Brotherhood of the Nerd

My home campaign session fell thru this week and rather than sulk or suffer withdrawal symptoms I signed up to DM a Living Forgotten Realms (LFR) game. It was my first experience with this program offered by WoTC.  LFR is an organized play program where players create a character and assign them to a specific region of the campaign world. WoTC then releases modules for each region that allow your character to progress through the levels of play.  There are adventures/games for early heroic level characters up to late paragon levels.

I had been contemplating playing in a game with Drax after the completion of season one of the encounters program, but I hadn’t because I was still working on a angle or pitch to try and convince my wife why I needed to spend more time away from her and the little one in the name of D&D. So I had been monitoring the sign up boards and new that games ran 12-4pm on Saturday’s. From what I can gather the program around here can struggle to get DM’s for the games.  I can understand some people’s reluctance as it can be a little daunting and the prep can be a little bit of a bitch.  I would encourage everyone who plays to give DM’ing a try as it is very rewarding and not as bad as people imagine it to be.  Plus the LFR is a pretty good place to get your feet wet as the adventures are pretty structured.  So when the e-mail came out on the group-list that they were short a DM for one of the tables this past Saturday I just shot off a reply saying that I would do it. What I didn’t realize is that it wasn’t for a regular game session but for a battle interactive adventure called The Paladin’s Plague which is a part of this thing called Spellstorm.  A battle interactive is a convention type game where the success of the players rests on the collective of outcome of all the tables involved in the adventure. Which is kind of cool but what I didn’t realize is it would run between 10am-7pm, and I had less than 2 days to prepare. As my confidence waivered e-mails came back signing my praises, and well I guess flattery will get you everywhere, so I set to it. The adventure was pretty good, fairly complex combat encounters which was a bit of a pain as I didn’t really have a lot of time to prepare and it was difficult remembering all the different things and conditions that the monsters could do. The adventure also called for use of Dungeon Tile sets that are no longer available (thanks WoTC) . I don’t understand why they don’t continue to put out these sets, unless they don’t make any money off them, needless to say it was pain in my ass. I ended up using a blend of tiles I had, homemade tiles, and my trusty battle mat.

The game went well. The adventures in LFR are pretty much on the rails as it is kind of like standardized testing and every administration needs to be the same, which can be a bit of a drag and I think you have to be careful that the game doesn’t turn into a table top miniature game, unless that’s what you and the players want. Where I could I tried to add some role-playing moments and some decent soliloquies.  I am pleased to say that the Silver Wolf Company was quite successful, what do you expect with 2 leaders/healers; I mean what’s a DM to do . I think the best part of the game was playing D&D with people I would never really have had an opportunity to meet before and having a blast doing it. D&D is really like a giant nerd brotherhood, and I am happy to be a member. I really liked LFR and I might occasionally play and DM a bit, as I think Drax is getting a little antsy in his early retirement.