The Dryad Tree - A Level 1 Playtest & FRPG Day folllow-up

[TwystedSpyder]

So, I completed our second session of DCC overall and the first that allowed players to get a taste of the character classes in action yesterday at my usual game store haunt, The Amorous Armadillo in Winter Park, FL; the same venue that had hosted Free RPG Day.

This would be my first time running an adventure of my own creation using the DCC rules. The adventure was written as a direct follow up to the Free RPG Day dungeon crawl and centers around the characters meeting up in response to a mysterious message they each received claiming to have found evidence of a dryad tree, after an unspecified amount of time spent learning their respective crafts. I ignored the last line/adventure hook in the Free RPG Day adventure in order to create a narrative gap between 0-level peasants and 1st level adventures. This one will have quite a bit of combat as I wanted to test how well the various mechanics flowed during the most dice heavy part of any game.

The complete adventure was typed up in 3 pages but we got 5+ hours of quality, non-filler, quick combat gaming done. They still have a few more challenges to face before they complete the adventure as well (that is for our next session).

What follows is part one of the summary of Thursday evenings game. This post is a bit long, I know, and I've broken the full summary up into multiple parts. I will post the 2nd part of our play report sometime over the weekend along with some player feedback.

Some many seasons later…

Your training was long an arduous, with many moments when you thought you may simply quit and return to your old mundane life. However, after much labor, you mastered your new path and set out to find fame and glory.

A few weeks ago a message found its way to you and to your surprise, remarks upon your first encounter with the unknowable so long ago, beyond that portal under the stars…

It is my hope that this letter finds you well this cold winter season.

As we approach the Solstice, I offer you a gift in celebration of the passing of the long night.

The Dryad Tree has been found.

I will be awaiting your presence at the Inn of Waning Light, in the village of Kilnhill, located along the southern edge of the Sgurrhaim Mountains on the eve of the Solstice.

~ A friend

The trip to the Sgurrhaims is a long and dreary road, one fraught with peril this time of year, but the possibility of discovering the truth behind the Rod of Rulership and the war-wizard’s mysterious alien benefactors is just too powerful a lure to resist.

The characters arrive from several different starting points but all meet up in the snow covered town of Kilnhill, at the Inn of Waning Light by the requested time and are surprised to find all of their old companions there as well. The players were allowed time to re-introduce their characters and provide some additional back story.

The players’ characters all reconnected with each other as they try to keep warm by the fire, though it is still a mystery as to why the potato farmer, “Spud” turned his aspirations towards the subtle and dangerous art of magic instead of edible roots. It turns out, “Spud” was just a nickname and his true name is Rasputin (which as it turns out is a very appropriate name).

… Exposition and role-playing ensues as the NPCs start making their appearance. I’ll skip these details for the purpose of a play test report. Quick Summary:
1. Blind elf wants them to get a locked metal box from a ruined keep and in exchange will give them one of his personal artifacts. Somewhat sexy, but scarred &seasoned one-eyed woman stands nearby as bodyguard to this crippled elf.
2. The surviving scout from a group previously sent by this elf came back with stories of the walking dead and a beautiful green maiden singing softly in glen under a massive tree that seemed to be growing in the center of the ruins. Only one scout made it back alive – all others torn apart by the walking dead and something in the shadows of the forest surrounding the keep.
3. Elf knew the PCs are looking for a dryad tree as he is in the business of acquiring rare arcana, but he states he does not know why they search for it. He figures they will be able to complete his job for a reward as well as complete their personal objective, thus improving their likelihood of completing this mission and not double-crossing him. Good luck with that, I think to myself.
4. Elf warns not to open the box if they find it. He warns them of this repeatedly.

We have a total of 7 1st level PCs spread out among 4 players, some seasoned, some not. All survivors of the Portal Under the Stars. Rasputin, the Potato Wizard, The Dread Pirate Roberts(Thief), Orn the Dwarf, George (Warrior but still thinks of himself as a squire), Olaf (Thief), Irving (Cleric of Amun-tor) and Sloth the Crippled Priest of Cthulhu. I allowed one player who didn’t get a chance to roll his own character on Free RPG day and who was stuck playing a surviving cast-off, to roll up one 0-level henchman of his very own. The group was thus met by Cleedus, a local hunter and their guide into the deep northern woods.

I used a random chart to track the events of each day of travel. It should take the party approximately 4 days by foot to reach the ruins by Cleedus’ best estimate. On day one, Cleedus gets them lost and they lose a day. The following three days pass without incident until they reach the denser woodland and are ambushed by bat-winged wolf-things. These Snow-Gnashers pounce from the trees above and dive down upon the party. They were apparently weakend by hunger, however as they could not bring down a single target and two of their pack were gravely injured during the attack, one breaking his winged foreleg and the other snapping his neck and dying instantly. TWO NATURAL ONES! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? The party makes short work of the remaining Gnashers with minimal injuries. A good first fight as far as the player’s are concerned. I’m not as happy, but I know there is much worse to come beyond this little random encounter.

Later the next day they pass into a much denser section of forest as the terrain becomes much rougher. The thick canopy above blocks out most of the sunlight and the air becomes noticeably colder.

Irving, his god granting him insight into the mysterious shadows moving amongst the trees, notices that these shadows appear to be alive and moving as bipedal humanoids. He is able to cast the light of Amun-tor upon these demonic wretches and turn one away. However at least half a dozen of these Shadow Things warp about via the very shadows themselves and attack the party from all angles.

The adventurers have a hard time striking these nearly insubstantial beasts and Cthulhu decided he enjoyed what these creatures were doing and in his displeasure refused to allow his witness, Sloth the ability to turn any other unholy beings for 4 full days. Orn, the dwarf waded into the fray felling many beasts, but the surprising star of this skirmish was Cleedus, the hunter, who felled a handful of the Things with his short bow. Unfortunately, one Shadow Thing took this personally and deftly disemboweled the poor hunter.

What follows is one of two soft-hearted decisions I made during this session. Because he fought so well, I allowed Irving to attempt to heal this 0-level character with his lay-on-hands power, even though 0-levels are supposed to be dead and gone once they lose all of their hit points. This was a one-time chance that needed to succeed before one round passed, and required the Cleric to be of the same alignment or automatically receive sinful negatives to his spell check. Apparently Amun-tor felt the mystery of this hunter’s skill was enough to warrant a second chance at life and Cleedus was soon back on his feet. I later ruled that 0-levels do not get a survival luck check at the end of combat, but I felt that during the course of an ongoing campaign, it wouldn’t hurt to allow these guys a bit more survivability if it comes at the expense of total party resource management.

With Cleedus back in the fight, the group was able to drive off the remaining Shadow Things, but lost a few weapons and shed some blood in the process. Seeing that more shadows moved amongst the trees, the party sprinted forward in the hopes of escaping the forest without further incident.

Out of breath with many of their party gravely wounded, the adventurers broke through the edge of the forest and come to a sunlit clearing. Here, no snow falls and the cool air is less damp and oppressive. A chill breeze blows leaves about in orderly spirals against the vast stone wall of a ruined castle, stretching several hundred feet in either direction. A quick scouting of the area detects no immediate threat from the ruins, nor any pursuit from the forest, so the party decides to try and rest for the evening and start fresh in the morning.

A few percentile rolls later and the night passes without incident. No wandering monster ambushes make for an unhappy GM, but tomorrow is another day to die as they say.

To be continued...

[abk108]

Nice report. How is it to play with more than one 1st level PCs per player? I'm still playtesting with a 0-level party of about 12 PCs... Should any player have more than 1 PC at the end, I was thinking I would have them level up all these PCs, then depart for the next adventure with one of their choice. I think it detracts from rp to act as more than one character.

[finarvyn]

Should any player have more than 1 PC at the end, I was thinking I would have them level up all these PCs, then depart for the next adventure with one of their choice. I think it detracts from rp to act as more than one character.

That's what I did. And it turned out to be lucky, since that player ended up losing his character a few sessions later so rather than start out at level-0 again I let him take over the character he'd already advanced to level-1 but had left behind.

[abk108]

Should any player have more than 1 PC at the end, I was thinking I would have them level up all these PCs, then depart for the next adventure with one of their choice. I think it detracts from rp to act as more than one character.

That's what I did. And it turned out to be lucky, since that player ended up losing his character a few sessions later so rather than start out at level-0 again I let him take over the character he'd already advanced to level-1 but had left behind.

also, there might be some quests where you might wanna have wclerics, if available, others where you might need two Wizards/elves...

[TwystedSpyder]

Before this game I was pondering what to do with multiple 1st level characters as well. Obviously I decided to just keep the character funnel going for the time being. Everyone really enjoyed roleplaying multiple characters, possibly because it gave them a taste of several gameplay options in one sitting. There was only one player who only had one character to start with and while he first refused to take anyone elses character just to balance things out, after the last session he was asking when he could get some 0-level henchmen.

Multi-character gaming is a fairly old-school Gygaxian concept as well. I know plenty 1e AD&D players who played with multiple characters and never seemed to have a problem roleplaying all of them at once. Of course there is "roleplaying a character" and "acting like a drama-school dropout attention-whore". Two completely different things. I'll refrain from getting into that discussion here, though.

I had been thinking of just keeping the extra surviving characters as backup, yes. I also plan on running multiple games that may not include the same players all the time, so having players split their characters between campaigns could work out quite well.

I will probably mix it up a bit in the long run. Though I'm sure I will focus the majority of my games on single character per player groups, the idea of each player having a personal mini-army for some occasional grand adventures (or meat-grinders) sounds like fun to me! I'm thinking epic crossovers between different campaigns!