Due to one thing or another, my 4E Castle Zagyg campaign has taken a detour into Gary Gygax's "Hall of Many Panes", appropriately subtitled "an Adventure of Significant Length". I picked it up for $10 during the recent TLG liquidation of their LA/d20 products (at the same time that I bought the Upper Works for full price).
Although this campaign began in the same tactical manner as my Sunday campaign, I've been moving more and more towards running it freeform; with more emphasis on roleplaying, storytelling and exploration.
This came about because I had to improvise a session where the PCs went further into a set of underdark tunnels when I thought they'd return home... so, one Rainbow Portal and a note from Zagyg later, they're in the Hall of Many Panes and I'm running the Acorn People adventure for them. Oh, they loved it (Adam and Nate did really fantastic squeaky acorn voices as well), and so last session I actually brought the adventure proper and they polished off a couple more panes.
I had the chance to work in a skill challenge, as well as having this Inappropriately Levelled party (they're levels 2 & 3!) meet a gorgon and a medusa. To my delight, the MM has both of those creatures... and so, with a few on-the-fly adjustments as suggested by the DMG, both creatures were reduced to a level more appropriate for the group. That was very fast, and didn't really interfere with play. The ease of levelling creatures in 4e is one of its greatest strengths. (In 3e, I found it broke completely as soon as you put grappling into the equation and changing creature sizes; it also tended to take longer.)
Minis? We haven't been using them of late. This is partly to speed up play - drawing the combat grid is a significant timewaster - and partly to see how 4e handles it. Yeah, I'm not finding it much different than running previous editions without minis, although the players might be. Some PCs care about position, others really don't. Ranger with bow? Really doesn't care.
To some extent, what that means is that the powers which slide/push and otherwise manuever foes around are diminished in usefulness, but condition-giving powers remain useful. I have a feeling that we'll go to a hybrid: using minis for significant fights against powerful enemies or multiple foes, but keeping the fights against 2-4 foes miniless. We'll see. I might well let the players decide before each battle.
I'm also making more use of "quasi-minions" - that is, monsters with half normal HP - and otherwise not trying to balance encounters. Encounters that are somewhat challenging but not life-or-death affairs are indeed fun, and they don't take as long: this is great for keeping intensity and the drive in the game.
In the other pane the PCs came up against some duergar... oops, I didn't have Thunderspire with me, and the MM doesn't have duergar. Oh well, use some dwarves and it'll work. It did too, and the players had a good time.
Cheers!
Although this campaign began in the same tactical manner as my Sunday campaign, I've been moving more and more towards running it freeform; with more emphasis on roleplaying, storytelling and exploration.
This came about because I had to improvise a session where the PCs went further into a set of underdark tunnels when I thought they'd return home... so, one Rainbow Portal and a note from Zagyg later, they're in the Hall of Many Panes and I'm running the Acorn People adventure for them. Oh, they loved it (Adam and Nate did really fantastic squeaky acorn voices as well), and so last session I actually brought the adventure proper and they polished off a couple more panes.
I had the chance to work in a skill challenge, as well as having this Inappropriately Levelled party (they're levels 2 & 3!) meet a gorgon and a medusa. To my delight, the MM has both of those creatures... and so, with a few on-the-fly adjustments as suggested by the DMG, both creatures were reduced to a level more appropriate for the group. That was very fast, and didn't really interfere with play. The ease of levelling creatures in 4e is one of its greatest strengths. (In 3e, I found it broke completely as soon as you put grappling into the equation and changing creature sizes; it also tended to take longer.)
Minis? We haven't been using them of late. This is partly to speed up play - drawing the combat grid is a significant timewaster - and partly to see how 4e handles it. Yeah, I'm not finding it much different than running previous editions without minis, although the players might be. Some PCs care about position, others really don't. Ranger with bow? Really doesn't care.
To some extent, what that means is that the powers which slide/push and otherwise manuever foes around are diminished in usefulness, but condition-giving powers remain useful. I have a feeling that we'll go to a hybrid: using minis for significant fights against powerful enemies or multiple foes, but keeping the fights against 2-4 foes miniless. We'll see. I might well let the players decide before each battle.
I'm also making more use of "quasi-minions" - that is, monsters with half normal HP - and otherwise not trying to balance encounters. Encounters that are somewhat challenging but not life-or-death affairs are indeed fun, and they don't take as long: this is great for keeping intensity and the drive in the game.
In the other pane the PCs came up against some duergar... oops, I didn't have Thunderspire with me, and the MM doesn't have duergar. Oh well, use some dwarves and it'll work. It did too, and the players had a good time.
Cheers!
