Playtest Report: Portal Under the Stars

[WSmith]

Playtest Game 06/04/2012

I ran a playtest game with four players. The characters they choose were:

Dwarf Fighter
Dwarf Cleric of Moradin
Halfling Rogue
Elven Wizard

SPOILER ALERT:


I am using Goodman Games DCC module from Free RPG Day last year. The first adventure in that book is "Portal Under The Stars." I decided to use that because I was in the "friends and family playtest" and my group have pretty much beaten the crap out of the Caves of Chaos with that.

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The Dwarf Cleric’s uncle had told him about a set of standing stones in the unsettled lands that opens into a magic portal every 50 years when the light of a certain star shines on it. Inside is a strange dungeon with lots crystals and riches. The uncle had visited 50 years ago, but had passed away since. It was their turn and their time to explore this mystical location.

The group set off into the night, on the date of the stars aligning. They traveled into the hill lands where various barbarian clans roam. They saw off in the distance a small campfire in the direction of the magical stones. At those fires are a more than a dozen humans; Barbarians from the Raven Clan, a very superstitious bunch (as one’s history knowledge revealed.)

The two groups walk out to meet each other halfway. The Rogue sneaks around and due to some good rolling on his part and bad rolling on the barbarians’ part, is able to get to the rear of the standing stones. The Wizard sneaks at a farther distance as to not be detected and ends up on the Eastern flank of the stones and the horde, halfway between the party and the rogue.

The leader of the Barbarian Horde tells the party that if they try to enter into the stones, they will have to be killed. It is the duty of the wildmen to protect the sacred crypt where a once legendary and great Barbarian King is eternally resting. The Dwarf Cleric assures them that the party has no desire to fight them, that they only want to witness the miracle or some such and drink mead. Merry-making ensues.

The Fighter gets into a mead drinking contest with one of the burly barbarians. Not to be undone, Fighter grabs two mugs and downs the contents. In an effort to out-crazy the native, he smashes both mugs on his forehead. One of them doesn’t break and hurts him a little, but the other smashed into hundreds of pieces, (Natural 20) showering the barbarian spectators with the wood shards and splinters of the former mug covered with residual mead. They howl in approval. More merry-making ensues.

As a certain star sheds light on the standing stones, inside the opening begins to reveal a long hallway with a flagstone floor. This can only be seen from the North side of the stones where all but the Rogue and the Wizard are in view of. The Rogue on the South side can still see through the stones as if nothing had happened. The Horde and the party could not see him because from their perspective, they saw the hallway magically appearing.

Five of the guards move to the opening of the now present hallway and turn their backs to it, to face the crowd. The rest of the Horde kneels and bows their heads. They all begin praying and chanting.

The Wizard must have made some sort of noise, as he moved to the rear of the stones to join the Rogue. One of the guards notices that wizard is missing and calls out for him. As this happens, Rogue springs a surprise attack from the rear of the portal. He jumps onto the back of the center most guard. In one swift movement, he plunges his dagger through man’s throat, clean to the front, and leans him backwards to the ground as he falls unconscious. Because of the size of the halfling and the size of the barbarians, no one was able to view the Halfling’s vicious attack. It was as if a magical pointed weapons skewered their ally.

Now, this part is epic. As the Rogue is bringing the victim backwards to the ground so he lands on his back, the Wizard shoots burning hands from other side of portal setting the four remaining guards afire, (this is pretty much some Matrix stuff). Keep in mind, they cannot see the Wizard. All that the Horde can see is that one of their guys just died by something piercing his throat, followed up by some disembodied searing jets of flame shooting forth from an empty hallway.

Subsequently, the Rogue beheads the fallen guard and tosses his head out to the praying men. This is the final straw for the superstitious lot. Morale breaks and all but the Leader and the guards, that are now on fire by the way, flee in panic in every direction away from the portal. Two of the flaming guards succumb to their wounds. The Dwarf Fighter runs past the two that are still ablaze and douses them with the crappy remaining mead (since all of the good stuff was drunk by the dwarves) and charges into the hallway.

The two extinguished guards remember their duty and run into the portal to chase down the Fighter, yelling “SACRILEGE!” A battle ensues inside this mystical corridor.

The Dwarf Cleric sees what is happening and rushes into portal. The Leader chases after him into the portal too. With that. the Wizard walks backwards through the stones, from the South side toward the North. The effect is that he materializes on the North side facing into the hall. He lets loose some magic missiles. We now have a five on three powerplay.

The Party makes short use of one of the guards. The other’s morale finally breaks and he runs out and away screaming something about demons.

More epic improv... The Leader is slain as fighter tosses the halfling rogue at him with such force (crit) to knock him prone. The rogue then buries a dagger into his eye, pinning his skull to the ground.

With all foes slain or gone, they can now concentrate on the wooden and iron door, adorned with many star and moon shaped gems, located at the end of this magical hallway.

 

[jadrax]

Cool!

So what did you and your players think of the rules?

 

[WSmith]

Thanks.

First, I was introduced to D&D with the Holmes Blue Box. I have been exposed to and played every edition of D&D since. Some of my players have started with 3e or even just 4e and have never been exposed to the "theater of the mind" style of D&D. It is quite interesting and comforting to me to hear from the players that they prefer to play without minis. They ones with only 3.x/4e experienced are fascinated with this style of play, (which I grew up on, so it is second nature to me.)

With the TotM style, the players have opened up their minds and tried all kinds of stuff. The jumping through the portal and burning hands while effectively invisible is one example.

For me, I (mostly) love what I see in Next. With the drinking contest, I came up with a check on the fly for the fighter smashing the mead mugs into his forehead. I had him roll a STR check against a DC, then a CON check against the STR check result to see if he hurt himself. I love that I can now again make on the spot decisions as the DM. Wait until I post the next session report. They really did some off the wall stuff. For example, doors were taken off hinges and used as shield walls. Giant ball bearings that were part of a trap of sorts were taken off and used as bowling balls. It was great to not see everyone worry about what power they were going to use on their next round.

While I still think something has to be done with magic missile and cantrips in general, I did not experience the overuse of magic missile like most other groups are writing up. I do realize, however, that is because of the wizard's player and the style and vision he has for his character. He doesn't get crazy with the at will spells.

We think the HP for the characters are a little high. So far, only one player went unconscious once.

We like the Short Rest and using of HD. We did not experience the Long Rest with its auto full healing. I know I am not a fan of that already, though.

I could use some clarity on "shadows" and how it applies to vision and stealth.

Humans seem bland (again.) In the first draft of the playtest, they got something called "human expertise" as their racial power. They were allowed to roll a d6, up to twice per day, and add it to any dice roll they wanted because of the flexible nature of humans. For the first time in decades, I had a table of almost all humans. I loved that. I am sad to see they removed that and gave humans just stat bonuses.

We want the character creation guidelines, already.

Overall, we are having a great time.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Hey cool report. Interesting players - I too have found that removing all of the powers has meant players look for solutions 'in game'. Fun. B/C giving up an action doesn't mean giving up doing so many 'cool things' players seem more ready to try these other things too.


Thanks for providing your insights into the rules and play style - I guess that is waht most of us are here on the 5E/Next forums for

I also agree with the ease of making calls (esp without scaling DCs - something that always irked me).
In all, a similar experience to ours.

 

[WSmith]

Thanks. I do like the flatter math. I am no fan of when a player of a 3rd level character says "+30 vs. AC". I am not making this up. It actually happened during last season of Encounters.