We had our fourth session of my 4e Castle Greyhawk campaign on Friday, which is using the currently released “Castle Zagyg” supplements of the Troll Lords as a base. It was a blast – in about 4 hours of game time, we had 3 combats (probably taking no longer than 90-120 minutes in total), and 2+ hours of insane plans and roleplaying.
You see, the PCs had to scale this 30′ cliff to get to a cave where they had been unreliably told that the prisoners they needed to rescue were. Up goes the rogue, taking a rope with him, which he lowers down to the rest of the party. Up comes Peggy’s wizard, who, upon reaching the top, calls down to the others to stop looking up her skirt!
This was probably an OOC joke, but she’d failed her Stealth roll anyway, so I kept it as the reason the bugbears found the group. 
The bugbears didn’t attack immediately, but demanded tribute. “Your fur is very nice,” replied the Wizard. The Rogue hurriedly threw a purse of gold to the bugbears (once we’d stopped laughing), and the bugbears let them go.
Back down the rope. At this point, the Rogue realised he really needed to go up there again to check the caves thoroughly. The Wizard used ghost sound to make it sound like they were climbing again. When a bugbear popped its head out to see what was going on, the Warlock and Ranger hit it, hard. Not quite enough to kill it, and so it retreated in pain.
The rogue climbed up (silently), and then the fighter came to join him. The bugbears investigated again, and a big battle occurred. It was made even more amusing by the absolute failure of the Warlock and Ranger to climb the rope – they couldn’t roll above a 4! – The fighter went down, but the Cleric saved him.
A little later (and with no prisoners found) they looked up at the next cave along the bluff – 60′ up, and up a really sheer slope. Not a chance of climbing that for most of the PCs. However, it was only 20′ below the rest of the cliff, so they decided to troop around out of the ravine, up onto the top of the cliff, and lower a rope down from there.
On the way, they met an orc patrol. The Wizard used Thunderwave on one of the orcs, bouncing him off the cliff and 50′ to the ground below. (He didn’t survive). That was a cool moment for the Wizard.
No prisoners in the next cave, just stirges… and a punctured Rogue by the end of it it all. Thanks to the cleric, he’s still with us.
Unfortunately, we had to end the session there as it was almost midnight. One wonders what will happen the next time we play (two weeks away, alas!)
Didn’t you get the memo? There’s no “roleplaying” in 4th edition! Ur doin’ it wrong! 😀 😀
Seriously, sounds like a fun time. Unfortunately, no session for my Friday night group this week. Hopefully my Wednesday night group will be getting together.
I really don’t understand the people who say there’s no roleplaying 4e. I really, really, really don’t understand it when they’re happy with the roleplaying in 3e or Pathfinder!
Well, they’re going:
“The rules are focused on resolving combat and are particularly light for RP, so you can’t RP” which is a fallacy.
Rules for RP can encourage or discourage it, support or dissuade it. Personally, I find the rules for 4e are more supportive of my RPing preferences than 3e.
For example, as a player I can say that my character sings in musicals without scrounging skill points that would be wastefully spent on the skill. Or was a farmer or carpenter. I can more easily improvise solutions to problems and have the result handwaved or page 42-ed.
As a GM, I can alter things on the fly _far_ more rapidly and have more satisfactory (for me) frameworks for resolving RP encounters that involve all members of the party.
But, there you go – in truth, 2nd edition people complained that 3e stamped out RP and that 3e was just a diablo clone, so these complaints are nothing new and still the product of the uninformed, malicious, or trollish minority.
They’re just loud 🙂
CC to 4th ed
So you are taking a C&C adventure and turing it into a 4th ed campaign. Interesting. How hard has it been to do the conversions?
Re: CC to 4th ed
Not hard. The main thing is just replacing regular C&C orcs with a variety of 4e orcs and the like. Actually creating creatures in 4e (for those C&C ones with no corresponding monster in 4e) is pretty easy as well, thanks to the guides in the DMG.
Re: CC to 4th ed
so no plans to play C&C?
Re: CC to 4th ed
Not at present. Although I’d be happy to run it, my players are (generally) enjoying 4e, so why change something they’re enjoying?