Goodman Games

Greetings ...

The club is sorting out its visit to Dragonmeet 2007 for December; and the chairman has turned round to me and "asked" me to run D&D3.5 for the convention. However, between my work and other RPG stuff, I've not got the time to write any scenarios.

What I want to know, is whether I'll be able to get copies of the GenCon DCC modules once GenCon is over. What about getting copies of the GenCon DCC modules from previous years?

Hello Arakor - and welcome to the boards!

In general, the DCC GenCon tournament adventures are released as modules the year after they get played at GenCon. Right now, there's two that are available - "Crypt of the Devil-Lich" and "Vault of the Dragon Kings" - and one that's forthcoming ("Palace in the Wastes") - should be out in September of this year.

Here's links to descriptions of all three.

http://www.goodman-games.com/5012preview.php
http://www.goodman-games.com/5029preview.php
http://www.goodman-games.com/5048preview.php

This year's DCC GenCon tournament adventure should be out sometime next year.

Hope this info helps!

Cheers,

Mike

The answer is yes (eventually) and yes.

We have had three tournaments to date:
'04 - Crypt of the Devil-Lich
'05 - Vault of the Dragon Kings
'06 - Palace in the Wastes

There will be another this year (look for announcements soon!), but that module won't be available for some time.

Crypt and Vault are available for purchase at the Goodman Games site or your Friendly Local Game Store. Palace will be released around GenCon, if you can wait that long.

All three modules are pretty drastically different from the other, and each has its adherents that claim it is "the best" of the lot. All of them are great times, so there's really no "wrong" answer.

To help you determine which module is right for you, the easiest way to decide is to look at how many players you want on a team and what level the pregens are.
- Crypt requires a 6-man team playing 15th level characters.
- Vault and Palace both require 4-man teams; Vault is for 10th level characters, and Palace is for 6th level characters. For both of these tournaments the team draws a team of 4 pregens from a pool of 6 choices.

You could also consider what metaplot and style you're interested in:

- Crypt is about killing the Devil-Lich, essentially a vengeance mission. There are a lot of brutal traps in this meat-grinder adventure. This was designed to be the final word in "killer dungeons."
- Vault is about finding a missing dragon. This one has several very difficult, but highly entertaining, battles. It has a solid balance between playability, lethality, and story.
- Palace is about solving a mystery and has a very strong story element. Its encounters get increasingly exotic and atypical as you progress; as a result it challenges experienced players but also needs competent Judges.

I hope this helps. I can say from personal experience that all three are a lot of fun.

I would also take the lethality into consideration. I believe that Palace in the Waste had the lowest PC kill percentage. It also seemed to be balanced so that the 1st round was less lethal than the semi final or final round.

Both Crypt and Vault were just...brutal. In Vault, I've heard that some teams lost party members in the very first encounter.

Each of the tournament modules also come with some spectacular maps as well:

http://www.goodmangames.com/presters.php

The maps for Palace in the Waste will probably be posted shortly after the module is released.

Really, no matter what you pick, it's hard to go wrong...

Thank you all for your comments and kind words ...

There are a couple of things that I need to make you aware of:

1. Dragonmeet is a 1-day convention.
2. The module will be run with PreGen characters.
3. The module must be able to be completed in a 4 hour window.
4. A GM can potentially run two modules; one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

Based on this criteria, and given that Dragonmeet cannot provide for multi-round adventures, which module(s) do you recommend using?

You make that sound like a bad thing!

Where you see lethal, I see "memorable" -- I wanted to start Vault of the Dragon Kings with a bang, and based on player feedback, I definitely accomplished that.

Adrian's summary for the modules is spot on. I am pleased to have been involved in all three modules, and am incredibly happy with how different they are, while each offering a very compelling, very entertaining dungeon crawl experience.

You really can't go wrong with any of them.

Aww...hell no. Are you kidding? All of the tournament modules were brilliant. They've accounted for some of my best and most memorable convention experiences.

I didn't mean to say that they should be avoided on account of lethality...it's all according to tastes. If he wants a more lethal scenario, I'd recommend Vault or Crypt. If he wants something where more PCs will survive while still having a very challenging scenario, I'd recommend Palace.

They all have something to offer...and the fact that they all offer a little different flavor is a credit to the whole Goodman Games crew. I'd imagine they work hard to make each tournament experience unique.

Don't worry ynnen...we still love ya, even though you did kill us in Vault.

Based on your criteria, I'd actually recommend "Legends are Made, Not Born". I believe that it was written specifically for a 4 hour convention time slot. It's a zero level adventure (the PCs are all local villagers). The module is tight and fun. It includes pregens. As a bonus, the one and only Superfan is supposedly mapping some of it....so by the time you run it, maps might be available for it.

The only downside of Legends is that it doesn't contain scoring...whereas the GenCon tournament modules do...

Still...it wouldn't be too much work to create scoring for it.

For a single 4 hour time slot, I'm not sure that I'd recommend the GenCon tournament modules. All of them involve some sort of plot line that you gradually uncover through the course of adventure. You could always run the 1st round...but that seems a little anti-climactic.

For the record - I loved the start of Vault. It was unique, interesting, and challenging. It was only after the tournament that we learned about the possible misfortunes that a group could suffer there...

In Feb 2006, I had the pleasure of playing through Iron Crypt of the Heritics in what was meant to be a four hour slot. When the game following us didn't materialize we kept going, since we had lost time creating characters at the start. Took about 6 hours, including a tedius characters creation session (folks waffling over spell choice, equipment choice, etc.). But I bet you could get it done in 4 hours... with good prep.

And Blackguard's Revenge might be a good companion for the other slot...

They are both very different, but linked by plotline. Iron Crypt was a blast to play, and having read Revenge, I'm looking forward to a chance to run it... This could be your con tourney...!