D&D Gameday celebrating PHB3 - did you play today?

[Festivus]

Ran it twice on the gameday, blogged a bit about it on the wizards site. It had the usual editing issues and was a bit railroaded (you almost have to do that at this type of game). The encounters game a good feel for how the PHB3 classes play, and many of these classes aren't buildable yet in the character builder.

I really liked the decent into madness skill challenge, and am totally snagging it for other things. I appreciated that there was a not-nessecarily kill the monster scenario in there, I liked that the deeper you got, the stranger things become.

 

[MerricB]

I can't believe you didn't bring up the flaws in the adventure that all of us DMs discussed!

OK, OK, I liked the adventure overall, but there were some interesting mistakes.

The biggest mistake was to have many skill challenge and monster knowledge checks based on Dungeoneering but with no PCs with Dungeoneering as a trained skill.

You must be looking at a different adventure than me. I don't consider being able to make Monster Knowledge checks an essential part of playing D&D 4E, and when you get to the skill challenges, the first one (area 2) allows an entire host of skills, not just Dungeoneering, and the second one (area 3) has only the smallest chance of requiring a Dungeoneering check.

 

[coyote6]

I GMed M&M -- does that count?

 

[Smeelbo]

There was a game convention in town the same weekend, so the local 4E Meetup cancelled its monthly meeting, but we had a full table anyway. We had one player that knew 4E well enough to DM it, one player that had never played any RPG, and the rest were 3.5/PF players that were curious about 4E.

I was able to teach the basics of 4E in less than thirty minutes, and we finished the entire adventure, minus the Gricks, in under 6 hours.

The adventure was the best written Game Day Adventure so far, with far fewer typos, omissions, and inconsistancies than any previous. It took me about an hour to fix this one, rather than the usual ten or more. The effort they are putting into the adventures now really shows.

Smeelbo

 

[Smeelbo]

I really liked the decent into madness skill challenge, and am totally snagging it for other things.

That was by far the lamest part of the adventure. Force the characters into a skill challenge where the skill is randomly determined, and they cannot assist each other? What was cool about that?

I cut the difficulty in half, and wrote a different, more rational skill challenge, to set the mood better at the beginning of the game.

Really, skill challenges, as published, still suck, and Wizards lacks the capability to fix them.

Smeelbo

 

[Festivus]

That was by far the lamest part of the adventure. Force the characters into a skill challenge where the skill is randomly determined, and they cannot assist each other? What was cool about that?

I cut the difficulty in half, and wrote a different, more rational skill challenge, to set the mood better at the beginning of the game.

Really, skill challenges, as published, still suck, and Wizards lacks the capability to fix them.

Smeelbo

I really think it depends on how it was presented it the players. Both tables I ran expressed to me that it was their favorite part of the adventure. If you hadn't noticed, there were options besides being locked into whatever was presented to you, and you weren't required to make the check suggested, and it did properly represent the chaos of the far realms. It was all supposed to be in their minds, so aid another wouldn't be proper in my opinion.

Overall, I thought it very cool, sorry your experience was different, although it sounds like you had a reasonable work around that suited you just fine.

 

[Holy Bovine]

That was by far the lamest part of the adventure. Force the characters into a skill challenge where the skill is randomly determined, and they cannot assist each other? What was cool about that?

I cut the difficulty in half, and wrote a different, more rational skill challenge, to set the mood better at the beginning of the game.

Really, skill challenges, as published, still suck, and Wizards lacks the capability to fix them.

The players at my (and other) tables enjoyed it. It was nice to actually see PC have a chance at failing a skill challenge for a change (as opposed to other from other Game Days that were auto-success every time). Besides the 'beaten savagely' result got huge laughs at my group.

 

[Festivus]

I was able to teach the basics of 4E in less than thirty minutes, and we finished the entire adventure, minus the Gricks, in under 6 hours.

The adventure was the best written Game Day Adventure so far, with far fewer typos, omissions, and inconsistancies than any previous. It took me about an hour to fix this one, rather than the usual ten or more. The effort they are putting into the adventures now really shows.

Smeelbo

6 hours? Curious, did the party end up fighting the dragon? I ended up calling some fights (e.g. once the Grick Alpha and two of the three regulars were dead there isn't much point in continued die rolling). Both of my games were roughly 4 hours in length.

I agree best edited thus far, but still it had errors still... perhaps the timeframes are too tight to get these playtested?

 

[Holy Bovine]

It took me about an hour to fix this one, rather than the usual ten or more. The effort they are putting into the adventures now really shows.

10 hours? Really? Not exaggerating just a weensy bit there?

 

[MerricB]

6 hours? Curious, did the party end up fighting the dragon? I ended up calling some fights (e.g. once the Grick Alpha and two of the three regulars were dead there isn't much point in continued die rolling). Both of my games were roughly 4 hours in length.

I agree best edited thus far, but still it had errors still... perhaps the timeframes are too tight to get these playtested?

My session ran for a little under 4 hours; the group didn't fight the dragon (instead bargained with it) but went through the other fights in full.

However, I was running a group that, with one exception, had never played 4e before.

We had some great moments: after the first combat, the wraith had never entered combat since no-one had moved much. Then one of the kids ran over to loot the bodies... and got surprised by the wraith. Great fun - the father really liked that bit, as it taught the kids to be careful.

Cheers!