D&D 4E Who's still playing 4E

[thanson02]

To run theater of the mind in 4E is actually not as hard as it sounds. But i find it nevertheless an achievement when people run it smoothly and to their group's satisfaction. It is I think easier for people who haven't been invested so much in the grid before. My current group plays also with TotM. They are beginners and don't have any problem with it - much so I think because they don't care to argue about absolutely exact distances.
But I like to get the dungeon tiles out once in a while and get all game-y.

(Your Fallcrest Times is nice btw - I like this kind of props and gimmicks)

Agree with the "Theater of the Mind" take. One thing that I find helps me is that I make sure that I have a map behind the screen and convert all the squares to feet, which is not difficult. That and the ability to express the environment in a dynamic way make a huge difference.

 

[vagabundo]

I steer people away from powers that are just about forced movement as they are less useful without exact positioning. I get players casting/using AOE powers to roll d4/d6 to see how many enemies they catch in the burst/blast. I also design my encounters with it in mind so all terrain and traps etc have abstract mechanics.

I have a bunch of other customisations and house rules, like rolling for character stats (4d6,drop lowest, in order). I've removed stun from monster powers.

I just can't leave 4e. It too easy to customise. Too modular and transparent.

Ran my first encounter of Return to Shadowfell Keep. King Splug and his small tribe of hungry goblins, recently evicted from the Keep, ambushed the PCs on the King's road. 1 3rd level Goblin brute, ten goblin grunts and a trap.

Trap: Massive tree trunk sections wrapped in thorny brambles tied to branches swung around the battlefield. At the start of every round everyone of not Small size - including King Splug - rolled a d6 to see if they were in the path of one of these things, beware the dreaded 1. If so +4 vs Ref;1d8+4 and knocked prone.

It was really just a throwaway encounter to let the Players get familiar with their characters. After all the chatting and catching up - a little more than usual - we got about 40 minutes of actual game time, 20 minutes on the above encounter - however they didn't get to kill all the goblins. The Starlock unleashed some tentacle power and ripped one of the goblin grunts apart, very gory, and the rest of the goblins auto failed their Morale check and ran. With King Splug following once he noticed he was on his own. (EDIT: Actually someone did use forced movement in the encounter; they asked if they could try move Splug into one of the swinging tree trunks. I allowed them to roll the d6 again for Splug, but it missed. I should have probably have been more generous, thinking back)

I'm looking forward to the next session. I have the floor of first room of the Keep covered in blinding dust that hides many many Crawling Claws and a portcullis trap to divide the party. Muhahahahha.

I love props when I have the time to put them together. Trail of Cthulhu and COC taught me about their effect on the table. The Fallcrest Times serves as my plot hook dump. So the party can choose which plot hook to follow up on etc. And they will watch the ones they don't follow up on develop in to greater threats.

Looking back at Keep on the Shadow fell I can help but be sad at the missed opportunity. It had the potential to be a great showcase for 4e, an iconic module, but probably came a year or two too early. The delve format also makes it hard to tell the "story" of the dungeon.

 

[The Fighter-Cricket]

King Splug, eh? Nice reference there

Terrain powers (grid-based as well as abstract) are so important for interesting encounters! I learned this only recently and want to build them in much more often. Last session I had the party stumble into a Kobold ambush with a lot of traps. With a bit more practice I will get to use hazards and such more naturally in a given encounter.

Really good tip with the d4/d6 to determin how many are affected by an area effect - I'll try it out.

I wish KotS would have been more about the exploration of the keep. You can wander around but you won't find any really interesting or baffling set pieces. The combat encounters are nice, don't get me wrong, but there should be more to a dungeon room than enemies and some terrain features like a campfire. Why not some nice mystical tapestries with clues for next encounters? Or levers that when used make distant machineries go rumbling? At least some atmospheric read-aloud-text. I personally like KotS as a starting point for the DM's own imagination.
My favorite Orcus-AP adventure is H2. What a cool dungeon environment! It has even nice random encounters with interesting NPCs in it that can but don't have to end in combat. Just great! The module has a lot of classical flair but uses 4E in a very elegant way (a lot of interesting terrain, traps, hazards etc.).

 

[vagabundo]

I personally like KotS as a starting point for the DM's own imagination.
My favorite Orcus-AP adventure is H2. What a cool dungeon environment! It has even nice random encounters with interesting NPCs in it that can but don't have to end in combat. Just great! The module has a lot of classical flair but uses 4E in a very elegant way (a lot of interesting terrain, traps, hazards etc.).

I've learned to take all the 4e adventures as just frameworks to hang my own stuff on. I've never found them very satisfactory as adventures. Just not enough of the quirky stuff, as you mentioned, they add a certain realism and interest to the adventure. And encourage the PCs to solve problems in interesting ways.

One of the best fights I've had in 4e was with the Solo Orc Butcher woman in the Slaying Stone. It was in a multistory building with scaffolding. There was much pushing her, and her pushing the PCs, off the different tiers, then some re-enforcements came. Some great use by a player of his teleporting spear - although we only realised later it was an encounter power not at will . Very memorable.

PCat's thread just reinforced how important mixing up terrain, traps and monsters can be to a game. 4e fits the narrative/gamist niche for me that I'm looking for. I'm quiet happy with interesting and abstract mechanics to resolve my encounter situations.

Another rule I've implemented for this campaign is that you can only truly have an Extended Rest in a safe place - a point of light - when out in the wilderness you don't get full healing and recuperation. I allow the players to roll a d4 after a nights rest in the wilderness/dungeon to recover that amount of healing surges. I experimented with not allowing dailies to recharge but decided against it.

 

[thanson02]

Terrain powers (grid-based as well as abstract) are so important for interesting encounters! I learned this only recently and want to build them in much more often. Last session I had the party stumble into a Kobold ambush with a lot of traps. With a bit more practice I will get to use hazards and such more naturally in a given encounter.

Working traps and hazards into the encounter building was one of the strongest tools that 4E gave the DM for encounters. There are so many options available for memorable encounters that it can boggle the mind. You can literally build any environment you want, and it is awesome.

I wish KotS would have been more about the exploration of the keep. You can wander around but you won't find any really interesting or baffling set pieces. The combat encounters are nice, don't get me wrong, but there should be more to a dungeon room than enemies and some terrain features like a campfire. Why not some nice mystical tapestries with clues for next encounters? Or levers that when used make distant machineries go rumbling? At least some atmospheric read-aloud-text. I personally like KotS as a starting point for the DM's own imagination.
My favorite Orcus-AP adventure is H2. What a cool dungeon environment! It has even nice random encounters with interesting NPCs in it that can but don't have to end in combat. Just great! The module has a lot of classical flair but uses 4E in a very elegant way (a lot of interesting terrain, traps, hazards etc.).

I got half way through KotS, and my players bailed on me. Well, all but one anyways. But then he was the only 4E fan in the group.... Random encounters would have been nice throughout the adventure. That is the one thing about 4E adventures that I wish they would have done more of. And they didn't need to be laid out in any real detail. Just give us a group of monsters and some suggested encounter templates from the DMG and we would have been good. I seem to always throw these together on my own. Oh well....

 

[gentle_songbird]

I'm still doing 4e. Just started a new group just a couple of weeks ago. I am thinking about trying to convert ToEE. If you know anyone that has already tried this, I would love the info.

 

[Jhaelen]

I am thinking about trying to convert ToEE.

That's likely going to be tricky. Large areas in ToEE are nothing but (almost) empty rooms with a single enemy or a squad of identical enemies. I guess, you're basically in for a rewrite, keeping the storyline, but creating all combat encounters from scratch.

 

[gentle_songbird]

That's likely going to be tricky. Large areas in ToEE are nothing but (almost) empty rooms with a single enemy or a squad of identical enemies. I guess, you're basically in for a rewrite, keeping the storyline, but creating all combat encounters from scratch.

That is kinda what I figured that I was going to need to do. That's OK. I have time to convert while the players are traveling. I also really only need to with on the areas that they explore not necessarily every square inch.

 

[Nibelung]

I am thinking about trying to convert ToEE. If you know anyone that has already tried this, I would love the info.

DDO did a "some years later" ToEE adaptation. You might want to take a look. (DDO is free, but ToEE is a paid pack. Warning sent)

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I also want to extend a very warm welcome to the 4E fans from the WotC boards (a bit late, I know). Great to have more 4E fans in the forums!