The Emperors Legacy

Well, they finally managed to clear the top of the island. First off some mistakes I made:

1. The rogue climbed up on the roof and listened at the guard posts. My first mistake of the night. The section the horse is in is uncovered so he should have been able to see the goblin dogs and could have possibly unleashed ranged death upon them.
2. I missed drawing some doors on the map. This didn't make a huge impact but kind of blows it for immersion.
3. In Ripnuggets room I only put him there on the throne. Rayzo entered from the eastern door, saw him and waited for me to call initiative rolls. I didn't and let him know that Ripnugget was not acting aggressive in any way and wanted to parlay. They move into the room spreadout and the bard moves 4-5 spaces south of him. As soon as they are done initial moving I place all the other gobs in the room as if they were hiding behind the pillars. The mistake is, the warchanter had a wand of silent images and is supposed to hide everyone behind it until they get close. grrrrrr.
4. After defeating him they prepared to enter the courtyard with the goblin dogs. Remember mistake #1. Yeah, this is when I tell them the courtyard is open to the sky. The group looks at me, "why didn't you say that earlier we could have ranged them to death." Since it was getting late for Will so he asks, "can we have a couple of us climb up and just assume we shoot them down with ranged?" At this point I am feeling dumb with the mistakes I have made and say sure. Moving along they hit the latrine room and the rogue makes his search check for secret doors find the treasure room, doesn't search the chest for traps, and tries to open it. The trap misses it's attack. The others have the key and open it. I didn't even ask which way they turned it. Mainly because I forgot to, but afterwards figured what was the point. The trap was triggered. They would have just bashed it in.
5. After clearing the top they go back for the horse which Will calmed down with some food from one of the barrels. They left Thistletop to head back into town. Um, the bridge is still trapped and I planned to trigger it. Except I forgot about it.

Whine, rant, whatever, here it comes. I have no DM'ing experience whatsoever. Generally for rules I favor the group just so we are not stuck spending an hour looking something up and discussing if a dancing lights spell can blind someone. (real issue that came up) After the play session I spend the time looking it up and let the group know my findings. So when it comes up that I decide something on the fly that goes against the group I have to defend my ruling. It wastes time and causes friction. Part of this is my fault as I seem to be unprepared for the groups intellect in doing things. I know that comes with experience but it is frustrating. The rest of the fault I feel is with the ones that want to argue back on the ruling. I had to put my foot down when Matt wanted to argue that the dancing lights would blind someone. He argued his maglite thrust into your face would blind you. Really? A 4 D cell Maglite puts out 23,000 candle power. That means 23,000 candles would have to be 1 foot away from your face to get the same effect. Dancing Lights puts out light similiar to 4 lanterns or torches. A kerosene lantern puts out 12-25 candlepower of light. So yes, a Maglite will blind your ass. A torch/lantern will not. It will be annoying to have four of them float just in front of your face, but that's it.

*end rant/whine*

To make up for my errors last time I will be planning things out as much as I can. Since the bridge wasn't trapped for them last time it will be this time. The main gate is closed and lookouts have been posted. Once they realized what happened topside he had the gate barred and the watchposts manned by two goblin commandos and a bugbear in each. Seriously pissed that Sandpoint sent adventures up and slayed Ripnugget, Nualia had the bugbear fortify the fort while she went down to pray to Lamashtu. She knows it is only a matter of time before the group comes back and will be planning something for their return should the bugbear prove useless.

I wanted to post about the Pathfinder Miniature line. The Valeros I ordered came in last Thursday and he looks awesome. I know he is the fighter Iconic, but I think he looks more like a badass ranger with his dual weapons and quiver/bow strapped to his back. I was so impressed I checked their site and ordered all the others that are out so far. They were listed as backordered so I thought I had a week or two before they came in. Uh, no they shipped the next day. Sorry babe, didn't mean to spend $120 on D&D this month. I won't mention the $25 on a WoW character move or the $15 on the second account my son plays on.

So this past Saturday's game marks the first PC death. It just so happened to be my 11 y.o. son who played Zeldax fierce warrior. I think he was in search of some princess and a triangle shaped key. I am kidding about that last part.

Anyway, the other guys are much older in their 30's so the maturity level is pretty big. From the first day he started with us I noticed this arrogant attitude from him at the table. Now I normally would deal with this as soon as it came up, but I wanted to see how the others re-acted. I can tell Matt was getting a little annoyed with Ray and Will trying to help him out a little. My son didn't seem to pick up on the hints to just sit back and learn. Which brings us up to the last game. The group just started at the maze of briars at the Thistletop entrance. They take the first path to the left which eventually leads to a passage left and the other ahead on the right. The others are trying to figure out what they should do. Everyone rolls listen and spot checks. My son walks right on by to check out the passage ahead on the right. I call for initiative checks and everyone groans abit and looks at him. I try to explain that he walked right by an open doorway without first checking it out. The encounter was way to easy for the others as they bottlenecked the doorway and slaughtered a bunch of refugee goblins and a few extra dogs I threw in.

Fast forward a few halfways/rooms and the bard spots a room with 6 goblin dogs chewing on some remains. Surprise round give them a tine bit of advantage. The doorway is still narrow but this time it is 10ft wide and the dogs have 50ft movement. They engage the party quickly while they are hampered by a 4ft tall hallway. My son who is a brave little guy runs up backed up by Rayzo (Ray's Barbarian). Of course now he has blocked the others from getting any shots off which annoys them as well.

A couple things I should point out:
1. My son started after the group so his fighter is 3-400 exp behind them and still level 1. The others hit 2nd making them more effective in combat.
2. The Wizard (Matt's) didn't memorize any offensive spells. At least not any that he used. He is basically a crappy ranger.

Ok back to the post; My son takes a couple hits bringing him dangerously low. Ray moves his cleric up but decides to hang back a square and throws a CLW on this Barbarian. The next turn my son goes down by one of the dogs. The others start shooting above his corpse. He looks at me like I murdered our dog. Then looks at the others with a smile and asks for someone to bring him back alive. Matt looks at him and says something about them not raising him and he is lucky they don't roll his corpse down the hole they just passed. He gets up and I tell him to roll up another one.

Now I try to let my kids work their problems out and if there are any questions or I feel I should intervene I will. So I let him go and continue on. After getting the others into the next encounter I head up to talk to him. He looks like he is about to start crying. I try to comfort him as best as I can. To me it is nothing but a game and making the characters is one of the best parts of it. To him he lost a part of him. Part of our discussion centers on his actions. I try my best to show that you are part of a group not 5 individuals doing whatever you want. Another thing I discuss with him is his attitude. I feel I got through to him. He wasn't as upset afterwards and we are planning on fleshing out Penelo his female Cleric. I can't wait.

Oh wait, about the game? Well Gogmurt or whatever his name is was a challenge for them. I will say Matt's Wiz is a bitch with his crossbow. Before I could move the Goblin druid back out of combat into the surrounding briars he scores a hit and kills him. Great. I have a few things up my sleeve. One of which is the whole Goblin camp is aware of their arrival. Once we meet back up this Saturday they will hear the alarm ringing. MWUAHAHAHA. um yeah, sorry.

Well I was totally blown away that my group didn't find the Catacombs of Wrath under the glassworks. They listened at the doors, but of course the door with the tunnel leading into the catacombs was closed and nothing could be heard. They went to the door where they heard Ameiko struggling with her bonds. Once they found her they went topside and spent an hour trying to figure out what to do with loot. Next game day will be their adventure to Thistletop. They read Tsuto's journal which clearly points to Thistletop and his beloved one, Nualia. I need to work on the intro and some of the encounters before we get together. With their overpowered group they are pretty much walking through everything. The last battle with Tsuto I beefed up the EL adding in 5 additional goblins with Tsuto as he came up behind them. In his two rounds he lived I rolled a two each time he tried to strike Ray and his Barbarian. He didn't last longer than those two rounds. They did manage to subdue him and he will be making his way to Magnimar jail in a few days time. Hmm, maybe I will let him escape and make his way to Thistletop so he will be there with Nualia or waiting up top with the other goblins. I guess I better start working on my stuff this week. Later.

If you have not seen the WoW: Wrath of the Lich King site yet please do so now.

I can honestly say that this expansion looks to be the best so far. The graphics seem to get a small boost, instance design of the first dungeon seems top notch, new story arcs, and two starting areas that are neutral to both faction, at least it seems so from their description.

The graphics on the flame effects are very realistic. I wonder what impact this will have on the majority of systems out there. I am running a Pentium D 3.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS SLI right. I still get lag in heavy pop areas. That lag more than likely has to do server lag but is still frustrating when running a higher end system. The flame effects could easily choke up others especially when 90% of your server pop is there doing the same quests. Ugh.

The instance design of the first dungeon, Utgarde Keep, is above anything I have seen so far in BC. Which isn't saying much as I have only been in TK a few times and some of the 5 mans. Yes that is a big content gap but I have my reasons. I love the fact that the story arc is works so seemlessly with the Keep. Just like a good fantasy book starts the reader off at the start of his adventure getting small hooks here and there. Eventually finding his way to the big bad castle with the BBEG (big bad end guy). I hope they can keep the story going so the other zones/instances are included. Not a quest that says, "Hey you just killed this big bad mofo that we couldn't touch. Thanks! Please go to this new area and kill 10 bunnies for Farmer Smith for 20s."

Having two starting areas seems like a good idea. From what I have read it will be something like Aldor/Scryer without the faction penalty. Get done with one and head over to the otherside to do all the quests, etc. Hmm nice.

This Saturday the players will be starting in the Glassworks. This is a pretty simple area with not much going on. I need to drop in some more stuff for them to do to keep it interesting. With 6 of them the original setup will be trivial for them.

As for the players here is their names and character info:

Matt: Rogue and Wizard
Ray: Barbarian and Cleric
Will: Bard
Joe: Fighter

Matt and Ray play two characters because they were the only ones I could get in initially. Will came on board just days before we were to start and Joe, my son, created his on our 2nd play day.

After the Glassworks the group will get a chance to hit the Catacombs of Wrath. There is a pretty tough fight in there. These types of fights are pretty interesting because each group thinks differently using a number of different strategies. From what I have read most players tend to be gungho, running into combat without any real regard for deaths. I am guilty of this as well. We have one guy in the group, Will, whose bard is a pacifist. She doesn't want to engage in actual combat unless it deals sub dual (non-lethal) damage. It will be interesting to see what he does IC if things start going wrong. In either case Matt and Ray already rolled up an "extra" character. Previous experience with either a bad DM or rules-lawyer DM have caused them to fear me. Matt even has a tendency to try and see what I roll behind my binder that I use for a DM screen. He has said before when he played in college it was not unusual for the DM to fudge the dice in favor of the monsters. I can imagine that would leave a bad taste in anyone's mind.

Well it seems my neurotic habit of starting something and never finishing anything has kicked in full time again. After my last post I did paint a couple more guys, flocked bases, etc but that was it. I still do not have one squad finished up. Knowing your weakness is supposed to make it easier to overcome, right? Well I have not given up on my 40K IG yet. They have just been shelved once again as they were five or six years ago.

Part of my strange obsession to start something, spend a chunk of change, and then give it up has to do with my childhood. I remember trying to create my own miniatures game using those cheap green army guys that come a hundred to a pack. After a day of working on that I gave it up. Just think if I would have known about Mr. Gygax at that time he would have inspired me to continue. But no I gave it up when it got hard. Well being 9 or 10 probably had something to do with it to. At that age I had never even heard of miniatures or D&D but I knew I had something going. Maybe my idea was destined to be shot down anyway ;)

Anyway, I want to talk about my new obsession. One I hope will last the rest of my life. Wow, reading that sentence sure makes it seem like a long time. I thought about changing that sentence because well I know I never do anything longer than a few weeks or months before giving it up. So this new thing or old thing really is D&D, or should that be written as AD&D? I "played" this as well as Shadowrun a few times when I was much younger. It was in middle school, or what was known as Junior High back then. Of course my very first taste of it I remember almost like it was yesterday. We were sitting in the lunch room when I asked a couple people from my neighborhood what they were playing. One guy had a book and the others had a paper with their characters on it. He said they were playing Dungeons and Dragons. I thought wow that is cool, "Can I play"? He said no you can't because you don't have a character. Um, OK. Now here is where human nature kicked in. I lied and said I had one. He was a level 5 fighter. Well of course that got me in. It's really not that hard to make some stuff up on the spot. That lasted all of the 10 minutes that was left on lunch break. The next few endeavors in D&D I don't recall. Shadowrun was one that I had a good time with. Even enjoying the game that came out on the Sega Genesis. The thought of futuristic people with computers in their head and slinging magic was to much to resist. My first character was a Decker. I remember sitting with my friend Stephen at the time trying to figure out the rules. Such good times. It is a shame that none of those things followed me further in life. They shaped a love for Fantasy and Sci-Fi books and movies. So here I am at 33 years old trying to relive my youth as it were. My son just turned 11. He loves Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and pretty much anything else fantasy. Here I have a building block to shape him the way I never had anyone do for me. I started a few small adventures for him to get him interested. He seems to really enjoy it but as I am pretty new to this to it is hard with rules, etc so I just wing it. I also started playing in a couple Play-by-Posts to get my feet wet. It has been about a couple months and I think I am ready for more. In the middle of January I email a couple friends, "Hey want to play some D&D with me? It will only be you two so make a couple characters each and meet up in two weeks." A couple days before one other guy wanted in. Saturday comes up, all three show up and we commence to spend 6 hours making 5 characters. Yes that is how long it took. :) We did manage to get one really small combat in which took us another hour or so. Fast forward a month to our next meet. I only planned for a couple fights because well that last one took so long against three goblins. This time things where going to get interesting. About an hour into the game my son comes downstairs with a character sheet in hand. Confused I ask him what it is. He says he just made him and wanted to know if he could play. Apparently he found my D&D basic kit I bought awhile back, pulled out the character creation sheet, found a d6 from a Clue game, and followed the 4d6 drop lowest rules. I am speechless. Needless to say his fighter Zeldax, obviously a tribute to Zelda & the Phantom Hourglass game he has been playing, is added to the group. This is what I have wanted to experience my whole life.

I will be posting up the campaign information here. None of the players know about this site so it may contain some spoilers for our game.

Setting: Golarian
Publisher: Paizo
Campaign: Rise of the Runelords