Writeups

Speaking of quick runs! Susan, Mark B., Dave Guerrieri and I cranked through Black Heart (original) in two hours flat. Luke GMed. I’m kind of thinking maybe I want to schedule H1 games for con Sundays? It’s hard to give a paragon module the proper attention after two full days of gaming. The adventure would have been much better if we’d done the previous two in the series. I did like that our seriously clueless low-Insight characters got more or less conned by someone with way more temporal power than any of us. There was one bit where I felt distinctly railroaded, but without looking at the adventure I’m not sure if there was just something I missed or what. ...

“Hey,” you say, “IMPI 1-6 isn’t out yet!” I nod wisely, and observe that Dave Guerrieri is one of the Cormyr regional admins and gets copies of modules early. Not BALD 2-1, which is what we were gonna play, but he had IMPI 1-6. Thus, me and Susan and Jason B. and David and Dan E. (who was at our BI table at DDXP) played that. Brian J. GMed. All good. ...

I do not remember anything about The Paladins’ Plague except that I ran it for eight hours on Saturday. OK, that is a lie. I have a stack of cards here that reminds me that Matt C., Barry, Susan, Mary Alyce, Meaghan, and Matt M. played. I just now realized how generous Matt C. was in his choice of character, since he gave up playing his striker in favor of playing a defender who’s unlikely to be seen in LFR ever again. Dude, awesome. ...

Back behind the DM screen for me on Saturday! My personal belief about Dogs of War (original) 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 (original) 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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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.

[gallery] RegulatorCon’s game room, up in Pennsylvania.

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.