The First Few Days of Warlock(s) of Firetop Mountain

The first few adventurers have entered Firetop Mountain:

Brave Joseph started things off. He was eventually clobbered to death from behind and turned into a zombie.

Pearl followed. She found Joseph standing around with four much more rotten zombies, and killed them all. She is still in the mountain, getting gassed to sleep over and over again within a maze.

Young Skipward entered, killed everything he saw, (except for some Orcs in a kitchen), and decided to escape with a huge jewel and key labeled '111' and is on his way back to the closest village.

The takeaways so far:
  • Combat as written is incredibly boring. I am planning on switching combat to something closer to DCC RPG once the Warlock is defeated for the first time, and scaling Orcs to be nearly as strong as starting characters.
  • The book assumes players are making maps, which doesn't really work for the pace of play here. I've added a rule that allows for Testing Luck if lost, which allows the character to stumble to the nearest new location or run into a random encounter.
  • Provisions ought to be usable at any time there's no obvious reason not to use them, with a chance of a random encounter interrupting them.
  • Potions of Stamina are incredibly powerful and allow just about any character to win one or two battles they'd never be able to win otherwise.
  • Searching for traps should be doable at any time, with the change to trigger a random encounter.
  • Time needs to to tracked a bit -- I'm using any combination of 3 stops for provisions or times knocked unconscious as a 'Day'. Rules for sleep and random encounters while sleeping are also required.
  • I've decided that leaving the dungeon early means encountering any creatures active in the most direct known path, plus Testing Luck once per dungeon 'section' to avoid a random encounter. There should be a chance the Warlock himself appears to try and stop thieves leaving, and/or adventurers should have winning conditions that force them to go farther in. I'm thinking of giving adventurers with better stats or starting equipment more difficult winning conditions.
I need more players! Leave a comment and get a discord invite.


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