Our DM is planning to run the whole Punjar Saga, weekly on Monday nights - it's heavenly!We didn't get to RP with Zenobia though, we were so freaked out we decided to ambush whatever was beyond the drapes - so we got ourselves a surprise round, but at the price of no character interaction!
Re story hour - not AFAIK, but I found out today one of the other players is a famous author, so who knows? I'm looking forward to seeing my PC Larsenio Roguespierre's name in lights.
Edit: No PC deaths yet - unlike you (and me!) our DM Mark is not a Killer DM, and we've mostly been playing with good tactics & decent luck. We also had the experience of encounters rolling together, but one thing Mark has been doing is having some rooms unoccupied, the NPCs are often met later as wandering monsters, which made for a great dynamic feel to the adventure. Eg Irocar & the alley-guards were away on our first visit, but turned up in the middle of the second session, resulting in *us* defending the Bazaar against *them* - we eventually made a fighting withdrawal up the stairs to the Dog Brothers' den, a useful bottleneck where the four of us were able to eventually take down Irocar (4th level Soldier with AC 23, and us 1st level - *yikes*) with 1 PC dropped but no fatalities; the last of the alley-guards ran away.
Excellent- to most of the above.
I take issue with the Killer DM tag, I let the PCs know (subtle then overt) that they're getting in deep. With the Slavers encounter they had the option to not follow on twice in a row but... they couldn't resist.
But we made a pact at the start of the game to play it RAW, we'd just gone through 24 encounters in KOTS- with one PC death in the fourth encounter (Irontooth), and little threat since then...
I suggested Goodman Games because I've been DMing their stuff since DCC#0, and their first attempts at 4e were/are killers- I TPK'ed a group in one of their other 4e 1st Level offerings.
Anyway- happy gaming.
Cheers Goonalan.
Oh and I had Arthuro return later on- he escaped from the Bazaar encounter, only to come back with more Toughs in the Beggar King's Throne Room- the PCs were also about 50 XP short of Level 2, and I figure they needed the boost before heading below.
