D&D Encounters

So last night was my first ever experience playing "D&D Encounters". It was at the local FLGS, Mayhem, and was huge. By huge I mean to say, entirely too many players and not enough DMs.

I had been into Mayhem before and seen these posters and advertisements for the Encounters thing, and had my interest piqued. Talked to the owner of the store about it, he said it starts at 6, no you don't have bring anything, &c &c.

I then convinced a friend to join me, and off we went, bringing absolutely nothing to the game except our formidable presences. No pencils, no dice, no little plastic pre-painted miniatures, no characters. That's right. Nothing. Except soda. And booze. Can't forget the booze.

We arrived, Jonny said something about needing to take a dump the size of Guam and ran off, and I sat down at the table. Give it to me, I said.

Give you what?

Whatever it is that you have to give.

And thus I received a Sentinel character and mismatched dice. Bummer.

A druid? This sucks, I said. Give me something else.

I have a Thief, a player said.

Ah crap, I replied. Nobody has anything decent?

I have a Warpriest, somebody else said.

Alright, give me the Warpriest. No way in hell am I going with a pansy fluffy-bunny-loving Druid for my first game.

Jonny came back. What do I get, he asked.

I have a Blackguard, the same person who offered me the Warpriest said.

Well hold on just a minute. How long have we been going around and around about this? Why didn't you guys just offer me the damned Blackguard at the beginning. I'll take that.

I guess I'll take the Warpriest, Jonny said.

Sloppy seconds, I replied.

Ouch.

I took a look around the table, which was actually three tables pushed together to form one big table. There were, by the time we started playing, nine players, including Jonny and myself. This does not include the DM, who had one full side of the table all to himself, because of his damned big DM Screen set up over there. So nine players, around three sides of a table. It was a tight fit, let me tell you. Which is, apparently, exactly how Jonny likes 'em.

Player impressions: um, yeah. The DM seemed confident, even with that many players. Cool. Counting the DM and Jonny and I, there were two other players who looked to be in their 30's. Which left five players who might have been in high school. Egads. Youngsters. Hoodlums. Ruffians. I remember what it was like back then. Punks and Yobs, manno. I was suddenly tingly with fear.

Not really. One of the youngsters talked about how the Drow were, like, his favorite race ever. I almost asked him if it was a cross between a Lion and a Tiger and reknowned for its magical properties. That didn't seem like the wise thing to do, however, in a group that I didn't know, and so studied the five sheets of paper that were given to me for my character. A Vryloka Blackguard. Vryloka? What's a Vryloka? I turn to the last page, where racial feats and crap were listed. Undead something something. Aha. I'm a sort-of kind-of vampire. A Vryloka is to Vampire what Tiefling is to Devil. I get it. I always did hate the concept of Tieflings. I suppose now I'll have to hate the concept of Vryloka too. Except I'm playing one. Great. And what's a Blackguard? Honestly, even now, after playing through that game, I don't know what a Blackguard is. Evil. That's what I know. How do I know? because it said so up on the top of the page. Evil Vryloka Blackguard.

I was pondering what a Blackguard was when the fellow to my right began cackling. That's right, cackling. He stopped. Then he started again. And then he stopped. And then he did it again. I almost walked out it was so fucking disturbingly mind-numbingly anti-social and creepy. Except it wasn't Halloween anti-social. It was more of a "I don't have any friends and this is why" anti-social. And then I figured out that he did it whenever somebody else came into the game room looking like they wanted to play D&D. It was a psychological trigger or something, the sound of that door opening. Like a human Pavlov dog that was trained to cackle every time the door opened.

A youngish couple came over to our table and asked to play and were turned away. But in the course of that, the girl in the couple (yes, there was a girl, and yes, she was turned away) stated that she wanted to play a healer. Which started a discussion around our table about whether or not we had any. Turned out we did. Two of them. One played by Jonny, the Warpriest, and another played by a 30-something to Jonny's left, another Warpriest.

To which I might have said, If I was playing a character class named Warpriest, and somebody asked me to heal them, I'd be pissed. Good thing I chose the Blackguard.

And the game was on. It was Episode 1 of the first chapter of the new Neverwinter cycle, apparently. And we're in a market, with markety things happening everywhere. A markety cart broke down and Jonny rushes in to help get it unstuck, but it turned out he couldn't. His Athletics skill just sucked, apparently. He exhorted all the players to help, me first, but of course I refused. Somebody asked, Doesn't anybody have the Athletics skill? Another player pointed at me, but nobody noticed. Of course I had the Athletics skill. I'm a tank. But I'm EVIL, why the hell would I help a broken markety cart? Instead I just pondered the fact that I was the only tank in the group.

Talk and talk and more talk about a new king of Neverwinter and a big fight that happened in a tomb or something (it was, apparently, handled in the prelude, which was last Saturday, which both Jonny and I missed). Then it was Surprise Round time, everybody get the minis, everybody roll initiative, game on. Where are all the minis going? So-and-so was over by the halfling selling pies, several people were by the dwarf selling God-knows-what, and several people were over by the broken cart. Where are you at, Ranger?

Staring over the Ocean.

Good answer, I thought.

Where are you at, Blackguard?

Peeing in the fountain.

Wait. What? Where are you?

By the damned fountain. All alone. The only other guy by me is this dude by the Halfling pie-seller. Sweet.

Up pop the critters. 10 of them from the sewer entrances, to which both my Blackguard and Guy-standing-by-Halfling were closest, and 4 fiery Drake things over by the Ranger-staring-into-the-ocean. Even better, I thought. The tank is gonna wade in here and start killing ash zombie things, and laugh as he shrugs aside their blows.

Zip Zap Boom two rounds later and everything is dead, including a second wave of 10 ash zombie things; the rightful king of Neverwinter shows up and leaves; and a fiery White Dragon lands in the market, threatening to end our pathetic 1st-level lives.

And if you thought that the description of the fight was too short, that's how the actual fight felt. Seriously. Two rounds. I got to swing my flail TWICE. But it was definitely long enough for me to realize that playing a Blackguard sucks. Or at least, playing that Blackguard the way it was built sucked. Or maybe playing a tank sucks. Or maybe quite simply having that many players sucks. Or maybe all of the above.

I don't know. I suppose I'll have to build my own character and go back next week to find out. I'm thinking a greataxe fighter with Power Attack and Cleave. Yeah. Tanky but hitty at the same time.