So gameday how did it go??

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

Well I have very little DM experience, but I got roped into running anyway. So how was it, well IT TPKed.

We had 1 new player (Never played D&D) who took the wizard. We had a poweertgameingcombatgumby twink who hated all of the “non optimized’ characters that as far as he was concerned could have been made by a bunch of monkeys with typewriters he finally took the barbarian. We had a couple who are regulars play the dragonborn and the warlord, and then this guy I never meet before played the paladin.

The first encounter went OK, with just a little bit at the beginning explaining to the new guy.

Then came the rust monster ambush. The paladin lost both his armor and his hammer to the beasts. Also the barbarian refused to fight them at all, only fighting the bugs.

Then came the epic fail of a skill challenge. The first 3 players (barbarian, warlord, rogue) failed the checks.

So going into the final encounter the paladin had no armor, and a nonmagic long sword. The wizard was out of healing surges, and the dragonborn and barbarian were both out of dailys. The fight did not go well. Round 4 or 5 we had already lost the dragonborn, and the warlord was making death saves.

The new guy picked up a PHBI after the game, he said as long as the barbarian player didn’t talk the game was pretty fun…even if he died gutted by a orc.


So how did everyone else do???

 

[clockworkjoe]

I ran a game with 3 experienced players who knew what they were doing, I toned down the encounters, they didn't fail the skill challenge so they got their maigc items back (after losing them to the rust monsters)

and they all died in the last fight. The kobold priestess is practically a solo by herself and her damage output is insane. A single attack does 2d8+5 which is equal to a flesh golem's attack (a level 12 elite brute).

 

[Bigassgeek]

Our party crushed the adventure. We didn't have a single person get knocked out, let alone killed. The barbarian and the paladin changed their dynamic weapons into wooden clubs during the rust monster encounter, and we kept the pally away from the rust monsters as much as we could. We aided each other as much as we could during the skill challenges and sailed through them. By the last encounter, only one of the characters had expended a daily power, so we unloaded everything on the boss and his henchmen.

The players were all well acquainted with the rules, and a couple were regular rules mavens. In my regular group, I'm the go-to rules guy, but two of the other players today put me to shame! They weren't rules lawyers, though, or power gamers.

It was a lot of fun. I've never played in a game day or a convention game or anything like that. Glad my first experience was so positive!

 

[MortalPlague]

I ran the adventure. We started with six players, with a mix between custom characters and the pregens. The first encounter was pleasantly challenging but never a true threat (except to the barbarian who went solo against the two orcs and the kobold while the others took after the drakes).

One of the players had to leave, so I ran an unmodified second encounter. Rust monsters 2, party 0. +2 plate mail and +2 maul both went kaput. The paladin wrestled with the arbalester and used it to fire on the rust monsters.

The skill challenge seemed ridiculously easy. My party breezed through it with no problems whatsoever. Great flavor for the challenge, though. The guardian tunnel was particularly impressive.

Finally, two players had to leave at the start of the last encounter, and then another player had to leave shortly after. With one player running four PCs, we decided to call it. I didn't get the chance to really use Sarna and her formidable damage, since the only two attack rolls I got with her resulted in a 2, then a 1. Still, overall, the adventure was entertaining, and I made off like a bandit with a whole army of minis.

 

[Treebore]

It went well for us. The best thing for me is two of the people involved, including the DM, are big Castles and Crusades fans, so it was nice to be able to talk "shop" face to face with fellow fans.

As for the encounters, the first went pretty easy, until we got to the rust monster area. At this point we had 6 players, 2 of us lost our armor and one lost a weapon. Fortunately we switched to our non magical weapons and the wizard hit with a lot of magic missiles.

The challenge section was a challenge. At this point 2 players had to leave, so we had 4 PC's now. 3 of us went into the river right away. 2 of us dwarven Paladins. One of those two was me. I made a roll to get out pretty quickly, the other dwarf spent 2 rounds successfully treading water after failing to get out of the water. Then he finally succeeded.

The Warlord successfully negotiated with the spirits to calm them down, and then we successfully negotiated to get replacement armor.

We went into the final battle doing climb checks to go down the wall instead fo across the bridge and got to the ramp going up to the paved/worked stones in two rounds. That is where we fought. It was tough. The Barbarian came very close to going unconscious, I think he was down to 9 HP at one point, several of us reached bloodied more than once. With judicious use of second winds, warlord powers to get additional surges, and paladin lay on hands, combined with a lot of bad rolls by the DM, 2 of them being ones, in a row, we persevered and killed them all without losing any of the 4 of us.

It took us about 5 hours, with one or two breaks, to get through everything.

 

[HandofMystra]

I started DMing the mod twice. I used tweaked pregens from a thread on the WotC boards WWGD:MM2 Adventure Alterations and Cheet Sheets - Wizards Community. The first time I took six hours to do the mod (I am a slow, but fun DM). I got overwhelmed on the last encounter and played it stupidly. They failed the skill challenge, but I kept with them until they had all the successes, because it seemed fun. We started the second mod at 7:30 and only made it through the first encounter by the time people had to leave (we were playing hide and seek with the harpy). The rust monsters got the barbarian's sword. The barbarian player (once she saved from being immobilized) asked me if she could have a two-handed improvised weapon (her at-wills need a two handed weapon) so I let her wield a large rock two-handed. I had a funny moment with the harpy in the second table: I had assumed its alluring song worked only on enemies but one of the players asked and I realized that it worked on everyone - so I immobilized the entire combat (I RPed the harpy as a stoner "Oh, man I hate when I do that! Why do I keep forgetting to miss my allies?")
I am just too slow a DM for these RPGA slots. My players had a good time 5 encounters in nine hours!

 

[Boregar]

I played the Barbarian in a group with three others, so we were missing the rogue, but we were all quite experienced players, so the DM just ran things as written rather than toning down the adventure.

And it was great fun!

We disdained any attempt at stealth, and just wandered straight up and into the caves and into the first fight. Unfortunately, one of the bad guys ran off, and we chased after him, so this encounter rolled over into the second one, without any chance for a short rest, so it was a little more of a challenge than it might have been otherwise. And I tried the suggestion that Bigassgeek mentions above, about switching my weapon to a non-metalic one, but our DM rulled that while it would change shape, it would still be metal, and subject to rusting. Ah well.

In the end though, only our paladin actually lost anything (his armour), and we succeeded in the skill challenge (although at one point, I was left as the only character actually on the raft), and he got it back from the spirits.

So it was on to the final battle. The three meelee types went down one of the cliffs, while our wizard went round and over the bridge. She was picking off minions, while we got stuck into the bigger baddies, including the kobold. Our warlord went down first, kicking himself moments later for having forgotten about using his Inspiring Word. I was taken out a couple of rounds later by the by-now-bloodied kobold.

However, our wizard had made it across the bridge by this time, heading for the altar. The kobold high-tailed it after her, leaving the Favoured of Grummsh to occupied the paladin, and caught up with her right just as she reached the book. One check to read from the book reduced the kobold to 3 hps, exactly the same as the wizard had. The kobold attacked the wiz again, but only did enough damage to reduce her to 1hp, thanks to the bloodcut armour. And so, a second reading from the book was enough to finish her off. A suitably climactic and heroic ending.

So, two of us died, but we triumphed in the end and, most importantly, a great time was had by all.

And as a DM, I'm happy to see rust monsters back. I'm not sure my players will say the same though.

 

[White Tornado]

We were with 6 players, so I could build my own character (an annoying halfling feylock, teleporting all over the place). We played for about five hours, and only did the first two encounters. We killed the kobold in the first encounter, and the BBEG walked into the second encounter with the book of prophecy under his arm. The paladin lost his armor (groaning: so this is why they put a paladin in!), and a few weapons were starting to rust. The rogue almost died when he was fighting a rust monster and a bug on his own, and the kobold dropped the paladin and the warlord to below 0.

Most importantly, we had lots of fun!

 

[MerricB]

I ran the session twice on Saturday: once for players from my regular group(s) along with one person completely new to D&D, and once for people I didn't know that well from the game store.

For my experienced group, they did really well in the adventure. Everyone changed to their non-magical weapons during the rust monster encounter and they kept the rust monsters mostly away from the dwarf, so no-one lost any weapons.

I really appreciated the writing of the skill challenge; it allowed everyone to be involved and it was structured as to make describing it interesting and not repetitive (not 12 rolls from the ranger to pass a Nature check each time).

That group played through the adventure in about 3 hours.

I didn't have quite as much time for the second group, as some of them had to leave early, so I slightly reduced the HP of the monsters to speed things along slightly (along with their lesser experience with 4e). We lost two of the players to other commitments about halfway through, which left us with 3 players, but I've run many 4e sessions with 3 PCs, and so I just scaled accordingly.

It all went well and they had a good time as they discovered the synergy between the paladin and the warlord in particular.

Probably the most memorable moment for the first group was when the goliath barbarian charged a foe... critted it and killed it, and then activated the power that allowed him to charge again in the same round... and scored another crit!

There were a few odd choices for the pre-gens equipment and other things, but I think it went pretty well.

Cheers!

 

[darjr]

I also ran two sessions, the second ended in the middle of the last encounter as the store closed. The manager stayed late for us. The event started at noon but when I got there at 11:15 a table was going and people were waiting for me.

At one point we had five tables going at once, with lots of people I have never met before and lots of friends. Three of those tables, including mine, ran twice.

The start of the adventure was a bit abrupt so I added a bit about the PC's chancing upon this ancient ruin in the middle of the wilderness being rebuilt and reoccupied and them being beseeched by an Old Oracle and a young Scholar, residents of the place. I talked about how soldiers were cleaning up after a siege and how they were oddly dressed with coins of ancient Nerath sewn into their cloths and welded to their armor. I played up the young scholar as being very keen about the caves and any details the players could discover. The Old Oracle was desperate for the return of the book. I did this for both sessions.

I did like the skill challenge, I try to show the players what is going on and the weaknesses they can exploit to succeed. I guess I try and run them in an old school style.

In my first event the players were running like clockwork, though it wasn't a cake walk. I fumbled a bit on the Rust Monsters, but the beetles were great fun. One of the beetles imbolized the dwarf next to a rust monster, but then the other players came down like a ton of briks. The arbalast was neat to run as well, 'The infernal machine scowles at you and you hear the barely contained strain as it draws it's string, two bolts thunking into the fireing chamber'. The last encounter was tough, even with the vunerable kobold. There was a gasp of relief when she fell.

The second session I had four PC's but the dwarfs player couldn't stay after the first encounter, her father had summoned her home. In the first encounter the barbarian managed to grab the ankle of the Harpie, a 'Harpie Balloon' is this fun ball of feathers and screeching madness. They actually managed to kill both it and the kobold. Then, through sheer luck, they almost stealthed through the second encounter. When the Barbarian player flubbed her roll, one of the players exclaimed 'Rust Monsters!?!?' in this sort of dreading joyfull way. They really dug into the skill challenge, but eventually failed it.

I had a lot of fun, and I think and hope my players did to. I met and ran for some new people and for some I only get to play with occasionally. Great times. I also got to show off 'The Village of Hommlet'. There were some brand new RPG players, and a few new to 4th ed. In my area there were a couple stores running the Game Day, I'm not sure how the other events went.