The big day arrived, and my 4e game took off. This post will discuss the preparation, character creation, and overall session, as I felt a lot of it started to click together as one giant post rather than a bunch of small ones.
My plan for 4e is to take advantage of all the amazing work that was released - seriously, there are a ton of awesome smaller adventures that were available with a DDI subscription from Dragon/Dungeon magazine. While many talk about Reavers of Harkenwold & Madness at Gardmore Abbey as major 4e adventures (and seriously, this shouldn't be ignored, as they are done very well), I also wanted to take a number of the smaller dungeon crawls and use them to help get things rolling. As a DM, taking these already published adventures gave me a few advantages:
- I didn't have to create the entire adventure from scratch
- I could focus on things like encounter design/monster choices and adjust as needed
- I could understand the general hook and adjust as needed for my players
So, with that being said, I needed a plan for the adventure I wanted to run. Looking through the various options, I found the perfect adventure - Prey for Smiley Bob, by Chris Perkins (Dungeon 205, August 2012). It felt perfect in a lot of ways, the main one being the fact that my introduction to DMing was Chris Perkins DMing the Robot Chicken guys, so taking some of his ideas and implementing at my own game table felt right.
Our initial group is starting off small (3 players). We all built characters together, with me helping to guide the nuances of 4e, since all the players originally started with 5e and have agreed to take this journey with me. We have:
Mari, a female tiefling Thief (Rogue build from Heroes of the Fallen Lands). So far we have little background on Mari, as the player is choosing to focus on the game aspects rather than the overall backstory, though I feel with a few more sessions we can start diving in a bit. I have some ideas of where she comes from and why. Mari's player has also not chosen a Theme yet, trying to understand her character a bit more before making that choice.
Ellywick, a female gnome Artificer Alchemist. Ellywick is an older gnome (~250 years old). Some inspirations came from Janet, the kind granny from Bluey. Elly loves to mix and create new items and things she can utilize to help the group. We don't have a lot of background on her yet either, but the whimsiness of the character helps fill that gap right now. I've also made no qualms about the fact that my dream 4e role has always been an Artificer Alchemist with lots of options to craft, brew, and create - since I didn't get to experience this when I was a player, I can ensure the payoffs now that I'm the DM.
Bree Tealeaf, a female halfling Bard Watershaper. Bree comes from the Riverslye Homestead, a small halfling community on the White River just two miles west of Albridge, in the barony of Harkenwold. She helps kick off the adventure, as she is seeking to help her home and rescue her brother.
I printed off the adventure, which meant that I could keep it in front of me a lot easier than flipping through a book. As mentioned before, I've also printed off a number of DDI articles to start making the digital content available in print for my own reference. This was a great help, as it gave me a ton of notes and things to reference, and it made running combat a lot easier.
Adventure Summary
The adventure kicked off with Mari & Elly being in Albridge. Gerrad, the old, hale halfling speaker was seeking volunteers to help the Riverslye Homestead deal with a bear problem. The bear known as Smiley Bob, due to the scar on his face, had suddenly decided to grab halflings and carry them off. Two halflings had already been taken, and the community was rallying quickly to try and rescue their family and friends. Bree volunteered to go, as her older brother Benton, was one of the halflings carried off. With Mari & Elly on board, the group journeyed back to Riverslye and then proceeded to go to the old windmill where Smiley Bob resides.
Outside the windmill, they spotted six goblins chucking rocks at one another. Bree realized these goblins must be from Daggerburg, a fortified fortress she had been warned about but never seen. They tried to distract the goblins, but ultimately alerted them and engaged them in battle. From the DM's point of view, this was a great introductory fight, as all the goblins were Minions. This allowed me to focus on the use of At-Will powers and how the attack bonuses & damage were calculated, as well as things like Basic Attacks vs At-Will powers - this mattered when Bree wanted to shoot her bow, but her At-Wills were Melee only. All good learning things!
Once defeated, they looked into the ruined windmill and saw three goblin sentries, one of which stood next to a large sleeping bear. The bear was blocking stairs that led to the second floor, and the group engaged these goblins in battle. One goblin tried to wake Smiley Bob, to no avail. Once two of the goblins were slain, the other was interrogated. Smiley Bob woke up, and the group was able to convince him to move out of the way. Bree went upstairs and found her brother and another halfling, Punkin, who told them that the other goblins had left and would be coming back. Just then, the leader returned. Mari and Elly let the other goblin go, who immediately ran outside to regroup with his leader. Feeling trapped, the group decided to try and repel out the backside of the windmill while the goblins occupied things out front.
This was a totally off-the-wall idea, as the images in the adventure don't really suggest that there is a window on the upper floor. Having already run two combats, I wanted to reward the players for quick thinking, as well as roleplaying and coming up with creative ideas (4e is full of this!). They chose to tie a rope to one of the stair railings, and the only checks I made were for Elly to test how stable it would be (Dungeoneering), and then had her descend, with a 75% chance of it holding (due to age). This all worked in the party's favor, and they were able to then get a head start on the goblins back to Riverslye.
The session ended with them noting Smiley Bob was coming towards Riverslye, with the goblin scout party following him, intent on seeking some retribution for their lost prisoners. The group will have to defend the inhabitants of Riverslye and repel the goblins.
Post-Gameplay Review
The group has already set up a date for the second session, and they are all looking forward to continuing. They will all get Action Points to use (having completed two encounters), and I'm expecting this final confrontation to start diving in to Encounter and Daily Powers, which they will need against the Level 4 Goblin Ranger! I'm also hoping they can get Smiley Bob to help them out and make their lives a bit easier.
I'm really happy that Bree had a strong hook to get the adventure rolling, instead of the heroes just showing up ready to help. It's helped give the initial story some heart.
I will say that combat has felt a lot more exciting than my 5e experiences, so I'm glad we're back. Things like Minor Actions, close burst 5, and stacking modifiers was a lot of fun to see the players figure out. I'm not saying these things don't exist in different ways in 5e, but it was cool to see a lot of this at level 1. Everyone also wasn't extremely fragile and could figure things out without worrying about taking 1d6 + 2 damage and dropping.
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