Steampunk Your D&D 4E, Part I

Dear Uncle Pernicious,

Last night me mates and I were chasing a black-hearted necromancer through a dark dungeon and he jumped through a magical portal. ‘Not such a big deal,’ thought we. Our wizard figured out the command word and we followed him through. We came out the other side in a city! But not a regular, normal, sane city…it was a place of dark, soot-covered buildings impossibly tall, carriages that hissed and smoked and moved without horses, and people with round little windows over their eyes who used magical rods that belched fire and launched some kind of sling stones with unearthly speed. (And they hurt. A lot.) We gave up on the necromancer and high-tailed it back to the real world.

My question, Uncle, is what kind of a place was that? And what kind of people could possibly adventure there?

Yours,

Regdar

6 Ways to Solve Mysteries

Dear Uncle Per,

I wish your Dungeon Master friends would tell us before an adventure starts that it’s going to be a mystery. If I knew that, I’d stay home and wait until they found the bad guy in his lair and go to fight him. When it comes to finding clues, I got nothin’. Perception? Didn’t train it. Arcana? History? Nature? Not a chance. Sometimes I get lucky and get to scare somebody into talkin’, but mostly I sit around.

Well, come to that, we all sit around a lot. Our ranger finds a human footprint in a pool of blood, our rogue spots a recently opened secret door, and the cleric reports the guy was strangled. Then the DM sits back and chuckles into his wispy little beard as he watches us flail about. But how are we supposed to put those three clues together and figure out whodunit?

Looking for advice,

Regdar

Play D&D. Not Street Fighter.

Septimus 31

Dear Uncle Pernicious,

So last week me mates and me were in this dungeon shaped like a big dragon head–don’t ask, it’s a long story–and the boss monster at the end was this huge dragon construct in this pillared altar room. The thing had like a thousand hit points and an AC what was way too high for us Level Twos. It was even acting multiple times in a round and had interrupts and react attacks and close bursts that hit the whole room. Plus, it blocked the only exit. So unfair.

We were gettin’ knocked all to hell until the DM felt sorry for us and hinted that we could maybe trash the fiery pillars and break the altar to help weaken the dragon, and or try talk to the construct to confuse it or stand there and analyze its fighting to find a weak spot, all instead of taking a swing! How were we supposed to figure that out? I mean, I’m as game as the next guy, but I leave mind-reading to the psions!

Your favorite fightin’ nephew,

Regdar