Players:
5 total strangers (male) from teenager to grizzled gray hair, each with 4 suitably random peasants. Out of the 20: there were 3 Halflings (the highest luck among them was 8 ); 3 Dwarves (1 of which had the only stat of 18 at the table: luck) all of whom were miners.
Of the 5 players, 2 said that they had looked the rules over prior to the game…
Mistake #1: Venue
The shop where I set up my table neglected to inform me that I was only going to have 2hrs before giving my table to someone else. Also, some of the DM’s were able to get their modules early in order to prepare. Apparently I don’t know the right people, ‘cause they wouldn’t give me my materials early when I asked for them; so I ran the module “cold” without knowing what the heck was in it ‘till I sat down at the table. It was also very loud, so I know the players had trouble hearing my explanations.
Mistake #2: DM failure to fully explain the luck stat & luck burn
Due to the afore mentioned confusion and brevity of play time; I got a little flustered and during my whirlwind explanations of the new rules & dice… luckburn got left out. Oops. They were already into room 3 when I figured this out @ which time I fully explained the concept… but by then there were several character deaths that probably could have been prevented (or @ least delayed) by the use of luckburn.
The Game: "The portal under the stars"
I read them the player intro; which seemed to confuse them, as they couldn’t cope with why there might be 20 folks crowded around the bed of Old Man Roberts or why they should be investigating the strange portal in the woods… but they trooped onward like good little players.
There were enough of them (+chickens and a dog) that they mostly filled the entry hall, but they lost 3 to the door trap. The Dwarves all agreed to start digging a bypass around the door, but then veered towards the “scent of gold in room 9. Before the Dwarves could get started, one of the peasants (a jewler) came forward to examine the gems on the door. He rolled a 20 on the INT roll +1 from stat, so I figured that was good enough to remove the 1 gem from the pattern necessary to disable the trap. He of course pocketed the gem.
It took them a while to pluck up their courage to enter room 2 (one round of debating and general cowardice) and the Dwarves resumed their debate about setting up a new tunnel. Especially after the first person into the room dodged left but got pinned to the wall after traveling only 5ft. They lost 3 more peons to the spears, but just for giggles I decided that the statues should get a move of 5ft and 1d6hp…(for the record I gave them an 8 round clockwork timer, but no one was able to hear the mechanism. Their programmed instructions were to 1. block the entrance with their bodies & 2. defend the crypt) It was at this point that I reminded them how cool it was that there were no morale checks for players.
Once they saw the statues ambling towards them, that is when they finally started getting creative… one of the peasants managed to get a 20 on their attack roll with a sling, pulling off an entertaining “David & Goliath moment.” One of the Dwarves sacrificed his lantern to set one of them on fire he succeeded in doing enough fire damage to destroy its clockwork springs, but the splash also set the door to room 3 on fire. Then another fleeb stepped forward and tossed his cloak over the head of 1 of the two remaining statues (which failed its save and became entangled and blinded). That was the end of round 3… Then they found that they had some rope and decided to try a reenactment of the “Rebel Alliances’ defending of Hoth.” It worked. They managed to tangle the remaining statues and bludgeon them into a pile of dented clockwork & springs. While several of the characters were involved in these activities, not everyone in the group was so brave. The majority hung back in the entry hall and one player had 2 of his peons grab a bronze spear and use it as a battering ram on the door to room 3.
The first two characters to enter room 3 immediately noticed the scorch marks, but with all the clanging and banging from room 2, they failed to notice the movement of the statue. It wasn’t until all the PC’s were in the room and moving around that they figured out where the scorch marks had come from… confirmed when one fleeb made a break for room 4. He got hit but managed to survive. Now, I figured that the logical solution would have been to take the largest group and distract the statue while they slowly left the room 1 or 2 PC’s at a time… the players decided on the “Quail” method. They all picked a door and ran for it scattering in all directions at once, figuring that the statue would only be able to track one person going to one door. Seemed reasonable to me, but I managed to pop 2 of them before they all cleared the room. After all, you can only fit so many people through a door at a time.
And then there were 3… parties. And one poor fool who was so scared that he stood perfectly still and so stayed in room 4.
Room 5: the party had 3 humans and one sheep-dog [it happened that the teenager rolled “herder” & a sheep-dog for one of his characters]
The piles of bones managed to kill everyone but the boy and his dog… {who between the 2 of them killed 5 out of the seven piles of bones, & the dog killed 4} At one, particularly bleak moment in the fight, the player asked me: “what happens if the dog is the only one of the party to survive the dungeon?”
DM Answer: “Well he could go back to town and try to convince another flock of fleebs to go save ‘the party that fell down the portal.’”
Or, you can play the dog as your character; Fido can choose between the classes Fighter, Thief, and Cleric.
Room 4: there were 4 PC’s in this hall/room counting the first guy (the one that abandoned the party earlier) and they charged straight down into the room. Since they made no attempts to listen at the door or anything, I ruled the Snake got a surprise attack: dropping one of them. Oddly it was 3 dwarves that were left, one of which seemed more interested in the throne and when he sat down I had him roll a Willpower save. I figured that since he wasn’t a wizard that it was plausible he might be “stunned” by the “twisting of his perceptions in such a strange new way. He failed, and spent a round drooling and gibbering. Fortunately the snake was pre-occupied with the other 2 Dwarves They had managed to give the snake some serious damage due to the fact that it rolled a 4 on initiative (after a +2 from Agility). It still managed to hit and kill one of the Dwarves. The last Dwarf missed its attack, but when the snake attacked on its second round: it fumbled.
That is when I discovered that there are no rules covering what Die I was supposed to roll on the fumble table. I had ruled already that the snakes’ AC of 13 was from an Agility of 16 and +1 from hide, so as light armor I rolled a d16.
The die came up and 8… “Like a turtle on its back…” so I ruled that the horn had become stuck in a crack in the stone flooring. The fight didn’t last too long after that…. The Dwarf on the throne never even made it into the fight before it was over.
By this time the guy in room 4 had plucked up his courage enough to try and climb up the statue to put his holy symbol on the outstretched arm. He told me he wanted to try and convince his God to help deliver him from this peril, hoping that by “challenging” the statue it would prove his devotion and so render him the assistence.
We never found out what happened to him or the 3 folks that busted through into room 6, as the table was taken from us… I had managed to squeak out 3hrs of time already (due to the fact that the next DM had been late in arriving) so I didn’t fuss about it. Much…
*Analysis*
At this point it is hard to make too many conclusions, but I can say that the players seemed to be enjoying themselves in spite of my errors. In hind-sight I don’t think the luckburn issue was all that severe considering how poorly everyone rolled. At best they would have ended up with a few more [possibly even a few less] folks in the scatter…
As a point of game mechanics, I feel that the concept of luckburn doesn’t fit the over all flavor of the game. The text of the beta rules and the overall design of the mechanics support an environment that is essentially ruled by “the hand of fate.” The opening sentence to the section on choosing a class says it all… “What man calls free will is but the options remaining after destiny and the Gods have made their plays.” Burning off stats to buy more power for wizards & clerics makes sense… but sacrificing luck to alter the hand of fate seems to run counter to the flavor of the game. Letting the Halflings then influence the “hand of fate” for others is an even further stretch of plausibility. But it does bring up a question one of the players had, “since I have the highest luck of the Halflings, & my modifier is negative… does that make me a ‘Jinx’ of some kind?” I said there is no policy that I know of, but would pass it along for a verdict. For my part I say: sure.
The group was less than pleased with the new dice (and I deliberately tried to sell them) and one guy kept getting snotty about it too. Every time I turned to him to ask what his PC’s were doing he’d start by quoting 2 or three different & ever more elaborate methods for calculating everything from a D2 to a D100… He left the game at the 2 hour mark to go play at another table. All but 1 of his characters were in room 6, and the one in room 4 died in the surprise round: so the dice made it so he had a lot of time sitting there with nothing to do. Before he left he said that; “It’s been more fun than I’d thought it would be. It’s been so long since I played a 0-level PC that I’d forgotten that it can actually be fun.”
The only other things I need to mention are that both the players and myself had a little bit of difficulty adjusting to the need to manage so many characters. Players frequently forgot to use 1 or more of there characters. Table space was at a premium as well.
One guy left in a huff after the last of his characters died in room 5… I had already got the feeling that he was less than pleased with the whole 0-level character idea… and he seemed to take it personally.
The other 3 seemed to really enjoy themselves and were pleased to hear that I would be scheduling further sessions for testing the Classes and the high-level stuff.
