lfr

After, let’s see, 18 months, Alesk finally got the chance to finish off the Byar’s Seven quest with Hunters’ Down (original). Matt J. kindly volunteered to run it for me; eladar, Kazordan, jredgiant, AussieScum, and Dareus were the other players. I think a few of them were also on the quest, so that was nice. I had fun, although it was kind of a bittersweet run. Alesk is not a stellar character and Essentials did not give me the rebuild potentials I’d been hoping for – he’s a Strength-based cleric, and Essentials is all about Wisdom-based melee clerics. I may yet rebuild him as a Wisdom-oriented character, but that sort of breaks some of the concept. ...

I needed to run something to get my slot score down a bit, and I always like running for Matt, so I asked him if he wanted an H2 and he said how about How To Hunt A Demon (original)? Easy for me to run since I’d run it once before, so I said sure and that was that. I ran it on 10/7, with Matt, logopolis, Oskar581, Kazordan, Zalarian, and Gadunge. ...

My first LFR game in October was Curse of the Queen of Thorns (original), on 10/3. I think I signed up for this because there was an open slot and they needed a defender, if I recall correctly. Martyr2 ran; my fellow players were Jay Ibero, Eltherian, logopolis, Blackmantle, and Trident. We had a balanced party and enough offensive firepower so that I got to pretty much slack off and relax as a defender. Fun game, and now Collin is a Knight of Cormyr, which is a bit perplexing for him.

Woo-hoo, more Nixie Queen! Peter ran; Susan, David D., Stacey, Justin K., and Nick S. played. Oh, and me, of course. Kevin rides again! Despite being level 3 and finally getting to use his treasured Vicious +2 Talenta Sharrash, he did not crit all night. So sad! But he made good use of his daily to finish off a very nasty quasit, and he set up the daily with Roar of Triumph, and I action pointed specifically so I could trigger Roar of Triumph with the quasit in mind. So I feel good about that. ...

[gallery] The Lost Academy of Zoon: Level 1

This is my bag. This is what I carry in it when I’m running LFR. From left to right, more or less: three encounters worth of miniatures, a bag of dice, my iPad, a thin notebook, a pouch of beads for marking zones and such, a pouch of pens and pencils, a pouch of dry erase markers, a tube of Alea Tools magnets, a pouch of Alea Tools magnets, a bunch of index cards, a big pouch with the module in it, a big pouch with battlemats in it, and the Rules Compendium. ...

Raven Knights one! more! time! This finished up my run of the Raven’s Bluff campaign. Susan, Hudson, Mark B., Jason B., and Colin played. I think everyone had a good time; I certainly did, despite being rather thrashed. This cold is sucking, let me tell you. The PCs were quite clever and came up with an idea unanticipated by either the module or by me. It didn’t work, due to factors beyond their knowledge, but the failure of the idea did reveal certain other things and before you could blink they were avoiding a certain unfortunate event. It worked out really well, and I was pleased to be able to reward cleverness without handing them everything on a silver platter.

Yep, again! I think that makes the third time I’ve run and/or played What Storms May Come. Both times playing have been because I had a character who wanted to complete the quest, and I ran it by request, so hey. This time was online, with Tsriel running. Matt, Jay Ibero, Dareus, Zalarian, Shamballa, and I played. We did something I really hadn’t expected: namely, took the baby into combat. Well. But given that we did a 1.5 round crush of the final encounter, I guess that was a reasonable choice. Also it means Collin has golden eyes, which fits nicely with the bear thing. ...

Jason kindly agreed to finish up the Raven’s Bluff slot 0 for us, so we played down at Games & Stuff back last Sunday. Busy weekend – we had guests in from out of town, and so on and so forth – but I figured hey, worth a bit of extra effort and all. Plus I got to pick up the awesome Rules Compendium. Plus Kevin seemed likely to hit level 3. ...

Part 2 in my Return to Raven’s Bluff run! My players were, once more, Susan, Colin, Hudson, Jason B., and Mark B. Ravens Under the Midday Sun is more of a dungeon crawl – well, it’s almost completely a dungeon crawl, with a bit of investigatory roleplay on the tail end. I rather enjoyed it, but I don’t have a ton to say about it. Hm. The skill challenge portion of the exploration could be better, I’ll say that. But I could have made it better myself if I’d done a bit of prep. The problem (for me) is that it’s all group checks, and all group checks are mandatory, which means it played out as narrative, “everyone roll X,” narrative, and so on. I could have handled it better by maybe giving everyone a round to make knowledge-ish checks, and then a round where everyone has to try and help in some way? Something like that. If I ever run it again, I’ll fiddle with it a bit.