Orvald's Tower Play Report

playthrough

#1

So after hearing about other people running and playing Orvald’s Tower I decided it to be my next foray into GMing ICRPG. My first attempt at running ICRPG didnt work out as well as I hoped, so I wanted to jump back at it with something more contained.

PREP

Since playing online I built each level of the tower using assets from 2-minute Tabletop and used index cards off to the side of the map to signal important details when needed. I also made pre-gens for the players cause they didnt have the time and ended up giving them a couple of buffs (one milestone upgrade and random loot roll) due to being a smaller group. I ended up floundering a bit as game day hit about making sure I had everything I needed setup or if I was forgetting anything, but that anxiety went away as we started chatting and jumped into the game as it usually does.

PLAY

Once we kicked it off it took a little bit for the players to get into the groove and start taking risks as the timer counted down. There was some things that I should have put more thought into before running, like the well. I wasn’t sure if i should have it activate at the start of the player’s turn or mine. After having run it, I think it should definitely be on mine. As we got to the final floor the players really threaded the needle with it, all of them were injured with little time left to escape. The final turn was super intense, a nasty maelstrom roll plunged the chamber into darkness, a character was down and another refused to leave them behind. In the end they all managed to escape just as the tower was completely consumed, ending in one of the most climatic session I’ve run and everyone having a blast!

Afterthoughts

So after finishing my 2nd time running ICRPG I have grasped the system the system a little bit more and its quirks. I still have a ways to go before it fully sticks in my mind but very happy how the session went over my first and that is in part to how fun Orvald’s Tower is. I’m excited to try to run it again and improve from what ive learned. If you haven’t had the chance to play it or run it I would highly recommend it!


On a quest to find a great Dungeon crawl fully build for ICRPG!
#2

I’m new to running ICRPG games, hell running any game at all. I ran my first session of Red Sword recently. It went pretty well other than the party being a bit small (2) and when one went down it took a minute to get things going again. Overall, everyone was pretty happy with the session and looks forward to the next. I plan on running Red Sword for another party soon. But the next one I plan on doing is Orvald’s Tower. Reading your post is inspiring and I’ll get started prepping soon. What assets are you using from 2 Minute Tabletop?


#3

I pretty much grabbed all of the free stuff map assets they had and used those to cobble together each level of the tower using photoshop. here’s the starting level.


#4

Really cool! I’m planning on taking on a mix of Orvald’s Tower and the encounter with Vath from the Time in ICRPG video on YouTube. I’m super excited to run it, although I have some details to figure out since they’re probably gonna end up moving UP the tower to fight the wizard. Sounds like a lot of fun!


#5

Nice work. I guess I’m going to have to pick up some photo editing skills.


#6

it was all pretty basic stuff, the most important thing for me was not trying to be perfect just good enough to get the job done!


#7

that sounds super cool, would love to hear how that plays out!


#8

that is dope, do you have more? and will you share?


#9

yeah i can do that!




#10

Thanks so much for sharing these.


#11

these are so dope. thanks


#12

Very cool! Thanks!
May I ask how you handled the distances (close/near/far) on these maps?


#13

i figured traveling across from one side to the other was far, so moving near would be about half ways.


#14

Lovely looking maps! Well done. Good of you to share😎


#15

thanks! if I run it again ill probably redo the crumbled staircase map, I couldn’t find a way to do it with stairs that I liked with the prep time I had, but it did allow for some interesting risk/reward play.


#16

Interesting! :slight_smile:
It’s my favourite with its magical floating, darkening, constantly disintegrating form.


#17

So i ran another one-shot of Orvald’s Tower with a new group of 6 people. This group was using mostly stuff from the 2e quickstart which ended up causes some confusion due to rule differences that I wasn’t prepared for but overall it went great. The shadowy descent room again created some interesting choices of players willing to take damage from falling due to the timer’s steadily decline. Unfortunately the dice were not in the parties favor and only 2 managed to make it out before the tower was frozen in time at the second of its destruction.


#18

Sounds just like a season finale episode of a series.
Next season, the rescue team could go after the ones left behind, right? :slight_smile:


#19

I’ve really got to get into one of your Orvald games. They sound awesome!


#20

im sure we could figure something out :slight_smile: