D&D Encounters, Problems and Solutions

So. Since the first week of D&D Encounters, I've been venturing forth to socialize and play a weekly encounter each Wednesday. I've been doing it for the last few months, and I have yet to miss a week. During this long period, I started bringing my wife, and I even had moved to a new home 3-4 hours away. We found a new store running the events (a 30-45 minute drive away), and they allowed us to bring our characters from the games we had been playing previously.

My major beef with Encounters is twofold: adventure kit problems and store problems. First, season 2 is more legalistic and strict about playing the game. Rather than allowing RPGA-legal characters of the player's creation, D&D Encounters: Dark Sun forces players to use their pregenerated characters. I can sort of understand their reasoning since Dark Sun disallows any classes of divine power source, and that campaign setting guidebook has yet to be released. Also, characters in Dark Sun must cope with the fact that metal is rare in the world. Given those issues, Wizards of the Coast decided to only allow six different characters. Another good reason for this change could have been the need to make parties composed of random players (often strangers) to have a variety of roles, which 4th edition has made very, very important to success.

The problem is that player enjoyment often depends on their involvement with their character, and pregen. characters by default create a disconnect between player and character. Also, many of the pregens chose poorly for feats, class specialization, or equipment. For example, Shikirr, the Thri-Kreen Battlemind (Psionic Deffender), uses a reach weapon for most of its attacks. The battlemind tanking class feature, though, is that when marked creatures make an attack which does not target the battlemind any damage they deal is dealt back to them by the mark (called Mind Spike). That mechanic, though, hinges on one other factor--being ADJACENT to the marked target. So, your character is generally at a reach of 2 in order to deal adequate damage, but doing so greatly reduces the efficacy of your class role's main mechanic. This is just one example.

Solutions? Well, the role solution is not really realistically or logistically fixable, but as for the equipment, WotC could have had equipment sets for players to choose from, in order to decrease the amount of metal in-game. Also, they could have a selection of sets that a party must divide between its members. This might encourage role diversity, as well.

Another negative aspect of this season of Encounters is the overall difficulty of each encounter. We get it, the sun is DARK, and the desert is treacherous, but putting (already inadequate) characters up against monsters with higher AC, HP, and damage than any PC is just outrageous. Yes, players like a challenge. Some players, particularly powergamers, LOVE the challenge of survival despite tilted odds, but I had been led to believe that Encounters was to be for players old and new. Of the three groups at our local(ish) store, two barely lived the first session, one TPKed. Last night, all three groups TPKed. The central thesis of the Dungeon Master's Guide is that DMing is supposed to primarily encourage one thing: FUN. Two weeks in a row of this horribly difficult adventure has taught me that fun is no longer a priority for D&D Encounters. They want to focus on challenging players and making them compete for renown and its rewards rather than encouraging new players and facilitating games for players who rarely get to play anymore, as the recent CNN article had suggested.

Now for problems with my store. The three DMs at the store are all pleasant enough. They have varying levels of mastery of the rules, but one admits to having little knowledge while demanding that his interpretations of the rules must be correct. None of them are aware of nor care about any errata for the characters or adventures. They are ignorant or dismissive of the twitter buffs to help PCs survive the encounters. They also have the most strict renown system I could imagine. For instance, I took over 70 damage last night before dying (in the gaping maw of a kank), but I did not receive the renown points for it, because of the death. The renown tracker for season 2 doesn't say that you have to live through it, but the store owner was adamant.

Unfortunately, that is not the most grievous policy about renown at the store. If your character dies during the encounter, the player gains ZERO renown for their efforts. I understand that "participation" awards are generally lame, but I'm pretty sure the three renown awarded upon "completion" of the encounter are meant to be such a award for the player's showing up and trying to help fight through the encounter. To be fair, the organizers do award renown for players who met requirements not involving living, such as scoring 15+ damage or invoking the new Reckless Breakage rule. Without such an action, though, none of our 15-20 players have received renown at all for last night's session, and 5 or 6 people didn't gain any last week either. How fun is that?

I poked around on WotC's d&d webpage and browsed through the Encounters forums, but I have been unable to find an explicit list of rules about renown that I might be able to email or tweet to my local store in an attempt to remedy the problem.

Sadly, I don't really have a solution for this combination of problems. I really enjoyed season one of Encounters, and I had really hoped to get one of the really cool Cozies, but I'm just not sure if the frustration of weekly TPKs, and having absolutely nothing to show for it, not even renown, will make driving 45 minutes to the store worthwhile. Last night, I left in a foul mood and remained in it for an hour or two. I can waste time getting frustrated by playing Halo with eight-year-olds at home if I wanted that sort of annoyance.

gaming

So to pick up where that last left post dropped off, my gaming life has improved in the past few months. I picked up Fable 2 again, and have begun obsessively purchasing every property in the game. The last major quest I did was the hero of will, I think. I own all of Bowerstone so far. In Lego Batman, I finally got everything to 100% and got all of the achievements. It took a while, but it was quite satisfying. Sort of working on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the 360 right now, but that's mixed in with Fable 2, WoW, and Mario Galaxies (1), in which I've gotten about halfway.

Most of my video/computer gaming continues to be World of Warcraft. I'm raiding full-time with the Spartans on Dalaran server. We do MTR raids from 6:45-10 CDT, and we're currently struggling with the summer and pre-expansioncombined slumps. On 25 man, the lowest we've seen Lich King is ~50%, but on 10 man I haven't gotten any complete wings down other than the first--then again that's because our 10 man group sort of dissolved in the last month or so. The guild's main group (officers only, sort of) are kingslayers and have been working on the hardmodes. I'm really jealous when I think about it, so I try not to do so. Also, I seduced James into starting a new account so I can get the Recruit-A-Friend touring rocket (read: flying mount that can carry a passenger) on Xellos (my rogue).

The first season of Dungeons and Dragons: Encounters just ended, and Allison and I have enjoyed it. In Murfreesboro, our group was amazing and had great synergy and DMing, but the store we go to in Jackson isn't as cool. My character from the beginning, a Goliath Warden, died in a TPK in our first game here, but I came back as a Githzerai Avenger and the games got better (read: I dominated. 2 d20s>1 d20 Avengers FTW). Next season starts Wednesday, and though the characters must be the pregenerated ones, I'm still excited about the setting in Dark Sun. [side note, the Penny Arcade (and PvP and Starslip Crisis) podcast has been great]

I've also started running a game at our house loosely based in Eberron. Our group is full of familiar faces from my gaming past:

• Allen, brother, githzerai druid
• Spike, old friend, bullywug assassin
• Tim, computer magician, dwarf battlemind
• Allison, hot wife, kalashtar ardent

and starting this past week

• Leah, sister-in-law, human wizard
  

I'm also hoping to get Keith, ogre-sized awesomeness, to play--maybe then the party will have someone with a strength higher than 10. They played through the mini adventure in the DMG, but next time they'll start the adventure with some RPing in Sharn, the city of towers.

Also, on Memorial Day, we started playing the board game Power Grid, but it got late and we didn't get the chance to get very far before people had to leave. Still, it looked pretty near, and I'm sure I'll play it sometime soon.