Badass Dungeon Crushers - Retrospective

Readers,

I bid you all a fond farewell, as this will almost certainly be the last post here on DMG42. I am happy, then, to make the capstone achievement of this little D&D blog be a summary and retrospective on the most exciting, intense, and satisfying D&D campaign I've ever run: Badass Dungeon Crushers. For those unfamiliar, BDC took nine Fourthcore dungeons, linked them all together through various means (hidden stairs, teleportation gates, etc.), and had a team of dungeoneers draw from a finite number of 50 total characters (whose race and class were determined randomly) attempt to defeat all nine dungeons.

Eleven survived.

Traps, puzzles, and horrible death was the name of the game. Blood stained the walls of this utterly brutal campaign. It was an absolute blast and taught us all many valuable lessons. Read on below for the players' look back, also provided in convenient PDF form. Follow up questions and comments can always be left here and will be forwarded on to the players as appropriate.

• BDC Campaign Primer
• BDC Campaign Log
• BDC Graveyard
• BDC Retrospective (PDF)

Salut!

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 Seven Sons of Moradin - actual play log

By reader request, I've linked and opened up the Google Docs continuing log of The Seven Sons of Moradin D&D campaign that I play in on Thurday nights. It's pretty neat to read, as many of the recent innovative posts here at DMG42 were created through its play, such as the popular Death and Reincarnation mechanics.

The notes are written very hastily, during the middle of the game, while we're drinking beers. So, it's a little sloppy at times, but very natural and organic, taking place entirely from the players' perspectives and relaying information that we find important without the shadow of the DM's plot schemes hanging over the descriptions.

PAX East 2012 DM Challange

Pregame setup

PAX East 2012 has come and gone in a whirlwind of activity. Among my favorite events this year, as was last year, was WotC's DM Challenge. Although I found many of the same troubles and frustrations as before, this time around proved to be at least a little more fruitful, in no small part to hard work done at Dungeon Oracle.

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 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!

[4E Modern] My campaign, summarized

Recently, I have run across the sad, and all-too-common, news that one of my players in my regular gaming group would have to leave us for real-life pursuits of quests and defeating of personal demons. While it is always sad to see someone have to leave, the silver lining is that it opened up a seat at the table for one of my friends who's been itching to get in on our action. To help welcome the new guy, also Steven, I asked the other players to write up a short introduction about their 4E Modern character and what they've done. The idea here being to give Steven an idea of what the party was like, and the tone of the campaign; so that he could mold a fun character for himself to play that meshed well with the group on multiple levels.

I have to say, my guys are just absolutely great. I've decided to share the best of the emails, below, to illustrate the hilarity, hijinks, and total fun nonsense that happens at our 4E Modern games. Seriously, all this ridiculous stuff actually went down in our game, and it was fun, and easy to run for the Dungeon Master. So much of this didn't make any sense, and was totally over the top, but none of that stuff mattered. Point of my post: here is an example of why you shouldn't ever get worried about the story in your roleplaying games making absolute sense. Pond-shallow plot lines are absolutely perfect. "We want to kill the Overlord because he is bad." and "Let's kill the Goblins and take their stuff" are classics for a reason.

Gamma World StarCraft at GenCon!

The very first thing I got to do at GenCon (after checking into my pimping hotel) was bust out my StarCraft Gamma World variant and play my Gammacore adventure, The Prisoner. It was a blast! Jon, Dave, and all the Canooks were consummate dungeoneers and a pleasure to play with. I look forward to the chance to hang out with them again! Listed below are a few pics I managed to snap when we were chucking the dice, with commentary.

4E Modern - Session #1 (09/11/2011) Recap & Game Master Notes

I normally don't try and advocate game recaps too much. When I read a recap on another blog I tend to find it boring and trite. However, I have been directly asked to relate my campaign's development, and like my olden days of college radio, it's hard for me to resist a request. If nothing else, these recaps will provide me with a means of communicating some of the implied ideas I have about Modern campaigns, as well as the less than clearly described rules, and subsequent rules tweaks.

Also, stats for evil Nazi Warlocks.

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch: Sights & Sounds

During GenCon, I was able to interview the top four FTDM teams. Some interviews were prior to the event, some immediately after.

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Interview - Team Critzkrieg!

The first minute and a half or so has pretty low volume. My apologies. We had some technical difficulties.

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Interview - Team Nighthawk!

Fourthcore Team Deathmatch Interview - combined Teams Cellar Dwellers and Don't Make This Weird!

Pictures below!

Revenge of the Iron Lich Podcast! March 20th 2011

I've just wrapped up the edits on our successful recording of my weekly campaign's run at Revenge of the Iron Lich!

The battle was long and hard, but everyone had a great time. I think it really showed my guys some fantastic things with 4E D&D that they didn't think were possible. A big round of applause to my players, and of course the adventure's designers, Sersa and Jerry 'Dread Gazebo'.

This took place on Sunday March 20th 2011 in Baltimore, MD.

NSFW!

Spoilers Ahead!

The fate of two of the characters in our long-running Paragon Tier campaign, Yusht and Mal, was decided by their actions in this adventure. The group achieved a score of 290.

Intro music artist: Nile
Song: Die Rache Krieg Lied Der Assyriche
Album: Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka

Red Hand of Doom - Session #2 (February 1st 2010)



from wizards.com



The trials of our heroes Desmo, Asterion, Father Hagerty, Magnus, and Ashgrim as they get their first taste of a Goblinoid beat-down.

Please refer to this post for an overview of the encounters, as well as a general description of the game mechanics of the NPCs.

Catch Phrase of the Night: “Shimmy”

PAX East Revenge of the Iron Lich

This shirt has a hymn written on it in gothic-font German. Very appropriate. 

At PAX East, I ran a session of Revenge of the Iron Lich for a group of D&D players that weren't afraid of a little risk and danger, heroics if you will, in the face of true victory. I feel like everyone loved it, and welcomed the fresh change to a dungeon with some real chance of defeat, and that really challenged the player and not just the number crunch on their sheets.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead!

Revenge of the Iron Lich: Total Recap!

from deckofmanythings.net and saveversusdeath.com

At the dawning of Saturday March 5^th, in the year two-thousand and eleven, four brave adventurers sacrificed their lives on a desperate suicide mission designed to strike back and stop the dreaded horror plaguing the land: The Iron Lich.

This is their tale.

WARNING!

The following post has explicit and detailed spoilers on the adventure Revenge of the Iron Lich.

WARNING!

This post is long as hell.

(Side Note: Anyone attending PAX East this weekend and wants to play this adventure on Sunday morning, hit me up!)

The Red Hand of Doom – Session #1 (January 18th 2011)

from www.willsfamily.org

I run two different D&D campaigns; one game is weekly, one game is bi-weekly. My bi-weekly game (on Tuesday nights) is currently going through my 4E conversion of The Red Hand of Doom. At my request, we are utilizing all Essentials character classes, partly because I am dying to see how these new mechanics play out, and partly because I wanted to grab a little more of that classic D&D feel that Essentials aims to provide.

The characters in our group of heroes are: Desmo (Human Evoker Mage), Asterion (Minotaur Knight), Father Hagerty (Half-elf Warpriest), Magnus (Dragonborn Slayer), and Ashgrim (Halfling Fey Pact Hexblade).