I managed to put together a group to play with the new rule set and generated one character for each class in the game: Barbarian, Thief, Fighter, and Sorcerer. Adam (who played in my first Crypts and Things campaign) played the Barbarian, Jade played the Thief, Brandon (who played in my second Crypts and Things campaign) and David played the fighter. I came up with a quick dungeon crawl where the adventurers where trying to find a thief that had disappeared with a sizable amount of treasure.
I don’t really remember the specifics of the events from the game but the party overcame a ghoul, some skeletons and they encountered an insane immortal and a demon. As the barbarian, Adam when full dark side when he sacrificed the insane immortal and freed the demon while the rest of the party (rightfully so) fled.
All in all, we had a good time and it gave me a chance to check out the change to the rules. The Skill system has been more clearly defined, the magic systems have changed somewhat in that in the original Crypts and Things game White magic was safe and now it isn’t. White magic is downright dangerous although using Black magic still can lead to madness and corruption. Also, saving throws have been replaced with the Pressing Your Luck mechanic. With Pressing Your Luck, you can also do a lot of other things as well such as recovering a spell or avoiding a death blow. All in all, the game is a little bit deadlier than it was which is OK with me.
As a note, my friend David is David J. West, a published writer of horror and dark fantasy/sword and sorcery stories. My personal favorite of his yarns is Whispers of the Goddess which is a historical fantasy that is set against the backdrop of the sack of Constantinople which occurred during the the 4th Crusade. It is based on an actual event where a mob tore down a statue of the goddess Athena. It think that Robert E. Howard would have enjoyed it and if you are reading this blog, I think that you will too.
Here is his Amazon page
http://www.amazon.com/David-J.-West/e/B004AIN4W4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_3
Here is his blog page
http://david-j-west.blogspot.com/
Here are some pictures from the adventure
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| Sorcerer character sheet. |
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| Thief character sheet. I could have sworn that I took a picture of the Barbarian and Fighter minis. |
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| The Ghoul Bride that the party found eating the missing theif |
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| Attack of the Spider |
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| The party battles animated statues |
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| Watch your step |
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| The barbarian goes darkside and sacrifices the old insane immortal by pushing him into the demon summing circle. |
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| Everyone else flees the demon, which is a good idea. |
I've had a great time running a few campaigns using the remastered beta rules. It has been in my experience though that test your luck is a tad over relied upon as a task resolution mechanic. When taking CON damage and rolling to stay concious be a (CON) skill test, or the roll for sanity depletion is a (WIS) skill test, there is a certain uniformity to it and athsetic appeal. Using skill number for saving throws as well also prevents the issue of high luck/level characters being immune to magic for the first few spells directed at them. You basically need to 'soften' up high luck PCs with traps and tricks that deplete their luck for that enemy lich to be a threat.IMO,skill number should be a bit more centralized as the task resolution mechanic, and luck as a boon for that fun special stuff like max damage, cleave, and retain spell.
ReplyDeleteThats just my 2 cents on my experienced thus far. But I have been running 2 campaigns a week for awhile now with the beta rules, so I do feel like i have some insight into the games long term workings. But as always, YMMV
Thanks for the input and insight! I wish that I was running a couple of campaigns with the beta rules set so I could see how I would adjust to them.
DeleteThanks Niels, it was a lot of fun!
ReplyDelete