Aliens,zombie cops and a D&D game

Joe Piscopo, master of movie emotion!

After a hiatus we hit the world of 4^th D&D this past weekend. However, there were a few minor distractions before we started; the viewing of They Live and then Dead Heat. Actually these movies only made the night of gaming better. They Live we all know and love for the classic “Chew bubblegum” line and a fantastic bum fight. Dead Heat though, I had only seen it once back 100 years ago and had very few memories of it. Thankfully now I have a fresh set. Like asking,”Who?” whenever someone mentions the name Arthur P. Loudermilk (or any person’s name), to see the largest building to only house three rooms, tucking of jackets into jeans, a class in emoting, the simplest computer programming ever for complex re-animation machine, fat Lea Thompson, and some of the best story telling around. I remembered it being bad, but had forgotten to what lengths it went to be so bad.

Then we got to the game. It was another romp through a labyrinth of challenges. The party is still not sure why they have been placed here, but they seem to not really care. They dispatched two more members of the XIII, whoever they are and survived the battles laid out before them. The highlights included: Lew bringing a troll to bloodied in his first swing against it, Mike rolling a 1,2 (re-roll) 3 with his first three spells (one of which was acid arrow and that would have made the troll fight that much faster), Tom being a damage sponge most of the night, Steve doing more healing than damage as a battle priest, Mike’s fear of oozy/slime monsters reemerging (probably due to a horrid grey ooze incident many years prior), damp Asian ghost women, a ghost pirate hat and Mike going from rolling terrible the first three encounters to then rolling gangbusters during the last encounter.

I thought the game went alright, but I am still having trouble keeping a consistent challenge. The ooze fight was a wash as the group cleaved through them easily with almost zero damage taken. The trolls were good damage soakers, but they put out very little damage. The undead encounter was ok, but I had a ghoul that would stun, but never bite and poltergeists that could never get their big throw powers to work or recharge. Still rough being a DM in 4^th.  I have yet to make a game too difficult, and feel they are sometimes too easy. I could go all scorched Earth, but that solves nothing, is unfair to the group and to easy to run. I am still looking for that Goldilocks game..... just right.