More home game

Recuperating from the cold-type thing I brought on myself.  Sleep and fluid are working their wonders.  Slowly, but steadily.

Baldwin having a contempletative moment

A bit of an update then, on the home game.  At present, we only have the one running.  It's a small party and we've just hit level 4.  This means we're starting to hit the gaming sweet spot - i.e. a lot of the stuff we do works and we can do major kicking if we have to.  That gives us a bit of extra confidence (or foolhardiness) going into situations and as a result we're more relaxed about trying out new things. 

Roger the Feegle, our Pixie skald.  Normally resident on Baldwin's horns for day to day travel.

I've got a vested interest in this campaign (apart from playing in it) because it is the sole creation of my son.  He does not have a particularly high opinion of Wizards of the Coast's adventure output, so he's built his own homebrew, complete with an entire bestiary.  This is fairly normal.

Where it gets interesting is his encounter design.  He tends to use his encounters a pieces of drama.  There is no such thing as an encounter existing in isolation.  Each is a mini-story.  A bit like a well-structured stage fight, we're learning more about our opponents and our own characters every time we run into people.  Encounter, in this context, does not necessarily mean a fight.  Our last session saw no combat at all.

All this makes the campaign feel very organic.  As a fellow GM I know what he's up to and admire it.  As a player I sit back and enjoy, knowing that whatever Baldwin comes up with will feed into the whole story.  Very satisfying.  What we do has consequences.  Unpredictable ones.

The cthonic water sample we decided to bring with us to examine at a later date might have been a mistake, mind you.  Asking about it has already got us turned out of a shop and brought worried looks from the local high priest.  Now we have to find some way to get rid of the stuff.   That and it seems to be alive and trying to escape.

The boy done good.

A not-terribly-interesting update

Short roundup of what's happening in game world.

Den - the one-shot adventure I am running for a group of 4e novices - has gone well.  They've survived a horrible cult, a deranged halfling priestess and a selection of misguided mushroom people.  They've also acquired a meteorite shard of dubious origin and rescued most of the people they set out to rescue.  Result all around I'd say.  Even better is that the group wants to continue.  Makes me happy. 

Tombs I are confronting one of the more irritating opponents the Tomb of Horrors has to offer.  A gargoyle that turns itself back into impervious stone when you hit it hard enough.  Alas for them, it guards the way to their ultimate quarry, so they are currently surrounding it and waiting for it to come back to life long enough for them to hit it.

Tombs II are engaged in negotiations with a group of pirates as they attempt to make their way to Sigil.  Slaad eggs are involved.  Their tiefling warlord has been notably inventive.  It was her plan to take a brass band and mercenaries to a dock to create a large-scale distraction. 

Our home game is approaching a climactic encounter.  We get to play tonight and I'm looking forward to it.  This is a campaign devised and run by my son, so we're making the most of him before he vanishes into exam hell.

On the practical front, washing machine loaded with bloodstained shirts (fake blood, which I'm assured comes out with pre-washing, although I have my doubts).

Planning session for next years Youth Theatre productions.  With a team of two, it's extremely difficult to get all 150+ members on stage every year, so I think we may have to think again about how we do this.  And find plays.

What else?  Oh, yes.  Replace the burst tire.  Leaving the boot depot of dreams yesterday, I managed to burst a tire and ended up waiting for the AA in a garage forecourt while they fitted the temporary wheel.  All was well and the necessarily slow journey home was rather therapeutic.  Driving through the Dales in the rain is remarkably beautiful.  Soul food - which let's face it, I probably needed.

The home game

The home game is on the go again, which is a source of happiness.  Much as I love my PbPs, there is still something special about playing face to face.  It's the social aspect and the chat and the cheers and groans and general interactiveness that is so wonderful.  Nothing says D&D like rolling out the map, finding the biscuits and using random bits of tat to represent monsters.  We discovered long ago that anything edible is a bad idea.  "I'm sorry, I think I just ate kobold 7".  "Was the paperclip you or the enemy archer?".

Thanks to UK Games Expo and GenCon, we now have many more minis and paper models around.  In theory at least, it should be easier to identify who is who, but despite some serious attempts at labelling, combat is often held up while we hunt for the bag of orcs we know someone put somewhere safe last week.  After 5 minutes or so, we substitute.  "So, these kobolds are rats and the purple worm is a troll.  Everyone clear on that?"

Due to the various family commitments of the original players, the group is currently down to four (five if work permits) and son and heir is GMing it.  He's very good and the campaign is a lot of fun.  Son writes a lot of his own monsters.  I rather like this.  It adds a big element of uncertainty and makes sense of using knowledge checks.

Our group of four contains the following.  Anandor the eladrin wizard.  He lurks.  He lurks really, really well as he has a high Dex and his favourite tactic is to lean against a wall and pretend it isn't him firing magic missiles at minions.

Brian Flowerbuds the battlemind is our melee specialist.  Also, for some incomprehensible reason, our diplomat.  This makes no sense at all as his player nearly got us all killed by the Thieves Guild when we went on a polite visit and he diplomatically offered to fight them all.

Roger the skald is our healer.  As a pixie, he spends quite a lot of time riding around in backpacks, but when the dice start rolling, he charges into battle screaming warsongs.  It's terrifying.  He is clearly a feegle.

His best friend is the satyr pictured above.  Baldwin is a warlock.  His sole ambition for many years was the acquisition of a wine cellar.  Sadly, he and Roger were captured by agents of Vecna and spent some time not quite themselves.  Since their return, they have a strong interest in finding out exactly what happened to them.  They'd quite like whatever it was to not happen to anyone else either.

Thus are adventuring parties born.