Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition

I said before (a long time ago now, but since I don't think I have any regular reader, I don't think it matters much!) that I play roleplaying games, specifically Dungeons & Dragons. As people who have an interest in D&D probably know, a new edition of the game came out about two weeks ago. This weekend, I started Dungeon Mastering my first campaign.

I had previously worked on creating some characters with my wife, but Saturday was the first time I actually created characters from A to Z and actually ran an encounter. So, my friends Sebastien and Valerie came over and, with my wife, created characters. Since the game is now built around four character concepts, I also created a character which I am running at the same time as I am DMing. Here's an overview of the characters:

• Sebastien: Dragonborn Paladin of Pelor - Defender
• Valerie: Elf Ranger - Striker
• Isabelle (my wife): Tiefling Warlord - Leader
• Me: Eladrin Wizard - Controller

The creation took some time, as we had to get familiar with the new races and classes, as well as the various new systems. They arrived home around 4 pm and left around 1 am, and we had time to create the four characters, do a quick introduction and play through one encounter. This might seem like very long, but we stopped for at least two hours and a half to make and eat dinner, give our son his bath before putting it to bed, and preparing the set for the game (more on that below).

I have decided to change the way I DM at the same time as we change the game we play: instead of drawing the map on a white erasable board and play with minis, I tried playing with my laptop and a screen plugged to it using Maptool. Available here: http://www.rptools.net, Maptool is a virtual gaming table. It enables me to load in a picture of the dungeon I'm running and moving tokens representing the Player Characters, Non Player Characters and monsters. This new way of playing was very well received, except by my wife who wondered why we had spent so much money on minis :-) The main reason were the clarity of the map, as I can't draw as well as professional illustrator, and the gain in time: no more pausing the game while I draw the map.

We are currently playing the adventure at the back of the Dungeon Master Guide and the players are based in Fallcrest, the town also described in that book. We might retcon that later to include this introductory adventure in a longer campaign, maybe using the guidelines to play the Keep on the Shadowfell (the pre-release adventure by Wizards of the Coast, which I plan to play next) in the Forgotten Realms, as explained on http://www.dndinsider.com.

I did a quick introduction, having the character I play introduce himself to the other characters as representant of the baron and enrolling the other characters to rid Kobold Hall of its inhabitants in exchange for the reward, as explained in the character hooks for the adventure. Nothing really interesting, but since what we really wanted was to test the new rules and not start a campaign, we did not bother with character background or motivation to go adventuring. We'll probably look into that some more if this adventure is successful (and I'm still not confident it will be as the last encounter seems quite deadly) and we decide to turn this one-shot (or rather, two-shot since we'll need two sessions to play the whole adventure) into a campaign.

The characters then moved to the dungeon area where we ran the first encounter. It went well, with the characters doing quite well, although we made several rules mistakes throughout: no one added their proficiency bonus to powers using a weapon, the ranger forgot to apply her Hunter's Quarry class features, and I did not use the Kobolds' Shifty power correctly (I used the power to shift using a minor action, but I did not realize they could use it twice in a round by spending their minor and their move action), and I should have removed one monster as the encounter is set up to have one monster per character in the group. But overall, it went well, was fun, and looks promising.

To make the next session easier, I have decided to work on two things: setting up the adventure in Maptool, which will make it easier and quicker to start the encounter, and create power cards with all the power the characters have, to avoid having to flip the books to find the description of the powers they have. I found very nice ones made by a fan called Ander00 on the EN World forums at this address: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=4274554&postcount=568.

I'll try to post a recap and my opinion of the new ruleset after the second session, probably during the weekend of the 5 & 6 July.