Running "Sailors"

[DM Cojo]

Tomorrow, I am running my first ever DCC RPG game..."Sailors on a Starless Sea." I am very excited. Reading the adventure, it seems very deadly...especially at the end. That being the case, I have a question of those who have run it. At what point to zero level characters usually level up in this adventure? It seems that they really need to before the end game to have any chance of survival. Based on the way XP is awarded, is there a point that they commonly level up, or is it not usually until the end of the adventure?

[Raven_Crowking]

When I am running it, most level up shortly before the finale.

[Doug Kovacs]

If you don't let them level up, it will encourage some real creativity from the players and be even more fun for those that survive. Nothing is more fun than plunging into a seemingly impossible situation and surviving.

An alternative to give them an increase in resources is replenishing the ranks with new prisoners being marched up the ziggurat. The prisoners could even have direct relationships with the existing party if they are from the same village. "Hey that's my mother/sister/brother/ friend/ wife/ barber !"

[IronWolf]

Yeah, I am one of the judges who typically run that one without leveling folks up. I do replenish ranks from the keep area and Doug's idea of gaining some even on the steps is a great idea as well. I will likely steal that for the next time I run it!

[Tortog]

{trying to be delicate and not give away too much}

I ran it with some modifications to the critters, but 2 out of 16 zero level characters survived. Though one of these survivors was actually a character that ran away after the big fight on map 1. The level of carnage does provoke creativity in the players, but there is also the possibility that the players might freak out on you. My 4 players were so shocked by the level of carnage that it was really pure luck that the last one alive at the end managed to escape at all. There were contributing factors. There are several items stashed around the maps, but the magic sword they found was randomly created in advance and it had a compulsion to incite homicidal rage in the owner towards all elves. The player had to burn 5 points of luck before they finally managed to put the sword back in its sheath. Fortunately for the elves in the party, the character ignored the sword's blood-lust for the rest of the game.

I've been thinking about how things played out and the next time I run it I'll probably keep them at 0-lvl, but I'll try to encourage them to be more inquisitive about the remote areas of the maps. There is plenty of treasure in the module and if the players use it they'll have a better chances for survival. I also suspect that which route the players take through map 1 will have radically different effects to the over-all character survival rate. My players charged straight through the front door without any pretense of stealth...

[DM Cojo]

Well, I ran it and I let them level up mid-adventure as they earned 10xp. This happened for a few characters just before they went underground. At least for those who survived from the start. I added replacement level 0's after a few encounters that were very lethal. Having some level 1 spellcasters definitely helped the party end the final encounter much quicker than I had expected, but several more PCs died in that final battle, including some level 1s. So I think it worked out quite well. Without any spellcasters, I suspect the final two encounters would have led to a TPK.

[Maxwell Luther]

I never level up mid-session. I ran SutSS a couple of weeks ago and my players managed to kill off 15 characters before they even descended into the dungeon. They managed to kill off another 8 during the descent and final confrontation and emerged victorious. Mind you, my players are a bloodthirsty lot and do extremely outrageous things with even leveled characters at the best of times (I've yet to have a campaign where they didn't attempt to burn an 'offending' village down at least once). Give them a bunch of 0 level schmoes of little perceived worth and they go ape-scat. It's Paranoia in a dungeon.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that, even with players who thoroughly enjoy throwing 0 level meat-bags into the sausage grinder, they still managed to beat the baddie with 0 Level characters. And they didn't even use skulls or attempt to rally any of the prisoners when they did it. They just had a bloody-minded focus on throwing bodies at him till he stopped moving, with a secondary goal of taking whoever was left standing (or successfully made their 'Turn Over' Luck rolls) as their characters, a grand total of 3 badly scarred and mentally unstable individuals (one of whom was convinced by the horrors he witnessed, and the eerie whispers of one of the glowing skull he kept from the pool room, to become a warrior priest of Malal).

But then, I believe that is the way it is supposed to work. DCC creates adventurers, and as any normal folk will tell you, all adventurers are slightly unhinged at best, batcrap insane at worst...