Last Saturday I had my first game session and we really had a blast! We were able to sit around a table again (after playing online exclusively for almost two years thanks to Corona). As we were only three people (yet nobody had played the game before), we decided to give the GM-less approach a spin, taking turns in describing the rooms.
It worked astonishingly well and especially the last room was super fun: A dungeon, objects needed to be organized in a particular pattern, the room had no gravity and an element of the room took control of a player’s mind and made them attack the rest of the party. I didn't even introduce the final challenge here because we already had enough going on:
A dusty skeleton, chained to the dungeon wall, took over the mind of one wizard who started attacking the others ("only one is worthy to become a true wizard. you must eliminate the competition!") while fighting in zero gravity. A chest on the floor contained an old parchment showing the skeleton with a torch in each hand and in its empty eye sockets. As soon as one player managed to stab the skeleton with the last torch (while the other two were still fighting), the skeleton turned to dust, screaming, breaking the spell and turning the gravity in the room back on. It was really a great showdown!
The players also enjoyed the judge, a very, very old scrawny magician with a long beard. A magic clipboard was hovering next to him with an animated quill, which kept taking notes during the exam (it made them a bit nervous, because they weren't able to spot what was being written down 😉).
I tried to use the exact same setup at an online convention a week later (because I'm totally lazy and it worked so well), but the game went a little bumpier this time. I failed to make it clear in the beginning that the rooms were randomly generated and the players kept trying to make sense of the particular room and the setup of the test, looking for deeper connections.
Even though I tried to emphasize that each room was a magical aptitude test, they sometimes tried to find mundane solutions to the puzzles first, before resorting to magic. But I still think everyone had a good time and there were some great, funny roleplaying moments.
Next time I'll either try to prepare the rooms in advance without the random tables to give the whole exam a more natural flow (maybe giving the rooms a common theme) to help people with immersion and role playing, or I will greatly expand the random tables (using a d20 instead) and go wild. ;)
Thanks for coming up with this great little gem!