D&D Game Day this weekend!

[MerricB]

It should also be noted that I'm not in a big city. If we get two tables during the day, we'll have done well (and - for this one - I'll be surprised if we do, seeing as a lot of my regular players are busy this weekend).

Wizards also pushes D&D Encounters very hard, but it's so difficult for smaller centres to run according to their rules.

 

[CancR]

I am stoked for Game day. We have 3 tables at the moment and are expecting 1-3 more.

Not only am I running one, but I get to play a Harper.

---Rusty

 

[Dice4Hire]

I am stoked for Game day. We have 3 tables at the moment and are expecting 1-3 more.

Not only am I running one, but I get to play a Harper.

---Rusty

You want a Harper pin or a chest to pin it on?

 

[CancR]

You want a Harper pin or a chest to pin it on?

Being a Harper in FR is enough.

It was hard to pick from being part of Jarlaxle's gang, or a harper. Really, really,really hard to pick. But then I thought 'Man I'd have to play a drow.'

 

[MerricB]

Well, I ran a session for the game day of 6 players; we ended up with one other table of 6 players + DM, which is about as good as we get on Game Days.

The actual Game Day material arrived *yesterday*, which didn't really leave us a lot of time to prepare for the adventure, let people know what was involved, etc. I was up late last night reading the adventure and getting the minis ready.

It's interesting to see how slow players are at making characters. Me? I can do it in 10-15 minutes. My players struggled for 30+ minutes with some of their characters before I could get to them and quickly fill in their defenses and attack bonuses for them. The one thing that worked really, really well was the showbag of stuff and the Theme/Background card with it. If Wizards produce them for later Game Days, I wouldn't be unhappy.

I still felt the adventure was a little shorter than I was happy with, but what there was of it went well.

I'll post more when I'm sure it's over for everyone.

Cheers!

 

[corwyn77]

Merric,



I hear lair assualt is going to be 5th level with every legal option available for character creation. Sure, the DM is going try and wipe out the party but hey if a challenge is what you want there is the game for you...

Thanks,

I've been thinking of this myself. I've been co-running encounters for a few months now. Typically we end up with 12 - 15 players - two large or three small tables and I'm considering leeching several out of there for Lair Assault.

I am a little concerned about running a 'challenging' game without being able to modify/delete some of the more abusive options that are still out there. Some hybrid combos, Moment of Glory (how has this not been nerfed yet - DR 5 for an entire encounter at level 1).

 

[GameDoc]

It should also be noted that I'm not in a big city. If we get two tables during the day, we'll have done well (and - for this one - I'll be surprised if we do, seeing as a lot of my regular players are busy this weekend).

Wizards also pushes D&D Encounters very hard, but it's so difficult for smaller centres to run according to their rules.

I'm in the same boat. Small town - one game shop running organized play and only two DMs that can rarely be present at the same time. Makes it hard when 7 or 8 players show up.

But we make it work. Still, I feel your pain.

 

[Saracenus]

Welp, we ran 5 full tables @guardian Games and if I had the space I could have run at least 1 or 2 more.

Damn you Yu-Gi-Oh pre-release event that didn't fill all your tables and flamed out half-way through the day. Your lame-a-tude sucked up space for an event that would have glade used the space.

As it was the event was awesome. I will report that the character creation at the event was definitely not looked upon with any favor by me (the coordinator), my DMs and many of the players.

We mitigated by making pre-gens that we pre-printed, sending out a email notice asking folks to pre-make their PCs if possible, and having tables staggered though out the day so we could have DMs helping with character creation before the tables ran.

All in all we had a good time. I think the 2 combats and 2 skill challenges was precisely the right amount for a one shot store event. Though I will say, the table I ran had 3 controllers (2 Hunters, 2 Pyro-Mage), 2 leaders (Storm and Corellon Warpriests) and a single defender (Cavalier who refused to put up his aura because he had better things to do with his actions) which took a bit longer in the second combat than some other tables... No strikers is an interesting beast.

My two coppers,

 

[MerricB]

Welp, we ran 5 full tables @guardian Games and if I had the space I could have run at least 1 or 2 more.

Damn you Yu-Gi-Oh pre-release event that didn't fill all your tables and flamed out half-way through the day. Your lame-a-tude sucked up space for an event that would have glade used the space.

The YGO event (thankfully) was held on the Sunday here, so I could avoid it.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

The game I played in was a disaster--between character generation onsite, and a highly inexperienced and young table with a GM who was less than fully prepared, it took us something like 1.5 hours to actually start playing. The fact that A) there was an emphasis on using themes and B) the themes in the bags had lots of prereqs (so for example I generated a Dragonborn, then got handed an invalid theme card so had to switch to a theme from the book, of which there was only one copy at the table), definitely extended the process substantially. Add some impressively bad dice rolls by the players in the first combat (with a GM who was not good at moving things along and would spend lots of time trying to figure out rules things when he should have just made a ruling and moved on), and the first combat was still going on 4.5 hours in when my wife showed up to pick me up. I could have asked her to watch the kids for another 15 minutes or half-hour, but what's the point when it would have only let me get to the end of the first combat and it wasn't much fun anyway? So I said my goodbyes and left then. I really hope the kids who were playing at my table had fun (and I think they might have), since the key goal is helping them get into gaming, but it was a basically wasted afternoon for me.

With pregen characters, it would have been fine, I think, even with the slow as molasses first combat.