I tried running 4e as a one shot again, this time in person at a local convention. I should really know better. Previously I ran an online one-shot with mixed results.
But I feel I learnt some things, and have some thoughts about what I might do differently if only try running 4e d&d at a convention again.
Some things that happened – i over prepped again, which is something I know i need to work on. This time i had something like 5 possible encounters, with criss crossing interests between various parties and multiple ways players might interact with them (fights, skill challenges, choosing who to engage with at all) but that proved far too many to be usable in 4 hours. Of the things the players did have the time to interact with, they initially cut a deal with a Templar hunting some escaped slaves but soon after finding the slaves and getting into a fight, the lead slave being a pretty dangerous defiler, they opted to turn on the Templar too. This resulted in a pretty interesting three way conflict for a time, and the sort of thing I was hoping to make possible in my prep, but did turn into a bit of a drag with the defiler slowly being whittled down past the point the outcome was obvious. They did consider trying to negotiate with the defiler but having killed his wife they didn’t think this was going to work.
I am coming to the conclusion that in terms of fun 4e play with suitably balanced opponents and conflicts that cam go any / either way, 2 to 3 pcs seems, perhaps surprisingly, optimal, All my experiences of larger 5 to 6 groups have been much more of a grind.
Admittedly there are also loads of practical things that would have made this more fun – better rules hand outs, making pregens that were easy for beginners to pick up rather than ones I found cool, and finding ways to get players bought into using quests and skill challenges more. One thing that was interestingly successful was taking the time to prepare and spend around som treasure parcels. This was worth it for the players delight in harvesting valuable delicious delicacies in the form of the magical burrowing worms from the wounds of one of the Templars dying servants.
12 responses to “4e Dark Sun at Airecon”
I have found that 4 players, at least for the systems I generally play, works well for conventions. My experience with 4e is limited but the times I have played and ran, 4 players worked he best. Having someone else familiar with the system at the table helps too whenever possible. I am not sure about how the demographics of the conventions lay out, if they are an oasis for the 4e thirsty or full of people with a pre-determined idea that the system is anathema.
I have also found that running a particular situation over and over, unless its the same crowd each time, helps. It allows you to refine the same content over time, without having to start at ground zero each time.
So there’s a certain amount of social pressure at this con to plan to run for five or six players (I had five but there should have been a sixth who didn’t appear), I think due to GMs getting free entry and the con wanting value for money and efficient use of the limited space for RPGs at what is mainly a board gamers convention.
Of these players most turned out to have played 5th ed D&D and were open to 4e, one having played a bit a long time ago. (Somebody on another nearby table felt the need to loudly declare that running 4e was heresy but I ignored them). Rules wise this meant we kept digressing into “oh so its different from 5e in this way, cool” type discussions which was fine but I’ll definitely aim to have a handout next time which flags some of these differences up front.
About numbers in 4e my suspicion (all it is currently) is that with smaller groups encounters especially combat are going to be more swingy – either the PCs get some solid hits in and finish off their opponents quickly or things go bad early and they need to run, regroup or change tack. As the number of players goes up things average out more and tend closer towards the default outcome of an encounter of x difficulty uses up y PC resources (and most of my patience as a GM). Purely for my purposes – trying to emphasis situational play with player decisions leading to, and resulting from, fights, skill challenges etc. the first outcome is what I’m after.
My plan is therefore, for the next time I run something like this, to split the PCs into two sub groups in the same area, with more clearly defined and orthogonal initial objectives and see how that works out. I figure it can’t actually be much more complex to run two fights in parallel for example, and if the PCs all meet up and decide to work together that’s great too.
About this bit “I have also found that running a particular situation over and over, unless its the same crowd each time, helps. It allows you to refine the same content over time, without having to start at ground zero each time.” yes, and I’m very much of the view that sitting and tinkering with a scenario to try and get the “right” experience at the table wont get me very far absent actually playing, seeing what players do, what they / we enjoy and don’t and then iterating based on that play. So I am keen to try this out again although lots of it will look quite different probably.
The edition comparisons do take up time and at a convention that can be frustrating. A handout does sound like a marvelous idea. Some mechanical concepts made it to 5e from 4e, so you would think that might help folks.
And yes, “Table for Six” is standard con seating even though I am not convinced it makes for the best con experience. Once upon a time I did, but last decade or so has me re-thinking that.
In case anybody wants to look I’ve put up a post with my prep for this session at my blog here https://chaoticmiserable.wordpress.com/2025/03/17/4th-edition-dd-dark-sun-the-eye-of-the-storm/
Be warned I doubt these make sense to anybody that isn’t me.
I had a bit of trouble opening the encounter notes.
I was curious why you chose Dark Sun. What about the backdrop provides the inspiration for creating situations with 4e?
Possibly unwanted advice …
A lot of situational preparation is a good thing, until I do any of the following.
– “After we do this, then we’ll do this” (alternative but equally bad phrase, “go here”)
– “Here is the thing which, when they find out, will be awesome”
– “Uh oh, I better make sure they care about this”
Translated to three mapped encounter spaces, knowledge of the potential for no-fun in any of those phrases leads me to think that one of the encounters will do, as far as any sort of anticipation of play is concerned. The situation may be such that it might be any of them, while the others occur out-of-scene without player-characters in them, or maybe two are just set aside as not being played depending on what happens.
Another consideration, or mental warning bell, is the notion of “play through the fight,” i.e., we begin with full tanks for everyone, and we are going to see one or the other side win down the last hit point. A more hazardous and disrupted arena for the confrontation may be better, as in, people get blasted or weakened or whatever all over the place, or something is happening which could well terminate the nominal fight in ways that no one wants.
I’m not sure if what I’ll say next follows logically from the former content to a reader, at least not as directly as it does for me intuitively. It is: clever isn’t as good as clear. I was quite surprised at how nuanced and personal my cockroach + rats vs. android + hoops fight was (using Gamma World 7E), given that it was definitely a set-’em-up fight fest. A little bit of Dark Sun zap in the basics of the confrontation can go a long way.
Considered reply to follow – for now I’ve edited my blog page to directly include the (over)prep plus maps on the page itself.
“A more hazardous and disrupted arena for the confrontation may be better, as in, people get blasted or weakened or whatever all over the place, or something is happening which could well terminate the nominal fight in ways that no one wants.”
I’ve been eyeing Fantastic Terrain and Terrain Powers to get exactly this “disrupted arena” into play.
There’s a thing that happens in the Netflix show Castlevania: Nocturne that I unabashedly enjoy, where a character launches a monstrous attack, and then spends the next instant peering through the resulting dust and sorcerous vapors to see if it connected, or if they’re about to be on the wrong end of a savage counter-attack from the shadows. I think similar things could be possible in 4e by applying the Fantastic Terrain rules. One thing I remember very clearly playing 4e in proximity to Champions Now was wishing that missed attacks (especially missed Encounters and Dailies) had just a smidge extra ‘spice,’ so to speak (the way a missed attack in Champions Now has the possibility of knocking over an innocent piece of scenery), and again I think those Fantastic Terrain rules provide some options in this direction.
It seems very reasonable to me to apply hazards freely upon the discharge of many Encounter and Daily powers, and not only as an extension, but recognizably as a direct application of the textual rules, if that distinction matters.
To me one of the inherent strenghts of 4E within the D&D ecosystem is the flexibility in the tuning of encounters. For convention/one shot play, I would generally prepare one big spectacle fight that is overtuned in ordeer to be challenging for the group in a single pass (but the game is decent at making sure that even being able to blow all the character’s resources at a single fight isn’t such a dramatic advantage), making sure I have all those bits and pieces that people tend to love about the game (obstacles, terrains, minions, events that can be altered via skill rather than combat).
But it’s one prepped fight per session/event. The rest is very light prep focused on situation and cast. Have the stats ready but no “scenes”; if it gets to the point where the characters are fighting the bartender, a mimic and 5 town guards on the roof of the tavern as it’s burning down, probably not having the fight prepared isn’t much of a problem compared to how organically that scene came together, and missing out on the big lava pit encounter with carefully placed elementals and the giant salamander boss won’t be much of a regret.
Thanks for sharing this! I don’t know Dark Sun well at all, but the sheer grisly soap opera of the session really came through. I didn’t do much with treasure parcels when I played, but those magical burrowing worms! I love how the game has so many mechanical crannies that can become permeated by weirdness.
Do you have any thoughts on effective ways to build Skill Challenges as part of prep? When I played, I built them very reactively in the moment. Have there been any, in this session or another, that you were glad you gave time to solidify before play began?
I don’t think I’ve ever actually had a skill challenge I’ve prepped then get used in play, probably symptomatic of overprepping. But I do think that the process thinking about and designing these has put me in a better position to improvise skill challenges that emerge during play, and particularly to apply some of the more optional approaches / rules that Hans has talked about in his skill challenge post. So I think I would recommend giving it a try while being aware of the pitfalls of getting all excited in advance about any specific skill challenge you might dream up.