2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimoire

DCC has inspired many folks to produce their own supplements and adventures for the game. This is the place for discussion of all 3PP products for DCC RPG.

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grald_the_hunter
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

smathis wrote:The reason I decided to do the S&S hack first was to show how TA can be used in different genres, give examples of how to hybridize the classes, and offer something in relation to spellcasting for the time being.

My original plan was to circle back to the monsters and setting. The reason for that was so third-parties could write adventures for TA. The biggest hold up for most of them is, as you note, not knowing the differences between monsters in TA and in other OSR resources. The setting (when I say setting I'm talking about the hexmap and setting info) would also help people who are interested in creating adventures.

I'm happy to set those aside and work on magic, though, if that's what readers want.
I want to see the hexmap too, actually. I was hoping it would help me create my own adventures. But I'd list that as third. First, magic; second, monsters and particularly named adversaries; third, the hexmap (as I mentioned before, my campaign is a bit of a hybrid so it doesn't take place entirely in Transylvania, although that will be the main campaign area); fourth, the Theorist. I think the game is complete enough as far as classes go without the Theorist, although I would like to see it just to see what a full-up spellcasting class looks like.

Of course, far be it from me to speak for all the readers. 8)

Oh yeah, and 3PP, get to work on those adventures :mrgreen:
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by Hoplitenomad »

Is there any information about using TA as is for S&S campaign. So instead of using DCC spells and classes, you just use the book as is for a grittier world.

HN
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

Hoplitenomad wrote:Is there any information about using TA as is for S&S campaign. So instead of using DCC spells and classes, you just use the book as is for a grittier world.

HN
Great question. That has been written and submitted for the next copy of DAMN. Its called the S&S setting hack And includes instructions on customizing some of the classes to create weird demihuman races, using DCC magic with the Polymath, and converts the DCC Wizard to a playable TA class.

It also covers using no magic.

I'm hoping that will be out soon.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by Hoplitenomad »

smathis wrote:
Hoplitenomad wrote:Is there any information about using TA as is for S&S campaign. So instead of using DCC spells and classes, you just use the book as is for a grittier world.

HN
Great question. That has been written and submitted for the next copy of DAMN. Its called the S&S setting hack And includes instructions on customizing some of the classes to create weird demihuman races, using DCC magic with the Polymath, and converts the DCC Wizard to a playable TA class.

It also covers using no magic.

I'm hoping that will be out soon.
Excellent!
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

Hoplitenomad wrote:Excellent!
I hope so. TA tackles a few of the challenges of low or no magic fantasy roleplaying and does so differently from other games that have tried the same (like Iron Heroes). It actually does S&S very well.

There's a fun space in there where the TA classes could be used for a Tales of Fallen Empire game. Or a Hyborean campaign. Or even a lasers & longswords, Thundarr-style of game.

Because there's firearms already, we could conceivably have a low-tech post apocalyptic campaign as well.

The S&S hack gives some guidance on those. Lasers & longswords is definitely in there.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by podweasel »

Cant wait to see the S&S hack. I'd also like to see your take on monsters before anything else. Love what you're doing, keep up the good work!
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

podweasel wrote:Cant wait to see the S&S hack. I'd also like to see your take on monsters before anything else. Love what you're doing, keep up the good work!
Thanks. And excellent first post to the DCC boards.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

I ran the third session on Sunday. It was just a straight dungeon crawl through a variant of The Portal Under the Stars. It turned out to be super-deadly, mostly because of a couple of added/changed monster encounters I put in. Only one PC (of seven) survived, but for the grace of the Judge (I decided to have him spared to be sacrificed to an erstwhile ally of the cult instead of being killed outright). He is a Native American/American redneck medicine worker and thus chose to be an Exotic. He's now level 1, but I'm going to run another funnel next time with him and a handful of new zeroes - BHP's The Ruins of Ramat. It'll be a secret monastery on an isolated Canadian island that was supposed to guard the Spear of Destiny . . . until everyone died there over 100 years ago.

Anyway, I mostly wanted to comment on the Ruin mechanic. It was really cool to watch the death spiral - PCs kept getting to 0 but kept spending more and more Luck every time as they watched their Ruin scores go up (I think the highest was 6, which was ironically the guy who survived). The Level 1 guy (the Valiant) had an advantage until he, too, quite literally ran out of Luck. I think one character could have survived had her player been more liberal with Luck spends, but everyone else got to Luck 0.

I've been playing around with the idea of Ruin working somewhat similar to Cinematic Unisystem's Drama Points, i.e. the PCs get hosed - kidnapped, ambushed, the villain automatically escapes, whatever, with no chance of avoiding that - but their Ruins all go down temporarily by 1 (minimum of 1). I haven't used this yet because I rarely do the "unavoidable" narrative hoses in my game, but it's something to consider.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

grald_the_hunter wrote:I ran the third session on Sunday. It was just a straight dungeon crawl through a variant of The Portal Under the Stars. It turned out to be super-deadly, mostly because of a couple of added/changed monster encounters I put in. Only one PC (of seven) survived, but for the grace of the Judge (I decided to have him spared to be sacrificed to an erstwhile ally of the cult instead of being killed outright). He is a Native American/American redneck medicine worker and thus chose to be an Exotic. He's now level 1, but I'm going to run another funnel next time with him and a handful of new zeroes - BHP's The Ruins of Ramat. It'll be a secret monastery on an isolated Canadian island that was supposed to guard the Spear of Destiny . . . until everyone died there over 100 years ago.

Anyway, I mostly wanted to comment on the Ruin mechanic. It was really cool to watch the death spiral - PCs kept getting to 0 but kept spending more and more Luck every time as they watched their Ruin scores go up (I think the highest was 6, which was ironically the guy who survived). The Level 1 guy (the Valiant) had an advantage until he, too, quite literally ran out of Luck. I think one character could have survived had her player been more liberal with Luck spends, but everyone else got to Luck 0.

I've been playing around with the idea of Ruin working somewhat similar to Cinematic Unisystem's Drama Points, i.e. the PCs get hosed - kidnapped, ambushed, the villain automatically escapes, whatever, with no chance of avoiding that - but their Ruins all go down temporarily by 1 (minimum of 1). I haven't used this yet because I rarely do the "unavoidable" narrative hoses in my game, but it's something to consider.
Interesting that it was so deadly. Sounds like a lot of fun, actually. :)

For what it's worth, I use both Luck and Ruin similarly to Drama/Hero/Karma Points. For minor things (like a funny joke or cool something or other), I'll hand out a Luck point. For major things like hosing oneself for the sake of genre/character/story or when things go seriously afoul, I'll award a Ruin point.

The Adversary Die is another currency that I use. But only for monsters. Sometimes the monsters have special abilities or powers they use -- at the cost of a lowering of the Adversary Die.

Great to hear how it went. I hope everyone had a good time.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

Ah yeah, forgot about the adversary die.

I had the PCs go over "what did you learn from the investigation" and explained to them about the adversary die.

The adversary die was a d20. They were so disappointed in themselves when it only went down to a d14.

:D
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

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grald_the_hunter wrote:Ah yeah, forgot about the adversary die.

I had the PCs go over "what did you learn from the investigation" and explained to them about the adversary die.

The adversary die was a d20. They were so disappointed in themselves when it only went down to a d14.

:D
Yup. That can really creep a group out. When they're so very certain they know EXACTLY what's going on but only watch the die drop by a couple of shifts.

The fun part is that they don't know what it is they got wrong. So there's all this speculation. It's worked really well when I've used it. A different approach to the idea of a "mystery rpg". I've even gone so far as to write the items down in an envelope and seal it up so groups know I'm not making stuff up.

Happy to hear that you used that part. The in-between adventures stuff can be fun too.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

Two more sessions, one two weeks ago and another Sunday.

We ran Ruins of Ramat two weeks ago and it was pretty much a disaster. It ended in a TPK despite my best efforts.

The party took on the demon even though it was clearly suicide. One guy had the absolute of always getting into fights with people clearly superior to him, and the rest of the party rushed into save him . . . it ended poorly. With one character left, I had a friendly NPC come in to save him from the demon. The remaining PC managed to survive until the encounter with the boss of the dungeon . . . then death when the Big Bad had only 3 hp left. Ruin got too high, Luck ran out.

It was pretty demoralizing.

So, with some time left in the session everyone created new 0-level characters - 8 for 3 players. This time we skipped the Mad Libs part. We had just started Starkweather Mountain when we had to end the session. Realizing that some of the problems with the previous two adventures (one with a near-TPK and the other with an actual TPK) were because I fiddled with them too much, I ran it pretty much as-is. It didn't stop the PCs from going off the beaten path, though. Even when swept up with the mob to the mountain, they decided that haste was folly, and headed back down to investigate the scene of the kidnapping. I used the sample clues provided in TA to use with the adventure and even gave them some extra XP for bothering to investigate. They didn't do a whole lot of investigating (and never did do any damage to the adversary die there or later), but headed back up the mountain. We had to finish the session with them trying to cross the chasm.

The next session, one player didn't show up but two others did, so we reallocated characters and everyone got two, which worked out pretty well. Straight off, two characters plunged to their deaths in the chasm. A third ate it thanks to the Frankendogs (which were pretty deadly; although only one PC died, three others kept going back & forth to 0 and Ruins got to 5 at this point). They were pretty lucky throughout the rest of the adventure (although they were pretty surprised when one of the Frankendogs came back to life; and one PC just barely survived after blowing the poison dust off the paper) and didn't set off any more traps or encounter anything else really dangerous until they got to Anton (Hugo shot at them with a crossbow while they were crossing the bridge then fled, and they never caught up to him). They still had four quakes left until the mountain was destroyed. They encountered Anton and were coming up with a plan to defeat him by tripping him into the lava when he told them his story ("He's the monster, not me!"). They also refused to believe that Drusilla had lost her footing and thought that she had jumped because she was horrified by what Anton had become! Anyway, to my surprise they completely agreed with Anton, and, witting that the entire village would be destroyed (the only local PC had plummeted to his death), made haste down the mountain and out of the area entirely, giving Anton a "Good luck!" (I don't think he is going to make it, guys). They made it out just in time to watch the entire village be destroyed by chunks of mountain and lava.

So I gave them some XP (they did survive, after all), which took them to 1st. We ended up with 5/8 PCs surviving, who then became a valiant, exotic, polymath, hunter, and survivor. They then began to solve a murder (six months later, and after doing some in-between adventures stuff where the polymath grew small horns because of magical research) of a friend of two of the PCs, where I took the city of Sibiu (Hermannstadt to the Germans) and made it a huge sandbox so they could investigate however they liked. I made randomly generated Germans and Romanians but I pretty much ignored the Hungarians because I didn't have a way to generate random names for them.

They didn't get very far in the investigation when we broke for next time.

So, how about a Hungarian random names table? ;)
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by ragboy »

How about all the name generators...

http://www.behindthename.com/random/
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grald_the_hunter
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

ragboy wrote:How about all the name generators...

http://www.behindthename.com/random/
Oh man, that's awesome! Thanks!
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

grald_the_hunter wrote:T
...

They didn't get very far in the investigation when we broke for next time.

So, how about a Hungarian random names table? ;)
This is fantastic. It sounds like an amazing time. It's interesting that the group decided to go back to the village to investigate before Starkweather. Very smart of them. Also interesting that they opted to let the village be destroyed. I've seen groups side with Anton, even talk him down. But I've never seen one let him blow up the hex. That's awesome.

I ran a 0-Level Funnel through Portal Under the Stars a couple of weeks ago. A grand total of 48 casualties. It turned into Big Trouble in Little China meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Dusting off the Sword and Sorcery Hack tomorrow night. I'll post some details on that in the near future.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by grald_the_hunter »

We've done three more sessions, during which they've continued to unravel the conspiracy behind the murders (I kept rolling random murders happening at the end of every investigation day so what was supposed to be one murder has turned into not just five murders, but a plot to frame the PCs for them, all thanks to randomly rolled stuff). The characters continue to be impoverished (they're all lower middle class for some reason) so one voluntarily temporarily became penniless to get 10 guilders. I gave them six investigation days because the plot is pretty complicated and involves a lot of NPCs. They even got a random monster on a stakeout so now they are trying to figure out what vampires have to do with the murders! (nothing) They've been pretty safe except for when a PC died after accidentally poisoning himself (after setting off a trap, he tried to reset it so the owner did not notice. Unfortunately he failed the handle poison roll and poisoned himself). They just started the dungeon portion so we'll probably finish up soon. I put the vampire there as a seed to the next adventure and I think they're going to follow up on that after they finish this.

Anyway, so . . . what's for Free RPG Day this year? :lol:
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by themightyeroc »

I finally downloaded the TA pdf and I love it. I have a small issue with printing the character sheet though, in the PDF it looks good but when printed it is nearly unreadable! Has anyone made a character sheet they could share?

Also, what Zero level sheet do you use?
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

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Thanks for the help smathis!
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by themightyeroc »

I ran Starkweather Mnt. for our first adventure, and everyone enjoyed it. As the GM I had a bit of trouble keeping everything sorted in my head but it all worked out in the end. I had five players and they each ran 1 PC. Our group was a comprised of:

Little Lizzie the street urchin (my daughter), Cyril Miner a Geologist, Doctor Victor Acula a Physician, Esther Blanchette a Nurse, and Lady Arcadia Raider a Dilettante.

Before we started everybody wanted to fill out the Character Mad-lib, which I thought we be fine. However I discovered you shouldn't really do that until you become first level! Because we did this everyone was very attached to their PC right from the get go. Since we will only be playing this once every other month or so it will be fine, but I will not do this again for a funnel.

Major suggestion: This game needs a generic Zero-Level character sheet split into two columns for funnels. Perhaps an add on in TG???

Otherwise this is a fabulous supplement to DCC! Also does anyone here have a suggestion on which version of the Hardcover to order? Are there any differences between the LULU and the Drive-Thru RPG Hardcovers?? They are both the same price, just wondering about quality of one over the other?

Thanks!
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by marshal kt »

I'm tired and stressed from a lot personal problems/drama; and can't find a zero level funnel that Eroc commented on. Is there one or did he create his own? I have the Original higher level adventure with the pre-gens.

Thanks.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by themightyeroc »

Starkweather Mountain is the Zero funnel included in the Transylvanian Adventures rulebook. I plan on converting a few CHILL adventures into TA ones going forward.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by Hoplitenomad »

Did the swords and sorcery variant get published yet?
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

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themightyeroc wrote: Major suggestion: This game needs a generic Zero-Level character sheet split into two columns for funnels. Perhaps an add on in TG???
I have one around here somewhere. I'll see if I can dig it up.
themightyeroc wrote: Otherwise this is a fabulous supplement to DCC! Also does anyone here have a suggestion on which version of the Hardcover to order? Are there any differences between the LULU and the Drive-Thru RPG Hardcovers?? They are both the same price, just wondering about quality of one over the other?

Thanks!
Thanks. My favorite hardcover is the Lulu one. Just better quality overall.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by smathis »

Hoplitenomad wrote:Did the swords and sorcery variant get published yet?
It's supposed to be in D.A.M.N. #2. I got it to Garrett back in March. Haven't heard back on it.
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Re: 2012: Transylvanian Adventures & The Transylvanian Grimo

Post by Hoplitenomad »

Finally got a chance to play. We played the "Winter Home" adventure. One of the best session I've been a part of. One hp away from a TPK. But, our female reaver was able to killed the big bad guy through the sacrifice of the other 3 players. The GM allowed all of the characters who died in the previous round to burn all of their remaining luck to distract the Big Baddy vs a staying throw.

It failed the ST and the Reaver with 1 hp left struck the fatal blow.
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