Goodman Games

Last night I ran my group through Sailors of the Starless Sea, and we all had a great time. It is the first of the modules that I have run for them, but will certainly not be the last, as I weave the published adventures in with my own homebrew content to make a (hopefully quite long lived) campaign...

Something very, very odd happened though - only one character died, and he basically killed himself on accident by using what he didn't realize was an area effect thrown weapon as a "smash it in his face" melee weapon.

It wasn't a funnel for the players as I had run a little introduction to the campaign before it, but they had a smaller party of 1st level characters and picked up one 0-level "henchmen" each as they proceeded through... It could have been a real meat-grinder, I just wasn't getting lucky with any of my die rolls and the party was managing all the good rolls to back up their plan of action.

Actually, it was quite marvelous to see... even if I do hope that next session cuts their party number in half.

Sounds about right.

It's a 0-level adventure. I'd imagine that a party of 1st levels that had favorable die rolls and didn't do anything stupid could survive it with minimal casualties.

I'll be Judging that one for my group soon. Any advice or pointers you'd care to pass on?

My only advice is to identify as quickly as possible whether your group of players are indecisive or not, and if they are, present what should be obvious options to their characters rather than wait for them to initiate action... my group had a huge lag time between me setting up each area descriptively and them finally actually doing something in character because there was a very real open-feeling to the adventure at large, starting with there being three and a half possible approaches just to enter the adventure area.

The adventure is very well built, and is statistically actually quite a challenge, so there isn't really much needed in the way of alteration or special treatment that isn't mentioned in the adventure itself.

Almost forgot - to keep the final encounter from being a real jumble of seemingly un-paced action, I made a certain baddie invulnerable until he could actually take action (once his "shell" broke). Had I not, my party would have swarmed him and ended the climactic encounter in a single round.

Quick necro-ing of this thread, just to add this:

I ran Starless Sea tonight and also added an "indestructible" necromancer that presided over the ceremony at the top of the ziggurat.
He was eventually killed when the party rescued the last prisoner destined to be sacrificed.
One the beastman was also a chieftain/tougher cookie (more hp, better AC).

Noticeable anecdote: of the 4 survivors (out of a total of 22 PCs in all, over 2 sessions), one was a GNOME, based on my soon-to-be-published in CRAWL! class. Possibly the FIRST of his kind to go through a 0-level DCCRPG funnel!!

Sweet! Looking forward to this issue of Crawl!

Just finished this with my group yesterday. Four survivors out of 20, so all 5 players kept one except for an unlucky player.

The module was really fun. This was our first adventure with DCC. It was fun to see veteran players being so cautious!

Any suggestion on a follow-up adventure?

Also, how do people handle it when one player looses all his characters?

Any comment welcome.

I make folks start with an all new set of 0-level characters. After the first adventure, they'll live longer because of the protection of the other leveled characters. They'll level in no time, unless they die. Then they start over again. It's worked out fine. But they're pushing 3rd level, so that may stop and I might let new characters start with a level or so. But new players (especially new to DCC RPG) will always start with a batch of 0-level guys.

Thanks for the feedback!

Thoom!

****spoilers below**** Tried to be as generic as possible.







In the final encounter on top of the summit... Do all of the beasties around get involved in the action or do just the ones on the top of the summit?

Basically do the PCs have to fight 20+ enemies or less than 5 enemies?

A lot depends on how they approach it. Suitably disguised, the beastmen might ignore PCs for the most part, as they march up the ramp. IMC, they recognized the black silk chaos tabard that the chaotic warrior wore, and started chanting prayers... "Shub! Shub! Ni-gu-RATH!" etc, and followed him up the ramp while another PC walked beside him with the black metal censer from the keep above. Of course everything goes bananas once they get to the top, but... it can be as stealthy or as full-frontal assault as your players like.

My players wore the few sets of robes they had grabbed and ushered the rest of the party at spearpoint as if they were to be added to the fires. That got them to the top where things got hairy. An awesome crit felled they effigy before too many of the batsmen could react and the roof started coming down...then it was every guy, beast, mollusk for themselves!

So, as you can see it really depends on the approach the players take

*** very Mild SPOILERS BELOW***






I've ran two groups of four through this adventure in the past week.

First group, I'll affectionately call the newbs, made it through with flying colors. I had never met these guys until I put up a public play notice and they all eagerly signed up.

Of the original 16, 6 or 7 survived. This group of mostly new to pen and paper RPGs players really amazed me. They made really smart decisions and assumptions. If this were a group of experienced players I probably would have thought they were cheating by having knowledge of the module. Showed me a thing or two about my assumptions.

The second group didn't fair so well. This group are hardcore gamers. They play RPGs a few times week. Out of the original 16, 3 survived. They barely knocked down the chaos lord and the shaman threatened to run rampant through the remaining three party members. Until the Slave with a luck of 5 stepped up and swung at the Shaman. AC 9 was his result. I told him, if you spend one luck...

He spent the luck. Rolled a 6 on dmg and felled the shaman. I gave him +2 luck right then and there for stepping up to the plate when the party was down to 3 peasants.

I'm guiding the newbs through first level character advancement tonight. I'm pretty nervous as I've never done it before myself. After that we will start slogging into the People of the Pit adventure.