We had previously finished our 4E adventure in May 2016. After a short break, we planned to get back into the game in July. It needed some preparation, though.
First of all, there were some staff changes. Both healers from the previous adventure quit, and I had only 4 people remaining. That was unacceptable. Our MAGUS games were frequently canceled due to 1 party member being unavailable, and we had the same problem a few times in our 4E campaign, also. We even had to postpone the final boss fight a session, due to not everybody being present - and I did not want anyone to miss the finale. So I set to recruiting more, and boy, was I successful. The party numbered a total of nine (9!) players on the first day. The plan was that anyone could take a break and not be present, and there would still be enough people to play.
Then we had a debate on what edition we should play. I know that the edition wars are long gone at this point, and nobody on the internet seems to have liked 4E. However, 4E was the only edition I had really played on the tabletop by that point. It was a lot easier to follow than 3E (as far as I could tell from my NWN2 experience), it was cinematic and everybody had loads of skills. But I did my reading. 5E was released in 2014, and it was received positively by the internet - which does say something about it. The conclusion that I reached was that 4E was more combat-oriented, while 5E promised a more balanced experience. With my current experience as DM, I can now say that this was flawed, and that you can play any edition any way you want. I was most likely also biased by the couple of adventures I've played through in 4E, which were mostly combat oriented. I presented my findings to the players, asking them to choose. The balanced adventure won by a thin margin, and so we set our sights to DnD 5E.[1] Looking back, it was a good choice. It may have to do with my own experience as a DM, but 5E seems a lot easier to run.
To the great disappointment of the members of the previous party, I had everyone create fresh, new, level 1 characters.[2] I gave a general presentation of the world and the adventure, but no specifics. Everybody was free to create any type of character they wanted. They knew they were getting into a violent fantasy world, where history was shaped by war, and decisions would lead to gritty consequences.
PCs:
- Groin, dwarf life cleric
- Ireth, wood elf druid of the land
- Khara, human fighter
- Lili, half-elf ranger
- Proton, halfling rogue
- Selene, half-elf wild magic sorceress
- Solid, dragonborn paladin
- Sotocus, tiefling warlock (MIA), replaced by Ren Portgas, kor monk
- Szivem, human draconic sorceress (joined later)
- Tari, wood elf ranger
- Zyn, dark elf necromancer wizard (me!)
Of course, by this point, the presentation of the adventure would be spoiler-free. In short, I had a grand plan. Our 4E off-the-shelf adventure was a classic dungeon crawl, with barely any decision making beyond "what corridor do we slaughter our way through next". This new campaign was supposed to be an open-world/sandbox adventure, with plenty of places to visit and decisions to make. I did a lot of reading through officially published and fan-made adventures, integrating some and making up more, assembling the world like a puzzle. At that point there weren't many 5E adventures available, and so I adapted materials from previous editions. This lead to another major change. Painstakingly transferring everything to 5E would have been too much of an effort. As I later found out, it would have been wasted time anyway, as the number of players fluctuated wildly from session to session. So I didn't have everything laid out in front of me all the time. I mostly had just notes, or annotated material, making up the specific details on the go - a huge change indeed from running through a detailed campaign book. (Although to be fair, when the whole adventures takes place in a village and a nearby dungeon, you don't need that many details. The current adventure that I'm running, Storm King's Thunder, works a lot more like my homebrew than like Keep on the Shadowfell.)
Finally, a disclaimer. The sessions did take place a long time ago. We began taking notes a couple of sessions in, so I'll have to rely on memory for the first few posts. Even later, the notes are sketchy, as the "scribe" was still getting used to juggling playing and taking notes. The pictures we took were sometimes few and far between, especially when excitement for the game overruled the desire to document. And so, dear reader, you will have to forgive me any inconsistencies.
Sessions (links to be updated):
- Intro
- Witch hunt
- Hunger Games
- Resurrecting Groin (guest star DM Dani)
- Meeting Szivem
- How to get sick
- Selene's private encounter
- Monster hunt
- The legend of Solid
- Rescue operation
- The Curse of Baron Gordham (part 1)
- The Curse of Baron Gordham (part 2)
- The Curse of Baron Gordham (part 3)
- Treasure Castle (guest star DM Dani)
- Dwarves and werewolves, part 1
- Dwarves and werewolves, part 2
- Solid's private encounter
- Buca Buca!!!
- Alla strikes back
- Tari unleashed
- Weddings day
- Pink fog (and private messages)
- Return of the Solid
- Pitch black
- Season finale
- Epilogue
[1] Interestingly enough, I took another poll a couple sessions down the line. People who had voted for 50-50 combat and non-combat missed the dynamic encounters of 4E, while people who had voted for more combat were happy with the way things turned out. By that time though, we were committed.
[2] Little did they know that this game would happen in the same world, about 20 years later. I had just one player who created the same type of character (elf druid), and I pitched her the idea to actually be the same character, with a narrative reason to be level 1. She accepted, and so we have Ireth back again.
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