London Dungeon on 3rd November

[loseth]

Was it fun?

Yep! I got to play my first ever RAW 3e game, which was also my first ever game with minis. The players and GM were great, and Tallarn, in particular, was helpful in explaining various 3e rules to me. I noticed that a lot of 3e rules that I have disliked in other games worked absolutely fine in an RAW context (perhaps unsurprisingly--as that's what they were designed for).

PS I loved the fight with the mephits! We were having a relatively easy time of things before the GM waited until my character was dangling from a rope half way across the chasm before having ice mephits attack. Very old-school!

Did you get any scoops?

A small one. I too had to run for a train, but I managed to fire off one question at Dave Noonan before heading off for a random encounter with two drunken and bloodied rugby players on the tube. I asked Dave how the design team had had to change spellcasting to make it fit into a 1:1 spell-level-to-character-level mapping scheme. He told me that it would be difficult to explain without giving me the PHB as they'd made a lot of changes, but he did give three interesting pieces of information:

--30 discrete levels of spells would be too fine a level of gradation, so we shouldn't expect to see spells occupying every spell level.

--Dave thought (but wasn't 100% sure?) that the upcoming Races & Classes book explained more about the spellcasting system.

--To help me better understand the new magic system, he said he would send me an autographed copy of the current iteration of the PHB. He might have forgotten that bit, as I'm sure he was very tired--but no doubt reading this he'll be reminded of it and pop the PHB into the mail. Really he said that.

So folks, go hit that pre-order button at Amazon.

 

[Morrus]

Loseth, you're in Southampton? Wherabouts? I live in Bitterne.

 

[loseth]

Loseth, you're in Southampton? Wherabouts? I live in Bitterne.

Small world! I'm in Lordswood--a bit out of the way, but cheap as chips. I'm also gameless in Southampton, so it'd great to hear about any good gaming in Soton that you know about through your privileged position as Admiral. Drop me a line at cv2@the U of Soton's email suffix.

P.S. What are you studying?

 

[Morrus]

Small world! I'm in Lordswood--a bit out of the way, but cheap as chips. I'm also gameless in Southampton, so it'd great to hear about any good gaming in Soton that you know about through your privileged position as Admiral. Drop me a line at cv2@the U of Soton's email suffix.

P.S. What are you studying?

I'm at Southampton Solent, not Uni of S, so I don't know what the suffix is. I'm doing Fitness & Personal Training, and really enjoying it. And there's certainly some good gaming in Southampton - my game is frickin' excellent!

Feel free to drop me an email - russmorrissey@gmail.com.

 

[Baby Samurai]

Well I was there from about 7:45pm till 9:30pm, so unfortunately I couldn't commit to a session, even though several cool people invited me (the guy with the monthly Living Greyhawk session flyer – near Tottenham Court?) to a table.

But I did corner David Noonan for about a half an hour and he's a really mellow guy (very clean too). Well as we can expect they have to a bit vague and tight lipped about info, but I'll try to put down a few tidbits I squeezed out of him:



-Changes to reach – some creatures may not be able to make an AoO with a bite attack for example, past a certain range. So maybe a Huge creature would have reach with its limbs out to 15 ft (3 squares), but only have a reach of 5 ft. (1 square) with its bite attack.

-Certain spells are gone, period (wish for sure).

-I heard a cryptic mention of "their" Magic Spreadsheet with the entire math laid out.

-He told me one of his fellow designers/play-testers was happy and relieved to go back to being a DM in 4th, as I guess being a player can be quite taxing/involved.



I'll try to get back with any more info, if I can remember. I know I could have asked him a lot more questions, but we ended up just talking about all sorts of things – older editions/RPGs, funny rules, travelling, nightmare players etc.

As for the London Dungeon, yeah, it's pretty nifty; the guys let me tour the Hall of Mirrors by myself – scary, somebody hold me! The only bummer is that the 4th Ed stat card I was so looking forward to is our old Spined Devil, so nothing new in that department.

The giant Troll and d4s were cute.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

A little extra random tidbit of atmosphere from Saturday:

When you go into the toilets at the London Dungeon, not only are there cubicle doors that look like coffins lids, there are sound effects. Mostly ominous music, but one blood-curdling screechy giggle that I particularly enjoyed.

 

[Baby Samurai]

A little extra random tidbit of atmosphere from Saturday:

When you go into the toilets at the London Dungeon, not only are there cubicle doors that look like coffins lids, there are sound effects. Mostly ominous music, but one blood-curdling screechy giggle that I particularly enjoyed.

Yeah, that almost freaked me out as I was tinkling.

I thought it might be plumbing problems.

 

[Henry]

Yeah, that almost freaked me out as I was tinkling.

I thought it might be plumbing problems.

If I heard a blood-curdling scream while I was in the WC, it'd probably be enough to give ME plumbing problems.

 

[Baby Samurai]

If I heard a blood-curdling scream while I was in the WC, it'd probably be enough to give ME plumbing problems.

To me it was more of a groan. At first I thought it might be someone in a stall having digestive problems, but then when I realized there were speakers in the urinals I started cracking up.

 

[CharlesRyan]

A quick aside:

I just want to say thanks to Dave for making the trip out here, to Mike at Leisure Games for working with us on the event, to Wesley at The London Dungeon for making it possible, and to all the volunteers who scrambled like mad for an hour before and after the event to get everything in place. (Believe me, unloading that troll on a busy London street and getting it set up in less than an hour was an adventure in itself!)

We had a great time, and The London Dungeon was simply the most awesome place on Earth to host a D&D game. I hope everyone who came out had a good time, and thanks for joining us!

A few pics are attached. [Note that there was no way to capture the actual lighting level--pics taken with flash were way too bright; those taken without were way too dark--so the photos don't capture the real atmosphere of the place. But you get the idea.]