Meatspace D&D - September Ed.

Less than 30 days from our last game night, my group of adventurers and I got together last Friday for our fourth installment.  As a DM I have a poor habit of thinking about my adventure a lot, but not actually putting pen to paper until the week of the game.  Which meant I was rushing to get all my prep done down to the last minute.  I drew an encounter map at 7:30pm and the players showed up at 8pm.  To give you an idea.

Thankfully my players are great and helped pulled off another successful night of D&D 4e.  No cardboard and hot glue for this session I'm afraid.  Instead I decided to go with three encounters, something I had never done before.  Between my over planning and goal of challenging them we usually only get one big encounter for the night.  D&D 4e's slow combat does not help either, although I'm we are working on addressing that.

I say "we" because getting through three encounters left us at 11:40pm trying to decide if we should start the last combat portion of our night or wrap it up and go home.  We agreed that it would be quick rounds and we'd try to finish in under an hour.  It went twenty minutes over that goal, but everyone agreed that all of our encounters in the future should have the same pace.  Coupled with some pro tips from Mr. Schwalb I think we could easily hit under the hour mark in the future.

Finally note, I forgot the camera again. Damn the ten thousand things going on in my head the night we play.  These post are probably made slightly less boring if I can manage to get some pictures of us to go with them.  Next time.