KotS #6
I was finally able to see The Dark Knight this past weekend and I’m glad to say it was a damn good movie. Everyone in the film did a great job, and the Joker’s sense of evil-irony & chaos made me laugh at all the inappropriate times.
I like this new Batman movie series so much more than the last one.
Back in 1990, my more “comic bookie” friends thought that Michael Keaton’s Batman and Jack Nicholson’s Joker was the most amazing thing on screen at the time. I just didn’t think it was that good. With the exception of Nicholson, the acting was bland and the movie could put you to sleep. I actually like Tommy Lee Jones’s and Jim Carrey’s additions to that version of Batman more because I was being entertained rather than being told I was being entertained.
Our group is still looking for more players, pretty much for the usual reasons. Soon Dale will be skipping half the sessions for his son’s school-related activities. Brian will have to miss for his job-related fun. Scott is still going through college, so his schedule could be totally random.
I put a kind of smarmy “Looking for another player” post on my FLGS’s web forums.
It has your standard statements of what we are and what we’re looking for.
I don’t think we’ll be getting many inquiries though because I pretty much stated ‘If you’re crazy, we’re not interested.’
Actually what I said was that you need be over 25 or have a college degree, can consistently play, have your own transportation, knows the game, and is “Not on, or in need of, any mental medication for social disorders (not kidding).”
Makes me sound like a prick doesn’t it?
Good. That’s what I want.
As I’ve said many times before, most of the group has just this one day to play D&D.
We don’t want to play with 12 year olds.
We don’t want to play with some guy who just shows up when he has nothing better to do.
We don’t want to be a chauffer.
And we don’t want crazy and flaky ruining our fun.
In other words, we want to play with other responsible adults.
We play in our homes, complete with wives or girlfriends, and usually children.
We’re not letting crazy into our homes.
To steal a quote from someone Aaron used to play with:
“You look just like the guy who has the restraining order out on me.”
On that lovely comment, let us move on to the actual game.
Keep on the Shadowfell is such a good module that we may move on to the second module of the series.
I almost can’t believe that the same company that made KotS is the same one that produced those horrible modules from the past two years (Ravenloft, Cormyr: Tearing of the Weave, and others).
Our lineup for this session:
Me, playing Tornok, the level 3 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 3 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 2 dragonborn paladin
Justin, playing Stout, the level 2 dwarven fighter
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 2 eladrin wizard
Oh, we found out that Dale had a bit of a goof with that 50 skeleton fight from last week.
It started off with 2 skeletons and 8 skeletons minions, with the same things jumping out at us every round for the next 4 rounds.
It was supposed to be 2 skeletons and 8 skeleton minions, then each round for the next four rounds 2 more skeleton minions were supposed to jump at out as us.
Oh well, not a big deal I guess. We got some huge XP from it and it only cost us 2-3 healing potions (which cannot be replaced at the marketplace). Plus we had some fun with it.
We also found out that we had one more fight before level 1 was cleared, so we quickly dispatched 4 more zombies hiding behind an illusory wall and correctly answered a riddle to win some black-iron scale mail for Stout.
Since most of us had used our daily powers, we decided to head back to our base camp, see Splug, and then head to Winterhaven for some rest and re-supply (Splug needs some flour, bacon, an so on to keep cooking for us).
Splug was happy to hear that Balgron the Fat is now dead.
Instead of the melancholy town we expected, we had a paranoid town with its gates closed and crossbow-wielding guards aiming at us.
Lord Padrag explained that the town was under attack, with several people having disappeared, and the dead from the graveyard now undead and moving.
So before we could rest sufficiently, we had to go kill around a dozen zombie minions, a pair of gravehound zombies, and not-so-surprisingly, Ninarin.
We did the usual “Pots and Pans” tactics. Which is pretty much us making as much noise as possible to see if we can get the undead to come at us prematurely. It didn’t work; we had almost made it to the center of the map before the zombies pulled themselves from the ground or opened the doors to the mausoleum.
As seems to be our main tactic, our front line (Stout and Earl) took on the gravehounds and half the zombie minions, while Valenae and Hadarai took out any bow-wielding zombies as best they could. Tornok did his best to harass Ninarin to prevent her from putting her bowshots to good use.
As usual, our front line dealt with their problems (with help from Hadarai) and then we swarmed Ninarin and took her captive.
On her person was instructions from Kalorel on how to raise the dead of the graveyard and the pass phrase to get past the first guard on level 2, “From the ground, some magic was found.”
We took Ninarin back to town for her to receive “proper” justice, after we interrogated her of course.
Ninarin gave us some information (Kalorel’s a priest of Orcus and hobgoblins are on level 2), but she was withholding something from us and we couldn’t get her to talk. We handed her over to the town “mob justice system”.
Nonetheless, that night the town had a party in our honor, we rested well, restocked on supplies, took them to Splug, paid him for his services, and re-entered the dungeon.
We got to the bottom of stairs on level 2 and find a few hobgoblins standing guard.
They effectively ask for a password, and we say “From the ground, magic is found.”
This week’s quote is from Dale (or rather a hobgoblin):
“Someone tell Kalorel that Ninarin is dead!”
That damn clever Kalorel tricked us, and tricked us good.
Then we were attacked.
Four hobgoblin soldiers rushed us, followed by some hobgoblin minions, who also freed a trained deathjump spider.
We stayed at the stairs to keep their attack options limited, but they were still able to pound on us from the front for a good long while, and the deathjump spider actually jumped right into the midst of the rest of us, wreaking some good havoc there.
We still won, but it wasn’t easy. The spider critted Valenae, and the hobgoblin soldiers dealt some nasty damage when they hit.
We moved along the northern edge of the map until we finally saw a hobgoblin in a room.
He saw us too and ran off.
When Valenae scouted around the corner that the hobgoblin ran to he only saw some closed doors.
We immediately moved our frontline fighters to the back, as I expect the hobgoblins to flank us that way.
And we stopped there. It was late and a good point for a cliffhanger.
Next week we may or may not have Brian and/or Scott.
I like this new Batman movie series so much more than the last one.
Back in 1990, my more “comic bookie” friends thought that Michael Keaton’s Batman and Jack Nicholson’s Joker was the most amazing thing on screen at the time. I just didn’t think it was that good. With the exception of Nicholson, the acting was bland and the movie could put you to sleep. I actually like Tommy Lee Jones’s and Jim Carrey’s additions to that version of Batman more because I was being entertained rather than being told I was being entertained.
Our group is still looking for more players, pretty much for the usual reasons. Soon Dale will be skipping half the sessions for his son’s school-related activities. Brian will have to miss for his job-related fun. Scott is still going through college, so his schedule could be totally random.
I put a kind of smarmy “Looking for another player” post on my FLGS’s web forums.
It has your standard statements of what we are and what we’re looking for.
I don’t think we’ll be getting many inquiries though because I pretty much stated ‘If you’re crazy, we’re not interested.’
Actually what I said was that you need be over 25 or have a college degree, can consistently play, have your own transportation, knows the game, and is “Not on, or in need of, any mental medication for social disorders (not kidding).”
Makes me sound like a prick doesn’t it?
Good. That’s what I want.
As I’ve said many times before, most of the group has just this one day to play D&D.
We don’t want to play with 12 year olds.
We don’t want to play with some guy who just shows up when he has nothing better to do.
We don’t want to be a chauffer.
And we don’t want crazy and flaky ruining our fun.
In other words, we want to play with other responsible adults.
We play in our homes, complete with wives or girlfriends, and usually children.
We’re not letting crazy into our homes.
To steal a quote from someone Aaron used to play with:
“You look just like the guy who has the restraining order out on me.”
On that lovely comment, let us move on to the actual game.
Keep on the Shadowfell is such a good module that we may move on to the second module of the series.
I almost can’t believe that the same company that made KotS is the same one that produced those horrible modules from the past two years (Ravenloft, Cormyr: Tearing of the Weave, and others).
Our lineup for this session:
Me, playing Tornok, the level 3 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 3 eladrin rogue
Scott, playing Earl, the level 2 dragonborn paladin
Justin, playing Stout, the level 2 dwarven fighter
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 2 eladrin wizard
Oh, we found out that Dale had a bit of a goof with that 50 skeleton fight from last week.
It started off with 2 skeletons and 8 skeletons minions, with the same things jumping out at us every round for the next 4 rounds.
It was supposed to be 2 skeletons and 8 skeleton minions, then each round for the next four rounds 2 more skeleton minions were supposed to jump at out as us.
Oh well, not a big deal I guess. We got some huge XP from it and it only cost us 2-3 healing potions (which cannot be replaced at the marketplace). Plus we had some fun with it.
We also found out that we had one more fight before level 1 was cleared, so we quickly dispatched 4 more zombies hiding behind an illusory wall and correctly answered a riddle to win some black-iron scale mail for Stout.
Since most of us had used our daily powers, we decided to head back to our base camp, see Splug, and then head to Winterhaven for some rest and re-supply (Splug needs some flour, bacon, an so on to keep cooking for us).
Splug was happy to hear that Balgron the Fat is now dead.
Instead of the melancholy town we expected, we had a paranoid town with its gates closed and crossbow-wielding guards aiming at us.
Lord Padrag explained that the town was under attack, with several people having disappeared, and the dead from the graveyard now undead and moving.
So before we could rest sufficiently, we had to go kill around a dozen zombie minions, a pair of gravehound zombies, and not-so-surprisingly, Ninarin.
We did the usual “Pots and Pans” tactics. Which is pretty much us making as much noise as possible to see if we can get the undead to come at us prematurely. It didn’t work; we had almost made it to the center of the map before the zombies pulled themselves from the ground or opened the doors to the mausoleum.
As seems to be our main tactic, our front line (Stout and Earl) took on the gravehounds and half the zombie minions, while Valenae and Hadarai took out any bow-wielding zombies as best they could. Tornok did his best to harass Ninarin to prevent her from putting her bowshots to good use.
As usual, our front line dealt with their problems (with help from Hadarai) and then we swarmed Ninarin and took her captive.
On her person was instructions from Kalorel on how to raise the dead of the graveyard and the pass phrase to get past the first guard on level 2, “From the ground, some magic was found.”
We took Ninarin back to town for her to receive “proper” justice, after we interrogated her of course.
Ninarin gave us some information (Kalorel’s a priest of Orcus and hobgoblins are on level 2), but she was withholding something from us and we couldn’t get her to talk. We handed her over to the town “mob justice system”.
Nonetheless, that night the town had a party in our honor, we rested well, restocked on supplies, took them to Splug, paid him for his services, and re-entered the dungeon.
We got to the bottom of stairs on level 2 and find a few hobgoblins standing guard.
They effectively ask for a password, and we say “From the ground, magic is found.”
This week’s quote is from Dale (or rather a hobgoblin):
“Someone tell Kalorel that Ninarin is dead!”
That damn clever Kalorel tricked us, and tricked us good.
Then we were attacked.
Four hobgoblin soldiers rushed us, followed by some hobgoblin minions, who also freed a trained deathjump spider.
We stayed at the stairs to keep their attack options limited, but they were still able to pound on us from the front for a good long while, and the deathjump spider actually jumped right into the midst of the rest of us, wreaking some good havoc there.
We still won, but it wasn’t easy. The spider critted Valenae, and the hobgoblin soldiers dealt some nasty damage when they hit.
We moved along the northern edge of the map until we finally saw a hobgoblin in a room.
He saw us too and ran off.
When Valenae scouted around the corner that the hobgoblin ran to he only saw some closed doors.
We immediately moved our frontline fighters to the back, as I expect the hobgoblins to flank us that way.
And we stopped there. It was late and a good point for a cliffhanger.
Next week we may or may not have Brian and/or Scott.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:49 AM
5 Comments:
I love that fakeout 'passphrase.' I'm interested in the fact that you guys are liking the module - what do you think of the skill challenge mechanic thus far? (If I recall correctly, it was used once thus far, in your conversation with Lord Keegan.)
(Incidentally, this is the same guy that was commenting earlier. Apparently my Google login now works. Go figure.)
We loved the fakeout passphrase as well. Very clever.
The "skill challenges" in 4e are horrible.
We had one last night that made the awkwardness of the Lord Keegan "skill challenge" a smooth deal.
Skill challenges need some major tweaking.
There's a new skill challenge system that someone on ENWorld made, and I've been using it in my games - I really enjoy it. You should check it out:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=232340
Heh, I thought I'd offer my Players Wanted sign:
Opening for one or two mature (in spirit, chronologically not completely necessary but must be legally classified an adult) DnD players.
Casual atmosphere both on and off the table, must be reasonably reliable and provide own transportation, must be able to converse without four letter words in every sentence as small ears will be in the vicinity typically the first couple of hours of a session.
Must be able to deal with the presence of owners of said small ears in the vicinity in a fashion that doesn’t upset the father who will not only be your DM but can and will also double as your bouncer if needed.
Sessions run from 6 to midnight on Saturday and uses 4th Edition DnD. System is still new so expect misruling, misreadings and for things to be taken away or granted during the course of time.
Basic refreshments provided, special needs you will have to arrange for yourself.
Qualifications-
If you can answer yes to the following you most likely will not have a good time so don’t waste yours and ours:
* Ever used the phrase “Oh that was just a practice roll, you mean I should roll now?”
* Ever used the phrase “I already rolled while I was waiting, I got a 20.” Bonus points if you also rolled max damage while you were waiting for your tun.
* Ever spent half an hour looking up a rule so that you could get a +1 in some once in a campaign encounter? Bonus points if you made everyone wait while you did so.
* Ever killed a god?
* Ever killed a npc because he looked at you funny? Bonus points if they were defenseless.
* Ever slaughtered a village looking for a bad guy? Bonus points if you were the group’s paladin at the time.
* Ever had the alignment Chaotic Psychopath?
* Ever had a mysterious dragon tattoo just like the kings and you were rescued along with a sack of royal purple kittens from the river as a child as a background?
* Ever had a drow that dual wields scimitars? Bonus points if you weren’t light sensitive.
* Ever had to fight three ancient red dragons and Tiamat because your DM couldn’t find anything else to remotely challenge you?
* Ever posted on a character optimization forum, “You people are amateurs.”
* Ever said, “I’m tired of talking, I want to roll dice.” after the DM starts a session with, “Okay you have come to your senses with a pounding headache and find yourselves stripped naked on a overgrown almost non-existent road in what looks to be some vast wilderness. A dead body, that of a human lays near your group with a dagger sticking from its chest with a note. You recognize the man, boy really, as the barkeep’s son you were paying to get information on mage Rubar.”
* Ever used the term ‘grinding out levels’ when talking about a Pen and Paper role playing game?
Hmmm, I may not qualify for some of those.
And that's even after discounting my high school years.
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