Theo Dudek, Ultimate Game Master

Last night I got to run a game for a bunch of people who I met through an older gamer friend of mine. Their names are Alistair, Konstantin, Carissa and Frank, and out of all of them, only Konstantin had played D&D 4th edition before. So I rolled up my sleeves and decided to hit them with a good beginner’s adventure… specifically, The Keep on the Shadowfell!

I had actually never run this myself before so it was a good opportunity to try it out rather than retooling 3e and older adventures to 4e like I usually do. With the exception of Konstantin, the players had all made characters at a bar a few nights before (I was out of town and couldn’t have gone in the bar anyway), but their characters checked out and so we ran with it. The party consisted of Onari, a water genasi Avenger in the service of the goddess called the Raven Queen; Shachi, a crowlike kenku shaman; Radran, a green-robed, heavy-drinking, smack-talking eladrin wizard; and Grof, a scarred, leather-wearing rogue who, though human, had been brought up in the goblin criminal clans. I used 3e alignment, so the party were not exactly “heroes” in the 4e sense; Onari had her holy mission of murder (to find and kill the evil Kalarel), and Grof was also on a mission from his bosses, but the others were opportunistic adventurers looking for gold and loot, not necessarily looking to defeat evil. ^^

For this adventure I dropped “Shadowfell” into Neo-Pegana, my campaign setting. Winterhaven became Marthis, a small town in the shadow of the towering Scagadonian mountains, said to stretch west all the way to the edge of the world. The Keep became an old stronghold off the Ozahian Empire, now nothing but tumbled ruins. In this setting, the dominant races are humans (of various cultures) and lizardfolk, whose militaristic Mondathian empire clashes continually with the equally cutthroat human confederation.

Alistair and Konstantin were late to the game, so the curtain lifted on Onari and Grof, traveling along a grassy cobblestone road through the oak forests of the land of Greenweir, around Marthis. They were then ambushed by kobolds, who in Neo-Pegana are mole-creatures, dirty cloaked beings with ratlike tails and the faces of star moles. I thought I had adjusted the encounter difficulty properly by removing one of the kobold dragonshields from the first encounter, but apparently this was not enough -_-;; for Onari was quickly cut down by the kobolds. Then in the nick of time appeared… RADRAN THE WIZARD, whose player had finally arrived after not being able to get a ride to the apartment!! Radran started blasting the kobolds with the spells in his magic tome, but soon he too was overwhelmed, as another dragonshield appeared, wielding a brutal combat shovel! To my horror I realized that I had actually played 7 kobold minions on the table instead of 5!!! As blood flecked and splattered in the oak leaves, Grof and Radran fell and the party seemed doomed yet again… until suddenly there appeared… SHACHI THE KENKU, the wolf shaman, whose player had finally showed up after waiting for 25 minutes outside the apartment unable to get a cell phone signal! Between the four of them, the party finally slaughtered the earthworm-eating kobolds, healed their wounds and continued onward, in the dusk, in time to reach the rundown town of Marthis.

Then there was much socializing at the inn, and Shachi and Radran (against Onari’s protests) came up with a plan to trick the villagers into becoming footsoldiers for them and basically sacrifice them on the front lines against the kobolds. It was a good first night with a nice balance of roleplay and combat. Unfortunately, I had to leave early because school started on Monday (today!!). We drove down to campus late that night and now I’m uploading this between classes! (^.^) Hopefully I will be able to return to Neo-Pegana Shadowfell soon!