Running My Whole Family Through 4e

So, on the 27th of December, I ran my family through a game of 4e DnD, almost all for the first time. The players included:

My mom, the Half-Elf Seeker
My dad, the Human Sorcerer
My brother, the Minotaur Bard
My sister-in-law, the Gnome Ranger
And my wife, Bridget, the Eladrin Swordmage

My brother and my wife have played 4e before, my sister-in-law has played other RPGs, and my dad played 0e and 1e back in the day, but nothing since. My mom had played one session of 1e in the 70′s, but hadn’t since.

I explained the basic rules, including at-will, encounter and daily powers, as well as action points, move, minor, and standard actions.
The heroes had been asked by a village to uncover the reason for the lizardman attacks in the region, a mission which led them to a woodsy glade with a ruined mausoleum in the center of it.

ENCOUNTER 1: THE FOREST
A pile of boulders, as well as a worn and ancient alter sat outside, and they happily marched forward, not even bothering to be careful or stealthy.

Stepping out of the forest were a pair of lizardmen, flanked by a group of small lizard-looking folk. My dad asked to determine what the little ones were, and a nature roll revealed them to be kobolds. My mom asked if kobolds are known to be evil, and a quick roll revealed that yes, they are seen as the scum of the earth. Not interested in parlaying, the group rolled initiative.

They quickly got the basics of it, with my dad acting as the de-facto leader of the group, working with everyone on tactics and trying to figure out how to take down the monsters.

The kobolds were all minions, but I still had them roll for damage. They quickly realized it was better to use at-wills on the kobolds, rather than encounters, and at the beginning of the game, they were sure they wanted to hold off on using their dailies till the end.

Before long (and with my son grabbing all of the pieces as we tried to play) they had defeated the lizardmen and their ilk, and moved into the mausoleum. It was a single tile from one of the forest tile sets. There were a couple of braziers, a small pool of water, and an altar-like table, with two lit candles.

The game was pretty great, because throughout, they didn’t ask to roll dice that often. When presented with a mystery, they would instead try to solve it with ingenuity and wit, rather than a dice roll.
So anyway, back to the room…

They began searching the room. Bridget went to the pool, and found it full of clean, cold water. Her Arcana revealed it to be unpoisoned. My brother had the idea of pouring some of the water on the floor, which then disappeared under the stone table. A little more investigation, and they found a switch near the floor of the table, which slid it aside to reveal a spiral staircase…

ENCOUNTER 2: THE PUZZLE CHAMBER
They looked down into the descending darkness, and my dad, the sorcerer, decided to go down first. Now, this isn’t a crazy prospect, sending the squishy one down first, as he had robes that created a zone of shadow around him. They figured he’d be able to be nearly invisible to anyone below.

As he came to the bottom of the staircase, however, there were no enemies in sight, just a long hallway, flanked by pillars. The pillars furthest from the stairs were charged with electrical energy, and beyond them, red runes glowed in the floor.

Xanthes, the sorcerer, called the rest of the group down, and they moved towards the pillars, stopping just short. Codrus, the Minotaur bard took his wondrous item, a floating lantern, and sent it on ahead, between the lightning pillars. Almost immediately, lightning shot out and disintegrated the lantern.

The players spent the next fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to get past the pillars. Bridget, playing an Eladrin Swordmage, decided to teleport past the pillars to the other side of the floor runes. Once on the other side, she realized the runes were in face ancient minotaur letters, which were upside-down to everyone else. Finally, my mom, the half-elf seeker, decided to try to ice up the pillars, and fired off two enchanted arrows, one at each pillar, which sealed them up.

Very quickly, though, they realized the pillars were beginning to melt quickly. They were nervous about stepping out onto the floor runes, but did so. Nothing happened, except that the runes stepped on glowed blue for a moment until they stepped off. They passed onto the other side of the runes, and tried to figure out what to do next. On the other side , large blue fields of energy kept them from advancing further. They looked over the letters, and soon, Codrus (the bard, played by my brother) realized that certain letters spelled out the name of Baphomet, the evil god of the minotaurs.

There were five players, but the gnome ranger had a Wolf animal companion, so they placed themselves strategically so that they were each able to touch two runes, with the gnome and her companion each covering one letter apiece. Each of the letters lit up, and the energy fields melted away, allowing the heroes to continue.

This encounter was great, in that it required very, very little rolling, just a lot of problem solving. I really enjoyed it, and I think the players did too.

ENCOUNTER 3: THE DRAGON!
Descending the staircase, the heroes found themselves in a massive room, dominated by three magic circles and a large platform with a Kobold Wyrmpriest on top, chanting over the circles. The sorcerer shot electrical energy at the priest, while the seeker volleyed primal arrows. Wyrmpriest would be slain, but not before he was able to shout out the rest of his ritual. Two of the heroes, the ranger and swordmage had gotten to the other side of the large portal before it began shimmering. In the smaller two blue portals, kobolds began pouring out, attacking the heroes. The large portal stopped pulsing, and standing before the heroes… was a massive dragon.

It dominated the room, its massive tail sweeping the area. The heroes launched their attack as even more kobolds poured from the portal. The ranger moved in to meet them and, upon stepping on the portals, discovered they turned red on contact.

The sorcerer, seeker and bard stood in the stairway just in front of the dragon. Opening its mouth, it unleashed flame upon them, fire sweeping up the stairway.

My sister-in-law (again, playing the ranger) realized that no kobolds came from the teleportation circle as long as it was red, and so stayed on the circle while sending her wolf companion to the other. She began taking out the minions as quickly as she could so that she could focus on the dragon.

Sweeping its massive tail, it knocked the swordmage (Bridget) back against the wall.

The three in the stairwell attacked back, firing arrow, magic and song in an attempt to take it down. It unleashed its fear attack, giving all of the heroes big negatives and save ends effects.

The battle slogged on, the dragon breathing down on the heroes while the bard bolstered them.

My dad, the sorcerer, ended up unconcious and dying on the stairs, the victim of a series of claw and bite attacks. The bard’s healing powers brought him back from the brink, but I soon realized I needed to wrap up this battle. 300 HP for this dragon could definitely cause this fight to drag-on (see what I did there?) for another hour or more. I mentally brought down its HP to a more reasonable level, when Bridget got a bright idea, and Fey Stepped onto its back.

Now being attacked from behind, in front and above, the dragon became bloodied and began showing signs of wear. Within a couple more rounds, the beast was slain.

POST MORTEM

The game, I think, went really, really well. I allowed the heroes to do whatever they wanted, without constraining them to their character sheets, and I think they all really enjoyed themselves. My dad in particular, I think, since I made the sorcerer for him and named it after his Magic User from 0e, so it was like his character returning to fight again!

I’m thinking I might need to make this an annual occurrence. Next year, however, we’re holding Christmas here in Chicago, and there will be a lot more family members here. It might be kind of fun to have 10-12 people gathered around the table to play!

I give this session !