Greetings gamers from all systems, places, and timelines!
My girlfriend Jenn had been asking me for close to two years now to read Fourth Wing. Because I hadn’t, at least to her knowledge, it made the perfect foundation for a surprise birthday game one-shot. However, writing this game was a daunting task because, as they say, the book is almost always better than the movie, and movies are created and directed by people, at least in theory, who know what they are doing.
In this case, the mission became to turn a twenty-two-hour audiobook into a single-night adventure that somehow wouldn’t end up sounding like an insane fever dream that had something to do with a war college and dragons. Additionally, there were many details needed to create the proper immersion, allowing this fantastic book to become an adventure to remember.
So sit back, grab a coffee, and relax as we go through why this game hopefully captured the spirit of Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing.
1. Pregame
DM Elizabeth (who you might remember from our Call of Cthulhu episode!) agreed to Co-DM this with me (for reasons that are still beyond my understanding…)
She made and mailed beautiful and authentic-looking invitations/letters of conscription to attend Basgiath War College. She then scoured the internet for what we would use for our core concepts, allowing us to design new classes for 5e that reflected the source material (many thanks to Mysterious_Strike586 on Reddit for the inspiration!)
Each class had its own set of stats, so that if a player met their untimely demise, they could easily jump right into the next scene with a new pregenerated character. If you have read the book, it makes perfect sense…
2. Art, Music, and Decorations
While each of these additions can add its own splash of immersion to the event, together they can have a synergic effect. In our case, with the game being Fourth Wing, we hung black dragon streamers from the ceiling and had a dragon tablecloth. There is no shortage online of Fourth Wing art, which was displayed on a monitor for all to see as the scenes changed. Music inspired by the book played throughout the game, and out of all of the tasks that went into making this game, a themed playlist is pretty easy and has a welcome effect on the session.
3. Player Buy-In
One of the best, often overlooked game resources, if you are lucky enough to get it, is Player Buy-in.
Two things were low-key encouraged: first, to read the book, which, if you haven’t, you should because it’s positively wonderful. By game day, at least five of the ten people involved had finished the book, which is nice, so that at least half of the table would have at least some idea of what’s going on. But equally important, we encouraged everyone to dress like dragon riders. If you were wondering what that means, most of us ended up looking like mercenaries, but this led to a fantastic group picture before we started.
4. Story and Special Scenes
The story basically covered Book One of The Empyrean series, but not beat for beat, because those railroad tracks are too visible even for me, and that’s saying something.
To survive the first year at the college, all they had to do was:
Cross The Parapet and not fall to their deaths; pay attention during their battle briefings; not be killed by their not-so-friendly non-teammates during sparring; training to complete The Gauntlet (which if you don’t know it’s like American Ninja Warrior, except you can fall to your death at any point); meet the dragons in their valley; complete The Gauntlet; make it to Threshing to bond their dragons; and, after some training with flight and mastery of your dragon-granted power, complete one final mission to graduate…
5. Minis
If you are doing any tabletop map or setting up figurines, they can play a key part in this. All the players needed a mini with the woman of honor having a custom one assembled and painted by yours truly.
The Threshing scene alone required nine dragon figurines for the players to potentially bond with – one of them being a large, iridescent purple dragon, which we 3D-printed because purple is the birthday girl’s favorite color. And yes, there were indeed no purple dragons in the first book, but it fit nicely.
All of these were on grand display in the final battle, where the dragon riders squared off against three wyverns and a Venin, which took place in a climactic battle where half of the team battled on the ground while the other half fought in the air.
6. New Mechanics
Riding a dragon came with its own form of special mechanics, which had to be abridged.
We realized there was no way to allow the player to take their full range of actions and then their dragon, especially with nine players and four monsters with special abilities in the final battle. Not unless we wanted to cancel our vacation plans at least. Also, when a rider bonds with a dragon in this world, they acquire a special power (and cool tattoo) which also needed some mechanics.
This led us to allow each character only a dragon-related move in the air or on the ground, and then one attack method. Whether it be their weapons, signet power, the dragon’s tail, or breath weapon. DM Elizabeth cleverly made handout cards for each of the players so they could keep everything straight on the fly.
7. Terrain
We used several pieces of tabletop terrain to make up the castle, classrooms, and the Threshing Valley. However, two pieces really stole the show. The first DM Bonnie created was a recreation of The Parapet, which, in case you don’t know, is a long, skinny bridge where one misstep could lead to an ugly fall and having your name read out in remembrance later in the adventure. But it set a nice amount of tension for which the original scene in the book invoked.Â
But the grand prize was DM Elizabeth, who, with the help of her relative with a 3D printer, recreated The Gauntlet, including all the challenges presented in the book. The object was simple: clear all of the obstacles and not fall to your untimely death.Â
The beauty of the piece was that it was well scaled when used with figures within the normal D&D size range. In this way, when a character was at say, the fourth or fifth challenge, they could look down and have that heart-dropping moment. Yet still know that they had to push themselves further, with nowhere to go but up.Â
Final Thoughts
Some of you reading this might correctly conclude that pulling this all together took a village – because running a game can, and will, absorb as much time, energy, and resources as you are willing to throw into it.
While this game was a huge success and one of the best I have been involved with in some time, there are more streamlined ways to approach it. For example, a great deal of this could have been handled with Theater of the Mind, which would have freed up time from a vast host of tasks, allowing the DM to focus more so on the story and game play.
How much energy you want to devote to something, only you can decide. There are no wrong answers as long as everyone genuinely has a good time.