I thought I would start off the first
post of this blog with a bang. Since 1983 I have gamed with dozens of different
players using Dungeons & Dragons. Nearly three decades later I still
gather one or two Saturday’s a month for a few hours to continue new campaigns
in Ultanya which is my home brew. With everyone approaching their 40s, kids,
jobs or just the curveballs of life it gets increasingly harder to find time
for table top.
So this summer I proposed we start a
CON just for our circle of gamers. This interestingly enough all told amounts
to over twenty people. The response was overwhelmingly a success with 11 gamers
able to make the CON day. So we rented a conference suite in a local hotel and
started to plan a game for what I consider a large group. I recruited the aid
of another veteran DM in our circle and we went to work brainstorming and
pumping out the big ideas.
We used the 4E game system which was a
challenge unto itself. The completed game was 50 pages long and took over 40
hours to complete. In another blog post I will show some of the tools we used
to get 11 players through the slow combat system of 4E with efficiency. In
short we initially split the groups for the first leg of the day and then they
doubled up during the second half.
Since we had a room full of 30 and 40 something’s
who are all professionals we needed an ecology free adventure. We wanted suspension
of disbelief to permeate throughout the day – just like it did when you were 10
years old. Who cares if just across from the fire elemental room lives a frost
giant! The backstory of the adventure was Baba Yaga’s hut.
We decided Baba Yaga has a century of insufferable boredom. So she returns to the prime material plane of Ultanya to set a deadly trap. As a long-lived and wise collector of lore and knowledge she knows exactly what bait to use. Baba Yaga creates an elaborate illusion of the entrance to a lost level dwarven mine. She has placed the illusion in a remote location so treasure hunters and adventurers would come in waves.
Baba Yaga does not want to eat the
heroes – just yet. She has collected for centuries pieces of various lore and
fantastical locations. The gauntlet inside the hut is a veritable menagerie of
forgotten relics, ruins, monsters, oddities from different planes of existence
and pure curiosities. Baba Yaga is doing
this entire exercise purely for her own amusement. If the players make their
way through the gauntlet they will eventually be tested in the Tesseract Arena.
Victory will mean they will be released and rewarded. Failure means they will
join the skull garden outside of the hut.
With that background in mind we had a
large task ahead of us to create the Tesseract Arena. The names derives from the fact that Baba Yaga's hut is a tesseract (a four-dimensional analog of a cube). My co-DM is a carpenter by
trade so this task fell primarily on his shoulders. So while I was busy
plugging away writing game mechanics he was getting his jig saw +5 ready to
eventually create what you see below.
In the center of the arena was a very Cthulhu
looking Aboleth which was held in place through the use of magitech locks. I
had to borrow one of my son’s octopus toys (not depicted) since I did not
have a mini big enough! The creature’s powers were syphoned to eight switches
throughout the arena which afforded various banes and boons. The players needed
to control these switches to help win the match.
Also in the arena were stacks of
strange black cubes. These devices had two handles which when turned made the cubes
weightless. They could then be thrown as many squares as a player had STR as a
standard action. When touching the ground (or another cube) they would magnetize
until properly removed again. These cubes would then allow a team in the arena
to build stairs, barriers, etc. Our players were very creative and at one point
the warlock in the group stood on one of the cubes while the Dragonborn fighter
tossed him 20 squares up.
Finally on each of the corner towers there was harpoon ballista (not depicted) which could be used to fire zip lines around the arena or used as a piece of artillery against the enemy team. Below I list some of the basic game mechanics used during the adventure:
Finally on each of the corner towers there was harpoon ballista (not depicted) which could be used to fire zip lines around the arena or used as a piece of artillery against the enemy team. Below I list some of the basic game mechanics used during the adventure:
Winning
Penalty box
On each
side of the arena there is a penalty box (one red, one blue). If a PC dies in
the arena they are sent to their respective penalty box. After 1 round they are
fully healed and all powers (encounter & daily) are returned to them. A
team mate must then flip the switch to let them out of the penalty box.
Crowd
Ethereal onlookers cheer wildly when a
combatant forces an opponent into the penalty box, granting the attacker a +1
bonus to speed and all defenses until the end of its next turn.
Magitech Switches
There are
eight switches which all correspond to one of the Aboleth demon’s boon/bane
tentacles as detailed below:
1.
Sharpened
Edge – controlling team will critical on 18-20
2.
Titan’s
Hide –
controlling team receives DR5 all
3.
Ghostly
Carapace– controlling team receives 10 temporary hit
points each
4.
Withering
Weapon– controlling team adds 5 necrotic damage to
all attacks
5.
Chill
of Death – enemy team is Slowed
6.
Weakened
Soul – enemy team grants combat advantage
constantly
7.
Crushed
Resolve – enemy dead stays in the penalty box 1 extra
round.
8.
Touch
of Evil – enemy team has a 50% chance to target an
ally with any attack.
I will note that contention over switch # 5 was the nastiest. In our game that switch proved to be overpowering and I would probably modify it for future arena matches. The players faced what appeared to be copies of their PCs but were actually shape shifting 3-hit minions which are detailed below. After two hours the players won the day and dethroned the NPC team.
Below are additional images of the Tesseract Arena.
The bridge of doom! |
We used colored pins to denote which team had control over a switch |