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Playtest Group of the Month
(June)

Playtesters at Work

"TEALPECK'S FLOOD" SUMMARY

I conceived "Tealpeck's Flood" out of a desire to bring various water-based opponents together in one setting, yet avoid the difficulties that come with running a water-based campaign. (How do characters breathe? Where do they go for safety?) The setting for the adventure is a dungeon beneath the mountain castle of the late wizard Nowell Tealpeck. Both the castle and its dungeon, a series of canals fed by mountain springs and redirected rivers, were built with the aid of a demon, and it was Tealpeck's mysterious pact with this demon that led to his ultimate demise.

The strange rules of the pact still apply to Tealpeck's heir, Darin, who will soon grow evil and insane unless he uncovers the secret details of his father's death. It is the PCs' happy pleasure to go down into the dungeon, brave its denizens and retrieve the only clue of which Darin is aware, a magical tome, stolen by his father decades ago. Descending from the plush, well-appointed castle into the dark, macabre canals of the dungeon, the PCs learn about the late wizard's dark side, and discover the price he paid for judging a book by its cover.

NOTES ON DESIGN PROCESS

To be honest, I designed "Tealpeck's Flood" without paying any special attention to the new rules. However, as I got down to the nitty-gritty of describing various rooms and monsters, numerous aspects of the 3rd edition D&D just seemed to leap out and scream "use me!" The standard resolution mechanic, along with the new saving throws, made trap descriptions a breeze. Also, with this being an essentially water-based adventure, I needed ways for my monsters to hold, tip, and obliterate the PCs' boats. Under the old rules, I would have had to spend time creating mechanics for these actions, but with the new rules it was all right there.

PLAYTESTING

One thing that did worry me as I designed, was how I was going to take into account all the new spells and skills. I had nearly memorized all the 2nd edition stuff, so it wasn't hard to design fitting challenges under that system. However, with an unfamiliar arsenal of spells, skills, and feats to contend with, I knew I really needed the playtest. By each choosing separate classes and poring over separate pieces of the new rules, the playtesters had effectively divided the task of finding ways to thwart my dungeon. Thus, when a sixth-level cleric summoned a water elemental to chase off the merrow on the first level, I saw I had some rethinking to do. When a sixth-level rogue, who had maxed out his Search skill, found and disabled only 75% of the traps and secret doors in the dungeon, I knew I had set those DC's appropriately.

One of the most entertaining things was seeing the surprise on the faces of the other players when that cleric called up his water elemental. The 2nd edition had been around long enough to allow everyone to know what every level of every class was capable of, and too often players had to role play that kind of surprise. With a lot of new stuff to learn, and the countless tactical possibilities afforded by the new rules, players are going to be feeling genuine surprise at every game for years and years.

THINGS I CHANGED BASED ON PLAYTEST

It did become clear, throughout the playtest, that the rogue's Search and Disable skills had to be taken into consideration when thinking out the mechanics of various traps. What good is devising an intricate mechanism if a player can simply roll a die and say, "I've foiled it"? For example, in one section of "Tealpeck's Flood," the PCs needed to speak certain passwords while going through various rooms. To verify the passwords, I had put in a number of statues with magic mouths on them. If the password were not spoken, the mouths would move and release a series of tripwires, which always lead to a good deal of unpleasantness. The rogue in our playtest was of the opinion that he should be able to undo the trap by making a roll. For me, this seemed to take away some of the fun of designing the trap in the first place. A rogue might know some things about magical traps like glyphs and such, but why would she suspect a magic mouth? In revising the adventure, I resolved this issue by setting the Search and Disable DCs rather high but then stipulated that any Arcane Knowledge points the rogue had could be added to her roll. This aspect of being able to combine points in a standardized way appeals to me a lot. It allows designers and DMs to resolve unique situations quickly and elegantly, and without a lot of ambiguity.

Overall, I found the characters were well matched for the dangers that faced them, in spite of their unexpected abilities. Where playtesting really helped was in finding the mechanical kinks in my design. For example, in one area, the PCs' boats are caught by a submerged tripwire, which triggers a trap and sends them plummeting into the lair of an umber hulk (unless they make their reflex save and hold onto the boat before getting tossed from it). While it was fun to watch the more fortunate PCs hold on for dear life while a solitary monk plummeted to face the umber hulk, I immediately saw some flaws that had to be addressed. First of all, the trap was designed to reset itself, thereby closing off the pit. Had all the PCs had fallen in, there would have been no one left above to re-open the pit and free them. Another problem I had noticed earlier was that the hulk would have starved to death in the decades during which the dungeon lay unused. Happily, this problem suggested a solution to the first one -- set the doors to open automatically for five minutes a day, allowing enough piranha to flow in to sustain the hulk, and giving the PCs a brief window of escape.