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Good "demo" adventure?

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 5:08 am
by finarvyn
I can find lots of tournament adventures which I can convert to DCC, but what I'm looking for is a decent adventure for a "demo" game at a game store. The store owner said that he didn't want players to have to commit to a whole block of time, and that players might drift in and out. This would seem to mess up most traditional adventures.

So... any good modules or adventures out there that are built to handle this sort of situation?

I had an idea of just putting together a couple of generic rooms and then alternating one and then the other. Seems kind of boring if anyone wants to stay for the whole time, but would allow newbies to jump in at frequent intervals.

I was also pondering having both blank character sheets and some stock pre-gen characters in case drop-by players wanted to create their own or just jump into the action. What I don't like about this is that I think character creation is half the fun.

What do you think?

Re: Good "demo" adventure?

Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:27 am
by GnomeBoy
I played a game at DunDraCon this past February, which had an approach that might work for you...

It was called the Dungeon of Chaos. The premise explained briefly why the place existed and why the PCs needed to do something about it.
A wizard had created the place to spawn random monsters for him to hone his magical abilities against... But he went missing and now the place is spitting out abominations that are threatening the countryside... The PCs were the short-straw drawers among the populace who had to go face off with this stuff and try to stop their creation.

Game play was structured around each level of the dungeon having three rooms (each with something to fight in it), interconnecting corridors with a trap at some point, a puzzle on each level, and the third fight was always a 'boss' (not my favorite term, but there it is). The DM determined all the layout, traps and room contents randomly.
So even he didn't know what we were going to fight at any given moment, nor what lay around the corner until we turned it, or listened, or what have you. Kept him on his toes, and might help make running a demo more interesting for yourself, as opposed to just running the same few rooms over and over...

In that game, even character creation was randomized, but I don't think that sounds too appropriate for a DCC demo.

But a "three-room dungeon level" might make a good demo, and if you like the randomizing approach, that could keep it interesting for you and for anyone that wanted to sit in longer than a fight or two... For that matter there are any number of 'dungeon generators' on the web and you could print off as many maps as you'd like, and randomly generate the contents from there...