You Jump down the shaft? Really? (play-test)

Just to set the mood, here is another silly doodle from my Amazing Adventurers AND incredible exploits pdf.

Adventurers in over their heads, Possibly?

So we played AAEE over the weekend.

Four players:

1. The old man wizard Jeremiah and his tentacle “Jim” (returning from adventure 1)
2. Hoarroar Moonshadow : The man who would be a thief, (Returning from adventure 1, now level 2!)
3. A new Wizard, (I forget the name let’s call him “Red”  in honor of the player) this wizard worships a god of Smoke, and casts ghostly and or Growing seeds, was a former snake oil salesman, and generally can raise some havoc, he also managed to roll a dead fish as his starting weapon, so yeah …
4. And a lady Minotaur warrior (Name also escapes me, Call her Velma) whose personality kicker said “wants to go out in a blaze of glory,” this pleased the player to no end.  The lady Minotaur had several careers the most relevant being “wizard’s footman” which lead us to decide she worked for Jeremiah, sort of like a research helper, and visiting nurse.

Game one was written about HERE

• Random Adventure seed: Prove the innocence of a local merchant by finding his daughter.
• Random location: The lost temple in MoonWood swamp.
• Random monsters:  (I rolled a few ahead while one of the players had a cig)
• Level 3 Tusked Iron dog,
• level 1 encrusted fungus,
• level 0 glowing rat,
•  level 4 snot filled statue.)
• Map: I have a note book of maps that I just sketch when I have time. I used one of them.

Awwww (only much bigger and more toothy)

The Game:

It went well.

The party thief called in a ticket and pumped a local ex-adventure for information. He found about the iron dogs, that the temple they were seeking was four levels deep, and that it lies in the middle of a swamp. Not only that but the thief was also given a jar of insects that the old man told him would act as armor if they ran into said iron dogs. A good roll, a good haul.

One of the other players, (Red the wizard whose character was once a snake oil salesman,) sold the old man a bar of soap which red claimed would regenerate his stump leg for some gold and a punch blade.

The party ran into five tentacle filled “encrusted Fungus” in the swamp.  The encrusted part came from the small shells the fungus had stuck to themselves to create a protective covering. After a couple of rounds and a few dead fungus, everyone agreed the giant fungus were a bit disturbing, so the lady Minotaur in the party proceeded to chop the  crap out of them with some of the best rolls any one has had in the game so far.

Wow, yeah so that thing... umm ... ok.

The Wizard (Red) managed to fumble during the fungus combat, but it only resulted in a trip and a lost round. His fumble was a missed opportunity for me. I should have described it more vividly than I did, I was trying to move the encounter along and did not make the fumble memorable enough. (note for next time)

They rested and I rolled for a random encounter coming up blank.

Velma the lady Minotaur scavenged an old wagon to create a shallow raft in order to cross a stagnant pond, good move by her.

Once at the temple the huge stone doors seemed troublesome until Red used his growing seeds on them and with an excellent result roll, ripped them clean of the front of the ancient structure.

Some glowing rats were dispatched, Velma fashioned one into a dripping glowing banana.  Hoarroar tried his hardest to play sneak thief while the rest of the part roamed around kicking over ancient vases.

In level one the party discovered a room with 4 hot coal filled copper braziers surrounding a shaft. They tipped a brazier into the shaft and watched the embers fall 40 feet down onto a sloping passage below. They had the means to climb down, but Velma the Minotaur decided to empty a brazier, and jump down the shaft circle sled style (remember her personality kicker?  Go out in a blaze of glory.)  Some rolls were asked for and failed. 

So she took off in a shower of sparks and one must assume grunting. She landed 40 feet below, hit the slope, slid 20 feet right past the entry to level 2, fell down the second shaft, saw level three halfway down the  60 foot plummet, finally landing  heap of sparks and cow meat in level 4.

She took 10D6 damage one for each 10 foot of vertical fall, I rolled badly on a lot of them and she took about 36 points of resolve dammage which left her with around 4 resolve left (or something close to that.)

You get this guy because when I google "Female Minotaur" I find things I don't want to re-post. 

The rest of the party set about using ropes and chains to climb down to her. Once they reached her they took a short rest to recover, and again I rolled no random encounters. (boo!)

They explored level 4 and fought off a few more glowing rats.

The party  awakened a snot spraying statue which  guarded a secret door, the characters that were hit by the stuff realized it did real damage so everyone decided to  run past it making checks to avoid getting hit, The wizard Red was the one most in danger and it set up a pretty  tense check to avoid further damage.

In the end they found the girl and freed her and found a nice secret way out. 

They did leave 2 levels unexplored for future delves, if they are ever so inclined.

The party found two randomly generated magic items:

“Exploding Dagger of Tether darts” dagger that shoots its blade out on a long filament, causes an explosion then retracts, it has about 40 charges.

And “the master's boots of fire holding”  The keep the wearer warm and cozy, they  cause 1d6 fire damage when you kick , and they occasionally suck in small flames. They also look like your sister’s uggs.

The Minotaur Velma discovered gravity.

Jeramiah Discovered wet wood burns more slowly than dry wood. (he tried to set fire to the raft, but it was soggy.)

The play test went well , combat was swift enough.
I think, the players did the idea of getting to pick from special effects when they roll well. 

The thief used it to good  result when he got a good deal of information and even a one use magic item from his inner city contact, and Red the wizard made great use of choosing perks to rip the temple door off with a spell.

At character generation wizards need to be stream lined, making random spells simply took too long. As a solution I'm going to make up a chart of 100 spells on which the player will roll on for starting spells, the "create random spells" chart will be moved to the character improvement section, and only used when leveling up.

As a Gm, it kept me on my toes. I rolled up 4 random monsters, and a few random magic items, and then It was really up to me to  flesh them out. When a result like "The master's boots of fire holding" comes up the GM has to think pretty quickly to determine what the hell that would be.  

Someone forgot their boots of fire holding.

In the end we laughed allot and I think every one had a good time. At the end of the day that's my only design goal with this one.

Any interest, Questions or comments, please leave a comment.