Gen Con 2019 is over and I had a great if exhausting time. I ran 12 hours of an adventure I debuted at U-Con back in November 2018. The House of the Red Doors is an unusual adventure.
First, it is a funnel. If you're not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics, funnels are 0 level adventures that catapult their survivors into an adventurer's life. Bad things happen to normal people. They die -- by the cartful. Hopefully each player has one character by the end and everyone levels up to their 1st level character.
Second, The House of the Red Doors is a single player funnel. The player has one character and one chance to successfully complete the adventure. Death means you have to start over. In a tournament setting, death is the end of a participant's run. I like the dynamic of two people sitting down to play an RPG. To me, it's akin to reading sci-fi/fantasy fiction where there is only a protagonist. It's intimate and the player has no one to rely on other than themselves.
The House of the Red Doors is a three part puzzle adventure that uses symbology and loose association to alignments for those symbols. There are three ways to survive which I will categorize as ignominiously, successfully, and gloriously. Getting back to Jassafae is success. Correctly figuring out the puzzle is a glorious success. There are many opportunities to die.
The Gen Con presentation of The House of the Red Doors was a single round tournament that took place over 3 days. Each player had one chance to brave the puzzles within the movable mansion and achieve the highest score. At the conclusion of each day's tournament, the highest scoring player was named that day's King (or Queen). Each day's monarch was in the running for the title of the Champion of the Red Doors and the winner of the tournament. A trophy (DIY naturally) and prizes (copies of The Lesser Key to the Celestial Legion and Fae Hard) were given to the champion and each day's monarch.
I had 26 players at Gen Con. I killed half of them. Seven of those unfortunates died in the first encounter (yusss!). Three survived ignominiously, ten made it back to Jassafae's sanctum. Of those ten, three solved the final puzzle successfully. The highest score was 14; the lowest -21 (impressive)! I even had someone come back and play again.
The vast majority of players chose to be aligned. 85% chose an alignment. Queen Saturday, Megan Wenzke, was unaligned. Eleven were neutral, five chaotic, six selected lawful.
King Thursday was Nick Taylor with 9 points. King Friday was Brandon Nutt with 14 points. Queen Saturday was Megan Wenzke with 11 points. Brandon drew pictures of the symbols he was given on the back of his sheet. I had never seen anyone do that before. He also came up with a very clever way to solve the last puzzle (no spoilers).
Next up is a Kickstarter for House of the Red Doors. Keep your eyes peeled sometime around the end of August or the start of September. Donn Stroud via Psychoda Press should be running the show.
First, it is a funnel. If you're not familiar with Dungeon Crawl Classics, funnels are 0 level adventures that catapult their survivors into an adventurer's life. Bad things happen to normal people. They die -- by the cartful. Hopefully each player has one character by the end and everyone levels up to their 1st level character.
Second, The House of the Red Doors is a single player funnel. The player has one character and one chance to successfully complete the adventure. Death means you have to start over. In a tournament setting, death is the end of a participant's run. I like the dynamic of two people sitting down to play an RPG. To me, it's akin to reading sci-fi/fantasy fiction where there is only a protagonist. It's intimate and the player has no one to rely on other than themselves.The House of the Red Doors is a three part puzzle adventure that uses symbology and loose association to alignments for those symbols. There are three ways to survive which I will categorize as ignominiously, successfully, and gloriously. Getting back to Jassafae is success. Correctly figuring out the puzzle is a glorious success. There are many opportunities to die.
The Gen Con presentation of The House of the Red Doors was a single round tournament that took place over 3 days. Each player had one chance to brave the puzzles within the movable mansion and achieve the highest score. At the conclusion of each day's tournament, the highest scoring player was named that day's King (or Queen). Each day's monarch was in the running for the title of the Champion of the Red Doors and the winner of the tournament. A trophy (DIY naturally) and prizes (copies of The Lesser Key to the Celestial Legion and Fae Hard) were given to the champion and each day's monarch.
I had 26 players at Gen Con. I killed half of them. Seven of those unfortunates died in the first encounter (yusss!). Three survived ignominiously, ten made it back to Jassafae's sanctum. Of those ten, three solved the final puzzle successfully. The highest score was 14; the lowest -21 (impressive)! I even had someone come back and play again.
The vast majority of players chose to be aligned. 85% chose an alignment. Queen Saturday, Megan Wenzke, was unaligned. Eleven were neutral, five chaotic, six selected lawful.
King Thursday was Nick Taylor with 9 points. King Friday was Brandon Nutt with 14 points. Queen Saturday was Megan Wenzke with 11 points. Brandon drew pictures of the symbols he was given on the back of his sheet. I had never seen anyone do that before. He also came up with a very clever way to solve the last puzzle (no spoilers).
Next up is a Kickstarter for House of the Red Doors. Keep your eyes peeled sometime around the end of August or the start of September. Donn Stroud via Psychoda Press should be running the show.
Well done!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, man! This is the kind of stuff that makes DCC great!
ReplyDelete