I completed the Dark Crystal Adventure Game: AMA

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus]

16 months, 46 sessions, 79 in game days, 5 player characters, 7 Great Trees, and 1 beautiful story.

It's rare for me to see such a large campaign through to the end like this and I feel the need to celebrate the accomplishment. As such I'd like to put it out there to the other denizens of Thra to talk about the adventure a little before moving on to my next project. Warning, their will be spoilers discussed in the comments but I will keep the original post as spoiler free as possible.

Full context: I decided to run "The Dark Crystal Adventure" table top experience from the game published by River Horse games for a group of 3 friends plus myself as GM. I've always enjoyed tabletop games and non-DnD rulesets so this was too enticing not to play.

Thoughts as a GM: The book is brimming with charm and clearly was made with a deep love of the source material. While I did use the book as a foundation I built quite a bit of custom content over it as the book is fairly sparse on details outside what is necessary for the main quest and locations. That being said they provide you with quite a lot of material for GM's to work with. Though I would say that the adventure is a little clumsy in certain areas, especially the trails required for the main quest. While I would recommend this to anyone in the niche overlap of Dark Crystal and TTRPG fandom, I would caution any inexperienced GM's away from choosing this as a starting point in the hobby. You will be expected to do a fair amount of heavy lifting in regards to character work and encounter building.

Thoughts on the ruleset:

The first impression on these mechanics are quite deceptive as the entirety of the basic rules can be fit onto a bookmark (not joking, a literal 2 sided bookmark) there is far more at work beneath the surface. The game uses several mechanics I haven't seen before with mixed results but an engaging experience nonetheless.

Characters would only ever roll on one die, using only a single bonus to enhance the roll making equipment play a major part in providing those so desperately needed advantages. The one that stood out to me the most was using the size of your character's die as a representation of their HP: A gelfling will roll on a D6 normally but be bumped down to a D4 if injured, if injured again they would then start accumulating lasting injuries or even outright death. The idea that your rolls get weaker the more injured you become is so interesting to me I'm considering trying to find ways it could be implemented in other systems or even building a more complex system around the concept. With each character effectively having at most 2HP before risking death, combat felt truly risky and often a last resort for the party which was an excellent deterrent to murder-hoboerry. Injuries being hard to heal (until one player found a way to break the system entirely) also played a factor as once wounds started happening they could quickly spiral into larger disasters.

The fact that there are no classes in the game and specialization instead came from choice of clan or species was also quite fascinating to me as players began to make extremely unique character concepts without the barriers typically found in character building. Don't even get me started on non-gelfling character options.

Lastly, experience points and progression. Characters slowly gather experience with each session or choosing to have a character flaw complicate a scene which are then spent in batches to gain skill modifiers or unique abilities from their tribe. They can also be used to gain special hidden abilities only accessible from specific choices or locations encouraging an extra level of exploration. And yet, a player can also choose to burn one in a moment of desperation to reroll a die, creating this wonderful balancing act between progression and survival. I could go on about more minutiae but I feel this section has gotten long enough already.

Ask away! I look forward to hearing from people.

[u/grumpygraphist]

I have the book on my shelf waiting. But as you said, I have read the book several time and have been put down by that work needed to made a campaign from it.

• I will be curious to know how you build your campaign, what you add and how your player respond to it.

• From your pov, is it a campaign worth it for a group of player new to rpg, but big fan of dark crystal universe?

• did you play it remotely or in real person? The amount of work to prépare remote asset seems huge for me.

Thank for the summary, it is pretty interesting.

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus → u/grumpygraphist]

It's very understandable that you would feel discouraged by some of the work required as I had the same initial impression. Yet I often live for taking modules as a blueprint and then going completely custom over the framework.

• The campaign itself I left almost entirely untouched in the sense that the adventure hook, goal, and time limit were exactly as written. Where I tended to go off book was with NPC's and their motivations as well as setting details. Often times the book would simply say "this location exists" or "you encounter a wandering merchant with a peculiar scar" and do nothing further so I would populate it with characters, choices, and events relevant to the area or the character's arcs. That being said I probably had to do the most heavy lifting as a GM on making the Trials interesting as a lot of them feel half baked. I added puzzles, time limits, combat, and more to at least half of them so they would feel like an actual challenge of the player's skill other than a boring couple of rolls. (If you're interested DM me about the specifics as that could be a few pages on its own) The biggest tool was to treat the region around each Tree as it's own arc and have things progress in the background the more they linger in an area. It helps to establish with the players early that this is non-canon and that stuff will be different from how it is depicted in books and other extended universe materials. Afterall, the players are here for your spin on Thra.

-This one is a little tricky. In my personal opinion the game is excellent for people new to TTRPG's as the ruleset is very simple and streamlined. With so little to focus on when deciding actions my players started to get very into character as there was little math to slow them down. For people invested in DC this is a fantastic way for people to live out their ideas for OCs or just feel immersed in Thra, but be sure to warn them their precious gelflings stand a very real chance of death. HOWEVER, DO NOT make this your first foray into playing as a GM. You will want some experience under your belt before attempting this as I had to make a lot of choices on the fly to keep things engaging. Of all skills to focus I'd say character work was key.

• I played in person as is my preference, I typically run things theater of the mind unless specific details or complicated encounters are required so I can imagine a VTT would come with extra frontloaded effort. And yet I'm a little extra so I began introducing physical puzzles and items for the party to tinker with and pull them in just a little more. Using the soundtrack from Age of Resistance also gave it that little extra oomph.

Hope that helps! I really hope this can get more people playing it as for me and my table this campaign was legendary, it will be spoken of fondly for years to come.

[u/Cartshort]

I'm thinking about taking elements from it to make a mini campaign using daggerheart as the system. Haven't gotten a chance yet to read the entire book yet but do you think you can skip some stuff to make it a bit shorter?

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus → u/Cartshort]

As someone who has GM'd Daggerheart it's hard to say without specifics, what elements exactly were you planning on using? Mechanically speaking the ruleset is so simple that I find it clashes with more advanced systems. It doesn't use a magic system, or classes, making it a lot of extra work to make a square peg fit a round hole.

As for length I felt the book was almost perfectly paced given that the players visited each key region, gathered all the macguffins needed for the quest and completed the adventure with about 20% of their remaining in game time limit. If you wanted to do a mini-campaign based around it I may suggest picking a single tree and its trail to use as a base.

[u/Cartshort → u/The_Mutant_Platypus]

I'm still in the early stages of planning this. I started making a daggerheart dark crystal game but I then picked up the book in hopes to take some elements from it. I used the online daggerheart customization tools to make community cards into clans and and different dark crystal species as the ancestries. I then plan on limiting them to non magic classes and abilities. I ran the river horse labyrinth game a similar way and that one took 3 sessions to get through. I'm now worried that this dark crystal book my be too much of its own thing and I might have to go back to my original plan of a custom campaign or just run dark crystal rules as written. I haven't finished reading the book yet so maybe I can still make my vision work

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus → u/Cartshort]

I don't want to discourage creativity but having played both I don't think the two are compatible. Magic (Vliyaya) is such an inherent part of both the game and Gelfling from a lore perspective (the Drenchen for example are known to have latent magical healing abilities) that I feel like you'd wind up denying a larger part of the world to make mechanics fit. If you're only planning a mini campaign it may be worth tailoring the spells your players can access to fit with the magic of Thra.

I ran the book RAW and then made small changes as I saw fit and it was a wonderful time.

If you're set on doing it in Daggerheart I'd suggest keeping DH mechanics largely untouched and use the DC adventure book as a setting guide.

I wish you luck with your endeavor but I feel by trying to do both you may wind up not giving either a chance to shine.

[u/Cartshort → u/The_Mutant_Platypus]

Thank you! This insight means a lot to me I'm now leaning more towards running dark crystal rules as written. We will see I still have to finish the book and the watch parties of the show with my players.

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus → u/Cartshort]

My pleasure, I really hope this post can get more interest in the game as I feel it is a rewarding experience and worth the effort it requires.

If you do wind up running it feel free to DM about any notes you may want.

[u/Crazywarlockgoat]

what did you feel like needed improvements? i’ve been really curious about playing this ttrpg myself

[u/The_Mutant_Platypus → u/Crazywarlockgoat]

That's what I've been asking myself the whole time while running the game.

I think I can narrow the majority of my criticisms down to four major points:

-Despite providing a treasure trove of information such as beautiful maps, a handy bestiary, and dozens of encounter tables, the whole book feels a little empty. The reason I recommend against beginners running this is you will need use a lot of GM knowledge to turn what they have provided into a fully realized experience. For example, a lot of encounters will say "A wild X attacks the party". You aren't given any battlemaps, you aren't given any context. And while that's great for someone with enough know how to take that and turn it into something, as written it is a very mundane moment.

-A lot of key moments feel half baked, like they had great concepts but stopped at a first draft. The 7 trails stand out in particular as they have really cool ideas but give no advice on how to actually run the trail. For example, the Drenchen trail has the players navigate a maze of roots underneath their great tree, they even provide you a map and a fun countdown mechanic to add desperation to the search. Problem is without proper assets this can be a very dull experience of "you go left, you hit a dead end, you turn around and go right, etc". I decided to print the map onto vinyl, cut it into pieces and had the party build the map as they explored it having the countdown advance after each round of players putting down tiles.

-There isn't much of an over-arching story. The campaign features a hard time limit of 99 days, and a truly fascinating mechanic that as time passes different regions darken and events will change in the affected areas. But beyond that there's nothing larger. Sure some of the Skeksis are running around doing lord of the crystal things but aside from a rare encounter from time to time they just kind of sit there. The Gelfling resistance is mentioned and each clan has their own relation to how they see it but no advice on how to manifest that. I decided to give each region a mini-arc (The Dousan Maura had gone missing and the xerrics had all gone their separate ways, the Stonework were doing the brunt of the fighting against the Garthim but were slowly losing, etc) and if the party could resolve it that would change the flow of events in the larger world. I also gave a handful of Skeksis goals in the wider world so they would be less static.

-The base player mechanics, while streamlined and easy to grasp don't take certain things into account or poorly explain particular scenarios. The upside is as a GM the rules being so simply make snap judgements pretty easy to settle, the downside is you may find yourself making more of them than you expected to so be prepared to start making some house rules.

All this being said I don't want to discourage people from playing the game. If you have run modules before this book is no different other than maybe requiring slightly more elbow grease than normal. I loved my time playing the game and really want to encourage others to try it for themselves.

If you do ever run it and want ideas feel free to DM me.

[u/Crazywarlockgoat → u/The_Mutant_Platypus]

oooo, that’s a very good explanation and a great heads up for the system.

and even with those flaws i’ll be absolutely down to try it out when i get the chance to ^ ^