Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

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cheimison
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Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by cheimison »

I ran BF1 Morgansfort and it massacred my players time and again. Despite having 2-5 henchmen and 2-4 PCs at all times they routinely lost at least one person every dungeon delve. They weren't being overtly stupid or anything, but I play it straight and let the dice fall where they may.

The problem is that playing only once a week this meant that the players basically never leveled up and, if they did, they often died immediately afterward. The amount of hirelings they had to manage was also tedious, especially since a couple of the players had never handled hirelings before. This level of massacre is okay if you're playing 4-6 hour sessions or more than once a week, but with short sessions and infrequent playing it makes it feel like the players are getting literally nowhere. On top of that, without nonsensical levels of monster replenishment like Diablo or Doom on harder difficulties they quickly run out of monsters and/or treasure that could actually give them enough XP to level up - leaving only the more difficult scenarios in the module, which are even more likely to kill them. Morgansfort is written a bit like Keep on the Borderlands and, like KotB, is likely to kill about 20 characters or more before you actually get through it.

I don't feel like editing adventures or fudging dice, so what is a good printed BF adventure that won't lead to a TPK 50% of the time? I'd still like to run Morgansfort but I honestly feel that it should be a level 2-3 adventure for a party of 5-10, rather than 2-4 new characters at level 1.
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Hexamer47
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by Hexamer47 »

I always start PCs off at level 2 when using Morgansfort. But if you don't want to do that then I would suggest Tales of the Laughing Dragon or Adventure Anthology 1, as many of the adventurers in AA1 are suited for low level characters.
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teaman
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by teaman »

I'm a "start at 3rd level" DM for every campaign.

Just my approach, but I'm a softee.
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SmootRK
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by SmootRK »

Sometimes I tend towards 5K xp, so some get 3rd level, others 2nd.

But most times just start w zero xp and run other small manageable encounters to help prep for greater things.
Is it really the end, not some crazy dream?
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orobouros
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by orobouros »

Beneath Brymassen is probably good for your party. Castle by the Sea might be good, too.
Let me plug my own module: A Temple of Slides and Stairs, which is meant to be an intro module. It can be completed in two hours (if you rush) or three (with some leeway) so it might be a good adventure for your party. It's written to scale to the party size, too, so you shouldn't need a bunch of hirelings.

There's a number of one-page dungeons you can find that work well for starting adventurers, too.

That all being said, consider some alternatives. Load them up with extra GP for new characters. They can buy some better equipment. Similarly, if you let them loot the dead, that's a source of resources right there.

How experienced are your players? I had a game with a group of both experienced and new TT RPG players. One of them (you'll have to guess) just ran headlong into a trap, while the other audiably snickered as soon as I said, "before you get to where you placed your token..." Even a single battle can wear down a party at first level, and that's okay. Go back, restock, rest up, and try again. You're the DM, you choose what happens in the meantime while the party is away.

If something just isn't working for your game, change it. If your players are creative or resourceful in dealing with enemies, let them have a bonus of some sort, even if that case isn't covered in the rules. Using a broken door to force wolves through a small opening? That crawling mutt will probably have to take an AC penalty while emerging, and only one can fit through at a time. Newer TT RPGs let you power up to deal with enemies, but there's a lot of creativity you can foster in the players, too.

Just running into battle and rolling the dice is a good way to TPK.
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GM Parseth
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by GM Parseth »

5k start experience is usually pretty solid for a less-than-six-members party.
Working on - The Fallen City & The Baroness of Blood
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Olgabelle
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by Olgabelle »

I don't think any of your criticisms of Morgansfort are bad things. Cautious play leads to more survival.
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quozl
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by quozl »

Do they ever run away?
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Metroknight
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by Metroknight »

quozl wrote: Wed Sep 26, 2018 9:14 pm Do they ever run away?
My players do when they think about the encounter and it fits in the character's personality.
cheimison
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Re: Morgansfort is a Meat Grinder, Good Introductory Modules?

Post by cheimison »

Olgabelle wrote: Wed Sep 26, 2018 9:13 pm I don't think any of your criticisms of Morgansfort are bad things. Cautious play leads to more survival.
Long time since I checked in but I have two issues with this:
If they play super-cautiously like an oldschool 1eHead, they'll never get anywhere. We simply did not have enough time in a session to do this, they'd end up the entire game in one hallway where they encounter nothing and poke the walls with a stick. Again, for a long play session with regular players this is fine; but when you're dealing with normies who have wives and jobs and don't like spending six hours a day twice a week playing make believe it's a lot to ask. It is virtually impossible to find other Grognards to play with, or I would. Most people these days don't even have the patience for strategy VIDEO GAMES, much less a hardcore OD&D experience.

Two, caution simply does not alter the mechanics of the game. An effectively invisible trap or a bad luck position of a random encounter (blocking off the only explored exit) has about a 50+% chance to kill a first level fighter with full hit points. There is literally nothing they can do about this and no way to predict it.

If I had a handful of 53 year old wargamer nerd bachelors to play with the lethality of these games would be no problem (I have spent decades getting killed in D&D) but for people who are trying to play on alternate weekends between school and work it makes the game a series of failures with diminishing payoffs.

The low granularity and abstractness of D&D-style games, especially at low levels, makes it pretty easy to demonstrate that an Orc is more than likely to kill most PCs in one hit and that there aren't many options on what to do about it once you've encountered one. Running away is a sound tactic many times, but often it's not - either because of positioning, because the orc has a bow, etc. You can get shot in the back as easily as the front. In fact, it's probably unrealistic how easy it is to kill an adult human being in low level games. GURPS and RuneQuest characters aren't nearly as squishy, even dumb peasants (as opposed to PCs) because there is enough detail in the game system to reflect a state between "totally incompetent baby made of glass" and "demigod who can tank crossbow bolts to the face", whereas D&D-type characters tend to be one or the other.

Now these are features and legacies of the old D&D games, so it's not necessarily a 'bad' thing, but it can make it very difficult for new players with limited schedules. And while it's possible to have D&D games without a lot of combat and traps, 90% of published modules for OSR and old D&D feature these extensively, as it's basically intended to be a war game.
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