D&D Gameday: Into the Shadowhaunt

[Vargo]

I went to the game day - Neumos is across the street from me, and it's the main HQ for D&D game day.

I played first in the Shadowhaunt game as the Human Cleric. We pretty much walked through it - I had half the riddle (I knew who Pelor was, just didn't catch the sire reference) but we got it figured out pretty quickly. We blew through the hobgoblins, busted the statues, and the elf + skeletons went down real easy. We didn't even really break a sweat.

There was also a game up with Andy Collins, one of the guys who wrote 4th edition. Three people didn't show for it (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? You have a game with Andy Collins and you bail? FAIL.) so I got subbed in at the last second. I played a half-elf rogue, and there were three other members of the party. It was the white dragon scenario.

Everybody else kept getting pounded on except me. I got hit ONCE - and that was because I provoked an attack of opportunity moving into flanking position. I dished out metric tons of damage to the dragon - probably around 50-60% of the total damage done by our party. The last hit was mine - I rolled a natural twenty which maxes out the damage done by your attack, which dropped the dragon. High fives all around, and Andy Collins signed my sheet. I don't normally nerd out like this, but I was pretty proud.

Overall it's pretty fun and fast as far as game systems go, but once you've burned your dailies and per encounters, it does get a touch repetitive doing the same thing over and over.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Just got back from playing the module twice at Zombie Planet.

Spoilers ahead...

First group didn't have too much trouble with the riddle, as we caught onto the Bahamut/Pelor thing pretty quick, just had to figure out the order to put the statues (which was random luck really)

Second group had it even easier, with the only thing I really contributed was the Bahamut/Pelor thing, with another player adding "sinister = left," so it didn't even take any guesswork on the order of the statues.

First group had a rough time of it, and wound up fighting two encounters at once, and most of us having a rough time due to lousy attack rolls, especially the two hobgoblins. Did have the ghost guy help us out at the end, although my Dragonborn Paladin (had six players so the GM broke out the KotS pre-gens; man oh man do they suck!) got clobbered big time by the animate statues.

2nd group had a far easier time of it overall, although the poor Rogue couldn't make a Thievery check to save the two captive boys' lives. I did take out the evil elf magician with my dwarf's brute strike, which was quite pleasing; don't know if it was part of the module or not, but the GM let me scramble up the column with an Athletics check. The poor Warforged Paladin had about the same luck as my Dragonborn one, but was apparently much tougher (and the Shifter cleric was doing a much better job of keeping that tank running). I think Alex (GM for the 2nd one) was getting a bit frustrated that the only time one of the statues managed to hit the dwarf, I saved against the knockdown, even though the other statue did a great job of manhandling the pally. Also, action points are fun

After this, I am definitely looking forward to playing 4e with my usual gaming group, especially as I now have a much clearer idea of how things work and group dynamics.

 

[GreyWizard77]

Just got back from playing it myself. The opening riddle wasn't a problem for us at all. The rogue (me) just spent some time investigating the sarcophagi and saw that the statues should be moved, and we also noticed that the pommels of the bodies had the appropriate holy symbols. So it was just a matter of moving the right statue above the appropriate symbol. (I haven't read the module yet, so the part about the pommels could have been GM fiat. I haven't seen anyone else discuss it that way).

We only had 3 hrs to play, due to time constraint on one of the players, so after the hobgoblins we bypassed the cave-in and went straight to the evil elf. The boys and statues were in the last room instead.

No one died, and it was good intro to the new system. I think I'm going to end up liking the new game, although I'm still a fence-sitter right now. I just need more play opportunities and more time to "unlearn" and accept that it's a differnt game with a differnt feel.

 

[blargney the second]

The riddle was brutal for us, I think because the DM took some strange liberties:
1) On a good knowledge check by the cleric, he told us the shadow thing would stomp us.
2) The shadow got angry when one of us picked up a statue.

Honestly, it seemed like a horribly contrived and improbable bottleneck to get into a dungeon. I hate bottleneck adventure design...

The rest of the adventure was fun once he gave us a mulligan.
-blarg

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

The riddle was brutal for us, I think because the DM took some strange liberties:
1) On a good knowledge check by the cleric, he told us the shadow thing would stomp us.
2) The shadow got angry when one of us picked up a statue.

Yeah, your GM did take some odd liberties, as both times I played the shadow thingy showed up to speak the riddle, for which neither GM required any kind of knowledge check to figure out, and the second one rewarded myself and the Warforged paladin with an action point for figuring it out with our noggins (which was kinda funny as we were playing the two dumbest characters in the lot).

Side Note: Are there copies of these PCs available online? Or does anyone know if WotC is planning to offer these guys up as promo material? Reason I ask is they seemed to be pretty well thought-out characters compared to the pack of stinkers that came with KotS.

 

[Xsjado]

Our DM played the riddle entirely differently; there wasn't a riddle as such at all as far as I could tell. Which sort of made it harder until the rogue just used his thievery to open the obelisk. I think he let it slide that way because he had introduced an extra encounter before we entered the tomb. A group of kobolds was attacking and we decided to barricade ourselves in. IMO that was an attempt to introduce minions into the module.

The two most deadly fights were the hobgobbos and the stone statues. We had some poor luck climbing over the traps and the dwarf caught on fire, got them down eventually though. The statues got activated after a scuffed roll from the rogue and the wizard and it got pretty hairy until the first one went down and we all piled onto the second.

End fight was over rather quickly even with the spirit joining in against us (we had been nice to it but DM though we needed the extra challenge). My turn undead rolls gave us room to get into the open and the wizard knocked the elf down, with the rogue finishing him off. I was a bit miffed that I missed with my daily though.

Pretty good module I thought, more interesting than last year's and I met a load of new people which is a nice bonus. Hopefully we'll be getting a 4e campaign running soon.

 

[thalmin]

The White Dragon encounter was not in the module. Inside the goodies box from WotC, besides the module and minis, were a couple of packets which included Monster Charades, 2 Trivia games (Classic D&D and 4E Trivia), Dungeon Feud (without Richard Dawson) D20 Questions, and Against the White Dragon (a 2-page encounter).

I'm happy to report we ran 9 groups through Shadowhaunt today, 6 groups of 5 characters, 3 groups of 6 (we added the Tiefling Warlord from the KotS download). Six groups made it to the white dragon, we had one TPK, and one group broke up early (3 players had to leave to meet the wives for dinner). We also played a little Dungeon Feud

 

[jinnetics]

I threw a game day at a local bookstore's community room and no one showed up! But I plan to take the kit to a local gaming con next weekend.

I had signed up when it appeared no local game stores were hosting D&D Game Day, but then ... they did.

I got to teach 4E to my son and we had fun anyway...

I really like the module. I had to take liberties since it was just one PC, but when he rescued the prisoners I had them turn out to be - SURPRISE! - a cleric and dwarf fighter! So he got reinforcements for the final battle.

 

[MortalPlague]

TPK in the Shadowhaunt Mausoleum!

Well, I had a good time with game day. My group was a player short, so we ran with four, which was not a big problem (I ran the adventure with four with my group and they all survived). I used dice to show where the statuettes were for the riddle, and I even put one out on the floor, but the PCs could not figure out the riddle. Even with hints, they had the idols in the reverse order they needed... so the hobgoblins had to show up.

Having Helvec in the hobgoblin room was a little cheesy, but it worked alright. The hobgoblins were an excellent fight, with plenty of back and forth combat. Two seperate PCs triggered the traps, each taking damage, and they were quite exhilirated once they'd beaten the hobgoblins.

And then everything went sour. The cleric had the bright idea to send the rogue ahead to scout. The rogue crept through the cave, past the boys (after peeking through the door), then into Helvec's room. He had the bright idea to sneak attack Helvec... thereby pulling Helvec, his skeletons, and the statues. All in one go. They fought the PCs in the hobgoblin room, Helvec used his secret passage to get at them from behind with one of his skeletons, and the party went down after a titanic struggle. The statues were the real killer there.

After that, we ran the white dragon encounter, this time with six PCs. Two characters died in the fight (died outright), but they managed to take down the dragon. All in all, an entertaining game day.

 

[Twizz Stonefist]

Ran 1-4 player game, 1-5 player game, 3-6 player games,and 2-7 player games. And 4 of the dragon fights. To make thing a little more fun I took pregens from all the different modules to date and let people pick from them. I just made sure every group had 1 rogue, 1 cleric and 1 wizard.

I'd say half the players in my store we people I hadn't seen. Almost completely sold out of the books had 1 dmg, and 1 mm left. It was a great day. And I had a few interested in coming in to get some on payday.

Sure it was 15 hours of gaming in 1 day. Omg I never want to game that much again in one day. Got to meet alot of cool geeks. I just to thank everyone who cameout for the fun.

Donny Rhye
Book & Music Exchange
Louisville,ky