Author: Bryant

Hey, halfway to 50! This is a pretty good pace, yep.

Night of Fallen Petals concludes the White Petal Demise quest. It continues to rock. Sadly Peter had to leave before this one, and Kirby GMed, leaving me, Susan, Mark B., and Jason B. to stop various pernicious influences and save the day.

More great fights, plus a really interesting skill challenge for moving through the city, plus more generally enjoyable roleplay. In the final fight, Reed met an oni mage in mid-air combat, hovering high above the panicked crowd. We defeated the evil Mad Fox and earned the gratitude of a bunch of Shou. Reed spent the rest of the month engaging in bacchanalia while everyone else headed up towards Cormyr.

For the first game of MiniMoreCon 2 – MiniMoreCon being our house conventions, three games in a day – we played White Flower Falling. This is part 2 of the White Petal Demise quest, an absolutely awesome Dragon Coast quest themed after Hong Kong movies. Susan and I had played Falling Snow, White Petal at GASPCon and we wanted to finish the quest line before we hit paragon; fortunately we managed to con a bunch of friends into coming up and playing with us.

I liked White Flower Falling at least as much as I liked Falling Snow, White Petal. The terrain all through this series is great, and the theming is very good. Whirling blades, triple balconies, all a ton of fun.

Mark B. DMed. Me, Susan, Kirby, Jason B., and Peter played. Good times.

Flames of Initiation is another oldie but goodie. I will admit, I played this so Collin could pick up +2 Dwarven Armor. I have no shame. (Why are there so few +2 armor rewards in the 1-4 range, but so many +2 weapons? Faerun is full of wonders.) But I do authentically enjoy it and getting Flaming Fist membership is a nice hook into Baldur’s Gate.

DM: Dareus. Players: Maelwys, Zeitgeist, Goldfishmind, Marquis, Jesterrr21, and me. Marquis plays a very nice barbarian.

Well! As noted previously, Susan rolled 4 crits in the space of 5 rolls against my poor Collin. She dropped him three times as a result. When he climbed up to fight a hopefully less dangerous foe, she crit our other defender, and then dropped Collin again. Nothing quite so sweet as rolling a 20 on a death save when you’re two strikes towards the eternal choir.

The other highlight of the fight, for me: “Well, unless she crits me again, I’m OK for one more hit, and how likely would a fourth crit be?” Now I know.

Lost in the Fog is a pretty fun module. Some of the monsters are a touch hard to hit, given that everything’s getting concealment for most of the module, but I guess it wasn’t an impossible situation. Susan GMed well (her first time!), and I had fun playing. Hudson, Tom, and Mark B. were the other three players.

Apparently the guy who owns Legends is trying to buy the whole building and turn the empty space next door into a Thai noodle shop. He’d also expand the event space. Fingers crossed, cause that’d be way cool.

Four crits against Collin in five attacks.

… third crit on me in a row. Collin drops again.

What I am now is pooped. I ran Pyrophobia for the usual crowd – Peter, Jon, Susan, Mark, and Noah. It takes, let me tell you, a lot of prep. I had about 20 effect cards on hand to give out to the players to reflect various temporary effects on the PCs, and a good number of those temporary effects had specific effects on individual combats. Here, have Vulnerable 3 for the rest of this section. Also, here’s an extra power you can use once in the next combat. Whoo.

I have a long review of this adventure brewing, which I’ll post over on the Wizards boards at some point. I think it’s a really interesting adventure that suffers from clunky writing and a bunch of iffy transitions. It’s got a bit of the railroad to it; at several points, the PCs are just expected to do or intuit the right course of action. Sometimes those courses of action will violate a PC’s ethos. Sometimes it’ll possibly seem like bad strategy. Fortunately I think I’m pretty good at framing choices with a magician’s force. Also I’m willing to exercise DM discretion as needed. My players might disagree, I dunno, but we got through it without the train whistle going off.

And the thing is, the idea at the core of the module is completely awesome. The transition from the previous module is awesome, even if it leaves some important questions unanswered. (MINI 1-6 may answer them. I hope so.) The end fight is the coolest climax I’ve ever run in LFR. So it’s worth the effort it takes.

I am stoked to read and run MINI 1-6. The Embers mini-campaign is a success in my book. Unless MINI 1-6 sucks, but I think it’ll be good.