumps.
Here's my initial plan:
1. Research Agriculture
2. Queue & Build Worker
3. Explore
4. Set Worker to prepare gambit
5. Queue & Build Settler
Next post will cover how it all goes...
This as totally piqued my interest so I'm going to try it, preferably using the equally intriguing Oracle/Metal Casting/Pyramids Gambit. This gambit aims to get a Forge super-quick, use an Engineer specialist to then get a Great Engineer, use him to build the Pyramids, and then use the Pyramids to get Representation really early. To pull this off requires ridiculous timing and min/maxy sacrifices with Slavery and pre-chopping of forests.
Game settings
Version: Warlords v2.13
Difficulty: Noble
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Civ: Indian
Leader: Gandhi
To help with micro-managing, I'm also trying out the Civ4lerts mod.
I choose Gandhi because the starting techs are perfect for these strategies. Philosophical appears necessary for a Specialist Economy (SE). I plan on switching Civics a lot to maximize timing of Theocracy/Vassalage benefits for war.
Here's a screenshot of my starting position:
I think that will work. I have lots of 3 Food tiles, lots of Forests, and it appears that I can position my second city on the opposite side of one of those forest clumps.
Here's my initial plan:
1. Research Agriculture
2. Queue & Build Worker
3. Explore
4. Set Worker to prepare gambit
5. Queue & Build Settler
Next post will cover how it all goes...
7.27.2008
H1: Miniatures Challenge! Update
FAIL
I wasn't paying attention and lost my two bids for D&D mini lots on eBay. I might just stick with the more expensive "buy it now" dealers since I clearly don't have the attention span to stay on top of bidding.
I wasn't paying attention and lost my two bids for D&D mini lots on eBay. I might just stick with the more expensive "buy it now" dealers since I clearly don't have the attention span to stay on top of bidding.
7.16.2008
H1: Kobold Hall Treasure
It's Treasure Time! Below is a list of all the treasure you've recovered from the Kobold Hall. This does not include any rewards that you might earn when you go back to Fallcrest. The party consists of mature, honorable, goblinoids so I'm sure you can figure out some equitable method for distribution...
On second thought, let me make a recommendation. First divide up any magic or special items that anyone wants to keep. Take any remaining items and sell them, and divide all the cash evenly, with an extra share set aside for "party necessities" (healing potions, bags of holding, sunrods and other gear that benefits the whole party).
Also, you should figure out if you send Brickabrack's share back to any friends/dependents in Sharn, or if you keep it.
In total, the party has recovered the following loot:
Standard Treasure
Coins:
After counting up all the coinage found on various kobold bodies and in the dragon’s chest, the party has a hefty haul. Assuming it costs around 6sp a day to live decently in the lower levels of Sharn, this is a small fortune. The coins are mostly silver and copper, with a smattering of gold. There are even two coins made of a strange metal. Only after a minute do you realize these must be Brelish Crowns – platinum pieces! The majority of coins are from Breland, though there are many from Aundair, and a few from the other nations.
Gems:
Among the prizes are an oval-cut ruby, two round cut garnets, and a shiny pearl. Gemstones are often used as currency, but their very small size and the type of cuts suggest they were intended for jewelry.
Magic Items
The kobold chieftain wielded a large staff to deadly effect. Any character with a decent Arcana skill can determine that this staff writhes with violent magical energies that a skilled user may channel. The staff was clearly built by the kobolds – the shaft is carved into a single, serpentine shape, culminating in a dragon’s head with a deep red crystal clamped in its maw. Several 2-inch diameter plates made of copper and iron hang from the staff and have runes stamped on them – the hobgoblin witch Lu’uraleen recognizes these runes as the draconic symbols for several constellations named after mythical dragon-gods. Various animal skulls, teeth, and feathers complete the staff’s appearance. Unfortunately, another Arcana check determines that these items are an integral part of the staff’s magic and you’d be reluctant to remove them. The bearer of this staff will be wielding a very feral-looking staff.
In the dragon’s treasure chest you found a sheathed longsword. The pommel and hilt are shaped like wickedly curved fangs and the grip wrapped in a deep, dark red leather. Drawing the sword from its sheath revealed jagged runes etched in the blade, and a large deep blood groove running down the center. Intriguingly, the blood groove runs all the way to the hilt where a hole has been bored into the pommel. Scrutinizing the magical aura, you ascertain necromantic spells at work. A successful Religion check reveals the sword’s runes contain references to the Blood of Vol, a religion that is found throughout Khorvaire, but most predominantly in Karrnath and Droaam. Vol is not a unified religion, but consists of numerous regional cults and orders throughout the land. The unifying doctrine is simple: that the faithful can escape the gray purgatory of the afterlife by self-examination, self-improvement, and achieving the enlightenment known as the Divinity Within. Only creatures with blood truly have souls, and blood plays a prominent role in their rituals and liturgy. The cult has strong ties to necromancy and is believed to have greatly aided the creation of the Karrnathi undead legions.
Lastly, mounted on stalagmite was a gleaming white sphere. It radiates freezing cold and was clearly intended to make the white dragon’s lair more comfortable. Based on the Transportation Guild mark at the base of the orb, you reckon this must be a Chillstone, used to preserve perishable foodstuffs during transport. Any character who bears this item will be miserably cold regardless of the number of layers they wear.
Miscellaneous
The key that unlocked the door from the kobold chieftain’s throne room to the dragon’s lair was made of silver. It can be kept or else easily melted down.
The players also found a tradebar stamped with the seal of the Banking Guild. While House Kundarak (the clan of Dragonmarked dwarves who run the Banking Guild) rarely manufactures tradebars anymore, some are still in circulation. In present times, most merchants would simply carry a House Sivis-magemarked letter of credit from the Banking Guild than lug around a heavy gold brick.
In the dragon’s chest was a thick roll of blue dragon hide. Dragon hide is an exceedingly rare item – not only must a dragon be slain, but it must be done in such a way that the hide is minimally damaged, and it takes a skilled tanner to cut and treat the hide. Dragon hide armor is not innately superior to any other scale armor, though certain enchantments favor them, and it is highly valued as a prestige item. To the right buyer, it would be worth a pretty coin.
The players discover in the dragon’s treasure chest a mysterious letter written in Draconic.
Finally, the party has found one of Glipkerio’s missing chests. Based on the letter, it would seem that the contents consist of Dragon’s Fury – a potent narcotic that, when properly brewed and imbibed, is a potent and addictive stimulant that increases belligerency and suppresses fear. While illegal, it’s known that many soldiers during the Last War made use of it, often with the tacit encouragement of their officers, and became addicted. Fulfilling that addiction is now a very profitable black market industry, and the cause of a great deal of violence and pain.
On second thought, let me make a recommendation. First divide up any magic or special items that anyone wants to keep. Take any remaining items and sell them, and divide all the cash evenly, with an extra share set aside for "party necessities" (healing potions, bags of holding, sunrods and other gear that benefits the whole party).
Also, you should figure out if you send Brickabrack's share back to any friends/dependents in Sharn, or if you keep it.
In total, the party has recovered the following loot:
Standard Treasure
Coins:
After counting up all the coinage found on various kobold bodies and in the dragon’s chest, the party has a hefty haul. Assuming it costs around 6sp a day to live decently in the lower levels of Sharn, this is a small fortune. The coins are mostly silver and copper, with a smattering of gold. There are even two coins made of a strange metal. Only after a minute do you realize these must be Brelish Crowns – platinum pieces! The majority of coins are from Breland, though there are many from Aundair, and a few from the other nations.
210gp
Gems:
Among the prizes are an oval-cut ruby, two round cut garnets, and a shiny pearl. Gemstones are often used as currency, but their very small size and the type of cuts suggest they were intended for jewelry.
50gp ruby
25gp garnet
25gp garnet
20gp pearl
Magic Items
The kobold chieftain wielded a large staff to deadly effect. Any character with a decent Arcana skill can determine that this staff writhes with violent magical energies that a skilled user may channel. The staff was clearly built by the kobolds – the shaft is carved into a single, serpentine shape, culminating in a dragon’s head with a deep red crystal clamped in its maw. Several 2-inch diameter plates made of copper and iron hang from the staff and have runes stamped on them – the hobgoblin witch Lu’uraleen recognizes these runes as the draconic symbols for several constellations named after mythical dragon-gods. Various animal skulls, teeth, and feathers complete the staff’s appearance. Unfortunately, another Arcana check determines that these items are an integral part of the staff’s magic and you’d be reluctant to remove them. The bearer of this staff will be wielding a very feral-looking staff.
+1 Staff of the War Mage (level 3 item)
Enhancement: +1 attacks and damage using this staff.
Critical: Adds +1d8 damage to any critical hit.
Implement (Staff) – a wizard may add the +1 attack and damage bonus, and potentially the critical hit bonus, to any power with the Implement descriptor.
Power (Daily): Free action. Use this power when using a power that has a blast or burst effect. Increase the size of that blast or burst by 1. (Note that any wielder may use this power, the implement descriptor is not required).
In the dragon’s treasure chest you found a sheathed longsword. The pommel and hilt are shaped like wickedly curved fangs and the grip wrapped in a deep, dark red leather. Drawing the sword from its sheath revealed jagged runes etched in the blade, and a large deep blood groove running down the center. Intriguingly, the blood groove runs all the way to the hilt where a hole has been bored into the pommel. Scrutinizing the magical aura, you ascertain necromantic spells at work. A successful Religion check reveals the sword’s runes contain references to the Blood of Vol, a religion that is found throughout Khorvaire, but most predominantly in Karrnath and Droaam. Vol is not a unified religion, but consists of numerous regional cults and orders throughout the land. The unifying doctrine is simple: that the faithful can escape the gray purgatory of the afterlife by self-examination, self-improvement, and achieving the enlightenment known as the Divinity Within. Only creatures with blood truly have souls, and blood plays a prominent role in their rituals and liturgy. The cult has strong ties to necromancy and is believed to have greatly aided the creation of the Karrnathi undead legions.
+1 Lifedrinker Longsword (level 5 item)
Enhancement: +1 to attacks and damage using this sword
Critical: adds +1d6 necrotic damage to a critical hit
Property: when you drop an enemy to 0 or fewer HP with a melee attack using this weapon, gain 5 temporary hit points.
Lastly, mounted on stalagmite was a gleaming white sphere. It radiates freezing cold and was clearly intended to make the white dragon’s lair more comfortable. Based on the Transportation Guild mark at the base of the orb, you reckon this must be a Chillstone, used to preserve perishable foodstuffs during transport. Any character who bears this item will be miserably cold regardless of the number of layers they wear.
Chillstone (level 2 item)
Property: over the course of a day, this item will chill a 40’x40’x40’ room to just below freezing. Larger rooms or uninsulated areas will be cooled but not to freezing.
Miscellaneous
The key that unlocked the door from the kobold chieftain’s throne room to the dragon’s lair was made of silver. It can be kept or else easily melted down.
1sp Silver key to area 5 of Kobold Hall
The players also found a tradebar stamped with the seal of the Banking Guild. While House Kundarak (the clan of Dragonmarked dwarves who run the Banking Guild) rarely manufactures tradebars anymore, some are still in circulation. In present times, most merchants would simply carry a House Sivis-magemarked letter of credit from the Banking Guild than lug around a heavy gold brick.
50gp gold tradebar
In the dragon’s chest was a thick roll of blue dragon hide. Dragon hide is an exceedingly rare item – not only must a dragon be slain, but it must be done in such a way that the hide is minimally damaged, and it takes a skilled tanner to cut and treat the hide. Dragon hide armor is not innately superior to any other scale armor, though certain enchantments favor them, and it is highly valued as a prestige item. To the right buyer, it would be worth a pretty coin.
Blue dragon hide bolt - 40gp (up to 200gp to the right buyer)
The players discover in the dragon’s treasure chest a mysterious letter written in Draconic.
The letter will be detailed in a later post.
Finally, the party has found one of Glipkerio’s missing chests. Based on the letter, it would seem that the contents consist of Dragon’s Fury – a potent narcotic that, when properly brewed and imbibed, is a potent and addictive stimulant that increases belligerency and suppresses fear. While illegal, it’s known that many soldiers during the Last War made use of it, often with the tacit encouragement of their officers, and became addicted. Fulfilling that addiction is now a very profitable black market industry, and the cause of a great deal of violence and pain.
Dragon's Fury: Until the end of the encounter, gain +5 temporary hit points and +5 defense against attacks with the Fear keyword. The user is hyper, belligerent, and irritable until the user completes a long rest (DM may assign a -2 penalty to some skills). In addition, the drug makes a +8 attack vs Will to cause addiction (+2 per additional use per day, and +2 per consecutive day of use).
7.15.2008
H1: Miniatures Challenge!
So at our last game, M. expressed some disappointment at my use of a large displacer beast miniature for a young white dragon, of spear-armed kobolds representing sling-armed kobolds, etc. He offered to buy me the minis if I sent him the list, because mismatched minis were confusing.
To be fair, that probably has more to do with the bottle of scotch and cooler of beer that vanished over the course of the game. But he does have a point, it would be nice if I had reasonably appropriate miniatures. I can't take him up on the offer to buy me the minis because a) I can afford them and b) it would ruin the surprise of the upcoming encounters!
So I am hereby declaring a self-imposed miniatures challenge: I will no longer bring food/drink/money to the game but instead will buy all the miniatures, and make them as accurate as reasonably possible. Even though I'm not overly fond of the look of pre-painted plastics, I'll probably rely heavily on them since they transport well and don't require hours of painting.
I'll post the shopping list and conversion guide for each encounter after the players have been through it.
To be fair, that probably has more to do with the bottle of scotch and cooler of beer that vanished over the course of the game. But he does have a point, it would be nice if I had reasonably appropriate miniatures. I can't take him up on the offer to buy me the minis because a) I can afford them and b) it would ruin the surprise of the upcoming encounters!
So I am hereby declaring a self-imposed miniatures challenge: I will no longer bring food/drink/money to the game but instead will buy all the miniatures, and make them as accurate as reasonably possible. Even though I'm not overly fond of the look of pre-painted plastics, I'll probably rely heavily on them since they transport well and don't require hours of painting.
I'll post the shopping list and conversion guide for each encounter after the players have been through it.
H1: Introduction
This was the email I sent prior to our first session to set the game tone. In the actual game, each character had their own very similar conversation with Glipkerio. Nikkit is a goblin NPC that I had made up as a placeholder until the players sent me their characters. Gwarfank has pretty much taken his place in the storyline.
Glipkerio dismissively waves his corpulent, greasy hand over the tray of sweetmeats, indicating you may eat them. Clearly, this man understands that a goblin cannot concentrate on business matters when there is potentially free food about. With cautious sidelong glances at the menacing enforcers who flank you, you grab the plate and noisily clean it. "Good, eh Nikkit? Enjoy it, I think it will be nothing but hardtack and jerky for you for a while eh? See Nikkit – something has happened to one of our shipments up north and we need to find out what. But I can't send my men, oh no nonono. It can't be someone that Ool Yesugai would know. That would make him worry, eh? Better this way then."
Glipkerio leans forward and his waxen, sweaty face glistens in the light of the smoky brazier. "But you, Nikkit, no one knows you eh? Nikkit's clean – a hard gobbo to be sure eh, but he watches out for his own and keeps clear." He then smiles. "But I know you turned One Tooth Fik's list, eh? Did you make good coin on that, Nikkit? No? That's too bad. You embarrassed a lot of people, made them angry. I'd have hoped it would have been worth it."
"But I can make things alright with Fik and his pervs, Nikkit. I hear you've moved your bed beneath the floorboards, eh! Poor Nikkit. You'll be able to sleep again, no dagger beneath your pillow. Poor Nikkit. Do this little thing for me and you'll be Nikkit the Clean again, eh?"
Poor Nikkit, indeed. You thread your way through the dark alleys of Sharn, flat bare feet slapping the wet cobblestones, making your way to the Eel Gate to meet Glipkerio the Merchant's fixers. Glipkerio the Fat. Glipkerio the Greedy. Glipkerio the underboss of the Stink District whose swollen fingers try to touch every coin, every ballot, and every person that passes within his turf. You always were a goblin known for a sharp wit and a sharper dagger, always kept your nose clean and did right. Well, mostly. Exceptional for a goblin, really. But the dirt and the filth and evil of Sharn still closes in around you.
H1: Characters - Gwarfank
Gwarfank the goblin wizard is played by A. Nobody really knows much about him (not even me, the DM!) other than he seems to be a bit of a loose cannon. He seems to have been caught up in Glipkerio's machinations, though he doesn't seem to be too upset about it. Brickabrack accompanies him almost everywhere. Even though Brickabrack is something of his apprentice, and Brickabrack has managed to grasp Gwarfank's rambling magical theories enough to craft a wand of magic missiles. This has surprised the hell out of both of them.
H1: Characters - Brickabrack
P made an interesting character - an illegal warforged who appears to have been created by someone who didn't quite have the process down. He looks very steampunk & primitive for a warforged, and appears to have mismatched and salvaged parts. He was smuggled into Sharn via a cargo shipment but for some reason was never claimed. He was eventually discovered by Sharn goblins and his since lived among them in the slums. He thinks like a goblin, talks like one, isn't much bigger than one, and sometimes forgets he isn't one. The character is something of a self-taught Artificer (rogue with the wizard multiclass feat) - a tinkerer and dabbler in magic.
Brickabrack gets involved in the story through his mentor, Gwarfank - where he goes, Brickabrack follows.
Brickabrack gets involved in the story through his mentor, Gwarfank - where he goes, Brickabrack follows.
H1: Characters - Tostig Al-Briarwood
M's character is a hulking male Bugbear fighter. Tostig Al-Briarwood was hired from Darguun as a merc, and he stayed on in Sharn after his contract. He acts as an enforcer and sends what little extra money he has back to his family. Tostig falls into that civilized barbarian archetype, he grew up on stories of the glorious goblinoid empire of Dhakaan and longs for the return of goblin civilization. At the same time, he's frustrated with his kin for their incessant in-fighting, slave-raiding, and other "barbaric" habits. He frequently finds himself falling back on those tendencies but tries to catch himself.
M has gone through several attempts at drawing Tostig, staying away from the classic D&D bugbear iconography.
v1: Adorable
v2: "beary" cool
v3: the cleaver is a nice touch.
M has gone through several attempts at drawing Tostig, staying away from the classic D&D bugbear iconography.
v1: Adorable
v2: "beary" cool
v3: the cleaver is a nice touch.
H1: Characters - Repko
G is playing Repko, a goblin cleric of Kol Korran, the deity of trade and wealth, revered by merchants, traders, and thieves. G's concept is something along the lines of a cleric who acts as a witness and middleman to black market transactions. As a cleric with martial training, he probably also acts as something of an enforcer of deals. I really like this idea - in a shady underworld where no one can be trusted, a neutral priest with a high Insight skill, much less the Discern Lies ritual, becomes a valued person. I am going to integrate this nuance into the Kol Korran faith.
Repko's hook is that he was an officiant to a smuggling deal, and that deal has apparently fallen through. Glipkerio is paying Repko's order to investigate what went wrong and possibly enforce the terms of collection.
Repko's hook is that he was an officiant to a smuggling deal, and that deal has apparently fallen through. Glipkerio is paying Repko's order to investigate what went wrong and possibly enforce the terms of collection.
H1: Characters - Lu'urlene
You are of a long line of dirgesingers who closely follow the Draconic Prophecy (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041227a). Indeed it is the very study of the celestial ring of Siberys that you draw your power from. Something in the Prophecy drew you to Sharn to seek clarification on the omens, vague as they are (make up what you wish). Your witch-peers know of your mission and you should secretly send them updates, while they will do likewise for you.
As a dirgesinger, you are highly respected among the goblinoid expatriates in Sharn. Individuals started to come to you to read their omens. At first it was simple readings for common folk like "Is now an auspicious time to conceive a child?" or "Does Dragnat Stink-Eye love me?". You had cast the bones for these sorts of omen readings many times before, and you were very good at it. As your reputation grew, more came to you for readings, some with bigger questions. One day, a fat human by the name of Glipkerio came to you, asking for guidance on a very large bet he was going to make. 1000 gold on The Hawk in the Race of the Eight Winds (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20041220a). More gold than you had ever seen, and he offered you a large percent. You knew something of this human's unpleasant reputation, but the bones were so clear and the gold glinting so bright that you did not hesitate to declare the victory assured...
*The name is an inside joke. One night we were walking home from M's old place after having too much scotch. My wife was on the verge of hurling but wanted to get home first. Since the streets are numbered in our neighborhood, as long as she knew what street we were on, she could figure out how much farther we had to go, and could hold it in. But for some reason, at one particular intersection, 14th Ave is instead called Lurline Ave. As soon as my wife looked up at the street sign and plaintively said "Lurline...? Where the hell is Lurline?" she lost it...
H1: Game Theme
The DM's reward for gaming is very different from the players' rewards. In a way, the DM gets shafted - it's a lot more work, and I don't get to go up in levels, or defeat opponents, or root for my team in the face of terrible odds. But what I do get is to create an interesting world. So as my prerogative, I always impose one rule at the start of the game: the game needs a theme and the characters have to fit tightly within it. This really gives me something to work with. It gives me the inspiration and framework to take premade purchased modules and tailor them to the group. It gives ideas for quests, villains, and mood. So I sent out this email:
We had an interesting discussion about how much to draw on the real world for inspiration and when does analogy cross into racism. Didn't see that coming from a request for a party concept... But I really liked the core idea - I really like reading history and following current events and the opportunity to creatively weave them into the game. It also had jogged my memory about Eberron. I vaguely recall being amused about goblins and illegal immigration in Eberron. While I've completely dropped any reference to Mexico or anything like that, there's no direct analogy here, playing out some of the experiences of an immigrant underclass is a really interesting D&D premise. I did a bit more research and we settled on the party being Goblinoid immigrants from Darguun living in the shady lower levels of Sharn who reluctantly get caught up in the underworld.
Inspirations
Links:
Goblin Uprising Dragonshard
Heirs of Dhakaan Dragonshard
Books:
Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm - Eberron hints at the plague of unemployed soldiers and rise of banditry. I wanted to play this up, along with non-human banditry, and integrate more of the "dark world with a few points of light" feel that core 4th ed. contains. OK book, a bit dry, but very illuminating.
Boss Ruef's San Francisco, Walton Bean - I was curious what old school "Boss" politics was like and whether I wanted to integrate it into the setting. I think in my mind it will be, especially in a place like Breland that is limping towards democracy, but only in the background. I don't think I'll use this material in the game, but it's still an interesting read.
Merchant of Death, Douglas Farah & Stephen Braun - it's the only book I own that really touches on how transnational smuggling (arms trading, in this case) works. I can't say I own many books on the black market. How does all that contraband (Sharn, pg 160) get into Breland? What about the barrels of blood shipped around the continent by the Blood of Vol? This gave me some ideas.
In the end, this is the final "game theme" email I sent out:
A long post, but hopefully there's something interesting or useful in there for you.
Depending on how much roleplaying vs. rollplaying you wish to do, having a more cohesive theme than "A fighter, a cleric, a thief, and a wizard walk into a tavern..." can be fun. If you have any ideas for giving the group a reason to be together, such as:I got back some interesting responses, but the one that really resonated with me was M's:then speak up, it makes my job more fun if I have a theme or context to work with and it'll help folks decide what character they want to make.
- you are all in the employ of an agency or ruler
- everyone has the same class or at least has multiclassed a little bit into a class (one of my best campaigns was when the PCs were members of a secret order of arcanists seeking forgotten lore in an empire where magic was illegal, everyone had at least one level of wizard. A party can be remarkably clever and inventive when they have 20+ spells per day among them!)
- the party consists of basically good but still pretty shady heroes in the vein of Han Solo/Conan/Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, etc. who are always looking for the "big score" but always manage to piss away their treasure in binges of various excesses
- the setting has a particular "feel" (e.g. exotic Arabia or Asia, pirates & buccaneers, mega-city like Grayhawk or Waterdeep)
- the party consists of ex-pats who have been displaced and have banded together as unlikely comrades (e.g. the dwarf whose homeland has been overrun by orcs, the half-elf banished from the elf kingdom, the halfling who has served in prison and can't ever get back into "proper" society due to stigma, and the spellcaster whose future in the Order was sabotaged by a rival).
ok - I have a proposal for our party - came out of H. going to mexico
The party are dirt farmers from semi-tropical area, driven from the fertile valley floor by large ranchers. We leave our families to cross the border - promising to messenger money back from our menial labor jobs in a richer nation. Once we get there we decide short order cooking sucks and so does construction - we're forming a gang of alien cousins to make money by illegal short cuts, looting tombs, selling outlaw services and commodities, protection rackets - whatever works.
From our background we are more or less acquainted with poison darts and blowguns, clubs with sharks teeth embedded in them and obsidian knives. Maybe some forest herbalism or primitive magic (more primitive than the fancy magic in this new country).
Unfortunately we look like immigrant labor and cant go to the best places in town - but then we have no social roots here and hardly view the people around us as people, so morally our hands are "less tied". I'm not married to this idea - so if you hate it say so now, before we cross the Rio Grande....
We had an interesting discussion about how much to draw on the real world for inspiration and when does analogy cross into racism. Didn't see that coming from a request for a party concept... But I really liked the core idea - I really like reading history and following current events and the opportunity to creatively weave them into the game. It also had jogged my memory about Eberron. I vaguely recall being amused about goblins and illegal immigration in Eberron. While I've completely dropped any reference to Mexico or anything like that, there's no direct analogy here, playing out some of the experiences of an immigrant underclass is a really interesting D&D premise. I did a bit more research and we settled on the party being Goblinoid immigrants from Darguun living in the shady lower levels of Sharn who reluctantly get caught up in the underworld.
Inspirations
Links:
Goblin Uprising Dragonshard
Heirs of Dhakaan Dragonshard
Books:
Bandits, Eric Hobsbawm - Eberron hints at the plague of unemployed soldiers and rise of banditry. I wanted to play this up, along with non-human banditry, and integrate more of the "dark world with a few points of light" feel that core 4th ed. contains. OK book, a bit dry, but very illuminating.
Boss Ruef's San Francisco, Walton Bean - I was curious what old school "Boss" politics was like and whether I wanted to integrate it into the setting. I think in my mind it will be, especially in a place like Breland that is limping towards democracy, but only in the background. I don't think I'll use this material in the game, but it's still an interesting read.
Merchant of Death, Douglas Farah & Stephen Braun - it's the only book I own that really touches on how transnational smuggling (arms trading, in this case) works. I can't say I own many books on the black market. How does all that contraband (Sharn, pg 160) get into Breland? What about the barrels of blood shipped around the continent by the Blood of Vol? This gave me some ideas.
In the end, this is the final "game theme" email I sent out:
So I’ve really come to like the idea of characters from an underclass who escape their bonds of poverty and alienation to become heroes. As P astutely noted this is not a cogent metaphor or commentary on current events. Certainly some contemporary or historical themes will make their way into the game – things like organizations that both prey upon and create community for immigrants (e.g. the Chinese Tongs from San Francisco’s history in the late 1800s, Irish-American gangs in New York during the early and mid-1800s, and even contemporary criminal organizations that fulfill similar roles today). These are fascinating and rich concepts for gaming, but let’s be tasteful about it.
The Vibe
The characters should be basically good – at worst they are benign scoundrels in the Han Solo or Fafhrd & Gray Mouser line of heroes. By dint of race and class, the characters begin the game in the seedy metropolis of Sharn. For whatever reason you are reluctantly tied to the criminal world that both protects and preys on your kind. Feel free to rationalize your relationship to the underworld however you see fit, just keep me posted on your thoughts. Some ideas that you may like are:
• You owe human traffickers a lot of money because they smuggled you and/or your family into Sharn. You’re desperate for a “job” – one with a big payoff.
• You needed money and did a minor thing to make ends meet. But now you find yourself caught up in things bigger than you intended.
• You’re an enforcer. Muscle for hire. You don’t really think about what you’re doing – you just follow the coin.
• You work for someone else – you’re a spy or an informer, or maybe even a freelance information broker in your own right. Every contact you make, every favor you bank, every face you see is valuable to someone.
The game will begin with a local boss sending you on a mission to find out what happened to a missing shipment. Please figure out how your character gets involved with this hook. This feeling of being tied to the underworld will recur throughout the early levels, the eventually you can outgrow it.
Character Races & Classes
The players should all be from the kingdom of Darguun. Darguun is a goblinoid kingdom fairly near to the human kingdom of Breland (and the continent’s major metropolis – Sharn). Playable races are Bugbears, Goblins, and Hobgoblins. Darguun is well-known for hiring out mercenaries (primarily hobgoblins and bugbears). Much like the ancient Romans had Germanic bodyguards, it is often a point of pride (and forethought) for merchants and nobility to have Darguun mercenaries. Sometimes the mercenaries stay on past their contracts as illegal freelancers. This would be a great hook for some characters. It should also be noted that rulers of Darguun secretly use these mercenaries as spies and informants.
Goblins are scattered about the continent as an unskilled and semiskilled labor pool. Contingents of laborers are frequently contracted out of Darguun. Many have settled outside of Darguun, often illegally, and an especially large population lives in Sharn. Many goblins attempt to flee Darguun to make a better life in Sharn and elsewhere – “goblin traffickers” both aid and exploit this need. These are great hooks for goblin characters.
Players are not limited to these three races if they can come up with another elegant way to integrate themselves into the storyline. It would be my preference for an all-Darguun party, but my job isn’t to limit peoples’ imaginations and I’ll be happy to work with you.
Any classes are allowed, although the goblinoid races and the game vibe really favor a subset of them (fighter, rogue, warlock, and warlord)
A long post, but hopefully there's something interesting or useful in there for you.
H1: Keep on the Shadowfell
I am going to give 4th ed D&D a shot - reading the rules, there's a lot I do like and a lot that I don't. But what the heck, might as well try it. And the best part is, it's with a new group of players who are all 30-somethings with some combination of mortgages, kids, careers, and drinking problems. They haven't played D&D since they were kids (1st ed AD&D!) and are super-excited.
It all started with a BBQ at M.'s, where I was outed as a D&D nerd and everyone made jokes at my expense. Then over the course of the afternoon it became apparent that almost every guy there had played D&D and in fact rather missed it. Conversation turns to the passing of Gary Gygax and next thing you know we're planning a campaign for old-time's sake. Here's the kick-off email:
The Keep on the Shadowfell module looks interesting, though I'll probably start with the mini-adventure in the back of the DMG, just so everyone (myself included) gets experience with the rules before the real deal.
I'm also going to attempt for the second time to make use of this blog. I've removed most of the old posts to get a clean start. The goal of the blog is to get stuff out of my email, make it easier for the players to find information, and perhaps even share useful hobbyist info with others. Maybe it'll kick me into painting miniatures again too. But the real reason I'm restarting the blog is the name "Bigby's Blogging Fist" is too awesome to be squandered on a dead blog.
It all started with a BBQ at M.'s, where I was outed as a D&D nerd and everyone made jokes at my expense. Then over the course of the afternoon it became apparent that almost every guy there had played D&D and in fact rather missed it. Conversation turns to the passing of Gary Gygax and next thing you know we're planning a campaign for old-time's sake. Here's the kick-off email:
So was it the booze talking? Perhaps it was the realization of one's own mortality and passing of innocence with the recent death of a childhood hero? Or maybe expressing a growing frustration with the moral ambiguity of a complex world and a need to return to a time when everything could be neatly plotted on law <-> chaos / good <-> evil axes? But I swore I heard you guys actually say you wanted to play D&D again.
The Keep on the Shadowfell module looks interesting, though I'll probably start with the mini-adventure in the back of the DMG, just so everyone (myself included) gets experience with the rules before the real deal.
I'm also going to attempt for the second time to make use of this blog. I've removed most of the old posts to get a clean start. The goal of the blog is to get stuff out of my email, make it easier for the players to find information, and perhaps even share useful hobbyist info with others. Maybe it'll kick me into painting miniatures again too. But the real reason I'm restarting the blog is the name "Bigby's Blogging Fist" is too awesome to be squandered on a dead blog.
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