Month: January 2010

We mustered up with me, Hudson, Tim (who runs Gamers Clubhouse and Radio Free Hommlet), and Mark GMing. Other Tim (who we know from GaspCon) and John, who’d just run The Paladin’s Plague for me and Susan, showed up and were welcomed to the merry band. We then went out and stomped all over Impiltur killing and negotiating with goblins.

This adventure is the best Impiltur adventure ever. It has the classic brutal combat they seem to all include, but it has way less of the guilt and a nifty twist at the end. Big thumbs up. Goblins rock.

Disclaimer: I have not played all the Impiltur adventures, so what do I know? But I dug this one. See below for a nice picture of the papercraft.

About an hour into Gilding the Noble, I went “Hey, it’s a Waterdeep adventure! There’s gonna be an excellent skill challenge or two, a lot of roleplay, some nobles, some storyline, and a couple of fights that feel like they were dropped in because fights are required in LFR modules.” I was correct! Which is not to say the fights weren’t fun, since they were, and the adventure as a whole was excellent. Keep on doing what you’re doing, Waterdeep Triad.

This was a fairly Maryland-flavored table, with me, Susan, and Hudson playing. We were joined by Terry, a nice guy from Oklahoma with a halfling paladin named Barney. The lowest Charisma at the table was 20, and the halflings had 17 and 18 Strength. Cute people with buff halflings, that’s us. A Charisma-oriented party will cut through a Waterdeep module like hot butter. We also had the Arcana, Athletics, and Religion needed to hit a couple of other skill challenge points. It was superb fun. Melody, our GM, facilitated the social carnage with great skill.

Amusing moment of the night: Faral’s realization that Lord Moonstar had sent her out to find a bard for his party. As if Faral wasn’t good enough to sing at his little fete. Grrr.

Our DM: John. My fellow players: Charles, Dallas, Dan, and Susan. This is a different Dallas than the one we played Darkness Falls Over Moray with. We almost had that Dallas at our table as well, but he got poached to fill out another table. Alas.

Battle interactives are cool. This one came off extremely well; nothing like 25 tables of LFR players cheering, debating, and more or less winning by the skin of our teeth. Reed got to do his thing in a big way in a few encounters – he’s still remarkably mobile and that’s still a completely awesome trait. Plus I scored three crits in one fight, one of which helped me kill a big tentacle all by my lonesome in one turn. (John: wait, you do another 2d6+16 damage?)

Reed and Faral now have a public works project named after them in a certain city. We’re thinking an obelisk (the Reed Softfingers Gilded Obelisk) with a limpid fountain around it (the Faral Pool of Song and Desire). The obelisk probably lights up at night or something. Tastefully.

There are going to be some spoilers in this; be warned! Not a lot, but I’m going to spoil one of the fights.

We happily got Amanda from the Games and Stuff crowd as our GM, which was pleasing. The players were me, Susan, Dallas, Randy, Garry, and Robert. Good balanced party: two strikers, two leaders, a defender, and a controller. Double bards is very amusing.

I liked the adventure as a whole. The Moonshae Islands have a nice Celtic/Viking feel to them; they’re always very atmospheric and I really get the sense that it’s not just another mainland Faerun adventure. I should play more of them, or run more of them – this was Reed’s first time out there. So that was quite cool.

The spoiler: I’ve been curious to see if anyone would ever put a solo in an LFR adventure. There’s one in here, which is cool. But it’s the most boring solo printed to date, which is not so great. I get that it had to be a werecreature, and I get that LFR authors are limited in what they can do in terms of new monsters, but the werewolf solo from Pyramid of Shadows is a 450 HP punching bag with two melee attacks and nothing interesting about it at all. So that was a bit of a downer.

Still, the adventure as a whole was fun and Reed hit level 8! I have wimped out and taken a feat for more damage rather than flavor, since I want to be in prime shape for the battle interactive and the special. I may retrain it into something fun post-convention.

Oooh, my first premier adventure! I played this in the second slot, so I guess that makes me pretty close to the head of the line for this one. It’s a continuation of the Byar’s Seven plotline. The Dalelands has some sweet story continuity going here, which I am very happy to see.

I will not spoil the plot other than to say that you’ve got some classic tropes going on here. I think it could have been a bit more perky, but Dean (our GM) was suffering from a sprained right hand, which meant he was GMing with his off-hand, which takes like a -2 penalty. Drumroll, please! I’m looking forward to running it.

Players: me as Reed, Susan, Hudson, Andy, Jack, and Ryan. Hopefully I got all that right. We sort of romped. There’s one extended encounter which is very interesting and I dig what they were attempting to do, but I’m not sure that it’s wise to present a sequence of single targets to a well-functioning party. Three strikers can be a bit of a buzzsaw.

We got into Fort Wayne last night and ran into Peter, Mark, Hudson, et al. After some sleepy comparison of trips, we did the obvious and set up for an impromptu game. Peter dragged out a My Realms adventure he’d written as a level 1-4 intro to his Vault of Xammux series. Mark, Hudson, James, Amanda, Jennifer, and I played. I was going to play Cine, but realized I didn’t really want to play him, so I dragged out Veil, my deva avenger of Vergadain.

She was fun and the adventure was fun. Afterwards I determined that while I want to push a controller up into the level 4-7 range (that’d be Cine), I didn’t feel like playing him because he didn’t have a strong personality. So I’ve given some thought to that. I’m seeing the only son of a lesser noble who’s been remarkably protected all his life; he recently developed psychic powers and used them to get out from under the thumb of his bodyguards. I am much more excited about playing that than about the generic eladrin psion he used to be.

And Veil is second level, so she can use her magic weapon +2 and swan around Faerun complaining about how she was supposed to serve some noble god before she got shanghaied during her reincarnation.