So I spent all day Saturday at my local Game Store, called Libraire Donjon, in Northern Montreal. I DMed the Worldwide D&D Game Day adventure.
I thought I’d make a post where I freely mix and match play reports from both games I played, adding semi-random DMing thoughts in the mix…
Read at your own risk!
I decided to play it in ‘open DM’ format as suggested by Jonathan Tweet here.
It means giving the players all the metrics of the game whenever a dice roll was played to portray how the game works. So I always said how high Defenses were, what attack bonuses I had and the DC of rolls.
I also played all rolls openly.
When a player wanted to try something I explained the numbers needed to be rolled and gave the player the choice to reconsider. It made the game more clinical and gameboardy, but my goal as a DM was to show the engine of the game, not engage the player in a meaningful narrative or fudge dice rolls.
The adventure, written specifically for this day, was called ‘Into the Shadowhaunt’.
It starts with the usual assumptions for Con-type games:
- Party as been together for some time
- Mission has been given and PCs are ready to leave.
Said mission is:
Widowed silversmith has had both sons kidnapped and taken to abandoned Mausoleum in wilderness, please find them.
I had players wanting to buy stuff with the up front reward and others wanting to gather more intel on the mission. I got to crack open my PHB and notice that there are no oil flasks in D&D 4e. Nor any other alchemical items other than a sunrod!
Still a player wanted a small barrel of oil, so listening to the Rule of Fun, I made stats for it on the spot. Here are they are:
Barrel of Oil, 5 gp, 5 lbs, allows you to create a Flaming Oil Slick Hazard.
Standard Action to create a Blast 3 oil slick (you pour the oil or break the barrel near you), Minor action to light it with torch or Flint/Steel
Flaming Oil Slick, Hazard
Attack: +6 vs Ref, deals 2d6 fire damage. Attack occurs whenever a creature enters starts it’s turn in the flaming area or enters it. Lasts for the duration of the encounter.
This was so easy to do on the fly. I had to make a few more calls like that and they came easily and made sense.
The knowledge skill rolls gave a bit more info on the bad guys and the mausoleum.
Fast forward to the mausoleum (some players were a bit surprised about the lack of ‘random’ encounter on the way).
Boring granite building, door slightly opened, signs of recent traffic…
Inside were 6 featureless sarcophagi, alcoves with statues of gods of Good and an obelisk with the names of the people interred here.
A secret door is found on the obelisk but no obvious opening mechanism.
After a few minutes of searching, a shadowy spirit rises from the floor and rasps a riddle about sinisters and sons and sires.
With some slight DM guidance, players from both groups worked out that the statues needed to be moved in a certain pattern so the secret door could open, revealing some stairs.
Fridge Logic Aside: How did the BBEG get in the dungeon below if the statues weren’t already correctly placed? Such thoughts are toxic to proper 4e appreciation. I assumed that the spirit, semi-controlled by the villain, “reset” the puzzle. Moving on.
Spirit appears satisfied and sinks back in floor. It appeared in various other scenes, asking PCs for specific things… working it’s way to friendlier status when PCs complied… It’s final disposition toward players determined how helpful it was in the last scene (possibly attacking the Boss)
Stairs lead to a room with 2 exit blocked by 2 sarcophagus on which rested a pair of lanterns.
2 Hobgoblins armed with longbows were waiting behind, ready to rumble.
Now here’s the 1st taste of 4e combat for all 11 players I DMed through this over 2 days:
- Hobgoblins had close to 30 hp
- The sarcophagus were filled with oil and the covers were weakened… stepping on them caused the cover to break and the lantern and PC to fall in 2 feet of oil…. Whoosh!
- The Sarcophagus could be toppled to create a 3X3 flaming oil slick… by either the hobbos or the players.
Putting traps in encounters has always been a good idea in prior editions, but traps used to be one-off bear-trap kind of things. Those sarcophagus were props that changed the tactical aspects of the encounter. They provided cover, were hard to cross and could be interacted with. They were absolutely awesome.
Here’s a few things that happened with them:
- Players could jump over them or climb over carefully (if unlit) with athletics checks.
- The rogue PC asked to use Acrobatics, I allowed it instead of athletics (tumbling over the sarcophagus) and I got to witness a rogue trying to cartwheel, slip and dive head first in flaming oil!
- A fighter shield-rushed one and toppled it on a hapless hobgoblin, producing the first 4e fried Hobbo crisp®. Yum!
- A wizard used Mage Hand to hold the lantern in place while another PCs broke the cover and stepped in oil.
- The same wizard later used Thuderwave on the hobbos and the sarcophagus… I wasn’t sure if this could topple it, so I instead ruled that it sent the lantern flying.
- Now that I got to think about it more, I’d allow an Intelligence check vs DC 15 to allow tipping the sarcophagus with that power…. what say you?
Can you see how much interaction occurred with that trap? It was sheer Rule of Fun genius!
Behind the Hobgoblins was a natural corridor that that lead to a large cavern featuring a diabolical-themed double door and an exit deeper in the complex (both were actually quite close).
Now in both instances that I played this, the rogue went to study the locked door while the Noisy armour clad PCs when to investigate the exit. (I think this is a disadvantage of playing exploration with Miniatures… players focus on different features because they all want to do something)
The exit led directly to the room where the dungeon’s boss (a Necromancer-like elf) was standing on a 10’X10’X10′ 2 sqX2sqx2sq pedestal reading a tome and protected by a magic circle.
Before the rogue could do anything more than look for traps, the noisy PCs got noticed by the Necromancer and 4 skeleton warriors fanned out from behind the pedestal.
Initative!
In both games, the Elf played rather early in the initiative track and was able to activate the 2 Animated statues that sat behind the closed double doors (and open the lock doors).
Those statues were exceedingly badasses and way more dangerous than the actual Boss! They were level 2 Elite Brutes with 86 hp!!!
Each had a trio of powers that might have been a tad bit to lethal:
- Smash a PC to send him prone to the floor by attacking his Fortitude (2d6+3 dmg)
- Follow up as a free action with a ‘kick them when they are down’ attack (2d6+3 dmg)
- If a prone PC gets up while adjacent to a statue, statue attacks automatically, makes PC prone again and ends the PCs turn (yup, 2d6+3 more damage).
That’s just too evil! That’s why I’m happy to have read the part of the DMG that mentionned that you shouldn’t spring “gotcha” attacks against PCs. Whenever a player was knocked prone (it happened a lot), I mentionned that the statue seems to be twitching and get ready for them to get back up.
Thus, I never had to use the 3rd attack because players found other ways to get up without gettig smashed again.
In both instances I played this large encounter, the Boss was ineffectual and served more as an exercise in trying to push him off the platform (I made successful saves each time so the elf spent most of the fight prone on the pedestal).
However, the 29 hp skeletons with longswords and the pair of animated statues were lethal.
In my first game, I had a Rule of Fun brainfart. After knocking my friend playing the Paladin out (I had 6 players the 1st time, so we used the Keep on the Shadowfell ) I did the follow up kicking attack and ended up killing the PC… depriving my buddy from playing in the next 2 hours.
The DMG explicitely mentions that you should ignore fallen PCs to concentrate on conscious ones to make the game more fun for players and allow the extra tactical complication of having to deal with monsters and dying PCs. Say what you will, but I happen to agree.
I did so in the second game and it worked like a charm. After 1 hour of fighting, all PCs were down to single digit HPs and no more healing. It really felt like old school D&D when the next hit could kill a PC outright.
Let me tell you that such dire situations forces players to learn the freaking rules fast and become creative.
At a certain point all players were prone and/or dying. The wizard player piped up and told all the others to play dead. He then asked me if he could use Ghost Sound to mimic armoured people walking up the initial corridor (he had like of sight to the entrance to the large cavern.
Ahhh the Rule of Cool sang to my DM ears and I sent the remaining 2 skeletons and both Statues running for 2 rounds, allowing most PCs to be healed and regroup in a defensive position.
My 1st group managed to win with only one casualty. My 2 Brilliant planners (called Thinkers in the 4e DMG) were playing a Warlord and a Thief and they caught on the true role of the striker and the synergies created by a leader class that can move PCs on his turn. Also they controlled the battlefield by remaining in the same area all close together.
Oh yeah, the 6th PC helped a lot… While I added an extra Hobgoblin in the 1st encounter, I left the encounters as in for the rest.
The second group’s rogue failed to be able to flank the statues and the needed damage output to kill them never materialized. Of course being only 5 PCs fighting a 2 fronted battle in 2 rooms didn’t help at all.
That’s why I ended up killing all but one PCs. They all died by failed death saving throws or crushed under the Cave in trap triggered by the rogue freeing the boys found in the animated statues rooms and running for it, the last remaining Animated Statue (with 30 remaining HP) in hot pursuit.
Both game lasted about 4 hours. I didn’t get to play the White Dragon scenario as the players decided to leave…. Awwww.
4e Verdict
I like it a lot! It’s an entirely new action role playing game based on common elements of prior editions. I love how fluid and fast the action can get, how easy it is to adjudicate actions not directly covered by the rules. All calls felt natural and players agreed to my proposed calls without debate.
I adopted 4e once and for all sometime during the afternoon of my 2nd game… Here I was with complete strangers (most of which had no intention to switch to 4e), killing their PCs and still seeing excitement, trepidation and fun on all their faces.
Well except one, but he kept complaining of being screwed by the dice and more or less doubting that I could play so many 20s without cheating. 🙂
I’m going to be taking a D&D break for a few weeks. With summer coming, I don’t know when my buddies and I will reconvene. At worse, I’ll start again in August. During that time I have a lot of reading to do.
Cheers and have a great week.
I don’t understand the sarcophagus scenario. If you can topple them, that means they’re upright. If you can climb on and walk across the covers, that means they’re flat on the ground.
They were flat on the ground with a fragile cover… and you could topple them (like toppling a horizontal freezer) to empty their content and the lantern on the floor.
In the midst of the action… all was fine… but now that you ask.. Fridge Logic sets in and makes me wonder… that’s some light granite!
Expect a lot of Fridge Logic moments with 4e… I don’t mind them, but some are head scratchers.
Thanks for the write up. I am anxiously awaiting my shipment from Amazon (which didn’t do a great job of handling pre-orders). You describe a game that sounds quite playable, and certainly a lot of fun in the hands of a skiled DM.
sadly I didn’t get there early enough to take part in any of the games, but I did get some nice schwag. I ended up with most of the DM’s kit (minus the stapled packet and the cardboard box) and all but one of the PC minis (the repaint of the cleric of pelor) as well as some left over bits and pieces from earlier game days and similar events (the find of the day was probably the pair of grey horse minis. They are at least as useful as the dragon. I had been using a hippogriff mini to represent character mounts previously (well that, the earth elemental, and the valenar rider mini, depending on who needed one)
Michael Phillipss last blog post..Firefoxing
I agree with you that the Necromancer wasn’t much of a big bad, but that he was more there to give the players plenty of ideas of how to do interesting stuff. In our group, it was the Wizard’s time to shine (teleport up there, Thunderwave him off the pedestal onto a skeleton… all the while the DM hammed it up having the Necromancer curse and scream.) I played the human fighter, and so the dwarf fighter formed up to my side so that we each had one statue to block against. I unleashed my daily power on my statue, and then the dwarf fighter… also unleashed her daily power on my statue. It dropped pretty soon after that, and then by that point the whole party was able to focus their fire on the same statue. I let the dwarf keep marking it because she was hard to knock over, which ended up being pretty important.
We did get to fight the white dragon. That was a fight where we really weren’t sure if we were going to win (things looking especially grim when our cleric dropped… which then looked a lot better after he rolled a 20 on his death save.) I was a bit concerned when the battle got log-jammed in a choke point, with no one having any real reason to move (which happened in every single battle in 3.5) but that portion didn’t last long enough to be that concerned. Good stuff, definitely my favorite of the preview modules so far.
Dave T. Games last blog post..The new age has begun…
Hey Chatty, did any of your players get the “sinister” reference before the hint?
I DMed at a local Barnes and Noble and one of my players go it, and one other player at another table did as well.
The dragon fight was brutal but fun. The immediate breath weapon from the dragon was just NOT cool.
Mikes last blog post..A different singularity
@Sean: Welcome on the Blog. Thanks for the kudos. I actually think that this edition, especially with the tips given in the DMG, will make it accessible to inexperienced DMs and still lots of fun for all.
@Micheal Philips: I too landed an insane amount of Swag… mostly because the store got 12 game day kits and only 6 games were run!
@Dave: I’m so going to play the dragon fight this summer!
@Mike: None did, as we are all French and we had no heraldry background… so I gave the left one for free. I didn’t try to translate the riddle as all players were fluent enough in English to get it (as most RPGers are).
LOL @ immediate breath weapon… this is what 4e will be… surprise powers!
We kicked the dragon’s butt! He only had about 30 hit points left when we decided to have the rogue try to talk him into fleeing. 😀 We could have taken him – everyone was up. We had more trouble in shadowhaunt thanks to couple characters who were too nosey for their own good.
Heathers last blog post..Dimble Bumblepants
Sounds like you had a good time, CDM. I didn’t get out to Game Day due to other commitments but we did make our own characters on Friday night. There was some incredulous moments as people freaked out about things missing but in the end everyone agreed that we are probably giving this a harder time than we would if it wasn’t called D&D. We’ll give the rest of Shadowfell to sell us on the system and I’ll do some heavy reading of the DMG to try to get more into the spirit of 4e. I do have to admit that I have a hard time with your so-called Fridge Moments. Heavy massaging of my frontal lobe to get past some of those things for us.
If you managed to grab some extra kits why not have a contest to give those of us who couldn’t run yesterday a shot at them? 😉
Deadshots last blog post..4e – One Player’s View
Thanks for the blog and reaction. I used part of this on my blog page. It helps to read different reviews to decide if I want to test out 4e myself.
Diane Brunners last blog post..Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition Launch – Game Day
It’s great to see a full rundown of the Gameday. We’re not fortunate enough to have our FLGS running Game day here so it only makes the yearning even stronger.
Thanks for the writeup.
Questing GMs last blog post..Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day
Chatty – when you get time, I have a few questions for you and/or the guys. I was confused about some things. I’m posting them on my blog. Thanks!
Heathers last blog post..D&D Nerdery – Questions
Hey Chatty!
Sorry, couldn’t make it to the Donjon to meet you. Will email you soon 🙂
@Heather: I couldn’t respond on your blog because it only lets Blogspot users respond or something but here’s the answer to one of your questions:
First aid has three uses. One of which is “use second wind, DC 10 task. You basically give the person you aid a second wind, which essentially means a healing surge. It is a standard action. Other uses of the healing skill have different DCs.
@Deadshot: I did grab one extra kit of minis, but it was already promised to a good friend of mine. Don’t worry I have some other goddies coming your way over the summer.
@Diane: Welcome to the blog! Thanks for the nice words. Do borrow away! I’m happy to help!
@Questing DM: Welcome to the blog! You are from Borneo (I had a peek at your blog)? So cool! I can’t believe how global this little exercise in prosaic geekery has become! Thanks for the Kudos.
@Heather: I made your questions my ‘post du jour’, I hope others will chime in to add more their perspective to my answers and add more questions.
@Consonant Dude: No problem man, maybe next time… I see that there is a big gaming convention brewing in Montreal in October… maybe we should do a Montreal/Quebec Get together then!
@Chatty: I think the “Fridge Logic” question from your post (about the “puzzle”, and resetting it) could have any number of (and by “any number of”, I mean “at least three”) answers, none of which require a huge stretch…
First, there’s obviously some way to open the passage from the other side, and presumably some way to close it. (“obviously” because the module says that the hobgoblins will open the passage if the players seem to be taking too long)
Second, there’s the enslaved spirit. I don’t think “Insubstantial” things are quite so incapable of moving around things as they were in 3.x, so it’s certainly possible that the spirit is left behind to reset the puzzle.
Third, there’s the BBEG’s other entrance, which he could certainly use as his normal in & out, and he could the just leave the puzzle in an unsolved state.
My players had a pretty high level of luck for most of the adventure. There was only way player close enough to get hit with a sarcophagus, and the hobgoblins immediately retreated to their back position. Two players made it over the second one before anyone fell in, and the Wizard used his Icy Terrain to cancel out the fire for the remaining members.
They also (luckily) dealt with the last two rooms one at a time by throwing hobgoblin bodies into the circle and setting off the statues early (The theory was that it was a weight based thing, trying to pull the “Indiana Jones Bag of Sand Trick”).
I played the adventure on Saturday and had a blast, despite our party doing about everything wrong. The DM was particularly Evil, but I think he enjoyed torturing us rather than killing our PC’s outright.
Funny about the oil. I tried to get Holy Water, the DM gave us a healing potion instead.
We worked out the riddle, but the DM did give us a lot of pointers so we would get through it faster. I think he just wanted to speed things along. Unfortunately our wizard shot the spirit, which set him off to attacking us. Well attacking the wizard anyway. My cleric turned him and that got rid of him, but that just set us off for worse trouble later.
In the second encounter I personnaly jumped on the sarcophogus and set off the trap. Nasty nasty. And fun.
The spirit showed up again, but we didn’t attack it and it wouldn’t answer us. Then it vanished. I’m not sure what was going on there.
We then set off the Necromancer and he released the Statues, then the spirit showed up to help them out. Again, nasty nasty fun. We barely survived, my cleric was unconscious but stable, but before going down he had used all his healing surges he could, all of his healing powers, his second wind, his daily power, and his action points.
We ended the adventure when we finally knocked out the villains, but we failed to save the kids. Actually, the Necromancer killed one, and the other we left screaming to be buried alive as we fled the Crypt. Well, they fled the crypt, my PC was unconcious.
A comment on the cleric. To take advantage of his powers you have to go into melee. But I found that when I did that I took so much damage I ended up using that healing on myself and not my allies. Just a comment, I think I needed to know a little more about the other PC’s powers to play tactically and avoid that problem.
The system seems fun. I will play again, but it isn’t my game of choice yet, and I don’t plan on running anything. But if I was going to run a new campaign for my current group, I probably would use 4E. It fits our kick-in-the-door style of play well.
Verdict: Good system, but it’s just another system of many.
Going to run this soon.
Questing GMs last blog post..Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Game Day