Into the Dark Unknown…

The Challenge Begins…

Last night the KIA SpecOps group began a new adventure for Dungeons & Dragons. The Challenge of Vixoris, as I named the story, is the first adventure that we’ve played using the 4th edition rules that has been home-written.

Here then are some thoughts from behind the GM screen…

The story so far…

Our heroes have been snatched from their last adventure on Faerun (the Forgotten Realms to you and me) and find themselves coming-to in a small fighting pit deep underground.

After a quick skirmish with the Orcish inhabitants of said fighting pit, the heroes discover that they have been “summoned” to this place by the mysterious Lady Vixoris. Meeting her vizier, Camulus, they have been made a Proposal and, following a hearty meal and some negotiation, signed a contract.

Our heroes are to set out and find a magical blade, said to reside somewhere in the underdark beneath Lady Vixoris’ mountain fortress. With said blade they are upon a quest to slay a mighty Dragon who has beset the lands that Vixoris is sworn to protect. In return, the heroes are promised treasure and the offer of either a permanent place within the Lady’s retinue or a free passage back to their last location.

And thus it began. The contract was signed and the heroes were led down into the depths of the fortress, accessing a deep and long-neglected sewer tunnel which, they are told, will put them upon the road to discovering the lost blade. Trudging through the foul-smelling sewer tunnel, alongside the slow-flowing and thick “waters”, our heroes are on their way.

All was well until they happened upon a swarm of Rot Beetles who, scenting the flesh of the party, moved in to kill and raze their flesh…

Encounters are simpler.

Writing a D&D 4th edition encounter is far easier that writing one for previous editions. If you then add the use of Wizards’ “Adventure Tools” to access the statistics of the foes you plan to throw against the party, then you’re quids in.

I’ve found that creating the first few key combat encounters was a relatively quick task, perhaps taking me an hour or so to create three or four. Admittedly, D&D 4th does not really encourage much beyond fighting encounters and skills challenges, yet given that the guys assemble to blow off steam and have a laugh, the game works well enough for a light-hearted dungeon bash.

I found that typing up my notes, cutting and pasting in the stat blocks from Adventure Tools, and then popping them into DropBox worked wonders for me. Using my iPad I was able to access the file in DropBox and read the stats right off the screen: never has GMing D&D been so straight forward.

Disease and complication.

A final element that was really easy to drop into the scenario was the idea of complicating the combat areas.

In the sewers, a narrow and tight fighting area anyway, I was able to quickly add disease to the waters and change the visibility with thick sewer fog. Both of these “special effects” had rules found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide for me to use them not just as flavour-text but as hard effects within the game.

Frankly, this was awesome and very entertaining, forcing the players to decide if being pinned against a sewer wall and mauled was preferable to wading through disease-ridden sewer water… in the dark and misty unknown.

Let’s not forget the players…

The group are, as ever, great fun to play with. My heartfelt thanks go to Ian (Saxum Vir), Mark (Ghalrik), Mark (Braemar), Dave (Ronan), and Pete (Wrath). I’m also told that we may have a new player joining us for the next session… so welcome in advance to Oliver.

Game on!