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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bento" data-source="post: 3428583" data-attributes="member: 36597">ReviewTitle: Dungeon Crawl Classics #0 – Legends are Made, not BornAuthor: Chris DoyleArtists: Erol Otus (front cover), Jason Edwards (back cover), Ian Armstrong, Friedrich Haas, Jim Holloway, Cliff Kurowski, Brad McDevitt and Stefan Poag (interior art)Cartographer: Jeremy SimmonsEditor: Joseph GoodmanPublisher: Goodman Games“Legends are Made, not Born”, number “0” in the Dungeon Crawl Classic Series is an adventure for 1st Level NPC class characters.  It was originally created for Dundracon 29, a gaming convention held February 2005 in San Ramon, California.  The copy I am reviewing was a post-convention PDF copy I purchased in 2006. The pdf is 36 pages in length including covers, and four maps.  In addition to the adventure, the module includes an appendix, which describes the village of Dundraville and a set of pre-generated characters the players can use. The illustrations throughout the adventure range from humorous to exciting, conveying key monsters and challenging encounters the players will face.  I especially like the hobgoblin by Stefan Poag.  Before the action begins, the module provides an adventure summary, guidelines for scaling the adventure to weaker or stronger parties, hooks to get players involved and potential rumors to flesh out the back story.  This includes a detailed story on villain’s motives and actions.  My favorite part is the encounter table, which is a quick summary of what’s inside.  For DCC #0, there are 8 combat encounters, 4 traps, 1 puzzle, 5 combat/puzzles (can go either way depending on player action), and 2 combat/traps, for a total of 20 encounters.  Encounter Level goes from EL ½ to EL 4 (final encounter), with the majority around EL1.  Overall a good variety of encounters to challenge players.Adventure SummaryThe players are common villagers who must rise to become heroes when their neighbors are captured by an ogre living nearby.  Using their wits, they must defeat the ogre, find the villagers and get back home.  As with most Dungeon Crawl Classics, the adventure is never as simple as it looks, as the players discover that the villagers were captured for an evil Wizard who plans to feed them to a demon he’s trying to summon.  The majority of the thirteen combat encounters are with animals and vermin that dwell in the ogre’s caves.  My favorite humanoid encounter is with Gurt, a hobgoblin who’s given up fighting to take up toadstool farming.  Every encounter is written with a great amount of detail; stat blocks are provided in each encounter for every monster, helping cut down the amount of page flipping.  Most combat encounters include sections like “Development,” that fleshes out monster motivation, and “Tactics” on how the monster can react to different player action.  In a couple situations a third section is also added, “Cool Ways to Make this Fight Interesting” which can broaden the encounter possibilities even more.  I believe there's so much information in each encounter because the module was created for a convention, so the emphasis is to pick this up and run without any preparation.   The style of the adventure caters to players who like to resolve situations without fighting.  As the players have a fraction of the abilities of a Level 1 PC party, they must use their wits to get around barriers, gauge potential conflict and get through the caves that make up  the adventure.  While some players may succeed with hack n’ slash style play, this adventure specifically rewards cleverness.  At the end of the adventure is a detailed list of resolving objectives through clever play with appropriate XP amounts.Running NPC GameMy original purpose for this module was to either run it for a group of inexperienced players or as a start for a campaign.  After reading it through, I feel it is much better suited for more experienced players.  Most inexperienced players I’ve played with want to jump at the chance of combat, which will only get them in trouble, or dead, in this adventure.  Most of DCC #0 is spent avoiding trouble, so players who can draw upon a variety of experiences will do better.  As for starting a campaign with this adventure, since its original purpose was for convention play, there aren’t any hooks that would help launch the heroes out into the larger world after they complete this adventure.  If you’ve picked up DCC #35, “Gazetteer of the Known Realms” box set, you’ll know that  Goodman Publishing has expanded on the idea of starting with the hero’s humble beginnings.  One of the two modules in the set, DCC #35A “Halls of the Minotaur” does a much better job with this concept.  While its adventure hook isn’t as strong as DCC #0, the encounters and resolution help propel the players towards a larger life as heroes.  In addition, a chapter in the GM Guide from DCC #35 gives much greater guidance on how to start a campaign with NPC Level 1 characters, including rules on shifting them from NPC to PC character classes.  While the concept of starting as NPC classes is not new, TSR’s N4 – Treasure Hunt came out years ago, the DCC series provides more emphasis on this idea.  While I like this idea, I don’t think “Legends are Made…” would be a great start unless the GM puts more work into it.  But as a stand alone adventure, it provides a challenging time for GM and players.  I believe “Halls of the Minotaur” would be a better start as it has been created for the purpose of launching heroes’ careers.Likes: module requires very little to no prep work, a wide variety of encounters, encounters allow for a wide variety of playing stylesDislikes: would require more prep work if it served as the beginning for a campaign, deadly for newer players who might want more hack n’ slash</blockquote>

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