JoeGKushner
First Post
The Iron Crypt of the Heretics
DCC 12.5
Written by Harley Stroh
Published by Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com
http://www.goodmangames.com/50125preview.php
ISBN: 0-976808595
24 b & w pages
$10.99
I’m in the middle of running the Shacked City by Piazo. One of the gamers is getting ready drop the game due to a change in his school schedule in the fall. He’s a gamer who enjoys min-maxing his characters and getting into the thick of things. Since the party is currently 13th level, I decided that to send out this player, I’d run The Iron Crypt of the Heretics.
At 24 pages, it’s small enough to run in a night or two and with a few changes to the background, I had no problem putting it into Greyhawk. My group is good in that they know not to push in terms of campaign details if it’s not going to effect the overall campaign.
The interior cover is in blue and white and contains the map of the Iron Crypt of the Heretics. It’s very old school. The internal art by Jason Edwards, Doug Kovacs, Brad McDevitt, Jesse Mohn, Chris Watkins, and Leo Winstead, is also very first edition.
The book uses italics for material that is to be read aloud to the players. It includes pregenerated characters, 12th level, for quick game play. One of my favorite bits though, are the numerous player’s handouts ranging from scenes in the adventure to written materials that the players come across.
The adventure uses a wide variety of traps, puzzles, and of course monsters, to challenge the players. In my playtest, we lost two characters but the players didn’t feel robbed or as if the game was ‘too hard’ and as a matter of fact, felt pretty good about stompping most of the adventure up to that point. Part of the problem I think, with higher level d20 game play as opposed to this particular adventure.
One of my favorite things about the adventure, due to it’s size I bet, is that the monster statistics are right there when you need them. No flipping to the back. No hoping that Piazo comes to their senses and provide some downloads of the monsters for the Shackled City. No hoping that some third party web site puts the stats on their host site. Everything you need right there without flipping a single page. Thumbs up on that alone.
In short, if you’re looking for a solid adventure with lots of opportunities for players to exercise their brains as well as their brawn, the Iron Crypt of the Heretics is for you. It’s quick to start and straightforward enough to require minimum adjustment prior to playing.
My own playtest notes are as follows:
My group consists of the following:
Pill: 13th level straight rogue
Sabastian: multi-class ritual warrior with human evolved levels (13th level total) Newfound and proud owner of a greatsword, Coldfire, that has frost and fire properties.
Ivan: dwarf paragon racial levels, smoking eye template and racial substitution levels on his fighter levels.
Eveserak: mojh magister with racial levels.
Father Angus Wells (yes, named after the fantasy-fiction author), a 7th level cleric of Pelor with 6 levels of Radiant Servant. Also has the good old Divine Spark from Weapons of Legacy.
You’ll note that I allow both Arcana Evolved and standard d20 material in my campaign. I use point buy for characteristics, maximum hit points, action points and all manner of campaign options to minimize death, such as a saving throw versus Fortitude from Unearthed Arcana.
So far it’d played out pretty well in the campaign. Only two characters had died thus far. One scout who failed a saving throw versus Destruction and a wizard who failed a saving throw versus an assassin’s attack.
The party had a little bit of problem with the start as the players must cross a fragile ice bridge. After some creative use of magic items, they made it across. Some of them a little more frozen then others.
They explored the ruins of an abbey and in that, found the hidden sanctuary. Right away my players appreciated the handouts as the game starts with one from a dead priest found in the ruins and then a statue with text cared into a scroll.
Getting up to the gates, the party had no problem passing the ‘trap’. Here it’s required that a good aligned cleric, monk, or paladin of 9th level of higher puts their hand into what appears to be an obvious trap. Remember that cleric of Pelor I mentioned? Well, one of the changes I made was that the Iron Crypt was a place where the church of Pelor took evil items and whatnot so he felt pretty secure in opening the crypt and he didn’t suffer for it.
The next room, the ‘Mysteries of the Ordocar’, involves three statues, two with weapons and one with nothing. The players have to figure out this puzzle, something that I’m terrible at and have ruined in more than one previous adventure. One of the nice things about this puzzle is that it uses not only common sense but illusions to increase the fun.
Another handout and the players taking quite a while to figure things out. I even ‘cheated’ a little. See, one of the things I do as a GM is try to give my players verbal clues. “Yeah, the north wall seems normal’. As opposed to ‘you see nothing of interest’.
All during the course of things, the players have been fighting traps and the undead. The cleric of pelor is such a higher level though that the undead aren’t really much of a challenge to him and despite the sheer number of undead throw at the party in some instances, thanks to the remarkably high armor classes of the ritual warrior and dwarf fighter, the party was in relatively little danger.
By the time the party moved onto their next intersection of rooms, they’d already passed by the body of Black Dougal who I made a little infamous by having him be one of the few other rogues in the city outside of Pill that worked solo. Seeing his body there had an effect upon the player’s morale. Especially as Pill had failed to notice a very dangerous trap but was saved by a certain type of scabbard that absorbed energy drain attacks and a very high dodge bonus that wasn’t affected by the energy drain attack.
When the party got to the next room, they’re offered a chance to see how much their paying attention. See, a magic mouth asks them what do they pray for. On the north the word Duty is written and to the South, the word Honor. However, if they’ve managed to find the hidden sanctuary, they should, like my group, be able to figure out the keyword and get the ‘true passage’.
Having a high level rogue in the group is sometimes interesting as Pill found the secret door before they’d gone too far. This allowed Pill to see the diamond skull before the found the chamber of other gemstone skulls.
Following the noise made by changing the skull, they wound up in another room, the Hall of Five Seals. A few times getting hit by the destruction spell but having protection from it due to arranging the skulls in the wrong way, they finally figured out the solution and another hidden door popped open.
Here, the party got to ‘battle’ the Ebon Egg. This is the accumulation of all those evil things that have been put into the crypt. A sentient sphere of annihilation basically, but one that has a while to go before it’s fully sentinel. Before they can get to that however, they have to fight a few driders.
I tried to clue the players into the power of the sphere by having one of the near fatally wounded driders ‘stumble’ into the sphere only to be blown apart by the outer planar energies and showcased how the sphere of darkness was something beyond mortal keen as it animated the corpses of the remaining driders.
One of the things I liked about this ‘boss’ enemy is that there was more than one way to defeat it. However, the priest of Pelor was feeling a little arrogant and felt that his god wouldn’t allow any harm to come to him and walked into it. As he was carrying two items that would destroy it, I ruled that he and the Ebon Egg were destroyed in concert by the powerful energies unleashed by the breaching of dimensional spaces.
You’d think that’d be the end of it, but the party, somehow emboldened by the death of the cleric, decides to do a little exploring. Since they figure they’re done in that space, they move on to the north passage in one of the earlier areas they passed by.
Here they enter the ‘Library of Heresies’. It’s a room with a few sentient monsters. Not a big deal but the party makes one big mistake off the bat. They fireball the room. Sure, it sounds like it makes a lot of sense when you’re being attacked by numerous small animated books, but it also destroyed a good deal of the ‘treasure’ in the form of rare text.
The second death came here. The master tome took, an animated spellbook with the ability to cast spells at the 12th level (which I boosted to 13th to match the party), cast a disintegrate on the mojh who failed his saving throw and took 26d6 points of damage. He took too much damage and was turned to dust.
After the party finished off the room, they then decided to hightail it out of there and back to Cauldron, minus not only two party members, but minus all the equipment that those party members had on them!
DCC 12.5
Written by Harley Stroh
Published by Goodman Games
www.goodman-games.com
http://www.goodmangames.com/50125preview.php
ISBN: 0-976808595
24 b & w pages
$10.99
I’m in the middle of running the Shacked City by Piazo. One of the gamers is getting ready drop the game due to a change in his school schedule in the fall. He’s a gamer who enjoys min-maxing his characters and getting into the thick of things. Since the party is currently 13th level, I decided that to send out this player, I’d run The Iron Crypt of the Heretics.
At 24 pages, it’s small enough to run in a night or two and with a few changes to the background, I had no problem putting it into Greyhawk. My group is good in that they know not to push in terms of campaign details if it’s not going to effect the overall campaign.
The interior cover is in blue and white and contains the map of the Iron Crypt of the Heretics. It’s very old school. The internal art by Jason Edwards, Doug Kovacs, Brad McDevitt, Jesse Mohn, Chris Watkins, and Leo Winstead, is also very first edition.
The book uses italics for material that is to be read aloud to the players. It includes pregenerated characters, 12th level, for quick game play. One of my favorite bits though, are the numerous player’s handouts ranging from scenes in the adventure to written materials that the players come across.
The adventure uses a wide variety of traps, puzzles, and of course monsters, to challenge the players. In my playtest, we lost two characters but the players didn’t feel robbed or as if the game was ‘too hard’ and as a matter of fact, felt pretty good about stompping most of the adventure up to that point. Part of the problem I think, with higher level d20 game play as opposed to this particular adventure.
One of my favorite things about the adventure, due to it’s size I bet, is that the monster statistics are right there when you need them. No flipping to the back. No hoping that Piazo comes to their senses and provide some downloads of the monsters for the Shackled City. No hoping that some third party web site puts the stats on their host site. Everything you need right there without flipping a single page. Thumbs up on that alone.
In short, if you’re looking for a solid adventure with lots of opportunities for players to exercise their brains as well as their brawn, the Iron Crypt of the Heretics is for you. It’s quick to start and straightforward enough to require minimum adjustment prior to playing.
My own playtest notes are as follows:
My group consists of the following:
Pill: 13th level straight rogue
Sabastian: multi-class ritual warrior with human evolved levels (13th level total) Newfound and proud owner of a greatsword, Coldfire, that has frost and fire properties.
Ivan: dwarf paragon racial levels, smoking eye template and racial substitution levels on his fighter levels.
Eveserak: mojh magister with racial levels.
Father Angus Wells (yes, named after the fantasy-fiction author), a 7th level cleric of Pelor with 6 levels of Radiant Servant. Also has the good old Divine Spark from Weapons of Legacy.
You’ll note that I allow both Arcana Evolved and standard d20 material in my campaign. I use point buy for characteristics, maximum hit points, action points and all manner of campaign options to minimize death, such as a saving throw versus Fortitude from Unearthed Arcana.
So far it’d played out pretty well in the campaign. Only two characters had died thus far. One scout who failed a saving throw versus Destruction and a wizard who failed a saving throw versus an assassin’s attack.
The party had a little bit of problem with the start as the players must cross a fragile ice bridge. After some creative use of magic items, they made it across. Some of them a little more frozen then others.
They explored the ruins of an abbey and in that, found the hidden sanctuary. Right away my players appreciated the handouts as the game starts with one from a dead priest found in the ruins and then a statue with text cared into a scroll.
Getting up to the gates, the party had no problem passing the ‘trap’. Here it’s required that a good aligned cleric, monk, or paladin of 9th level of higher puts their hand into what appears to be an obvious trap. Remember that cleric of Pelor I mentioned? Well, one of the changes I made was that the Iron Crypt was a place where the church of Pelor took evil items and whatnot so he felt pretty secure in opening the crypt and he didn’t suffer for it.
The next room, the ‘Mysteries of the Ordocar’, involves three statues, two with weapons and one with nothing. The players have to figure out this puzzle, something that I’m terrible at and have ruined in more than one previous adventure. One of the nice things about this puzzle is that it uses not only common sense but illusions to increase the fun.
Another handout and the players taking quite a while to figure things out. I even ‘cheated’ a little. See, one of the things I do as a GM is try to give my players verbal clues. “Yeah, the north wall seems normal’. As opposed to ‘you see nothing of interest’.
All during the course of things, the players have been fighting traps and the undead. The cleric of pelor is such a higher level though that the undead aren’t really much of a challenge to him and despite the sheer number of undead throw at the party in some instances, thanks to the remarkably high armor classes of the ritual warrior and dwarf fighter, the party was in relatively little danger.
By the time the party moved onto their next intersection of rooms, they’d already passed by the body of Black Dougal who I made a little infamous by having him be one of the few other rogues in the city outside of Pill that worked solo. Seeing his body there had an effect upon the player’s morale. Especially as Pill had failed to notice a very dangerous trap but was saved by a certain type of scabbard that absorbed energy drain attacks and a very high dodge bonus that wasn’t affected by the energy drain attack.
When the party got to the next room, they’re offered a chance to see how much their paying attention. See, a magic mouth asks them what do they pray for. On the north the word Duty is written and to the South, the word Honor. However, if they’ve managed to find the hidden sanctuary, they should, like my group, be able to figure out the keyword and get the ‘true passage’.
Having a high level rogue in the group is sometimes interesting as Pill found the secret door before they’d gone too far. This allowed Pill to see the diamond skull before the found the chamber of other gemstone skulls.
Following the noise made by changing the skull, they wound up in another room, the Hall of Five Seals. A few times getting hit by the destruction spell but having protection from it due to arranging the skulls in the wrong way, they finally figured out the solution and another hidden door popped open.
Here, the party got to ‘battle’ the Ebon Egg. This is the accumulation of all those evil things that have been put into the crypt. A sentient sphere of annihilation basically, but one that has a while to go before it’s fully sentinel. Before they can get to that however, they have to fight a few driders.
I tried to clue the players into the power of the sphere by having one of the near fatally wounded driders ‘stumble’ into the sphere only to be blown apart by the outer planar energies and showcased how the sphere of darkness was something beyond mortal keen as it animated the corpses of the remaining driders.
One of the things I liked about this ‘boss’ enemy is that there was more than one way to defeat it. However, the priest of Pelor was feeling a little arrogant and felt that his god wouldn’t allow any harm to come to him and walked into it. As he was carrying two items that would destroy it, I ruled that he and the Ebon Egg were destroyed in concert by the powerful energies unleashed by the breaching of dimensional spaces.
You’d think that’d be the end of it, but the party, somehow emboldened by the death of the cleric, decides to do a little exploring. Since they figure they’re done in that space, they move on to the north passage in one of the earlier areas they passed by.
Here they enter the ‘Library of Heresies’. It’s a room with a few sentient monsters. Not a big deal but the party makes one big mistake off the bat. They fireball the room. Sure, it sounds like it makes a lot of sense when you’re being attacked by numerous small animated books, but it also destroyed a good deal of the ‘treasure’ in the form of rare text.
The second death came here. The master tome took, an animated spellbook with the ability to cast spells at the 12th level (which I boosted to 13th to match the party), cast a disintegrate on the mojh who failed his saving throw and took 26d6 points of damage. He took too much damage and was turned to dust.
After the party finished off the room, they then decided to hightail it out of there and back to Cauldron, minus not only two party members, but minus all the equipment that those party members had on them!
