World of Alidor

4e is fun to play, but it seems that you need a computer to set up your character well. I am totally fine with this, but say you are camping and you have a bunch of new players that you want to introduce to the game and no computer for miles. What do you do? Pull out the PHB and go step by step… This is a race; this is a class. If they are anything like the people I tried to get to play, they all get glossy eyed real fast and start asking if they can do something more fun like watch a golf tournament on Tivo. What I say you should do is pull out the Monster Manual (MM1 or MM2 as of this writing) and tell your players to pick one and play it.

I don’t see this as a bad thing and I really did not give it serious thought until my MM2 arrived. After reading through the book, I got to thinking why not use the monster version of the player class instead of trying to build a character from the Players Handbook. Granted, the monster version is far less superior to the PC version, but if you are just running a quick game, I see pulling player characters from the Monster Manual as a extremely fast way to get the game going and more importantly draw in interest.

I figure pick a 7th level or lower monster that represents a legal race from the PHB (PHB1 & PHB2 as of this writing) and keep all the stats like for the dwarf bolter on page 97 of the Monster Manual, or the eladrin arcane archer on page 96 of the Monster Manual 2 and there you have a PC for a player with out all the hassle and confusion of the PHB. I suppose as DM you can craft encounters the same as normal or be too tougher, either way if a PC dies, she can just pick a new monster class and try again.

I understand it totally breaks the system, but after the intro game the players that are interested can convert to the correct way to run a PC from the PHB or PHB2 or PHB3…

I am actually going to play test this with a group over the 4th of July weekend. I tried a quick test run with the wife; she ran a gnome mistwalker page 127 MM2 and a goliath sunspeaker page 136 MM2. She was quite happy with having a couple potions of healing for each character and finding a magic sword and some gold in the dungeon. The game was not that complicated and action points were earned as she adventured (typical milestones and what not), initially she had no action points. She also thought rolling to see when she could use her power next made the combats fun. For instance her goliath gets a sun ray attack that has a recharge rate of 3d6; we converted to 1d6 roll and if it were a recharge rate of 1d6 or less, we rolled a 1d4 instead.

We decided that the experience and gold gained could be used to build a PC the right way but it had to be the same race and we would play again the more conventional way.

I was just wondering if anyone else had tried this out there? Either way, we call this 4e Extreme Basic Play around here.

With my new high level 3.5e game going well, I thought I would let you in on a fun little table I use when the players slay a Tanar’ri, or Demon, or Fiend, you know those creatures native to chaotic evil-aligned planes like the Abyss. I am talking about death throws. Yup the Demonic Death throws table in the Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss, Dungeons and Dragons Supplement, James Jacobs, Erik Mona… It is on Page 9 of the book is great for describing the last blow to a fiend in combat. You could also use it for any big bad guy it is that good. At least in my opinion.

The table is good enough to use in any version of any game where you have a fiend to slay. It came in handy last week during the high level game, by adding some color to the combat. In high level games, single player actions can take forever to complete and can sometimes be anticlimactic, even if the player deals the death blow, but when you make the player roll for a random result and it says the fiend crumbles to the ground into a mass of tiny little beings that fight amongst themselves until there is only one left, which finally disappears in a poof of smoke. Your players can definitely say “that demon is dead Jim.”

UPS guy dropped off my latest 4e purchase today the 4e Monster Manual 2. I have been real busy with plenty of other activity mainly in 3.X versions of this great game. Matter of fact, I grumbled about bullywugs last week, because I could not find my Monsters of Faerun book. I have darn close to all the Monster Manuals from 3.X except MM5, which I almost bought but then WotC said they were coming out with 4e and me being a wise consumer of the game, decided to not add another 30 or so dollars to the grand I had already spent on books for 3.X. Yup I was being frugal and I figured I had enough monsters to last a lifetime with the books I already had. Until last week…

Bullywugs from the vast swamp in Greyhawk, you’d think a beast described in the core game world of Greyhawk would be present somewhere in those first four monster manuals or in the Feind Folio. Nope, it was in the Monsters of Faerun. The original 1981 version of the Fiend Folio had them. But hey I am happy with the 4e Monster Manual 2 why? Because the bullywugs is back. That’s right and in a core book, not some floozy pre-generated uber marketed gods are dead, gods are alive again world specific monster manual.

Hey I am very happy with this version of the Monster Manual 2 but not enough to sing about it but if you do want to sing visit rpgcentric.com he has a great bullywug song post. They also put in silver and gold dragons which are common in Alidor. Less work for me for my home game now. yeah! Oh and centaurs Monster Manual 2 has those too, though I will still keep my special centaurs that live in Jelling.

Now where should I place bullywugs in Alidor…

My high level run on Tuesday night went quite well. I had 5 players with an average party level of 17 and I wanted a fun and challenging encounter, so I could see how well the group syncs during combat. Since the game is going to last through the summer, I wanted to start by building up group confidence and cohesion. I wanted a dramatic but easy combat. I used d20 Encounter Calculator from the Pen Paper and Pixel website to help (great job who ever wrote it). The generator is for 3.x versions of the game and is extremely useful. It said four CR9 monsters, one CR12 monster, one CR13 monster and 4 CR16 monsters, for and average party level of 17 would be easy and that is what I wanted and that is what I ended up with. Encounter distance is another way to give combat advantage to the players, I started the group at 130 feet on an open field. If you want to screw with players you shorten the encounter distance to absolute minimum. Since that was not my plan for tonight I stuck with 130 feet.

Encounter starts: 2d10×10 feet away (130ft)
1 Charnel Hound MM3 P26 CR13 running among the fallen
4 Goristros HoAbyss p40 CR16 holding pyramid chariot
4 Bulezau HoAbyss p32 CR9 pike men on chariot
1 Thredra the true necromancer Libris Mortis P53 CR12 calls out to parley to party on his turn

The plan was for the necromancer to monologue on his turn in combat which would give clues about the story for the later parts of the game. Now I know why “boxed text” is important. Usually the players are not allowed to interrupt “boxed text” which is a way to force story hooks on a party. I did not have any “boxed text” for this part of the game. It was a subtle mistake on my part, but from the cheers around the table as the general of the undead army was essentially detonated by multiple “force energy” spells from three players who all had higher initiative than the necromancer made the goof worth it. I will have opportunities to bring in the story line next session via another bad guy.

For the first combat I had placed the “general” on top of a multi-level pyramid shaped sedan chair being carried by the goristros all the other fiends were on the sedan chair also. The players at the table started joking about my dreaded general’s sedan chair after I described the necromancer as an extremely fat man sitting on a throne of gold. They kept saying it reminded them of Meet the Spartans (2008) which I had not seen. I was imaging the fat guy sitting in the bucket loader from Barb Wire (1996) for the general.

They took care of the general and his fiend guards in about 3hours of combat, and had a blast doing it. I nearly killed two players twice. The story continued via “boxed text” with the players leading an army south slowly over three days dispatching the remaining undead forces (bullywug zombies) until they reached the ruined Village of Bren, where they met up with other NPCs and roll-played for a bit with the innkeeper, his wife and his two daughters who were all vampires, but the players were so caught up in roll-playing dialogue and dinner with the troops who had followed them to Bren, that the party paladin had not suspected anything out of the ordinary, until late into the night. Shortly after the third watch started the players spotted the inn keeper’s daughters fooling around with the soldiers who were sleeping in camp with the party. The guys all thought teens. Get a room… But a decent spot check keyed into the fangs. This time the party dialogued with the vampires before dispatching them, and found clues for the next part in the series of dungeons. Everyone had fun.

On another quick note, I asked the DM of our Keoland adventure, if I could set up an encounter with the hag that captured our party last week. He said yes. So during the wait for players to arrive, I ran a quick encounter which included the “lead-in” hook to my high level game and also ended up freeing the 1st level PCs from the hag. Neat thing was 1st players “kill the hag!” 16th level players “lets use some diplomacy the hag.”

Well tonight I get to try running a high level game for a group of players I have never been able lure into my home game. They are strict RPGA players, and rarely play any other version of the game except that half the players refuse to try 4e. The good news is that I am not stuck DMing a traditional 3e RPGA module, I just have to hit some key points in the story arc for each game, otherwise I am free to create my own story and combat until I reach the Tomb…

The bad news is that they want me run the Tomb of Horrors. Not the best module for inspiring players into joining your home game, especially when they are RPGA players, and their characters have 3-5years of game play under their belts and are coming out of RPGA retirement just to play the module series. In all my years of playing and running the Tomb of Horrors, the parties have always had a negative survival rate. I had one group quit the module deciding to go off and fight drow or illithids instead of exploring some trap ridden tomb in a swamp. Most other groups in the past followed this typical pattern: Find tomb, die, recover, die again, recover and completed the dungeon, often cursing a lot along the way.

My plan tonight is to ease them in with basic all combat game with some interesting atmosphere like battles in storming, windy weather followed by grand parties which lead to bleak discoveries of things to come. I hope they have fun. It will be about three 4 hour sessions before they actually reach the Tomb.

Here is the last sketch of my first 4e group of players. This is the dragonborn fighter Keiman the Axe run by my 5 year old son Owen. Now 4e is definitely not a kids game but owen still had fun, though he enjoyed playing with the minis at the end of the game more than actually playing the game. Keiman the Axe was a community owned PC. Different players ran him at different times depending on Owen’s interest.

Keiman followed his mother’s character and retired in Yatton.