Free Will and Determinism – Winging It or Playing by the Rules

In the first few sessions of my game we weren't playing D&D, the home brew system was a lot more cinematic and scenes tended to be big and dramatic. Bringing in the new structures and limitations of the fourth edition rules caused a lot of concern. Rich and Iain most noticeably felt their characters were less able to contribute to the action. Their concerns were valid but I promised once we were all more familiar with the new system we'd get back to the freedom they felt was missing.

The last few sessions have given the players a lot more freedom. The fear expressed by Rich, that the miniatures and battle grid were taking over from action movie style combat scenes, has been laid to rest. This week's session was a great example of this. And while the scenario itself had a few issues, the encounters worked well and at the end of the night we all went away happy to have played in another fun night of D&D.

After the feast

The dwarves give the party the mission of attacking the goblin army from a remote hilltop. A guide leads them through more dwarven tunnels and out into a natural cave. Here the party meets and dispatches a small clutch of goblins, a hard encounter for the six level three heroes which nearly costs the Sword Mage his life. A short rest and some simple medical attention bring the party back to their prime, and while Onza's wounds are patched up Miri and Tabba find a mound of jellied spawn; dozens of transparent globes, each with a gestating infant goblin inside. Within moments Annarin bathed the spawn in fire. The crackle of flames is soon accompanied by the popping of the organic bubbles and the tiny squeals of the unborn goblins as they expire. Moving out from the cave the same end is dealt to numerous other goblin spawns.

At the cave mouth the party looks down the hillside at the river of goblins flowing towards the walls of the dwarven fort. Hulking lizards pull along war machines and troop carriers, rockets scream through the air piloted by equally screaming goblin suicide troops. The defences around the fort hold back the onslaught as the six heroes take stock and plan their assault.

Sandbox Battle Field

After describing the general scene and the way the combat was going I then explained how this next scene was going to work. I wanted a truly cinematic battle sequence, and told them to express their imagination. Each player had an image of the hillside and the waves of goblins sweeping towards the fort, and I let them interpret the facts dramatically. When Arwen wanted a tree to climb from which to fire arrows into the fray the tree was right there. Miri climbed on the back of a dinosaur and began to cut the straps that connected to the wagon behind it. Onza lightning lured a rocket out of the sky and briskly dived out of the way before it hit the ground where he had been standing.

In turn each player described not only their character's actions but also their interactions with the battle scene and the rest of the party. We put the dice away and ran the next hour of fighting as a purely narrative story. It went very well. The feeling of big screen block buster action had returned and I saw even the most sleepy of my players come awake and put their all into the scene.

Best Laid Plans

Unfortunately this was also the scene where a specific action had be planned. Lily (Hannah's Character) was supposed to fall in combat out of sight of the rest of the party. Hannah and I had discussed this, and as the combat continued I felt the moment slipping away. The freedom the players were enjoying ended up with me fumbling the agreed element of action. Hannah wanted Lily to be captured by the Goblins and to then use this in the next session to lead into her characters reveal.

As the night was drawing to a close I was aware that I was going to have to shoe horn in her going missing. Leaving it so late and forcing the moment left it feeling wrong and it didn't mesh with the rest of the scene. I'm looking at that for future sessions, and at the beginning of the next session I will weave the tale a little more so as to smooth over this hiccup.

All in all, the free form element worked well. With the right players and the right atmosphere you can put the rules down and go without. I had a team of heroes against a field of mooks (low level minions) and I saw no need to force the action into a more restrictive format. With little danger of taking lethal damage I left the party to incorporate the Goblins into their descriptions, and occasionally threw in a little extra background colour myself.

Next time the party has to track down their missing librarian and rescue her from a goblin surgeon. Why have the goblins taken her away? Why has Lily been feeling so nauseous since arriving at the dwarven halls? Why has she put on weight? Arwen and Tabba have a theory, but all will be revealed soon.

The Dwarven Front: The Big Reveal

It's a simple trip into the mountains. The Dwarves are fighting the Goblins, we're delivering weapons and food to the dwarves. Lots of references to the mines of moria, and cousin Barrin giving us a fine welcome. We know what to expect, it's all been done before.

When your players assume they know what to expect you have an opportunity to push your story to new heights. This week's game was one such chance for my campaign, and because I seized that chance we had one of our best sessions.

It was an exercise in pacing, storytelling and foreshadowing. Leaking out the information slowly at first with more realizations coming in waves as the night progressed.

My six players were to discover this was no standard dwarven outpost, and they weren't dealing with familiar dwarves either.

 

Reveal One – We don't do things like you do

The party has never met another race in it's own borders before, this was their first foreign country, and I wanted to show that there were diverse social models in my world. Here they aren't just finding a new race of humans, they are in the sunken tunnels of a different species. I wanted them to have to second guess a few of their preconceived perceptions.

Dwarves on my world live a segregated life. The men are free and proud, any male can follow his own plans for life and strike out to achieve his ambitions. Dwarven law supports the rights of the individual and adjudicates where conflict or disputes occur. But their society oppresses their women, leaving them uneducated and restricted in their power and freedom.

The party arrives and late as it is are soon given bunks for the night. But the women are led away to a separate hall where they share a room. They find that the dwarven women only speak their racial language and at that they speak it in simple terms and concepts only. Miri speaks dwarven and has to translate for Lily. They find one dwarf, Merel, who seems more educated and enlist her as their guide.

Overnight as they sleep the whole party awake together and face a beast from the far realms, the combat is very one sided though they can land some blows and do a fair amount of damage it's hardly even wounded as it slides away. This feels very much like they have been tested by the beast.

When they awake in the morning the men are invited to meet the Alder General who thanks them for their service in delivering the food, and asks for the weapons to be given over to his quartermaster. Arwen explains that the swords are being held by Lily and magically guarded. Though perturbed by this he sends for the women. Each of the men turn to talk about the coming war. Kurtis, the merchant they have been escorting explains he intends to return home to Palanquas. Our four heroes all pledge to assist in the fighting. The Strophean Captain adds his sword and those of his remaining six soldiers, as a first sign of support from the prince.

 

Reveal Two – There are Enemy Factions within Factions

Merel arranges for Miri to have some space in which to practice her martial arts. The dwarven maiden has never seen a woman able to defend herself like this and when Lily joins in Merel formulates a plan.

She explains to the girls that there are cultists who are hiding here in the womens quarter they are gathering and plotting and maybe having seen what these humans are capable of maybe they could capture one of the cultists and take them to the men. No male dwarf would listen to her, but the strangers have given Merel a chance to do something about these zealots.

She leads Miri and Lily deeper into the womens region and points them to a cave where there are five of these bad dwarves. Face to face with the threat Miri and Lily see these dwarves are crazed snake cultists, bald and tattooed with snake skin patterns over their scalp. They kill four and take the fifth prisoner.

Collected by the General's men Miri and Lily deliver their captive and he is led away to be dealt with. Arrangements for the weapons to be handed over are made, and then talk turns to the coming feast.

 

Reveal Three – You never know enough, but you soon know too much

At the feast the party begin to swap tales and very soon Arwen is telling of their encounter in an abandoned dwarven hostel. They show the axe head, book and magical staff recovered and some interest rises from nearby tables, a bard at their table promises a legendry tale if first Arwen will tell what they found in this ruined hall.

The damaged hall came to their attention after they encountered a clutch of death jump spiders, after dispatching the arachnids they took rest in the valley and discovered a Warlock stone circle pulsing with impenetrable energy. Exploring the area they found a dwarven hall behind a waterfall and began to delve deeper. They found many signs of fighting, the scortched bodies of fallen dwarves, and eventually a cavern badly damaged from a great and mighty combat.

In return for these details the bard tells of an ancient dwarven hero, something of a rebel, a warlock who allied with the powers that dwell beyond the stars. This star-locked mage was known as Garram, and he freed the dwarves from their masters the Gnolls. But the power he used was wrong in the eyes of the Alders and they raised up a party to kill him. This group of wizards and clerics fought him across his many bolt holes until they tracked him to the hall that Arwen had described. Here Garram fought and lost all his students but with a sudden burst in his power punished his enemies and ascended growing and shifting into a Shadow-form dragon. The dark dragon Gar still remembered his dwarven brethren and continued to protect them. Eventually he amassed a following and then, projecting himself on their worship, climbed into the heavens. He defeated the then neutral goddess of shadows to take the Throne of Darkness for himself.

As all the pieces fell into place every jaw in the room dropped. The evil god of darkness, once a dwarf himself, is the patron deity of the dwarven nation, a nation with restrictive views on gender roles and female freedoms and rights, a nation with which the two neighboring human nations of Palanquas and Strophea have allied to join in the war against the Goblin uprising. Earlier that very day they had all pledged their swords/bows/knives and spells to that self same cause. A pledge they now had to evaluate in a new light.

And so we ended that nights session on that revelation… and there was much post game discussion.

My World + WotC’s Ideas

The world and setting for my current campaign is my own, and one I've run campaigns on before. Switching to the new edition of D&D gave me some interesting options, and some challenging story concepts to try and work in. I had no half elves on my world. I didn't have Eladrin or Tieflings, The Feywild just wasn't a concept I had ever included before, nor was the Shadowfell. All these elements I felt should be brought in, so I examined my story lines and tried to see where my setting could include these races and locations.

The primary story lines, already in progress before the launch of 4^th edition, could easily lead to the two planes. I had picked the shadow god as the main villain for the main story so I started to shift the background colour to include the shadowfell, there is a second story getting very little interest where all the native fey creatures are migrating south, this will tie into the feywild – I won't go into this just yet.

As for the Tieflings and the Eladrin, well I figure they could be the common folk of the two new planes. When the party arrive in the Shadowfell they can interact with the Tieflings, maybe even bring some back. The planned outcome of the fey story line should give plenty of opportunity to introduce the Eladrin.

Half Elves…. hmmm

Eliode: An epic campaign

Before I discuss the intricacies of the plot let me introduce the party –

• Simon plays the Ranger Arwen Skinner, a failed druidic initiate.
  
• Hannah plays Lily Williams, a roguish librarian
  
• Rich plays Tabba Silverside a Minotaur barbarian
  
• Iain plays Onza a Swordmage
  
• Sera plays Miri a Monk themed Ranger
  
• Steven is playing Annarin a wizard.
  

Our heroes have encountered the Evil god of Darkness, Zehir discovering that academics documenting Zehir's rise to power gave him the name Gar Raminol Thea. They also found scrolls and tomes describing the Goddess Zehir defeated when he took the throne of darkness the goddess called Par Thea Col. Arwen has set his sights on re-establishing the church of Par Thea Col and the party have a dark obsidian looking glass that reflects back an image of the Goddesses face. Their experience and research into the pantheon of gods will be important as the game progresses because it gives me opportunity to shock them like I did last night.

 

Last night my D&D4ed game hit the 11^th session. The current story element has our band of heroes escorting a caravan of weapons into the Redcap Mountains. They are protecting a merchant who will deliver blades and axes, food and provisions to a Dwarven fort.