Wednesday, September 07, 2011

this should be interesting...

Just got an email from Dave, the supercool dude who runs my FLGS:
Hey all...
Quick annoucement...
Beginning tonight, September 7th, Armored Gopher Games will be hosting D&D Encounters on a weekly basis. The sessions will be run by Eric Bohm, and promise to be a lot of fun!
Seating is limited, be here early. Game time is 6:30PM. Enjoy!
Dave @ Armored Gopher Games
Tonight also happens to be the night I'm resuming running D&D at the Gopher.  Six sessions seemed like a sufficient amount of Boot Hill and I wanted to give my FLAILSNAILS players some competition, so I'm sending whoever shows up for my game into the Caves of Myrddin.  It's not the first time I've GM'ed when another game was going down on the other side of the store, but it'll be the first time that other game was also called Dungeons & Dragons.

There's lots of interesting data that could be gathered in a situation like this.  Do the D&D Encounters people skew younger than my table?  How many encounters do they get through in an average hour as opposed to my game?  Setting up a couple of video cameras to observe the two groups could be fun as well.  In general I'd much rather focus on my own game rather than someone else's, but this is an unusual opportunity.

13 comments:

  1. If you can, try to start one of your combats at the same time they start one of theirs. The time comparison should be interesting.

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  2. I'm playing in the curent D&D Encounters campaign at my own FLGS and played through the previous one.

    Each Encounter session is exactly that: there will be one combat encounter, usually proceeded by some short role-playing or skill checks. The sessions take about two hours to complete depending on number of players and familiarity with the system.

    Strangely, the session at my local store skew older in age. The current groups has only two younger guys who got started on 3.5 or 4th edition. The other 4-5 all date back to 1st, 2nd or Basic D&D.

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  3. This might be a cool opportunity for both tables to learn about what they other one is doing. Could broaden the player pool for both groups. My D&D club has sessions of all D&D editions from Mentzer to 4e.

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  4. Aha! Geoffroy senses intruders into the caves, Geoffroy thinks he must needs return, post-haste, to secure the riches inside!

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  5. Everything in 4e takes longer, so it would be interesting to me to count how many encounters we get through in two hours.

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  6. You'll finish your encounter before the 4E table finishes looking up some random rule and arguing over how it is suppose to work.

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  7. Remember, though, that I'm going to be there running One Ring at the same time as well. That's going to complicate things!

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  8. When did this get on the schedule? As often as I link to the Gopher website, you'd think I'd remember to read it once in a while!

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  9. Heh. It's been on the schedule since August 29th, dude. :)

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  10. From a half-dozen cons, you get in a four hour session, two combat encounters, and four roleplaying encounters(initial, two interludes, and one ending).

    4e Combat is at it's longest when the opposition are just tough enough to beat down the PCs and the PCs are just resourceful enough to keep the healing surges going. Then it becomes a grind for one side to go down to zero.

    This is assuming that no out of play issue occurs over rules or personalities.

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  11. There are actually discrete "roleplaying encounters" in 4e.

    wtf man, wtf.

    I've been fairly open-minded about it as an edition but that distinction just seems ludicrous to me. Like you need to make time for roleplaying in between skill checks and such.

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  12. Anonymous6:28 PM

    Last week I ran B4 using Moldvay adjacent to an Encounters table at my FLGS. There was some initial confusion where they thought I had arrived to play 4E with them, but after I showed them my books, they caught on, with approval. The store is very focused on new product, but staff and patrons have always received my groups playing OD&D, Moldvay, LL, etc with friendly curiosity. I was too busy having fun to take much note of goings on at their table, but at risk of reinforcing stereotypes, the most common activity I observed when I did chance to look over was the passing around of rulebooks to reference power descriptions, etc.

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  13. This sounds like a very volatiile situation. I'd bring some mace with you. Also position yourself close to the exit.

    Remember that scene in Gandhi when there are two huge columns in the desert, one of Hindus going south back to India and one of Muslims going north to newly-created Pakistan. One dude freaks out and screams some insult and both lines diverge and crash into each other, turning into a full-fledged battle.

    All it takes is one offhand "4e is like WoW" comment to set the whole thing off. :)

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