More Doors

Having finished running through my 4E conversion of Chris Perkins' adventure Lich-Queen's Beloved, I've learned a few lessons about dungeons and adventure design. One of these is the importance of the architectural environment and the very elements of the dungeon itself. In Lich Queen's Beloved, the environment of the dungeon takes on an interesting role and challenge in and of itself in the adventure, namely in the types of doors that are encountered. Doors, I feel, are an oft overlooked source of hazards, terrain effects, challenges, and provocative dungeon dressing. At the end of this post, I also briefly touch upon a way in which we can all design dungeons with better (ie. more fun) secret doors.

What I'm trying to say is that we simply need more doors.

Twilight of the Gods

The dream ending of many Dungeons & Dragons campaigns is to see the protagonists fight and claw their way to the hallowed halls of godhood and true divinity. But what does it even mean to become god-like? How does one emulate that which is unknowable using the primitive tools of a game that aims to "kill monsters and take their stuff"? I'm proud to say that my group and I have found a fun, satisfying way to cross that threshold.

And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull. With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum, with ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air. I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I can know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body. --Cavill

The end of a campaign has come and gone with one of my regular groups, and so I'd like to share some of the lessons learned on how we all came together at the table to craft a satisfying conclusion to an Epic Campaign. One of the things I'm most proud of was how we dealt with the player characters ascending to rule the heavens.

The Lich-Queen's Beloved: Spellbook

image from lostinschlock.blogspot.com

For the last few weeks, my home group has been exploring a 4E conversion of the much lauded 3rd Edition D&D adventure The Lich-Queen's Beloved. You can read up on some of their prior exploits here. For brevity, I've skipped a few session here and there. The adventure isn't so much timed as it is restrictive on extended rests; many bad, permanent conditions apply to the dungeoneers when they take a rest. As such, some weeks the group is very careful and reserved in their delving, which makes kind of a boring post.

At this point, the dungeoneers have really got this adventure nailed. They've gotten into a good puzzle-solving groove, finding helpful treasures all around and are able to keep up with the main antagonist, The Iron Lich-Queen Abilene, through some quick ritual casting. All the pieces are in place for the finale that will not only end this adventure, but also my entire 4th Edition campaign.

Even with all the treasures and boons the dungeoneers have earned, they are still deathly frightened of the villain. During the course of their delving, they've had a handful of narrow escape from her clutches. She packs quite a wallop in combat, and has indiscriminately killed dungeoneers with a flick of a spell. To further heighten the players' sense of fear, and to give them some interesting strategic insight into their enemy, I created Abilene's Spellbook, placed in Room 37: Library of Bone and guarded by an Illithid Lich.

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved (Part 7)

This post continues to document the journey through The Lich-Queen's Beloved (4E). The up to date conversion and latest notes and changes inspired by the actual play can be found here. Have at thee!


IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN, DON'T READ THIS

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved (Part 6)

This post continues to document the journey through The Lich-Queen's Beloved (4E). The up to date conversion and latest notes and changes inspired by the actual play can be found here. Have at thee!

IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN, DON'T READ THIS

The hatchery is a secret location in Vor Rukoth that Abilene has created . She has agreed to help repopulate the devastated Dragonborn species in exchange for their (literally) undying loyalty.

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved: Part 5

This post continues to document the journey through The Lich-Queen's Beloved (4E). The up to date conversion and latest notes and changes inspired by the actual play can be found here. Have at thee!

IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN, DON'T READ THIS

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved, Part 4

This post continues to document the journey through The Palace of Whispers, as started here. This post will actually be recapping two week's worth of play (again). Have at thee!

IF YOU ARE PLAYING IN THIS CAMPAIGN, DON'T READ THIS

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved: Part 3-1/2

This post continues to document the journey through The Palace of Whispers, as started here.

If you're in this campaign, don't read these goddamn posts. Steven.

This week, our normal Sunday morning Dungeons & Dragons was interrupted by the plague: almost all of us (myself included) had called out due to a heinous bout of the flu or somesuch malady.

So, to keep the players interested and thinking of the game and to keep the story moving, we chatted via email about the four divinations they were to receive regarding the dungeon in reaction to their use of the grim haruspex from last week. During that session, they had already gotten a question in, and learned that the Lich-Queen's phylactery was not located in Susurrus.

After some back and forth discussions, the player generally in charge of puzzles (Ryan) asked these questions on behalf of the group. My answers were, predictably, cryptic, and the last of these questions left me with some questioning of my own!

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved, Part 3

This post continues to document the journey through The Palace of Whispers, as started here.

This post will actually be recapping two week's worth of play. I always like to have some new, usable content for my readers with every post. Being as I posted the baseline conversion of the whole adveture already, I'm really looking to the additions and alterations I've made. These come mostly in the form of deadlier enemies and added deathtraps, so not every single week is entirely appropriate. This past week has been so; have at thee!

Warning: This is a long-ass post.

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved, Part 2

This post continues to document the journey through The Palace of Whispers, as started here.

Picking up where we left off from the last game, the dungeoneers had (very briefly) faced Abilene the Iron Lich after stumbling into her throne room. Some very lucky rolls delayed the penultimate Level + 5 Solo villain of the adventure enough to give the dungeoneers a moment to retreat. Abilene had managed to cast a spell on the Shardmind Invoker of the group, turning his floating rocky body into a statue of solid steel. Failing multiple saving throws, he was petrified. Forever!

Or at least until the group found an old potion of flesh restored they had lying around. In this campaign, all magic items need to be physically present at the table in the form of a small printed card, or else it is unusable. It's a good method of keeping track of things, and makes sure that the players take some time taking care of their character sheets and whatnot. It does also place some burden on me, the Dungeon Master, as I'm responsible for having a printout of all treasure. However, I've found this to be a minor inconvenience. Also, dungeoneers are forbidden from crafting magic items.

Even though the group solved that problem/dungeoneer death very quickly, it hurt them pretty bad. That was their one and only potion of flesh restored, and it certainly won't be their last run-in with Abilene the Iron Lich. This session had a lot of fat trimming from the stores of magic items accumulated over the years, as the dungeoneers are looking to at everything they can get their hands on to give themselves an advantage.

Exploring the Lich-Queen's Beloved, Part 01

This is the first part of a series of posts I will be doing that provides commentary and guidance on running my 4E D&D conversion of the 3E adventure "The Lich-Queen's Beloved", found here.

I've also added quite a few embellishments from the Fourthcore Alphabet into the mix, but have not made those parts too public so as not to be posting huge pieces of a paid-for text.

If you're a player in this game, please stop reading now so I can surprise you at the table!

Add Mystery in Your Dungeon

Just the other day I had the great pleasure of playing in a game of D&D, as a player, and having an amazingly fun time. If you're the kind of person who spends their free time looking through the internet to read obscure D&D blogs like DMG 42, then you're probably like me and don't often get the opportunity to be on that side of the screen. So, you understand well what an opportunity it was just for me to be in that seat. The campaign I'm in is set in Dark Sun and we're almost out of Heroic Tier. I've only been involved with the group for a short while, I'm really just filling in for a missing player that had to be out of town for a few months, so I don't know a lot of the background or story details. Although, honestly, I don't very much care to know the story details.

One of the other players, surprisingly not myself, had privately mentioned to the Dungeon Master that they would appreciate a little more challenge. A little more Fourthcore, if you will. The player, Matt, has quite a mastery of the 4E system, he's a "min/maxer" type with a reputation for simply annihilating standard issue combat encounters with ease. It's quite something to watch, really. He goes by Bohrdumb on the Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Play-by-Posts and the WotC boards, for those who care. Thankfully, our Dungeon Master happily obliged. This is something that shouldn't just be glanced past. It takes a little bit of guts to do something like this, from both the player and Dungeon Master. Both are making the game more stressful, more thoughtful, and less reliant on easily obtained DDi adventures. Things go out on a limb, things go past the prescribed ways to setup combat encounters. Of course, this is done because things also get fun!

The Lich-Queen's Beloved

from d3.heroes-centrum.com

This autumn has been a series of wrap-ups and finale's for me and my campaigns. Immediately on the heels of the 4E Modern campaign's conclusion, my group and I jump back to our long-running 4E D&D campaign, now just breaking into epic tier, and conclude the long-standing stories there by wrapping up all the loose ends over the course of a Level or two.

When it was published, I was inspired by Rodney Thompson's "Adapting the Lich-Queen's Beloved" article on DDi. The article goes to describe the author's experiences converting a treasure of an adventure from a (slightly) older edition to 4E and the benefits thereof. The experiences described felt very Fourthcore to me, very much in line with the kinds of adventures I like to run and play in. If you haven't already, please go check it out, as well as the link to the original 3rd Edition adventure. After reading it, I did, however, find myself a little disappointed in the lack of full stat blocks and enough details to really run the adventure in the 4E milieu. I imagine Rodney did what most of us do; print out what you got and wing it! That is a fantastic methods, which often leads to a lot of improv and creativity, but that's not what I wanted.

So when thinking about things and reading the original Lich-Queen's Beloved (LQB), it struck me as a perfect basis of design for creating the capstone to wrap up my D&D campaign. Hence, I have developed a fully written up 4E D&D conversion to LQB, taking many cues from Fourthcore in general and the Fourthcore Armory specifically, going so far as to develop Rumor Cards for my players.