Agamon
Adventurer
...yeah, but this wasn't Caves of Chaos. Having run KotB more times than I can count on my fingers (yes, I still have all my fingers), I thought trying something different would be better. I has going to go with something I made myself, but someone in another thread last week mentioned B10 Night's Dark Terror. "Hey, doesn't that have goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls and such?" thought I. Sure enough, I got it out of storage, and it looked like a pretty easy to convert, either straight across with the bestiary, some re-skinning, or some extrapolation. And it's got a nice mix of event-based and location-based encounters, sandbox-y with a purpose.
There were 5 players. Not my usual group, but I used to play Living Greyhawk with them back in the 3.0/3.5 days. These days, they are 4e players, and I thought it would make a nice contrast with my usual group that are more 3.x/PF players (aside from me, I prefer SW, HM or, for D&D, RC).
The adventure is made for 2nd level B/X PCs (they should have 5000 xp it says in the book), so the one thing I did stress over was if the more powerful L1 DDN PCs could handle what was balanced for L2/L3 B/X PCs. I decided to lower the numbers by about 1/4 to make sure they weren't overwhelmed. I soon found out that that was unnecessary.
The game started out with the group wandering the market area of a river trading town. They were approached by a man who wanted to hire them to travel to his brother's homestead to guard a shipment of rare white horses to a nearby elven clan. They came to an agreement, and he arranged for them to take a riverboat up river for a day's travel before being dropped off for a day's travel overland to the homestead.
A few hours into their trip up the river, the boat comes to a sudden lurching stop (a heavy chain attached to trees across the river is the cause), and bunch of bandits emerge from the treeline on the shore. Nearly half stay on shore, firing with bows while the rest swim to and board the boat. This is an encounter where I reduced the amount of opponents. Even though the melee-ers had to swim and climb into the boat, the adventure had 18 opponents with surprise. But of course, surprise is no longer a free round, and that made a noticeable difference. Despite one of the boat's rowers was really a rogue with the bandits (that managed to sneak attack the fighter), the fight went with little loss from the party, who learned that ducking behind the full cover of the boat's gunwale (half cover when standing in front of it) and popping up for an attack worked very well. The archers eventually started to ready attacks, but only 2 of the swimmers made it aboard, and I was rolling poorly.
The boat trip continued, and near the end of the day, they were dropped off at a cabin where an elven hunter (druid?) and her bear lived. The captain knew the hunter and that she would let them stay at the cabin for the night. She wasn't there, but he figured she was off hunting. What they didn't know is that she was actually paralysed in a goblin attack and dropped into the river, her bear was wounded and chased into the woods.
Two of the PCs keep watch, waiting for her to return, the others stay back at the cabin. The watchers hear, but don't see, the bear returning, but due nothing about it, figuring the hunter was returning. Instead it was an angry hurt bear by itself. The cleric of Moradin, sitting outside the cabin, spots, and is spotted by, the bear first. "I want to use Animal Handling. I walk slowly towards it, making cooing sounds, and cast Healing Word on it," he tells me.
"An angry hurt bear? Okay, you can try, but it's going to be tough. The spell will not put much of a dent in his wound, but that's what makes this not impossible. DC 23." He then rolls nat 20 for a 25. The bear calms down, but then the fighter runs out of the cabin, having heard the bear roar. The agitated bear gets jumpy again. "Make another Handle Animal check if you want to keep it calmed down," I tell the cleric. "Easier this time, you've calmed him once. DC 18." He hits the DC on the nose. The bear grumbles and goes and lays down beside the cabin to rest. A difficult encounter (I made him a skinned owlbear with less hp for the wound) bypassed with some ingenuity and lucky rolling, so I awarded the xp.
The party decides to track the bear's trail into the woods, thinking the elf was hurt in the woods during a hunt. They find a big looping trail, with more and more blood on it as they they follow it back, realizing the attack occurred at the cabin. They then find small humanoid tracks at the cabin, leading down the only beaten path lading from the cabin, and decide to follow it even though the sun has fallen, believing the elf to be captured and in potential trouble.
Down the path, they are attacked by a pack of 7 wolves, which is fairly easy for the party (extrapolated to be an equivalent threat to a hobgoblin). When there were only 3 wolves left, they bolted back into the forest. I used a modified RC morale rules, using the morale rating listed in the module, and it worked really well. I like the idea of having morale rules in the game, and use them with the advice in the DM guide to figure it out yourself when it's obvious, and roll when it's not.
The party keeps following the trail, and eventually the sun rises. I tell them that if they continue without resting, they will have disadvantage on all checks. That stops them. I had thought this was an actual rule, but I can't find it. Still, sounded reasonable to me.
They resume the hunt later in the day, coming upon the homestead as the sun sets. Goblins are attacking it, and the barn, tower and palisade are burning. To cross the bridge across the river between them and the homestead, they need to fight a group of 8 goblins. At this point, I decided to use the numbers of opponents listed in the adventure, as they were walking over what I threw at them thus far. That didn't change here, regardless.
Just as they take down the last couple of fleeing goblins, they spot a half-dozen wolf-riders and hear more goblins approaching from behind them in the forest. The gate in the palisade opens and they are ushered into the homestead before they are overwhelmed.
Part of the palisade is burned down, and a few gobbos come through, but are shot down by the inhabitants and the party together. They retreat into the main building where they meet the man they were hired to help deliver the horses for. They decide to help them figure out defences for the homestead to try and keep back the two goblin tribes attacking them until morning, when they should disperse. And that's where we stopped for the day.
Conclusions (aka tl;dr): There was a fair bit of discussion concerning the rules both during and after the game. Here are the thoughts:
Bottom line, though, everyone had fun. It was agreed that the more "open" style was a nice change to what they were used to. Coming up with an idea and having the DM tell them at DC for a check made for a fun game for everyone.
I'll follow up with my a report of my online group after we play on Tuesday. It'll be the same adventure, so I'll just post differences between the two groups.
There were 5 players. Not my usual group, but I used to play Living Greyhawk with them back in the 3.0/3.5 days. These days, they are 4e players, and I thought it would make a nice contrast with my usual group that are more 3.x/PF players (aside from me, I prefer SW, HM or, for D&D, RC).
The adventure is made for 2nd level B/X PCs (they should have 5000 xp it says in the book), so the one thing I did stress over was if the more powerful L1 DDN PCs could handle what was balanced for L2/L3 B/X PCs. I decided to lower the numbers by about 1/4 to make sure they weren't overwhelmed. I soon found out that that was unnecessary.
The game started out with the group wandering the market area of a river trading town. They were approached by a man who wanted to hire them to travel to his brother's homestead to guard a shipment of rare white horses to a nearby elven clan. They came to an agreement, and he arranged for them to take a riverboat up river for a day's travel before being dropped off for a day's travel overland to the homestead.
A few hours into their trip up the river, the boat comes to a sudden lurching stop (a heavy chain attached to trees across the river is the cause), and bunch of bandits emerge from the treeline on the shore. Nearly half stay on shore, firing with bows while the rest swim to and board the boat. This is an encounter where I reduced the amount of opponents. Even though the melee-ers had to swim and climb into the boat, the adventure had 18 opponents with surprise. But of course, surprise is no longer a free round, and that made a noticeable difference. Despite one of the boat's rowers was really a rogue with the bandits (that managed to sneak attack the fighter), the fight went with little loss from the party, who learned that ducking behind the full cover of the boat's gunwale (half cover when standing in front of it) and popping up for an attack worked very well. The archers eventually started to ready attacks, but only 2 of the swimmers made it aboard, and I was rolling poorly.
The boat trip continued, and near the end of the day, they were dropped off at a cabin where an elven hunter (druid?) and her bear lived. The captain knew the hunter and that she would let them stay at the cabin for the night. She wasn't there, but he figured she was off hunting. What they didn't know is that she was actually paralysed in a goblin attack and dropped into the river, her bear was wounded and chased into the woods.
Two of the PCs keep watch, waiting for her to return, the others stay back at the cabin. The watchers hear, but don't see, the bear returning, but due nothing about it, figuring the hunter was returning. Instead it was an angry hurt bear by itself. The cleric of Moradin, sitting outside the cabin, spots, and is spotted by, the bear first. "I want to use Animal Handling. I walk slowly towards it, making cooing sounds, and cast Healing Word on it," he tells me.
"An angry hurt bear? Okay, you can try, but it's going to be tough. The spell will not put much of a dent in his wound, but that's what makes this not impossible. DC 23." He then rolls nat 20 for a 25. The bear calms down, but then the fighter runs out of the cabin, having heard the bear roar. The agitated bear gets jumpy again. "Make another Handle Animal check if you want to keep it calmed down," I tell the cleric. "Easier this time, you've calmed him once. DC 18." He hits the DC on the nose. The bear grumbles and goes and lays down beside the cabin to rest. A difficult encounter (I made him a skinned owlbear with less hp for the wound) bypassed with some ingenuity and lucky rolling, so I awarded the xp.
The party decides to track the bear's trail into the woods, thinking the elf was hurt in the woods during a hunt. They find a big looping trail, with more and more blood on it as they they follow it back, realizing the attack occurred at the cabin. They then find small humanoid tracks at the cabin, leading down the only beaten path lading from the cabin, and decide to follow it even though the sun has fallen, believing the elf to be captured and in potential trouble.
Down the path, they are attacked by a pack of 7 wolves, which is fairly easy for the party (extrapolated to be an equivalent threat to a hobgoblin). When there were only 3 wolves left, they bolted back into the forest. I used a modified RC morale rules, using the morale rating listed in the module, and it worked really well. I like the idea of having morale rules in the game, and use them with the advice in the DM guide to figure it out yourself when it's obvious, and roll when it's not.
The party keeps following the trail, and eventually the sun rises. I tell them that if they continue without resting, they will have disadvantage on all checks. That stops them. I had thought this was an actual rule, but I can't find it. Still, sounded reasonable to me.
They resume the hunt later in the day, coming upon the homestead as the sun sets. Goblins are attacking it, and the barn, tower and palisade are burning. To cross the bridge across the river between them and the homestead, they need to fight a group of 8 goblins. At this point, I decided to use the numbers of opponents listed in the adventure, as they were walking over what I threw at them thus far. That didn't change here, regardless.
Just as they take down the last couple of fleeing goblins, they spot a half-dozen wolf-riders and hear more goblins approaching from behind them in the forest. The gate in the palisade opens and they are ushered into the homestead before they are overwhelmed.
Part of the palisade is burned down, and a few gobbos come through, but are shot down by the inhabitants and the party together. They retreat into the main building where they meet the man they were hired to help deliver the horses for. They decide to help them figure out defences for the homestead to try and keep back the two goblin tribes attacking them until morning, when they should disperse. And that's where we stopped for the day.
Conclusions (aka tl;dr): There was a fair bit of discussion concerning the rules both during and after the game. Here are the thoughts:
- - The fighter needs "something else". Not surprising, coming from 4e players, and not that I disagree. But I personally think that a tactical module will help make the fighter more interesting for those that need that. And I tried stressing the Improvise action, knowing that coming from 4e, they might be used to looking at their sheet to figure out what they can do. But I think it was forgotten for the most part. Pulling off stunts using the environment and your imagination is a big point to the game, imo.
- + Checks, saves and background "skill bonuses" was liked. Though they didn't do a whole lot of improvising during battle, they did a lot of stuff outside of battle that required some rolling and that went well.
- - Looking at stats, they backwards engineered the fact that humans get +1 to all stats. "In 4e, no one was human, but in DDN, everyone will be," was the consensus. I can't completely agree with that without seeing what each of the races get, but that does seem pretty huge, especially if PCs are built with a point-buy system (less so in an array or rolling).
- = Not a plus or minus, but the lack of opportunity attacks and flanking and the move-action-move was a bit confusing to the players at first. They players that played AD&D back in the day assimilated a little more quickly, but they all got used to it eventually.
- - Personally, I thought the PCs were overpowered. I had trouble even making them sweat, let alone dropping any of them, and with encounters that I thought beforehand might be too much. I know Mearls mentioned that they intentionally over powered them to start on purpose, but they certainly need to be dialled back some for the next release.
- = Going in, I knew there were a few problems with the playtest PCs. So I had the rogue switch his Int and Wis around and gave a humanoid language to each of the PCs so that they have an opportunity to talk to opponents.
Bottom line, though, everyone had fun. It was agreed that the more "open" style was a nice change to what they were used to. Coming up with an idea and having the DM tell them at DC for a check made for a fun game for everyone.
I'll follow up with my a report of my online group after we play on Tuesday. It'll be the same adventure, so I'll just post differences between the two groups.
