Death Test session report: band new players, first time GM

[JohnM]

Hello, I’m John. I’m relatively new to TFT and TTRPGs in general, but I recently had the opportunity to GM a game of Death Test with friends, two of which had never played any kind of RPG or dungeon crawler before. Here are my thoughts as a first time GM, running a game with brand new players.

This being a very first play-through, I didn’t want to kill everyone off too soon, and after reading about how deadly Death Test can be (and TFT combat in general), I decided to have the players build 38 point characters. This turned out to be too drastic on my part, as I think the party could have used a bigger challenge earlier on. The three PCs were: Vespia the wizard, Krog the definitely-not-an-orc-in-disguise greatsword wielding warrior, and Philip the deadeye crossbowman. I also ran a fourth character, Milo the halfling ninja, armed with bola and throwing stars, In addition to the dungeon.

Highlights of the game include Vespia the clumsy wizard missing nearly every single roll to cast a spell except for two, both illusions. The first was a bear, who inherited its maker's clumsiness and missed every single attack roll it made. The second illusion Vespia created was a duplicate of himself, which provided a much needed tactical advantage in the last fight. Krog, the party’s tank, did tank things until getting zapped by lightning and crit-hit by a magic fist, which took him down to exactly 0HP. Luckily the party had a health potion by that point and were able to get him back into the fight. He also managed to befriend a spider early on, which rode on his shoulder for the duration of the dungeon. Milo’s bola was quite useful for tripping up enemies and setting up Krog for a few quick kills. Milo was also the party's only loss: crushed to death by a giant club.

Philip was probably the real MVP of the party however. Nothing too fancy or showy, just consistently hitting with the crossbow and rolling high damage. He did roll a critical hit and triple damage some poor goblin though, leaving the creature’s spine attached to a wall.

The party managed to reach the final room of the dungeon with an appropriately cinematic ending fight with a giant. Vespia managed to distract the giant with an illusion, while the party attempted to run past and escape, getting quite the surprise at finding the door locked and their escape blocked. This was where Milo met his end as well, crushed flat. Vespia, out of desperation and with only a few ST left, began swinging his wizard’s staff at the giant, criting and rolling double damage. Philip peppered the giant with bolts, while Krog, himself down to only one ST, managed to strike the killing blow.

Overall everyone enjoyed themselves and I think it served as a good first introduction to dungeon-crawling. I really want to lean more heavily into the roleplay aspect of the game the next time we get together.

Things I would like to do better: I need to get more familiar with the rules. I spent a lot of time looking things up and I hate to waste player’s time. As I get more comfortable with the system I hope to get more comfortable winging it and making quick judgment calls as well.

I liked the tactical aspect of the combat, but several times during play we wound up in kind of a stalemate of the two groups just standing still and rolling dice at each other. As we start adding Talents into the mix (we played with just Melee/Wizard) hopefully that will open up more interesting options.

Final party thought: I know Death Test is a combat focused adventure, but for the sake of variety and to aid in roleplay I would have liked to have seen some more traps or environmental hazards to contend with, or maybe even a puzzle to solve. If I run Death Test again I would like to add some in myself.

Thanks for reading. TFT is a fun game!