Key Our Cars

Episode 17, part 3 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

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Episode 17, part 2 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 17, part 1 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This is our Finale session for the summer, during the hiatus we’ll be delving into the Savage Worlds system.

Everyone is present and accounted for in this session, Biminey, Stak, T’Balktu, Torel, Visra.  Our heroes have reached level 10 in the quest to end the dangers to their little corner of the world.

We join them in Aricee’s lair where the dragon, shifted into human female form, instructs them in their tasks, how they must defeat the Guardian of the Lance of Unmaking, recover the Lance and then go to Darkmith to destroy the Chaosborn.

T’Balktu and Aricee spend a few hours alone while the rest work on their gear and Biminey crafts magical items.  Aricee gifts T’Balktu for his performance with a matching set of axes, the greataxe known as Ghost Slayer and the throwing axe known as Splintertree.  He is pleased as was she.  And it’s not everyone who gets to lay with a dragon.  Which I’m sure will have no dire consequences…

They proceed toward the Guardian’s lair after Aricee assures them that she will help them return after they find out it’s a chute down into a room.  Biminey uses his Ladder ritual to make it easy to descend into the depths.

There they find a floorless room with flipping platforms on gears and pistons to stand on.  As the fourth one comes down the platform flips and almost tosses Biminey [I think] into the bottomless darkness but a quick grab by one of the other’s saves him from certain death. [Yes this was a return to the Save or Die of the old days but it is the season finale and the dangers are ramped up accordingly.]

They spread out and defeat the constructs that are attacking them for serious damage, inadvertently spreading out and reducing the risk of any particular platform flipping over. [A platform flipped on a roll of 15 or high, +2 for each person on the platform over 1.  By splitting up they made it a lot less likely that a platform would flip.  Purely unintentional on their part.]

They moved around the room, jumping from platform to platform with Biminey working his way closer to the central brain to shut it down but the amount of damage the party can pump out swiftly overwhelmed the mobile portions of the construct.  There was another bit of a hair raiser as T’Balktu jumped on the platform that Biminey was on and caused it to flip over sending T’Balktu plunging to his death only to be snagged at the last second by Bimney’s Acrobatics roll (which he has no skill in) saving T’Balktu’s player from having two deaths in the campaign.

Under the platforms they uncovered the Lance and retrieved with T’Balktu nimbly climbing the pistols and gears to get to it.  There was no sign of Aricee so they left the room of the guardian by T’Balktu using the lance to open a passage through the shielding magic.

Aricee was waiting at the top and she had a bit of an interlude with T’Balktu in a frozen moment of time where she gave him her True Name so he could destroy the crystal binding her to her service as the tunnel’s guardian.   When he destroyed the crystal embedded into her chest a two headed dragon shadow was cast from the explosion of light.  T’Balktu kept this bit of information to himself.

They talked with Aricee about what they were supposed to do, “Kill the chaosborn” and she was going to get them to their destination and bring their airship to them and support them in their battle.

[In an aside, with herself free from her captivity she didn't give a rat's ass about the chaosborn, a minor annoyance only to her and simply wanted the party out of her hair figuratively speaking.  When she didn't show up to help, when they had to walk back because there was no airship, and later on as Biminey figures out the whole 'explode the airship' was bullshit the light began to dawn on the group.  "Never trust a dragon." isn't a phrase that came about by whim and whimsy.]

The group found themselves in Darkmith where a war was going on.  They spotted the central power area and headed that way, failing their attempts to sneak through town and were surrounded by undead, summoned by Phy’el Fleshwalker for the battle.  They defeated a huge swarm of undead only to seem hundreds more running after them.  When the undead all stopped and Phy’el himself appeared.  “If you win, remember I did you no harm when I could have.” he says and all the undead drop motionless to the ground as the cut the strings binding them to him.  Phy’el has long held a grudge against Liloth and her King and like all good evil people is more than happy to screw them over for slights they have done him.  And he’s also hedging his bets, he senses the magic artifact the group possesses, trying to curry a little future favor perhaps.

They push on and reach the ziggurat of power where the Chaosborn is being reborn.  Liloth his lover is climbing the tower toward him.

T’Balktu kicks on his Ghost Slayer ability and charges the Creature, slaying it, at least it’s human form, releasing the chaosbeast within.  He continues to use the Lance of Unmaking against the creature, finally destroying it and the group turns its attention to Liloth who’s a little upset at the events.  But the group has grown too strong for this little regional hazard and mops up the floor with Liloth and the pet shadows.

They recover a Shadowblade, a dreadful greatsword from the shadowfey that was the Chaosborn’s weapon and very gingerly maneuver it into a bag of holding without touching it.

They help mop up the city, joining in with the hobgoblin tribes battling the minor darkness’s still released in the city alongside the strange eyeless, mouthless priests of the white king.

Leaving the city, on foot, they trudge through the swamps surrounding the city and stop off to spend a couple of days with the Soul Eaters in their home range, the tattoo’s on their arms are extended by the tattoo artists of the tribe, depicting their battles against the darkness in stylized abstracts.

They continue back to Larkson where they find Teagon working a power play to take over the city and remove the Council.  He’s hired more mercenaries from Anvil and after all the fighting his forces outnumber the Watch.    With the group informing him that the deed is done and the city is safe he bargains with them to join in.

The group does and become partners with Teagon.  They arrange for Garon and the just appointed Merchant faction Councilor Neev to be moved out of power gently as possible.  They work a deal to keep the Watch alive and in their control and direct all martial activities in the city, although everyone understands that with Teagon holding the purse strings that feeds the mercenairies that that control could be tenuous.  But Teagon is smart and wise and understands the power that the group presents so the deal is made and at this time both sides appear to be genuinely interested in keeping it.  The group will receive a 1000 golds a month each for their portion of the bargain, a fortune really for this town although Biminey is going to donate his income to the Watch to help train, equip and restore them.  The Watch lost most of their men, dead or injured beyond fighting ability, and what’s left are the lucky, green and inept without only a small cadre of veterans.

They bring the airship into town and then fly out to the slaver stronghold searching for the two ships full of the town’s women and children, finding only a work crew lead by a slaver working on rebuilding the islands buildings.  They capture them all, interrogate them and then destroy the newly constructed works and building materials and fly back to their city.

Sushanna tells Biminey that one of the until now dead lights on the ship’s consoles lit green for a few hours one day while they were gone (during their walk back to Larkson).

When they get back to the city, there is talk of a flying creature spotted in the skies out to sea, seen more by it’s blocking out the stars than any direct visual.  It was assumed to be the group’s airship but when word got around that it wasn’t then other people stepped forth saying it was a vast flying creature, a dragon certainly.

What it was, what the green light means, where the slavers took the slaves, where did Phy’el wander off to, where the slavers main bases are and what they’re doing, the rebuilding of the city of Larkson and the outcome of the battle of Darkmith, these questions and more will have to wait till we pick up this campaign and enter the Tier of the Paragon’s…

Image Credits

We start our little soiree with everyone present, Biminey, Stak, T’balktu and Visra.  The group meets with the Council and founds out all the bad news, the town was attacked shortly after the group left by portals pouring through undead inside as funnel clouds descended and ripped up the protective stonework even as an army of undead swarmed over the outside walls.

The priests of the temple of Eris were able to eventually sever the controlling strings of the undead and they all dropped to the ground motionless and the citizen rose up in arms to destroy those wandering the city streets.

As the group arrived back they found Captain Werrick missing one of his legs from the knee down and discovered that he led a force against three figures that seemed to be commanding the forces as well as breaching the walls, a female in white, a mostly nude man who’s flesh morphed and wavered and a dark shadow figure.

They also learned that ‘merchant ships from the south’ had arrived and were taking on women and children to sail them to safety.  Two of the three ships had already left filled to the brim with children and women and the third was still loading.

The group jumped to the conclusion that the ships were slavers picking up an easy profit and headed to the harbor.

They ran into a group of sailors and approached them.  A noble looking individual confirmed that what the group suspected and delivered an ultimatum, the group delivers the airship to the island and they give the women and children back.  If they don’t deliver the airship then they’re going to infect all the captives with the parasites and give them back.

The discussion rapidly went downhill.  The noble turned out to be a fake, while the real noble, a fire mage of some power was dressed as a sailor.  The sailors were quickly put down leaving the fire mage and the slaver lashmaster.  As things took a turn for the worse for the slavers the firemage made his escape using a contingency teleport ring to teleport back to the ship leaving the lashmaster who surrendered to the group.  As he made his getaway he told the group that they’d just doomed one ship full of children and if they wanted the others returned then bring the airship to him.

The gruop took a few minutes to recover, loot and discuss the thing and smoke started rising from the harbor.  They rushed to the harbor and found several of the small fishing ships on fire as well as the docks and warehouse. People  rushed in to quench the flames.  Once it was clear the flames were under control  the group got out their longboat and sailed out to the airship and set off after the fleeing slaver ship.

after an attempt to set the ship’s sails on fire failed, the firemage simply doused the flames, Stak shot a note down to the ship demanding the slavers debark in the ships boats and leave the captives onboard.   The slavers failed to listen so the group started riddleing it with ballista bolts.  The slavers quickly retaliated by lashing their captives to the sides of the ship.  This failed to deter the group and they continued to try and sink the ship.  And yes their ballista bolts hit more than one captive.

On board the ship the firemage weighed his options and found them wanting and performed a ritual that exploded the entire ship, killing everyone on board rather than see group rescue a single one.

The group turned the air ship around and headed back to its usual place with a rather somber atmosphere.   They re-entered the city.  Torel’s new found ability to see the lines of power protecting the city while holding the battle standard lead them to an old reading room now in use by the high priest as a bedroom as he didn’t feel comfortable taking the last high priest’s bedroom.

They found a mosaic in the floor and using the key they’ve been carrying for so long they triggered a lift, the entire floor of the room that dropped them down deep into the earth into a chamber.

There they were accosted by constructs demanding a pass phrase, when it wasn’t forthcoming they fought the constructs.  Torel in his infinite avenger wisdom opened a door and added in another set of constructs.   But with clever use of the Deamon Heart amulet and a failed reaction roll the new buzz saw construct fought with one of the other’s and the two ended up dealing something like 150+ points of damage to each other which was probably one of the few things that could have saved the group.   In total the encounter ended up a level 15 against a level 9 party which would typically result in someone or all someone’s dying.  But by setting two of them on each other they removed roughly 300 damage the group would have had to absorb and added 300 damage to the group’s output.   Call it luck if you will but it saved them.

Inside the second chamber they found the Book of All Things and Biminey was able to recover an ass load of residium from the cylidners powering the protections on the room as well as enough parts to make a new construct, a mobile buzzsaw that he can deploy in combat.

As they left the temple they were met by Aricee, a strange being in the form of a plain looking woman but with the eyes of a dragon.  She opened a portal leading them into her lair where they waded through piles of gold and jewels to a side chamber where they were fed a great meal.

Aricee told them that their best chance in the upcoming battle was to recover the Lance of Unmaking which is located deep in her lair guarded by a creature.  She tells them she guards the lair, the guardian guards the lance and she has a device embedded in her chest that protects the lance from her.

The group is located in an instant between the past and future and will have several days grace before the time in the world ticks over and the chaosborn is freed.   This gives them time to prepare, recover the lance and save the world.

She also tells them that the lance and the banner may not be enough and that it is possible to destroy the airship in a single cataclysmic event that will unmake everything in the blast radius.

We leave our group there as they prepare to descend into the tunnels after the Lance of Unmaking for their final climatic battle against the chaosborn and go down in a ball of flame or emerge victorious.

Image Credits

Episode 15, part 3 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 15, part 2 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Episode 15, part 1 of the Key Our Cars group’s 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons podcast gameplay session.

Subscribe to the feed – http://www.keyourcars.com/feed/podcast/

Also available through iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I thought some people might find this interesting.  To me what makes a good session great or a bad session better is the amount of time the DM puts into thinking about what’s come before and what comes afterward.  It’s only with thought that things tie together.  You might get a happy synchronicity on occasion but these, at least for me tend to be accidents and can’t be relied upon.

So with that said, the party was  going to need to seek out the hobgoblins in the region last week, who have banded together.  On the way there I’d come up with a minor POI or Point of Interest that could be engaged or bypassed as the party wished.  These always start out as ‘filler’ material to lend verisimilitude to the world that things happen in spite of the players, not because of them.

There have been several such incidents during this campaign.  What might appear to be a minor encounter just for an encounter’s sake branches the world as the player’s react to it.  The rescue of the people kidnapped when the airship touched down in Darkmith, the rescue of the slaves from hobgoblins, the encounter with the Hill Giant (Rest in peace big fella you had so much ahead of you), the bandit encounter, the woman and child who entered the town bleeding to name a few off the top of my head.  These were all Important Moments In Time and helped determine future events.

This most recent PoI was of a similar nature.  This little encounter started out in my planning as a small little tactical combat opportunity as they searched around the countryside looking for a tribe of hobs to parlay with.  Nothing special, the kind of thing that every DM pencils into his flow chart to make sure he has enough ‘stuff’ on hand to fill the session.

But over the course of the week this little minor side point grew and evolved and here is how it happened.

As the week went by the generic “Necromonger” as it was, your basic necromancer encounter, a creature shunned from town for his stereotypical fetish for the dead.  My initial envisioning was of a necromancer taking advantage of the bodies of a hobogoblin intra warfare site.   The initial single encounter broadened into two encounters and the scenery was filled in.   The generic aka without much interest antagonist turned into the Steppes Hag as I found time to consider the upcoming weeks events.   I envisioned this creature as a minor legend in the area, one that fed on the dead and made them serve her and the encounter grew into three ‘minicounters’.  A kind of minor delve.

Then as I was working on my Rogue’s Gallery of villains on the opposing forces a little note I’d penciled many weeks ago about one of the creatures working for the BBEG back in the day, Utha Plaguebringer now escaped from her prison like so many others of the dark days, caught my eye and the Steppes Hag became Utha and a new plot branching was brought into being.

I’d already set the stage for Utha to make an appearance, her pet, a kind of liche like dragon creature had already been spotted searching the countryside (looking for bodies for his mistress truth be known now after the fact as a kind of foreshadowing but it also had the side benefit of increasing the paranoia of the players).

As I dressed up the encounter a bit more I realized that Utha wasn’t doing her job very well.  So the encounter grew more legs and stretched out.  Instead of just sending out Bonegnasher to spot battle sites, she set up a ritual, a powerful summoning magic that subtly leads people toward her lair and drives them to their natural tendencies to fight.  It was aimed primarily at hobgoblins who enjoy fighting other tribes.  This way she doesn’t have to go looking for bodies, they come to her.  Naturally though as the players traversed the countryside they would be caught in this ritual.  Although they discovered it before walking into the trap as heroes tend to do.  But what makes a hero is what he does with such knowledge.

In addition she’s still bitter about her sister, Liloth gaining the favor of the Dark One and is always scheming ways to curry favor and throw down her bitch of a sister as she sees her.  So she’s concocted a plan to infect the corpses with plague and give them back the semblance of healthy flesh.  These hobgoblins she’ll send back into the tribes where they’ll pass on the infections.

The underlying reason for her actions are many as I inked her into being.  She along with all the others of the Darkmith bunch hate the hobgoblins as they were part of the forces that locked them away and to date still guard against any creature that escapes the wardings of the ancient prisons.  By decimating the tribes she hopes to win the ‘love’ of the Dark One.  In addition committing genocide by disease is just a joy of hers anyway.  She’s not a very nice creature.

In the end the encounter grew from a simple time filler into what I think was a fairly interesting encounter (even if there was no loot ) and the players’ actions or inactions yet again have a direct and major impact on the world.  If they’d not followed up on the encounter, if they’d of not killed her or if they’d of taken too long to kill her she would have escaped and continued on with her plans and the players would have had to deal with the consequences of the hobgoblin tribes, a major if unknown factor in the fight against Darkmith sickening and dying.

As it was they performed a service for all hobgoblin kind, the same hobgoblins by the way who have ransacked and destroyed several farming villages of Larkson and taken the people they didn’t kill into slavery.  Just because hobgoblins have a common enemy with the group, doesn’t make them nice people either.  Not everything is black and white, in fact few things are.

So there you have it, the evolution of an encounter from a generic combat fight into something with interest and ties to the world and the story line and it was simply by spending a little time each day thinking about the planned encounters and past encounters and the forces at work in the world.

Hopefully this will inspire you to turn that next random wandering encounter into something with deeper roots than as a portable bag of experience and gold for your players.

Image Credits

Thought this was interesting and decided to share.  I made this with the idea to see how big a module would be when charted out in Masterplan.  Pretty big actually and this doesn’t have a lot of the minor pieces in it as I was creating it off the top of my head and the campaign goes back a few months now.  Hell Biminey could still read at the start of this campaign.

This takes the campaign from the opening capture at the spring festival to the current heading out to play with the Souleaters.

It’s interesting to see how much of a campaign is shaped by player choices.  This is actual play flowcharting and it has only passing similarities to my original campaign outline and episode events. Oh the broad story arcs are still there, the capture by the slavers, the visits to Darkmith, the airship, the the activities of hobgoblins and the creatures of darkness, the Council’s activities, those of Shuk and the thieves guild, the bandits outside of town.   But over the course of the last 14 sessions the details have certainly altered to react with the players.  The order of events has changed and the players’ characters have had a dramatic impact on the town and its future.

Some things they’re aware of as having gone on, some things they aren’t.  Some minor things turned into major things and major events turned into minor ones.

As a discrete example, Noribar and Meri’s absconding with the guild’s treasury had little impact on the group with the way the campaign has evolved.  If Dra’kin had still been alive then it’s a given that Shuk would have asked for the players help with the thieves.  But as that character died, that link to the guild was broken and now it’s a mere periphery event.

How exactly did the characters impact the course of history in this world? The players choosing to rescue people or not changed many things about this chart.  Their choice to try and heal Torn and Soozin, again alter the flow.  How they dealt with Krag and the murders in the city.  How they reacted to Phy’el’s first sally to get them out of the town.   Their decision to not go with the slaver envoy as they watched the airship get towed out to sea.  Their relationships with the Council, the Watch and the Temple all generated alternate time lines of events.

And in looking at this flow chart and trying to figure out how to package it up for others to use, I realized would make it a railroad and a half. It would be forcing other groups to follow in the footsteps of this group.  Because the players choices for their characters caused some events to come into being and others to die stillborn, how exactly would you write that up to give to others?  How could you?

Which is why I’m coming to the conclusion that packaged campaigns, full length ones commonly are left to discrete dungeon crawls.  Which many bemoan.  I read all the time, “This module has no roleplay in it.”  Now in looking at mine, perhaps there’s a reason for that.  Any roleplay embedded into a module isn’t roleplay.  It’s force feeding a script on the players and GM.

Where a module, whether it’s a 3 encounter delve or a 4 session story arc or a full blown campaign shouldn’t fail though is providing the DM with something to hang his RP hooks on.  If there are no descriptions of the town, none of the people in it etc, if the product is simply “Room 1: 3xOrc Headbangers  Terrain Features of X/Y/Z, Dimly Lit.  Phat Lewt includes:  X/Y/Z” then it’s failed a bit, more than a bit perhaps unless it is nothing more than a Delve.  But even delves should have something to build on.

Player – NPC interactions are something best not put on paper I think now but the building blocks certainly need to be.  If I were to package my current campaign up, it would simply be something like pearls on a string.  Each pearl would offer a shiny distraction to the players and dm, if you go here, you’ll be able to interact with this.   How you interact with it would be your responsibility.

For instance I would offer up something like the below and I wouldn’t offer the information until the players and DM needed it -

Arrival In Larkson -

A partially walled city it’s open to the sea.  Most of the inhabitants work in the fishing fleets, support the fishing fleets or provide services for those that do.
Powers in the town include:

• The Council, a trio that rules the mercantile, political and legal side of the city.  Teagon runs the shipping and handling.  Aloof and cold.   Garon runs the fleets and docks.  Friendly but sad as he recently lost his children to slavers.  Larik, hostile and bitter, a humanist runs the merchant guilds.
• The Watch, overseen by a conservative captain who controls the martial side of the city.  The watch is tasked with keeping the city safe from inside and out. He takes that duty seriously and won’t put the city at risk for nothing.
• Thieves Guild, small by most standards with a lovely half orc who assumes everyone assumes that she’s an idiot when in fact she’s quite brilliant.  She’s involved with one member of the party as appropriate who doesn’t know of her position.

The council will want to talk to the party when they arrive assuming that news of their escape is known.  This could from any other slaves they’ve rescued along the way.   Garon will be eager to hear tales of their captivity, news of his family and etc.  If tales of their derring deeds filter through the town the Captain will be impressed by them at least a little.   Garon will endeavor to task them with investigating the bandits on the river.   Lerik will sneer at them with disdain, at least the non-humans, and try to splinter the party by inviting the humans to a feast or celebration in an effort to get them to join his hate. Teagon will attempt to dissuade the party from going after the bandits using whatever innocuous means seems appropriate but won’t push the issue.

The average man on the street ranges like most do from outgoing to gruff.  Most of the citizens are commoners, fisherfolk and craftsmen or their kin.   As word spreads the party will be approached by others that have lost people to the slavers looking for news or just hope.

That should be enough for most DM’s to roleplay out.   Anything more than that and a) it’s unlikely your players are gong to respond in the same way to any canned dialogue and b) it’s forcing your players to fit the role that the writer wanted.

So as you’re ‘building your sandwich’ [Podcast listeners will get it.] remember to allow for the players to change the world, the city, the dungeon.  You can certainly have a direction for them to follow but also give them the latitude to change to a different lane and swing by some of the scenic points and hell, make some of the scenic points.

We join our heroes in mid conversation at the Temple of Eris, it’s the same day they were dropped off in from the airship and left to hike into town, the crew not wishing the airship to be known yet.  Biminey, Dash and assorted persons, primarily Visra’s old retinue, now Biminey’s crew are sailing above the clouds eating dates and figs and the like.

Elisssa has decided to retire for awhile from the adventuring life [Laura wanted to try something else]. The reason that I made up for this was a fairly obvious one, the group (characters) keeps getting on Elisssa’s case about killing the hill giant, not being able to pitch a tent or sail a boat.  For a dragonborn such insults and snide comments are hard to take.  Them not letting her kill the captured slavers was the final straw and furious with the group she stalks off to see her friends and family as soon as they enter Larkson.  She takes with her a couple thousand in gold and Krag’s Axe and Bracers and some assorted trinkets and souvenirs.

Later discourse over the course of the session might reveal that Elisssa may come back as the floating crew of available NPC’s for use by players (Torn, Dash, Sushanna, Kane)

The action starts immediately with the first of three encounters for the night.  Screams are heard echoing through the temple and grabbing their arms the group rushes to see what’s going on.  T’Balktu, Torel, Visra and Stak are joined along the way by a visiting Cleric of Kord from Anvil here to do research at the temple by the name of Spar.  [Played by Biminey's owner Temple]

THe five of them find the room that contains the temple’s main ritual circle filled with a vortex of energies.  People located in the room are being sucked into the vortex and being… reformed as something else.  As the energies die away the group catches a glimpse of Liloth and Phy’el Fleshwalker through a rent in space causing the effects.

An abomination of flesh, humanoid, composed of merged persons in the room roars out a challenge.  It’s back bursts and hunks of flesh drop free to create little humanoid creatures dripping flaming slime. The monkeys immediately start flinging their slime around the room and where the gobs hit, invisible before now runes flare and burn out, a few seconds later the bricks blow outwards in blasts of energies and shrapnel.

The group attacks of course, taking down the big creature and then mopping up the smaller ones but not before they cut a wide swatch through the walls, floor and celing of the room destroying  large sections of the bricks and subsequently the wardings inlaid upon them.

As they stop and catch their breath they hear more screams, deducing (correctly) that this was a diversion while another attack was going on.  They rush through the temple to find the forbidden archives under attack by rats.  A section of the floor has fallen away down into the sewers that run under the town and rats are streaming in, each grabbing a scroll or parchement or tome to flee down the hole with it.

They follow, smashing rats as they go.  In the dank large sewers they run into Krag’s animus which has formed a temporary body out of rats along with other rat swarms.  Due to their positioning Krag has to reveal early on that he can absorb the rat swarms to recover his mass (i.e. recover health) and the group destroys the swarms before working on Krag.  (this made the encounter easier on the group by a considerable amount thanks to their smart thinking).

As the mass of rats that is Krag collapses to stream away a red mist shoots off down the sewers. (Krag’s animus).

They follow the animus (and trail of parchment fragments) to Krag’s lair where he’s been feeding the blood of those he’s slain through one of Liloth’s warps.  A large chamber has been damned up at the doorway forming a pool of blood like liquid several inches deep.   The room is filled with rats each holding a parchment.  Right now the rats are being lifted through the portal bearing the parchments. They turn on the group as Torel and Spar both try to bless the portal to destroy it.  (A whole hella lot of very low rolls).

Eventually the group gets the warp closed and triggers a trap laid into the room turning the blood into a blood elemental.  It’s not designed to be able to stand up against a full group but is aimed to destroy single intruders and the group makes short work of it.

Spar had the idea during the fight to break the dam holding in the blood and if they’d of done that before the fight they could have destroyed the warp and prevented the elemental from spawning but hind sight and all that.

They recovered a bracer and axe that Krag’s been slowly enchanting to replace his lost axe and bracer.  He’s a very good enchanter, at odds with his brutal nature but has a knack for things that deal with blood.  It’s just hard to enchant things when you’re a ghost.   The bracers are similar to Iron Armbands of Power but require a healing surge to activate, after activated they boost edged weapons damage by 2 for the rest of the encounter.   The axe gives its wielder a Immediate Reaction ability that grants them a basic melee attack with the axe when an adjacent target is bloodied for the first time and it deals an extra +2 damage when the wielder is bloodied.

The group retreats from the chamber and heads back to the temple.  They rest and recover and then work on plans.  They talk to the captain of the watch and Garon of the council.  Garon is floundering.  He’s out of his league with the things that are going on and doesn’t know which way to stumble much less lead.  People have been leaving the city out of fear, this is obviously a bad thing for the city’s protection and the party points it out and want him to lock the city down.  He’s reluctant to do that, he doesn’t want to be the ‘bad guy’ or institute the martial law that this requires.  Larkson has always been a free city and preventing the poeple from leaving strikes him too much like slavery, an act that really runs against his core values especially after having lost his children to slavers.  He’s also loath to go against the agreement with the Watch in terms of disbursement of the mercenaries.

He asks Torel and Stak to hire on advisors, a task they reluctantly agree to consider.   The group considers their actions and decide to send a fetch out to Biminey asking him to meet them early.

They purchase a longboat and row out to sea, successfully navigating to their general meeting area.  They discuss things with Biminey and the others.

Biminey asks them to ask Sushanna to come visit him for multiple reasons, the primary one he wants to teach her the ways of the artificer so that she can at times take control of the airship allowing him freedom to leave the ship.

After discussion they’re going to try and lead a band of mercenaries out of the town to gather information on the hobgoblins who are taking small villages and farmsteads captive as a threat for the town to give them some book, a book they believe holds power over the creatures loosed from Darkmith.

We end our session there.

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To steal Icosahedraphilia’s DM’s phrase, Prop Shop, I just had to share these.  [FYI:  Decent podcast and very 'clean' so you can actually listen to it with children in the room much unlike a lot (most?) of the rest.] Tangible potion props for inventory.  I won’t tell you what they cost but let’s say sellers on Amazon should be taken out and shot for what they’re charging for these kinds of bottles.  No I didn’t buy mine on Amazon, I’d shoot myself for paying that much for something like this.

Anyway, now I can hand out actual potions when the players pick up or make potions. And if the slaver they’ve got on the airship ends up joining the party then they might have access to quite a few potions as he’s a master alchemist.  Of course you have to get over the idea that he’s a slaver of course. Or ex-slaver.

They’re filled with nothing more than a little food coloring in some water.  In retrospect the first ones I filled have too much coloring.  The blue and the green are pretty hard to tell apart at a distance.  I briefly considered using some kind of silicone or epoxy to fill them since they are made of glass and could conceivably break if they hit the floor just right but they’re fairly thick and small enough and light enough that I think you’d practically have to fling them at the floor at top speed to get them to break on the average floor.

I think I’ll pick up some more and get some of that ‘swirly’ shampoo.  WIth a little food coloring that make a pretty cool visual inside one of these. 

Thanks to the gods of whimsy the groups warlock, a ‘conlock’ by the name of Dra’kin died last session.  Unfortunately there just wasn’t much that could be done although much like the death of Aoefel it might have been preventable.  But we’ll never know.

At any rate the net result is T’Balktu has joined the group.  He’s a younger goliath barbarian.  Think of the goliath in my world more as a Hill People than some half elemental race.  Lots of muscles, outdoor types with a hunger for living as large as their view of the world from atop their mountain fortresses.

He was made in a hurry Saturday and I’ve since cleaned it up a little, swapping a couple of things out that didn’t work for a 2handed great axe wielder.

The end result is a veritable damage machine.  If he crits his Ragestrike power he’ll be doing 60 damage.  Not half bad at all.  And with multiple ways to get temporary hit points he should make up a little for his lower defenses.   With low reflex and willpower he’s going to get whacked a lot by critters that attack those defenses.  And unfortunately as I happen to know, more than one of the bosses of this campaign have powers against those.

Against masses of mobs his total damage output should go through the roof and he should be a minion killer from hell.  An at-will that has a blast 3 component if he hits with it?  I’ll have to seriously ramp up the minion count just to break even.

I’ve started him out with Bleeder, his father’s greataxe, that spurs him onward to greater displays of glory as well as an Ironskin belt made by his grandfather out of materials no one in the family likes to talk about.  And I think he may be a good candidate for the Cape of the Red Path they recently found as mobility for him would be a good thing so he can get to the best position on the field to unleash his burst/blast attacks against swarms of bad guys.

Too bad though about Dra’kin.  But failing 3 out of 4 death saves and the healer failing 2 out of 2 stabilization checks?  His death was meant to be.

But T’Balktu should be able to pick up the slack and then some.  And as a front line striker it should help keep the others alive and in better shape a little more.

Image Credits

I’m going to be trying some different processing techniques on the current podcast in production.  For one thing I’ve tried to remove silence gaps that are longer than a 5′ish seconds.  This cuts down on the time you have to listen to ‘nothing’ and file size etc.  Although I don’t have any bandwidth restrictions on my hosting I do have a finite amount of drive space. Â  At some point I’ll probably have to whack older podcasts but that shouldn’t be for awhile.

I’ve also run volume equalization on the sound files such that everyone should be the same volume regardless of where they are in relation to the mic.  This may have a detrimental effect of enhancing background chatter in some locations but we’ll see how it goes.

The podcast files are ready, I just need to schedule some time with my announcer to do the recap and lead in for me and then put some public domain back beat under her.

My molding efforts are steadily showing fruition.  I’ve run easily 20-30 moldings, with Laura’s help, of the ones I own and the bags of pieces are growing at a steady rate.  Since I really want all the pieces to be color matching I’m not going to even consider painting until I have way more than I need for what I want to do with them.

I may start considering my basing options though in the near future.  I am going to be going with low walls for viewing purposes which will also help with the obvious (to me) seaming issues with the fieldstone.  I may try to come up with a technique to help minimize that as well using some kind of filler materials here and there to break up the horizontal seams.  I’m also going with a more modular approach than the one posted on Hirst’s web site for flexibility’s sake at the cost of set up time.

In regards to the painting, I’ve been perusing various other people’s efforts in painting and IMO too many of them are following Hirst’s color schemes to the letter and as a result they all look identical.  And, again my opinion only, those colors are hard to get realistic especially if they’re the only coloring you apply.  The color values are too separated and garish and too bright.  Part of the problem is I believe that the molds overly emphasize the texture. I do though realize that roughness to scale would be invisible at standard viewing ranges much like it is now if you stand and look at a brick wall from 100 feet away but I think a more subtle color scheme would work better and then use washes to highlight the texture could look better.

I aspire to this kind of coloring/shading (images pulled from this thread where you should go look if you have any artistic appreciation.  Absolutely gorgeous game board in the making for HeroQuest):

Not this (Image from Hirst Arts) :

In other news I see I’ve surpassed a quarter million unique visitors since this site initially went live with this inaugural post on April 21st, 2007.

Well I borrowed mold #85, an accessories mold from a co-worker and tried my hand at adding it to my molding rotation.  I’ve found that 2 cups (58 grams of water + 186 grams of plaster x 2) of material will just fill 3 deeper molds and one floor tile mold with very little waste and I was able to salvage most of the small waste material and fill in three or four holes in a fifth mold.

Mold 85 has some hard pieces to get to come out correctly. Â  A lot of very narrow parts, especially the small bucket is giving me problems in getting the mold filled and a couple of other pieces are also inconsistent in their turn out. Â  But it gives them character and helps reduce the ‘clone’ effect.  I guess.

Mold 71 has a couple of problem pieces, some fiddly curved bits that are for window moldings I think that if I’m not extremely careful unmolding snap in half.  I could wait longer I suppose for the plaster to harden more but I’ll just have to be more careful I think.  I’ve probably only gotten 4 or 5 of these pieces intact out of last nights work and should have 10 at this point.

Molds 70, 75 and 201 don’t give me any problems, easy to fill, scrape and demold.

My piles of pieces are building slowly but surely.  I’ve run about 10 moldings of 3 to 4 molds at a time and the bits and pieces are starting to pile up.  There’s going to be an ass load of excess pieces though that I probably will never use. Â  The tiny triangles and such on the floor mold springs to mind as well as some of the more esoteric curvy bits.

Image Copyright Hirst Arts

[D'oh.  There is a similar kind of thing that you can find here by GreyScott.  Different from mine but the spirit is the same.  I like mine better but then I like my kids a lot more than other people's kids so that's not unexpected.]

Barring dungeon crawls I don’t really do trivial encounters, that long progression of ‘gimmie’ fights that a DM puts a party through to do a slow drain on their resources to soften them up for the BBEG encounter at the end of the work day.  I certainly run multiple fights in one work day but typically they’re not quantified as ‘trivial’.  Each one has a chance to result in death for someone other than the NPC’s.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us have limited play time and expending that playtime in fights that are ‘gimmies’ seems wasteful.  Many of these single type encounters can be done using Narrative rather than combat.  But there are times that you do need to show the wear and tear on the group as they go through a long series of encounters but breaking out the mini’s for each one just eats horribly into the time you have to play.

Lately I’ve been using skill challenges to drain surges from the group to simulate small but pointless fights as they flee pursuit through the swamps or try to hide from the hobgoblin tribes while making their way home. Â  But those seem rather flat.

So I’m considering something more combat encounter based and let the party use their combat values against some defensive value, kind of an abstract combat.

The key question is how, I like the 3 rounds and you’re out system I use for skill challenges (duh or I wouldn’t use it right?) rather than the three strikes and you’re out that is the official system. And right now three rounds of combat are close to typical for the group at the level it’s at and seems like a good place to start.

So primarily how to abstract something as tactical as 4th Edition combat is the big question.  I need to work in a way for the players to gain some benefit from the various level of powers, at-wills, encounters and dailies with the understanding that a daily used during an abstract combat encounter is a daily they will not have during that work day.  And we need a simplistic way to simulate buffage.

So my thinking is on any of the three rounds the players can elect to use an At-Will (base), Encounter (bonus), Daily (bigger bonus).  They will take their Attack value for that power, added the bonus for encounter/daily, and then roll against an abstract defense of their opponents.  This isn’t so much to abstract their ability to hit as it is to abstract their ability to do damage.  Encounters and Dailies = more damage output.

Enough failures and they will be forced to expend a surge for each round. Â  So the most they can cost themselves is 3(4) surges per A.C.E. which isn’t out of line with a trivial encounter.

But we also need a way to more equitably spread out the surges lost.  As we all know barring really hard fights it’s typical for some (defenders) to go through an asston of surges while classes that can remain out of harms way might spend none.

So as a first draft let’s see how this flies -

Abstract Combat Encounter System or ACES

Purpose:

To simulate resource drain for a fight the party is expected to win without much risk but without having to take the time to move to a tactical simulation.

Procedure:

The party will negotiate 3 rounds of abstract combat.  In each round each member of the party will pick one of the following, At-Will, Encounter, or Daily.  They will roll a d20, compute their attack roll and compare it to the appropriate DC for the encounter using the AC/F/R/W values as set by the DM.

On any round that there failed rolls are equal to or less than successes the members of the party will lose one surge.

On any encounter that the party does not garner at least one success they will be penalized an additional surge.

Details:

Characters /Attacks -

During each of the ACES rounds each member of the party will choose one of their powers to use.  If the power is an attack power that targets a defense, the character must roll against the appropriate DC/Defense as set by the DM.

If the power also enhances another member of the party then the player may grant/add a +2 bonus to another character’s roll using the Aid Other rules.  If the power does not make an attack against an AC/F/R/W attack but it grants a benefit to another character then the player rolls against a DC+encounter level.  If they succeed then it counts as a success and grants a +2 bonus to the other character’s roll.  [NOTE: Yes this grants higher 'value' to non-strikers in general but what the hell let's give them a time to shine.]

If the power is not an At-Will the character receives the following bonuses where appropriate:

• Encounter +5 to attack roll / Additional +2 bonus Aid Other.
• Daily +10 to attack roll / Additional +4 bonus Aid Other.

Monsters / Defenses / DCs –

The DM will determine the defenses / DC’s of the encounter using the average AC, Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower of the encounter creatures.  You can also use the following values as an overall average across all monster types

• AC = 14+Encounter Level
• F/R/W = 12+Encounter Level

All encounters are assumed to be at the Easy level.  If you wish to simulate a normal or harder fight then add +2 per increase in difficulty that you wish to portray.

Experience / Loot-

The party will earn loot for the encounter just like they would have if it had been played out tactically.

They will earn full experience of the encounter divided by 3 multiplied by the number of rounds they succeeded at with a minimum of 33%, even failure teaches us something.  i.e. if they only succeeded on two rounds then they get 2*33% or 66%.

If they win two out of three rounds they’ll also typically earn some mundane items of value.  By winnign three out of three rounds they’ll also earn some items of higher value or items of a magical nature.

Sacrifice –

One per encounter a character can elect to sacrifice a surge and take one for another member. Â  More than one character can sacrifice for a member but each character can only sacrifice once per encounter.

Major Failure / Death-

If the group fails all three rounds then one player determined randomly is assigned a Death Strike which counts toward their three death strikes for the day and as such can only be removed after an extended rest.

Long Term Usage / Wave Attacks -

Sometimes you might want to simulate a lot of minor attacks, wave situations for instance where the party might have to face 5-10-20… etc trivial fights.

In this case you could instead of each encounter being three rounds, you just decide how many rounds per wave you want simulate. Â  Each round rather than once per encounter a player may sacrifice a surge for another player.

If a character runs out of surges they’re considered out of the combat and the remaining characters incur a cumulative -2 penalty per out of commission character on their die rolls to simulate them being forced to ‘take up the slack’.  If all characters are reduced to 0 surges the encounter is considered lost.

High Level Example: Goblin Warrens for Level 1 Party

Setup: The party has been tasked with cleaning out a goblin warren on one of the caravan trails.  The creatures have been causing issues with the caravans, stealing things at night from the strong ones, attack and pillaging smaller ones after driving off or killing the guards.

Attacks against the goblins have proven of little use with only a few killed.  But now the location of the warren where they’re holed up has been found and the party has been sent to insure that one way or another the raids stop.

It’s assumed that trying to deal diplomatically has failed and there’s no point in talking to anyone but the leader of the goblins and the outside chaff won’t talk.

So the DM figures it’ll take 3 minor encounters to get to the inner sanctum of the goblins.  He chooses to do this with ACES to leave time for the big boss fight whether that turns tactical or roleplay.

The first two encounters are truly easy so the DC’s for those are going to be AC: 15, F/R/W 13 as they’re level 1 encounters.  The third one will see the goblin boss throwing in some of his personal bodyguards so he’s going to crank that difficulty up one notch and that fight will be at DC’s of AC: 17, F/R/W 15.

The final boss battle will be played out normally.

Encounter 1 – Party of 5:

• Round 1 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 3 – Only two success – Result: 1 lost surge

Total: 1 surge lost.  The paladin elects to sacrifice a surge for the cleric and loses two and the cleric loses none.  Experience gained equals 66% of the total.

Encounter 2:

1. Round 1 – 3 successes – Result: No loss
2. Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
3. Round 3 – 5 successes – Result: No loss

Total: No additonal surges lost. Full experience gained.

Encounter 3:

1. Round 1 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
2. Round 2 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
3. Round 3 – 3 successes – Result : No Loss

Total: 2 additional lost surges per party member.  The fighter sacrifices for the wizard and loses three surges while the wizard only loses 1.  The paladin does the same for the cleric losing three surges and the cleric loses 1. Â  Only 33% of the encounter experience gained.

ACES results –

• Wizard – Down 2 surges
• Paladin – Down 5 surges
• Fighter – Down 4 surges
• Cleric – Down 1 surge
• Ranger – Down 3 surges

Comments? Thoughts?

Image Credits

Found this post and it’s one of the better alternates for adding guns to a fantasy world that I’ve come across, not OP like many or just horrible implementations like some [the one that every shot creates a cloud of smoke cover, I'm looking in your direction, as well as the ones with a random chance to blow up, yeah you too].

Given I’ve got an artificer and they’re going to be searching for artificer type things something like this might actually find a way into their hands.  Given the secrets of the powder manufacture is currently lost it’s a automatically self limited resource.

Obviously the superior ones would require a feat for all to pick up and use well and the martial ones would require a feat for most.

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Original idea presented by DMEric on the official WOTC forums -

The goal of my firearms was to make ones that had a historical basis, but presented an interesting option to players as opposed to either an overpowered “must have” item or a slow loading piece of junk outclassed by bows. The martial level of items represent what, stat wise, amounts to a martial level crossbow. The superior level ones are essentially a superior version of the Repeating Crossbow.

Blackpowder is a rare and “expensive” item from the perspective of a peasant(or lord trying to outfit an entire army), but still trivial to any adventurer past the earliest levels, or very well funded mercenaries, pirates, etc.

My firearms come in two varieties, Martial and Superior. I haven’t designed feats yet, but I think in all likelihood they will just share feats with crossbows, since they are used in a similar manner.

Martial Firearms use breech loading mechanisms (they are loaded from the rear- either from the side sort of like a bolt action rifle or from behind like an old style shotgun), and they use paper cartridges with minnie balls. A minnie ball is a special type of bullet that when fired expands slightly to grip the rifling, allowing one to load the weapon at the speed of a musket, but fire with the accuracy of a rifle. (Historically, the difference was that rifles had “rifling”, tiny ridges that spin the bullet, inside the barrel, while muskets were smoothbore. However, rifles took a much longer time to load than muskets since the bullet had to be very carefully seated inside the barrel w/ a rifle, while muskets could use paper cartridges and just be quickly jammed in.)

• • Pistol  +2  d8 5/10   50gp   2lbs Firearm  Load Minor/High Crit
  • Musket  +2 d10 15/30  75gp 4lbs Firearms Load Minor/High Crit

Superior Firearms are special weapons based on the designs of the famed artificer,Vicento Leorezzi. These weapons, while using a smaller bullet, utilize magazines preloaded with primer, cartridge, and shot, allowing the user to reload the weapon from the magazine by way of the weapon’s finely tuned internal clockwork mechanism. In addition, the improved barrel design alows for accurate fire at longer ranges than conventional firearms. Each magazine holds ten shots, costs 3gp, and requires a standard action to remove the spent magazine and load the fresh one.

• • Clockwork Pistol +2 d6 10/20 80gp 2lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit
  • Clockwork Rifle +2 d8 20/40 105gp 4lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit

It’s been brought home to me recently again just how much better your custom content can be if you spend just a little time each day between sessions thinking about what you have going on in the world, past, present and future.
I can’t stress enough really that if you’re going to be creating your own content you really don’t ignore it until game day.

As much as everyone gives lip service to a ‘sandbox’ world, “OMG you’re railroading them!”, etc. as a DM you, IMO, HAVE to railroad to some extent in order to give them the best possible gaming experience you can.  Mature, complex, interesting campaigns have a hard time finding fertile ground in a sandbox.  Sand just isn’t conducive to growth.

A sandbox is “Hey peasant, where’s the nearest dungeon?  No we already cleared that one, where’s the next one.” typically.  Or out of character, “Okay guys I have three modules for your level, which one do you want to do?”.  These can certainly be entertaining at the player level, social dynamics, the mechanics of the fights etc. But they’re hard to engage the characters.

I can improv aka play in a sandbox as good as many, better than most I think but I can certainly tell a difference in the quality of experience I can give the players by just spending a few minutes each day thinking on how things are going in the world.

By devoting a few minutes going over current events (assuming you’re doing more than dungeon crawling, a fine past time in and of itself) and putting yourself in the shoes of your NPC’s and their interactions with the PC’s you can come up with some pretty cool stuff I believe. Â  As an example, Biminey has transcribed details of their trip through Darkmith and sold it to the Temple of Eris (god of knowledge). As I was documenting his payment (125gold for the curious) on the campaign sheet for Biminey’s character I thought about one of the high priests reading these descriptions and realized from my one line personality note I’d scribbled out on him weeks ago that this could have a profound effect on the man. Â  And that effect is now going to flavor and color multiple interactions  that deal with the PC’s in specific and the NPC’s in general that might be affected.  And flavor and color add a LOT to a session.  No one likes bland white toast all the time.

Your own content also really really has to be flexible. Case in point the group in our last session derailed my story arc by getting captured. [Through all fault of their own. ]

Luckily this happened at the end of our session or it might have either resulted in less interesting events than I think it will now or I’d of had two options. Either called a time out while I rapidly regrouped or improv out the remainder of the session, the first has the advantage of better results, the later of keeping the flow of the game going.

Drastic events like the party getting captured by the bad guys when you’re not expecting it can certainly throw a kink in things. Or perhaps you have one key character in the group that your story arc is founded upon and that character dies. Do you have a backup plan to keep the story on track? Or do you toss out what you have and work out another arc? Do you sink to the level of “A wandering healer comes across the scene and agrees to resurrect the poor man if only you’ll go fetch him 10 belts from the orc tribes in the next canyon.”?

You have to consider these things when you’re working on your storylines. And you cannot possibly consider everything that a group of players might do or things they might simply not figure out, or figure out wrong and be unable to see other clues as result of their wrong conclusion.  But by taking the time to build up this gestalt image of your world between sessions you have a much better stronger tapestry that you can reweave around snags in the thread that might occur.

That’s not to say though that as a DM you don’t have to be prepared to lose work, some things you’ve worked so hard for just can’t be salvaged after the party goes off on a tangent. And that’s okay. There’ll be other times, other places, other campaigns if needed for those events to happen.

Look at every side trek, every derail not as an issue, but as  an opportunity to weave a stronger storyline that integrates the characters’ actions into your world. And integration is something that will involve your players.  This issue with the players being captured in my personal campaign is going to I think really expand some NPC’s in an interesting way, create at least a couple of memorable encounters and has sparked an idea that will have a domino effect that might see wrack and ruin in the region from yet another possible source than those already planned and that might actually cause a redirection of a regional force into a force of while not good, at least not evil.

All this because the players split up like so many chickens with a weasel dropped in their midst during a fight and got taken out by a group they should have been able to beat.  Players definitely get a ‘we always win’ complex and as a result not really take tactics or even thought into consideration.  It’s nice to throw them a curve like this and drive home the fact that they’re not always going to win and there are going to be consequences to losing even if it was unintentional. Â  In this case they’ve lost 1000′s of golds worth of magical gear, not to mention their basic gear that will have to be replaced from very limited funds.

Improving though with 4th edition can be hard, especially if you lack experience with the system in specific or gamemastering in general. With older editions it was pretty easy to ‘fake it’ with monsters you had to add at a certain point. You just needed a to hit number, a defense and some damage. Monsters were boring, the vast majority of them simply swung, bit or clawed at the players for ex damage in a Flinstones Boxing methodology (aka stand there taking turns swinging till someone died) And those were very easily faked, especially if you had any experience with older editions as faking things is mandatory for a DM as the math was so broken overall.

But 4th edition improv is harder. Sure you can come up with a basic creature fairly easily, just use the basic monster value formulas and you’ll have balanced monsters quickly. They’ll just be a bit boring until you have enough experience under your belt to knock them out.  And remember battles that contain a single creature type can also contribute to boring battles so you have to knock out, print out, look up several creatures per battle.

As a result of the more interesting monsters in 4th, it helps if you have some basic creatures printed out of an appropriate level range for you group, pick a couple of of each type, then just ‘reskin’ them as needed. A level 3 orc can just as easily be a level 3 guard, a war dog, an undead abomination, whatever. Just print out a few in preparation just in case.

So to wrap this up, remember, think about your campaign when you’re not playing it, just a few minutes a day can work wonders.  Think about your NPC’s and what they might want and their reactions to the actions of the PC’s.  And be flexible, be prepared for the party to jump the tracks by having a good idea of the world in general and being prepared with materials as filler/stop gap to give you time to work the derailment into your campaign and make it stronger as a result.

A derailment doesn’t always have to mean a train wreck….

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[Warning this is a rambling post that doesn't stay on topic very well or at all really...]

I was explaining my style of DM’ing to someone and thought it might be something that someone else might get some usage out of.  Or might just rile them up if they think differently but I’ve been riled up by the ‘wrong’ way that other people play only to eventually make a change in the way I play. [Ramble Alert!] As a prime example, I had a long discourse with someone about when to grant experience in Neverwinter Nights modules.  I was still very much in the ‘per monster killed’ mindset.  You kill a monster, you get experience.  His was you awarded experience when the players reached a certain point in the game.  Eventually, not then because he was being an ass about it but eventually, I decided that made a lot more sense to me as a DM.  It takes away the [True Story Alert] meta-gaming aspect of XP “I only need 10 exp to level?  I lean out the window and throw a dagger at someone on the street.” and makes it easier to balance things out if you have any kind of branching encounters planned.  If there’s no way the players are going to be anything but 5th level by the time they make it to the Sacred Tombs you can build the Sacred Tombs way in advance and not risk them being 3rd level or 7th level.

I really don’t do trivial encounters; even back under older editions I stopped pretty early.  I lean heavily toward combats that mean someone might get really hurt. (And yet I’ve killed fewer characters in 3 decades of GM’ing than I have fingers).  My harshness is I make the players work for their victories and I enjoy the reputation I have as being harsh and deadly in spite of the fact that in reality I rarely kill anyone.  I just make them know they were in a fight.  You do have to kill someone every now and then though just to show them that they’re not immortal…

4th Edition really lets me go to town in this regard.  Since the players are back to full after each fight and with limited options for them to spend their ‘working resources’ aka Healing Surges this means a) their work day is long enough that sleeping periods fall naturally rather than being forced by lack of resources and b) they can keep going typically for a few encounters even at the level+3, 4, 5′s that I toss at them.

Granted I haven’t really used a ‘dungeon crawl’ yet with 4th edition.  Where there are encounter after encounter after encounter.  But I have problems with those anyway.  I’m as guilty as the next person early on in my career of having a series of rooms connected by passageways with essentially random monsters tossed into each one.  Each battle very sandboxed, you fought these creatures and the ones just down the hall ignored the fight and patiently waited their turn to be slaughtered.  Part of that was definitely a bit of “Oooh the party hasn’t fought one of these before, or this, or this, or this.” and I’d munge them all together.

Then I started doing themed dungeons, waaaaay back in the day when even the commercial modules were still very much a list of encounters built by rolling percentiles.  The Swamps of [Clare] Grogan (Scottish actress that I thought was hot and I thought the name was very dungeony) which was a swamp themed dungeon, lizardmen (and women), giant snakes, crocodiles that went down for like 5 levels.  The Lair of the Eternal Trickster, a dungeon comprised of probably 50% traps combined with creatures.  Party would find or trigger a trap that alerted mechanical guardians or undead, creatures that could be ‘realistically’ parked in an alcove to wait for their queue and didn’t have any intelligence or programming that would allow them to respond to anything other than their set queues.

It was about this time that I started making dungeons smaller in terms of overall population and larger in terms of encounter population. Â  Or I’d do the ‘obvious’ and stream the bad guys in as a seemingly never ending fight.  Attack the guards in the front room and the guards down the hall would take a round or two to wake up, grab their gear and charge up, yelling for help which would get the guys in the next room up etc and so on.

I find myself now with fourth edition expanding further on this.  Fewer encounters but more meaningful encounters.  Perhaps I’m merely playing to my thoughts or the inclinations of my group but a series of trivial, everyone is down a surge or the cleric used up a couple of CLW’s fights bore me and I presume/assume they bore the players if there’s no story arc reason for the fight.

With 4th Edition I can fairly safely assume that the party will have a full set of hit points after each fight, when they reach the point they don’t then they’ll rest and recover them.  Sure they might be down a Daily power or out of their Action Points but numerically Dailies just aren’t that big a deal, sure they can cut a round or two out of a fight or if everyone burns them on one boss cut that fight out of the day in short order.  But they’re not a valid excuse to have a 5 minute work day.  The only real valid reason to extended rest IMO is when you’re out of surges, not because everyone’s burned their daily powers.

But I digress. [Hence the disclaimer at the top of the article now]

To get back on point, I don’t personally see a need for trivial encounters.  They spend valuable limited game time on something that is a foregone conclusion that the players will win and win without threat. Â  The only time I plan on using trivial encounters, trivial meaning anything that’s not on the Moderate difficulty scale at least, is when they’re strung together as a series of encounters without a break or when they forward the storyline or add another element to the story.

Case in point, the [I've Got Crabs] encounter in session 2 of this encounter (yes I give my encounters goofy names in my notes), it was a fairly trivial encounter, the party was never in any real danger.  But their focus on dealing with the crabs charging them rather than the crabs menacing the other huddled survivors of the slave ship on the beach cost one of those NPC’s their life.  Perhaps a point lost on the group but still a point that I wanted to make an effort put out there and try to broaden their scope and awareness.  Did it work?  Doubtful.  But I feel better for making the effort.

In my upcoming session I’ve got a skill challenge among others where the characters will try to escape the city.  If they fail on any of the three rounds (I use my own skill challenge design) then it triggers an encounter or two with the ferals of the city.  But these will be narrated out and the party will simply start the next round of the challenge a couple of surges lower.  This will continue throughout the skill challenge. Â  The only times I have planned to break out the miniatures is when it’s a fight worth playing through tactically. Â  There will be days in their overland trek that will have them facing encounters but these are again just narrated out, “Over the last three days the lands have changed from tundra to low hills as you continue your homeward bound journey.  Through the use of your skills you’ve managed to avoid most of the dangers of the lands although dusk of one night found you battling for you lives against a wolf pack lead by a strange black eyed wolf with boney spikes protruding from its joints.  They were fought off through the use of your talents and the black wolf seemed to really fear the Torel’s abilities that were infused by the power of his god.” [Just made that part up but now I'll use it Saturday.]

In this particular instance the success or failure of the challenge will cost them surges that they won’t have for the next round.  And of course, obviously?, there will be a tactical encounter at the end of the skill challenge and their success or failure at the challenge will have a direct impact on that encounter.  (in more ways than one but I won’t spoil that right now in case they read this before Saturday).

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After 30 a lot years of this whole roleplaying thing.  Every time I type that I have images of french maid outfits.  Anyway I was thinking of the ways I’ve started new campaigns over the years which lead me to the whole, how would I do it now question.

I’ve literally done the a wizard has called you to the tavern to discuss a proposition with you approach but that was decades ago before it became a trope and number 1 on the “Ways you should never start a campaign.”

Another time I had the players start a campaign dead.  That was fun writing their charater background stories.  I can be vicious when I need to be.  Actually I should post those campaign background stories here.  It might be interesting to someone.

Let’s see, I’ve had the town attacked by some kind of attacking attacker and the members of the party were the best of what’s left to go rescue the captives.

They’re all strangers to each other in a caravan heading to somewhere and it’s attacked and they’re the only survivors and band together for strength in numbers.

They’re strangers or acquantances that are pastsies for a regicide and are forced to band together to clear their name.  Oh and escape very painful deaths at the hands of prince’s torturers.

They already are a adventuring band although that obviously takes pretty much no thought or planning.  “Okay you’ve all been adventuring for awhile now.”

Hmmm in all these years I guess I haven’t really started too many campaigns.  But then it wasn’t unknown for my campaigns to last 18 months of 4-6 sessions a month. Â  Long sessions, like 12-16 hours.  Long gone are those days though.  That kind of thing is for the younger ones without lives filled with outside demands.  Sometimes I miss those days.

I believe a campaing should have a good start, something unique, tailored to the characters and the players, a strong middle point that perks up the players after they’re starting to get blase about things and a very memorable ending that the players will be talking about 2o years later.

As a DM / GM that’s your job really.  To provide the framework that the players build on.  And a shoddy foundation is no way to build anything although with enough mortar and duct tape you can certainly add support to a shaky start.

If and that’s a damn big IF, if you can get it from your players, try to get them give you some idea of what they think their characters are like prior to starting on the heroic path.  Some event that occured during their characters life that is a high or low point.  Honestly it takes just a few minutes for a player that’s truly interested in their character to come up with this kind of thing.  And your campaign should be the better for it.

Have an idea where you’re campaign is going.  I know players tend to ‘miss the island’ and a campaign can definitely derail into another direction you didn’t expect at all but if you start with an idea where the players are going to be about midway through the campaign you’ll end up with a better one.  If you’re good at improv you can improv the whole thing but having the luxury of time to work on the midgame gives you a better campaign.

And definitely have an ending to it.  Whether they get their own castle, save the world, recover Vecna’s left testicle, whatever, have an ending to the campaign.  Don’t drag it out past your’s and the players’ enthusiasm.  Things need to have an ending or all the struggles along the way are pointless except for the purposes of survival.  And just surviving isn’t really all that interesting on a global scale.

Anyway, lacking anything better to post about, I thought I’d share this. As always it’s personal opinion and your opinion could and probably will and honestly should vary to some extent.  Don’t be a sheep after all.  If they spark an idea for you awesome.  If it wasted your time reading it, well not much I can do there.

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