Sarah Darkmagic's blog

I'll admit right at the start, I was not only a PAX virgin but a convention virgin when I attended PAX East this past weekend. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and that's probably a good thing too since there is no way I could have predicted the experience I had.

Highlights:

• Meeting too many people to name, including Phil Menard, Trevor Kidd, Logan Bonner, Greg Bilsland, Chris Tulach, Quinn Murphy, Dave Chalker, E, Mark Knapik, and Dan Clery. Oh yeah, Wil Wheaton and Scott Kurtz too.
• Having Phil run a quick pimp my game session with me during Friday brunch. Most of the tips were more in the realm of tweaks than complete rewrites, which totally made my day.
• Playing D&D in a bar with most of the above mentioned people.
• Running two games. First, I ran the Dark Sun preview and one of the guys at my table was non-other than Andrew French, the DM of my first Game Day game. Then I ran my adventure for the DM challenge. About 8 hours straight of DMing.
• Giving Mark his first Boston Boston cream donut.
• Sitting in on the Save My Game panel and getting most of the jokes as well as understanding the advice.
• Having dinner with a bunch of the D&D guys on Sunday.

Lows:

• Being so nervous around Wil Wheaton.
• Not running an even better Dark Sun sesion. I know I spoke way to fast and I probably could have made it more immersive. I would love some feedback from anyone who was in that session.
• Not winning the DM challenge. Just kidding, I didn't expect to win and it was an honor just to compete. Congrats to Dave Chalker on his win!
• Having work on Monday which meant I couldn't stay for bowling. I really hope Trevor won.

Overall, I am so glad that PAX East was my first convention. The barriers to entry were much lower and everyone was so incredibly friendly and open. It truly was a magical experience. I'm going to do my best to attend more conventions, particularly Gen Con and D&D Experience. The experience also increased my confidence in my DM abilities a bit, so I plan to post more of my adventures and ideas here.

I can't go to another con again because it will be pretty hard to beat this one. I spent the Thursday before PAX East in the lobby of the Sheraton Copley, meeting tons of people and playing games. I'm not normally a board or card game person, but I decided to give them a shot. After a day of work, it was hard for me to pick them up, but I had a great time and Phil, a.k.a. @chattydm, and his friends were patient teachers. Being able to play with Phil and Quinn, @gamefiend, was a great start to the evening. I got to meet up with a bunch of other people including Dan (@exedore6), Mark (@AsmodeusLore) and Jason (@Neldar). One of the guys from my group, Mike (@TheMikeKatz) was also there. I wish I could have spent more time with all of them and I hope to make up for my shortcomings the rest of the weekend.

As if all of that wasn't awesome enough, I got to meet Wil Wheaton and Scott Kurtz and had them sign my Dungeon Master's Guide. This was huge for me and I really want to thank them and their friends for allowing me to spend a few minutes with them. The D&D podcasts are why I started playing and DMing and I wish I could convey to them how much the people who were and are part of it really helped change my life. It sounds really silly and corny I know, but until I started getting involved in the online community, I wouldn't have had the courage to talk to them. Heck, I wouldn't have had the courage to go to a con to begin with.

Afterwards, I got to meet some of the great WotC group, many of whom I've been following on twitter. I know I met Greg Bilsland (@gregbilsland), Trevor Kidd (@Wizards_DnD), and Chris Tulach (@christulach). There were a few other people there as well.

So I want to thank everyone who reads this blog and follows me on twitter. And I especially want to thank all the great people tonight (and I mean every single one of you) who helped make my first con experience one I will never forget.

Since playing in the D&D Encounters session last Wednesday, organized play is a lot less scary for me. This is a good thing with PAX East coming up in just a few days. This past Saturday I went in to check out D&D Worldwide Game Day for Player's Handbook 3 at Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, MA. And, since I knew I was going this time, I had my player's handbook and dice all ready for play. It's a good thing I went too, one of the other people from my group, Mike, also showed up and we were able to play together in the first game. Mike actually posted about his experiences on his site and, even more importantly, he has pictures, including one of me. Not only did I play in that first game at noon, but I stuck around to play again at 6pm.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. The number one bit of awesome for me was that it started in medias res. That really helped calm my nerves and helped me focus the list of things I could do. In addition, the DM of my first game, @aethanbear, is incredibly funny and knowledgeable and I really would love it if everyone had the opportunity to play with him.

I decided to make it a day of firsts as much as possible, so I decided to try out the defender in the first game, playing the Wilden Battlemind. While it helps if your defender rolls a higher initiative (sorry guys), I had no problem playing the character and I think I did a decent job with the tactics. And while the points system was new to me, I don't remember being unsure about how many to use or when. Lastly, during the skill challenge I had to do an intimidate check, and I loved the mental picture of the Wilden puffing out her leaves to appear larger.

For the second game, I gave the half-elf ardent a whirl. The ardent is a pretty good generalist, which I tend to like, but it definitely felt harder for me to play. There are a lot more team mechanics choices that go into deciding which of his powers to use, namely a decision tree of healing, moving, and debuffing. Adding on top of that the power points system, I definitely had to pause more often to figure out what to do. I think I handled it pretty well, but I might steer new people away from that character class.

The adventure gave me a ton of ideas on things to bring into my own game and really helped me understand just how great terrain effects can be in a game. I can't wait for the games during PAX East. I live in the area and should be around Thursday night through Sunday. If things get too late, I might just beg, borrow or steal a bit of hotel room floor to sleep on.

@ChattyDM asked a couple of us, @Neldar and me, to figure out some place cool to go on the Thursday night before PAX Eaast. @Asmor created a forum post about it in the enworld forums. If you are interested, please go to the forum and post your ideas and whether or not you are attending. Also, it might be cool to figure out something to do Friday morning. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible!

Last night was a night of many firsts. Beyond the obvious first night of D&D Encounters, it was the first time I played with strangers (or even outside my normal group), the first time I played in an RPGA event and the first time I played a 4e first-level character. Overall, pretty crazy stuff for me, especially since I decided to go after I was already at work. This meant that I didn't have any of my books with me, or anything else for that matter, including my dice. During lunch, I quickly created a Wilden Seeker using the Character Builder. Then I went to Your Move Games in Davis Square, Somerville, after work to give this whole gaming in public thing a try.

The truth is, I liked it. I don't want to give too much away because I know there are people who are going to play this session who haven't yet, but overall I think it was a pretty good experience. More people came than could be accommodated at the 7 pm game. Most of the group regularly plays together in the Living Forgotten Realms series, they were friendly to the two strangers in their midst. While there are some things I wished the DM did slightly differently, that's just life. However, it did show me just how important it is to have the initiative order displayed so everyone can see it. As the bad guys were taken out, it became harder and harder for me to remember when my turn was coming up.

As for the Encounters series itself, there were a couple issues I had with the first session. First, it starts in a tavern. I know, I know, there is a long history behind this. But nothing is more awkward to players than trying to figure out the social dynamics of a tavern. No one in our group really wanted to be the first person to go forth and get things started, which made that first part drag a bit.

While I really like the idea of the twitter stuff, I found it hard to keep up on it. It might make sense for each table or location to appoint one twitter person to follow @Wizards_DnD to get the special game buffs during play. Another idea would be to turn on texts for that twitter account during the game, but since it seems that the account is also used to post responses to questions during the game and I don't have unlimited text messaging, that might not work well for me.

Also, the renown points system is pretty cool and people who got 10 or more during the first session received a buff to use at future sessions. The one given out last night gives you a once per session reroll of a failed saving throw. It sounds like more of these will be handed out in the future and only one will be applicable to any particular session, which means players who play a lot of sessions might get better buffs, but they won't be a ton cooler than a new person at the table.

I'm still not sure how they are going to handle a bunch of in game elements. For instance, if I can't show up for two weeks, how will they handle dailies and action points? Similarly, if I expend those on my current character and decide to come the next week with a different character, does that mean I have the new character's dailies and action point available to me. It may seem silly to create a new character every week but it's incredibly easy with character builder and right now, all I would be missing is a little gold. I think some of the characters from last night's game may die before the end of the season, if only because we probably won't be taking an extended rest before we get to our first objective and they went down a bunch.

Overall, it was great to be a player for the first time in a while and I think people should definitely give them a try. It's a great excuse to try new classes and races and to meet some new people. And I really hope they make the season available afterwards, hopefully as pdfs. I think there might be some really good DM wisdom contained in the pages, such how to scale the adventure, dealing with inconsistent groups, etc.