Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Wanna playtest the next ZEITGEIST adventure?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="skotothalamos" data-source="post: 8204861" data-attributes="member: 83398"><p>We got about halfway through in five hours, but my group is notoriously slow at combat and also really digs into the roleplay possibilities.</p><p></p><p>It took about 45 minutes to get through gun acquisition, spycraft rules, and introductory material. This was longer than it could be for most because my players (four out of five having played through Gears of Revolution from 2013-2017 and all of them currently playing in a 100-years-later Zeitgeist campaign) really wanted to know the setting info in detail.</p><p></p><p>Session report hidden below:</p><p></p><p>[SPOILER]They wanted to know how big the cell was, whether it was secret or publicly known, and other details that were spawned from having played before and are probably answered in the upcoming setting sourcebook.</p><p></p><p>Once we got under way, our group of Conspirators (3 Tieflings, 1 human, 1 Dwarf) enjoyed chatting with the boat passengers and the crew, and the players really enjoyed the spooky monologue from the pilot. This may have been enhanced by Arrovia having been played by Barovia in our previous campaign during a 6-month detour into Curse of Strahd.</p><p></p><p>They interrupted Kvarti a lot at the docks, but he was able to get most of the group to come hunting with him. Our teenage Tiefling Sorcerer declined, so I left Julius behind with her at the docks to give that player a chance to do Spycraft while the others hunted. We did the Spycraft first and everyone who was going hunting wanted to try, so I let them do a round of Spycraft during the hunt. The Sorcerer made a connection with Julius by engaging him in conversation about the Ottoplismists. The Feral Tiefling Barbarian tried to make a connection with Budwati over their similar guns, but she did not take to it at all.</p><p></p><p>The hunt was helped by our Assassin surprising the Rager and then beating its initiative. It took two crits before it got a turn, and then everyone piled in and took care of it in short order. I explained Ally Actions as we headed into the fight, but no one remembered in the first round, so I had Budwati shoot & pounce at initiative 0 to remind them. They remembered her for the rest of the combat. The Angry Buck got a charge off on their Dwarf Cleric and dropped him to single digits while the rest of the group was having a bit of a laugh killing the Rager. At that point, I had Kvarti shoot the beast, then the assassin dropped it to 3 hit poitns or so and she asked Budwati to finish it off before it could attack again. Once they took care of the Rager, the Buck, and one Deer, I just had the rest of the deer scatter to get the adventure moving along, as we were 90 minutes in already.</p><p></p><p>At this point, I felt like the Sorcerer player had been left out of that fun, so when she suggested luring Julius off into the woods to, ehm, "Gain an Asset," I let her have another round of Spycraft. I then realized that with the amount of Spycraft happening, they were getting way ahead on Spycraft rounds and we felt way behind on time. Not wanting to slow down even further with more combats and also not wanting to give them too much pre-dinner Spycraft, I made the decision to axe the Fox Hunt and just let the hunters have some more Spycraft with Kvarti and Budwati. Three of them tried to interact with Kvarti while the Barbarian tried her luck with Budwati a second time, this time over beast forms, and failed even harder than before. At this point, the roleplay was painting Budwati as a bit of a jerk. The Cleric made a connection with Kvarti over being grumpy old dwarves, and the Human monk succeeded in an Inguiry roll. With Maurice not even having ben introduced yet, I told him that he noticed how Kvarti let his guard down when reminiscing about old Drakr with the cleric and so he would be able to identify when Kvarti was more at ease in future (to allow him to gain the Inquiry info when Kvarti and Maurice interacted later).</p><p></p><p>We made it to the manor at about the two-hour mark. I had both groups arrive at the same time, which led to much group speculation about what Julius and the Sorceress had been up to. I really like the way the adventure reveals new NPCs to the players one or two at a time to keep them from getting overwhelmed. Each one gets a reasonably-memorable intro scene. The only one that fell flat, frankly, was Marlot. They'd just met Pritchard and then Nargio, started to see and track interactions between the NPCs (Julius & Pritchard; Nargio & Budwati), finally made their way into the manor, met two more NPCs in quick succession, made jokes about how the butler clearly was guilty of something, and then they get left alone to poke about. The flow at that point, expecially after a lot of scripted dialogue, feels like we're done with the cut scenes and now it's time to poke about and discover where we are and then in the first room they go enter there is yet another NPC and another scripted scene. I shortcutted her intro a bit so the group could feel in control.</p><p></p><p>Instead of running the Fox Hunt, I just gave them the two hours before dinner to talk to whomever they wanted. The Cleric succeeded on an Extraction with Kvarti, revealing that Heid was the host, and also that Kvarti was disgruntled. Unable to come up with a way to make him an Asset, the Cleric moved on to the Library to poke about for the second hour. I gave him Red's book to read, with a paraphrased version of Red's story from later. The Assassin spent a couple of hours hanging out with Nargio, making a Connection and talking about geology. The Sorceress made a Connection with Pritchard and Extracted his prophecy ahed of the dinner (and also the Heid information). The Barbarian finally found someone to talk to in Margot, making a Connection. And the monk spent an hour trying to make a connection with Maurice. His natural 1 on his Connectio roll led to Maurice enlisting his aid in taking the bomb to the docks and bringing the Phlogiston up, so he'll make a handy patsy when the time comes. He then tracked down Budwati and made a connection with her over gun-fu before dinner.</p><p></p><p>At this point, we'd hit our 4-hour session time limit. I asked if we could go another hour to do the dinner scene, since I felt the boat explosion would make a more suitable cliffhanger than "soon there will be dinner with 11 NPCs." We took a 15-minute IRL food break and did the dinner scene. Everyone sat near their Connections and the volleys were lively, with everyone enjoying the exchanges and forming more opinions about the NPCs.</p><p></p><p>When the VIP team entered, everyone realized it was serious roleplay time. One player had rolled a 21 Insight for the dinner and his character noticed the call-and-response. One of the players told me it was super obvious, but the other four did not notice. After I told the 21-Insight that there was a call and response, the rest of the group said "what was it?" and the attentive player recited both lines back to me.</p><p></p><p>This group definitely enjoys philosophical debate. Moreso than their DM, sadly, so I was left a bit behind when they challenged both of the Dwarves on their beliefs. I mostly let the players engage with each other on that level and occasionally pushed the conversation forward.</p><p></p><p>When Pritchard laughed off Nargio's "Dragon" insult, after I'd played Pritchard as pompous all night, the group immediately assumed he was a dragon. They might have PTSD from missing too many dragons in human form between Zeitgeist and their current campaign (where Pemberton has finally been discovered).</p><p></p><p>We got through the prophecies and the boat explosion and ran through "Immediate Reactions," getting each PC to commit to a course of action before calling it for the night.</p><p></p><p>Having skipped the Fox Hunt, I forgot to manufacture a way for Julius to get an upstairs room, which the Sorceress player questioned me on when he went to "get his gun." I had to retcon him into having talked his way into the Mavisha room. As she was working him as an Asset, the player argued that they would be sharing the room and her guns would also be in that room, so she's now following Julius up the stairs.</p><p></p><p>The Assassin is stealthily following Maurice into the basement. The Barbarian is going with Marlot and Budwati to the docks. The Cleric went with the VIPs to the study, and the Monk is standing guard/eavesdropping outside that room.</p><p></p><p>Everyone is super excited to be back in the intrigues of the Zeitgeist world. As much as I try with my post-Zeitgeist campaign, it's clear that they're very spoiled by having played in the official content of this world for 4+ years and are craving more!</p><p></p><p>I asked the players for feedback and got two responses.</p><p></p><p>Barbarian player (who usually tunes out roleplay and resurfaces for combat): "I like the spycraft, pick who you're interacting with this hour system. With all the NPCs it gives a nice feel of trying to sift through a mystery."</p><p></p><p>Monk player (did not play previous Zeitgeist campaign): "I really enjoyed the openness of the spy-craft, and the sort of flexibility that can come with that. Mess up on a connection? well you can still snoop around or watch the situation and make you own conclusions from there."</p><p></p><p>I ran the session using FoundryVTT. The playtest map I got had Secret Doors marked on it but not room numbers. It's possible there's a better map available for VTT use that I should have asked for, but if not, it would be handy. I had to move some walls to obscure the half-S symbol in a bunch of rooms.</p><p></p><p>Running in Foundry meand I had to enter all of the NPCs and monsters into the system. I noticed some irregularities in their stat blocks when doing this:</p><p></p><p>Merlot's dagger does 1d12 damage in melee (same as her cane) but 1d4 when thrown.</p><p></p><p>Vlendam Heid's Dex is listed as 10 with a +2 mod. AC math is for a 10 Dex, so I assume the modifier is incorrect.</p><p></p><p>Jaromir Delkovich's Dex is listed as 10 with a +2 mod. AC & Dagger attack math is for a 10 Dex, so I assume the modifier is incorrect.</p><p>Jaromir Delkovich has the Persuasion skill listed in his stat block, but the bonus is just his Cha mod. Should it include proficiency and be +5? NPC/monster stat blocks don't usually include numbers for untrained skills.</p><p></p><p>Maurice Sesto's Impromptu Weaponry ability uses his Dex mod for attack and his Strength mod for damage. Further, the damage is listed as 5 (1d6), which seems like it should either be 3 (1d6) or 5 (1d10) if Strength or 6 (1d6+3) or 8 (1d10+3) if Dex.[/SPOILER]</p><p></p><p>The session is captured on Twitch if you want to eavesdrop: [MEDIA=twitch]video_id=923180992[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>our next session is scheduled for the 28th. I hope another report next Monday with the second half will be in time to help!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="skotothalamos, post: 8204861, member: 83398"] We got about halfway through in five hours, but my group is notoriously slow at combat and also really digs into the roleplay possibilities. It took about 45 minutes to get through gun acquisition, spycraft rules, and introductory material. This was longer than it could be for most because my players (four out of five having played through Gears of Revolution from 2013-2017 and all of them currently playing in a 100-years-later Zeitgeist campaign) really wanted to know the setting info in detail. Session report hidden below: [SPOILER]They wanted to know how big the cell was, whether it was secret or publicly known, and other details that were spawned from having played before and are probably answered in the upcoming setting sourcebook. Once we got under way, our group of Conspirators (3 Tieflings, 1 human, 1 Dwarf) enjoyed chatting with the boat passengers and the crew, and the players really enjoyed the spooky monologue from the pilot. This may have been enhanced by Arrovia having been played by Barovia in our previous campaign during a 6-month detour into Curse of Strahd. They interrupted Kvarti a lot at the docks, but he was able to get most of the group to come hunting with him. Our teenage Tiefling Sorcerer declined, so I left Julius behind with her at the docks to give that player a chance to do Spycraft while the others hunted. We did the Spycraft first and everyone who was going hunting wanted to try, so I let them do a round of Spycraft during the hunt. The Sorcerer made a connection with Julius by engaging him in conversation about the Ottoplismists. The Feral Tiefling Barbarian tried to make a connection with Budwati over their similar guns, but she did not take to it at all. The hunt was helped by our Assassin surprising the Rager and then beating its initiative. It took two crits before it got a turn, and then everyone piled in and took care of it in short order. I explained Ally Actions as we headed into the fight, but no one remembered in the first round, so I had Budwati shoot & pounce at initiative 0 to remind them. They remembered her for the rest of the combat. The Angry Buck got a charge off on their Dwarf Cleric and dropped him to single digits while the rest of the group was having a bit of a laugh killing the Rager. At that point, I had Kvarti shoot the beast, then the assassin dropped it to 3 hit poitns or so and she asked Budwati to finish it off before it could attack again. Once they took care of the Rager, the Buck, and one Deer, I just had the rest of the deer scatter to get the adventure moving along, as we were 90 minutes in already. At this point, I felt like the Sorcerer player had been left out of that fun, so when she suggested luring Julius off into the woods to, ehm, "Gain an Asset," I let her have another round of Spycraft. I then realized that with the amount of Spycraft happening, they were getting way ahead on Spycraft rounds and we felt way behind on time. Not wanting to slow down even further with more combats and also not wanting to give them too much pre-dinner Spycraft, I made the decision to axe the Fox Hunt and just let the hunters have some more Spycraft with Kvarti and Budwati. Three of them tried to interact with Kvarti while the Barbarian tried her luck with Budwati a second time, this time over beast forms, and failed even harder than before. At this point, the roleplay was painting Budwati as a bit of a jerk. The Cleric made a connection with Kvarti over being grumpy old dwarves, and the Human monk succeeded in an Inguiry roll. With Maurice not even having ben introduced yet, I told him that he noticed how Kvarti let his guard down when reminiscing about old Drakr with the cleric and so he would be able to identify when Kvarti was more at ease in future (to allow him to gain the Inquiry info when Kvarti and Maurice interacted later). We made it to the manor at about the two-hour mark. I had both groups arrive at the same time, which led to much group speculation about what Julius and the Sorceress had been up to. I really like the way the adventure reveals new NPCs to the players one or two at a time to keep them from getting overwhelmed. Each one gets a reasonably-memorable intro scene. The only one that fell flat, frankly, was Marlot. They'd just met Pritchard and then Nargio, started to see and track interactions between the NPCs (Julius & Pritchard; Nargio & Budwati), finally made their way into the manor, met two more NPCs in quick succession, made jokes about how the butler clearly was guilty of something, and then they get left alone to poke about. The flow at that point, expecially after a lot of scripted dialogue, feels like we're done with the cut scenes and now it's time to poke about and discover where we are and then in the first room they go enter there is yet another NPC and another scripted scene. I shortcutted her intro a bit so the group could feel in control. Instead of running the Fox Hunt, I just gave them the two hours before dinner to talk to whomever they wanted. The Cleric succeeded on an Extraction with Kvarti, revealing that Heid was the host, and also that Kvarti was disgruntled. Unable to come up with a way to make him an Asset, the Cleric moved on to the Library to poke about for the second hour. I gave him Red's book to read, with a paraphrased version of Red's story from later. The Assassin spent a couple of hours hanging out with Nargio, making a Connection and talking about geology. The Sorceress made a Connection with Pritchard and Extracted his prophecy ahed of the dinner (and also the Heid information). The Barbarian finally found someone to talk to in Margot, making a Connection. And the monk spent an hour trying to make a connection with Maurice. His natural 1 on his Connectio roll led to Maurice enlisting his aid in taking the bomb to the docks and bringing the Phlogiston up, so he'll make a handy patsy when the time comes. He then tracked down Budwati and made a connection with her over gun-fu before dinner. At this point, we'd hit our 4-hour session time limit. I asked if we could go another hour to do the dinner scene, since I felt the boat explosion would make a more suitable cliffhanger than "soon there will be dinner with 11 NPCs." We took a 15-minute IRL food break and did the dinner scene. Everyone sat near their Connections and the volleys were lively, with everyone enjoying the exchanges and forming more opinions about the NPCs. When the VIP team entered, everyone realized it was serious roleplay time. One player had rolled a 21 Insight for the dinner and his character noticed the call-and-response. One of the players told me it was super obvious, but the other four did not notice. After I told the 21-Insight that there was a call and response, the rest of the group said "what was it?" and the attentive player recited both lines back to me. This group definitely enjoys philosophical debate. Moreso than their DM, sadly, so I was left a bit behind when they challenged both of the Dwarves on their beliefs. I mostly let the players engage with each other on that level and occasionally pushed the conversation forward. When Pritchard laughed off Nargio's "Dragon" insult, after I'd played Pritchard as pompous all night, the group immediately assumed he was a dragon. They might have PTSD from missing too many dragons in human form between Zeitgeist and their current campaign (where Pemberton has finally been discovered). We got through the prophecies and the boat explosion and ran through "Immediate Reactions," getting each PC to commit to a course of action before calling it for the night. Having skipped the Fox Hunt, I forgot to manufacture a way for Julius to get an upstairs room, which the Sorceress player questioned me on when he went to "get his gun." I had to retcon him into having talked his way into the Mavisha room. As she was working him as an Asset, the player argued that they would be sharing the room and her guns would also be in that room, so she's now following Julius up the stairs. The Assassin is stealthily following Maurice into the basement. The Barbarian is going with Marlot and Budwati to the docks. The Cleric went with the VIPs to the study, and the Monk is standing guard/eavesdropping outside that room. Everyone is super excited to be back in the intrigues of the Zeitgeist world. As much as I try with my post-Zeitgeist campaign, it's clear that they're very spoiled by having played in the official content of this world for 4+ years and are craving more! I asked the players for feedback and got two responses. Barbarian player (who usually tunes out roleplay and resurfaces for combat): "I like the spycraft, pick who you're interacting with this hour system. With all the NPCs it gives a nice feel of trying to sift through a mystery." Monk player (did not play previous Zeitgeist campaign): "I really enjoyed the openness of the spy-craft, and the sort of flexibility that can come with that. Mess up on a connection? well you can still snoop around or watch the situation and make you own conclusions from there." I ran the session using FoundryVTT. The playtest map I got had Secret Doors marked on it but not room numbers. It's possible there's a better map available for VTT use that I should have asked for, but if not, it would be handy. I had to move some walls to obscure the half-S symbol in a bunch of rooms. Running in Foundry meand I had to enter all of the NPCs and monsters into the system. I noticed some irregularities in their stat blocks when doing this: Merlot's dagger does 1d12 damage in melee (same as her cane) but 1d4 when thrown. Vlendam Heid's Dex is listed as 10 with a +2 mod. AC math is for a 10 Dex, so I assume the modifier is incorrect. Jaromir Delkovich's Dex is listed as 10 with a +2 mod. AC & Dagger attack math is for a 10 Dex, so I assume the modifier is incorrect. Jaromir Delkovich has the Persuasion skill listed in his stat block, but the bonus is just his Cha mod. Should it include proficiency and be +5? NPC/monster stat blocks don't usually include numbers for untrained skills. Maurice Sesto's Impromptu Weaponry ability uses his Dex mod for attack and his Strength mod for damage. Further, the damage is listed as 5 (1d6), which seems like it should either be 3 (1d6) or 5 (1d10) if Strength or 6 (1d6+3) or 8 (1d10+3) if Dex.[/SPOILER] The session is captured on Twitch if you want to eavesdrop: [MEDIA=twitch]video_id=923180992[/MEDIA] our next session is scheduled for the 28th. I hope another report next Monday with the second half will be in time to help! [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Wanna playtest the next ZEITGEIST adventure?
Top