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Tournaments of Madness and Death $7.58
Average Rating:4.4 / 5
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Tournaments of Madness and Death
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Tournaments of Madness and Death
Publisher: D101 Games
by J H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/01/2020 03:25:27

You know this is probably a good idea if you are going to publish your own game. Do some convention scenarios. Hone those adventure scenarios then sell them. Capitalize on that shit. Get other people running them, and get more people playing the system. I mean if the adventures are good it'll work.

So these are Newt Newport's convention scenarios for the very excellent Crypts & Things. I have a 38 page saddle stapled A4 booklet. The cover art is nice. The inside art is black and white. The maps are very good. The rest of the art is okay. It's neither quite evocative enough, nor useful enough to show players. It certainly doesn't detract from the adventures, but neither is it good enough to get me amped to run the adventures. (That cover art tho!)

I want to start with the middle section - the part that talks about how to run a good convention game. Some of this is fething amazing stuff. Things like : schedule toilet breaks and TELL YOUR PLAYERS! And KEEP THE PACE UP! And (what should be obvious but probably isn't) BRING PREMADE CHARACTERS AND EXTRAS. I'm all for this. Especially for one shots. This is only four pages but its a really good section. THe first part of the advice is "Focus on what makes Crypts and Things What It Is" which is a great statement. However despite Newt going into four things that he thinks makes Crypts and Things different (and I mean as the author he should know!) he doesn't mention one of the things I'm a big fan of : a simple sanity based system. This point sort of links in with the adventures, none of them have enough potential for sanity loss that it becomes mechanically important. It's a minor point, but I would have preferred failure by insanity to be an actual possibility in these scenarios.

Both adventures are structured similarly. There is a hook, there is an urban environment to explore, then a short dungeon, then a boss fight with a twist. For a timed scenario this is the best you are going to get. It avoids the (far to common) trap of living group play - the travel montage of four short scenes. (Just the memory makes me rather slit my wrists). The hooks are good, solid, and on point. A hanging iron moon is collapsing, and foes are trying to wake up a confined evil emperor. The urban exploration for both is smashingly excellent. Almost every location has a hidden piece of information, that the GM is told only to reveal if the players are clever. These are never essential (yah to no gatekeeping!) but are almost always helpful (again big thumbs up to rewarding players) and will often only be gained by roleplaying (again, reward what you want players to do!).

Then short dungeons (about nine rooms) which in a timed environment is all you want. They're not linear (again fantastic!) and feature a good mix of combat, intriguing situations, and just cool stuff.

Lastly the boss fight, again these are not quite as straightforward as the intro would leave the characters to believe. Here players will be rewarded for actually finding out stuff during play.

They're not perfect. One of the adventures has a powerful wizard quest giver who effectively betrays the party. The adventure points out he doesn't need the party and instructs the GM to ignore this.

Despite this and the redundancy of the sanity system I think this is an excellent product. Whilst hard to integrate into a campaign they will stay on my shelf as 'bloody good one shots'. If convention GMing is your thing, check this out.



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[4 of 5 Stars!]
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