Author Archives: Michael the OnlineDM

TactiCon 2011 – CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way

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CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way – Spoilers Follow

I ran three sessions of CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way at TactiCon 2011 – Thursday evening, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. My biggest worry was that there wouldn’t be enough players for the Sunday morning game, thus denying me the Iron Man achievement, but no worries there – I had a full table. Actually, the Thursday evening table was the only non-full table I ran all weekend (only four players). Saturday morning’s table actually had seven players!

I hadn’t run this adventure before TactiCon, but by the end I was quite a natural with it. It’s a fun little adventure, where the party has to track a missing caravan into the feywild, dealing with a thieving elf who accidentally got the caravan into trouble. They rescue the captive drivers and caravan workers from gnomes who were planning to deliver them as slaves to some eladrin – and then fight off the eladrin as they try to escape from the feywild.

The first table decided to take a different approach to the final encounter. Rather than dashing for the portal out of the feywild, they decided to literally circle the wagons and shelter in place. No problem – I adapted the existing maps I’d prepared in MapTool, and they fought from within the wagon circle.

The second table, with seven players, had four people who had never played LFR before. As my regular readers know, I LOVE introducing new people to D&D, so this was a great time for me. The highlight was when one player, having thrown his only (non-magical) dagger at a foe in an earlier round, decided to try to take out the enemy by springing off one standing stone to kick the bad guy off another stone. Good Athletics and Acrobatics led to success, with the PC standing atop the stone and the bad guy prone at its foot, taking decent falling damage, after which he was soon dispatched. Awesome.

The third table had my friend Nate as a player (yay!) as well as a father-son pair who had approached me on Thursday or Friday, admiring my projector setup and asking about the game. I told them that the Saturday morning and Sunday morning games would be ideal for new players, so they signed up!

This was a solid little adventure, and I could see using it as a good introductory adventure for new players in the future. Also, I found myself using character voices in this adventure – something I don’t usually do much of as a DM. The thieving elf Harelahur somehow developed his own voice, which I think made the players feel a bit sympathetic toward him (they all let him run away instead of turning him over to the authorities at the end). The cold eladrin leader’s voice was fun to do, too. I’m not usually a big “voices” guy, but I could see doing a little more here than I have in the past, if the character is right for it.

TactiCon 2011 – SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds

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SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds – Spoilers follow

I’ve already written extensively about my experience running this adventure at TactiCon. In a nutshell, it was a mostly-fun paragon tier adventure that my party decided to take on at a high challenge level. This came back to bite them in the final encounter against a hydra, which they eventually had to retreat from. This meant that they received a negative story award, which left them with a lousy feeling about the game. And it led to my only non-perfect DM evaluation scores of the convention (two people gave me a 9 out of 10).

I did learn later that the hydra’s attacks and defenses and damage should not have been scaled upward by 1 according to the adventure, so I made a mistake there (but the boss monster in the other adventure branch does have instructions to adjust his attacks and defenses and damage, so it was an understandable confusion on my part). And ultimately I should have changed whatever seemed unfun to me as we went along at the table (a lesson I took to heart in the last game I ran a the convention).

I guess I’ll have to shoot for perfect scores next time instead. 🙂

TactiCon 2011 is in the books

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And on the fifth day, OnlineDM rested.

TactiCon 2011 started Thursday evening at 6:00 and wrapped up Sunday evening at 6:00. 72 hours from open to close for me (plus a little extra time at the end for the DM appreciation ceremony). I spent 36 of those hours at the game table, running games.

And I had a blast!

I got some dubious looks when I said I wanted to Iron Man the con (running games the whole time), but I can honestly say that I came out of it feeling energized, not exhausted. I did run a little short on sleep over the course of the convention (I had a 30 minute drive each way, so that cut into my sleep time a bit), and I’ll admit that I feel asleep at 9:00 PM last night and slept until 8:00 this morning, but I wasn’t getting headaches or feeling drained or anything like that.

Ultimately, TactiCon was a lot of fun. I was running games at tables in more public areas for most of this convention (in the past I’ve often been in individual hotel rooms), which meant that a lot more people got to see my MapTool / projector setup in action. It was a great feeling to have people stop by to say how cool they thought it was, or to ask questions about how they could build something similar themselves. Some of them even brought friends back later to show my setup off to them.

I’m looking forward to the next convention!

Individual game recaps

I’ve decided to break my detailed recaps into separate posts, rather than putting it all in one massive post. The links to those posts are below.

Lost on the Golden Way (Thursday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning)

MyRealms adventures (all day Friday)

Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds (Saturday afternoon and evening)

Need to Know (Sunday afternoon)

Annoyed at SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds

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I’m most of the way through my attempt to Iron Man TactiCon (I’m running nine slots – 36 hours of games over a 72-hour period). I’ve had a lot of fun, and I’m especially pleased that the adventures I wrote myself were well-received on Friday.

This afternoon and evening (Saturday) I ran a two-slot game of SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds. This is a paragon-level adventure, and I ran it with a party of mostly 11th level characters and a couple of 13th level characters. They chose to run it at level 14 (so yes, they opted for extra challenge).

It was a fun and challenging adventure for the first four hours, and when we came back from our dinner break we went into the last encounter.

It was silly-hard. Spoilers follow.

In the particular path my party chose, the adventurers have to fight against a hydra and two spore demons at the end. The spore demons were mildly annoying, but not much of a real threat. The hydra was insane.

It can’t be flanked, much to the frustration of the two rogues in the party.

It makes ranged attacks without provoking attacks of opportunity.

It has threatening reach in a 2-square radius (on a Huge creature).

It gets two free attacks against any PC that ends its turn within 2 squares.

Now, the PCs had spent a lot of resources in the next-to-last encounter, and only two of the six of them had action points for the last battle. There weren’t too many daily powers left (though there definitely were some).

The party had a really hard time with this battle, and they eventually retreated and declared defeat.

My annoyance comes in that, by running the adventure as written, I made the players have a less-good time than they otherwise would have. The final battle ended in defeat, and the party got a negative story award because of it (it makes them more vulnerable to diseases in the future). It was pretty miserable at the end.

And I have to admit that part of my annoyance is that two of the six players docked me a point on the GM evaluation sheet for the question, “How much fun did you have?” I still got great scores, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care about the awesome possibility of getting perfect scores while Iron Manning the con. I really wanted that, and I failed.

Ultimately, this is on me. When the adventure as written has unfun things happening, I should deviate. I should follow my own judgment, and I didn’t. I should have had the hydra spread his attacks around more, rather than focus on one PC until it drops as the adventure says it should do. I could have changed things so that the hydra’s ranged attacks at least provoked opportunity attacks, or made it so that it only got a single bite attack against PCs that end their turns near it.

But I didn’t make any of those changes, and my players had less than optimal fun because of it. This doesn’t mean that every fight has to be a victory for the party, but if something feels unfair and I have the ability to change it, I should change it! I didn’t, and my players had less fun because of it.

Lesson learned. If something seems unfun, change it.

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?

TactiCon 2011 approaches!

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I live in the Denver area. The Denver Gamers Association hosts two gaming conventions each year. The bigger one is Genghis Con, held over Presidents’ Day weekend in the winter. TactiCon is held over Labor Day weekend in late summer. This means that it’s time for TactiCon 2011!

My first gaming convention ever was TactiCon 2010, where I ended up running three Living Forgotten Realms adventures and playing in six others. I had a blast. When Genghis Con 2011 rolled around, I once again ran some adventures (one of which I had written myself), played in a few LFR games, and tried my hand at GURPS, Savage Worlds and Call of Cthulhu.

I’ve had so much fun running games at these conventions that I decided I wanted to try to Iron Man TactiCon 2011. I’m running games in all nine slots. That’s 36 hours of DMing over the course of three days. 12 hours a day. Wow.

I’m happy to say that I’m mostly ready. I have completely finished preparing the adventures for eight of the nine slots already in MapTool (for use with my projector setup), and I’m part of the way done with the ninth (I should finish this afternoon). This will leave me with time to polish the three adventures I’m running that I’ve written myself, get props and handouts together, get pre-generated characters on hand, re-read each adventure, etc. I’m taking Thursday off work (even though the convention doesn’t start until the evening), so I’ll have one more full day to do some prep work before the point of no return.

For those of you who will actually be at TactiCon and would like to play at my table, here is the schedule of the games I’m running (all of them D&D 4th Edition Living Forgotten Realms):

  • Thursday evening: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
  • Friday morning: MYRE 3-1 The Staff of Suha (written by me)
  • Friday afternoon: MYRE 3-1 Tallinn’s Tower (written by me)
  • Friday evening: MYRE 3-1 Descent Into Darkness (written by me)
  • Saturday morning: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
  • Saturday afternoon and evening: SPEC 3-2 Roots of Corruption – Dark Seeds (two slots)
  • Sunday morning: CORE 2-4 Lost on the Golden Way
  • Sunday afternoon: LURU 2-4 Need to Know

I’ve run the three MYRE adventures before (obviously) as well as the two-slot SPEC event. I’m done prepping CORE 2-4, and I’m working on LURU 2-4 today.

Am I nuts? Maybe, but I think I’m going to have fun! I’ll be exhausted afterward, but that’s why I’ll have Monday to recuperate (Labor Day).

Free art: Numeric runes

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There’s a puzzle in my third adventure (to be released after I run it at TactiCon next Friday) that involves numbers. The puzzle itself is optional and could be handled with skill checks, but I decided to go ahead and make it a true puzzle for those players who enjoy that sort of thing.

And since this is D&D, just throwing a set of numbers out there didn’t seem like enough. Yes, I’ll give the Arabic numeral version of the puzzle to parties who don’t want to deal with extra complexity, but I decided to use runes to represent the numbers 1 through 8.

Now, I don’t know anything about runes and wasn’t quite sure how to find runes to represent numbers, so I decided to just create my own. I’m not an especially artistic person, but I figured I’d be up to the task of making simple linear runes.

To make them more decipherable, the number of pen strokes in each rune corresponds to its number. So, the rune for the number 6 has six strokes.

Feel free to use these at your own table, and let me know if you have any suggestions to improve them!

Rune 1

Rune 2

Rune 3

Rune 4

Rune 5

Rune 6

Rune 7

Rune 8

No more Pathfinder for now

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I’m officially done with my first Pathfinder campaign after just three sessions. I would have liked to have continued playing, but other things interfered.

The big one is that my wife’s health has not been good, and she just needs me around more. I have to cut back on gaming time, and since this was my newest campaign it was the obvious choice to cut first. I’ve also cut way back on Living Forgotten Realms games, but with the awesome DM Andy having moved to New Mexico, I wasn’t as motivated to show up to LFR as a player anyway.

I ended up missing this past Monday’s Pathfinder game because I had to take my wife to the emergency room Sunday night, and she still needed me Monday evening.

Then, one of the other three players ended Monday’s session by bowing out of the campaign. He decided that he really preferred playing 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons and was getting out of Pathfinder and d20 System games entirely. With only three players left, the game was looking shaky; when I bowed out, too, that was the end of the game.

I met with Phil, the incredible GM running the game, tonight at our local game store for coffee and a post-mortem. Why did this campaign fail?

  • Obviously in my case, it was my wife’s health (although I wasn’t passionate about this particular game)
  • One of the players decided that he just didn’t like Pathfinder
  • One of the players was a bit socially awkward and didn’t really fit in with the group
  • We only had four players to begin with, meaning that the game was almost impossible to run if anyone was absent (or dropped out of the campaign)
  • Phil observed that a game like Pathfinder really needs a rules wizard at the table, and we didn’t have one

Some reasons that I would have expected the campaign to make it:

  • We had a fantastic GM
  • The story was engaging
  • Three of the four players really clicked with one another

So, there are some lessons to be learned here for future campaigns.

  • If you’re not playing with an already close-knit group of friends or family, make sure you have at least one more player than you need in order to run a fun session (if you need four, have a party of five or six)
  • Screen players up front; if someone isn’t going to click with the rest of the group, it’s hard to fix that problem down the line
  • Make sure you have enough system mastery at the table – if not from the GM, then from one of the players (this isn’t a concern with a rules-light game, of course)

I feel bad for Phil, as he’s a great guy and a great GM, and I know that he poured a ton of energy into this campaign. The biggest change to make for the future is to make sure you have enough good players lined up before starting the campaign. It may stink to delay the start of the campaign by a few weeks in order to recruit another person or two, but it’s the right choice in some instances.

RIP Father Beren, my first Pathfinder character.