Annoyed with D&D Game Day Characters

[Remathilis]

Heh, I remember when the pre-gens were first posted I went over them and produced "corrected" or "updated" versions of each. I can't find the thread now, but it was pretty through.

 

[Orcus]

TR-

I'm with you. I saw a lot of people that were amped and were having a good time.

But I think gameday should be a day to show off D&D. Dont confuse player fun with showing off D&D.

Imagine if people were also saying "hey, these characters are really GREAT!" Or not dying due to poorly constructed flame skull encounters. And imagine if there were good tie ins for retailers for Ravenloft or even maybe Book of Nine Swords or something. That would have been cool.

Clark

 

[Twin Rose]

TR-

I'm with you. I saw a lot of people that were amped and were having a good time.

But I think gameday should be a day to show off D&D. Dont confuse player fun with showing off D&D.

Imagine if people were also saying "hey, these characters are really GREAT!" Or not dying due to poorly constructed flame skull encounters. And imagine if there were good tie ins for retailers for Ravenloft or even maybe Book of Nine Swords or something. That would have been cool.

Oh, you're right. Having a slightly better setup and a 'funner' game would have been better, but I certainly didn't feel it was a failure at all. I definately liked to see so much positive energy and people enjoying the game. It would have been nice if it had been even "more enjoyable" to be sure.

 

[haakon1]

Each year, have the design group (or, hell, subcontract it to Paizo - they're the experts) to produce a short D&D adventure, suitable for about 4 hours of play, start to finish. It should present the 'iconic' D&D experience, which means a low-level dungeon crawl, using the Core Rules only, and make it exciting. Package it up with 6-8 pregenerated characters suitable for use with the adventure, and make those characters similarly iconic - clear representatives of their class, good at one or two things each, and not using any funky rules if they can be avoided.

Debut the adventure at D&D Gameday, and encourage as many DMs to run as many games in as many stores as possible. In addition, produce the adventure as a 'real' D&D module, with proper artwork, cover, maps, and all the rest, including those pregen characters. And, for the rest of the year, give a copy of that adventure away free with every "Dungeon Master's Guide" that is sold. (And, each year, produce a new adventure to give away, and make the previous year's adventure available as a free download at Wizards.com.)

At the same time, develop a set of fast-play rules, which present the minimal ruleset, a micro-adventure, and some 1st level PreGens. Give this away free to anyone who wants one at D&D Gameday, and make it freely available to download at Wizards.com.

Next, produce a big poster, or a few big posters for retailers to display in their windows for the month before Gameday.

I think this is good stuff. Discounts aren't needed. Good material is. And the majority of gamers I know (including me) were unaware that game day came and went. We don't play at game stores, we just buy stuff there.

 

[delericho]

One thought hit me, though. If enough people are interested, and willing to put up some money for an interesting project, maybe we could convice Wolfgang Bauer to make a 3rd Custom Adventure specifically for the 2007 Worldwide D&D Gameday.

I'm not keen on that idea, for three reasons:

1) I object to paying for the priviledge of doing WotC's marketing for them.

2) If we're doing an ENWorld adventure, I rather like the idea of it being done by, you know, us.

3) While Mr Baur clearly has the ability to write an adventure of that sort, it strikes me as overkill. Surely there are many DMs here who have the ability to craft that sort of thing, and do a good job of it?

 

[Harker Wade]

Game Day

I've run Game Day all three years at the Barnes & Noble I work at here in central Illinois. I generally make a whole day affiar out of it. This year I even built a ziggurat for minis play! This year I ran D&D minis, Star Wars Minis (I know, I know, but we get a lot of kids who like to play), Three Dragon Ante (which was fun but, both games were only played with 2 people) and I ended the night with The Curse of Gethin Abbey.

I have to agree with many of the issues presented here - both about the characters and the adventure. But, there had to be, I guess having run the 2 previous years I wasn't really surprised. I just adjusted things. I added healing scrolls to the pile of scrolls and I gave everyone a couple of Action Points, also toned down many of the monsters. I only fudged 2 rolls the whole game and nearly killed everyone at least once, many serval times. The cleric did end up a way did on a crit from the 'liquid hot magama' hurler. All but one of my players was experienced and the guy playing the Paladin embraced his low charisma and made him sound like a southern televangilst!

the only thing that really disappointed me was the lack of the connection to Ravenloft, especially with the cool frickin' picture of Strahd on all the promo materials...

 

[Schmoe]

I played on Game Day, as it's the first opportunity I've had to play a game in over 6 months. I (an experienced DM/player) played the wizard, and we had three complete newbies playing the Cleric, the Rogue, and the Ranger. There were no NPCs, just the four of us.

I had to leave early, just as we were getting to the encounter with the wizard and the magma hurler, so I didn't know about the Hellcat, and I think we skipped the skeleton warriors completely. We did alright, with no deaths up until the point I left, and I left the group with a sound strategy for taking out the wizard/magma hurler, so that should have been manageable. I have a feeling the Hellcat would have been either a TPK or a "run for your lives!" moment, though. Not good for an "introductory" adventure.

I did look over the equipment list for the ranger, at least, and that plus his feats had me scratching my head. I also can't believe that the pre-gen paladin had a 10 charisma. That's ridiculous to the point of absurdity. How can you introduce players to the game with a character that can't use it's own class abilities? That's about as dumb as it gets.

The biggest negative I had on the day is that our DM wasn't very good with the rules. I know, for example, that he wasn't applying DR. That could be explained if he wanted us to have a chance at defeating the encounters. After all, we were still challenged. But he also didn't understand "taking 10" and refused to allow the rogue to "take 20" on Search rolls. He basically said "that's for higher level characters." Huh? I explained it was really just to save time so that people don't need to roll the die 20 times until they succeed, but he instead limited the rogue to one attempt per character level. Oh well. It's no big deal, but it was disappointing.

Still, that being said, by the end of the day the three newbies were all into the game and having a good time, so that was nice to see. I just think the whole thing could have been executed MUCH better.

 

[Mark CMG]

As those who got involved with the thread or others prior to the game day are aware, we made some corrections to the pre-gens ahead of time, in regard to outright mistakes but left things that could be chalked up to choice. The paladin's Charisma was certainly the most noticeable of those. Nevertheless, the games were a blast and everyone had a good time. I had players as young as twelve (had just gotten interested in D&D the previous week) and up into their forties (been playing since the early days of the game). There are surely some things that could be improved with the event in advance but the kits, including the adventure and miniatures, are a great resource. From my perspective the day was a success.