Free RPG Day: Undying Legacy Playtest report

Without spoiling anything, here is a play-test report of Undying Legacy of the First Ones, the NeoExodus adventure for this year's Free RPG Day.

I talked about this adventure in previous posts (Here and Here) as this adventure was the result of our Kickstarter project that ran over the December-January period. (So you know, we'll have another one starting in March.)

I've spent many long nights and a few mornings while "watching" the kids at my computer, frantically writing and expanding the story, tweaking the combats and adding some story elements. For although I want this to be an introduction to NeoExodus, I want the adventure to showcase and present what is NeoExodus.

The Party

There were five players (our sixth had to bow out at the last second (but I knew)): Martin playing Freija the human gunslinger, Homer playing Chenoa the prymidian bard, Jon playing Hans the human cleric of the Kaga, D'Anne played Karissa the p'tan rogue and Everett played Dema-ma (whom he played in a Sunday game of "Encounter at Ramat Bridge"). Of those, Martin had never played NeoExodus before, D'Anne never played it either but she owns the book. Jon, Everett and Homer all played NeoExodus before, so they had some idea of what NeoExodus was before.

No one opted to play Nose-Cutter, the Enuka Fighter, which I thought interesting. It would certainly make for interesting times.

I mean... When does an RPG adventure not interesting without a big, burly fighter? Or a cleric, or a arcanist or a rogue, you ask as I chuckle?

The Game

We started late (which is ALL Homer's fault, it has nothing to do with the fact that we were stuffing our faces with Casa Caliente's awesome burritos and we walked in 2 mins before him). So we sat down, introduced ourselves (this was the first time I met with Martin who freshly arrived from Australia), did some chit-chat and finally got down to playing.

A few words about Exodus, and boxed text...

The game proceeded well. I do have a few things, notably as transitions, things that are clear in my mind, but that didn't make it onto the page. The inevitable grammar and weird sentences to correct, some elements I feel are lacking to the adventure (which I noted, added and did not tell my players about).

The flow was good, the progression of the PCs through the story was good, I do not feel they were lost in the setting at anytime, they knew what was going on, what to do and the skill checks did not seem over-burdened. Although they did spend a lot of time in one location rolling an average a '2' out of about 10 d20 rolls!

The Setup

At the request of a priest of the Sanguine Covenant, the PCs travel to a small border village in the Caneus Empire besieged by a tribe of calibans. Aggressive, barbaric, cannibalistic and dangerous, the calibans are a threat to civilized people everywhere. More is afoot than initially believed. That is the blurb I am currently working on.

The Combats

Combats were challenging, without a doubt, but none could be considered overpowered. I found them fun, entertaining and exciting... and most of all flavorful. That last one is important to me. Flavor and "feel" of the monsters used is important

Overall

I need to tidy up things, and a few more notes before sending this one to editing. But overall, I'm happy of the adventure and it should be fun to run at play at Free Rpg Day. I'm very happy with what I have and look forward to making it... well better once all the tweaks and notes are integrated. I am very anxious for Free RPG Day to see how many people will play the adventure and provide some feedback to us.

The adventure is rather isolated from the rest of our NeoExodus adventures in that it does not use any pre-existing characters, nor does it work off of the main storyline, at least not directly. Still the style and feel of NeoExodus is there.

A level 3 introduction to NeoExodus!

JP