Last week, our playtest heroes fought their way through the Crypt of the Twin Kings (one good, one evil), overcoming skeletons, traps, and a sealed room where they’d have to listen to Led Zeppelin… forever.
Now they stood before a magnificently carved ivory door that bore engravings of the Twin Kings fighting monsters! This was undoubtedly the end of the maze, the treasury of the Twin Kings themselves! Next to the door was a decrepit side-passage that terminated in a dead end. On the wall of the dead end were, carved into the stone, words in a strange, unknown language.
Our Holy Man, Sansange, was elated! She had been waiting for a chance to cast her new power, “Read Strange Languages.” There was just one problem: the spell cost 20 spell points. Sansange had 20 spell points at maximum, but had already spent 10 on casting an Instant Heal after a battle with skeletons.
Sansange convinced everyone that the words must be of paramount importance, and everyone should camp out and regain their spell points, and then next morning, Sansange could translate the words.
Here we hit, and fixed, a few rules problems. My initial rules had it that resting overnight restored 1 HP and 1 spell point per character level. We agreed that it might be fine for HP to regenerate at this rate, but that a full night’s sleep should restore all spell points.
We also adjusted the cost of Instant Heal. Initially, all level 1 spells cost 10 Spell Points, so that, for instance, a level 1 Holy Man could cast “Instant Heal” twice per day.
Instant Heal cured 30 points of damage: however, since everyone had 2d12 or 3d12 HP, no one had anything near 30 HP. Sansange felt bad about spending 10 points to cure a minor injury.
We decided that, since Instant Healing was the bread and butter of the Holy Man class, we’d give it a nonstandard Spell Point price. It could now cost any number of Spell Points: it cured that many points of damage. You could use it like D&D’s Lay On Hands to efficiently fix minor injuries. At higher levels, with bigger wounds, it became less efficient, but new healing spells would become available then anyway.
Rules issues resolved, the heroes made camp. Since there were no fatigue rules, Sir Robert, who had spent neither HP nor Spell Points, stayed up all night to guard the camp. And it’s a good thing he did! The camp was attacked by Mystic Skeletons!
Mystic Skeletons were much like the other skeletons the group had fought, except that, instead of attacking, they could try to Maze a player. A Mazed player would see everyone as a skeleton, and wouldn’t know who to attack.
This fight was more grueling for the party than the previous one, with several characters becoming Mazed and attacking their friends. Walmart Jr, hurling daggers at the Sansange the Holy Man, posed the greatest threat. She only stopped when someone gave her a chance to break the Maze by reminding her that “your father threw himself to his death in a pit! If I was really a skeleton, how would I know that?”
When the battle was won, the party got its reward: the chance to finish their sleep and refresh their Spell Points. Sansange cast her spell and read the words written on the wall, which said:
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You probably remember sitting around with your friends playing Mazes and Monsters back in the 80s, but your mom threw away all your M&M stuff during the Tom Hanks Scare of ’82. And original Mazes and Monsters gamebooks are so hard to find on eBay! How are you supposed to play M&M retro clones?
