Design Diary: Prep and Run Part 2
Thoughts from behind the GM screen
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A “weekly” blog-letter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We explore design, execution, and culture relating to anything played on a tabletop. If you’d like context and introduction to this thread, check out Part 1 here.
Rather than reporting out a strict blow by blow of the play session, We will have some sprinkled in play report tidbits with focus on design aspects of the adventure - what worked and what didn’t.
The Action
Play started as I thought it might, with the players immediately doing something off the wall. They landed at A1, and I started with the red and green doors open so I could entice them to go through the red door towards A2 where an NPC was waiting to fill the PCs in on the rest of the context through roleplay conversation rather than info dumping.
Before deciding which way to go, players asked for some details in which I revealed the clockwork eye above each doorway that had large precious gems socketed in metal fingers (think jewelry setting). The doorways that were open had the eyelids open and irises visible, the black onyx hallway had the eyelid down and it was harder to see the obsidian gem. One player pulled that gem and received a 100 gp onyx for their inventory, but had unknowingly disabled the pathway leading down to B3.
I am planning to redesign this module for Shadowdark rather than Knave 2E as it’s native system, so I will likely have some text in the adventure to the GM to only give XP based on the treasures that the party escapes with rather than just finding it.
The table had between 10-12 players at it over the course of 3.5 hours and we ran into some inter-party discussion about the gems, the color-coded halls, and some splitting up. Moving a group of 10 adventurers around a table became troublesome in just physically moving them around. For this, I use a set of poker-chip style D&D status indicators that have a unique color for each chip and let players pick their own so they know which one they are. I find it easier to push around a stack of poker-chips to be an abstraction of which room each character is in rather than worrying about an exact tactical spatial representation.
Design vs At-The-Table
Keeping this to a one-shot for one night, I adjusted a couple things versus my design. I intend the module to be an adventure site which could be visited multiple times if a GM chose rather than this one-shot time-pressured adventure involving the Cult of the Illuminate. Things I abandoned at the table from the design:
Strict adherence to a 10 minutes timer, as I intend to recommend in the module write up, became more about feels and vibes. When the party had a lull in the action, I would remind them with a loose estimation on the time left before door shifts (when all the hallways of one color would shut and become death traps) so that the time-pressure was still present, but became input for their decisions rather than being a “gotcha” by design
Strict lighting concerns (I intended to use the 1hr Shadowdark torch timer) and exploration round counting for the purposes of when to roll the danger die became loose. By design, I intend the adventure to have a danger roll every 2 rounds as is done in Shadowdark, but with an expanded list like in Knave 2E - where roll outside of just a 1 on D6 have things happen. I’m thinking shifting the door on one of the numbers and torches go out on another - but that’s not final yet.
Asking each player before they moved how fast they were going didn’t work well with such a large group. I moved to stating out loud my assumptions of how fast I figured they were trying to move - slow usually so as to not upset unknown traps - and then if it became time for high drama, I’d ask them first. This did work out pretty well in two points that I will elaborate on later.
Back to the Action
After some time discussing the situation with Vivian Beauless, an NPC from a previous group that had been given the same trial as the PCs now face, she informs the party that being in the halls when they are shut is death. She has an ace up her sleeve though, she has a plant amongst the Illuminate group that the PCs will find themselves before after the clockwork statue kills the babe in her arms (about 2 hours). With some “words of power” to be spoken during the third chime of a gong signaling teleportation is commencing, the PCs will keep their equipment and any treasure they find in the temple. She also informs the company that something turned a previous group sent down here into cannibal monsters that now roam the B level of the temple. Vivian also revealed that, for some reason she didn’t’ know, she could tell the exact time the doors in the temple would shift. Practically, this meant the party could check in with Vivian anytime they wanted exact numbers on the shift, but I would give them some general idea to work with.
Vivian will not leave room A2 and the party went on their way toward B7 in the southeast. I intended a staged situation ongoing between three “Mantids” The mantis/ant creatures and three cannibals but I felt that would have immediately stopped the flow again, so Instead in the moment I decided the fight had already occurred and there were dead from both sides in the room and when they investigated they would find a strange flat iron spear that looked like a big clock hand - part of a puzzle elsewhere.
Time for a shift was coming, but before that, they managed to get the key out of the red door in room B7 that unlocked a treasure in room B6.
Now I rolled a die and a 1 came up which meant it was time for an encounter. I rolled cannibals from the list of enemies, and we had someone new joining us at the table at about the same time. So now I had a split party and cannibals were rushing at the players and one of them was back in the room with Vivian Beauless.
We rolled for initiative and a flurry of crossbow bolts, spells casts, spears, swords, axes, clubs, and claws were goin in all directions. I was rolling pretty hot - uncharacteristically high - and I dealt alot of damage before the cannibals were put down. And poor Vivian Beauless was killed in the fighting, but luckily no PCs met their end here.
Then the doors shifted. Red doors closed. Black doors opened.
More to come next time…
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