Tag Archives: D&D4e

Puzzle: The floor of runes

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I was asked after I posted my runes last week to also share the puzzle that these runes appear in. As you wish!

This puzzle appears in my forthcoming adventure Descent Into Darkness (the sequel to the Staff of Suha and Tallinn’s Tower). During a trek through some caverns, the adventurers come across a square chamber, 30 feet by 30 feet, with runes carved into the tiles of the floor. It soon becomes apparent that some of these tiles have solid pillars beneath them while others are false floors that lead to a nasty fall. The runes give a clue to which tiles are solid and which are not.

The party is entering from the tunnel on the left side of the map and is trying to get across the chamber to the tunnel on the right side.

Any PC who speaks elven recognizes these runes as representing the numbers 1 through 8 (the number of lines in each rune corresponds to the number it represents).

While tiles are safe, and which lead to pits?

The PCs enter from the west side of the map and are heading east (left to right)

Hint 1: If you need a hint, mouse over the next section of text (white text on a white background: Keen-eyed PCs can spot the rune that equates to the number 1 carved over the tunnel on the far side of the room (the east wall).

Hint 2: They can also spot the rune that represents the number 3 carved into the south wall.

Hint 3: The rune for the number 7 is carved into the north wall.

Are you able to figure out the puzzle?

Custom 4e monster: The digger

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I thought I’d put up a short post to share one of the monsters from the finale of my adventure trilogy (Descent Into Darkness – coming soon!). This is a minion called the digger

The digger is a big underground bug with nasty pincers that it can use to burrow through rock – or grab unwary PCs. They tend to show up in large groups, sometimes used as tunnel-builders for drow or duergar. When a digger grabs hold of its prey, it may very well try to drag it back to its nest for dinner, with the unfortunate victim kicking and screaming the whole way.

Diggers often like to tunnel beneath their foes, causing them to fall in shallow pits. This makes it easier for the bugs to grab hold of the victim to drag it away.

Cover art: The Staff of Suha Cycle

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I’ve written three adventures over the course of the past year, all of which have been run as MyRealms adventures for Living Forgotten Realms (even though they’re not really set in the Realms). I’ve released versions of the first two of these on my blog already (the Staff of Suha and Tallinn’s Tower). The third adventure, Descent Into Darkness, is done and has been run twice already, but I’m going to wait until after I run it at TactiCon this weekend to release it (since I may tweak it further after more play testing).

My eventual plan is to release all three as a single adventure PDF. Each of the three adventures is really a delve – a four-hour, self-contained adventure. Together, they make for a respectable-length adventure that I’m calling the Staff of Suha Cycle.

When I started thinking about doing this, I realized that I needed a prettier layout than I’ve been using. I’m not much of an artist, but I’ve been trying to make things look a little bit nicer in Word (and the ultimate PDFs).

And if I’m going to publish this as a full-on adventure (for free, of course), I need some cover art. So, I created some.

This is the cover page for the Staff of Suha Cycle adventure. I’m quite happy with the way it turned out. I wouldn’t call it professional, but I’d definitely call it presentable.

What do you think – does this cover make you interested in checking out the adventure?

Magic item distribution: Random wish lists

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I have some good qualities as a dungeon master, and I feel like I’m completely competent in most areas of running a fun game. But I do have a major weakness: Magic items.

Somehow, picking out magic items for treasure troves is a task that I put off and put off and put off and sometimes entirely forget about. Last week, I took the time to pick out a bunch of magic items to give to my Friday night players in my online War of the Burning Sky campaign… only to find out that I’d done a lousy job. I picked chainmail that nobody wanted. I picked a +3 rod for the warlock in the party, thinking that she only had a +1; I’d forgotten that she’d gotten a +3 the last time I’d given out treasure. Sigh.

Another option is wish lists, but I’ve never liked wish lists. I once had a DM ask us to put wish lists together, and it just felt… wrong somehow. When you just tell the DM “I want these things” and the DM later says “Here you go,” there’s no magic in the magic items. You know what’s coming.

One of my Friday night players suggested another option that I plan to try: random wish lists. I’ve asked each player to give me a list of three magic items they’d like. They’re at 13th level, so I’ve asked them to list a 14th, 15th and 16th level item (downgrading any spots they like). That is, items of their character’s level +1, +2 and +3.

I have seven players, so if they all participate I’ll have a list of 21 magic items. I’ll pad that out with a few of my own ideas (maybe an artifact, maybe a booby prize, maybe some coins) and create a table. When it’s time to hand out treasure, I’ll roll on that table (openly, in front of the players).

This way, almost everything I give out will be something that somebody wants (except the booby prize, which is intentional), but there’s no certainty that any particular thing will come up at all. I’ll ask for new items at higher levels, so some items may never come up. And if one PC keeps getting lucky, the party might swap things around or turn a few items into residuum to make new stuff (but only new stuff with DM approval). If I roll for an item that’s already been given out, I might roll again or I might give nothing.

I’m going to give this a try and see how I like it. At the very least, I won’t be scrambling to look through the Compendium to find cool items at the last minute (or beyond the last minute).

Have any of you tried anything similar? How has it worked out? Do you have ideas about how to make it better?

Review: Cairn of the Winter King (Monster Vault adventure)

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Tonight I finished running my family through the Cairn of the Winter King adventure from the Monster Vault. Overall, they seemed to really enjoy the adventure, even more than Reavers of Harkenwold. Of course, this is a party of players who can best be described as Slayers – they want to fight monsters and take their stuff, rather than spending a lot of time on story and such.

We ran this adventure over the course of three sessions, spanning about 12 hours of play. We played the game via MapTool and Skype (my brother in law and sister in law live in Texas while my wife and I live in Colorado). If you’re looking for the MapTool file we used, you can find it here. If you’re looking for my version of the adventure maps, those are here.

Like Reavers of Harkenwold, Cairn of the Winter King is rather non-linear, though for different reasons. Reavers involved political wrangling, traveling around an overland region performing tasks for various groups (in whatever order the party wished) in order to gain their help against an evil overlord before engaging in a big battle and an assault on the overlord’s keep. Cairn, by contrast, is a traditional dungeon delve in which the party is free to explore in any direction they wish. They can run into the various encounters in a variety of orders (though certain encounters are likely to come up later simply by being farther from the entrance).

SPOILERS AHEAD

Critical review

The skill challenge of flying the ship was well done. I like skill challenges that use scenes like this.

There were some cool set piece battles in the adventure, particularly against the tiefling lieutenant in a room with fiery forges. The fight against the gnome illusionists and the otyugh was also quite cool. I also liked the kitchen fight, where the transmuter could slide PCs over to the otyugh’s pit and occasionally turn a character into a piglet or a newt or whatever came to my mind (though this attack seldom worked).

I appreciated that the adventure allowed for some alternatives to combat, although I would have liked a little more discussion of how to handle the Winter King encounter for a party that simply gives him the Scepter and tries to leave (this wasn’t fully explained in the written text).

I wasn’t happy with the extended rest situation. It’s clear that the party is expected to take at least one extended rest and likely two while inside the dungeon, but at the same time there are patrols walking the halls. How do the patrols not find them? Also, technically PCs aren’t allowed an extended rest unless they’ve been adventuring for many hours. That just doesn’t happen here.

Players who want a lot of story probably won’t enjoy Cairn of the Winter King. Players who like cool fights and dungeon exploration will love it.

Narrative review

Cairn of the Winter King begins with the party visiting Fallcrest in the Nentir Vale, where it’s discovered that the whole region (and beyond) has been gripped by an unnatural and vicious winter for weeks. During a meeting to discuss what to do, a dragon-headed ship full of undead creatures flies out of the sky and the creatures start attacking villagers. The dragon head demands the Ice Scepter, and it is soon discovered to have been stolen by a half-elf passing through the area. The adventurers are to take the Scepter, board the dragon ship and fly to the lair of the Winter King to convince him to end the endless winter.

My party grabbed the Scepter and flew off without worrying about bringing the half-elf or anyone else. A skill challenge to pilot the ship to the Winter King’s lair followed. I enjoyed this particular skill challenge, since it’s presented as various scenes that the characters can respond to as they see fit (endure a hailstorm, fix a torn line, etc.). I much prefer this over static skill challenges that say things like, “The PCs must pilot the magical ship. Primary skills include Nature, Athletics, Endurance…”

Once they arrived at the lair, they saw the Cairn itself – a frozen pile of skulls that stands over a cave entrance. The first dungeon combat followed, against a big man who claimed to be the Winter King and who invited the PCs in for a feast. It was soon revealed that there was much illusion in the room – the man’s hunting hounds were Dire Wolves, his attendant was a gnome illusionist, and the feast table was actually covered with dead bodies. A fight broke out, which almost killed my PCs (scaling things intended for a quintet of level 4 PCs down to a trio of level 5 PCs is tricky for me). The gnome escaped, and the party decided they needed a rest, so they bedded down in the comfy beds in this first chamber. They had some bad nightmares, which were supposed to have a negative effect in future battles, but which I let slide.

From there, the party began exploring the lair. They came upon some wraiths that badly hurt them, followed by a run-in with a pair of gnome illusionists who claimed to be the Winter Queen and her attendant. Once the ruse was revealed, the gnomes attacked along with a zombie and a pet owlbear. This encounter was a lot of fun, as the gnomes made triplicates of themselves when they were thinking about fleeing (but the PCs beat them down anyway).

After this battle, the PCs heard some footsteps in the hallway and found themselves fighting a guard patrol (a relatively quick battle). They decided to try to take another long rest after this fight, going back to the beds in the first chamber. I allowed it, even though they really hadn’t been adventuring long enough at this point. After the second rest in the cursed beds, they found themselves suffering a -2 penalty to attack rolls in future battles.

That next battle was in the lair’s kitchen, fighting a human transmuter, a dwarf brawler, and an otyugh in a garbage pit. The transmuter was happy to chat for a while, but when the party was unwilling to just hand over the Scepter he started fighting them. His area burst slide ability was useful for moving the PCs next to the otyugh’s pit, at which point the tentacled beast started feasting on the warpriest. Yum! The party did ultimately prevail with good teamwork (eventually).

Wanting to eliminate the nightmare effect, the party had to take an extended rest elsewhere, but this time I ruled that they hadn’t been adventuring long enough. They decided to just hang out for a few hours in an alchemist’s chamber they had found, which I ruled would get rid of the -2 to attack rolls but not let them recover any surges or daily powers.

Next up was an encounter with a dragon. The frozen dragon had an ice key on a rope around his neck, and the PCs had already found an icy temple door with a ghostly dwarf trying to get them to unlock it. They snagged the key and then turned to fight the now-unfrozen dragon. Eventually they worked their way to the icy door during the fight and used the key, at which point the key melted. Some negotiation with the dragon followed (fortunately, two of the three PCs spoke Draconic) and they convinced the dragon that he could find better food by leaving the dungeon and hunting outside.

From here, the party found a room filled with frozen traps, but they were too nervous to enter. Instead, they explored a ruined library, and the warpriest was excited to discover a potion that would allow her to breathe fire for an encounter. THAT was a big hit in the next battle, where an ettin and two barbarians faced the party in a hallway. This battle normally would have taken place in the trap room, but since the party skipped that room I decided to have the bad guys jump them elsewhere.

At this point the party had gone through three fights since their last true extended rest, so I allowed them to take another one, after which they faced off against the Winter King’s tiefling lieutenant and his ogre and blazing skeleton allies. The party loved discovering that they could dip their weapons into the blue flames of the forge in this room to make them deal extra damage – that was another big hit. They happened to totally rock this battle, too, with only the warpriest taking any damage.

Discovering a fire key on a chain around the tiefling’s neck, the swordmage brought out a javelin and hooked the key’s chain around the end of it (the key was hot and would burn anyone who held it for long) and took it to the temple door that had previously been unlocked with the dragon’s ice key. The temple was filled with ice, but the ice had a keyhole that perfectly suited the fire key, which evaporated the ice. The ghost of the dwarf priest in this room bowed to the party and gave the warpriest back the two healing surges she had lost while fighting the tiefling before fading away in peace.

At this point, the party explored the remaining empty chambers and even tried getting into the vault beyond the trap room (none of them spoke dwarven, so they couldn’t figure out the puzzle) before finally entering the Winter King’s chamber (listening at the door revealed some spooky whispers, so they saved that room for last).

The hunter and warpriest navigated the icy bridge with no trouble, but the swordmage fell off twice. Finally, the warpriest walked up to the frozen skeleton in the throne and slipped the ice scepter into its hand…

Whereupon the Winter King burst from his ice and commanded the PCs to kneel before him. They refused to kneel and tried to reason with him, explaining that they just wanted him to end the winter and let them go. The Winter King spent a few rounds threatening and yelling at the characters, who wisely chose not to attack, instead continuing to talk to him. They got to the icy skeleton after a while (winning the skill challenge), who commanded them to leave and never come back. The swordmage asked him to melt the icy bridge to make her exit easier, which royally (pun intended) ticked off the Winter King, who threw a bolt of ice at the swordmage as a parting shot. Never ask the Winter King to melt ice!

At this point the magical cold from the outside world began rushing into the Winter King’s lair, and the party hightailed it out of there, hopped on the now-icy dragon ship and flew back to Fallcrest. The winter was over – mission accomplished.

As I said, the group had fun with the adventure. Give my party lots of fights and they’ll be happy. A story-loving party might not have as much fun, but there was nifty stuff for most types of players in the Cairn of the Winter King.

Running my third homemade D&D4e adventure at the FLGS

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Woo hoo – I finally got to run the third adventure in my Staff of Suha trilogy tonight! (Adventure one and adventure two have been previously published.) I ran it as a MyRealms game at my friendly local game store. This was the inaugural run of the adventure, so it’s still a work in progress, but it was so much fun.

First, I should mention that my players were awesome. I had a father and son at the table whom I’ve played with before (I love multi-generational gaming families). I had a new player who was playing his third game of D&D ever – super nice guy.

And I had a husband and wife pair; I had met the husband a few weeks ago at D&D Encounters when he was a brand new player, and I managed to kill off his character in that first session. We’ve kept in touch, and his wife was excited about playing, too. The wife made homemade gluten-free cookies for me and my wife (who’s allergic to gluten) to thank me for helping with their characters and getting them into the game tonight. How sweet is that? I really, really like this couple, and I’m hoping that I’m making some new friends here.

Anyway, the adventure itself started off with a little exposition, then moved into the first action scene. I won’t go into too much detail here; I’ll put up a full post about the adventure itself once it’s polished (after I run it at Tacticon over Labor Day weekend). Suffice it to say that the first battle began with the PCs in total darkness. I forgot some of the abilities I had given to the leader of that fight, but it was still a good battle. Lots of PCs were bloodied, but none fell unconscious. The party interrogated the leader, who gave them some information but then died in anguish (he evidently said too much). And the party discovered one of the three artifacts they were seeking.

We had some exploration after that. This was technically a skill challenge, though I’m running it as several scenes that each have their own success and failure consequences. I really, really liked this approach, and the way that the PCs worked together. I’m getting farther away from the formal skill challenge structure and closer to just scenes that use skills. This particular challenge consists of three scenes, followed by a combat encounter, followed by the final scene.

The second combat encounter began with some sneaking and spying and conversation, but erupted into battle when the assassin in the party had to be true to his nature and took a swing at a bad guy.

I skipped the final skill challenge scene because we were running way short on time, and just threw the PCs into the final battle with fewer minions than I originally planned. I was pleased that the party took advantage of two different terrain effects in this battle, and even though I forgot about a mini skill challenge that was supposed to be running during the boss battle, it was a cool fight. The boss wasn’t quite as interesting as I had hoped, but he wasn’t bad.

Enemy lair with ziggurat and magma river - no grid

I ultimately had to end the battle early because the store was closing, so I declared victory for the PCs and called it a night.

Lessons learned:

  • I need to shrink some of the encounter maps. One map has some terrain effects that work in blast areas; an overly-large map encourages the monsters to spread out too much, making the terrain effects less attractive.
  • Minions that explode upon death are fun, but only in moderation. I think my second battle is overdoing it. Maybe I’ll make them non-minions and have fewer of them.
  • If I’m going to give the PCs cool magic items to use during the adventure, I don’t want it to be too hard for them to figure out what the items do. I think I’ll have this auto-succeed during a rest (I was previously requiring an Arcana check).
  • Players are easily tempted by treasure. If you dangle something valuable-looking just out of reach (literally, in this case), they will move heaven and earth to get it.
  • Having an in-game time limit does a nice job of ramping up the tension (and provides an incentive not to take back-to-back short rests to maximize healing powers).

I hope to run this adventure once for my home game players before Tacticon. Once I feel that it’s polished, I plan to release it on the blog, and then I plan to release the whole trilogy (edited and updated) as a single big adventure. I’d like to make it look a little bit pretty, too, and I’d be willing to pay for some help with layout and maybe even commission some artwork. Does anyone have suggestions on this sort of thing? How do I find and hire a freelance layout person?

Missing D&D Encounters already

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Tonight begins the new season of D&D Encounters… and I’m not running a game. The story behind this is twofold.

First, my wife and I are in a bowling league on Wednesday nights. The league starts up on August 31, so I won’t be able to run Encounters after that. Thus, I can’t be a regular DM this season (though I will occasionally be a backup, running a 5:00 PM table if the regular DM is not available).

Second, my friendly local game store wasn’t planning to run this season of Encounters until recently, much to my surprise. They’ve been running Encounters every season so far, and I thought things had been going well, but with Lair Assault starting soon the store owner was planning to just run that and skip Encounters. He changed his mind when the Encounters players last week got upset that there wouldn’t be a game.

So, he belatedly ordered materials for this season of Encounters, but they haven’t arrived yet. We’ll probably be running the first two encounters in a single session next week.

Has anyone else seen a store that was dropping Encounters in favor of Lair Assault? I was shocked when I heard this suggestion, since they’re aimed at completely different groups (casual and new players versus hard-core optimizers).

GenCon 2011: Afterword

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GenCon is now over, for real. And I’m okay with that. I had a ton of fun, and if I were living GenCon every day it wouldn’t be as special.

I’m writing this particular post from my room at the Marriott – my wife and I decided to stay Sunday night and go home to Colorado on Monday. This was a good way to do it, since we were able to enjoy all of Sunday without having to worry about checking out of our hotel or scrambling to catch a flight or anything like that.

It also meant that I was able to do some gaming Sunday night. I put out a call on Twitter to see if anyone was around the Marriott post-Con and wanted to play some games, and I ended up playing a fun game of Smallworld Underground and having a nice dinner with four new Canadian friends. Cool people, cool game, and good food.

Quick-hit thoughts from GenCon

  • The RPG blog reading community loves GenCon. I got a lot of traffic on my blog during the Con. I’m glad you liked reading what I had to say!
  • The RPG blog reading community especially loved reading my detailed notes about the Wizards of the Coast New Products Seminar on Saturday. I’m not surprised, really, but my normal daily traffic is 200-400 hits per day; Saturday and Sunday had nearly 1,500.
  • True Dungeon is a must-experience part of GenCon. It costs $38 per person, but it’s worth it. And the token-trading community around it is amazing!
  • Watching all of the costumed attendees is a ton of fun. They’re clearly proud of the work they put into the outfits, and they all seemed happy to pose for pictures (though I personally wasn’t in picture-taking mode).
  • I think the way to try out RPGs you’ve never played before at GenCon is to sign up for a session in advance, which is a little disappointing. I was hoping to stumble into someone looking for another player for old-school D&D, Traveller, Dresden Files, Fiasco, etc., but it never happened.
  • Staying at a hotel connected to the convention center isn’t cheap, but if you can afford it, it’s money well spent. I loved not having to drag a heavy bag with me at all times, since it was easy to drop stuff off and pick stuff up back at the room.
  • Getting food at the convention was not the problem I feared it would be. The sit-down restaurants even a couple of blocks from the Con were able to seat us quickly every time, and if we went, say, 5 or 6 blocks away we pretty much had the place to ourselves. There’s no real place to buy groceries, though (I was glad I took care of this on Tuesday when I was staying on the north side of town for work).
  • The temptation to game late into the night was easy for me to resist, as I really enjoy a good night’s sleep. Had I given in to that temptation I probably would have had miserable days of exhaustion. Heading back to the hotel around midnight worked well for me.
  • Twitter is beautifully suited to GenCon. Being able to send out a quick blast to find people for a pick-up game is great. It’s also a good way to find out the location of people you want to meet.
  • I really enjoyed getting to meet so many members of the RPG blogging and podcasting community, and I wish I had met more. I at least said brief hellos to NewbieDM, Jeff Greiner, Mike Shea, Tracy Hurley, Thaddeous Cooper, Randall Walker, Ameron from Dungeon’s Master, BrainClouds, and Matt James. I also met Morrus and PirateCat from EN World and some other EN Worlders. I missed out on meeting Ryan “RangerWickett” Nock, which I horribly regret, but I never knew where he was.
  • Meeting folks like Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Rob Thompson and Mike Robles from WotC was pretty cool, too.
  • Running into a friend from California who I hadn’t realized would be there was awesome, and he had two other awesome friends with him. Good stuff.

Clarifications

I also wanted to post some follow up comments about the D&D New Products Seminar from Friday. First, I did do a little light editing before I sent it live (a quick read-through to correct a few typos or unclear sentences, plus adding a little bold facing to the various new announcements); I wasn’t planning to do that when I wrote the intro, but decided I really ought to do a basic amount.

Second, I wanted to add some clarifications after a post on Greyhawkery to which I responded in the post’s comments. Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium is intended to only be available to game stores, though those stores themselves are allowed to sell it online. However, Mike Mearls did say something about Amazon being able to buy it, but this part was really unclear. I think the intention is to make it so that Amazon et al are not able to offer the book at a massive discount relative to what hobby stores charge, but it wasn’t clear how they were going to do that.

Also, Greyhawkery offered speculation that next year’s setting will be Council of Wyrms. I wasn’t familiar with that setting, but he linked to a post from NewbieDM in which the original was unboxed. From having sat in the room at the WotC seminar, I agree that Council of Wyrms would fit their description of next year’s setting.

Thank you – come again!

So, thank you everyone for reading my GenCon posts. If you have questions about any of it, please let me know. And I’m always happy to have more readers for my usual talk about running games online, creating maps, using a projector setup with MapTool and so on. Comment, email, etc. – I appreciate the feedback!

GenCon 2011 Day 3: D&D New Products Seminar

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I just left the D&D New Products seminar here at GenCon, and I took copious notes during the two-hour discussion. It was about 35 minutes of prepared remarks from Mike Mearls, James Wyatt and Brian Thompson, followed by an hour and fifteen minutes of Q&A, followed by a 10 minute section at the end where they talked about their plans to bring back minis – non-randomized.

The text below is rather unedited, but I thought time was of the essence on this one. Here you go! If you have specific questions that aren’t clear from my notes, go ahead and drop them in the comments.

D&D New Products Seminar – August 6, 2011, 10:00 AM

9:48: In the room, just met Jeff Greiner. My Marriott guest room internet doesn’t work here, so I’ll be taking notes and putting up a blog post afterward.

9:49: The WotC folks have a Dragon Collector Set on the table in front of them. I have no idea if that’s new or old since I don’t do minis; I’m guessing new.

9:49: Ah, Jeff Greiner and Tracy Hurley are here to record the Tome Show. Cool, they’ll be putting it up online afterward! If my notes are lousy, that’s okay.

9:53: The microphone that the Tome Show folks have set up for recording is very professional-looking (no surprise there). Big honking old-fashioned radio look with a THX logo on the side. Pretty!

9:56: Chatting with a nice fellow and his wife next to me. They’re here from Toronto and say that Dungeons and Dragons bailed them out at the border crossing when they were selected for extra screening. The agents asked why they were coming to the US, and they explained GenCon. An agent said, “Ah, you must play Border agents aren’t worried about people who are obviously non-threatening nerds like us!

9:59: Sitting next to Ameron from Dungeon’s Master. Awesome! I didn’t even have to try to find a blogger that I admire this time, he just happened to sit down next to me.

10:00: Matt James is on the other side of me. It’s like I’m around people I sort of know!

10:01: Doors are closed. Off we go!

10:01: Mike Mearls, James Wyatt, Brian Thompson. Mike Robles is apparently an afterthought. He’s live-tweeting.

10:03: James: Novels.

–          Neverwinter in October (Salvatore)

–          Charon’s Claw next year (Salvatore)

–          Brimstone Angels by Erin Evans in November

–          Cold Steel and Secrets by Rosemary Jones – serial e-novella starts in October or November (99 cents per installment e-book)

10:04: It’s all fun and games once someone loses an eye… a comment from James about a potential fight for the 11 bookmarks they have to give away.

10:05: Abyssal Plague novels. Ends in April 2012 with The Eye of the Chained God by Don Bassingthwaite. I honestly don’t follow these novels in the slightest, so I know nothing about them.

10:08: Eric Scott de Bie sitting behind me cheered for his own book, Shadowbane.

10:09: They’re trying to get e-books out as the same time as the physical books. Also working through their backlist at about 3 novels per week to release as e-books.

10:10: More books, too, on top of the ones already mentioned.

10:10: Rodney Thompson – board games and “tabletop” which is non-RPG games. He’s a fast talker!

10:10: Recap of Conquest of Nerath. Rodney is enthused.

10:11: “Adventure System Games” are Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt. They try to focus on interconnectivity. Peter Lee, a designer of the game, is here previewing the game at GenCon. You play heroes from the Drizzt novels. New classes like the archer. Sees this as “maturation of the system”.

10:14: Mike Mearls. Dungeon of Dread announced for December release… canceled now. They felt it wasn’t up to snuff. Tied into their desire to minimize errata.

10:15: Lords of Waterdeep. Euro-style board game coming out next year. Competitive game of intrigue set in Waterdeep. You’re a lord of Waterdeep, recruiting adventurers for quests, backstabbing / cooperating with other lords. Pretty cover art! Started on the game train last year with a conversation with Peter Lee. There are dice, cards, tiles. March of 2012 is the aim for release. Square coins and crescent coins. Old 2nd edition Forgotten Realms sourcebook used this image for Waterdhavian coins, so they made them for the game. Relies heavily on Volo’s (?) Guide to Waterdeep.

10:18: They want to expand their board games into all sorts of areas.

10:18: Mike Mearls. Roleplaying games – here are their next six months or so.

10:19: Neverwinter – released here at the convention.  Campaign setting book. Character themes are written to tie to story hooks in the DM book. Try to integrate character creation and campaign creation. Game day is today, of course. They’re focusing on integration – things fitting together.

10:21: Madness at Gardmore Abbey super-adventure. Poster maps, monster tokens, Deck of Many Things. James prefers the term “deluxe adventure”. 32 pages more text than the folio adventures. Covers 3 levels of play. Extra book adds tons of story – quests, patrons, villains with agendas. Open-ended adventure. Tried to create options other than combat for encounters (don’t have to, you know, slaughter the nymphs).

10:22: Mearls says they’re listening to feedback, trying to be less railroady with their adventures.

10:23: The Deck of Many Things is scattered at the start of the adventure. Villains who have cards might have extra power from there. Encounters that have cards in them have extra random effects going on.

10:23: 4 32 page books. 2 battlemaps. Comes with Dungeon Tiles, too. 24 card Deck of Many Things. Treasure cards…?

10:24: Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium – the back-from-the-dead book. Greg Bilsland runs playtesters internally and externally. It’s a “core exclusive” only available at game stores. Items are attached to the rarity system. Character options for flails. Mundane armor. Followers and henchmen rules. So, not just magic items – a book of “anything you could buy”.

10:26: Lair Assault launches in September. Forge of the Dawn Titan. 5th level characters. DM apparently gets some control over the encounters – where to place the bad guys. It’s for powergamers (Mearls’s words). December: Talon of Umberleaf is the second adventure.

10:27: First adventure is fiery dungeon. Second is a pirate theme, finding an artifact on derelict ships. DM gets some control of changing things up in each run-through. Third Lair Assault is Attack of the Tyrant Claw by Matt James. Tower defense game – dinosaurs rush your camp. Matt, shockingly, is enthusiastic. It’s more puzzly.

10:29: Limited edition dragon set. 5 chromatic dragons. New sculpts for White and Green. Comes out in October. Similar to the beholders from last year.

10:29: Encounters. Neverwinter next, then the Feywild – Player’s Option Heroes of the Feywild. Encounter based on UK1 Crystal Cave adventure – Beyond the Crystal Cave. Fortune Cards – Fury of the Feywild. There will be a PC race that can fly from 1st level. New barbarian build is a dual-role class. Defender when not raging, striker when he is.

10:31: Fortune cards will help characters with fey origins or backgrounds.

10:31: December and March – new Dungeon Tiles. Shadowghast Manor (haunted house) then Cathedral of Chaos (including diagonal cards Mearls described as allowing Gygaxian chambers). Since the Essentials box sets are kept in print now, these can be more specialized.

10:32: Map packs starting in January. Some from previous adventures. 2 new. Priced at $11.95

10:33: Book of Vile Darkness – December. By Robert Schwalb. Allows for playing evil campaigns. DM advice for making an interesting campaign with evil PCs. 32 page facsimile of the Book of Vile Darkness itself. 96 pages of player/DM info, double-sided poster map.

10:34: February Encounters – The Elder Elemental Eye. Player’s Option: Power of the Plane Below. Fortune Cards: Spiral of Tharizdun. Essentialized Sorcerer (Mearls’ words). Monk option of some sort. Tharizdun-based conspiracy. More investigation – not like Call of Cthulhu where you just die from your investigation. Tied to Eye of the Chained Gods novels in April.

10:35: Undermountain Adventure. Yawning Portal tavern map is all they can show. 80 encounter areas in Undermountain. The adventures then talk about how the PCs might get involved in these things. Little hooks. Random dungeon generator to use. Poster map of first level is on reverse side of Yawning Portal. Comes out in April.

Q&A begins

Question: Elemental Sorcerer. It will go alongside existing builds, like Slayer, not a Class Compendium replacement. Monk is just a new build.

Q: Book of Vile Darkness – will it be as “adult themed”? A: Not really. No “adult only” sticker, standard art.

Q: Emporium – any rituals? Q: Don’t think so. Mearls: People aren’t using rituals at low level, and at high level they’re too cheap. Mearls would like to introduce scaling rituals (more money, more power).  Also faster to cast rituals (1-5 minutes – still outside of battle).

Q: E-books format? 3 formats – Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader. Not in Apple iBooks yet (James).

Q: Price point on e-books? A: Same MSRP as paperback/hardcover. E-book retailers discount this typically. Re-releases? $7.99 MSRP, discounted by retailers to around $6.39

Q: What are the class builds in Heroes of Feywild? A: Rodney was lead designer. Barbarian dual-role. New bard build focused on wandering storyteller. Druid build. Several themes – agent of Unseeley Fey, Sidhe Lord, etc. Want options for being from the Feywild or living near a fey crossing. Sidhe Lord theme gives you a permanent companion character – guard of noble house.

Q: Next year’s campaign setting? A: Mearls – not yet ready to talk about it. They’ve intentionally pulled back their timeline a little. Don’t like announcing stuff before it’s really ready and then canceling it. Don’t want to create expectations they can’t meet or create confusion. Essentials – they don’t think that was handled great in this respect. There WILL be another campaign-style book next August, similar to Neverwinter this year. Undermountain is 100% go – in final editing. Slated for April.

Q: DDI, Virtual Table. A: Mearls. Digital team is completely separate from these guys. Don’t want to get ahead of themselves. It’s complex. There was a DDI seminar on Thursday. Mostly talking about articles, though, not tools. They’re looking at feedback online and delivering it via DDI (strength cleric, adventures for epic). Fast turnaround for digital – 3 months start to finish. Physical is slower. They want physical products to be more luxurious and solid. They see 32 page adventures as being less likely to be purchased in physical form.

10:47 Q: Game products to use Abyssal Plague elements? A: There have been DDI articles on this. Stats for demons were in Monster Vault Threats to the Nentir Vale. Mike Shea wrote more on DDI. Encounters season for next spring will tie into this.

10:48 Q: More tokens are in products; have they considered releasing tokens for previously printed monsters? A: They’re doing that with Monster Vault. Asked audience about selling a set of just tokens – surprised by the positive response. $10-$12 probable price point if they did it.

10:49 Q: I’m the guy who wants to play the Runepriest – should I commission content from Mearls directly? A: There’s a new build coming out in October (Kanji? What?) It’s already announced.

10:50 Q: Same question on Seeker. A: They look at what people are playing in DDI. If people aren’t playing a class they want to be careful about how they support it – not just releasing more powers. Want to tie it into flavor or story or something to make it more appealing. Human Fighters are most popular. Also, under-played classes might not get a lot of submissions to DDI. Might get 100 warlock articles but only 5 seeker articles. For popular classes, they tend to wait and see what comes in via submissions.

10:52 Q: From Trevor – different kinds of classes – what’s up with Barbarian / Monk. A: They use AEDU but with “twists”. The first new version of the Monk came in “essentialized” and they decided they preferred it to use the same power structure as PHB3 monk. Ex: With Seeker, they wouldn’t “essentialize” it. (Is this about Monk or Bard or… I’m confused)

10:54 Q: Neverwinter – why a book rather than a box set if it has both player and DM content? A: They like to do a single book for Encounters season (ed: um, but what about Shadowfell?). BoVD is a little different. If they see it getting a lot of use at the table, they tend to go hardcover.

10:56 Q: Confusion over class progression starting with Essentials, going into Vampire… are there resources that might explain to people how to translate? A: Everything is explained in the text. If there’s no table of class features by tier, it works as AEDU. If there’s no table in the class writeup, then go to PH1.

10:57 Q: For next August’s setting, any hints and when will it be announced? A: It’s not Dragonlance. Well, it does have dragons. Tease: “It’s not just a setting, but it’s a way to play. Something that D&D hasn’t tried before.” “Twist” is a good word (James)

10:58 Q: Racial options from Feywild? A: Hamadryad, Satyr, Pixie. The Pixie is the race that can fly, of course. And support for a variety of races tied to the Feywild.

10:59 Q: Wizard that uses elements? A: Themes provide the tie-in to elements. Sorcerer structurally tied to elements. For Wizard, it’s more powers like the Pyromancer – you can use the options, but don’t get locked in. There’s a Shair (?) build for the PH1 Wizard. Al Qadim setting – wizard that has a genie familiar that gets the spells for him. Al Qadim is the kind of thing they would want to do in Dragon/Dungeon first to see how people like it.

11:01 Q: Where are the Legends and Lore articles heading? A: Mearls: I’m just a manager, I don’t actually design stuff anymore (unless something has gone wrong). Mearls has visions of Runepriest players gathering outside theWotC building with protest signs (James – “Both of them!”). Mearls is the guy on top of the mountain – what’s the big picture? They’re a research and development department – where COULD they go? Their job is to look at the other paths they haven’t taken yet, but on the other hand you can’t just push people into the new path – they might hate that. There’s something else to talk about before the session ends (not 5th Edition or anything like that). They need to look at what people want and what will excite them in D&D. We can either say “Here’s what we hear you want.” Or “Here’s something we think you’ll like – surprise!” Doing plastic surgery on a 6 month old you’re babysitting will get a bad reaction; doing their laundry or cleaning the house will get a better reaction as a surprise. With Legends and Lore, he reads the feedback. He re-read every 1 star review of PH1 and also every 5 star review. Acknowledges Pathfinder, that some people could possibly be excited about D&D, but they’re over there in a different room. 2nd Edition didn’t speak to how Mearls played D&D – he liked dungeon crawls. He liked 3rd Edition. He worries that they lectured people with 4th Edition and said, “Here’s how it is now and you’re going to like it.” D&D has to serve the “creators” (us), and if they’re missing on it we won’t just passively consume it. We expect more because we’re creators – we’re much more intellectually engaged with our game than most people are with their games. They can’t dictate to us – they need a dialogue. They need to get back to that trust. If players hate what WotC publishes we’ll stop buying it. Gygax: “Make sure the DMs don’t figure out that they don’t need us.” Yep. With Legends and Lore, they’re trying to get that trust back. Let us know they’re listening.

11:09 Q: Any plans for digital distribution of physical books? A: We’re looking at it, but nothing to announce yet. They know this was problematic.

11:10 Q: Conqest of Nerath board game – any additional start scenarios? A: They want to look hard at how they do expansions because it’s a big investment of $80. No solid plans yet. There’s some great fan stuff on BoardGameGeek and the Wizards forums.

11:11 Q: Any thought of using Conquest of Nerath rules for mass battle rules in the RPG? A: Well, we like the system, but I don’t think we’d use those exact mechanics in the RPG. We’re also looking at ways to do a mass battle game.

11:12 Q: More support for other eras like Sci Fi, Modern? A: Not right now. We’re focused on fantasy. Want to focus on getting back to basics of what we do and improve there.

11:12 Q: Heroes of Shadow tied to shadow source, what about Feywild? A: The power source is a mix. Lots of arcane, but also a strong primal tie.

11:13 Q: Runepriest and Assassin; not a lot of feat support and abilities, but there’s SO much for fighter and wizard when it comes to builds. Little feat support, and what’s there kind of sucks. A: Feats in Essentials are designed to work with that on-ramp. They look at power spectrum but can’t just pay attention to one end. Need balance. Do they need to just power up the “weak” classes? Well, it’s not off the table, but they’re not actively doing anything on it. They do have that concern, though – don’t want entire classes getting pushed out of use. Submissions are a piece of this. Q: What about feats in particular? A: Steve Winter started a thread of “what isn’t working in the game” earlier this year. That’s their to-do list, in some order.

11:17 Q: How much play testing goes into the new books? Has it changed over time? A: Yes, they do more. They have a set of play testers (100 people with NDAs). Doing fewer books on the schedule now, largely so they can have better quality.

11:18 Q: Encounter seasons. Is there any plan to have a break between seasons for things like DDXP, GenCon, Thanksgiving? A: Maybe do character creation between seasons? Chris Tulach knows more, but they’re aware of the problem around holidays and such. They’re looking at it.

11:20 Q: Minis? A: We’ll get to that. “Oooh!”

11:20 Q: Investigative component is a theme of Elder Elemental Eye; is that writing examples of writing skill challenges or actual new mechanics? A: For Encounters they want to keep it simple with established mechanics. For new mechanics it would be in something like Dungeon magazine. If they wanted to do the Inqiusitives from Eberron, it might be in something like Unearthed Arcana.

11:22 Q: Asian or swashbuckler classes? A: Likely to do something like that more with a theme than new classes. More classes will probably lead to unhappy players at this point because of the ongoing support thing. Like the elemental power build for the monk – it’s support, not a new class.

11:23 Q: Races with little support. Some have gotten more support with the update. A: Don’t want to do new races just for the sake of doing new races. Feywild – those three made sense. Elemental book – no new races (he’s pretty sure).

11:24 Q: Digital distribution – opening the vault for novels, what about older editions of the RPG? A: Can’t give specifics (don’t want to say anything until they’re ready to go)… it’s like a band when you like the first 3 albums and when the 4th comes out they destroy the old ones. Not great. They do use the older editions as sources and inspiration for the current edition. 2nd edition had great setting support, for instance. James: If your party is a Wilden Seeker and Shardmind Psion and no dwarf fighter, is it still D&D?

11:27 Q: Can’t buy Mordenkainen’s online? And with PDFs, it’s not that I can’t afford to pay full price, but it’s irking that they charge it. A: Have to keep stores happy – it’s where they get new players. It’s an awkward balance. What about full price for novels? If they want a book store  to charge full price for the physical, how can they sell for 2 bucks? They have to keep authors happy (royalties). Also, there’s some pride – you don’t want to tell creators that their work isn’t worth much money. It’s the broad publishing problem. Mearls buys PDFs from RPG Now, too; not gonna pay $50 for a PDF. They’re really grappling with this. Authors are often nervous about changing their contracts.

11:30 Q: Why not Mordenkainen’s online? A: Some hobby stores do sell online, and they’ll be allowed to sell this. Amazon will be able to order from WotC… (ed: what does this mean?) They want to keep the industry healthy – complex ecosystem.

11:31 Q: Game stores are where new players come – what makes you think that? I never see new players in my store? A: When we see a store that’s having Encounters, they sell more player’s handbooks, etc. Q: What about options outside stores? A: LFR for instance is free. Encounters is special for stores – level of trust with WotC and the stores.

11:33 Q: Two years ago on this panel there was discussion of products for parents playing with kids. Was that Red Box? What about more discussion of having a 9 year old DMing for dad? A: More support may come online – they’re talking about it.

11:33 Q: How about hybrid digital distribution approach – if you own the physical book you can get the electronic version? A: Can’t tell you what exactly this might look like, but there are plans they’re looking at.

11:34 Q: More details on Madness at Gardmore Abbey? A: $39.95, comes out in September. Set in Nentir Vale. Built by order of knights of Bahamut. Dark secrets in its cellars. 3 major patrons – Lord Padriag of Winterhaven, Paladin, Fey lord – they’re the quest givers. There’s some randomization with the deck of many things – which cards come up first might determine which patrons are evil. For levels 6-8? 7-9?

11:36 Q: Eberron themes? A: Nothing announced yet. They’re talking to Keith Baker.

11:37 Q: Generic themes? A: They do some of both. Did some of these in Dragon magazine a couple of months ago (12-16 themes).

11:38 Q: What does “finding a way to support all editions” mean? A: If you’re a fan of D&D, they want you to be a fan of what they’re doing, whatever edition. Why don’t fans like WotC or what they’re doing?

11:39 Q: Newer books have more crunch, which is good, but I need fluff, such as from DDI articles… no way to easily find things like a bunch of Forgotten Realms articles in one place. A: They know that the organization system on their web site is a problem and they’re thinking about it.

11:40 Q: I live 53.7 miles from Encounters store… any thought of making the adventures available something like a year later. A: Ideally we’d do a series in Dungeon that supplies the content. They want to deliver new content. [ed: Seems like a bad dodge to me]

11:42 Q: Big push with video games continuing? A: License with Atari – they’re working on more stuff.

11:42 Q: Could they put in a ranged basic that uses your highest ability score for the Prescient Bard? A: We’ll put it on the list

11:43 Q: Steam releases video games occasionally with a big sale – buy all of the games in this bucket for a good price. If you sell the old novels, might you ever do this kind of thing? A: We did this with an Eberron bookshelf access thing – pay a fee for a year and get access to all of the Eberron stuff. Uh, James – that wasn’t announced yet. (Hilarity ensues.)

11:44 Q: Kara tur – will that be classes or ongoing support or what? A: It’s a one-time thing. Build for Runepriest. Believe there are themes. Setting material. Adventure. Honor system article. They like that they can get good feedback in the forums this way – people are already online and more likely to comment.

11:46 Q: Any chance of, as with Red Box, getting things more widely available in places like Target or Wal Mart? A: Well, we have to design the product specifically for them with packaging sizes and so on. If we do it, you’ll hear about it ahead of time. Maybe with board games.

11:47 Q: Modular character sheet in Builder? A: It’s on the list, but we don’t personally work on that.

11:47 Q: Demogorgon, Lolth, Orcus are cool… when will we see more support for devils? A: We’ll think about it for DDI.

11:48 Q: Do you monitor use of Character Builder options? A: Yes. We don’t just look at the classes and races, we can look a little deeper, but we don’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole where we ONLY support what’s popular. Vampire jumped way up in popularity (number 8?) when Heroes of Shadow came out.

11:49: One More Thing…

11:50: Miniatures. They started in 2003. Interest eventually faded. 9 months ago they decided to stop doing what they were doing. RPGers don’t like randomized miniatures. A random model makes it cheaper per miniatures – some kobolds, goblins, spider… early on people bought a bunch of random stuff. But later, when you already have a lot of stuff, you don’t want to pay to get more stuff that you already have to get a little of what you don’t have.

11:51: Next year they’re going to release non-collectible miniatures in themes (drow, goblins) in sets of 12, including some large. Also a miniatures game on top of this. A board game using these war bands of miniatures. Helps retailers who don’t want to get stuck with the “out” stuff this month.

11:52: Rodney re: the game. The big difference with this new game is that it’s a diceless game. It’s a tactical game where skill is really important. Action cards are the commands you give your units that drive them around the battlefield. Luck comes from cards, but you make more informed decisions after you draw them. Focused on more skill than luck. Made tile placement at the start of the game an important part of the decision-making. Each set comes with miniatures and creature cards for the set, but also some command cards. Sounds like there’s a CCG aspect to it with these command cards.

11:54: Rodney. There will be a public, open play test well in advance, starting in the next couple of months. You can print out the cards online, use your own minis, playtest, and provide feedback. They want us to help them make it a better game.

11:55: The open playtest is a new thing for them. If they’re going to do a big, new thing, they’re going to get our input.

11:56: Playtest is not DDI-only. Information will hopefully be in mid-September on web site. There’s some testing under NDA here at the con. Tiles are 8 by 8, can be used with D&D.

11:57: Will minis be limited edition? Goblins, for instance, should always be available in some form.

11:58: Maybe include stat-block cards D&D style? Don’t want to drive up the cost too much with stuff that’s not miniatures.

11:58: New sculpts? Packs for PC races that haven’t been released yet? Some new sculpts, yes. Going to be hard to do this for fringe stuff.

And that’s it! Afterward I got meet Tracy Hurley, so I’m doing great at meeting the rest of the D&D blogging community so far. Thanks for reading!

SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds – MapTool file

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I felt like I had to share this MapTool file simply because of the sheer insane amount of work I had to put into it.

I agreed to run a “special” Living Forgotten Realms game at my local store today for a charity benefit event. The adventure is SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds. A normal LFR game runs in four hours; this one was scheduled for six, plus an hour break for dinner (4:00 PM to 11:00 PM).

When I first saw the adventure I almost backed out due to the huge amount of prep work I would have to do in MapTool before I could run it with my projector setup. The adventure is cool in that it lets the players have a meaningful choice. Early in the adventure they can choose between two totally different paths. The encounters for each path are completely unrelated to one another, and you could get a legitimately different play experience if you were to repeat the adventure and go in the other direction.

Unfortunately, this means that, as the DM, I needed to prepare a whopping TEN different encounters that the PCs could go through. And half of that effort is going to be wasted on any given play-through, since the party can only take one path.

I decided to use the map images provided in the adventure PDF this time. I had to do the work to erase the markings for monster starting positions and PC starting positions, but I’m getting fairly adept at that. Then I had to create tokens for each monster.

Making matters more complicated is the fact that this is a season 3 adventure for LFR, which means it can be run at any of five different adventure levels – 12, 14, 16, 18, 20. In most cases the adventure uses the same monsters throughout (just leveling them up or down), but there are a few battles where the monsters for level 12-14 are different from the monsters for levels 16-20, for instance. And there’s almost no instances where a monster is used in more than one fight, so I had to create a crapload of unique tokens.

The work is done and the adventure is now over. If anyone out there ever runs this adventure in MapTool, you’re welcome. I’ve done the work for you.

Note that this campaign file was created in version 1.3.b66 of MapTool.

Download the PDF of the adventure here.

Download the MapTool file here.