Pathfinder Mythic Rules

I've been blogging daily on a second blog site for the past 5 weeks, that has almost nothing to do with gaming outside of the name... but blogging daily there has gotten me back into the blogging habit, so I feel like I should revisit this space and start using it again.

(For the interested parties, my other blog is my journal as I try to lose about 100 lbs and get back into shape, you can see it here: http://weightlossachievementunlocked.blogspot.com/).

Anyway, back to the point of this post. We've been playing in the new Pathfinder Adventure path for the past few months, and last night finished a big dungeon crawl and leveled/tiered up again.

We have a party of 5, all of us are level 8 and Mythic Tier 3. Here's our party:

Brill, Level 8 Human Life Oracle (that's me)
Dyrfinna, Level 8 Human Stormborn Sorcerer
Torq, Level 8 Half-Orc Rogue
Shegurd, Level 8 Half-Orc Barbarian
Rahz, Level 8 Human Fighter 5/Paladin 3

Overall, my opinion on the Mythic Rules is that they are very interesting, but i'm not sure I appreciate the increased complexity that comes with the massive amount of rules. We've been playing Pathfinder a long time, but with this campaign we're using Ultimate Campaign and Mythic Adventures, and honestly it's a lot to keep up with. I've got a shop in the ruins of our starting city and the downtime issues there are just a chore when added to everything else... armies, rebuilding cities, leveling up in both level and tier. It's a lot!

We're trying to smooth things out a bit, with a combination of 'cheat sheets' that spell out all the various actions we have available, and we've begun work on a 'playbook', to try to script a little of the fights, but of course the only good thing about a plan is that you know it will get thrown out the window as soon as initiative is rolled.

This post is mostly just a pre-cursor though. I'm just getting this out here as an intro, and I'll try to post something about our campaign  every few days. Since we've been in the campaign for a while, I can both post look-backs as well as current events and look-forwards. So I should have plenty of fodder for the first few weeks.

Arena Update

I should have pictures and a detailed post about making this after this weekend. I picked up filler, clay, and balsawood for the walls. All that's left now is, you know, working on it.

Brief Update on the Arena

The base arena is basically finished! I've done the following:

Purchased styrofoam
Drawn the basic shape
Cut out the shape with hot wire tools
Laid out a grid with masking tape and paint
Etched the grid with hot wire tools
Cut out a staircase up to the arena floor
Base-painted the arena
Sprayed the arean with Fleck-Stone texture
Inked the arena with darker paint
Painted several layers of highlights over the floor to give it a more organic look
Picked out Hirst Arts floor tiles for the stairs

Still to come:
Smooth and fill the stairs and mount the stairs
Smooth the stair walls
Wrap the entire arena in basswood or plastic to make a wall around the arena
Coat the wall with Makins Clay and then use a mold to texture the walls like brick
Mount a door to the wall where the stairs enter the arena
Decorate the wall with hirst arts columns and torches.

What got nixed:
Modular floor sections. I still like the idea, but it was clear that that wasn't going to wrok out the way I liked. So, instead, my modular sections will be mounted on board/styrofoam.

Building a Gladiatorial Arena (For real)

I picked up a 4'x8' sheet of 1.5" thick Formular pink styrofoam for $13 on sale at my local Home Depot, and brought it home. A few minutes with a razor blade later, and I had a sheet for my arena... I settled on a 24" x 46" rectangle, as that seemed the largest feasible size for my gaming table.

After cutting, I realized I failed to have a good way to grid the board. Due to the properties of styrofoam, I didn't have a perfect square, so using my T-square was failing. After realizing I wasn't going to be happy with this, I flipped the board and went at it again, and still wasn't happy.

So, I punted. And played a lot of Dragon Age. Tonight, I'll simply take some 1" thick masking tape, tape it off horizontally, and brush on gridlines with green paint. I'll let that dry, pull off the tape, mask it vertically, and grid it again. Then I'll etch the gridlines with my foam cutter.

Wish me luck.

Building a gladiatorial arena (layout and design)

Continuing my plan to build a large arena for my Dark Sun campaign, I wanted a play surface that would evoke a lot of potential concepts... the something that could be used for any type of gladiator combat, be it the Roman Colosseum, or the Battle Arena in Star Wars. So.. first off, graph paper.

Oh, the possibilities.

 For graph paper, if you don't have any handy, but do happen to have Photoshop, it's pretty easy to make a piece. I created a 30cm x 50cm canvas, filled it with white, and then turned gridlines on. I went into the grid options, set the grid lines to one per cm, colored them a nice shade of blue, and done... a perfect 30x50 grid.

Then, I used some very basic tools to layout the arena itself... after just a few minutes, I had this:

It's actually less interesting now, isn't it?

Here we have a very basic layout of my arena. I'll take a sheet of 30" x 50" 1.5 inch thick pink styrofoam insulation, and I'll grid the whole thing via a carpenter's square and a Sharpie. You can purchase this stuff at Lowe's or Home Depot... it's actually called 'Sheathing' and comes in 4'x8' sheets. 1.5" thickness sheets cost about $20 here, which is a huge piece that you can use for many, many projects. I'll be buying a sheet for my arena, and use the other 2/3 of the sheet to build various arena modules, and still have enough left over to do another huge project later.

This will get me a bright pink work surface with a battlegrid on top of it. I'll rough out the curve of the arena walls with a pencil, until I get the curves right, and I'll also mark out the 'light' areas. Once I've gotten my board marked up apropriately, it's time to get to work.

An Exacto knife along the edges a few times will cut deep enough that I can snap the pieces off the corners. I'll probably do this in three-four chunks per corner, just to keep the breaks clean. Then, for the harder parts.

First, I'll want to carve out the gridlines. I will use my Hotwire Foam Factory for this... I have an engraving tool, and I simply use it to gouge a shallow rivulet down each of the gridlines. You can use a guide for this, but I have fairly steady hands and like it to be a little organic, so I will do it free-hand.

The three large areas of lighter color are where I want my 'modules' for the arena. So, I need to cleanly and carefully cut these out. For this I'll use a straight craft saw, and cut them out along the grid lines. If I am very careful, you'll not really be able to tell they are removable.

At this point, I'll have a basic 1.5" thick battle surface with three removable pits. The other light areas are going to be the stairs the are used to enter the arena... I will carve out 1" wide steps, each step .5" high, so that you will walk up onto the battle surface. Now the structure of the arena floor will be done.

The next step will be relatively difficult, and I'm not certain how to handle it right now... I want a low wall around the entirety, with the two entrances with doors. Normally, I'd use Hirst Arts molds, but this is a huge surface... so I can either try to smoothly cut styrofoam in a curve (not likely), or use flexible material... plasticard, light cardboard, balsa or basswood. During the planning phases, I'm not really sure what I'll be using, so a trip to Hobby Lobby is clearly in order.

Before I do that, though, I'll want to paint everything. I paint every surface with a thick, brush-on primer. This will allow me to safely use aerosols (primers, paints, sealants, whatever) without melting the styrofoam. I'll take out the modules for this part, so I can get the sides as well. When I'm done, you'll no longer be able to tell it's bright pink home sheathing.

So that's it for theory... if I have time this weekend, I'll do this in reality and take some pictures so you can see it as it comes together in real life.

Building a gladiatorial arena (brainstorming)

My proto-Dark Sun campaign is going to feature a gladiatorial arena as the primary tactical encounter area for the first several sessions. I'm a huge fan of building props for games, and have a large amount of hobby supplies that are devoted to building terrain... I've got a hot wire foam factory kit, modelling epoxy, flock, ballast, Hirst Arts molds, stacks of scrap styrofoam... the whole thing.

So, I need to plan out the arena, since it's going to be where all the 'action' happens. First things first, I want it to be large, but not terribly unwieldy... it would be nice if I could transport it, for instance.

So step one will be to design the basic arena. It will need to be large enough to support reasonable mass combat, or to handle a gargantuan beast with room to maneuver. So my first thought is to make it rectangular/oval, with the tactical surface being roughly 30"x50".

The base will be a thin, strong surface... possibly chipboard. I'll need a surface slightly larger than the proposed arena floor, so that I can build up walls and gates around it. The actual arena floor will be made from 1.5" thick pink styrofoam. I will use this, because it will allow me to put some 'subterranean' features onto the arena floor. The basic arena floor will be featureless, but with two large 'pits' situated near each end of the long edge of the oval. These will be cut out of the styrofoam, revealing the chipboard beneath. I will have at least two modular pieces that can plug into these holes... the first will be narrow grates (suitable for walking over), the second will be wide grates (that a model could conceivably fall through). Finally, there will also be modular floors that can be put in, removing the pit entirely.

This will allow each side of the arena to have three options... flat floor (no game effect), narrow grates (steam, gas, tentacles, etc can enteract with those on the grates), wide grates (same issues with environment, but now you get to make acrobatics checks while walking across or risk falling in... or being pushed in... or being grabbed from below), or open pits (again, nasties can be inside, or they can just be areas to be bullrushed into...).

So, our basic arena will have a large tactical suface, two modular environmental areas, walls with gates for entry points of combatants. that's a good start.

The first major piece that will be added will be a 'King of the hill' pyramid. This will be a modular pyramid consisting of 1"-thick pink styrofoam in the following default configurations:

2"x2" 'Crest' or the top, level 1
4"x4" level 2
6"x6" level 3
8"x8" level 4
10"x10" level 5
12"x12" level 6

I will make 2 each of these sizes, so that a ziggurat style pyramid of up to 12" in height can be formed in the middle of the arena floor. This will allow for the following configurations...

12-8-4, 1 layer each. Allows for a 3" 'hill' with relatively gentle slopes. Climbing to the next level is simply difficult terrain. Being pushed from the top would result in little to no damage.

12-10-8-6-4-2, 1 layer each. This creates a 6" hill (30' to scale). Going down a level is difficult terrain, up a level difficult terrain that requires an easy climb check. Being bullrushed off the top could result in significant falling damage.

12-10-8-6-4-2, 2 layers each. This creates a 12" hill (60' to scale) with 10' high walls between levels. Climbing up requires a moderate climb check, and getting bullrushed off the uppoer levels will be decidedly unpleasant.

These will be the basic configurations, with others possible. In addition to the basics, there will also be 'floor' and 'wall' traps that can be mounted... spike strips, climbing poles in the walls, arrow traps, etc... with various triggers, so that players can experiment and use the traps as offensive weapons.

The nice thing about having this arena is that with just these relatively simple pieces, you can already create dozens of configurations to keep the tactical battles fresh. It also will give me a strong basis for fights while still allowing me to build a 'terrain feature of the week' that I can spring on the players as the nefarious arena masters come up with new things to keep the arena exciting.

Building a new Role-playing campaign from scratch

I'm currently brainstorming a Dark Sun campaign, using the 4e ruleset. One thing I've learned over they years is that D&D doesn't have to be planned out to be fun, and in fact fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants DMing is a great way to have fun when you don't have the time to devote to a full campaign.

However, in this case I do have time... it's going to be months before the Council of Thieves Campaign I'm playing in is over, and I want to limit my campaign play to two at a time, and Kingmaker isn't going to be done for ages...

So, I've started building up my concepts and conceits, in very broad strokes...


So, you meet in a tavern!
I have to admit that trying to get an interesting 'party genesis' handled is difficult. Without devolving into a bar fight or a raliroading of why, exactly, this Paladin is chooising to run around with the dude in the black cloak with the green-tinted weapons, you really have a half-assed blather as each person tries to justify why they're working together, and for what goals.

Also, you have to deal with backstory and such, when most players are busy tweaking stat bonuses. I've decided to do away with all of that. Each Player will have the opportunity to create one or more 'Proto-Player Characters'. I'll be creating an alternate character sheet, where you will fill out things like the player's name, immediate family tree, their age, what their parents do/did for a living, their profession, and a few traits, like 'strong' or 'beautiful' or 'educated'. No stats. No class.

As for the characters themselves, they'll be thrown together via a railroad plot at the start. Yes, I fully admit it. The point is to have the players learning about who *they* are prior to codifying stats, class, feats, etc. Every Proto-PC will be looked at on the basis of race/traits/background, and will be introduced on a Slave Ship, crossing the Silt Sea... almost certainly, every Proto-PC will be a prisoner on this vessel, but others could be guards or overseers or staff...

The first adventures will be cinematic/story-telling, going over how they got on the ship, who they meet there, and resolving some conflicts (food and water shortages, domineering overseers, advances by the captian, attacks by creatures). Some Proto-PCs will likely die. Others will be sold offout of the campaign. The key here is to let the players 'feel out' a few different options. Eventually, they will leave the Silt Sea, and become gladiator-slaves, fighting in the arena to entertain the masses. At this point, the characters will be actually fleshed out with stats, class, and full-fledged character sheets. And hopefully, with a session or two of cinematic role-playing, they'll already have a personality that complements the choices made to actually create the character.

The art of the railroad
I'm developing my campaign ideas with a fairly heavy hand at the outset... when it comes to an adventuring party, there's a lot of questions. You can spell them out as the Who/What/Where/Why/When/How. In this case, I give the players complete control over the 'Who' (as long as they fit in Athas, obviously). But for the rest, I'm going to initially be heavy-handed.

What? Gladiator Slaves. All of them. Where? The pits and arena. When? they answer to the overseer's schedule. Why? For entertainment and to make their patrons money. How? With the tools they've been given.

Whatever class they choose, the first several levels of the game will revolve around life in the Gladiator pits: Social interaction, lobbying for better training, better weapons, better armor, better patrons. Attempting to curry favor and influence, honory and glory (or possibly infamy).

In addition to the social interactions and trying to survive the pits, there will also, of course, be arena battles. Initially, these will be mass melees, as none of the PCs have earned any glory or a name for themself, they'll be fighting alongside each other and NPC minions, against the 'enemy of the week'. This will allow me to set up any ridiculous combats I like, showcasing monsters, terrain features, weapons, armor... none of the PCs have control over who they fight, or what they fight with.

My goal, initially, is to be able to focus on who they are... gear won't be attached to characters, or money. The only thing the players hae control over after they've made stats is what 'face' they present in the arena to the masses, and how they interact behind the scenes with their peers, the guards, and their patrons. Over time, they'll become more influential, more powerful, and at that point, the railroad will dead-end into the sandbox. Do they stay in the Arena, fighting for glory? Buy their freedom? Escape? Become patrons of other slaves, and take on the mantle of overseer? Modify public opinion from the sands to overthrow corrupt government? It's up to them... I'll make it clear as time goes on that they are becoming exceptional... that nothing is truly keeping them in the pits, and then they can decide how to take the campaign from there.

It should make for an interesting campaign.

Welcome to Dark Sun

For those of you waited with bated breath for my foray into Swordquest: Earthworld, you'll have to be slightly more patient. Instead of playing the game yesterday, I moved my wife and her partner's offices to their new building. The last thing that crossed my mind was to try to play and post about one of the most incoherent Atari 2600 games of all time.

So instead, I'm going to post something that doesn't involve having to play a videogame, and just talk about the 'new' D&D supplement, Dark Sun.

I played Dark Sun when it originally came out. My character was a Fighter/Psionicist Thri-Kreen that specialized in those little tri-pointed throwing stars. I believe he had a 21 dexterity and 22 strength. His name was unpronounceable, and the rest of the party just called him 'Tick'.

I don't recall much about the game, other than despite having a power-level orders of magnitude higher than anything I'd ever played before, we regularly got our asses kicked.

I'm pretty excited to see the new Dark Sun for 4e... I think it's a terribly good match for the system. Some people disagree with me, but lets take a look at it:

Dark Sun is a brutal world of isolated city-states, surrounded by deadly wastelands. Points of Light, check.

Dark Sun characters are incredibly powerful, exceptional beings that have to be that strong just to survive the rigors of the game world. Uber-powerful 1st level PC's, check.

Magic is limited-use and frowned upon, the gods are absent and magic use is destroying the world. Magic use is limited to in-combat attack spells and difficult rituals, check.

I think it's a perfect fit, and am already planning a campaign that will start once our Council of Thieves game wraps up.

I've even got a solution to one of the major complaints about D&D 4e, being that combat feels like a tactical game. My solution? The party is going to be a group of freshly captured slaves, thrown into the arena as Pit Fighters. Each session will involve social and roleplaying opportunities, as the party interacts with other slaves, slavers, bookies, and etc. Combat can happen in these portions, of course, but the players are prisoners, and jailbreak/escape isn't going to be on the table in the Heroic Tier, unless something extraordinary happens. Because of this, any 'riots' will be broken up by the guards/wardens more often than not.

In addition, each session will have a planned combat... an 'Arena'-style death match, where the 'party' will be on one side of a mass combat. The opposition will vary from week to week, as will the 'interesting features'. Sometimes they'll be able to bring armor and weapons of their choice, other times they'll have to take what is given, pr they may have to go for things on the arena grounds.

Each week there will be interesting terrain features on the arena floor, and more importantly... the most important factor of combat won't be 'kill it quickly and take it's stuff', but instead 'survive, while being as entertaining as possible to the crowd'. Boring fighters, when they lose, will get the 'thumbs down' from the crowds, while popular fighters will live even if they fail to win.

I think I can get through the Heroic Tier quite well with political intrigue, gambling rings, a prison economy, etc, with the fights as 'flavor' as opposed to the point of the campaign. It also gives me a lot of leeway on relative treasure levels and equipment... as nothing 'belongs' to the players, I can modify equipment on the fly, while still taking into account each player's preference, occasionally allowing them very early access to awesome toys...

It should be a good time. I've got a few months to prepare before CoT wraps up, as well, so I've got time to build an arena out of styrofoam and Hirst Arts blocks, as well as work up a large stable of NPCs.

Anatomy of a TPK (with a bit of history)

I've played role-playing games for a long time. A LOOONG time. I first truly started playing D&D with the Basic and Expert Sets, that my Grandmother purchased for me when they were released in 1981. I was 10 years old at the time. I'd played in a game with my friend Walter's older brother prior to that, that used lumps of lead that were supposed to represent heroes and monsters (miniature sculpting has come a long way in 30 years) that I believe was either OD&D or the original blue book Basic D&D.

Anyway... from age 10 until I was 19, D&D was a staple of childhood. In middle school I 'graduated' to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and while most kids my age were spending allowance and lawn-mowing money on movies, clothes, or sporting goods, I was shelling out $20-$30 a pop for hardback role-playing books.

Once I got to college, AD&D fell to the way side... oh, we still looked at it now and again, especially when Dark Sun came out, but the games that took over were things like Traveller, Bushido, RoleMaster, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk 2013, Palladium, TMNT, Rifts, GURPS... the college I attended had a huge Role-playing group, and we played every different system we could get our hands on.

After college, I returned briefly to AD&D 2nd edition, playing with my old high school friends, but it wasn't the same. We started an abortive 3.0 campaign, but hated it because the combat was far too tactical, and the character power levels were horridly imbalanced. We jumped ship and played White Wolf games for a couple years, with a Vampire campaign running through the years while Werewolf, Mage, Changeling all never really managed to get anywhere.

After that, role-playing wasn't really a priority. I was playing a lot of other games... Magic the Gathering, Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, board games. Then 4th edition came out, and I wanted to see if they'd fixed my issues with 3rd edition. They had, and I ran a 4th edition campaign for a while, until one of the group moved away.

Then, about a year ago, we started playing Pathfinder with friends, and I was back playing in a constant campaign. A few months ago, our DM started a second group, to play the Kingmaker Adventure Path.

We rolled up characters, and our party was ready to brave frigid temperatures, deep snows, bandits, and a brutal random encounter table to claim a kingdom of our very own. The party was fairly balanced... Paladin, Rogue, Druid, Wizard. We began our adventure, mapping, setting watches at night, picking up quests.

Now, all of this history is a prelude to this statement: in nearly 30 years of roleplaying, I had never once experienced a TPK, a Total Party Kill. I will say there are times I should have been in one, but something always saved our asses. Now, I'm not saying we never had campaign reboots, because we did... but they were never based off a game, that at the end everyone looks up, and the DM says: 'OK, you're all dead. We'll make up new characters and start again.'

A Total Party Kill is not something most DM's strive for. A TPK means someone has just screwed up horribly. Possibly several people. Hopefully, the screw-ups are the players, because at least then they deserved it. I'm going to go over our TPK and analyze it a bit, to see just how many screw-ups were required to get to this place... as well as pick out 'moments of awesome'.

Our party consisted of four level 2 characters:
Kieyanna, a Paladin 2 of Calistria (goddess of lust, gambling, etc) that was houseruled to Chaotic instead of Lawful. Heavy armor, giant sword, and carried a whip for combat maneuvers.

Daehir, a Fighter 1/Rogue 1 with light armor, low strength and hit points, but ridiculous dexterity. (My character) Also of note, I'd contracted lycanthropy in a previous adventure that manifested not only on the full moon, but when I confirmed a critical in combat... if a crit was confirmed, I would have to roll to see if I changed to an enraged hybrid form that attacked the nearest creature, friend or foe, for 2d10 rounds.

Dr. Two-creeks, a Druid 2 with great mental/weak physical stats, with an armored Boar companion (Crixus).

Urtos, a Wizard 2 who was a drunkard, had visions of Kieyanna becoming 'king', and had a combat strategy of 'fall prone, fire force missiles' to avoid combat.

The four of us stumbled across the fort of the bandit known as the Stag Lord. It was dark and quiet, and we began our plans.

The following plans emerged:

1) Set up an ambush in the woods, wait for a bandit party to return/leave, fight them and attempt to capture one or more to interrogate/use as hostages.

2) Set up a distraction, such as a large fire, and draw out a group to see what is going on, so that we could fight them, and capture one or more to interrogate or use as hostages.

3) Note the position of the bandit fort, observe it to try to determine the number of bandits and their habits, return when we are more prepared (read: 3rd level).

4) Use some dust of illusion on Kieyanna to make her great sword look like a bag of gold, her armor to look like tastefully ripped silk clothing showing a LOT of skin. She and Urtos would convince the guards that they were helpless travelers with a lot of loot, so that they would open the gates, then Two-Creeks and Daehir would charge in from where they were hiding off to the side, and we would attack with a full-frontal assault. this plan was even named: Pig in the Poke 2. Urtos, our wizard, had previously used 'Pig in a Poke' as a plan to draw bandits *in* to our fort, this plan was a modification, allowing us to get in to theirs.

Guess which plan got chosen? Yes. Number 4.

Plan fail 1: You chose the wrong plan.
Plan fail 1, subsection A: Picking a plan becuase of a clever name, doesn't make the plan clever.

Once we were sure we were going with this crazy plan, Urtos and Kieyanna moved up the road, while Two-creeks and Daehir snuck off to the side. While Kieyanna and Urtos begged/pleaded, they also failed bluff checks. And as the other two crept up, suddenly Zombies popped up out of the ground and attacked the people off to the side.

Plan fail 2: The bluff didn't work.

Plan fail 3: The situation has changed, your ambushers have been ambushed instead.

At this point, the rational solution would be to chalk this up as a big fail and run away. But no. We decided to fight it out...

The guards began taking shots at us all from the wall with bows. Urtos ran off to get out of the line of fire... bringing up more zombies. Kieyanna decided to keep to the plan, and climbed the gate (making an amazing climb roll) and flipped over the other side.

Two-creeks and Daehir got peppered with arrows and charged by Zombies. We used up some healing magic and an entangle trying to control the zombies while Kieyanna, on the other side of the wall (still looking like a ravished woman) tried once more to convince the bandits to open up.

Urtos ran to the gates, fleeing the zombies, Kieyanna gave up diplomacy and started cutting bandits in half with a greatsword enchanted to look like a bag of gold, and Daehir took this opportunity to confirm two criticals with his rapier and kukri and start howling at the moon.

Moment of Awesome: Kieyanna slicing two bandits in half in two attacks with max-damage rolls.

Plan fail 4: We've split the party.

The next round, Daehir spends a full round action wolfing out into a hybrid form, Kieyanna opens the gates, and Urtos and Two-creeks run inside, while the zombies are stuck in the entangle. As they get into the gates, it is noted that there are a couple of 'named' bad guys and 5 more goons. And they're calling for more help.

Plan fail 5: in the face of overwhelming odds, consider flight.

Daehir rages and transforms, and rips through three (injured) zombies in one round, Urtos catches 5 bandits in a color spray, Two-creeks and Crixus go after the named guy...

Plan fail 6: if you are spending a lot of resources just to get to 'fair fight' then  you should reconsider your actions.

 Moment of Awesome: the guards on the wall seeing Daehir transform and shred multiple zombies.

In the fort, we're attacked by a series of important bad guys... the Stag Lord himself, and two more named bad guys, as well as an owlbear. The goons are going down quickly, but the wizard and druid are out of offensive spells. Daehir runs, in hybrid form, and attempts to leap the wall (Side note: that's cinematic awesomeness, and I'm still upset that I wasn't able to do it even with a natural 20. Not that I rolled a natural 20. But even if I had, it would have failed.)

Plan fail 7: if you've run out of limited-use abilities, and haven't engaged the boss yet, RUN AWAY.

Things go south pretty fast here... Daehir manages to climb the wall, and is a whirlwind of destruction, ripping through goons and one of the named guys... but is sitting at 1 hp while raging. And wasted a round going after the boar, because it was closest after I ripped a goon in half. Kieyanna, once facing named guys, stopped rolling natural 20s and max damage. She's still up despite fighting multiple foes because of lay on hands.

Plan fail 8: when you're out of healing magic, and everyone is in single-digit hit points, you really should disengage.

We focus on the owl bear, and hurt it badly, but it's still got Kieyanna. Then, Kieyanna stops trying to get away, and instead PUNCHES the owlbear. Natural 20, confirmed critical, max damage. She punches the owl bear to death. TO DEATH. Unfortunately, the bad guys drop Daehir to negatives, Two-Creeks to zero, and Urtos to 'oh crap I think he's dead'.  Kieyanna and the boar are still up, and luckily the Boar's command was to 'defend Kieyanna', and she's toe-to-toe with the Stag Lord and the boar is on the Barbarian Combat lasts for several rounds of whiffing, as Kieyanna and the Boar are rolling horribly, and the bad guys can't get past their ridiculous armor classes. During this time, Two-creeks wanders around at zero, no healing, looking for potions or wands, or something to get one person back in the fight. failing to find anything on the corpses, she goes deep into the fort and into a basement...

Plan fail 9: don't go into a basement, all alone, at zero hit points.

Moment of Awesome: PUNCHING A FREAKING OWLBEAR TO DEATH !

While Daehir and Urtos bleed to death, Kieyanna finally managed to kill the Stag Lord! Unfortunately, the Barbarian killed Crixus, and Two-creeks, in the basement, just got attacked by a rabid Wolverine and mauled to death.

At this time... with 3/4 of the party dying, Kieyanna at 3 hit points, everyone was dead except for the Wolverine and the Barbarian... I wondered, at this point, if our DM would have him give up, since his leader was dead.

No such luck, combat continues and one round later, Kieyanna is dead.

Plan fail 10: don't count on your DM to save you after you've shown repeatedly that you're unwilling to be reasonable.

We looked up. the battle had taken hours. We'd used every spell. Every potion. We'd all fought tooth and nail through our last hit point. Despite going with a horrible plan, and even worse tactics, the dice were stupidly kind to us through a ridiculous fight... until the very end, when Kieyanna couldn't roll over a 4 to save her life (literally).

It was one of the most epic role-playing combats I've ever had. And we were *second level*. At the end of it, I was a little sad... I'd liked Daehir, and really wanted to see what it would be like to play a Werewolf.

Looking back, it's easy to see that we could have recovered at several points... as soon as the bluff failed, as soon as the zombies popped up... those were the key spots that could have saved us all. Toward the end, we probably were going to have some casualties, no matter what.

Instead, we got slaughtered. We were stupid, but it was glorious.

Note: pictures to come. Probably.

GenCon breakdown

My wife and I just returned from our first GenCon, where we had the pleasure of going with a LOT of friends and friends of friends.

I could go day by day over activities, but instead I'll just mention games played and call the post done...

Board/Card Games:
Civilization (only got to play 5 turns)
Dice Town
Innovation
Parade
Race for the Galaxy (with Gathering Storm and Rebel vs Imperium Expansions)
Rattus
Telestrations
Tichu (actually, my wife played this while I was playing other games)
Time's Up
Time's Up: Title Recall
Tok Tok Woodman!
Win, Lose, Banana (with and without the Cake expansion)

I failed to play the following, despite making at least a modicum of effort to do so:
Ascension
Battles of Westeros
Castle Ravenloft
Death Angel
Irondie

There were a ton of other games I wouldn't have minded playing, but there simply isn't enough time in the day. I did learn that you play games on Thursday and Friday, and do your wandering Saturday, instead of vice versa... that should help next time.

Role-playing games:
Fiasco
The Shotgun Diaries: Die Zombie Die!

These were the only RPGs I played. Fiasco is an amazing shared narrative game, no DM required. I highly recommend it if you have a group of four that likes telling stories and fucking each other over.

Die Zombie Die was a bloody dice fest of fun, low on mechanics, high on over-acting and gruesome death scenes. Our group started out far too slowly and methodically... but once we got into the zombies, things picked up and we had a blast.

RPG's I didn't play, despite wanting to:
Dark Sun 4e

Outside of gaming, I managed to see Wil Wheaton speak and get a chapbook, but failed to play Magic: the Gathering, Battletech, True Dungeon, or TerrorWerks. But all told, it was a successful first trip to GenCon. I will definitely spend more time gaming the next time we go.