Gimme a Hand

Despite all the technology available to the hobby gamer in this age of desktop publishing and productivity, there’s something warm and cozy about having an actual artifact in front of you when you play. Especially with maps, documents and other handwritten artifacts.

I wondered what this was and have decided that it's a super sweet hand-drawn map.

I don’t mean artifacts in the context of powerful magic items. Rather, I mean solid, tangible things you can touch and feel. I’ve made it no secret that I enjoy writing longhand, and I really enjoy drawing crabbed, little maps by hand. Which is kind of a shame, since I have all the artistic ability of a wet paper bag. There’s just something more dear to a handmade artifact, even a found artifact, than the slick productions I can purchase.

Likewise, there’s something nice about dice. I have all the dice I’ll ever need. We used to package our own dice, made promo dice, etc., so there are literally probably a million dice around the office, but I still like new dice, especially buying new dice, and I do it at every GenCon at least. Maybe it’s because I’m a creature of habit and the ritual is comforting. Or maybe I’m a hoarder, and it manifests only at GenCon. I like dice so much, I watched all ten minutes of this and enjoyed it.

My wife hollered at me for buying more Moleskines the other day. I bought them for work, but they’re square-ruled, so I co-opted one to scribble little notes and maps in. As with the dice, I have a thousand notebooks and pads lying around the house and office, so why do I need another? Well, to take notes, of course. And to feed my addiction.

Hey, I know I’m behind on the actual plays and scenario updates. I’ll correct that when I can.

Scenario: Neflim Pass

Neflim Pass (Thursday, 5/21)

Neflim Pass was the site of a battle between the barbarians of the north and the soldiers of the Kingdom of Galbez.

A curse levied by one of the barbarian witch-priests has rendered Neflim Pass a blighted chasm. The bodies of fallen soldiers on both sides of the conflict rise from their bloody resting place to torment those who would travel the pass. Despite winning the battle, the citizens of Galbez still suffer under the plague of the deathless fallen.

Only the heroes stand between the restless dead and the terrified folk of Galbez.

(Character creation: 2nd level, anything goes. PHB, PHB2, and FRPG are permitted. Backgrounds are allowed. Use and advance your previous character if you’re in Tuesday’s game.)

Actual Play: Rundig’s Keep

All that remains aboveground of Rundig's Keep in the badlands surrounding Secundum.

Into the dungeon delved a potent party of noble adventurers, intent on reclaiming Rundig’s Keep. The keep was an outpost on the far reaches of an empire a thousand years lost, and the heroes investigated it to help push back the savage frontier. Located near the modern city of Secundum, Rundig’s Keep will serve as a base for the reclamation effort of the surrounding desert badlands.

Consisting of Althea (eladrin wizard), Gabriel (dragonborn paladin), Path (tiefling bard), and Angrist (elven avenger), the party encountered a hidden warren of ratmen in the ruins of the keep. They made short work of the foot soldiers — bit in exterminating them, disturbed a nest of stormclaw scorpions.

The avenger and the paladin boldly rushed into the fray, locking down the bigger threats while the wizard got off to a rocky start with area effects that brought down the minions. Gabriel and Path found themselves grappled and electrocuted, which took the paladin to death’s door twice. Judicious healing and clever maneuvering by Path revived the paladin and kept the scorpions arranged so as to be caught in the nimbus of Althaea’s fire spirit. Angrist eviscerated one of the more formidable ratmen warriors, so terrifying another one to such a degree that he jumped back into the depths from which he came.

Thus, with one lone, surviving ratman in desperate retreat, Rundig’s Keep belongs once again to civilization.

Notable Positive Experiences: Minions are fun. It’s especially exciting to watch a bunch of baddies go down in a doomed mass when a wizard or other area-effect character does her thing. It’s extremely empowering for the players to watch it happen, and if you’re using them right as a DM, you can pat yourself on the back for having them provide that morale-boosting powerkill. Angrist, using an action point, hit a double-critical with an encounter and a daily power that left a smoldering crater where his adversary once stood. Much fun to see, and to witness a first-level character dropping 40+ points of damage in a single turn.

Notable Negative Experiences: None. This one flowed pretty smoothly, and concluded in the timebox. The stormclaw scorpion felt a little tougher than I expected for a first-level soldier, but that’s not really a complaint.

Scenario: Rundig’s Keep

Rundig’s Keep (Tuesday, 5/19)

Once a bastion of order in the lawless frontier, Rundig’s Keep was sacked over a hundred years ago by a menace that crawled up from the floors and brought down the guardsmen.

Since those long-ago times, Rundig’s keep has been abandoned, written off to the perils of the frontier. As bold adventurers beat back the savage frontier, it’s time to reclaim the keep. A half-day’s journey past the frontier town of Secundum, Rundig’s Keep waits to be delivered.

Of course, the wretched creatures that usurped the keep in the first place are reluctant to give it back.

(Character creation: 1st level, anything goes. PHB, PHB2, and FRPG are permitted. Backgrounds are allowed.)

Changes In Practice

Some changes gotta take place.

After the Jungles of Thresh scenario, I figure imposing a player limit at the table will help keep things apace. Few people means fewer people to make decisions, which means fewer people, which means less time spent poring over books and more time rattling dice before getting back to work. One session running a little late was okay, but it can’t become a habit.

Also, I’m imposing a you-keep-your-character policy at the table. Even if they don’t play every session, when players are familiar with their characters, they’re not overwhelmed by options. Especially as we start getting up into the higher levels, the sheer breadth of choice available to the players is enough to trip up the dumber ones, and even swamp the ones who have already solved the game. Yes, solved. It happens.

Of course, keeping characters suggests level progression, so I’m adopting that, too. Each session is one level higher than the previous. People can still drop in and drop out, but using the same character in his linear progression keeps that familiarity I mentioned above.

So we’ll see where it heads. I feel the spectre of plot looming, and I’m going to fight that. Episodic, not serial, has to remain the functioning model. Maybe another campaign-style game will arise, but this isn’t the place for it. Well, yet.

Actual Play: The Jungles of Thresh

A dazzling waterfall hides peril in lamented Thresh.

A bold band of heroes journeyed into the dreaded jungles of Thresh to discover what perils lurked therein and to fight them back past the borders of civilization. A clearing in the jungle where a waterfall emptied into a pool with a natural arch above it marked the location of the encounter. Something foul and atavistic made its home in the rocky walls of the waterfall — the debased descendents of men who once ruled an empire that spanned all of Thresh.

The six heroes closed ranks as the menace advanced upon them. One of the creatures, emerging from the jungle behind them, charged and struck true, injuring the cleric and bard who had been holding the back of the line. Another dashed out of a copse of dense jungle undergrowth while another pair stormed across the natural arch. A third pair descended from the top of the waterfall, and these seemed to be some sort of sorcerers of their ilk, as they moved by teleportation.

As the party engaged each pair of the reptilian subhumans, the sorcerers teleported down the side of the waterfall, dazzling the heroes with some sort of invasive mental manipulations. The sorcerers proved too slow, however, and by the time they made it down the waterfall, the heroes had already put most of the savage, four-armed shock troops to the sword…

…When some sort of bizarre, tentacle, crocodilian horror dragged itself out of the murk of the pool at the waterfall’s base. It focused its attention on the paladin, who kept it enthralled via divine challenge, while the party focused their attacks on it. They managed to defeat it before it pulled the paladin into the mire, but only just, and a single turn spelled the difference between victory and a watery death for the paladin.

With the crocodile-beast dispatched and the reptile-men screaming in cold-blooded hell, the sorcerers were no match for the battle-hardened warriors. In tandem, they would have been dangerous, but the efficient combatants in the group dismantled the jungle threat piece by piece and emerged victorious.

Notable Positive Experiences: Group dynamics continue to be the single greatest facet of 4e. When a party puts its abilities together to take on foes, they’re a powerhouse. When someone breaks ranks and charges in recklessly, he fares less well. I really like this, as it keeps the group working toward a common goal instead of ambling off on their own doomed solo jaunts during which I feel bad about killing them for their own mistakes.

Notable Negative Experiences: 4e usually runs quickly. Not so this time. Part of the problem was group size, as we had six players, and part of the problem was that not all of the players had their actions cards preformatted, meaning that some of them had to rifle through the books to figure out what they wanted to do. Normally, you’d say “figure out what you’re going to do in the downtime between your turns,” but 4e is so tactical that the best thing to do might literally change with the action of the person before you. While it was still exceedingly easy to run and adjudicate, it just took longer than we had set aside as our time box.

Scenario: The Jungles of Thresh

Sorry for the delays. We’ve been completing a staged delivery and planning a new one, so time was at a premium. Here’s the precis of last week’s scenario (we had only one, as the office was closed Thursday). I’ve got the actual play in progress right now and it should be up soon.

Tuesday, 5/5: The Jungles of Thresh

Once the seat of a lost empire, Thresh has since become a dense jungle, and some whisper that the gods smote this forgotten empire for claiming divinity for itself.

The jungles of Thresh are vast and deadly, teeming with savage beasts and vicious, degenerate tribes of uncivilized creatures. Sage lore suggests that these latter are the broken men who survived the wrath of the gods and survive in the ruins of their legacy in debased forms. Survivors of the jungles swear that they’ve seen malevolent intelligence in the eyes of those who have harried them.

The truth may never emerge, and the evil out of time may forever after dwell in the jungles of Thresh.

(Character creation: 7th level, anything goes. PHB, PHB2, and FRPG are permitted. Backgrounds are allowed.)

Actual Play: Ruins of Alta Sikhum

A ruined temple discovered in the desert near where Alta Sikhum was believed to have exist.

A group of explorers unearthed a ruin near the place where Alta Sikhum once stood, in the midst of a great desert. A gaping chasm yawned near the ruin, suggesting a seismic shift that might have pulled the ancient city into ruin. Only a few pillars, some crumbling walls, and a curious stepped platform stood, and the ruin was perhaps a collapsed temple. A coarse layer of sand shifted constantly across the ruin, making footing precarious.

As the heroes conducted their search, a guttural, ululating sound rolled up from the chasm. A pair of angry apes pulled themselves from the depths, and clambered the heroes in a territorial charge. (The apes used the bear statistics from the MM, plus an ability that allowed them to traverse the difficult terrain at no penalty.)

The party focused its firepower first on one ape and then the other, taking down the challenge piece by piece. The whole battlefield was difficult terrain with the exception of the platform, but the group mostly stayed together, using close defensive buffs and protecting each other’s backs rather than scattering recklessly and hoping to face the threat individually.

Terrain played less of a role than it has previously. The low walls never mattered — no one used them for cover. The difficult terrain didn’t hinder the PCs unduly, as they clustered for protection and to use combined power effects. The apes used the platform to jump from and engage the party with close-burst abilities, but the PCs used their abilities that shifted enemies to knock the apes off the elevated sections.

In the end, blood stained the sand and civilization asserted itself over the encroachment of atavism. The party’s synergies worked very well together, robbing the apes of their mobility and directing the flow of their aggressions. The apes never stood a chance.

Notable Positive Experiences: I greatly enjoy the way “party build” is a key asset of 4e: The party just happened to have two controllers, and thus managed to negate the advantage the more-mobile enemy had over them. Every power, even the core, at-will ones feel overpowered without actually being overpowered, and are fun to use, with a little imagination and special effects that add to the excitement.

Notable Negative Experiences: Now, I know I went into this with two brutes, but I wanted a little more dynamism from them that just wasn’t there. I even doped them up a bit more than normal, giving them a terrain advantage, but the party overcame that. (Not a negative in itself, but the apes would have been even less effective if they hadn’t had my initial favor to them.) They were literally just piles of hit points susceptible to “blank map syndrome,” in which case the best option is to just close with them and whale on them until somebody falls down, without any particular finesse and heedless of the surroundings. I think the solution here is to take advantage of the monster roles and mix in creatures of a different type. I didn’t do it up front because I wanted that Robert E. Howard feel of man vs. nature where nature has become hostile, which “natural” foes like apes highlight thematically.

Ashur and Alta Sikhum

Ashur, the archer of the skies.

The center of a warlike but pious people, Alta Sikhum vanished after the Ashurians lost a protracted conflict with the rival Hezzir culture. Ashurian emperors were believed to be the chosen of the archer of the skies, Ashur, strong in his image and divine by his blessing. Ashurian people pledged themselves to various warrior cults, following aspects of their patron god, claiming their arrows were as far-reaching and terrible as the rays of the sun could be.

The Ashurian emperors were progressive for their time, allowing conquered peoples to become part of the empire. They were implacable if defied, however, and many of the great Ashurian epics are rife with bloody vengeance taken against those who betrayed them or refused to submit to them. Temples to the deity Ashur could be found far and wide in the lands of the empire, and any who wished to devote himself to the priesthood could do so, regardless of his people of origin.

Sikhubanipal, one of the last of the Ashurian emperors, was a great proponent of civilization, and unlike most of his line educated himself in arts outside those of warfare and conquest. The lost vaults of Alta Sikhum were once believed to hold troves of the treasures of antiquity, until the Hezzirs and later nomadic tribes trampled them to dust. The secrets lost to time and barbarism in Alta Sikhum and other Ashurian cities might never again be known to the civilized world.

Actual Play: Showdown at Collum’s Bridge

Collum's Bridge connects Welton to the rest of the world through the Forest Forlorn.

The party assembled themselves at the end of the bridge that led to Welton, a small village in danger of being cut off from the rest of the world if the renegade elves who claimed the bridge had their way. Consisting of Morrik (dwarf invoker 2), Adrik (dwarf cleric 2), Liam Heartwood (“longtooth” shifter warden 2, who was descended from an ancient tree rather than the traditional quasi-lycanthrope shifter), and an unmanageable goblin rogue 2 named Hellyug, the adventuring company stormed the blockaded bridge.

Their enemies included four elven archers, an elven scout, and two gray wolves — a fairly stock encounter from the DMG plus two more elven archers.

The heroes were successful! They turned back the elven terrorists holding the bridge. A wolf and an elven archer were bounced off the bridge and plunged into the roiling river below. An elven scout burned to death. One wolf was laid low by divine disapproval and an archer was cut to pieces by the surly goblin. Two elves ran the hell away. Fine work, heroes!

But surely these weren’t the only elves who laid claim to the Forest Forlorn….

The map was built to give enough room for various characters to charge, but also had a few features to encourage some dramatic use of sliding and maneuvering. On either side of the bridge, a suspended platform allowed archers to loose arrows at those attempting to cross, and the whole thing traversed a valley in which a swift-flowing river coursed far below.

Things started of as anyone’s advantage, then the PCs suffered a critical setback, but then managed to fight their way back to dominance. An early bless gave the party bolstered offensive capability that benefited them throughout the fight. Unfortunately, a few exceptional rolls, including a critical, managed to fell the warden in the defender role. Concerted effort brought him back to his feet, and an ugly cluster-brawl at the center of the bridge saw most of the action. The elf scout used a reroll to his benefit early on, but made up for it by blowing his two-weapon attack during a pivotal point in the fight. Everyone had a kill except the invoker, who suffered from poor dice rolls early on but which increased toward the end of the fight.

Particularly enjoyable was the players’ use of the terrain to their advantage. The goblin rogue made a dashing leap up to one of the hanging platforms and relentlessly harried one of the archers. One of the wolves and one of the archers went careening off the bridge and platform, respectively, which I just love from a dramatic, gameplay, and visual standpoint. (I’m the kind of player who takes special abilities so his character can hurl dudes off things, and I just dig seeing it in play.) It’s my intent to always have some nifty environmental aspect to the play areas, because I think it’s exciting and I think it’s handled pretty elegantly in the 4e rules, so I have to challenge myself to keep those ideas fresh.

Notable Positive Experiences: Bad guys sailing off the architecture, of course. I liked seeing the warden in action. I also like the way 4e splits the “fairy” archetype into elves and eladrin. I’ve always liked the idea of elves as chaotic and untrustworthy, and I liked using them as bad guys without having to resort to stereotypical drow. Every player contributed something significant and had a chance to use cool powers.

Notable Negative Experiences: Nothing out of the ordinary. I think Morrik’s player, Ned, was a litle frustrated by bad die rolls that limited his input, but that’s part and parcel to a dice-based game. Link, playing Adrik, definitely enjoys a more narrative experience than I plan to deliver with the single-encounter lunch sessions — not that that’s necessarily negative, but I think his enthusiasm may be limited by the format.