Winter Fantasy 2016 and D&D AL

[Motorskills]

That's a great story. I know the player in question (she's awesome) and when she told me the story I was super-happy to hear that these kinds of great moments are still being facilitated by the design.

I had a great time at our T3 table. I was asked to leave my group to join another table so it had enough people, and you never know how that will end up - the table was great! We had a lot of fun and did very well even though our party was far from optimal. Our DM was excellent and I liked the encounter design. The only downside we had was that the dragon never even showed up at our table! But, we could at least see that our accomplishments were impacting the battle and we enjoyed seeing the dragon visit other tables and the effect that had.

Indeed. Our DM was great, the coordinator for Salt Lake City IIRC.


Our PCs didn't know that a vampire's Charm lasts for ages, so of course we untied her after the first visit ended. Big mistake.

(The player inquestion was sat next to me, and yes, she was awesome, you can tell her that from me, but I think she knows I think so already.

Everybody at our table was great.)



Based on all the above, I would definitely consider doing T1 again for a future Epic, but hopefully this particular Epic will be repeated somewhere else and I can play a different tier for a comparison.

 

[Cascade]

Our table at T2 was fairly challenging. We didn't have an over optimized group so some encounters were fairly brutal (even on normal mode).

No one at our table (including our judge) understood the map on the wall and what the colors (locked or unlocked meant) meant. We just kinda played through. We couldn't hear the updates so just heard the occasional "a vampire was released... a dragon is flying ... some shield guy came out".

We really didn't finish the second series of events to receive the second item (but the judge gifted it anyway).

Overall, I had way more fun with our DDXP group in the other events which weren't so loot focused and had more story (the griffons would have been more than enough reward). The DDEN4 event was nice (in rewards) but lacked that end of season umph that I was expecting.

The 2 round event Assault on Maermydra was awesome - excellent story and decent combats.

Still - I had a great time ! - I missed Winter Fantasy the last 2 years but I'd go back as long as they keep up the quality of judges and play that this one did.

 

[Motorskills]

So people around the table couldnt just pick up their table and movie it a bit further out?

No chance of that sadly, it would have needed coordination from on high.

(Which could have been done, but this is more a feedback shout-out to assist BMG for next year).

 

[darjr]

I'd suggest posting it on the forums over on their website to increase your chances.

Good point, but I figured this was good neutral ground and they do visit here.

 

[Motorskills]

The projection showing the progress within the city of the various groups at each Tier was great.

A suggestion for future Epics would be to have the big announcements similarly displayed, perhaps in a rolling side column. (After all, most of those are scripted events, shouldn't too hard to have them ready to load).

A countdown clock might also be fun, put real pressure on groups to make progress. Is YOUR group the one that is letting the side down?

 

[NeverLucky]

Okay I have to say, I was disappointed by the T3 Epic track. Everyone in T1 and T2 has fantastic stories and changes that impacted their game throughout the night. Both tracks got fantastic magic items usable by at least 1 or 2 people at each table almost guaranteed, and items that can't be found anywhere else. Hell T2 got freakin mounts out of it.

T3 got it's living expenses paid for in Phlan. On T3 characters that have 10,000+ gp each. One of the magic items that we got was restricted to a particular race, and likely only to a particular class or two within that race, and that already exists elsewhere. Literally no one at our table could use it, nor really wanted it. Nothing changed during our entire game session. No wandering monsters (unless you count the Vorgansharx "encounter" that was woefully short and not even a real fight). I couldn't feel the impact any of our actions were having on other tables, or other tables having on us.

Was this by design because it was expected that T3 was supposed to be hard enough already? Everyone at our table was prepped for a WWIII fight against the dragon. What we got was Desert Storm with us being the allied forces that could declare victory almost before it even started. Even on "lethal+" levels of difficulty we were steamrolling encounters. No Vampire Lord showing up or anything other than several straight forward encounters in a row. We literally finished in a continuing survival encounter because there was nothing else to do.

I can't imagine the prep that has to go on for these things to happen. Maybe no one expected that many T3 tables and so more prep was put in to T1 and T2 tracks. But everyone at my table left feeling, well, honestly the word "cheated" most aptly describes how we felt. Not even a special race or mount cert.

All in all, I recommend going to a con and doing an Epic. But from everything I've heard, do it at T1 or T2, you'll be disappointed by T3. At least if you go in expecting something, well, Epic.

I had a similar experience in T2. We played it on lethal, but we still stomped over every encounter with barely any resources used. We were in a corner, so we couldn't really hear any of the announcements, we didn't get any boons except one, and we didn't get any special events. The griffon mount was cool, but the magic items were a bit disappointing; one of them was a crossbow that nobody at the table could use. I wished we could find all five magic items and choose two to keep, instead of having to keep the first two we stumbled upon.

 

[skerritthegreen]

I wished we could find all five magic items and choose two to keep, instead of having to keep the first two we stumbled upon.

There were only two items per tier (just multiple places to find each one). So you didn't stumble onto items, you found the only two there were.

 

[skerritthegreen]

As far as Epic lethality goes, its going to vary based on dice and table composition. For example, I killed one PC at my T3 table and he got to find out what happens you die... You don't just get a free raise, but rather there some really cool story stuff going on that I won't spoil since the EPIC is replaying many places soon.

 

[Motorskills]

l since the EPIC is replaying many places soon.

Is there a list of such locations?

 

[skerritthegreen]

We had been relying on cons to do there own advertising but we have also discussed listing them all on a page somewhere. At the moment that doesn't exist but perhaps we will.