I love that world... The books, the campaign, just everything about it. Hmmmm... wonder if there's a 4th Ed Dragonlance planned...?

You are a very, very lucky man. Buy that women some flowers tonight or something. Last night when I logged in just for CharGen my wife was on my case mercilessly and I can't ever imagine her coming to a Con with me.

First time I've played in almost ten years, though I've DM'd sometime in the last 5. The 4th edition ruleset is so, so good. It was awesome to me that my girlfriend ended up liking it even though she came into the experience actively trying not to. It was the first time in a long time that I've played a tabletop RPG without feeling like I was fighting the rules and game mechanics every step of the way. Having an excellent DM really helped, too.

As far as the XP thing goes, I believe that it's at the DM's discretion how he wants to distribute it all. How I did it when I ran a brief 3rd edition campaign was to divide it equally between all players, then increase the sum by 50%. In our case, it'd be about 195-200 (525/4 = about 130, 130+65=195). But, I'm not going to complain if you put me halfway to 2nd level after one encounter.

I really want to get into 4th I had it in my hand and was about to purchase the damn thing the other day. However, all my friends pretty much say that they'll no longer look at me if I try and drag them in.

And I call these bastards friends.

Adventure #2 was this past Saturday. I have to say that the rules are getting easier, bit by bit. Discovered something after the adventure was over: We hadn't realized that daily and utility spells were "prep beforehand" things. My wife should have had two dailies to choose from rather than one. Now that everyone hit second level, she's got the Expanded Spellbook feat so she can have three to choose from, plus two (not one) utilities. Live and learn; the WotC (Gleemax) messageboard has been very helpful to post questions to, by the way.

Encampment Encounters
The PC's defied my expectations and took an enemy hostage to bring back to town, so his superiors tried to take him back that night. I had to improvise this one and, though it went off well, was a pretty hairy encounter, and caused me to think about how I run encampment encounters in the future. If any of you have any best practices you'd like to share, I'd love to hear about them.

Cool Combat Maneuvers
I know the PC's are (now) second level and all, but I really want to find a way to properly illustrate all the cool things that players can do in combat. My interest in this grew when I had a zombie successfully grab the cleric in the group (first Zombie flanders joke, by the way). The players' apprehension visibly grew when they found out that wimpy first level enemies would be doing cool things. I have to applaud WotC for recommending simple, but different combat strategies for monsters. It really helps to establish that encounters have a different flair each time.

Time Out
Now that first level is concluded, I'm creating some "down time" of a week or two to create a break in the action, which is all the more appropriate since it may be a few weeks until our next adventure, anyhow. The wizard will research what the heck their minor magical item is and I'll flesh out more of the story that guides them forward from here.

Cool Observation
Yesterday was officially the first time I've ever woken up to see my wife flipping through a PHB, thinking about her second level feats. After discussing the mechanics of spellcasting and how different all the feats were, she remarked how difficult the game was. For a second, I thought she was complaining, but she clarified. "People put this game down as simple and stupid. This is much harder than I would have thought."

What she was getting at was that the rule structure and the powers all require that you pay close attention and use some serious logical skills. She thinks it's far more engrossing than a video-game not just for its narrative quality, but because the mechanics are front and center. It's not like WoW, where the algebra is buried beneath the interface. In D&D, the mechanics are simpler, but you have to do them, not the computer.

This endeared her to the role playing game more. What was interesting, though, is that I think she "gets" why MMORPGs are so engrossing now. It may not be D&D to her, but she understands all the stat-mongering a bit more now that she's stepped through the looking glass. What's coolest to me (as a dad) is that she can justify hours of our son playing D&D with the family, because it's a social group project and requires logic/lateral thinking. Where we tightly regulate Adam's time with the gameboy, we don't care one lick if he stays up late RPG'ing with us.

Recently, I ran another campaign with my family. I thought I'd add to my GWJ campaign notebook:

In preparation for this latest game, I did something different. Usually, I improvise the particulars of a battle map. This time, I have run my first custom-designed battle-map (drawing on the wet-erase board). It took place inside a watermill, where well-organized goblin agents were attempting to kill the proprietors and steal supplies (among other nefarious aims).

A Cool Battle
One of the things I wanted to do with this battle-map was to create a more fleshed-out working environment. Upon the start of combat, there were three humans left defending, all others had been killed. The idea was to have the token defense force that would show they "got there in the middle" of the battle. There was a balcony along two sides of the mill where goblin sharpshooters (and sharpshooter minions) were firing down into the mess. Add to that: a mysterious NPC off-set that was contributing minimally with his arquebus - this was the introduction of the NPC, meant to add a dash of steampunk.

What I learned is that big battles are a challenge. I hadn't run a battle with so many moving parts in about a decade. Initiative Cards were not an option - they were a necessity and helped tremendously. I never wondered whose turn it was, I just moved through the cards in order and kept moving. That said, the entire battle lasted two and a half hours. I consider this to be a rousing success because all the players considered this the coolest combat so far, and that time just zipped by. As a DM, I loved telling the players "use your daily powers" for this one. I didn't want them to worry that I was going to throw some really hard combat after this... there was another combat encounter afterward, but it was minor and most definitely did not require daily powers. Telling them this had a powerful psychological effect - it caused them to treat the fight like a big deal (which it was, there were tons of enemies).

Battle Highlights
Around the mill were crates to climb on. I used the following rules to handle moving vertically through the battle map.

Remember that you can "get on top of" things. For instance, if there's a crate around your height, you can make an Acrobatics check with a DC of 10. If it succeeds, you spend 1 movement point and can jump on the next higher-level crate (where possible). If it fails, you still move into the space, but you spend 2 movement points instead of 1. You can't move any higher, either, but can otherwise move normally. When you are on a crate, you gain +2 to your AC when in melee combat, but cannot make an attack of opportunity if someone on a lower level moves out of your melee range. You can also move away without provoking an attack of opportunity.
Being on top of a crate may make you a more inviting target against ranged opponents. Also, you have no bonus to your AC, though there is no penalty.

This rocked, by the way. I know a bunch of you would handle it differently, but it basically made it relatively easy for characters to act heroic, while still allowing for a 20-sider to influence events.

My son's halfling weaved through the battle, jumped on a few crates, then ran on top of the waterwheel (DC15). Then he spent an action point to not end his move on a moving waterwheel and dove into a sharpshooter (opposed strength check). While he didn't topple the sharpshooter (the halfling fell down on the balcony), he basically forced the sharpshooter to abandon his primary (best) weapon to fight melee instead.

The female cleric drastically altered the flow of battle with her priestly powers. Adding +2 to all allies armor class turned the humans that were supposed to die into amazing assets. They held the line and were continually healed when they got hurt. This is the first time that a few throwaways were able to take on a non-minion goblin and be successful and it's all thanks to excellent combat-roleplaying. My players are heroes. They defend good-guys, and the got some good XP for their trouble.

My wife's wizard was ridiculously effective. Spellcasters - please use your daily Flaming Spheres. It eats minions for breakfast and provides solid hurt to all major enemies. She delivered more than half the damage needed to the Goblin Hexer that was running the fight. Also, she moved the sphere up to the balcony (add 1 movement square to get "higher up") and damaged/trapped the other minions.

The tiefling warlock also used the crates to get himself higher, delivering solid damage to the enemy and further pressing the situation to their advantage.

Overall this was super-fun and worth the extra crafting that it took to design it.

NPC's Aplenty
After that cool fight, there was a lot of opportunities for the players to improvise what they wanted to do. I've been working on good ways to create roleplaying options with a minimal of preparation. Usually, this involves a name for the person, some keywords to describe their "essence" (ie - shifty, guarded, stutters), and a short description. If there are any other relevant bits, they get short bullet-points. I busted out a half-dozen NPCs in about 20 minutes. Any further details about them flow from the interaction with the player characters. This was my first time trying this and it rocked for ease of use.

Improvisation
The player characters and I improvised an entire "root out the mole" sequence that was a problem in-town. This is, incidentally, where 4e shined: the opposed check system has really helped with things like chase-sequences and conversation-threads. With literally nothing but a few impressions of what I wanted to do, the characters built a plan and executed it with great alacrity. They did a lot of great role-playing, had a lot of fun, and got to discover more about the backstory, all with no railroading whatsoever.

Moving forward
The great thing about this new "as little work as possible" approach to my NPC's, is that it saves time for me to flesh out the cool NPC's that I want to develop. Also, it allows me to plant seeds, which the players then water. Once they've watered it, I know what to write for the next time. This gives me even more to work as a result. I have been obsessing about the twin problems of DM'ing (in my experience): railroading and overpreparing for useless stuff. I will be applying this method of developing NPC's to the towns in the area too, which should allow me to quickly develop areas that the PC's can feel free to visit.

For instance, I previously thought it would be cool to develop maps, but those take time which I am trying to save. My new approach? Lift pictures of medieval villages and then label the buildings. It gives a great sense of place without requiring me to figure out how many half-orc villagers live in the northeast quadrant. I'm now figuring on using the following labels to fit info into: Outskirts of town (is the town walled, not walled, farms, forest?), Traveling feel (when moving about town, does it feel like tight quarters, open areas, green, developed), Resident style (are folks generally gregarious, guarded, fearful). Plug in your keywords and then move on to the next one. I figure on including a "dominant trait" (ie - big eldarin rune in the center of town, a giant big-ben style clock by the river, steam-pipework railings everywhere) to have an easy way to make a town feel differently. Those of you who have moved from town to town and found them all the damned same know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I just spent my whole lunch hour typing this one message so I'm going to call it quits. I hope a few of you DM types find it useful, for myself, it's nice to be able to offload my thoughts so I don't entirely forget.

Grats GWJ-crew.

That two and a half hour fight was one of the best I've ever had in D&D. My girlfriend's cleric practically carried the first part of the fight with her 1st level daily and 2nd level utility, and the values of that Flaming Sphere CAN'T be overstated. I just wish my warlock had more of a showing in that fight. I had this glorious image in my head of throwing a goblin sharpshooter out the window with a my Claw, and then spending an action point to set the Hexer on fire with my daily. Not to be, sadly.. it would have been so cool if I'd just rolled a teensy bit better.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Game Mastering ..Right now i am running a 3.5 campign for a group of friends that has gone on well over the last two years I would give you details but some of my players visit this site and i don't want to leek spoilers .. I am always happy to give you general advice (although from what you have posted so Far the basics you have down flat ) as far as Assigning Xp what I tend to do it total up the Xp from encounters, traps and other things and divide it by the total number of players ..then assign bonus Xp for good Role playing or creative thinking ... I would catuion you that I only show up to a game with a handful of notes at most, In fact I often toss out several possible plots and see which the group bites at ..But while i have looked over the 4th edition rules we have not converted to it as my players Dont like the system (to be fair many have been playing since 2nd edition and we had to drag them kicking and screaming into 3rd and 3,5 so i give it a year ..have fun and if you have any genral questions feel free to PM me (that goes for any other Dm/ Gm out there Allways happy to swap How i salughtered the players stories )

Thanks, this is a great journal. Now I just need to convince Mnemnosyn to start one for the game she's running for us... twelfth level characters have a lot of fun! And she's great at political and influence-based games.

Anyways, you split the xp equally (if no one's said that yet). The idea is 8-10 encounters per level, and if you look at the xp required for 2nd level it's 1,000 xp. That's about 100xp per encounter which makes sense with the average level one encounter being 400-600xp.

That said, Benticore has another approach - in his game, he levels the characters at appropriate points in the plot. That makes a lot of sense, if you want to do it that way.

I would suggest http://www.gwjrpg.com/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage as a good place for people to write up campaign journals / campaign materials. True, right now it's for the GWJRPG stuff, but there shouldn't be a problem with setting up separate areas for other games people are running... otherwise just post here and we'll read it!

It might be convenient for your players if you had them go here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showpost.php?p=4274554&postcount=568

There's a program and a patch and so on so you can print out D&D powers. You can even print them out on photo paper so they keep better. This is a great way for new players to have something to look at when they're deciding what to do.

Anyway, keep up the good work, keep us posted

ps. More unsolicited advice:

Roleplaying will always feel weird but you have to make people do it. New players will have trouble getting into it but before you know it they'll develop a voice and an attitude for their character, and it really helps to get people into the game in the long run. Gently encourage RP by talking as NPCs, asking players what they're saying to each other, etc. and eventually your game will run itself (not true).

Planning is a two-sided coin. Personally I'm an off-the-cuff DM but I still write up notes before each session with characters and places I want to use. I've never written up an entire dungeon module (before I started my GWJRPG game but that's a different matter), I've always just noted what kind of encounters I wanted to have and sketched stuff ahead of time. However there's a downside.
You have to make scrupulous notes during play or else you'll forget the names of the NPC you invented when the characters decided to go to unexpected places and do unexpected things. You also have to prep a lot more "possible" encounters if your people tend to run off rails, cause you don't want to have to stop the game to stat out the town guards when they start a riot.
What I've done recently is think about "themes" for my encounters. For example, if I were running the "dragon" game Malor was talking about I would have prepped an air, sea, and land encounter so I could run whichever depending on how the PCs decided to get around their problem. They're all riding on a dragon - that makes them more vulnerable to attacks from the air.
On the other hand, puzzles and traps are harder to do if you don't know the terrain beforehand. That's why sometimes I have to paint very bright signposts explaining to the PCs why they need to go into the Big Bad Dark Place. Of course if they decide to tunnel there rather than taking the brightly marked main entrance, I guess I have to move the trap... hehe.

Wow. You people gave me lots to chew on - thanks for that.

To Rabbit, I definitely plan on continuing this. I find it really cool that there's a ready-made audience in this community for RPG'ey stuff, and none of the asshats I see on other board. To Robert Douthitt, thanks for the XP-thoughts. I realize that I'm going in a different way with XP now that I've ready you and KingMob. I'm sure that my old group would be dead-set against 4th edition since they had so much invested in the old way.

To Malor, I remember running mana rules from way back, but hadn't even thought of it until your comment. We, too, hated that starting wizards had maybe three spells that they blew in the first few rounds of combat, then spent the rest of the time fretting about their 10 hit points.

To KingMob, excellent advice there. My group is a tride-and-true believer in using the power-cards. We have nice cardstock-printed color power-cards which we use, without fail, to keep all the relevant options on the table. I also started using shiny, silver Jillian's tokens for action points. We just used those last game and my group has really taken to it. Probably your most compelling point is one that I learned years ago - take tons of notes. Improvising is creative work, trying to remember all the crap you made up is much harder. A pen and a piece of paper does wonders.

To ShadeRaven, I'm thrilled to learn of another person who is involving his child in a game! I feel like that's a whole new subject that I'm now learning lots about. You are right about using miniatures - I only wish I could afford them. I did a lot of searching and couldn't find anything that I could afford. What I have done is a great cost-effective way of getting some visuals in-mind.

I went here and downloaded the free counter pack. I printed two copies of it out on cardstock. I am now finishing up the process of making double-sided square counters that I fit into these things (scroll down to card stands, bag of 20). Presto - instant baddies that just-about everyone can see without having to turn them around and knock everything over. If you need a little heft, glue pennies to the bottom of the base. Optionally (like my son), you can use lego-characters if they stand up. My boy was quite tickled that two of the skeletons (among some decrepits) were lego skeletons from his Indiana Jones set. They stood out nicely as "boss" characters in the small encounter.

Damn straight, RP-inclusion is a big one. I've read Goodjer's elaborate on this one in various threads. My wife is still getting-the-hang of the RP-encounters. She's still trying to feel comfortable with it, but I am working hard. It helps that Creatureparade and his girlfriend feel extremely comfortable with it. I think that the highpoint of the non-combat encounters for her, so far, has been watching me roleplay a rotund community leader. She is large (and in charge? oof), runs the theaterhouse and is head of the Merchant's guild. I wanted to model the whole "local folks want to get to know these people acting like heroes". My wife got a giggle out of some of my comments and she got to learn that not everyone you run into is hiding something. Luckly, that +9 to insight gives me the cover to tell her "you sense nothing malign in this person - she's just curious". I think my wife subconsciously expects everyone she meets to be someone they're going to oppose, but I will dispel that.

Oh, and as far as giving Adam extra power, he really doesn't get terribly much - just a way for me to (somehow) resurrect him if he dies (and he doesn't actually know about it, by the way). Right now, he fears death like any other. Even if (and when) I do the thing, there will be penalties - some kind of price, for sure.

About the XP, I suppose that if you figure on all the combat and non-combat encounters, I'm still awarding a bit more than is usual. I can tweak it going forward, but even with the mechanic that creatureparade and I use for combat encounters (total monster XP, divide by number of party members, and then double), it's still working out to be "level on a break". Regardless, I'm happy with the pace so far. The players really get into it and they are certainly earning their XP and loving the process. That's more important to me than stretching it out. I don't know if I mentioned it previously, but I played in a game where you'd slog through an admittedly great game session that lasted 10 hours, but then come away with 235xp or something. I think that still affects me...

Thanks to all of you - lots to chew on, here. I look forward to writing more. Also, KingMob's recommendation on contributing to the Wiki is one I can definitely get behind. I've never worked on a wiki, though, so if you have any recommendations, I'd love to hear it. I have been doing all my work in Google Docs and then going in to revise the adventures with what did happen (as well as tracking what they did on what adventuring day). I'm happy to make any of what I've been using available if it will help any of you gain perspective. I'd love to compare notes with any goodjer that wants to - we all just want to have the best damned games we can.

I'm enjoying this a lot, thanks for posting! I'm running a 4th ed game for Certis, Gaald and Trachalio, but I'm pretty new at the whole thing. Your watermill fight sounds really cool, I want to get into more terrain type fights at some point.

The point about failing at a task being a good way to break the ice is very true. Nothing is as boring as constant success.

I am really thirsting to play in a Planescape or Dark Sun game at this point - anything other than the traditional fantasy settings.

I recently jumped back into the D&D world after a decade or more with 4E - I did the same thing you did, docbadwrench; starting up a simple campaign with the wife (a renfaire/theater/scifi-fantasy geek) and kids (daughter, age 9, geek in training, son 7, who's a little less inclined).

Like rabbit, we've played a bit of fairies tale (a great game, and a great activity for slumber parties!), and the wife and I have gotten together once or twice with a local 3.5 group, but nobody had much experience at all besides myself.

I basically padded out the "kobold hall" adventure in the back of the DM's guide by playing out the journey from town with a couple homebrew encounters, since I'd been out of GM experience for a LONG time, and to get everybody used to the rules - nothing fancy, a party of goblin bandits and a group of kobold sentries, but it all worked out well...

The kids surprised me with their completely embracing the roleplay aspect; my dragon-obsessed daughter got a real kick out of playing a dragonborn warlock (and made some really innovative use of the mistwalk ability in battle that completely blew me away). The boy's playing a dwarf fighter, high strength, low wisdom - generally fits well with his single-minded "charge into battle swinging" strategy. The wife played an elf ranger, and I did double duty as GM and a human cleric to offer the occasional hint when the party got confused about what to do next, and to patch them up if necessary.

I'm finding the 4E rules really intuitive, and actually pretty great for less experienced players (some have complained about this, but it works in our case); the kids can follow the mechanics really well with minimal assistance; we had a great time just hanging out around the kitchen table playing out the story.

Glad to hear everyone else is having a great time with it as well!

Chuck: You know, I've never even heard of Fairies Tale before this thread... I guess I was missing something, eh? I have also been impressed at the ease with which my son takes to the game. He's playing his halfling pretty-much as I expected, though: a little goofy, brave, eager to gain the acceptance of the other players (Mom, Uncle Kyle..er Creatureparade, and Carole) - all much older than him, but everything's been syncing up nicely.

A moment in the last adventure that was precious: Adam's halfling was made to look like a goblin. The wizard used her herbalism knowledge to make him stink, the warlock used his bluff to help with the approach and other conniving, then they 'locked him up' in the basement of the watch-house. The idea was to lure out a mole that was revealing the humans' reprisal plans against the encroaching goblin tribes. It was definitely an A-Team teamwork moment that was very fun to play. It was gratifying to me to reward their ingenuity since the whole thing was unscripted.

Yes, the kids have a knack for roleplaying, it seems.

Raven: I made a slight update to the current draft of the settlement notes, basically lumping art & export together (a farming village with a theater community, for example). On the bus yesterday, I pumped out two more towns in around 20 minutes - already the thing is helping me to fill out my whole region. Once it's in a more fleshed-out (read: typed) format, I'm going to post more links. I see another lunch-hour where I don't leave the office...

I think that Ander00 cards are required for making the game so streamlined - our sessions are so very improved by those wonderful creations. I'm glad I'm not the only one finding them useful.

It no longer surprises me that we have this little tykes playing the game we played as awkward adolescents. It did at first - until I realized that we've had a few decades to work out the kinks and sift through the sand to get to the essentials of what makes a good RPG in the first place. It sure as hell doesn't include individual item saving throws for everything in your backpack after a fireball spell, does it?

Aww... at a certain age, it's really fun to roll lots of dice for unimportant reasons...

Okay, for the record, I've started a blog. Because, well, I'm a gamer, I'm a geek, and in accordance with federal law, I have to start a blog. In reality, I was inspired by Carla's blog and then found out lots of other DM's are doing it, and I'm nothing if not a follower.

Of course, there's much to be done, yet. But since I'm doing tons of writing in Google Docs, it doesn't help to share - keeps me from working in a vacuum, eh? I have to continue this thread, of course, because it's too much fun to talk to all of you.