Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, I said I'd post a playtest report. Here it is! The game background and characters are fairly tongue in cheek, as players never take this sort of thing that seriously. Running a segment of Monte Cook's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
The Party (Level 10)
Sir Cosmo Harkan - The prettyboy Paladin of the Morninglord, a Deity devoted to the purging of Evil, and the Redemption of Sinners.
Eagan - The homocidal, cannabilistic Gnome Barbarian. A deep hatred of Kender runs through his veins. (Interestingly, Cosmo is oblivious to his evil alignment due to changes in how paladin powers work)
Father O'Flaherty - a priest of the Holy Bejaysus, a Deity of unknown providence.
Klaus - A fighter and mercenary, formally a town guard for an ungrateful hamlet.
Not present today was Alynar Spellface IV, an elven Mage of the venerable Spellface dynasty.
The group had a selection of magic items that I selected and then rolled randomly for traits. I'll put them in a spoiler in case you don't want to read them, but some of the stuff the table threw up is quite amusing.



The premise:
In their earlier adventures the group had confronted an evil cult in the dreaded Caves of Chaos. We now move forward, several years later, when our intrepid heroes have tracked the Cult to their lair- the ruins of the Temple of Elemental Evil. (A misinterpreted rumour had lead them to believe it was the Temple of Emmental Evil. This proved false. Their cheese knives went unblunted.)

Here's an overview of the first level of the Dungeon:


The 4 heroes approached the entrance the underground ruin, signs of recent use clear in the half collapsed entrance. Eagan, ever impulsive, rushed forward and spied a huge, malformed Ogre.


He howls a Gnomish battlecry, unfortunately alerting the brute to his presence. While he calls for his party to join him, the Ogre blows a twisted war horn, summoning his kin from the Guard rooms on either side. (Initiative gave the Ogres the drop on the players here, and things escalated quickly. Cosmo cast a spell that granted the players resistance to most physical damage, and Father O'Flaherty said a prayer to the Holy Bejaysus, granting bonuses to hit and damage. The Ogres were actually in game terms Ettins, representing the elite ogres the cult had trained as Guards.)



The Ogre Guards rushed quickly into the fray, lead by their father, Borgal. (Game Terms: I used a slightly modified Frost Giant stats to represent the tougher Ogre Barbarian.) These heavily conditioned and brutal Ogres take no quarter from hertics who do not worship the Elder Eye. The three front line fighters quickly formed a battle line, with Sir Cosmo's divine favour protecting them from harm. Father O'Flaherty prayed to HB for Sanctuary.
(This section of the game took about half an hour to play through- each Ogre had 63 HP, and the players were downing one roughly every two turns at first. It did become a bit of a slog, but the high damage output coupled with low ACs all round kept it moderately interesting. Cramped quarters worked in the PC's favour).



Suddenly, the wall shook and trembled, and a huge Earth Elemental burst through the rock and earth at the party's rear, while a Stone Giant lumbered forward and began pelting the good Father with rocks. Thankfully, his aim was put off by the scrum of Ogres, and despite hurling several rocks, he was unsuccessful. The fighters continued to cleave through the Ogres, felling the father of the malformed younger Ogres. Cosmo disengaged to confront the Elemental with his priestly companion, leaving Klaus and Eagan temporarily vulnerable to the clubs of the Ogres. (Note: ACs are much lower in this game. Everyone gets hit, A LOT. I think this is more fun, but the game makes liberal use of DR, Resistance and the Disadvantage mechanic for protection.) However, the group prevail, slaying the Ogres and engaging the Giant. The Elemental crumbles into rubble under sustained assault from the religious. (Rules note: I kept the Stone Giant at Large, as he had to fight in the narrow corridors. In 5th they are supposed to be Huge.)



In the end, the Ogres fell, and the Stone Giant alone was no match for the heroes. They moved to explore the area, noting the cramped quarters of the Ogres. "Some sort of sordid behaviour" Cosmo was heard to remark, with disgust, looking at the closely packed sleeping mats. Eagan discovered the Ogre's cesspit, to his dismay, but the more perceptive Father found a well hidden secret door that had not been used in a long, long time.



This lead through a narrow tunnel, full of dust and rubble, to a tidy room. A fireplace, a book case, a workbench and some locked coffers sat covered in dust. Eagan eagerly opened the coffers, snapping the locks (rolled stupid high on his Str checks), finding gold and platinum. Some sinister books were also found, which Cosmo insisted on burning straight away. The group then took the chance to have a short rest, closing the doors behind them. (and I'll take this as a good time to break the post- I'll post the second part in my next post here!)

After their rest, the heroes moved through the tunnel, into the round shaft that the Giant had come from, and down a corridor to the south Eagan scouted, lying flat on his magic carpet and flying at the exact top of the ceiling. At it's end, some distance from the entrance, they found a door. Eagan quickly opened it and moved inside. He found a large room with two areas to the north and south full of sullen, emaciated Hobgoblin slaves. They glowered at him. Predictably, he roared at them, cowing them further. However, his roar woke someone up...



Grug the Ogre had been sleeping off his shift from clearing rubble, when he was rudely woken up by Eagan's roaring.
"'Ere, what's all dis racket abawt?" he rumbled, still bleary from sleep. Our intrepid heroes were not without an explanation or three.
"We're Dungeon Inspectors! Have you got your paperwork?" said Klaus.
"We're the new owners of this Dungeon!" said Eagan.
"I say, are any of you in an Evil Cult?" said Cosmo, not quite understanding the concept of subterfuge.
"Whut? Inspectahs? Ownahs?" Grug replied, scratching his lice ridden scalp.
"Yeah. We're Inspectors sent by the new owners. We need to speak to your supervisor really." said Eagan.
"Supervisor? Me boss? Yeah..." said Grug, now totally out of his depth. "I'll see about getting him."
"Excuse me, are you in a Cult?" repeated Cosmo, politely.
"Werl, yeah, 's all Cult, innit?" replied Grug, vaguely. He wandered off to find someone more senior to deal with these confusing visitors. After all, he was only a labourer.
As he wandered off, the group congratulated themselves on dealing with the encounter so quickly. Unfortunately, their discussion woke another Ogre, who lumbered out.
"Blimey! Wha's this abawt den?" he said. This time, Cosmo was ready. He really had to clear this up.
"We're looking for an Evil Cult. Is there one around here?" he said.
"Yeah, 'course. It's all Cult here."
"So...are YOU in a Cult?" Cosmo replied, seriously.
"Yeah, of course. We all are. It's all Cult, like I said." the Ogre replied, now slightly baffled.
"Ah. Good." Cosmo replied, unsheathing his sword and sheathing it quickly in the Ogres bowels.
Wholesale ogre slaughter followed, most of the Ogres still bleary from sleep.


The last Ogre pleaded for clemency, and Cosmo granted it, on condition that he promise to follow the Morninglord and be a good Ogre from now on "or I'll have to find you and kill you, you see". The Ogre agreed, took some pamphlets and made a beeline out of there. The players also liberated the hobgoblins, sans food or water, to die of starvation in the forest. However, Grug was true to his word, and really did go to find his boss:

Ghex the Beholder. Ghex quickly realised they had an Adventurer problem on their hands, and dispatched Grug to go and get the other cultists on this level- an assassin, a cleric, and a powerful wizard. (The players were too pleased with themselves here, and allowed Grug to give intel to more intelligent baddies. I was curious to see how they'd do in a very difficult encounter, and concious that they'd probably deal with these threats easily, individually. It is funny because Eagan had mentioned that the overseer was probably a Beholder, being the only creature with enough eyes to watch all these bloody Ogres.)
Ghex set up an ambush:

He was hovering 30 feet up, in the shadows of the roof of a large dome. The wizard and assassin shown were both invisible, and the cleric and ogre hid out of sight, in an alcove down the south corridor. As Eagan soared in on his carpet, followed directly by the good Father, Ghex had pointed his central eye straight down, shutting off the magic carpet and all the Cleric's magical gear, before blasting at the fighters with his death, petrification, wounding and disintegration rays. These didn't petrify or kill anyone, but they did do large amounts of damage. Then the assassin sprang forward, critically hitting Eagan with a sneak attack with a poison dagger, wounding him badly as well. The Wizard cast stoneskin on himself and bided his time. The players were obviously a bit put out by the sudden appearance of the Beholder, but they could do little about him, hovering 30 feet up. As the combat progressed, they scattered, to avoid the central eye. The assassin widthdrew, the Cleric moved up, casting Blade Barrier, the Wizard opened with a fireball.

Eagan closed on him rapidly, but before he could do much, the Beholder took it's next action. 5 eye rays, randomly rolled- Death, Petrification, Disintegration, Disintegration, Death. Ouch. Eagan was turned to stone, Father O'Flaherty, Claus and Cosmo all took a beating in terms of damage. The players were suddenly in panic mode. The next round, Father O'Flaherty used his wand of Binding to Hold Monster the Beholder, freezing it in place. Klaus ran and used Eagan's carpet to fly up to it, and then used an action surge to attack it, and a fighter trick to bat it 15 feet downwards. Cosmo battled the Assassin, while the Cleric threw a Flamestrike down. (He was blocking the Ogre's entry with his Blade Barrier though- d'oh!)(I'm also pretty sure I'm forgetting some stuff from this combat- but you get the picture, lots of things happening, piles of damage, absolute chaos).


After a chain lightning, followed by a Wall of Fire cutting off their escape, the players were feeling desperate. Javelins cast at the Beholder barely made a scratch, but Klaus managed the bat the monster down to ground level before it shook off the Binding. (It got a save each round on it's turn, which is good). Before it could act, however, Cosmo rushed in and smote it with a blinding flash. (He'd used a Blinding Smite spell. My Beholder was now blind! I ruled that this was a shocking enough occurrence for such an ocular monster that it lost it's concentration on the Flesh to Stone spell. In 5th, flesh to stone requires the caster to hold concentration for 1 minute to make it permanent. Since the concentration was broken, the spell ended.) Eagan sprang back to life with a vengeance, gutting the Wizard beside him and sprinting across the room to dive onto the Beholder's bulbous body.

It rose into the air, in a panic, shooting eyebeams blindly (1/8 chance of being hit). The good Father was struck again, and dropped. Cosmo sprinted across and healed him, while Klaus finished off the Assassin. The Cleric forced Cosmo through his blade barrier, and the Paladin was now close to death. The blinded beholder was bloodily put out of it's misery by Eagan, who slashed it to pieces before leaping onto Grug.

The Cleric then summoned a terrifying spectral entity, who dropped Klaus. However, the tough fighter stood once more, too dogged to die (Fighters get a cool ability where if dropped below zero they can make a Con check and be returned to 1 HP.). Father O'Flaherty summoned his own entity, which damaged the Cleric and killed the Assassin and the Ogre. (The entities were represented by the shocker lizard and the boar on the map, due to an in joke between my players and I). At the end, only the beleaguered Cleric stood against the group, and the maniac Gnome rushed through the blade barrier to eviscerate him in the end.

The group then retreated to the hidden room, and during their recovery they heard the sounds of angry, gravelly voices finding the slaughter they had heaped upon the cult. Despite the anger of their foes, they were not discovered. (End of session)

It's late now, so I'll give some of my thoughts on how things played and what I thought of it tomorrow, but I can say definitely that we all had fun, and despite it being a new system to use it ran fairly quickly and smoothly.

This update pleases me.

Right so, thoughts:
-The game is much more streamlined and simple than either 4th, 3.5 or Pathfinder. This is possibly just a result of the fewer options in the playtest document. My players like their crunch, and said they would be worried about getting bored with their progression if there wasn't more meaningful character options.
-It plays fast and simple- moving and attacking is very fluid, attacks of opportunity are a much lower concern. This encourages mobility when the battlefield is open- the narrow corridor didn't allow for it.
-ACs are low, but defences of other kinds are used liberally. Everyone had some way of granting disadvantage, forcing a save to be attacked, gaining DR or gaining damage resistance, This meant that everyone could hit or be hit, but with the right choices the players could swing it in their favour. I really liked this. I also liked that all the monsters are pretty much in reach of even a level 1 party, to hit wise.
-Damage is fairly consistent. Between level 1 and level 10, the biggest difference was that the fighters got more attacks. Each attack didn't do a lot more damage- the damage seems much less spiky than in 3.5 for example. The monsters have lower HP and defences than in 4th, which meant they went down fast, but the players are in the same boat. The damage from spells was quick to work out and generally only a bit more than a fighter on a good round. The players were generally pretty happy with their damage outputs. Paladin seems like it's a really good mix of combat and spells, but it's not anywhere near as dangerous as a PF paladin for example.
-The fewer spells thing is interesting. Every spell does something significant, but you quickly run out of powerful options and have to fall back on your lower level stuff, or wade into melee. Surprisingly, spellcasters can do okay in melee due to the lower ACs. The spells all felt a bit more significant, though we didn't see much use outside of combat yet, the option is there.
-Skills are fairly simple. I dunno if this is good or bad, but we mostly barely used skills at all. The adventure was very combat heavy so I'll reserve judgement. My players dislike the simplicity of the skill system, but I quite like it.

Overall the game is quick and simple to pick up and involves very little on the fly calculation to play. It's stripped down, fast playing and exciting. I think it would be a great introductory game for people who are roleplaying for the first time for that reason. The flip side is that the fewer options may feel limiting for players who are used to other games or who like a bit of crunch with their fluff. It "felt" like D'n'D 3.5 to me in play, but played much faster and without getting bogged down the way higher level 3.5 games can. The players felt threatened and worried at many stages, but the combats were all over in a pleasing amount of time. The fight with the Beholder and his cronies was especially dramatic, with a lot happening and the players being forced to be be creative to deal with the monster and so on.
I am pretty enthused by the game, and hope that the full game keeps much of the structure. I often find Pathfinder, while fun, gets quite bloated and bogged down, and of course casters are gods. This game seems much more balanced between characters, and it seems like they made a concious choice: PF balanced things by giving everyone more, upping the power creep a little. Next seems to balance by giving everyone a little less, but equalising what they have and giving the casters less scope to be pumping out ridiculous damage.

Much appreciated, an interesting read indeed.


What did you do the maps etc with BTW ?

I use a software called Maptool, free to download. It's designed for online play, so you can share the maps. The player can only see the areas that are "lit" in the pictures, the rest are blacked out, and it has options for lighting, darkvision and so on.
http://www.rptools.net/
That's the website. Also has a tool for making images into tokens for use, I have a big catalogue of image files that I've made into tokens so I can pick whatever I want for different stuff, but it's as easy as googling to find what you want.

The map images themselves are cut from the PDF of Monte Cook's pre-written adventure. I tend to loot maps from all over the place, and I also have the DND dungeon tiles as images from somewhere, so I can make my own.

It's been a real boost to our gaming since I got into it, since we play online via Google + these days. I much prefer it to Roll20 for example, though sometimes the networking can be a bit of a pain and I wish it was browser based!
Well worth a play though- it's free after all!

Is this streamlined or simplistic? Because right now it's not looking too good. I want D&D to have options for characters and tactics.

Definitely streamlined, definitely reasonably simple, and definitely low on character options at the moment. That was players main compaint, though they had fun in the context. I will say they had a variety of tactical options though- that is still there. It was easy and uncomplicated to trip, or to bat enemies around the map, and the rules for movement in combat and so on were easy to interpret and run.

I think the simplicity is designed in some ways to appeal to the OSR crowd who don't feel the need for complex character builds and archetypes. It appeals to me, personally, as permaGM, because there's way less for me to keep track of than the morass of splat that is Pathfinder. I expect fairly rapid bloat though, once things get going.

Nice report. This sounds very good, just what the doctor ordered.