Playtest 1
In my last update I said I would be playtesting the Slumbering Castle at Total Con 40, but I chickened out because I didn't feel I had enough to go off of. Now I have finally tested this adventure at a different convention (Nerdfest). The playtest went fairly well, and I ended up with plenty of notes.
What Happened?
At the start of the session I gave players a crude map of the kingdom revealing the back entrance of the brook. This was a last second decision and a mistake as players immediately believed this to be the best way into the kingdom. 3 bandits were waiting in the lowlands along the brook, in ambush for folk leaving the kingdom to take their treasure. They ambushed the party and killed them within a few rounds. The players found this amusing and asked to re-use the same characters and attempt to enter through the front gate. They re-entered through the front gate and explored the kingdom on the path to the castle, slowly losing stamina (the stamina loss rate seemed perfect to me - just biting enough to cause a bit of constant fear). Eventually they made their way into the castle and stayed there a bit too long. I want to save the details of what they found so no future playtesters get spoiled :) Only one adventurer made it out and the others fell asleep while running back to the front gate.
Difficulty
One of the players commented that the adventure was too difficult to finish in one session. This is the intent so I didn't find it overly concerning. As I mentioned earlier I felt like the stamina drain happened at a perfect rate, at least for this first test.
Dragon Movement
The Dragon's current movement setup was perhaps a bit too fiddly and had it firmly nestled in the corner of the kingdom (zones 1 and 5) for the entirety of this playtest (as its movements kept pushing up against the boundaries of the hex zones and therefore it wasn't moving at all). I believe I will change this to have it move counter-clockwise if the movement dictated by the dice is impossible.
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