The ramblings of a Boston area gamer
Session 1 - Keep on the Shadowfell
A warning. There may be potential spoilers for Keep on the Shadowfell with these summaries.
A summary of our first session exploring the Keep on the Shadowfell. In attendance:
As an aside we all used to live in either the Boston or South Shore areas of MA. Due to job and family reasons some moved out to the Metro West area (not too far from Worcester). We usually rotate between my house (South Shore) and my brother's (Metro West). It's a 45 - 60 minute drive between the two so we carpool. This gives Dave and I a fair amount of time to discuss the state of D&D and the group's various campaigns in addition to talking about sports, TV, etc.
We had decided to do a character creation session and then start the adventure. On the way to Kevin's I tell Dave, "Bob's going to show with a dragonborn, probably a fighter or paladin with the enlarge breath feat. He saw dragon breath and thought it was the most powerful racial ability out there." Bob shows up with 3 characters and the one he wants to play is a dragonborn paladin. Dave turns to me and says, "Tom, I owe you a Coke." As we eat the rest of the guys make the characters listed above.
While making the characters Kevin mentioned that he's not a fan of 3E. He had read some of the 4E stuff and felt it would be more enjoyable. 3E had too many rules. 4E was more like 1st edition where the class roles were more defined and things weren't so codified. I was totally caught off guard. I had no idea he felt this way. He had changed his D&D campaign to HackMaster a while back, but I figured it was more for "old school" feel than a dissatisfaction with the rules.
I go with the 'Investigate the Rumors of a Death Cult' hook. Ed and the guys roleplay the cleric recruiting the others to help with the investigation. 4E allows roleplaying, check. A little while later the characters are on the road near Winterhaven.
I decided to go with a house rule where Allies provide cover as I think it's a bit too unbelievable otherwise (it'll be a number of sessions before I realize these somewhat hoses the ranged attacks of the PCs but more importantly, those of my bad guys).
Here comes the first battle. The players are ambushed by a couple of kobolds. Ed goes first and delays. Bob's paladin runs up and lets loose his mighty breath weapon on the 3 kobolds (no minions) in from of him. He does 4 points of damage and looks pretty sad (he does hit a good number of the bad guys). All of a sudden Ed mentions that he didn't know he could move and attack, could he do something now. I have no idea why he didn't think he could move and attack. We went over the action types (and a couple more of the basics) during character creation. Plus, it was pretty much the same as 3E. By the third or fourth round the guys had pretty much got a hang of the basics and they kill my wyrmpriest before I remember to use most of its more interesting abilities. The guys end up spending a healing surge or two plus an action point before finally defeating the kobolds.
The characters were never really in danger during this encounter but I thought it did a good job getting the players used to the new system.
The guys take a short rest and heal up.
In Winterhaven, the party explores the town, interacts with the citizens and eventually accept a commission from the town mayor to stop the kobold menace that's been attacking caravans.
Outside the village, the party was subject to another kobold ambush. This battle was over quickly. The guys had figured out their powers and how to use them to best help the party as a whole. Bob took the most time to figure out what he was going to do each round, but everyone else had there action ready when it was their turn. Overall, combat doesn't seem any faster than 3E. At low levels it seems longer, but (aside from Bob) I didn't have to wait minutes on end for someone do decide what they were going to do. It seems that overall combat may take longer but the individual rounds go by quickly. It seems like high level combat will take about the same amount of time in 4E as low levels and not exponentially longer like 3E. We'll see when we get there.
At this point, I'm a little worried that it'll be really difficult to hurt the PCs (the next session will change that). Neither combat provided a real challenge to the party. We prefer a game where characters can die.
After this battle it was quitting time. Going around the table the guys decided that they want to continue playing KotS. Everyone said they had a lot of fun and, so far, liked it better than 3E (except Dave). Ed was more involved in the game for the first time in a long time. Kevin said he enjoyed 4E more than 3E. Bob wanted to continue but wanted to play a fighter instead of a paladin. Dave preferred 3E and called 4E a board game but was willing to play again. At this point, I was willing to play/run whatever the majority wanted. I enjoyed myself a lot running 4E. Monster design was one of the things I liked during the previews and they really shine in play.
On the way home, Dave and I discussed what we saw as the new paradigm with 4E. In 3E you maximized your character's abilities, but in 4E you maximized the party's abilities. We figured that was why Bob was taking so long to decide what to do. Dave said he didn't hate 4E but felt it was on the same level as board game night. He also stated he was not going to buy any more of the 4E books than the core three. Dave was a huge collector of 3E and prior editions. If we wanted to look at a book (WotC or 3pp) he usually had it.
I think it helped that we didn't worry about what was in previous editions and not in 4E and vice versa. We just decided to play and let the game either win us over on its own merits or not.
A summary of our first session exploring the Keep on the Shadowfell. In attendance:
- me - DM
- Kevin - eladrin wizard
- Dave - elf ranger
- Ed - human cleric
- Bob - dragonborn paladin
As an aside we all used to live in either the Boston or South Shore areas of MA. Due to job and family reasons some moved out to the Metro West area (not too far from Worcester). We usually rotate between my house (South Shore) and my brother's (Metro West). It's a 45 - 60 minute drive between the two so we carpool. This gives Dave and I a fair amount of time to discuss the state of D&D and the group's various campaigns in addition to talking about sports, TV, etc.
We had decided to do a character creation session and then start the adventure. On the way to Kevin's I tell Dave, "Bob's going to show with a dragonborn, probably a fighter or paladin with the enlarge breath feat. He saw dragon breath and thought it was the most powerful racial ability out there." Bob shows up with 3 characters and the one he wants to play is a dragonborn paladin. Dave turns to me and says, "Tom, I owe you a Coke." As we eat the rest of the guys make the characters listed above.
While making the characters Kevin mentioned that he's not a fan of 3E. He had read some of the 4E stuff and felt it would be more enjoyable. 3E had too many rules. 4E was more like 1st edition where the class roles were more defined and things weren't so codified. I was totally caught off guard. I had no idea he felt this way. He had changed his D&D campaign to HackMaster a while back, but I figured it was more for "old school" feel than a dissatisfaction with the rules.
I go with the 'Investigate the Rumors of a Death Cult' hook. Ed and the guys roleplay the cleric recruiting the others to help with the investigation. 4E allows roleplaying, check. A little while later the characters are on the road near Winterhaven.
I decided to go with a house rule where Allies provide cover as I think it's a bit too unbelievable otherwise (it'll be a number of sessions before I realize these somewhat hoses the ranged attacks of the PCs but more importantly, those of my bad guys).
Here comes the first battle. The players are ambushed by a couple of kobolds. Ed goes first and delays. Bob's paladin runs up and lets loose his mighty breath weapon on the 3 kobolds (no minions) in from of him. He does 4 points of damage and looks pretty sad (he does hit a good number of the bad guys). All of a sudden Ed mentions that he didn't know he could move and attack, could he do something now. I have no idea why he didn't think he could move and attack. We went over the action types (and a couple more of the basics) during character creation. Plus, it was pretty much the same as 3E. By the third or fourth round the guys had pretty much got a hang of the basics and they kill my wyrmpriest before I remember to use most of its more interesting abilities. The guys end up spending a healing surge or two plus an action point before finally defeating the kobolds.
The characters were never really in danger during this encounter but I thought it did a good job getting the players used to the new system.
The guys take a short rest and heal up.
In Winterhaven, the party explores the town, interacts with the citizens and eventually accept a commission from the town mayor to stop the kobold menace that's been attacking caravans.
Outside the village, the party was subject to another kobold ambush. This battle was over quickly. The guys had figured out their powers and how to use them to best help the party as a whole. Bob took the most time to figure out what he was going to do each round, but everyone else had there action ready when it was their turn. Overall, combat doesn't seem any faster than 3E. At low levels it seems longer, but (aside from Bob) I didn't have to wait minutes on end for someone do decide what they were going to do. It seems that overall combat may take longer but the individual rounds go by quickly. It seems like high level combat will take about the same amount of time in 4E as low levels and not exponentially longer like 3E. We'll see when we get there.
At this point, I'm a little worried that it'll be really difficult to hurt the PCs (the next session will change that). Neither combat provided a real challenge to the party. We prefer a game where characters can die.
After this battle it was quitting time. Going around the table the guys decided that they want to continue playing KotS. Everyone said they had a lot of fun and, so far, liked it better than 3E (except Dave). Ed was more involved in the game for the first time in a long time. Kevin said he enjoyed 4E more than 3E. Bob wanted to continue but wanted to play a fighter instead of a paladin. Dave preferred 3E and called 4E a board game but was willing to play again. At this point, I was willing to play/run whatever the majority wanted. I enjoyed myself a lot running 4E. Monster design was one of the things I liked during the previews and they really shine in play.
On the way home, Dave and I discussed what we saw as the new paradigm with 4E. In 3E you maximized your character's abilities, but in 4E you maximized the party's abilities. We figured that was why Bob was taking so long to decide what to do. Dave said he didn't hate 4E but felt it was on the same level as board game night. He also stated he was not going to buy any more of the 4E books than the core three. Dave was a huge collector of 3E and prior editions. If we wanted to look at a book (WotC or 3pp) he usually had it.
I think it helped that we didn't worry about what was in previous editions and not in 4E and vice versa. We just decided to play and let the game either win us over on its own merits or not.
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