D&D2E Age of Wormsish Playtest Campaign

I've never finished Age of Worms, despite about a dozen attempts at this point, and I'm fine with that because after all these years I've realized that it's not well-written or designed (which I'll touch on in a bit). When I tried running it as a way to playtest 1st Edition Dungeons & Delvers, I initially ran it mostly as written, with a few tweaks here and there. But as the campaign went on, I found myself making more drastic changes, and near the end was only really using some of the adventures as a sort of plot concept that I would build on.

For example, in A Gathering of Winds (the sixth or seventh adventure in the series), the players normally go into another Wind Duke tomb, which is basically just a tomb with more or less normal tomb stuff for a mid-level party. It's about as disappointing as the first adventure, The Whispering Cairn, where the players also go to a Wind Duke tomb but there's just stuff like beetles, a fire and water elemental (but no air elemental), and a ghoul.

You don't even fight anything vaguely wind-based until the end, and it's basically a set of magical flying armor. The treasure is equally mundane, mostly old armor, a magical suit of chainmail, magic goggles, some non-magical silver rings worth seventy-fucking-five gold pieces, coins, etc. I scrapped almost all of that, having the players go to the Elemental Plane of Air, changing the dungeon layout so that it took place mostly on floating islands, and created different monsters and treasure that felt more thematically appropriate.

For 2nd Edition Dungeons & Delvers I am again running it for long-term playtesting purposes, and this go around I'm doing that sort of thing from the start, taking the core idea of the adventure path, removing all the bizarre nonsense and often absurd amount of valuables, and making it more interesting.

For example, there's no reason for the Whispering Cairn to have readily available, easily destroyed magical portals. There's no reason to have the seven lanterns, especially since each of them being present stops the wind-trap that you find after scaling one of the chains, which means that in the cairn's default state (which magically resets over time) it won't do anything, anyway.

There's no reason to have an underground floor be the "lair" of the guy who built it, as well as the crew, who for no reason went through all of the trouble to build an entire basement level to live in, and then the tomb on top. They could have just as easily built simpler, smaller shelters, which could then be dismantled later or even simply abandoned. Or, if they can build magic portal technology, just go home for the day.

There's also no reason to have a magical food generator, a room that makes you feel sleepy (as well as a magical statue that kills you if you do). There's also no reason to have the ghost kid show up and try to be all scary, especially if he wants people to help him. In fact, it would have made more sense for him to actually help the characters during the fight against a random grell that has somehow been skulking around in a ball pit with infinite ammo and not dying of starvation and.or dehydration.

Sooo much of the adventure seems like random elements just slapped together, but then it was approved by Paizo so what did you expect?

Anyway, we ran a session a few days ago. The party consisted of a human fighter, human wizard, and kobold wizard (everything was randomly generated, besides class). They went into the burial mound and were soon set upon by wolves. After a string of ominously bad rolls, the human wizard was dragged off and presumably torn to pieces. Given that the fighter was also severely injured and the kobold out of Willpower, they both retreated.

They returned a few days later with a dwarven rogue in tow. This time they kept a wide berth from the passage where the wolves apparently dwelled, and eventually arrived at a large chamber with a dais at the center. Seven shorter passages branches away, each featuring a smaller dais. A thorough inspection revealed a mechanism in the central dais which, when activated, caused a staircase encircling the dais to appear.

Descending underground, they noticed that the walls had changed. Before they looked to be made of unworked stones haphazardly stacked atop each other. Here, they looked to be at least somewhat shaped, and there was some semblance of order, suggesting more recent and/or advanced construction.

They found a small room that featured an unremarkable sarcophagus, as well as a wooden door banded in iron. Multiple strips of paper hung loosely across it, fixed to the adjacent walls with wax. They were each covered in writing, though the language was unfamiliar to them. Reluctantly opening the sarcophagus, they were somewhat relieved to see that it only contained a sword. It was plain, with a hilt that looked to be made of something resembling ivory, but otherwise looked to be in pristine condition.

The fighter picked it up and gave it a few test swings. It felt slightly more balanced than the one she carried but was otherwise unremarkable. Even so, she held onto it, assuming that there must be something to it given its location. They debated for a time about removing the paper strips, eventually having the kobold incinerate them. The door was stuck but not locked, and beyond the air was heavy with the stench of decay.

Once they were finished retching they pressed on. The first room featured a stack of yellowed skulls. Undeterred the fighter and dwarf rifled through them, finding a few with golden coins pressed deeply into the eye sockets. The halls were lined with burial alcoves, though the skeletal remains within were dark and spongy, and none of them possessed any heads. 

They reasonably assumed that that accounted for the skull pile, but were soon proven wrong when a tall, gangly creature emerged from the darkness, wearing nothing but a cloak fashioned out of countless skulls lashed together. Its discolored flesh clung tightly to its bones, and it grinned widely at them as it muttered something about food. Since the fighter was in the lead (and carrying a light source), it lunged for her first: she stabbed at it frantically, just barely missing its clawed hand, which easily enveloped her entire head.

Despite its frail appearance it was unnaturally strong, casually lifting the fighter off the ground and battering her against a wall. The dwarf rushed forward, hacking frantically at its legs, and though he sliced off narrow strips of dried flesh and muscle the creature didn't seem to notice. Propelling herself on jets of flame, the kobold blasted the creature as she rocketed past. Its arm now alight, the creature struck and rubbed it against a nearby wall in an attempt to extinguish the flames.

Stones shook loose as it cried out to its "servants" for aid, and pits formed in the stomachs of both the dwarf and the kobold. Pinpoints of light illuminated the eye sockets of the skulls that formed its cloak, and they began to chatter noisily.

The dwarf heard clattering behind him. Turning to look, he could see the skeletons had emerged from their alcoves and were clumsily crawling towards them. He tried hacking at the larger creature's arm, hoping to free the fighter: she was doing likewise and with their combined effort managed to slice its hand off. Meanwhile, the kobold repeatedly blasted it with jets of fire: the creature was quickly engulfed in flames, and soon crumpled to the ground.

At this the skeletons also ceased moving, and once the flames died out the party checked the remains for any valuables: though it possessed none, elsewhere the party did discover several golden holy symbols still hanging from skeletal torsos.

Before they left the dwarf found a secret passage, though the mechanism to open it seemed to be stuck or damaged. While trying to force it open the ghost of a child approached. He was killed by the creature after he discovered the underground area long ago (how long, he could not say, as there was no way to track time down here). He claimed to be able to open the door from the other side, but would only do so if the party took his remains home and buried them.

The party agreed and received directions, but upon arriving at the farm, they found the house mostly collapsed and abandoned. Four open graves, piles of dirt, and a shovel nearby caught their attention. As they investigated the house, an owlbear emerged and attacked. Despite its severe injuries, the owlbear nearly killed the fighter in a single hit. The party managed to defeat it, and despite any prior misgivings between her and the mother, the fighter decided to take care of the now orphaned cub.

Though they couldn't be sure, it was safe to assume that the names on the gravestones referred to the child's parents and siblings and that he wouldn't be happy being buried there alone. There were footprints and tracks, along with a somewhat fresh arm featuring a tattoo that the dwarf recognized as belonging to a local gang from Diamond Lake (the starting town of the adventure).

The dwarf knew better than to mess with the gang, and after several days of the fighter resting and everyone else trying to figure out indirectly why they might be digging up bodies, returned to the scene of the crime and tried following the tracks. Despite all odds this actually worked, and after several hours of tracking and backtracking, they found themselves at an old observatory, and this is where we stopped for the night.

BEHIND THE SCREEN

A big change is that the tomb no longer has anything to do with the Wind Dukes, not that it really mattered in the original adventure or even adventure path. Instead, the tomb serves another, more direct function that might become apparent later depending on what the characters do. Otherwise its conceptually the same: the party goes to the tomb, finds a barrier they cannot bypass, help the ghost in exchange for its help, and learn a bit about the Kyuss zombies and worms in the process.

I will say that the party could feasibly bypass the barrier, anyway, they would just need the right tools to bash the wall in. They would just miss out on XP, treasure, and additional information in the process.

In 2nd Edition there are no longer Vitality Points. Instead, there is a more elaborate and meaningful Fatigue system, which interlocks with being Encumbered, conditions, and other mechanics. Healing has also been changed, which Melissa initially didn't like due to how long she had to spend healing, but quickly turned around because it made a lot of sense that, after being clobbered by a massive owlbear, her character would need multiple days to fully recover.

How healing now works is:

Each time you rest (ie, 6+ hours at a time), you make a Constitution check. This is modified by your character's Constitution saving throw bonus, level, and many other variables such as where you are resting, Medicine checks, healing supplies used, etc.

You regain 1 WP point, but if your Constitution check is 10, you regain another. You also regain another for every 5 points you exceed this result by. If you fail you still regain 1, but the amount goes down by 1 if you get a 5-2, and by 2 if you roll a natural 1. This normally cannot reduce the WP you recover less than 0, though some conditions might, so an injured character could actually get worse.

At level 5, 10, 15 and 20, the base WP regained is increased by 1. This is because an increase in WP doesn't mean your character becomes magically more durable, it's all relative: when you have 5 WP and take 3 damage, that's a pretty nasty injury. If you have 10, it's not so bad but still pretty bad. If you have 50, it's a minor injury. So, having healing scale like this makes sense, and also makes things a bit unpredictable. It also makes tougher characters heal faster, and gives you an incentive to sleep in better quality inns, eat healthy food, and rest all day.

Mending potions are also different. Instead of recovering, say, 1d6 WP, you drink it and make a Wound Recovery check with an added bonus based on its quality. You also have to make checks when drinking too many potions to avoid being Sickened, which can also result in you effectively poisoning yourself if you're really unlucky and/or been knocking them back in rapid succession (so dwarves are great for this due to poison resistance).

All told the party has found around 60sp worth of treasure, which might not sound like a lot until you see the revised prices, which were all reduced in some way (mending potions went from 25sp to like 7). If you were to compare it to normal Dungeons & Dragons, it would be the equivalent of around 400-500gp. This is because we want to keep prices more "realistic", something peasants could actually afford, but also keep all coins relevant and avoid PCs becoming absurdly rich after a few days of adventuring.

As for the monster, it was a sort of ghoul, but it had the ability to control a corpse so long as it possessed its skull. The skeletons wouldn't have been too bad: only level 1 and with maybe 4-5 WP a pop. Something anyone could have taken out pretty easily. The only concern was the number of them (the guy had a lot of skulls), but then the kobold wizard could have incinerated quite a few with Fireblast or even Firestride.

Melissa's armor has been pretty helpful (DR 4 because she didn't roll all that well on her gear table), and being able to use her shield to Hinder an attack has kept it useful without making her character invincible. I just realized that I forgot to check for a lingering injury, but then she rested for three days so it might have gone away, anyway.

The Dead Man Walking rule is still great. No routinely going from perfectly functional to unconscious or dead. Melissa was able to keep on fighting at -3 (at -11 she passes out), and despite a -2 to everything was able to hurt the owlbear a bit. Then it was just a matter of bandaging her up so she could hobble back to town and take it easy for a while (the Con check is Assisted if you rest all day).