Category: Writeups

Back behind the DM screen for me on Saturday! My personal belief about Dogs of War is that the Hoffmans were tired of people making jokes about talky Waterdeep adventures full of skill challenges and they wanted to prove they could write a combat-heavy adventure. Meaghan, evil Tony, Phin, Jason B., and John B. were kind enough to join me as players to test this hypothesis. Survey says: correct!

The thing about this sucker is that there’s a non-obvious time limit on one of the fights, and you wind up with waves of gnolls if you hit the time limit, and they hit the time limit. Phin’s sorcerer had Armor of Sudden Recovery, which turned ongoing 10 damage into regen 10 for the rest of the encounter. That was pretty much the margin of victory. In retrospect perhaps I should have had the gnolls pile on him, since regen turns off when you’re under 0 hit points, but I wasn’t sure of the rule and I figured the gnolls got frustrated eventually. As it was, I killed evil Tony’s assassin. Third PC kill for me in LFR. I will refrain from painting silhouettes on the side of my DM kit, since that’s the wrong attitude, but I admit I keep track.

Discomfort is the plot sequel to the Arts and Crafts quest line, which is kind of funny since it’s an entire tier away from those level 1-4 modules. No matter; it’s still about the deadly drug Confidence in the mean streets of Westgate. We kept Tom as DM plus most of the previous game’s players, except we traded Justin for Duncan and Ron. This gave us a defender, which we hadn’t had before, and a second daggermaster rogue. So the combats were brief in game time and somewhat lengthy in real time, but it’s worth it to watch pros in action. Also, daggermaster rogues love it when the bard keeps feeding them combat advantage. Word to the wise.

This was one of the most witty and/or boisterous tables I’ve ever been at. Witty if you were sitting at it; hopefully not too boisterous if you were sitting next to us. Sorry! I’m assuming most of those guys play together a lot, cause they talked like they did and they worked together like they knew each other. They also did a great job of including us in both the combat tactics and the funny. I had an insane amount of fun. I even earned a “solid” from the daggermasters on one round, which I take as a compliment to my damage-dealing.

Plotwise, we got to sit at a table with the big boys and help determine the fate of Westgate. How cool is that? This is another module where choices matter, too. Paragon play is pretty awesome that way.

Our paragon play for the weekend began with Killing the Messenger. Susan and I were joined by John M., who I’d just DMed for; Justin V.; and Paul. I spent the entire module assuming Paul’s name was Team, because that’s what it said on his name tag, but it turned out he was splitting his badge with his wife who was going to be playing on Saturday. Tom A. was our DM, and a very fine job of it he did. Lots of personality to this one.

I could pretty much describe our entire adventure to you without spoiling anything, because there is an option at every point excepting the intro, one central turning point, and the conclusion. Like combats? That can be arranged. Like skill challenges? Sure! Our group liked skill challenges, what with having two bards, a husky sorcerer, a rogue, and a ranger. We didn’t fail a skill roll all night. We rolled 1s and succeeded. It was a bit of a thing. Tom rolled with it all marvelously. I had a great time.

The Regulator Con recap begins here, and will go on for quite some time. Me, Susan, and the Bradleys trucked on up to Gettysburg bright and early Friday morning so as to get there in time for the 9 AM morning slot, in which I ran Black Cloaks and Bitter Rivalries. My players were the Bradleys, Hudson, Matt M., and John M. Little did I suspect how much I’d see of John that Friday… but I risk getting ahead of myself.

It’s both a completely awesome adventure and a somewhat frustrating adventure. Awesome: tons of room for roleplay, and lots of stuff you’d never find in a normal LFR adventure. It’s also highly flexible; the players can do almost anything they want. If you play this, you should expect to figure out how to infiltrate and destabilize a Zhentarim fortress all on your own.

Frustrating: I really wanted more than one slot for this. I kind of boned the second combat because I was rushed. There are a lot of NPCs, and it takes a while to really give them all voices. Also, for a keystone adventure for a plotline that’s been extending throughout the heroic tier, one might like something more conclusive. Another hint to players: schedule CORE 2-1 for play after you’ve done this. You’ll be glad.

The awesome outweighed the frustrating by a ton, especially since I had great players. Final verdict: great start to the con.

After the Battle Interactive last night, Dave Guerrieri called up… I believe her name was Allison. There was apparently some special award for roleplaying, or so he claimed. The ruse held until Paul came up front to present the award, dropped to one knee, and asked her to marry him. (She said yes.) Awwwww!

Very cute. More on the actual games of the con later; running a three slot schedule makes it hard to keep current. Also my throat hurts. A lot.

Back to non-virtual reality for For Crown and Kingdom, down at Legends. We had a new player today, Colin, which is awesome; he joined me, Susan, Hudson, evil Tony, and Tom. Mark DMed. 

For Crown and Kingdom is a decent little adventure, and probably the best 1-4 Cormyr module. It’d make a great introduction to the region, since it really gets the whole knighthood and nobility thing across. It’s also relatively non-linear. I liked it a fair bit. At this point Collin (my PC, not the new player) is fairly twinked out, so I wasn’t totally challenged or anything, but I don’t expect that out of the average 1-4.

I dragged Sirath out of the vault yesterday to play Silent Streets and Vanished Souls on short notice. They had no leader, and it’s probably a good thing they got one. I didn’t burn all my healing but I burned most of it; this is one of those two-fight modules. The second fight has yet another appearance of that annoying werewolf solo. I can’t believe he’s been used in two LFR modules. He’s dull!

Eltherian DMed; Matt, Darksydex3226, and Xalcairn joined me as players. Or rather, I joined them. Fun little module, which I’d never played before; good urban setting with neat cultural stuff. Unfortunately that’s one of the things that usually gets lost a bit in online play. Still, it was enjoyable. I’m reminded I like playing shaman; I think I’m getting better at it after watching Susan play Gurdis.

As it happened, there was an online session of What Storms May Come scheduled for Friday, so Susan and I jumped into that. Dareus DMed; Matt, Eltherian, Darklord, and MisterJester were our fellow players. We were pretty psyched to dip our toes in the paragon waters before RegulatorCon. 

It’s quite the mod. For me, it was satisfying finishing up the quest line, and the combats were epic all on their own. The second combat takes place on a sea of ice floes, which move and shake and so on. There are ice slides and slippery macguffins and all kinds of fun. Awesome stuff.

Also it was fun watching characters who are, shall we say, somewhat more optimized than Reed. Eltherian played his paladin, who is a healing machine despite not being a leader. Between him and Faral I think we saw over 200 points of surgeless healing in the last encounter.