Gothmog
First Post
This is pretty long, so you've been warned.
This last weekend, I started a new 4e campaign with five people who had never played a tabletop RPG before (two guys who I had in my Neuropharmacology class and their wives, and another guy who was one of their friends), and one guy who was a self-avowed 3e lover/4e hater. All of them had played Neverwinter Nights, but no WoW or MMOs, and all of them enjoy fantasy, sci-fi, and horror movies and novels. One of the guys had tried to play 3.5 in high school, but only got as far as character creation before he felt overwhelmed, and one of the other girls had sat and watched a previous boyfriend play 3e, but had no real interest after that session. The 4e hater gave the typical reasons for hating 4e (can't roleplay, too videogamey, blah blah), but agreed to play because his other friends were playing.
Our character creation session was last Thursday. I knew things were looking good when the young lady who had watched a 3e session came to the character creation session with a fully made PC (shadar-kai rogue) who was built very well, and had a great backstory. She had gotten online and downloaded the free Character Generator from WotC, read what it had said about her options, and made a character a 4e veteran might have made. We used the CharGen to finish up the other five characters (human wizard, elf ranger, elf cleric, dwarf paladin, and shifter warden) and I explained how skill checks, healing surges, etc worked in about two hours total! Everyone was chomping at the bit to play (even the 4e hater seemed interested), and I had them select some minis I painted up for them for Saturday.
Our first game session was on Saturday night. We got a good 7 hours of gaming in, from roughly 5 pm to midnight, with a short break for dinner. It was one of those sessions where everything clicked perfectly. All the players had great backstories that I managed to hook together into the initial plotline, and had developed their characters down to peronality strengths and flaws, as well as goals, motivations, and fears. The players roleplayed out their meeting under unusual circumstances at a roadside inn and survived a strange series of events that will become important later in the campaign (evil fey were after another traveler in the inn, eventually abducting him and carried him back to the Feywild). During the RPing, the characters realized they were headed to the same destination, and becasue the hills surrounding the town were fairly dangerous, they decided to travel together for mutual protection.
On the way, they had a short encounter with some roaming goblins bearing tumors and growths on their bodies (related to the caves near some standing stones- see below), but managed to dispatch them without too much trouble. I encouraged the players to describe to me and each other what they were doing each round, and "write their own story". I had thought that having new players describe using their powers in a narrative sense might make it seem less like "mashing button X", and they didn't disappoint. They had a great time trying crazy stuff, doing stunts (thanks p. 42!!!), and the fight kept moving at a quick rate, and seemed like a dangerous situation to them. The 3e guy took a bit longer to get the hang of it than the others, but once he did, he had some fun with his shifter warden.
Once they got to the small town, they began to investigate strange lights in the hills, disappearances of local farmers/shepherds, an area of forest where the trees had been turned to glass, and the cleric began looking for his missing priest friend who lived in town. What followed was three hours of some of the best, in-character roleplaying I've seen in years. All of them like mysteries and suspense, so I made the townsfolk rather sullen, with a feeling of underlying menace in the town. There were a few skill checks, a short skill challenge to befriend the town elder (with in-character roleplaying the primary focus, and the skill rolls as a secondary concern), falsifying credentials saying they were investigating on behalf of the Road Wardens, lots of interviewing townsfolk, and investigation of the chapel where the missing priest had last been seen. After searching the chapel, they realized the priest was terrified of something, and had put up wards (not any sort of ritual, just symobls that would deter such creatures marginally- pure RP and for-effect stuff) near the doors and windows of the chapel against all sorts of entities (spirits, demons, undead, shapechangers), and chained the door shut with himself inside, but despite these efforts, he had vanished. The group started to realize something was seriously wrong when the cleric said this wasn't like his friend at all, and they found his journal (which I typed up for them) describing his slow descent into paranoia and madness caused by strange dreams and visions he was having.
We ended the session there, and everyone had a great time. Next time, they'll be exploring the section of the forest turned to glass, looking into the strange lights in the hills, and exploring the caves beneath an ancient site with standing stones (and discovering the horror that was trapped there in ancient times). The two guys I had in my class went and bought PHBs, Arcane Power, and Martial Power, and the guy who had hated 4e went and bought a PHB and PHB2 the next day! He told me this isn't anything like what he thought 4e would be, and this was the most fun he'd had gaming in a long time. Our next session is tomorrow night, and everyone is stoked about getting back to the game!
Anyway, I wanted to post this because this was a really positive experience I had with 4e, and there just aren't enough positive thread around here about great experiences people have had while gaming. This was the first time I had tried to play 4e with a group of people who (mostly) had never gamed before. It went really smoothly, and there was NO fuss about the rules or people understanding them. It sure looks like WotC hit the bullseye with making a game that people new to the hobby can pick up and play easily! I think I've also finally hit my stride and gotten really comfortable with 4e now, and I'm running games that feel to me a lot like the games I ran in 1e and 2e AD&D. So thank you WotC for giving us this incredible game, and supporting it with so many incredible books, the DDI, and options!
This last weekend, I started a new 4e campaign with five people who had never played a tabletop RPG before (two guys who I had in my Neuropharmacology class and their wives, and another guy who was one of their friends), and one guy who was a self-avowed 3e lover/4e hater. All of them had played Neverwinter Nights, but no WoW or MMOs, and all of them enjoy fantasy, sci-fi, and horror movies and novels. One of the guys had tried to play 3.5 in high school, but only got as far as character creation before he felt overwhelmed, and one of the other girls had sat and watched a previous boyfriend play 3e, but had no real interest after that session. The 4e hater gave the typical reasons for hating 4e (can't roleplay, too videogamey, blah blah), but agreed to play because his other friends were playing.
Our character creation session was last Thursday. I knew things were looking good when the young lady who had watched a 3e session came to the character creation session with a fully made PC (shadar-kai rogue) who was built very well, and had a great backstory. She had gotten online and downloaded the free Character Generator from WotC, read what it had said about her options, and made a character a 4e veteran might have made. We used the CharGen to finish up the other five characters (human wizard, elf ranger, elf cleric, dwarf paladin, and shifter warden) and I explained how skill checks, healing surges, etc worked in about two hours total! Everyone was chomping at the bit to play (even the 4e hater seemed interested), and I had them select some minis I painted up for them for Saturday.
Our first game session was on Saturday night. We got a good 7 hours of gaming in, from roughly 5 pm to midnight, with a short break for dinner. It was one of those sessions where everything clicked perfectly. All the players had great backstories that I managed to hook together into the initial plotline, and had developed their characters down to peronality strengths and flaws, as well as goals, motivations, and fears. The players roleplayed out their meeting under unusual circumstances at a roadside inn and survived a strange series of events that will become important later in the campaign (evil fey were after another traveler in the inn, eventually abducting him and carried him back to the Feywild). During the RPing, the characters realized they were headed to the same destination, and becasue the hills surrounding the town were fairly dangerous, they decided to travel together for mutual protection.
On the way, they had a short encounter with some roaming goblins bearing tumors and growths on their bodies (related to the caves near some standing stones- see below), but managed to dispatch them without too much trouble. I encouraged the players to describe to me and each other what they were doing each round, and "write their own story". I had thought that having new players describe using their powers in a narrative sense might make it seem less like "mashing button X", and they didn't disappoint. They had a great time trying crazy stuff, doing stunts (thanks p. 42!!!), and the fight kept moving at a quick rate, and seemed like a dangerous situation to them. The 3e guy took a bit longer to get the hang of it than the others, but once he did, he had some fun with his shifter warden.
Once they got to the small town, they began to investigate strange lights in the hills, disappearances of local farmers/shepherds, an area of forest where the trees had been turned to glass, and the cleric began looking for his missing priest friend who lived in town. What followed was three hours of some of the best, in-character roleplaying I've seen in years. All of them like mysteries and suspense, so I made the townsfolk rather sullen, with a feeling of underlying menace in the town. There were a few skill checks, a short skill challenge to befriend the town elder (with in-character roleplaying the primary focus, and the skill rolls as a secondary concern), falsifying credentials saying they were investigating on behalf of the Road Wardens, lots of interviewing townsfolk, and investigation of the chapel where the missing priest had last been seen. After searching the chapel, they realized the priest was terrified of something, and had put up wards (not any sort of ritual, just symobls that would deter such creatures marginally- pure RP and for-effect stuff) near the doors and windows of the chapel against all sorts of entities (spirits, demons, undead, shapechangers), and chained the door shut with himself inside, but despite these efforts, he had vanished. The group started to realize something was seriously wrong when the cleric said this wasn't like his friend at all, and they found his journal (which I typed up for them) describing his slow descent into paranoia and madness caused by strange dreams and visions he was having.
We ended the session there, and everyone had a great time. Next time, they'll be exploring the section of the forest turned to glass, looking into the strange lights in the hills, and exploring the caves beneath an ancient site with standing stones (and discovering the horror that was trapped there in ancient times). The two guys I had in my class went and bought PHBs, Arcane Power, and Martial Power, and the guy who had hated 4e went and bought a PHB and PHB2 the next day! He told me this isn't anything like what he thought 4e would be, and this was the most fun he'd had gaming in a long time. Our next session is tomorrow night, and everyone is stoked about getting back to the game!
Anyway, I wanted to post this because this was a really positive experience I had with 4e, and there just aren't enough positive thread around here about great experiences people have had while gaming. This was the first time I had tried to play 4e with a group of people who (mostly) had never gamed before. It went really smoothly, and there was NO fuss about the rules or people understanding them. It sure looks like WotC hit the bullseye with making a game that people new to the hobby can pick up and play easily! I think I've also finally hit my stride and gotten really comfortable with 4e now, and I'm running games that feel to me a lot like the games I ran in 1e and 2e AD&D. So thank you WotC for giving us this incredible game, and supporting it with so many incredible books, the DDI, and options!
