Let's Run an X-Crawl: Part 2

 

I previously talked about this but I figured it’s good to repeat it here, so here’s the first paragraph of the previous article to explain why/what I’m doing. With the upcoming X Crawl Classic coming to Kickstarter soon I’m pretty excited about new and returning players getting involved. It’s not a secret that X Crawl is in my top three favorite RPGs and I would love for it to succeed. To that end I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to start an X Crawl campaign. I’ve been playing X Crawl for nearly as long as there’s been a game. I played in the first ever Buckeye Crawl at Origins back in… “Zeus am I old.” Anyway, I’ve run a successful multi-year campaign, and several smaller one shots, and demos.

My previous article was advice to help Dungeon Judges (DJ’s) run an X-Crawl and some things they might want to look at to make for a hopefully more unique experience. In this article I’m going to focus on Crawlers. What your players need to know and what might help them as they get ready to play.

The first part of this is going to focus on mechanics. There are two things that get lost in most Crawlers first few game. I’m going to cover those and give them a couple of tips to help remember. After that I’m going to go into some character, atmosphere, and roleplay tips that can be used to help enhance the experience. X-Crawl is one of those amazing games that makes me think different, and I find that it takes some players a couple of sessions to get into the mindset for X-Crawl. I’m hoping these tips help shortcut that.

None of this is mandatory to have a good time, and if your game doesn’t focus on roleplaying or getting into character that’s fine. This game works both as a funhouse dungeon and a roleplay deep dive. However your group has fun is the perfect way to play these are just some tips to help both groups.

 

MECHANICS

Two things in X-Crawl I see new players miss all of the time are Mojo and Grandstanding. Even new DJ’s tend to forget these things and as such players miss out on a couple of bonuses that will help them in the long run.

MOJO

Mojo is the most often beneficial and the one I’m going to look at first. Mojo is a representation of the group’s teamwork. It is the mechanical representation of their long hours of practice, tactical discussions, comradery, and the trust they’ve built up. It’s that little boost of, “You can do it!” that’s found in most team sports.

Every Crawler has their own pool of points that they can pass out to help the other player succeed. Since you have to give them out before the roll player’s tend to forget they have them or they try to bank them for the final encounter. In hopes of not forgetting them I recommend a pile of tokens, poker chips, mini-snickers, or whatever you happen to have around. This gives you a physical thing to handle that should help remind you that you have something to give. Snickers work particularly well here since you can only eat one when you give away the point.

The other problem is banking them until the end. They prefer to hand out as many points for a single roll instead of a series of +1’ and +2’s to help out over several roles. This sounds like a great idea if you can reach the final fight then give the heavy hitters +10 to hit. It’s a guaranteed kill. I’m guilty of this. I’m guilty of both of these.

The problem comes in two parts, first, a high to hit role doesn’t do tons of damage or trigger a critical; it just hits. The other is a role of 1 will empty everyone’s mojo pool setting them all to 0. This makes it really difficult to bank the points to the big encounters.

The other misconception is that the +1 and +2 won’t help that much. While I think this is a more pronounced problem in previous editions, the DCC has a mechanic that makes this a far better option. If you fail a role in X-Crawl Classic then you can spend luck to make the role a success. By giving your teammates the small pluses at the very least you’re saving them a few luck points if they still fail the role.

GRANDSTANDING

Another mechanic that gets forgotten by new players is grandstanding. You get to perform two grandstands in an encounter; one during and one at the end. Grandstanding is that moment when you work the crowd to get them to behind you. If you’ve ever seen professional wrestling you’ll recognize the moment a wrestler starts playing to the crowd. In other sports, it’s the touchdown dance, high five line at the end of a home run, or the golfer’s fist bump after a great shot. Different sports have different levels of allowable excitement. In X-Crawl you’re going more for the wrestling level.

A successful grandstand will affect your fame score. Fame is mostly an out of crawl statistic. You’ll use it more between levels than during and it’s possible to never have to use fame during a crawl. To this end it’s more important to pay attention to fame and grandstanding in an ongoing campaign than a one shot.

However, it’s still a part of the sport and easy to forget. Much like mojo, the best way to remember is to have a physical reminder. If you’re using poker chips for mojo add a different color chip for your grandstand attempt.

Remembering to use it is one thing; using it well is another. You get bonuses on your grandstand check if you choose the right time to try it. Like most sports, grandstanding is best done after something memorable. I’ll not say something good here, which is a more traditional way of looking at it.

“I thought you had to do something good to be famous.”

“Not if you do it colorfully,”

 This is a quote from Major League, a really good baseball movie and worth watching. I use it here because it’s right. In real life we’ve seen the Cleveland Browns get a parade for a perfect season after losing every game. Eddie the Eagle is an Olympic legend after finishing with the lowest ski jump distance in Olympic history by wide margin. Neither of these were good things but they were popular, they had the fans behind them, they got attention.

Pick your moment, scoring a critical hit on the big boss is a great moment to grandstand. So is rolling a natural 1 to jump a pit, tumbling into it, landing on your own vial of alchemist’s fire, setting it off and barely putting the flames, and standing up with a single hit point. It wasn’t good, but it was certainly memorable. You will show up on the highlight reel. Does the clip end with you looking dejected or screaming, “Is that the best you’ve got?” It’s not flying, it’s falling with style.

 

That’s it for the mechanical parts of the article. From here on out I’m going to give a couple of character and roleplay tips I think can build the setting better. If this is where you leave us, thanks for stopping by but, you might want to skim the next part, just too really ratchet up the fun.

 

QUICK AND EASY PERSONAS

This is not my trick. I stole this from Brendan LeSalle. If you’re playing a one-shot and want a quick and easy description for your character think of the actor that will play them in the movie. Any actor, any character, any era. X-Crawl is from a world of magic where resurrection and mystic clones are both available. I use this when running demos and it’s incredibly helpful. I know that in some instances making a character that’s just a carbon copy of a specific character or actor you like is seen as lazy. Honestly, it’s a great short hand and I’m officially giving you permission to do it.

Plus, mixing it up can be fun. It’s just as entertaining to play a Barbarian that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gina Carano but it’s equally fun to play one patterned after Napoleon Dynamite or Velma Dinkley.

Beyond that you’ll want to decide if your team is white hats or heels. These are wresting terms that apply here in X-Crawl very well. White Hats are crawlers who try to show a more heroic side while Heels fight dirty and are generally considered the “bad” guys.

What stance your team takes doesn’t affect your characters overall personality. One of the best character concepts I remember from the early days of X-Crawl was someone from the forums who played Captain Howdy. The Captain was a White Hat; beloved by children and families. Behind the scenes he was a rat bastard. Being a White hat doesn’t make you a hero and a Heel isn’t necessarily a villain. Hell, the Rock was a Heel; and I think we’ll all agree he seems a decent fellow.

 

BACKGROUNDS

Why is your character an X-Crawler? One of those old standard questions we ask about gaming is why does your character go on adventures. There’s lots of safer ways to earn money. My first group was filled with the standard fantasy RPG reasons. Regain family honor, a quest for revenge, fame and fortune, and tragic pasts a plenty. These were all fine, but X-Crawl offers a few options we hadn’t thought of.

X-Crawl is one of the few games where we have examples of why people would actually do this. Look at any professional sport and you can see dozens of examples of why people play football, baseball, American football, and pretty much every other sport. You don’t need a long and detailed backstory of searching for your lost sibling who went off to adventure and disappeared. If you had a sibling do that, you know exactly what happened to them, you probably watched it on a big screen TV in full color with surround sound.

Here perfectly decent and reasonable backgrounds are you got a college scholarship, loved the sports as a kid, getting out of the projects, and dozens of others. Heck, if you’re playing a messenger then you have a built in background.

Messengers are the X-Crawl clerics. As a messenger your background is you were doing your life when a God appeared before you, informed you that you are the descendant of one of their many children, and demanded that you go forth and bring honor to their name in the sport of X-Crawl. Doesn’t matter what you used to do; police officer, soldier, accountant, or fast food worked; you’re a professional athlete now. I mean, you could say no…I’m sure the Gods will understand…there are tons of stories about how people told them no and absolutely nothing bad happened because of it…

 

TEAM NAME

What your team is called is one of those things I watch people stumble on. In most groups I’ve run, this includes one shots and campaigns, there’s a brain freeze when you ask for team names. There are two places to look, the first is professional sports. City and a mascot and you’ve got a team. This is a popular convention that’s worked well for a while. A quick method for this is use the city you’re all from and pick a mascot that you can all agree on. If you’ve got something local that fits in go with that. It doesn’t have to be fantasy based or fictional. A perfect example is the Sell Swords, an in universe team that’s featured in a lot of the art.

The other example for this is E-Sports. In fact, I’d recommend looking at E-Sports for lots of inspiration in X-Crawl. The model for how X-Crawl works and how E-Sports function are very similar. With E-Sports teams you get some fun things. You’ll have stuff like Team Liquid, Zealots, Murlock Book Club, or Fnatic. Sometimes they’re named after their sponsor, Team Red Bull has a thriving E-Sports presence.

I’d even o so far as to say you could widen this to the name of your character. Big K, Dumpster, MFPallytime, and Stormshriek are all E-Sports players. They also all sound like they could be running around in X-Crawl.

 

MOJO

Handing out Mojo is a mechanical, easy to perform action. However, you can always liven it up by describing what you do. A quick, “You got this,” is more than enough to justify a couple of mojo points. More often than not, that’s all it represents. However, if you’re going to spend a lot of points, I’d say four or more, then try and be a bit more colorful.

If you’re wearing a baseball hat flip it inside out and go full rally cap. Team chants are a good idea. Cool Runnings has that great, “Feel the rhythm…” count down they do when the take off at the start of a race. Quacking in the Mighty Ducks. The Cleveland Browns bark at one another. Baseball players use various handshakes with some players having a special handshake for every member of their team.

 

GRANDSTANDING

Typified more in professional wrestling than any other sport, grandstanding is a great way to ramp the game up. The act of getting the crowd to support you, cheer for you, and rally behind you is an art form in professional wrestling. The great ones get remembered, go on to be famous, and get film and television deals.

When performing a grandstand it’s better to put some effort into it. Have fun with your descriptions. You’ve just critically hit Guntar the Bold, ogre barbarian final boss of Highlands Crawl. He’s still up, he’s angry, and he’s turning to face you. This is a great time to grandstand. You could easily announce a grandstand attempt, roll some dice, and take the result. Or you could call him ugly, scream for the fans to give you their power, and put on a show of getting ramped up by the crowd’s cheers. Sounds silly? Hulk Hogan did it three times a week for years.

A nice subset of this is Cutting a Promo; another wrestling term. Cutting a promo is when a wrestler/crawler films a brief ad where they call out their opponent before the match or gloat afterwards. Calling out is more of a white hat version and gloating more for heels. In my opinion, cutting a promo is a great way to start a session. One of the players should take a moment to talk smack about what they’re about to face off against. Maybe they go after the DJ, a celebrity monster they know will be in the level, or another team taking part in the event.

If you want great examples of promos look up Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and the Rock on YouTube. They’re all masters of it. Also, for DJ’s, check out anything with Mean Gene Okerlund as the poor commentator stuck reacting to the screaming wrestler for a great bit of color you can add to help boost the promos. Giving the Crawlers someone to play off of is great fun.

 

ODDS AND ENDS

A few last little details to think about. These aren’t anything you need in a one-shot and in a campaign they’re nice but not necessary. Even if you use them you don’t really need them for the first dungeon.

Team Colors/Uniforms

Does your team have official colors? Do you guys try and dress in a way that makes you look like a team or do you just wear whatever costumes and gear you want? How you do this can show cohesion, give your team a sense of togetherness, and lets you have that yell. The old give them the Crimson and Gold, for the Blue and Green, or Orange Black pride. If not, then what do you wear and how does it look? You’re athletes, what’s your number? What goes on your jacket, jersey, or next to your name in the program?

Theme Song

What’s the song that plays when you hit the field as a team? What’s your characters personal theme? Every wrestler has a song that plays as they run to the ring. The song you pick gives you a vibe that you’re setting. Choose a song that sets the tempo for your character and team. Hulk Hogan comes out to Real American, Rick Vaughn comes to the mound to Wild Thing, and the Superbowl Shuffle for the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Songs can be great fun to set a theme. Are you a messenger/paladin of Zeus; Thunderstruck. A brawler who specializes in tridents; Wipeout. A country music based jammer who plays a fiddle; Thank Gods I’m a Country Boy. An athlete who specializes in bare-hands combat; Eye of the Tiger. I could do this all day.

Front Man

Who’s you teams Freddie Mercury, Wayne Gretzky, Joan Jett, or Mia Hamm? One of you will stand out from the others. You’re who the DJ’s will talk to, the media will favor, and the fans will swoon over. You’ll also be the one hounded by paparazzi, stalked, and blamed. A spectacular win and you lead your team to victory. A brutal loss and you’ll be a dismal failure who should be replaced. It’s a two edged sword and one of you will probably have to bear it.

It’ll be a bigger part of the campaign if your group focuses on the parts between the crawls but, it doesn’t have to be. If your group doesn’t want to do the out of crawl bits then roll a dice and focus on the levels.

FINAL THOUGHT

As with everything I write about this, these are all thoughts, tips, and suggestions. None of them are required and should only be done if you want to do them. These are here to give you something to think about that hopefully helps enrich your experience with X-Crawl. If you don’t use any of these or come up with better ideas, then those are awesome too.

I hope you enjoy X-Crawl. It’s a great game and I want more people to play it. I’m a selfish bastard, I want to hear the stories.

Anyway, I hope this helps. If you have any questions, tips I might have missed, or ideas then please drop them in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Thanks. Until next time, Stay safe, be well, and may the Emperors light protect you all.

Let’s Run an X Crawl

 

With the upcoming X Crawl Classic coming to Kickstarter soon I’m pretty excited about new and returning players getting involved. It’s not a secret that I X Crawl is in my top three favorite RPGs and I would love for it to succeed. To that end I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to start an X Crawl campaign. I’ve been playing X Crawl for nearly as long as there’s been a game. I played in the first ever Buckeye Crawl at Origins back in… “Zeus am I old.” Anyway, I’ve run a successful multi-year campaign, and several smaller one shots, and demos.

X Crawl is a unique beast and when getting started I made some assumptions based entirely on my years of gaming before that. While my history helped and anyone should be fine there are a couple of things I figured out through trial and error I thought might be helpful to others.

This article is going to be about how to start an X-Crawl campaign for Dungeon Judges (DJ’s). I’m planning to write a second article for players and what they might want to think about to get ready. I’ll try and have useful information here for both groups but I’m primarily focusing on Dungeon Judges.

For the purposes of this article, I’m going to use the Memphis Crawl from the X-Crawl colored edition rules as a reference point here. There will be some minor spoilers, but it will all be stuff I think the players should know going in. I won’t lay out any traps, plot twists, or direct information. I will give a general overview of some of the major themes and recurring characters.

 

GETTING READY

Most of what you want to do here is what you would for any adventure. Read through it, take some notes, and be familiar enough to run what your player’s will encounter. There are a couple of small differences between this and other settings.

First, you’re going to want to pay attention to the Dungeon Judge. This is going to be your character for the adventure. While, you’ll be playing all of the NPC’s as normal, the DJ is special. They’re the opponent but not necessarily the villain. They have a style, a way of behaving, and will interact with the players by Arcane Video Screens (AVS); a magic close circuit television. Every DJ has their own style, goals, and will be a force in the arena without ever coming into direct conflict with the characters.

For Memphis Crawl this is DJ Cudgel Up. She’ll be the character you spend the most time playing. If you look through the notes on her and the crawl you might notice a couple of things. First, Memphis Crawl is the opening crawl of the season. It’s meant to get the year going and bring everyone back after an off season break. Because of this the crawl has several very showy elements, large set pieces, and a few fan favorite monsters. Second, she wants the characters to be heroes; after all she gives them princess to save. Finally, the players are all Division 3 and this will most likely be their first nationally televised appearance. They’ll not be well know so the crawl makes up for and accentuates it.

This crawl is designed to give the players/characters a chance to introduce themselves to the world and make a splash doing it. It’s the first one of the year, it lets new teams introduce themselves to the public, gives them well known opponents to face off against, and princess to save. They are meant to come away from this with fans.

Another thing that sometimes gets overlooked are their opponents. This is a competitive sport. While it’s easy to think of it as team vs monsters it’s important to remember that there are five other teams running the first level of the crawl. Two of the six teams go on to compete in level two. Only the best team gets to compete in the final level. To this end you might want to have a couple of other teams named and ready to go.

I have a stable of teams set up ahead of time to pull from. I usually go through and create names and mascots for the other groups they’ll face. I also like to have some the teams set up with names, classes, and races for the different members. I’ll usually tick one off as the team captain as well. Your players may never directly interact with any of these teams and I honestly don’t even think you need stats. It’s just a nice piece of background information to flash on a scoreboard or for after the level.

 

            CHARACTER INFORMATION

Before you sit down for your first game, you’ll want to let the players know some things about the game. The description of the adventure is pretty good and gives them a good way in. However, I think there are a couple of things they should know before you go in. Cudgel Up has been running Memphis Crawl for a while and there are a few things that make it and X Crawl different from other games. These are some of the things that make X Crawl shine and will challenge your players to think even before they enter the level.

First off is the Princess. Every year Cudgel Up gives the contestants a number of princesses to rescue. This is a given. If you’re players are going to go into the crawl their character would know this. They’d also know that on occasion some of the princesses will be in harm’s way, this makes loading up on nothing but area spells and effects…not an awful idea, but it could limit options at a critical point. They’ll want a couple of single target options. They’ll also know that saving the princess involves reaching them and completing a challenge, this isn’t an escort mission. The princess’ will also be themed to areas of the dungeon. Each one will appear in costume at the beginning of every level and only some of them will be taken away. This will give them hints at what’s to come in levels 2 and 3 if they think to pay attention. It won’t be a guarantee of success but might help out in some of their potion buying and spell selection.

Next are the celebrity monsters. They are going to know that there will be the Cudgel Up Dancers and Vrusk the troll to contend with. The Dancers show up multiple times and this group of well-trained goblins are extremely loyal and tricky. They move with the coordination of your average SEAL team and have a room designed specifically for them that they’ve been practicing in. While they won’t be able to do anything in particular to prepare for them, they’ll want to be prepared to handle the little buggers when they show up. These are not going to be mindless thugs but well trained opponents. Also, they can show up on more than one level. They might only be on level 2 this year or they could appear in all three levels of the crawl.

Vrusk is a different matter. Vrusk the troll is a feature in the first level of every Memphis Crawl. This gives him the most exposure. He’s a fan favorite with his own fan club and a special rate for them to get tickets in his room. The players wouldn’t even have to work hard to learn that he’s going to be on level 1. They’ll probably come across it on the news or in their Facebook feeds. They will know everything about Vrusk, he’s big, a troll, and has woven barbed wire through his skin. He likes to grapple contestants and shred them against his skin. He’ll also be far more popular in his room than they will be. The crowd will be rooting for him. They also won’t kill him. The referee’s always call the room when Vrusk gets knocked unconscious for the first time. This will encourage the players to bring fire, but to remember that he might be holding one of them when it comes time to chuck the vial of alchemist’s fire or cast burning hands.

 

Finally, Cudgel Up likes to highlight Memphis in her Crawl. This can include area knowledge, local celebrities, or even challenges based on landmarks. While they won’t have any specific knowledge it might be fun to let them hit some Memphis tourist sites and see if they can figure some stuff out.

Now, you don’t have to tell players this. I think you should as it’s a part of X Crawl. They’ll know these things. They happen every year and are honestly an expected feature of Cudgel up. They won’t apply to every crawl the players encounter. I can think of at least two published crawls where they’re being run by new DJ’s and this sort of information wouldn’t be available. There are also several who don’t use recurring monsters, but would have certain themes, events, or types of encounters. One of the home brew DJ’s I created was DJ Big Daddy who was a former biker. Most of the prizes in his Crawl were high end custom Motorcycle parts. They could easily be sold for a good value but the team that won the entire event would also win a special edition Harley-Davidson’s and the custom parts would be installed for them. They know that much going in, it was even a factor in whether or not my players choose the crawl.

 

WHERE TO BEGIN THE SESSION

Unlike most RPG’s X-Crawl gives us a pretty decent starting point; the green room. We don’t have to know how the players met, became a team, or decided to go adventuring. We literally get to start with, “You’re in the green room…”

This gives us an advantage over a lot of starting campaigns. We get to skip a lot of the introductory bits of the game. The characters have been working together for a while, trained together, and know one another pretty well. Where a lot of games spend session 1 figuring out the group dynamics, this group is ready made. That’s a big step towards pushing forward.

This will help your players as well. I’ve never had a character concept 100% survive the first few sessions. It’s rare that I have a characters voice and mannerisms locked in for the first game. I’ll have a rough idea and can answer some surface level questions but usually anything really detailed I’ve written will be contradicted in a game or two. Starting in the green room helps players avoid spilling a lot of details about themselves that will have to be worked around later.

If you want to give them some role-play opportunities to get started with small steps, you have access to the greatest introductions of all time; game show questions. If you’ve ever watched the first five minutes of any game show you’ll have seen the host introduce the players and ask them a short leading question. You know the type, what’s a hobby you like, where did you go to school, is there anyone back home you want to say hi to? For X Crawl you want to start with something similar. Give the players a chance to get used to their characters before hitting them with heavy sports interviews. Questions you might even try if players seem to be having a rougher time is direct mechanics based ones like, their favorite weapon, fighting style, or spell.

Hit each player with a quick easy question and then move on to the dungeon. Let the fighting and adventure happen, take notes and at later interviews in the break rooms, after major show pieces, and at the end of the level to ask about the highlights from the crawl. Check out sports interview or even E sports interviews for some good examples of questions to ask here. In fact, I would recommend E sports over traditional sports for a much more fitting feel to what X Crawl is trying to accomplish.

 

NO GO DOOR PLACEMENT

You might have noticed that at Division 3 every room is to come equipped with at least 1 No Go Door for a quick escape should a contestant feel overwhelmed. You might also notice they don’t show up on the map at all. While you could go through and place them beforehand so you know exactly where they are. In fact I used to do this. I even included descriptions of where those doors should be in the adventure I posted on my blog. However, I’m going to back that up and say that you probably don’t want to place the No Go Doors on the map at the beginning. In fact you probably don’t want to point out their location unless specifically asked.

Part of this is it just clutters the map and reminds players that there’s something to get them out of jail if they get in over their heads. The other reasons is if you place them it might make useless if you need them. If you mark the No Go Door on the west wall when the team enters the room only to have the wizard really need one while standing on the east side of the room you’ve basically cut him off from his only escape.

I think X Crawl should be deadly; it should kill characters. However, it shouldn’t be unforgiving. Leave the No Go Doors off the map and then if a player gets into a bad spot and wants to save their character add it to the map and tell them where the exit is. You don’t have to make it a freebie. In fact I’d make them work for it a little bit. Make them have to scramble, give it some drama; if possible. Make them sweat.

If the player needs a way out and haven’t thought of one you can even remind them the No Go Door is an option. However, you should also remind them that by using it they are eliminating their character from the remainder of the level.  If the team manages to finish without them they can come back for the next level but it’ll be tougher with one contestant down and it should be.

 

BETWEEN THE LEVELS

They’ve made it to the end of the level and won the day. Now what? You can start on level two and get right to the next part of the crawl. It’s easy, fast, and a readymade next step. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the action going and if it works for you and your players it’s the best solution.

However, I will recommend giving them a little bit of flavor in the world. The first level of the crawl is run over three days with two teams running the level each day, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Teams will have to wait to see how they did and learn the final results. In that time they are able to socialize, visit the town, and hang out in the hotel. Maybe they want to visit the local Adventures Guild and learn from the veterans or train to keep in top form. There are lots of options to explore.

Maybe they can interact with other teams. Give them a rival or friend they get along well with. Introduce them to the plucky underdog who’s just trying to make good. If you’ve ever watched any sports movie or sports in general you’ve probably seen the effects rival teams can have. I’m from Ohio and the rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan that crops up every year is intense and all consuming. I don’t even live near the college and it gets dug in pretty harsh. Professional wresting has great rivalry promos floating around. How would your players react to someone from another team calling them out by declaring he’ll get more kills in the next level than their fighter?

Even if you don’t do any of these things it’s nice to give them some extra touches. Tell them how the other teams did. Most X Crawls expect/require a twenty percent mortality rate to keep the audience engaged and the ratings up. List off a couple of the deaths from the other teams. Highlights from the crawl are always fun too. Maybe another team had a hard time with a challenge the player’s breezed through or the reverse. Maybe one of the other teams discovered a secret your players missed. Maybe one team got completely wiped out or only had one member survive. Maybe someone got their arm torn off and their career ended early. There’s a lot of flavor that can be added here for these little bits.

One other thing to think about between the levels is the dungeons monsters. There are typically two or three days between level levels to allow for tear down, set up, and any promotional events the crawl has planned. However, something the monsters do during that time is watch the game tapes. While it won’t help the more mindless animals and undead the intelligent opponents will have a bit of new tactics to practice. If your players found a tactic they liked the monsters will try and find a work around.

Is the party’s tank hard to hit but does little damage then maybe they can be ignored in favor of softer targets. Does the mage favor area spells, then the monsters will space themselves out. Does the cleric focus all of their healing on single targets, then maybe spread the damage around. Did anyone have difficulty with a particular type of saving throw, they might be that spell type’s principal target moving forward.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

There you go. I hope this helps you get ready for your first crawl. X Crawl is an amazing game with tons of flavor and fun. If you just run it as a funhouse dungeon you’ll have a great time and lots of laughs. If you decide to add a couple of small tweaks here and there I hope you enjoy them as much as I have. Some of my favorite gaming stories are X Crawl stories and I’d love to sit around and share a couple of pints and the tall tales of days gone and adventures had with the lot of you. If you do use any of this advice or have some more for others coming along, please leave it in the comments below. I’d love to hear it.