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Gencon begins! We played Tyranny’s Bleak Depths on Thursday evening, 8/5; I won’t be backdating entries any more, unless I get way far behind again. We’re always a bit nervous about playing specials at cons, because they’re intended to be super-tough and you never know what your group is going to be like. Much to my pleasure, the minotaur adventuring company we met at DDXP was searching around for a leader and another striker, and Reed and Faral fill those roles nicely. ...

[gallery] Kevin as sketched by Bill Spytma.

[gallery] Kevin’s on a boat! And bloodied. He’s the little halfling with a red marker underneath him towards the top right of the photo. There are few halfling barbarian minis out there, it seems.

Yeah, I was over a month behind. Catching up now… and done. Posts are backdated to the day the game occurred. Hey, look, Gencon this week! I am not going to bother doing detailed stats at this point, but I’m at 77 78 games played in 7 months, which is obviously well on track for the 100 game target. If I get over 100 games, I’ll maybe reevaluate, but more likely I’ll just declare myself a success. If I just play five games a month from here on out, I’ll still hit the target. ...

Jason B.’s running the Raven’s Bluff mini-campaign at Gencon, so he wanted to slot zero it for practice. Amanda, Jimmy, Hudson, Peter, Mark B. (who’ll also be running it) and I were happy to oblige. We all played our Nixie Queen adventuring company characters. Since it’s not Gencon yet I’m not going to say anything about the adventure other than that Kevin the poser barbarian is immensely fun to play. There will be a photo from this adventure on Friday, but I’m embargoing it until then.

For the second module of the day, Jimmy ran Curse of the Queen of Thorns. I swear I very rarely choose modules for the bundles, but I admit I wanted to play this one for the Ring of the Dragonborn Emperor. Such a good item, even though the damage bonus doesn’t stack with Reed’s radiant weapon. The extra use of an encounter power is still good, and I’ll have more flexibility to use different damage types without giving up damage this way. ...

[gallery] Splitting the party, to the tune of two different fights several miles apart.

7/24 was the first paragon game day for the Baltimore area crowd, since a full seven of us had played characters up to level 11 the old-fashioned way. (You kids. My lawn. Get off it.) Amanda ran Closing a Deal for me, Susan, Jimmy, Hudson, Jason B., and Mark B. Yay, Waterdeep! Why, yes, it’s a very talky module. I don’t want to spoil certain surprises, but this is definitely a good place to let go of your preconceptions about the structure of LFR modules. Amanda did an awesome job running paragon tier for the first time, as preparation for her Gencon GMing stint. Reed and Faral helped out Lord Moonstar for a second time. Unfortunately he’s only looking for P1 help and they’re about to level – still nice to see the old chap once more.

Mystery of Deepwater Harbor (original) was the final step in my plan to get Collin to level 10. Susan and I like Waterdeep mods, so playing one down at Games and Stuff was an excellent scheme. Except for the bit where they still hadn’t fixed the air conditioning. Four more days of Baltimore summer heat, and four more days of gamers in a stuffy room. It was getting kind of rank up in there. ...

So I was reminded/informed at Dexcon that Collin’s level 5 daily, Dervish’s Challenge, had been nerfed. It’s a fair nerf: a 3[W] attack that only uses a minor action is ridiculously good even before you add in the stance effect. The nerf combined with my general lack of any need to use Dual Strike combined with my desire to do more damage meant that I really wanted Collin to hit level 10 and retrain before the nerf became mandatory. ...