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Hey all,

I thought it would be fun and interesting to talk a little bit about my lunchtime, Temple of Elemental Evil 4e game. I run the game on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the WotC offices. Between travel and work schedules, the first session was (finally!) last week. This campaign is the first I've designed that wasn't specifically for playtesting or for a demo. This is just for fun.

The first adventure is really open-ended. I'm using Gary's original Village of Hommlet as the starting point, switching things around to fit my tastes and keep things fresh for the group.

Here's my group, all level 1 PCs:
* Cornelius, a half-elf cleric of Boccob who carries a strange tome. He arrived in Hommlett a few days ago with Kot. Cornelius is absent-minded, but he always keeps an eye on his creepy book. He was enslaved by forces of Iuz under circumstances not yet clear to the rest of the party, and Kot freed him during a High Folk raid into the Old One's empire.

* Kot, a half-elf wizard and war hero from the High Folk. He fought in several battles against invading minions of Iuz. In his last battle, his commander was slain while on a raid into the territories of Iuz. Before dying, the commander whispered a terrible secret in Kot's ear. That secret has led him to Hommlett.

* Saman Bharat, a human fighter from Ket. Saman served in the Kettite army before an incompetent but highly connected officer led his unit into an ogre ambush high in the Yatil Mountains. He escaped to the south and found service wtih the militia in Sterich. While on a raid against a cave system housing a number of bandits and monsters, he stumbled into a weird temple. He found a sword that that looked as if it was carved from a single, huge piece of metal rather than forged. Hearing a number of troglodytes approaching the temple, he grabbed the sword and tried to escape through a curtained doorway. When he passed through the door, he found himself in an old, dusty, unused temple exactly like the one he was just in. He emerged from the temple to in the wilderness near Hommlett.

* Marken, a human fighter from the City of Greyhawk, is a taciturn mercenary. The group knows little about him, but each morning he bolts upright in his bed when he awakes, as if waking from a terrible nightmare.

(We have a fifth character, a tiefling warlock, who will join us in the next session. All the PCs have elements of their background that will play a role in the campaign.)

The current ruler of Hommlett, an aristocratic fop named Lord Geldon, hires the PCs on an emergency mission. Lord Geldon is expecting a caravan to arrive with a valuable cargo of his, but he has just received word that the North Gate, an old, ruined pair of towers along the caravan's route, is occupied by bandits. Since Burne's Badgers, the mercenaries who serve as town guard, are off hunting a marauding werewolf north of town, Geldon asks the PCs to ride out and help the caravan.

It doesn't take a genius to see that Geldon is up to something. When he approached the PCs at the Welcome Wench, he hadall the tact and subtlety of a hammer to the face. He blatantly forgot the innkeep's name, shooed some farmers out of a booth to make way for his meeting with the characters, and was clearly nervous, worried, and desperate to keep the caravan's arrival a secret. Geldon came to rule only when his father and older brother died in a plague a few years ago, and before that he was much happier spending his time (and money) in the city of Verbobonc. There, he could spend his time in safe, posh, splendor in his family's urban holdings. Here in Hommlett, he's on a dangerous frontier without any of the niceties of his old home. He supposedly accepted the move only because it was better than facing the many gambling debts he piled up in the city.

With that in mind, the PCs accepted his deal, but are on the look out for trouble. Opting for the direct approach, they rode out to the tower and decided to attack the bandits. They discovered that the North Gate is two towers that flank the rode, with a bridge connecting their second floors. In addition, only one tower has a door, and that door is set on the second floor. To get in, the tower's occupants must lower a rope or ladder down. Carefully scanning the area, the PCs noticed that there were several men on the bridge.

This is where things got interesting. I set up the situation to be as flexible as possible, leaving the players to come up with a plan. I had the bandits statted out and a general idea of their defenses. When the characters arrived at the tower, it was night and a light rain was falling.

The group's plan started like this: the fighters Saman and Marken would approach the towers under cover of darkness. Kot and Cornelius would wait in the woods for the signal to approach once the fighters had secured a rope to the side of the tower.

I used a skill challenge to represent the guards' state of readiness. The fighters' approach was louder than they liked, but Kot used a spell to distract the guards. Unfortuantely, the fighters kept making noise, prompting the bandits to send a few guards out to patrol the base of the towers. The fighters were able to secure a rope and climb to the top of one tower just as the guards made their descent to the ground from the second floor door.

Once on the roof, the Marken noticed that the wooden timbers were quite weak in several places. They spied on the bandit leader below and listened to him order several more of his warriors to walk a quick patrol. That's when the party's plan took a quick, 90 degree turn.

With the bandit leader left alone in his chamber, Marken sprung into action. A quick kick smashed a hole in the roof, through which he lept with Saman close behind. Saman slammed the door to the room shut and barred it, while Marken attacked the now trapped commander.

Meanwhile, Cornelius and Kot argued over what to do next. They saw the guards emerge from the tower and watched their allies leap down through the roof. Kot, as befits a war hero, emerged from hiding to blast away at the bandits with his spells. Cornelius followed, almost tripping over his robes as he tried to keep up.

While the fighters made quick work of the bandit leader, Kot and Cornelius were not quite so lucky. While Kot's spells made quick work of the bandits on the bridge between the towers, the bandits on the ground charged and knocked him unconscious. Luckily for Cornelius, he had a trick up his sleeve that let him turn invisible for a brief moment. One Bluff check later, and the bandits fell back to the tower, panicked that the robed figures they saw in the darkness were actually illusions. A second volley of spells from the cleric and wizard showed them the error of their beliefs, dropping one of the warriors. Unfortunately for Kot, a bandit archer hiding on the bridged popped out to knock him unconscious again with a lucky arrow shot. The archer had only a moment to celebrate, though, as the door to the second tower burst open. Marken and Saman, having slain the bandit leader, opened the door from the room, charged out on to the bridge, and defeated the archer. Cornelius healed Kot (again!), while the bandit on the ground scrambled up the ladder to safety.

At that point, the session ended. We had an hour to play, but got through most of the first fight. The bandits shut their tower tight, and now the PCs must force their way in.

So, that's what a (short) session of honest to goodness 4e looks like. We had some fun roleplay in the exchange between the fighters and the bandit leader, and Cornelius freaked out the bandits by turning invisible. Lord Geldon is a fun guy to play, and we had some funny moments in the Welcome Wench before all the swordplay.

As a DM, I find myself doing more random, kind of crazy things, like having a player make a Bluff check to see if the bandit mistakes him for an illusion, or using the skill challenge to determine the bandits' level of readiness (it ranged from barely paying attention to organizing a thorough search of the area; the PCs were about half-way to completely alerting everyone when they attacked).

Anyway, I thought everyone might be interested in seeing what a 4e adventure looks like. IMO, and I *am* biased, it felt a lot like a good mix of how I handled things in 1e/2e and 3e.

sigil_beguiler wrote:

Mearls, how seemless would you say the skill challenges you used were in context to rest of the adventure.

Could you for example, have a partial skill challenge, and after say a failure enter a combat-situation then afterwards continue on with a skill challenge?

Also thanks for posting, always fun to read the campaigns/adventures the developers are having

The skill challenge was completely seamless. As the fighters crept up to the tower, I told the players they were now in a skill challenge. That was the only diversion from the game and roleplay it involved. I asked for checks, the characters tried different stuff to remain hidden (like Kot's spell to distract the guards), and so on.

The repercussions of their failures were nice and organic, and I think that's key. For example, early on the guards on the tower argued over whether they had heard anything, and when the PCs climbed to the roof the commander was in the middle of ordering a guard patrol.

Admittedly, most of the players are in R&D and have experience with the game, but I think that most groups will hit this stage early on. The key as DM is to weave the effects of the challenge into the narrative. The first few times it'll be a challenge, but I think with practice it becomes more natural.

Skill challenges are designed to cover a wide range of time periods. For instance, you might create a skill challenge for a PC who wants to win membership of a guild. You might allow him one check per day to represent his attempts to earn membership, and things like completing adventures that help the guild earn automatic successes.

You could also build a challenge that allows for the chance of combat. For example, one challenge might be to disenchant an altar dedicated to Juiblex. If the PCs rack up too many failures, or maybe even after X number of checks, succeed or fail, a few oozes and jellies emerge from cracks in the temple's wall to attack the intruders. The fighter and wizard have to hold them back while the rogue and cleric work together to ruin the wardings that give the altar its power.

In many ways, the skill challenge mechanic is a new way to organize and handle bookkeeping for a series of skill checks. IME, it's very flexible. I'm really excited to see what sort of thing DMs do with it.

Ditto!

Thanks,
DZ