We Are the Champions: DM Challenge at Pax East 2010

As you may have heard by now, I won the DM’s Challenge, put together by WotC on the Saturday of Pax. For weeks, since it was announced, ChattyDM and I have been trash talking and hyping each other up about the event. For a while, I was worried that the event wouldn’t run due to lack of participants. Boy, was I wrong. 

 

What is the DM Challenge? DMs come up with an adventure using the following parameters, then run it:

The adventure should play in about 5 hours. You should write approximately 4 combat encounters for your adventure; you must write at least 3 combat encounters, but no more than 5. Levels for the encounters should not be lower than 4 or higher than 9; you should endeavor to write a total of about 26 levels’ worth of combat encounters (that would parse out into two 6th-level fights and two 7th-level fights). You can, of course, add skill challenges and roleplaying encounters to your adventure to give it a cool story.  

We were also given the theme that it should involve the Underdark, especially any elements from the book itself. 

It actually took me a while to come up with the spine of the adventure. Eventually, Chatty and I worked out the same solution for each of our adventures: steal liberally from previous adventures. It was only when I was in a sinus infection-induced sleep deprivation that the title came to me that made everything fit: The Lost Treasure of Torog. (Alternatively titled The Legend of Torog’s Gold, but rejected a City Slickers 2 reference for some reason).

From there, I pieced together scenes from some of my favorite adventures from my campaign. I started with a roleplaying scene (an auction house, inspired by the Horror on the Orient Express podcasts) in the Underdark, both to kick off the adventure and allow the PCs to get to know each other and to set the atmosphere. This included some optional combat encounters, depending on how the PCs did. Then, I pulled in some of my favorite combat encounters from other adventures to form the dungeon, and added a healthy dose of Indiana Jones. 

Utimately, it was a pretty classic dungeon crawl in many ways, with traps, treasures, and beasties. What was important to me though was that none of the combats just be “fights for the sake of being fights”- each one had to feel like progress, and each one had a way to accomplish the goal without just resorting to standing and fighting (to try and eliminate grind.) I also did some fine tuning based on the PCs, which were given to us beforehand (the same ones from the PHB3 game day.) For example, there were 2 controllers (meaning I was fine throwing multiple swarm monsters at the PCs), 2 leaders (meaning that I could throw some heavy damage at them when it called for it, as well as split them up), and only 1 striker (meaning I wanted to limit soldiers and brutes.)

That was all the adventure design. Then there was the element of “how do I win this thing?” Obviously, my skill and charm counted for something (hahaha) but I really wanted something to put it over the top. And that something was what I was calling in my head as “cheap tricks.” At first, I was thinking about having props and handouts, which would have been cool but didn’t quite add enough to the adventure (and… I ran out of time to make them.) I settled on something that fit with the adventure, and also made sense to appear at a Penny Arcade event: I brought a dungeon of Dwarven Forge. In my discussions with others, I started to refer to it as “my secret weapon” in the challenge. It also ultimately meant carrying around a heavy backpack all day Saturday, but I’d say it was worth it.

Other preparation was as it normally was: getting together the right tiles (no way was I drawing my own map), bringing my usual equipment (magnets and such), printing the adventure with monster stats. I made some custom initiative cards using the images from the pre-gen characters, since I find it hard as a player when I’m using a pre-gen to remember what character’s name is mine. All of that, along with the Dwarven Forge, was tossed into an official D&D backpack, and I was good to go.

I showed up along with Chatty about an hour before the event was to start so we could get setup. Remember at the beginning when I said I was worried my table wouldn’t run? The event ended up drawing 10 DMs, each with a full table of 6, with some people being turned away due to lack of space. (While we’re at it, the entire D&D schedule sold out on Saturday, with lines out the door common. I’ve never seen that for any RPG at a convention). Not only was I going up against Chatty DM, the guy who regularly helps increase the awesome factor of my games, I was also against the likes of Sarah Darkmagic, and 7 other experienced DMs (they even had the official Dungeon Master shirts.)

One bummer of the whole thing: a reader had signed up to be a part of my game, but due to how the event worked, I had to turn him and his friend away… and I didn’t even get his name! Kicked myself for that afterward. If you’re reading this, leave me a comment or drop me a message- I’ll try and make it up to you!

I did end up with a totally awesome table, though. Many of them knew each other already, and they all formed a very effective team, even when using new character classes. From the Ardent’s “sensual caress” granting temporary hit points, to the Minotaur Runepriest that my dice had it out for (but who managed to stomp a swarm to death while on the way to unconsciousness), I had a great time running the adventure for them.

I had to wrap up the adventure a little early (though they had the final encounter pretty well in hand by sticking to the maxim of “never split the party.”) The DM Challenge rules had them rate the adventure and my DMing and hand it in for judging. I felt pretty good about the whole thing, but with so much competetion, who could say?

 

The winner was announced in the afternoon the next day… and I won! Aside from the awesome swag all the DMs received, for winning the challenge, I was handed a big stack of books and accessories. Of course, I owned most of them already, but that just means I can give them away to friends, players, and… maybe even a contest?

All in all, I had a total blast, from planning the adventure, to letting my competetive side show, to running an adventure for an awesome group of players. If you get a chance, I definitely recommend entering events like these. You may notice that I’ve been scant about details of the actual adventure itself: I’m hoping to prepare and collect it, and get it posted somewhere as a complete adventure, so I don’t want to spoil anything just yet.

And now I return to my usual campaign, where my regular players will have to deal with me being even more insufferable about my DMing skills…