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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/04/08/tabletop-review-appendi
x-n-adventure-toolkit-4-the-witch-of-wydfield/
The Witch of Wydfield is the fourth release from Brave Halfling’s Appendix N Adventures line. These adventures are meant to be short one session pieces that use the Dungeon Crawl Classics rules set. Previous releases include The Ruins of Ramat, The Vile Worm and The Treacherous Cobtrabs. I’ve enjoyed all of the adventures so far, but I’m happy to say that The Witch of Wydfield is the best Appendix N release yet, as you still get a healthy dose of DCC hack and slash, but you also get a pretty interesting storyline that should keep your players on their toes from beginning to end.
What’s really nice about this particular Appendix N Adventure, is that you’re getting far more than just the DCC piece. You also get a separate black and white map, which, in true Dungeon Crawl Classics style, ends up being one of the artistic highlights of the piece. I can’t express enough how the maps for DCC products like these are reason enough to buy adventures for this system, especially when they cost as little as this one! You also get an art free version of the adventure and a system neutral one, in case you want to run the storyline with, say, Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder or Swords & Wizardry. Heck, you could even probably do it with something like Cthulhu Dark Ages. I just can’t believe the sheer amount of stuff you get with this adventure, and even if you’re brand new to Dungeon Crawl Classics, the Appendix N Adventures are a wonderful way to get sucked in to it.
The adventure itself is short but brilliant. It is designed for Level 0 characters, although how many is not mentioned anywhere. Level 0 characters a DCC staple, and can even be more fun than high powered god tier characters. Behold the fury of the cheesemaker! Anyway, Level 0 adventures are a great way for newcomers to see firsthand the lethalness of the Dungeon Crawl Classics system, and also decide what class they want to be once they have obtained enough experience. It’s also always fun to throw monsters and supernatural activity at characters that have no experience or training in this regard, one of the reasons I also love Call of Cthulhu so much.
The story of The Witch of Wydfield is that one morning, the townsfolk of Wydfield awaken to find their local Cleric, Sister Thara, horribly murdered with the letters Y U L spelt out in her blood. A young girl named Dela is also missing. The villagers put two and two together and realize the good Sister was trying to spell the name of who killed her – a witch named Yulna. Unfortunately, Yulna was killed by Sister Thara and her adventuring party some time ago. Could the witch have come back from the dead? Well, the players are determined to find out, and guided by a young man who knows where the witch once dwelled, the PCs form a town mob to root out the cause of this evil and destroy it.
The Witch of Wydfield is a short adventure, involving only four encounters and six locations on the map. There are also three ways the adventure can end, but only one of them is a happy ending. The other two are melancholic at best. I do like that the encounters are extremely interesting ones, that include an ensorcelled hunter, a living wall of ivy, a cauldron full of slime and even a demon. The big trap in the adventure is also a highly memorable one, and every aspect of The Witch of Wydfield should have players fondly reminiscing it weeks, months and possibly even years after playing it – it’s that well written. I even like that you can find Yulna’s magic broom in her belongings if you play your cards right. That’s a nice magic item for early adventurers to get their hands on.
As I said at the beginning of the adventure, The Witch of Wydfield is the best Appendix N Adventure to be released so far, and it’s one of my favorite Dungeon Crawl Classics experiences to boot. With a price tag of under two dollars for the PDF version, you should definitely pick this up, even if you’re new to DCC. The art and adventure itself should suck you in to considering a purchase of the core rulebook itself. I’m really impressed by what’s here, and can’t wait to see what’s coming next for Dungeon Crawl Classics from Brave Halfling Publishing
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/10/23/tabletop-review-appendi
x-n-adventure-toolkit-1-the-ruins-of-ramat-dungeon-crawl-cla
ssics/\
If you’ve been reading this site for a while, then you know I really enjoy the new Dungeon Crawl Classics system Goodman Games released earlier this year. So when I saw a Kickstarter back in June where a company was going to try and release their first DCC adventure, I happily threw money at it. Well, that Kickstarter exploded to where there are now seven or eight products in the works being funded by the money it raised – most of which are Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures. You won’t hear me complaining about that. Now, Brave Halfling has run into a few problems along the way. One of his artists and the slipcover creator both massively raised their rates post-Kickstarter which left him with a financial shortfall and some publishing delays. It happens. Kickstarter is Venture Capitalism, not Amazon, after all. Personally, I’m just happy the first adventure is finally out with the promise of more to come.
The Ruins of Ramat is a twenty page adventure. Of those twenty pages, one is the OGL, two pages are the covers, two thirds of a page is introduction, one page is back story for the adventure, one page is an encounter table and the hook for the PCs, five and a half pages are the actual adventure itself, six and four-fifths pages are exceptionally awesome artwork, one page is an appendix for expanding the adventure with three unconnected and very different situations, and one page (page 2) is inexplicably blank. The PDF version of The Ruins of Ramat also comes with a second two-page PDF. It contains the full map drawn in the usual Dungeon Crawl Classics style, along with two half page versions of the handouts that are in the core adventure PDF. I’m not sure why we’d need or want both, but extra pages are extra pages, I guess.
The actual adventure is a pretty interesting one. As it involves Level 0 characters, there should be a lot of PC death occurring. Of course, that’s one of the whole points to a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure, which is why the game’s core rulebook suggests everyone play two or three PCs EACH when doing one of these. This particular adventure suggests eight to twelve characters, which means three to six actual gamers playing. The adventure is a pretty big one, containing seventeen rooms and four big encounters that range from a crab spider to a demon with an instant death attack. Ouch. There aren’t a lot of monsters to encounter, but again, that’s because these are Level 0 characters. I think the adventure is balanced enough that a few of the characters will make it out alive, and that’s to be expected. DCC has a mortality rate almost as high as Call of Cthulhu after all.
The back story for the adventure is an incredibly good one and it revolves around the Church of Ramat, a Lawful Good deity (well, just Lawful as this is DCC) splintering into two factions and eventually destroying itself in a violent civil war that has left the religion and its God forgotten for thousands of years. It’s just too bad that much of the back story will never be encountered by the characters that play through it, but at least it’s there for gamers to read and enjoy after the fact. The weakest part of the story is the player hook. A little girl has her dog kidnapped by a giant monster (which never appears in the adventure oddly enough) and the PCs all journey into an until now undiscovered pit in their hometown which then leads into forgotten old ruins. I can’t see too many cheese-makers or basket-weavers thinking this is a good plan of action. I mean, I love animals more than people, but if I was a Level 0 human in the world of Dungeon Crawl Classics, where a horrible death by a foul beastie is more likely than a stroke or clogged artery, I’d be more inclined to buy the child three puppies instead.
All in all, The Ruins of Ramat is not only a great adventure, it’s better than some of the “official” Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures I’ve seen put out. The art is fantastic, the story is a very interesting one and I like the idea of optional expansions for the adventure. The storyline also gives a great explanation for why one (or more) of the Level 0 characters becomes a cleric. It’s practically built in. The Ruins of Ramat impressed me greatly and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a physical copy of the adventure to see how it holds up in digest form. Even more though, I’m looking forward to the rest of the adventures that will be released in the months to come
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Originally Posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/03/12/tabletop-review-appendi
x-n-adventure-toolkit-3-the-treacherous-cobtraps-dungeon-cra
wl-classics/
I’ve really enjoyed the Appendix N Adventure Toolkits. They are short adventures that fit the Dungeon Crawl Classics line perfectly. I absolutely adored The Ruins of Ramat, and found The Vile Worm to be fun, albeit expensive in terms of the page count to dollar amount ratio. The Treacherous Cobtraps is no different. Three dollars is a lot for a twelve page adventure, especially when you consider that the covers, two full page pieces of art and the OGL contribute to that page count. That means there are only seven pages of content, which may dismay some readers of this review. Take heart though, as The Treacherous Cobtraps is a fine little adventure, and it boasts some incredible artwork by people like Steve Zieser, Andy Taylor, Mark Allen and Reece Ambrose. About the only thing missing, art-wise, are the awesome maps you usually find in first party (Goodman Games published) Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures. Instead of being included in the core PDF, it’s attached as a separate one. I’m not sure why Brave Halfling decided to go this route, as it’s far less convenient to have to go back and forth between two PDFS, especially on a tablet or e-reader, than it is to have just included this extra page in the core adventure PDF.
In The Treacherous Cobtraps, a team of eight to twelve Level 2 characters are hired by the town of Brandy Hollow to cleanse a forest of a strange race of giant malevolent spiders known as Stygian Orb Weavers. The adventuring party sets out, and what follows is a pretty simple hack and slash dungeon crawl. DCC does tend to put roll-playing before role-playing, and this adventure is no exception. It’s exceptionally light on story and the first sentence of the paragraph covered all there really is. Your players go into the woods, deal with three encounter locations rife with Stygian Orb Weavers, and if they make it out alive, they might be able to find some treasure and survivors from the spiders’ recent conquests.
Combat is surprisingly light for a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure too. As mentioned, there are only three locations in this adventure, and while each one has you slaying spiders, the amount of enemies is quite small for the massive size of the party. In most Dungeon Crawl Classics adventurers, the party size is so large because death is exceedingly common and players end up playing two or three characters each. Here it feels like you could go through the adventure with a party half the size of the suggested one. As well, you should be able to finish this adventure in one sitting, as it’s quite short, even compared to other Appendix N Adventure Toolkits. For a real DCC experience, you may want to increase the amount of monsters, as most players will find this adventure to be a cakewalk. Without a map or any real detailed description of the forest, it’s almost as if this is a Fourth Edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure rather than a Dungeon Crawl Classics one.
Now you would think that, since the adventure is so short and slightly on the easy side, that I’d be giving this a thumb’s down, but that’s not the case. Unlike the previous two Appendix N Adventure Toolkits, The Treacherous Cobtraps comes with a lot of extra stuff. There is a system neutral version of the adventure in case you would like to run the Toolkit in something other than DCC. Say you want to try it in 4e or Swords & Wizardry – you have that option. It’s also art free, which is a bit of a bummer though, because the art really sells the piece. You also get an art-free variant of the DCC which is supposed to be for tablets, but the colour covers and the art didn’t bother my Kindle Fire at all, so I can’t see when or why I’d ever use this one. Still, it’s nice to have the option if, say, you only had a regular e-reader. There’s also a “Letter Text” version which has things laid out in a different format and font size, and is also missing the covers. Again, I’m not sure why they did this variant, but it’s nice to have four options open. Finally, there’s the map PDF I mentioned at the very beginning of the review. Again, it really should have been part of the adventure PDF(s) instead of a separate one, but at least the map is really gorgeous looking. Well, as gorgeous as art of a spooky forest filled with vile beasties trying to kill you can be.
All in all, for three dollars, you’re getting a decent short adventure along with four different versions of said adventure and a fifth PDF that is a map of the encounter areas. Once again, Brave Halfling Publishing does a nice job giving us a third party Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure for about the same cost of a comic book. The adventure isn’t going to wow any gamer that plays it, but it’s nice for a short hack and slash fest when you and your friends don’t have time for a longer or more detailed adventure.
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Dare you awaken the horrors of a mad scramble through the darkness with savage giant spiders absolutely everywhere, all determined to eat you or worse...
Designed for a large group of 2nd level characters, still battling their way through the 'funnel' to emerge as potential heroes, this quest involves a lost bunch of elves and their terrible fate! It's not a dungeon crawl, the adventure involves pushing through grim dark forests festooned with cobwebs, the sort that have giant spiders in them.
And of course, the spiders won't stay there, they'll come out after you.
I hope none of my players are arachnophobic... their characters probably will be when I have finished with them!
As well as the full adventure, the download includes a picture to show your players to set the scene, a map and a systemless version of the adventure should you prefer to run it under a ruleset other than Dungeon Crawl Classics. Rather neatly, this last has been printed in such a way that there's plenty of room for you to add your notes and game mechanics from your chosen ruleset (don't be confused, they forgot to change the footer from an earlier adventure, The Vile Worm - the text is correct for this adventure, though!). As a final bonus, if you want to run the adventure from your e-book reader or tablet, there's an art-free version included as well.
A cracking little adventure, simple yet effective.
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I've been using a mix of Basic D&D and Basic Fantasy RPG (free rules) with my kids, but we've turned to Dagger because they are so simple and fun. We're casual gamers and D&D Next and other systems tend to slow things down with too many rules. Dagger has the right approach: It has a basic, simple foundation upon which I've added "house rules" (which are really a mix of my own ideas and Basic D&D) to add just the right amount of complexity. We each created a character in under five minutes! Dagger is a great building block and a great way to get anyone interested in RPGing.
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In a word, Dagger is Superb!
GET DAGGER if you have kids or even if you enjoy rules-light gaming as an adult. It uses any OSR game as a base, so you can use Descending or Ascending AC, whichever you like better. But even if you don't have your "big" books with you, You can play Dagger on the fly, so it may serve as a good, cheap, on the go pick up game or a simple game to introduce new players or to take camping. But to introduce kids to tabletop RPGs, it's perfect.
I think I'm becoming minimalist in my gaming preferences because Dagger has no Attributes and I find that liberating! That's right, no STR, DEX, CON etc... how is this possible? You know what? it totally works!
Dagger is designed to distill OSR/D&D down to the minimum to make it accessible for kids as young as 5. I dare say it does this flawlessly. This Sunday, I 'ran a combat' with my 5 year old daughter, and she basically got it on the first try. She just turned 5 in January and it was a hoot. I can totally see this working for kids 5-10. I can see how using figures would totally help with younger kids.
The spell list captures the iconic spells of the game, and the rule book states it's a suggested list. With only 4 spells of each level (levels 1-5) you may want to add more, and it's super easy to do (which was the bulk of my house rules). You can basically just plop in spells from from S&W, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, C&C, D&D Oe, 1e... not hard to fudge it on the fly even. That said, since this is for 5 to 10 year olds, keeping a tight focus (that is, short spell list) is wise. Also, with no Ability stats, spells like (Bull's) Strength and Haste simply won't work.
The characters are simple but effective at capturing the essence of each class, and here, as you may expect, Dwarf and Elf are classes. You can of course, call the Knight an Amazon or Warrior Princess or the Wizard a Fairy Princess or whatever any player wants, really. They can be a Gorn or zombie, even, and the rules support this on the fly make-believe fun; as they should!
So in brief, Dagger does what it sets out to do, and it does it well. It's great as an introduction to gaming for the young or for older kids or even grown ups who are afraid of dealing with a ton of rules.
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If you have youngsters clamouring to learn to role-play - or you think that role-playing would be a fun activity to get your younglings involved in - you might like to check out this ultra-simple set of rules. What they have done is cut the mechanics of character creation to the bone so that it is quick and easy to set each youngling up with the character that they want to play, freeing them to concentrate on the 'person' that they are playing without needing to worry about all the rules stuff.
It's a nice idea, and could work well with really young children or as an initial introduction even for older ones. It isn't for the novice Game Master, though, the idea is that whoever is running the game should understand 'proper' role-playing rules and as the children become more adept they will be able to filter more sophisticated mechanics in to the game until they are ready to play Labyrith Lords (or old-school Dungeons & Dragons or Dungeon Crawl Classics or whatever ruleset you prefer).
As an introduction it's neat, especially if you are not confident in being able to explain the more complex aspects of your chosen ruleset to complete novices, particularly very young ones.
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/12/17/tabletop-review-appendi
x-n-adventures-toolkit-2-the-vile-worm-dungeon-crawl-classic
s/
Almost two months ago I reviewed the first of the Appendix N Adventures Toolkits: The Ruins of Ramat. I really enjoyed it and, even though Brave Halfling Publishing is a bit behind on their release schedule, I was still chomping at the bit for the next entry in the series. What can I say? I love Dungeon Crawl Classics. Now I’ve got The Vile Worm in my hands, and while it’s shorter and not as good as the first release in the series, it’s still a fun (albeit quite brief) adventure for the system. The Vile Worm might even work as a side story or short encounter between major adventures due to its brevity.
The Vile Worm is a pretty simple, linear affair, and it is designed for eight to twelve Level One characters. I know that sounds like a lot if you haven’t played Dungeon Crawl Classics but trust me, it’s about par for the system. Each gamer plays two to three characters because the death toll in this system is so high. It sounds pretty crazy, but the emphasis with this system is roll-playing over role-playing and combat over characterization.
The story of The Vile Worm is fairly straight forward. The players come across a deranged hermetic berserker who is sacrificing people to a gigantic worm. The players have to take down this sin against nature and free the family that he has currently imprisoned. The players have to survive the monsters, navigate the berserker’s lair and try to not get impregnated by the worm and end up as a host to larvae. After that, the players must do battle with an even older and larger creature that they won’t see coming. As I said earlier, it’s a fairly straight forward affair, but the battles are memorable and it’s nowhere near as vicious to the PCs as most Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures. It shouldn’t take more than two hours to play through this unless the DM is REALLY padding things out for the players.
About the only down side to The Vile Worm is how expensive it is. With a price tag of nearly six bucks for only fourteen pages, The Vile Worm is way too expensive for what you get. I could get TWO Shadowrun Missions for the same price, and they’re twice the page length (or more!) and in full colour! A fourteen page document really shouldn’t be running more than three bucks at most. My guess is the cost is primarily due to the art by guys like Mark Allen and Andy Taylor. Still, that’s a LOT of money for such a small adventure, and my fear is that the cost per page will simply be too much for the majority of gamers, especially in this day and age.
My advice would be not to pick this up on its own due to the six dollar price tag for only fourteen pages, four of which are covers and legal mumbo jumbo. Instead, go for the subscription, which should bring the price down dramatically. Make sure you know and love Dungeon Crawl Classics first, or you’ll just end up with a bunch of adventures you’ll never use. Still, Appendix N Adventure Toolkits are proving to be the best third party releases for the DCC system. After only two, I’m quite satisfied, and I can’t wait to see what Brave Halfling Publishing puts out next.
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This is a rather short product, but appropriate for the low cost. You get a single skill list with a short number of "adventure" oriented skills. Then you are presented with 3 different resolution systems, mostly taken from traditional D&D methods of resolution: A D6 based system, a percentile system and an ability check system.
It fits nicely in the context of old D&D, and could be attached to any "old" D&D based game, whether based off "classic", "basic" or "advanced" versions.
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Looking for a way to get my three young children into the hobby and this could be it - rules are simple enough and are well written that they translate the information in a way children will understand yet experienced role players will find familiar too.
Lots of extra shiny bits in the bundle via the bonus sets really compliment the rule book
Can't wait to give this a go!
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First impressions: solidly written, and a great lively town with several included adventures to get a fresh group of characters off to a fun start. Seems like it should be plenty of material to work with for several sessions. The included maps are useful and well done, but it would have been nice to have the dungeon maps drawn with a grid of 1 square = 5' instead of the 1 square = 10' that is used. Since I'll probably use tiles for the dungeons it's not a real problem for me, but it might make it more work for someone who is looking to just directly enlarge the existing maps.
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What it truly needs is further support, though there's little difficulty in adapting "grown-up" adventures to KCC. The rules are simple enough for kids - perhaps too simple at times. Our youngest grandson had no problems picking up Castles & Crusades' rules for players. (Mainly, just one rule.) On the other hand, this is something the five-year old and three-year old were able to enjoy, if only for a limited time.
It succeeds in its objectives, and is a very good game - kids or otherwise. If it just included a ninja cut-out miniature, the previously-mentioned 7-year old would consider it perfect!
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Hmmmm. What can I say, I love Brave Halfling products and I LOVE Labyrinth Lord but Old School was NEVER this basic.
What we have here is some rooms with some monsters and some treasure. It's all brawn and no brain. If you don't like one samey combat after another, this won't be for you. In fact, the more I think about it, the more this module feels like a 4E "adventure" converted to LL.
The Mountain King himself is kinda OK but he's just stats on the page. This adventure lacks atmosphere and a sense of purpose.
The potential of this product comes from what the referee is prepared to add and there's room to add. Too much room.
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KCC is a very cute game. It is an interesting one since it is t touch higher on the complexity scale than other "Kids" games. That is not a complaint, but rather a nice little change.
Anyone familiar enough with any other RPG will pick this one up in about a minute. Less than that if you eve played Basic D&D.
Classes and Races are the same thing, so you have "Wizard" "Knight" "Dwarf" and the cast of regulars, but also "Fairy" which is nice.
The classes have 3 levels each, which is plenty really since by the time the kids get to level 3 they will be ready for some more grown up games.
Everyone has something they can do every round so that is also good.
The game is simple, easy to learn and use and makes good on it's promise is something you can do with your kids in an afternoon with little to no prep time. At 28 pages it is the perfect length.
If you are a gamer and you have little ones, then this is a great way to introduce to our hobby!
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| Larm |
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by James S. [Verified Purchaser]
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Date Added: 03/26/2012 11:00:17 |
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Remember the Village of Homlet? Do look back fondly on having a pint at the Inn of the Welcome Wench? I know I do, and with Brave Halfling's Larm you get that feeling all over again. Larm is more than just an adventure, it's a campaign starting point that's fully fleshed out and ready to go. With two small dungeons and one wilderness encounter along with several "side quests", your players can easily spend their early levels here in (relative) safety while they get a feel for old-school gaming.
Well worth it.
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