Tag Archives: D&D

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Sunday was the most recent installment of the Storm Point game. We had a full house, less one, and I’d warned everyone that this sessions was going to be the defense of a fortified mine against a band of hobgoblins, part of the army marching on the town of Storm Point.

I decided that I was going to use the rough skeleton of the skill challenge created by Mike Mearls in his Ruling Skill Challenges column. I liked that it allowed a wide range of characters to contribute meaningfully to the defense of the mine, doing different things in different ways, so I filed off the serial numbers, put in my own required plot elements and big bad guys, and ran it.

It worked quite well.

Part of the challenge involves preparing for the battle, and it provides a nice set-up where the group just can’t get everything done that it needs to – there are too many options, and not enough time or resources. The players definitely felt that pressure, knowing that for everything they did to prepare the defenses, there was something not being done. And the things they chose to do had a real impact on the actual defense of the keep.

Now, the Warlord in the party came up with his own option, not using one of the ones provided in the skill challenge, deciding that he would, instead, train one of the defending units to be a command cadre, allowing him to pass orders and implement tactics more readily. I liked the idea, so I let him do that, giving him a +2 bonus to his rolls in the Tactical Command skill challenge during the defense.

The Cleric managed to get another unit on its feet with his Heal skill, so the boys were able to fully man both the battlements and the gates, while still keeping the trained command cadre intact. And the Fighter managed to fortify the gates a little better, the Swordmage sorted out some good healing potions, and the Ranger and Rogue made a scouting flight on their hippogriffs to assess the enemy forces.

Yeah. Those hippogriffs.

So, after that, I ran the challenge mostly by-the-book from the article, except that the archers weren’t mounted on hippogriffs, and I changed the leader to a shadar-kai rather than an oni. The undead attack was detected early on by the Cleric, and he and the Ranger and the Rogue on the parapets managed to drive them off fairly easily, and they used their healing potions to keep from losing the squad of defenders up there. The defense of both the walls and the gate were much easier without having to worry about air cavalry, and I wrapped things up with a big battle against the hobgoblin command (beefed up a bit to make it a good fight for the party) and the shadar-kai leader*.

The battle was tough, with a couple of the guys coming dangerously close to dropping, but the group has got very good at trading off healing and being targets, so they managed it without actually losing anyone, though I decided that they were going to lose one squad of defenders for every three rounds that the battle went on. It lasted five rounds, so they lost one squad.

Not bad.

The basic structure of the skill challenge was good, and it gave me a nice starting point to describe the battle and improvise when the characters wanted to try something not covered by it. Everyone felt that they were contributing to the success of the battle, and they had fun.

I’m planning on doing something similar for the next couple of sessions, which is the siege of Storm Point, and the end of this portion of the campaign arc.

I’m looking forward to it.

*4 hobgoblin soldiers, 1 hobgoblin archer, 1 hobgoblin warcaster, 1 hobgoblin commander, and 1 shadar-kai battle lord warrior*, 1,800 xp, a level 7 encounter for 6 characters. Back

*Found him in the Monster Builder, which I am starting to love. Back

One-Shot Dungeon Delve

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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This past Saturday night, I ran a one-shot for a fairly large group. The organizer, a friend from work, wanted to introduce his wife to the game, and to try out the new system, so I agreed to GM, supply pregenerated characters, and the adventures. His job was assembling a group. I told him that the basic assumption in 4E was that the party would consist of 5 characters, but that it was possible to run with more or fewer. I also said that less than four characters could make things more difficult, because then all the roles wouldn’t be filled, and there would be very little in the way of back-up.

He put together a group of seven players, most of whom had very little (or no) experience with 4E, which was fine. I used the D&D Character Builder (which I love to death) to generate quick characters – one for each class, and spread among the races. Everyone picked a character, and I ran them through  Coppernight Hold, the level 1 delve from Dungeon Delve. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and I think the game went fairly well. Some observations:

  • In retrospect, I think it would have been better to stick to the PHB1 races and classes, rather than going for the variety I did. While there was a benefit to having the broader choices – one of my friends finally got a chance to try out a Warden, for instance – I think that the range of choices was a little overwhelming to those who were less familiar with the whole thing.
  • As new supplements are released for 4E, I have noticed an increase in mechanical complexity with newly-introduced material. This is reasonable and to be expected, as the supplements can be viewed more as expert source material for those who have achieved some mastery of the game’s basics. However, for starting players, it makes the characters that use the new systems (beast mastery for Rangers, the Shaman’s spirit companion, and the Monk’s full discipline mechanic, for instance) more complex to play. We had both the Monk and the Shaman in play on Saturday, and they took a little time to start fitting together their abilities. I’m immensely glad no one chose the Psion.
  • Monks are very, very cool. I want to play a Monk.
  • Monks might be broken, currently. I’ll have to take a closer look, but the Monk in the game unleashed an absolutely devastating combo of powers with the wise use of an action point that made my eyebrows rise quite dramatically. Further investigation is warranted.
  • Seven players is a big group. Larger than I ideally like, but not completely overwhelming. The simplicity of the adventure and the frame of the one-shot made it easier to handle than a regular campaign, but combat rounds took a long time, especially as everyone was trying to get familiar with what their pregens could do.
  • The Character Builder Quick Character feature is great, but it produces some odd results sometimes. There was a real preponderance of multi-classing among the characters it generated, and some strange combos of class and race, and some less-than-intuitive selections of powers and feats. Now, the idea of the optimal build for each class will change from player to player, but I feel comfortable in saying that none of the characters was really optimized.
  • We started late (around 10:00 pm), and had a large group of novice players, so I cut out the middle encounter of the delve, and didn’t beef up the encounters we did play to match the number of players. That let us get through the delve in about three hours, which is not too bad.
  • It was very foggy as I drove home, and I thought I might die.

As I said, the game went well, and I think everyone had fun. We’re talking about doing it again, and I’m up for that.

Post Tenebras Lux Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Friday was the latest installment of the Post Tenebras Lux campaign.

It’s been a long week, and I was kind of tired and unfocused that evening, and I didn’t have a very good game.

One of the things that I notice is that, when I’m tired and not completely into the game, I wind up making bad calls. Nothing huge, really, but missed opportunities for making the game more fun for everyone. You say you’d like an example? Well, sure. Here are a couple.

First of all, we had another combat with a patrol of gnolls*, which is fine. The party is trying to scout out the Ghostlord’s tower in the Thornwaste, which I’ve decided is sort of a savanna-like plain with hedgerows of brambles, and some deep gullies and mesas in places. As part of the scouting and avoiding detection, I let everyone make either a Perception or Stealth check, and used a sort of conglomerate of the scores to decide what happened. Now, the heavily armoured paladin really blew a Perception check, so I decided that the group and a gnoll patrol just sort of stumbled on each other at point blank range, and each party was equally surprised. I drew a few hedgerows on the map after the group had placed themselves, so that I could have the paladin basically coming around the end of a hedgerow face-to-face with the gnoll patrol*. I was using the thorns and brambles essentially as walls, obstacles in the combat. I described them as between eight and twelve feet tall, dense and impenetrable. And then one of the players asked if he could push an enemy into the brambles to hurt or trap it.

And I said no, because I was thinking of the hedges as walls.

That was the wrong answer – the fight could have become very cool, with people pushing each other into the clinging, piercing thorns, setting them on fire, and stuff like that. I realized it during the fight, though by the time I did, we had got deep enough into things that changing my mind would have made things worse, by invalidating the tactics the group had come up with to deal with the environment. I consciously tried to say yes to stuff after that, letting them climb up on top of the tangles and such, but I think I really missed an opportunity for some interesting stuff with that single no. I need to remember to say yes more often.

Second example came later, as they first encountered outriders of the Stone Swimmer Tribe – a tribe of goliaths who raise bulettes. The group wanted to talk the tribe into meeting with the Grass Dragon Tribe (enemies of theirs) in order to forge an alliance against the gnolls and the oni who may be behind the army. Now, the way I’ve been running these, as I mentioned last time, is that I’ve been listening to what the characters are saying to the NPCs, and giving them a roll against an appropriate skill when they say something that has a chance of swaying the listeners to the party’s point of view. With this particular tribe, the chieftain has had her position undermined by the tribal shaman, who thinks she’s being a coward for not making a direct attack against the gnolls, despite the overwhelming odds, so there was an extra layer of complexity, as the chieftain couldn’t come out in support of the meeting and alliance until she felt she had enough support among the warriors to stand up to the shaman.

So, what happened? One of the characters, playing the cleric, upon first meeting the Stone Swimmer scouts, launches into a very eloquent appeal to them to ally with the Grass Dragons. He manages in his speech to lay out the prospect in terms that gets the Stone Swimmers’ backs up – uniting with the Grass Dragons, the tribe not being strong enough to protect their own children, the way they need outsiders to come show them the errors of their ways, all that kind of thing. And all of this coming out of the mouth of an outlander worshipper of a foreign god, and a city boy, at that.

Now, what I should have done is used this opportunity to show the reactions of the goliaths in such a way as to provide guidance to the party as to what arguments would and would not be useful. After all, except for one of the warriors being the husband of the chieftain, they were all just extras in the scene, not decision-makers, so I could have offered instruction by having some of them react badly, citing the specific insults, and having a couple of the calmer heads settling the hot-heads down and saying that these questions need to be settled by the chieftain and shaman. Maybe even have a friendly one offer some sotto voce advice to avoid certain approaches.

What I did was have the entire Stone Swimmer party take umbrage and start to dismiss the group, until the paladin piped in with one sentence – after the cleric’s lengthy argument – calling the tribe’s courage and love of their children into question, which got them in to see the chieftain.

See, I made the mistake I railed against back here. I responded as if the goliaths were actually proud tribal warriors being insulted by an outlander. I did “what the goliaths would do,” not what I needed to do to move the story forward. In doing so, I devalued the cleric’s contribution to the process, and I almost threw a very large obstacle into my own plot.

Things worked out in the end, but not as cleanly or as interestingly as they might have. The cleric’s Insight skill became integral in figuring out the divisions within the tribe, and the trophies that the party had collected from the gnolls managed to set the tribe’s shaman back on his heels when they were dropped in front of him in response to one of his challenges.

So, the game was not a bust, but it wasn’t one of the best sessions I’ve run. If I had been a little more attentive and focused on the things I mention above, I think it could have been great, but it turned out pretty mediocre.

Have to try harder. But that’s always the lesson, isn’t it?

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*2 deathpledged gnolls, 6 gnoll minions, and 3 krenshars – 1,225 xp, a level 5 encounter for 6 characters. Back

*I can rhyme! Back

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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Not a whole lot of plot progress in this session of the Storm Point game.

I gave my players the option at the start of the session of continuing with the attempts to delay the advancing army or jumping ahead to the next phase of the adventure – the defense of the dwarf mines near Storm Point. They decided to stick with the army, but wanted to devote their efforts toward clearing the path of the humanoid force of civilians and livestock, both to keep the civilians safe and to deny the enemy the resources. There was even some discussion of burning the fields in order to do the whole Russian-falling-back-to-Moscow thing that messed up both Napoleon and Hitler.

They decided not to go quite that far, though.

So, the flew around on their hippogriffs, warning people, and generally clearing the line of advance. I threw one encounter with a raiding party at them, and then recalled them to the mines.

Couple of interesting observations from the game. First, the addition of the hippogriff mounts did a fair bit to enhance the group’s combat effectiveness. Even the characters that didn’t use the mounts a whole bunch were able to drop out of the sky on the first round and attack, which they liked. And having a couple of extra targets on the table helps to dilute the damage that the enemy dishes out.

And hippogriffs bite really hard.

The raiding party was a 7th-level encounter for my players*, which is a party of six 5th-level characters. I expected it to be a tough, desperate fight, but it was pretty much a cakewalk. I’m going to have to take a closer read of the DMG and PHB rules for mounts, and check out the info on companion creatures in the forthcoming DMG2 to make sure I’m handling things right. I imagine that I will need to add some extra monsters to the fights where the hippogriffs play a role.

The other observation is a little more unsettling. It seems my players are one thin excuse away from vicarious Vietnam flashbacks. After killing the raiding party, they decided to drag the bodies back into the path of the advancing army. Fine. Then they started talking about arranging the bodies as a warning. Okay… Then they started talking about mutilating the corpses in graphic and obscene ways to instill fear in the enemy.

I drew the line at this point, stating unequivocally that doing so was an evil act*, thereby crushing their desire to recreate Apocalypse Now in my heroic fantasy game.

I swear, I gotta get those guys to watch less TV and fewer movies.

And that was it for another session.

*2 dire boars, 1 ogre savage, 6 orc warriors, and 1 orc eye of Gruumsh, 1,900 xp. Back

*”It’s not evil. The American forces did things like this in Vietnam.” Pause. “Okay. I see your point.” Back

Post Tenebras Lux Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Latest session of Post Tenebras Lux last night. I was scrambling during the afternoon to prep, because I discovered that my updated adventure notes were on a computer that I did not have access to at that time – I had forgotten to e-mail them to myself. That meant I had to try and rebuild the information from memory in a couple of hours.

Now, the encounters weren’t too difficult to pull together, but I had notes on things that could happen in each little village the party passed through on their journey down to the Thornwaste to check out the rumours of the returned Ghostlord. I also had extensive notes on the nomad tribes of the Thornwaste, with political factions and character notes for important nomads and, I dunno, names and stuff, most of which I just couldn’t recall off the top of my head.

I was able to pull together a few things, though. The characters decided not to go directly to the Thornwaste, but to detour up to Vraath Keep to speak to the original Heroes of Brindol who destroyed the Ghostlord a dozen years previously. This gave one of the new players a chance to bring some of her background into play, as she had written up that she was the daughter of one of the Heroes of Brindol and had been trained by another. We had a bit of nice roleplaying there, with some insight into Jaks’s character and history, as well as getting details of the destruction of the Ghostlord.

When they headed down to the Thornwaste after that, they made some History and Insight rolls to see if they knew anything about the tribes in the area. As is becoming usual with this group, they aced the knowledge rolls, and learned about the three main nomad tribes:

  • The Grass Dragons, a tribe of human nomads who breed and raise drakes.
  • The Blood Hawks, a tribe of halflings who train birds to aid them in hunting, scouting, and combat.
  • The Stone Swimmers, a tribe of goliaths who have domesticated a number of land sharks.

The also got an idea of the territories each tribe claimed, and some insight into the nomad culture – somewhat isolationist and xenophobic, with a strong warrior culture, given to raiding each other and nearby farms, but also willing to trade from time to time. With this information, the group decided to speak with the Grass Dragons, the nearest tribe, to try and get more information.

Now, I had been going back and forth on how to do this – the skill challenge rules certainly work well for this sort of thing, but when I use them explicitly in my games, it always seems kind of jarring, like a move away from roleplaying to a very gamist system. I wanted the discussions with the tribes to be more fluid and natural for the players, so I decided not to use my normal method for skill challenges.

What I did was play the chieftain of the Grass Dragons as an older man, a traditionalist, a strong leader, but very resistant to change. Also, given that the situation involved a newly-arrived tribe of gnolls camping around the Ghostlord’s tower and stealing the children of the tribes for conversion into undead slaves, I decided that he felt helpless and angry, ready to lash out at anyone who stepped wrong.

And then I just ran it as a roleplaying encounter. Well, mostly. Secretly, it was a skill challenge, but I never told anyone that. For the most part, I just let the party talk, and replied as the chieftain would. When one of the party members said or did something that had the potential of winning some support from the tribe, I asked them to make a roll on whatever persuasive skill seemed most appropriate at the time and kept track of successes, describing the reaction of the tribe.

They got off to a bit of a rough start, what with the chieftain being especially prickly, and not very receptive to these outsiders coming into his lands and telling him that he needed to abandon the traditional ways of his people to unite with the other nomad tribes if they wanted to be able to drive out the Dog Ghost tribe – what they called the gnolls. A couple of missteps got interpreted as being threatening or insulting, and only backpedaling and apologizing, along with the intervention of the tribes shaman, got things settled down enough for the chieftain to agree to meet with the other tribal chiefs if they could be persuaded.

The information the party gained was that hundreds of gnolls were camped around the Ghostlord’s tower, and that they were sending out raiding and culling parties against all the tribes. No one tribe was strong enough to stand up to them, and the nomads were faced with the choice of leaving the area again or being killed off.

The party decided to go have a look at the Dog Ghost territory on their way down to the Stone Swimmer tribe, both to see what sort of force they were up against, and to try and get some trophies to lend weight to their words when they spoke to the other tribes. To oblige them and start showing some of the complications that await their investigation, I gave them a combat encounter with a Dog Ghost culling party.

In addition to the two gnoll huntmasters and four gnoll minions, I threw in two witherlings from the MM2, describing them as mummified children with dog skulls where their heads should be, in order to show the type of nastiness the gnolls were getting up to. Leading them all was an oni devourer disguised as a gnoll, which came as a bit of a shock to the players, and I think has a couple of them asking questions about what’s actually going on here. The whole encounter came to 1,250 xp, which is a level 5 encounter for 6 players.

So, now the party has the following information:

  1. Lights have been seen in the Ghostlord’s tower.
  2. The nomad tribes have been raiding farther afield. Some of this might be the action of the gnolls.
  3. A large army of gnolls has encamped around the Ghostlord’s tower.
  4. When the Heroes of Brindol destroyed the Ghostlord and his power sources, they split the Pool of Rebirth before breaking it’s connection to the Heart of the Lion, causing the enchanted waters to spill into the ground of the Thornwaste before rendering it powerless.
  5. The gnolls are creating undead servants.
  6. There was at least one oni involved, leading a party of gnolls.

This has got them thinking and making guesses about what’s actually going on. It’s also getting them a little worried.

Which I like.

All in all, despite the fact that I didn’t have my complete notes for the session, the game went pretty well, and everyone seemed to have fun. I’m looking forward to the next session.

Dateline – Storm Point

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Storm Point, What's he playing?
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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

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

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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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

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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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