Queston about Sailors on the Starless Sea

[lukash]

The Chaos Effigy is AL L? How very chaotic.

Okay, that wasn't really my question. I'm curious about end of the module where players have d6+2 actions to get on the boat so they can escape the collapsing cave. Is this just sort of an abstract system for estimating the time it takes to get onto the boat? If so, I don't get why the switch was made.

I'm going to draw the pyramid/whatever on the board, so they will know exactly how far they have to move to reach the boat, but not how much time. I think I'll just ask them to roll initiative each turn until the roof collapses or they are all on the boat. Each turn I'll explain the cave is becoming more unstable. Maybe on the turn before the last and on the last turn I'll roll some falling rock attacks against tardy PCs.

Anyone have some insight they can share, or some examples of play that worked well?

[DM Cojo]

When I ran it for my group, I rolled the number of rounds, and then asked them what they wanted to do. I described the beginnings of the collapse. Some players wanted to get loot, and other went for the boat. I decided it took two rounds to get from the base of the pyramid into the boat. Those at the top of the pyramid needed two rounds to get down the pyramid, and then two rounds to get to the boat. These were simply arbitrary time periods I chose. If I recall correctly, for the players on top of the pyramid, I motivated them by having falling debris almost him them (DC 5 REF save to avoide a falling boulder, and added 3 to the DC every round after) until they either got in the boat, or were squashed. All of the remaining players wisely decided that they had all the loot they wanted to wait on, and got in the boat on the last possible round before the total collapse. It worked pretty well for me.

[lukash]

I like your save vs rocks idea.