Interest Check: Barrowmaze - Now Recruiting!

[cailano]

EDIT: Recruiting is open! Closing February 23rd.

I've posted my thoughts about this campaign before, but they've evolved a bit since then. Barrowmaze is a sandbox campaign centered around a sprawling megadungeon. You can read more about it here.

I'll need a party full of tomb robbers, treasure hunters, and undead destroyers. There will be a lot of dungeon crawling in this campaign. The good news is that I run a pretty damn good dungeon crawl.

I look forward to your thoughts.

[matt_s]

free rules provided by the designers (and you link the exact pdfs so we don't have to guess editions!) , OSR dungeon crawl, I'd be down!

But you forget to link the hilarious Barrowmaze trailer unless its buried somewhere in your preliminary forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wKQq8gLDXE

I haven't played barrowmaze or BFRPG, I've played a touch of red box dnd, a fair deal of WWN which is OSR-ish, and a couple brief jaunts into other OSR-likes.

 

[Cirlot]

 

 

You've got my sword (or likely axe. Feeling dwarfy at the moment) - my thoughts/questions are entirely practical: do you have a desired posting rate/frequency for the game? How soon are you open to character applications? And do you mind that I've been run through about one 10x10 bit of barrow before the campaign petered out before the end of the first encounter?

[Malkavian Grin]

Never played Barrowmaze but with you at the helm, I know it'd be a fun ride. Would I be able to bring Gemlia, Dwarf Cleric of the Living Forge, over to this game? I'd obviously reroll stats and the like but I really liked the flavor we were starting to build up around it.

[roryb]

Pure dungeoncrawling is my favorite kind of Old Skool. I'm always chomping at the bit to delve - traps, monsters beyond our immediate ability, loose coins for grabbing as we run for dear life... all that jazz.

[Delorphin]

That sounds like a fun time, as for me I’ve never really played an OSR game beyond running Tomb of the Serpent Kings with some of my friends using Maze Rats. So it would be cool to play with people more experienced in that genre.

Edited February 12 by Delorphin (see edit history)

[Bobcloclimar]

I'd be interested in playing - a pure dungeoncrawl is something I've wanted to do for ages, but still haven't managed to actually play in for more than the first scene or three.

Edited February 12 by Bobcloclimar (see edit history)

[cailano]

20 hours ago, matt_s said:

free rules provided by the designers (and you link the exact pdfs so we don't have to guess editions!) , OSR dungeon crawl, I'd be down!

But you forget to link the hilarious Barrowmaze trailer unless its buried somewhere in your preliminary forum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wKQq8gLDXE

I haven't played barrowmaze or BFRPG, I've played a touch of red box dnd, a fair deal of WWN which is OSR-ish, and a couple brief jaunts into other OSR-likes.

 

It's got it's own topic! Check the Trailers topic (not that you haven't already seen the trailer.)

I freakin' love that trailer.

[cailano]

5 hours ago, Cirlot said:

 

 

You've got my sword (or likely axe. Feeling dwarfy at the moment) - my thoughts/questions are entirely practical: do you have a desired posting rate/frequency for the game? How soon are you open to character applications? And do you mind that I've been run through about one 10x10 bit of barrow before the campaign petered out before the end of the first encounter?

Ah, but read the Player Level house rule, a defining part of this campaign. TLDR: You've got to earn the right to dwarf. I'm actually really excited about that campaign feature since Barrowmaze is a famously lethal place to visit.

As long as you can role-play not knowing anything, you're good.

I run a fast-paced game, so there will be fresh posts four to five days per week. I do take breaks from time to time, but I let everyone know what's going on. Feel free to check any of my completed games to see if you'd be comfortable with the pace.

 

Character applications should open this week.
 

[cailano]

5 hours ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Never played Barrowmaze but with you at the helm, I know it'd be a fun ride. Would I be able to bring Gemlia, Dwarf Cleric of the Living Forge, over to this game? I'd obviously reroll stats and the like but I really liked the flavor we were starting to build up around it.

You've got to earn the right to dwarf in this game. But she can come in at some point! That was a great character.

[Cirlot]

20 minutes ago, cailano said:

I run a fast-paced game, so there will be fresh posts four to five days per week. I do take breaks from time to time, but I let everyone know what's going on. Feel free to check any of my completed games to see if you'd be comfortable with the pace.

Alas my posting rate would be glacial in comparison (2x a week or so) so despite this looking awseome I'll just have to cheer on your murderdeungeon game from the sidelines. I'm curious how the Player Level houserule ends up working - it implies a LOT of character churn which even with the accelerate posting rate you've got going is normally kind of rough in PbP.I'm not particularly precious about character death but it given a day long post and response cycle a downed PC means the player is likely sidelined for a week or more until a new PC can be worked in, more if there's no hand-waving and the party is required to haul all the way back to town to recruit.

 

[Malkavian Grin]

25 minutes ago, cailano said:

You've got to earn the right to dwarf in this game. But she can come in at some point! That was a great character.

Earn via base stats? Or just by playing for awhile? I've barely played basic fantasy.

[cailano]

9 hours ago, Malkavian Grin said:

Earn via base stats? Or just by playing for awhile? I've barely played basic fantasy.

No, with Player Levels. It's a house rule I made just for this campaign.

The thing about Barrowmaze (and OSR megadungeons in general) is that they are lethal AF.

So, what I've done in this game is to create a system of rewards for players who lose characters. They get to level up! One way to gain a player level is to have your PC gain a level, but the other way to get one is to have your PC die in action.

Player Levels bring a series of cumulative rewards, but they're only useful when rolling up a new character. At first level, you can only play a human of one of the four basic classes (Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Thief), but at later levels, you can choose from a whole assortment of new races and classes. Dwarves and elves come in fairly early, but at higher levels, you can bring in races from outside games, break race and class restrictions (dwarf magic users, multi-class humans, etc.), or even create a custom character class.

You can read more about it in the Player Level topic.

[cailano]

19 minutes ago, Cirlot said:

Alas my posting rate would be glacial in comparison (2x a week or so) so despite this looking awseome I'll just have to cheer on your murderdeungeon game from the sidelines. I'm curious how the Player Level houserule ends up working - it implies a LOT of character churn which even with the accelerate posting rate you've got going is normally kind of rough in PbP.I'm not particularly precious about character death but it given a day long post and response cycle a downed PC means the player is likely sidelined for a week or more until a new PC can be worked in, more if there's no hand-waving and the party is required to haul all the way back to town to recruit.

 

It can be. I'm hoping the Player Levels can help to mitigate that, but only time will tell.

[leons1701]

I'll admit, despite my general dislike of old school and particularly this exact style of killer dungeon, this does sound sort of awesome, especially the player levels idea. Hope it works out.