Deluvies Montagnes
Last night we gamed. Duh. Wendy was out, so Nick, John and I hit the home of Montezuma. Rolled up some characters for his Frostfell-esque home brew and headed out. Nancy the Teuton joined us.
The party ended up being a drow elf fighter chic (Nancy), a human barbarian (John), Goliath Barbarian (Nick), and human warlock (me).
With monster die rolls, Nancy's character has the best abilities amongst us. That, combined with her fighter feats lets her presently have a potential AC of 22, improved disarm, sleep in her scale mail, and I forget what else. Not to mention all of her drowey goodness. Strong character once she learns to play it. Last night was her first time.
John's barb got the worse rolls of us, so he's just dumb and mildly strong. He weilded his great axe to some good gob smashing enjoyment, though.
The real powerhouse in the party is the goliath, though. That bastard's large great sword does 3d6 + 5 damage, and with Cleave, he's hacking down two enemies a turn. Watch out at level 6 when he's at two attacks + possibly having Great Cleave. Sheesh. I think his body count last night was two gobs and two wolves.
Mine was two wolves and a gob, cause my 2d6 only rolled about 7 once, and my d20 consistently rolled 2 less than what I needed to hit with my ranged touch attack (weapon focused AND point blank shotted). That's sad considering I needed a 4 to hit the gobbies and a 3 to hit the wolves. Yep, that's right. Thrice I rolled a 2 and once a flat out 1. Blows mighty chunks in a five round combat.
To Nancy and John's credit, Cragwalker (goliath) and Morganoth (warlock) were acting as scouts, so we had two full rounds of combat before the other's made it in.
Improvements we need? Armor for the goliath....BIG TIME. Sure, he's got 39 hit points, but we don't have a healer, and with an AC of 10, everything's gonna hit him. And tactics for the elf. That's really just an issue of Nancy learning how to play, though.
As for the game itself, I gotta give Monte props for the detail. Very novelesque and VERY easy to picture the setting in your head if you pay attention. For those of us with ADHD, paying attention gets tedious, though, as all that detail makes for very long winded descriptions. Not a real problem, though, cause he understands and allows us ample time to ask questions. Good style.
The only problem is, much like my campaign, the world exists primarily in Monte's head. I run into this all the time as a DM. The questions the party *should* be asking don't get asked, because I've not given them enough information to know they should be asking. It's not that there's not enough information, it's just not the right information. How to solve this? I don't know. The width of gamer experience makes it hard. Some people could benefit from a Q&A session wherin the DM just lays a large local and/or world map out, gives a run down of the area, and the players pump him/her for info. Other players just want the map and a fact sheet/write up. Some would benefit from a short story about a local character of importance. Still more would completely fail to take advantage of any of those opportunities and just expect the DM to interrupt a potentially stupid action with a comment along the lines of "Your character knows that such an action is an extreme social faux pas likely to land his ass in shackles."
Granted, part of the excitement of a new campaign is getting to explore a new world and a new imagination with a new group of people.
Above and beyond all of that, good times. The obvious recommendation from everyone is, learn the rules. But we knew that going into it, and this was a quick shot for Monte's benefit, so he could figure out what rules were the most important and what have you. With our group, advanced combat will be big, magic won't. Sure, my warlock can use pretty much any magic item in the world whether it's race, class, religion, sex, alignment, or shoe size specific, but that's the briefest of sections in the magic item/skill use chapters. The only spells Monte needs to be fully prepared for are those his NPCs cast. Skills, feats, and travel/weather are gonna be his biggest concerns for awhile.
Good stuff all around. How frequently we play is all that's up in the air now. I get the sense that Saturday nights are gonna still be primarily my campaign, but I could have read that one wrong entirely. Personally, I hope so, casue I'm so excited about the shit that I have planned. Guess we'll just see where things go from here. I could reasonably see game night consisting of my campaign 2-3 times a month, Nick's once or twice and Monte's once or twice, specially in months where we can get a Friday and Saturday night in. I'm not opposed to that. Just don't know if everyone else is up for that much gaming.....
Oh yeah, and I'm officially a ranked DM for the RPGA now. Go me.
The party ended up being a drow elf fighter chic (Nancy), a human barbarian (John), Goliath Barbarian (Nick), and human warlock (me).
With monster die rolls, Nancy's character has the best abilities amongst us. That, combined with her fighter feats lets her presently have a potential AC of 22, improved disarm, sleep in her scale mail, and I forget what else. Not to mention all of her drowey goodness. Strong character once she learns to play it. Last night was her first time.
John's barb got the worse rolls of us, so he's just dumb and mildly strong. He weilded his great axe to some good gob smashing enjoyment, though.
The real powerhouse in the party is the goliath, though. That bastard's large great sword does 3d6 + 5 damage, and with Cleave, he's hacking down two enemies a turn. Watch out at level 6 when he's at two attacks + possibly having Great Cleave. Sheesh. I think his body count last night was two gobs and two wolves.
Mine was two wolves and a gob, cause my 2d6 only rolled about 7 once, and my d20 consistently rolled 2 less than what I needed to hit with my ranged touch attack (weapon focused AND point blank shotted). That's sad considering I needed a 4 to hit the gobbies and a 3 to hit the wolves. Yep, that's right. Thrice I rolled a 2 and once a flat out 1. Blows mighty chunks in a five round combat.
To Nancy and John's credit, Cragwalker (goliath) and Morganoth (warlock) were acting as scouts, so we had two full rounds of combat before the other's made it in.
Improvements we need? Armor for the goliath....BIG TIME. Sure, he's got 39 hit points, but we don't have a healer, and with an AC of 10, everything's gonna hit him. And tactics for the elf. That's really just an issue of Nancy learning how to play, though.
As for the game itself, I gotta give Monte props for the detail. Very novelesque and VERY easy to picture the setting in your head if you pay attention. For those of us with ADHD, paying attention gets tedious, though, as all that detail makes for very long winded descriptions. Not a real problem, though, cause he understands and allows us ample time to ask questions. Good style.
The only problem is, much like my campaign, the world exists primarily in Monte's head. I run into this all the time as a DM. The questions the party *should* be asking don't get asked, because I've not given them enough information to know they should be asking. It's not that there's not enough information, it's just not the right information. How to solve this? I don't know. The width of gamer experience makes it hard. Some people could benefit from a Q&A session wherin the DM just lays a large local and/or world map out, gives a run down of the area, and the players pump him/her for info. Other players just want the map and a fact sheet/write up. Some would benefit from a short story about a local character of importance. Still more would completely fail to take advantage of any of those opportunities and just expect the DM to interrupt a potentially stupid action with a comment along the lines of "Your character knows that such an action is an extreme social faux pas likely to land his ass in shackles."
Granted, part of the excitement of a new campaign is getting to explore a new world and a new imagination with a new group of people.
Above and beyond all of that, good times. The obvious recommendation from everyone is, learn the rules. But we knew that going into it, and this was a quick shot for Monte's benefit, so he could figure out what rules were the most important and what have you. With our group, advanced combat will be big, magic won't. Sure, my warlock can use pretty much any magic item in the world whether it's race, class, religion, sex, alignment, or shoe size specific, but that's the briefest of sections in the magic item/skill use chapters. The only spells Monte needs to be fully prepared for are those his NPCs cast. Skills, feats, and travel/weather are gonna be his biggest concerns for awhile.
Good stuff all around. How frequently we play is all that's up in the air now. I get the sense that Saturday nights are gonna still be primarily my campaign, but I could have read that one wrong entirely. Personally, I hope so, casue I'm so excited about the shit that I have planned. Guess we'll just see where things go from here. I could reasonably see game night consisting of my campaign 2-3 times a month, Nick's once or twice and Monte's once or twice, specially in months where we can get a Friday and Saturday night in. I'm not opposed to that. Just don't know if everyone else is up for that much gaming.....
Oh yeah, and I'm officially a ranked DM for the RPGA now. Go me.
posted by Amazing Shafeman at 8:29 AM
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