Goodman Games

Thanks for all the heartfelt feedback. Rest assured, we will be incorporating these ideas, or variants thereof, into the next tournament.

It will be a doozy, too. 5th anniversary. Bring your lucky dice.

//H

I'm geeking out about it already. Is it too early for that?

Does that include my lucky d20? Cause really he is my luck ring leader. With out him the others get lost and can't find their way to Big Numbers town.

Yeah, no more big fat die!! **picket**

Heh.

We will NOT be using the big 55mm spindown/countdown die, I can tell you that for sure.

We WILL be having something similar in its place, however. Its exact nature and eventual implementation will be discussed very soon in a diner near you. Over pie.

year of the digital initiative! everyone bring your laptops!

Never happen.

I can't even sell most of the Judges on the merits of laptop GM-ing (of which I am a huge fan).

I love laptop GMing, but I definitely wouldn't want the see the entire live game go digital. You could even go with one readable regular d20 that everyone used would be better than the big unrollable die.

Dan,

As a player (and winner) of this year's Xcrawl tournament, I have to say that I FRIKKIN LOVE IT!!!

These modules are a hoot to run through...funny, challenging, engaging, and possible to use as one shots for a change of pace.

Let's just say that after the tournament I went and BOUGHT EVERY Xcrawl product made. Ran my home group through half of the first level from the Vegas crawl and they loved it.

I didn't see the sour faces that I got after sending them up against the ice cliff from "Dragon Kings". They don't like deadly DCC tourney modules! But they love Xcrawl. Each room is it's own challenge, and they can be as goofy as they can get. You get prizes for "winning" each room. I love the "mojo" and the teamwork mentality.

All in all a great system! I can't wait to come back next year and defend the title!!! (I just hope it's not against Dan !)

Ben "superfan" Waxman

I playtested the Xcrawl as well, and it was a blast. The two tourneys are apples and oranges, but I would highly recommend picking up one of the xcrawl scenarios and checking it out. Xcrawl has an awesome background and backstory, but the style of the crawls (dungeons) is unique and lends itself extremely well to tourneys, one shots, and campaigns. On a very basic level (it goes very deep), it gives a platform for all the Grimtooths traps you ever wanted to throw at the players and monster combos that cant exist in "nature". It also has an action point type system and specialized skills to work the crowd. Tolkien purists need not apply. But theres a forum for xcrawl over thataway...

/threadjack

Jeff - I couldn't have said it better. Those Grimtooth's Traps and other ultra-nasty encounters often seem out of place in a traditional dungeon or adventure... but they really shine as the focus of a particular challenge/room/encounter in Xcrawl.

Time to dig some of those old books out and take a trip down memory lane!

Yeah...sorry about the threadjacking. I just thought that I'd post here, as some of the DCC teams might be interested in giving XCrawl a try as well. I was curious if any others might be giving it a shot next year at GenCon. After this post, I'll go back to strictly DCC tournament stuff and conversations about Adrian Pommier and Chris Doyle having pies (while discussing how to kill more players).

Hey Superfan! Thanks for the info. While I won't be purchasing every XCrawl on the shelf, I do think I'll pick up the core book and the recent tourney module (when it comes out) for starters. Although, the DungeonCrawl Brooklyn is tempting, since it has maps...

I think this line alone will convince the girls:



Anyway, I'm saving your post and showing it to my group.



Ha! After gaming with you Wednesday night at GenCon, I think you know the rules better than I do!

Alright...one more comment, and THEN I'll stop threadjacking.

I had spoken to Brendan at GenCon, and that was one of the things that intrigued me. Dungeon ecology doesn't make sense? It does now! Welcome to XCrawl.

That's just cool.

Actually I was apologizing for *my* threadjacking.



Yeah, I dunno. The Monk vampire in the first room of Devil Lich and the Ice cliff in Dragon Kings were pure poetry in my book. That's the kind of thing that groups talk about forever. I like my dungeons difficult and deadly and there is nothing like a save or die to build tension. I guess that's the Call of Cthulhu GM in me. I loves my tension.

If I make GenCon next year I'll have to see about this "X-Crawl" business, it does sound like a lot of fun and something I can get excited about.

I'll likely buy a mod or two of X-Crawl in the mean time, and check out Superfan's maps that just got posted a few days ago to Prester's.

Oh. In that case, I forgive you.



Ha. Yeah, the beginning of Vault really set the tone...an awesome start to an adventure. That was one of my favorite parts to the Vault. Every year, the tournaments give us something to talk about (whether it was a difficult combat, the ambience, a cool plot, or a difficult puzzle). Often, the rooms that give us the most difficulty manage to make it into our "favorites" list as well. Funny how that works...

The part I was commenting on (regarding XCrawl) was the part about each room being seperate challenges, and being a little more light-hearted than the DCC tourney.

I wouldn't trade the DCC tournament for anything (and that especially includes the toughest rooms), but I think that XCrawl will make a nice pairing for our GenCon schedule...and since both are Goodman events, we can guarantee that they'll be run well.

Question about round one... how did other teams that encountered the ooze in the hallway room, dispose of it? Our team tried several times to push it off the edge but poor rolls proved deadly. It didn't help that we weren't a team of regulars. Some decisions were made without much discussion and that cost us big time.

We lured it back into the spore room and pelted it with rocks from outside.

Yeah, we had discussed doing the lure technique and everyone had retreated except for a lone party member that stayed by the door. He opted to slam the door shut on it instead of letting it enter the room for us to kill. When we reopened the door it was gone, up the wall above the door! ... death ensued.

After our party defeated the sentry outside, a search of his lookout post enabled us to find some dwarven ale (?) I forget exactly what it was but it was alcoholic (good) and flammable (even better). We doused the ooze with the liquid and went to town on it with torches. (we figured the torches were included in the starting party inventory for something!)

Yeah, I forgot we used stones and torches from a range. Took a long time, but saved us some damage. We did not get to use the ale since we had to use it to save a couple of party members from the spores.

WRT the alchemost (ooze critter), our initial plan was to lure it out into the entry chamber, then circle around and get past it, locking it behind us.

However, we ended up just luring it out of its lair, then hitting it from both sides; I think it did hit us once or twice before we dropped it.

In retrospect, there's something else I think would have been an even better strategy for dealing with it. Ah, 20/20 hindsight!

Yeah this is the point where the dice really started cooperating with you guys... up till that point I was starting to feel like the dice gods had completely abandoned you!

Honestly though - your group only made one tactical "thinking" error in the first round (the wax trap) other than that I don't think you could identify a single moment when I didn't feel like you were reading my mind.