Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Sands666 Nov 28, 2009 7:43:36	Last night I ran an adventure for my D&D buddies.  A one shot delve from the Dungeon Delve book.  I tied the Goblin Tower delve into an adventure that started the PCs in town.  The PCs were down on their luck with funds.  It had been a while since someone had hired them -but suddenly- A rich halfling trader (with a hot halfling female... hot if you're into halflings) comes into the Blue Moon Tavern.  He is escorted to the VIP section of the bar where there is a balcony overlooking activities; the bards playing and the other halflings making deals, drunk friends sitting under torch light with the cool night air blowing in now and then as the door opens to the Tavern. The PCs, a Dwarf Fighter and a Halfling Rogue talk about how things are rough, and make fun of the Rich Trader who walks in.  They put their ales on their tab after assuring the bar tender he would get his money soon.  After a while goes by a waitress walks up to the guys and tells them that the Rich Halfling Trader wanted to speak to them.  They proceeded up stairs.  At the top of the stairs they looked down and saw the oak door entrance to the Tavern open again. A couple of town guards came in, looking about the place as if they were trying to spot something going wrong, or for anyone who might be hiding perhaps.  They passed the dark red curtains  and entered into a candle lit room with the Halfling Trader sitting at an elegant table, with strange paintings praising the gods surrounding him on the walls (mostly Avandra). The Female Halfling looked at the Rogue with flames from the candle light flicking reflections of light off her eyes. A bald Elf, a Cleric, sat next to the Rich Trader on the opposite side of the woman.  The Trader was cocky and asked the two if they would be willing to raid a tower for him.  The Daggerburg Goblins were attempting to move further North out of the woods and established residence in an abandoned tower (the 3 delves out of the book).  The Goblins had attacked some people delivering an art item he had paid for and it was destroyed.  He was only hiring the PCs to have the Goblins killed as punishment, though local business seemed to be glad the Rich Trader desired that. After some negotiations, they were told they would be paid 200 gold a piece. The Elf, Duval, went along to assist them (I basically let the PCs decide what he would do, and I role played his personality).  Their bar tabs were paid for and everything was on the Rich Traders tab for the night.... who they never got the name of.  In the morning Duval led them to the stables where they were given Clydesdales to ride, with custom saddles to suit their smaller sizes.  They traveled for about two days to the Moon Hills where they found the tower and broke in. The first floor of the Tower in the delve is set in a room where the goblins are all playing cards, drinking wine and basically just getting up, I said it was about dusk. The ceiling sags down towards the center of the room.  There are a ton of minions in this room and one Goblin leader who activated the gong in the room during the fight and alerted  the up stairs guys of their presence. They definitely won that fight last night and had a really good time. So good a time that they wanted to play the continuation of that delve after I had run a higher level adventure tonight for 3 of my RPG buddies in a different delve that I tied into the story of their other game (two different games kind of running into each other!).   When one of the guys had to leave, the 3rd player, the original two of them requested to play the other game out. They went up to the higher levels and finished that last two encounters of that delve.  It actually ended in a hilarious way on the 3rd and last floor of the dungeon, where the Rogue used a power to shift one of the bad guys into a square, where there was a trap door. The bad guys were hoping the PCs would land in the trap by standing next to it and waiting for the PCs to come fight them - they didn't expect him to do that.  He happened to move in the right squares.  The Rouge shifted the Bugbear into the square not knowing there was a trap. The bug bear proceeded to fall to the floor below and then onto some unstable ground below (the floor on the 2nd level was sagging into the first).  The floor area the bug bear landed on collapsed and he fell down one more floor, having even more damage dealt (AAAAaaaa... crash... crumble crumble... SNAP, AAAAAAAaaaaa.... crash... uuuuugh!). Then the rogue attacked the main goblin boss with the same trick, falling two stories below.  He ran away and commanded the Bugbear to go back up and take care of them. The players were laughing a lot at that happening - it was pretty funny.  The bug bear ran up the stairs and then got knocked prone by the Dwarf, which sent him rolling down to the bottom of the stairs where he was knocked unconscious ha ha ha, more laughs. They found a captured prince, who was from the Barony Harkenwold - Harkenwold was where the characters from the 3 player game (the higher level game) I ran tonight came from.  The characters in the higher level game were searching the swamps and fighting cultists, thinking that the cult had the prince (one of the player's brother). At the end of the 3 player delve no one had found the prince and they wondered what was going on. In the two player game, they were able to deliver the prince back to the kingdom of Harkenwold.  Duval realized that he was a prince.  They delivered him back in secrecy but were attacked by goblins on the way there, on the road through Harken Woods.  The Goblins spotted the prince in the PC's wagon wen they attacked and ran to tell the others.  All along the way I made a skill challenge where they had to manuver away from Goblins attacking them sporadically from the woods, until they reach the Barony where Goblins were too afraid to pursue them any further. The Baron thanked them and had a party full of debauchery for them!  It was very Conan I must say!  It was cool to be able to set up two games with the plots weaving together, with the return of the prince occurring in the 2 player game, while the PCs in the 3 player game were searching for the same prince with no luck.  It actually set up new dungeon crawls for each game's pathway. Moreso, running 4th edition these past two nights, brought back a more old school D&D feeling I had been missing.  A lot of games I have played in, haven't used dungeons they way 4th uses them.  I think 4th edition really managed to bring back a great basic component to the game - the dungeon.  All the traps and tactics really make you pay more attention to the board, rather than conceptualize the stetting with some minor battle mat involvement. My friends, who were all skeptical about 4th edition had a good enough time to make them ask me to keep playing, I think they felt it too.  Duh-na- dunt!  Now I want to play tomorrow night! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
#2 Dougan_Axehammer Nov 28, 2009 11:32:56	Sounded like an excellent experience for everyone involved.  I'm glad you and your friends were able to enjoy 4th edition after some initial skepticism. (Now I just need to get off my butt and get an adventure together for my skeptical community.)
#3 Sands666 Nov 28, 2009 15:36:34	In all honesty it was like pulling teeth to get one of the players to play the game.  I had one player like me who was into 4E, one player who was willing to try and one player who was used to the earlier editions, he was the one that was hard to get to.  The guy who was used to the earlier editions didn't like the system at all when we had run the beginning of a Shadowfell game because he played a Wizard and he was more used to the old Wizards. The guy that prefered earlier editions was willing to try 4E, he did and didn't like it.  He was even going to try my campaign to get a real feel for it.   We all wanted to play this 4 day weekend, so they asked me to run something.  I picked up the delves and went with that.  The guy who prefered earlier editions of D&D was in the 2 player game and was the one who requested to continue when we finished our other 3 player game. Success!  He was one of the people having the most fun.  I had to fight with his stubbornness a bit, but in the end he liked it. One note on all of this, is that part of the way that I think I won this player over was by coming here to understand 4E by chatting (or arguing at times... sorry!) with some people about the 4E system.  It was through that, where I started to better understand why there might have been changes, which mostly had to do with balance.  Every argument I heard from my player, I took here and discussed.  In the end I had answers to shed light on the why of some things had changed so much, even if at first he didn't like it anyway.   The other thing I started doing more of, was trying to listen to why he might not like the game and then just talking to him about it through what I knew about the changes - maybe I even sided with him sometimes too. Anyway, that's it - I personally think it was worth getting everyone to try even if it was a little difficult sometimes to convince them. Hold your ground!