Editing User:Bill/Thunderspire Mountain Enhanced (section)

===Session 6 - July 6, 2011===
This week I presented several miniatures that I have been preparing to represent the player characters. Everyone seems reasonably impressed with them. While this season of Encounters is scheduled to terminate in another four weeks, I am planning to continue using these characters for a project at work. Professionally, I work with college students that have mild degrees of autism at a technical college. Role playing games offer a good opportunity for folks with social skill deficits to engage in structured social activity and practice those skills. And it was a good excuse to purchase more toy soldiers, which I enjoy collecting.

I digress. This week's game continued on with the Chamber of Eyes. Seven players were in attendance; Bruce, David, Dylan, Jason, Layne, Phil, and Rachel. Bruce continued played Jamorin the half-orc again, while Layne took on Auden and Phil used Dyzan. David, Dylan, Jason, and Rachel continued with their characters from the previous week as well. Both Layn and Phil indicate that they have experience with previous editions of D&D and that this is their first time using 4e.

I had hoped that the players would be able to complete it before I left on my trip to Seattle, unfortunately we were barely able to finish half of it. This time the players elected to go through the doors to the north, skipping the middle area. This immediately led them into a chamber occupied by three duergar. Rather than get tied up at the doors this time, the players swarmed into the room; surrounding the duergar. They probably would have made short work of them too, if they had been focusing their attacks more effectively on one target at a time. After two rounds, a goblin sorcerer (actually a redcap reskinned) arrived to complicate matters. This was a moderately effective ploy. The goblin only managed to get off a couple spells before he was pummeled into oblivion, but the distraction permitted the duergar to be more effective than they would have been by themselves. Two rounds later, the hobgoblin leader of the bloodreavers, Krand, showed up. In the module, Krand is set up as a fifth level leader. This group would have torn him apart with very little effort. So, I substituted the stats for the eighth level hobgoblin Hand of Bane. That made him a much more credible threat, and potentially would have put several of the characters in jeopardy if they hadn't been operating as a team. Working together, they managed to finish off the duergar and Krand much more quickly with less damage to themselves than I would have given them credit for. 

The pace of this session was pretty consistent. Everyone appears to be getting into the rhythm of the game. I made at least one major error this session though. I completely overlooked the first duergar warrior's expansion power. When I used it on the second one, it very nearly killed Jamorin. I think remembering it the first time would have changed exactly how things played out, even if it wouldn't have altered the outcome itself. The remainder of the encounter will be played out next week, while I am out of town on business. Dylan has agreed to run the remaining material. Hopefully he will write notes as well.

I've noticed a consistent confusion among new attendees when it comes to selecting a character. Since the new classes bear little resemblance to the traditional D&D ones, it's difficult to describe in any quick and easy fashion what a character is like. The warden and the sentinel are both druid-like in their flavor and emphasis on nature, but neither of them are exactly what an old school D&D player would expect a druid to be. The nomenclature introduced in the fourth edition, indicating power-source and general role, doesn't mean anything to people unfamiliar with the game either. I'll have to mull over some better explanations for the future. On the other hand, I am not planning to continue running encounters next season; so it won't be my problem for much longer. Instead, I will be running a weekly demo game of Rifts on Monday nights. Encounters has been very successful for connecting local players and increasing D&D sales at Astral Games. I would love to make the same opportunities available for another game. Additional details will be forthcoming.