Played My First Living Forgotten Realms Game… Not Impressed

Well I finally had a chance to try LFR this weekend at MetaCon in Illinois and I was not impressed. Earlier this year on World Wide Dungeons and Dragons Game Day I played their demo kit module and had a blast. Honestly the game we played that day was real fun. WoTC butchered the Living Forgotten Realms game. It may have been my dungeon master; it may have been that it was my second time as a player for 4th edition D&D, but I did not have fun at all.

The module I played was called Core 1-1 Inheritance it was supposed to be one round meaning 4hours. There were two tables at the con I could have played at either table. Table one had 3-4 new players and one RPGA regular and a DM I had not met before. Table 1 was still getting players ready for play. Table 2 had four players all ready to go and only one was new to RPGA but had a character; the DM was known to me and was a RPGA regular. I could only play one session and then had a family party to go to at the end, so I chose table 2. (possible spoilers below)

I goofed there. About 1 hour and 45 minutes later we had passed the first “encounter of the game” Table 1 was well onto encounter 3. The DM had a hard time getting the “feeling” of the game across let alone the theme or plot. I don’t want to give stuff away but man was the session laborious I was a rouge because I had a blast with it in the first game I played. Attempting to hurry us along to encounter two we just rolled dice against a set of skills, if you failed a roll the DM took note and then he said we made it to encounter 3. Encounter 3 almost TPK’d the party.

The DM said it was my fault because I did not roll high enough on my perception checks. I’m like, I am a first level rouge I am going to miss rolls at that level. Anyway, we, actually I, set off a trap and we were attacked by monsters that kept dazing and slowing us and essentially turning invisible afterwards while crossbows in the walls kept shooting at the nearest target. This encounter took 2 hours to complete, and by complete, I mean the DM called the combat after the last enemy fell but the crossbows were still shooting at us because we could not roll a natural 20 to to see the location of a lever to turn off the trap. Table 1 was done with the mod by this point. To complete the mod, the DM hurried us to the next encounter with some incorporeal being that was impossible to get to but eventually we beat it. We were all 1st level at the table. It took 4 hour 50 minutes to play. Nobody wanted the treasure and took the extra money instead.

Notes from the game.

1. The DM said after playing six mods there are no extended rests in 4th edition LFR. Apparently it is a mythical beast.
2. No one knew if you could forcibly move an insubstantial being through PC occupied squares, this would have helped us some.
3. I now understand why so many RPGA players are giving up on 4th edition RPGA. The mediocre quality of game writing found in Living Greyhawk rolled over to 4th edition to ruin Living Forgotten Realms.
4. I need to try the game with a different DM before I completely give up on the game.

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