So this weekend I got the chance to run 4th Edition D&D two nights in a row. Gotta say, the Dungeon Delve book that WotC released back in February came in handy this 4 day weekend. We decided on Tuesday that we were going to play on Friday night, then on a whim we ended up playing Thursday also (we're very excited geeks). Both days we had successful games, mainly because that book made it nice and easy to jump into the game with very little planning. I'm still new to 4th edition and this was a great way to try out the new rules system. If you're a new DM for 4th edition, check out the Delve book - it's worth it.
The initial plan was to only play on Friday, but after two of my players and I were done with Thanksgiving dinner, we met up and decided to play Thursday night too! I had some pre-generated characters that I swapped from the Keep on the Shadowfell adventure. Those characters come ready to play (for free if you download the adventure), and are prepared to be played at 1st,2nd or 3rd level, we chose 3rd level. The players (Mike Goluch and Manny Salazar), chose to play the Dwarven Fighter (Mike) and the Halfling Rogue (Manny). Since most delves are set up to be played with 4-5 players, I had an NPC Cleric travel with them to make it more fair for them. To interfere less as a DM for what the players were doing in the game, I had them decide what the Cleric did in combat and I filled in role playing aspects for the Cleric, only making decisions for the Cleric when the players were busy doing other stuff.
Thursday night game: The players started in Fallcrest. Broke and down on their luck they met each other at the Blue Moon Tavern. The PCs were adventurers that made their living by hiring out their skills for any job paying them well enough - but lately they hadn't gotten any jobs. The Blue Moon is always full of Halfling traders, so the Dwarf and the Halfling met up there in hopes of finding work. Eventually a Rich Halfling trader showed up and sent them an invitation to join him in the VIP section of the tavern. When they went to meet him, he told them he had a job for them. The Daggerburg Goblins were apparently starting to attack further to the North, they hit a caravan that was delivering an art object he had bought and it was destroyed in the raid. He wanted the two to go to an abandoned tower that the Goblins had taken refuge in, and kill them all (the delve from the book!). A Cleric named Duval, who was employed by the Rich Halfling trader, was sent with them as an informant and assistant. This is the plot hook I inserted to make the delve become more than just a hack and slash encounter - I created it on a whim at the table because I had read the delve and also knew something about the Nentir Vale setting, which is described in the DMG. All I had to do was set the delve in the Nentir Vale, choose a city and start the game. I still haven't even read all the way through the setting in the DMG and was still able to start the game.
The PCs headed out and traveled to the tower. When they arrived it was dusk, the Goblins were just waking up. The tower was a ruin. The players snuck up to the front entrance to the tower and peaked in through one of the broken holes in the rotting door. Goblins playing cards were arguing, another dipped his goblet into a cauldron of wine, others scurried about the room and on the stairs. The tower's floors and walls were made of stone. The ceiling of the room was sagging low near the center of the room due to the decaying infrastructure.
The delve I used for this combat is on page 18 of the Dungeon Delve book; it is a 2nd level delve. With three party members at 3rd Level (Dwarven Fighter, Halfling Rogue and Elven Cleric), the delve was considered a lower challenge. Normally, however, they suggest that if you have a party of less than 4-5, that you should adjust the amount of monsters in the delve (minus one or two monster per party member missing). Since it was a lower level encounter, I kept the same amount of monsters and that seemed to be a good decision. The combat they encountered here seemed to be an equal challenge for their abilities.
We ended the night when this delve was finished.
And now for a break by MIXEL PIXEL:
Friday night: I had the two players from the previous night's game (Mike G and Manny S) plus one more (Rob Bessette). This was the planned game, that we were going to use 16th level characters for. It took me a lot longer to make the characters for the game than expected (it was actually my first time creating characters for the game). I ended up letting the players do the work for buying equipment with the money I gave them. I was trying to create all the characters for them before the game so we could just play, but since it was my first time building them, it took a little longer as I tried to optimize their characters to be able to work well together. Because of the character creation delay, the game started later than expected.
The blog below, Harkenwold, Zealots and the Emerald Dawn, was the original hook for the game. Instead of getting into all of the role play stuff, I skipped it all, told them the overall plot and put them at the dungeon door in the swamps (they were all high level characters that are high up in rank in the barony of Harkenwold, one of them [Mike] was the son of the baron - they were all searching for the Baron's other son who was suspected of being kidnapped by some cultists).
For this game, I used an 8th level delve from page 42, then used the succeeding delves that connected to that one (pg44 lvl 7, pg46 lvl 9), from the Dungeon Delve book. Again, there were three members in the group... and being that the level was a lot lower (for all three delves), I kept all the encounters the exact same as they were presented in the book. The players (Mike - Goliath Barbarian, Manny - Human Cleric, Rob - Human Warlock), blew through dungeon. The only trouble that they really encountered was from the Feymire Crocodile in the delve on page 44. One of the PCs (Mike's) put one of their dead opponents in the area where an unseen well sinks below the surface of the water to lower ground. This disturbed the Feymire Crocodile enough to grant him a perception check as they walked by. It attacked Mike's character, grabbed him with his jaws, the croc's move action was then spent moving back under the water. Mike's character made a strength check to get out and successfully swam to safety. They didn't encounter the croc again until the next dungeon room/delve when a cultist swam across a moat to attack the PCs, thus disturbing the waters and thus disturbing the croc again! They finally killed it there.
The adventure ended mysteriously after they killed all of the cultists. No trace of the Goliath/Baron's son present. The players were confused...
STAR TREK CLOSER BREAK
There was another dungeon delve series I was intending on running but that game ended there, Rob had to leave. Mike and Manny still wanted to play, as did I. So we continued on the path with Thursday night's delve.
Back to the adventures of the Dwarf Fighter, Rogue Halfling and Elf Cleric (Duval... the only character in that game with a name until later). They had completed the dungeon delve for the first floor of the tower. The second floor of the tower was the next delve (pg20 lvl 3). This delve was the appropriate level for the characters and proved to be more challenging. I did not altar the encounter's monster count (it was sorta experimental these games). The center of the room was unstable, the floor was sagging downward toward the first floor (bad infrastructure remember?). They managed to succeed against the monsters on this level and climbed to the last level!
The last level of the tower (delve on page 20) I altered somewhat. I kept it the same level and warned the players that the delve might be more challenging! I took a spot marked as 'soiled bedding' -where some monsters are hiding- and turned it into an illusion that was masking their presence (same DC and check to notice them past the illusion). I made it an illusion so that I could place an extra dungeon tile there if they succeeded in their check to notice the illusion... the extra tile was an alcove where a Goliath was laying asleep due to the effects of a magical binding sleep spell. This was the prince from the other game. The characters in this game were from Fallcrest, the 16th level guys were from Harkenwold, but both games included the Daggerburg Goblins somewhere in the game.
The fight was looking like it would have been in the monsters favor, however things changed in favor of the PCs quickly. An area marked with a secret trap door on the map came into play. The monsters were waiting behind the area to taunt the PCs to come fight them, so that the PCs would step into the square and fall through the trap door. Manny's character managed to step around the area with the trap door (luckily), then proceeded to use a move that shifted the bad guys into that space. The players didn't know there was a trap door there. When the enemy (the bugbear for those looking at the book) fell through the trap door the guys laughed pretty hard. They laughed even harder when, after he landed on the second floor, the sagging floor of the crumbling tower gave way and he fell one more floor to the bottom level and took more damage! Then Manny was able to successfully do this to the main boss, who, after falling two floors like the bug bear, ran out the door and commanded the bug bear to fight to his death. The bugbear ran back up and got hit by the Dwarf when he got back to the top of the stairs and was knocked prone, he then fell down the spiral staircase - landing on his head at exactly 0 hit points.
After that they delivered the Baron's son back in secret. They were discovered by goblins on the way there and were attacked all along the way. I made the event a skill challenge for them to avoid the random goblin attacks from the woods, while on their way to the barony (random groups of goblins here and there along the road, were firing arrows at them). When they made it to the Barony the chase stopped. They were rewarded and a banquet full of debauchery was had in their name.
All in all it was a good time. In my opinion, 4th edition does a good job of bringing an important part of the game back to life: The Dungeon! The game focuses more on terrain and traps, in a way that brings the dungeon more importance. I feel like other editions were more prone to conceptualizing of the dungeon because there was less focus on it.
And now, for another break..HANSEL & GRETEL
On Saturday night, Manny ran his 3rd edition game for me, which is a one on one D&D game. I play a dwarf named Obsidious Crown. He has been adventuring, claiming that he is the scion of a forgotten Dwarf king. Throughout his adventures he has been fighting some strange cult members that have the ability to be raised as undead. In last night's game Obsidious killed two of them by putting them in a bag of holding after he knocked them down, then buried them in the woods, but not before he poured acid on them and watched them melt to nothing. Obsidious was tired of cult members coming back from the dead. He just found papers confirming his link to the king, while he was in a secret town inhabited by warforged. Manny's campaign combines the old west with D&D fantasy, which is pretty cool. Obsidious has two revolvers and I'm hoping he'll eventually get magical guns that fire crazy types of ammo or magic. He is traveling with a young girl who can cast spells and heal him, Opal. he found her in a Tavern where some of the cult members attacked, killing her parents. He is currently searching for his giant raven friend Thoth who was kidnapped (damn you Manny! that was my mount!)
ZANZER TEM!
Mike came over while we were playing the one on one campaign, so we stopped playing that game and played our 4th game of the weekend! Mike and I started a different game in Manny's world, where we built characters via a 'play while you build mode' of the game. We started the game in a prison that we had to escape from (This was an idea I initially spawned from the earlier Zanzer Tem D&D boxed set, where the game taught you how to play while actually playing). We decided to play as brothers (THE EVIL HARDY BOYS!). I'm playing a fighter and Mike is a ranger... I think. The prison facility we were in was raided and we escaped in the process. Some crazy f*cking warforged dude made sure we got out alive for some reason. We escaped and had a boat waiting for us outside. We were dressed in prison guard outfits and passed off as them when we got to the town docs. Then we ditched our gear and bought all our stuff in the game we needed. That was as far as we made it in that game last night before calling it quits.
It was a great weekend. And now the new work week begins.
I now end this blog -and my weekend- with this performance art video I found today, that I like:
