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

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 continued from Part II.

Well,
okay, it wasn't a dragon, exactly. It was a White Dragon Wyrmling … but the mini I
had for it was the young green dragon from the D&D minis starter set, and when I put it on the map, the excitement
and apprehension that rippled through the three of them was just
awesome. It made me excited for the day that they're near 20th level, and they're ready to fight the Black Dragon that I have a strong feeling is going to attack and destroy large parts of Fallcrest.

I reached back behind my DM screen, and grabbed my Sonos controller. I'd been playing some soft Celtic music since we began, but I'd queued up something special for this final encounter: the soundtrack from the Two Towers began to play, originality be damned.

"This isn't as scary as this mini looks," I said, "but it's
still pretty scary to your characters. You hear the cracking of ancient tile and the
scraping of giant claws. The room gets colder as you see a white dragon
wyrmling come around this corner. Do any of you speak Draconic?"

They all looked at their character sheets. None of them did.

"Can
we make, um…" Nolan's friend looked at his sheet, "…some kind of
check to see if maybe we catch the basics of the language? I mean, what
if Draconic shares some language roots with Eladrin?"

Normally, I
wouldn't allow something like that in combat except as a standard
action with a substantial penalty for the circumstances, but this was
one of those instances where the opportunity to give a player something
cool and fun – and reward his clever thinking – was too good to pass
up. They all made Nature checks, but none of them rolled better than 11.

"Sorry,
all you know is that this dragon is pretty pissed that you're in her
lair, and the Kobolds down here," I pointed to the end of the corridor,
"are coming toward you, now."

"Oh! It's a she!" Nolan's other friend said. "That's so cool!"

"The
dragon moves her head back and forth on her long, slender neck. She
cocks her head to one side and then to the other. Her lips curl back,
as she slowly opens her mouth."

I glanced up at them. Their eyes were all wide.

"She rears back, and a blast of freezing cold dragon breath surrounds you!"

As I rolled for each of them, Nolan noticed the change in the music. "Did you do that on purpose?" He said. I told him that I had.

"That's really cool," he said.

"Okay, the wyrmling's freezing breath fills the chamber, but Immeral and Koka flinch away in time to avoid any real damage. Kika, you weren't as fast, and take," I rolled damage, "17 cold damage, so you're slowed and weakened." In a happy coincidence, the music swelled.

"Wow we totally lucked out," his friend said.

"Totally," the other agreed.

"Speak for yourselves," Nolan said. "I'm bloodied."

The fight continued, the wyrmling getting a few good hits on them, but missing more often than not.

"Can I flank her?" Nolan's friend, who was playing the halfling, said.

"If you can figure out a way to get behind her," I said, "sure."

The
encounter as written in the book takes place in a simple 12×4 room with
nothing but a magical bearskin run on the floor, but I have this cool
dungeon tile that has these little statues down the long sides of the room.
I decided that it would create a better throne room than a plain, empty rectangle,
and it would give the PCs and monsters a few places to grab cover, so I
used that when I put the encounter together. At the moment, the PCs
were in a line, facing the wyrmling. On either side of her, there were
statues that blocked movement through the chamber.

"But you can't move through these statues," I said.

"Can I try to make an acrobatics check to swing around them?" He said.

I
thought for a second. "Um, I think that would be athletics," I said, "but yeah, of course you can try. If you miff the roll, though, he
consequences will be … dire. Either way, you'll provoke an attack of
opportunity."

He looked up at Nolan and their other friend. "If
I get behind her, I can get out of reach of her claws, and I do all
kinds of cool stuff when I'm flanking someone."

Yeah, this kid is really into being a rogue.

They agreed that he could go for it. I decided that this was incredibly difficult: DC 20.

"Make an athletics check," I said. Then, "are you sure you want to do this?"

But the die was out of his hand. It rolled across the table in front of him and landed at the edge of the map: 19.

"What's your athletics bonus?" I said.

"Plus 1," he said.

"Well, I can't believe you pulled it off, but you did it."

"YES!" He said, with a major fist pump.

"Let's see if the Dragon hits you, as you leap away," I said. She rolled a four.

"As
you crouch down to leap away, she looks down at you and snorts contemptuously. She
slashes at you with her left claw, but when it snaps closed, you've
already lept through her grasp! You lock your hands around the neck of
this statue, and spin around it, tucking your feet in and avoiding the
wyrmling's bite. You let go of the statue, somersault in the air, and
land on your feet behind her."

"That was so cool," Nolan said.

His friend and I both nodded. I realized that I was having a lot of fun visualizing the action in my head, and describing it to them all as evocatively as possible.

They
ended up killing the dragon shortly after that, thanks to Nolan's
successful use of his Daily Power, a Brute Strike that hit for 23.

"Drawing
on all your strength, focus and training, you pull your maul back and
let out a mighty Dwarven battle cry as you swing it around your head.
The wyrmling's eyes narrow, then widen in surprise as you land a mighty
blow right on her skull. She howls in rage as the force of your attack slams her head against the wall. She lets out a short, sharp, yelp of pain, and then collapses to
the ground," I tipped the mini over on its side and after a brief but dramatic pause I added, "you have
killed the dragon."

The three of them cheered.

"Yeah, baby! That's what happens when you mess with the Dwarves!" Nolan said. We all laughed.

Concluded in Part IV…

Over the 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 continued from Part I.

If you've read the Delve I'm talking about, you can probably see the
first change I made: rather than make this a mine, I made it a tower,
primarily because I had dungeon tiles that supported that (as you can
see in the photo), but also because I wanted to challenge myself to
make small modifications right away – we're only going to have 3 PCs
for most of this, I think, and I'll be required to make a lot of
adjustments as the campaign unfolds. 

The Delve I took them
through has three encounters that are supposed to get increasingly
difficult. The first one takes place on the surface, and the last two
are in different areas beneath the tower (or the mine, if you run it
verbatim from the book.) I scaled the difficulty back a little bit,
because it was just the three of them. I was genuinely worried that the
last encounter may kill them, but I was surprised when the second encounter nearly killed them all.

It's not a particularly difficult encounter. The PCs come down some stairs, where they find some rubble (difficult terrain) in a small chamber. Beyond the chamber, there's a hallway with a large statue in the middle of it. Tapestries line the wall, and a few Kobolds lurk in the darkness. In our session, one of the minions from the first encounter had fled down the stairs, so the bad guys knew the PCs were coming.

Nolan's friend who played the rogue wanted to sneak down to the bottom of the stairs and see if he could pick anything up about the room. I had him make stealth and perceptions checks while I rolled perception checks for the Kobolds. He rolled very well, and they did not, so I told him, "You creep down the stairs as silently as you can. When you get to the bottom, you see that there's some dried blood on the rubble. You also see a hallway, with a statue of a dwarf in it," I grabbed some dungeon tiles from behind my screen and set them out. I didn't have a statue tile, so I used a little Chessex dice box for it. "You can hear some creatures in the hallway. What was your perception roll, again?"

"28," he said.

"Wow, nice." I said. "You can see that the statue looks unstable, and it's been seriously defaced. There are two Kobolds lurking behind it."

"I'm going to sneak back up the stairs and tell them all this," he said.

"Okay, go ahead."

I was pleased that they were making an effort to be quiet. In the first encounter, they'd all sort of run around the ground outside the tower, making no effort to be stealthy at all, even after they'd spotted little Kobold clawprints in the muck around the place. This gave the Kobolds a surprise round as soon as one of the PCs moved into their line of sight, and that PC (the wizard) ended up immobilized for several rounds by a gluepot.

They decided that the wizard would attack the statue with a magic missile, because it does force damage.

I thought this was a very clever idea, but I was completely unprepared for it, and didn't even think to suggest he use Mage Hand instead until just now, as I was writing this post. (Looking at the pre-gen character he's using, though, I see that it doesn't list Mage Hand, even though it's in the PHB as a wizard class feature, which is kind of lame. I'll have to correct that before our next session.) Anyway, I knew that the statue would topple with a DC 10 strength check, but I didn't see anywhere in the rules that said magic missile actually pushed anything. I wanted to reward clever thinking, though, and I always want my players to feel like anything is possible, so I decided that any roll better than 10 would score a hit, and if he rolled a critical or max damage, it would topple the statue. Imperfect, but it was the best I could come up with in the 5 seconds I had to make the decision. (Looking through the DMG last night, I see that what I came up with on the fly is close to what I'd have found in the book: statues are hit on a 5 or better, and this one would have had 10HP, so … go me.)

The wizard hit, but only rolled 5 points of damage.

"Magical energy crackles out of your hands and streaks across the chamber, trailing little sparkles behind it."

They all looked at me.

"What?" I said, knowing exactly why.

"It hits the statue square in the beard, but only leaves a scorched mark."

"I don't like that this eladrin is damaging a stature of a dwarf," Nolan said.

"I'm just trying to crush the monsters," his friend said.

I noted this on the obligatory DM's scratch pad. "From inside the hallway, you hear grunting and snarling. Roll initiative," I said. Dice clattered across the table, and I arranged their character's initiative cards accordingly.

In the first
encounter, they didn't work together as a team, mostly because they were getting used to the idea of playing this game together. I tried to nudge them,
but I didn't want to interfere too much – hey, if they're going to get
themselves killed, they're going to get themselves killed – and it was
just the encounter itself being pretty easy that saved them from any
real threat of TPK. They didn't start working together as a team in this encounter, either. That,
combined with the monsters rolling well and the PCs rolling poorly,
nearly killed them. But when they started getting clobbered, I saw a shift in the party dynamic: Nolan, who has a great deal of RPG
(tabletop and computer) experience, started suggesting tactics for them
all, and that's the only reason they survived.

The statue ended up falling down when the Kobolds behind it pushed it over toward the rogue and the fighter, but it missed them. One of the creatures, though, a Kobold Wyrmpriest, really put the hurt on them. The rogue was eventually knocked unconscious, and though he made his death save on the next turn, I could tell that it shook them all up.

"That's good," I thought, "they need to feel like something real is at stake here, and they're not just going to respawn if they die."

When the encounter was over, I reminded them that they could climb back up the stairs if they wanted to, and take an extended rest in the camp, where they thought they'd be safe. Instead, they decided to rest for 6 hours in the dungeon. I thought that there was a chance they'd be interrupted by some kind of wandering monster (like a small level 1 encounter of Kobolds or something) so I made six rolls – one for each hour – but I guess the Kobolds were all out watching the Kobold World Series or something, because nobody showed up to harrass them.

"Okay, you're all rested up, and nobody harrassed you. What would you like to do?"

"I want to do something about the statue," Nolan said. "I don't like that it's just all crumbled down there like that."

"Sure," I said. "You spend some time gathering up the pieces as best as you can, and you say a prayer to Moradin. You feel a little better."

I didn't tell him, but I gave him 25XP for good roleplaying, and they all walked down the hallway to the closed doors that separated them from the final encounter.

The kids are playing
a Halfling Rogue, an Eladrin Wizard, and a Dwarf Fighter. The kid who
is playing the Rogue is really into being a thief, and from the moment
he sat down, he wanted to pick locks and detect traps. In the description of the area, the
doors that separate the second and third encounters aren't anything
special, but I wanted to give him something fun to
do, so when he asked me if he could check for traps, I let him. There
weren't any, but I decided to lock the doors so he could try to pick
them. He made a bunch of really good stealth, perception, and thievery
rolls all in succession, so I decided that everything went perfectly
for him. He wanted to peek through the door, so I let him do that, too.
All four Kobolds on the other side of the door rolled single-digit
perception checks, and he rolled over 20 on his stealth, so I decided
that meant they didn't see him peeking through a small crack between
the doors.

Nolan looked at the situation and said, "Okay, here's
what we do: I'm going to kick in this door. Koka [the halfling] is
going to charge into the room and sneak attack that guy there. Immeral [the wizard],
you hang back and cast magic missile on him."

I was so proud of
their teamwork and ingenuity, I decided that if the dwarf was able to
kick in the door (DC 15 – it's wooden and very old) they would get a
surprise round. Nolan rolled 19, and the final encounter began with a
bang.

They made quick work of some minions and bloodied one of
the two Kobold Slyblades (who I'd expected would be very serious
threats) in the first two rounds. That's when they saw the dragon.

Continued in Part 3…