Google Wave, and Magic/D&D

I'm super stoked about the Google Wave invite I won from Asmor on his blog, Encounter-a-day. He ran a contest where you had to convert Magic: the Gathering monsters into 4E D&D monsters. It was pretty fun, and I got to use some old favorites and a new one from 2010. I think Asmor'll be posting them on his blog sometime soon.

Anyway, I've read a bunch of stories about the possibilities (and realities) of playing RPGs by Wave and I'd like to see if I can get in on one. I've hardly had the time to even look around yet, but maybe tonight I'll try to see if I can get a hold of someone running a game.

I even saw couple of my contacts already had invites, so that's cool. I'm not sure what it takes (just time?) to get invites, but I'd really like to get some long distance friends together to try some wave games.

In case you don't know what Google Wave is, check this out:


Or you can watch their insanely long (1:20 mins)preview video here.

Wow. I want a trampoline wall. (saw this on neatorama)

Harry Potter D&D

Since I'm pretty sure not one of my players has any idea about a campaign arc or even what happened in the last game, I decided that once we finished the Well of Demons in under Thunderspire mountain that we would switch to more of an episodic delve format for our game.

This past weekend I didn't end up having much prep time so I pulled out an adventure that I'd been eyeing since I first saw it. Danger at the White Lotus Academy is so Harry Potter it's ridiculous, and my players had already been introduced to my Gilderoy Lockhart inspired Prince Erethan of Therund.

Anyway, the adventure as written had four combat encounters and one skill challenge, and I knew that our group can only get through about 2 combat encounters a night. I had to shorten it.

I ended up dropping a fight with poltergeists and doing something a little crazy with the garden fight. Instead of running a normal combat encounter, I sketched a very rough drawing of the encounter area after describing it. I then described what each player saw based on their perception, and asked what they wanted to do. Not everyone got it right away, but we managed to pull off an almost completely narrative combat in less than 30 minutes. Narrative! Mostly roleplay! It was awesome.

It was a lot of winging it, but I had page 42 of the DMG open the whole time, and a general idea of the enemies abilities and defenses. I after everyone described their actions for a round I would summarize and describe some consequences, make some "attacks" and then let the players take more actions. I tallied up successes and failures and took away healing surges for failure. At one failed roll I gave a decision: fail on the attack or take the status effect on yourself as well. I loved this encounter, and I'm going to probably do more this way in the future, just fit a whole delve into one game night for us.

I also toyed with the idea of tweaking monster stats (-25% life, +33% damage, or something like that) to make fights go quicker but I didn't end up doing it. I might in the future, just to see if it makes a difference. I wish I had time to run a mock encounter myself to see how it would work.

Things I learned:

• Solos have too much life. I REALLY have to tweak their HP.
• A choice between a negative effect missing is WAY better than just missing.
• Skill challenges are wicked hard for me to narrate/figure out. Need more practice.

Oh well, never enough time. Guess I'll run more games for my son. :)

Exit Thunderspire

So I don't forget about/lose it, here is the connecting email I sent out to my players before saturday's game. I was going to run Danger at the White Lotus Academy (requires DDI subscription), since 4 of my 6 players are Harry Potter fans. I'll do a recap later.

Our heroes defeated the evil Maldrick Scarmaker and learned (by shamelessly rifling through his personal belongings) that he was in fact a worshiper of Orcus, Foul Demon Lord of the Undead! The ritual he nearly completed would have not only rededicated the temple to Orcus, but opened up another rift to the shadowfell for countless undead horrors to spew out. After giving his ritual book a careful read through, Aderes managed to extract a few rituals for the two Eladrin to learn: Water Walk, Hallucinatory Item, and Last Sight Vision. Intrigued by the possibilties of Hallucinatory Item, Darkguard found a small, previously hidden alcove. Inside was a pair of patchwork leather gloves whose peculiarity was only heightened by the opalescent shimmer of the stitchwork. He surreptitiously slipped the Gloves of Eldritch Admixture into his pouch.

The party headed back to the Seven-Pillared Hall. On the way Dakkon cajoled his new pet Triceratops into following along, and two tieflings attacked (and were subsequently killed by) the party. Hoping to return to the Hall as much-heralded heroes, the party was bummed out by the disappointing deadness of everyone in town. Prince Erethan and his party had managed to save a good number of residents by holing up in the Church of Erathis, but casualties were still very high. Fortunately for Dakkon, the previous owner of the dino (Ulhand Deepgem) perished in the fracas. Borris was so sad about this (Ulhand was the only non-evil dwarf Borris had met in years) that Ulhand's daughter gave him her father's old adventuring armbands. Engraved with really freakin cool geometric symbols, like any good dwarven metal, the armbands had a small inscription on the inside: To my snookums. Love, Vanya. Iron Armbands of Power, Size:Dwarf. Sirius made it through no problem, unless you count the horrid zombie smelling gas he had for the next week.

After a few hours of rebuilding the Hall, Prince Erethan left. He said he was bored, and keep up the good work everyone! A few months of work later, a small shining yellow bird landed on the doorstep of the halfmoon inn and politely asked for the party. It stated that it was sent by Prince Erethan and that the headmaster at the White Lotus Academy had requested his assistance. Though overcome with consternation, (at this the bird frowned most peculiarly), the prince stated very clearly that he was indisposed, fighting very important giants and evil fairies and such. In his place, he figured six other people (our party!) might do more or less as well. As a gift for being so helpful, the bird produced 6 signed copies of Erethan's newest memoir, Cold Iron and Hot Steel: A Hero's guide to the Feywild.

So, bored out of their minds with restoration work, the party gladly accepted and high tailed it out of the Seven Pillared Hall, into the fresh air of freedom!

Building Characters!

This Veterans Day we had scheduled some serious game playing time, and the way things worked out that meant me playing D&D. Which is awesome.

A couple of weeks ago I killed off my Dragonborn Warlord just so I could ruminate over a new character, and ruminate I did. Hours and hours spread across many days formulating character after character, and imagining the fantastic adventures they would go on (well, mostly the awesome amounts of damage they would do). Some of my favorite ideas were:

• Elven Samurai (two-sword ranger re-flavored to just be really speedy with one sword)


• Half-Orc Whip Fighter (dragging flail + whip training + a rogue in the party means lots of easy targets!)


• Minotaur Warden/Ranger (discarded when I realized twin strike uses dex when you use heavy thrown weapons. Might try building a fighter/ranger with Cleave and Deft Hurler Style later to see how close that is to what I was wanting)


• Human Fighter with HUGE Hammer

I had a couple restrictions, in that the party (Paladin, Rogue, Sorceror) needed either another defender or a leader. With that in mind I wanted to either go BIG damage or lots of attacks. I think I would have a great time playing any of those concepts, but I ended up choosing a different direction; Gnoll

Cleric of Melora.

I figured she'd be a blast to roleplay (though we don't really do to much of that) and gnolls look really cool. Also, I managed to fill a need (leader) while still managing to do good damage (battle cleric with proficiency in the waraxe).

I got to get some good play in with her, and got to pull off a couple Turn Undeads and a Ferocious Charge or two. That can do insane damage if you're bloodied. I like the built in encouragement to be bold when you're hurt.

Anyway, lessons learned from being a player again for a bit.

• Missing on encounters SUCKS. Like nothing else. I'll try to nudge my players into making sure they have combat advantage (or some attack bonus) before they try them in my game.


• You can't tell when the DM makes stuff up! I love that...


• A stunned PC is very unfun. Whatever else I do, I'll try to stay away from depriving PCs of their precious standard actions. Penalties, OK.

I probably learned some other stuff but I've already forgotten it, so does that even count? I'd guess no. I guess that means most of school doesn't count either.

Gamer Culture?

Excessive self-reflection/meandering to follow.

I was listening to my Pandora station based off The Advantage (here's a link) this morning and loving it, as always. Rock bands playing 80s video game music (and sometimes just straight up tracks from games) just seems like the best thing ever for me; I think it's the Pandora station I listen to the longest without getting sick of it.

It is also the Pandora station that most other people think is stupid. I don't blame them, it probably does sound weird. But not for a gamer.

I realized then that gaming is my culture in a really deep-set way. Its not really that I want or need to play games at all times, but I appreciate their existence and enjoy things with clear game influences (game related food stuff not included). I don't actually get much (video) game time in anymore, but it doesn't matter. I still keep up on gaming news sort of like my mom still keeps up on Finnish news even though she's been in the US since she was 18. It is also why a place like PAX feels so great. There I was surrounded by my people. It was like revisiting the freakin' motherland.

A strange part of it is that the gaming culture has changed and is still changing. I'm sure if my kids grow up enjoying games they will have completely different view of what constitutes gaming culture. The music is certainly different in games nowadays. And online interactivity or even multiplayer is a larger and larger component of gaming as a whole. It sucks that being a gamer now means knowing what teabagging is.

The best part was the strong sense of belonging I felt when I thought of this. Not like I'm actively looking for something to belong to, but I think it's a pretty powerful natural urge. Anyway, I tend to just surf through my day until something strikes my fancy and then I get revel in the sensation or the concept. This was one of those things. Trees blowing in the wind is another one that gets me though, so take that as you will.

The Proving Grounds

Well, I am a colossal failure at National Blog Posting Month. Oh well.

Saturday night the party faced the green dragon (random!) guarding the inner sanctum of Baphomet's temple. The traps didn't harm anyone very much, and a good dungeoneering check from Emlyn allowed them to quickly figure out the Doom Sphere and how to avoid it. Dakkon and Borris put some serious hurt on the dragon, but Emlyn really stole the show with some cool stunts. She stabbed both her swords into its neck and managed to hold on as it flew through the corridors and was blasted by a couple attacks. Then she blinded it and jumped off as it clawed at her and dove back down its pit. The the whole party focused fire on the rock above the dragon's pit and buried it beneath tons of rubble. Epic. First real solo fight went well, I think, though the Doom Sphere really helped make the Dragon more threatening.

For the actual Inner Sanctum battle I prepared the map ahead of time with dungeon tiles and sticky tack, as well as some Heroscape tiles to add height to certain parts. I think the final effect was pretty cool, so I'll probably be doing it more in the future.

The constructed map.

The setup, minus conspicuously absent Barlgura.

This went pretty well too, and I even managed to drop a bunch of characters in one fight without making it a TPK. Maldrick Scarmaker was pretty threatening, but not overwhelmingly so. The Barlgura was an awesome threat, and I finally remembered to use the Evistro's bite and bonus to combat advantage, making them credible threats as well. Anyway, the party managed to rescue the slaves before either one was sacrificed in the ritual, (DC 24 arcana was pretty stinkin hard for Maldrick to pull off) so the day was saved well and good. Aderes' Flaming Sphere made a strong showing, as did an extremely effective and timely Command from Awendella. Maldrick did not fare too well after he was forced into a vat of boiling...stuff. I was also particularly proud of the party focusing all their attacks on the Barlgura once it showed how dangerous it could be. When they decided it was time, they took it out like a chump. In the end, Emlyn snatched a magical silver key that gave her mysterious visions, as well as a beautiful elven cloak. Exhausted, the party decided to rest right there. Hopefully nothing nasty comes for them in the night.

Random Stuff

Being that it is National Blog Post Month or something, I'm actually going to try to post something every day. For now, here are the two other places that I've tried to keep track of our DnD "campaign" online.

Obisidian Portal
Google Doc

I think I might continue using Obisidian Portal because the wiki functions could be useful, but I'll keep posting here for other reasons. Whatever I want really. Because who cares.

A couple weeks ago our heroes braved the Halls of the Crimson Whip and the Howling Pillars to collect the last two artifacts to prove their worthiness to Baphomet. They explored a bit of the proving grounds and found the four ritual circles, as well as a pool of magical liquid that, when consumed, granted them each resistance to poison. Super handy, especially since the next room consisted mainly of two pools of poison blood.

There was lots of jumping around and some disastrous splashing, as Dakkon splashed into the first blood pool while carrying Borris on his back. Things might have gone well, since Aderes did summon the ever-useful Floating Disc. Dakkon and Borris weren’t too into waiting though, and made their fateful leap right as the ritual to create the disc finished.

Consequently, the Carnage Demons leapt out of the blood and the giant minotaur statues activated, making any path to the sacred dagger treacherous. The Demons and the warriors trashed about covered in blood, while Darkguard got to work disabling the first of the traps and the ladies made their way slowly to the two pieces of the dagger.

I really meant to get a picture of this encounter, since I bought some Goristro minis to represent the minotaur statues, and used a scrap of crazy red fabric for the blood pools. Ah well.

The Hall of Howling Pillars was no less insane, but I think the battle went much smoother for our heroes. A timely prayer of peace from Awendella stopped the otherwise brutal Barlgura from attacking for most of the fight, thought it didn't save her from being smashed by its last raging blows.

I really liked the random attacks from the pillars, and the teleporting effect especially. The range was such that it essentially scrambled every single combatant to random parts of the map, and it happened a couple times. Besides that, the arrangement of the area encouraged movement. I love it when battles are more fluid.

In the end, the party managed to limp out of the hall with the last artifact (The Bell of Fury's Calling, I believe). Whenever we're able to play next, they'll be facing the the last challenge the Well of Demons has for them, as well as Maldrick Scarmaker.

Because of the time constraint the party is facing (slaves about to be sacrificed, and the seven pillared hall currently being overrun by zombies), there have been no opportunities to take extended rests. As such, some of the party has accepted aid from Baphomet (equivalent to an extended rest) in return for the promise of future payment. Interestingly, Borris and Dakkon refused the boon...we'll see how this all plays out in the future.

I took my keyboard apart yesterday to clean it. Took forever. Would not recommend doing it yourself...I'll probably just buy a new keyboard next time. Psh.

I did enjoy taking pictures of the removed keys though.

Gnolls and Mirrors

With Borris back the party went after the remaining gnolls. Highlights include:

1. Everyone being very impressed by the Barlgura. He didn’t end up being a very effective damage dealer, but he was scary! Also, I got to play around with using a stunt to grab Borris and carry him along.

2. Carolyn being pretty funny with her character’s women’s lib shtick. She kept bugging the female Gnoll Scourge about a rally and how great it was that she was an empowered woman and stuff. Then the gnoll and barlgura knocked her unconscious.

3. Getting everyone to talk to some teiflings instead of killing them.

4. Having cool stuff to give when they searched the Scourge’s room.

The Hall of Enforced Retrospection was an encounter that I was really excited about running, because it was quite different than anything we had done before. Didn’t work out perfectly though.

1. Dakkon’s low will defense and his charge ahead attitude got him sent to a separate room to battle a crazed and starving gnoll alone. He rolled a crit though, and I ruled that since he did more than the creature’s bloodied value in one hit, he took him out. Cool, but ended up boring for Brian since he basically had to sit the rest of the encounter out. I should have been more obvious about how to get him out.

2. Aderes spent most of the battle trying to get Dakkon out of the Oubliette of the Empty Mind, and succeeded on a skill challenge to get him out.

3. Everyone took advantage of the teleporting mirrors after they were identified, and used them to traverse the room. This was kind of cool.

4. Boneclaw skellies exploding a lot. Makes a DM proud.

One problem I keep running into that is hard to get past is not knowing how much info to provide the players. I don’t want to give everything away, but if they don’t get enough info they are just confused, not curious. I guess I’ll just keep giving them more, and see when it gets to be too much. We are just trying to have fun, after all.

Borris' Big Day

So, what did Borris do while the party was slaying gnolls?

I had read that the skill challenge with the ghosts in the Well of Demons wasn’t very fun, and had decided before that I was going to skip it. Borris’ absence allowed for something more interesting, though. I had him encounter the ghosts and be possessed by them, allowing him to play out a couple encounters leading to them finding the Well of Demons. It also allowed me to give the players some hints about the challenges to come, and even a hint or two about a fabulous treasure they could seek out.

Jacque wanted to be a burly dude, so I made her a goliath cleric of Kord. Katrina didn’t care, but I know how much she hates missing, so I made her an elven avenger (basically Buffy the Demon Slayer). I wanted to give Brian something different to try, so I made him a Deva Invoker. Stu just got to play Borris, since he was inhabiting the body of a dwarven fighter. This way he could reasonably get experience to catch up with the group and the others could glean info or even treasure.

Since I was fairly sure that our group could not do more than two encounters (at least not the way we do them now) in one night, I planned:

1. The gelatinous cube random encounter from the Thunderspire Labyrinth book. I like making the gelatinous cube out of jello, and I really liked the hook of the tablet inside the cube protected by wraiths. This would have worked great if I hadn’t created a party of divine characters that immediately annihilated the wraiths. Whoops. I think they had fun though!

2. An encounter with an iron dragon and her vampire minions on the face of thunderspire mountain. I used Heroscape tiles to make this encounter, and that was really cool. Running a solo was a learning experience though. I’ll have to think a lot more about how to that next time. Here I gave more hints to the “fabulous treasure” from the cube’s tablet, and Brian’s Deva ripped a vial containing blood of an immortal from the chest of the slain dragon. Why did she keep it there? Dragons don’t have pockets, silly.

After those fights Borris flashed in and out of consciousness, and caught some glimpses of the challenges that lay ahead. Katrina’s avenger walking blindfolded through a room of mirrors and holding a black mask. Jacque’s cleric covered in blood fighting a demon, and then holding a huge dagger. Brian’s Deva crying out a warning as he was grabbed by a column of bodies and then holding a bell, grimacing. Finally I had him regain consciousness in his own time, with the bodies of his temporary adventuring companions strewn about him. I had each player pick a piece of treasure from the bodies for Borris to bring back to them.

It was pretty fun, I think. J

I played a game of D&D with my almost 3 year old son Finley. It was super fun, and he's MUCH better at in game conversation than I am.

It started because I took him with me to buy some minis. He loved playing with them and wanted to add most of them to his birthday list. I tried to balance shared excitement with a desire to not have to buy a bunch of extra minis because my son mangled them. We left with a couple new monsters, and I spent the ride home trying to explain to my son why a Wrackspawn has no eyes (for the record, he didn't know its name, we just called it a red guy) and whether or not he was a good guy.

Back at home, he was very excited to play this game that I bought little guys for. I said OK, then proceeded to play a whole little adventure without using any guys. Whoops. He didnt' seem to mind, though.

I started by telling him that he was in a small town and a dragon had stolen the princess. No need to get complicated, I thought. I asked what he wanted to do:

Finn-fight the dragon!
Dad-ok, do you want to buy anything before you leave town?
F-a sword. a poky sword (this means a rapier). a purple poky sword!
D-ok, anything else?
F-a zappin thing (i wrote down wand of lightning)
D-ok, ready to go? are you going to take the road, the river, or the forest?

He chose forest, and on his way out of town he was stopped by his friend Tika (yeah yeah, I read lots of Dragonlance back in the day). She told him it was dangerous and that he shouldn't go. He was confused for a moment, and then told her he had to save the princess! I wasn't sure he would even have remembered that. We talked some more and I was really impressed with how he took on the role. WAY better than I do when I'm trying to role play. Throughout the little adventure, he found an adventuring buddy or three, fought giant spiders and found a rifle in one of their webs, hid from boar-riding hill dwarves, and saved the princess. And after many repeated instances of "I want to fight the dragon", he ended up bartering for his and the princess' life with the rifle, which the dragon considered a fantastic treasure. I was so proud of his use of diplomacy to solve the problem, and he can always go back to fight the dragon another day...

Got this from @thekiko. We should set up our table like this...

Fun skill check. Really.

Actually got to play D&D tonight, that's always cool. Had a lot of fun, but somehow had the most fun trying to perform a simple strength check to open a huge stone sarcophagus. We failed and failed and failed, even using levers and aiding each other and even (even still!) after Peren summoned her magical horse to pull on the thing. Ended up pushing it off with a last chance push and a natural 20. Fun times.

Thunderspire Labyrinth - Well of Demons - Gnoll Fight!

The party:

Aderes Orenda, Eladrin Wizard

She likes hitting bad guys with stuff, usually magic

Awendella Arabella, Eladrin Cleric of Corellon

She likes winning, and not getting hit by bad guys

Borris Hardworm, Dwarven Fighter

He likes smashing stuff and saving the day

Dakkon, Warforged Barbarian

He likes turning monsters into red mist, and jumping

Darkguard, Dragonborn Warlock

He likes a spectacle, and outsmarting the baddies

Emlyn Malelia, Half-elven Ranger

She likes twin strike and violence

We last left them catching their breath after a horrific tentacly encounter with the "guard dogs" of the Well of Demons, ancient underground temple to Baphomet. I needed to take Borris out of the picture for the night, but Stu wanted him to do something noble. No tripping into a pit or falling asleep for him. I could have brought him along as a superminion but I wanted to railroad the players a bit so I did something else.

At this point in the campaign Aecris had spoken to Borris a few times, but nothing too obvious to the other players. This time I had it goad him on to rushing south into the temple. Borris thought it was to save some poor trapped slave girl, but the axe really just sensed some ghosts it wanted to slaughter.

Anyway, he rushed south, stone slab crashes down behind him, BAM! Now the others have to head east into gnoll city.

First encounter went great, even after the long hiatus. Emlyn tried to peek in on the two gnolls playing dice in the mess room and happened to peek just a little too long. The gnolls screamed out (much fun going around the group trying to accurately reproduce hyena sounds) and alerted the caged hyenas, a huntmaster, and a bunch of beastman slaves (minions) living the hyena cage. Dakkon charged straight into the two gnoll marauders and stayed there for most of the fight trading blows. Awendella tossed a sunrod down the hall so the party could see the huntmaster and his minions. Aderes knocked a gnoll marauder down on the table with a push from her master's wand of magic missle, and then lit them both up with a column of flame. Darkguard and Emlyn held off the hyenas from the cleric and wizard, and Darkguard pulled off a cool stunt where he knocked a magic torch off the wall into a beastman, immolating him and lighting a previously dark area. When only one of his compatriots remained, the huntmaster fled south, to get some backup. The fight ended (as they often do) with Dakkon splitting the last foe in two and striding epically through the ensuing geyser of blood. Yeah, gross. But those dirty gnolls totally deserved it.

The second encounter was a neat one too. Darkguard opened a door and was instantly attacked by four hyenas, while five huntmasters came out from a door way down the hall and started firing a stream of arrows. Dakkon tiger leaped over the hyenas into the next room and saw a bright blue triceratops (the saddle had the deepgem emblem on it: a diamond with a dwarven D over it) chained to the floor and caged. Awendella fey stepped into the room with him and helped Dakkon soothe and comfort the beast. Meanwhile Darkguard and Emlyn took the brunt of the huntmasters' fire, both falling once before being revived by Awendella and retreating north around the corner to pop out and fire from cover the rest of the fight. A pack of beastman slaves was incinerated by a white hot scorching burst from Aderes. The trihorn flipped Dakkon onto his back and charged down the last two huntmasters, plastering one to the wall as Dakkon brought his enormous blade down on the head of the other.

Again one gnoll escaped, though, and we've got to wait until next session to find out what's in store for our heroes. Hopefully Borris will come back with only a few spectral wounds, and maybe some clues as to the whereabouts of the slaves the gnolls want to sacrifice.