Players Keep Out! Session #2

If you’re playing in my game, don’t read this. If you do, I’ll send you to Finland.

Last week’s session was the first session that really utilized the adventure module I’m using, The Village of Hommlet. If you don’t already know, The Village of Hommlet is a famous adventure written by Gary Gygax for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. We’re not playing Draw Steel!, not AD&D, so there’s a fair bit I’ve had to change about the adventure.

First, there are a whole bunch of encounters in TVoH that really wouldn’t challenge the party. In D&D that would be fine because D&D is built around attrition AND offers the party experience points in small amount for even small encounters (in AD&D terms I believe you got XP based on the amount of gold you find, not from killing monsters, but the point still stands).

In Draw Steel! however, things work a bit differently:
•Your character’s coolest abilities use your class’s Heroic Resource, which you gain throughout an encounter. There’s no attrition for your character’s abilities, only their health.
•When you beat an encounter your character gets 1 or 2 victories. When you start an encounter, you receive your Heroic Resource equal to the number of Victories you have, and when you take a rest, your Victories become XP. BUT, since each Victory is quite significant, you don’t get any victories for trivial encounter.

Because of those two points, I think trivial encounters would feel pretty bad for the players. The fight wouldn’t be terribly exciting because everyone knows the party is going to win, the party isn’t getting anything from the fight, and they’re just losing stamina. It’s a lose-lose-lose scenario.

So, I took out most of the encounters I thought would be trivial once made with Draw Steel!’s monsters. Some frogs at the Moathouse entrance were taken out entirely, a giant spider in a tower was found already killed by the villain of the adventure (who I also completely changed), some brigands were replaced with Wode Elves, and a big snake, a lizard, and a giant tick were all removed.

Also, the evil vines I showed off in the last Players Keep Out! post didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped. They did a little bit, but with how Draw Steel! potencies (the equivalent of a D&D saving throw but without the randomness) work, I’d have to roll very well to really affect most of the party members (Paarthanoxx got affected because his Might is as low as it could possibly be). Next time I make something like this, I’ll probably have them only rely on the roll and not on any of the party’s stats unless the effect is nastier or harder to end.