All right, I finally had a chance to run this today, at a convention with some complete strangers. All in all, it took three, maybe three and a half hours, including character creation.
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We had a Cleric, Ranger, and Wizard to start, and a Paladin joined in after the first encounter.
We had established at the start that what they were interested in was a holy relic, with something to do with their god.
So, first encounter was with the Kreen raiders. The party promptly killed the leader, with a casting of fear, a magic missile, and an arrow to the head. After taking down a few Kreen, they retreated, with only a couple making it away.
The players proceeded to the gullet of the graboid, meeting and getting along with the ratmen. The leader offered them a deal - he would let them pass down to the lower chambers, provided the party cures them of their sickness. The party takes it, and busts through the magically warded door into the lower chambers.
The party talks to the senile old face, and the paladin told him the story of Goldilocks. Which kind of scared the senile old face out because the ranger's beast companion was a bear. The senile old face hocked them up a coin of remembering, and told them that one of the doors leads into the temple, and the other leads to bad things.
The adventurers decided to bravely split the party, and two of them went for the trapped room. The ranger's beast companion was consumed by the gelatinous cube, and they needed to
They also made short work of the gargoyles, no one was pushed into the pit, but a couple folks on middling rolls, I offered them the choice of falling in or dropping their weapons in, they both chose to drop their weapons and used adventuring gear after the fight to retrieve them.
The golden face room was interesting, after awakening the stone elemental, one of the players got the idea of trying to trick the stone elemental into thinking that the bear was a Dwarven warrior who needed the mask to defend the temple. This sounded cool, and he rolled a natural 11, so I rolled with it, and I ruled that the stone elemental was sufficiently nearsighted that their plan worked.
They proceeded down the crack, and met the Grippli. One of the best moments of the adventure I thought was when the Wart Mother appeared. Basically, the party couldn't understand the Grippli language, and were confronted with a bunch of little frogs croaking at them and telling them to get inside the mouth of a giant frog the size of a bus. Some people in the party didn't think it was a good idea and wanted to fight, but the Paladin bravely went in, rationing that if he is eaten, he can always cut his way out.
So, the Wart Mother grabbed him with her tongue, sloshed him around in her mouth a bit, and hocked him back up. Now that they could communicate, they had a bit of back and forth, and one member of the party asked if they could communicate directly with the Wart Mother. I figured that there is one way: The Trial... of the Anus.
Basically, the Ranger had to pass through the Wart Mother. So, things got a bit weird in the narration. As in, "Your path is blocked by a turd. What do you do?" weird. But he did pass the test, although he came out of it reeking like ass and with a nasty case of pinkeye. Fortunately, the magic mushrooms offered a cure to that. He also picked up the relic on his way through, but the Grippli wouldn't let the party leave with it, unless they brought a cure for the Wart Mother and something else with which to illuminate the swamp. A bit of shared storytelling, and we figured the relic was a golden book, and their god would have told them to destroy it.
The party decided to head up for a cure, at which point I decided to throw in a complication. I decided that when the party smashed through the door, they also disabled the magical warding protecting the Ratmen and allowed the Kreen to attack. So, we had a chaotic scene with a couple dozen Kreen attacking the Ratmen, who are fleeing deeper into the lower chambers. The adventurers gave the forgetful face the coin, and told him to use it to remember how to awaken the statues of Dwarven warriors, who joined in the fight.
The Wizard came up with a cool idea - wear the Golden Dwarf mask, awaken the stone elemental, and bring him into battle. It was a cool plan, and he got good rolls, so the Stone elemental came up and started chasing the Kreen off.
The party rested and the next day headed off to the Kreen encampments. Through the clever use of invisibility and some cantrips, they managed to avoid combat with the Kreen as they made off with a bundle of leaves. While a couple Kreen pursued, they were warded off with an illusion of the stone elemental. The party cured the Wart Mother and the Ratmen, went on to destroy the relic, and everyone lived happily ever after (?)
I didn't bring in the rival adventurers because a couple folks had to leave soon, and I didn't think it would add anything beyond just a random useless encounter.
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As a DM, I loved the system. It was easy to DM, and easy to make stuff up as I go along. I wasn't quite at the top of my game yesterday (I need a better system for organizing my notes, and being people that I literally met 5 minutes before, it took a couple encounters to establish a rapport with players. Also, I think I could have prodded them for a bit more fiction at times, and played a couple of the characters better, such as cranking the senility of the face up to 11), but I think both myself and the players enjoyed ourselves. Also, one little thing which I think helped was not having to use a screen which took down one of the barriers between players and DM.
I liked the system because I could essentially wing it. Just going with the natural flow of the game eliminates a lot of bookkeeping on my end. All hell doesn't break loose if I get confused on the initiative order, for example. I just have the monsters attack when it seems appropriate.
The players also seemed to like the system, as it is a lot more "chill" than D&D. No counting out squares, that sort of thing. Just "What do you want to do? Cool. Roll whatever is appropriate." Also, they liked how they were able to quickly make characters and get into the game right away.
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The players seemed to like the adventure. One of the things was it really messed with what they were expecting - the Ratmen and the Wart Mother, for example, look like the kind of horribly mutated creatures that would attack the party on sight if this were a typical dungeon delve. But, they each had their own goals and were fairly friendly. I think by subverting player expectations a little, it added to some of the mystery of the game. Especially the scene where the Grippli are trying to convince the players through body language to get into the Wart Mother's mouth.
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Another thing I'm debating is next time I run a one-shot, whether to start at L1 or L3. L3 is a bit more complicated by adding in advanced moves off the hop, but it also gives the casters a bit more options. It's a bit of a complexity vs ease of picking up thing.
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Another little point: while my opinion two days ago was that the artistic character sheets should be more utilitarian to use space more effectively and try to get everything all on one page, I must admit that they did drum up some interest from a few passers by. Clearly, I shouldn't be in marketing.