Dungeons & Drogans: Session XXXVIII 

Session XXXVIII Summary

We rewind time to Coltaine and Win'tyr's exchange at the cemetery.

Coltaine brings Win'tyr to his cousin's corpse, which, for some reason, is still there. The elf cradles the body, takes the ring from her hand, a family heirloom, and pockets it. "I'll always remember you," he says.

Coltaine says, "I'm sorry for your loss. No doubt her actions were a result of compulsions by a terrible evil. That's why it's important that we defeat these cultists and madmen that threaten innocent lives so that no one needs to suffer like her or you again. Win'tyr, would you like to join us on our quest to protect the innocent of our world?"

Win'tyr replies, "Coltaine, I wanted to hate you. I wanted to blame someone for Ninaran's death. Someone who is a complete twat, like you. But after all those evils we've faced, I know you are a Good People. Although you are not as Good People as Rekoj, Rekoj taught me the meaning of Good People. And for the Rekoj in all of us, I understand that evil must be fought. And it's time I stopped being a pussy. Coltaine, it would be my honor to be Good People."

They leave the graveyard, leaving Ninaran's corpse rotting under the sun.

That concludes our adventures in the Keep on the Shadowfell. The rest of the session is a debrief. We begin a Round Table discussion and cover everyone's favorite PC, battle, enemy, NPC, memory, and overall thoughts on the adventure.

Session XXXVIII - Part 1 Summary

The hourglass runs backwards, rewinding time until Coltaine and Win'tyr are at the cemetery, alone, just after the double funeral.

Coltaine brings Win'tyr to his cousin's corpse, which, for some reason, is still there. He explains that she was the aggressor. The corpse is in a sorry state, but Win'tyr recognizes the face.

The elf drops to his knees and cradles the rotting flesh in his hands. He takes the ring from her hand, a family heirloom, and pockets it. "I'll always remember you," he says.

Coltaine puts a hand on Win'tyr's shoulder and says, "I'm sorry for your loss. No doubt her actions were a result of compulsions by a terrible evil. That's why it's important that we defeat these cultists and madmen that threaten innocent lives so that no one needs to suffer like her or you again. Win'tyr, would you like to join us on our quest to protect the innocent of our world?"

Win'tyr stares Coltaine in the eye and says, "Coltaine, I wanted to hate you. I wanted to blame someone for Ninaran's death. Someone who is a complete twat, like you. But after all those evils we've faced, I know you are a Good People. Although you are not as Good People as Rekoj, Rekoj taught me the meaning of Good People. And for the Rekoj in all of us, I understand that evil must be fought. And it's time I stopped being a pussy. Coltaine, it would be my honor to be Good People."

They leave the graveyard, leaving Ninaran's corpse rotting under the sun.

That concludes our adventures in the Keep on the Shadowfell. The rest of the session is a debrief. We begin a Round Table discussion.

First question: Who is your favorite player character?

Dave: Doug. (He then realizes the question stated player CHARACTER and not PLAYER). Zacsaard. The cleric. He was crazy. It was funny.

Session XXXVIII - Part 2 Summary

(Continuing the discussion of, "Who is your favorite player character?")

Dave: Every time Zacsaard would go down in battle, we would win.

John: Zacsaard. I didn't resurrect him because I have a personal rule: if my character dies, I have to make a new one. I miss him a lot. The difficulty of the campaign ramped up really quick -- in the beginning, I could goof around a lot during battle, but near the end, I felt I couldn't spend a single round trying something cool because I needed to perform optimal tactics or the party would die. Part of the reason I have fond memories of Zacsarrd is because, at that time in the campaign, I could do crazy things like pick up a kobold and throw it at another kobold.

Nick: Although I have a certain pride in the fact that Coltaine managed to survive this whole adventure, I still think Rekoj and his multiple personalities were just too funny. He's my favorite.

Doug: Got to be Rekoj. He was so much fun to play, even though he wasn't my main. Even when Dave was playing him, he had this character -- he was just funny. And the multiple personalities just built on that.

Stephen: The original Zacsarrd. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't hit shit. But no matter what random-ass thing he wanted to pull off, he'd somehow do it flawlessly.

CJ: The original Zacsarrd, for the reasons already highlighted.

Favorite battle?

Doug: Hard to say. Of the ones I partook in... none were particularly glorious.

Nick: When Coltaine went down to the second level of the keep with the reinforcements from Winterhaven. That battle went on for some time, and we were on the verge of giving up. Win'tyr was cornered, Coltaine was sure he'd be killed. Coltaine went all-in with his last Daily Power, but ended up fumbling and dropping his weapon. But because of that, he was able to push the last enemy down the well, and we managed to just barely scrape ourselves a victory from that.

CJ: That was an epic battle. I'm going to agree with Nick. That session was so long... we played until 4am. The battle was down to the wire.

Dave: I got two. First, when Autumn went to aggro the dozen zombies that were ignoring us. We had to form a defensive square and hold them off from both ends. The other was the cemetery, with Ninaran, where everyone was knocked out, leaving Rekoj to finish the battle.

Stephen: I can't say I have one. I think I missed most of the epic battles.

John: It wasn't by any means glorious, or even victorious, but my favorite would have to be the slime. In 3 rounds, he destroyed us completely. We didn't even have time to fully engage him in melee -- that's how fast he killed us.

Favorite enemy?

Nick: I would, obviously, go with that slime. It's the stupidest thing we ever decided to attack twice, and it just drove me crazy. I probably had nightmares about that freaking slime. And truly, it was our most formidable enemy. Everything else paled in comparison. I'd also like to mention Balgron the Fat, because that little bastard got away in the end.

Dave: The rats in the pit. They were the most retarded enemies, ever. And they almost killed one of us. That was freaking hilarious.

Stephen: I wouldn't even know where to start.

John: Balgron the Fat. He's the reason Zacsarrd is dead, for one, and we never got to kill him.

Doug: The imp. He escaped twice, and when he finally died, I wasn't even at that session.

CJ: My favorite "villain," and I only consider him a villain because you guys fought him, would have to be Sir Keegan. He had the capacity to be just as powerful -- if not more powerful -- than the slime. But I just had terrible rolls that day, so he was never hitting you guys. Sir Keegan is the most well-developed character within this adventure. He has the largest write-ups, and it's such a shame that a large part of the plot/backstory hinges on the success of a skill challenge.

CJ: Also, I'd like to point out that no one here mentioned Kalarel, and you'd hope that the main villain of the adventure would be the favorite villain, but he was just so terribly written that it's not surprise no one picked him.

Favorite non-villainous NPC?

Dave: The dwarven blacksmith. Rekoj's eternal enemy until his grave days.

Stephen: Hear, hear.

John: Splug. No matter how many times we leave him behind, he's still my favorite guy.

Doug: Ninaran. She's my cousin and I love her.

Nick: The innkeeper/bartender. I still don't remember her name, and I never will. But it was so much fun not remembering her name and having her hate me -- and hate all of us -- because we were disgusting and stupid. Sylvana, or Pana, or whatever the hell her name was.

CJ: [laughing] That's completely wrong.

Session XXXVIII - Part 3 Summary

Best memory?

Dave: Asparagus.

Doug: Rekoj balling his eyes out over Sir Keegan.

John: When Rekoj was in the temple, getting healed, and I called over the blacksmith to go visit him.

Nick: When we spread rumors around town that Jacques was a pedophile, and then chained him to the stables and had his head kicked in by a horse.

Stephen: When we got the original Zacsarrd killed, and you (CJ) realized that you did enough damage to him to get him from Bloodied to instantly killed.

CJ: I'm going to have to agree with that. It wasn't a great moment, but I'd never been so surprised, as a DM. We all had a good laugh.

Thoughts on the module/adventure? (Keep on the Shadowfell is an adventure published by Wizards of the Coast and was run mostly as written)

Dave: If we started at level 2 or 3, this adventure would have been doable. The beginning was all right, but once we reached Irontooth, the difficulty ramped up to the point that the adventure was near-impossible to complete. Some of the battles were pretty cool; they had some variety to them. The characters in Winterhaven were pretty good. My main beef is that we started too low-level.

Stephen: The adventure itself was decent. The battles were pretty hard, but I think that makes it more challenging and interesting. The one thing that pisses me off the most is that room with the stinkin' statues, where Zook and Autumn died. Too many traps in one room.

John: I like challenges -- especially combat challenges. From a lore aspect, it was kind of good. Sir Keegan had a lot of depth. Also, the way the slime was born. The lore was okay, but I found the combat... I've never been in a campaign -- in my life (almost 10 years experience playing D&D) -- where each round, I was hoping I'd hit. Normally, I wouldn't mind missing an attack, because I could always hit next round. But in this adventure, if I miss with one attack, I start to worry about a total party kill. The combat was ridiculous. I can't believe Coltaine is still alive, honestly.

Nick: This adventure was complete and utter bullshit in achieving its goal. It's supposed to be an adventure welcoming players into the 4e experience. Instead, it induced feelings of frustration and a desire to quit D&D altogether if things got any worse. That trap room was just stupid beyond belief. It's just depressing -- it makes us feel like we're terrible at the game. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it -- there was a lot of fun involved, and some of the battles were epic because they were so close. But it just did such a poor job at achieving what it was designed to do.

Doug: I think the majority of our frustration came from bad rolls. The trap room, I will agree though, was retarded. Three of the four traps in the room could be avoided by walking around them, and the last trap could only be faced by the one person caught inside it, leaving the other players to just wait for the person to die. But as a whole, it was a campaign of potential that was not reached.

CJ: "Potential not reached" -- excellent point. Great way of summing up the entire adventure. To an extent, that trap room is representative of the entire adventure. Just... poorly designed; not well thought out.

Session XXXVIII - Part 4 Summary

CJ: A note about the characters... Dave mentioned the characters (NPCs) were a strength, of sorts. I'm not stating this to claim credit, but I refuse to allow the adventure itself to get the credit. As written, all of the inhabitants of Winterhaven are just written as complete cardboard cutouts with no personality whatsoever. Any amusement you may have gotten out of them cannot be attributed to the authors of this adventure. This adventure will detail -- ad nauseam -- the most bizarre of things, and then gloss over important details that could serve to flesh out the adventure. The adventure missed the opportunity to make the players care about the people of Winterhaven by giving them personality.

Doug: It's quite possible the writers hoped a good DM would fill those shoes when it comes to running NPCs.

Nick: But what CJ was saying is that people buy this product so that they don't have to invest that kind of time in it. Any DM can overrule the description given to them and change things, but there should be some kind of setup already in place. I don't think every DM wants to have to make up a personality for every single NPC the players interact with.

CJ: That sums up most of what I had to say quite nicely. Yes, the DM can come up with a personality. However, there are creative professionals paid to write this stuff, and that's what you pay for when you buy the product. I can compose my own song, but if I hire a professional to do it, it'll turn out much better. And that ties into the lore point -- yes, the adventure went to great lengths to detail the lore about the slime room and Sir Keegan, and yet it is very easy to completely miss that detail. The only reason you guys found out about it is because I cheated and just gave the information to Sorrow: your character starts with all this information that would have been skipped because this adventure is poorly written.

CJ: Sir Keegan was written to be an interesting character -- a tragic hero. But you don't get his backstory if you fail the skill challenge. Which brings me to the skill challenge... First off, "social" skill challenges are more difficult to run, to understand, and to enjoy than "physical" skill challenges. Having this as the introduction to skill challenges -- what was supposed to be a major selling point of 4e -- was a big mistake.

CJ: The difficulty of this adventure was a major flaw. Challenging combat is cool, but this adventure is written in such a way that, if you do not play with a party of 5 optimized characters, with each of the four combat roles well-represented, and if the players do not make the optimal combat choices throughout battle, the difficulty is unmanageable. As the introduction to 4e, why so difficult?

CJ: And then we come to the plot... Kalarel is such a poorly-written villain. He's not written to be incompetent -- he's just incompetent based on how he's written. What are his plans? Why does he want to open this rift? Why does he care about Winterhaven interfering? Why did he send an obvious spy? Let's just say I look forward to the next adventure.

Doug: I'd just like to finalize by saying that as my first D&D experience, as a whole, it was still quite fun, in spite of the frustration. I enjoyed it. I had a good time. D&D is fun.

CJ: That's a good point. As much as I could say that Keep on the Shadowfell was a terrible, terrible adventure, I do think we had a lot of fun playing through it -- at least I did. Some times weren't so fun, like when we had those near-TPK moments, or frustrations because of the insane difficulty, but overall it was fun. But I don't attribute that to the authors of the adventure, but rather to our group, the players, all of us together.

CJ: I will say one good thing about Keep on the Shadowfell; it delivered a good ending. It set up all the dominoes in such a way that the final battle was climactic. A satisfying death to the stupid villain, who was essentially killed due to his own stupid plan.

(Open question) From a production standpoint, from a YouTube standpoint, what can we do to improve the sessions? Presently, each session is divided into roughly 20 minute increments -- I can make the session one long video, but would that be better or worse?