After buying first 2 modules, telling about them to a friend, it took entire 2 days before I was faced with threat - they want to play this weekend or else. Which gave me another 3 days for preparation - fortunately, with my wife and kid away for a week, I was able to spend considerable time in preparation (plus I have already studied players and campaign guides previously).
From 5 people who were supposed to come, only 3 finally appeared - on such short notice it is still a nice result (I have told I will not start a campaign with less than 3). One of them is DM and player of 4e since a year now, second played only few 4e sessions, 3rd one never played 4e, but has 20+ years of D&D experience with previous editions. All of them long time players, knowing each other well.
We started in true 4e way - stats before story
With 3 players, there was some problem with finding a good composition, so I hinted at the fact they will have NPC cleric at hand during this session. They ended up with
Kandor Longtooth Shifter Two-Blade Ranger
Morn Human Staff Wizard
Telax Changeling Storm Sorcerer
After that, I gave bit long introduction to the setting and allowed making any corrections to the stats/story they would like. Telax came with a story about his family being killed by Inquisition when he was young and his younger sister kidnapped - heavily hinting at the fact that she was young enough to be conditioned by them, so if they will meet in the future, they can be as well enemies at first. With them both being changelings, chance of recognizing 3-years old sister by face after 20 years is rather small, but we will see...
SPOILERS BELOW - DON'T READ UNLESS YOU ARE A DM
I stressed the point that we should find a strong motivation for them to be involved in main campaign arc. I quickly dismissed motion of "They can pay us a LOT" and we finally agreed that they do care about inquisition, avoiding being burned on stake and to my surprise, about preserving 'liberal' setting of Gate Pass. Too bad they will not see it that much in the course of campaign...
Talks with Torrent (Torencia in my campaign, as Torrent sound male in our language, plus piratebay connotations would be probably too strong) went well - with the exception that they wanted to use fire protection potions when building started to burn later. I somehow managed to explain that something supposed to protect from inferno of burning forest will not help in case of burning oil and that they may run out of potions in the forest - which was a stretch, as I had Torencia carry potions also for future 2 persons...
First fight went well - but as I have expected, thunderstones from scouts were a major deal. As band of recruits outside have failed to force the door on first round, scouts started the fight - throwing one thunderstone, catching all players in blast, hitting all of them (including Torencia). NONE of them rolled saving throw for next 4 rounds. Guy new to 4e learned that you can actually make more than one action per round only during next fight...
I kept Kathor in the back, letting players deal with scouts and recruits/thugs. Falling roof took half of enemies, players took other half and managed to escape the fiery house. Fight was interesting because of the roof collapses/burning oil, but having all players dazed certainly decreased the possible swashbuckling there.
After seeing his thugs decimated, Kathor rode away - for players he become a recurring villain figure immediately. Thats good, as he is one of the few multidimensional characters here.
Road of quests to depository was bit artificial. Thanks to my players that they have not made it hard to me - certainly, having 3 short, 'non-important' encounters after each other was bit strange. They helped a guy to carry his family, found and befriended Kiki (I had to bring them back in order when they considered threatening Kiki's life to blackmail merchant for more money). Scene with trampling near the gate was best I think - even if not very interactive.
Depository scene was bit strange for me. It went very good visually - they seemed to show a real respect for the depository Unfortunately, Larion role was bit mysterious to me - for the amount of resourcefulness he is showing, entire setup to try and get the password by trick was not coming to me. Even if Peppin would be there and box would be protected by password know to him, why he should say it in front of the locker?
I had to assume that Peppin was one of the players (with male name like that, Torencia was out of question) - and they went with it without hesitation. After a minute or two Larion realised something is not right and decided to lead them to the 'case' - in fact escaping above. Fight started, with Solon getting a critical and getting bloodied in one shot - hurting players seriously in effect. Larion escaped through the balcony and started running upwards, but one of the players managed to get outside and use a power to get him prone. Total damage 1d6+5+7d10 (minus few for acrobatics) ... After hitting the ground and not getting bloodied he started to run tower top again, circling around it to get out of the sight. Solon teleported, showing nice effect - I decided that anybody teleporting is leaving fiery trail on the teleportation route, to show the leaking of the planes and damage he is getting. One of the players described it that guy teleporting is a match and 'ether' is a striking surface (stuff on the side of matchbox, not sure about english name?).
Larion escaped from top of the tower with huge matrix-like leap (getting a lucky arrow shot from prepared rangers in the process), solon went stratospheric and the rest went as planned.
Flaganus encounter was interesting - they let him outside, blocking both street exits and tried to intimidate him into 'fair' fight. With huge roll, they succeeded, making him kill the child and went berserk against the challenger. Action point later, 2 people on one side were stunned/prone and he turned back to other two saying "Your turn". They managed to get him down (barely) and finally reached the safe house.
Hour was late, but they wanted to play a bit more and next in turn was "White Wyrms" encounter. Without Torencia. 3 1st level guys versus level 5 encounter meant for 5. I was already tired and somehow allowed them to go there...
It started quite well, with changeling donning plate armor taken from Flaganus and pretending to be their ally. There was small issue - he was not speaking orcish, but managed to get out of that "Do NOT mutilate our speech human, I will speak Common with you if you cannot pronounce the language of conquerors properly". Unfortunately, other 2 were sneaking directly behind and tipped off pseudodragon. Still, Telax managed to get most of the white wyrms around him for 'briefing' and put a whirlwind centered on himself, getting critical hits with it, flying off, putting more area goodness with action point (for total of 120+ damage in that round). After that, it went downhill. Ranger decided to fight from top of the boxes, despite my warning, giving advantage to bandits continiously. Soon, both wizard and ranger were downed, with changeling facing mage, two guards and bandit (most of them blooded). With a lucky bluff roll "Charge in NOW, only 4 of them left" he managed to force them to run (this location was compromised anyway). Everybody got lucky on death saving throws and they returned back to safe house with wounded pride, but sound and whole.
Generally, everybody enjoyed the session. I could be bit more prepared as far as Larion encounter was concerned (I had no time to change it in the way I would feel 'believable'), but everybody enjoyed the setting and intra-party dynamics.
I have focused on combat and story above, but there was some nice goofing around also - best part for me was wizard trying to shave without a mirror and changeling standing in front of him, mimicking his looks in realtime while he was shaving (kind of live mirror). After cleaning all the blood, they decided they have to try it more often, as a kind of training for mimicry skills of Telax.
From 5 people who were supposed to come, only 3 finally appeared - on such short notice it is still a nice result (I have told I will not start a campaign with less than 3). One of them is DM and player of 4e since a year now, second played only few 4e sessions, 3rd one never played 4e, but has 20+ years of D&D experience with previous editions. All of them long time players, knowing each other well.
We started in true 4e way - stats before story
With 3 players, there was some problem with finding a good composition, so I hinted at the fact they will have NPC cleric at hand during this session. They ended up withKandor Longtooth Shifter Two-Blade Ranger
Morn Human Staff Wizard
Telax Changeling Storm Sorcerer
After that, I gave bit long introduction to the setting and allowed making any corrections to the stats/story they would like. Telax came with a story about his family being killed by Inquisition when he was young and his younger sister kidnapped - heavily hinting at the fact that she was young enough to be conditioned by them, so if they will meet in the future, they can be as well enemies at first. With them both being changelings, chance of recognizing 3-years old sister by face after 20 years is rather small, but we will see...
SPOILERS BELOW - DON'T READ UNLESS YOU ARE A DM
I stressed the point that we should find a strong motivation for them to be involved in main campaign arc. I quickly dismissed motion of "They can pay us a LOT" and we finally agreed that they do care about inquisition, avoiding being burned on stake and to my surprise, about preserving 'liberal' setting of Gate Pass. Too bad they will not see it that much in the course of campaign...
Talks with Torrent (Torencia in my campaign, as Torrent sound male in our language, plus piratebay connotations would be probably too strong) went well - with the exception that they wanted to use fire protection potions when building started to burn later. I somehow managed to explain that something supposed to protect from inferno of burning forest will not help in case of burning oil and that they may run out of potions in the forest - which was a stretch, as I had Torencia carry potions also for future 2 persons...
First fight went well - but as I have expected, thunderstones from scouts were a major deal. As band of recruits outside have failed to force the door on first round, scouts started the fight - throwing one thunderstone, catching all players in blast, hitting all of them (including Torencia). NONE of them rolled saving throw for next 4 rounds. Guy new to 4e learned that you can actually make more than one action per round only during next fight...
I kept Kathor in the back, letting players deal with scouts and recruits/thugs. Falling roof took half of enemies, players took other half and managed to escape the fiery house. Fight was interesting because of the roof collapses/burning oil, but having all players dazed certainly decreased the possible swashbuckling there.
After seeing his thugs decimated, Kathor rode away - for players he become a recurring villain figure immediately. Thats good, as he is one of the few multidimensional characters here.
Road of quests to depository was bit artificial. Thanks to my players that they have not made it hard to me - certainly, having 3 short, 'non-important' encounters after each other was bit strange. They helped a guy to carry his family, found and befriended Kiki (I had to bring them back in order when they considered threatening Kiki's life to blackmail merchant for more money). Scene with trampling near the gate was best I think - even if not very interactive.
Depository scene was bit strange for me. It went very good visually - they seemed to show a real respect for the depository
Unfortunately, Larion role was bit mysterious to me - for the amount of resourcefulness he is showing, entire setup to try and get the password by trick was not coming to me. Even if Peppin would be there and box would be protected by password know to him, why he should say it in front of the locker? I had to assume that Peppin was one of the players (with male name like that, Torencia was out of question) - and they went with it without hesitation. After a minute or two Larion realised something is not right and decided to lead them to the 'case' - in fact escaping above. Fight started, with Solon getting a critical and getting bloodied in one shot - hurting players seriously in effect. Larion escaped through the balcony and started running upwards, but one of the players managed to get outside and use a power to get him prone. Total damage 1d6+5+7d10 (minus few for acrobatics) ... After hitting the ground and not getting bloodied he started to run tower top again, circling around it to get out of the sight. Solon teleported, showing nice effect - I decided that anybody teleporting is leaving fiery trail on the teleportation route, to show the leaking of the planes and damage he is getting. One of the players described it that guy teleporting is a match and 'ether' is a striking surface (stuff on the side of matchbox, not sure about english name?).
Larion escaped from top of the tower with huge matrix-like leap (getting a lucky arrow shot from prepared rangers in the process), solon went stratospheric and the rest went as planned.
Flaganus encounter was interesting - they let him outside, blocking both street exits and tried to intimidate him into 'fair' fight. With huge roll, they succeeded, making him kill the child and went berserk against the challenger. Action point later, 2 people on one side were stunned/prone and he turned back to other two saying "Your turn". They managed to get him down (barely) and finally reached the safe house.
Hour was late, but they wanted to play a bit more and next in turn was "White Wyrms" encounter. Without Torencia. 3 1st level guys versus level 5 encounter meant for 5. I was already tired and somehow allowed them to go there...
It started quite well, with changeling donning plate armor taken from Flaganus and pretending to be their ally. There was small issue - he was not speaking orcish, but managed to get out of that "Do NOT mutilate our speech human, I will speak Common with you if you cannot pronounce the language of conquerors properly". Unfortunately, other 2 were sneaking directly behind and tipped off pseudodragon. Still, Telax managed to get most of the white wyrms around him for 'briefing' and put a whirlwind centered on himself, getting critical hits with it, flying off, putting more area goodness with action point (for total of 120+ damage in that round). After that, it went downhill. Ranger decided to fight from top of the boxes, despite my warning, giving advantage to bandits continiously. Soon, both wizard and ranger were downed, with changeling facing mage, two guards and bandit (most of them blooded). With a lucky bluff roll "Charge in NOW, only 4 of them left" he managed to force them to run (this location was compromised anyway). Everybody got lucky on death saving throws and they returned back to safe house with wounded pride, but sound and whole.
Generally, everybody enjoyed the session. I could be bit more prepared as far as Larion encounter was concerned (I had no time to change it in the way I would feel 'believable'), but everybody enjoyed the setting and intra-party dynamics.
I have focused on combat and story above, but there was some nice goofing around also - best part for me was wizard trying to shave without a mirror and changeling standing in front of him, mimicking his looks in realtime while he was shaving (kind of live mirror). After cleaning all the blood, they decided they have to try it more often, as a kind of training for mimicry skills of Telax.
