My first playtest was with the Worlds Without Number by Sine Nomine Publishing, and I ran it with my current home game group. What follows is my playtest dungeon key & map, a rough play report, as well as my notes on what I learned from the experience.
Apologies in advance for the stream of consciousness nature of the play report – I underestimated just how much effort it would be to both write a summary as well as edit it down to be readable so in the future I plan to have them be a bit less cluttered and more organized. For now though, I just want to get this out and stop worrying about it being perfect.
Characters
Lightning (Mage)
Thunderstorm (Warrior)
Raine (Expert)
Tanwen (Warrior)
Players
M. B.
J. L.
A. N.
B. A.
Hooks
I provided the party with four hooks, one for each PC:
- The local village reeve wants the rumors of rising undead investigated and, if true, stopped
- The abbot of a nearby monastery seeks a sanctified prosthetic said to rest deep within the crypt
- An alchemist working out of the surrounding forest desires a grimoire said to be buried below the manor
- A letter of unknown provenance claims that one PC is a lost heir of the family and owns the land and what lies below it
Of the four hooks above, only the heritage hook came up in play. It seems like its the most gameable and offers the biggest change to playstyle, since the other three essentially boil down to heroics or plunder.
Play Report
The party took an immediate shine to the sealed demon within the dungeon, and both disbelieved and disliked the seneschal.
The party interpreted the seneschal’s warning to not steal as something akin to Fae bargains or Pan’s Labyrinth, where even eating food within the dungeon or picking up items temporarily might constitute theft. I didn’t intend things this way but it’s definitely more evocative than what I had in mind, so it’s a great example of how playtests can reveal great ideas about the direction you should take your adventure in!
The shades provided the party with a good reason to pick a specific direction to travel in within the dungeon, which is something I’m going to cover in my takeaway/debrief. In short, though, I think it was a good idea to include them and want to include similar interesting “things” in dungeons I write in the future.1 Giving the party an actual reason to go left vs. right helps avoid the issue of meaningless choice.
The party triggered the mimic despite the signposting I put in place with the mimic weapon rack going unused by the shades as well as the weapons all appearing pristine, despite their age. I don’t think this is necessarily a problem with my writing or GM style so much as most of my players are new to RPGs and weren’t immediately familiar with some of the tropes. I feel it’s probably a combination of that and just not expecting to actually run into a mimic, so I’ll keep it in mind as I play with them more but I imagine I’m making a mountain out of a molehill here. Following the mimic’s appearance, the party became apprehensive of just about everything (e.g., avoiding the room with combat noises) so in some ways, the idea did succeed. I was also happy to see them immediately realize the severity of the situation and decide to flee. Considering many of them are new to RPGs and old school gaming in general, seeing them embrace the idea of picking their own battles was great.
Without receiving a preamble about the dungeon’s history, the identity of the masked man was mostly a curiosity to the players and he served as somewhat of comic relief, which wasn’t what I intended. One player in particular tried to interact with him in a handful of ways, trying to drink with him as well as get his attention. Another manhandled the NPC in order to determine if they were a threat before losing interest. I did stat up the character, so part of the fault lies with me for not using the NPC I prepared. Still, it did make me feel that in the future I should ensure my NPCs are more gameable and less set-dressing.
The party met the surviving treasure hunter but failed to convince him to let them take him out. However the treasure hunter’s fear and the seneschal’s warning gave the dungeon some coherence that the party picked up on and actually remarked on post-session, so that was good to see.
The party rappelled down to the arena and approached the Dullahan before deciding the leave when it registered their movement and gave them a warning and took up a battle stance. This was a short interaction but does indicate that they’ve really started to internalize the danger of dungeoneering and that their characters don’t possess any plot armor.
They also deliberately didn’t go in the direction indicated by the demon because they wanted to “play hard to get”, so they explored the northeast wing and discovered the statue leading to the secret crypt. Their initial thought was to slide underneath the armor in order to move it forward and that wasn’t what I had intended so I turned down the idea but after the session I realized it would be both a more interesting and unique method for accessing a secret room while also being so clearly dangerous that it wouldn’t necessarily be an obvious thing to attempt, so I wanted to incorporate it into future drafts.
The party picked up on the secret room within (8) thanks to the grooved floor description. When they realized they wouldn’t be able to open it from the side they were on, they made a mental note to keep track of any other methods of ingress. I do really appreciate how they’ve taken a shine to dungeon crawling but I worry that I’m too generous in my room descriptions and tend to give away obvious dangers or points of interest. I don’t think this is currently a problem with my GMing style or my players but in the future I do want to be a bit more subtle. That way, players can develop more player skill in identifying potential danger and I can pare down my long initial room descriptions.2
The party also found the eastern ossuary and picked up the magic sword there, but chose not to open any of the coffins. An interesting bit of feedback I received was that the sword seemed too simple and easy to collect. To some degree, I intended for this to be the case but it also sort of came up in the following playtest, so maybe “free” treasure should be further in the dungeon as sort of a reward for pushing through, while treasure close to the entrance(s) should have some baked in risk to claiming.
They explored the secret crypt and used a light source (without my prompting!) and found the sealed coffins, the open coffin and the corpse draped over it. They saw the ruby there but didn’t interact with it out of fear. I asked a few times if they wanted to look at it but they didn’t give me a clear answer. I may need to make it more clear what is and isn’t dangerous to do, so that they know they can generally look at things even if they don’t touch them. In this case they passed up on valuable treasure due to (possibly) a misunderstanding of what the risk/reward actually was. On the other hand, this does show they’ve developed more experience as players and are willing to pass up on dangerous situations, something I should be more proud and supportive of.
They checked out the corpse and identified him as the third treasure hunter.
Checking his pockets resulted in finding more antiquated gold coins as well as a series of letters that catalogued hidden members of the family of the crypt. The PC heir found his grandparent’s name on this sheet (after a little prodding, which makes me think that maybe it isn’t a clear solution) and later used this to convince the seneschal of his claim.
The party also took note of the corpse’s position and guessed that they either died of suffocation or some magical curse and, after investigating the interior and exterior of the coffins, found rusted and burst poison darts as well as small holes in each wall of the coffin that would have been how the trap operated. They ended up assuming that the darts must have burst into a gas and the gas was how the corpse died, and seeing them determine this was interesting. This sequence of events as well as the hints of background lore within the dungeon seemed very motivating for the players and are types of optional mysteries I want to include in what I write moving forward.
The party went down the final door in the north-eastern hallway and returned to the entrance, meeting with the seneschal and wrapping up the heir hook by convincing him that one of the PCs was the heir to the family. This was a bit of a mixed moment, because although their success in convincing the seneschal was motivating it also slowed play to a crawl as they began to interrogate him about the dungeon, the house and other details before our session wound down for the night.
Takeaways
All in all the session went quite well and the party even expressed interest in continuing the dungeon for the next session, suspending our campaign for a bit. Seeing them enjoy it and actively want to continue was definitely a great moment for me. Its also helped me realize what they enjoy about TTRPGs and old school gaming, and how I can leverage that moving forward to craft material for better sessions with them.
As interesting and motivating a hook the heirdom might be, it kind of ruins the tension of exploring the rest of the dungeon. On the other hand, the reward does need to be earned and the immediate draw of the hook compared to the rest really can’t be overstated. The inclusion of the papers on the crypt robbing thief was meant to indicate that the hidden crypt contains secrets of the family but the up to date nature of the documentation is somewhat of a plot hole so maybe the current implementation doesn’t make sense. A thought I did have was to have the robbing brothers also be “heirs” and have that explain why they brought the papers, but that opens up doubts regarding the veracity of their information and whether or not their papers are forged, so it may be more trouble than it’s worth.
I initially wanted to use the room off to the side of the demon’s room with the three coffins as a false version of the hidden crypt, as they both contain three coffins. I still think I’m going to keep with this idea, but this has made me realize the constraints imposed on using a preexisting map and I may more aggressively edit the maps I use in the future, develop my own, or use Dyson’s maps as a jumping off point for coming up with ideas before combining both approaches.
I decided that the arm demon would be more congruent with the dungeon concept if it resembled blood instead. The demon’s name would also have to change if I changed its core concept, as the current name is a reference to one of the Hecatoncheires. I ended up deciding to make it look like the hemoglobin protein structure but it’s a bit difficult to describe accurately at the table and, as you’ll read in the next set of playtest notes, ultimately turned out to be a failure.
The name that I landed on for the seneschal that session was Peter and the party thought it was funny and not fantastical enough, so maybe something more fantasy sounding would be best. This seems like a clear Tiffany Problem3 (coined by Jo Walton) type situation but it is what it is.
Next up will be the play report of my Knave playtest!
The Lady and Tiger 
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