The show must to go on! Just because Ameron is on vacation is no excuse for Dungeon’s Master not to have a D&D Encounters weekly recap. I reached out to one of our loyal readers and he gratefully agreed to share his groups’ experiences with D&D Encounters week 6. Thanks to Rob Quinton (who you know as Lahrs, a frequent commenter at Dungeon’s Master) for his excellent summary of D&D Encounters week 6. Lahrs has been a player and a DM for the last twelve years and is currently running the D&D Encounters program at his FLGS.
Tag: D&D Encounters
Chapter 2 of the Keep on the Borderlands – A Season of Serpents began this week. This season of D&D Encounters is running well at my FLGS. We’ve managed to run one solid table every week. On top of that new players keep coming out to try their hand at D&D. Some with absolutely no 4e D&D experience and other who are old pros looking for a pick-up game.
Even though we see new faces every week we’re having difficulty getting them all to come back. The good news is that the interest is there and that the players seem to be having a really good time (I know I am). The negativity that clouded our FLGS during the final weeks of D&D Encounters Dark Sun seems to have disappeared and we’re picking up a lot of positive momentum. I think we’ll start to see more regular attendance moving forward and perhaps have enough people to run two tables.
If you live in the Greater Toronto Area and want to join us, we play on Wednesday night at Dueling Grounds. D&D Encounters begins a 6 p.m. every week.
Last week Ronnik tried to eliminate any evidence that might tie him to the Cult of Tiamat or Gordi’s kidnapping. Time was of the essence, so the PCs headed to the Well Hideout specified on the map they found in Ronnik’s wall safe.
This week we had a full party of six made up of Merric, Quinn, Hagen, Sola and two Berrians. After running two characters last week I opted to go back to just one character this week – Sola. We had a new player join our table this week. The last time he played D&D was AD&D 2e. So after a quick 10 minute primer on d20 mechanics, and a 5 minute recap of what happened during weeks 1-3 we moved on to D&D Encounters week 4.
Sometimes it’s nice to play an encounter that’s just hack and slash. Show up, sit down, roll initiative and kill monsters. I’m not saying I’d be happy with this week after week, but it was a welcome change after two weeks with some heavy role-playing.
When last week’s encounter ended the PCs barely had time for a short rest before they noticed Ronnik’s bank was on fire. The action picked up immediately where last week’s left off. Sal cried out, “Ronnik’s trying to destroy evidence of his evil affiliation by burning his own shop.” The PCs rolled initiative and rushed towards the burning building in search of survivors among the flames or evidence of Ronnik’s deeds.
Categories
Month in Review: September 2010
In September two topics dominated Dungeon’s Master: the Adventure Builder Workshop series and our coverage of D&D Encounters. These weren’t the only topics we covered but they certainly filled out the month. We also debated the pros and cons of LFR and began our series on the Tomb of Horrors. There was a lot of great gaming advice and lively debate happening at Dungeon’s Master in September. If you happened to miss any of it, here’s your changes to get caught up.
Our regular readers know that we normally publish our month in review article on the first day of the month. We were ready to publish it on Friday, but after reading about the proposed changes coming to LFR based on D&D Essentials we decided to preempt our normal schedule to cover this more timely topic. So without further delay, here are all of the highlights from September.
Week 2 proved to be a great mix of role-playing and action. As promised during the D&D Encounters seminar at Gencon, this adventure has plenty of opportunity for role-playing and skill challenges in addition to the hack and slash. Our group is fortunate to have players that are looking for more than just a chance to roll dice and kill monsters. The DM is fostering a great atmosphere for fleshing out the characters and the story.
Before jumping into the recap I wanted to talk about the pre-generated characters. Although we’ve only had two weeks to use the pre-generated characters, I’ve found them great to play and a lot of fun. More thought and consideration went into building these PCs than we saw in the Dark Sun pre-gens. I wonder how much of this praise should go to the creative team who built the PCs and how much should go to the D&D Essentials rules? In either case, I’m happy to keep playing the pre-gens and really have no interest in rolling up a new PC once character builder is updated.
D&D Encounters: Keep on the Borderlands kicked off yesterday. Although the number or participants at my FLGS has been steadily dwindling over the past few weeks we had enough people to run the first encounter last night.
D&D Encounters is a great way for new people to try their hand at being the DM. And that’s exactly what happened at our table. Few players at my FLGS have made every game since D&D Encounters began, but one of the most consistent participants decided that he was going to step up and DM this time around. I don’t know if this was his first time ever DMing or just his first time DMing D&D Encounters, but he did a phenomenal job.
D&D Encounters season 3 begins today. Using new rules from the D&D Essentials line, the season 3 adventure is a re-imagining of the D&D classic, Keep on the Borderlands. The adventure is broken into five chapters, each one running four weeks (yes, that’s a total of 20 weeks for those of you doing the math).
Players are encouraged to create their own characters using the new D&D Essentials rules found in the recently released Red Box. Wizards of the Coast hinted that Character Builder would be updated with the Essentials materials in time for everyone to make suitable PCs for D&D Encounters season 3. Unfortunately that didn’t happen. So unless you’ve picked up the Red Box and are happy making a character without character builder, then for at least the first week you’ll have to use one of the six pre-generated characters provided.
Now that the second season of D&D Encounters has drawn to a close it seems like a good time for a little reflection. First of all thanks are in order to all the folks at Wizards of the Coast for producing and distributing the adventure, thanks go to my FLGS, Dueling Grounds for hosting us, and of course thanks to all the players who showed up.
Fury of the Wastewalker offered a great introduction to the Dark Sun setting. Though it was too brutal and unkind for some people’s liking, it succeeded in setting the tone that people have come to expect from Athas, the world of Dark Sun. A lot of characters died, a lot.
I think this adventure will serve as the best campaign primer for any DM that wants to start a Dark Sun game in the city of Tyr. The adventure touched on many of Dark Sun’s themes, such as dying in the desert, dying in caves, dying in the jungle and being eaten by cannibals. By the end of it the party will have arrived in the city they sought for so long, ready to begin the campaign you have planned. Clever move Wizards, I see what you did there.
With only two weeks left the excitement really started building. The PCs left the lush mountain foliage where the feywild crept into Athas and returned to the harsh desert environment more familiar to the PCs. With the sun setting on the horizon and long shadows reaching out towards the PC, they move hastily towards Tyr. As the party weaved in and out of the rocky outcroppings they heard a blood-curdling shriek followed by several others as if in response. The Wastewalkers most powerful allies were upon the PCs.
Our numbers continue dwindling. We were down to five this week. Again, I stepped up as the DM and ran the four adventurers through the penultimate encounter. The only pre-generated character in the party this week was Barcan. He was joined by three familiar faces, the Half-Orc archer Ranger, the Human Warlord (archer build) and the Minotaur Seeker. No defender and no strong melee characters. This was going to make for an interesting encounter.