I got a chance to run
Crimson Dragon Slayer again last Saturday afternoon. It's only the fourth time I've tried it out (second if you count having the completed rulebook in hand). Luckily, we all had a great time and it was a lot of fun.
Here's the cast of characters...
Ronnie Von Blitzkrieg was a heavy metal (hair metal, actually) bard. Yeah,
Crimson Dragon Slayer doesn't actually have a bard class. So he was basically a warrior who used his axe like a guitar. For rolling 3d6 in order, he knocked it out of the fucking park. Besides an 11, his lowest score was a 13. He wanted to play a pixie fairy princess - with a beard. So, a bearded lady or drag queen sort of deal. Our input led to Ronnie's beard being longer than he was, as pixie fairies are only 2' tall. Basically, the player wanted to live his dream of being in the video game
Brutal Legend. I'd never heard of it, but the concept sounded cool.
Emerald Ice rolled again on the name table to arrive at
Emerald Ice Panther. I had forgotten about his incredibly powerful magic trident that his character found at the end of last game. We had some fun thinking about this reptilian warrior wearing the skin of his enemies (or anyone with nice looking skin, really).
Death Ultra was another recurring character.
Lastly, we had
Panther Asphalt, an infernal elf wizard. Here's the last
session for those who want to get caught up.
Because I've been so busy with my paternal leave from work (that's where I get a lot of my free time at the computer) and whipping
The Outer Presence into shape, I let the
No Escape from New York writing fall by the wayside. Though I still held out hope that several amazing ideas would fall out of my brain - until the morning of game day when I realized it was not going to happen (not satisfactorily, at least). Luckily, I remembered that
Crimson Dragon Slayer comes with an introductory adventure at the back of the book! And it should be vaguely familiar since I wrote it. Bonus!
We got through almost the whole thing in 4 hours (that included creating 2 characters). Recounting the entire session would be exhausting for writer and reader, so I'll just post the highlights...
- Ronnie has costume changes in-between sets.
- Exploding damage = actual explosions!
- Ronnie acquires a magic sword then adds that to his axe-guitar to create a two-handed, double-necked guitar (axe and sword) with codpiece attachment and cup holder.
- A Rubix Cube with seven colors should probably have seven sides. Oops. Guess that means it's a 7-sided cube with extra-dimensional properties. yeah, that's the ticket!
- Panther Asphalt pushes over the Tardis to find a leather glove with the fingers cut off (fingerless glove) called Glove of the Five-Finger Death Punch. It does 5d6 damage!
- The tangerine dream explodes thanks to Panther Asphalt's purple lighting spell. Then it explodes again and something else randomly explodes behind it... because explosions are awesome, as well as, METAL!!!
- A wizard's bones were desecrated, a dove decapitated and blood drunk from its neck (I have absolutely no idea why, but I wrote it down in my notes... so, yeah).
- Everyone was hell-bent on saving the hottie about to be sacrificed by demons - except for the infernal elf. Inter-party battle! Yay, my game mechanic for recovering bonus dice works!!!
- Ronnie whips the dirty, stinking primitives into a mosh pit with his monstrous riffs. Not hard as they had already been injected with Satanic LSD.
- Skeletal mermaids! Did they have seashell bras? If not, could one see the skeletal remains of their mermaid boobies? That's for the Dragon Master to decide.
- Everyone rolled surprisingly well on their death saving throw, so even though the party was annihilated by explosions and horrendous damage, no one died. ;)
- The demonic frost titans were awakened by Ronnie and his orders were these: Go forth and spread the word of metal to all the lands. Thus the holy word of metal perforated the consciousness (and eardrums) of Thule.
Yeah, it was a wild time. It helped to have great players who were game for super-gonzo shenanigans.
___
Also, there's the small matter of errata...
Crystallines get racial Hit Points of 1d12.
If you score a critical hit, instead of increasing your next attack by 1d6, you can increase it by 2d6. One in the hand is about the same as two in the bush.
If a spell needs a willpower saving throw to resist the effect, how is it done?
First, determine how many d6s should be rolled by looking at the target's willpower. Let's say the target's willpower ability score is average (assume it's average unless you know otherwise), that's 2d6 (if the target had an above average willpower, they'd roll 3d6. If it's below average, then 1d6, etc.). They roll their dice pool of 2d6 and the Dragon Master will interpret the results as they will. For instance, a "1" saving throw result might mean the target takes double damage. With a "2" or "3", it's just a regular failure. "4" could be half damage. "5" is a successful saving throw - no damage. Perhaps a "6" leads to being immune to that spell cast by that wizard. Multiple "6's" could be the spell bounces back on the wizard who cast it.
I'll keep adding to the list if people have questions, clarifications, or errors they want a ruling on.
Thanks for reading,
VS
