Well, I’ve spent a few happy hours today preparing for Friday’s session. I started running this new Castle Greyhawk game a fortnight ago, and between then and now have picked up part of Castle Zagyg by Gary Gygax. So, I’m integrating my CG material with his…

Of course, all of Gary’s material was originally for oD&D, ported into Castles & Crusades, and now being ported into D&D 4e by me. It’s not really taking that long, thanks to the great guidelines on creating monsters in the 4e DMG… and the fact that the Mouths of Madness aren’t really that difficult. The one thing I’d like is someone to come up with a version of Green Slime that I like!

Apart from setting up the dungeons – I’ll convert the second level of my own tonight – I’ve also got to set up interactions in the City of Greyhawk to provide roleplaying meat for the trips back there, and give reasons for going back to Castle Greyhawk apart from just “let’s have an adventure!” Good NPCs are really important for that. Martin’s Rogue already has a couple of NPCs that will be good for prodding him in interesting directions, and the tutor from Grey College will also be useful for those PCs who were studying with him (Peggy, Nate & Bradford, IIRC).

I’m also rereading Saga of Old City for more inspiration, and I really need to pick up a hardback copy of it, for my old paperback edition has seen much better days. Gary was not the greatest writer in the world, but he had lots of good ideas that could be put into adventures.

I’ve got to say: turning C&C encounters into 4E encounters has shown me how dull a lot of encounters are. When you’re talking about 4 orcs, 6 goblins or 3 gnolls… over and over again… with very few actual interesting points or tactics? They need livening up. So, that’s what I’m doing.

Mind you, it also reminds me of what basic balance is like in the world of oD&D: one hit die balances one level. If you have 6 1 HD monsters, then they’ll balance 6 1st level PCs. Sure, half the PCs might die without magic, but that’s how it works. 1 HD really means “one hit and it dies” for the most part. The difference between a kobold, goblin, gnoll and bugbear is in how many hits they take to kill and not much else. 4e makes them much more interesting.