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The Dragon Scroll is out! Play it at home, play it at a con, or just read it for fun. It's the first official adventure for the game. Here's the blurb: Characters can encounter zeppelins battling above glaciers, undead mobs rampaging in the halls of St. Vartan's school, necromancers, alchemists, cockatrices, mini-head chimera swarms, freaks of magic, ruins of engineering, and broken-hearted schoolchildren stranded far from home, with little to hope for and much to fear. The adventure includes: * 3 GM maps of St. Vartan's school, including extensive secret passage networks * 3 player maps of St. Vartan's school with the secret passages yet to be discovered * 4 player handouts * 2 GM handouts, including GM achievements for the adventure * An adventure record sheet for characters continuing in the series The Dragon Scroll follows a narrow-wide-narrow format. It begins in medea res, then allows for the players to follow many different paths to an endgame whose outcome depends on the players' actions. Seven pre-generated characters are included. The text of the adventure is 38 pages long; the last seven pages are the character sheets of the seven pre-gens. Strap on your flight leathers and board the Freezing Mary, bound for St. Vartan's school. This is adventure in the Kingdoms. Here, as always in the Kingdoms, love and fear are the most powerful forces you will encounter. And as always, you may find yourself asking: is that a good thing? Buy the adventure here!
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I have read through the adventure and I really like it. It has answered a lot of questions on how Frank puts things together, very helpful. I like the way scene order play is portrayed giving a framework for a GM to introduce scene order play into the game and help to coax players into the concept. I really liked the scene order table although Frank suggests not relying on it, it does give a really good idea of how to do it.
The adventure is flexible and quite portable. I will be able to fit it into my own campaign without difficulty. It will introduce another adversary on top of the ones I already have.
The pregen characters were useful because they give good examples of histories, inspirations and reputations.
Overall I am very pleased with the book it is a good read and really helps me think about how to use the rules. It will change a few of the things I am doing in my own game. I always thought that the core book lacked an example adventure. This certainly fills that gap.
A few questions and comments:
First, the adventure introduces three denominations of coin, basically gold silver and copper but the adventure nor the core book talks about their relative value. In the core book only gold is mentioned and all items are valued in only in gold. What is the relative value and how are the other coins intended to be used? I have always assumed minor bookkeeping is avoided in SBK and things like the cost of a meal or a drink subsumed in wealth.
Secondly, I would have liked a couple of battle maps with the zones drawn out as hand-outs. Certainly for the first and last battles which are in fixed locations.
Third, it would have been useful to have a hand-out with the NPCs all together in a simpler structure to read in game. The stats of the NPCs are in the prose and scattered through the adventure making them harder to use.
Fourth, any advice on balancing the GM scenes and the player scenes, I know how this is suggested in the primary book but I was interested how it was envisioned in the adventure. Do you think any of the GM scenes are compulsory?
Finally, for a short point I felt a little lost reading the book because of the structure. It kind of goes: adventure thread but then pauses to do dungeon map and rooms before returning to the adventure. I persevered and it all came together but for a while I felt “had I missed something?”.
Nice job, I have enjoyed reading it and hope to get some fun out of running it.
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Glad you liked it! The format for SK adventures may change in the future, depending on feedback. There are three goals I'm trying to meet with the format. First, make it fun to play; second, fun to read; third, playable as both site-based and scene order. For me, it's not fun to read an RPG adventure without good maps. Even if I run a scene-based game - which I almost always do - I want a map so that I can see how everything fits. And, of course, you need a map for a site-based adventure. The scene list seems to slot in nicely after the sites because it leads into the climax, giving the reader a sense of rising action. I was pretty happy with the format, actually, but it's always open to change depending on what people think.
Speaking of which - I haven't heard in email or here or pm anywhere what people thought of the scene flowchart GM aid. I always picture things like that and it really helps me keep the pace of the adventure up. But maybe that's just me.
About the coins: they're on p. 56 of the rule book. And yeah, in play, you don't need to keep track of the silver and copper. It makes for good reading though, and some people do like to keep track of that stuff. The gold, of course, can be converted into wealth levels. What I meant to do - totally forgot until now - is add a point in there about "If you don't want to count orbs, then just award a 1 WL increase to successful characters at the conclusion of the adventure." Ah well - next time!
Battle maps. Hm. For the two set pieces at the beginning and end, the book does tell you (or suggest to you, rather) what the areas are. Including a sketch map might not be a bad idea, although of course it will add to the time and labor involved.
Hand-out with all the NPCs together: Sure! I never use them and always resented such handouts in paper products, but in a pdf where there's no real constraint on space, next time I will copy-and-paste all the major NPC stats into one appendix. I'm also going to leave their stats in the text, too, because that is more fun to read.
Ooh, good question about the necessity of GM scenes. The true but nebulous answer is that it depends on the players. To be more specific, though, no. I don't think any scene is necessary in every game. If the players are advancing and having fun, and you are too, then let it go on! Depending on style and a group's expectations, I could see the GM needing to set some scenes in order to maintain verisimilitude and tone. When I have run this adventure at cons, I do almost all the scene setting (for a lot of reasons, including that many people aren't familiar with the rules, etc.). And I'm a little selfish sometimes too so I'm not sure that I'd ever totally give up my scenes. :) But could it happen? I think so.
Another point on format - maybe I'll try to make clearer next time that, if you are reading through to find a particular chain of events or scenes leading to a climax, you should skip chapter three (the site-based chapter) and go from two to four. I tried to do that but it probably wasn't clear enough.
But yeah, glad you liked it. I've had a lot of fun running it a ton of times.
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YcoreRixle wrote:Speaking of which - I haven't heard in email or here or pm anywhere what people thought of the scene flowchart GM aid. I always picture things like that and it really helps me keep the pace of the adventure up. But maybe that's just me. I liked this as a reading aid certainly. I am not sure how useful it will be in game but in a non linear adventure it is a real help to see the links. I often use something similar to map my own games (and campaigns with a live flowchart). YcoreRixle wrote:About the coins: they're on p. 56 of the rule book. And yeah, in play, you don't need to keep track of the silver and copper. It makes for good reading though, and some people do like to keep track of that stuff. The gold, of course, can be converted into wealth levels. What I meant to do - totally forgot until now - is add a point in there about "If you don't want to count orbs, then just award a 1 WL increase to successful characters at the conclusion of the adventure." Ah well - next time! Ahh yes so they are. I never use them. I just kind of glossed over that, named gold as ducats and do everything in those. I hand-wave staying in inns and nights out etc as long as the PC has enough wealth. YcoreRixle wrote:Battle maps. Hm. For the two set pieces at the beginning and end, the book does tell you (or suggest to you, rather) what the areas are. Including a sketch map might not be a bad idea, although of course it will add to the time and labor involved. I think there is real value in battle maps. There are also several games now using zones such as FATE so they could have additional use. YcoreRixle wrote:Hand-out with all the NPCs together: Sure! I never use them and always resented such handouts in paper products, but in a pdf where there's no real constraint on space, next time I will copy-and-paste all the major NPC stats into one appendix. I'm also going to leave their stats in the text, too, because that is more fun to read. I found myself flicking around a lot. Having everything in one place would help. I think you have the luxury of being the author and knowing your own creations.
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I like the circle flow chart thing, of limited use except as a basic aid to say, which scenes should I allude to next.
I secord or third the list of NPCs and what they want some where in the back. i really like the NPCs, and don;t want to miss any. I am more likely to take a list of NPCs and weave a story session around them, then use the Locations as described as a set encounters containing the PCs.
REPHRASE:
I rather take the NPCs and use them as the main focus with the locations as background. A list of NPCs, what they want, and where they are likely to be found is how I think about these adventures.
i don't like having a list of rooms with the NPC descriptions listed in order of room.
Example: Elsa is crazy(-awesome) and her leading her pet PC back to her rooms for a private chat is a highlight. but that scene is about Elsa, not her room. I want to think about the places she is likely to be encountered (her classroom, her private rooms, dining hall) not have to muck around until I find her stats about some location the PCs are not at.
Example: the oragnist is cool. He could be all sorts of places depending on the time of day, what has been said, or what is going on at that moment. i want a list of places he could be and then look those places up than vice versa.
Obviously what kind of presentation is wanted will vary by person! I have never been a fan of dungeon crawl game or layout. for a social game like SKs, any given encounter with a NPC should just lead to another encounter down the line.
our game is set in thyre, and though our intro into the adventure will be different than presented in the book (they ambushed the Civic and Duty people in their hotel the night before the flight), it is well on its way.
Jason
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