TPK!
Nah, just kidding. (Wouldn’t that be funny though?)
I have to say that the second time DMing was much better than the first. (Much like other virginity-losing experiences?) To review, here is the cast of characters:
- Egon – Halfling Rogue, ex-husband of Babs.
- Babs – Barbarian, ex-wife of Egon.
- Orsik – Dwarf Cleric
We last left our adventurers as they were entering the tower on the side of the mountain. Egon fell when walking over the rotted fallen door and got himself a pile o’fire beetles. They killed off the beetles, crawled into their cave, and found a +1 frost battleaxe.
Moving on to session 2…
The PCs go into the tower and inspect the dwarven statues. Egon goes to Pillsbury Dough-Boy one of them, which conveniently happened to be the one that opens the secret door revealing a small room. A dwarf skeleton is collapsed in front of a coffer. Egon goes in, picks the lock to the coffer, and pulls out a box. The door to the room closes on him, locking him in the dark (he’s a Halfling – can’t see!!). Now, if it were up to his ex-wife Babs, he’d probably rot in there and die. Luckily, Orsik is much nicer and presses the statue again, opening the door for Egon.
Opening the box, Egon finds three heavy pouches full of very shiny iron filings. He touches the tip of his dagger to the filings, which immediately jump out of the bag and attach themselves to the blade. Egon drops the blade to the ground. After thoroughly checking it out, he realizes that there is nothing different about the dagger other than it being shinier and a bit heavier. He puts the other two pouches of filings in his bag.
Searching the dwarf, the PCs find masterwork thieves tools and a note:
At the Gates of Gilded Blood
One click sinister,
then shun both extremes.
Keep to the center,
keep your life.
I made that note back before the first session (which was shorter than expected) and have been dying for them to find it ever since. I worked hard on making it look cool. It was all wrinkly and smudged and everything. (Shoot me, I was proud of myself!)
The PCs decide to climb up the mountain path rather than jump the river to the lower path. They find the secret stairs into the caves and manage to be quiet enough that the zombies don’t hear them. They fight the two zombie ogres in their lair.
These were supposed to be two level 8 zombies. I had to nerf them quite a bit because I only have 3 PCs (the module is written for 4-6 PCs). I could have cut it down to just one zombie, but really, what fun is ONE zombie? I made the cleric’s radiant damage have a higher bonus and did not use the Zombie Slam or Rise Again powers. It was a tough and long fight, but the PCs finally took them down. (This despite Egon sliding out of the room and refusing to fight about halfway through the encounter.)
They move out of the caves and back along the mountain path, where Egon is shot by dwarven guards with crossbows who are guarding the big green copper door. The PCs battle the dwarves and their ogre slave (Babs tried to negotiate with the ogre, but he was very dumb and very angry).
The dwarves manage to sneak away, leaving the PCs with the ogre. The ogre is killed and just as Babs’ axe is cleaving through its body, the PCs hear the big green doors close. It takes a big team effort to push the doors open (thanks to Orsik’s knowledge of the type of door – it’s good to be a dwarf!).
The Floodgate trap was set off by the dwarf (it’s not good to be a dwarf!) and Babs went flying down the hallway in the rush of water, falling into the lake below. The boys threw her a rope and hauled her back up. As they’re heading back up the hallway, they are attacked by the two dwarves that threw the trap switch. The PCs kill them pretty easily.
Egon had scouted into the next room, seeing the great staircase and the three orcs camped near it. He sneaks in and ambushes them. The surprise round really hurt the orcs (they were eating dinner!). The three level 1 PCs took down three level 4 orc beserkers. Only one orc was able to use his Warriors Surge (when bloodied, can regain 16 hps on a hit). The PCs had some close calls in the single digits of their hitpoints, but thanks to Orsik’s healing abilities and Egon’s big damage, everybody survived.
Babs was the one who saved the party from their last bit of danger – she caught the vial of poison that rolled out of the orc’s secret stash in the side of the staircase. After that, the PCs decided to retreat to the caves near the dead zombies and make their camp for the night.
Things I Learned
- DMing is way easier the second time around.
- When the monsters are too hard, it’s okay to fudge numbers to make the monsters still hard, but not impossible.
- I wish Anubis’ Encounter Manager would move dead monsters to the bottom of the list so the only folks left in the initiative order are PCs and live monsters.
- Minis are cool, but even with silver dots to number the identical orcs (1,2,3), I can still manage to mix up which orc is which.
- My friends can be well-behaved players when they try (or when they’re really tired – Babs was exhausted today.)
- Maybe I should arrange for Babs to be tired every time we game…
About e
Sounds great! Good work with the props, and you’re favouring rulings over rules, smart! – did you read the Quick Primer on Old School Gaming?
Kiashu´s last blog post..The "impossible thing" is trust
The minis issue you had is the reason I game with numbered tokens.
Practical is better than cool looking.
Also, no kidding, I think I gave a handout using the same font recently… That’s an elven font, right?
ebertran´s last blog post..Gaming with Sound Effects
Message from a player: e did really great. I’ve seen many ‘proven’ DM be worse than her. For her true first session (everybody knows that the first time is to practice ;p) she was well prepared, she managed to adapt the encounters to our level, while maintening a good challenge (she reminded me of me), the message was really good and really well done (the scan doesn’t give the right feel).
All in all, we all had great fun, maybe except Bab’s player who was really down towards the end. I’m really impatient to go on.
Nicely done lass… One zombie could be fun if it was say, a multiple attacking, tentacle wielding, noxious breath spewing monstrosity! : P
But then again, I think this is 4E you’re playing with right??
: P
@ Kiashu – I haven’t read it yet… on my to-read list (which sadly, gets longer and longer and longer…)
@ ebertran – The font is Freebooter Script. I downloaded it from a free fonts website.
@ Hybban – you are too kind.
@ green – It is 4e.
You gotta problem wif dat?
I’m quite possibly the only poster on your site who doesn’t dig 4E. Again, I’m the one outside of the clubhouse. : P
@Greengrunt: I understand that you don’t dig 4E. It’s a game really different from the previous edition, but I’ve seen is that is has brought back many players around the table. And that is a good thing. My favorite D&D edition is still the Rules Cyclopedia, followined closely by 1st edition. But still, I have fun being around the table with friends to share a good moment of role play.
I’ve played 3E(.5) for years and I still hate this edition. But if my friends want to play that… And now, I have to play Pathfinder that I really don’t like more!
@ Green – It’s ok, I still like you.
@Hybaan I would imagine the reason you don’t like Pathfinder is that it’s too close to 3.5E. I do miss the old school D&D… I had the Basic set (the blue box) with the number chips and Keep of the Borderlands…. Sniff, sniff… Ahh the good old days.
Yeah some things in 3.5 aren’t exactly up to par… And higher level play is broken… But I’ve unloaded a hefty amount of dough in that edition and I’m not going to invest in another edition…
And even though 4E may have brought some gamers to the table, many concepts of the new edition offend my grongnard sensibilities. To me the game is getting away from Gygax’s vision of the game and it’s fantasy literature and pulp fiction roots.
To each their own.
@E : ) You are too kind milady.
To each their own, indeed.
Yeah, there are definitely valid reasons to dislike 4e. And even “I don’t like 4e” is one of them. It’s all personal taste.
Though I personally feel that 4e has come a fair amount back to the pulp adventure. More than 3.X, at any rate. Things like action points and second winds lend heavily to that feel, in my opinion, which is why I also enjoyed the Eberron setting.
But yeah, the system is definitely not for everyone.
Graham´s last blog post..Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.
@Graham:
Just read your blog man… Couldn’t post a comment there so I did here… Grrrr! Sorry e!
Awesome Graham! Totally awesome!
Firstly- I am stoked you finished Rise of the Runelords!
Secondly- I am stoked that your PCs beat Karzoug!
Thirdly- I am stoked that you play Pathfinder APs!
You deserve a hearty congrats my man!
Rock!
All the best-
GG
You couldn’t comment on my site? Why not?
Yeah, Runelords was pretty fun, though it had some major issues.
It actually looked for a while like Karzoug might wipe the party, until that crit with the Disintegrate. After that, the barbarian tackled him, and everything turned around fast.
As for playing Pathfinder APs, though, I’m sorry to say that will probably be my last. I wasn’t completely impressed by it, and the modules were inconsistent. I’ll always look for more by some of the authors, especially Logue, but we’ve moved into 4e and are loving it. As such, I don’t see us buying any more pathfinder stuff any time soon.
Graham´s last blog post..Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.
@Graham- something about that damn anti-spam word/secret code … Wouldn’t function and therefore I couldn’t post a comment… Sorry to hear about the disappointment with Pathfinder.
Cheers!
@graham: The second pathfinder AP is really better. And if I had to run it, it would also be in 4E. The 3rd AP has a nice beginning, I’m waiting for the next books soon.
@green: I agree, tastes are differents. As long as everybody in the room has fun, I see no wrong in trying different things. And I’m talking about RPG
Interesting, greengrunt. Do you have javascript disabled? I think the plugin uses javascript to place the captcha.
Send me an email at the email link on my page (top right of the page). I’d like to figure out the problem and solve it.
As for the disappointment, some parts were spectacular, but others were severely underwhelming. I documented most of my problems with it on my site, if you’d like to read it all.
Though I do need to say that 90% of my problems with it were mechanical. There were some story snafus, but it was pretty good overall.
@Hybban
The second one definitely seems interesting. My issue is that I just don’t have enough free time to convert the crunch to 4e right now, so a non-4e adventure just doesn’t work for me. At least not at this point.
But if it comes recommended by those here, I think I will check it out, if only to steal ideas from.
Was Logue an author for it again?
Graham´s last blog post..Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.
@graham: Logue has written at least the first tome. And it’s a nice urban adventure (except for 4th and 5th, 5th being a big dungeon like in first AP, but I think that’ll be always the case).
As for running 3E modules with 4E, I don’t convert. I make up encounters depending on what players show up, the content of the party and the flavour of the scenario. I’m running the uber dungeon ‘Castle Whiterock’ from Goodman Games for a (almost) weekly session (Mielka’s adventure) and I almost never prep my games
I couldn’t do that with 3E, but 4E allows me to.
So E, when are we going to see you write your own adventure, which you can post for everyone else to play?
@ Mystrich: Funny you ask. I’m working on two right now. One is a full-length adventure I’m co-writing with my GeekBoy. It’ll be for level 5 and get the group to level 8 by the end.
The other is a one shot adventure for level 2s. It’s basically designed to run out of AnyTown from your campaign and do-able by a smaller-than-usual group of PCs. Something you can run if a couple players can’t make it but everybody else wants to play.
If I can’t get WotC or Goodman Games to buy them, I may just have to publish them for free here.
But hey, I’m poor, so keep your fingers crossed that I can sell them!