I ran the fourth session of my 4e game last night, and I thought it was a good session. A lot of excellent RP coupled with a fun and exciting challenging encounter for the PCs to mess with.

During the session, I was able to sit back as DM and just listen to the players engage in a lengthy discussion in-character, about the next steps the characters were going to take.

Through the first three sessions, I had dropped in several plot hooks and threads, and the players' RP decisions ended up creating several more plot hooks that they could follow if they wanted to.

They picked one plot thread in specific to focus on, one that I hadn't really thought would be as interesting as some of the others. None of them were the 'right' decision or the 'wrong' decision, but I found myself sitting back to wonder why players choose one plot hook over another.

In games past I tended to have an NPC in the group that I use to bounce questions off the other characters, but I didn't want to do that in this game (no real reason--just wanted to try something different). So, without that NPC to ask questions and maybe occasionally gently direct the PCs into one direction or another, it's entirely up to the players and their PCs.

Anyway, just some ruminations on players and the decisions they make, whether they're anticipated or not.

Scribe Ineti

This session was a lot of fun to run. The PCs had a lot of stuff going on subplot-wise, and I really enjoyed giving each of them a chance to do some stuff. Malkaius had a great conversation with Captain Folston about various and sundry, and that discussion sparked a number of potential plot hooks.

Malakith had a chat with a fellow Blood of Vol devotee, and that also sparked some subplot potential (and indirectly provided possible next steps for the group).

Zenya and Diesa also had something to do, though not quite as much. I need to work on getting them both more involved.

As for the combat encounters, the venture into the sewers went pretty well, but I could have balanced it better. The first encounter was against one dire rat and several giant rats and it was far too easy for the group.

The second encounter, though, with one deathjump spider, two dire rats, and three giant rats, was much harder for the group, partly because the DJS was rather powerful and rolled well on its attacks.

The third encounter with the sewage elemental was easy by comparison. I'll continue to work on making each and every encounter challenging to some degree.

Other than that, I think it was a session that went very well, notably because of how late we played. Coffee around 11:00 for some of the players helped a lot.

Scribe Ineti

This session was pretty easy to prepare for and run. I designed the encounter with the goblins and used the MM pdf to cut and paste the monster stat blocks into a Word document, so that was pretty handy--no page flipping required during the session, which continues to be a godsend for the game and for 4e.

I'm continually impressed with how quick encounters pass by and are resolved. Combat is quick and exciting, even moreso as the players and I get the rules ingrained into our brains.

The plot continues to thicken at a nice pace, and the characters are starting to come to life through the players' role-play.

In this session, Matt (playing the tiefling warlock Malkaius) had a nice RP scene that ended with sort of a throwaway line, but I latched onto that line and have a good followup scene for him in Chapter Three.

As a GM, having players do good RP that advances both the overall campaign and their own subplots is a great gift. This campaign is starting to veer into the territory where the PCs are driving the events rather than reacting to events tossed at them.

This is a great thing, for several reasons. Makes it easier for me to plan sessions, gives them a greater sense of ownership of the campaign's direction, and gives us all deeper stakes in the campaign as a whole.

Scribe Ineti

This session was run as a solo because the player was out of town and missed the first session. It was a good chance to get to know the thief and how she normally operates.

The fight with the bandits went pretty easily. I think four minions against one PC might be too easy of a fight, but it was fun and fast, so I'm happy with that.

It was also fun weaving in the solo character into the storyline already begun in the first session, and it was fun to see certain moments from the first session reflected in Zenya's eyes as she 'coincidentally' ended up in the same place as the other players.

All in all, a good session which proved to be a good warmup for the second chapter of the game, run on the following night.

Scribe Ineti

So, over the past two weeks or so, my group and I have been talking about 4e and setting up plans for an extended 4e campaign. In the process, the players have been bandying ideas back and forth about which class and race their characters will be.

Almost all of the players have had two or three or more changes of heart on what class or race they want to play, mostly because they've all commented on how many options they have, and in some cases, how hard it is to choose between the classes.

I like to think this means 4e did something right in terms of making each class and race cool and interesting, enough so that a player can't simply dismiss a class or race outright as I have seen done in the past with other editions of the game.

I haven't looked at the PHB in great detail, since I've been focusing on the DMG and MM, but I will say that the few times I sat down to check out the character classes, I caught myself thinking like a player--"Oooh, that's a cool power. I'd like to play this class" or "Oh, man. That's even better!"

So, kudos to the 4e design team for forcing players to really look at the options and not entirely stick with their originally intended characters.

Scribe Ineti