Last night, taking the opportunity afforded by our GM being away, I ran two of the regular Friday Nighters through a short playtest of the Rashn’s Tower adventure using D&D5e.
It was a very good night of gaming, allowing me to try/discuss the House Rules proposed earlier in the week. We also playtested the Bruxx.
Here’s what I learned.
D&D Flows
Although I’ve been enjoying the games we’ve had with the new rules, last night I really began to appreciate just how much the game flows. There was an easy familiarity with D&D that I felt I lost with 4th edition, and that was damaged somewhere shortly after we moved to 3.5. I never really recovered it until last night. It felt exciting.
What worked well for me were the fights being easy and quick, and the rules getting out of the way of everything else I needed to adjudicate. Certainly the high degree of preparation helped, but more than anything I felt that it was easy to make rulings and keep the game running along.
The Adventure’s Good
Module B1 was always a good introduction to dungeoneering. What was extra cool, at least for me, was hearing both players coo over how neat it was to “do that kind of game” again.
I think that returning to the Old School dungeon exploration format of the scenario breathed fresh air into my own DMing… and the game felt like the best session I’ve run in years. Yes, really.
It was cool when the characters came across the dead adventurers’ bodies. It was cool to use the Magic Mouth spell, and the Wandering Monster table, and a myriad of other details.
My most smiley moment was when the heroes tried to get Tahmura’s treasure… only to discover an illusion. It was FUN and very greatly so.
Prep Helps
Being prepared was also good. I’ve tended to run very “off the cuff” games over recent years (for good reasons, mostly to do with limited free time) but playing the game having invested two days in editing my own version of the dungeon really paid off. Big time!
There are things I want to change. The playtest helped me realise, for example, that more frequent small amounts of treasure would be better. And I need to add more wizard tomes to be found, and similar. Yet, overall, it works really well.
Is it worth the time to type up the notes for each location? Yes. If you can, it makes life so much easier… but I’m not sure how practical it is to do if you’re running a regular game. In a way, I’m prepping my next campaign (and prepping way ahead for the school campaign), and I hope that the cumulative effort on the setting will make DMing the locations in the sandbox easier.
One thing is for sure: it’s a heck of a lot easier to modify and update a location once you’ve written up the details. Going forward, I can re-present Rashn’s Tower and simply change details to reflect the impact the party made.
House Rules Got Tested
My last post generated a lot of chatter about two of those House Rules I proposed (“Wizard spells” and “3d6 in order”), but the playtest showed the other four rules work fine.
We had one use of the shield shattering rules, which saved a hireling’s life (more on those guys in a sec), and the Druid took one crit which smashed his leather armour. In both cases, the guys liked the rule, re-equipped from looting the thugs they’d killed, and moved on. The main comment of note was that these house rules added “character” to the game, making it a “better story”. That’s cool.
Following discussion, I’m going to bench the “3d6 in order” rule because (in truth) I have no beef with the basic 4d6 system – it was an over-zealous idea to adhere to Old School values that, arguably, don’t fit so well in a game where ability scores are directly tested far more often.
Also, I’m going to leave the Wizard spells alone for now. My intent was to encourage more use of non-combat spells, add some flavour to the setting through wizardly tomes, and to hopefully give Wizards more (not less) spells. In hindsight, however, it raises more problems than it solves – like the issue of copying spells – and distracts players from the fun. That said, I’m still going to place wizardly tomes of spells around and encourage the use of utility spells through interesting challenges in adventures. Sometimes, though, good intentions give sucky ideas.
Oh, and the Bruxx played well. Big thumbs up from the guys!
Hirelings Got Added
I did a spur-of-the-moment thing: I gave the two PCs support through access to two semi-NPC “hirelings”. This is an Old School idea adapted.
In short, the guys got some much-needed support (in and out of combat) through the addition of a Fighter and a Rogue. They got them, however, in the form of an NPC stat block which I allowed them to “play” unless they were trying to use the hirelings for something they’d never agree to do. Enter Slyfoot and Khurshid.
These worked a treat! For the exchange of a share of the treasure, the party got some chunky support both in and out of battle. Slyfoot opened doors, while Khurshid did the heavy lifting and breaking… and the Druid and Monk got to adventure.
What was most interesting were the comments of the guys: they told me the hirelings were both easy and fun to roleplay, not intrusive to play with, and presented in a format that worked well. Conclusion: I’m going to create a few more local hirelings for the times when the party needs an extra one or two “professional” bodies.
Oh, and for the curious, these are simply the NPC Thug (from the Monster Manual) with one level of Fighter added for Khurshid, and one level of Rogue added for Slyfoot. Easy.
Whats Next?
I’ve learned that writing / editing the adventures in long form is helpful. I’ve also managed to test out my proposed House Rules, the Bruxx race, and the introduction of Hirelings. That’s not bad for a four-hour session.
You know what’s even better? Both the guys wanted to keep playing in the setting. That’s what it’s all about for me.
Game on!
