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My party started their Twisting Halls proper adventure last night.

After reaching the cavernous entrance to the temple, the party searched for signs of activity and chose to enter the less-active looking entrance to the north.  Upon opening the door and entering, they were greeted by Kobalds performing maintenance on the various shrines and doing what minions do.  The nearest such Kobald led the players to Farralax, a fledgling white dragon, after the players questioned him about his master.

The mage Sharrn was the first to speak with Farralax, and was not very reverent with the dragon and angered Farralax.  This almost escalated to the point of attack, but fortunately Benecia and Gwindelyn managed to take control of the situation.  Eventually after some conversation, a bargin was struck between the players and Farralax.  Each player "contributed" 10 gp to the dragon's horde, and the party as a whole commited themselves to killing Maraleth, with the promise of set of magic armor when the task was complete, and safe passage further into the temple.

From Farralax's lair, the party chose to move through the doors to the south.

Oh, the skill challange.  I'm still having a tough time navigating NPC encounters.  This was by far my worst encounter of the night.  I had a rough time with the dialog, and wasn't very effective at leading the players into trying different things.  It seemed like diplomacy checks were all the players could come up with, and were more focused on making the same case over and over again, but more reasonable. Needless to say, I abandoned the skill check encounter architecture.  I need to figure out better ways to play NPC's and lead characters where I want them to go.  I need to spend more time during preperation scripting dialog and thinking about how to lead players to the conclusions I need them to reach.

Entering the room, the players immediately noticed the rug in the room, which stood out by not being covered in filth.  It was obviously a trap, and was identified as such, but no one in the party possesed the skills to disarm it.  Keeping that in mind, the party focused on the foes in the room.  Two Dire Rats and four Goblin Snipers occupied the room.  Benicia's wolf companion, Cullen, immediately engaged the first Dire Rat while the Slayer Ari engaged the other on the opposite side of the trapped floor.

The rats used this position to block movement of the other players, forcing them to use only ranged attacks, or in the case of the Fighter Xaviar, attempt to jump over the trap.  Xaviar's attempt failed, but he managed to save himself from being damaged by the trap.  The Goblins safely returned fire from the corners of the room.  

At one point, Sharrn attempted to use Mage Hand to move the carpet covering the trap and drop it on a Sniper to obstruct his view, but the Sniper proved too dexterous for this tactic and nimbly avoided it.

Fortunately for those attacking, the rats were unable to land a hit and spread their debilitating Filth Fever.  And were dispatched in due time.  With the rats out of the way, and freedom of movement restored, the partymade short work of the remaining Snipers.

The party then took a short rest and searched the room.  Xaviar took the rug to try and recover some of the gold given to Farralax.  Gwindelyn took notice of the statue that was in the southern part of the room and found the script scrawled into the back of the statue.  Fortunately, he speaks Dwarven and was able to decrypt the ominous passage.

This combat went very well I thought.  The rats were a solid, but not overwhelming challenge for the fighters to tank, and the Snipers made great fodder for the party's Mage.  I thought it went well, and I was able to handle the few curve balls the players threw at me, including the Mage Hand trick.

After some deliberation, the party went through a set of double doors to the west.  Inside, they discovered a room with of tiles of alternating colors of dark and light.  Against the west wall of the room stood four statues.  Gwindelyn took the lead into the room, and after attempting to walk straight forward, reeled from an attack directed at his mind.

At this point, the statues animated and began to move.  The party quickly learned the rules of the enchanted room, which restricted movement based on the rules of the chess piece position the player entered the room on.  Sharrn quickly dispatched three of the pawn statues while Xaviar held the attention of the Queen and Knight pieces to prevent the Queen from unleashing her devastating attack against the rest of the group.  The Rook was attacked and tanked by the wolf Cullen.

After a few rounds, Cullen and Benicia dispatched the Rook with a combined assault, Ari dispatched the final remaining pawn.  Gwindelyn and Sharnn dispatched the Queen and Knight from a distance while Xaviar routed their attention towards him.

As the statues crumbled, the players took a short rest.  They must now decide where to go next.

We ended the night at the conclusion of the Chess room.  The players really enjoyed this room.  It wasn't particularly challenging for them, but I believe that was mostly due to their tactics working in their favor.  Xaviar was able to route the Queen, preventing her from attacking three adjacent players, which is would have turned the tide rapidly.

Overall, I think the skill challenge room was the only encounter I didn't run well.  I need to improve my NPC interaction with the players.  I feel pretty comfortable in combat encounters now, so at least there is that.

The only other note I have about this session is that Ari seems to not be engaged.  She sat on the floor and looked at real estate listings on her phone the whole game, only coming up to make a quick combat strike on her turns to whatever was close to her.  This is her first exposure to D&D, and isn't a fan of fantasy or have a gaming background, so this may not be something I can overcome.  I'll attempt to adjust the campaign to try and get her engaged in the story, but I'm not terribly hopeful for success.  It may just not be her cup of tea.

Well, last night my group started their campaign.

From our last session, the player who had created the Half-Orc Scout had lost his character sheet.  Fortunately, he and his girlfriend (the Tiefling Warlock) had found their sheets from a previous campaign and were able to use those.  Our Half-Orc scout became a Dragonborn Fighter, which was kinda nice because we needed someone filling the defender role.

We started with the first encounter in the 4e Red Box dungeon master guide, which consisted of the characters coming to an ambush at a crossroads on the way to the abandoned Twisted Halls temple.

Well, I should probably step back a touch further.  I started the campaign in an Inn at Fallcrest (which I probably could have named for the players, but didn't).  I then tried to initiate some backstory roll-playing to try and get some insight into the characters being played I learned, to which I only had some limited success in coaxing people to share any details they have come up with.

Two characters which had been rolled for a previous campaign had decided they were kindred spirits due to there minority status in the world, and were in search of employment due to a maligned adventure that had left them penniless.  The tiefling warlock is named Sir Gwendolen Von Cherries and the Dragonborn Fighter is named Xavier Conqueso.  Sir Gwndolen is being played as a male by a woman, and the character is naturally homosexual.

My wife's character, Benicia the Druid Sentinel, decided to play the part of a woods guide that was between employers and seeking a new party to guide.  Benicia's player hasn't played D&D since 1ed was new, so the game is basically new to her again.

Our Slayer, Ari, is by far the newest to the game.  This is her first exposure to any sort of table-top RPG, and isn't even a big fantasy genre fan.  She isn't really ingrained in nerd culture like the rest of the group.  However, she's giving it a fair shake so far, and I'm hoping she starts to get into it.  I don't know if that will happen or not.  May just be a square peg in a round hole kind of situation.

Our Eladrin Mage is named Sharn Arravel.  He didn't offer up much backstory other than his character is Pan-sexual, which he was having fun with.  Yes, we have an odd group.  This is this players first playing of 4ed, but he's played other editions of D&D, as well as a number of other table-top RPGs.

Well, back to the Inn...

Since nobody did the solo encounter from the Red Box players book, I improvised a story opening about Traevus and his hijacked caravan, and pointing them to the temple.  Sharn was pretty insistant about trying to find out what we were trying to recover.  I skated around the issue more than I should have, and didn't handle it too well, stating that Traevus is refusing to say.  He tried to roll an insight check, which I resulted in seeing that there was more to what was being told than what Taevus was giving the players.  Fortunately, he didn't try and roll a diplomacy or intimidate check.  However, I want to try and use the conclusion to the story to hook into the next adventure, so I was going to be stubborn about it.

Still, I wish I would have thought of something better to draw attention away.

Anyway.  Attack at the crossroads on the way to the temple.  It's a very simple encounter, consisting of two Goblin Cutthroats and two Wolves.  I was glad we did this simpler encounter before making our way to the temple, as it was a better way of cutting our teeth on things.  The first possilbe encounters inside the temple would have been much more dire.  This gave my new players an introduction to the basic mechanics, which was much needed.  Plus, for some reason, the dice was not on the players side, which could have been disastorous against harder monsters.  First three attack rolls from players were 1's .

Sharrn and Gwendolen were the most entertaining, as they started taunting each other as they missed during their attack rolls.  I found it very entertaining, as it was the most role-playing we saw all night, and is the beginning of a naturally developing dynamic between the two characters that can influence things to come.

Sharnn was also insisting on using his minor action to use Mage Hand to "throw dirt at the Goblin".  I insisted that he couldn't blind or damage him with the sand because Mage hand wasn't dexterous enough, but that it would upset the Goblin and him more likely to target Sharnn.  In hindsight, I should have had him roll unmodified against the moster's DEX (a failed roll would have been the monster shielding his eyes) for a chance to blind.  I don't feel too bad about not doing that however, as we weren't using Mage Hand correctly anyway since the monster wasn't adjacent, and he would have had to perform the action by the end of a second turn (minor to summon and pick up sand the first turn, move up to 5 squares and free action throw sand during the second turn).

My other big screw-up of the night (in my opinion) was not handling Benicia's familiar properly at all.  I knew she had one, but I didn't know how it worked.  We didn't place a token for it, and didn't do anything with it.  She contributed well with her healing powers, but next time we'll bring the wolf into it.  It didn't really come up until we were trying to figure out how the mechanics of Combined Attack worked.

The Combined Attack dispute was if two attack rolls were needed to be made (one for player and one for familiar) and if the character's attack missed, would he still take damage from the familiar.  It doesn't work that way, as the familiar's attack is triggered from a successful hit by the player (granting a free action move plus familar's basic attack).

Overall, the encounter was a success.  We were very slow, which in addition to an unavoidable late start, resulted in only the one encounter being played that night.  We only had one player fall unconsious, which was good.  I was rolling much better for the monsters than the players were, so I was pleased that it was just the once that someone fell.

I'm looking forwared to our next session.  I learned alot from this first encounter as a DM, and could feel myself getting more comfortable throughout the session and know the next session will be even better.

So, I figured I'd blog my D&D campaign, and remark on any notable things that happen.

A little background.  I've never played D&D or any other pen & paper RPG, although I have watched and listened to the Penny Arcade D&D podcasts/livestreams.  It looked fun, and my wife wanted to play, so I thought I'd take a shot at starting a campaign with some co-workers.

For Christmas this year, I dove right in and purchased the following D&D items:

Red Box (Starter Kit)
Dungeon Masters Kit
Monster Vault Box
Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
Heroes of the Fallen Lands

I also purchased a pound of dice, as I had none, and one month of DDI to try it out.


I spent a few weeks reading through the Red Box material and most of the DM book, until I had a basic understanding for most of the rules.

I invited 5 players to my game, and we had a character creation night last Friday.  I think it went reasonably well, although it probably could have been better organized.  Myself and two of my players have had next to no experience with D&D.  Two others had played a few adventures, and I'm still not sure how experienced they are.  The last player was familiar with 3e and other pen and paper games, but not with 4e in specific.

We first started trying to do character creation via pen and paper, but found that I (or anyone else) wasn't familar enough with the process to guide everyone through very well.  It was kinda a mess.  I should have read the players guide first before attempting to do it this way.

We ended up firing up a laptop and using the DDI character creator to simplify things.  Since I didn't have a printer (something I rectified over the weekend), we couldn't print the sheets made yet.

One who is not a gamer of any sort, was so new that she had no clue about the various class and race paradims, even though they are pretty well established across the fantasy genre.  She slowed things down a bit and I think was overwhelmed to the point that she just started picking things after a bit when it came to power selections and feats.  I think she was a bit bored by the end of the session, but hopefully wasn't too disuaded now that this part is over.

Naturally, the player of other pen and paper games spent a lot of time trying to convince me to switch games.  He's a bit of an ass sometimes anyway, so I'm sort of used to ignoring him, but it was annoying anyway.  I think he was bored by the end of the night as well.

The other players seemed reasonably interested and entertained during the evening, including my wife, which is important .  The two who had played before had brought a PHB, which I wish they hadn't as I think it confused things a bit.  I was trying to keep things restricted to the essentials books for now, but they kept suggesting feats from the other book to people.  Which wasn't helpful since we were using the DDI quick essentials character and modifying.  Much of the stuff out of PHB wasn't available in those selections.

By the time we were done with character creation, it was too late to start anything, so we retired for the evening.  I guess we'll see if we lost anyone before then.

We ended up with the following characters:
Eladrin Mage
Half-Elf Sentinal
Human Slayer
Tiefling Warlock
Half-Orc Scout

I was hoping to see a defender class in there as well, but I guess we'll see if we can make due without one.  

The big takeaway I came away from here was that the players books were not that useful.  Since we only had one set floating around, they slowed things to a crawl.  It seems that a DDI subscription and access to the character creator can wholely replace the players books.  Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I feel like I could have saved that $40.

Next session we'll start playing.  I'm sure there will be some major hiccups there as well, but hopefully it will go OK.  We'll being doing the Twisted Halls from the Red Box, and I feel reasonably prepared for it.  Hope it goes well.