ZEITGEIST Session One – Review and Recap

I may be insane, but I’m currently running three different D&D campaigns.

I have my long-running Friday night game online via MapTool and Skype in the War of the Burning Sky campaign saga from EN World. Awesome game, awesome people. We play most weeks (I’d say 3 times per month usually), though we’ve just come back from a six-week break. I should probably write more session recaps of this game, but I have to admit that I don’t.

I have my family campaign in Madness at Gardmore Abbey. We’re four sessions in, and I’m liking the campaign so far. That one, too, is online. I’ve been writing recaps of that one regularly.

And then I have the campaign I run for my friends in-person. We’ve just finished our third session in the ZEITGEIST campaign, also from EN World, which brought us to the end of Adventure One.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Session one of Zeitgeist (I get tired of typing it in all caps, as it’s technically written) was on Christmas Day. We gathered at my and my wife’s place around 1:00 PM and started by playing some board games. We then moved on to Christmas dinner and, since my wife needed a nap, a game of Taboo. Finally, we moved on to Dungeons and Dragons.

We had already done character creation a couple of weeks earlier, using rolled stats (my first time doing so in 4th Edition) and the character themes in Zeitgeist to tie the characters to the setting. The themes are a fantastic idea. I had never used themes before, since I see them largely as power creep and things that are likely to slow the game down with more choice paralysis on the part of players. But in this case, I love that they give PCs an automatic place in the world of Lanjyr (the land where the campaign is set). I think that Zeitgeist DMs should STRONGLY encourage their parties to take these themes.

You down with RHC? Yeah, you know me.

The PCs in this campaign begin in the employ of the Royal Homeland Constabulary (RHC), a sort of CIA / FBI / special forces unit for the country of Risur. Magic and technology both exist in this world, though technology is just starting to come into its own. Assignment number one in the campaign is for the Constables to help out with security at the launching of Risur’s first steam-powered warship, the RNS Coaltongue (a fun nod to a character in the War of the Burning Sky campaign).

A skill challenge to case the crowd, looking for troublemakers, has the potential to end up in a fight, though my players did a good job and avoided combat here. There were some good role-playing opportunities, and I tried hard to bring my players into their characters via their interactions with NPCs. One PC wanted to recruit a local cop to help with a task, so I gave him a cop and asked him to name the guy. This is something I did again later in the adventure, and I encourage it – when you get a new minor NPC, let the player name it.

Soon the king and other nobles arrive to board the Coaltongue, letting the party learn a bit about the politics of the world. My wife’s character, a rare eladrin female in this world, decided to make friends with the beautiful handmaiden of the king’s sister, Duchess Evelyn. Our dwarven knight tried to endear herself to the Duchess. And so on.

Once on board the ship, more chances for role-playing and exploration came. Then there came a moment where some of the PCs were asked to go check on the Duchess, who had gone below deck to take a nap and hadn’t come back. Some of the PCs went to check on her, while others remained on the main deck. The handmaiden called through the door of the Duchess’s cabin that the Duchess was still sleeping, and she refused to open the door. Eventually, the PCs heard a splash through the door, as if someone had jumped or been thrown out out a window, and they decided to bash their way into the cabin.

And at just that moment, the brass band on the main deck started playing the Risuri national anthem, drowning out any sound from below. Roll initiative.

Save our ship!

This was a very cool way to run a combat; hundreds of dignitaries above, oblivious to the chaos below as individuals led by the handmaiden tried to sabotage the ship’s boiler in an effort to blow the whole thing sky-high. The fight spread over multiple decks and involved not just straight-up combat but also efforts to restore the magical wards to protect the powder magazine as well as the skills needed to deal with the sabotage before everything exploded. The adventure comes with a cool mechanism for tracking how close the boiler is to exploding, though it definitely needs a good DM to tweak it on the fly.

The party eventually found success, saving the ship, and the band played on. Thus ended session one, which was Chapter One of the first adventure. It was rousing day of fun all around, and had us looking forward to session two.

Future sessions: Session two

-Michael the OnlineDM

One-page 4e character sheet – free tool!

I’ve mentioned before that I prefer to have my character sheet be as compact as possible; one page if I can get it. This is one of my biggest annoyances with the online Character Builder compared to the old downloadable version; I can’t make a one-page template (with power cards handled separately, of course). I also can’t suppress the printing of power cards that I don’t need.

Thus, I was delighted to discover a new free tool from an EN World poster who goes by the name divide0 that will create a compact character sheet using .dnd4e files exported from the online Character Builder. divide0 put up a post about this program last week, and I first saw it on Friday. Exciting times for me!

I know it doesn't look like much, but trust me

Now, there are some caveats. The main one is that, so far, I’ve only been able to get it to work properly in Firefox version 10. divide0 explains that he built it for Firefox, but I wasn’t able to make it work quite right in version Firefox version 3.6.26 (I’m generally a Chrome user, so I hadn’t updated my Firefox in a while). In 3.6.26, most things look good but the trained skills are blacked out by diamonds, making the numbers unreadable. In Chrome, everything looks good until you get to the print preview, where the tables seem to break down.

If you want to use this program, here are the steps I suggest following.

  1. If you don’t already have it, download and install Firefox version 10 (or later, I imagine).
  2. Within Firefox, go the Firefox menu button in the top left corner, hover over Print, and select Page Setup. Check the box next to “Print Background”. You’ll probably also want to go to the Margins & Header/Footer tab of this box and set your margins to zero and all of the headers and footers to be blank.
  3. Export your character file from the Character Builder. If you’ve never done this before, you can click the Load button from the Builder’s main menu, then click on the character you want to export, then click the Export button. Save the .dnd4e file wherever you like.
  4. Go to divide0’s character sheet app page.
  5. Click the Browse button and choose your .dnd4e file.
  6. Click Upload and watch the magic happen!

What’s so great about this character sheet app, you may ask? A few things.

  • It puts the information that spreads over three pages in the normal Character Builder sheet onto one page (racial features, class features, feats)
  • It gives you the full text of the class features, racial features and feats
  • You can click on any power card to deselect it so that it won’t be printed
  • It handles magic items in a clever way; one power card to summarize all of your magic items and their properties, and then separate power cards for every magic item power (which, again, you can choose to suppress if you don’t want them printed).
  • Cool icons for standard / move / minor / immediate / free / no action powers, plus the usual icons for melee / ranged / close / area powers
  • Icons for damage types that you can read at a glance
  • If you print to PDF, the file size is about a tenth of what you get from the Character Builder
  • Did I mention the awesome one-page layout?

Note that some cards are greyed out - I don't want these to print

The images above show the interface in action, and this PDF is the result of printing the sheet above using CutePDF. Pretty slick. (This is my wife’s dragonborn swordmage from my Madness at Gardmore Abbey campaign, in case you were wondering.)

All that said, I certainly have a wish list of things that would be cool to see in future versions of this tool if divide0 does more with it:

  • Not a complaint, but it’s worth noting that actual ability scores are not displayed, just the modifiers. You should also be aware that this program uses the character summary card for defenses, hit points, initiative modifier, skills, etc. instead of putting those on the main sheet itself.
  • If you get enough class features and feats, I could see this spilling onto multiple pages. Cutting the descriptions of the languages and changing them to just a list could help.
  • It would be very cool if you could re-arrange the order of the power cards.
  • If this could be made to work properly with Chrome too, that would be awesome.

That’s a pretty short wish list. I really think this is a cool tool, and it’s especially nice for me when my players for my online game send me their .dnd4e files. Now I can read them without having to load them into the Character Builder, which requires that I delete other characters due to the 20 character limit.

This is the kind of development that I hope WotC will encourage in the future. The D&D community is full of smart, talented, energetic folks who want to create things to make the game better for everyone. Wizards of the Coast, give divide0 a cookie!

-Michael the OnlineDM

OnlineDM1 on Twitter

Madness at Gardmore Abbey: Session Four

Past sessions: Session OneSession Two, Session Three

This is the recap of my fourth session running the Madness at Gardmore Abbey adventure via MapTool and Skype for my family group. As always, SPOILERS AHEAD.

Sora the dragonborn swordmage (played by my wife), Homer the elf hunter (played by my brother in law) and Stasi the half-elf warpriest of Pelor (played by my sister in law) found themselves in the Temple of Bahamut on Dragon’s Roost, having just finished an extended rest under the protection of Sir Oakley. Upon their waking, Sir Oakley offered the party a mysterious object he had found hidden in a niche on the altar to Bahamut: An ivory plate that the party immediately recognized as a second card from the Deck of Many Things, to go along with the Key card they had found earlier.

This card had an engraving of three women – one young, one middle-aged, and one old (with a pair of scissors). Stasi was able to figure out that this represented the Fates. (Note that I’m running the game online and therefore am not handing out the physical cards; I like that the players get to puzzle out what some of the cards represent based on a description that I provide rather than getting to read the names on the cards.) Stasi agreed to carry this card with the other for the time being.

Having escorted Sir Oakley to the Abbey and having helped him defeat the enemies in the Temple itself, the adventurers agreed to help him find the three missing relics that would be necessary for him to perform the needed cleansing rituals. He didn’t know where these relics were, but he knew that they must be somewhere within the grounds of Gardmore Abbey. Sir Oakley ultimately agreed to accompany the group on their search (with a three-PC party, it’s nice to have a companion character along to help with the scaling of battles).

The group decided to start by searching the catacombs. Stasi the warpriest was itching to blast the heck out of some undead creatures (which have been rare in the Essentials adventures to this point). Coming down the stairs, they heard prayers ahead. Homer the hunter stayed back on the stairs while Stasi and Sora accompanied Sir Oakley down to investigate. They found a bunch of humans in armor praying around an altar of Bahamut.

Thus began Encounter 23: Altar of Glory. I’ll say right here that I totally screwed this up, because this was supposed to be the first encounter where my party was to meet The Others – the rival adventuring party. Oops. I forgot all about that, and I hadn’t prepared The Others in MapTool yet anyway. Major oversight on my part, but I have an idea of how I’ll fix this.

My other oversight is that I once again forgot to have the cards from the Deck do anything in combat, but that’s in part because combat was a little weird in starting. This encounter began with a skill challenge for the party to figure out what was going on with these knights praying in the catacombs. Sir Oakley joined in the prayers at the urging of the PCs. A religion check from the warpriest showed that the lead knight was making up some of the prayers as he went along, and the other knights were following his lead. They also noticed that the knights had their scabbards loosened and kept their hands close to their weapons, as though they were expecting a fight. However, they failed to recall any history of the Abbey that might be helpful in understanding the situation, and they twice failed to notice that the knights weren’t casting shadows.

Thus, the skill challenge was failed, and the knights attacked with a surprise round. It soon became clear that these weren’t actual knights – they were pale reavers disguised in the forms they once held in life. I loved describing the first attack, as one of the minions disappeared into a wall, reappeared next to a PC, and then reached for his sword, which somehow transformed into a long mane of hair as the reaver’s true form was revealed.

The fight was challenging with the surprise round and the good initiative roll from the lead reaver, but our warpriest finally got to Smite Undead on the lead reaver, and the group kept him pinned in a corner for much of the fight while they beat up his friends and later focused on him. Some surges were spent, but none were actually drained by the reavers themselves.

Examining the room showed that the altar to Bahamut could infuse a weapon with the one-time ability to deal fire damage, which Homer the hunter was all over. Sir Oakley helped him with the prayers, and the dragon heads on the altar came to life and bathed Homer’s bow in flames, which then died down, leaving the bow warm to the touch. This came in handy in the next fight.

One sarcophagus in this room had been pried open, and the skeleton within was missing its skull. Corruption emanated from this coffin, and the party was able to figure out that the corruption could only be cleansed if the skull could be returned. No skull was to be found in this room, however.

Onward to the east, then! The stone doors opened smoothly enough, revealing a room with a badly damaged ceiling. Roots from above had grown through the ceiling, creating a tangle that extended most of the way to the floor, stopping six feet above the ground. Stasi’s Sun’s Glow showed a good portion of the room, and the party could hear some shuffling footsteps in a far corner and a very faint sound of movement coming from another corner of the room near the ceiling (up in the roots). After Stasi and Sora moved into the room, the light revealed a mummy coming toward them

Encounter 25: Memorial Chamber was under way. Homer won initiative but delayed, staying back in the Altar of Glory chamber. The mummy moved toward the doorway and cursed Stasi, so that she would take necrotic damage every time she tried to hurt the mummy (a brutal but cool ability). Sora figured out that she could yank on the roots in order to bring the fragile ceiling down on the mummy, which worked like a charm (I decided that DC16 Strength would be for a minor action check and DC12 would be for a standard action). That mummy struggled for the next three rounds to free its legs from the rubble (immobilized, save ends).

Knowing that they had heard other movement in the chamber, the party was cautious about moving farther in. Too bad for them, then, when a swarm of rot scarab beetles stealthily crawled through the roots on the ceiling without attracting attention and then rained down onto Sora’s head. This was a wonderfully disgusting moment, leaving Sora the swordmage inside the swarm. Homer eventually jumped into initiative at the end of the round, after Sir Oakley told him that the mummy would catch fire if hit with fire, using Bahamut’s blessing from the previous chamber to light that mummy up.

At the beginning of round two, I remembered that I wanted to use the Deck of Many Things, and I decided later that I actually kind of prefer having the Deck manifest its power after the first round of battle. It feels artificial for the Deck to know exactly when combat is breaking out and to show up immediately; I like the idea that it responds to the stress of actual combat and then manifests.

In this case, the image of the Key appeared next to Stasi as a big glowing light. A minor action Arcana check revealed that someone standing in the Key square could use a move action to teleport 5 squares; pretty cool stuff!

Round two is also when the Flameskull revealed itself from behind a mosaic-covered wall on the far side of the room and dropped a fireball that enveloped three of the PCs plus the mummy and the scarab swarm. Uh oh! The new threat caused some major concern.

Eventually, Sir Oakley ended up charging into the chamber largely to get away from the swarm’s aura and to go after the Flameskull (and because I wanted to make the combat more dynamic than a chokepoint between two rooms). He was left to his own devices for a while as the PCs finished off the mummy and the swarm. Finally, the PCs came to help, rescuing Sir Oakley from unconsciousness and destroying the Flameskull.

When the Flameskull was defeated, the skull’s fires went out, leaving behind a normal skull. The PCs immediately thought – aha, perhaps this is the missing skull from the earlier sarcophagus. Indeed it was, and Stasi the warpriest returned it to its rightful place and used some healing magic to cleanse the corruption – in the process gaining Bahamut’s blessing and the one-time ability to breathe fire.

The Memorial Chamber was revealed to have a secret door to the north (the Perception check beat a 19, but not a 23), which led to a small room with three long-dead knights of Bahamut beneath a mural depicting the Platinum Dragon as a dracolich. Sir Oakley was able to explain that this was a private practice of some worshippers of Bahamut, and that it represented adherents steeling themselves to face death rather than worshipping undeath. Some searching of this secret chapel revealed two other doors leading to other chambers, three topazes that had been taken from the temple, and the fact that these knights evidently closed themselves in this room and starved to death rather than leaving. Interesting stuff. Having Oakley along at this point has been helpful.

From here, the party decided to go through the door on the west part of the north wall of the Memorial Chamber, which revealed a short hallway, beyond which was a room with a fountain – and a couple of skeletons.

Encounter 24: Font of Divine Health began with two skeletal tomb guardians arising and attacking. I once again had Sir Oakley get himself in the middle of things in order to create some movement. A blazing skeleton popped out from a niche to light Stasi on fire.

In round two, the Fates revealed themselves. The new card from the Deck manifested adjacent to Stasi, who boldly stepped into the light and understood that if she were hit by an attack while in the Fates’ square, she could force a re-roll of that attack with a -2 penalty. This power appealed greatly to Homer, the great chicken of the party, who camped in that square for several rounds.

Meanwhile, the tomb guardians were slicing and dicing all over the place, making effectively four attacks per round (a fun mechanic). Some skeletal minons revealed themselves, providing a flank for the guardians. All the while, the blazing skeleton kept burning things from a distance.

The fight ended with Stasi using a daily power, then finishing the final foe in a blaze of holy might. At this point, the mosaic of the head of Bahamut inlaid in the floor glowed brightly, and the whole party regained some free hit points. It was soon discovered that drinking from the fountain in this room would also regain some free hit points, plus grant some necrotic resistance. Good times; I love these alternate, short-term rewards.

Here we stopped for the night, with Homer and Stasi suggesting an extended rest in the secret chamber and Sir Oakley adamant that they must press on and find the holy relics. I hope they do press on; they’re not in severe shape just yet (Oakley is the lowest on surges by far). If they decide to rest in the secret chapel, so be it. It’s possible that their entrance has guaranteed that it will not remain secret indefinitely…

-Michael the OnlineDM

OnlineDM1 on Twitter

Next session: Session five

Quick Hits: January 2012

After taking a brief, inadvertent break from blogging recently, I thought I’d jump back in with some quick-hit thoughts on D&D Next, my own D&D campaigns, some non-RPG games I’ve played, the Order of the Stick Kickstarter, and the upcoming Genghis Con.

D&D Next

I’m liking most of what I’m hearing out of DDXP. Simplicity if you want it, complexity if you want it, and a real effort to reach out to players of all editions. The Dice Monkey Radio bonus episode featured yours truly discussing the game with some other folks in the D&D community. I can’t wait to get my 1e books! Yay for potential unity!

My D&D Campaigns

I’ve had some real life stuff interfering with my gaming for the past couple of months, and my Friday night MapTool game is currently on hiatus. Fortunately, it looks like the real life stuff has cleared up, and I should be able to resume that game soon. Yay!

My Madness at Gardmore Abbey and ZEITGEIST campaigns have been similarly delayed, though less explicitly so. I’m hopinh to run a session of Gardmore this weekend. I was thrilled to discover that Tracy Hurley, Sarah Darkmagic herself, included a link to my write-ups of my Gardmore Abbey sessions in her article over on the Wizards of the Coast D&D page. Woo hoo!  Thanks again, Tracy!

I’m also working on a new adventure in response to a reader question. I received a request for some basic “DM 101” tips. I provided a few in an email (this came during the real-life-interfering time, so I didn’t write much), but I definitely want to make this into a blog post. And I think an important DM 101 thing to provide is a good intro adventure. I did a lot of brainstorming on planes last week and am hoping to build the adventure itself and run it in the next couple of weeks.

Non-RPG games

I got a copy of Innovation for Christmas and have played it several times. Cool little game, and it travels well! I was in Florida and Pennsylvania last week, and a friend in Florida and family members in Pennsylvania all enjoyed it. 

When I was in my FLGS recently, I saw a copy of Kittens in a Blender. In real life I’m a cat lover, even fostering kittens for the local animal shelter. Still, I couldn’t resist – in part because the game makers apparently donate part of the proceeds to a no-kill shelter.

I finally tried the game with my wife Monday night, and it’s about what I expected – rather goofy! I think it would play much better with more than two players, of course. I find that there’s an interesting tension in the game when your “best” move is to go ahead and hit the Blend button in order to save your kittens who have gotten away, but when you have a kitten or two who will face death in the machine. The illustrations are adorable, and they make it hard to consign the fluffies to die. And that’s a good thing!

Genghis Con

The local convention is a couple of weeks away, and I’m excited! I’ll be running my Staff of Suha trilogy, and I have players signed up for all three slots. I was disappointed to learn that the Hero System game based on Dr. Horrible that I was registered for was canceled, but I’m still looking forward to trying some Dresden Files and Ashes of Athas.

Order of the Stick books

I’m guessing most people who read my blog probably know about Order of the Stick, Rich Burlew’s awesome web comic about a stick figure band of D&D adventurers. I own all of the books except War and XPs, and was therefore very excited when Rich announced a Kickstarter project to get that book back in print.

He needed to raise almost $60,000 in order to get the book in print. He blew through that in about a day. As of this writing the Kickstarter has been up for a little over a week, and he’s raised nearly $300 grand and counting. This pretty much means that all of the OotS books will be in print. Yay!

My only frustration: The comic is so popular that all of the special rewards (such as those involving signed copies of the books) are snatched up before I have a chance to sign up for them! Oh well; good for Rich!

If you love OotS, I recommend supporting this Kickstarter.

Looking ahead

Now that real life seems to have gotten out of the way, I’m looking forward to more gaming goodness. My new web site should be going live soon, and I’m excited about the improved look and feel. Fun things are afoot!

-Michael the Online Dungeon Master

OnlineDM1 on Twitter

New edition of D&D – OnlineDM’s first take

So, the big news announcement on January 9 was indeed about the next iteration of Dungeons and Dragons. Lots of folks have been chiming in with their thoughts; here are mine.

Modularity

Wizards of the Coast has said that they want the game to be modular, offering groups the chance to have more complex or less complex games as they see fit. It’s a lovely notion, and if they can pull it off, I think it will help to make the game appealing to a wide audience.

I expect to see options for omitting things like opportunity attacks. I expect to see a wizard option that’s Vancian and a wizard option that has at-wills. I expect to see separate books for whatever the next iteration equivalent of tiers will be (heroic, paragon, epic), with big changes between them.

Open Playtest

The other big news in the announcement was that WotC would be engaging in an open playtest of the rules. A friends and family playtest is ongoing (and no, so far your OnlineDM does not rank highly enough in the D&D community to have been invited; pity). The first public viewing of the current version of the new rules will be at the D&D Experience convention in Fort Wayne, Indiana, in a couple of weeks (under non-disclosure agreements from the players involved). A wider public playtest is supposed to start sometime this spring.

I’m very happy to see that WotC is making this move. I opined a couple of weeks ago about the importance of the company focusing on good community relations as they move forward; so far, so good. Actively soliciting feedback from everyone who offers it is a good idea. Obviously, they won’t be able to take everyone’s feedback, since some of it will conflict. But at least giving everyone a chance to be heard is a powerful step in the right direction.

Unification

This new iteration is explicitly intended to appeal to players of D&D from its entire history. WotC is trying to unify the D&D community with their new game. A lot of folks have moved to Pathfinder or OSR games, and WotC is trying to interest them in this new iteration.

It’s a tall order. I was shocked to see the level of vitriol on a bunch of OSR blogs on the day of the announcement. I understand that these folks don’t like WotC, but wow. It seems like this company is reaching out to them, and they’re just not interested at all in many cases. There are definitely folks in the OSR who are open to the idea of this new rule set, but I was shocked to see how many flat-out are not at all interested. So, not an easy task for WotC.

What I’d like to see

I’d like WotC to use a game license that lets third party publishers get their content into whatever electronic tools they develop. I find it annoying, for instance, that my players can’t add the ZEITGEIST themes to their characters in the Character Builder.

I’d like to see continued strong support for online tools like the Character Builder.

I’d like to be able to get PDFs of adventures at the very least, and preferably PDFs of everything for the game. I run games using my computer, and I’ve actually gotten to the point where I scan my hard copies of adventures like Madness at Gardmore Abbey so that I can use them more easily as PDFs.

I pray that we don’t go back to Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. And if such a class option exists, I pray that it’s an optional rule that isn’t present for organized play events.

I want magic items to be rarer and more interesting. Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium is the right paradigm. “Expected treasure by level” is not.

I’d love for WotC to make more use of the digest format for books, as they did with Essentials.

I certainly hope the new version keeps the 4e style of monster stat blocks, with everything right there rather than making the DM look up spells and so on. I like being able to run combat easily. Heck, monster creation in general in 4e is fantastic; stick with that!

I want great community outreach. As I said, I think they’re already doing a good job on this one. Keep it up!

What I expect to see

I expect a license that’s more restrictive that the OGL but less restrictive than the GSL. I also expect WotC to do more work with third party publishers to keep them in the loop farther in advance on this issue. Community outreach!

I expect to see Vancian spellcasting in certain classes and probably even Quadratic Wizards in those classes. Sigh. I hope they’re optional rather than the default.

I expect to see the traditional hardcover format books rather than digests. Not a big deal to me, but I’m guessing this will be important for bringing back players who’ve left. They probably don’t want digests (but it’s worth asking to find out).

I expect the PDF issue to be worked out, somehow. They’ve got to get past the “no electronic books” issue if they’re going to have wide appeal these days.

I expect some option for stripped-down rules that won’t require electronic tools in order to build a character, and more advanced rules that basically will.

I expect options for gridless combat to have actual support.

I expect more focus on exploration and adventure and less focus on combat in the core books. Combat will still be well-covered, but the meat of the text will try harder to evoke a sense of wonder.

I expect lots and lots of changes throughout the process. I expect things to come up in the rules that people HATE, and for those things to subsequently go away or become marginalized. I look forward to this.

What about my own games?

I realize that it’s possible that the new version of D&D will be something that appeals to me less than 4e does, in which case I’d probably keep playing 4e. But I expect that WotC will do a good job with this new game, and that I’ll migrate over in the end.

I can say that as soon as I get the chance to playtest the new rules, I will do so. Hey WotC, you want someone to see how the new rules work in an online game, right? Drop me a line at onlinedungeonmaster@gmail.com!

-Michael the OnlineDM

OnlineDM1 on Twitter

Madness at Gardmore Abbey: Session Three

Past sessions: Session OneSession Two

As always, SPOILERS AHEAD!

The group left Winterhaven, escorting Sir Oakley to Gardmore Abbey on his quest to purify the main temple on top of the mountain. He explained that he knew of the existence of a secret stair to take the party up the back side of the mountain and straight to Dragon’s Roost (the  mountaintop). After an hour or two of searching, they uncovered the stair and made their way up the long climb.

At the top, they found four buildings still standing. The main temple was the grandest of these, and only partially ruined. The stair came up directly behind a squat, columned building. To the south was a long, ruined structure, and to the north was the relatively intact gate house that guarded the road down to the orc village.

Since they were right next to the squat building, they peeked inside and saw webs all over the ceiling. Recalling their earlier, unpleasant run-in with deathjump spiders, they moved elsewhere.

Our intrepid explorers decided to poke around the long, ruined building to the south next. Peering inside, they saw some broken bunks, a well, and a rubble-covered stairway. This building had evidently been a barracks. After debating for a few minutes whether they should go inside (the well was strangely tempting for our elf hunter, who had enjoyed drinking from the Font of Ioun earlier), I had them roll a stealth check… which they failed.

Suddenly, a big-ass bug popped out of the ground in the middle of their group, spraying rocks and debris all over them. It was a bulette! And so battle ensued.

This was Encounter 19: The Barracks. With a party of five, it would include the bulette and two carrion crawlers. I scaled it down for my three-PC party by removing a carrion crawler. Having Sir Oakley in the party made it a pretty easy encounter.

Running the bulette was fun; I was happy to let him get opportunity attacked if need be in order to dig back into the ground and burst out later, creating zones of difficult terrain all over the place. I had the carrion crawler make stealth checks for the first two rounds to get close to the doorway where the fight was taking place, and the warpriest who chased the bulette into the main barracks had to make a quick decision whether to fight on or retreat when she saw the tentacled monstrosity clinging to the wall inside the door. She fought on, and the day was soon won.

Our elf hunter was disappointed to discover that the well only had water 30 feet down, with no bucket to fetch it. Mature character that he is, he decided to poop down the well in frustration. Okay then. He also searched the ruins and found a skeleton with a small amount of gold and two potion vials. These turned out to be an Elixir of Flying and an Elixir of Accuracy (I’m so loving Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium).

The group asked Sir Oakley about the stairs, which he explained led down to the ancient vaults far beneath Dragon’s Roost, in which there were chambers devoted to all of the gods worshiped at Gardmore Abbey. He said that, while he would one day love to cleanse the entirety of the abbey from evil influence, including the vaults, his main goal for now was to cleanse the temple.

Thus, the party headed for the grand building. Inside, they saw altars devoted to Kord, Pelor, Erathis, Ioun and Moradin, in addition to the grand altar to Bahamut himself. Bahamut’s human knight avatar was also represented in statue form in the middle of the temple.

The temple was not entirely uninhabited, however, as the group soon learned. A disgusting half-woman, half-vulture creature swooped down and invited the group to come and pray for Bahamut, but she wasn’t making a lot of sense. Her sister in the rafters was babbling incoherently. Our dragonborn swordmage recognized the creatures as harpies. Sir Oakley didn’t like this one bit, saying that harpies are not known for their worship of Bahamut, and this harpy’s preaching was nonsensical and sacrilegious. He drew his sword, as did the rest of the party, and the harpies began the fight. They were soon joined by a pair of angels of valor; creatures that normally would defend a temple, but that seemed intent on destroying the intruders, even though Sir Oakley was clearly a paladin of Bahamut. Thus began Encounter 21.

The lead harpy soon enthralled most of the party with her bizarre hymn to Bahamut, pulling them closer to her so that the angels could zap them with lightning. [Side note: I LOVE the descriptions of the harpies from a role-playing perspective on page 7 of book 4. Giving these monsters not only names but also personalities and descriptions of their songs was fantastic!]

Once our hunter had escaped the enthralling song, he decided to pull out the Elixir of Flying and take to the air. As he got close to the altar of Kord, his deity, he felt a pull in that direction and discovered that fighting while near the altar of his god made him more powerful. He took great pleasure in shooting the angels out of the air and sending them crashing to the floor.

Our swordmage, who is firmly unaligned and worships no deity, asked if she could do an on-the-spot conversion to worship Ioun, whose altar was the easiest for her to get to. I absolutely allowed this – and oh, there will be consequences!

Eventually, the swordmage’s ongoing lightning damage felled the final angel, and the group could rest for a moment in the temple. They discovered they harpies’ chamber, where the gaps between the bricks had been stuffed with gold coins. They also discovered a mace hidden under a harpy-dung-covered pile of fabric and furs, which had clearly belonged to an original defender of the temple. This was revealed to be a Mace of Disruption (yay Mordenkainen again!), which I thought was a perfect fit for the temple and a useful weapon for our half-elf warpriest.

Sir Oakley then attempted his ritual to purify the temple, while the PCs assisted (since they now each worshiped a deity represented here). Sadly, the ritual failed because three religious relics were missing from the main altar. Sir Oakley asked the party to find the relics and bring them back to him in the temple, confident that they must be somewhere in the area of Gardmore Abbey.

The group asked Sir Oakley if he would stand guard while they took an extended rest in the temple, and he agreed to do so.

Thus ended session three. I have not yet revealed the treasure hidden in the altar to Bahamut, but I think it will come up soon. I also have yet to remember the Key card from the Deck of Many Things that the party carries, but the players haven’t remembered it yet, either. I’m looking forward to session four next weekend!

Later sessions: Session four

Opening for a gamer: Friday night MapTool game

Spread the word all: You could be the lucky person chosen to join an actual OnlineDM-run campaign in MapTool! Calooh! Callay!

All right, so maybe this isn’t the most exciting news ever, but I do have an opening in my long-running Friday night game. It’s a D&D Fourth Edition game in EN World’s War of the Burning Sky campaign saga. The characters are 17th-18th level, so we’re at upper paragon, in spitting distance of epic tier.

The game runs on Friday nights, starting at 6:00 PM US Mountain Time (8:00 PM Eastern, etc.). We usually game for about four hours, and the game runs most weeks (typically three weeks a month or so).

Obviously, if you’re very new to D&D 4th Edition, this probably isn’t a great fit since the party is at high level. But if you or someone you know is interested in joining the game, drop me a line at onlinedungeonmaster@gmail.com. Start the new year in a new campaign!

FYI, the party is pretty well-balanced, so almost any class of character would be welcome. We have a dwarf fighter, a tiefling warlock, a genasi wizard (damage focused), a pixie bard and a human hybrid wizard/swordmage (more wizardy with a control focus).

Madness at Gardmore Abbey: Session Two

Earlier sessions: Session One

My party of three recovered from their run-in with giant spiders in the feygrove of Gardmore Abbey and continued making their way toward the orc village. Before long, they came upon a spring populated by a number of eladrin warriors. The leader of the eladrin ordered his soldiers to surround the party, which they did via teleportation. The leader demanded to know who they PCs were and what business they had here.

Homer the elf hunter (played by my brother-in-law) quickly explained that the PCs had been sent by Lord Padraig of Winterhaven to scout the orc threat, and they meant the eladrin no harm. Deciding that enemies of the orcs couldn’t be all bad, the eladrin leader introduced himself as Berrian Velfarren and invited the party to come to the spring to join him in a glass of high-quality feywine.

Berrian explained that he had come to the region of Gardmore Abbey in search of his father, but that the trail had gone cold. Making matters worse, his sister Analastra had gone off on her own and hadn’t reported back yet. Berrian said that he would appreciate help in locating her, which the party agreed to do. Berrian explained that he planned to stay by the spring, trying to understand more about its magical properties.

Stasi the half-elf warpriest (played by my sister-in-law) talked to Berrian and examined the fountain and determined that drinking from it could give visions of the history of the region. Only Homer the hunter was brave enough to take a sip, and he experienced a vision of a valorous knight of Bahamut defending himself against an onrushing horde of ten orcs, slaying them all in swift order and emerging victorious. This vision of heroism left Homer with the ability to get some extra minor actions in a future battle.

The party then left the Font of Ioun and moved toward the orc village, eventually coming upon the sounds of struggle in the woods ahead. An eladrin woman was fleeing from a pair of displacer beasts, and the beasts caught up to her and knocked her to the ground, unconscious, as the PCs entered the grove. A dire stirge emerged from a nearby ruined bell tower, and the party moved to attack. Thus began Encounter 11: Bell Tower.

Since there are only three PCs in my party, scaling the battles down is always a little bit tricky. I decided to let this one be a challenge, and I only removed one dire stirge instead of removing a displacer beast (or a displacer beast AND a dire stirge). All I can say is wow, displacer beasts sure are annoying to fight! Rolling a 17 or 19 on the attack die and finding out that you missed is a major bummer.

I scaled things a little bit on the fly. I had a stirge go after a bloodied displacer beast. I had a surge die when it was knocked down to about 10 hit points, and I did something similar with one of the displacer beasts. I was planning on having the other displacer beast flee when it was badly bloodied, but the PCs REALLY wanted to kill that thing (it did eventually escape with 9 hit points). The battle ended with Stasi unconscious (but stable) and Homer only on his feat because he got a 20 on a death save. Whew!

After the battle, the PCs were able to revive Analastra, the fallen eladrin. She thanked them, but was clearly embarrassed to have needed their help. She asked them to come with her to meet her brother, whom the PCs revealed they had already met.

Berrian was grateful to see his sister again, and thanked the party by asking what he could do for them. They mentioned that they wanted information about the orcs, and Berrian obliged by telling them what he knew. He also let the party rest in his grove while his soldiers stood guard and Analastra regained her strength (an extended rest – they needed it!).

In the morning, Analastra escorted the party to the garden hedge maze that marked the end of the feygrove, from which point the party could see much of the orc village for themselves. They also noted the wizard’s tower, and the fact that the keep seemed to be the headquarters for the orcs, based on the foot traffic in and out.

As the adventurers made their way back through the feygrove to head back to Winterhaven, Berrian gave Sora the dragonborn swordmage (played by my wife, and the only PC to have made it through the displacer beast encounter without falling unconscious) with a Giantslayer Broadsword +2. Yay for Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium (the first time I’ve actually used the book).

Back in Winterhaven, the party settled in at Wrafton’s Inn and sent word to Lord Padraig that they were back and ready to report. Padraig came to see them in the inn, and they showed him the map of the orc village they had created with their notes about the strength of the orc troops. I asked the party if they were telling Padraig about the eladrin the feygrove, and they said no.

Padraig expressed dismay at the size of the orc force and said that he would need allies in order to chase off the orcs. Still no mention of the eladrin. He asked about the wooded area on the map. Still mention of the eladrin.

Shrug.

Padraig did at least note that the wizard’s tower the party had seen would probably be of interest to Valthrun the Prescient. He also paid the party some gold as a reward for their scouting report.

After Padraig left, the party was approached by a paladin in full-on shiny armor with the device of Bahamut prominently displayed. He introduced himself as Sir Oakley and said that he had heard that the party had been to Gardmore Abbey. He explained that he was a direct descendant of Gardrin the Hammer, founder of the Abbey, and that he wanted to cleanse the Abbey of evil and set it as a beacon of good in the world before he died.  Also, he knew of a secret stair that would lead straight to the top of Dragon’s Roost, bypassing the orcs. He asked the heroes to help him, and they readily agreed.

They stopped off to talk with Valthrun before leaving town the next day, and he was excited to hear about the tower. He’d been researching the Abbey in the week the party had been gone, and he asked them to be on the lookout for a book bound in white dragon scales, which his research indicated had been owned by the last wizard to use the tower before the fall of Gardmore Abbey.

Thus ends session two. I hadn’t put together the encounters on Dragon’s Roost in MapTool yet, so we had to cut things a little bit short. We should be able to play again before the end of 2012.

Next session: Session three

Madness at Gardmore Abbey: Session One

At Christmas 2010, my wife’s brother and his wife came to visit us for a couple of weeks. During that time, I introduced them to Dungeons and Dragons, and they were hooked right away.

We started off with a Living Forgotten Realms module I had run at my friendly local game store, and they wanted to know what came next. So, I spent the next day crafting an LFR-style adventure that was the sequel (I really should post about my LURU 2-3 sequel one of these days – Deeper Into the Crypts). I ran it that night, and they loved it. I ran them through two or three more adventures that week before they had to go home. Good times.

Once they were back in Texas, they wanted to keep playing. No problem – MapTool to the rescue! I had heard such good things about Reavers of Harkenwold that I decided to run them through it next, followed by Cairn of the Winter King.

Now that we’re on the standard post-Essentials adventure path, I figured I might as well go with the next adventure: Madness at Gardmore Abbey. I got the box months ago, read through the first two books, and started building monsters in MapTool. Once we figured out when we’d actually be able to play again, I re-read the books, formatted the maps from WotC to fit to a 50 pixel grid, and put a few more monsters together. I randomly determined the positions of the cards from the Deck of Many Things and all of the consequences of those positions. And now, off we go!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Session one began with the party in Fallcrest, relaxing after their voyage to the Cairn of the Winter King. A messenger from Winterhaven rode to town, seeking the adventurers whose reputation was growing as problem solvers. Her name was Elaine (though no one asked). She knew the party by name: Sora the dragonborn swordmage (played by my wife), Homer the drow hunter (played by my wife’s brother) and Stasi the half-elf warpriest (played by my sister-in-law). The messenger explained that Lord Padraig of Winterhaven had a bit of an orc problem that needed solving, and his regular troops weren’t up to the task. He’d heard good things about the adventurers, and decided to send the messenger to hire them.

Being the easygoing, “Where’s the next fight?” group that they are, they eagerly agreed to travel with Elaine to Winterhaven. Lord Padraig had arranged for the party to be put up at Wrafton’s Inn at no charge during their time helping the town. They tried to catch a whiff of rumor about the orcs from the patrons who were there in the early afternoon (Rond Kelfem, Valthrun the Prescient, a few peasants and of course Salvana Wrafton), but their Streetwise was lousy. So, they waited for Padraig to show up.

The Lord came to the Inn around dinner time, and waved for Salvana to bring him his regular mug of ale. He bowed slightly to the party with a few words of flattery and asked to sit with them. He explained the orc problem and what he wanted the group to do (the Scout the Abbey quest from page 8 of book 2). Again, they readily agreed.

After Padraig left, the group tried to pick up some more information, which they got from Valthrun and Eilian the Old at a corner table. They learned about the sacking of Gardmore Abbey 150 years prior and the orcs who lived there ever since. Eilian had seen the ruins as a boy, but never ventured too close. Valthrun expressed interest in the grounds – surely there must be some intriguing mysteries within. He asked the party to let him know if they found anything mysterious.

And with that, they set off to Gardmore Abbey. After three days’ travel, they arrived at the place where a path left the King’s Road to head up to the wall around the abbey’s hill. Their keen eyes spotted some orcs manning (well, orcing) the guard towers by the main gate, so they decided to head south, where trees could be seen on the opposite side of the wall. Finding a gap in the wall, they decided to head on through.

At this point, I decided they needed a fight, so I tossed them into encounter 9 against the spiders (even though they weren’t coming at the Feygrove via the village). The three of them fought off five deathjump spiders without trouble.

During a short rest after the battle, the adventurers noticed an armor-clad skeleton tangled up in some webs in the trees. Armor might mean treasure, so they climbed up and cut the body down. They were able to figure out that this was the body of a paladin of Bahamut, and in addition to a faint magic aura from the paladin’s sword, they also discovered a thin plate of ivory, about the size of the palm of a hand, blank on one side, and with an etched image of key on the other side (which I described as being similar to scrimshaw). Stasi, the Arcana-trained warpriest, was able to figure out that this was a card from the Deck of Many Things, a legendary artifact known as a force for chaos in the universe. She was also able to determine what effect the Key card would have in battle. Intrigued, she decided to hang onto the card.

And thus ends session one. I’m excited about how things have gone so far. It didn’t take much encouragement for my group to decide to check out the Abbey, and now they’ve found one of the cards of the Deck of Many Things. They’re in the Abbey to scout the orcs, but have taken a circuitous route to get there – and that’s okay! Madness at Gardmore Abbey allows for a lot of freedom, which I appreciate.

Now I need to put some more encounters together – I only have 1 through 14 done!

Next session: Session two

A plea for good PR for D&D

I’m not an edition warrior, and edition wars make me sad. I know they’ll always exist, but I hope for a day when they are barely noticeable.

I came to D&D too late for the last edition war. I played a little bit of 3rd Edition in 2002 or thereabouts, but didn’t really get into the game until early 2010 with 4th Edition. Thus, my information about the 3e to 4e edition war has come after the fact, when 4e was already well-established and people had taken sides. I missed the “people forming their opinions” stage of the war and have only personally seen the “cold war” state of things.

It seems to me that there are certainly facets of 4e that people who dislike the game actually dislike. However, a lot of those have become less prominent with the introduction of the Essentials books (for instance the “sameness” of classes and martial classes with daily powers).

It also seems that people who don’t like 4e dislike the way certain things are presented in the books. For instance, they feel that there’s too much emphasis on tactical combat and not enough on flavor, exploration and wonder. A fair criticism, and also something that’s gotten better in later books, but it’s something that’s not an inherent problem with the game itself, just its presentation. A good 4e DM can have plenty of flavor, exploration and wonder in the game.

Thus, I think a lot of people who hate 4e could potentially have a lot of fun playing the game if they wanted to. But they do not want to – strongly.

So why are there such strong negative feelings toward 4e in some quarters, rather than just apathy? If a game doesn’t appeal to me, I generally ignore it. I don’t complain about it.

I think it’s clear that a big source of the vitriol against 4e was the poor public relations (PR) surrounding the launch of the edition. I didn’t see all of the “4e is the new edition” PR when it actually came out in 2008, but I’ve seen bits of it quoted in edition warry forum posts and such.

It was bad. WotC seems to have really alienated a large part of their player base. This isn’t always a bad thing for a company – sometimes you’ll have customers whom you’re not really interested in serving, and it would be better for the company if those customers went away. But I don’t think that’s the case with the customers WotC lost in the 4e transition. I think they screwed up by alienating that many people, and I think they’d agree that they screwed up.

Thus, my plea: Please, WotC, as you move forward with the D&D game in all of its incarnations, whether that’s 5th Edition or something else, please make PR a priority.

Note that I’m taking the term “public relations” at face value here – relations with the public. I don’t mean marketing-speak or alternate reality games or weird PR stunts or anything like that. I mean, think very carefully and put real resources into building and maintaining good relationships with the gaming public as you work on new projects.

To be clear, I think Mike Mearls has done a very good job of this so far. I think the hiring of Monte Cook, clearly a fan of older editions, is probably a step in the right direction (although WotC will need to delicately handle the message here to folks who LIKE 4e; Monte’s columns have the potential to alienate them). But I could see it blowing up, badly.

Stay positive. Don’t bad-mouth other editions of the game or other games (like Pathfinder). Talk about what’s great about your new projects without dwelling too much on the perceived “problems” you’re solving . Think carefully about how your words will be interpreted before you write them or say them in public.

This is not an easy task, of course. One extreme would be to say as little as possible and to make sure that everything you say is carefully vetted. That’s a mistake, too. Openness of communication with the gaming community is a hugely important way of building goodwill. But you have to make sure the people who are doing that communicating have the right attitude.

Be nice. Be welcoming. Develop a thick skin (because haters gotta hate). Acknowledge what’s good about other editions and other games.

Even if you don’t get waves of people migrating to your game, good PR will keep you from seeing waves of people migrating away. And from reading comments online, it sounds to me like a lot of people who don’t currently play 4e are open to the idea of considering WotC D&D in the future, if it’s done well. Bad PR will make sure that those potential customers never give your product a shot. Be positive, open and welcoming.

You can do it. Good luck!