So if you're interested in playing Reavers of Harkenwold, this will have spoilers, but not much in this initial post.
The group was asked by the Lord Warden of Fallcrest to investigate the Iron Circle oppression of Harkenwold, and help out the people there if possible. He also wants them to track down a lost agent, San Humbolt, who also his wife's second cousin.
The group got to Harkenwold and stopped some Iron Circle brigands from burning down a farmhouse with the occupants inside of it. It was a pretty one sided fight. From there they went on to Albridge, the seat of the fledgling resistance, but stopped by the druid grove first and learned that bullywugs were harassing Tor's Hold back west.
They went to the Mallard Inn to get some rest, and some Iron Circle goons made the horrible, terrible, insanely stupid mistake of threatening the group. In one round the wizard simply vaporized two of the minions, and sent the one brigand flying against the wall, breaking many of her bones. The minotaur warden then took out the last minion and the the other brigand. It was messy, there was property damage.
This is where it went off script. They interrogated the brigand and learned about the garrison in the town (which I added on the fly) and set an ambush for them, drawing out most of the garrison to investigate the minotaur who was apparently rampaging around the inn wearing the heads of Iron Circle mercenaries as garish accessories (he is still, technically, evil after all). They made short work of the bulk of the garrison, then tracked down and slew the rest of them at their base.
It took forever for the game to get rolling, partly because we leveled up at the beginning, partly because we were "babysitting" my friend's 11 year old brother, who observed the first encounter or so. That's good, because I want to get him the new Red Box for his upcoming birthday anyway. But once the game got going it went pretty well, especially once the bar "fight" was over.
The PCs paid for the damages, but they went into full on post-Marvin Pulp Fiction, Erik dropped a really nice quote and they proceeded to clean up the bar, investigate the garrison, and lay the trap. I had to reward that with an encounter which, like many of them, they kind of walked through, but frankly they're supposed to be heroes, they're powerful dudes (and a dudette) and they should get to wreck **** from time to time.
Although one of my players expressed a desire to fight a big hulking monster at some point, so I might just have to give them that.
