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Dateline – Storm Point

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Subtitle: Maybe Now My Players Will Stop Whining For An Update. Also, Hippogriffs.

Yeah, I’ve been kind of letting the update slide, mainly because I was at GenCon this past week. Now, I’m home and I’m getting caught up on stuff, including prepping for a Post Tenebras Lux game tonight and putting up this post.

The Storm Point game was the Sunday before GenCon, and we had a full house for it, which is always fun. Of course, it generated a lot of cross-talk and diversions, but it was still fun.

In the previous session, the characters had uncovered a planned attack on Storm Point by an army of mixed humanoids, headed by a cabal of shadar-kai. Out of game, I gave the players the option of defending Storm Point; exploring nearby ruins for treas… I mean, items to aid the defense of the town; or leaving the defense to the town officials and going on with another adventure, letting the attack happen in the background. They chose almost unanimously to defend the town.

So, I divided the attack into four phases:

  1. Scouting the advancing army and trying to delay it.
  2. Defending a dwarven mine that’s about a half-day out of Storm Point.
  3. Defending Storm Point during the siege.
  4. Breaking the siege.

I intended to have each phase take one session, running it in very episodic fashion, with a little narrative to fill in the gaps. I built what I thought would be a suitable number of events for the first phase to fill a session, and set up a quick outline of what sorts of effects success and failure in each event would have.

And, of course, my players managed to break my planning in two.

First off, they didn’t get through more than about two of the events that I had set up – simple skill challenges to track the army and scout its composition. They managed to walk right into an ambush by a sentry party*, which was a pretty good fight, and by then it was getting to be close to the end of the evening.

While I was trying to decide whether to run another session on this phase or jump ahead to the next phase, I described the camp of the enemy army to them. Trying to give them an impression of how the disparate humanoid groups fit together, I told them the goblin area was a maze of tiny tents and small campfires, while the orc section had larger hide tents in numerous small groupings, and the gnoll area was hard to spot because most of the shelters were camouflaged. The centre of the camp had a permanent shadow over it, where the shadar-kai were.

Then I described the hobgoblin area. I told them about the orderly rows of tents, the cookfires set up near long mess tables, the array of banners. And, because the next phase has a wave of hobgoblins mounted on hippogriffs, I described the corral of hippogriffs*.

You see it, don’t you? I knew it was going to happen as soon as I mentioned the hippogriffs, but by then it was too late.

Nothing would do for my players but that they get the hippogriffs for themselves.

My first instinct was to say, “Nope. Way too many hobgoblins and such for you to get there.” But then I thought about it. Why not let the players have some hippogriffs? It’s a good thing, in my opinion, both to try and say yes to players and to let them have some of the cool that all too often seems to be the province of NPCs or enemies. I was going to have a wave of hobgoblin cavalry mounted on hippogriffs assault the defensive wall of the dwarven mine. Why not let the players nip that in the bud and claim the hippogriffs for themselves?

So, I made them work for it. It was too late in the evening to start another fight, especially one as big as this was going to be, so I let them do it as a skill challenge. They worked up a convoluted plan involving distracting some sentries, creating a diversion elsewhere, and using Thrun as a bowling ball. With some very good rolls, they managed to not only snag one hippogriff for each of the characters, but also to chase off the remaining ones.

In the end, I like the way it worked out.

So, now I’m looking at what they accomplished. They didn’t get to do a lot of delaying of the army, but they did steal a valuable resource and show the enemy that they are vulnerable. I figure that will give them a bit of a delay, but not all that much. The big bonus is that now the party has hippogriffs and the enemy doesn’t. Together, this means not much time to prepare the defenses of the mine or Storm Point, but the fight has a reduced threat without the air cavalry.

All in all, a win, I think.

* 3 goblin sharpshooters, 2 gnoll marauders, 2 hyenas, and a dark creeper. 1,325 xp, a level 6 encounter for 6 characters. Back

* Because if I hadn’t, next phase everyone would have wanted to know where the hell the hobgoblins had got their hippogriffs and why hadn’t they seen any at the camp. Back

GenCon Update

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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So, by now, pretty much everyone knows about the next setting for 4E: Dark Sun.

That’s cool. I thought the original Dark Sun setting was pretty interesting, and I’m curious to see what they do with it in 4E. It makes a lot of sense, especially considering how the PHB3 is going to introduce the psionics power source for the game.

I’m not entirely thrilled, though. I mean, they talk in the announcement about how they wanted to do something a little less baseline fantasy, and I respect them for that. And I can understand how they want to tap into an existing fan market for the world, especially in the current economic climate.

But I keep thinking about the other two finalists of their setting search, and wondering about the two 100-page setting bibles locked away in WotC’s vault.

I think about them, and I really wish they had picked one of them to do. Why? Partly because I’m curious, and partly because I wanted a fresh new idea. Dark Sun is a neat setting, but I’ve already seen one iteration of it. I’d prefer something new. That may just be me, though. I expect that the 4E version of the world will be every bit as cool and well-done as Forgotten Realms and Eberron were.

Had another nice dinner with Gwen, Brian, and Julie from Sigh Co. Graphics. This time, we went to Alcatraz Brewing Co. Food was good, and the server, Rayna (Raina? I dunno.) was great. Lots of fun.

Now, I’m back in the room, and I’m going to spend the rest of the evening reading Geist. So, far it’s really pushing a lot of my mythology buttons – people who die, then come back from the dead with something extra from the other side; syncretized religion and ceremony to enable supernatural powers; twisted, half-human archetypes bound to the souls of people who must both control and serve them; a system for players to construct their own mythology for their characters; stuff like that. I’m having a lot of fun with it.

And, speaking of fun, the count for today was 12. That’s down 72% from last year’s record of 43. It’s not the lowest score – that was 3, on the year GenCon first moved to Indianapolis – but it’s the first time since then that the count has decreased. We discussed it, and think that it may be an indicator that casual gamers are not attending in high numbers due to the economy. Certainly, sales this year are down over last year.

And that’s it for tonight. Tomorrow around noon, we hit the road for home, and another GenCon – my tenth – will be behind us.

Worldwide D&D Game Day – Dungeon Master’s Guide 2

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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From the WotC site:

Show Them Real Adventure!

Bring your friends and join in the fun as we celebrate the release of Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, packed with new options for your Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition game.

In the spirit of Dungeon Mastering, we’re giving you the opportunity to create and show off your very own adventure! Work as a team to build encounters using the materials provided. After your team has finished, play another team’s adventure or DM the one your team created. We provide you with everything you need — maps, miniatures, monster stats, and how-to instructions. Just bring your imagination, a pencil or pen, and some dice!

Just for playing, you’ll take home the pregenerated character sheet and a miniature of the character you played. If you DM the game, you’ll take home a poster map of the encounter areas and a pack of monster miniatures used in the adventure.

This is a very special activity that has never before been a part of Worldwide D&D Game Day! But don’t worry if you just want to play; you can participate in as much or as little of the adventure-building activity as you want. Nothing, however, beats the satisfaction of hearing another team howl in terror as they fight the foes and traps you placed for them!

A Passage Into Mystery is a special team-created 6th-level adventure that uses tiles from DU3 Caves of Carnage and monsters from the Monster Manual: Legendary Evils miniatures expansion. Come out on September 19 and be a part of the adventure!

On September 19, I will be running this event at Imagine Games and Hobbies here in Winnipeg. Because of the way this event seems to be set up, I’m looking to start at 1:00 with the adventure building part, and hopefully get to the playing part by 3:00.

So, come 0n down and play. It’ll be fun.

Eberron Campaign Guide Review

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As you may have gathered previously, I have some real love for the Eberron campaign setting. It is, in fact, my published game world of choice for D&D. So, I had some pretty high standards for this book.

It measures up.

As has become my habit, let’s walk through the book chapter by chapter for my scintillating insights.

Art and Maps

I’m not a big one for judging the art in game books. Some of it I like, some of it I don’t, but it’s all really a personal call. That said, the look of Eberron (strongly established in 3E by the wonderful covers and opening spreads by Wayne Reynolds) always appealed to me. The art in the new books, with very few exceptions, holds up those high standards.

The maps, though, blow me away.

One of my two main complaints about the 3E Eberron stuff was the maps. There wasn’t a good political map for the continent, and the miniature maps in the various sections just didn’t show how things connected between the various nations. The new map in the Campaign Guide is wonderful – detailed, attractive, and useful. And the battle maps on the reverse are very nice.

Kudos to WotC for this.

Introduction

The introduction reprints the Ten Important Facts section from the Eberron Player’s Guide. Except for referencing DM-centred books rather than player-centred books in the first point, the section is identical.

After that, there’s a section on what other books you need to use Eberron to its fullest, and a sidebar on looting the book for ideas.

A nice, quick introduction.

Chapter 1: Adventures

There’s a shift in design philosophy that came along with 4E. It’s subtle, but it showed up in the Forgotten Realms setting books last year, and it’s been carried over in the Eberron books this year even more strongly. Prior to this edition, campaign settings seemed to be aimed at creating vibrant, interesting, dynamic worlds in which the characters could adventure. Now, campaign settings seemd to be aimed at creating vibrant, interesting, dynamic settings for adventures*.

What I’m getting at is that the books are less focused on showing you how cool the world is, and more focused on showing you how to build cool adventures using the cool stuff in the world. This chapter is the core of that design, and does a very good job of showing how to make D&D adventures into Eberron adventures.

The chapter starts with an overall look at the world, discussing the three dragons, and giving us a map of the globe. It does a good job of laying the groundwork to incorporate Eberron’s rather idiosyncratic cosmology into the default 4E cosmology without eliminating the flavour, as well as a quick peek at history.

Then comes a long section on campaign themes. It lists five different themes that are central to the campaign world, and talks at length about how to incorporate elements of each one into your game. Some of the most valuable advice in the opening of this section is at risk of being overlooked by the reader – don’t try to cram all five themes in. Just focus on one or two major themes and go deep with them*.

There follows several pages covering three global threats, which brings me to my other complaint about the 3E Eberron books: they had a number of spoilers for the players embedded in sections that the players might read. The division of information between a player’s guide and a campaign guide nicely solves that problem. Or, at least, alleviates it somewhat*. Anyway, this is where you find out about the Aurum, the Chamber, and the Lords of Dust, none of whom are (as I recall) mentioned in the player’s guide. Details are given as to methods, objectives, and a couple of stat blocks for each organization – all very useful for integrating these threats as elements of your ongoing campaign.

History is next, with several pages of narrative and an “abbreviated” timeline that looks pretty complete to me. A lot of it is lifted right from the 3E campaign setting, with what looks like a couple of additions from other 3E Eberron books. The emphasis here is to show how the history of Eberron influences the possibilities of adventures for your game – it’s far cooler to investigate ruins of a Dhakaani goblin empire warren that was overrun by fleshwarped abominations during the war against the Daelkyr than it is to investigate a goblin cave where some aberrations are hiding.

Following that is a section dealing with integrating the magical technology of Eberron into the game – what sorts of magical services and toys are available, how magic is used in everyday life, and who’s doing the using of it. As this is one of the major flavour differences between Eberron and most other settings, the extra space discussing it and how it fits in the world is nice to see.

Finally, the chapter closes with a section on wondrous locations: sites of magic and mystery that you can use to add another fantastic element to your game. Again, the emphasis is on how to incorporate these things into the adventures you create for your game.

At this point, you could almost close the book and have a good chance at running a very Eberron-flavoured game. And you’re only on page 59.

Chapter 2: City of Towers

Chapter 3: The Five Nations

Chapter 4: Greater Khorvaire

Chapter 5: Beyond Khorvaire

I’m lumping these four chapters together, because they’re all essentially the same. They each deal with the geographic location in the title of the chapter, breaking down into smaller areas within each chapter.  The focus is on providing adventure hooks and secrets for each locale, giving the GM lots of material for creating interesting adventures. And the individual maps are far more useful than the 3E ones.

Chapter 6: Dragonmarks

In many ways, the Dragonmarked Houses are dealt with in the same manner as the locales in previous chapters. The difference, of course, is that they’re more geographically diverse, spread around Khorvaire rather than being in any one particular spot.

The Dragonmarks support the guild-like structure of Khorvaire’s economy in interesting and gameable ways, and I’ve always liked them. The focus in this chapter on how they fit together (and where the points of friction are) is nicely clear, and gives you lots of intrigue fodder.

Chapter 7: Gods and Cosmology

The religions of Eberron are dealt with pretty well in the player’s guide. Here they expand a little on that information, and provide some of the secrets and adventure hooks that aren’t in the player’s guide. It also finishes addressing the non-standard planes of Eberron, complete with a nice diagram of them. Nothing really new, here, though some of the secrets of the Blood of Vol are spelled out a little more clearly than anywhere else I’ve seen, and the Khyber Cultist family was a nice addition.

Appendix: The Mark of Prophecy

This is the introductory adventure, and it’s not bad. As most WotC adventures, it’s a string of fights, but the Eberron flavour is emphasized through a flashback to the Last War and the Day of Mourning, an investigative skill challenge to track someone through Sharn, some interesting Prophecy Marks, and an eldritch doomsday device. It’s these touches of flavour that make all the difference.

Also evident is that this is not a site-based adventure – it follows on the Eberron tradition of moving action, shifting scenes, and a more cinematic approach to adventure design. It’s an approach of which I heartily approve.

 

So, there it is. The Eberron Campaign Guide does not disappoint. It is more than a worthy successor to the 3E version; it is a definite step forward for the world of Eberron.

 

 

 

*I said it was subtle. Back

*For the curious, the five themes are The Last War, The Draconic Prophecy, The Dragonmarked, Urban Intrigue, and Dungeon Delving. Back

*Let’s face it – nothing can be done to stop players who want spoilers from getting them, and it’s not worth it even to try. The best that you can hope for is to keep spoilers away from players who don’t want them, which is where the 3E book failed drastically. I’m looking at you, entries on Karrnath and Blood of Vol. Back

Busy Weekend

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I spent this weekend working on preparing for various games that are going to be starting soon.

Hunter: The Vigil

First, I’ve almost finsihed knocking the Hunter: The Vigil campaign into shape. I’ve made more work for myself with this than I was intending; see, I did a co-operative world-building thing with the players, and we wound up with something a little farther off the core rules than I had expected. Far enough that I’ve had to create a free-form special powers system to support what I want to do. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it means that I have to do some extra work with each individual player to set up mechanics for their special abilities.

This is  a little harder and more time-consuming than I had expected. A large part of that comes from the fact that I’m not as familiar with the New World of Darkness system as I am with the old one, and I’m having to do some more reading to make sure I’m not creating more problems for myself than I’m solving. Another part of the delay is the fact that building the powers is enough work that I’ve been putting it off.

But I’m in the home stretch, now, almost done with the power, and with the initial adventure fleshed out. We’re starting the game in a version of Magical Winnipeg that we developed for the Dresden Files RPG Bleeding Alpha Playtest. As we created it for the Dresdenverse, it doesn’t have the dark, horrific aspect that Hunter does, so I’m tweaking things a little. Still, the setting is more in keeping with the power level and the desire for playing supernatural (or at least unusual) characters that the players indicated.

One of the things we did during character creation for this game is to have a sort of collectively-narrated shared prelude for the characters, bringing the group together for the first time. This weekend, I finally got that typed up and distributed. Here’s how the party met:

As Below, So Above

In the spring of 2009, a number of disappearing students at the University of Manitoba attracted the attention of several people who had interests in investigating supernatural occurrences. Izzy, lecturing on civil engineering at the University, knew two of the missing students, and Nicholas knew another – she was the lead singer in his band, Divine Comdey. Liv was the one who tied it together, tracking the information on her site, and that attracted the notice of Vivianne and Ellis.

They began investigating independently, with Vivianne infiltrating the University occult crowd. She found most of them to be posers, but discovered that one of the missing students was a member. She delivered that information to Liv, who had come to town to investigate things in person.

Liv tracked down Izzy and convinced her to give her access to the University computer systems. She found unusual plans for expansion and completion of the tunnels under the University, plans that didn’t make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, Ellis was on the trail of some stolen rare earths, substances used in many geomantic rituals, from one of the science labs at the University. His investigations lead him to the dorm room of one of the missing students, where he meets Nicholas, who has come to see where they lead singer has disappeared to.

After they established that they are after the same things, they searched the room and find most of her belongings are gone, but discovered her phone in the pocket of a pair of jeans. They decided to take it to Liv, being familiar with her website and tech expertise.

The various investigators got together and compare their findings. Izzy’s interpretation of the building plans allowed Ellis to identify the shape of a sigil linked to earth magic, similar to the patterns used by Neolithic societies in their underground constructions. They were able to tie together information from the occult poseurs with the symbol, the missing rare earths, and their knowledge of the supernatural, determining that someone was planning to sacrifice “builders of stone and delvers of earth” – the engineering students – to power a geomantic rite that would shatter the floodway and flood downtown Winnipeg.

Arming themselves, they proceeded into the steam tunnels, looking for the centre of the ritual – an underground maintenance room beneath the administration building. Earth spirits, roused by the beginnings of the ritual, obscured the area with drifting dust and shifting shadows, distorting the distance and size of the area to make traversing the tunnels difficult. Members of the cult attacked the hunters physically, and the heroes were forced to fight their way into the ritual space.

One of the students had already been sacrificed, and Nicholas’s friend was next on the list when they burst in. In the ensuing battle, the villain managed to sacrifice the singer, and Nicholas killed him for it. They freed the other two sacrifices and fled the tunnels as the backlash from the interrupted ritual called in a deluge of river water to wash the place clean.

So, things are finally moving forward on that front. The first game will happen soon.

The Phoenix Covenant

Finished the map of the area around Stayyin Keep and Covenant, where the game is going to begin. You can see it on Obsidian Portal here. I’m not great with maps, and this one has a number of flaws that jump out at me as I look more closely at it, but all-in-all I’m satisfied with it. It’s got 13 locations marked on it for the party to explore, and about the same number of places that are only marked on my GM version that they may or may not find out during play. The entries of the marked locations are already up on the wiki.

Have I mentioned how much I love Obsidian Portal? I love them lots.

And that was my weekend.

Divine Power Review – A First Look

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Divine Power is now on the shelves, and I just finished my initial read-through.

Once upon a time, a little over a year ago, I was bemoaning the lack of options currently present in 4E. I said at the time that we had been spoiled by the wealth of published material for 3E, and that it was going to take some time for the 4E publishing schedule to catch up.

With the release of Divine Power, I officially and publically withdraw my complaint. I think we’ve hit the critical mass of options my brain was waiting for before saying, “There. Now there are sufficient choices.” Not that I’m going to turn down the forthcoming choices – if they stay true to form, Primal Power is going to be very cool, and I can’t wait to see the full versions of the monk and the psion in Player’s Handbook 3. It’s just that I’m looking at the books and thinking, “Any player should be able to build a character they like from these options.”

Anyway.

Overall, I like the book, though I find myself not as blown-away as I was with Arcane Power. A lot of that has to do with the subject matter – I like playing divine characters, but I find the arcane characters and choices to be inherently more cool. Divine characters for me are about roleplaying the connection with the god, while arcane players are about pouring flaming death down on your enemies*.

So let’s take a walk through the book and see what there is.

Introduction

Not much new here, just a couple of fluff paragraphs and the usual advice on how to use the book. It takes up about half a page.

Chapter 1: Avenger

The avenger is one of the new divine classes introduced in the PHB2. This chapter does a good job of providing a number of roleplaying options that take the class beyond the “divinely appointed assassin” trope – not that there’s anything wrong with being a divinely appointed assassin; it’s just nice to have other options.

The new build in particular deals with some of the lone-wolf issues that the class has. As a Commanding Avenger, you get a little more of the Leader role grafted onto your Striker, in a manner that I think works nicely. The new powers support this well, while not neglecting the other avenger flavours. All-in-all, a nice collection.

And, of course, some of the best bits are in the sidebars, offering advice and options on actually playing an avenger. Some of these sidebars contain expansions on the core mythology of D&D, as is fitting for a book on the divine. We get to find out about some more things that happened during the war between the gods and the primordials, and why there is night and day, and stuff like that. All very nice.

The paragon paths offered for the avenger don’t thrill me too much, but that’s more to do with my taste than any problem with the paths. They do give a nice mix of ideas for different types of avengers, which I appreciate. There is one issue that bothers me: the Favoured Soul paragon path gets a level 12 encounter power that increases his or her fly speed by 4 squares, but they don’t get a fly speed until level 16. Unless I’m reading it wrong.

Chapter 2: Cleric

This chapter introduces a new build: the Shielding Cleric. This build takes the support aspect of being a Leader and turns it up to 11 by mixing in a bit of the Controller. If you’ve been missing the buffing cleric from 3E, he’s back, and he’s looking good. The assortment of new powers seems to be weighted to favour the Shielding Cleric build, with a number that give bonuses and resistances to allies or penalties and vulnerabilities to enemies. Some do both.

Not all of the powers are focused that way, which is good. There’s plenty of stuff to augment other cleric builds, some of which (like weapon of astral flame) are very cool.

The paragon paths, again, don’t really do much for me, but there’s a decent mix.

Chapter 3: Invoker

The more I think about the invoker, the more I like it. And this chapter does a lot to help foster that affection.

The new Covenant of Malediction gives a slightly (but only slightly) more subtle slant to the class, relying more on fear effects than on pure, raw power. It gives a nice balance to the other build featured in the PHB2. The fluff behind it – the invoker speaking ancient words of devastating power that shatter the mind and body of foes – appeals to my imagination, as well. And the powers are suitably vicious.

One mechanical piece that I’m unsure about is the fact that a lot of the malediction powers do something to the caster – leaving him dazed, for example. Now, admittedly, the powers with that cost are pretty impressive, but it still makes me leery. I don’t currently have any invokers in any of my games, so I don’t know how much it makes those power undesirable in combat. I’ll be interested in seeing what others have to say about it.

The invoker’s paragon paths show some of the more interesting ideas in the book. There are more among this class that I find intriguing than any of the other classes. I think part of that is just my fondness for the class, but come on! How can you not love an idea like the Adept of Whispers or the Keeper of the Nine?

Chapter 4: Paladin

Two new paladin builds, each of which really adds to the idea of playing a holy warrior. In the Post Tenebras Lux game I run, the paladin sometimes just feels like a fighter with a couple of different tricks*. The Ardent Paladin and the Virtuous Paladin builds help deal with that, offering flavourful and functional options for paladins. The paladin has to give up lay on hands to get the goodies, but the goodies are pretty good.

This chapter also addes the idea of divine sanction, a secondary type of marking ability for the paladin that works nicely in concert with divine challenge to help the paladin be a stickier Defender. A number of the new powers bestow or key off of divine sanction, as well, making it a nice new addition.

Of the paragon paths, the Gray Guard stands out in my mind as the most interesting. This is a pragmatic, do-what-it-takes kind of paladin that completely undercuts the Lawful-Stupid Paladin stereotype. The other paragon paths mainly focus on whether you kill demons, dragons, devils, or undead best.

Chapter 5: Divine Options

This section brings back the idea of Domains, with a set of feats to incorporate them into your character. I like Domains; I like the idea that a cleric or paladin of Pelor is functionally different from one of Bahamut. The implementation of the Domains looks very workable, with each deity having three Domains, and each Domain having two feats. One feat gives you a skill bonus and a little something extra for one of your powers, and the other feat gives you a new power.

There’s also a section called Your Deity and You, which focuses on roleplaying options for the servants of the various gods. 4E has been very heavy on mechanics over roleplaying thus far, and it’s very nice to see this section included, along with another section on Divine Backgrounds.

New feats, of course. Scads of them, including several new multiclass feats. As is typical of the Power series, a large proportion of the feats are specific to the classes in the book, sometimes paired with specific races. Lots of new options. I haven’t read them all, yet, but they look pretty tasty.

Then we’ve got 10 epic destinies, 7 of which are avatars of various kinds (i.e. Avatar of Death, Avatar of Storms, etc.). They all look pretty nice, but it’s going to be a while before my games get far enough along for those to be really useful to me.

The book wraps up with eight new rituals, which is good, including one for creating holy water, which is very nice to have back in the game.

 

So, there’s the book. As I said, I like it, if not quite as much as Arcane Power. Lots of good choices in it.

Go buy it.

 

 

*Although, in 4E, you can do this with divine characters, too. Especially the invoker. Back

*Part of the issue is that he’s the only Defender in the group. Paladin, cleric, rogue, ranger, sorcerer, and avenger. Have I mentioned how my players looooooove the Strikers? Back

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Finally got together for another Storm Point session this past Sunday.

We’d left the previous session with everyone somewhat beat up from the wraiths, and they spent the first part of the session trying to decide if they should try and find a place inside the villa to hole up for an extended rest, or to retreat and find someplace in the forest to camp for an extended rest. No one thought they should push on, which was interesting to me – obviously, they felt that they’d taken some serious hurt. Listening to them discuss it, it seemed to me that the issue was less about how injured they were, and more about the fact that they had pretty much all used up their daily powers*.

If they had retreated and hidden in the forest, I was planning to let them use one of the skill checks mentioned in previous reports to find a concealed camp site. However, upon return, the forces in the villa would have been reinforced.

And there was no way in hell I was going to let them find a safe spot inside the villa to rest.

They decided on a fairly subtle plan*: rather than go wandering the halls, looking for someplace to rest, they pried loose a couple of planks in the ceiling and climbed up into the room above, which was an abandoned indoor garden, with dead plants in pots and planters everywhere. It was sparsely visited, judging by the signs on the floor, and the door was swollen and stuck, but it showed some signs of being opened in the not too distant past.

This is where they decided to camp.

I figured that the shadar-kai and their minions were searching the building after the noise of the battle, so I rolled a d6 to see when they would happen on this room, multiplying the result by 30 minutes. So, an hour and a half into the rest, an ogre kicked down the door.

The fight did not go the way I expected.

See, I wanted to simulate hordes of humanoids, backed by a pair of shadar-kai. My plan was to have a base bunch of monsters* attack and, every time a minion was slain, another would join the fight the next round. This replenishment would stop once the two shadar-kai were killed.

So, what went wrong? Well, one thing was that I let the players level up between the last game and this one. That let the fighter take the power rain of steel, which is one of the better mook erasers in the game. In general, though, the minions just weren’t enough of a threat to the party. They didn’t hit often enough, or do enough damage when they hit, to really be much of a factor in the combat, especially after the swordmage’s opening round of multiple area of effect attacks.

Also, I  made a mistake in trying to get the shadar-kai into the fight. They shadow jaunted into the room, past the dwarf fighter corking the door, to attack from behind. This left them the main focus of all the other characters in the room, and they got spanked in about three rounds.

In that time, I got another wave of pretty much every group of minions – and two waves of the ogre – and had the orcs bash holes through the lath and plaster walls to let the rest of the minions into the room. It was too little, too late, though, and the fight just wasn’t as tough as I’d planned it to be. Something I’m going to have to keep in mind with using minions in the future*.

Anyway.

Afterwards, they smashed the altar to Vecna in the main court, cleaned off the blood that had been used to mark the place with his holy symbol, and searched the villa. They found a teleportation circle, whose symbols they have noted down, and a chest of money and magic items sent by Tolvas Shadowborn to aid in an assault against Storm Point.

Hopefully, they’ll be able to do something about that.

*This is something I’ve noticed more and more in 4E. Resource managment is spread among all the characters, where in previous editions it was primarily the concern of spellcasters. Now, characters can keep on going if they’ve used up their big daily powers, but they start to try and assess what sorts of challenges lie ahead, and figure out if they need to refresh that particular resource. Healing surges are almost a secondary concern, at least in the groups I’ve run. Back

*At least, by their standards. Back

*A shadar-kai witch, a shadar-kai warrior, eight goblin cutters, eight hobgoblin grunts, five orc drudges, and an ogre thug – 1,524 xp; a level 6 encounter for 6 characters. Back

*WotC has noticed that the minions just weren’t as much of a viable threat as they might have planned. The minions in the MM2 now have roles and a little more in the way of effective powers. Back

Groundwork – The Phoenix Covenant

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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For those who are interested, I’ve finished the preliminary wiki for The Phoenix Covenant on Obsidian Portal.

Now, I’m in an interesting position, game-prep-wise. I’ve got the world pretty much designed, but the design is not current with the game – it is 500 years out of date. This was deliberate: with the village of Covenant being sealed off from the outside world, all they have is information on what the world was like when they closed the Phoenix Gate. Nothing on how it has changed.

Of course, that means that I don’t know how it’s changed, yet, either.

That’s okay, though; I don’t need details on all the changes just yet. I don’t have to worry too much about whether the Imperial City still exists, or if there’s a smoking crater where it once was. It’s going to take some time before my two intrepid explorers make it that far south. What I need to know right now is what changes have occurred around Covenant and Stayyin Keep. In short, I need the first adventure.

Way back a long time ago, Ray Winninger wrote some brilliant articles on building a D&D campaign. They were published in Dragon Magazine as the Dungeoncraft column*. A couple of pieces of advice from those columns – things he referred to as the Rules of Dungeoncraft – have stuck with me over the years, and I’m going to try adhering to them as much as I can.

The first one is the advice to not create more than you need to. Stay focused on the things that the characters are going to interact with at this point in their adventuring careers. So, for starting out, give them simple things: a home base, some wilderness to explore, and one or two adventure sites.

Now, the fact that I have created the wiki detailing the entire Empire may seem to violate that rule. I felt I needed the high-level coverage, given the campaign premise. If you look through the wiki articles, you’ll see that most things get only a few sentences. The details are saved for the history of the Empire (i.e. “Why are we locked underground?”) and the village of Covenant (i.e. “So, what’s it like where we grew up?”). The rest is pretty sparse.

The other piece of advice I’m trying to stick to from Ray’s column is the suggestion that, whenever I create something important about the campaign – a place, an NPC, an organization, a religion – I create at least one secret about it. You write these down on index cards. When you build an adventure, pick a card from the stack, and drop a little clue to that secret into the adventure. I did this in the Broken Chains campaign to great success, even seeding some of the clues into the campaign newspaper for the characters to follow up on. It creates a great way for the players to pick and choose which things they care about, and provides direction for the game.

Which brings me to where I’m at right now.

To get the game ready to play, I need to flesh out the area around Covenant and Stayyin Keep, both detailing the region and creating the secrets deck. In doing this, there are certain design goals I need to keep in mind:

  • I’m planning on opening up the game to more people, playing successive groups leaving Covenant to help restore civilization to the world. The initial area has to be able to support multiple groups doing different things.
  • I want more of a sandbox feel to the game than in previous campaigns I’ve run, with the players free to explore where they want and set their own priorities and agendas.
  • I want different types of encounters in the game – some combat, some skill challenge, some roleplaying, some combinations.
  • I want things to be dynamic, with changes based on the characters’ actions.
  • I want meaningful choices for the players, so that their decisions determine the encounters and situations they come across, rather than just which order they fight the monsters in.
  • I want to maintain the mix of post-apocalyptic feel with the general D&D fantasy milieu.

So, given those goals, I have some basic idea about what the area is going to contain:

  • Lots of choices, with different areas and things to find.
  • Ruins, some inhabited, some not. Also, other signs of an epic magical war leaving scars on the world.
  • Different groups in the area with different agendas that the characters can interact with in different ways.
  • Some nasty-bad mutant monsters*.

And this brings me to my next steps in getting the game ready:

  1. Create a player map of the area circa IY 897. This is what the players will have to guide their initial explorations.
  2. Create a GM map of the same area showing what’s changed in 500 years, and marking out all the various sites and encounter areas.
  3. Deciding what the current situation at Stayyin Keep is.
  4. Deciding how much of a dungeon crawl I want the initial departure from Covenant to be*.
  5. Mapping out the dungeon crawl (probably in flow-chart form rather than a traditional map) and setting the encounters in it.
  6. Doing up the monster stats and treasure package distribution.

Now, steps 1 and 2 are probably going to take the longest. Really, I need to make sure that I have step 1 done, then work on steps 2 and 3 while concentrating on steps 4, 5, and 6, which are going to see the most immediate play.

And that’s what I’m working on for the game right now.

 

 

*The articles are available here. I hasten to add that I have no idea about the copyright status of the articles, or the legality of them appearing on this site. I have my own copies. Back

*Okay, so this one isn’t a product of my explicitly stated design goals. But this is a D&D game, where there should be nasty-bad monsters, and it is a post-apocalyptic game, where there should be mutants. So… Back

*I know I want it to be a bit of a dungeon crawl, for a few reasons. First, it hearkens back to the first Fallout game, where you have to make your way through a cave full of rats when you first leave the vault. Second, it gives me a chance to start showing some of the changes in the world brought on by the war. And third, it allows me to stick in another jumping-off point for other exploration of deeper caverns and maybe even the Underdark. Back

Post Tenebras Lux Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Last Friday night was the latest session of the Post Tenebras Lux campaign*. Only four of the six players were able to show, so I decided not to advance the plot too much, and to keep things centred around Brindol. At the same time, I didn’t want to spend the whole session shopping, with the players looking through books and counting out their pennies to see what magic items they could afford and chatting amiably to random insignificant NPCs.

As a solution, I told the players that they could do their shopping via e-mail after this session, and that I would make sure they had all the information they needed to do so*.  I also encouraged them to do some research to see what they could find out about the Ghostlord and the Thornwaste, which is their next objective in the game. And, of course, I had a few encounters on hand to spice things up.

So, the party spent a little while scouting out the market fair, buying some ale and tankards, sending letters home, and doing some research. On the research side of things, I had about a page and a half of information about the Ghostlord, with DCs on getting it going up to the mid-twenties. They managed to get it all in the minimum number of rolls that it could have taken, because they were rolling hot.

They took a little time to talk and think about the information, and then they started looking a little antsy, like they wanted to hit the road. I didn’t want them running off from Brindol on the mission just yet, so I pulled a bandit encounter out of my notes, and an encounter with a group of priests of Ioun coming to view the ruins of the recently cleared Rivenroar Castle, and decided that the priests were ambushed by the bandits on the road. One guard escaped and carried word to Brindol, and the temple of Ioun asked the party to help*. 

Now, when I run something off the cuff like this, I tend to like to be pretty vague about the setup, and let the players show me what they want through the choices they make. So, when they asked where this had happened, I told them it was a couple of hours outside of town. When they asked if they could borrow horses from the temple, I said sure. Then, when they asked how they could sneak up on the site and scope it out, I said, “Skill challenge.”

I set the DC of the skill checks at 12, and didn’t limit their skill choices in any way. I told them to tell me what they were doing with each turn, and then, if I liked the idea, I dropped the DC by 2. If the idea was boring or a repeat, I boosted the DC by 2*. Based on what they did, I decided that they found the site, found evidence of elven archers, a shallow grave holding most of the guards, and a trail leading to an abandoned farmhouse in the wooded hills near the road.

They continued on with the skill challenge, using it to get the drop on the bandit hideout. That meant that I mapped out the area on the battlemap, and told them to place themselves wherever they wanted, as long as they weren’t in line of sight of one of the enemies* they could see.

It was kind of late when we got to the combat, and it ran kind of long, but it was a fun fight. The party almost had everything their own way, but they got a couple of surprises, as well, from the hidden bandits. Everyone got to do something interesting, and the fight ranged over most of the map – even off it, in two situations.

So, we wrapped up after that, but I’m pretty sure a good time was had by all.

 

 

*For those who are wondering what’s up with the lack of Storm Point updates, well, there hasn’t been a game in some time, thanks to busy summer schedules of the players. We’re hoping for this Sunday. Back

*Because of the way I hang on to the character sheets between sessions so that I have them on hand if a player can’t show, sometimes the players aren’t sure how much coin they’ve got. This is aggravated by the fact that I use Campaign Coins for the money; strangely enough, I’ve found that, if they have the actual physical coins, the players don’t seem to count them very often. But everyone likes jingling them. Back

*After all, they’d been the ones who had cleared Rivenroar Castle in the first place, back when this was still on the Scales of War adventure path. Back

*This is an idea I have stolen gleefully from Robin D. Laws and Jonathan Tweet’s brilliant RPG Over the Edge, where boring descriptions of combat tactics get you a penalty to your attack. Back

*They could see two sentries on the hills around the house, and an archer up in the loft of a barn that was nearing collapse. In total, there were three human bandits, three elf archers, a dwarf hammerer, and a half-elf bandit captain, for a total of 1,200 xp; a level 5 encounter for 6 characters. Back

The Phoenix Covenant – Starting a New Campaign

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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So, this past weekend, my friends Penny and Clint asked if I would be interested in running a small game, just for the two of them.

In the past, I’d run a fairly long-lived Eberron game for them, but it got lost in the shuffle of some non-game things intruding on my life*. By the time my schedule had cleared sufficiently to go back to the game, we’d all lost the thread of what was going on, so we let it die. Well, in the midst of the discussions this weekend, I told them how I had envisioned the final few adventures (we were about six or eight sessions from wrapping it up), so we got a little closure on it.

So. A new game. I asked them what they wanted to play, and they really didn’t know. Penny suggested something post-apocalyptic*, and Clint suggested one of the campaign frameworks I had proposed for the Hunter: The Vigil game that is slowly moving towards start-up. I sent them an e-mail when I had had some more time to think about things, outlining the things I’d be prepared to run. These included a new 4E Eberron game, a modern fantasy game using pretty much any set of rules I had, other World of Darkness games, Star Wars, and even Star Trek*.

The other thing I suggested was something that I’d been working on for some months – strangely enough, it was a post-apocalyptic 4E campaign, based on things like the Fallout video games and the Earthdawn setting. I called The Phoenix Covenant, and here’s the opening pitch:

The Empire of Nerath faces destruction.

King Elidyr takes up arms against the Ruler of Ruin and his seemingly endless horde of rabid gnolls, calling on the old covenants with the other free folk of the world to aid in their defense.

Ancient magics are unearthed and new ones created – magics that can rend stone and split the skies to unleash fury and death.

Bargains are struck with powers from the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos, with the rulers of the Feywild and the dark mistress of the Shadowfell.

Some fear it will not be enough. And some don’t think that the Ruler of Ruin will stop with Nerath.

And some fear that the powers arrayed on both sides may sunder the world forever.

The wise folk of the world gather together on the eve of destruction, and create the Phoenix Covenant.

That the Light shall not be forever extinguished.

And here’s the Phoenix Covenant Declaration:

Whereas the free nations of the world, and the allies thereof, whom shall be called the Light, face the armies of the Ruler of Ruin, and

Whereas the armies of the Ruler of Ruin leave naught but devastation in their wake, and seek neither to claim land nor to build upon it, and

Whereas the advance of the armies of the Ruler of Ruin show fair to overwhelm the defenses of the Light, and

Whereas in the loss of the Light, many wonders of civilization, culture, and learning would fade and pass from the world, and

Whereas such a loss is deemed unacceptable by the wise of the Light:

Therefore let there be founded now the Phoenix Covenant, which members have affixed their names hereto, with the following goals:

First, to survive the coming war.

Second, to preserve from destruction those matters of value which form the core of the societies of the Light.

Third, to hold in trust for the survivors of the coming war the wherewithal to return to the heights of modern civilization.

Fourth, to provide such resources to the survivors at the conclusion of the war, in order to assist them in regaining what they have lost.

Fifth, to nurture and train such heroic members of our band as may be necessary to defend and effect our goals.

Unto these ends, we shall take a collection of wise and skilled folk, representative of all races and crafts, apart from the nations of the world into a secret place, called Covenant, where they shall be hidden safe from discovery by the most powerful magics available to us. Covenant shall be provisioned and provided with all necessary substances to allow the inhabitants thereof to survive in perpetuity without need of congress with the outer world, such arrangements created through our enchantments. All contact with Covenant, save only through the Phoenix Gate, shall be proscribed and prevented, whether from the material world or any of the adjacent planes. The remnants of our society shall open the Phoenix Gate after the scourge of the Ruler of Ruin has abated, and it is time for our society to fulfill its purpose. Should no member of our outer society survive, then the Phoenix Gate shall open after a period of five hundred years, and the heroes of Covenant will be sent forth to explore and reclaim the land.

May the gods favour our undertaking, and grant us the faith and fortitude to see it done.

Done on the 8th day of Full Spring, in the 14th Year of the Reign of Elidyr, feared to be the last Emperor.

And here’s the final sting to get the campaign rolling:

No one ever came to let you out.

So, you prepared, honing yourselves into the heroes that the world would need, learning what you could from the Masters of Covenant. You learned to fight, to lead, to work magic and deception. You learned the words of the gods and the whispers of hidden powers. You pored over maps of the Empire of Nerath, though you knew you would find everything changed.

You made ready.

Now, the day is almost upon you. In two weeks, the Phoenix Gate will open, and the heroes of Covenant will return to the world.

All you must do is prove that you are worthy to be among them.

Well, they picked this idea for the game. Part of the allure is that it is heavily influenced by the stuff we’re all playing as a video game right now. Another big part is that I already had a bunch of background, including a map*, written and ready to go.

There were a few concerns, though. First off, I had planned this for a big campaign ramp-up in the fall, inviting all my gamer friends to play, but spiltting the respondents into two groups if more than six wanted in. But that’s easily fixed; I can still do that in the fall – the story will just change slightly so that a smaller advance group went out a couple of weeks before. Everyone who wants to will still get to play the game.

Second was a bigger problem. Running 4E with two players is going to be a tough balancing act. I’m still somewhat concerned about being able to properly set the encounter strength, and the small number of players means that I’ll be running smaller numbers of monsters. Most worrisome, though, is how things will work without all the roles covered*.

I’m addressing this concern in a couple of different ways. First, I’m starting the characters at 3rd level. That gives me some breathing room on the experience point budgets for creating encounters. Second, I’m giving them some really nice things with the Bribe(TM). This time around, I’m asking for four things (one of which is mandatory), and giving them the pick from a list of four choices (each choice only once). What can they pick up with the Bribe(TM)?

  • +2 to any one attribute.
  • One extra 1st-level At-Will Attack power.
  • One extra feat for which they qualify.
  • One extra trained skill from their class skill list.

Looking at the list, I think it’s almost a recipe for munchkinism. However, given the nature of these two players, and the fact that there are only two characters in the game, I’m willing to risk it. Besides, I can always up the challenge of the encounters if it looks like the characters are just walking through them.

Anyway, we’re going to wait until after July 21 to create characters – that’s when Divine Power hits the shelves, and I want them to have the options in the book, because at least one of them is talking about multi-classing into cleric for some extra healing.

I’ve put up my background notes and the map on Obsidian Portal if you’d care to take a look. You’ll notice that a number of the names (Nerath, Arkhosia, Bael Turath, Cendriane, etc.) are lifted right from the 4E books. I thought that the folks at WotC did such a good job building a loose backstory for the world that I decided to use it in my game with only minor changes.

First game will be either early August or late August. Mid-August, I’m going to GenCon.

 

 
*Work got very busy, I ran out of time to prep. Back

*All three of us have been playing a lot of Fallout 3. Back

*What can I say? The recent movie got me so excited about the universe again, that I started to think about running a game in it. Back

*Done in Campaign Cartographer 3, using their Mercator style, from the 2008 annual. I was very pleased with how it turned out. Back

*From initial discusions, it looks like they’re leaning towards playing a sorcerer and a ranger. My players just looooooove the strikers! Back