Having said that, in some ways this dungeon was easier than it could have been - there’s a stream of drinkable water that runs through a ravine that bisects the ruin that basically reduces long-term food pressure, and as a ruin, most rooms are in dim light, rather than darkness. (Homeless, all conditions, and broke, which isn’t far off from where they are now.) So much so that Tim spent much of the aftergame trying to figure out whether players can just get so bad that they can’t recover.
As a result, they’re in decidedly worse shape than when they started. The players played opportunistically, and as a result wound up sampling a lot of the dangers without ever quite pushing through to the big payoff. To get it out, the players will have to make a determined push at one or the other to get at the hoard. Secondly, my adventure design didn’t mete out treasure in proportion to their effort - the treasure had been scraped up by the two factions. That makes everything quite a bit harder. Not … deadly, exactly, but - first of all, there were only two of them. At times I felt like a worried witness to their scarcity. I wasn’t responsible for them - it’s not me grinding them, it’s the system! This feels like a triumph, because the game clearly produces the experience described on the tin. That’s both good and bad - while it’s amazing that this really true-to-genre experience rises out of the pages unbidden, I did also feel slightly disconnected from the players’ emotions. I felt like a stage manager more than a director. I’ve said it before, but the ‘adventuring minigame’ has the effect of stretching a simple dungeon idea into a longer story (kinda like the way an episode of Lost or X-files really only has a few plot payoffs, procedure and logistics make up a lot of the meat), which made GMing it feel easy. You don’t meet them until it feels you’ve explored a bit, gotten a bit scraped up, and advanced just a bit too far for an easy retreat. I followed the pattern that LOFP’s “Death Frost Doom” and Zombie Elves (a 2012 1-pg dungeon) use, which is to tuck the monsters away for a bit. I deliberately didn’t want a linear adventure, so I created a fairly connected space (a ruined cloistered monastery) that the players could wander around in. The adventure I went in with worked well with it, I think. It felt tense, and tentative, like exploring a ruin should feel. The choices felt meaningful right from inventory layout, and the players always had plenty to worry about, even if they were just poking around. I went in with a sketch, worrying that it was going to feel too bare, but the mechanics leapt up and filled the void. We made characters in the first hour, and then played for four, finishing off with a slightly rushed town phase (which the players were too beaten up to do much with, as it happens).įrom the GM’s perspective, it was almost like the game ran itself. This is just fragmentary - but wow, that was fun. Rather than say much about it now, I’ll just quote the email to Luke and Thor I penned after playing, back in 2012. He's there most days when he's not out checking on the stonefruit crop.This one is special to me, since it’s the adventure I used for my very first Torchbearer playtest. "Anyway, if you folks are here about the call, you'll be wanting to talk with Elder Merrik at the manor house.
'Ol Jossu helped pull his body from the wreckage of the temple along with Sister Aria's." At the mention of the priestess he makes some religious sign. "In fact, one of those halflings had just come back that night as well. We did send the two Farfoot boys up to look around a week or so back." He pauses, as a slight glimmer of remembrance gleams in his eyes. The two or three travelers we found look like they were beat something fierce and bit into by something like a boar, but with the tusks the wrong way. "Most the livestock that were attacked just seem to gone missing. We ran over with a group ah other folks who come running out a their houses at the sound to see what could be done." he trails off a bit, and after a few seconds he offers weakly, ".but there weren't nothing to be done you see."Īt Gavin's questions, he looks a little more thoughtful. It was odd and colorful, like an aurora, but not so wavy like. We was joshen on about latest avalanche when out ah no wheres, this light came crashing down from the sky and blasted it all to smithereens. It happened just as I was walking the last of my regulars home for the night.
"Aye, the latest in our recent tragedies. Monstrous Compendium Vol 3: Minecraft CreaturesĪt Kathra's mention of the destroyed temple, the barkeep's expression turns more melancholy.
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