This is a mostly spoiler-free review/recap of our experiences.  If you don’t want to know anything about the third session, don’t click the link below.

Dante & I have been playing the new D&D Encounters season: Fury of the Wastewalker.  Last week, we finished our third session (see photo).  I’m playing Barcan, the sorcerer, while Dante is playing Jarvix, the psion.  Both of us are new to Dark Sun, so this has been a unique experience for us.

Session Recaps — Without Giving Anything Away

Traveling through the wastelands, we find our caravan attacked.  We few adventurers survive and strive to escape to civilization.  It’s not an easy life, traveling the desert, especially with random attacks threatening our lives.  But we have to keep moving, or the victory our enemies fail to achieve will be accomplished by the harsh environment.

My Thoughts So Far

I opted for the sorcerer, Barcan.  I wanted to play a class with which I had some familiarity, but there were still several elements I didn’t know.  It’s tough to walk into a character not knowing anything about them, but I thought my experience with my wizard would be enough to help me figure my way through the unfamiliar powers.

My biggest problem was getting used to the abbreviated character sheet.  I miss having all the details, especially the skills.  With all the miscellaneous skill checks, it would have been nice to have all the skills and modifiers listed, instead of just the trained skills.  The spells are fairly well defined, but I miss little things like the keywords.  For me, it’s more about what I don’t see on my little character card, though the omissions are minor in nature.

Dark Sun is a unique experience for me.  I’m having fun so far, but I’m not sure how much I would enjoy the difficulties of surviving the environment in a long-term campaign.  So I’m reserving judgment until I’ve play a bit more.

Attention: Spoilers included! If you haven’t played your last session of Encounters yet, you may want to come back later!

In-Character Recap

Brief summation for those who haven’t been playing along at home. Our merry band of adventurers were hired by Fein to open the magical entrance recently unearthed in the Underdark; before we were hired, we had to rescue her from thugs. We made our way to the entrance, we disabled the magical protections and escaped down the revealed stairs before the ceiling collapsed on us. We found ourselves trapped in Halaster’s apprentice’s quarters. We fought our way past all kinds of evils before continuing on our way. Eventually, we met up with Fein again, who came through a portal; shortly after her arrival, Xeres, the Big Bad showed up, and the portal was no longer active. Xeres brought some friends to keep us occupied while he kidnapped Fein. He managed to avoid all kinds of obstacles, and we managed to fight our way through to find him.

We survived the skeletons intent on killing us. Knowing Xeres was just a little further ahead, we gathered our courage and our remaining resolve, and we chased the wicked Xeres until he turned to challenge us. We needed to defeat him to retrieve the key to open the portal and escape from the Underdark.

Xeres stood, cooly posed on the bridge, standing over Fein’s apparently unconscious body. Our fighter-y types advanced to engage him, I started peppering him with radiant damage, and our gnome psion inadvertently found some other enemies hanging out, waiting to be invited to the party. It wasn’t easy, but early into battle, things seemed to be going pretty well for us (see picture). Xeres took a lot of focused fire for while (see picture).

But as we all know, battle can turn very quickly. Xeres teleported away to a less-threatened vantage, forcing the fighters to chase him (see picture). Our resources were running out, our resolve was close to failing, but we managed to pull ourselves together, and in the end, we won, though not without a few surprises.

Out-of-Character Thoughts

I had a great time with Encounters! It was a challenge, that first night, to walk into a room full of complete strangers, but I’m glad I did. I made new friends, and I’m looking forward to exploring Dark Sun, not with strangers but with friends.

The concept of one battle per session worked really well. We walked in every week knowing what was expected of us; there were enough surprises that we never knew exactly what to expect, but we knew there would be combat. There was never a moment of indecision because we knew where to go next.

One of biggest problems was with difficult gamer personalities. We had two teenagers that played most every session, and they talked more often than they planned. Combat moved slowly with them, and it was very frustrating for the rest of us. We also had a super-gamer who showed up for a couple of sessions. He wanted to role-play his way through the encounters, which didn’t work well for the group as a whole as he a) took a lot of time every round talking through options he wanted to try, and b) he wasn’t fighting effectively.

My second issue was the slow pace at which we gained experience. As I mentioned before, I understand that short encounters mean less experience, but after eight weeks at level one, I was thrilled to be level two for the last couple of sessions.

Overall, the positive experiences definitely out-weighed the minor issues. I will be starting the Dark Sun season next week, and I hope to have more good experiences in this new set of Encounters!

This is a mostly spoiler-free recap of last week’s D&D Encounters session.

On the eve of my next Encounters session, I realized that I neglected to share my experiences from last week! So while it’s a little late, here’s how it went.

Last week was my first week playing my Hybrid as a level 2 character. After rolling up and swapping out a feat, I felt much more productive as a party member. Granted, I’m not doing crazy-lots of damage, but I’m hitting more frequently and for more damage.

We had a pretty good session over all. One new-to-4E player joined us and played the paladin pre-gen. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t survive the session, but he is planning to come back this week with a new character.  [Picture here.]

This last session brings us into the final chapter of the season, and I really enjoyed the set-up and tension-building last week. It really felt like we were working up to something big, but that something is still lurking in the shadows, so there is still some mystery to our adventure. I’m definitely looking forward to this week’s session!

This is my mostly spoiler-free account of my D&D Encounters – Session 7 experience.

We’re still exploring Undermountain.  It seems like it’s been days since we’ve seen the sun, let alone someone (other than our little party) who wasn’t trying to kill us.  It’s a monster-extravaganza down here!

As we continued our exploration, we encountered a tortured soul who had no control over her actions, most of which involved attacking us.  And that’s when I got in trouble.  I was attempting to move to a more secure location in the room when I was attacked and knocked prone.  Our Runepriest was only able to heal one of us involved in the battle, and I told him to help the Fighter, who seemed to be more effective in combat.  Then, before I could even stand up, I was unconscious.

Fortunately, the Runepriest was able to heal me shortly thereafter, and I returned to the fray.  Unfortunately, I was so rattled by the experience, I wasn’t able to do much of anything productive after that.  The rest of the group managed to end the poor soul’s suffering.  But this pace has been difficult for us all; we could all use a nice, long rest, and I hope we manage one soon.

This is a mostly spoiler-free review of my fourth D&D Encounters session.

Last week, we finished our first chapter in our D&D Encounters game.  It was a fun time, as always.  We had a couple of different players in this game than we’ve had in past sessions, and with one extra player at the table, the session went really fast.

This time, Atora managed a pretty descent accounting of her abilities.  She used her Brilliant Beacon power to cause some damage and hamper the enemies a bit.  It helped a bit, especially when the on-going radiant damage killed one of the bad guys!  We still ended up a bit battered, but we survived to continue exploring Undermountain.

My Impression of D&D Encounters

So, I’m four weeks into this experience.  Being a generally shy person, it was a big jump for me to join a group where I didn’t know anyone.  But it’s been a good experience.  There’s a camaraderie around the table that’s universal, and this is the first time that I’ve really experienced that on my own.

However, I will admit to being a little frustrated at the pacing.  I realize the goal is to have an encounter each session, but I want to see a little more progress.  I want to move beyond level 1.  I want more!  It’s still fun, but I’m ready, after four weeks, to be a little older and more experienced.

As part of my next D&D Encounters review, I’ll share some of my thoughts on playing a Hybrid Invoker/Avenger.

This is a spoiler-free recap of my experiences in the second session of D&D Encounters.

Tonight I played the second session of D&D Encounters at Total Escape Games.  It was a better combat experience for my hybrid invoker/avenger, but it was a rough combat for all of us.

Only four of the six players returned this week.  One of the monks, the warlock, the psion and me.  When faced with the bad guys and their very pokey weapons, we had some trouble.  They had no trouble hitting us, we had only a little trouble hitting them, but in a contest, they hit way harder than us!  Our monk went down three times, the warlock and the psion both once.  Fortunately, no one died.  But it was close!

So imagine this: my cloth-wearing invoker/avenger is backed into a corner, her sword in one hand and her rod in the other.  The monk has fallen, the warlock takes a nasty hit and falls too.  There are two enemies left, and one takes the psion down.  Atora is standing alone, facing two enemies.  Suddenly 12 hit points doesn’t seem like enough to survive the round.  She lands her attack, dealing some radiant damage.  Then, suddenly, the warlock stands back up!

Combat ended shortly after that.  Everyone survived, though our monk has decided that adventuring isn’t for him, so he’s headed back to the surface; the player has decided to hang up the monk and replace him with a leader-role class.  And we can definitely use the healing.  Suddenly, next week looks a little more promising!

This is a mostly spoiler-free account of my D&D Encounters experience. Just don’t click to view the picture linked below.

Wednesday night, I set aside my general dislike of gaming with complete strangers and headed over to Total Escape Games in Broomfield for D&D Encounters.  I’m generally a shy person, so sitting around a table with a bunch of guys I don’t know is not high on my list of things to do on a Wednesday night, but I thought I’d give it a try.

Traffic lights foiled my attempt to arrive early, but I managed to get to the store just in time to get started.  We had one player completely new to 4E.  Four players used pre-gens, while two of us had rolled up original characters.  We had a warlock, a ranger, two monks, a psion and my invoker/avenger hybrid, Atora.

Our DM was awesome!  She was very good about describing how skills worked in our non-combat environments.  She handled combat very smoothly.  She was familiar enough with the source material to not have to read verbatim.  It was a good gaming experience.

Combat was a little rough on us as a group.  Our monks did a great job of engaging in melee combat, with a little help from the warlock and the ranged attackers.  Only one monk fell in battle, but he did not die; Atora managed to revive him (hooray, bonus renown point).  I think it would have been a bit smoother if we’d had a leader in the party to help with healing, but in the end, we survived.

I play to recap my Hybrid character experiences after I’ve had a little more game time, but I wanted to share a bit of Atora’s combat experience.  Rolling a 1 and a 2 on two of the three attacks I attempted meant I didn’t manage to do much damage during combat.  But I figure reviving the melee combatant had to count toward my damage count!

At the end of the session, I’d accumulated 12 renown points, earning me the Delver Reward.  All in all, it was a fun experience, and I’m looking forward to playing again next week!