Ran a playtest last night of the Epyllion adventure I’ll be running at Games on Demand at GenCon. Looks like I can get through the whole adventure in two hours if I keep everyone moving and on task.
Unfortunately, the short time slot means that I can’t introduce story complications when someone rolls a miss. Adding any extra obstacles could leave me out of time without the story coming to a resolution.
My players did notice something right away on the playbooks that I had seen but not thought through. The first age bracket is “Raw Scaled Drake” and the second bracket is “Winged Drake.” Does that mean that beginning characters don’t have wings yet?
We played it that raw-scaled drakes had wings but could glide-fly only as well as chickens and Buzz Lightyear, always down.
Would you be willing to share your Con adventure? What do you plan to do on misses instead of complications? More shadow or maybe wounds, or negatively modifying the older dragons’ opinion of what takes place?
I might want to level up the pre-generated characters to winged drakes. It gives the PCs a little more proficiency, and I need them to do quite a bit of flying.
For misses I”ll probably use some soft penalties, like “you humiliate yourself” or “that’s going to cost you when you get back to the capital.” During the dramatic action near the end I might use missed rolls to separate the PCs or ensnare them or wound them and such. Since those are physical obstacles instead of plot obstacles they’re easier to resolve quickly.
I’d be glad to share my adventure notes if they were at all legible. Right now it’s a mishmash of broken sentences, blank spots, and question marks. I’ll be tidying it up a little based on my playtest, so I might be able to post it when it’s coherent. This month I’m scurrying around doing a lot of prep for GenCon, though, so I can’t predict when I’ll get around to it.
How do I get my hands on this material to playtest with my kids?
Max Saltonstall The Kickstarter backers received preview copies of the playbooks and move sheets. That’s what I’m using.
I need to remember to make it to Games on Demand this year.