D&D Game Day this weekend!

[MerricB]

Hmm - all the themes I saw worked with any character. (We might have been lucky). But it does sound like you had a terrible DM.

The difference between me making an Essentials PC and that of many of my players is this: it takes me under 10 minutes, it takes them almost an hour. I let my group struggle (well, sort of) along for half an hour before I went to each and finished up their characters quickly. (I gave everyone I helped the Expertise feat, as hitting lots is the best thing for fun in a Game Day).

I gave out the showbags & theme cards *before* anyone created a character, and they then used it as a guideline for the character they should create.

However, would the Game Day have gone a lot smoother if they didn't have to create characters? Massively. Of the players, only two had the Essentials Heroes books. I lent out mine, plus some from another one of the DMs who'd run the later session. (No copies were available for sale in store). The assumption that everyone would have at least one Heroes book was stupid - especially for those players who have been playing for years and have seen no need to pick one up.

I thought the theme cards were fantastic - giving background and potential roleplaying notes which, although the adventure didn't really support them, gave the players a basis to work from. If they could marry them with pregen characters, then the next Game Day would be fantastic. It'd also allow the adventure to be longer - I really, really felt the adventure was too short. My favourite Game Day adventure so far has been Journey Through the Silver Caves (by Logan Bonner) which was 4 encounters - three combats and an extended skill challenge... and probably the best skill challenge ever printed.

Cheers!

 

[Vael]

So, character generation is the most frustrating part. That's unfortunate, but understandable, as it requires a lot of copying, and several copies of the player books. I think if WoTC is serious about fast, at-table character generation for game days or other organized play events, they need to make some sort of character generation kit. One page handouts for each class, and first level powers written out on cards. Same for races. Similar to how you build your characters in their adventure boardgames, only a bit more in depth. Or the organizers need some DDI subscriptions and Internet access, but that's putting more stress on them.

 

[Windjammer]

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=472656Playreport by experienced GM with nice photos. He thought the module crap, but it seems he pulled off a nice session regardless.

 

[Imaro]

Well in a strange twist of fate I ended up running this adventure at my (recently opened) local gaming/comic book shop Saturday. I was in the store shopping with my son and decided to check out game day upstairs. Originally I thought that we might even jump in and play a quick game but to my surprise they were short on DM's. I mentioned to one of the guys that I had DM'd 4e before and next thing I know I'm skimming Neverdeath and borrowing some dice from the other two DM's there... getting ready to run 4e.

In all honesty I had a pretty good time (especially considering I had not expected to run anything and wasn't well prepared) and my table had a blast... but I didn't exactly run the module as written either. We didn't make up characters but I used the pre-gens and allowed some quick and minor modifications to bring them more in line with the vision of the player that had chosen them. The party I ended up runnning for consisted of the pre-gen cleric, paladin, slayer and thief. It was no surprise to me that my son chose the slayer. While runnning I improvised quite a bit (I did feel a little nervous about this as I really only have passing knowledge of the FR and am not really knowledgeable in alot of it's details).

The PC's negotiated a slightly higher price for their vwork, but didn't really garner any info from Seldra (I think that's her name). After the negotiations she told them it would be an hour before the ship was ready to leave port so this gave my PC's time to explore Waterdeep for an hour(in-game). During this time the cleric and paladin (both of Kelemvor) decided to seek out a shrine (easy streetwise check) to make donations in order to ward off death during their trip (easy religion check to remember the correct offerings of a few drops of blood and a silver coin).

While the paladin and cleric made their donations the player of the slayer and thief talked with the patron of the local tavern and found out more information concerning Neverwinter (I used this opportunity to fill in the details they had forgotten to ask Seldra about).

After the above information was obtained I declared that the hour had passed and they all decided to head to the docks to board Seldra's ship. I did mess up here as I hadn't memorized how long the trip would take and only now realized it was four days (when in Seldra's negotiations she had claimed it was a day and a half... don't ask me where I got this from ). No biggie I just told the players that I had messed up and that the trip was 4 days instead of a day and a half. They were all cool about it.

We glossed over the four days of travel with each person getting a few minutes to describe how they had spent most of the journey. In order to stay within the time limit I told them that Seldra had spent most of the journey below deck in her quarters but had briefly throughout the trip spoken with each and every one of them, thanking them for accepting the job. Next I read the description of them docking in Neverwinter and we moved into the first encounter... and I messed up again... I forgot the adventure was designed for 5 PC's instead of 4 PC's and didn't modify the encounter (I actually didn't realize this until I was thinking about the encounter the next day.). It was a tough fight and two PC's dropped but they eventually overcame the undead, however the archer and the wizard were able to escape with the item.

Here I decided to improvise again, by having them interact with a contigent of Neverember's ( I think that was his name) soldiers that showed up due to the comotion that errupted on the docks when the undead attacked. They spoke to a young captain named Garett who proved to be unhelpful to the characters (low diplomacy roll on their part). The PC's decided not to waste any more time with the soldiers and, under the advice of Seldra, headed into Neverwinter to hunt down the stolen item.

I got a little nervous here as the module called for a skill challenge and I just don't particularly care for skil challenges. Instead of doing this totally by the book I narrated their travel through the streets of Neverwinter and depending on their actions asked for rolls of a particular skil. As an example one PC... the Thief decided to speak to one of the numerous beggars in Neverwinter to find out if he had heard or seen anything about a red-robed man fleeing through the streets. I asked him to roll a Streetwise check at an easy DC since it fit his character. I did this but kept the tally for the skill challenge as a way to measure success/failure as well as an indicator for their proximity in Neverwinter to the graveyard for the final encounter. They eventually found the graveyard (succeeded in the skill challenge)... and we had to stop here due to time running out.

Well the gamers at my table asked me if I'd be running a table at encounters on Wednesday nights, but I wasn't sure I wanted to make that type of commitment, actually I'm not even sure how it works. But that I and my son might stop in on Wednesday to play at a table if their was room. So all in all I had a great time (though I do wish I had finished up the last encounter) and believe I ran a preety good game of 4e.