Worst yet though…both rangers are focusing on the ranged aspect of things…which makes the rogue the best candidate for frontline defense, sort of…

Melee combat is NOT their thing…

Reverend Mikes last blog post.."Happy Birthday!"…"I know."…

I’m hoping to start my own new campaign sometime next month, depending on my players’ schedules. It won’t be D&D… I still haven’t had a chance to look at 4e, and I have my regular NWN campaign to keep up my fantasy quota. But this will be the first tabletop campaign I’ve run in a long time, and I’m looking forward to it. As for the character backgrounds, I’ve asked folks to write a little bit about their character. One player has gotten a little carried away, and he’s up to 3 pages.

Tomcat1066s last blog post..Alignment Part 9 – Goodie Two Shoes

Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08

@Tom: The format I’m using (Short campaigns), the blank slate of my reset Gameworld and the fact that I don’t have time to do much advance world building kind of drives my campaign decisions.

I’ll let the game do the work by taking notes of what players say and do.

@Kawa: People like strikers… I myself play a Mage on World of Warcraft all the time. Hopefully leader types are as fun to play!

@David: I’m not going to do a Sandbox game.  While I have leveled up at Gen Con, I haven’t reached that level of comfort yet (nor can I commit to the work).

I will borrow the ‘Let’s build the map as we go along’ concept by having a Plastic Hex Map (with plenty of colored markers lying around near player hands) as the tablecloth of our game table.

Heck, I’ll encourage players who doodle when idle to do it on the map…. adding monsters, towns, rivers and such!

@Yan: This is going to be an interesting experiment… looking forward to tomorrow night!

I for one often steer my racial decision by the strategist in me. I then fluff it so it fits with the general aspect of the game…

With some exception like Lilly (the Pixie sorceress for which I even designed a class that is somewhere on this blog) in which case it was a complete fluff character.

As for the role distribution we have very different play style.

Me, I like it up close and personal. The classes that sing to me are the Warlord, Fighter, Paladin, Clerics (battle mages!) and Ranger (two weapon fighting style)

The West Marches deal always seemed really interesting but impossible with my current group. Here’s hoping that what you are doing works out.

Davids last blog post..Messing with Players

The lack of healing made me take Heal as a skill, just in case, though the paladin can do a bit (but he’s mostly there to be a tank – 20 AC at level 1, woo!) The general lack of defending will make things…interesting.

I’m really looking forward toward seeing how this progresses

Toms last blog post..Alignment Part 9 – Goodie Two Shoes

Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08

@Czar: Less blacksmiting and more gaming is what I say! Or you can live vicariously through my gaming reports with my friends or my son.

I missed doing play reports.. it’s what this blog used to be about mostly…

@Jonathan: Thank Tommi and Jeff Rient. They are the ones that pointed me to Ben Robbins’ excellent blog.

@Tommi: Shhh… don’t say it too loud, you’ll scare my players away. There will still be lots of pointless fights though… I mean I do have a few butt kickers in there.

The lack of Humans made me ponder what type of liege Lord they could have and, more importantly a ‘What happened to Humans’ plot idea. What if I tackled a non-human mini campaign first… They were mostly responsible for the fall of the world in my last campaign… And we had an Anti-Human sub-theme in it too.

My current plan surely can support this.

@Morten: Wow… just wow. That’s a great storytelling 4e house rule. Mind if I repackage it as a Mini post soon? With full credits to you of course!

Chatty wrote:
“That’s why this year I didn’t ask for player backgrounds and such, we’ll discuss it in-game.”

I usually don’t bother with a anything but the most cursory background stories. Mainly from the principle, that anything not presented in play (ie. the shared fiction between the players incl. GM) is not very interesting. It is much like books or movies, you don’t have long detailed back story for Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones, and whenever their background story becomes important it is introduced into the story – either through some sort of exposition or from flashbackscenes (take a look a various Asian movies, they have lengthy backgroundscenes).

The reason for this is twofold:
If you have cool background story, I’d rather play it than read it.
A slim background story is easier to integrate into the game and to expand upon.

So if and when a player introduces a background story the trick is to mine it for the relevant plot elements: What is it the player wants introduced into the game? What are the exciting parts?

And if they’re truly cool: Do play flashbackscenes!

Some might argue that flashbackscenes cannot be exciting, because the characters can’t die. Well, that argument also goes for movies and books, and yet those scenes are exciting. That’s not because we fear for the lives of our heroes, but because they reveal why the hero is where he is and how it happened … and it does reveal wether or not he has a spare Potion of Giant Strength hidden in his backpack. You see the cool thing about flashbacks is, that you can use them for more than character exposition. Here is a houserule:

Dramatic Flashback
Once pr. Milestone (game session or whatever marker you prefer) a player can during combat activate a flashback (non-combat) scene. The scene must reveal something important about the character, his or her personality or motives. Once the scene is played out (lasting from 30 seconds to about 5 minutes), the player is immediately granted an Action Point or the reuse of an Encounter Power (or Daily Power if it were a cool background scene).

The purpose of the houserule is to integrate backstories into the game. A flashbackscene can be purely narrated or it can be roleplayed normally with the other players handling NPC’s (so everybody is active during the scene).

Morten Greiss last blog post..Spillederkompendiet fra Fastaval 08

(Also: 2/3 of the group are elves. Take that, elf haters.)

Tommis last blog post..Persistent fantasy – system update

Wish I lived in Montreal… sounds like a good time (game+beer FTW).

Jonathans last blog post..Entourage Gaming?

Let us know how your group adjusts to 4e.

My home group is comprised of a Human Wizard, Elf Ranger, Human (*coughdopplegangercough*) Ranger, and a Shadar-kai Rogue…I’ll be starting up another campaign with a few nubian players this semester…

I don’t think my players are used to not having me in the party yet…lack of a Defender has made encounters rather interesting…

Reverend Mikes last blog post..Sermon #2: Believe In You Who Believes In You!

So do you think you’ll be able to handle 6 players?

Dave T. Games last blog post..Inq. of the Week: It’s All About You? 2008

Eladrin Ranger, Human Rogue, Human Warlord, Human Wizard, Dwarf Cleric and Dragonborn Paladin. Gotta love it when the group divvies up the roles themselves without [much] prompting fro me.

Have fun with it!