As those of you who follow the SyncRPG YouTube channel know, we record most of the sessions we play, for both public events and our closed weekly playtest of our adventure modules with our earliest alpha testers. These videos are very long, upwards of two to four hours, and I don’t expect too many people to sit through them in their entirety. However, some things happen in them that show the power of SyncRPG and other online tools that I use all the time, and I want to make sure as many people as possible get to see how it all works.

The Playtest Highlight series will be videos showing, at most, a single encounter, focusing on a specific way that SyncRPG can be used to enhance your own games, and it will be limited to fifteen minutes in length so they’re not too intimidating. Unlike the GM and Player Academy series, which are designed as in-depth, purposeful tutorials, the Playtest Highlight videos will show us just using the tools to play a game.

For the first Playtest Highlight, I will show you how I generated a random hazard during a bit of hexploration in The Rescue of Doniert Ironvale without any prep at all. Zero. Using macros, maps, and tokens from SyncRPG and rules from d20PFSRD.com, I was able to throw together a fun encounter in under two minutes, without doing any research on hazards before the session.

Having completed a major objective in the adventure, the party was heading back to Riverford, eager to return a mummified cyclops eye to a local shop, Potent Potables, and claim their rewards. As they moved from hex to hex they blew a signal horn they had captured from the orcs, hoping to lure out their druid ally, Ivuk. For each hex they moved through I mashed a macro to roll for random encounters or hazards, and eventually a hazard came up, complete with a link to the SRD page.

Let’s see if I can make something cool happen…

I quickly scrolled through the hazards, looking for something CR 3-5. I briefly considered a flash flood, but looking at the map I joked that it was a bit too far from the river for that. Instead, I opted for rot grubs. I quickly searched SyncRPG for a map with a road and a corpse token to use as the host for the grubs, and then moved all the player tokens to the map, and let them loose. In all, it took under two minutes from clicking the “Generate Event” macro to everything being set up and ready for the players.

As they explored the new map and began asking questions, I quickly scanned the rot grub page for important information. 15 is an important number. Perception. Reflex. As they get closer and begin to ask specific question about the body, I call for Perception and Heal checks. Larry Life and most of the party rolled poorly on both, and just saw a rotting corpse with a cloud of flies around it.

After debating whether or not any of their characters cared about the gods or the religious customs of most civilized folk, they decide to bury the body, and King Krish the Chaotic Evil halfling walks over with his knife to begin mutilating the face, as he has been known to do. As he is about to begin, Larry admonishes him, and reminds him of what he had said earlier: If the halfling continues to cut up and defile corpses, the oracle would no longer heal his wounds. Before Krish could bark back a not-so-witty retort, a good Perception check revealed the rot grubs in the corpse he was approaching.

Krish didn’t know what they were, but knew enough to back away. Being able to see them after Krish pointed them out, Dumpty gave them a look, and rolled well enough to know how nasty the grubs can be. He began heading back down the road, content to leave the rotting corpse, but Larry suggested the halfling sorcerer use his fire magic to destroy the corpse and the grubs.

Oh, so [mutilation] is only okay when you're okay with it?

He scorches the corpse, and the party moves on down the road. The Halfling took the corpse’s skull to remember the events of the day.

From conception to VTT encounter in two minutes, played to completion in ten, with gorgeous VTT art. SyncRPG is serious about helping you reduce everyone’s prep time and getting you gaming!

Discuss 'Playtest Highlights #1: Random Encounters and Hazards with SyncRPG and the d20PFSRD' on the SyncRPG forums