Today is Free RPG Day, a great day to drop by your Friendly Local Game Store to pick up some neat stuff and make a token purchase as appreciation. In Daggerheart news, Darrington Press has released The Dying Spire, a new level 2 adventure intended as a follow-up to The Sablewood Messengers quickstart adventure.
I hope many current and aspiring GMs pick up this new adventure because it is a lot of fun. And I know it’s great because I had the pleasure of running it five times at Gen Con last year. At those five tables, I picked up a few tips beyond what’s in the adventure itself to help you make the most out of the experience.
The adventure ran fast for me
The adventure is targeted for four hours of playtime, including filling in character details. Personally, I ran the adventure between 2 1/2 and 3 1/4 hours. I didn’t feel like I was rushing, and I know other GMs ran long. Just know that it can go quickly.
Keep the Travelers moving
In the very first scene, the party will meet Hergl and Lika, two seemingly innocent travelers who turn out to be the targets later.
The longer you dwell on the scene, the more the players will become suspicious. If you want to stay on the rails, steer the conversation to how dangerous the goathogs: it will just sound like an in-game warning.
However, if you don’t care about rails, let the players do their thing. One of my tables nailed an Insight roll and realized the travelers were up to no good. In that case, I improvised a third traveler who took the Brambleheart himself and left Hergl and Lika behind.
That got really confusing later because the players just gave chase instead of getting more exposition from the Spire Keeper. However, it mostly worked and is just your chance to exercise those GM skills.
Focus on the chaos, not the rules, of the river run
Honestly, I still don’t know what the exact rules of the river run are. I know I was supposed to tick some countdowns sometimes depending on what the rolls were. Player actions and environment actions do things. Whatever.
What really mattered is that the rapids feel hectic. Rather than dangerous, I actually mainly focused on goofy. Whenever I rolled a 2 for a PC to go overboard, I had all of the players roll d12s, and the lowest went over. Of course, it kept being the same person over and over again.
Spend your Fear freely for this encounter. Between a wimpy goathog fight and the short rest, you should have some banked. It’s worth spending on this encounter and building up a little more before the final encounter.
Prepare a battle map for the final encounter
The goathogs shouldn’t have been too taxing, and unless the party went over the falls, they probably didn’t get hurt by the river too much. However, the Soot King can be a very real, very dangerous, very tactical encounter.
Or not. I whiffed a few times when the ranges or minions or terrains made it really trivial for the tanks to walk up, whack away, and call it a day.
I always recommend that GMs read the adventure in advance. With The Dying Spire, you can probably get away without too much prep elsewhere. However, you really should be ready to run the final battle. Draw a battle map. Do a mock run-through of the fight so you can imagine what the players will do and what abilities the Soot King has.
You can always dial it back in-game if it’s too hard. However, if the players chip away at the Soot King’s HP too quickly, it’s tough to turn up the heat again. Start big, scare the players, then titrate for the narrowest victory possible.
Kill a player (character)
The Soot King is an intelligent adversary. Don’t feel bad about picking on one of the PCs. Daggerheart has excellent rules for handling PC deaths however they want, so see how the rules work.
For what it’s worth, the majority of my players went for Blaze of Glory, and at least one of them killed the Soot King on that action. That felt cool.
Remind the players about Tag Team rolls
In a one-shot for new players, it’s easy to forget the weird rules that aren’t on the character sheets and cards. The most commonly forgotten is the Tag Team, which also happens to be one of the most fun rules to add.
If there’s a big moment, remind the players that they can Tag Team. It isn’t overstepping and probably will be appreciated.
A few more ideas
After Gen Con last year, I wrote a few blog posts about my experience. I tried to be careful not to expose anything about the adventure. However, I suspect that all of these will make a lot more sense with The Dying Spire in your pocket.
Leave a Reply