On Sunday, July 16th, 2017, at Crit Hit 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona (held at the Hilton Phoenix Airport), I ran DCC #83, "The Chained Coffin" as a Road Crew event for the Goodman Games World Tour 2017! Here's the report:
I had six openings, and four players showed up. Two of them had played in my "Viking Crawl Classics" even the day before, and decided to switch from what they had originally planned to play DCC again (I took that as a very good sign). I had created pregenerated 5th level characters using Purple Sorcerer's generators. The players and their characters were:
* Jake: Azgelasgus, the First Father of Justicia (Cleric of Justicia)
* Nick: Zorathus the Soothsayer (Wizard)
* Fabien: Athelstane the Swindler (Thief)
* Ryan: Iminix the Elder (Elf) and his demonic python familiar, Ilnarek.
SPOILER ALERT! If you have not read or played The Chained Coffin, and do not wish to see spoilers, you may want to stop reading at this point. I have tried to be vague about any details that would give away the secrets and puzzles of the adventure! Anyway . . .
Azgelasgus, the First Father of Justicia, had been drawn by dreams he believed sent by his goddess to a cave sealed by a boulder. He and his companions moved the boulder and entered the dead cave. They were attacked by undead Barrow Bones. Justicia's power to Turn Unholy sent the snake-man bones slithering away, while the party destroyed the ox-headed Bones. They found the eponymous Chained Coffin containing Zugun and were moved by Zugun's story (though a little distrustful at first - they almost decided to waste precious time by seeking out a temple of Justicia where they could verify Zugun's story, but in the end decided that Justicia would not have sent them on this mission if it were not true).
So the party headed to the settlement of Bent Pine at the edge of the Shudder Mountains. Realizing that the Shudfolk were superstitious folk, Azgelasgus did most of the talking, leaving the less savory members of the party (a thief, and elf, and a wizard!) to guard the Chained Coffin and keep it out of sight. Azgelasgus bought a horse and a travois to carry the Chained Coffin up into the Deep Hollows, as well as some basic supplies, and laid a Blessing on the trader that sold them supplies (he rolled really well for this blessing - the horse stables in Bent Pine are very prosperous now!).
The party traveled into the Deep Hollows. They found the gave of Japthon of the Fiddle, and urged by the fiddler's spirit, Zorathus the Soothsayer took the silver-stringed fiddle. He practiced with that fiddle on their trip through the Shudder Moutains, and got quite good at it, as far as the dice rolls were concerned. The player used his cell phone to play short clips of tunes for which his character was performing a "fiddle version," which was a very nice touch.
At the crossroads, the PCs ran into Ol' Blackcloak, who offered them all kinds of help, but neither Azgelasgus nor Zugun wanted the party to make any kind of deal with the old devil. They decided to forego his help, though some members of the party had occasion to wonder whether that was a mistake. Zorathus played his silver-stringed fiddle and drove Ol' Blackcloak away.
Zugun really did become a member of the party, too. They turned to him for what little advice he could offer about their mission, but also such things as discussing what herbs might be good for cooking around the campfire and such. I think some players found him a bit annoying, the way I played him, but he definitely came across as a real person with a genuine personality, not just "a voice from a box."
The party tried to decipher clues from a song they overheard in Bent Pine and rumors they had heard from some of the Shudfolk, and mostly by luck managed to get on a good track to lead them to their destination. I didn't help them - I didn't really care if they just wandered around lost in the Shudders, as long as they were having fun - but they actually got on a pretty direct path to where they needed to go, just by random chance!
They had some random encounters on the way, and the wackiness that DCC RPG
makes possible became clear when an encounter with a Giant Rattlesnake met with a Snake Charm spell and some characters ended up riding the Giant Rattlesnake as a mount for a while. They did come upon the cabin of the Sin Eater, who nearly convinced them all to disarm before he attacked them. Ultimately, Zorathus used the fiddle to Banish the Sin Eater.
In the end, they defeated the Bad Lick Beast, got over the Bad Lick Bridge, and encountered the puzzle lock. There was some clever use of some Patrons, Patron spells, and such to guess a solution to the puzzle without much damage to the party. So they reached the place before Boak's party and were waiting for him.
The climax was somewhat of an anti-climax, but no one seemed to mind much. Boak and Malucius showed up with their demons, and Boak began to transform into a champion of chaos. But a Spellburn and Luck maxed-out Emirikol's Entropic Maelstrom took out Boak and Malucius, dissolving them down to the molecular level, leaving the party with only a couple of demons to fight. Zorathus was forced to use the fiddle as a weapon to strike a demon, smashing the fiddle but achieving a Critical Hit! In the end, the heroes triumphed and Zugun went to his eternal reward, leaving the PCs to pry gemstones out of the battlefield by way of monetary reward.
Everybody had a great time. Two of the players had been in my game the day before, but this was basically the players' first exposure to DCC RPG, and it's always great when the game ends and I end up answering questions about how to get the DCC book, where to find the funky dice, etc. More converts made to the DCC madness!
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