Population: One

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.

Incident at the Gorge of Gauros is second in the Radiance Against Thay quest, so now I guess Reed has to play What Storms May Come, huh? And conveniently, he’s now paragon, so I’ll keep an eye out for that one… damn, we could have signed up for it at Regulator Con, but right now nobody else is signed up for it and we have a sure thing in that slot. Ah well.

Draden DMed this on Maptools; my fellow players were Matt J., Ceneakor, spayne, and Emperor799. This was the first time I’d seen a high level taclord in action. Spayne was pretty terrifying. It was also the first time I’d seen people using mounts heavily. I can’t say I was deeply impressed – mostly the benefit was Draden pounding on a mount instead of a PC, and that was a DM choice thing. Not worth the effort if you ask me, but they didn’t make the game painful either, so no objections from me.

The module was good but not awesome. I liked the story continuation quite a bit. The fights didn’t strike me as very difficult, but it was a fairly optimized party. Sort of a B+; I’d run or play it again, certainly.

Wow, two weeks between LFR games. I feel all at loose ends and stuff. Good thing RegulatorCon is coming up.

Blades of Daggerdale was the first level 4-7 LFR module I ever played, so I was kind of pleased when Mark requested it. It turned out to be quite a bit of fun to run. There’s a ton of roleplay and while the big skill challenge is normally the sort of thing I hate – an extended skill challenge requiring eight successes that’s 95% trying to convince people to believe you – something about this one worked well for me. I think possibly it was the presence of an adversary, which gave me a way to sort of tilt the situation against the PCs every time they made an argument. It made the skill challenge into a give and take rather than a slow slog up a hill.

The combats are no big deal. I did get the pleasure of watching the players assume a certain combat was full of minions just because I put down seven identical minis.

“OK, I go get started on clearing the minions. I roll… 23, I hit that one, my attack does damage.”

“How much damage?”

“… crap.”

Players: Tom, Mark B., Jonathan, evil Tony, and Susan. The usual rocking crowd.