Julian Bernick is well-known to the DCC community. He’s been writing for Goodman Games going back years! When he told me that he had once written a 10th level adventure and run it, I said tell me more. We started cooking this thing up almost 2 years ago, but that’s only when I entered the picture. Check out the interview and you’ll learn about the origins of this gnarly adventure and how it became The 10th Doomstar.

I know its been a while since you ran the first iteration of this adventure. Do you remember the original inspiration or any particular memories from the first time running it?

I conceived a 10th level adventure way back in 2014 or 2015 or something. I love PVP type setups so it was originally a crawl sort of thing that turned into final PVP tournament encounter. This was more fun with my home group than at the GENCON game I ran that year. When I returned to it, I made the last part more open-ended so that the players can play it as straight up teamwork or start backstabbing away, as suits the table.

The first time I ran it back then, as a playtest for GENCON, my BFF Gary Fortuin got the macguffin and won the whole thing because he was just playing the Halfling -- everyone forgot his character was there! Sometimes being sneaky works especially with a bunch of demigods.

Do you regularly do much high-level play in DCC or other systems?

Mostly I have written first level adventures for Goodman Games, but I find that third and fourth level adventures are pretty fun for con games and one-shots. The characters start to get pretty powerful and less squishy at that tier, so it’s definitely a shift from lower level. My home campaigns have generally run their course around fourth-fifth levels.

Any advice that you can share for others trying to craft their own high level adventures?

One thing I found in playtesting is that it gets wilder than even regular DCC so you have to be ready to roll with it. Be OK with the fact that players are going to break your game-- there’s 4-6 smart people at the table with near demi-god powers. Your job is not to nerf them, it’s to keep new challenges coming at them. Improv away! Also, give them plenty of reason to fight each other-- it’s hard to make a bad guy who’s more dangerous than a 10th level character!

Lastly, playtesting is a must-- as Marzio says, “Mechanics don’t make an adventure, but they might BREAK an adventure.”

Any old memories from high-level adventures that you wanted to evoke/emulate or perhaps avoid?

A few times in college, I made high level AD&D one-shot crawls that were very deadly. They were very fun because the players got to try on high levels, do godlike things and when the one-shot PCs died, it was a great night no matter what.

I remember a few deadly dull TSR games from the AD&D/1980s era where we couldn’t make any sort of progress in spite of being very powerful PCs. I’m not an instakill guy and I’m not a puzzle dungeon guy. So I would rather put PCs into bizarre situations and see what tactics and problem solving they will come up with. And the whole point is to give players a chance to cast some of these high level spells, get crazy crits and roll those nutty deed dice and then get to actually alter the fate of the cosmos for the next 10,000 years!

Thanks for sharing! Anything else that you’d like to share?

I hope people are not intimidated by the idea of high level play. We’ve tried to make it easy for the Judge by giving advice through the adventure + supplying pregens. If you have the basic rules down and you do your prep, you’ll be fine. Like the Dark Master always says, at the end of the session the only question that matters is, “Did we have fun?” So don’t sweat the little stuff-- it’s really the same game, just with faster combats and looking way higher on the tables!

Check out The 10th Doomstar and tell me what’s your favorite high level adventure?

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