Allan T. Grohe, Jr (aka, 'the grodog')

[grodog]

Why did you choose to run it at GC? Mostly to help sell it or other interests? How did your games seem to go? I recall you mentally listing some changes you wanted to recommend to Rob.

Yes, I had submitted the events to GaryCon with the idea that we'd have the book available at the convention, so the events were to support sales and awareness of the adventure.

The games went well, although the module can be a somewhat frustrating one at times, when players get mired in some of the choicer encounters.

For running the game at conventions, I was considering three main changes (none of which did I implement this year, and I've run BC ~5-7 times or so now, in total):

1. Change the starting locations from the key #1A-G locations to the cavernous key #A-G. That makes it less likely that the PCs will end up mired in some of the time-eating encounters from the get-go. I will probably test this out sometime when I run the adventure next just to see how it affects the flow of the session, since it would be a very different environment at its onset.

2. Distribute as many as half of the paintings from key #4 The Gallery to the environs of the rest of the level. This would serve a few different purposes:

a) people would actually get to encounter them (the Gallery is hard to find)
b) it would break up some of the less-populous areas of the rest of the dungeon level
c) it would break up some of the encounters in the Gallery itself---that way not every painting location is an automatic encounter, for example; the larger monster encounters would still be located there (since the Gallery is a very large room), as would ones that need to relate to other paintings in the Gallery, but the more-standalone encounters could then be deployed in locations throughout the level (probably with some random generation behind it too: perhaps as many as 26 standard locations could exist, with a random range of paintings being moved, and then they may end up in variable locations each time PCs visit the level)

3. Create a WM table

Some encounters would be drawn from the fixed encounters in the level, while others could hint at other encounters from outside the level, rival NPC parties (of potentially varying levels---remember that the BC entry point appears on level 2 of Castle Greyhawk, so it's entirely probably that some of the NPCs would be hapless low level types desperately trying to get back out!), other monsters, and some monsters/traps/tricks that would only be encounterable as WMs (whether for good or ill would remain to be seen, of course! ).