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WorldWide D&D Game Day: Red Box

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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This coming Saturday, September 11, is the next WorldWide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day, celebrating the release of the new Red Box starter set. We’ve got four DMs available to run the game at Imagine Games and Hobbies, starting at 1:00. This is a perfect Game Day for anyone who’s interested in D&D, but who has no experience with the game to come by and give it a try. It should also be fun for more experienced players, who will get to try out the new character builds from the Red Box set.

So, come on down and play with us.

WorldWide D&D Game Day: Dark Sun

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Just a quick reminder to folks in Winnipeg that I will be running the Dark Sun game day tomorrow at Imagine Games and Hobbies starting at 1:00. And when I say “I will be running,” what I mean is that I, along with D&D Encounters DMs Barry, Kevin, and Rob, will be there to put four tables through what looks like an interesting and challenging adventure.

So, come on out and play with us.

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day March 20, 2010

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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On Saturday, March 20, I will be back behind the DM’s screen at Imagine Games, running the Game Day adventure celebrating the release of the Player’s Handbook 3. Here’s the blurb from the site:

Player’s Handbook 3 Game Day
March 2010
Celebrate the release of Player’s Handbook 3 with a day of adventure! Psionic characters, skill powers, and hybrid classes abound in this essential rulebook. Test out the new classes and rules as you play a unique adventure and grab a copy of Player’s Handbook 3 while you’re there.

Now, that’s not a lot of information, so here’s the intro blurb from the adventure:

Beneath the Lonely Tower

An adventure for five 6th-level characters

The Far Realm’s distance from other planes, reinforced by wards erected at the beginning of time, protects those other worlds from the outer madness. Over the course of history — particularly in the wake of the Dawn War—the wards’ power has weakened, permitting the madness to leak into other planes, including the mortal world.

Recently, a rift to the Far Realm opened beneath an abandoned fortress called the Lonely Tower, twenty miles from the frontier village of Beorunna’s Well. Ten days ago, a troop of foulspawn emerged from the rift and began luring mortals for sacrifice. As each victim dies in the dungeon beneath the tower, the foulspawn ritually gather the escaping life force to expand the rift and to prepare for the arrival of a greater evil.

The braver folk of Beorunna’s Well—barbarians, rangers, and other warlike folk—have mounted two investigative assaults on the Lonely Tower. No one has returned.

This adventure challenges characters to find and close the rift. If they fail, more creatures of madness will pour forth and corrupt the land.

And just to further whet your appetite, here’s a list of the characters available to play:

  • Balashi, Shardmind Psion
  • Caewin, Elf Seeker
  • Foostus, Minotaur Runepriest of Kord
  • Izera, Githzerai Monk
  • Kalen, Half-Elf Ardent
  • Zazenna, Wilden Battlemind

So, if you’re in the city, and you like D&D, or you’d like to try D&D, come on down and play.

It’ll be fun.

Game Day Report

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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I just got home from running the Worldwide D&D Game Day session at Imagine Games.

It wasn’t a huge turnout; I had three players to start, and two more joined half-way through. Because of the numbers, and also the War Machine tournament that was running in the back of the store, we had neither the bodies nor the space to split into groups and do the build-the-adventure portion of the event, so I just ran the adventure I had prepared from their materials.

The basics I decided on were that first of all, livestock was going missing from a nearby village, then some livestock carcasses were found horrifically mutilated. This continued for a time, until people started disappearing, and lights had been seen in a nearby cave at the top of a waterfall. Then a pair of children disappeared on the night of the new moon, and the village elders sent some heroes over to the cave to straighten things out.

Yeah, it’s a kind of hokey set-up. It’s a one-shot.

Anyway, the idea was that the Doomdreamer was blending the worship of the Elder Elemental Eye with arcane experiments tapping into the Far Realm. He had set up a small shrine to tempt locals, using the Scarecrow Stalker, and seeded the offering pile with Scarabs. As he grew in power, he enlisted some Minotaurs and summoned a couple of Foulspawn, who liked hunting further afield and snatched the kids.

I made the encounters fairly tough:

  • Encounter 1: Scarecrow Stalker, Hoard Scarab Larva Swarm, 3 Minotaur Thugs (1,750 xp, a level 8 encounter for 5 characters)
  • Encounter 2: Doomdreamer, Foulspawn Mangler, Foulspawn Hulk, 2 Minotaur Thugs (2,200 xp, a level 9 encounter for 5 characters)

For the first encounter, though, I only had three players, so I dropped two of the Minotaur Thugs, reducing it to a 950 xp encounter, or a level 7 encounter for 5 characters. The group had some trouble with this encounter, mainly because they were lacking a striker (they played the fighter, the invoker, and the artificer), wound up in a bottleneck with the Minotaur hitting and retreating repeatedly. Not being able to dish out a huge amount of damage (and suffering from some truly disheartening dice rolls) made this a tougher fight than it looked like on paper.

Two other folks joined for the next encounter, so I didn’t have to trim down the encounter at all. It was an interesting fight, with the problem of getting down to the second level without getting spotted by the monsters down there.

There plan only sort-of worked.

The opening round had the heroes swinging down on ropes to attack (and some flopping painfully onto the rock), and then they all started shoving enemies down into the pit after afflicting them with ongoing damage of various flavours.

Despite this fight being significantly tougher than the previous one, having the party roles filled out, as well as the extra bodies to distribute the beatings being received, served to make it go more smoothly and successfully for the party. And, to be fair, the players all knew this was the last encounter, and most had saved their dailies for it.

So, they managed to slay the cultists, and looted enough cash to raise the kids from the dead. There was a party with ice cream and puppies. Yay!

Thanks once again to Pedro, Wendy, and Kieran, not to mention Leo and Maya, at Imagine Games for being such excellent hosts for these events. And thanks to the people who came out to play. I hope you had fun.

Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day – Dungeon Master’s Guide 2

By | | Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, What's he playing?
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Don’t forget that this Saturday is the latest Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day, to celebrate the release of the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2. As usual, I will be at Imagine Games to run the festivities.

This game day is a little different – it’s not just an adventure to play. It’s an adventure to build. Here’s how it works:

The support package has a rough outline, monster selection, and battle map for the scenario. The participants break into two groups, each putting together a two-encounter adventure over the course of an hour. After that, the leader of each group runs the adventure for the other group. And fun, presumably, is had by all.

How many participants do I need to do the whole schtick? I’d say at least seven, with at least one of those being willing to DM. That would give each group one DM and three players (with me participating), which should be good enough. There’s enough material to run with up to 12 participants – each group having five players and one DM.

And there are freebies. Each participant is going to get the mini of the character he or she played, as well as the character sheet (and these are some nice-looking character sheets). The DM is going to get a set of the monster minis used in the game and the battle map.

What happens if we don’t get enough participants to run it this way? We’ll figure something out. If one of the participants wants to try DMing, I’ll be more than happy to walk them through the adventure creation part and let them run the adventure. Otherwise, I’ll have an adventure that I’ve put together from the material Wizards have sent out, and I’ll run that for up to five players. Depending on time and demand, I may even run it twice. Or two different ones.

Either way, it looks like it should be a fun day of gaming. I look forward to seeing some of you folks there.

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.