I posted a
very lengthy two-post report on my experience running the first session of D&D Encounters: Dark Sun over on the official WotC DDE forum. I'll repost it here. It's extremely long, and full of spoilers for the first session.
*****
In a sentence? "Tonight's experience with D&D Encounters: Dark Sun made me remember why I love D&D, and why I love DM’ing."
I just got home from running the first session of D&D Encounters: Dark Sun. It was a huge success!
I am so happy! I had an absolute blast running this, and all six of my players seemed like they had a great time, too. There was a lot of excitement around the table, and the game just went really well.
This was more fun than I've had DM’ing in a long time. I've run a lot of 4E, both home games and LFR, and I've gotta tell you, tonight was totally awesome.
Dark Sun. The best setting of all time!
This adventure is very cool, the characters are interesting, the first encounter was brutal and fun and tactically interesting as well as a wonderful thematic introduction to the harsh sands of Athas.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone involved in making this program possible, creating the materials, writing the adventure, and helping me to become a WPN organizer and have a chance to run this excellent D&D game at my local store. I had a tremendous time, and it's only getting started, and I'm so grateful to the fine folks at WotC and the helpful posters here who made it all happen and gave me such great ideas.
We played for not "one to two hours", but for almost four hours. And it was thrilling and intense the whole time. I feel like I did a good job DM’ing, and I had a great table of players who were a joy to DM for. Everyone really loved the setting and the scenario, it was a huge hit.
So, I had no "new" players, but I did have a couple of guys who hadn't played much 4E, or much Dark Sun, so they were fairly new-ish. Three of my players were brand new acquaintances to me as of tonight, and they were great.
I had two of my good friends and longtime gaming buddies there, and they're 4E pros. I knew they were coming. I also had another friend there who had DM’ed some Dark Sun for me previously, and he'd signed up ahead of time, too. Then the fourth player was a guy I'd never met before, who just e-mailed me a couple of days ago about the game, because I had finally hit upon the idea to post something about it on the local gamer Meetup groups, and he saw it there.
I figured those four who had contacted me ahead of time were going to be it. But to my delight, two other guys showed up who had just heard about it from the Event Locator on the Wizards site. So we had a perfect six-man table, with two unexpected guests. I was very happy about this!
We spent the first hour and forty-five minutes going over the characters, me talking a lot about the setting, and describing the background for the adventure. There was some roleplaying, and some scene-setting. We didn't even get to the "encounter" until an hour and forty-five minutes in, and everyone was already having a great time and really getting into the Dark Sun vibe.
I used a lot of the ideas that Teos and others here suggested, as well as some ideas I had myself from some time spent reading old Dark Sun material and thinking about how to make the introduction to the adventure really sing "Welcome to Athas!" I got a lot of compliments on how I started the adventure, and I think it added a lot that we did things the way we did, instead of just showing up, reading a paragraph of boxed text, and rolling initiative. If I may toot my own horn a bit, I think I really nailed it.
To start with, I printed up a bunch of stuff ahead of time. I made a big full-color picture of the Dark Sun from the logo and put it up over the back of my DM screen with the words "Welcome to Athas" in big red letters in an old classic Dark Sun font.
I wrote up and nicely-formatted my own personalized errata sheet for the PCs, only including changes that benefitted them, and not bothering with any errata that reduced their abilities. They appreciated that! (I also gave Phye a +1 masterwork bonus to all of her attacks for having a metal weapon, because I wanted the metal weapon to feel really special, and enforce the "metal is rare and awesome here" theme, and make her feel like a true noble.) I also printed off (warning: slight copyright infringement alert, please don't sue me WotC) the first six pages of my scanned PDF of the old original Wanderer's Journal from the first Dark Sun boxed set, because I think they're an amazing introduction to Athas and a great read. And then the "Welcome to Athas" player primer from the kit, and the tracking sheets. So I made this huge packet of stuff for each player, and gave them all of it at the beginning, told them it was all theirs to keep and use as they saw fit.
Then I had the beautiful character cards for them, and gave them all dry-erase markers with erasers to use on them, and another marker to use to mark up the sheets more permanently if they chose. I told 'em to write whatever they wanted on the sheets, as I had plenty of spares. I had a big selection of minis with me for them to choose from, pretty much every mini I had which could remotely be used for one of the characters. (Though poor Shikirr had to choose from either an ettercap or a mezzodemon.) And I gave out the can coozies, which people liked a lot, too. So they showed up and I just showered them with stuff, it was a good time. I felt well-equipped and well-prepared, and it was appreciated by the players. The materials provided by WotC were gorgeous and fun to hand out.
After everyone had their characters and their minis and all the sheets and information I'd printed for them, and we were all settled in, I gave a little speech about how much I loved Dark Sun, and how it had been my favorite setting as a young gamer, and all of the magical memories I had of it, and how I wanted to share the wonders (and horrors) of Dark Sun with these guys. Really riffing a lot off the similar comments made recently by Jerry Holkins about his running of Dark Sun for his pals. I felt the same way he did, and so I said some words about it.
Then I asked them to listen for a moment as I read them something to set the mood. In my most dramatic poetry-reciting voice, I intoned...
"I live in a world of fire and sand. The crimson sun scorches the life from anything that crawls or flies, and storms of sand scour the foliage from the barren ground. Lightning strikes from the cloudless sky, and peals of thunder roll unexplained across the vast tablelands. Even the wind, dry and searing as a kiln, can kill a man with thirst.
This is a land of blood and dust, where tribes of feral elves sweep out of the salt plains to plunder lonely caravans, mysterious singing winds call men to slow suffocation in a Sea of Silt, and legions of slaves clash over a few bushels of moldering grain. The dragon despoils entire cities, while selfish kings squander their armies raising gaudy palaces and garish tombs.
This is my home, Athas. It is an arid and bleak place, a wasteland with a handful of austere cities clinging precariously to a few scattered oases. It is a brutal and savage land, beset by political strife and monstrous abominations, where life is grim and short."
(That's the first three paragraphs of the original Wanderer's Journal, of course. I read it like I was auditioning for a play, and they all seemed suitably impressed.)
Oh god I love Dark Sun, and my love for it was just pouring out of me as I started talking about the setting, about the harshness of the environment, and about the things that made each of their characters special in the world. I told the Veiled Alliance players about the Veiled Alliance, and I told Shikirr about Thri-Kreen, and talked about The Will and The Way to the psionic characters, and the legendary toughness of Muls and the savage raiding tribes of the Elves and the glorious rigors of the arena. I'd read each character's background several times, so I could speak to each player confidently about their specific PC and who they were and what was cool about them, without having to read anything or glance at any notes. I could see them getting into it, feeling drawn into this amazing world so different from the common D&D generic fantasy settings.
Then I explained about weapon breakage, and the concepts of all the non-metal weapons and the scarcity of metal and all that. I explained the rules for it, and the players liked them. I urged them to strongly consider trying to find extra weapons or take them from their enemies. And I explained survival days, and the crazy harshness of the environment, and how absolutely crucial it was to have the proper supplies in order to survive the wastes. I really talked a lot about these two mechanics, and all of the story/setting implications of them. They got the picture, and also really liked the rules elements of both of these Dark Sun specific things. So, great job on those two mechanical elements, Dark Sun designer guys. I think you knocked those out of the park.
So then we launched into the narrative of the adventure itself. I told them about how they'd come to be with this caravan, drew in the linked stories of Phye and Barcan and Jarvix, and talked about the unique nature of Veiled Alliance sympathy in Altaruk. I told the other three that they'd been enslaved, and were serving masters on the caravan. I said that they'd all been travelling together in this caravan since Balic, and were headed to Tyr. I talked about the rumors of Kalak's death, and how and why that was such a Big Deal on Athas. I described the caravan in detail, painting pictures in their minds of mekillots and inixes and kanks, huge armored wagons and guards. I talked about how dangerous travel is, and described many setbacks that they'd already encountered on their long, slow journey. I told them they'd faced terrible sandstorms, and attacks by elven raiding bands, and that they'd had a chance to fight together and work together to survive the journey. The nobles among them requested that these three slaves be assigned to their personal duty, and we had a couple of brief roleplay scenes, and I let people make some skill checks that got them more into their characters. Nature checks to reveal knowledge about the world, a couple of Diplomacy checks as Phye and Barcan persuaded the caravan master to let them bring their befriended slaves into the heavily-armored "big wagon" with them.
I told them that they'd started seeing Silt Runners (and of course, then there were Nature checks and more knowledge revealed about Silt Runners, which I'd prepared well for with a print-out of the old 2E Monstrous Compendium entry -- and I got to show them the old Silt Runner picture, too, which was nice) following along and watching the caravan, keeping at a distance. I told them that more and more kept coming, and that this was unusual for Silt Runners, as they'd normally never mess with such a huge and well-defended caravan as this. There was a lot of talk about Silt Runners actually, lots of knowledge checks and questions from the PCs and roleplay about it. By the time they got to fight some Silt Runners, they really knew a lot about them and weren't just facing some random faceless generic bad guys. Dark Sun flavor to the max, that's my goal in this thing!
I also did the whole thing with seeing the comets in the night sky, and feeling that it was an omen, but of course I made it Barcan who saw it, since that was such an obvious tie to his character background. Then he took it to Jarvix, and they went to the caravan master about it, who blew them off. But I really made it sound ominous, and told them that they were having bad dreams for a couple of days afterward. I was slowly building this thing up, with the omen, and the massing Silt Runners just mysteriously following and watching them.
Then they saw the storm, far off, but obviously huge, and strangely dark, and moving their way. I told Barcan and Jarvix that they could feel a wrongness about it, that they knew it was tied somehow to the grim omen they'd noticed a couple of nights before. By this point, all of the players were really intrigued and excited and nervous. We'd been roleplaying (and me narrating a lot) for well over an hour, and I just kept giving them Dark Sun lore and color, and building up the tension of the approaching disaster, and they had lots of questions (in-character, smart questions), and it was very cool.
I described the preparations for the storm, as the wagons all started covering themselves up and taking shelter and trying to protect themselves. The fear was building, and I made a big deal of how dangerous this was, but also how well-prepared for such dangers the caravaneers were, how this was a way of life on Athas. So finally they were all battened down inside the "big wagon", the armored one with its own guard turrets, pulled by lumbering mekillots because it was so huge. The noble PCs got to feel cool because they'd made an effort to persuade the caravan master to let the other characters into this fortified wagon with them, and now everyone felt rewarded by that, as they were obviously the safest people in the caravan. This gave the slave PCs more of an incentive to like and trust the nobles, too, which made more of a party bond.
Then I told them that they started to hear something most unusual. A sound that their characters had never heard, but which any of them as players would know as the sound of a hailstorm beginning. Not just sand and wind blowing out there, but something hard, many such somethings, falling like a deadly rain from the sky. Then we did the inevitable Nature and Arcana checks, and more descriptions, and I really built up the obsidian storm, described it in several stages as it grew worse and worse, and how unnatural it was. I let the psionic and arcane characters determine, through their skills, that it was not a psionic or arcane effect, nor was it natural. So they got a bit of a clue that this had to be some very powerful primal magic, but since none of them were primal characters, it was scary and mysterious to them.
Despite all of this really lengthy description, narration, and just talking, my players were so into it at this point. No one was bored or waiting impatiently to kill something. It was intense and really, really felt like Dark Sun. I was feeling like the best DM ever, but really it was all the material and taking time before the game to read a bunch of excellent Dark Sun stuff and think about how to present it. The scenario is perhaps not very thoroughly fleshed-out in the adventure module itself, but of course I know that's due to space limitations. The idea of the scenario itself, though, as conceived by the author, is really quite brilliant and so rich with possibilities. I had to put in some real work and effort myself to make it truly shine, but all of the brain fuel was provided for me by the module writer (seriously, great job Mr. Tulach!), and the old Dark Sun authors, and some very clever people here on these boards (thank YOU, Teos!)
So the storm got worse and worse, and the less-stout wagons were being shredded, and crushed, and thrown about in the wind. The air was filled with the screams of dying men and kanks and inixes, and the air was a haze of blood and sand. Larger and larger heavy chunks and razor-sharp shards of obsidian were falling, decimating the caravan, killing everyone, but only in the one largest wagon were the PCs safe. But not for long. I told them it was getting worse, and they looked pretty nervous, wondering what they were going to do, trying to plan how to survive. Yuka and Shikirr were scouting out the locations of the supplies in the wagon, and just waiting for the opportune moment to jump the guards and take what they needed.
Oh, and the Silt Runners! Now this freaked them out. I told them that the storm wasn't hitting the Silt Runners at all. That hundreds of them were still out there, gathered and just watching, relatively calmly. Like they knew this storm was coming, like this was all part of the plan, and they knew they were safe from it. Then as it got more intense and dangerous, I told them the Silt Runners were getting more excited, chanting and singing songs in their unknown language (I knew that none of the PCs spoke Draconic), and dancing about. Man, the players were very scared of these Silt Runners, and this storm.
One of the players cleverly asked the caravan master if the caravan was carrying any odd or special cargo that might make it a target for someone powerful. He answered, of course, that the only thing controversial that this caravan was transporting was the two Veiled Alliance members. All eyes turned to Jarvix and Barcan, as everyone sort of suddenly grasped that they were the targets of this crazy disaster. It was a cool moment at the table. I was delighted to see how into the characters and the scenario everyone was.
So finally it all went to hell, and the biggest chunks of obsidian rained down, causing the whole earth to shake, as the wind picked up to incredible speeds, throwing smaller wagons and dead animals everywhere. I described a huge shard of obsidian cleaving their big wagon in half, the remains of it being ripped to pieces as they cowered in their shelter and clung to it for dear life. And another huge chunk fell, and sent their little piece of the wagon flying, and the windstorm picking it up and hurling it far away, high in the sky. And then it crashed to the earth, and all was black for them.
They woke up, and they were in this tiny, shattered fragment of the original huge wagon, far away from the road and the remains of the caravan, but fortuitously in the part of the wagon which had held the supplies. The storm was behind them, at least the worst part. They were just on the edge, and the shards still falling were mildly dangerous, but survivable. But they could hear the blowing horns of the Silt Runners in pursuit of them . . . many, many of them. Coming from the south, east, and west, and only a small scouting band ahead of them to the north, away from the killer storm of certain death, away from the hordes of Silt Runners coming swiftly their way. But they were very motivated to gather supplies, as my depictions of the brutal inhospitality of the desert on Athas had made them respect the danger of the wastes, and they were not about to run off without lots of survival days in hand.
So, finally the actual encounter itself begins. We've been playing for nearly two hours already, but everyone's super excited and the atmosphere is thick. It was one of the best DM’ing experiences I've had in ages, I was just thrilled by how immersive it was. I wanted to transport these guys into Athas, and I think I really succeeded. (Again, with the wonderful material I had to work with!)
I took some liberties. First of all, I placed some other "stuff" in the wagon with them besides survival days. I had bundles of three javelins each, and belts with five daggers a piece. All non-metal, of course. I think that Castri, especially, really needs more than those two daggers for ranged weapons, and the two defenders could use some ranged weapons on occasion, too. So in addition to having survival days to collect, they had the option to spend minor actions to bulk up on some basic ranged weapons as well. Then I had the ornate wooden box, which I told Jarvix and Barcan they could tell was just a bit arcane in nature, "like the kind of box that a wizard would keep magical things in". Inside were the two healing fruits (and here again was some explanation and description of the lore behind those, why they were really quite special and a big deal, and so on), and I also put in enough mystic salves and rare herbs for Jarvix to cast each of his rituals twice. I made the box sound cool, and the stuff inside sound cool, too. They felt like they were getting something really flavorful and neat, not just a few gold worth of ritual components and two healing potions.
I made the storm only harm the PCs, because it was way cooler telling them how the storm seemed to miss the Silt Runners on purpose, like it was targeted, like something was directing it. This really creeped them out, and had them wondering about this mysterious and obviously powerful enemy (whom they suspected was a primal caster of some kind) who was stalking them and throwing all of this scary stuff at them. After having run the encounter for myself twice already as a test, I felt confident that I could do this and it would make the encounter more tactically challenging without being too overwhelming. I knew at least three guys there were seasoned 4E pros, and no one there was actually new to the game, so I figured they could hang with a bit harder fight.
I added one Rager, for six players. I also made visibility beyond 20 feet in the storm provide concealment, and I applied this penalty to monsters and PCs alike. Oh, and I gave the Silt Runners the ability to ignore all of the difficult terrain from the dunes, since we'd spent so much time earlier talking about how they were so fast and light, and had these big, flat feet that let them run over sand and silt easily. It made them feel more like the flavor they were supposed to have, and again, added yet another level of tactical difficulty to the fight.
That's all I changed in the combat encounter as such. The visibility thing, the storm only hurting the PCs thing, and the Silt Runners ignoring the difficult terrain thing. Those made the fight all the more scary and tricky, without adding more monsters or raising their levels or stats. On the PCs side, I'd given them wholly favorable errata, plus extra weapons available to grab, plus the free ritual components, and I'd armed them with a lot of knowledge. (For example, I'd made a very big point about how much Silt Runners hated elves, so everyone knew very well that Castri was going to be target number one before they ever got into the fight.)
One of my players had Twitter on his phone, so we checked it and the buff granting the PCs a free slide at start of turn had just come up, so I gave them that. They thought the Twitter buffs thing was really cool. Whoever came up with that little idea, well done!
So, then we had the battle. It lasted two hours in and of itself, and we'd already played for almost two. But man, was it fun. Brutal and intense, and all of the build-up and immersion to that point had really set it up well. The tension was high. Everyone was into their characters and the scene. Everyone was on the edge of their seats and it felt like a true life-or-death struggle. I loved it! And the players fawned over me and the adventure afterward, so I'd say they loved it, too.
*****
The battle was great! When I first read the encounter, it didn't seem all that special to me. I thought, "eh this is okay, but nothing to write home about." But man, in play, it was gorgeous. Props to the designer, again, because this really was a well put-together D&D encounter. So challenging, even at only a level 1 XP budget. I can't tell you how many lame, unimaginative, cake walk LFR encounters I've DM’ed and played, which all felt way too easy, too safe, and just disappointing in their simplicity. But this, this lovely little introduction to Athas . . . this was masterfully tough given the low XP budget. The terrain, the time limit, the need to gather supplies, the ongoing storm damage, the motivation to stay in the cover of the wagon in conflict with the motivation to escape the map and/or go chasing down Silt Runners who are hanging back shooting poison darts and blowing you up with psionics from afar. Just glorious. I dunno how it was for everyone else, but for my table tonight, this encounter just plain rocked.
The first creature to attack them was the Inciter, blowing them up in the wagon with his psionic explosion. I told the psionic characters that they could feel him using The Way, could sense the psychic energy being manipulated by this intently-concentrating Silt Runner. (That led to a brief conversation in which I said, "Well, I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the rules that lets you actually sense other creatures using psionics, but in all the Dark Sun novels they always talked about sensing each other using The Way and stuff, and it sounded really cool, so I'm going with it.")
The fight was hard enough on its own. It made it all the worse when I rolled three crits. (And I roll everything in front of the players, it's just how I like to DM.) All of them were on the big-damage encounter powers, too. Poison Dart crit for 23 was the very first Darter attack I rolled. Brutal Spear crit for 28 was shocking and scary. Getting hit for 28 by a 1st-level monster is not something these guys are used to! It was pretty terrifying. I also rolled a 1 at one point, and had the Rager break his spear and re-roll! After quite awhile, the players were having a bit of a rough go, and it was late (we started at 6:00pm, and it was 9:30pm, and the battle was far from over), so I called for another Nature check to glean additional insight into their foes, and then informed them that "Silt Runners are pretty skittish when their leader is slain. If this one who is calling the shots and inciting them to such a frenzy dies, the rest might lose their heart for the fight." So they gunned for him, and took him down just in time to avert a very probable TPK. It felt epic, and they were thrilled and relieved, and even though the second Darter and two of the three Ragers ran away and didn't actually die, they took it as a satisfying and hard-won victory, all the same.
My players were great though. They were soldiers. I hammered them, and they kept on fighting. I drilled them with the storm, which their foes ignored, and they didn't give up. They were champs when it came to getting survival days, too. At the end, they had 24 of the things! That's amazing. 24 survival days, and they managed to pick up a few extra weapons, and Shikirr even carted off the dead body of the Inciter as they fled. (He's going to eat it...)
A lot of great moments in this battle. Everyone got their chance to shine. Well . . . okay, everyone but poor, poor Castri. So, I knew he was doomed. I'd even pretty much made it clear to the player that Castri was doomed. I really pushed the "Silt Runners hate elves a LOT" thing, and he totally got it. In fact, the guy who played Castri was the best possible player for it. He's a big time old-school Dark Sun fan, too. So he was quite into the idea of the Silt Runners gunning for his elf, and he's also the coolest, most laid-back guy ever, so he was totally not bummed out by getting raked over the coals. And ultimately killed. Yeah, Castri died. I knew he would. When I playtested the encounter for myself, he did. It was almost inevitable. The player got that, too, and he was really fine with it. I don't think I've ever seen a D&D player take his character's death as well as he did. He's a great player, and just a really classy guy. (He's the one I mentioned who'd DM’ed some Dark Sun for me at one point.) So yeah, Castri died, but it wasn't a big deal, and it didn't dampen the fun or bring down anyone's spirits. It served to punctuate the brutality of Athas, make the encounter feel difficult and deadly, really support the whole lore thing of the Silt Runners, and yet it didn't ruin the game or cause a TPK or piss anyone off out-of-character. So really, as far as PC deaths go, it was the best possible PC death there could have been. He's excited to come back next week, death penalty and all!
Everyone else lived, and escaped the map in round four. With 24 survival days, some extra weapons, the box of goodies, the dead body of Castri slung over Yuka's brawny shoulders, and the corpse of the slain Silt Runner leader in Shikirr's greedy claws. Four of six action points were used, but no dailies, and no healing fruits consumed yet. The PCs spent seven healing surges in the battle, which is the same number I used when I ran the encounter for myself the first time. But they haven't done the rests after the fight yet, and they're pretty badly beat up, so they'll use quite a few more surges when we start the next session.
Barcan used 0 surges, 0 dailies, 1 action point, and ended with 4 hit points. He critted the Inciter to end the battle with his encounter power Ray of the Moon, which was a huge moment and much needed. His player gained 4 renown.
Castri used 1 surge, 0 dailies, 0 action points, and ended up dead with no hit points. He kinda just got the crap kicked out of him, but he had lots of fun anyway, and is ready to come back with a vengeance next week. His player gained 4 renown.
Jarvix used 0 surges, 0 dailies, 1 action point, and ended with 8 hit points. He saved Phye from certain doom with a timely Excise From Sight Veiled Alliance power, and made great use of his twice-per-encounter Distract power, too. (Oh, and he even used Send Thoughts in battle, to secretly tell someone across the field to KILL THE INCITER!) His player gained 4 renown.
Phye was the MVP of the night, getting her Moment of Greatness when, in one round, she killed a still-tough Rager and brought three different allies up from dying. (Nearly maximum damage on an Augment 2 Energizing Strike plus granted a surge to one dying ally, then action point and Augment 1 Energizing Strike to grant 4 hit points to another dying ally, then Ardent Surge a third dying ally. The guy who played Phye tonight was very effective!) She used 1 surge, 0 dailies, 1 action point, and ended with 5 hit points. Her player gained 7 (!) renown.
Shikirr took heaping piles of damage, and very nearly died twice. He didn't get much chance to attack or use powers, but boy did he save his buddies a ton of pain. He used 3 surges, 0 dailies, 0 action points (the only PC besides the dead Castri not to use an AP), and ended with 18 hit points. His player gained 5 renown.
Yuka got a chance to use his Combat Agility opportunity attack AND his immediate interrupt Combat Challenge attack both against one Rager in one round as the stubborn brute refused to be deterred in his mission to attack the elf. He took it from unharmed to bloodied, and knocked it prone (and the team got a lot of mileage out of that prone), and in the second attack, he rolled a 1 and took advantage of the reckless breakage rule. I described the resulting hit as him actually breaking off one whole spike of his alhulak in the Silt Runner's body. It was a nice, brutal Dark Sun moment. He used 2 surges, 0 dailies, 1 action point, and ended with 8 hit points. His player gained 4 renown.
(Oh, actually I just remembered, Castri did get to do something cool before he died! He got the first kill in the fight, as a matter of fact. He threw a javelin from inside the wagon at a Darter who was taking cover beside one of the big rocks. Despite a -4 to hit from concealment and cover, he threw and hit, and did good damage with his javelin and Quarry, and killed the same Darter who had just critted him with Poison Dart for 23. I gave a detailed and epic-sounding narration of Castri's enraged and skillful gladiator throw. So yeah, that was a cool moment for him before he died. Yay! But this was also another shining moment for Phye, too, because actually, Castri missed that killing javelin shot by exactly 1, and Phye made it a hit with a timely use of her Adept's Insight theme power. So that was great teamwork.)
The battle was one of the most fun I've DM’ed in 4th edition, and without doubt more fun than any Living Forgotten Realms encounter I've ever DM’ed. (And I've run quite a lot of LFR.)
Overall, the session was a tremendous, tremendous blast, for me and the players, and I'd call it a huge and unqualified success. I am now super psyched about D&D Encounters, and feel so happy and lucky that I get to run this, and have this kind of fun with D&D, in my beloved Dark Sun, in a wonderful organized play program like this.
The store owner was happy too, as I brought six guys in who'd never even been to his store. He'd never had any sanctioned, organized D&D stuff at his store before (they pretty much just have a lot of Warhammer players there), and I was the one who specifically called him up and talked him into it. So another D&D venue is born, and hopefully this helps his business as well. What a great program!
Thank you again, everyone who made this possible! Chris Tulach, Nicholas Tulach, and Teos Abadia, in particular, you guys are my heroes. Big thanks to my awesome players tonight, and I can't wait for next week!
Oh, and I hope everyone else had a good time, too. (But really, there's no way that anyone else had as much fun as we did.)
it can be difficult. Here is a link with some suggestions about how to start things off: 
