After two years, to the month,and 37 sessions, the 4E Campaign came to an end on Friday (two days ago). It was a unique experience, most notably because it was a conclusion of a campaign, rather than the conclusion of a period of play which just happens to not have any more sessions. The Buffy campaign had conclusions at the end of season one and two but was expected to go on. The Pendragon Campaign had a great conclusion, but there was a slight, group delusion of it continuing with a new generation at the time. We'd have to go back to the group's first Crescent Sea (3E Campaign) to find a proper finale. This was a proper, emphatic finale on numerous levels.

What the 4E Campaigns reminds me of is the role-playing group is blessed with imaginative, dynamic and mature individuals that embrace change and the new rather than avoid it and have an almost subliminal and preternatural ability to negotiate ideas and riff of each other for the betterment of all. This creates an experience at the table that we take for granted but probably isn't the norm. One of the facets of this heady brew is passion for renewal at the table, we don't just play the same thing continually, we look for something quite different each time, play it with a passion that all but consumes it, and then we move on to something else. The goal this time was to have our own version of the full 4E D&D experience: the full three tiers, levels 1-30, the use of miniatures for a level of tactical play (a major new element for the group) and an epic story that fully mined the potential for a different feel in each tier, ideally with the same characters. Okay, we tweaked the default experience in that we probably extended the authoring power of skill challenges a bit, had different rules for things inside and outside of encounters in the epic tier and we probably averaged a level every one or two sessions, but I'm convinced we got a distilled, injected with awesome, valid 4E experience. It was 4E to the max.

I'm going to take a moment to praise the characters: they were brilliant, if I do say so myself. I'd probably even suggest they were very different characters to what we normally see in our games. They were very unique, prideful, selfish and, in many ways, broken individuals. They were heroes in the classic sense, rather than the modern fictional sense. Heroes because they could make a difference, not because they were entirely altruistically driven to do so. This was intentional, another sign of the group's ability to clue into an idea and max it out. This was further strengthened by the fact this worked, it was always played to strengthen the experience at the table rather than destroy it and this carried on through the whole of the campaign with those attitudes bringing perpetual twilight to the world and us destroying lives and nearly the world while at all times we remained the 'heroes'. How that was balanced by all participants at the table, often in an almost tacit and invisible way, was brilliant, and it created a unique sword and sorcery experience woven through all three tiers. The characters had style, failings, brilliant imagery and just dripped pure awesome. As a composite creation, to blow the groups trumpet a bit, they were fascinating. I fully expect to benefit from this rich and passionate approach to characters in Fading Suns.

Let's face it, final episodes are hard. A Final episode to a two year long campaign that has seen the same protagonists go through three tiers of play each with their own unique feel and who have grown in depth and feel in proportion to that is even harder! Throw in the fact the penultimate episode was a blinder as well (I was influenced emotionally by small parts of the penultimate episode, it was very sad) and it seems almost impossible. The finale was brilliant though. The final miniature-based encounter was great. The final personal encounters before the end of the world worked really well. The big reveal on some new miniatures was strangely exciting. The way we got to define the nature of the next reality as the three remaining heroes, who once could only make petty and selfish power plays in the heroic tier, but who now stood as final arbiters was frickin' awesome by any assessment. Fantastic stuff, all the more powerful for having played through the three tiers and no less powerful despite the fact we knew it was coming! The ultimate indicator of the quality of the finale? It felt done. It felt right. I particularly liked how the three quite different views on the nature of the next reality actually came to be in balance and in agreement at the end. Not in a forced way, but in a natural way that was right for each protagonist and allowed them to be the fantasy equivalent of The Authority defending what they had created in the next reality. That in itself was another sign of the groups ability to subliminally negotiate such issues over time for the strength of all.

Was their some minor issues along the way? Yeah, but none that are serious or worth mentioning again. Indeed, they only got mentioned on here in the first place because I'm fascinated by how these things work rather than them being experience ruining issues. If I was to pick my favourite tiers it would probably be a toss up between the heroic and the epic, but then the middle of things is always difficult, and the paragon tier was one big middle which meant it suffered just slightly against the other two, while having moments that would probably sneak into a top 10 (which I'm not even going to try). I know what would be number one though? The killing of Ashura, the primordial of the sun and life, and the casting of the world into perpetual twilight. I'm not sure superlatives exist to describe that session.

Overall, the whole experience was just fantastic. Unlike many, many gamers who profess that their best gaming is behind them in their early twenties, I'm glad to say this isn't remotely true for me, and that is good.

GM Blog Links:-

• Dead Rising
• Land of the Dead
• The End of Time

I've been a bit remiss lately when it comes to talking about the 4E Campaign, I suspect the sheer audacity and awesome of plunging the world into perpetual twilight due to killing the God of the Sun and Life shocked me into silence. It probably was the moment of the campaign so far, as if we'd been building to it for 30 sessions. It was that great the risk is it was the top of the hill and we've reached the downward slope and are running headlong into to the finale in one big epilogue.

That's not a bad risk to face though, probably a pretty cool one.

We've had some excellent encounters, but again too many really to describe in detail. The best encounters have all involved something else going on, such as the Dragonborn Imperial City being destroyed by city ships while we personally battled the Dragonborn Emperor (our first 1000+ hp enemy). We also had a battle to secure the ancient, Primordial destroying weapon known as the Void Star, which was on a timer as the enemy tried to escape with it. It makes the fights exciting as there is an objective above and beyond taking the enemies down. Like anything, I suspect this would get a bit boring if used all the time, but when it's come up so far it's always worked very well. Plus, you can't beat being faced with the enemy actually succeeding in getting away with the God destroying super weapon, and your reserve strategy to 'destroy' the power source having failed! Oh wait, the Rangers cat is within striking distance of the final power node in the final round, and mauls and scores. Classic stuff.

One great scene seemed to be influenced by Kill Bill, as the Dragonborn Empire and Imperial Palace (featured in Rise of the Dragon God and Rise of the Dragon God II) was based on ancient China. The scene was between my character and his estranged sister, which was like the battle between The Bride and O-Ren Ishi in an oriental garden. All it needed was snow. It had two quick, agile and accurate characters in a potential fight to lethal death. What made it more interesting was the use of skill challenges. At the start of every round a skill roll could be made on one of my trained skills providing a benefit to me (if I succeeded) or my sister (if I failed). What was more interesting about the skills, is they provided a bit of colour, narrative excuse, or however you want to describe it, to push verbal interchanges building up to the reveal when I won the skill challenge (or she reached bloodied status). It meant the encounter went in interesting directions, better than just a straight fight, as I spent the first few rounds using stealth to try and persuade her she needed to take a different course. It meant it was a fight, but also had an air of a lightsaber duel in the sense it was about the verbal interchanges as much as getting medieval. It was a good use of setting, colour and rules I thought. Probably one of the best use of skill challenges.

The character progression is also interesting, if a bit distorted, since we only exist at any particular level for a single session. The characters are becoming quite specialised. My character, Artemis, now seems to be able to cause damage in the multiple hundreds with encounter powers, never mind daily powers, and he has numerous ways to get encounter powers back! In the last few fights I've never even had to open up with the daily powers and one of them does 8W! Morn is the ultimate defender, keeping things to him and boggling smashing them into status effect delirium and Azhanti provides essential healing and power magnifying powers as well as essential, non-friendly fire AOE. It works really well. The encounters have potentially got a bit harder to predict due to the number of powers and the extreme edge cases of the character abilities. How do you account for a character gaining a power that allows him to shoot everything on the battlefield in one round? Works well to, I cleared virtually the whole field of minions with it and caused about 50 damage to each non-minion. We may also be experiencing a slight superhero problem in that Morn is very tough, while my character is a glass canon. It makes me curious how things would play if we were playing in the tier for longer with many sessions and encounters at each level.

Basically, I'm loving the Epic Tier. One of the main reasons is the pace is more to my liking. It's back to the dramatic speed of the heroic tier, which is working well. It's all too easy to think it would be good to enjoy the awesome for a bit longer, but I suspect the tipping point that sees it getting a bit mundane and less unique is never far away.

After all, it can become a bit laboured being this awesome all of the time!

GM Blog Links:-

• Rise of the Dragon God pt II
• Rise of the Machines
• The Earthshaker Wakes

I'm not sure what I can say other than to throw in superlatives every other sentence. Super. Fantastic. Awesome. Great. There, got them out of my system. The epic tier is proving to be pretty fine in the 4E Campaign. Pretty fine indeed. It just feels more free and collaborative at the table and the result is exciting, slightly unpredictable and all the better for it. This week we had the epic defence of the fortress stopping an army of undead running rampant across the Dragonborn Empire, the very empire one of the player character wants to become the God Emperor of.

The encounters at the fortress were very well done. A mixture of skill challenges, player authoring, interesting encounters and some pretty funky strategy. It worked well, pacing out a number of encounters over the course of the session representing individual battles as the army made its way through and over the concentric walls towards the heart of the fortress. It actually felt better that we lost the odd one. I particularly liked the battle with the Undead Mega-Golem at one of the walls. It felt right as it was like a scene out of Troy in which the battles rages but the victory is decided by the battling heroes rather than actual military forces. The battle against the Undead Mega-Golem was a DPS race, always a big mistake. Five rounds? I think we did it in two.

The strangest thing this session was probably the key encounter against Lord Dust, an old enemy from a past session, who was leading the undead army. It was weird because it played out like a mutual engagement of de-buffing on the action economy of both sides. We seemed to be continually distracted by minions, the usual role of minions and henchmen (my name for the 3-hit minions used in this fight). In turn, Lord Dust seemed to get hit with at least some de-buffing powers and status effects. As a result, it seemed to be going nowhere fast while not being boring. Then it was announced we'd bloodied him. It's hard to describe, but it was certainly one of the strangest combats we've had in the whole campaign I'd say. The damage to Lord Dust must have just crept up on us in an odd game of slow inevitability.

Speaking of encounters, next week I'll probably face one of the scariest things that can happen in 4E? Single combat. In previous editions this never felt that bad, but in 4E it's very worrying. The characters in 4E are designed so well to be one cog in the party machine the thought of having an encounter without your other team members is pretty shocking. You don't feel encounter complete on your own. It may be a case of who blinks (and then hits first) as my character is a striker and I suspect his half-sister has at least some striker qualities. Not sure how it's going to play considering strikers tend to be epic damaging machines but tend to not take punishment well. Neither do I have any status effect powers. As I say, it's going to be slightly scary.

GM Blog Links:

• Rise of a Dragon

Three days ago, we played the thirtieth session of the 4E Campaign. The third of the epic tier. It was the day we would lead armies against the forces of a corrupted Sun God. The day we would render the whole of creation in perpetual twilight. The day we would reunite the eternal love of the sun and the moon only to tear it apart again. The point at which we would reach level 24 and gain our return from death powers from our epic destinies. It was also the point at which we played the single, best session of the campaign so far and certainly one of the top 5 sessions I've experienced since the gaming group got together in 2000.

So, why was it so good? Well, one of the reasons is common to all sessions that get listed in 'all time favourites', they are invariably the product of everyone at the table. This was undoubtedly true this time. The fabric of the session at every level was added to by every player. The descriptions of events in the skill challenges. The agreement at the table to join the sun and the moon in the sky together (who are lovers) after 'an age of reality' apart. The scenes that either fed into or became more poignant retrospectively (and both can be true and whichever it is doesn't matter), such as my characters opening scene which came to be about his choices bringing nothing but death and dire consequences, ringing true at the end of the session when we cast the world into perpetually twilight and broke apart the eternal love of the sun and the moon after only one day in the sky together. There was fabric of agreement at the table about what the story was emotionally about, and that consensus, fed into the result. In turn, the GM injected raw material into the process and weaved the outputs at the table together perfectly and cemented the result.

The other element is the content of the campaign is now having a pay off. The sundering of the love between the son and the moon by a false God (which we killed, thus allowing them to be together) was brought in via a player in the heroic tier. The epic imagery and actions of us leading armies against the corrupted forces of the primordial Ashura worked because they aren't just a mass of generic forces, they are forces that represent past alliances, or even more important, they are our people which we care about. These connections have been forged over events in the heroic and paragon tiers. Even the battle with Ashura casts a long shadow, as it was the remains of Ashura's physical form that we killed in the very first session and it was our raid on that tomb that resulted in artefacts being stolen (one which my character still carries) that lead in turn to the God's madness (the actions and consequences riff of the session coming in again).

The battle with Ashura was also very interesting because it showed how one of the criticisms of the 4E game need not be a criticism at all. One individual might say we played out an MMO-style encounter when we battled Ashura. We had a main boss who went through numerous phases as we damaged him. His hit points were essentially spread across three forms: his 'giant' corrupted self, his possession of the World Tree and his final form. The fight also had 'adds' that needed managing. We even had tanking, healing and DPS (and I caused 352 damage in one round this week, almost taking all Ashura's hit point for one phase in one go). Another person might say we had an epic encounter with a God, in which we matched our skills and wits against him. We saw him in a 'giant' corrupted form. The swine then caused the World Tree to walk and attack us with its giant sweeping branches. It was a battle of great imagery and heroic moments. A battle that took place on the top of a mountain with our faces waging a brutal war below us. You know what? Both interpretations are true and it's another strength of the group that we realise both are true and can enjoy both at the same time.

Overall, the session just had a feeling that anything could happen. We were deciding the fate of peoples, nations, the love affairs of minor Gods and the nature of reality itself by daring to kill a God. Not only that, the fact the awesome of our characters is now spreading out across these elements like forest fire is brilliant. Our very presence changes events just from the fact we've turned up on the scene due to being catalysts for change through our very action and decision. Last session, I defied the will of a nations people (actually mine), just because I could, just because I chose to save one of them above the supposed decision of the 'many'. I can do that because I'm the God Hunter, the mortal who has slew the great beasts of the world and two Gods in the process. It is awesome stuff. It frees the mind to make big, bold, melodramatic and fateful decisions and be damned with the consequences.

How much does the reduced player account for the sessions brilliance? I certainly don't think for a second a player count of five precludes a session such as this occurring, but I also think a reduced one helps. There is just less rotation around the table so everything happens faster. Less voices in the mix so consensus on events almost happens by osmosis and conclusions are reached more efficiently. It's also true the gaming group has a number of factors going for it that will be sorely missed should it ever disband. I already know gaming ends for me when this group ends. It's the level of maturity, trust and commitment to events at the table. Yes, we have our off days in terms of energy levels, but we don't suffer from any of the myriad of issues other groups suffer from with respect to 'my guy play', refusal to consciously manage spot light time, inflexibility, an apparently refusal or inability to get on the same page and compromise and form a social contract. This maturity and trust can occasionally produce a spontaneous work of gaming genius, this was one of those times.

At the end of this session, my character is Artemis, Ranger and Great Hunter of the Pashtun people; God Hunter, whose arrows brought about the perpetual twilight; and Lord of the Shrouded Oasis (a vast forest, shard reality enterable only by mortals), where his people now reside safe from the impending 'end of this reality', who is spiritually connected with the World Tree, it's roots extending across realities allowing him to traverse to anywhere in a day, even back from death. How frickin awesome is that?

Roll on session 31 and the ever approaching rumble to control the fabric of the next reality as the current one dies.

GM Blog Links:

• Days End II

We are now into the second session of the epic tier of the 4E Campaign. The final section. The campaign itself is rapidly approaching the point when the number of sessions left will fall into single digits. That's a big thing considering how we've been playing this campaign. It's length has been epic by our group's standards. This means our characters have gained their epic mojo and are making their play to control the 'end of times' and the nature the 'next reality' takes. It's a big stakes game and everything is in play to be won or lost.

Session 29 was the first, of two, in which my character has the 'stick of narrative importance' and I really liked it. I liked it for a few reasons, which are common to why I've liked others, so it's nothing new. It wasn't congested, the congestion often being in the form of rapidly moving from one set-piece battle to the next, and as a result there was room to breath. The events were driven by a series of relationships with people and things: Artemis and Kallista, Artemis and his people, Artemis and his peoples' leaders, Artemis and his attempt to become the Great Hunter of his people, etc. I can deal with this sort of stuff, I can connect with it and as a result the way I play is different. I have and understand the context and as a result I can play with it. It was a very good session. I'll role-play to resolve such issues, I'll rarely engage with abstract political games or power-plays without that 'intimate' connection and in a context I rarely fully understand. I particular liked the scene in which I tried to persuade one of the leaders to ally with me only to find his mind was twisted by the need for revenge, good stuff, as how could Artemis take that from him since he spent the whole of the heroic tier on a similar track? As I say, relationship layers between characters, peoples, emotions and concepts. Good stuff.

What's strange about 4E, or 4E in the way our combination of decisions results in it being played, is the tiers have largely been one of colour via social contract, often one a bit rough around the edges and never fully agreed. It tended to be quite firm in the first three quarters of the heroic tier, suffered a bit from that point until the epic tier, and now seems to have fell into agreement again. It's weird because the game itself advocates and 'supports' the three modes of play, but by and large the delivery of those modes is a colour issue not a rules issue (a few Epic Destiny powers aside). It's true that your character gets more powerful, but it's largely variations on a theme. The key rules that kick in between each tier might have been diminished due to us 'colourising' them, such as teleporting and the use of rituals. The epic tier is largely represented by us just 'being allowed' to describe things in a more awesome fashion, not necessarily because mechanically we can get the more awesome result.

Needless to say, we now stride around the scenery like the dramatic colossus's we now are, influencing events by our every action. Putting things right or complicating matters just through the fact we've turned up. In session 28, we saved the Library of Ages from the forces of chaos, and it's now our Authority-style base with connections across time and space so we can pretty go anywhere or any when as required. We have spent our time fighting a cornucopia of epic creatures (or allying with them due to our awesome), including the sons of gods and in the next session (30) a mad primordial (an actual God). The one problem you do have in the epic tier is your enemies just will not die. As player characters we all gain a 'come back from death' power as part of our Epic Destiny (chosen at level 21), if most beings of this magnitude have such abilities it could get pretty ridiculous.

I did have a moment of mind boggling, mechanical awesome born out of the stars being aligned on a lucky series of die rolls. Confounding Arrows and Attacks on the Run, unleashed in the same round due to the use of an Action Point, all hit causing a spectacular explosion of dice involving 11D12+3D8+4D6+150! Regrettably, the enemy at the time, the Son of the Sun God, was immune to fire otherwise I'd have had the chance to add 15D6 to the roll. Neither did any of the 5 attacks that hit come up a critical. Anyway, it was 254 damage done in one round, which was pretty spectacular. The fiendish thing is, every time I hit I lower the enemies defences by one until he saves against the de-buff, he spent nearly a whole round on -5 defences and got a bit 'shot up'. That 'withering' power is one of the best decisions I ever made in my view. It's a good group enabler.

GM Blog Links:

• The Library of Ages
• Days End

Exactly thirteen months after the the final heroic battle, we have the final paragon battle. The end of the paragon tier, some sixteen sessions in length. The paragon tier has been focused on the retrieval of five McGuffins, the 'hearts' of each of the five primordials. We started this session in possession of them all and with the goal to return to the City of Kings, the place the campaign started, enter the labyrinth of madness and stop Sopias, one of said primordials, escaping from his prison and / or cure him of a chaos infestation.

Battle in the Skies

I liked the first battle because it felt less like a 4E encounter and more like a dynamic action scene that just happened to involve a 4E encounter. It started with us giving the enemy an illusionary set of primordial hearts. It ended with us ramming the enemy battle cruiser airship and teleporting out of the descending wreckage into the City of Kings. In the middle was an encounter with the enemy to regain control of our ship before the enemy realised and the giant battle cruiser airship turned around. This meant the actual 4E tactical play seemed to be framed within a larger dramatic set-up and, as such, it felt different. The overall cinematic situation didn't get lost when the battle zoomed into the encounter experience in this instance. It didn't for me anyway.

And I got to shoot an arrow into one of the airship's power nodes to take out an enemy mage, which was great. It was cool and dramatic. It gave the character an 'awesome weight' above and beyond repeated application of the same powers. That's what allows you to 'feel the awesome' rather than relative encounter maths.

The Sinister Five

The second encounter involved the return of five previous enemies we'd killed during the heroic or paragon tier. They'd been raised to rain revenge and destruction upon us. It was an interesting fight because it seemed to be the closest we've come to fighting a party like ourselves. They'd been built using the monster construction rules, but they fell into various 'class-like' slots. Rather scarily they included an Invoker and a Barbarian which have ridiculous damage potential. It also meant that was one enemy for each one of us. A few things came into focus in this encounter. As a strike (Ranger), I can take things down quickly, but go down easily myself when the enemy really insists on focusing on me. The fighter has seriously harsh abilities to keep things focused on him, and in the case of our fighter, causes a significant amount of steady damage to those so locked around him while being ridiculously hard to take down (and even more so with the Demigod Epic Destiny).

It was a swingy fight, it looked doomed at one point but we pulled it around but there was key points were it could have swung either way. It was very interesting fighting a group of enemies with a healer in the mix, as we did focus on taking him down due to his power magnification. The use of status effects was also interesting on both sides (they kept their healer alive a few rounds longer through judicious use of them).

I'm not sure this encounter had as much emotional investment as it did for some of the other players. Enemies returned for revenge! Yeah, but to me it was like a load of henchmen returning for revenge rather than someone important! I could think of a few others that would have really got the adrenaline flowing. I mean, Paldamar the Ganked?

Sopias Kill Steal

What's not to like about this battle? A massive, I mean obscenely massive, Sopias raging against his chains slowly being corrupted by chaos looking out across the field of battle as the chaos demon and his forces, consuming his very soul, is confronted by a group of heroic mortals. Frickin' excellent. This is a perfect example of how the 'encounter zoom in' erodes the dramatic weight. I completely lost track of this imagery in the scene as you concentrate on the tactics. It's not part of each round, more opening and closing colour. It's only after you consider it again.

It was another good encounter. The number of minions on the field was legion, and that really showed off the awesome of the mage. Despite their numbers they had very little influence on the battle due to continually being killed by AOE awesome. Cloud Kill may not be great empirically (though I have no idea), but it was certainly awesome on that field on that day. It was the first encounter in a long time to see us relying on our at-will powers, not for a boring 1001 rounds, but in the last handful of rounds it was certainly the case. The main boss also had a fiendish ability, a throw the dice at the GM in frustrating ability. It had an AOE attack that gave the GM a dice roll for each enemy in the area of effect and the result of those dice rolls could replace any GM or player roll until they ran out. Annoying, but cool.

The best bit at the end? I got to stand over Sopias and make a fateful decision to send an arrow from his fellow primordial's weapon, The Solar Bow of Ashura, into his chest. Did I choose to fire the arrow? Of course, I did. Artemis, Slayer of Gods, shall be whispered across the fabric of reality!

Fateful choices. Freckin' excellent.

The Paragon Tier In Conclusion

The paragon tier felt very long. It swapped the five month, eleven session heroic tier for a paragon experience of sixteen sessions and thirteen months. If we imagine each tier as a season then both are quite long by the gaming groups standards and the paragon tier is probably longer than the two seasons of the Buffy campaign added together. I suspect each tier isn't that much shorter (if not longer) than whole of the Crescent Sea campaign? We played the paragon tier for a whole year? Shheeet!

It may have been a marathon, but it was a fun marathon. The picture the DM paints is fantastic, if sometimes so deep it becomes superfluous as no one keeps on top of it as it seems too distant from the protagonists themselves (though it gets closer as the game goes on). The encounters have been great. It's a great, round the table experience. It's just a sort of fun that seems less immediate, visceral, intense, chaotic and emotional. It tends to be more controlled, delivered and mediated and a story held by the GM certainly exists to a greater extent than in other games independent of player issues, premise and desires for their characters. It's no secret my favourite bits are were a bit of chaos and unpredictability sneaked in.

All the immediate, visceral, intense, chaotic and emotional stuff is there but it tends to be lost in either the encounter rush (and the time they take) or obfuscated behind power-based, transactional politics and 'ultimate pragmatist' characters rather than being based on emotional needs and wants due to loves, hates, the weight of history and other dramatic constructs. In short, the why of the power dynamics. I suspect the larger 'story fabric' also has an influence.

I also find the actual plays interesting. They have an Alastair Campbell sort of 'sexed up' feel about them in that they reflect generally what happened at the table but in a much better fictionalised form. It's a dramatic reconstruction of events that isn't exactly a piece of fiction inspired by the game. Idealised I guess. The DVD extras that are often added onto the end are great, despite the fact it relegates them as 'off table'.

The game is a great achievement though, and the final session was awesome.

The epic tier looms. Hopefully, a shorter and more intense experience full of fateful protagonist decisions born from emotions and relationships and wants and desires that effect all of reality itself! A bit of chaos, for good or bad? Bring it on.

GM Blog Links:

• Flight of the Navigator
• Into The May of Madness

Last session we entered the land of dreams to find some shenanigans going on with the Summer Court, things all got a bit 'Gandalf at Edoras', and we freed the Queen of Summer from her magical malaise. The Famori broke free and a war for all reality was on. This session we went to the Winter Court to try and persuade the Queen of Nightmares to join the battle against the oncoming Famori.

We had two encounters. One was with the 'Wormtongue' figure from the last session as he tried to stop us passing the gate into the Palace of Nightmares. The best bit about that combat was the fact he raised four elementals, one of each type, so it was a bit like facing off against four elemental superheroes. The main guy himself doesn't stick in the memory much, but the air and earth elemental particularly stick in the mind. It's all about the interesting toys (powers). The second fight was with the Famori Overlord Carnage within the skull of his crawling behemoth. The imagery on that was pretty cool. It looked like it was going to go badly, but some fiendish AOE spells from the mage and a particularly broken use of Spitting Cobra Stance helped us along. Carnage had all his awesome stolen by the killing blow coming by virtue of Stinking Cloud. The same.

The epic battle between the forces of the Summer and Winter Courts and the armies of the Famori was a montage of player authored scenes representing the results of skill challenges. We got the required successes without any fails. The rolls basically defined the key moments in the battle when heroes, namely us, turned, or failed to turn, the tide of the battle as well defining the nature of the conflict within the skull of the Behemoth. There was some really good scenes, I choose to swoop in on my Griffin, leap down onto a formidable giant general and turn his brain to toast with the Solar Bow of Ashura (I rolled a critical). I favour this method of doing large battles, as despite all the scenery going on, the battle should be decided by the actions of the heroic figures and their enemies on the field.

I'll admit to really enjoying the awesomeness of Spitting Cobra Stance, which I decided to give a try a session or so ago, but it's only now a fight turned up that made it worth utilising (without having psychic powers regarding being able to take a rest anyway). Admittedly, we got the rules wrong by allowing forced movement to trigger the opportunity action. I seemed to get myself into a good position so that enemies had to 'close with me' to attack others and we also had a nifty combo going on with Tide of Iron to force shift people into the trigger area. It was ridiculous in application, as it's surprisingly easy for the fighter to use his At Will power to give me a free attack every round.

We are also getting to pick a magic item, always a bit awkward when you don't have access to the books. I'm currently not sure what I should pick. I currently have the Solar Bow of Ashura, an artefact item (that does a range of funky stuff as well as cover the core levelling bonuses) and a set of arm grieves I got from the Vampire General Zirithian (+4 damage). I always imagine these arm grieves a particularly ominous black and dark red for some reason. It feels better them coming from a named enemy. They had a nifty name, but I've forgotten. Magic items aren't what they used to be in D&D, this is a good thing in the sense they aren't 'all important', but a bad thing in the sense the tomes of magical items are like reading some sort of government framework document. Very boring. I've still not picked one, though I have a few vague ideas.

I've commented before how the steady stream of new 'rules content' delivered by Wizards of the Coast provides an interesting analogy with MMO patch updates (as it always has with D&D, but more so with 4E). Now we've encountered the errata and we've hit with the equivalent of the MMO nerf-bat. Spitting Cobra Stance has had it's mechanical definition changed so I can only do it once a turn (no matter how many run towards me). This is a pity, it was fun while it lasted. The fighter has had a few punishing blows from the errata. It was a strange experience as I think this is the first game the gaming group has played in which anything close to an errata has been applied.

GM Blog Links:

• All Alone In The Night

Been a bit remiss as I didn't blog about session 24 as well as forgetting the digital camera for that session. A pity, since it involved a battle with a dragon, not just any dragon, but one of the 4 (or 5, maybe 6, who knows) badass dragons that exist in the world. Well, they sort of exist. Whatever, he was a significant name anyway. It was a good fight and interesting because he halted the conflict to parley for his existence. Fights are always better when there is more to it than 'the numbers'.

This session didn't really involve any fights at all, beyond a cursory battle due to the 'enemy' attacking first, but we did eventually make peace and moved on. A complete summary of the events in the session can be found in the links at the bottom. It's suffice to say we had to travel into the 'land of fairy' in order to retrieve the final Primordial Heart, this one from the mad God Sopias. The usual stuff, frictions between the Summer and Winter Courts, love across borders, politics and a load of Fomori out for revenge. What was good was a host of things that have made the campaign good for a number of sessions now: it's just fun. It has it's impressive bits, it's funny bits, great out of character banter, and it just gels as a fun afternoon. It even had an excellent cliffhanger. Very good stuff. It really is fun.

Sessions never pass without an observation or two since I'm a sucker for analysing how and why things work. It seems to me we have 'situation creation' issues, in that we miss it completely or it's miss-communicated or its there but not presented. As an example, in one instance a one-sided monologue occurred to define a character arc that probably isn't being addressed enough in the game. It was grand and everything be felt hollow due to a lack of situation. In another instance, I did a description of an epic journey into the desert as part of a flashback to my character visiting the great spirits of the desert, then stopped at the point I thought player-DM situation was required only for it to end and another scene to effectively start. This was a miss-communication, potentially on my part, of where I felt I'd left it. I was also part of a flash forward scene that didn't seem to have much point at all, it lacked any situation or conflict, it just existed to show me something, but I wasn't sure what the impact of that show was? I just felt out of place. In a similar vein, the Princess of the Summer Court was having a relationship with someone in the Winter Court? Great situation, but it was never really introduced in a way that afforded any, and may now just be a mechanism to engage with the Winter Court. The stories situational heart becomes a mechanical plot lever. After all, the situation derived from a Summer Queen with an obsessional hatred for the Winter Court, her daughter in love with the enemy and the Senschal betraying his Queen because he loved the Princess would have been great...enter players stage left.

Now, these come down to lack of communication or understanding to one degree or another. I also think there is a bit of drift going on between the situation and direction players see for their character and what the DM sees or is willing to deal with. This may be driven by the fact there is very much 5 player stories and the DM one, at times they can be quite adrift.

Fascinating. I find it fascinating anyway.

We are now about 4-5 sessions away from ending the Paragon Tier and that means deciding how the character changes between tiers and opting for an Epic Destiny. I've not got access to many of the books, so I haven't looked into it exhaustively, but it seems to be quite an important decision. It obviously defines the character a bit in terms of their 'end point' when they reach level 30, but also they are very different mechanically. Broadly speaking, the Epic Destinies fall into giving you dramatic stuff (some might say fluff) and hard advantages. A dramatic example might be the ability to travel anywhere within 24 hours, hard advantages are new powers or being able to have an astronomically high armour class. The Epic Destinies are far from balanced I'd say, they are quite random and unpredictable and, in some cases, compare like Apples and Oranges. Not sure what I'm going for at the moment, though I find the God Hunter one intriguing as it fits dramatically (in a can take anything down sense) and, as far as I can tell, it's mechanical 'oomph' isn't too bad either.

Due to scheduling we probably won't see the end of the Paragon Tier until after Christmas, which is a pity. You've got to love conclusions and new beginnings.

GM Blog Links:

• In The Coils of the Serpernt III
• Dreams and Nightmares

A bit delayed, as we played last weekend, mostly because we didn't even get the miniatures out this session. Shocking. You wouldn't believe there was a time the group would have been shocked to have a miniature make it to the table never mind note the lack of them in one particular session. It was a great session and summaries can be read via the links at the bottom. The session was notable mostly because of the group pushing things in terms of player-driven narrative and an attempt to merge skill challenges and combat.

The player-driven narrative was very cool. Did it give the session a feeling of being a bit raw around the edges? Yeah, but it was also exciting because you didn't know where it was going to go and felt more like you were turning around corners and anything could happen. It was all good stuff. Basically, one of the players decided to try and wrestle information from a ancient and powerful being (Primordial or God I can't remember) in one of the McGuffins, and we set stakes and everything, and it was an interesting scene and he ended up swapping places with the evil creature. Interestingly, what 4E game has reminded me is how powerful Aspects are in Fate 3.0, specifically the ability for everyone at the table to compel them to move the story along in interesting directions on the spare of the moment. The fleeting group discussing that lead to the player trying it was essentially a compel on his character's arrogance. Circumstances have come up before in which I saw 'if only for the compels'. I realise such mechanics aren't necessary for it to happen, when such mechanics exist they become the point of the game and the norm. There was a few consequences of this dramatic turn I'd have played out rather than have happen off camera, but it was still good stuff.

The merger between skill challenges and combat came from the need to handle a scene in which we made our way through a swamp, with numerous enemies looking for us. We are a walking locus of personal power and they descended on the area for revenge, our legacy items or the McGuffins we are collecting or all three. Primarily it was a skill challenges, but failures resulted in brief encounters with these forces. Not full blown encounters with miniatures, but exchanges of dice rolling. It highlighted how different 4E is to other games we've played, and how it breaks down a bit when you abstract it too much, though how much depends on your class and power selection. A lot of what makes the experience unique is in the tactical and exact encounters, take that away and the rules systems for managing it in a more abstract and narrative manner aren't overly present. I could see the point and I could see where we wanted to be, but I'm not sure it worked on the first attempt. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion you avoid such problems by not putting major figures into such a sequence. After all, if they are major players with a bit of narrative weight they deserve the time, and if they aren't, and represent forces we can more easily dispatch, then we probably could have done a full encounter each time? Pondering.

I also fiddled with my powers a bit, though I didn't get a chance to try them out, obviously. We got a new encounter power at level 17 and I vouched for the upgrade to Hawk's Talon, which was a pretty reliable choice but nothing that sexy. There was a few other choices, but I played safe. I was slightly tempted by the one that allowed me to fire three arrows at three different targets for a total of 1W + bonuses each. I also got rid of the level 16 utility power I'd previously chosen, as I chose it quite quickly, and I've still not used it since we've had a bit of rapid levelling, and went for the power that allows my character and his pet to use a healing surge (almost like a multi-class healing ability). Cool because it's healing that I don't need to rely on others for, also cool because it factors in the pet (rare since I'm really a Bow Ranger with a pet rather than a full Beast Master Ranger).

The big change was the selection of Spitting Cobra Stance in place of a power I can't remember. It's an experiment, but it's been selected on the cool factor. Basically, Spitting Cobra Stance allows me to make an opportunity action, to perform a basic attack, at any enemy that moves towards me within 5 squares in any direction. If three enemies converge on me I get a basic attack (1W+20 damage) against them all as they move in. I also have three, if I remember correctly, ways to move away from enemies that get close. If they move towards me again next round, that's more basic attacks. It's a bit like Legolas standing on the hill shooting at all those incoming Orcs, and in the same way, if they are minions, they would fall if hit. It gives me a 5 square zone of death, which is going to be interesting. Interestingly, the power uses an opportunity action (not attack) and as such it works on enemies that shift and teleport, but not when movement is forced. I believe some experimentation is going to have to take place on my character's positioning, as they only have to move towards me (which may mean they're actually moving towards another character), so the opportunity for some cool covering fire represents itself.

It may come to pass I should have been using this power throughout the Paragon Tier (roughly when Martial Power hit the gaming table).

• In The Coils of the Serpent II

Things all went a bit Stygian this session, in the sense we visited a Stygian-style environment similar to the place in the Conan novels. Swamps. Jungles. Nubile women. Poisons. Black Lotus. All the usual stuff, we just happened to have the Dragonborn rather than snake people. Still, they're both lizard-like so it pretty much counts. In many ways, it was another session in the style of the previous one, in that it felt a bit more free, less overly structured and had a feeling of the unpredictable. It was also shorter, which I think also works well..the lengthy effort that was 16-17 was just too much (for me anyway). Punchier, more dramatic, that's what I like.

As usual, I'll leave the overall synopsis of the narrative to others (see the GM links at the bottom), I seem to have fallen into focusing on the encounter juice sprinkled into the overall concoction. Have to say, just like the last story (sessions 16-17), the encounters are pretty good. Possibly even better than the conflict with the Beholder. It just goes to show we like to be tested. While we might smile, laugh, whoop and jump out of our seats when we give things a good kicking in 1-3 rounds of awesome status effects and burst damage, just like tennis, the big serve gets a bit boring after too long and you want a few volleys.

The first encounter didn't actually need to be a fight, it just turned into one after an epic narrative and skill challenge with the team trying to assess, locate and infiltrate the enemy high temple to secure a potion to protect us from the deadly poison of the Hydra. It was very exciting, ultimately everyone got captured other than my 'Mission Impossible II antics' which got me into the most secure of chambers undetected (we also have a disguise magic item). Anyway, the confrontation with the nubile woman in charge turned into a physical fight and all hell broke lose. The encounter actually merged two encounters, each of which was supposed to be a challenge, so it was one we might not have been able to win.

The great thing about the encounter was it had multiple things going on. All the best encounters have had multiple things going on. In this case it was the presence of two major opponents and the fact I was still unknown by the enemy and was stealing something Indiana Jones style while the fight ensued. This was exciting and tense but it also meant everyone was one player down, most notably a significant amount of DPS. It was an exercise in holding the creatures, though in truth the warrior does quite a lot of damage now, till we had the goods and then we could all lay the smackdown. I think we could have won it. I was particularly impressed with the spell the wizard had that held the snake woman in ice (and previous to that a great use of a web spell).

The second encounter was the epic conflict with the Hydra, a five-headed beast of epic proportions. The Tiamat miniature was used to represent it, which had some heft. The Hydra was fascinating, as it's a creature that changed the rules, which creates unique dynamics. The main thing was the fact it had five heads, which altered the beast's action economy, in that it had an action for each head spread throughout the initiative order. Despite this it had one hit point total, which created some oddities around how 'save ends' saving throws work, but I think we sorted it out. It also meant the status effects and then death routine we'd fallen into had diminishing returns as the status effects only ever applied to a single-head, apparently. You'd daze or stun a single head, which is much less effective than stunning the creature.

It was the special attacks each head possessed that seemed to do us in, especially the poison, which was a 'save ends' status effect that stopped the recipient using healing surges. If you can't use a healing surge you just can't heal as any ability from personal skills, magic items or spells just allows you to use a healing surge. This meant that even our fighter, who did an epic tanking job on the creature, got taken down and so did the cleric. In fact, the poor cleric got taken out and then rendered unable to rise back up due to being unconscious, stable but unable to use a healing surge (and then failing his save ends multiple times). At one point, I was taken out and had to resort to my pet acting independently as my main character, which wasn't that bad as it contributed 18 damage on average, which is better than nothing and could contribute against the beast's regeneration.

Two great encounters, it would have been interesting to see how differently they might have gone if the Warlock had been present. While the Hydra encounter had the awesome monster factor, the first encounter was pretty good as we could have actually won I think, if the nubile priestess come snake woman hadn't called foul and got her God involved (on a 3 round to arrival timer). Still, she'll no doubt return one day.

The interesting thing taken from these fights? There is a lot of cinematic stuff going on, but the tactical nature of the confrontations seems to result in me not remembering them as great, dramatic and visual conflicts, but one of resource usage, damage totals, movement and healing surges. I'm willing to accept this is largely a perception I have. The odd visually awesome moment gets pointed out afterwards and I realise it's true, but I didn't experience it like that at the time. Pity.

• In The Coils of the Serpent

So, at the moment we are playing through our 4E campaign, The City of Kings, with the goal of playing through the distinct heroic, paragon and epic tier phases. The campaign uses Dungeons and Dragons 4E, obviously. Very rarely, as in only once previously across all games, the question of guest GM slots comes up. Last time it was during the first campaign of the gaming group in Dungeons and Dragons (3E) some eight years ago. It varies things up a bit, allows the guest GM to flex their muscles and the actual GM to play for a session or two. I did it back then, and it seemed to work out well for the players (I think), though it was a mixed bag from my point of view.

We now seem to have a gold rush on guest GM spots in the current 4E campaign. This is intriguing, as it's never happened in any other game beyond the one aforementioned time. Yet, the last session of 4E was a guest GM spot after an invitation to do so from the main GM and that guest GM wants to give it another go, and another member of the group has expressed a wish to run a guest slot. At this rate the main GM will get plenty of actual play and we'll have an extended Paragon Tier!

Have to say, when the initial offer was raised, I was sorely tempted to give it a shot. It has some advantages, you get to run an epic tale of adventure with existing and rich characters who probably have plenty of issues that can be pushed without needing to tread on or further the central narratives. I was really tempted, and still am, but ultimately I decided not to for a number of reasons.

The first is related to the fact you're playing in someone else's sandbox. While the sandbox is very large (and is jointly created anyway), you are still painting on a canvass someone else has more ownership rights over. In the case of the 4E Campaign, this isn't an issue of adding setting elements, but more of setting precedents in relation to existing elements. Hard to exactly put into words, but let's say there is an executive producer no matter how open and there is always the chance you'll push something through quality control he'd have not given the nod to. You also have a player at the table who still holds a level of GM authority. None of these things are massive issues in our very open group, indeed the main GM slotted into a great supporting role, but they will always add a unique wrinkle.

You also need stuff. Quite a bit of stuff. You need miniatures and dungeon tiles. The main issue here being how do you plan your encounters without having these at your disposal? It can be done, but it creates a bit of psychic distance. As an example, the last GM to guest spot had these items and laid out the encounters beforehand and took mobile phone pictures so he could re-create them. I though that was a good idea. The use of 'dungeon tiles' (and related paraphernalia specifically) puts a bit if a limit on your encounter spaces without having the tiles. There is an argument to say you build each encounter space by mutual consent on the actual day, which has worked well in the past, but it may not be a great option for every encounter.

The main reason was the 4E system itself: it's just too damned complicated. In order to run a session I'd need to intimately understand all the guidelines around encounter construction. I'm not suggesting this is complex, though I don't think it's very simple, more that it's a mixture of the technical and the artistic to get right in order to produce encounters that are exciting without being a walkover or the risk of giving the players a serious pounding. I don't have the rules for a start, and I wasn't convinced I'd want to put the effort in to get up to speed by reading the necessary books.

The actual play is also quite complex. It's true to say the rules aren't so much complicated as highly structured and there is a lot to remember. The key point being the player characters become quite impossible to understand from a guest GM perspective, especially the interactions between the characters. While XP budgets should guarantee a balanced encounter, I'm not sure this is true, I think there is a lot of 'built up experience with the characters' from a GM perspective which one doesn't have as a guest GM. Well, in truth you do have a surprising amount if you've been paying attention as a player, such as knowledge of the key combos and how effective they are, but you do lack the experience of that from an encounter creation perspective.

The theory of it being complicated seems to be proven by the recent guest slot, as the burden of technical and structural information on how the system runs was a great pressure on the GM, and the encounter balancing didn't work out as well as was suggested (in the book). There is obviously a big experience factor playing into how the game runs.

The result of all this is I never volunteered and still remain on the side of not joining the gold rush. I suspect there would be every chance my expectations of how a guest session should go would not be matched with the reality for factors attributed to the aforementioned reasons. I remain tempted, but I'm tempted by an unrealisable ideal I think.

We shall see how the guest spot rationing pans out in the near future.

The last two sessions, The Pool of Radiance and The Dark Rises, are two of the best of the campaign so far. True, one might say I'm inclined to say that since they are my character's spotlight episodes, but it's actually nothing much to do with that because the conflicts the character faces didn't get pushed that much, it was a combination of the encounters and a feeling, especially in The Dark Rises, that the orchestrated awesome had given a way to a more flowing, unplanned series of unexpected awesome driven by the intersection of player action and mechanics.

Following the really good encounters in The Pool of Radiance, especially the Beholder, we got three exciting and diverse encounters in The Dark Rises.

The 'Skiff Battle'

The first encounter consisted of getting to Shraal's alabaster fortress, a massive floating piece of rock in a great cavern, and this was done via floating rock platforms to and from the cavern's outer walls. Queue a battle with other floating platforms in an attempt to get across. We didn't go for the subtle approach, but then this shouldn't be surprising, if there is ever an opportunity to take the Michael Bay approach to problem solving we will. We chose to ram other platforms, undertake boarding actions, leap between platforms, teleport enemies into the air and shattering platforms into pieces using the magic items of the Gods (and stunt points). It was a really fun encounter. In truth, it could have been more difficult by giving the enemy forced movement powers, but it didn't need it as it was largely a great visual piece before the two main events.

Taletia, Queen of the Drow

Taletia was once the handmaiden of Ashura (Primordial of the Sun), but betrayed him, thus creating The Drow, but she is now enslaved by Shraal and was our next obstacle. The encounter was pretty nifty as she covered 100% of the battlefield in magical darkness, turning the fight into one of search and destroy with the target being able to teleport and strike for lots of damage. While these things can be frustrating, I thought the encounter looked clever and fun, though it's easy for me to say as I was off rescuing Kallista (my character's half sister while this encounter took place). Ultimately though, all it took was for Morn to tag Taletia once, thus beginning his stun and daze cycle as well as locking her down and she was done. We did make a dubious bargain with her, thus she may feature again in our fight against the Primordials.

Shraal, Lord of the Void

The final fight, with Shraal, Lord of the Void, bent on destroying the Heart of Ashura and sucking every living soul into darkness. A nice and suitable 'destroying reality itself bad guy'. The big bad. Regrettably, the poor soul, soliloquy-ing from his shield of shadow with great aplomb was 'taken out' quickly due to a series of fortuitous rolls, the use of action points and 'triggered powers' causing 417 points of damage in 2 rounds. In a way this was a bit disappointing, as the scale of the guys nefarious plan and the build up to his 'scary awesome' by Taletia had really got us primed for a good, hard slog. Instead we got total 'pwnage'. Still, it could easily have went the other way due to the vagaries of the dice, his AOE power being particularly vicious, combined with the reduce healing of the 'gloom' effect. Still, it's good to totally kick the enemy big style every so often.

Descent of the Fortress!

The key point came at the end of the Shraal encounter, just as we were about to lay on the killing blow an NPC, a rival on the great hunt my character is on, stole the kill just like I did from a rival in The Belly of the Beast. After a bit of negotiation we got the scene framing correct and what followed was the first skill challenge that had something. It went beyond a simple binary decider, or a way to montage scenes, both of which have their uses, and instead mechanically sent the story spinning of in unexpected directions. That's what you want the mechanics to do. We scrambled for ownership of the Heart of Ashura as Shraal's massive stone monolith began to descend back down into the cavern with us in it. Awesome. As it happened everyone lost it and it crashed to the bottom in the rubble. This kicked off Morn using a ring obtained in Iceholme to visit an ancient undead giant to bargain for the heart and my character jumping off a platform and descending into the rubble cloud after Kallista to chase her for the heart. It was a great, dramatic, big scale ending in a form no one knew would happen, and thus more exciting for it.

The Three Lenses

What has become apparent is the game is viewed through three difference lenses. The three different lenses are:-

• Tactical Lens: The is is the game utilising the figures and the battle mat. It is quite specific and exact and, to one degree or another, adversarial.
• Skill Challenge Lens: This is less tactical and serves numerous purposes as I've discussed before. It's often a way to montage through a sequence with some stakes in play.
• Role-Playing Lens: The system takes to the background to the point of not being present and we role-play the characters.

Now, what's interesting about this is it's a very old school approach, which isn't a value statement, but you do have to be aware of it. It's true that other games merge the distinct lenses of play better, often by not having as many (and they have other issues). What has become apparent is conflicts are occurring over how things work in the different lenses and when we transition from lens to lens.

First example In the role-playing lens I happily jumped from a floating platform after Kallista, essentially a leap of faith as I had no way to stop myself, I assumed she did, and that she'd rescue me or I'd have to fight her for 'the parachute'. No rolls, no system, purely dramatic, narrative issues resolved through action stuff. Yet in the tactical lens, characters with magical items that allow super leaping can find themselves making rolls they can fail despite using stunt points to achieve much less. I'm generalising a bit, and a few holes exist in the argument, but the point holds in terms of the inconsistency between the lenses. The tactical lens acts as a restriction which in turn allows a certain type of tactically tense encounter to occur.

Second example. The surprise NPC killed Shraal in this session and entered the field, but we'd moved out of combat..or had we? He killed Shraal dramatically without a roll? Were we still in the tactical lens, the skill challenge lens or the role-playing lens? It actually took a bit of time to establish it was the skill challenge lens and how it was going to work. It worked very well as noted, but I'm not sure the transition went without frustrating some people. If you throw in the fact powers can be used in skill challenges in a muggy way, skills occasionally get brought into the role-playing, stunt points can in theory be used in all lenses, it's quite easy to see it gets a bit messy.

There are a number of other examples, such as transitioning from tactical to role-playing at the end of the final encounter with Zirithian in Iceholme and the fluid change between tactical and role-playing in the battle with The Grub and Ak'Aran Tra'Kar in session 10.

I'm not sure how to resolve the above, as consistency is going to be difficult as the nature and goals of each lens are different. The best bet might be to adopt a clear set of scene framing tools, and for everyone to be patient so we know the frame of the scene along with the lens. At times the 4E Campaign needs to slow down and spend time on these areas, as well as from a wider perspective to allow things to absorbed and reacted to. Why is consistency needed? Well, some might say it's a rules lawyer thing, but it's not. Consistency is important to form a solid bedrock for decisions, it's true during change in an organisation and it's true in role-playing games. If people know where they stand, they are more likely to take the initiative and push, in a role-playing game that generally means doing something awesome rather than second guessing due to wanting to avoid too much negotiation through lack of clarity.

While all that's an interesting observation, let's not forget above all else, the two sessions were, for the most part, amazing.

GM Blog Links:

• The Dark Rises

I really enjoyed the session overall. It was just very...enjoyable. One of the staples of the 4E Campaign is the depth of it and the delivery. Awesome though this can be, it can create pacing problems in that we seem to breeze over the detail in favour of the awesome strokes (and the potential for information dumps). This session just felt better paced, smaller in scale and a bit more flexible in how it was delivered. It worked better for me anyway.

We had two encounters in the session. The first was essentially a 'random encounter' despite not coming from a table as we progressed through the Underdark. I can't remember what the creatures were, but they all had prodigious strength, and thus an ability to knock us through the air with their clubs, and the main one had Warlock powers. Their strength was used to knock us into a fast moving river, though they did it to the Warlock a number of times and he could just teleport out. A giant spider also entered the field, but it didn't prove as scary as we wanted it to be. Not sure why. It was a cool miniature though.

The battle at the Pool of Radiance encounter was the clincher though, it will probably go down as a classic encounter of the campaign for the foreseeable future. This is assuming nothing eclipses it in the next session. The encounter took place in the Pool of Radiance itself, which meant the terrain was a mixture of water we could walk in (thus difficult terrain) and deeper water we had to swim in. This meant movement was very restricted. Not good in itself. The guardian at the pool proved to be a Beholder (re-skinned in looks slightly, but that was all), and the Beholder floats, thus not restricting its movement, and has many and various ranged attacks. The encounter broke the 'tank it and spank it' approach to fights that can take place as Morn (the fighter) never got within melee range for virtually the whole fight. In a strange, sadistic way it was also cool being hit with all the interesting rays to see how they worked. It's safe to say the death, disintegration and petrification rays are pretty scary.

One interesting point of note, though I have no idea what it says about the two encounters: I only used Twin Strike twice, and that was during an action point powered burst of double-Twin Strikes. The rest of the time it was mostly encounter powers.

Good stuff. We even got to end the session on a cliffhanger. We ended 'early' and I even think this worked as we got to chat about it a bit before rushing out the door. It was noted that in July we'll have been playing the 4E Campaign for a year. Having checked the facts, we started playing on 27 July 2008. One of the features of the campaign is it has been one of the most consistently run and it even managed to transition between the tiers (something that stalled Pendragon a bit) without stalling. Once we get through the epic tier it'll certainly be the campaign we've played for the longest.

Having a session named after a classic D&D computer game also had a certain appeal.

GM Blog Links:

• The Pool of Radiance

This was quite an encounter heavy session, or seemed it. We entered the city of Iceholme, which was occupied by the sprawling army of the Vampire General Zirithian. We did a few skill challenges to get the lay of the land and discovered that the army was controlled by three forces: Gylda, the Death Hag, diviner and overall leader; Arath Nightcaller, Priest of Amaan and Necromancer; and Baaldaran, a demon. Ultimately we made a deal with Gylda and this resulted in an end run through three encounters to kill the other two leaders and then into the temple to confront Zirithian and get the Heart of Maran Gor.

One of the strengths of the encounters this session was the enemies had style, mostly visual style I have to say, since a few of them seemed to get tagged with our 'status effects then death' strategy, but they were cool. I'm specifically thinking about Gylda the Hag, who was very well described, probably need to see more of her.

I'm also enjoying my power spread at the moment, backed up by the ever faithful Twin Strike I have a range of powers that all seem to do 3D12+15, even the encounters. This works quite well as it means my dailies aren't critical, just added awesome sauce. I'm particularly liking the 'when bloodied' one and the sheer coolness of Combined Fire, and the action point generating one from my Paragon Path.

Regrettably, due to the time the session took, involving three encounters in succession, we seemed to rush the denouncement slightly again. Unfortunate, but couldn't be helped.

The Arath Takedown

A bit of an all or nothing encounter this one. It usual goes like this. The enemy catches us in an unfortunate position, such as being crowded around the door, and they unleash a devastating attack that really causes some damage (it took me down I think). In response, the healing kicks in and then we come back with the +5 round of doom (+8 if human and using action points) in order to unleash the unholy hell of daily powers on the enemy. The battlefield was really good, with a small bridge over a basin in the centre of the field, but it didn't get used as much as it could have been.

People started flying in this encounter, both players and enemies, it's going to slowly raise the issue of how to handle the third dimension.

The Baaldaran Takedown

The problem Baaldaran had was his low armour class, which made him very easy to hit. The best thing about this fight was actually the minions, which were some sort of highly agile ghoul, meaning they jumped around the battlefield hitting people on the run. Each hit potentially immobilising. The imagery of them was really good and they proved quite effective, they kept me from moving for most of the fight.

The Zirithian Takedown

Despite looking like some sort of eighties disco, the encounter with General Zirithian promised to be interesting because of the potential for enemies to come from multiple locations. We had minimised the potential in this by making a deal with Gylda the Hag and killing the other two leaders of Zirithian's forces (thus reducing the forces in the final fight).

We had two major enemies in the fight, Lord Dust and Zirithian. We spent several rounds waiting for Zirithian to enter the field, holding off on powers and the like for the big bad to enter, give a brief soliloquy and attempt to take us down. Unfortunately he entered the field, cast a few 'gloom and doom' powers, teleported around a bit and then the 'status effect and then death' routine kicked in which meant he was always unable to act or on a reduced action economy. He died in short order, kicking and screaming about being conned out of his awesome. Personally, I preferred Lord Dust, he turned out much cooler in actual play, floating around with a myriad of powers. Even the force bubble that kept me out of the fight for about five rounds was great. I'd like to meet Lord Dust again.

The funniest part was when Morn smashed the ever changing statue in the middle of the disco floor and revealed an exposition simulacrum who tossed the Heart of Maran Gor across the room only for my pet to make an interception and catch it.

GM Blog Links:

• Iceholme pt 1
• Iceholme pt 2
• Iceholme pt 3

Well, we've gone from the oceans to the remote mountain of Wintertop and the town of Valberg in search of the Heart of Maran Gor, the second McGuffin on our epic quest. Needless to say, there was much going on. The actual play reports can be found at the bottom of this entry. It involved much history, including that of the character Morn, betrayal, Gods from another world, monks, a strange 'out of time' city known as Iceholme, Tieflings, Vampires and Undead.

I shall concentrate on the encounters since this seems to be this blog's USP with respect to the campaign. There was a number of encounters, though I've only included the ones from session 17 here for brevity.

The opening encounter of session 17 resolved the cliffhanger of the previous session. We arrived on a raised platform about to be surrounded by shambling undead, so we launched our attack into the horde of zombies. We had the option of running into the streets, but were was the fun in that? It was the first use of swarms within the campaign, but I suspect they didn't get to do a lot of their cool stuff like dragging people down and eating them. They did try to do it with Azhanti, but considering the nature of his radiant powers and the ability to turn undead that proved more of an advantage to him. In the future it might be exciting to see some 'swarm awesome' just to see how they work and what they bring to the table.

The second encounter was very good as it was pretty much a mini-game mixed in with a skill challenge. Since I'm writing this a good two weeks after the session, I'm probably remembering it wrong. Basically, the scene was the characters flying via Wyerns to the portal that would take us to the strange place known as Iceholme. The undead horde was attempting to stop us creating a flying encounter. At its heart it was a skill challenge, but we also got to play it out each round as we flew over the city. The actions in the round, across a number of height bands, had the chance of making the skill challenges harder by not allowing certain of us to roll. It worked well and was exciting. It also allowed a great use of Tide of Iron, to bash enemy flyers into crashing.

The last encounter, in order to gain access to the portal to Iceholme, was against Lareen, a Tiefling Vampire who betrayed her people, a few of her minions and a ghost of a long dead King of Valberg (a Wight). This one had an interesting twist in that Lareen used her Vampire powers to mind control the Azhanti, the Cleric. This brought about a brief discussion of mind control being the destroyer of fun, but she never really got a chance to use the power much as people started to kick off with daily powers in response. This resulted in much synergy of attack bonuses and a round of awesome damage. She fled in the face of our assault. Whacking out the daily powers probably wasn't a good idea since, at the time, we still faced the battle with the Vampire General Zirithian. We shall also enjoy the second battle with Lareen when it comes around.

At the end of our session we found ourselves facing the city at the heart of Iceholme and the prospect of beating the Vampire General Zirithian to the Heart of Maran Gor.

GM Blog Links:

• The Dreams Dragons Bring pt 1
• The Dreams Dragons Bring pt 2
• The Dreams Dragons Bring pt 3
• The Dreams Dragons Bring pt 4
• Heart of Darkness pt 1

4E skill challenges. As I understand it the basic principle is as follows: you have to get so many successes out of so many rolls and there is a list of skills that can be applied, but any skill can be used if a case can be made for it. Each player gets to add something to the situation and roll to see if they succeed. The irony is, on average, my character often has the most skills he can apply to any particular challenge. This is because the chances are the skill challenge will be a way to play out an extended 'fantasy adventure' scene and my character probably has most of the skills in that area. This is a good thing since he is a martial character (Ranger) and thus relies on them.

The problem is, I'm not fully sure why they don't gel with me. It's like they sound more cool in theory than in practice.

I think a part of the problem is they feel like a mini-game. They are part of the 'gamist challenge' fabric. Quite often what results is a series of discrete events that are pass or fail and failure will result in the loss of resources. When this method is used it feels odd because it's purely a risk / reward game with no reward. It also tends to be a bit by the numbers.

The better use is when the skill challenges make something in the future harder, but even this can have less impact than one might expect. For example, it makes something harder in a conflict you have yet to get to for a reason you don't yet know, one might question the point. This again ensures the skill challenge operates purely on the 'gamist challenge' level as it has made a challenge harder.

Another element is to what extent skill challenges should create new content? This comes down to how much scene setting is done and how this relates to the skill challenge. I think when the scene is too open, the setting too sparse and the framing very open, the skill challenge can lack a sense of urgency or intensity. They have no conflict and the very random D20 just gets decide two different routes each lacking player investment (loss of resources for failing aside). The risk is you create a series of events that just happens but doesn't serve any dramatic purpose (beyond resource loss). I also think they sound better written up then they do in the moment in a core of cases.

The randomness of the linear D20 is magnified by the fact you have no way to alter the roll. The majority of systems that use less granular resolution with clear stakes provide a mechanical method to control the outcome. Obviously, 4E is trying iron out the linearity by attempting to turn it into a strength by having success be based on say 3 out of 6 rolls, thus having the benefit of involving all the members of the group. The trouble is this tends turn it into a sequence of discrete tasks, thus increasing the granularity of each roll. This tends to cause repetition and most skill challenge sequences have common elements inserted into them. It is inevitable, you only have so many skills and the 'adventure situations' that need to be overcome are very similar. We decode runes (Arcane), follow the path of fungi or avoid dangerous plants (Nature), sneak passed authored enemies (Stealth) or various set ways to allow Morn to use Strength, Athletics or Intimidation.

This brings up the issue regarding the scope of skills as some have more scope than others. As an example, certain skills are very physical and as such are more limited to the physicality of the location and what the character can see, hear and touch. This is not the case with other skills (possibly also linked with established spheres of control), such as Arcane, which can transcend character boundaries. These naturally enhance the potential for creating conflict in skill challenge. My character is focused on the physical skills that have a more limited scope. While I may lack a bit of imagination at times, I still hold that some skills are more limited in scope than others.

Discounting the linear nature of the D20 and the lack of a currency to iron out the roll, since this is just a facet of the system, I think a lot of it comes down to the framing of the conflict. If the framing essentially sets up a sequence of events that diminishes resources or makes a future conflict harder, the skill challenge may result in either (a) some good narrated scenes that define character and / or (b) scenes that set up future conflicts. It may result in neither. In terms of (b) these are often through the skills with a wider scope or due to events in the skill challenge providing scene framing for the next skill roll. This can happen and compensate for the lack of more focused scene framing initially. It doesn't always happen.

Overall, I think a more open scene framing, with a focus on resource loss in the challenge itself can be very random in the return on investment. This has resulted in the odd comment of 'just accept the consequences' because the return of the skill challenges is being seen as lesser than the combat encounter for failing. It can also be odd that the consequence of failure is lost resources but in truth such a skill challenge should contribute to the break points for action points.

You could ask the question: why have a skill challenge unless it's dramatically important? If it's not and it's only about resource loss or a future combat becoming slightly harder isn't just worth skipping forward? Is the skill challenge valuable in itself? Is it worth it for the chance it produces something exciting and dramatic? Possibly, but then we are back to the scene framing to ensure that is embedded in the challenge itself?

As an example, the 'failure' on the mountain in the Fellowship of the Ring film could be seen as a series of skill challenges, but the point was it resulted in a fateful choice of Frodo deciding to go to Moria despite Gandalf's fears. They faced that dramatic choice because they failed the skill challenge (Aragorn lost his ranger awesome and Gandalf failed a battle of wills with Sauruman) which made continuing their current path more difficult. It changed the direction of the story. I think that's key, it should change how things go, limit character choices or push fateful decision one way or another. The other option is to make the skill challenge more personal by framing the scene better. As an example, could the skill challenges be used for chase scene with something critical on the line? The problem with some of these is the simplicity of the discreet D20 roll. If you said first to beat the other by three skill rolls you could be really dredging the skill list by that point?

It's for these reasons they've just not clicked yet. It's like they haven't reached their potential. It may be they have reached their potential and they just aren't up to it or whether the elements around the mechanic, such as scene framing, need tweaking. It probably also depends on your outlook, I'm generally less interested in the continual authoring of the discreet events in the challenge, and more interested in the results of failing or succeeding in the challenge and what spins off from it.

I was thinking about something today. Well, it was more of a passing thought while analysing the liquidity of a well known supermarket and the influence of how it recorded it's banking arm. Who said I can't multi-task? Anyway, the thought related to how my view of magic items in D&D has changed. It's gone from a position of 'I cannot be arsed and keeping track of them is a pain' to 'give me some more bling!'. What took a bit longer was how the difference has come about. I think it comes down to three things.

First, the use of legacy items in our 4E campaign has to be given some credit. It took what is already a pretty cool system in 4E (see reason two) and made it even simpler and provided an iconic piece of equipment at the same time. This is one reason why I used to not like magic items. I never liked the idea you would inevitably throw a magic item away because a better one would come along. The legacy item will never be thrown away because it provides the core magic item bonuses as we level and, at least in my case, the bow is so iconic it'd be sort of like losing a left arm or something. It isn't just an item, it represents the character's awesome. He's so good at what he does it he took the personal magic item of Ashura (a Primordial God), known for being a great bowman (I assume) and uses it himself. This also links in with his lack of respect for such entities. It helps I always envision it as some sort of grand, Exalted, Orichalcum forged device of Battlechasers awesome. Great stuff.

Second, the 4E magic item system is pretty cool. It's cool in two ways. First, it makes the item slot system a bit more front and centre. It's probably true to say other versions of D&D had the same system of slots for head, neck, feet, etc, but 4E makes it more obvious. Like World of Warcraft obvious. Not only that, it's clearly stated which slots provide the core bonuses for attack and defence. Once you have those core bonuses sorted (the legacy item in our case) the rest tend to do funky stuff rather than provide more bonuses. That's the second reason the focus on cool stuff rather than another bonus to something. The 'does cool stuff' nature of magic items makes them more interesting and more likely to be used for longer as you'd pick something cool for the character.

Third, World of Warcraft has undoubtedly been an influence. This is especially true as our characters move through the Paragon Tier. It has the feel of getting great magic items in World of Warcraft but divorced from the grind and the arms race instead its more thematically appropriate stuff and has a sense of history, age or a personal touch to it. The use of well themed magic items can really up the Paragon feel as the heroes move away from being street level to travelling around the world shaping it's future by their very action. I'm waiting to get Displacer Armour at fourteenth level, it's not just about forcing any attacker to roll twice and take the lowest (cool though that is), it's the fact he's killed a desert beast took it's skin and now is the desert hunter that hides in his own sun haze effect. Sweet. What about boots that allow movement as a sandstorm? Specifics aside, it's all about defining minor powers, just like you'd do if playing a superhero game.

It's great that magical bling has finally become cool. Superhero cool.

Since one of the players was away in the US it was decided not to move on to retrieving the next Primordial Heart, and instead deal with some lingering issues from the last two sessions, expand the defeat of the Kraken and explore the potential for dream sequences in the dream powered floating vessel we are currently jaunting around the known world in.

It was quite a dense session, and in no way could be considered second rate filler. In fact, it was a very good session, the dream sequences being very effective. They allowed for some major character depth to be added and also set-up things for the future as well as detailing parts of the larger world and its history. The characters are truly breaking away from the heroic tier and becoming principal players amongst the various powers vying for dominance.

The action scene this week was to help the soon to be epic hero Captain Strom kill the Kraken. It involved descending down the very throat of the beast on a ship in order to destroy the pumping heart of the chaos infused creature. The scene involved two encounters on the ship as it descended into the depths of the Kraken and then one battle at the location of the heart. The battle to destroy the heart involved a fight with a great being of chaos within the belly of the beast, and the betrayal of Captain Strom as my character is a rival of his to become the epic hunter of awesome, a much revered figure amongst my character's people. I stole the destruction of the heart from Captain Strom, thus closing the door to immortality for him and removing him from the competition (to be resolved early epic tier). He died as a result, which I wasn't expecting. I must admit I'm still not sure about the decision, but it did sort of fit with my character's rather callous attitude to getting what he wants.

The battle was also good because I think everyone got to be awesome. The warlock was particularly effective this week due to being largely responsible for keeping the great chaos monster ineffective, and applying the +5 to hit of doom which combined with action points and daily powers can lay down some serious hurt.

Great stuff.

GM Blog links:-

• Interlude
• Interlude II

Last Sunday we played session fourteen of the 4E Campaign. After dealing with the cult that was raising the sea bed last week, the task now was to delve beneath the ocean, go to the temple of Mael, at the bottom of a deep crevasse, and retrieve the Heart of Mael. There was also the issue of Vedris, one of the first daughters of Mael who sit at the heart of the seven Lakaronos city ships, who is rumoured to be a Lich after the city ship Maelstrom was lost. There was also an issue of a stolen Dragon egg. We travelled down into the depths via our floating ship, wrapped in various arcane rituals to protect us from the ocean depths, only to be welcomed by the Kuo-Toa priests and their various undersea guards. Needless to say, it soon all descends into chaos as it is revealed Vedris has stolen the Heart of Mael and has a Mind Flayer ally monitoring the occupants of the temple and in turn Vedris is trying to create her own legion of dragons to get revenge on the Dragonborn Emperor.

We had two combat encounters, and both were very good due to the interesting opponents and the complications. I particularly liked the complication of the Kraken in the first combat as it appealed to my everything bigger than everything else principle. The use of a Mind Flayer was also cool as was the complex environment involving rapidly flowing water which had the ability to suck you outside into the ocean if you couldn't get out (though travelling to the exit would have taken a while depending on where you fell in). The second fight was just as good because it had an enemy that actually talked to us, plus it was an enemy we didn't actually have to fight (she handed over the Heart of Mael without conflict) and it was character narratives that pulled us into the combat. We even decided to 'take her out' and not kill her, which was good as it revealed some great information regarding the loss of the city ship Maelstron and allowed us to form a tenuous alliance.

How did the the new, stepping up, approach to the game go? It went very well. The spreadsheet is relatively simple and just does three things: creates an easy reference, makes levelling up automatic (feat / power selection aside) and ensures I have every last bonus included. It felt different at the table, I felt I caused more damage and contributed to the game much more. There is something cool about giving people an automatic plus one. I never got to go 'all out daily' this session as we saved them in the first fight and circumstances in the second fight kept me doing other things. I remembered to use Reckless and I remembered to track the AC debuff from Withering. I also used different dice, so I'm not sure what difference not using 'Old Orange' brought to the occasion. It has occurred to me the 'years of collateral damage of bouncing along tables' may well make 'Old Orange' a weighted die in the wrong direction.

Also, is it me or do the fights involve more 'swing'? During the heroic tier I felt the fights had a more steady feel to them, with less wild results. They could be predicted a bit more. Now it seems to be a bit more towards the all or nothing end of the scale. They can be predicted less and unlucky rolls can cause a pretty rapid collapse (potentially). It seems to be related to damage and hit points, to overcome the hit points and healing you need a certain amount of damage, but this seems to make it less 'steady'. The magical items are probably an influence as well: what do you have to do to overcome the healing powers on Morn's armour? How spiky is it with me causing +15 per hit with Reckless on? Etc. It may be that things have moved from a steady 'damage over time' model, to a 'burst' model. It may also be just the types of enemies we've faced since starting the paragon tier. I could also be imagining it.

GM Blog Links:-

• Into The Deep pt 3
• Into The Deep pt 4
• Into The Deep pt 5

Despite speculating I'm possibly becoming a casual gamer, my sense of professionalism is driving me to step up at the table. The last couple of sessions I haven't felt like Artemis (Ranger / Battle Archer) has been delivering in the tactical battles. It feels like something has changed in the transition to the Paragon Tier and he just doesn't pull as much weight. I'm sure this is a mixture of a few things that are mathematical, some of it will be perception, a bit of it will be my lack of ability or will to remember things and some of it will be the rise in effectiveness of other characters.

In terms of the character parity, some of the group have certainly become more effective in the Paragon transition, namely Morn, who has changed class to Fighter and just seems to become a package of all round awesome, and Assamber, who is coming into his own as a controller since the synergy of character abilities is making his role more powerful. This is a good thing.

So, how to make Artemis more effective?

First, I need to start remembering the simple stuff that can make a difference. Second the focus in 4E isn't necessarily about the personal awesome, but the team awesome. I can think of numerous things that can raise the effectiveness of Artemis with immediate effect:-

• Use my Battle Archer ability to mark four enemies (my Wisdom bonus) as that gives ALL the group a +1 / +5% to hit against those targets. We like Bless, but that's a daily, this is almost as good and is free to use! Pretty amazing now I think of it like that.
• The Solar Bow of Ashura allows me to accept a -2 on my AC to gain +6 in damage. This is a lot and raises my damage bonus to +15 on every hit. That means my basic at-will will causes an average of 20 or 40 damage. This -2 to my AC will represent even less when I get my Displacer Armour made. I wants the Displacer Armour.
• The Withering ability on the Solar Bow of Ashura is permanent. This means any target Artemis hits receives a cumulative -1 to AC until it saves against it (it's a save ends effect). This means any enemy I hit has at least a +1 to hit on it until it's turn, potentially much more.
• As soon as the 'use the daily powers flag' is on, slap down the stance that allows me to transfer my Hunter's Quarry to another character, this radically reduces the chance +2D8 of damage will go unused. This is effective as I can give that potential damage to any character in 5 spaces, including fellow range attackers like the Wizard or the Warlock.
• As soon as the 'use the daily powers flag' is up, and any pluses to hit have been brought into play, use Splintering Shot on the big bad of the fight as it applies a -2 to hit on the creature that it cannot remove for the whole encounter (and a -1 on a miss). Use the Solar Bow of Ashura's re-roll with a +2 on this daily if necessary.
• Position the pet in a flanking position for Morn as soon as possible and keep it in such a position as it gives him +3 to hit. Besides role-playing uses this is it's only real combat use (a Shimmering effect for me would allow me to gain that advantage as well without incurring an OA).
• Remember to use my Immediate Interrupt encounter power which allows me to do a 2W weapon attack (average 50 damage) on an enemy an ally has just hit - do it as soon as the cumulative pluses to hit are good as it comes on-line every encounter
• When I use an action point remember that an attack action born from that action point has a +3 to hit as I often forget. Not only that, action point first not second as it increases the chance of a Withering effect being in place for attack number two.
• Remember that some of my powers now do half damage on a miss. I think I forget that probably 50% of the time. Check all powers used for a 'on miss effect' as there is at least a couple of them now. Remember when I use a power that attacks twice, which is a lot of them, if the first one has hit the second attack has a +1 to hit due to the Withering effect.
• At the end of the round ALWAYS remember to roll saves to get rid of annoying and damaging status effects.

In response to the above I'm going to create a personal checklist for my character's combat round. It's not going to be that complicated but it will mean I should forget less in the moment.

I'm also thinking of bringing the Netbook to the table, which I thought was ridiculous at first but now I'm not so sure. Morn's player has his character on his iPhone due to the ridiculous amount of pre-calculated circumstantial bonuses he has as a Fighter, and this seems to work well. It also occurred to me that the Netbook would save space as it's actually smaller than the character sheet, which is often obscured anyway. The main advantage of the Netbook will be for a streamlined character sheet with everything pre-calculated and set-up to remain pre-calculated as I level up. When my stat bonuses change everything else will change, as will all the bonuses that use the bonuses on the Solar Bow of Ashura that also levels up at key points. I can also factor feat bonuses in (and have it clear where that bonus is coming from). Skills will also just calculate themselves. This will mean I'm always operating at maximum ability mathematically and can keep it current easier. This might also mean I'm a bit more on top of what I might want to swap out over time.

That's it. Other than the whiff factor, which I can't control that much (beyond all the group working the maths more effectively), this should allow me to step up and bring the awesome more often. Quite exciting. I'm looking forward to it.

Now the next task is to think up some awesome for my signature two-part session which is coming next as we retrieve the Primordial Heart of Ashura. I'm thinking of locations, which characters to bring in and framing it all within a thematic conflict as well as focusing on what keeps me happy at the table. I want the potential for some major issues and conflicts outside the battlemat or during it's use, if possible.

The heroes are hunting for the five Hearts of the Primordials, in order to open the Tomb of Sopias so we can confront him before his prison fails for all time and he is released upon the world. The first Primordial Heart is the one belonging to Primordial Mael, Primordial of the oceans and father of all monsters, and it exists within one of his ancient temples below the sea.

It's not as simple as just going to the temple and stealing the heart from its occupants as the occupants of the temple are at war with a massive Lakarnos city-ship. The city ship is stuck in a rapidly rising series of volcanic islands, including an outer ring which keeps the massive ship from leaving. Not only that, the rising of the islands is being caused by the Cult of Vinga, Goddess of Revenge. The Lakarnos also seemed to have raised a giant Kraken, which they seem to have lost control of and it is repeatedly attacking the Lakarnos vessel.

The heroes enter this situation with the power to change it and the goal to retrieve the Heart of Mael.

The session was good, further enforcing our paragon status to enter a situation and immediately become the locus for local powers, because we change the situation by our very presence and the decisions we make. In this session we chose to arrive at the Lakarnos city-ship by flying our magical ship in and arriving above the cities central park. After some discussion with the leading priest of the Lakarnos and a well informed guard we decided to head out and deal with this Cult of Vinga, with the aim of stopping the earth rising which would destroy everything within the network of islands (including the many Lakarnos on the city-ship).

The Cult was in a volcano, and it contained Lidia, Champion of Maran Gor, who disputed Morn's possession of the Hammer of Maron Gor. Needless to say, this didn't go down well and a battle with Lidia began. It was a great battle, in a very cramped and fiddly location. Lidia herself was was quite tough and she had a number of nifty allies including Magma Giants and Fire Birds with a really dangerous exploding power and the ability to make us vulnerable to fire and apply on-going fire damage. Very dangerous. It looked doomed at one point, but as is the case with 4E, the healing kicks in and all the gauges shoot up again. It was a good fight though. Morn's ability to stop enemies moving away from him, due to being a fighter, is allowing much more combination powers to be used as we can count on the enemies staying in place more.

If there was problem with it? I just seem so prone to the whiff factor. Lidia did happen to be made of stone, which probably had a lot to do with it. It may be everyone is experiencing it in the same way, but it does get a bit frustrating when every power misses. It gets even more frustrating when cumulative effects also don't kick in as a result of missing. Still, this is the nature of the game, and I wouldn't have it any other way, but it is frustrating. I also need to make sure I have my to hit calculated right, as it was at +15 but I think it should be +16 and make sure I used my ability to 'mark' multiple targets as that's another +1 for everyone. Drill into the brain that every +1 is a 5% improvement!

We did try to get away with the second age artefact, a giant cauldron, potentially the artefact Moran Gor herself used to raise the continents and create life, but we failed to extract it from the collapsing volcano.

On our return we got to see Iridalla, one of seven daughters of Mael, each residing in the heart of one of the seven Lakarnos city-ships. My character, Artemis, also met with the a ship captain called Strom, who was set on battling the Krakken, literally diving down its throat so he could thrust living fire into its heart. We agreed to help fight the beast while he tried to kill it from the inside. Yes, madness. Such are the trials of those on the cusp of the epic tier!

GM Blog Links:-

• Into The Deep pt 1
• Into The Deep pt 2

We started the 4E campaign again yesterday and it was an experience. We've basically split the campaign into the three tiers defined by the rules. We finished the Heroic Tier just before Christmas and we started the Paragon Tier last tonight, though it was more a small prequel.

The original characters have changed a bit from their Heroic Tier selves, so we now have:

• Morn: Former Paladin of the Unfettered God. Morn lost the woman he lusted after and his faith in the City of Kings. He wields the Hammer of a Titan with an attitude to match. After overthrowing Darius he declared that he had had enough of Gods and Demons and walked off into the desert. As the game starts he is the Lord of the Pit, Arena Champion of the City of Daal (Fighter/Pit Fighter).
• Assamber: Mage and one time devotee of the Primordial Mael. Assamber is a member of the ocean going Lokarnos people. He has plumbed the depths of the Maelstrom, the font of all magical power and returned changed. Once a worshipper of the Gods now he sees himself perhaps as their equal (Wizard/Spellstorm Mage).
• Azhanti: Dragonborn Priest of Vulcan, Lord of Storms and father of the Dragonborn race. Vulcan is a dead God but his spirit lives on. Azhanti intends to correct that mistake and elevate himself to the position. He seeks allies in various elemental Courts (Cleric/Radiant Servant).
• Artemis: A wanderer, Ranger of the Pashtun desert people. Artemis came to the City of Kings to seek revenge on Akaran Trak'Ar for kidnapping and raping his mother. Trak'Ar is dead and Artemis has sought new purpose for his life. He has wondered into the vast dune sea and communed with the great spirits of his people with the goal of becoming their chosen champion, the legendary hunter of his people. They have gifted him with a spirit of the desert winds and rolling dunes that takes the form of giant desert tiger (Beastmaster Ranger/Battle Archer).
• Chiniko: An Orcale of a strange people of the freezing lands of the south. They are worshippers of Sopias in his aspect of the Lord of Dreams. Chiniko has been dispatched to help the group to find the Heart of Sopias and the other Primordials. It is unclear yet whether Chiniko seeks to free the insane Sopias, kill him or cure him (Warlock/Radiant Servant).

Six months have past since the end of the Heroic Tier and the battle at the City of Kings. Four of those heroes, plus a new member, are already hunting down the 5 Primordial hearts in order to keep a mad Primordial in his prison under the city. This session involved going to the trade city of Daal, home of the Masked Lords, and a legendary gladiatorial arena. The aim being to recruit Morn back into the team who has been drowning his loss of faith in the celebrity of being the arenas champion. Needless to say we recruited Morn back into the fold only for the Masked Lords to betray him in the arena, thus all the heroes joined the fight in a grand gladiatorial battle. It was a bit like a fantasy version of the set-up in Attack of the Clones mixed with Gladiator, complete with some sort of giant displacer beast. It was a great miniature anyway, and annoying enemy as you'd use daily powers on it only to find it had displaced itself! Still, it's power shall be mine as we are turning it's hide into some displacer armour.

As we move through the tiers we want the campaign to change, mostly the goal is to change the theme and scope of the campaign. The theme has certainly changed as we are now heroes of great renown and ability, striding across the known world in a floating ship having adventures of a grand, melodramatic, pulp nature along the way (and collecting the hearts). What was also quite a shock, to me anyway, since I didn't overly think about it, was how the combat has changed.

There are a number of reasons for this:

• A change from Paladin to Fighter for one of the characters
• The introduction of a Warlock as an additional character
• The introduction of Paragon and Paragon Path abilities
• The enhancement of our Legacy Items with magical properties

All this has changed how the group works and we are effective in a different way. Since the tactics in 4E are based on the interaction of powers these dynamics add up. We also have a number of things in the mix that last beyond a round or place on-going effects on enemies. These things need recording and tracking. As an example, I have a 'Withering' power on my legacy item that means I reduce a targets armour class every time I hit it, but this needs remembering and whoever controls the target needs to remember to save against it. It's very powerful ability, if you track it, and also it could be a very strategic ability since my Ranger can now not only be used for damage but as a damage enabler by working to reduce AC on key targets for a period (every +1 to hit is quite powerful).

The combination of elements actually make our team 'power output' much higher, it's a bigger than the sum of its parts thing. As an example, in the first half of the heroic tier the Wizard never really felt as effective as he should be. As we've gained more powers, the Wizard has become much more powerful as we can now keep the enemies within the area of the Wizard's spells. In the fight today we managed to keep enemies between the Wall of Fire and the Fighter thus punishing them for whatever they did. If they tried to move out of the Wall of Fire they would potentially get hit by the Fighter which in turn stands a chance to hold them in place.

The combat scene felt a bit like the first one we did as a practice before the Heroic Tier, so it seems like there is a bit of re-learning needed both in how we use our powers and track them effectively. At one point it even seemed like it might be too much effort. I suspect it's just going to take a slightly different approach, with the players ensuring they take on some of the burden of tracking their own powers. It's certainly worth giving it all a go. I know I'm wanting to re-organise the way I manage my powers in the game, I'm just not sure how yet.

It's going to be good.

After eleven sessions the conclusion to the heroic tier comes to pass. An eight hour session from about 1400 to 2230 hours with a stop for a very nice home cooked curry in between. It was an epic final battle, with our heroes at the centre forming the elite strike force destined to make the heroic journey through The Cabal's headquarters, into The Spire and a personal confrontation with Darius, the leader of The Cabal. A full actual play can be found in the following locations:-

• Act 1: Old Friends and Troubled Times
• Act 2: The Rebellion Strikes Back
• Act 3: The End of Time
• Act 4: Light at the End of the Tunnel
• Act 5: Revenge of the Rebellion

Generally, there was three parts to the session. The first was a series of scenes establishing material and relationships for the Paragon Tier. The second was the background awesome of the wider battle going. The third, and by no means least, was our heroic journey into The Spire and the final confrontation with The Cabal.

The Paragon Tier stuff was good, and our quest schedule is already pretty full of promise. We all got given a choice during the battle to become Champions of a specific Primordial or not (we've become loosely connected to a Primordial each due to goals or using their ancestral weapons). We all chose not to. It was also interesting to see new relationships form in the Paragon Tier and elements introduced to the setting take on a more front and centre position. As an example, my character's half-sister is now an enemy due my character killing her father out of revenge. She has allied with The Order of Transcendental Inquiry, a sort of pulp fantasy, secretive organisation that collects antiquities setting us up for some great rivalries. They'll probably be a significant aspect of the Paragon Tier. It's also great that we've become the sworn enemies of a whole people due to trashing a Primordial's tomb and taking his stuff during session one.

The descriptions of the wider battle wwas brilliant, and it was awesome stuff. All the forces that had assembled for the final battle, some of them through our own efforts, attacked their selected targets in cut-scenes that would have blown the budget of any film. I particularly liked the Pashtun witches riding into battle on flying carpets followed by a horde of Jinn howling behind them on a wave of sand all Mummy style. That seems to be the one that has stuck in the mind the most anyway.

It would take forever to describe the epic journey through the Armoury of The Cabal and the battles in The Spire. There was a battle at the entrance, an insidious trap in the Trophy Room, a battle in a Wizard's Armoury full of fragile flasks, the potential battle with the Iron Lord at the entrance to The Spire, the shutting down of The Cabal's ritual and the final confrontation with Darius. That was due to the route we took through the complex, we could have went a different way. Strangely, I liked the battle with a Golem in the Armoury as all sorts of chemicals and contraptions got knocked over and activated creating a hazardous environment. I also liked the battle with the Iron Lord at the entrance to The Spire as we heroically slammed in the Key of Time to shut the doors (we'd used the teleporting networking to get inside) and then kept the giant Golem away from the doors using knock back effects and status effects. Despite the fact it cut the fight short it just felt right, more heroic and desperate than the typical slug out fight. I also thought the trap in the Trophy Room was good, a sort of psychic assaulting tapestry, while at the same time trying to battle living statues that choked you to death. These were better than some of the bigger set-pieces I thought.

It was also pretty cool when we stopped The Cabal ritual, as the ritual had stopped 'the sun rising' that morning, and when we stopped it the battle momentarily stopped as the sun shone across the city. I thought that was very atmospheric, as it felt a bit 'Lord of the Rings' a signal coming to the thousands losing their lives that the heroic four they'd trusted their lives in might just be at the final hurdle. I did like that.

As a conclusion, it was really good. If I was to have one small minor complaint it'd be the usual one of getting sucked into the tactical battles just a bit too much, fun though they are. The main example being there wasn't that much interaction with Darius, but then there probably wasn't any real need for it. It was exciting, and interesting, but figuring out some way to inject a bit more role-playing into these confrontations would be good. I think that's an issue for the whole table. The battles just sort of pull you in. Still, it was a very good conclusion, with some great imagery and some exciting battles. I still like the ones with a lot going on the best.

Bring on the Paragon Tier.

No, you've not missed anything. I missed something. Session nine to be exact as I was away. Not only did I miss a whole session I also missed the whole of level eight which whizzed by in a moment and I never saw it in actual play. Not a problem, just a curious observation.

As usual a more narrative breakdown of the sessions can be found on the GM's blog:

• Session Nine (here, here and here)
• Session Ten (here and here)

In many ways session ten was not so much the calm before the storm, as it was pretty chaotic and had lots of storms, but more the clearing of the decks. The resolving of a bunch of conflicts between the protagonists and a number of characters in order to have a clear agenda for the final conflict in session eleven and to move the characters to having less party-conflict in the Paragon Tier. We have Assamber resolving his religious differences with The Grub. Artemis and Morn resolving their differences over Kyia Tra'Kar, in the process Artemis got to kill Ak'Karan Tra'Kar, Kyia's father, and Morn realised his God was a total fake and wasn't protecting him from his bonds of slavery at all, resulting in Kyia being killed after she controlled him to protect her father. We also resolved our differences with the rebellion, though it largely became a non-issue as the offered us an olive branch to pre-empt the conflict. Dramatic stuff. The result of it is though all Heroic Tier dramas are over except for the take down of The Cabal in the final session of 'conclusionary' doom. As usual, things are more narratively dense than I have time to recount here.

It was a good session, it felt a bit perfunctory I suppose. A bit by the numbers, joining up all the dots to ensure every order of business was concluded, but it worked well. I liked it, particularly sending an arrow into Ak'Aran Tra'Kar's back...nice. The episode before grand conclusions can be as tricky as the conclusion itself. The main focus of the session was the fight with The Grub, which seemed to be a significant set-piece of epic proportions. It seemed much longer and involved than our other fights? Not in a bad way. Personally, I think we gave The Grub a good kicking and he never really recovered from our opening assault after Assamber's player used a stunt point to stun him in the opening round as a result of ritual feedback. The description of the fight in the GM's blog possibly suggests The Grub was doing better than he actually was. It's all perspective I guess, as Morn's player might not agree since he went to low health at least once and spent most of the fight immobilised.

It was a bit of a pity to see The Grub go, one element I added to the game down, but that's the great thing about the collaborative nature of these things. In actual play The Grub became more important to another character and the result of that was death. Interesting how things turn out.

One interesting thing happened as I levelled before this session: I got Attacks on the Run. Is that the single most awesome daily power in existence or what? I can do a full move as part of the power, attacking twice as I do so for 3W each. That's potentially my weapon damage (D12) six times, plus my Hunters Mark (D8) plus my damage bonus twice (+8) if I hit both times. That is obscene. I assume, though I didn't realise it in the session, that I can then use my normal move as well. So I can attack for a ridiculous amount of damage and move 12 squares. Amazing.

Next session, number eleven, is the final episode of the heroic tier. It's potentially an eight hour epic-fest featuring epic battles in the City of Kings, Wizards, mad inventors, giant Iron Golems, Dragon Riders and whatever else. Looking forward to it.

A more detailed breakdown of The Key of Time can be found here and here. It's suffice to say it was a really good session. The heroes had to go to the Shrouded Oasis to collect Artemis's mother, as the rebellion had promised her to Akaran Tra'kar, also giving us the opportunity to speak to the High Priestess of the Cult of the Eternal. The Shrouded Oasis was a very atmospheric location and I certainly want to go back to it and have more adventures there. This is especially true since things have already been added due to failed and successful skill challenges that it would be cool to know more about. As we made our way through to The Cult of the Eternal's home in the Shrouded Oasis we got chased by a tribe of savage apes, knowing more about them would be cool. Are they ruled by some semi-intelligent Monkey King! I'm also thinking, if the heroes eventually get their own Hero's Sanctums or other fancy locations (such as Assamber's tower), I want mine to be in the Shrouded Oasis all Phantom-style. In fact, by the time the epic tier comes we should all have such sanctums with instant teleports and communications to each other, even if we never use them!

The session got off to a strange start. I'm not sure what it was but I don't think I made the mental shift into playing. Not sure why, it's hardly a big getting into character thing, it's just we sort of started before focus had been attained. I think there was a tiredness round the table for the first time as the session started. I'm not sure this fully cleared until we actually entered the Shrouded Oasis. This meant some of the decisions up until that point probably could have been better. I know I wasn't mentally ready for all the pivotal authoring on how to get into the Oasis I was faced with, I should have saw it coming, but a combination of MBA head space and not having transitioned to gaming mode made it more difficult than it should have been. I think everyone had that problem. We certainly need transition time.

The last scene in the game was also very interesting. In that we arrived back in the city having completed all these heroic things: got Clan Antarion to agree to slow the Dragonborn (session five) and killed a Dragon, found The Makers (session seven) and secured their help with the Golems and brought Artemis's mother back (session eight) and got entrusted with the Key of Time. Before we left we kept it secret we'd discovered who the traitor was in the rebellion (session four) in the hope that Akaran Tra'kar would try and finger an enemy for it as part of a political ploy (as he had been charged with hunting the traitor down). Artemis had also put his mother, against her will, in Assamber's coastal tower intent on not handing her over. I think we were all set for a grand scene in which we impressed upon the rebellion our total awesome and asserted our new authority (in our minds). I'm not sure the scene went as anyone intended as before we could regal our heroic journey it became embroiled in the issue of Artemis refusing to hand over his mother and got locked into that with neither side willing to budge. It seemed to be a point of no compromise for the rebellion, who still seemed hell bent on just bossing us around. So we parted ways having had a 'serious disagreement'.

By no account was this the campaign's first bad session as was queried by the GM before we went home. It may have had some slow points in the beginning. It may have had high expectations of it. It certainly had the best action sequences so far, one ending with me doing a victory lap around the kitchen. It may have had a pivotal scene at the end that went in a direction people didn't expect (but by no means not great or interesting). It could even be argued that it was one that was a bit more uneven than it's predecessors, and possessing a sort of raw quality, rather than an impeccably served experience. But bad? Far from it. I think it leaves the game in an excellent place, but that may just be me. The session ended with great drama, the ominous music kicked in and the credits rolled. Cue next week.

If I could be so bold, it could even be argued it was the best one yet.

So, why did it take 3 days for the GM to go from feeling 'it was the end of all things' to being much more mellow? Personally, reading between the lines and possibly getting it totally wrong, I think it was the first time the game ran away with itself and fine control was completely lost (from a GM perspective). The sessions are excellent, no one has any complaint, but there is an element of awesome stage-management in terms of plot, NPCs and performance orchestration. It's not a smothering control, more a puppet master behind the scenes sort of control tinged with some encyclopaedic knowledge. This session probably broke the strings at the end and it became a bit of a conflict between the Players (through the PCs) and the GM (through the NPCs) to wrestle control of the creative ground, story direction and the degree of protagonist impact (the fate of Artemis's mother being a symptom rather than a cause). We'd killed people on the relationship map before, we'd ignored things by accident before, but this was our first attempt to mould it in our image and put us at the centre of it. To use a lawyer analogy, it may have appeared a bit like a case falling apart in the courtroom due to surprise evidence. There may have also been an 'expect the players to play as he would play' mistake going on, a mistake I think we've all made in our time as we've GM'ed.

The ironic thing about it is this can only be a good thing and the GM only has himself to 'blame' as the sessions in the desert away from the city were so good I think every player came back wanting to transition their character to a more heroic, we're taking the bull by the horns stance (and taking no commandments from above) and impact ourselves on the environment as the heroes we are. I believe everyone wants that to happen, I just don't think he saw the unconscious player agreement on it (it wasn't that well flagged) and our unconscious group think to use that final scene to establish it. As a result, it probably came out of nowhere in a scene that was pivotal, but ironically rushed at the end (a mistake by all parties).

The above is, of course, only one perspective.

We left it on a cliffhanger last session, with the four heroes heroically swashbuckling their way through the complex of Paldemar and his various lieutenants in order to free the people of Rothaar so he would guide us to their ancient city. What was interesting about this session is it was the first straight up, slug out, combat session since session three and the assault on the Cabal to rescue Kallista and assassinate Althea.

The first four hours of the game were taken up with the heroic battle into the second half of the complex and defeating Paldemar. It was great stuff and represented everything that 4E combat is supposed to be I think. We put the whole sequence on a timer of ever depleting poker chips, as we entered into the different colours we had less options regarding avoiding Paldemar and / or getting out with the Dwarf slaves. The big assumption was that we wanted to 'avoid' Paldemar. It was good stuff, as it put a bit of pressure on. The sequence was also good because it flowed and wasn't just one set piece battle after another as the enemy could come from different routes, which added an element of the unknown. We also had to make decisions on whether we took the time to recharge our encounter powers as that caused quite a lot of poker ships to go from the pile. It was exciting and the exchange of arrow fire between Artemis and two crossbow firing guards was pretty cool. The session again managed to merge exciting, cinematic combat, with a gamist and MMO mix to create something great.

We did decide to continue with our 'Star Wars' approach to planning our assault and after the 'Chewbacca Strategy' last session, we decided to communicate with Paldemar through his own scrying sphere this time (also using the illusionary circlet we found last session) and persuade him that our assault had failed and that he should come and check out the magic relics we'd left behind (we are carrying around the personal weapons of Gods and Titans). This meant Paldemar didn't bring his golem bodyguard with him, and we set ourselves up around his teleportation sphere to 'gank' the swine when he arrived. This worked well, as soon as he arrived his was grasped by magical hands, held in place and literally pounded on with hammer, axe, bow and spells until he dropped. While it could be argued it might have been more fun with a more tense fight, we were low on healing surges and we might as well get the reward for our good planning.

Plus, he was wearing a metal skullcap and thus deserved no mercy.

We then had to use a skill challenge to flee through the underground tunnels pursued by Paldemar's remaining lieutenants and his small army of Gnolls and other strange beasts. The series of challenges and the mutual authoring (depending on who won and lost) resulted in us being chased by a giant, undead spirit thus allowing Morn to do his 'you shall not pass moment' and smash a bridge across a giant crevasse with his Titan hammer. It did turn into a mini-Moria, which is fine, it just needed the music, which would have been cooler. This took us to one of the last cities of The Makers, literally hewn out of a mountain. This part of the game was really atmospheric, and it had an almost Wizard of Oz feel to it. In a good way. There was a number of conflicts going on but we did manage to persuade The Makers to help us against the Cabal's Iron Golems at the critical time which was the whole point of the trip. It only entered my mind when I got home that I should have had Artemis promise to hunt down the lost Giants to get their help, would have set up some paragon tier story directions. Oh well.

What was interesting about the time in the Mountain City of The Makers was it was like the peeling away of an onion. So far the game has been very much in the heroic tier, in that it's like the smaller scale Conan stories or the Thieves Guild anthology of tales. We have seen the odd oblique image of the more paragon and epic world, such as the history of the Giant in his floating grave in session two, but the heroic tier has been dominant. When with The Makers it was like the heroes got momentarily shown the next layer (or two) of the onion and opened their minds to a world view that just didn't previously enter into their perceptions: giant mechanical telescopes, stars representing physical powers, creatures from beyond time and space, etc. Whether this was the intention or not it worked. It was very well done. It certainly worked for me and my character will change as a result as he becomes aware of this larger world and its conflicts and concerns, this has probably changed significantly how I'll tackle next session. It has also got us thinking about themes and approaches to integrate the characters into the next tiers. It has occurred to us our four current characters fit quite well into being representatives, champions, whatever, of the original primordials. We've not decided to go with that yet but it does have some appeal.

Another great session. I think the only issue from my point of view is the D20's ability to introduce a serious whiff factor at times. While I'd not change this, as it is part of the gamist, edge of your seat experience (and it wouldn't be the same game if it wasn't present), it can be deflating at times to line up the dailies and see them fail due to the rather linear progression of the D20 die. Still, it's all part of the ups and downs of the rollercoaster.

Historically, the life-cycle of a role-playing game's rules hasn't been something I've invested much in. Virtually any game I purchased I read, and I may have even played, without ever worrying or looking for errata, and in a lot of cases not buying that many additional books. In truth, all the problems that made the game virtually unplayable never really got discovered or influenced the game much. This was obviously a style thing. In a similar fashion the whole MMO idea of waiting for patch notes and consuming them with an all devouring hunger to see what was changing in the game wasn't something I did either. While playing World of Warcraft I pretty much went through the whole game without knowing what was in most of the patch notes, a few high profile cases aside.

In short, the whole 'rules as content' theory of the role-playing game, whether traditional tabletop games or MMO games, has never caught on.

I am finding this is changing with 4E though. I'm sure the designers and Wizards of the Coast would be pleased to here this. Dungeons and Dragons has always had a 'rules as content' business model, like a lot of games, but the crunch focus is particularly heavy with the Dungeons and Dragons line, especially 3E. What is different here is I'm enjoying it. Now, this isn't to say I'm special or some sort of 'unique snow flake' what's important about me liking it is historically I was the quintessential candidate who would just refuse to fall into that trap out of principle. Now I find myself looking forward to the extra crunch to see what I can pillage. Okay, due to time constraints I never turned up for session 6 of the 4E campaign two hours early to devour the two new books, but I still hastily took that feat from one of the new books that allows me to use a bow that does D12 damage rather than D10.

I'm also looking forward to Martial Power, mostly because my character is probably the one who will benefit from it the most due to being the only class that belongs to the martial power source. We've had a sneak peak lately with the Beast Mastery class feature finding its way into the Rules Compendium. This allows my Ranger to have a beast pet that fights alongside him and stuff. It's pretty exciting even if it does make the archery focused Ranger even more like the Hunter in World of Warcraft. It has made us wonder when the Paladin will get his 'Bubble and Hearth' Daily Power.

Waiting for these new books to introduce 'new rules' as 'content' is quite exciting. It will all end in tears over the course of the years though, as the game will inevitably suffer power creep and collapse under its own weight, but the chances are we'll have gotten our use out of it by then and moved onto something else.

I'm still hoping I can adopt the Beast Mastery class feature though, without it being 'incompatible' with my current choices around the archery focus. The patch drops in November and we shall see.

Last session, having solved the problem of Clan Antarion's poisoned water, killed the Den Robi (a Dragon) and solved, though largely as observers and catalysts, the political fight over who should be Clan Chief, the heroes set off on their journey south to find The Makers of Iron Golems. As usual, a more detailed breakdown of the sessions plot can be found on the DM's Blog (in three parts: #1, #2 and #3).

The journey to the mountains in the south involved travelling across the desert to find the badlands, a landscape of unforgiving rocks and crevasses. On the edge of the badlands was the mad hermit Udun, a bit like Yoda he seemed to be more than he seemed. The diplomatic Assamber managed to ply him with drink and we got the information we needed, the location of a city at the foot of the southern mountains, apparently a place of much scum and villainy. The city was once a Giant Hold, but is now ruled over by Paldemar, an ex-member of the Cabal thought to have died thirty years ago. We had to find Rothaar though, who would possibly know the location of The Makers.

A skill challenge found the heroes successfully make their way across the badlands and avoiding the People of the Rock, the feral tribes that live in the Badlands. A few failures resulted in the loss of two healing surges each, which is an interesting mechanic that is currently being used. As an example, one failed roll meant we stumbled upon a grave ghost of the People of the Rock, the loss of the healing surge representing our efforts to extricate ourselves without having to go into combat mode.

The Forbidden City and the action around it were plundered from Thunderspire Labyrinth a module for 4E. While the locations had been taken from there it had obviously been liberally laden with elements from the campaign. The underground location was great and very atmospheric, a sort of lawless frontier town ruled by Paldemar with an iron fist based on prospecting for the ancient items of The Makers. The inn was very evocative and very well described. Ultimately, Rothaar agreed to help us if we would kill his brother Rundarr, who had betrayed his people to Paldemar, and free his people, this would mean going into part of Paldemar's complex within the mountain.

The whole action section raiding the complex was brilliant. The location was, again, excellent with a number of features we couldn't wait to interact with due to a load of cinematic imagery entering our heads on seeing the map. The main feature that attracted our attention being two spans crossing a bottomless underground crevasse. We had to fight on one or make a dramatic escape across one in true Moria-style. We haven't done that yet, but I'm sure it's scheduled for session seven. Anyway, we used the 'Chewbecca Manoeuvre', which involves masquerading as 'guards' and slapping chains on the non-human looking character in the group. We got into the complex and then made our way through in an excellently paced, free-flowing series of encounters cutting our way through three of them, with some sneaking around in between, killing both Smith Urvol (encounter #2) and Rundarr (encounter #3). It was a really good action sequence with action points being used, encounter powers being burned, stun tokens being burned and much excitement. It even had some interesting reveals as it was discovered Rundarr was an imposter, and he probably hadn't betrayed his people but had instead been killed and replaced.

We had to leave it there due to time, but the spans await and the battle to free the slaves, and the choice as to whether we flee to avoid Paldemar or stand our ground and take him on.

It's hard to say what this session had that others didn't, especially since all the sessions have been great and any comments by those concerned have been in a 'road to perfection' vein, but it did have something. It was like all the discussions, blog posts, the GM and the characters sort of just gelled. It was really good. It had stunting. It had combats that allowed the players to cut loose a bit without it feeling knife edge (while accepting the boss escalation will mean the final one or two might be). The encounters flowed rapidly from one to another allowing encounter powers to reset while having to manage the risk of the enemy merging one encounter into another (and alerting the rest of the occupants). The MMO elements merged well with the 'action hero' feel to create something unique. When I said that despite their very different agendas the action scenes in 4E and Spirit of the Century need not be that different, this session is what I had in mind. The role-playing was also varied as we moved over the different, and very evocative locations, giving it a great variety, richness and epic feel. It felt more like a typical gaming session than an experiment in gamist combat or an exercise in slightly 'distant' skill challenges, all of which works, and featured in this session, but they seemed to be a part of a much more integrated whole, which I think is the key to this sessions awesome: it brought everything together.

The first stop on the desert tour (which was very evocative and atmospheric) to help the rebellion was the home of Artimes's tribe, the aim being to secure their help in slowing down the Dragonborn army on its way to the city. The heroes arrived to find a bit of turmoil and skulduggery. It would seem a power struggle was taking place between Isaac, son of the old chief, and his uncle Agamo who killed the previous chief. The result was numerous really good scenes with the various participants involved, a few of them being very atmospheric, especially the scenes involving the Witch Sybelle and the mad Shaman who speaks to the dead ancestors. I was also good because it gave my character a chance to get into people's faces, it would seem the character is morphing into someone who is quite direct and not very diplomatic.

We had two problems: solve the problem of the clan's poisoned water supply (nicely CSI'ed via Assamber) and the killing of the mysterious creature in the desert. We delved into the caverns beneath the sand first, which was done via a number of skill rolls with the player authoring on success and the GM authoring on failure. Ultimately, we found our way to an ancient pumping station and the revelation that the mad Shaman was poisoning the water either due to speaking to the dead too long or due to supporting Isaac for chief (which he did). This battle was against quite a few foes, but the minions soon got despatched, and use of movement abilities kept the two scary ghosts from using their aura ability too much. The Shaman had a load of Warlock abilities, which saw us experiencing the power of a striker, but luckily I opened up on him with an action point powered encounter and then daily which caused a good amount of starting damage. The fact Morn's Paladin mark does aura damage also helped as did turn undead from Azhanti.

We then travelled back and revealed the source of the water poisoning, at which time Artemis announced the heroes would kill the mysterious desert beast, but that the chief should come with us as it was his duty to have killed it already. Isaac then also volunteered, creating a conflict situation as Isaac had previously suggested we take the chief and ensure he didn't return alive.

All the combat encounters we've had have been interesting and fun, but the best one until this session was probably the conflict with Althea. This was exciting in an MMO sense. She was the big boss and she had varied abilities and she really drain our resources and it was exciting. That combat encounter has been replaced, for me, by the battle with the dragon in the desert temple. This had a different focus, it was less like an MMO fight and felt more dramatic, and seemed to have its own narrative and flow. It was one you could picture in a movie more easily, the dragon causing a cave in to disrupt our tactic of holding it at a corridor entrance was suitably cinematic, as was it bursting out of the sand when we had to go looking for it after getting out. It was all a bit Michael Bay, especially as it burst out of the sand. Due to the way the dice went it wasn't as challenging as it could have been (or our abilities are kicking in), but it had other merits. It just shows that both the MMO and cinematic approach work, what's interesting is whether the multitude of factors that make these things happen in actual play will ever produce one that works on both levels (or maybe this one did, just one 'feel' tends to override another). That's more of a theoretical observation though.

As can be seen in the pictures the set for the battle with the dragon is quite large and a bit random, this was because it was created randomly with each player (including the DM) adding a part of it in turn. At first this was elements of the floor plan, and then the second round consisted of adding elements that could be interacted with from an index card. We had sink holes, tombs that had a rotting aura, braziers that enhanced fire damage (which we did try to use against the dragon), a circle that enhanced arcane damage, an alter that could reset powers based on sacrificing healing surges, etc. It made for a very dynamic environment, and while all of them didn't get used the attempts to move the battle so some of them could be used resulted in other things happen (the cave in for example was driven by an attempt to get the Assambar on the arcane circle) and the second phase of the fight was enhanced by opportunities to use the alter. Good stuff. I think this side of things is key when facing solo enemies, they should have an epic environment to match their epic nature.

An observation from this session is that running up against the session deadline can be a problem. The odd scene got cut short, such as the grand reveal of the Shaman as the poisoner, this was largely over aggressive scene framing to ensure we fit the killing of the desert beast in. The balancing of time with these things is always difficult. The same happened at the end due to lack of time, in that the conflict with Isaac and Agamo wasn't tackled directly and happened 'off camera' due to a lack of time and also the logistics of running two non-player characters in the battle with the dragon. Again, an unfortunate consequence of logistics rather than anything else. You can't just play forever after all. The only problem with time pressures hitting such scenes is it possibly adds to the feeling the game has a certain structure: enter conflict situation, get spin-off quests which change the views of people, these involve a combat encounter and possibly some skill challenges and conclude. This is very much how computer games are constructed, again more an observation than anything else (though without the skill challenges, you'd get the map to travel through). The lack of the denouncements possibly increases this feel.

Another great session.

This session followed a similar format to session two, in that it was split into two halves. We had been called to a meeting with the rebellion, to discuss the fall out from our assassination of Althea, the head of the Cabal's (the bad guys) secret police. The meeting with the rebellion was scheduled to take place as per the requirements of plot so the first half of the session was dedicated to the protagonists working through the dramatic consequences of the first three sessions.

A number of narratives played out before the meeting with the rebellion. Artemis and Kallista spoke, with Kallista proving to be a bit more open minded than Artemis, or so it would seem. Assamber arranged a deal with The Grub to take over the Seawatch Tower, which we have now moved into. Artemis tried to negotiate the release of Kyia, who The Grub now has changed close to a dais as a slave (Princess Leia-style). He didn't really have much to negotiate with, the two options he is considering is betraying the rebellion (unlikely) and Akaran Trak'Ar's head, something he'd do anyway. He could have also gave up his legacy weapon, which I must admit I considered, but reconsidered under group advisement. Azhanti went to meet his people and proved to be a sort of Dragonborn racist wanting the humans to fight it out between themselves so the Dragonborn could be come their overlords in the aftermath. We also discovered in this scene The Cabal has sent for a Dragonborn army to secure the streets of the city. Three of the characters had a religious discussion (which Artemis let them get on with). Artemis revealed to Morn he betrayed Kyia to The Grub, and after much discussion Morn made a vow that if Kyia is not free in a month he'll take his vengeance.

The meeting with the rebellion was interesting, primarily due to all the colourful characters in attendance. The only problem was the central issue in the scene wasn't one that could really be discussed to any sensible degree as the protagonists, or more specifically the players, couldn't really form a view on whether attacking or not attacking was remotely realistic. It lacked quite a bit of context. Ultimately, after some talking with the leaders and their henchmen we decided to support not attacking in favour of us seeking out a way to destroy the Iron Golems. The ancient murals on the walls of the Giants Cradle (session two) depicted the creation of great Golems in the mountains, so the plan was to head there. The other great reveal of the meeting was that Akaran Trak'Ar, in a Palpatine sort of way, was now going to aid the rebellion.

The single combat in the game took place after the rebellion meeting as Nabonidus revealed that Akaran Trak'Ar wanted Artemis to return his mother to him as the price for helping the rebellion. During this fateful discussion it was discovered Nabonidus's daughter looked exactly like the woman we rescued from Althea's tower - she was an imposter of some sort. This was a very good reveal that came from nowhere but felt very natural, which is pretty much the quality seal of a great reveal. She proved to be some sort of Desert Devil so we ended up fighting her, a befuddled Nabonidus and their guards. It was a good combat, with some particularly nasty abilities on display, specifically variants of the spell Flaming Sphere and Wall of Fire. The Wall of Fire being particularly brutal when immobilised within it. I was pleased her 'Psychic Scream' ability didn't regenerate throughout the combat. Still, I got three critical hits during the fight and probably pumped out quite a high amount of damage in a relatively short number of rounds.

It was interesting to note how the competitive nature of the combats is increasing. We seem to be heading towards an environment in which the group self-moderates to make sure no one is taking the piss. A case in point being the DM trying to lay a Wall of Fire diagonally, and a very brief interplay from a number of players suggesting that wasn't 'fair'. I found this moment fascinating, possibly more fascinating than it possibly is. In truth, absent of any gridded map, the wall of fire could go diagonally, but the presence of the gridded map in the first instance and the design of the game that has everything falling neatly into the grid and, potentially more importantly, the perception the players would not have got away with laying it diagonally, meant it got placed horizontally within the grid. In our own small way, the group has started to self-monitor itself to ensure the competitive environment is fair. The raising of the death flag is likely to be raised in the combats that are the most dramatically important, yet as a result of the flags presence they may become the mostly coldly tactical. Not sure how you get around that one.

As we roll into sessions five and six we face bringing the mother of Artemis back to the man who kept her captive for years and going to the mountains to seek out ancient builders of Golems. A part of me wants to not deliver Artemis's mother to the rebellion, it is this I now ponder.

All things considered though, another excellent session. It's going to be interesting spending sometime outside the city for a session or two. We also reached the lofty heights of 5th level and got our second daily power. We may now slow down the levelling a bit.