The game testing of a D&D adventure module I wrote concluded last Saturday night. I sat in on the four game sessions it took to get through the entire module, watching and taking notes as others ran and played through the adventure. It turned out to be one on the most enjoyable gaming experiences I have had.
The module is essentially an elaborate bank robbery and takes it inspiration and mood from movies like “The Great Train Robbery,” “Ocean’s 11” (the remake and the original) and so forth and so on. As such, it required more guile that brute force.
I did not write the module to be impossible to complete or a TPK. I don’t like adventures like that so I was not going to write one. However, the way the players went at it just reminded me to never underestimate the chaos creating abilities of a group of adventurers.
Once they infiltrated the bank, the PCs ordered the guardian golems to go berserk and demolish the place. This is how they distracted the guard – by literally knocking over the bank. Oh, all right, they did not knock the entire building over – it was a big place. But they did cause a phenomenal about of property damage. Then the members of the party who were not actually in the bank went around the city starting a full-scale city riot.
Heh
With the city in flame, mobs roaming the streets and the banks own golems tearing out sections of the walls, the guards were sufficiently distracted to let the party rob the place blind.
Once they were out of the bank and were safe, the party went all “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and killed each other down to a single member.
Heh heh.
The final survivor of the party then discovered that their patron, the man who had set them up to rob the bank in the first place and provided them with equipment had ripped them off and ended up with the treasure.
Heh heh heh.
Good times, good times.
The module is essentially an elaborate bank robbery and takes it inspiration and mood from movies like “The Great Train Robbery,” “Ocean’s 11” (the remake and the original) and so forth and so on. As such, it required more guile that brute force.
I did not write the module to be impossible to complete or a TPK. I don’t like adventures like that so I was not going to write one. However, the way the players went at it just reminded me to never underestimate the chaos creating abilities of a group of adventurers.
Once they infiltrated the bank, the PCs ordered the guardian golems to go berserk and demolish the place. This is how they distracted the guard – by literally knocking over the bank. Oh, all right, they did not knock the entire building over – it was a big place. But they did cause a phenomenal about of property damage. Then the members of the party who were not actually in the bank went around the city starting a full-scale city riot.
Heh
With the city in flame, mobs roaming the streets and the banks own golems tearing out sections of the walls, the guards were sufficiently distracted to let the party rob the place blind.
Once they were out of the bank and were safe, the party went all “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and killed each other down to a single member.
Heh heh.
The final survivor of the party then discovered that their patron, the man who had set them up to rob the bank in the first place and provided them with equipment had ripped them off and ended up with the treasure.
Heh heh heh.
Good times, good times.
