I ran my first ICRPG adventure recently which happened to also be the first time I ran a game. Here is the background and rundown of the some of the “Event”. Warning There are a few spoilers about the Doom Vault Adventure. Some time ago I started buying some DnD 5e stuff as I wanted to get into fantasy RPG’s and DnD "Next’ seemed better than Pathfinder. The amount of information really is overwhelming and my ideas for running a game kind of died. Then I found ICRPG on Youtube. The concepts blew me away. “Get to the table”, use common sense, one target number and the idea of just get to it, don’t over plan. ICRPG Core was purchased and read. I’m a teacher and had students playing DnD at lunch and I had promised a few of them I would run a game but it wouldn’t be DnD. They were weary and had many questions. I just told them not to worry. I gave them character creation info two days before the session.
Session 1
They came characters ready to go and as I set up I had them draw their character or something to represent them on yardstick pawns (see final room pic). I was running The Doom Vault and I shamelessly copied Hankrin's map.
He's right when he says it's a little therapeutic to draw the crosshatch lines.
I used some ICRPG cards as NPC’s and room items as things went along (right of map). I started by telling the students “This one shot adventure its a DnD campaign, we are not spending time dallying around in a bar. You have already accepted the job and you are about to get the details”. Their response, “Good”. They got the info and were lowered by rope to the ridge. Students had a tough time figuring out that the invisibles were basically invincible as they always wanted to fight them. Two heroes were thrown out of the hall onto the rocks but were able to hold on and not to tumble off. Once they got past the invicibles and got to the water room they had horrible rolls and were attacked and damaged by Ropers and the “Oncemen”. In a twist I had the muck floating in the water put off flammable fumes and one hero decided to use a flaming arrow which did a lot of damage to all around
. So by the time they were at the magic doorway they two were almost dead.End of session.
For Session 2 I had to decide what to do about the injuries. In the beginning they were told by 1 of three kings and his guard (henchmen- it was purposely vague) and a mumbling mage about having to stop the ceremony to save the kingdom. They had been told that others had been sent in but had not returned. That was how I decided to handle the almost dead heroes. So just before the session I decided that the two heroes died from internal bleeding and I drew an additional room (see pic) I also removed the wandering Invincible from the stairway.
Session 2
Two students made new characters while two others guided their heroes through the magic doorway. They finally did some exploring (none had been the first session except trying to read runes) They found notes and could read some text in a tome (see pic) So those two got some vague info about the monks but then knew that one king had plotted against the other two and was under the control of Ogdru or the cultists and had sent heroes into the vault to have their blood used in a ceremony.
The two new heroes had awoken in this water arena with hundreds? of cultists watching them. They had to deal with a water elemental (Printable Heroes)and flying Great White (to me the most terrifying monster ever) One hero lost a chunk of his arm to “Air Jaws” which poured blood into the water (once again refer to note found pic)They were able to break open the gate at the right side of room which I had flow under the Guardian from and pour onto the floor next to the drainage grate in the ceremony room.
As they were doing that the other two had made it to Guardians, one ran past and another was unable to. So three heroes fought but could not stop the Ogdru (I was using Printable Heroes Kraken to represent its body). The hero back at the Guardians was alive but would die in the cave in after the ceremony. Two quickly died fighting in the ceremony room. Th last hero standing sliced off one tentacle then took almost lethal damage and had the opportunity to go out the drain to try to survive… but he didn’t want to be a coward so he fought to his death! The kingdom was overcome with DDDOOOOOMMMMM!!!
End of Game
I had a blast running them through and they said it was way better than the DnD club. Hopefully I created some future Lumpy Heads. Hopefully you could follow my scattered descriptions and thanks for reading it.