I’ve been having a lot of fun planning out the first Howlmark adventure. I downloaded a few maps, made a custom dungeon crawl, set up scenes, created PC’s and NPC’s, and got to write journal entries ¹. Even better, working on Howlmark encouraged me to flesh out the backstory for the continent on which the story takes place. I may even use Aeon Timeline to give this world even more color. I have enjoyed everything about this process ². But all through it there was one thing which kept bothering me.

I’d never run a game before ³. Even more daunting, I’d not read the rules from a DM’s perspective since 2nd Edition, over thirty years ago. To alleviate my concern I decided to beta test the main dungeon crawl. This test had four main goals.

First, I wanted to see if my MacBook could handle running Foundry VTT when I had multiple people connected to it. If my MacBook melted down that would be fun for no one.

Second, I wanted to use the software in a game play environment so I’d better be able to anticipate glitches or bugs with the setup and teach players how to use the interface.

Third, I wanted to test the crawl’s difficulty. If I inflicted a total party kill right at the opening of the session that would probably turn off most of my new players and I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want the crawl to be a cake walk, but there needed to be some challenge.

Fourth, I wanted to see if had the ability to run the game in a way that people actually had fun. After all, that’s the point of playing.

I am happy to say all the goals were met. My MacBook ran Foundry with three external connections just fine, and I don’t anticipate adding three extra players will put much more strain on the system. The beta testers helped me better understand the Foundry interface, and even reminded me that I needed to brush up on how spell effects are handled ⁴. I learned that I needed to tweak a couple of encounters, especially for newer players, and I was even able to tweak some monsters on the fly to better balance the game. And the players had fun! I was able to guide them through the crawl and get them immersed in the environment.

I am beyond excited that this worked out, and can’t wait to take the party on full adventure!