• Registered: 2011-01-29
  • Posts: 1

Topic: What I Learned from Stargazer [SPOILERS!]

I’m not sure I know what I’m talking about, so I’ll try to keep this short. 

Last night I finally ran LotFP:WF -- specifically, Tower of the Stargazer.  It was a spontaneous one-shot.  Like any one-shot, there is always the issue of context.  However, with Tower of the Stargazer, the lack of context felt more pronounced.  This is not a criticism; on the contrary, the game felt to me -- because it was missing context -- as if I wan’t playing it to it’s potential. 

TotS belongs in an ongoing campaign/sandbox where the players define their own goals.  I think back to some of my old favorite TSR modules, such as Keep of the Borderlands (of course), Secret of Bone Hill, or the Village of Hommlet, and I find what I enjoyed about those were that the players worked out their own goals. 

TotS could be a place in any of those modules, and what the players choose to do there is up to them to discover through role playing and prior to getting to the tower.  Is it ...

  • To stop the lightning

  • Free the ghost

  • Find the Star Crystal

  • Retrieve some books

  • Get the treasure horde

  • probably more I’m missing...

Anyhow, it was after playing TotS, and feeling like I was missing something, that I have a little more appreciation for the structure of the game.

  • From: Dallas, TX
  • Registered: 2011-05-18
  • Posts: 1

Re: What I Learned from Stargazer [SPOILERS!]

I myself just finished my second session of LotFP/TotS tonight.  It hasn't gone the way I expected.  But it's actually been really fun, probably more so than if things went the way I wanted them too.

My players are also my customers and are all about twenty years younger than I am.  We're closed on Tuesday nights and so I only open the store to my players.  Several have experience with only 3.5 or 4E.  One had no experience with RPGs at all.

I wanted to quickly achieve verisimilitude in a house-ruled weird science setting.  I was hoping they'd work together, develop back stories for their characters, etc.  But no, they are aimless thugs who want nothing but loot and to run away when their party members need them most.

When I was reading TotS, I thought, "Nobody will be stupid enough to fall for these traps."  My players do.  All of them.  Even when I try to narrate in a way that would indicate impending doom without giving too much away.  They have let loose the vials of animated blood.  They have broken the jar with the demon in it.  They managed to cause an explosion on the top of the tower with the black powder.  One character wound up toothless and incontinent.  Another got sucked into a mirror, which they then broke to get her out.  That's just the tip of the iceberg.  The truth is, I've had to softball things a little to keep any of them alive at all, but I can sleep at night because I've had three deaths in a party of four players.

The funny thing is that they appear to be LOVING it!  big_smile  Frankly, I am too.  Hopefully story and depth will develop later, but for now I'm just glad to be playing.

  • Registered: 2011-04-13
  • Posts: 36

Re: What I Learned from Stargazer [SPOILERS!]

Gunslinger_Games wrote:

The funny thing is that they appear to be LOVING it!  big_smile  Frankly, I am too.

Yes, before reading LotFP's referee guide I somewhat forgot that part of the fun in RPGs is that they can be challenging.

My players botched pretty much everything in Death Frost Doom but came back the next week for more !

Last edited by Kobayashi (2011-05-18 11:02:17)

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