This week marked my first attempt to run a session of Dungeons and Dragons as a DM. And personally I think it went pretty well. All the players seemed to enjoy themselves, no one died, though a few came close, and we got to test out the newly revamped 4E version of the Dark Sun world.
This was the first session of the second season of the Dungeons and Dragons Encounters program. As a DM I was given a kit from which to run the campaign, so let’s discuss that shall we. The kit contains a twenty or so paged campaign booklet that gives all the details on the world, the actual encounters, and any special rules. In this case giving some background detail on the world of Athas and some of the rules that help simulate how harsh this new world is. This is contained in a nice little folder with a double sided folding map which contains all the different encounter areas for the campaign. The map is one of the best part of these campaigns, the other are a set of status cards that are supplied. These little illustrated cards each describe a specific negative status effect and are nice for handing a player so they have a better idea of any limitations they face when under a particular status. For this particular campaign they went with pre-generated characters and a nicely illustrated character card is supplied for each of the six.
Now nice as these items look they also happen to be riddled with typos and errors. Some of it is a result of rule changes that took place after the campaign went to the printers, but a great many of the problems are simply a lack of adequate proof reading. And unfortunately since the actual rule books for the Dark Sun setting aren’t going to be released until August there is really know way of knowing how much of the perceived errors are real and how many are a result of other changes. Thankfully this is part one of a three part series, so hopefully some of these issues will be fixed in the follow-up parts.
One nice thing about D&D is that it’s fairly easy for the DM to expand and adjust the rules, and of course the campaigns are written in such a way that you can add to and adjust the story to your and your players own liking. On this point I did some research into the original version of the Dark Sun world in order to add some more background and give my players more information. So I added some extra skill checks and through in some more little bits of story to pull them in a bit more and hopefully get them more into the role playing side of things. Along with that my group was a little smaller then the encounter was designed for so I had to adjust the fight.
And on that note on to the story.
The party begins its adventure as members of a trade caravan traveling towards the city state of Tyr. Some are minor nobles or other wealthy enough to travel within the relative comfort of the wagons, they rest are slaves, trudging along through the sand in the wake of their masters wheels. Along the way a massive sandstorm erupts, though a common enough occurrence on Athas the storm soon takes an unnatural turn. Great shards of obsidian begin to fall from the sky, propelled by the great winds they are like great blades, slicing through anything in their path. Taking refuge from the storm within a wagon the group huddles in fear as the storm rages. After what seems like hours the storm finally begins to weaken, and as the few survivors pull themselves from the wreckage and begin to collect what supplies they can find shadows fall upon them as a band of reptilian creatures appear upon the top of the sand dunes surronding them.
Thus began the first encounter. Surrounded by a group of silt runners the party had to collect as many supplies as they could while fighting off the attacking creatures and make their escape all within a mere five rounds. All in all my group did fairly well I thought. No deaths, though two were knocked unconscious, the group also used both healing fruits, half their second winds, and two daily powers were used up. Looking over the rest of the adventure I may end up adding a few extra healing fruits in here and there to give them a fighting chance. They’ve definitely kept true to the harsh world that is Athas.
Until next week ladies and gents. I’ve got some home brewed rules I’m going to be trying out and I’ll post them up after I see how my players like them.