Greetings adventurers! My name’s Jackson, and I’m a new addition to the Campaign Coins team. Up until now, I’ve been helping Andre, Mark, and Penny with packing orders whenever a Kickstarter campaign was completed, but now I’ve been brought on to upkeep the website and blog.
We are positively maniacal that evil is spreading across the land, in the form of our black metal Electrum coins. Kickstarter backers will have theirs infesting their gaming tables very soon, while fresh victims will be able to purchase them from CampaignCoins.com in March.
Gamezilla RPG Night is a fortnightly Meetup event in Melbourne, hosted by myself and officially sponsored by Campaign Coins. So it was the perfect opportunity to celebrate another successful Kickstarter by running the beginning of Hell Black Coins by Geoff Gillan, a campaign outline that was the result of one of our stretch goals.
Mark and I had been planning to run the game for two separate tables of roleplayers, when, with less than 24 hours to go, Mark had a crazy idea. Inspired by Will Hindmarch’s Level Eater 7, he suggested we run the adventure for both tables together; a double-DM mega game.
We went in with this outline:
- The two parties would meet after a call-to-action fight (in a group scene that I would run)
- The tables would trade members, then follow two seperate leads (splitting the work of planning the encounters)
- Finally, theyd re-unite... (in another group scene run by Mark)
- ...for the showdown (an epic 10-player brawl requiring both DMs to hear everybody).
Plus, to encourage the players to mix-up their teams, one table began as a guild of spellcasters, while the other was a band of mercenaries.
The scene was set with mysterious black coins appearing in the village market. In no time, they seemed to have possessed everyone with an all-consuming rage, and all hell broke loose. Amidst all the fighting, the martial characters decided they didn’t like the looks of those mages at the other end of the square. To which Mark replied, ‘then let’s go take care of them’, and led his playersto the other table. The spellcasters were very puzzled to see another group of roleplayers invading their game, until I narrated 'remeber those mercenaries in the market I mentioned? Yeah, they're pretty sure you're mixed up in this.'
After a brief bout of PvP action (in which the sorcerer and barbarian very nearly took each other’s heads off), the adventurers had to unite against a common enemy. Once silence had settled back over the village, everyone was forced to choose between two groups of shady figures to pursue, each going in opposite directions.
At first, the spellcasters were still terrified of the mercenaries, who in turn didn’t want to be slowed down by wand-waving wimps. It seemed the unbalanced parties were going to go their separate ways, until the mercenaries realised that the mages had already looted all of the healing potions in the magic shop. By necessity, the teams traded members and set off.
We had suspected that my table's encounter would take slightly longer than Mark's, so he agreed to improv until I signalled to him that we were ready to move on. Once my players had accomplished their mission, the parties re-united at the crossroads just outside the nearest city. They were only slightly delayed by a minor electrum curse infecting the wizard's palm. (The wizard survived. His hand did not.)
In town, the party was confronted with a gargantuan mechanical spider, seemingly a servant of the demonic black coins. By this time, the evening was growing old, so in convention-game style, we all but ignored the dice rolls and let every character accomplish whatever awesome heroic feat they could imagine. Also, for ease play, we skipped rolling initiative and let the players all act at the same time, followed by the baddies.
In an epic 10-player brawl, the heroes managed to beat the spider back to retreating through an infernal portal. (And just when we hit 10 minutes before we had to pack up! What convenient timing!) But, with his axe still embedded in the creature’s hull, the barbarian (played by Andre) clung on tight as they both disappeared into the abyss. Not wanting to be outdone in heroics, one by one the rest of the adventurers plunged into the gateway, following the barbarian into what lay beyond.
It made for a grand conclusion to a hectic and insanely fun evening.
Electrum coins are now available!
The Hell Black Coins campaign outline is available as a Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG.