First Season of D&D Encounters Wraps Up at Armoury Games
Columbus Face Games visited with the DM’s, players and the owner of Armoury Games as season one wrapped up Wednesday evening on Wizards of the Coast’s D&D Encounters. Armory Games is one of the host game stores where the D&D Encounters Season of Twelve ‘encounters’ has been taking place. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has provided all the adventures for this season.
If you are unfamiliar with D&D Encounters it is a new and exciting marketing program from Wizards to promote D&D at local game stores. WotC has created twelve linked episodes or encounters that are strung together to form an adventure. Players visit their local game store and a store-approved DM guides groups of up to six adventurers. The night I visited there were two tables with a total of 10 players and two DM’s. A second session was also run the same evening. As this was the last encounter of the season, I came expecting to witness the climax and denouement and I was not disappointed.
The players were in a deep cavern with a cold rushing stream and facing them were the chief villan and his minions with a helpless hostage to boot. The battle raged and the bad guys were vanquished. The hostage, sister to the main villain, turned out to be not such a victim, nor much of a nice person and revealed her dark side before exiting stage right.
The players collected their treasures and the DM coordinator Allen Bard handed out special in-game abilities to players that had earning the most Renown Points in the season. Renown Points are awarded for the following things:
Renown Point Accomplishments
Complete an Encounter: 3 Renown Points
Hit a Milestone: 2 Renown Points
Complete All Quests: 5 Renown Points
Revive a Dying Adventurer: 1 Renown Point
Hit for +15 Damage Against 1 Enemy: 1 Renown Point
Kill 3 Minions with 1 Attack: 1 Renown Point
Take 50 Enemy Damage in 1 Session: 1 Renown Point
Survive 8+ Sessions without Dying: 2 Renown Points
Moment of Greatness: 2 Renown Points
Create a Character Builder Adventurer: 5 Renown Points
Player’s Handbook 3 Class or Race: 2 Renown Points
Player’s Handbook 3 Feat: 1 Renown Point
The start of Season Two begins immediately next week on June 9th. The next season is based on the Dark Sun Campaign System introduced in 1991 and centered around the devastated world of Athas. Expect a strong presence of psionics in this upcoming season. As a little taste here are the pre-generated characters for Season Two:
Yuka – Male mul brawling fighter (wasteland nomad)
Phye – Female human enlightened ardent (noble adept)
Castri – Male elf marauder ranger (gladiator)
Barcan – Male human cosmic sorcerer (veiled alliance)
Shikirr – Male thri-kreen quick battlemind (wilder)
Jarvix – Male tiefling telepathic psion (veiled alliance)
I spoke with the owner of Armoury Games, Bruce Langdon about WotC’s new effort to promote D&D 4ed. Bruce was thrilled that WotC was making a strong effort to promote D&D through local stores. We discussed how difficult it is to run a successful hobby store in the internet era, when Amazon.com and internet hobby stores can easily undersell a brick and mortar store.
Bruce felt that his continuing dedication to promoting the hobby, his loyalty to his customers and giving folks a place to play and enjoy their hobby has been the difference that has allowed him to stay in business for almost 10 years. He admitted it was challenging to run a successful store and hopes players of all types of games will reward their local store with their business and their loyalty.
You can play season two of D&D Encounters at Armoury Games or Ravenstone Games starting next Wednesday. Check out the game store links for further information.
