For context in terms of this post however the general outline of our campaign was:
Duration: ~5-6 months, roughly weekly sessions of ~2h length
Playspace: Maps, characters, and notes in roll20, jitsi for video/voice
Generations: 4
Extent Reached: end of level 1 (Gen 1), died first room (Gen 2), past the reef gate (Gen 3), The Deep Queen (Gen 4, returned crown)
Experience: 150xp per room explored, awarded on descent
Party at End: (Gen 4) Academic 14, Cook 10, Fisher 11, Slug Farmer 11
Also holy crap I had forgotten the Academic was level 14! Snorting artifacts for sand (XP) is a hell of a drug. Also my buddy Vegas made me a thank you card afterwards with the most adorable art of a CHUM and it melts my heart every time I see it.
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| Chum, by Vegas |
We talked for a bit after the end about how the game
encouraged player expertise and gave a different vibe in terms of
lethality. Yes, you can die pretty easily but also that’s fine! gg go
next! The driver in not dying is not preservation of character but that
next bit of information that you can glean to make the next run easier.
As Gen 4 continued the players did start to become more careful with
their characters but that could have been a function of time spent
playing (Gen 4 took by far the most time) or perhaps the idea that they
were so close was a stronger motivator. I think if they had died at that
point, after so long, I’m not sure I would have had it in me to run
another long generation.
After returning the crown to The Deep
Queen, we had all agreed that we didn’t think we’d want to play A Rasp
Of Sand for a bit, at least not how we had been. Someone threw out the
idea of trying to see how far we could get in a single, dedicated day
and I latched on to it immediately. So here we go!
Going to
start at 930am on Saturday and go till we can’t or we win. I’m making
only a few changes from stock A Rasp Of Sand but these are all things I
had also changed from the beginning, when I ran it the first time.
Temple
level maps will be generated ahead of time. Originally I would roll
them up and draw them by hand, before going to sleep, and it was a very
relaxing process. I didn’t want to make them on the fly at the table
because all the rolling seemed too cumbersome for live play. It also
allowed me to connect the rooms in somewhat more organic fashion. This
time rather than hand drawing I am going to use the excellent and very
pretty Shifting Sands generator to roll up the maps to save myself some
work.
Generating maps ahead of time requires changing the Sailor 4
ability “Current Construer.” Rather than allowing the Sailor to
influence the room generator roll, they instead get an idea of the
relative danger of adjacent rooms.
Doing XP per room, 150 XP each
like in the book, but since the map is generated ahead of time it
creates a choice for the players of if they want to push on exploring
when they find the stairs down or if they want to keep pressing on.
Slugs
effects do not reset between generations. I wanted the players to be
able to hold on to the little bits of knowledge they scrape from the
temple and this seemed a good way to contribute to that. This meant I
had to change the Academic 5 ability that let the players prevent slugs
from re-rolling. Instead, an Academic 5 can now simply identify any slug
on sight.
That’s pretty much it though! I really liked this game
the first time and hella pumped to run it again in a different way.
It’s funny, was talking with my crew last night, about how I enjoyed
popping off little stories when the Academic would hoover up sand from
artifacts and Vegas said something like “Oh no, we don’t have time for
dialogue or cutscenes, this is a speedrun!” Their wheels have been
turning for a minute, it’s gonna be good.
Speaking of minutes, I
definitely want to try and capture some stats, maybe like time per level
/ generation, number of rooms, something, but not sure yet. Will
marinate on that as the day goes on.
This kind of turned into
more of a review than I intended but can't talk about what I’m gonna do
without talking about what I changed the first time. When my comrade’s
review drops I’ll link it here, I’ve seen the draft and it’s a good
read.
