LEGO Denuvien takes on a regular mini

Playing some 4E with some friends, will ramble about the experience afterwards!

Oooh, lego demon?

I'm sure according to lego this is an alien fire monster, but it looks like a demon to me...or maybe a fire elemental...I guess my players will find out soon enough...

Inventory

Our rogue, slightly oddly, is a little bit poorer than everyone else in the party.  

Our rogue never sells her gems.  She keeps every single one.  

This affectation suits her character well, since our "evil" rogue isn't very evil.  She gets along well, more or less, with the good and neutral party members.  She rarely kills people for kicks or giggles.  But if you told her that you hid a gem inside one of these 101 cute dalmatian puppies, you'd suddenly find yourself knee deep in puppy guts.  (And if you suddenly went all Cruella De Vile and decided to make a coat, I wouldn't bother, I'm sure the skins would be missing.  They are valuable after all.)

I can easily imagine her opening up her gem bag next to the fire, staring at the shiny rocks inside, her heart speeding up... all of her coldness to people being burned away by the firelight reflecting in her most prized possessions.

So that's not surprising.  What is surprising is what's happening with the player.  She keeps her inventory in a little notebook, and she has a page just for her gems.  I'm absolutely sure that if that notebook went missing, she'd be just as upset as if she'd lost the real gems.  (Also, since we play with Lego, if I put an actual lego gem down on the table, and she "finds" it, then she keeps it.)

Anyway.  I don't track inventory for my players.  And I don't really care about inventory much in our Lego game.  I don't care about it, because we aren't playing DnD as a survival game.  I think there's a lot of axis that you can plot types of DnD games on.  Wargame vs Interactive Storytelling, Railroading vs Sandbox, etc... but a big one is Grand Adventure vs Survival.  Our Lego game is definitely far, far into the grand adventure trope.  A small group of adventurers trying to save the world from certain doom.  It's them vs the world, so I want them to feel, and have, a lot of resources.  That's why it's okay that our barbarian has 15 swords and maces and spears.  She can't sit down, but whatever monster comes around the corner, she feels like she's prepared.  

Contrast this with a survival game.  In a survival game I'd care a lot about inventory.  And about loot.  In a survival game, every little decision has to matter, and careful preparation has to be key.  This puts a burden on me as a GM though too.  For one, I have to enforce that stuff.  Or at least make sure my players know I want it self-enforced.  But more importantly, I have to make an appropriate challenge.  The stakes may be huge, but the road the adventurer's travel has to be narrow.  

The full moon came out.  One of your companions is a werewolf.  Run.  Hide.  Survive.

The world will end in 4 days unless this object is placed in the center of this dungeon maze.  

In the Lord of the Rings, Gandalf and Aragorn were on an adventure.  Frodo and Sam were surviving.  "Go here, destroy the ring.  You have 4 lemba loaves, 2 daggers, and an elven chainmail vest.  Good luck."

The new Chima line has some pretty cool weapons.  My greedy loot hungry players claimed them (without even knowig what they were) as soon as I set the minis down on the map.

I escape being shamed, and my players encounter Vornheim for the first time...

Had a momentary panic that I accidentally named this blog "DND and Legos," which, of course, would have caused me incredible shame.  Thankfully, I didn't do that.

So, on to our adventures...
Our team stumbled onto a sorcerer opening a way gate to the elven homeland, and while they managed to slay him, they didn't do it before he got the gate open.  They quickly looted his still steaming corpse and ran for it before elven armies poured through into our dimension.  Among his sorcerly possession they found a book, which they lacked the skill to read.  Upon finding someone who could read it, they discovered that they'd need three other books to close the gate (because who puts their closing spells with their opening spells?  That would just be silly.)

So they are looking for the three books they need to close the gate and banish the elves (again.)

Hence they come to Vornheim.  If you aren't familiar with Vornheim, you can read about it, and buy it, here.

Vornheim is a city kit put together by Zak over at DND with Pornstars.  Previously I'd only used my own hand crafted campaign materials, and Paizos, so this is my first foray into 3rd party stuff.  So I want to talk a little bit about Vornheim as a campaign aid, then lego a bit, and I'll mix in the events of our game to illustrate my points.

So, some things about Vornheim.  It's not written for Pathfinder.  If you're playing Pathfinder, or 3.5 or 4E, it's not written with you in mind.  That said, it took me about 10 seconds to get the jist of what Zak was going for and make some modifications so it worked for us.  And keep in mind, I'm fairly new at this whole DND thing, so I'm sure most DM's could make it work between breaths.

In fact, my favorite thing about the module is that it's very very easy.  And the odd thing about that is, it's easy because of the things it leaves out.  A couple of times I found my asking "How is this supposed to work?  Does he event tell me how it's supposed to work?" and then, instead of trying to find page 113 graph B section C which may explain the minutiae of how it's supposed to work, I just made it work.  I can see how some people that would be a game breaker for them, but for me, the freedom of knowing "there may not be a rule for that," felt freeing rather than restricting.

Anyway, so my players walk north and find the strange city of Vornheim.  The mountains it is located in aren't generally known to be particularly cold, but around the city they've been transformed into a dark and ominous tundra.  They decide they need to find an inn, ask some questions, take a nap.

There happens to be a table on Inns (I didn't actually look for it, it just happened to be open when they asked about an inn), so I rolled up an Inn for them to stay at.  They quizzed the locals and drank rancid beer.  Our rogue won 40 gold playing pool, and was gifted a pool ball, wherein they found a mysterious key.

Sleep was had (with only a small inter dimensional interruption), then off they went to the most likely procurer of books, The Library of Zorlac.  Of course, the Library of Zorlac isn't a public library, but that didn't stop them from sneaking around looking for the book they want.  Puzzled were solved and fights were had, and our casters have so far avoided burning the place to the ground...

Awesome MOC

Check out this amazing LOTR Inn of the Prancing Pony that was posted on Reddit.  Someday my set pieces for DND are going to look like this.. someday when I'm richer...

I couldn't find the original MOC'er, so if anyone knows who actually built this beauty, please comment.

Awesome Fantasy Minis in Series 9

If you're more into the DND side of life (as opposed to the Lego side) you may not know about the mini-figure blind packs.  They come in little baggies that look like this:

Each little packet has one minifigure.  The series 9 figures look like this:

Which include a bunch of awesome figures for DnD.  I'm particularly in love with the gypsy and the little cyclops.  You can buy the blind packs online all over (Amazon Link), but for our purposes I'd either buy them in the store, since with a little work it's easy enough to feel through the bag and buy the figures you actually want, "blind pack" be damned.

Usually the bags sell for about 3 bucks, which is about the average price for minis, but with the blind packs you can often find  the more common figures cheaper, since collectors buy the whole box to get the rares (which we DND players may have no interest in), and then sell off the commons cheap.

The "Forest Maiden" and the "Heroic Knight" fight off a LotR troll.

Also, I need to read more random gaming blogs, like this one.

I just NEED to make that War Litter out of Lego, and sick it on my players...

Back-story is your friend

I had a great moment last weekend that, at least for me, proved the maxim that "A solid backstory is more useful than a million stats."

We only had two encounters:  One, a random encounter while journeying... and the dice (well, an online random encounter generator) selected... a young green dragon... I quickly decided his motive was simply hunger, quickly read his stats, and we're fighting... and I'm reviewing stats.... and we're fighting... and I'm looking over abilities... and we're fighting, and I'm trying to decide if my players creative solution might work... back and forth, back and forth.

The second encounter was the one I "planned."  And by planned, I mean I knew my players would be heading to talk to NPC-Z, to get information about Macguffin-X*... I wanted to use the lego bride minifigure, and I wanted an NPC that was probably friendly, but had a weird twist and could go badly for the players... I remembered another bride (Zack Smith's Hollow Bride), so I stole a lot of the idea from that, and decided that NPC-Z had been replaced by an interdimensional traveler who really really wanted to socialize and make friends, but who had a really nasty temper and would freak out and revert to her natural form (the hollow bride) if the players offended her.

The face of evil-ish.

So of course the rogue looked up her dress.  And got caught.  And couldn't bluff her way out of it.

Battle ensued.    

There were 7 creatures involved in this battle, and figuring out what they'd do and why, was about 100x easier than the "simple" dragon battle.  And in both situations I spent about 30 seconds looking over their stats, but in the latter, I knew why the monster was doing what she was doing, and that meant the stats were secondary to the story I wanted to tell, and I worked less.

So note for self:  Next random encounter, spend an extra minute and make up a quick backstory.

*The gang found an elvish wizard, he managed to open a planes gate between earth and fairy.  They managed to kill him and steal his tome, but they don't have the skills to understand it.  They took it to the NPC who explained she needed 3 other tomes to figure out how to close the gate (of course.)   I know, Troperific.  

Chess

I just saw this chess set over at my favorite DND blog (NSFW, sometimes) and it really threw me... it's a completely normal chess board (same number of squares) but the varied heights make it look much more complex, and my brain defaults to "higher is better."  It would be interesting to make (and play) on a board with the actual important squares higher (ie, highest at the center) and see how that changes people's play.

Best Lego MOC ever

If you're any kind of Lego fan, you have to go check this out:  Mini-Fig Scale Serenity.

If I ever manage to build anything that awesome I'll be able to keel over and die afterwards in complete satisfaction with my life.  Make sure you flip through all the pictures (there are many), the interior shots of the kitchen, cockpit, and bedrooms are absolutely fantastic.

Great table for when a player misses a session

I'm putting this here, so I never ever lose it again.  (Zack's site is generally not safe for work, but this direct link SHOULD be okay... no blaming me if you just can't wait to get home and open it at the office and get fired... although, if you do, can I have your job?)

Er, sorry, anywhere, here it is:   Where the Hell have you been Flake Table, at DnD with Porn Stars

Review of Shelob Attacks

Eurobrick has a great breakdown of the build, so I"m going to skip it, and jump right into talking about it as a DnD mini's set.

So, first off.  Hobbits.  Well, Halflings, since we're playing Pathfinder or DnD, but let's not quibble.  The important thing here is that we have short little guys with curly hair.  That makes me happy.  I don't have anyone playing a halfling in my current campaign (sadly), but now that I have a dozen of these little guys, they may meet some.  

The set comes with 3 minis.  2 halflings, and Golum.  Golum is pretty... I dunno, strange.  Kind of harmless looking and withered and strangely adorable.  I'm sure I can find some purpose for him (for some reason he reminds me of the treasure goblins from Diablo 3, so maybe I'll make my players chase him around a map for ages?)  

The Hobbits are hobbits.  The new curly hair is great, and I'm always up for some new capes and short legs. They each have a sword, although Frodo's is curvier.  I'm pretty sure "sting" isn't a unique model, but I'm always happy to have more stabby bits.

There is also a little "cave" thing.  Yay map flavor bits.  Nothing to write home about, but it won't go unused either.

The real joy here is the spider.  Shelob is awesome.  I almost passed on this set, because I have two of the spiders from the Harry Potter series, and why have another big spider?  Giant spiders are a little "meh" in my mind to begin with, so I wasn't sure I wanted to invest in another one.

But check it out... it's HUGE.  And scary looking.  It could eat the Harry Potter spider (whose name escapes me) for lunch.  I'm going to have to save this bad boy for a truly epic encounter somewhere down the line, because it's just too awesome to waste.  

Shelob towers over Sam and Frodo, and the ruins of our last game.

Shelob is making a light snack of the Harry Potter spider.

DND 4E Tonight

I gotta say my buddy Andrew does the best role-play voices ever.  Fat Marlon Brando as a disturbingly sexy 600 lb fishmonger?  Yes please!

On the DND Starter Box

I'm playing DnD 4E with some friends on Sunday, and using the starter box to roll up a new character...

The "Choose your own Adventure" thing is cute, but can also be a little confusing, and I think it would be easy for new gamers to miss important stuff...

For instance, my rogue apparently gets "Bump and Run" which does normal damage and moves my opponent 5 feet away from me... so far so good... but then it also tells me I can move half my normal distance away from my opponent... is that part of my regular move action?  or part of Bump and Run?  It's unclear in the book... maybe it's clearer on the little cards?  Would a new gamer think to look there?

Hmm... okay, healing surges, fine...

Alignment... man... if Alignment and I were on a long drive, and she (alignment) was bitching about her boyfriend (Wizards), and showed me this, I'd tell her to break up, move on, he's just not that into you... For the record, I'm of mixed feelings on alignment myself.  I see it as a role-playing aid.  That is, if noting down on your character sheet that you're "evil" reminds you to stretch yourself and "be evil," then more power to you.  But as a DM and player, I'm not going to enforce (or even set up) your evilness.   Which brings up something else... check this out (I scanned it, because I want to make sure you believe me...)

Okay, I understand that, for new players (and new DMs) Good characters are (a lot) easier than Evil ones.  And I understand that some players read "evil" as "I get to be an asshole at the table and nobody can call me on it," but that's got nothing to do with evil pcs, that has to do with assholes at the table.  If you have asshole at the table, ask them to leave.  Evil PCs can work way more often than rarely.  Poor, poor alignment.  You just aren't loved anymore.

Okay, fewer skills than Pathfinder, but they make sense, the book explains them well enough I guess... no problems there... the little skill check in the book is cute enough (poor dying goblin...)


Hmmm... my rogue gets 12 Reflex save + my dex modifier... but the character sheet says the base is 10... I assume the other 2 is a class bonus?  No way for me to know for sure... 


Hey, I get 2D6 added to my attack rolls when I have combat advantage!  I wonder what that is...


I guess I'll figure it out when I play...


Okay, so the Choose your own adventure thing is cute, but it took me an hour to wander through, and I did it ALONE.  The Pathfinder starter is less cute, and sometimes a little more confusing, but at least it wasn't designed to isolate you from your friends.  It just seems odd to me, to make something that's designed to be done alone, to kick off such a social activity as DnD.  That said, it works, I have my rogue ready to go for Sunday night! 

Never bring an Ostrich to a Druid fight...

We managed to play for a few hours on Friday night.

Our intrepid adventurers were standing in a dark hallway, with a large door at one end... from behind the door came scratching sounds... like the scratching a cat would make... like the scratching a cat the size of a small elephant would make... but that's where they left...

If I were a mean DM it would have crashed it's way through the door before Friday nights game, but that'd be mean, and I'm categorically against mean DM'ing, so it was still scratching away when we started.

They made the wise decision to leave, and when they ran into a group of Deep Gnome guards they gave themselves up, which, in true Return of the Jedi style, brought them right to a crazy old king, who made them participate in an underground ostrich race for his own amusement.  

The rules were pretty simple, but I think if I do another race I'll change it a lot...

So, first off, the rules as I ran it:

Everyone starts with a D6

For every 5 points of Ride or Handle Animal you get +1 to your dice rolls

Heavy armor drops you 1 dice (so from a D6 to a D4, etc)

Being small let's you move up one dice.

At any time you can move up one dice, but have a chance of falling off

At any time you can move up 2 dice, but have a bigger chance of falling off

You can move down one dice for a 2 ac bonus and +10 to perception.

Combat works as normal, the Ostriches, however, are well trained racing mounts and won't attack.

There were 4 riders on the players side, and 2 riders on the gnomes.  If the players win they get to ask the king for a boon.

And this worked well, everyone had fun, although it went completely differently than I expected.  Primarily because only one PC had to finish the race, and there were only 2 gnomes competing against them.  So 2 pcs raced, and 2 pc's stayed behind and locked the gnomish competition down.  (Fighter killed one, druid did a sexy Ostrich dance to distract the other's mount.)

So the other 2 had no problem waltzing through the traps and other minor encounters of the race track.

If I were going to do it again, I'd make everything bigger.

Every starts with 3D6.  For every 5 ranks in Ride or Handle Animal you get another D6.

You lose a D6 (or 2) for heavy armor.

You get a D6 (or 2) for being small.

Etc... so instead of moving up 1 or 2 squares, you'd move up... a lot... or down, a lot... 

I'd also have changed it so if one player wins, that player gets a boon, but anyone who beats the gnomes gets a prize... and I'd have more gnomes... at least 4, maybe 6 or 8... 

Our rogue and Barbarian running the gauntlet... we ended up setting the starting line off to the side with the druid and fighter boring the gnomish competition to death... 

They also fought a slightly leveled up Bulette... and rolled 4 20s in a row, and completely destroyed him.  

The "Bulette" is actually a Megablocks Dragon... I won't tell if you won't.

And now for something completely different...

I swear I'm going to review the DND 4e box, but I've decided I want to DM the starter mission from it, before I review it.  So I'll have to dig up some victims, actually put the starter box through it's paces as it's meant to be used, then review it.  I think that's fairer.

I'm also working on reviews of the Lego Lord of the Ring sets (tl;dr: They are awesome).  I've managed to acquire all but two of the currently released sets, so you'll probably get a big rush of reviews.

In the mean time, check out my friend Jamie's podcast.  It's all about British History, and it's brilliant, and it's highly inspiring, particularly in keeping my medieval campaign medieval.

The British History Podcast

On the Pathfinder Starter Box

Both Paizo and Wizards of the Coast make it really easy and inexpensive to get started playing their respective RPGs.  When we were trying to decide which game we wanted to play, it quickly narrowed to DnD 4e or Pathfinder for this very reason, but then we were stumped... which one did we want to play?  What was included in the box?  How good is the stuff in the box?  Is it really all we need to play?  Luckily for us, our local game store (Guardian Games, if you happen to be in Portland, Oregon) had open boxes, and let us paw through them.  I know that's not an option everyone has, so I wanted to do some quick reviews.

So I'm going to look at the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box today, and sometime this weekend I'll do another post about  Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Roleplaying Game: An Essential D&D Starter (4th Edition D&D).

The Pathfinder Beginner Box is really impressive.  It's regular price is 34.99 (You can buy it here, direct from Paizo), but you can usually find it cheaper on Amazon (linked above), so it's a little more expensive than the DnD box, but the contents, in my opinion, are completely worth it.

The (slightly abused) contents of my Beginner Box

 A quick run down of the contents:  4 pre-filled character sheets (Warrior, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard), and a few blank sheets.  A full color GM guide.  A full color player guide.  A two-sided plastic battle map (one side has a cavern for the starter adventure, the other side is blank).  A set of dice.  Paper monster cut outs with plastic stands.

The GM guide and player guide have all the information you need to play to level 5.  There's a truly impressive amount of information here, from a healthy variety of monsters (with the corresponding paper tokens), to a robust feat list, item list, even adventure seeds and tips on writing your own adventures.

Two things really jumped out at me from the moment we opened this box:  The first was that this set is really meant to get you excited about the game, and playing.  It's really a complete game unto itself.  If you run high lethality adventures (you know, the kind where you don't make it to level 6...), then you never have to buy anything other than this box.  Yet, it's all very accessible.  I'd played a grand total of one gaming session before opening this box (A game of Call of Cthulu which we completely derailed and killed a god, was awesome), and yet I felt right at home when we opened this up.  It doesn't present itself as anything more complicated or intimidating than monopoly.  It's appears to be just another game with all the normal accouterments.  I'm tempted to send a box to my mother, without telling her it has anything to do with DnD, and see what she does with it.

The other thing that really stands out, is that it is a quality product.  Everything is full color.  The books are solid construction and heavy paper.  The plastic mat is, well, a plastic mat... I expect it to live more or less forever.  The paper monsters and player tokens are full color, and printed on a heavy stock.  Barring being stepped on or drowning in soda, there's no reason to expect them not to survive regular use.

It all just adds up to a really solid opening salvo.

To be completely honest, I love this beginner box.  In fact, I love it so much that I was slightly disappointed to see that the box's clean designs and style aren't carried over into the GM guide and Player Guide.  I assume the box was done after the big books, so I have hope that future revisions of the books will be more similar to the box, because I think the box is hugely accessible, in a way that the books aren't (although, by the time you invest in the books, maybe they don't need to be.)

About the only thing I think could be added, maybe (I'm of two minds about this) is something along the lines of the "power cards" that come with the DnD Box.  (I'll do some more comparing of the two boxes later this week.)  On one hand, I can see the advantage of having simple reminders for new players.  My group is pretty mellow and helpful, so we helped each other remember what powers and feats we had, but simple reminders are nice.  As a GM, I've began writing down monsters abilities on 3x5 cards, so I have something simple to refer to when I need a quick reminder.  On the other hand, I can see how cards could cause players to get into the "video game" mindset, of "these are my options" and lock them out of the creative cheating, er, thinking, that makes pen and paper RPGs special and fun.

Have you used the Beginner Box?  Any thoughts?  Feel free to tell me in the comments, particularly if you disagree.  I'm so in love with this thing, I'd love to hear from people who hate it.

Paper monster tokens, on their plastic clips.  I was too lazy to count all the monster tokens, but there are a lot... 

The selection of monsters is really impressive.  

Pretty Character sheets.  I was a little sad when we printed out some of the official character sheets from Paizo, and they aren't the same.  I really like these.

Lego Lord of the Rings Set Review #1: Gandalf Arrives

If you're into Lego at all, you've been looking forward to the LotR sets.  If you're into Lego, and a huge fantasy geek (like moi), then you've REALLY been looking forward to these.

Local toy stores have started putting the sets out of the shelves (our local lego store says they'll have them next week), so I'm going to be picking them all up (of course) and doing short reviews of them.  I'm doing the review thing a little different:  I'll review them as lego toys, and then as their use as DnD/Pathfinder/etc minis.

The first set I picked up was Gandalf Arrives.  It's the least expensive set (I picked it up for about 12 bucks), but it's quite a bit of bang for the buck.  

Boxed

The unboxing, with the reveal of the awesome new horse.

The set, built.  I love the mass of stuff overflowing the cart.

All the accessories laid out.

Okay, review time.  As a lego set, it's great.  Two minifigs, a new poseable horse, and a ton of random little accessories is all great.  The cart thing has been done before of course (I think I have at least 3, and I'm missing at least 1), but this cart has a unique build, with some great custom touches.  (I love how Gandalf sits off to the side of his bench, and how it all overflows.)  I think it would have been pretty easy to get away with making a generic cart that was good enough (in the movie the cart isn't particularly unique or exciting), but Lego did a nice job making it exciting and interesting, but still accurate.  I was worried that Gandalf wouldn't be able to sit on his cart without removing his cloak, but it seems more flexible than most, so he sits beautifully without removing it. 

As for using it as minis:  12 bucks for a horse, wizard, halfling, and cart, seems pretty awesome.  I'm also a big fan of backpacks (It makes me want to make one of those "treasure goblins" from Diablo 3 and run it through my pc's... any tips on making that work in a fun way?).  I have tons of barrels (they occasionally show up on the wall at Lego stores), but they're great flavor for dungeons, so the more the merrier I guess.  Another Asp is useful, it's basically another monster miniature, but can also be used as a weapon or staff topper.  I'm a big fan of books, and they're fairly rare (mostly just from the Harry Potter series, as far as I know) so I'm pretty happy to have another.  I'd love a few hundred of them so I can build a library dungeon set up.  I've yet to find a good use for carrots, and I'm no sure about the fireworks, but I'm sure they'll come in useful for flavor somewhere. 

This has nothing to do with DnD or LoTR, I just love my little comic book motorcycle cross over...

A quick preview of this week's bad guys:

Cloaker

Dark Creepers and Stalkers

The gang just entered the dungeon, ready to go

Reddit Dinner Party

We FINALLY were able to play again last Saturday!

As I previously noted, I was inspired by (read: completely stole from) this thread on Reddit, wherein people submitted descriptions of dinner party goers.

Let's back up just a little bit though, before we get to the chaos that was the dinner party.  A reminder of where we we're at (I should have reminded my players where we were at, after the long break... apparently they don't spend hours reviewing their notes before each play session like I do... ).  Our party had just ventured from the newbie starting zone of Sandpoint into the great metropolis of Withersea, a magocracy with a strange form of non-government.  Withersea is a coastal city, but it resides on a cliff 300 feet above sea level.  An island exists just off those cliffs.  On that island is a tower, so tall that it's spires vanish into the clouds.  Three bridges extend from the tower and across the gulf into the city, and become the city's three main thoroughfares.  Often, sometimes every day, sometimes every few days, a swarm of identical servants cross the bridges into the city, and buy ... things.  There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to their purchases, they just buy, paying in solid gold coins, and then vanish back into their tower.  The entire city of Withersea is built on this commerce.  The servants rarely speak, and they never divulge information of any sort about the tower, however, on occasion they have come bearing instructions about the governance of Withersea.  They never threaten or suggest any consequence for failing to abide by their instruction, but such is the power of their commerce, that their rules have always been followed.

Our heroes had barely set foot in the city before they were recruited (actually drafted) away to combat a rebelling Baron (The Paizo module "Tower of the Last Baron," a mission which they concluded successfully.

They've returned to town, and although their mission is a secret, they're the secret guests of honor at a dinner party, held by the Lords of Withersea.

So there were are, we're caught up.  My players are walking into a fancy dinner party, rather out of their element.

All of the guests, at our lovely dinner party.

Against the right wall you can see "Lord Reddit," the silent host of the party.  For some reason I decided he's a leprechaun.

 You can read my complete notes here (WARNING: my players should NOT read this)  Withersea party guests.  I took quite a few liberties with the characters that Reddit came up with, to fit my campaign settings and drop my plot hooks.

Okay, so two big failures in this, and one "failure" that probably really isn't a failure.  The first:  I didn't remind my players what a unique setting they were in.  I assumed they'd be asking specific questions about the city, and they didn't, so some plot hooks weren't picked up.  No big deal, they'll get them later, but it did make playing the scene less fun than I'd hoped.

The other was that I overestimated my abilities to have the NPCs interact with one another... I didn't want the PCs to wander around the room chatting with each NPC in turn, picking them clean, then moving on... I wanted a dynamic room where things happened outside of the PCs locus of control, and I just BARELY managed that... my real failing was just having too many NPCs, and losing track of who was who.  If I had to do it again, I'd probably drop 4 or 5 NPCs, and give each NPC a flag with their name on it.

And the non-failure, was that my characters were just a little lost and didn't really pull as much information out of the NPCs as I expected.  However, all of the PCs have crappy social skills (game state wise, not real life wise), so that actually maps out okay... they were a bunch of adventurer's stumbling around a fancy dinner party, just as they should have been.

So what did work:

I think the most interesting thing I did was to have social groups form at the party, with each group changing over time.  So my PCs were interacting with, at the most, 4 NPCs, not the whole room full.  This also meant there were conversations happening that they weren't a part of, so they had to pick which group to talk to and which groups they could afford missing.  This also helped me keep track of who was who, and what was going on.

I also had some NPCs with costs and benefits associated with hanging out with them... The best example was the NPC that my players fondly referred to as "Mr Stinky"  (Baron Kleiner, I think, in the Reddit thread).  An extremely wealthy man with a fondness for adventurer's and their tales, who was not fond of bathing, but loved alcohol.   Each time my players chose to join his group, he made everyone drink (which could cause you to pass out if you drank too much), but if you could get him to like you he'd award you with a random gift to assist you in your adventures.

He also traveled with the elven whores, which one of my players enjoyed a little too much, and left with, and was promptly robbed... gotta watch your back with those random hook ups...

I also had some scripted events... my players caught a pickpocket, and chose to let him go in exchange for some insider information about the Tower of the Magus.  I have a feeling that will come back to haunt/help them in the future.

If I had to do it again:

I'd drop a few of the NPCs.
I'd script out a major conversation topic/conflict for each little group for each "hour" of the party, so the NPCs were interacting with each other, and the PCs could jump in .  I overestimated my abilities to keep track of who was who and all the relationships, when I should have just said "At 9pm in Group 1:  Major Smith will start a loud argument with Lady Rose about nosy adventurer's sticking their nose in other's business."  Sandboxes are great, and all my notes about who hates who may come in useful in the future, but I could have made my life easier.

My players did get the major plot hook and did go stab some stuff, so I'll post about that next.

I'm not dead...

Had some non-DND weekends, but we're playing again Saturday!

Working on a really really long, complicated adventure for Saturday's (and on) Pathfinder game.  A whole module really.  It's crazy... I'll post it on the Blog sometime this weekend...

It's inspired by this thread on reddit, and is going to be awesome.