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D&D Encounters D&D Next

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 2)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverDuke Abdel Adrian is dead – killed in front of hundreds of witnesses while addressing the people of Baldur’s Gate on Founder’s Day. Fortunately a group of adventurers were on site and helped defeat the assassin before there was any other loss of life.

That’s how things began last week for the PCs. Following their spectacular heroics they were approached by three different people who wished to enlist their services while Baldur’s Gate tries to reestablish some sense of order in light of the Duke’s death. By night’s end they needed to decide which of the three offers seemed most appealing.

Last week at Harry T North in Toronto we had a lot of players and only 2 DMs. This week we were back up to 3 DMs but had even more players. The result was two tables of seven and one table of eight.

I ran the table of eight which included seven new players. None of them had ever played D&D Next, and three had never played any form of D&D. After letting them choose from the pre-generated characters, we ended up with the following PCs in the party: Half-Elf Paladin, Gnome Druid, Dwarf Fighter, Elf Mage, Human Monk, Halfling Rogue and two Elf Rangers.

I spent the first 30-40 minutes providing a recap of last week’s events and tried to offer an unbiased breakdown of what each of the three factions had revealed to the PCs during week 1. Eventually the PCs agreed to side with Marshal Ulder Ravengard of the Flaming Fist company. A few were leaning towards supporting Silvershiled, but they were eventually convinced to come on board.

Categories
D&D Encounters D&D Next

D&D Encounters: Murder in Baldur’s Gate (Week 1)

murder-in-baldurs-gate-coverWe begin another season of D&D Encounters. Season 15 is called Murder in Baldur’s Gate and it’s part of Wizard of the Coast’s next big cross-over event, The Sundering. The Sundering will bring about changes that will transition the Forgotten Realms from 4e to D&D Next.

This past weekend Wizards encouraged FLGS that normally participate in D&D Encounters to run the Murder in Baldur’s Gate launch weekend adventure. This adventure is a prequel to this season of D&D Encounters. Fortunately I got a chance to play the launch weekend adventure at GenCon, as did a few others from my FLGS. However, my FLGS did not order the kits so players who were not at GenCon (which was most of them) didn’t play it. As it turned out, that was a good thing.

This season the weeks are divided into stages rather than sessions. The first stage is the Introductory Stage which we played this week. It begin by repeating the events of the lunch weekend, albeit it an abridged version, and then gave the PCs opportunities to meet with up to three significant NPCs. Anyone who played in the launch weekend and then showed up for D&D Encounters this week would have likely been bored having to do pretty much the same encounter twice.

This season the PCs will have a tremendous amount of freedom. The choices they make will have a direct impact on the story as it unfolds. There are no right or wrong choices, but the final outcome will be different depending on what choices each group makes along the way. For this reason we are going to try and have fixed tables this season keeping the same parties together whenever possible.