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First session! Sweet.
As you can probably imagine, our first session of 4E D&D involved quite a bit of stumbling and rule-checking - and, simply, learning how $#!+ works. Our two "experienced" players - DM Pete and player Ashley (Calen, Shifter Ranger) - were both over a decade out of practice and had "fond" memories* of THAC0 and other ancient conventions. It was as much a learning experience for them. Pete's first conclusion: "Combat takes a LOT longer... but it's also a lot more fun." Apparently at-will powers like Twin Strike and Eyebite** are more interesting than rolling 1d4 to swing your dagger. Even without the perspective, I'm inclined to agree.
Our original plan had been to use the published "Keep on the Shadowfell" adventure - level appropriate and fully realized, so Pete would be able to get his bearings on DMing before he started getting super-creative. Then we realized that KotS is, in fact, one of the adventures featured in the Penny Arcade podcasts... which meant most of us were already familiar with it, since the podcasts were what got us interested to begin with. A subscription to D&D Insider abruptly came to our rescue when we discovered that each issue of Dungeon includes several adventures - and the most recent ~5 issues have all featured the "Chaos Scar" as the setting for a large number of L1-5 adventures. Salvation!
So Pete asked us what had brought us together, and we asked him what had brought us together, and he explained that the temple of Avandra near the Scar had put out a call for adventurers to help with the evil festering on the far side of the King's Wall. So let's see...
Volk, Goliath warden: yeah, I'll help people in need against evil.
Kerrick, charismatic Eladrin wizard: fame and fortune? Volk between him and arrows? Sure!
Calen, Shifter ranger: as a Walker of the Unseen Path, eager to defeat the Scar's corruption.
Gift, Tiefling warlock: looking to prove himself and his newfound Pact.
Paiya, Half-elven cleric of Avandra: a representative of the temple to watch after the adventurers.
Sweet! It's a group, and we're all interested in facing evil!
Pete's really intent on elevating the role-play element as we progress, but feeding us an adventure for the first few session seemed the easiest course of action to get us into the game and help all of us learn the ropes. Much learning was certainly involved - but so was much getting-into. The afternoon flew by. What happened? Well, from the characters' perspective not a whole lot - we're new at this, after all. But there's definitely an in-character blog post's worth of "happened."
* No one actually has fond memories of THAC0. Some people are just delusional.
** I'm taking Fran's word on this one, since he missed every time he tried to use the spell. But it would have been "totally awesome."
Combat doesn't actually take longer once you get used to it. Personally, I still like 3.5 better than 4th edition, but 4th edition works. It just homogenizes the character classes. Bleh. Skill challenges and rituals rock though.
ReplyDeleteWhereas RPGs like GURPS move closer to reality, becoming tediously realistic, 4th edition moves much further from reality in the interest of game balance. How the heck does a character's constitution make a spell do more damage? How does charisma make a warlord's sword strike hit harder? Makes no sense, but it makes people pay attention to attributes that went ignored in 2nd edition.