Author: Bryant

Yeah, I was over a month behind. Catching up now… and done. Posts are backdated to the day the game occurred. Hey, look, Gencon this week!

I am not going to bother doing detailed stats at this point, but I’m at 77 78 games played in 7 months, which is obviously well on track for the 100 game target. If I get over 100 games, I’ll maybe reevaluate, but more likely I’ll just declare myself a success. If I just play five games a month from here on out, I’ll still hit the target.

Oh, one thing worth noting: July appears to be the first month I didn’t run any games. 12 13 games and no DMing? I feel guilty.

Edit: whoops, missed one. There.

Jason B.’s running the Raven’s Bluff mini-campaign at Gencon, so he wanted to slot zero it for practice. Amanda, Jimmy, Hudson, Peter, Mark B. (who’ll also be running it) and I were happy to oblige. We all played our Nixie Queen adventuring company characters. Since it’s not Gencon yet I’m not going to say anything about the adventure other than that Kevin the poser barbarian is immensely fun to play.

There will be a photo from this adventure on Friday, but I’m embargoing it until then.

For the second module of the day, Jimmy ran Curse of the Queen of Thorns. I swear I very rarely choose modules for the bundles, but I admit I wanted to play this one for the Ring of the Dragonborn Emperor. Such a good item, even though the damage bonus doesn’t stack with Reed’s radiant weapon. The extra use of an encounter power is still good, and I’ll have more flexibility to use different damage types without giving up damage this way.

Powergame much? Well, sometimes.

Amanda joined me, Susan, Hudson, Jason B., and Mark B. on the player side of the screen. Her warlord, Kiera, is a serious Cormyr loyalist, so this module was awesome for her. We got very diligent about handling every single threat to the realm, which somehow wound up with four PCs sitting in a mausoleum an hour’s ride from the palace, while Kiera and Reed held down the fort at the palace itself. We expected and got simultaneous attacks on both locations. Jimmy scaled both fights for six players.

It worked out surprisingly well. The away team dealt with their problem pretty quickly, and Kiera and Reed played survival and gonzo damage dealer respectively. I think we actually might have been able to finish up the palace fight alone, although we’d have needed some luck, but the away team managed to teleport back in time to finish off the last monster. It helped that Reed and Faral were level 14 and we were playing on low, but it was still pretty tense.

7/24 was the first paragon game day for the Baltimore area crowd, since a full seven of us had played characters up to level 11 the old-fashioned way. (You kids. My lawn. Get off it.) Amanda ran Closing a Deal for me, Susan, Jimmy, Hudson, Jason B., and Mark B. Yay, Waterdeep!

Why, yes, it’s a very talky module. I don’t want to spoil certain surprises, but this is definitely a good place to let go of your preconceptions about the structure of LFR modules. Amanda did an awesome job running paragon tier for the first time, as preparation for her Gencon GMing stint. Reed and Faral helped out Lord Moonstar for a second time. Unfortunately he’s only looking for P1 help and they’re about to level – still nice to see the old chap once more.

Mystery of Deepwater Harbor was the final step in my plan to get Collin to level 10. Susan and I like Waterdeep mods, so playing one down at Games and Stuff was an excellent scheme. Except for the bit where they still hadn’t fixed the air conditioning. Four more days of Baltimore summer heat, and four more days of gamers in a stuffy room. It was getting kind of rank up in there.

Derek McN ran; I hadn’t met him before, but he’s a nice guy. His son Luke played, and I had met him before – he played in my run of The Icy Queen’s Crossing for Weekend in the Realms last year. Susan, Mark B., Tom B., and evil Tony filled out the table with me. As with all Waterdeep mods, there was a lot of talking. This one also had some pretty good fighting. Games and Stuff had to close a bit early for a solid LFR run, as usual, but it was still decent times. I like meeting new people.

So I was reminded/informed at Dexcon that Collin’s level 5 daily, Dervish’s Challenge, had been nerfed. It’s a fair nerf: a 3[W] attack that only uses a minor action is ridiculously good even before you add in the stance effect. The nerf combined with my general lack of any need to use Dual Strike combined with my desire to do more damage meant that I really wanted Collin to hit level 10 and retrain before the nerf became mandatory.

The plan was to drop all the two weapon powers he had, get rid of the Fighting Shield (which was his second weapon), and get Iron Armbands of Power to increase the punishment for ignoring his mark. But I had to hit level 10 first, and we skipped the Sunday games at Dexcon which would have gotten me there. Good thing there’s online play, huh?

Moticon ran a superb session of Night of Fallen Petals, particularly for a first-time online GM. Xalcairn, Kazordan, Thaldryn, Logopolis, and Trident were my fellow players. I continued to not need either Dual Strike or Stop Thrust, and I continued to get excited about hitting level 10 and executing Plan B for Barbarian. I couldn’t find anything on weres in Chessenta, but I figure it’s going to represent a sort of cold anger – Collin’s always tended to dislike injustice, so I can rationalize his newfound barbarian side that way.

This is part 3.1 of Scepter Tower of Spellgard because part 3 takes forever so we still have the second 40% or so to go. As previously, Jason B. ran, and Mark B., Tom B., Hudson, Susan, and I played. This was the time we found out that you can reserve the back room of Games and Stuff, and someone else had, so we bumped out into the main room which was full of very nice Privateer Press demo squad people. Fortunately there was one table left! Unfortunately the air conditioning was broken. More on this later. Not a newsflash: gamers still get a bit whiff in close quarters and heat.

Playing Cine with a ranged AoE was just as pleasant as I’d hoped it would be.