It was a fair fight

Friday night game review.
It was only four players tonight, so they were down one Wizard and one Ranger (slash rogue), I couldn't change the fight they had just walked into at the end of the previous friday game, so I just went with the encounter as it is written in the module I am using,
The general situation was that they had walked into a reasonably open yet oddly configured room, with areas of deep, otherworldly darkness roiling in set areas, and stocked with two Hook Horrors, an Umber Hulk and a Beholder... well, the Hulk and the Horrors were Shadow versions and the Beholder was a Frost version of the Eye of Flame variety.. but yeah, it was four medium sized humanoids vs four Large Monsters.
Although the start of the combat did not go too well for the player characters, with the Warforged Barbarian (Cog), getting grabbed and partially masticated by the shadow Hulk, they quickly rallied and charged in, setting up strategic Marks to hamper the selective fire of the Beholder, hacking the Horrors to bits slowly but surely and pouring a ton of heals into the Toe to Toe fighter types.
The players at one point, towards the end, were quite shocked when the Tiefling cleric (Mallet) announced he was all out of anything but basic healing.. of course, they were slightly more shocked when the cleric healed himself by drinking the blood of one of the Hook Horrors.
Turns out he is a descendant of an ancient line of psuedo vampires.
Anyway, the players managed to Triumph.
They were tickled by the treasure they found, another odd creation of mine.
It is an animated Fullblade (great big sword), that projects an image of a warrior named Tensendor, who animates the sword by appearing to carry it around and use it. The illusion is real to the sword, but insubstantial to everything else.. it can also use a special ability to transfer a condition or some ongoing damage effect to anyone the sword has wounded during the current combat.
Fun and kooky items are a favorite thing in my games.
The players also found a strange box, which is made from Adamatium, can only be opened if you know exactly what is inside, and is really heavy.
I have no idea what they are going to do with it, but I have warned them that the original owner, according to Tensendor the Sword, only had it so he could protect it, and he never actually opened it.

I like Kobolds, they are small, craven, puny and devious creatures, but, they are also the absolute masters of the art of traps, and while I could throw a small army of these creatures, in basically any configuration, at my current party of six level 13 adventurers.. the outcome would always be a large pile of very dead Kobolds.
But of course, that is without the traps being in the scenario.

Now here comes the cunning plan.

The Dwarven Paladin character, Cobalt (corrected spelling of the name this time), has been given a divine mission by his God Erathis, one of the bits of the mission is to find the individual called Fistenfoe... The player doesn't know it yet, but Fistenfoe is actually the most ingenious Kobold Artificer that has ever lived (hell, he has eight levels in the artificer class!).
Unfortunately, getting involved with Fistenfoe means getting caught in the middle of a war between two rival Kobold tribes, one of which is in service to a powerful dragon.
While Fistenfoe is an unbelievably skilled maker of traps and devices, his opponents are tactically brilliant, and highly skilled at the capturing, breeding and training of pests, oozes, horrors and assorted gibbering nasties, which they use to great effect.
The details I have yet to work out, but there is plenty of material on Kobolds that has been released for 4th edition already.
I just have to come up with some truly diabolical traps and some rather interesting variations on vermin, oozes and constructs for later deployment.

Should be fun!

Game Prep.

It's Friday afternoon, the game starts in around two hours or so, and I have to prepare.
I have the location all mapped out, I have an idea of who the bad guys are.. but I have reached a point which I know, historically, has been a weak spot of mine.
I have tended, in the past, to create lairs, dungeons or complexes in a way that seems logical and built by someone who has some idea of what they are doing.. and I have discovered that this is NOT a good method for RPG games.
Here are some of my new guidelines.

• Traps are placed in obviously places that one would suspect, and they are never of the type that only a trained rogue has any chance of disarming or disabling, also, they can always be avoided entirely with a little bit of effort.
• The lair, dungeon or what-have-you never has only one entrance/exit.
• No sliding walls, pit traps or any other kind of structure is capable of splitting the group up, unless it is for a very short period of time (and never involving combat situations).
• Much like short and memorable NPC descriptions (the guy selling the hotdogs with the huge, warty nose and pet parrot, for instance), the rooms, corridors and other features must have a short description, and the important bits are always mentioned last.. For Example, "The spacious room with the heavy oak crossbeams a foot or two above your heads, draped with thick, dusty spider webs, small, oily sconces shed flickering yellow light on a green/grey raised pool of water, so large it almost takes up all of the 20 foot square floor.. moss covers every flagstone and creeps half way up the masonry walls, it looks icky and diseased.. the murky pool smells foul and ripples on the surface indicate that there is something moving beneath the slick surface. The is a half open oak door directly across the room from you, beyond the pool."
• Boss fights happen in bad ass locations, they don't spring out at the group in the middle of a corridor or in a simple 10x10ft room.. exciting locations make for exciting fights.
• If all you players know that walking five feet above flowing magma is most certainly lethal to anyone wearing full plate, chainmail or whatever... then don't ask them to suspend their certain knowledge of real world physics and thermodynamics... magma is really, really hot, and lots of it produces some really nasty physical conditions.
• Simple things are fun.. Oozes, rust monsters, kobolds, magical swords, dragons and hoards... everyone wants to kick the door in and lay blades to the bad guys, then steal their stuff.. it is a large part of why we all play this game, after all.

There are other rules.. but for the start of tonights game, I am looking at the entrance to the dungeon and thinking "How can I make this just one entrance out of a possible group of entry/exit points?"
The answer is that I am going to have at least a couple of portals in the dungeon, the main entrance is a tricky one.. it looks like a stairwell that leads to an elevator, the elevator box has three wheels for operating a mechanism.. one makes it go up and down, the next makes a trap prime and spring on them, the third cranks down a panel and reveals a door handle, which opens the rear of the elevator to the actual corridor behind it, on the main level of the dungeon.
If the players just go down the lift, they are still in the dungeon, but have entered from a lower level.
I have decided that this is going to be a repeating design theme of the dungeon, and that the whole place is really ancient.. thousands of years.. but built big and solid, from quality materials and enchanted to withstand the weight of years.. so, lots of odd statues, strange treasures and weird room features (I mean, the Romans built rooms for vomiting after/during banquets.. what would you think that room was for if you had no idea before you walked in there?).

Anyway.. better get started.

The Friday Game

Here are the basics.
I run a Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition game, set in the Forgotten Realms, on Friday nights, from 7-11 pm, there are six players.
The game has been going for a while now, currently the player characters are half way through level 13.

There is a lot of back story, but I shall attempt a summary.
(Obviously a montage would be vastly better, but, this is a blog and animating that sort of thing is beyond me at the moment)

Back Story.
There was a group of adventurers who attempted to rediscover the ancient kingdom of Thar in the Moonsea region of Faerun (in the forgotten realms setting), most of them lived, some did not, almost all of them went off to live less exciting lives.. only the Dwarven Paladin is still actively adventuring.. he has acquired new companions along the way.
During the adventures, the world changed abruptly and dramatically, twice.. out of the story, the Dungeons and Dragons game morphed from 3.5 to 4th edition, and then the Forgotten Realms setting was released for 4th edition, so the game itself adapted to this and continued throughout.
The situation at the moment is that the world of Faerun is undergoing the Spell-Plague, it is set just after the death of Mystra, goddess of magic, and the world is in chaos.. the adventurers have uncovered a plot by some villains located in the Shadowfell to disrupt the lands of Luruar (the cities of Silverymoon, Everlund, Sundabar and the Dwarven citadels), they are now travelling through the Shadowfell, hot on the trail.

The Player Characters are..

• Kobolt, Dwarven Paladin of Erathus (and now his prophet in the land of Faerun), Lord of Vaprak's Fort.
• Lan, Eladrin Blood Mage (and avid blood collector), High Magus of Silverymoon.
• Arno, Elven Ranger (and aspiring rogue).
• Gyrax, Genasi Shock Trooper (a heroic fighter, currently very popular with the Genasi community within Luruar).
• Mallet, Tiefling Warlock (lost scion of an ancient Tiefling bloodline with a dark history).
• Cog, Warforged Barbarian (former guard protector of Lord Methrammar of Silverymoon, now sworn to service of High Magus Lan).