Using +Jon Marr Purple Sorcerer 0-Level Party Generator I randomly made 24 PCs where the 1's on hp were re-rolled (however some of the stats for Stamina were so low that some hit points were still at 1). Out of those 24 PCs only 4 survived! It was brutal and everyone had a blast!
So this is the second play-test of this adventure which is in its second draft. Tomorrow I begin writing draft three.
Here is what I learned:
- Agility Challenges involving 24 PCs is pretty silly and slows the game way down. It's better to randomly determine 1 PC from each player or maybe only the PCs with the lowest Luck score from each player and then have them roll Agility Checks.
- Random Tables of items in rooms are fun (even more so when they kill off players!)
- Making every death meaningful adds to the fun and keeps the players in a good mood even if they are being slaughtered.
- DC 10 Strength Checks for scaling walls with a rope can be just as brutal as raving mad cultists.
- Speaking of Cultists if you have a mini boss fight planned you better make sure he has more hp than a long sword can deal damage.
- Make sure your major baddie has a ton of hp to make the battle feasible. (Amount of PCs x 10 = hp?) That equation might seem crazy, but it works!
Overall my players (who are also my friends) had a lot of fun and said this version was better than the last. However it is finally time to step out of my comfort zone and run this adventure with strangers. In the next few weeks I plan on running some games online and will of course keep you all updated. I've never ran a game online so I'm not really sure what's the best way to go about it. I've never used Roll20 or whatever. If you have any advice please leave me a comment.
I'll leave you with one final piece (of artwork!)
This is a piece I commission from the extremely talented +Stefan Poag. It will be in the back of all my modules displaying the best deaths from all the play-tests of said adventure and it's metal as hell!
