Originally published as part of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Free RPG Day booklet, The Portal Under the Stars, serves as a character grinder for level 0 characters. Lots of them, in fact! The booklet itself suggests upwards of 20 characters and warns that even still, depending on the smarts of the player and luck, it could end in a TPK. Now, this play style is not for everyone, that much is obvious. Old School play, and by proxy Legend4ry play thrive on this deadly nature. It makes for stressful situations where player smarts meets character role playing. It's quite interesting to see; I talked about this phenomenon in my last post regarding the second floor of my 4e Dyson's Delve Conversion.
Now, the biggest question I faced was, How do I translate this to 4e?I find that I ask myself that question a lot when it comes to conversions, simple or not. I liked the idea of the level 0 rules, or Heroes First Steps, published in Dragon 403, but still felt like something was missing. I really like the randomness of the level 0 rules presented in DCCRPG and tried to represent that in spirit and somewhat mechanically in my take on the module. Random rolls for race, ability score stats, and power source/role helped represent that. I also took the random background chart from the Free RPG Day booklet and allowed my players to roll D% to determine their background. (It led to some interesting combos, like a Halfling Dwarf Armorer, but we rolled with it and had fun with it.) I tweaked it a little, and whatever gear the many PCs received as part of their background package they had proficiency with, be it armor or weapons. Each player (only 2, sadly) had 5 PCs apiece for a grand total of 10 PCs running through this death trap.
The assault on this meat grinder kicked off with a bang; two of the stronger randomly rolled PCs kicked the bucket within the first ten minutes and it all went downhill from there. The party was split by a large Fireball throwing statue in one room, and then they decided to roll with it, having the party effectively in two places at once. It was completely chaotic but totally fun for both sides of the screen. In preparation for this, I had drawn out the entire map and placed it on the table and this helped tremendously with the split party fiasco. They could see rooms they hadn't been to, but thankfully my players are good at separating what their characters know from what they know.
Split party. Death in the form of an animated but stationary Fireball throwing statue. Docile Crystal Men who become hostile when attacked. Magic snake creature who is deadly, but offers amazing gifts to the party upon defeat. Yeah, this dungeon had it all. It was fun and at the end of the night with the dungeon only half way resolved (only the first 4 or 5 rooms, actually) only 2 of the original PCs stood standing. The others had fallen to fireballs, the snake mage, and the docile Crystal Men. Yeah, the same Crystal Men who are attracted, much like moths to light and only seek warmth, who are completely docile unless attacked. Yeah, those guys? Yeah, the PCs attacked every single one of them and paid dearly for it when they became hostile.
--- ----- ---
So let's talk mechanics here and look under the hood, as it were. The first thing I thought about is that a full character sheet isn't going to cut it, especially when each player is running 5 PCs. That would be overkill! So I created a very simple character sheet with minimal information. We found out during play that it was missing some things, but they were easily squeezed in. I will hunt for the sheets and upload a corrected version as soon as possible.
Character generation was fairly simple, we had the two Heroes of... Essentials books in front of us and everything else was completely random. All in all, it took around half an hour for them to create all 10 characters. This gave me time to review my notes and also socialize before the game with my buddies. It was good times. Below is both the Char-Gen guide as well as my customized version of the Power Sources presented originally in Dragon 403.
 |
| Click to Enlarge! |
 |
| Click to Enlarge! |
I should note in one of the chambers I call for 12 Demon Snake Minions... upon play it was quickly discovered (both by room dimensions and common sense) that this was far too many. Depending on party size I would suggest 0 to 4 or 5. Use your judgement. You can find the original document in PDF format of my Portal Under the Stars 4e conversion here and in the upper right hand corner where my other download links are located.
--- ----- ---
Up next for Legend4ry D&D is quite unknown. I have been planning on compiling all of the Legend4ry monsters I've designed for this site into a bestiary, albeit a very small one. The same is true for the magic items that have been created here as well. Beyond that, I am uncertain content wise.
Currently I am writing up my on-going groups next adventures that I DM, as well as working on a 4e Ravenloft and Dark Sun adventure. I may post regarding the design of all three of these adventures, but still I want to keep the focus on Legend4ry play above all else.
Until next time,
You can follow me on Twitter @Sorcerer_Blob or via the hash-tag #legend4ry. You can also find my blog and others at the Fourthcore Hub and at the RPG Blog Alliance.
No comments:
Post a Comment