The Tabletop Wizard at NYCC 2011

The combat encounters were pretty basic; a handful of well-trained knights facing off against a horde of orcs. The orcs weren’t a huge problem – as a cleric I did my best to support my team by healing them, providing them with bonuses to defense and attack, and allowing them to make saving throws out of turn. The biggest hits, damage-wise, would often come from our wizard, Glynneth, who was tossing fireballs into the orc hordes and catching us in the area of effect. We defeated Nightbringer, our half-orc companion resisted the call from the orc captain to join their side, thus completing his goal, and we were victorious! We were then treated to a “cutscene” narrated by Melissa where she described how the Knight Commander, unaware that we had turned the tide of battle, used the magic item on the orc armies and released wild chaotic magic that not only destroyed the invading orcs, but also began destroying our armies as well.

Our next task was to navigate through another series of skill checks and lead the citizens and nobles of the abbey down into the vaults underneath the fortress for their protection. We did this with little trouble, and just as we could taste victory a giant Red Dragon descended from the skies and landed between us and the vaults. It was a fight we couldn’t win, so we had to make a choice: abandon the villagers and seek shelter in the vault, or distract the dragon while the citizens ran to safety, thereby sacrificing ourselves for them. Want to know what we chose? Ask me in the comments and I might tell you; suffice it to say it was one of the more rewarding D&D experiences I’ve had.

The second D&D game I caught at NYCC was completely different. This one was a one-hour “dungeon delve.” The idea behind the delve is to give players a short and concise gaming experience. You could play each part of the delve consecutively throughout the day, or just play bits here and there. Each part lasted just one hour and that hour was strictly enforced. As soon as we sat down and met each other and selected characters, the DM started her stopwatch and we made our way through a dungeon. This time I played a drow ranger, and it was a race against the clock to clear all of the monsters out of the dungeon as creatively as possible. There was no role-playing, no hemming and hawing over which power would be most effective in the situation, just balls to the wall action. It was a lot like the D&D Encounters session we played, just with little to no setup. In essence it was much like a stripped-down board game, where the only goal was to live through the hour and make sure your enemies didn’t. It was nearing the one-hour mark and we had one more enemy to kill. I blasted it with arrows, our thief tried to gut it with her blades and with just second to spare our fighter ran in there and finished it off, just as the stop watch chimed. We leapt out of our chairs and high-fived and laughed. It was an appropriate ending to an extremely tense game.

Say what you want about D&D 4th Edition, but the fact that I went from one game to another and had a vastly different, but equally fun, experience at both shows just how versatile a system 4th Ed. can be.

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Want to weigh in on D&D 4th Ed.? Have an opinion about con gaming vs. home gaming? I’d love to hear it.

Extra special BONUS: My gaming buddy, Rick, has started illustrating custom character portraits for your RPG characters. Here’s what he has to say about it:

“Merging my fandom of D&D with my career as a character designer, I’m offering adventurers a chance to get custom portraits of their RPG characters for their games. Interested gamers can get a digital package that includes a character sheet portrait, full body avatar for print and use on card stock avatars for in-game use (or for showing off to your friends!) as well as a desktop/smartphone background. Cost varies and is on a sliding scale based on each order. Contact me through my blog profile that has my direct email on it. Crits or GTFO. www.ricklacy.blogspot.com.”