Dragon Safari: An adventure for TFT

[hcobb]

http://www.hcobb.com/tft/dragon_safari.html

Let me know which items you found the most profitable please.

[Skarg]

Ok. Would you please define "refill" in "on a success refill food and water."?


Also, I think this mercenary's talents look like a typo:
Human Hero Mercenary recruit ST 11 DX 12 IQ 12 MA 10
Mace(2d-1) Small Shield(1)
Alertness, Ax/Mace, Carousing, Goblinish, Horsemanship, Humanish, Knife, Missile Weapons, Quarterstaff, Recognize Value, Shield, Sword, Unarmed Combat I

* You don't list what level of Missile Weapons
* You don't list any missile weapon talents, so Missile Weapons seems unusable and inappropriate unless he's used to being equipped with lightning rods or something.
* He's a 35 point character with IQ 12 and 16-18 points in talents?


Actually, a lot of them seem to have a few more talents than IQ (mainly due to redundant weapon talents), and don't seem to be equipped with the weapons they have talents for.

[hcobb]

These are medium level characters. Good catch on missile weapons, will add a test for that.

[Skarg]

If anyone wants to try joining my play-by-post (i.e. slow) play of this adventure, please come join on the TFT Discord server at https://discord.gg/QmQ8JNg .


(Just an aside, but they seem to pretty much all have a lot of peculiar talents, especially languages and peculiar weapons they don't use. It doesn't really affect playing the scenario, and may be more of a comment of the new weird XP/talent rules, but if he'd started as a 32-point PC, he'd have to spend 400 XP on attributes and (even if he started with IQ 12) 2000 - 3000 XP on random talents. I'm actually very amused/entertained, because it reminds me of the various times in our old TFT campaigns that, even with human-designed mercenaries and NPC companions, the players were often bemused by the peculiar and not-really-helpful abilities of their NPC assistants.)

[Celjabba]

Possible typo below starting out: *"then return to Dranning to reset."
Rest or Reset ?

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

Possible typo below starting out: *"then return to Dranning to reset."
Rest or Reset ?

It's a reset as you get new hirelings.

I'd like to automate all the encounter rolls, but I really don't want to run a big local database with everybody's characters in it.

[hcobb]

I rewrote the food entry.

I'll check on PHP session stuff to see if I can automate the adventure some.

Any suggestions on map terrain?

My concepts so far are:
* Clear ground with a slope in a random direction.
* Dry stream bed with broken ground going down the middle, slopes up to either side.
* Ridge line across the map with slopes down on either side.
* Boulder field
* shrubbery
* forest
etc

And I added everybody's favorite mountainside (literately) combat map.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Any suggestions on map terrain?

My concepts so far are:
* Clear ground with a slope in a random direction.
* Dry stream bed with broken ground going down the middle, slopes up to either side.
* Ridge line across the map with slopes down on either side.
* Boulder field
* shrubbery
* forest
etc

* Road in mostly open terrain.
* For mountains, much less accessible ground, with rocks, rough ground, trees, shrubs, slopes, things that can be stood upon.

[platimus]

I apologize in advance. This might seem harsh.

Introduction
This is a TFT adventure for (a party of) one or more to four starting characters. The party's leader must have the Animal Handler(pg. 37), Literacy(pg. 36) and Woodsman(pg. 41) talents. This character is issued a prospecting license by the The Wizards' Guild(pg. 60). The license asserts the named character's authorization to transport dangerous substances and lists contact details for the authorizing Guildmaster. They are also issued a one pound book listing the ingredients the Guild is interested in. The party's leader has been hired by the Wizards' Guild to collect the following ingredients for their magical concoctions.

(list items here)

The party leader also starts with a bonus mule(pg. 88) they have trained themselves. Example Mule: ST 25, DX 14, IQ 6, MA 20. Kicks for 1d+1. Maximum load: 300 pounds.

The leader then needs to buy the following items from their starting $1,000.

The party's leader starts with the following items:

(starting items list)

The party's leader also starts with a bonus mule(pg. 88) they have trained themselves. Example Mule: ST 25, DX 14, IQ 6, MA 20. Kicks for 1d+1. Maximum load: 300 pounds.

This leaves the party's leader with $560 to buy weapons, clothing, armor, etc. The mule is lightly loaded at slightly less than 4xST.

The other members of the party (if any) are outfitted normally.
###And how is that? ITL page#s?

The Mercanaries
###Don't break this paragraph up with an awful frame. Put the frame at the end of the paragraph. Better yet, don't use a fram at all. Just use a link that opens in a new tab/window...and explain what the link is for.

Starting out
###Link to map? Page# in ITL?

The Mountains
###What happens if I leave the mountains? Are we required to stay in the mountains? Why? Tell us these things in the Introduction.

"On an ordinary failure lose one of the two days of food and water stockpile."
###That's very confusing to read. I think you mean "lose one day of food or water". As written, I'm not sure. It took me several minutes to reach a hypothesis.

"A critical success on the foraging roll resets the stockpile and recovers one exposure hit."
###Where else is this foraging roll mentioned? When is it performed? How is it performed? ITL page#s?

[b]Encounter Map[b]
###The encounter map setup requires too much time and rolling. It's too complicated in general.

[b]The Way Back[b]
After seven days the thoughly lost party heads back. Reduce the navigation rolls by one die if they find someplace they've seen before.

###Navigation rolls? Th(or)oughly lost? Please explain and/or point to page#s in ITL.

If they manage to leave the mountains subtract another die from the navigation rolls and subtract one on the daily encounter table roll. If they stumble into a major city they'll be able to gate back to Dranning.

###This goes back to an earlier comments. Manage to leave? Is something preventing that? Stumble into a major city? Does it happen by accident? At this point, I got the feeling we were supposed to stay in the mountains but I don't know why. Please explain and/or point to page#s in ITL.

Return to Dranning
###This seems like info I should know by the end of the introduction, especially if I need to give out XP for each encounter. I think the introduction could use a 'sequence of play' outline or more explanation about what's going on.

[hcobb]

This weekend I'll examine how to make it an automated programmed adventure.

I've started coding it up in PHP with game status stored as cookies on the user's browser. In order to move your current game to a different machine you'd need something like a chrome login to move your cookies.