Last weekend, I started a 4E campaign for my son Nolan and his friends. The plan is to take them through the entire Keep on the Shadowfell module, and then probably into Thunderspire Labyrinth, with possible detours into various level-appropriate Delves, or something from Monte Cook's awesome new project, Dungeon-a-Day, if it makes sense to incorporate it into the campaign. This is concluded from Part III.
There
were still a few kobold minions left in the room, but they hadn't been
able to get at them because the wyrmling was blocking the way. I
decided that they'd need to make a morale check after seeing her fall, but I couldn't quickly find a reference to that in the rules. I decided that I'd make a roll against their Will on d20, and if they rolled higher, they made it. I have no idea if that was the "right" thing to do, but it kept the game moving and gave me some mechanic to determine if they were shaken by seeing this wyrmling, who was essentially their leader and master, felled so quickly. I rolled behind the screen, and all but one of them failed the check.
"These guys shriek in fear and run down the hallway," I said. "This guy, though, seems resolute, and he charges toward you."
The wizard was next in order, and Nolan's friend who played him pointed at
the attacking kobold and said, "Magic Missile!" Ah, it was as if Jim
Darkmagic himself had joined us. It was a hit, and all that was left
were the minions who were running away from them.
Now, in the
delve, there's a set of doors at the end of the chamber, but it doesn't
really define what's back there. During prep, I came across a dungeon tile that had some cells along one wall. I decided to use that as an antechamber or something that the kobolds had converted into cells. In the cells were Bekar
Coppernight, and a human cleric I named Taron The Cleric, in a burst of creative genius. I figured that the PCs would
open the doors and rescue them at the end of the encounter, but they'd
made such quick work of the wyrmling and the other kobolds who were
with her, I thought it was all just a little bit … anticlimactic. I
added three more minions and two dragonshields to the room for them to
fight. I figured that, if it got too tough for them, the Cleric could
heal them from within his cell, and maybe even join the fight as a last
resort.
As it turned out, this unexpected denouement ended up being a
perfect challenge, and all the NPCs did was cheer them on while they fought. When the
whole thing was over, I had the cleric heal them, the dwarf thank them,
and tell them his story.
"This tower used to stand guard over the river," I said, in a gruff, dwarven voice. "protecting all who passed beneath her watch. It fell in
the Great War, and it was only recently that I learned of its
existence. I came here a month ago, determined to restore it to its
former glory.
"I brought some fellows from Fallcrest with me, including Taron. We'd been here for just a few days when we were attacked by that
foul beast and those despicable little creatures." I looked at Nolan
and said, "he looks at you, and curses them in dwarven.
"Most of our friends were killed, or taken captive, and we were
imprisoned here." I resumed my normal voice. "He looks away from you
and adds, 'imprisoned in my clan's own tower. Can you imagine the insult of it
all?'"
I looked at them, to see what they'd do.
"So…did the dragon have any treasure?" Nolan asked.
I suppressed a smile. Of course. The treasure.
"Are you asking me, or Bekar?"
"Bekar," he said.
"He looks a little disappointed," I said, and then resumed my gruff
voice. "'If it's treasure you're after, I know she has a horde over
there,' he says."
They collected some gold, and a Terrifying Dwarven Maul (+1).
"You spend about two hours helping Bekar properly of the bodies, but the
Wyrmling's too heavy for you to move. You decide to go back to
Fallcrest, where Bekar says he'll mount another expedition to come back
and get rid of it once and for all." I said, planning to have Bekar
eventually turn the dragon's scales into some kind of armor that will
show up on market day in Winterhaven, I think.
"When you return to Fallcrest, you go straight to Douven's office to
share your triumph with him. When the door opens, though, you find his
wife, standing alone. Her eyes are puffy and red, and she clutches a
small holy symbol in one hand.
"'Douven … Douven is gone,' she says. 'He said that something
terrible was happening near Winterhaven, but he wouldn't tell me what
it was. He just said that if he didn't get there soon, it would be the
end of us all!' She looks at you, expectantly." The music, which had been sort of triumphant and energized, had become soft and melancholy, another happy coincidence that I assured the kids was entirely planned in advance.
"Well, guys," Nolan's friend said, "I guess we're going to Winterhaven."
Next time: a few thoughts from behind the screen
And one adventure gives way to the next. If you ever put out a book or short story about your adventures I’d buy it in a heartbeat. You are a natural. Keep them coming Wil! Thank you.
– Michael T.
Definitely keep em coming. Will we be seeing continued posts about their adventures? Reading them kind of brings out the gamer in me (that school has been supressing)
You know what’s a really good roleplaying advocacy site with lots of resources for roleplaying with your kids? The Escapist – http://www.theescapist.com
I dunno, it just seems like the sort of site that’d be cool to share with people who are doing that kind of thing, that’s all…
These posts have been awesome! Thank you for sharing them with us, Wil.
Two questions for you:
1. Are you going to be making a Campaign site over at Obsidian Portal?
2. Are you showing up at GenCon this year? 🙂
These past four posts have been great. I do not have kids, and my fiance and I are planning on waiting a while after marriage to make that step, but reading these wants me to be able to head home, plan out a campaign and sit down with my kid and watch his/her face the first time they experience D&D. I hope that my kids are into the same things I was when growing up, or at least want to try out D&D or other nerdy board games. If not, I envy you. Either way, thank you for such an entertaining read. And curse you for wanting me to play D&D even more than I did before you re-kindled my interest. 🙂
Nice story. Keep ’em coming!
I’ve never played D&D, because when I was a teen there was nobody interested in games like that. Now (as a tween) I have a weekly boardgame group, but we mostly play Germany-style games and not many of us are interested in roleplaying.
Minor correction: it’s “hoard”, not “horde” 🙂
As someone first exposed to your writing in Dungeon, I’m really glad to see you actually get to DM a game for your son. It sounds like it went well. I hope you keep these recaps coming for Keep on the Shadowfell.
Maybe someone here knows the answer to this: Reading this series and listening to the D&D podcasts at Wizards has me contemplating starting up my own game.
One thing has been bugging me about Clerics for a while but I don’t own any of the books to be able to just look it up. Can a cleric use his healing powers outside of an encounter? I listen in the podcasts and I’m constantly confused as to why if they have a cleric in the group is the party healing up using just their own surges every time? Shouldn’t the cleric be able to dish up a healing word and give bonus HPs to every player, thus reducing the number of surges they need to spend?
I really wish I knew people who played already. It’s an intimidating prospect to have to scrounge up a group AND buy all these books and stuff AND be a first time DM all at the same time when I would honestly rather just be a player.
Good work with the Will checks on the fly. I’m picking stuff up here for my own (hopefully) impending first session as a DM. Mind if I borrow some of your ideas? They could come in very handy methinks.
Your players seem to be getting right into this, it’s great to see.
Fantastic write-up Wil. You have me really thinking about firing up the 4e starter set with my 9 and 14 year olds. Maybe even the wife, hmmmm…..
Healing Word is a 2x/encounter power which allows a player to use one of their own healing surges, plus the *D6 modifiers provided by the cleric. So any healing surges used are the player’s own. I think there’s later powers that let a cleric spend their surge on someone else but that’s down the line somewhat.
And yes, clerics can use their powers outside of an encounter.
Yes, you can have the cleric use their Encounter powers every 5 minutes (1 encounter) during downtime to heal the party. It’s a bit of a trick most people don’t think of, and some DMs don’t allow, because it means taking an extra 5 minute rest for each Encounter power to refresh. If you’re healing 4 members of a party, and healing word can be used twice per encounter, that means 10 minutes rest. And that doesn’t count if a member needs more than one surge to heal up.
Some DMs will rule that this isn’t “resting” and you can’t do it. Others will roll for random encounters while you’re taking so long. Some, though, will let you get by with it.
Personally, it depends on the circumstances. If the PCs are in an area unlikely to be bothered, I’ll let them do it. Otherwise, I point out that they’re likely to be discovered and start checking for random encounters if they take too long in one place.
Another great post. I have actually been trying to think of a way to introduce DnD to my teenager, but I am unsure if he’d enjoy it as much as I do. He is highly fixated on zombies, skeletons, and the like. That should be an immediate yes for DnD I guess. So I pose the question to posters (or Wil), how do I get past the whole “teenager-who’s-not-sure-dad-games-can-be-cool” thing? For reference, my son is 15, not too involved in the whole teenage angst stuff, but he does have his moments of emotional turbulence. Any thoughts or advice are appreciated.
Does your son do any gaming in other areas…ie Computer/Console?
If yes, then I don’t think you will have a difficult time. I took my daughter to a gaming store a few weeks back that was hosting a newbie D&D character generation and 1st level adventure. There were a lot of teens, gen x’rs like myself and even older. It was a great range of ages.
She had a great time and wanted more…
I wouldn’t even try selling it as a “Dad” game…its a game period. Most of the new players are your son’s age so its as much his game as it was ours. Sell him on that. You could even say…I played this about 20 years ago but it was a much different game then…today’s game looks a lot cooler (*cough*). You up for trying it?
As a third POV on the Cleric issue: out of combat, boosted healing is really just a question of how far you go between “days”. If you’re not putting a time crunch on your players (that is, if you’re not saying “you have 3 days until the dragon destroys everyone” or the like), then giving the Cleric free reign to heal out of combat actually makes the game *harder* — the party is more likely to exhaust their best abilities before they exhaust their healing potential, and that can leave them underpowered by the end of the day.
So unless in-game time is important, I see no reason not to let a group boost heals as desired.
XLNT storytelling! I wish we could hear the actual game session – you seem like a great DM – creative, improvisational, concerned about the needs of the players. Kudos!
Wil Wheaton has officially ruined my productivity this week and has me dreaming of campaigning with my kids (10 and 13.) Could I please get a note for my boss and professor (and wife?)
*Big thumbs up!* Way to go Wil, you are a natural at the DMing stuff. At least, it appears that way to your players and that is all that matters! =] On a related note, as requested in an earlier comment, I asked my players if the would be okay with us streaming our game this friday (tomorrow) live on UStream.tv and they said sure! I’ll be posting the link on my twitter when we go live (around 7pm PST): http://twitter.com/tyren
Wil, may I just say…
Squee!
You’ve reawakened all the reasons I loved DMing my group back in highschool. I guess I’m going to have to wrangle some new adventurers to go tromping through dungeons and caves again.
Hawesome work, my friend.
Blake
Follow me on twitter!
Even though there is enough positive feedback here to inflate anyone’s ego to the nth degree, I just have to add mine. I love reading your posts! The vicarious D & D thrills are amazing – more than I ever would have believed. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think you have a lot of people here appreciating all you do. That is, in itself, one of the best feelings in the world. Okay, I’ve went all emotional in front of everyone, but finding your blog has been great. Thank Neil Gaiman for that one! And, well, I have always been an huge TNG fan!
I’m trying to get a group together to play 4E and hope that I can DM as well as you seem to be Wil. Getting the narrative, I think, will be the most challenging part. It’ll be my first attempt at DMing ever so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. Wish me luck!
I echo the sentiment above. If you pulled these sessions together as the basis of a full on fantasy novel or novella, I’d buy it.
I also wish you’d recorded this for Podcasting, but I can certainly see the logic in not doing that with your kids and their friends.
I’ve never played D&D and probably never will, but greatly enjoyed these stories. Thanks!
(“Well, guys,” Nolan’s friend said, “I guess we’re going to Winterhaven.”)
Railroader! 😉
Reading these has been SO cool. It makes me wish I could find a 4e game to join in my town. Thank you for sharing these! They make me all excited about gaming!
Cheers!
Uh, and the only benefit of using healing word out of combat is the players gain an extra d6 of health. After combat is over, if the players spend 5 minutes resting, they can spend healing surges freely.
However, I noticed that the new Bard class has a Song of Rest ability that grants extra healing during these rests. This is a much cheaper/better way to get a healing boost out of combat.
It seems like morale checks should be affected by groups. If one enemy fails a morale check, then it triggers a new morale check on the next turn for the enemies that were near him.
It also seems like there could be a frenzy check that does the opposite — possibly causing a mass of monsters to charge all at once.
Wow, this sounds like so much fun! Now I’m really sorry that I never had anybody introducing me to RPGs as a kid. My boyfriend has been talking about getting toghether a group to play DSA (kind of a German equivalent to D&D) for a while, though. Gotta go nag him about it.
Echoing some people above this post: Oh yes, oh yes, write a fantasy novel, pretty please! I really enjoyed your character’s story on SuicideGirls, I’d totally read a 1000 page fantasy novel about it!
Well… if we’re making minor corrections, here’s one: “”You spend about two hours helping Bekar properly of the bodies…” I would *love* to know how to _of_ a body… 😉 I’m really enjoying reading all this about D&D, Wil, even though I’ve never actually played it. Thanks for sharing – not only ‘cuz the game itself sounds fun, but because I love reading about you interacting with your family. What a cool dad/husband you are! 🙂
-Alicia (@aliciawag)
I have really enjoyed your appearance on the D&D podcast with the Penny Arcade crew. I also think it is great that you are gaming with your kids.Thanks for sharing your experiences here!
The proper way to “of” a body is something that can’t be taught; you just know how to, uh, do it.
…yeah! That’s it! That’s the ticket!
Hello.
Will you please talk a bit about what you will be doing at Emerald City?
I’m trying to decide which day to go….
….and scrape up the fun(ds)
Thanks!
Hope to see you there.
Hello and please help!
🙂
I have never played D & D but done a lot of computer gaming, red a few books on it and even owned the red edition you showed on your Blog several posts ago (when I was about 8)
I seem to remember a website which was advertised on here where you could go to and use pre made maps / dungeons / characters and everything else a n00bie GM would need.
Can you either repost the link please or post any other links, I have done a little googling but can’t find what was advertised here previously – I went back till October in the Archives but it didn’t jump out.
As I said any help, advice, links would be greatly appreciated 🙂 thanks guys!
Jon (uk)
I’ve loved this little series.
I found your blog by way of the Penny Arcade D&D series (that takes way to fucking long coming out, lol) and have really enjoyed reading here.
Thanks for doing this.
Gotta go change my sons diaper
Jeff
part 2 (post butt change)
but in lieu of finding a new group (you know times are bad when you can’t afford to take the time to play some D’s, as my friend calls it) i have enjoyed living vicariously through you guys.
Thanks!
Jeff
A hint I have is “Don’t be a slave to the rules and keep the game moving.”
I played with a DM once who refused to let the players do anything that he couldn’t find specific rule for in the DMG. For example, in one game a corridor was blocked by a pit slightly too long to jump over, so I had the idea to have the party tie a rope around my waist in case I fell, and then try to do a neo-style ‘wall run’ to get across.
The game then stopped for thirty minutes while the DM looked for ‘wall-running’ in the DMG and tried to figure out whether the safety rope would effect the check…and when he couldn’t find anything on ‘wall-running’ in the DMG I was told I couldn’t do it.
Basically, if your players want to do something, find the check that works best with the action, make it appropriately difficult or easy and let them do it. Oh, and don’t stop in the middle of a climactic encounter to look up rules…it’s okay to wing it occasionally if the alternative will throw your players out of the moment.
Ah… gotcha. 😉
-Alicia (@aliciawag)
Why would it be a prob to podcast the fam?
I’m slowly becoming a D&D podcast junkie, so I’d dl in a minute if you did.
My twin sons are now four. I’m looking forward to the day I can sit behind the DM’s screen while their eyes grow large with wonder.
Good stuff, Wil. Thanks for sharing.