And so it begins. The third part of “The Sundering” series of adventures started around the world this weekend with the D&D Encounters Launch Event for Scourge of the Sword Coast. We at Good Games Ballarat had our largest turn-out for some time: fifteen players and three DMs. And we were still missing potential players who couldn’t attend!

All the tables were running D&D Next this time around, which makes moving from table to table a lot easier. Ben and Paul were my co-DMs; they’ve played D&D Next, but I don’t think they’ve DMed that much of it. I’ve DMed a lot of it thanks to the last year or so of D&D Encounters programs.

The session started with character creation. Some of the players chose to maintain their characters from Legacy of the Crystal Shard, or return to their Murder in Baldur’s Gate characters, but there was a lot of character creation going around. I aided as much as I could, and there were a lot of gadgets being handed around with the rules on them (my Surface, other peoples netbooks or iPads), as well as my printed copy of D&D Next playtest rules. At last everyone had the approximation of a character and we could begin.

Scourge of the Sword Coast, like the last two Encounters seasons, has a lot going on. It isn’t written particularly well for Encounters play, as it is quite freeform in nature. There are several plot threads and encounter sites to engage with, and so the order of approach for each table can be quite different, which makes it hard to go between tables. On the other hand, it looks like it is a very good D&D adventure, and so, given we have a high level of stability at our store, it will work very well for us.

My friend Glen joined us for his first game of D&D in… a very long time. He chose to play a ranger, specialising in archery. Tim retained his paladin, Tait and Harry chose to play rogues, and Kalum retained his barbarian. Glen and Tim quickly showed themselves to be strong role-players, which made my job so much easier as the DM. I’m not the strongest natural role-player in the world (my strengths as a DM generally are with story and session structure and rules knowledge), but I can role-play a little, and it gets kicked up a notch when I have good players.

I explained the basics of the adventure set-up to them: Sir Isteval, a renowned knight and ex-adventurer, had called for aid for his town of Daggerford. Apparently the local humanoids were being more restless than normal. My adventurers had met up in Waterdeep, and were travelling with a caravan south to the town. Along the way, they’d picked up several more travellers, including many displaced farmers who had fled their homes due to the attacks. As the adventure began, the caravan came in sight of an abandoned farm, a day’s travel away from Daggerford.

Glen asked me if his character, Calib, knew the area well (his background was as a guide). I decided that this was the case, and so for most of the adventure, the key NPCs tended to know who he was, allowing for quick entry to interaction (parlay!). He set out to scout the grounds, whilst Tait and Harry investigated the house proper. It was quite obvious that it had suffered an attack by humanoids – gnolls, it seemed to be – and there was no sign of the family who had lived here. The attack had taken place a couple of days previously, and only a few food stores and items remained. The caravan master cautiously asked Calib if it would be safe for the caravan to stay the night there. Calib decided it would be, but made certain that enough people were on watch.

Not particularly surprisingly (this is a D&D adventure after all!) the party were attacked during the night – a group of goblins and wolves had come down to loot the place. The goblins were entirely surprised when, after they’d done nothing but set the scarecrow on fire, they were attacked from the house by the adventurers! They quickly recovered and charged into the fray, and inflicted several good blows on their adversaries, but accurate arrow-fire ad sword-play soon saw all the goblins and all but one of the wolves dead. The goblins were carrying a fair amount of gold, which the adventurers pocketed. They were undisturbed for the rest of the night, but it was certain that it just wasn’t gnolls that were causing problems for the settlements around Daggerford!

The next day, the group came to Daggerford proper. It also presented me with a challenge: there’s a lot of information to impart here. The adventure gives quite a bit of advice for the structure of this section, but the pacing for this session was going to be a problem, especially as there wasn’t a big “end” combat to finish the section with. (The best first Encounters session has definitely been the first of Murder at Baldur’s Gate – it was stunning how it worked).

The first indication of the internal problems besetting Daggerford was immediately apparent as the caravan swung round to enter the main gate of the town: the town guard weren’t letting in any of the refugees who were seeking safety. The group discovered when they inquired that the gates had been barred to any who couldn’t pay to get in, with the local lord suspecting everyone as potentially responsible for the theft of a dwarven relic in his keeping. Everyone was nervous and irritable, and the adventurers were particularly drawn to the plight of a pregnant young woman and her husband. Tim and Glen talked to the gate guards, and offered to pay for the young family; the guards were initially reluctant, but they recognised Tim’s paladin from the tales of his good deeds in Legacy of the Crystal Shard and also knew Glen’s ranger from his time in the town, and so eventually allowed the group passage. This angered the rest of the refugees, who surged forward. Glen and Tim calmed down the refugees, but things almost got a lot worse as one of the guards prepared to fire his crossbow at the refugees! Tait’s rogue was the only one to notice, and he was fast enough to act and talk the guard down. The guard seemed quite shaken by his actions, but the group were able to pass into the city.

The group were accompanied into town by Curran, a Halfling devotee of Tymora, who had aided them at the gates. Curran took them on a tour of the town, pointing out a couple of taverns and the shrine to Tymora. He invited them to stay at a gambling tavern, the Lady Luck tavern, but the group preferred the high-class River Shining Tavern, where they also settled the family, Tim’s paladin paying enough for the family to stay for three months!

Dinner at the Inn saw them learning more about the troubles besetting the area: Sir Isteval and his companions had left Daggerford to investigate rumours of gnoll attacks along the Trade Way, there had been no contact with Julkoun for some days, a trade town further along the river, and there were a lot of orcs approaching the grounds of the Floshin Estate. They also met Jekk, a dwarf who had wanted to acquire the “Bloke”, a dwarven relic – indeed, the one that had been stolen – from the Duke. He told them he’d had a copy made by a sculptor in town, and he was leaving to see the dwarves in Firehammer Hold to see what they could tell him about the sculpture. Curran and Jekk were quite friendly, and the adventurers quite liked the rich dwarf.

The next day saw the group resolved to leave the town and go and find some adventure – to Julkoun, in particular. Further investigation in town? No thanks, they just wanted to leave! However, the town wasn’t quite done with them yet. This was the trickiest part of the adventure to run, because the group wanted to leave, but it was quite important to have these events happen. The first thing the group learnt was that the guard at the gate who had almost attacked the refugees, Grengel, had killed himself, and had complained of hearing a voice in his head beforehand. The second was that the Duke was annoyed – he was forcing his guard to search the refugee camp for the dwarven relic. I didn’t take overlong with either, but they did take time – and I was running out of time in the session.

With the group approaching the next adventure site, it felt like time to end it, but we needed just a bit more action. A group of wolf-riding goblins provided that excitement, coming upon the group as they approached the town. This was made more interesting by the fact that Harry and Glen were scouting ahead, and so ended up fighting the goblins before the rest of the group caught up to them. The pair wanted to withdraw back to their friends, but the superior speed of the wolves caught them; they were hard-pressed, but Kalum, Tait and Tim came through the brush and slew the remaining wolves and goblins.

The session ended with the group coming within sight of Julkoun. I described how it looked like it had been recently fortified, with pits of stakes, guards on the walls and suchlike, before ending with the revelation that the guards weren’t human… they were goblins!

That was the first session of the new seasons of D&D Encounters for us. It was a problematic one to run, primarily because of the information overload: so many problems! So many places to investigate! In fact, having so many options is a great thing for the game, and will likely provide a very memorable season of adventures, but it’s hard to present it all in the first session. Not having a Big Damn Combat to round things off with is a disappointment; I probably should have made the last combat a bit bigger if I’d really been thinking about it.

I’m particularly pleased by the role-playing in the session, and I’m really glad to know where the group are – it will make preparation for the next session a lot easier!

So, it’s been an encouraging start for the new seasons of D&D Encounters.