Free RPG Day Dark Sun adventure

[SquareKnot]

They do seem to be the same as the characters here. They've been reformatted into the D&D Encounters character sheet format (glossy two-sided half-sheet with lots of color) and their back stories have been tweaked slightly to better tie them into this plot (and facilitate each half of the party having slightly different goals).

 

[Spatula]

The sample characters are up on the wizards site, but when I downloaded the zip file, it seems to be corrupted or something. Format unknown. Anyone else having that problem?

Edit: Also, any stores in the Greater Toronto Area participating? The site only has one store in Toronto and one in Vaughn. That's disappointing.

At least in Windows XP, WinZip can extract the files but the built-in Windows tool cannot.

 

[DEFCON 1]

These seem to be the characters posted on critical-hits.com (the DDXP pre-gens).

And it sounds like the module is the same one we played at PAX East (as we also had those characters, and we also started the adventure in an arena as well).

 

[SquareKnot]

I was curious as to whether this module was recycled. The Free RPG Day module doesn't start in an arena, though it most likely will end in one. I don't want to spoil things, but in very general terms this is a "hired to protect a caravan" type storyline with a few twists. I don't know if this is the same as the PAX East or DDXP Dark Sun previews. In past years, the WotC Free RPG module was advertised as an "all new, never before seen" adventure. I haven't seen that wording this year, but that doesn't prove anything.

 

[Solvarn]

Error prone

I was curious as to whether this module was recycled. The Free RPG Day module doesn't start in an arena, though it most likely will end in one. I don't want to spoil things, but in very general terms this is a "hired to protect a caravan" type storyline with a few twists. I don't know if this is the same as the PAX East or DDXP Dark Sun previews. In past years, the WotC Free RPG module was advertised as an "all new, never before seen" adventure. I haven't seen that wording this year, but that doesn't prove anything.

I just hope these pre-gens have less errors/inconsistent info then the D&D Encounters characters do.

They really need to circulate these PDF's by email in-house, with a $50 gift card to the person that can identify the most errors, so that the errors can be corrected before they are unleashed on us.

 

[thalmin]

The Free RPG adventure is different from the Encounters adventure. The pregens are different, including a couple different classes and races, and all different builds.

 

[SquareKnot]

I just hope these pre-gens have less errors/inconsistent info then the D&D Encounters characters do.

In my quick perusal, I've already noticed that Pak'Cha's card for Free RPG Day is missing the Duststorm Binding Daily that was present at DDXP. The Free RPG Day card has no daily for Pak'Cha.

Suldin has the "Orb of Deception" ability that grants a benefit when you miss with a wizard illusion power. Unfortunately, no power keywords are on the card, so you have to guess what is a wizard illusion power.

 

[Pathanus]

For those having problems extracting the character sheet files the newer 7zip 9.14 beta can extract them. It seems others have been having lots of problems with them since it looks like Windows OS cannot extract em.

Browse 7-Zip Files on SourceForge.net

Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible

edit: second link is to Wizards board post about same topic, dunno why name loaded weird when I pasted it in

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

For those having problems extracting the character sheet files the newer 7zip 9.14 beta can extract them. It seems others have been having lots of problems with them since it looks like Windows OS cannot extract em.

Thanks, that did the trick. My 7zip version was too old.

 

[Taed]

I just picked up the Free RPG Day Bloodsand Arena and it's a nice give-away and will certainly get people excited for Dark Sun, especially in conjunction with Encounters. It has a nice double-sided large poster with 3 maps (that have good reuse possibilities), two decent mini-adventures (though heavy on skill challenges for my taste), and two sets of the six character cards. My only complaint is that there wasn't room for a bit of desert that's needed for one encounter.

I'll actually be running it the next two weeks for my group, as we have multiple people out so our normal D&D campaign is on hold. We'll be done with that around late August, so might switch over to Dark Sun.

Overall, I like it better than last year's Khyber's Harvest, though I really liked that as well (though haven't had a chance to use the adventure yet, just the dungeon tile).

Thanks, WotC!