“They’re dead! They’re all dead!”
-Ethan Hunt, Mission: Impossible

The fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons was released last month, and being so far from home Nadia and I had no one to play with. After a few weeks of searching, we came across a new campaign starting up via meetup.com. The DM running the game lives 35 miles from us!

Our first session was two weeks ago. Nadia is playing a halfling rogue and I’m playing a human wizard. The party is rounded out by the DM’s wife, playing a elf ranger and another meetup.com member playing a eladrin cleric. Below is the result of our very first rolls of 4th Edition:

For the uninitiated, 1s are bad rolls. The higher, the better.

This latest edition inspires an adventuring group to keep pushing themselves. Instead of resting after every other encounter to regain health and spells, 4e is set up so that even beginning adventurers can engage multiple groups of enemies before resting for the day. After slaughtering two very large groups of kobolds (small reptilian humanoids), we decided to venture into their lair. We figured that we had enough resources to continue the fight, which was true, but we didn’t realize that we were about to run out of luck.

Another nine kobolds fell at our feet after being punctured by a hail of arrows and bolts from our strikers. There were only two more enemies left: one kobold with a shield and a goblin with a battle axe. There was no way we could lose.

A TPK is a Total Party Kill. These typically occur when the party makes very poor tatical decisions, or when the players run out of luck and their dice work against them. In our case, roll after roll after roll came up low. I rolled eight single-digit numbers in a row! In a few short rounds, my three adventuring buddies lay dead (or near dying, as it is in 4e) and my wizard stood facing the last two monsters with only 1 hit point.

While this was a TPK, our DM was merciful and allowed me to run out of turn. This means that I will return later and drag my companions away so we can heal up and try again another day.

This is the first time I’ve ever been in a game where the party was totally wiped out like that, and it reminded me of the quote that I opened this post with. At our next session in two weeks, we’ll have better strategies in mind and (hopefully) a replenished font of luck to draw from.

A shifty looking rogue came out of nowhere, claiming that he has dealt with this ettin before, and he wanted to help us. What really helped was the other elf girl that also just showed up out of nowhere. I was getting ready to swing at the ettin when she managed to talk him down and change him back to human. The ettin is lucky too. I would have killed him.

Turns out that ettin was a cursed paladin. Probably a good thing they kept me from killing him. I don’t think Kord would have allowed me into Ysard if I did do that. I have to remember to thank them later.

The elf girl turned out to be half-human, and Freiya is her name. Sam is the rogue.

So, we get to town, have a drink, and follow this guy Corvus back to his home (finding some dead guy along the way). We broke into his house and Ama found a secret door. The new half-elf is a sorceress; she put several guys to sleep with a wave of her hand. We snuck around like a bunch of common thieves; I felt real dirty doing that. When we finally found Corvus, I slid across his table and punched him in the jaw, knocking him out. That was the only useful thing I had done all day.

Kill count: nothing, unless you count Corvus’ ego.

We went to the Laughing Bear in another town to get some rest. We sold some stuff, I bought a fancy chain shirt, and traded in my old greatsword for a really nice one too. We went to meet this politician Sir Avis, talked about someone named Corvus, how a war might be brewing, how we should go to Avid to stop an uprising, and… whatever. Skip this stuff. I wasn’t paying attention. All I remember is that we had to disguise as entertainers to get to Avid.

Along the way we found this town called New Fort. They had an ettin problem: this two-headed ogre thing stole their cows and vandalized a church. Rather than dealing with the problem in the best possible way (drive my sword directly into his chest and pull out his heart), the bald guy wanted to talk it out. So did the elf and gnome. Only Elian wanted to kill him too. We were outnumbered, so we tried to talk. With an ettin. What’s next? Barter with dire bears? Have lunch with a demon?

Kill count: not a single thing.