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I had a lot of fun DM’ing the final battle. One PC was unfortunate enough to fall unconcious at the villain’s feet with nobody else near him. The villain had a fun time picking him up and tossing him into the underground river. =)
The first encounter was brutal, but fun. We had 2 group go, both almost got TPK’d. The groups arn’t what i’d call strategic masters, but either way, they had a lot of fun.
Encounters is…. meh. I’ve played enough low level characters to want more from what is offered on a weekly basis each Wednesday night.
@Drakkam: If you have access to the books or to DDI suggest running a oneshot like Kobold Hall from the back of the DMG for an evening of entertainment. See who likes it and who doesn’t.
I stopped playing Encounters due to a) terrible scenarios b) awful players c) bad venues and d) having more fun not playing than I was by playing.
Terrible Scenarios: If you’re going to have an encounter in which the enemies are unreachable by the party (the goblins on the bluff encounter, specifically) then you’re going to end up with bored players. I was playing the ardent. The DM was asking for DC 18+ athletics checks to get up the cliff. With an Athletics of +4, that’s not going to happen. So, while the Ranger and the Fighter were able to scramble around and have a ton of fun, and the twin Sorcerers were able to blast the gobbos, everything the ardent does is predicated on whacking something with a spear. End result? Two hours of sitting around saying ‘I ready an action to hit whatever comes into range’ and ‘Oh, I failed my athletics check to get up the wall for the fifth time and took 5 falling damage? I guess that’s awesome.’ Perhaps it is a poor choice on my part to play the ardent, or maybe I don’t have the creative thinking skills required to find a way to be more pro-active in the battle (‘Can I pick up a rock and throw it at these guys?’ ‘Uhh… There aren’t any rocks.’ ‘Fine, I throw my spear.’ ‘It’s a great spear!’ ‘…Fine, I use colorful language and pass my turn. Again.’) but I’ve always been under the impression that its the DM’s responsibility to see that each player is engaged by the scenario and doing his best to make sure that everyone is having fun or at least has something to do. I may as well have not shown up at all for the effect I had on the battle, the negotiations that preceded it and the skill challenges both before and after. I felt snubbed, and the fact that neither the DM or the players did anything about it made it even worse: They didn’t care that I wasn’t having fun.
Awful Players: 4e, much more than previous editions of the game, is a team sport. If the people you are playing with do not grok this, then things are going to be dicey. None of the people I played with in Encounters, despite all of them claiming long experience with the product, made any mention towards thinking or acting like a group. Each time I said ‘Hey, we should take a second and figure out a plan’ I was met with angry stares and grumbles of ‘we’re here to have fun, not think’. Combine with players that were more interested in telling stories about how awesome their Drizzt clones from another game were, or endlessly repeating the same memified catch-phrases as in-character dialogue (I’m sorry, since when is ‘I can haz cheeseburger’ something a resident of Athas would say to a fire elemental?) and you have a situation that rapidly spirals out of the fun zone and into suck. Add on top of this the renown points, and you have a wholly terrible situation. Each player at the table was in pursuit of these things to the exclusion of everything else. The controller is being eaten by beetles? Eff that guy, I can get a renown point by healing him from dying. My ally is about to be flanked and overcome by dray? If they’re focusing on him, that means they’re bunched up, so I can use my explosion to get all of them, who cares if my ally takes some damage in the process, I’m going to get more renown! Between renown-whoring, off-topic chatter: An hour or more of each session was devoted to players and DMs going on about something that had nothing to do with the game I was attempting to play.
Bad Venue: It is summer. Summer is hot. Sticking six gamers into a six foot by six foot room with no AC, no fan, no windows when it is 85 degrees outside and 100 degrees in that room, for two hours, is a good way for a venue to say to me ‘We signed up for this event to be cool, despite the fact that we really do not have the space to run it, and really do not care about anything beyond bringing a person into the store in the hopes that they will buy something before they leave’. I have been to four different venues in the local area, and they are all pretty much the same: Encounters is relegated to a storage room or a crowded room in the back that does not have the space to run more than a two-person game, yet six or seven people try to squeeze around these tables. I know it’s popular but until I find a venue that actually has a dedicated gaming space that isn’t a closet, I’m out.
Fun: On Wednesday nights, I have two choices. One the one hand, I can fight rush hour traffic for an hour and a half to get to the closest venue, not find a parking space that is anywhere near the venue, get to the store out of breath and flustered because I hate rush hour traffic and parallel parking, and then realize that a starting time of “six-ish” (which is the only time that this particular venue owner will give for starting) actually meant 5pm, realize that I am walking into the encounter an hour later, get glared at by people as I try to find a seat in the 6′x6′ gamer oven, only to find that pretty much as soon as I am ready to go, the one encounter for the day is over and it’s shutting down time. Or I can go to a different venue, where the people talk endlessly about their cats and bounce dice off the hard-wood table repeatedly when it’s not their turn, sighing and saying ‘FINALLY!’ when it does roll around, and then have to ask ‘uhh… What’s going on again?’. Or the other venue next to the dry cleaning place that is two full hours during rush hour, that spontaneously decides not to hold Encounter sessions because the venue owner doesn’t feel up to running a game because there’s a Firefly DVD he’d rather watch. Or! Or! I could stay the hell at home and play D&D with people I actually like.
Hmmm. Tough choice.
I’m sure there are awesome venues with awesome game rooms that have ventilation or AC where people realize that 4e is a team sport, where Encounters is run by DMs that recognize when a player is starting to feel left out and know how to keep a game on track, a place where the venue owner realizes that if his venue is a place where gamers want to come to play games, it will be a place where gamers want to come and spend money, but there are none of those places here.
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:35 pm
I had a lot of fun DM’ing the final battle. One PC was unfortunate enough to fall unconcious at the villain’s feet with nobody else near him. The villain had a fun time picking him up and tossing him into the underground river. =)
June 4th, 2010 at 4:04 am
I wish! It is only availible if there is retail support, in my case only 2 hours one way.
June 10th, 2010 at 7:28 am
The first encounter was brutal, but fun. We had 2 group go, both almost got TPK’d. The groups arn’t what i’d call strategic masters, but either way, they had a lot of fun.
June 10th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
In Romania we don’t have D&D Encounters. Any chance you migth give me some pointers on how to attract community?
June 11th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Encounters is…. meh. I’ve played enough low level characters to want more from what is offered on a weekly basis each Wednesday night.
@Drakkam: If you have access to the books or to DDI suggest running a oneshot like Kobold Hall from the back of the DMG for an evening of entertainment. See who likes it and who doesn’t.
July 26th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
I stopped playing Encounters due to a) terrible scenarios b) awful players c) bad venues and d) having more fun not playing than I was by playing.
Terrible Scenarios: If you’re going to have an encounter in which the enemies are unreachable by the party (the goblins on the bluff encounter, specifically) then you’re going to end up with bored players. I was playing the ardent. The DM was asking for DC 18+ athletics checks to get up the cliff. With an Athletics of +4, that’s not going to happen. So, while the Ranger and the Fighter were able to scramble around and have a ton of fun, and the twin Sorcerers were able to blast the gobbos, everything the ardent does is predicated on whacking something with a spear. End result? Two hours of sitting around saying ‘I ready an action to hit whatever comes into range’ and ‘Oh, I failed my athletics check to get up the wall for the fifth time and took 5 falling damage? I guess that’s awesome.’ Perhaps it is a poor choice on my part to play the ardent, or maybe I don’t have the creative thinking skills required to find a way to be more pro-active in the battle (‘Can I pick up a rock and throw it at these guys?’ ‘Uhh… There aren’t any rocks.’ ‘Fine, I throw my spear.’ ‘It’s a great spear!’ ‘…Fine, I use colorful language and pass my turn. Again.’) but I’ve always been under the impression that its the DM’s responsibility to see that each player is engaged by the scenario and doing his best to make sure that everyone is having fun or at least has something to do. I may as well have not shown up at all for the effect I had on the battle, the negotiations that preceded it and the skill challenges both before and after. I felt snubbed, and the fact that neither the DM or the players did anything about it made it even worse: They didn’t care that I wasn’t having fun.
Awful Players: 4e, much more than previous editions of the game, is a team sport. If the people you are playing with do not grok this, then things are going to be dicey. None of the people I played with in Encounters, despite all of them claiming long experience with the product, made any mention towards thinking or acting like a group. Each time I said ‘Hey, we should take a second and figure out a plan’ I was met with angry stares and grumbles of ‘we’re here to have fun, not think’. Combine with players that were more interested in telling stories about how awesome their Drizzt clones from another game were, or endlessly repeating the same memified catch-phrases as in-character dialogue (I’m sorry, since when is ‘I can haz cheeseburger’ something a resident of Athas would say to a fire elemental?) and you have a situation that rapidly spirals out of the fun zone and into suck. Add on top of this the renown points, and you have a wholly terrible situation. Each player at the table was in pursuit of these things to the exclusion of everything else. The controller is being eaten by beetles? Eff that guy, I can get a renown point by healing him from dying. My ally is about to be flanked and overcome by dray? If they’re focusing on him, that means they’re bunched up, so I can use my explosion to get all of them, who cares if my ally takes some damage in the process, I’m going to get more renown! Between renown-whoring, off-topic chatter: An hour or more of each session was devoted to players and DMs going on about something that had nothing to do with the game I was attempting to play.
Bad Venue: It is summer. Summer is hot. Sticking six gamers into a six foot by six foot room with no AC, no fan, no windows when it is 85 degrees outside and 100 degrees in that room, for two hours, is a good way for a venue to say to me ‘We signed up for this event to be cool, despite the fact that we really do not have the space to run it, and really do not care about anything beyond bringing a person into the store in the hopes that they will buy something before they leave’. I have been to four different venues in the local area, and they are all pretty much the same: Encounters is relegated to a storage room or a crowded room in the back that does not have the space to run more than a two-person game, yet six or seven people try to squeeze around these tables. I know it’s popular but until I find a venue that actually has a dedicated gaming space that isn’t a closet, I’m out.
Fun: On Wednesday nights, I have two choices. One the one hand, I can fight rush hour traffic for an hour and a half to get to the closest venue, not find a parking space that is anywhere near the venue, get to the store out of breath and flustered because I hate rush hour traffic and parallel parking, and then realize that a starting time of “six-ish” (which is the only time that this particular venue owner will give for starting) actually meant 5pm, realize that I am walking into the encounter an hour later, get glared at by people as I try to find a seat in the 6′x6′ gamer oven, only to find that pretty much as soon as I am ready to go, the one encounter for the day is over and it’s shutting down time. Or I can go to a different venue, where the people talk endlessly about their cats and bounce dice off the hard-wood table repeatedly when it’s not their turn, sighing and saying ‘FINALLY!’ when it does roll around, and then have to ask ‘uhh… What’s going on again?’. Or the other venue next to the dry cleaning place that is two full hours during rush hour, that spontaneously decides not to hold Encounter sessions because the venue owner doesn’t feel up to running a game because there’s a Firefly DVD he’d rather watch. Or! Or! I could stay the hell at home and play D&D with people I actually like.
Hmmm. Tough choice.
I’m sure there are awesome venues with awesome game rooms that have ventilation or AC where people realize that 4e is a team sport, where Encounters is run by DMs that recognize when a player is starting to feel left out and know how to keep a game on track, a place where the venue owner realizes that if his venue is a place where gamers want to come to play games, it will be a place where gamers want to come and spend money, but there are none of those places here.
August 26th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
One of my players has been DMing for D&D Encounters for a while now and he has nothing but good things to say about it, YMMV however.