John Aegard ([info]johnaegard) wrote,
@ 2008-09-18 01:37:00
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Entry tags:gaming

next session, puppies
(I apologize, but this will make no sense to people who aren't huge dorks like me)

I am DMing Keep on the Shadowfell for our gang. D&D4E is a fun game in general, but Shadowfell is rather dry, with flat NPCs, a next-room-next-monster rhythm, and a general absence of wow.

Here's an example: (SPOILER WARNING) the module includes a spiffy poster-sized battlemap of a dragon tomb dig, complete with a skeletal dragon curled round some treasure. Very nice stuff. The associated encounter requires that the party prevent an Orcus cultist from ... retrieving a semi-magical hand mirror that was buried with the dragon?

Zzzzzz.

In my own private Shadowfell, the Big Bad Undead Daddy is digging that dragon skeleton out so he can frikken REASSEMBLE and ANIMATE it into a howling reptile death ghost. I decided to use this as my troubleshooting encounter, the one I would bust out if the party got into more trouble than it could handle.

Last night, they totally got owned by Irontooth. But instead of TPKing them, I drugged the four survivors up and sent them to join the involuntary labor force at the bone dig. Then I told them they had to individually choose between rolling on an escape skill challenge or a sabotage-the-ritual skill challenge. And they couldn't dither about it, because all the while, the dread cold-lightning radiance of the surrounding abyssal thickets would be leeching away their souls.

(Thanks to John Harper for his cool continuing-damage skill challenge rules)

I think the guys were a bit rattled by Irontooth, because only one of them was tempted to be a hero and try to screw up the ritual. The rest organized a fast escape into the wilderness. That night, while they huddled against the spring chill, they saw a blaze of light from the direction of the tomb and heard the unholy shriek of something ancient and terrible being reborn...

Damn, this is fun. I just hope that no one feels abused. The Irontooth encounter was rough, and the undead dragon might have looked like me doing a victory lap. So yeah, next session, puppies.


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[info]ckastens
2008-09-18 11:57 am UTC (link)
This post and, in particular, that icon brought back some memories. Ah, B2: Keep on the Borderlands, where have you gone? :)

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[info]johnaegard
2008-09-18 07:08 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, when I went digging through my old stuff to make a new icon for gaming posts, B2 came to mind immediately. I think I will need to add a mad hermit to the current game...

For more excellent eighties D&D goodness, see The Erol Otus Shrine.

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[info]ckastens
2008-09-18 08:17 pm UTC (link)
Sweet website. Sigh...

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[info]johnaegard
2008-09-18 08:21 pm UTC (link)
Did you see this?

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[info]ckastens
2008-09-18 08:24 pm UTC (link)
Indeed I did, back when you posted it. :)

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[info]bardofawen
2008-09-18 02:12 pm UTC (link)
I really, really dig fourth edition, but yeah... Shadowfell is just about the worst introductory module they could've put out. They're giving away better ideas every week on their website than the ones that went into that module.

Still, the seeds for awesomeness are there, it just went a little too old-school with the implementation. It would have been a fantastic module back in 1981. ;)

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[info]johnaegard
2008-09-18 07:21 pm UTC (link)
To be honest, I'm kinda liking how Shadowfell is only 10% awesome. It's a fun thing to riff on and I'm having more fun putting my own mark on it than I would if it were tighter and better designed.

As an module for new players, I suspect it's pretty much a failure. Irontooth is too much too soon, the chief antagonist is boring, the Winterhaven NPCs talk like Ultima IV characters, there's no skill challenge, there's no pointing out obvious stunting opportunities, and worst of all, no support for debugging a player defeat or TPK. The game just ends. Fun!

I wonder if the dryness and sketchiness is by design? We all were supposed to start with B2, which was very detailed in some ways and completely not detailed in other ways. Maybe the idea is to teach DMs how to riff on top of the module material...

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[info]itsmrwilson
2008-09-18 02:36 pm UTC (link)
The irontooth encounter is something like level+5. A very odd choice. I got really close to TPK with that. Nothing else has come close.

I've decided to just hack out 90% of the rest of the module and just get to the good stuff. Last night had two fights that dragged on too long, and they didn't have any real importance to them. After the fact I'm kicking myself for not cutting them as well.

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[info]johnaegard
2008-09-18 07:02 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Google "irontooth tpk".

I tried to make it a bit easier for them; I moved the "outside the lair" encounter to a watch encampment far from the waterfall so that they'd be cued to have an extended rest before taking on IT. Unfortunately, that encounter wasn't a clean sweep -- someone got away and warned the lair, which went to Defcon 1.

I put the first lair wave outside and decided that the second wave wouldn't attack until the lair was breached. There was a dirty trick there, though -- the skirmishers (stealth +12!) were hidden in a grove of trees near the left entrance and were under orders not to attack unless discovered or until the lair was breached. Also, I added the wyrmpriest to the first wave, putting him in a firing tower in the mouth of the cave, using him to bait the characters into the lair. As soon as anyone took interest in him, he ran back inside.

It worked perfectly. My initiative rolls were awesome. The wyrmpriest cast his +5 temporary hit point ritual, making the minions into total little beasts, and between those HP, the cover from the trees, and the +1 from the magic circle, they were very tough to clean up. They combined fire mostly on Jon's cleric, knocking him down before they party had even had a sniff of the lair and soaking up some serious healing. Clerics are the batteries of the party -- if they fall, the party is in big trouble.

Then the party split up, with Seth's warlord and Kristian's wizard charging into the lair after the wyrmpriest and the archer ranger staying outside to dink around with the minions. Wil's fighter and Jon's cleric were kind of stuck in no-man's-land for a couple of turns while they hustled to bail Seth out. In the end, they faced IT without their striker ever taking a shot on him, which hurt.

There was some bad luck too. Kristian had IT and his dragonshields lined up with a sleep spell but rolled 1,2,3 on his to-hits. A dragonshield critted on Seth at least once. Then, after a front line had stabilized within the lair, where there wasn't much room to maneuver, the skirms jumped out of cover, raced into the lair, and flanked everybody. Hammer and anvil. It was over quickly after that.

Edited at 2008-09-18 07:04 pm UTC

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[info]tacithydra
2008-09-18 06:29 pm UTC (link)
Reading this post made me so happy.

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[info]johnaegard
2008-09-18 07:21 pm UTC (link)
thanks. :)

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Running from the pit
(Anonymous)
2008-09-18 11:30 pm UTC (link)
Frankly I advocated for run away over mess with the ritual because a) higher odds of success and b) it just seemed like more fun going forward to have to figure out how to equip back up and then have to deal with a rampaging dracolich - wilhelm

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