PCs:

Please just look at your own character's page for now as they may contain mild secrets. (No, no one is playing a traitor or secretly evil character)

• Kaua? Thundercaller Goathuali - Goliath Warden (defender)
• Razuul - Kobold Ranger (ranged striker)
• Shirakk? Telan - Githzerai Monk (melee striker)
• Lyndsay - Eladrin Bard (ranged leader)
• Patrick?

When generating a character, take a look at the SOW character creation? page.

Background:

The game is nominally set in the Forgotten Realms, though too much info on the rest of the Realms isn't too likely to come up in the game. And the particular gods of the Realms may be replaced by the generic 4th Edition counterparts sometimes - or holdovers from the 3rd edition generic gods.

We'll be starting in the small town of Drellin's Ferry which will be familiar to Red Hand of Doom players. It's a lot like most fantasy small towns - feel free to add in any background element you like.

Locals & Others

If you want to have ties in the community, I'll throw out some of the residents of the town here. Feel free to request/make up others:

    * Jalissa: acolyte of St. Cuthbert
    * Sertanian: curator of the Hall of Great Valor, which has relics of the Red Hand's invasion and repulsion
    * Kartenix: captain of the town militia
    * Thurann: 8 year old son of Kartenix
    * Mirtalla: halfling cook at a local inn
    * Zerriksa: old woman who lives outside of town, reputation as being a witch
    * Eoffram Troyas: town mayor
    * Adronsius: dwarven alchemist

Other NPCs

    * Olorus: dwarven priest of Moradin accompanying the dwarven trade caravan that Kula travels with.

House Rules

Stunting

For this game, we’ll be borrowing the stunt system from Exalted. In short, you get bonuses to your checks (most commonly rolls to hit or skill checks) for giving interesting descriptions of your actions. As D&D 4th edition has cool powers that often go under-narrated and I think 4th edition D&D characters are heroic beings, these rules will encourage player narration to back up that fact and make the game more interesting and memorable. Here’s a list of bonuses and the level of description to get them.

• +1 The player gives an exciting description of her action.
• +2 The player gives an exciting description and uses a part of her environment in the action.
• +5 This action is simply made of awesome. The other players at the table will remember that event when they think of the session. Don’t try too hard to reach this level, it mostly seems to happen on it’s own in my experience.

A thread on RPG.net about stunting in Exalted may provide elaboration and examples: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=192129. This post is particularly good advice for those new to stunting: http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=3964739&postcount=31

Skill Challenges

(Borrowed from someone else’s Actual Play of this same module)

A general house rule I use is that if a PC re-uses the same skill in a skill challenge, he's at a cumulative -5 penalty. This encourages people to try a variety of approaches while still allowing those who have sunk resources into excelling at a skill to get more than one use from it.

A second is some tinkering with how Aid Another works: When someone makes a primary or secondary skill check, only one other person can do Aid Another to help them. The aiding player announces what skill he's using to help out and explains how it works. He then makes his check, against a DC set by the GM (generally the same as the DC of the primary skill check - the advantage being in that the aiding player is presumably using on of his best skills in the attempt). If he succeeds, the other PC gets a +2 bonus to his skill check. If the PC making the primary skill check fails, both he and the aiding PC suffer any consequences listed in the description of the check (e.g. losing a healing surge, or whatever).

I tend to use rounds in skill challenges (although not initiative): once everyone's had a chance to take an action, it's a new round. This lets me bring time pressure into play (effects that kick off each round) and makes action points viable in skill challenges (to get an extra action in a single round).