Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

Not sure how I missed JD's changes.. sorry!

S'awright, I got it.

As far as I know, this is the final text. Anyone wanting to take a final look at it, please do. I'm going to see if I can find some artwork to fill in a few blank spaces, but other than that I'm done with it. If no problems are found in the next month, I'll send it to print.

I'll give this another look-over. Can't wait to see this thing in print!

PLAYTESTING AFTER ACTION REPORT: BENEATH BRYMASSEN

I originally had a much longer writeup, but the forum didn't like the length. Just as well it was likely too much of a recap of our game, though some of our interactions were pretty funny. Following are just a few comments for discussion, as well as a neat cliffhanger ending I devised at the end.

AREA 2/13
So first of all my players went right past the secret door to room 2. Not sure how many players are accustomed to checking for secret doors everywhere they go, so I wonder if this room and room 13 would ever be found?

AREA 5
I made the east door, the one going outside, be open. I thought it better explained the animal droppings in the room, as well as the breeze. It would take some creativity on the part of the DM if the party decides to go outside!

AREA 6
My ever careful party opened this door just a crack. This set off the "battle axe trap", which I renamed "pendulum trap", made better sense to me than a swinging axe from the ceiling...

Because of thorough searching, they found the secret door. The second secret door seemed easier to find, as they were not content with a dead end.

AREA 10
Coming into the catacomb, the two elves did a number of searches through the remains. I gave them each 10% chance of finding something, rolling twice per character, and they still found nothing. Questioning here the 1% per round of searching!

AREA 11
So the fighter and thief took off in the other direction. They went right to room 11 with the crazy hobgoblin and his ESP medallion. Here is another fun chance for DM creativity. Basically as my players were discussing what they were "going to say" to the creature, I would use this tabletop banter to account for his ESP. He would speak as if he had read their minds. I made this character a little crazy and a comic relief.

-=CLIFFHANGER ENDING=-
So the module doesn't really say much about what to do at the end, other than there is a sack of gold involved. I decided that the father has been slowly turned towards vampirism, and today he finally turned. The party notices a strange look on his face as they return the children. Vamp-Dad offers his handshake as thanks, and the party refuses. Rather than take offense, he blankly smiles and thanks the party anyway, asking them to be on their way.

My wife's character, the cleric, says "I grab the children and run". At this point (remember we had bounced back and forth all game long during various cliffhanger moments) I exclaim "cliffhanger" and end the game!

-=INTENDED OUTCOME AND EPILOGUE=-
What I had intended to have happen was enough clues to scare the party, but them to leave peacefully. I did NOT want a handful of level ones fighting a vampire, especially with exactly zero magic weapons between the,. I thought a later "vampire hunt" would have been fun, with a dark twist: Vamp Dad has bitten and turned the children!

-=EPILOGUE=-
We sat down today for a second game session. I recapped the action, giving the cleric about five seconds (real world time, not in game) to make a decision. She wields her holy symbol and launches a vial of holy water. L1 clerics have zero chance of turning vamps, but they are "repulsed" according to their monster description. The holy water missed, but I allowed a 1HP damage due to splash. Rolled for 7 hit dice, made for a 24HP vamp. Rolled an 11 against morale, and very lucky for the party, the vamp retreated!

To make his retreat dramatic, I shape shifted him to a wolf. Jumps out the window, and rolled 3d6 for a pack of summoned wolves. Pretty scary exit I believe...

-=WHAT'S NEXT=-
Since we are all starting out anew, we plan on staying inside the AA packet. To transition into a vampire hunt, I need to get the players leveled up a bit. I have imagined a dwarven vampire hunting party, because why not... I think it will be hilarious. My players need to prove themselves first before gaining their trust. I am using this as a bridge into "Gold in the Hills". I'll try and post our results and my playtest feedback on that mini-adventure later.

DEATH CRYPT OF KHALDUN

I jumped into this module a little under prepared. We were in "Gold in the Hills" and the party decided to descend into the mine shaft. I had to give them something to do, so I found a plot device to say the dwarves uncovered this ancient tomb during their digs. I eventually realized that our player's party was a little under powered to defeat the skeletal black dragon at the end, though luckily they got past the mummy largely due to fire damage. That being said, I allowed their cleric to turn the dragon as a skeleton, since I had no other options. Which brings me to my feedback.

When we add cool new monsters, I think we need some added info in addition to the stats. I know that not every scenario can be covered and the DM can make a lot of decisions, but what to do with the Minotaur Skeleton and especially the Dragon Skeleton were a little ambiguous. I googled my arse off, and really didn't find much. I never played 4e, but needless to say the 4e cleric turning didn't translate over well. I ended up justifying my decision to let the turning happen based on a 4e description of skeletons however. It stated that they do not act on their own initiative, but are merely animated, and will attack you until dead.

Now that somewhat sounded like it would never turn or retreat, yet it also had a morale check of 8. So there should have been some chance of the dragon even fleeing upon first contact or significant threat. Further, the dragon probably shouldn't have had it's own memories, determination, and other things associated with having a brain. In essence, it was a large animated shamble of bones. As such, I let it be turned!

Further discussion on the skeletal dragon, I would question why it still had an acid attack. I think there should be some sort of gland missing that would prevent this type of attack.

Overall this was a very fun adventure. I like the rising skeletons and zombies in the false crypt, I continually raised two at a time. The consistent extra goodies that keep getting thrown at the players are real flavorful, and made for a real fun encounter.

As an aside I've also got some review/after action reports on a few of the AA1 adventures on the BFRPG blog.

Sorin_777: those were fun reads! If you still have the longer text, or if not, you should definitely submit your play test reports and opinions of the module, BFRPG in general, etc. to Solo as a possible blog post.

I am still giving AA1 a look-over, and generally giving it a bit higher priority than the other in-progress items as it's going to be going to print in a month or so. I think the amount of content is just outstanding, and I personally hope to contribute to a future AA2.

You don't have to wait to contribute to AA2. Just write a shortie and post it in the Workshop!

chiisu81 wrote:Sorin_777: those were fun reads! If you still have the longer text, or if not, you should definitely submit your play test reports and opinions of the module, BFRPG in general, etc. to Solo as a possible blog post.

Actually I might have saved the longer post as a text file. Either way, a few of my comments on Beneath don't make sense, because of the way I cropped out some of the text. Thanks for the feedback, I'll see if I can give the longer version a once over.

Okay, so way back on Christmas Eve I called this a "final text." chiisu81 said he'd give it a final once-over, and has not since posted any comments on the quality of the text.

I'm doing a flow check on it; as far as I'm concerned, this next release IS the print release. Yes, we're doing it.