Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
QFT. And for awesome.
D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)
QFT. And for awesome.
jydog1
Explorer
The 4e one-shot was awesome and a great intro to the system for me, since I actually hadn't played it yet. My character boned the skill challenge and had to be rescued while inhaling sand, and then got very close to the villain during the carpet ride before fumbling and crashing though the bedroom of a high tower. Great fun.
Oh, and the goblin rogue followed on his magic carpet as the villain fell 400 feet to his death, taunting him the whole way down and making everyone else convulse with laughter.
Oh, and the goblin rogue followed on his magic carpet as the villain fell 400 feet to his death, taunting him the whole way down and making everyone else convulse with laughter.
WizarDru
Adventurer
Dang it, PC. Some of us aren't even used to skill challenges yet and you're hacking the whole process. 
I'm liking the way I can use skill challenges to do stuff that otherwise might be clumsy or tedious to do as a straight combat encounter. You're just reinforcing that viewpoint. So far, my favorite skill challenge was hitting the PCs with 60 corsairs at first level using the skill challenge you helped me hack out. Probably my favorite 4e moment, right there.
Right now I'm trying to whip up a 'navigate the death-trap laden temple complex' and 'evade the corsairs and rescue the dwarven submarine pilots' challenges.
I'm liking the way I can use skill challenges to do stuff that otherwise might be clumsy or tedious to do as a straight combat encounter. You're just reinforcing that viewpoint. So far, my favorite skill challenge was hitting the PCs with 60 corsairs at first level using the skill challenge you helped me hack out. Probably my favorite 4e moment, right there.
Right now I'm trying to whip up a 'navigate the death-trap laden temple complex' and 'evade the corsairs and rescue the dwarven submarine pilots' challenges.
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
We just played a different sort of game. The Grey Guard, with Toiva missing and an eladrin swordmage (played by PSC) acting as defender, was assigned to go negotiate with someone named Orrloth the Scabrous. This dwarven necromancer has long maintained a haunted tower in Bressail, long enough that his name is used to frighten misbehaving children. No one has ever seen him, and apparently he only arrives in the city occasionally - always accompanied by an increase in undead, kidnappings and body stealing. Problem is, he's much too powerful for anyone in the Guard to go and kill. The PCs are told this in advance and are sent to negotiate with him, hopefully convincing him to leave on his own account.
(For what it's worth, Orrloth is a lvl 15 solo and the PCs are 6th level. I took the time to roughly stat him up in case the PCs decided to attack him after all.)
The end result turned out to be really fun. Because they knew they couldn't (or shouldn't) try to kill him, they worked to break into his tower as politely as possible.
Knocking on the front door dropped half of them into a 30' pit trap which linked to a different spiked pit with a gravity sphere and a number of minion decaying skeletons in it (as well as two lasher zombies who were former grey guard members.) After much hilarity involving the other half of the group failing to jam open the pit trap, everyone retreated from the basement and climbed back up onto the lawn. I liked the mechanics of the gravity sphere, which pulls people towards it and screws up missile fire. Stuck in the middle of a pit, it's a nifty obstacle.
After fighting off three runeflame skeletons who followed them back up to the surface, the rogues disarmed the door trap and entered the tower -- a tower full of vivisection equipment, quiescent undead, and dissection diagrams. Orrloth the Scabrous wasn't such a bad guy for an insane scholar and necromancer. The group convinced him that despite a likely influx of bodies once fighting began, the city would be crawling with troops and Orrloth would never find a moment of privacy or peace. They also suggested that he'd have trouble accessing the bodies and that an invading army would be no end of bother. Swayed by their persuasive argument, Orrloth gave them the supplies he wouldn't have room for and vacated the tower for the near future, heading to one of his other labs instead. He clearly was nervous around living people, and the thought of so many intruders was enough to get him to leave.
I think one of the reasons I liked the game was that the climactic encounter was pure roleplaying, as the players tried to understand what motivated Orrloth and then used that against him. He wasn't exactly sane or canny, mind you, but it could have gone very badly indeed -- and sometimes it's really satisfying to get treasure that your enemy simply hands you.
(For what it's worth, Orrloth is a lvl 15 solo and the PCs are 6th level. I took the time to roughly stat him up in case the PCs decided to attack him after all.)
The end result turned out to be really fun. Because they knew they couldn't (or shouldn't) try to kill him, they worked to break into his tower as politely as possible.
Knocking on the front door dropped half of them into a 30' pit trap which linked to a different spiked pit with a gravity sphere and a number of minion decaying skeletons in it (as well as two lasher zombies who were former grey guard members.) After much hilarity involving the other half of the group failing to jam open the pit trap, everyone retreated from the basement and climbed back up onto the lawn. I liked the mechanics of the gravity sphere, which pulls people towards it and screws up missile fire. Stuck in the middle of a pit, it's a nifty obstacle.
After fighting off three runeflame skeletons who followed them back up to the surface, the rogues disarmed the door trap and entered the tower -- a tower full of vivisection equipment, quiescent undead, and dissection diagrams. Orrloth the Scabrous wasn't such a bad guy for an insane scholar and necromancer. The group convinced him that despite a likely influx of bodies once fighting began, the city would be crawling with troops and Orrloth would never find a moment of privacy or peace. They also suggested that he'd have trouble accessing the bodies and that an invading army would be no end of bother. Swayed by their persuasive argument, Orrloth gave them the supplies he wouldn't have room for and vacated the tower for the near future, heading to one of his other labs instead. He clearly was nervous around living people, and the thought of so many intruders was enough to get him to leave.
I think one of the reasons I liked the game was that the climactic encounter was pure roleplaying, as the players tried to understand what motivated Orrloth and then used that against him. He wasn't exactly sane or canny, mind you, but it could have gone very badly indeed -- and sometimes it's really satisfying to get treasure that your enemy simply hands you.
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theskyfullofdust
First Post
This sounds like a cool game. I like what you did with the skill challenges.
Questions from a curious mind: how much prep do you do for your games, and how much of the world have you written down?
Questions from a curious mind: how much prep do you do for your games, and how much of the world have you written down?
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Oh, those are bad questions.
Game prep averages a half an hour, plus some plotting in the shower and as I'm falling asleep; I'd say an hour per game. This is down 2-3x from my old campaign (which, notably, was higher level); the days when I was spending as much time prepping as playing seem to be far away. DDI gets all the credit for this. I figure out how I want the session to run, scan for appropriate monsters, and then alter their stats as needed to make sure they seem unique. Likewise, I scan the compendium for appropriate magic items.
One thing thart is helping tremendously is keeping a separate word doc for each level. This document keeps a chart of what treasure parcels I've handed out (and what they were, and to whom), lists of important NPCs, copy-n-pasted monster and treasure stats, any handouts, and my ongoing plot notes. I'd be floundering if it weren't for these.
I wrote down a bunch of information initially on my campaign wiki. Since then everything is tracked in those campaign docs, but not elsewhere. I also digitally record every game and just archive those recordings on my PC.
On a separate note, running this 4e one-shot has shown me something interesting. I find 4e a fun system for my campaigns; the condition tracking is sort of a pain in the ass, requiring a white board to really track conditions efficiently, but everything is fast with good tactical options now that everyone knows their character. For a one-shot, though, I'm finding 4e to be sub-optimal. Players get information overload as they sit down to two pages of power cards, and feats tend to create rules exceptions that you have to remember in order to use. The game's strengths in a campaign become weaknesses when I'm trying to get everyone up to speed on new characters quickly. "The Caprian Foreign Legion Goes to Tea" only works because it's focused on stunts, skill challenges and roleplaying instead of on combat.
Moral of the story? I'll probably run fewer D&D one-shots going forward, instead using systems that have low learning curves and simpler characters, and keep 4e as my campaign game of choice.
Game prep averages a half an hour, plus some plotting in the shower and as I'm falling asleep; I'd say an hour per game. This is down 2-3x from my old campaign (which, notably, was higher level); the days when I was spending as much time prepping as playing seem to be far away. DDI gets all the credit for this. I figure out how I want the session to run, scan for appropriate monsters, and then alter their stats as needed to make sure they seem unique. Likewise, I scan the compendium for appropriate magic items.
One thing thart is helping tremendously is keeping a separate word doc for each level. This document keeps a chart of what treasure parcels I've handed out (and what they were, and to whom), lists of important NPCs, copy-n-pasted monster and treasure stats, any handouts, and my ongoing plot notes. I'd be floundering if it weren't for these.
I wrote down a bunch of information initially on my campaign wiki. Since then everything is tracked in those campaign docs, but not elsewhere. I also digitally record every game and just archive those recordings on my PC.
On a separate note, running this 4e one-shot has shown me something interesting. I find 4e a fun system for my campaigns; the condition tracking is sort of a pain in the ass, requiring a white board to really track conditions efficiently, but everything is fast with good tactical options now that everyone knows their character. For a one-shot, though, I'm finding 4e to be sub-optimal. Players get information overload as they sit down to two pages of power cards, and feats tend to create rules exceptions that you have to remember in order to use. The game's strengths in a campaign become weaknesses when I'm trying to get everyone up to speed on new characters quickly. "The Caprian Foreign Legion Goes to Tea" only works because it's focused on stunts, skill challenges and roleplaying instead of on combat.
Moral of the story? I'll probably run fewer D&D one-shots going forward, instead using systems that have low learning curves and simpler characters, and keep 4e as my campaign game of choice.
theskyfullofdust
First Post
I have to say, when it comes to 4th ed. DDI helps a lot. I use it in the same way, and it invaluable as a reference (using the compendium) to look up rules quickly whilst playing.
Interesting view on one-shots. I've played a couple and you're right, there's a lot to take in, especially if you haven't played anything in a while.
Interesting view on one-shots. I've played a couple and you're right, there's a lot to take in, especially if you haven't played anything in a while.
Jack99
Adventurer
Yes, indeed a good way of using skill challenges, will have to try it out it soon.
davethegame
Explorer
KidSnide
Adventurer
I think the level of 4e exposure makes a big difference here. Having played 4e for a year and a half now, it's not that hard to pick up a high heroic character if you're already familiar with the build . The trouble is that you just can't expect a high level of system mastery in a con setting. (Or, at least you can't if you don't warn folks ahead of time - obviously 4e system mastery is going up in the general gaming population over time.)
It's also worth noting that the Caprian Foreign Legion PCs mostly involved builds from the splat books (e.g. tempest fighter, prescient bard, ruthless ruffian rogue). It was a great party RP-wise, but it made the characters harder to digest for folks who had played a little 4e, but had never seen any of those builds.
That having been said, low level 4e characters are a lot more fun and powerful than low level 3x characters. I think that one-shot games set at level 2-4 would be easier to pick up, and -- as this thread has aptly demonstrated -- you can do an awful lot with PCs of that level.
-KS
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