Introduction
I have finally decided to tell the story of our 4E adventure! OK, so in fact, this was the 3rd time that I started this adventure. The first times were a lot of fun, but the adventuring groups did not stand the test of time and disbanded after only a couple of sessions. This time, I found (founded?) a persistent group of daring adventurers!
Impressions
Nothing to hide - I was still a beginner DM. As such, even such a pre-constructed off-the-shelf adventure presented its difficulties. Luckily, my players also lacked experience (even more so than myself), so we had embarked on a common journey of discovery (or some other such grandiosely sounding nonsense). However, by this time, being the third try, I was already reasonably familiar with the setting and NPCs enough such that I didn't have to look everything up all the time. I had time to concentrate on what mattered - the roleplaying aspect of it all. I dare say that I did manage to spice up the pre-written dialogs with some flavorful details.
The party
Left to right:
- Sure Valla, half-elf paladin
- Random, tiefling rogue
- Ireth, wood elf druid (and her animal form)
- Nixi, gnome wizard
- Alla Hootwise, shifter warlord
- and a later addition, Thrall, wilden shaman
We started with 5 original members, then took on another Leader-type character when the warlord had to miss a session. Next time I had a party of 6 on my hands, so I had a first, rough introduction into encounter balancing and adding monsters. Later, there were 4-6 players available at any time, so I had my share of work. It served me well later on.
The adventure begins
At first, we were much too excited to take photos. I'll insert map overviews instead. And of course, there was nothing to keep track of all the witty comments, inside jokes and the rest of the fun. I'll write down whatever I remember - although the first session was around a year and a half ago.
Note that the adventure was a free product made available by Wizards of the Coast. You can look it up and research the mechanics underneath. I am only presenting the chain of events from the player's perspective.
Sessions
