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And I’m sick and tired of trying to “fix this”, I’m currently unhappy with our 4e games but was at a loss about turning things around until mid-week.
…and when it’s all said and done, an unhappy Dungeon Master is the surefire sign of a dying campaign/gaming group.
There they learned of a pact made between the Gith seeking to eradicate the Elemental Chaos influence on the world of Sikarra and Melora’s Eco fanatics who were unable to channel the power of their Nature god to avenge this dying world. The Gith brought a large artifact, a Psi-Crystal so powerful that it could channel power sources throughout a world to a select few. The artifact was mounted on Sirrakas highest mountain range where a fighting monastery was built.
As the party schemed, hidden behind a pile of Warclank (i.e clockwork mechas) spare parts near the gigantic pile of humanoid corpses, the ghouls and blasphemes continued their Dance Macabre, the ghouls trying to snatch pieces of relatively fresh “meat” from the pile while the reconstructed undead kept them at bay with beams of death-laced energies.
The one rule I gave myself was “Shape the adventure based on the questions your players ask you” and “When in doubt, ask for a skill check”.
It worked wonderfully. So much so that my first true sandbox dungeon adventure probably felt like a seamless linear adventure narrative to my players who probably thought they were just following the path I had made for them.
The Titan Clank hit by the Avenger’s abjure undead power was eventually bloodied. In a cloud of greasy smoke, it stopped functioning and let out a badly battered undead humanoid made of mismatched stitched parts! It was wearing some sort of military leather harness filled with poisoned knives!
The Wrath of Melora tackles the Claw, Hollywood style and takes on the Titan Clanks while his buddies are being pummelled relentlessly.
As stated in Part 1, the first combat encounter was designed to be among the hardest hitting encounter my players had yet faced in D&D 4e while still being designed with an XP budget that somewhere between level 15 and 16 (the PCs are still 14th). The goal was to totally challenge the PCs while having monsters close in levels to the PC (from 12-16) without having the players clamour for an extended rest right after.
Last Friday’s adventure was great. It was mostly a 3 hour+ set-piece fight but I wanted to duke it out with the players in a no-holds barred slugfest. I cranked damage dealing to the absolute maximum I could without breaking the rules (a design goal of mine). I also did my best to screw with their game plan and use plenty of dirty tricks to give them their greatest challenge in months.
See part 1 and part 2. First Contact This combat encounter had 3 goals: Give players a fairly challenging fight to give them a better feel for their PCs’ powers. Set a hostile first contact with mechanical monsters, in this case some undead warforged (you read that right) Spring a surprise on the player by […]
See part 1 here. Get me some Competence Porn, stat! The first scene had a few goals. Introduce the PCs to the first important NPCs of the campaign, give them a quest for the night, but more importantly, make them look good! The scene started with the PCs waiting to be summoned to show up […]
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