[DL] Dead Presidents Comments <SPOILERS> (long)

["Roy Spence" <roy.ster@virgin.net>]

Hi all

Just managed to pick up Dead Presidents at the weekend and thought I'd post
some thoughts, so it's spoilers all round.  Also a warning, this gets pretty
long...

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OK, at the outset I must admit that it didn't really connect with me, don't
get me wrong, I love the idea and premise for the adventure but some of it
just didn't ring quite right for me.  That said, knowing then what I do
now - I'd still buy the book - so weigh everything said below with that in
mind.

First I impressions were that the adventure seemed a little thin,
considering that it involved such a big change in the WW game world.

My major disappointment with the book was that the adventure seemed to skip
over the investigation opportunities for the plot and instead concentrated
on the opportunities for combat. I guess I thought that any adventure that
involved the discovery of a presidents big secret would involve major
investigation on the part of the characters.  However when I read through
the adventure I ended up with the feeling that as long as the characters
were combat capable and could defeat the enemy, the "clues" were easy to
pick up.  Also I got the impression that the clues weren't so much clues as
blatant leads to the next part of the adventure, which led to the "go to X,
kill Y, get clue, follow clue to Z, kill A ...." impression.

Don't get me wrong in this, I thought that most of the combats shown were
justifiable (read: not simply fillers), however I just think that a major
opportunity was lost between the combats for a bit of inter posse
roleplaying, trying to unearth clues and piece them together until they work
out enough to be able to move on would have been nice.  Maybe space
prevented that approach, or it simply did not provide the desired effect for
the game, or maybe I've been tainted by too much CoC, but I just think that
the investigation approach would have helped the big wow factor when they
piece together enough to discover Davis' secret.  That said I think a lot of
players would have guessed the secret pretty early on - but the fun would
have been in watching them try to unearth enough proof and then watch what
they were going to do about it.

When I do run the adventure (which will be sometime away as we're just
currently starting Devils Tower part 2) I plan to re-arrange the adventure
so it involves more of the investigation style.  I'd also plan on running an
intro adventure based along the lines of Barbara Hamblys book "Travelling
with the Dead" (possibly with a lesser focus on vampires setting final
scenes in Richmond)  and use that to introduce the Nightwatchers and provide
the necessary flavouring (at the moment I'm trying to track down the first
book "Those who hunt the night" and not having much success).  This would
also give an opportunity to introduce Richmond to the PC's as I think it
would help with the end piece and make it all the more spectacular.

There are many bits in DP that I did like (honestly), the river crossing on
to the island is class for one, and the threat level came across as having
had much thought put into it, however I just felt that there was a lot of
potential in the adventure that was unfortunately missed.  I look forward to
hearing how people get on running their posses through it.

Anyway, sorry it took so long to say my piece, I hope it was worth the read.


Roy