Scales of War 4 & 5 – Catching up!

Session 4 – Finding Prisoners

Present:

• Alabaster, Tiefling Cleric
• Ralia, Elf Druid
• Rouge, Half-Elf Rogue
• Porth-OS, Warforged Swordmage

Upon returning to the dungeon, the players make their way to the next room, once again choosing the left option. This is a crypt, with skeletons in alcoves along the walls. There is some concern among the group that they will animate and attack, but they don’t. Instead, as the group reach the centre of the room, the door to the north swings open for no apparent reason. Nothing comes through them, but 2 magma claws appear and attack. Apparently, I was unclear in my description here, because there was some confusion about whether the claws or the gnome skulk that also attacked came from the passage. (The gnome was hiding beside the door, and he was the one who opened it.) This fight wasn’t too difficult, for one thing the tiefling cleric was reminded that he has resistance 5 to fire damage. 👿

After the battle, we take a short break to level. Normally, I’d wait until before or after a session, but I knew they had enough XP now, and we all wanted to be out of level 1.

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Scales of War 2 & 3 – My god, she’s actually writing!

So, yeah… sorry for the delays everybody. As Graham mentioned earlier, real life kinda got away from us for a while. Therefore the goal here is to get caught up before I run yet another session tomorrow.

Session 2 – Getting to the Dungeon

Present: everyone

This session started after the fight with the ogre. The characters got a chance to rest and the next day were invited to speak to a town councilman, Eoffram Troyas. He introduced himself and told the five of them that he summoned the “four of them” (with a look of disgust at the Gully Dwarf :p ) to ask them a favour. It turned out that during the raid, several townspeople were kidnapped and several of the town’s treasures were stolen (nothing of any monetary value – they were trophies of the Red Hand’s defeat ten years ago and therefore important to both the town and the raiders).

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Starting a new game, new system & new DM… back in September…

So I guess the first thing you’ve learned about me is that I’m a terrible procrastinator. So players, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hassle me if I’m taking too long to post anything. :annoyed:

So I’m the new and fairly novice DM. I played Nox in Graham’s campaign and am his fiancée. Hi. We’re playing the “Scales of War” Adventure Path from Dungeon magazine.

Our tale begins in the Antler & Thistle tavern (of course) in the small town of Brindol. About 10 years ago, this was the site of an attack by a goblin army known as the Red Hand. They were attacked and sent into retreat by adventurers, and the area has known relative peace since then.

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Final thoughts after marathon 4e release day events

In no particular order:

TPK in a casual release game with casual players unattached to the characters, which wins us prizes and status as the (likely) first post-release 4e tpk in Winnipeg = awesome!!!

People have dissed Splug the goblin for trying to be Meepo (Sunless Citadel) for 4e.  Well, for the short time we were with him, he was better!  Not only did the PCs take to him as a slave quickly, he soon assisted in combat (hitting the enemy none of them were hitting, by swinging a bag of rocks), and then saved our Warlord’s life with a heal check to stabilise her.  After this encounter, someone else took over DMing the game, and I joined in as Splug the goblin cleric, inspired to do more healing!  So much fun!

We played 4e with a random pickup group for 18 hours, as level 1 characters.  Never in that time period did the game stop being fun.  That says something.

We played Keep on the Shadowfell for 18 hours, with 2 DMs, without either of us ever having read the adventure.  The town RP was tricky, but not bad.  But the game never slowed down because of this, especially in battles.  The 4e game is just that easy to pick up and DM.  I predict that 4e will see the return of the true D&D pickup game.

Level 1 has never been so interesting.

People have been complaining about things conceptually online a lot, but these complaints disappear once you’re in the game.  Minions fucking rock, and make the battle that much more fun!  The at-will/encounter/daily power split works perfectly.  Clerics and Fighters are cool again!  I would play either again by choice.  Dragons!  Oh, dragons are so much fun!

The complaints:

Not everything is explained perfectly in the books, causing a bit of confusion.  These are minor, however, and just call for a quick ruling most of the time.

Paladins are… well, unimpressive.  I mean, they’re alright and they do what they’re meant to, but I much prefer the battlefield control powers of the Fighter.  This is a personal thing, though.  I probably won’t play a Paladin any time soon, but someone in my group (or yours) might love it.

That about covers it for now.  Caffieeeeeeennnne!!!!!!!!!!

32 Hours of 4e D&D!!!

Well, here we go. Today is the release date for 4e D&D, and we’re having our giant gaming event at Gameknight.

Today is opening up the books and playing for 24 hours. Tomorrow, I’m DMing for D&D Game Day. And the whole time, I’ll be posting occasional updates here with impressions, rants, and notifications of TPKs. Oh, and despite Dave’s assertion, we’ll see just how high level we can get in 24 hours of straight gaming.

You can read the updates here. If you use Twitter, you can also get them at http://twitter.com/ve4grm

(If the widget below doesn’t show up, just refresh the page, or use the link above. Twitter seems to be sketchy sometimes, but it’s the best way I know of to do this from a cell phone.)