This is the second time I’ve played The Night I Called the Undead Out (original). I’ve liked it both times! Susan and I went down to Games & Stuff to play it, cause it’s nice to get down there every now and again. Mac was our GM, and he did a great job. Chris, Tom B., and Jonathan were our fellow players. The usual complaint about TNICtUO is that it’s really long, which it is. I am inclined to think that cutting out the third fight would not be the worst thing in the world, and it’s how I’d abbreviate it if I were running it in the 3.5 hour slot that Games and Stuff allows. But that’s after playing it twice and thinking about it some more. And the thing is, it’s an awesome module no matter what. ...

Gangs of Wheloon is a classic I’ve never played, so when Matt J. was kind enough to offer to run it online for me I took him up on it. My fellow players were Darksydex, Eltherian, Knight4612, Tracker (aka Kevin from GASPCon), and Xalcairn. It’s a fun module with a few branching paths you can take, and I got a kick out of meeting one of the Valwaters, who I’d encountered as a DM in Head Above Water (CORM 1-3). ...

April’s LFR began with Sense of Wonder (original), with Susan GMing. My fellow players were Mark, Tom, and Jason B. for a full set of the Bradleys; we also had Hudson and Jonathan. Legends was closed at the last minute so we jaunted on down to Games and Stuff, which is still an awesome space to play, I gotta admit. But 40 minutes away. C’est la vie. The module is pretty decent. Not insanely challenging, but lots of roleplay and some fun NPCs, which Susan did a great job with. We had the double leader double defender configuration. That always makes combats feel a bit like pillow fights, especially since my Collin is rocking two daily healing powers himself. Nonetheless, I enjoyed myself mightily. I’m looking forward to Collin’s first 4-7 outing this Thursday. ...

In like a lamb, out like a lion. I managed twelve games once again, despite a very slow start to the month. My February ratio of 8 played to 4 run held true for this month too. Over half of the games (7) were at a con, and three of them were online. I can’t imagine I’ll play as many games in April, but we’ll see. I had 7 different DMs again, with Tom A. the only repeat offender. I count 36 people on my tracking sheet; I DMed for 15 of them, and played with 24. Give or take a counting error. One of these days I’ll spruce up my spreadsheet. Yeah, that’s a touch obsessive of me. ...

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. ...