Behind the Screen: A new beginning...
Posted by Dante at 1:14 AM
This weekend, Stupid Ranger and I were cursed with a prolonged internet outage. Thankfully, it is all resolved now but know that we put our time to good use meeting up with our new intrepid band of adventurers for our next campaign!
New beginnings, new social contracts...
Like all good campaigns, ours started with the simplest of discussions: what, when, where, and how often. We decided to pick up Keep on the Shadowfell since we had several newbies to 4th edition (myself included), and we committed to playing twice a month at minimum. The rest of the incidentals went along standard lines... they have kids so we'd likely play at their place more often, around dinner time like our old group was just fine with them... and the discussion went off without a hitch.
We did cover some more complicated matters on handling character death, playing of non-present characters (we elected to have them run by another member of the party in order to keep some party balance during fights), and just general approach to gaming. We entered into some discussion regarding gaming background in order to divine what type of gamers they are, and happily it seems like they fit the mold of many of our friends from back in the frozen plains of Illinois.
Regarding the module
Neither Stupid Ranger or I have much experience in running from a module. I'm looking forward to it as a learning experience and I've not yet loosed it from its plastic wrappings to find out what joys lie within. Our group seemed pretty excited to start into it with their own characters, so I've been wondering how much impact there would be in running the module with our characters instead of the pre-generated ones.
In the end, I suspect it will be fun regardless of the decision on that front, but I think I'm edging toward making it work with our own unique characters. They both seem pretty excited about that prospect, and I find playing with my own character much more involving than playing with a pre-generated character. Granted, just about my only experience playing a pre-gen was at Nascrag, which is an entirely different beast... but the point remains.
If any one has recommendations on how to approach running a module, I'd be happy to hear them. We start this weekend!! Wooo, game time!
New beginnings, new social contracts...
Like all good campaigns, ours started with the simplest of discussions: what, when, where, and how often. We decided to pick up Keep on the Shadowfell since we had several newbies to 4th edition (myself included), and we committed to playing twice a month at minimum. The rest of the incidentals went along standard lines... they have kids so we'd likely play at their place more often, around dinner time like our old group was just fine with them... and the discussion went off without a hitch.
We did cover some more complicated matters on handling character death, playing of non-present characters (we elected to have them run by another member of the party in order to keep some party balance during fights), and just general approach to gaming. We entered into some discussion regarding gaming background in order to divine what type of gamers they are, and happily it seems like they fit the mold of many of our friends from back in the frozen plains of Illinois.
Regarding the module
Neither Stupid Ranger or I have much experience in running from a module. I'm looking forward to it as a learning experience and I've not yet loosed it from its plastic wrappings to find out what joys lie within. Our group seemed pretty excited to start into it with their own characters, so I've been wondering how much impact there would be in running the module with our characters instead of the pre-generated ones.
In the end, I suspect it will be fun regardless of the decision on that front, but I think I'm edging toward making it work with our own unique characters. They both seem pretty excited about that prospect, and I find playing with my own character much more involving than playing with a pre-generated character. Granted, just about my only experience playing a pre-gen was at Nascrag, which is an entirely different beast... but the point remains.
If any one has recommendations on how to approach running a module, I'd be happy to hear them. We start this weekend!! Wooo, game time!
Labels: 4e, Dante, rpgbloggers
