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tpmiller08
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Hello!

Post by tpmiller08 »

New to the forums here. I signed up because I'm working on my first 4E campaign (been playing and DM'ing since 2nd Edition though) and need some critique on my obsidian portal site for the campaign.

I'm running the pre-made adventure for 4E 'Keep on the Shadowfell' and I'm pretty nervous. I've been out of the DM'ing chair for years now, and I'm pretty rusty.

You can see my campaign site and wiki here - http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns ... l-campaign

Please let me know if there is anything you would add (campaign starts in 4 days, so it's only basic info.)

Thanks for reading, and thanks for having me in the forum!!!

-Troy
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Sophia
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Re: Hello!

Post by Sophia »

This forum has nothing to do with "Dungeon Mastering" in the D&D sense.
(Well, we have a D&D game going on the side, but that came much later!)

It is dedicated to an old computer game called Dungeon Master.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Ma ... eo_game%29
tpmiller08
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Re: Hello!

Post by tpmiller08 »

Oh dear, I believe I've made an arse of myself :D
Sophia wrote:This forum has nothing to do with "Dungeon Mastering" in the D&D sense.
(Well, we have a D&D game going on the side, but that came much later!)

It is dedicated to an old computer game called Dungeon Master.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon_Ma ... eo_game%29
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Bit
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Re: Hello!

Post by Bit »

That's a good beginning ;)
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Jan
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Re: Hello!

Post by Jan »

tpmiller08 wrote:Oh dear, I believe I've made an arse of myself :D
Then you're in a good place. :mrgreen:
Finally playing and immensely enjoying the awesome Thimbleweed Park-a-reno!
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Ameena
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Re: Hello!

Post by Ameena »

Hehe, don't worry, you're not the first person to join the forum asking for help about being a DM. In fact, the last time someone did that, they only made one post then never came back. However, that thread sort of mutated into a general talk about tabletop RPing and out of it I ended up finding a gaming club close to where I live, and another member on here (Beowuuf) started running a PbP game using DnD rules sort of combined with those of the game, DM, to which this forum is dedicated. Another game is due to start after that one finishes. I've also fairly recently (like, a couple of months ago) started running a game myself over Skype which is turning out pretty fun :). I don't think I could do it over tabletop though :P.
Don't feel like you have to bugger off back where you came from just because this forum isn't quite what you thought it was - some of us here do play tabletop RPGs, including DnD. Not everyone here likes 4th edition but I certainly do and in fact have played a bit of the Shadowfell campaign you mention - my dad was running it for a few of us at home but we didn't get very far (due to certain circumstances coming up). I can remember entering a dungeon and (as I played a Rogue, my usual character choice) sneak-attacking a goblin standing on guard - I think I critted but I'm not sure, anyway the gobby ran away and it turned out after we killed some other gobbies and then found the first one hiding round the corner and finished him off that I'd managed to reduce him to 1hp in that single shot! :D Anyway, last thing I can remember doing in that campaign is meeting a goblin called Splug. And that's as far as we got ;).
I like 4th edition 'cause it's nice and simple and you don't have to make loads of calculations and remember tons of stuff every time you want to do something (ever played any of the Warhammer 40k games? Aarrgh). Those people who aren't so keen on it tend to be of the opinion that it's "dumbed down", and one person I know says it's apparently good for dungeon crawls but no good for anything else. In the game I'm running at the moment (which has only one player but who plays two characters, and I play two more to give a bigger party so I can throw more stuff at them ;)) we haven't been in any dungeons yet. I think we've had 17 sessions so far (something like that), ranging from about two hours to more like seven per session, and only had four fights. There's been looooads of dialogue and hanging around in a village sorting stuff out and stuff, but we're having fun and it's going fine - I'm not forcing the party to stay where they are or anything, it's just sort of turned out that way with them deciding to speak to certain NPCs and stuff. Game might well speed up a bit soon once they leave this village - they're still in "newbie land" atm really ;). I'm not using a pre-written adventure, or anything - it's one I'm entirely making up myself. If you want to get some indication as to how I run my games, feel free to check out the OP page for it (game is called "The Nature of Things" and my username on there is the same as it is here) if you should feel so inclined to do so ;).
And feel free to stick around the forum if you want - I'm happy to talk 4th edition with you for as long as you want ;). Do you have the character builder? I don't like the new version - it's online-only so you have to have a paid subscription in order to activate it, as you do with the new version of the Adventure Tools - I have the old versions of both and though they're not updated any more they're still perfectly fine for what I want to do :).
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beowuuf
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Re: Hello!

Post by beowuuf »

Yup, funny this never came up until recently. We had that post around two years ago that put Ameena on the path from computer RPGs to discovering tabletop stuff. And yeah, gave me the excuse to play a pbp game here!

Are you new to 4th edition, or just DMing under it? I haven't DM'd it myself, but I think some of the common conceerns/comments are:
- combat is much longer. Perhaps ry to enforcing a timing/looking ahead for moves to speed up each round. To speed up combats while still making them relevant, some people seem to like to increase monster damage but reduce their hp.
- skill challenges are pretty much RP sessions. The skill challenge framework is very simple. It's probably bets to not think of it mechanically at all, simply construct it as an RP experience and use the mechanical pass/fail to set your back against to know when to ditch out of the scene, and what the results will be.
- check the rules errata. Certain things like new DCs for aid another, and new timings for skill checks, have been tweaked that make the game run a little smoother and faster.

Looking at your stuff, I'd only say eight PCs sounds a lot. There seems to be a decent amount of combatants, but in 4th edition defenders are definitely something useful to have to soak up damage and pull focus. Didn't notice many of them. THe above game Ameena was speaking of, I'm runnign a barbarian as the primary fighter type guy, and he seems to be working ok, but Barbarians really needs lots of small dudes around to keep their hit points going as a buffer.

And Balgron the Fat? Is that a general D&D name anyway, or are you an RPPR fan? :D
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Ameena
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Re: Hello!

Post by Ameena »

To be fair, said Barbarian is able to take out groups of several Minions in a single attack, and has so far been effective at reducing the hp of even "proper" mobs pretty damn quickly ;). I need to throw harder monsters at you so you actually get hit more often and stuff - so far I haven't even Bloodied anyone! I think the closest anyone came was that Shiraka went down to about 19/31hp at one point. Then again, I suppose if I throw you up against one single boss mob, you'll probably find it a lot tougher as poor Mort won't be able to build up his usual stackload of temp hps to soak up most of the damage ;).
I haven't looked at that OP page yet 'cause I didn't have time earlier 'cause I was going out, and now it's after 11pm and I'm going to bed soon. But yeah, eight PCs, wow that's a lot. You'll find combat takes even longer than usual unless you have really easy fights pitched against the characters ;).
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Lord_BoNes
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Re: Hello!

Post by Lord_BoNes »

tpmiller08 wrote:Oh dear, I believe I've made an arse of myself :D
LOL. At least your in good company... I do it WAY too much, hehehe :P
 
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oh_brother
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Re: Hello!

Post by oh_brother »

tpmiller08 wrote:I'm working on my first 4E campaign
Don't let Raixel hear you saying that. :wink: If she asks tell her you are using 3rd edition.
tpmiller08
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Re: Hello!

Post by tpmiller08 »

Thanks for the warm welcome all!

I'm a long-time, but rusty DM. 4e is new to me. I've been playing some games over OpenRPG and Skype. It works out well. Only thing is I don't have a mic, so all my responses need to be text.
3e was ok, 3.5 was even more ok, 4e is great, but 2e was the BEST! =)
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Lord_BoNes
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Re: Hello!

Post by Lord_BoNes »

tpmiller08 wrote:...Only thing is I don't have a mic...
Try using headphones, plugged into the "Mic Input" jack on your soundcard. If you crank up the gain a bit, you can usually get create a "poor man's microphone". I used to use this back in the days of my trusty 486 :P
 
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1 death is a tragedy,
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Twiggy
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Re: Hello!

Post by Twiggy »

Man I wish I understood half of what's being said in here...sounds like you're all having fun :(
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Ameena
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Re: Hello!

Post by Ameena »

The game I run over Skype uses text-chat - I prefer it that way and it's working fine :). Text chat means no-one's interrupting anyone else and everyone can say what they want to say, and there's no chance of anyone having to repeat themselves if someone misses something because they just need to scroll up and read it :D. Mind you, as there's only two of us (Wuffy, the player, who has two characters, and me, the GM, who also has two characters plus of course everyone else), this is perhaps less of a concern. We had been doing combat via maps drawn by me on a grid I'd done in Paintbrush, with crappy lines and blobs and stuff for scenery, but I recently downloaded this really cool prog called MapTools which is really easy to use and lets you connect to other people online to share your map. So we're gonna be using that for combat in future, but still using Skype for the chat so I can keep the log of it (been copying and pasting every session into a separate Word document so I have a proper record of the whole game so far) - another reason for using text rather than voice chat ;). Also been using Obsidian Portal to keep a more general track of things and also to put up info on the world etc.
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