The Demon Keep [Loot and Feedback]

Well it was quite an undertaking, the whole thing clocked in at 12.5 hours which is about an hour under time. I had a lot of fun doing it and am also quite tired as I'm sure no one is surprised. Thank you all for participating and I hope you all had lots of fun. Below you will find the xp and loot for each part. I urge you all to leave feedback too. While I won't run the same thing again there's a good chance I'll do another multi-parter like this at some point so especially feedback on the set up, format, etc are greatly appreciated. If you prefer to discuss things rather than leave a post you can always message me on skype and we'll talk there instead. Thank you again! Part 1 (AL 6): Exp: 700 Gold: 350 50% off an item up to level 10 Part 2 (AL 8): Exp: 1000 Gold: 1000 50% off an item up to level 10 Part 3 (AL 12): Exp: 2500 Gold: 4300 50% off an item up to level 15 Part 4 (AL 18): Exp: 5000 Gold: 19,000 50% off an item up to level 20 Finally, all characters who participated gain the following award: Bound Together, Brothers and Sisters In Arms! Daily (Free Action on your turn) Close burst 10: An ally in the burst who also has this award regains hp equal to twice your highest modifier. (This award lasts for 5 levels) Below are the videos for each game if you want to go back and see what other parties did and how they contributed. Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Game 4

Thanks for running man, I had a blast. I really didn't expect you to be able to pull off a total of what, 8 encounters and 4 skill challenges in about 13 hours, but you did it. I mentioned it to my friends and their response was "We need to get this guy to teach our DM how to run." You've definitely given me some ideas for my own marathon sessions, probably a Sentinels boss rush. Probably the biggest disappointment was right here. The quick encounters meant fairly low gold and XP, and combined with getting item discounts instead of actual items, the gold feels even smaller. My reaction is probably influenced by my personal dislike of shopping for magic items, but it's still a thing, so I felt I should mention it. Even if you get a bad level 6 item, you can pocket 450 gold off it, but in order to use the loot reward from here you have to spend money (and with the gold rewards being relatively small, you probably have to spend more money than you earned)

Feedback time: I thought it was entirely well-organized and streamlined with a basic but effective narrative. The encounters seemed well-designed, but perhaps a little... inconsistent? It seemed pretty easy until all of a sudden we have a dead artificer. That's a minor quibble, though. I liked the idea of "missions to be completed" and how we went about them, but I would have liked to see more emphasis on skill challenge incorporated into some of the combat encounters (I think that was an option with opening the gates and the whirling lightning portal and whatnot, but a little more requirement of "you need to deal with this, not just kill people" is something I would like. Overall, I had a lot of fun, and I thought it was great! As for treasure, I have no problem with how you did it. Rolling for items for 24 people is a pain, especially without thinking about RNG and stuff like this, and this way people get a reasonable amount of gold, even if it comes in the form of a discount.

First and foremost, thanks for running 4 games straight giving 20+ people a chance to play and, in a way, work together. Overall, I thought it was awesome. A handful of modular encounters that can be picked/handled at the player's discretion was legit. Giving groups the agency to decide how to impact the following groups situations really gave meaning to their decisions, and that's great. For instance; Group 1's Artillery and Group 2's Reinforcements really saved our skins (in Group 3). I don't know the context behind the adventure series outside of what was on the tin; and given the nature of guild play (time management, combat-focus, etc) a lot of my issues are probably trivial and might only apply to like, a home campaign setting, etc.: In general, I wouldn't have minded a couple less-combat oriented options (was disabling enemy artillery like that? or the portal?) As a player in Group 2; I would have liked an option to further elaborate upon the encounter choices outside of just the general description given. There was no way to tell which may have been a bigger threat between, say the portal and the beacon (though the portal was already partially taken care of, but I mean if it hadn't been.), or the elite demons and the demon caster, etc. Perhaps like quick, and limited, skill checks to gather additional reconnaissance info? I dunno if extending the analysis paralysis for having a little bit more intel would be a viable trade off, but yeah. I'm happy that there were options that were quite clear regardless (busting in through the front to make way for the next group, being one of them). As a player in Group 3; having been in the previous group and hearing a little bit from group 1; honestly I have no issues. If anything, I would like to see that encounter ran again with any number of different combinations of the previous encounters cleared. (How would it have gone if the enemies still had their artillery? if we had air support? etc.) A minor suggestion, I would have liked a little more info on what our own reinforcements could have done. Not knowing how they would function sort of threw us in a loop when we delayed the call until after things got hairy. I only expected them to come in and kill a couple mobs and I was relieved when the clerics came with them. Given the session, the heals were perfect but I would have liked if they could have provided a different option, had we not been in dire need of healing. (maybe an option to return an encounter power? so as to reduce it from feeling like we're just slogging through blocks of monster hp with at-wills.) That aside, this was hella fun and I'm pumped to utilize the Story Award. All of us who had the opportunity to play in the series will be reminded of it each time we heal each other. Thanks again man, good shit.

If you could refrain from immobilising/ restraining me at the arse end of the encounter map that would be great XD Seriously though. Was a stellar example of a good 4e D&D battle. Even if some monsters where bullshit. But lets be honest so are player powers.

If everything is BS then nothing is.

Thanks Andrew for running. I think the format of 4 games one after another, with each affecting the next one is awesome. One problem with setup I noticed is the multi part, it should be more clear and maybe stated in the post on how it works (I only saw other peoples confusion, I wasn't around for enough games to claim multi myself). For the 4th part: I think it was a bit too easy. Maybe because the previous groups did such a good job that we had far less obstacles to overcome. Maybe it's high paragon people being high paragon. But I felt the boss should be a bit more scary than that. All in all I think this was a great idea that was well executed. And again thanks for organizing this all.

@Erwin All of the heroic objectives could be done as either a combat or a skill challenge, so for example if you had chosen to do the skill challenge on the gatehouse it would have involved sneaking around, disabling traps, distracting defenders, etc. The idea was to give players the choice of how to go about it. As for the info on the decisions being light it had 2 reasons behind it: 1) so players dont have a list of details on each location and therefore the choice becoming a maths decision rather than a gut character one. 2) the info displayed represents everything that was obtained in the short time available, spending further time to gather more info would have delayed the assault. As for parts 3 and 4 (this is more directed at anyone interested) group 3 has no victory condition per se, their job is to deal with as many things as possible to give group 4 an easier time, which they did tremendously. If group 3 hadn't done such a good job then the leftovers would have joined the fight in part 4 e.g. if the succubuses weren't dealt with they would have attacked group 4 a couple of rounds in. So in answer to Kamil, it was partially group 3's doing that part 4 was so easy, and it was partly high paragon being high paragon and doing all the damage. As for the multi thing, I was figuring it out early into the game so there wasn't really an opportunity to communicate it to people en mass. Now that I have a system figured out it'll be clear for next time if I do something like this again.