Saturday, August 3, 2013

Playtesting your own Adventure: Can you leave the table unscathed?

Hello everyone (if there's someone out there, actually I don't know. On blogger no one can hear you scream, I guess...).
As I previously stated here on Halfling's Den, yesterday evening I ran my own adventure, "Grayfield Manor", for a group of 7 players (6 males, 1 female). Although I've been GMing for a bit, I never had to "playtest" something that would have been published online. I thought some people might be interested in reading about this kind of experience, so I wrote down a list of "goods" and "bads". Everything in this post (and on this whole blog, actually), is strongly IMHO. Furthermore, please understand that the following text contains some spoilers about the adventure itself, so do mind that when reading.
First of all, the party composition:
- Female 1st level catfolk fighter (melee, weapon finesse and two-weapon fighting).
- Male 1st level oread monk (archetype: monk of the four winds).
- Male 1st level grippli wizard (archetype: spellslinger).
- Male 1st level elf warrior (ranged, longbow plus point-blank shot and precise shot).
- Male 1st level human inquisitor (trickery domain).
- Male 1st level dhampir summoner (quadruped eidolon with bite and reach).
- Male 1st level human druid (with animal companion, deinonychus).

Please note the absence of a strong healer (the total healings the party had were two Cure light wounds spells prepared by the druid, and a Potion of cure light wounds obtained from an NPC. However, they were very solid 25 points PCs, so I ran the adventure as written without making any adjustments, basically assuming my players were a good equivalent of a 2nd level balanced party made of 4 to 5 adventurers including a cleric, a fighter, a wizard and a rogue.

The GOODS
(I like to start with those)

1. The gears are in the right place: Or as you could say, the adventure works, mechanically speaking. The PCs faced the three combat encounters and the traps in the order I had anticipated, and although somewhat limited by their lack of a good number of "tanks" and quite slowed by their numbers (they had a total of NINE models, and the kobolds were 8 to 6 based on the encounter), managed to reach the final fight without losing anyone. Which is good, because the last combat in this adventure can easily kill a couple of PCs, if not carefully managed. Both the players and I rolled incredibly bad and we saw only one 20, while I counted about twelve natural 1s, so the rolls were balanced (although in the boring way; more on that later).
This means I don't have to rewrite any encounter; which is a great achievement.
2. They liked the setting: This is a bit narcissistic of mine, but the players liked the hamlet of Copperwood and its inhabitants. They engaged in a lot of conversation with the patrons at the tavern and even joined the Middenlog brothers playing cards. The names felt right.
3. No one died: Three of the players (the catfolk fighter, the human druid and the elf ranger) were completely new to D&D and roleplaying games. The rest had no experience with Pathfinder, although they played D&D 3.5 so it was easy to get going. Not knowing what to do and how to do it, the newbies were sometimes in danger of getting pierced to death by kobold spears. The more experienced ones helped them creating a plan of action and there were no casualties (the kobolds, on the contrary, died of horrible deaths). I always love when a newcomer to D&D emerges alive from their first game.
4. Funny PCs: When you ask your players to build throwaway PCs, you know you're in for some twisted characters. Although some PCs were OK, like the elf fighter and human inquisitor, the grippli ("Calamity Kermit"), dhampir ("Edward Fallen") and druid's deinonychus ("Denver") were bat-shit crazy.
5. Funny battle plans: When your monk grabs a kobold, holds it in mid-air and then drops it face first in the trap the kobold itself burrowed into the ground, you can't but laugh. When you realize that one hour ago your druid purchased whisky from Copperwood's emporium just to create a molotov cocktail and throw it at the final boss' minions, you realize it's genius. Then a player finds the precious Elixir of red dragon breath that, along with some negotiation, would persuade the kobold sorceress Gonthlarym to simply leave the manor and hand the PCs the medical recipe they were looking for, looks at it for about 1 second, and although knowing the sorceress was clearly prone to negotiation (damn, I had her learn Common for a reason, folks!), drinks it at once and unleashes 7d6 fire damage on the kobold spearmen and the druid, incinerating the kobolds and almost killing the poor druid. CRAZY. The adventure assumed that Gonthlarym, if the elixir was lost or the PCs refused giving it to her and attacked, simply swallowed the recipe the players were looking for. However, the inquisitor cast Command blocking her for 1 round, and then the PCs simply assumed (rightly) that she had the recipe on her and easily got it. I was amused, but there were some problems too. More on this later.

The BADS
(ouch)

1. Bad rolls: As I mentioned before, both the players and the GM rolled poorly during the whole adventure. Heck, as a general rule the rolls were 10 or less. I can't count the times my kobolds rolled 1 on the damage die, thus dealing no damage because of their poor Strength. Don't get me wrong, this is assumed to happen, just not this frequently. High Armor Classes, low rolls: combat lasted too long and people started to get bored. Only the spellslinger, with his ability to negate armor bonuses (see firearms rules), could avoid missing consistently. I hate when this happens, and under normal circumstances would have faked some hits or misses, but I was playtesting the encounter as written and rolled my dice where the players could see them.
2. Funny battle plans: Turns out they were too funny. Now, when I gathered these players for the session I knew what their play style was. Not a lot of dramatic and intense roleplay, doing things "for the lulz" and the likes. Hacking and slashing at things, people, animals, or air if necessary. The newbies (especially the druid) were more of the same. You know how it's going to roll when the first question you're asked after having described a building is "how does it work, destroying walls?..."
Now, these people are not dumb, they're not jerks, and most of all they're not aggressive. They're simply playing to have fun and kill some monsters, no big philosophical questions when faced with a harmless kobold female whose fellow reptilians the PCs had exterminated without even thinking about what they were doing. That's why they got the recipe, killed the kobold (burning down the manor in the process) and exposed Copperwood to retaliation from the rest of the kobold tribe. Kinda like "You're not going to die because of the sickness, guys! However, once you've stopped coughing, take those goddamn spears 'cause there's a whole army of scaly bastards coming for your hides."
3. Well that escalated quickly: I'm not whining, nor am I usually disappointed when players do things in a way I hadn't thought of. But the last hour of the session was simply outrageously crazy. It wasn't just about breaking the constraints of the written module; it was about pinning logic against a wall and breath fire against it. And this taught me a lesson.

The LESSON
(learning from your experiences is fundamental, children)

1. Thou shall have faith in your encounter building/combat math abilities.
2. Thou shall not, however, give your monsters high ACs. More hit points are better. Players feel better when hitting and not killing than when wasting twelve arrows against a 5 hp kobold.
3. Thou shall anticipate the most frequent choices players will make during an adventure.
4. Thou shall not, however, think you're safe from their awesome, crazy ideas. That's impossible.
5. Thou shall write an adventure with a certain type of player in mind (roleplayer, monster basher, chaotic evil jerk).
6. Thou shall not expect your adventure to be fitting for every kind of player.

What this all means, basically, is that I realized it's impossible to know where things will lead once the GM screen is on the table and the character sheets are out. Some say that no adventure can work for any group without a GM to tailor it to suit the needs of his players. That's very, very true. We had a good time; but I'm aware of the fact that, had I not been running the module "letter-by-letter", instead changing things on the fly to better appeal to all players, things would have been great.
Does this mean I won't write any more adventures because "they can't work without a GM"? Hells no. That's the beautiful part of roleplaying: it means something different for everyone, and all you can do when writing is to give someone enough informations to run your story, which suddenly becomes HIS OWN. A hybrid, something along the lines of a cadavre exquis.

Have a great time playing, folks!

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