Zeitgeist is amazing

Life continues to be crazy professionally, and my home life is just as busy as it was when I put the Astral Sea on hiatus, but my Zeitgeist campaign has been moving along nicely

In fact, it's going so well that I felt the urge to come back and mention it here. Zeitgeist is what 4e adventures always should have been. It has intrigue. It has genuine mysteries. It has amazing set pieces. And it has the PCs doing the sort of action hero stuff that 4e really caters for.

I've been running the campaign for 3 months now, and have found almost nothing to fault it for. If you haven't yet, I urge you to check it out (downloads at the bottom of the page). It's available for Pathfinder and 4e.

And for those of you who'd like to see exactly what I'm talking about, check out my ENworld discussion thread here (I trust it goes without saying that my players should stay out).

Astral hiatus

If there's one thing that I have found to be universally true when it comes to endeavours and products, it's that you can have them "cheap, quick or good; choose two".

It goes without saying that the Astral Sea blog has been cheap (it's free, after all) and I like to think that it's been good, but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to squeeze quick in there.

Work is keeping me busy, and then Mrs Colmarr and the Colmarrs Jnr occupy most of my time outside of work hours. I have enough free time to play D&D, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the time to blog about it. The impending move from the player chair to the DM chair is likely to result in an increase of time devoted to playing D&D, and that takes even more time away from the blog.

Long-term readers have probably already noticed the downturn in content, and for that I apologise. I took stock of things over the long weekend just passed and have reached the conclusion that I don't want to do things by halves. If I can't update the blog regularly (I can't), then I'd rather not update it at all.

With all of the above in mind, I think it's only fair to let you know that the Astral Sea will be going on indefinite hiatus almost immediately. I'll probably maintain some form of Zeitgeist campaign thread over on the ENworld boards for those of you who are interested in following along. If I do, I'll post a link to it here on the Astral Sea.

To everyone else, thank you for accompanying me on this foray into the blogging world. It's a job for professionals, but it's also pretty damn fun. Your involvement has been a blast!

Zeitgeist

Those who have been following the blog for a while will recall that I've been wondering what 4e is like from the DM side of the screen. I had a taste during our Eye of Flame one-shot, and as those posts showed, I liked what I saw.

Since then, I've been content to continue playing Pieter in the SSTL campaign and enjoy being a player. But the DMing bug never really went away. I continued to fiddle around the edges, designing Paldemar and Sinruth redux and the runestalker for A Fire at Night. But I didn't want to take the reins for a couple of reasons:

1. I didn't want to be disloyal to my DM, who is doing a wonderful job running the SSTL campaign;
2. I didn't know whether I wanted the extra work that comes from DMing, especially when you DM from scratch; and
3. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to build a campaign around.

Then I found Zeitgeist, a soon-to-be-commenced adventure path by EN publishing. What's it about? I'll let them tell you:

Steam and soot darken the skies above the city of Flint, and winds sweeping across its majestic harbor blow the choking products of industrial forges into the fey rainforests that dot its knifetoothed mountains. Since the earliest ages when the people of Risur founded this city, they feared the capricious beings that hid in those fog-shrouded peaks, but now, as the march of progress and the demands of national defense turn Flint into a garden for artifice and technology, the old faiths and rituals that kept the lurkers of the woods at bay are being abandoned.

The Unseen Court, the Great Hunt, and the many spirits of the land long ago conquered by Risur’s kings no longer receive tribute, but they cannot enter these new cities of steam and steel to demand their tithe. The impoverished workers who huddle in factory slums fear monsters of a different breed, shadowy children of this new urban labyrinth. Even their modern religions have no defenses against these fiends.

Times are turning. The skyseers — Risur’s folk prophets since their homeland’s birth — witness omens in the starry wheels of heaven, and they warn that a new age is nigh. But what they cannot foresee, hidden beyond the steam and soot of the night sky, is the face of this coming era, the spirit of the new age. The zeitgeist.

In one fell swoop, EN publishing solved problems #2 and #3. Having an adventure path to base a campaign around would minimise my DM work, and the setting background of the rise of technology is one that fires my imagination to levels it's hard to describe. I couldn't wait to DM it.

But what about problem #1? Wouldn't my DM feel betrayed? As it turns out, no. He's just as jazzed by the idea of being a player in Zeitgeist as I am of running it. Problems solved!

Zeitgeist starts in "Spring 2011" (sometime between 1 March and 31 May), and I can't wait. When it does, we'll be putting the Stones and Shadow, Trees and Light campaign on hold for a while. We fully intend to come back to it, but for now a change of scenery is most welcome.

I'm always happy to advocate for things I'm excited about, so I encourage everyone to check Zeitgeist out. And if you're as excited about it as I am: tell your friends, tell your local gaming group, tell everyone you meet at your FLGS. Oh, and make a pledge at Zeitgeist's kickstarter project.

Damn this is going to be good!

SoW: Return to Brindol

The messenger delivers her message, and the PCs find themselves returning to familiar climes.

After rescuing Alys, the PCs receive her message:

"Greetings from Sertanian, castellan of the Hall of Great Valor. I beseech you to return to Brindol with all haste, as your presence is needed here. The matter concerns one of the relics that you recovered while saving myself and our town’s other captives in Rivenroar, and is most urgent.”

Alys confides to the party that she has never seen old Sertanian as fearful as when he sent her forth. That should serve as a pretty good hook, especially if you played Sertanian as stoic when the PCs first encountered him in rescue at Rivenroar. If the PCs didn't rescue Sertanian, then the message comes from his successor Aeomon. Much of the personal collection is lost, but guilt over a life not saved might be just as strong a motivation to return to Brindol.

The PCs meet a dwarf patrol on the road, led by a dwarf named Zoram Splitershield. The purpose of that meeting seems to be solely to inform the PCs that gnolls are in the area, because virtually no other information is exchanged. I sorely suspect that Splintershield is introduced here because he'll turn up again later in the adventure path. If not, this meeting is a little bit of a proud nail.

Upon their arrival at Brindol, the PCs get to enjoy a bit of hospitality from the friends and family of the citizens they saved. It's a nice way of telling the PCs "you've come a long way, baby" and impressing upon them that they're more than just adventurers now. They're heroes. When they finally make it to the Hall of Great Valour, they discover the reason for Sertanian's summons: the platinum blade they recovered from Rivenroar has started to talk!

The weapon calls itself Amyria, and warns the PCs of a gnoll shaman seeking to become an exarch of Yeenoghu, the god of butchery. Just as importantly, the sword maintains that its form is only temporary, and that if the PCs bear it to Fortress Graystone - where the gnolls are preparing for their ritual - her true form can be returned. There's a lot of information to be imparted in this section of the adventure, and DMs would be wise to read through the scenario a few times to make sure they understand it all.

After Amyria has delivered her message, company shows up.

SSTL 61: Thunder and Lightning

The Heroes of Winterhaven man the walls of Argent, and learn to their cost that battling the forces of the primordials is no trivial matter.

Read the full recap here.

The good thing for players about splitting a combat across two sessions is that you get a chance to ruminate on what you have learned, figure out effective tactics, and designate targets of importance. Hence, when we returned to the fight against the giants' airborne assault squad, the roc came in for a pounding the likes of which the sages will sing about for decades. There's nothing quite like the promise of a 200 foot drop to focus an adventurer's mind on the task at hand.

One thing that came to the fore this encounter (and has made a consistent appearance over each of the last 3 or 4 sessions) is just how much damage Nala does when she scores a critical hit. This session it was 64 points of damage, but what is more impressive is that - if I remember correctly - she has broken the campaign's record for 'biggest hit' on no less than 4 occasions. I'm not sure whether that's dragon magic sorcerors in general or just some particular quirk of Nala's build. Either way, it's impressive.

The fight against the behir was more worriesome, because - let's be honest - it wailed on us like chumps. Three activations per round gives it the capability to dish out very significant damage, and that capability only increases as it gets into melee range (no need to waste move actions on moving) and PCs fall unconscious (more chance of the Behir receiving multiple turns in a row). It swallowed Pieter and Dek at different stages of the combat, and Dek would likely have died in its belly were it not for his player rolling a natural 20 on a death save. The rule stating that swallowed characters are out of line of effect is nasty.

In the end, it was a foolhardy swoop by Soveliss and Nala that saved the day. They landed flanking the beast (which may not have been the best tactical option) and the behir promptly stomped the eladrin into the floor. Fortunately, Nala made her last shot count, and it was just enough to drop the behir before the last of the Heroes of Winterhaven fell.

We had somehow survived, but the poor performance in this encounter was to prove very costly in later sessions.

On a personal note, the DM had set aside a Cherished Ring from my wish list as Pieter's treasure from the roc encounter, but on further consideration, I realised it was a pretty poor choice. I picked it for the Diplomacy bonus, but a 14th level item is not the most efficient way of getting one. He graciously allowed me to swap the ring for a Choker of Eloquence and a Dynamic Belt. Both items together are roughly the same cost as a 14th level item, and they give Pieter skill bonuses (Diplomacy, Bluff, Athletics and Endurance) but just as importantly they also allow daily re-rolls of any of those skills. Which could come in very handy indeed.