Category: Writeups

Ah, Radiant Vessel, how like a pair of comfortable old shoes thou art. I have played this sucker… a few times. This time Matt was the DM; we played via MapTool. The players were me, Monouk, Goldfishmind, Pelyt, Lunarstar, and Darrell. I’m mostly using forum handles for names here, to maintain privacy and to keep my life simple.

Matt’s an awesome online DM. He knows how to keep the pace moving. Despite a couple of new players, we cranked through the thing in 3.5 hours, which is nice given that we started at 9 PM. He also remembered Reed failing his Athletics roll miserably back when he and I played this together, so when we were hanging out with the orcs he described a halfling getting his ass handed to him while wrestling. I was most amused.

8 people DMed for me: Amanda, Dean, Jeff, John, Mark B, Mark D., Melody, and Peter.

26 people played with me: Amanda, Andy, Brad, Charles, Dallas (female), Dallas (male), Dan, Emily, Garry, Hudson, Jack, James, Jennifer, John, Mark B., Peter, Randy, Robert, Ryan, Susan, Terry, Theren, Tim from AmberMUSH, Tim from Pennsylvania, Tom, and evil Tony. Unsurprisingly, Susan played with me the most. I think Hudson’s number two.

I DMed for 15 people: Emily, Frank, Hudson, Jeff, Jon, Kirby, Mark, Nina, Noah, Peter, Susan, evil Tony, good Tony, Trevor, and Zach. Two of those were first time D&D players. That’s pretty cool.

That’s 38 people in all, some of whose names I misspelled. Sorry! It’s also 15 games total, nine of which I played and six of which I ran. Two of the adventures I ran were double-length, as was one of the ones I played in. At an average of four hours apiece, that’s 72 hours of Living Forgotten Realms. I expect to be cutting back next month. It could be worse, I could still be raiding in WoW.

I had a lot of fun.

Blah, this is a hard one to write about. I hate saying a game sucked, but this one pretty much sucked. The players were very solid; I think this was maybe the most competent group I’d played with as a whole (me, Susan, Hudson, Tim from Gaspcon, Brad, and Theron). Edit: several months later, we had Theron as a DM at Gencon, and thus I have fixed my misspelling of his name.

Mark, the DM, was not really what I was looking for when I signed up for a super-tough storyline-focused special adventure at DDXP. He got tagged to run it for us at the last minute when the muster was short of DMs, so I cut him some slack for that, but if you’re stuck in 3.5 land you shouldn’t be running specials. No, undead aren’t immune to unconscious. Yes, teleporting away from a pursuing avenger triggers his class ability. Yes, when a troll regenerates and attacks a PC, the PC should be told explicitly what’s going on. Yes, when you screw up and forget which one of your miniatures represents a minion, you should cut the warlock some slack given that his strategy involved cursing and killing a minion first.

Grumpy. I had a modicum of fun because the other players were really excellent players, and because I think I could see the skeleton of a good adventure underneath Mark’s snide remarks about the elements he didn’t understand, but man. That could have been way better.

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.