First Playtest
Cult of the cave crickets
An adventure for D&D 5e and Dungeon Crawl Classics
The pandemic was hard on a lot of people, and tabletop gamers were no exception. Within a month my group had gone from in-person sessions to virtual only. We struggled at first to find our new groove as we flitted from tool to tool: first roll20, then discord only, then, finally, foundry. We did this for years, cameras off, a simple virtual board in front of us. I kept the connection alive with my friends through the pandemic with biweekly sessions; roleplaying out our frustrations, boredom, and latent murder-hobo tendencies. During that time the group scattered, moving from New Hampshire to Maine, Massachusetts, and California. Once the pandemic eased I found myself in a roleplaying desert, my “ttrpg family” too far-and-wide to play in person. And so we continued online, thankful for the technology and the ability to do so.
Times have changed. One friend moved to Maine around the same time as myself, and another returned from California. A friend I thought I had lost connection with also found his way to Maine. A group that could feasibly drive to game together slowly took shape.
Today that group of old friends came to visit, gaming around the table in person for the first time in years. I had forgotten the true scope of how that feels. The camaraderie, the flow of play, and the excitement are all things virtual table tops struggle to capture. It was the perfect day, and the perfect group, to playtest my new adventure about cosmic horrors and poor decision making.
The group arrived at 1pm, expecting to play a professionally written, published module. I kept my name off the text, and told them it was simply another published adventure I was running. I didn’t want their feedback tainted by the knowledge that I had written it. I wanted honest comments, during play, from a group I knew was fairly critical of poor writing.
On the table I had laid out six randomly generated, first-level characters (courtesy of Purple Sorcerer). This would be two for each of the participating players, which they divvied up quickly and bent to the arduous task of finding the perfect names for their characters (of which only half would survive). It was the first time some of us had seen each other in months, if not years, and the stories (and beer) were flowing. It wasn’t until 2pm that we took a seat around the curled and faded chessex mat I bought over 15 years ago, and the players heard that classic opening: “So you’re in a tavern…”
From there the task was set: explorers from the Blackwood College of Ancient Mysteries had gone missing a few days north of here. Professor Ward, who had stayed behind as a point of contact in town, is worried sick. The characters are hired, buy some gear, and make their way north to investigate.
What they found over the course of those first hours was an abandoned camp teeming with the markings of alien life and fungal entities. A short, brutal encounter brought them face-to-face with the mutant cave crickets for the first time. A preliminary exploration of a nearby cave system revealed signs of the lost expedition, and they soldiered into the deep.
The caves were brutal. From natural hazards to fungal traps, the party fought forward. The expedition was scattered. Some could be saved, some were long dead, and some had gone mad. In the caves they found weird and wondrous items with otherworldly properties, battled nightmarish and horrible creatures, and questioned what it meant to be a hero when you are so far from home and hope is fading.
The final act left the group breathless, as they frantically scrambled up a natural chimney, deep in the bowels of the caves, and emerged into the ceremonial cavern of the cave crickets. Here they fought to stop the forces of the fungal entities and save the remaining expedition members. They succeeded, but only just, and the ramifications of their decisions have the potential to echo across the landscape for decades to come.
The response from the group was positive! I kept my own involvement in the adventure quiet, and simply listened, prodding with exploratory questions every so often. The dungeon was a bit linear. The cave crickets were really awesome and unique. This magic item felt disconnected, and that section of the caves felt empty.
I took note after note, scribbling their thoughts down until I had a page crawling with them. Problems with the flow, monsters too hard/too easy, and tons of praise. I noted it all down. Finally, I revealed to them that I was the author. No one was surprised, I had been writing adventures biweekly for them for years! I guess I won’t bother with the subterfuge in my next adventure.
A big thanks to Casey Lynch, Brian Miller, and Nate Yacek for participating in the first playtest! Your friendship all these years has meant the world to me!
So now the first playtest is done, and the rewrite can begin. Several judges have stepped forward to give their notes and run a playtest, and I have asked Matt Funk of Witch Pleas Publishing to conduct the next playtest. He should be running it in the next couple of weeks, so watch the Dungeon Crawlers Discord for that event!
My fiancée, Casey Lynch, is a professional illustrator (and potter) and has begun work on the art for the adventure! The current plan is a kickstart in December or January.
Stay turned for more info, and, as always stay weird!
The first draft map for the adventure.
After the first playtest, I can see that
it will end up changing a bit, especially
to address the linearity. More options,
more chambers, more decisions. Players
want (and deserve) as much agency as possible!
