Current mood:	happy
Entry tags:	4e, coh, d&d, gaming, pendragon

Labor Day Gaming
What a nice, gaming filled holiday weekend this has been.

Saturday, the Replacements hit Thunderspire Labryrinth, going to the partly restocked duregar fortress, site of the prior TPK. One player couldn't make it again, but another gaming pal (the guy who bought Descent for the group)did pop his head in. He hadn't been a fan of 3E, but I pushed the fighter sheet in front of him, gave him a rundown of his abilities, and let him go.

The group hit the southern fortress, which they had bypassed with their previous characters. They had a good fight (almost took out the fighter- invisible duregar hitting with beard spikes and critting with his crossbow), but were good to continue on. They took a different approach on the bridges, suffered some bad rounds, watched as their wizard got hit with just about every status attack the duregar theurge could throw out, and... failed to stop a runner. Not only did they fail to stop a guard that ran, they followed him. Right into the ogre room. With no chance to recover, the party had added a level 5 encounter to a level 5 encounter. Dice were rolled, dailies were used, blood was spilled, the ogre seemed to hit every round, and somehow, the PCs came out on top.

This time, the PCs were able to rest before taking on the head duregar. It was still a bad, bad fight. A funny fight too, provided it wasn't your character in the fire (like when the rogue wounded a duregar causing it to expand, which pushed the rogue into one of the fireplaces in the room. Or when the wizard's sleep spell was quickly shook off by the dark dwarves, but KO'd the party paladin). Despire looking touch and go for a while, the PCs managed a win.

This was probably our longest fight yet in 4E. Part of it may have been having a brand new player running one character. Another player was refering to the PHB for each power, which added on some time. But, this was our first outting with 5th level characters; I have to say I'm a little worried about high level combat in 4E if we're seeing slowdown at 5th. Maybe it was just a fluke...

Before getting too deep into the game, we spent a bit of time just chatting about games. The guy who joined us on Saturday had been working for a railroad out of town, which cut into his availability. He's been hired by one in town, which should free him up for gaming in a few weeks. We talked about the upcoming Axis & Allies Anniversary Edition, and how I'd like to try a 6 player game of Game of Thrones at some point. I also brought up Battletech as another interest I'd like to give another go. He mentioned that he was planning on buying Twilight Imperium- another big game from Fantasy Flight, makers of Descent, but sci-fi strategy rather than fantasy dungeon crawl.  That night, I read over the rules online, and while it looks like a big and complex game, it also looks like fun.

Sunday, I logged on to City of Heroes, thinking I'd just do a couple of missions. Instead, ran into two of the guys from Saturday, and ended up playing for about three hours killing Rikti, Arachnos, and Nemesis, some of my favorite high level villain groups.

Today, we got together at noon for Pendragon. The last session had progressed things to the end of the Anarchy period. 510 marked the start of the Boy King era, and also the switch from their original characters to a new generation. The new Player Knights got to witness Arthur drawing the sword (four frickin' times! it was almost turning into a comedy by the end), were knighted 3-4 years early to help fight against Lot and the rebel kings, and made it through three battles with most of their parts still attached (but not all- one PK took a major wound in the first fight, a second was majorly wounded and still suffering from wounds of the previous day's battle and had to be saved by GM's mercy, and a third took major wounds in two different battles). Despite this, there was no shortage of glory. We'll pick up in 511, a much quieter year, on Friday, our new gaming night.