Report from the Road: The Chained Coffin at Crit Hit 2017!

      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! 

Report from the Road: Viking Crawl Classics at Crit Hit 2017!

      On Saturday, July 15th, 2017, at Crit Hit 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona (held at the Hilton Phoenix Airport), I ran a homebrewed "Viking Crawl Classics" adventure for a Road Crew event for the Goodman Games World Tour 2017! Here's the report:

     As many of my readers will already know, I've had a Viking-themed fantasy campaign setting called Midhgardhur that I've been toying with since about 2004 or so, and in which I started running a regular Pathfinder campaign in 2011 (and managed on Obsidian Portal as "Heroes of Midhgardhur"). This post in in an author's blog I maintain because I also write fantasy novels and short stories set in that world (shameless plug!). As soon as DCC came out, I wanted to adapt my setting to those rules, but I have not have not really had the time or opportunity to work much on it. So I decided to try it as a Road Crew event to playtest some ideas at the local Crit Hit convention.

     I had six openings, and four players showed up. I had created pregenerated 3rd level characters using Purple Sorcerer's generators, then added some tweaks of my own for the setting. The players and their characters were:

* Keith: Gudhrun the Gydhja of Freyja (Cleric of the Vanic goddess Freyja), who had been raised an herbalist
* Robert: Eitri the Alfur (Elf), who had started his career as an elven forester
* Fabien: Eldgrimur the Runecaster (Wizard), an armorer before he was initiated into the mysteries of the runes
* Ryan: Ragnhildur the Red Shieldmaiden (Warrior with berserker Mighty Deeds), a hunter before she became a warrior.

     The party started out in the small settlement of Luleastadhir, near the northernmost point in the bay called the Helsingjabotn, which was frozen over for the winter, preventing travel by longship. Due to a nearby outbreak of a plague called the Red Fever which resisted magical curing, Jarl Grundi asked for volunteers willing to cross the dangerous wilderness to the south and east on foot to reach the settlement of Vyborg, where the healers had a treatment for the Red Fever. The PCs agreed to go on the quest, of course.

     The players were very smart throughout most of the session. Only Keith had played DCC before, so it was a great opportunity to showcase some of the things that make DCC special. The players got some advice from the Jarl's advisor, a runecaster named Orm-Barri who had a tiny shoulder dragon familiar, but they decided to buy a local shepherd named Sorli some mead and ask about the wilderness they were to cross. They got some good intelligence on the road ahead this way. They stocked up on mead and provisions before they left, and Gudhrun spent the night in prayer before their departure.

     The morning of their departure, they sought an oracle from a local spaekona (seeress) named Sigga. I ran this like an extra Birth Augur for the duration of the adventure. The spaekona sat on a wooden platform and entered a trance to tell the group's fortune. I rolled 3d6 as if for an attribute, and came up with a number that would have given a +1 bonus. So she predicted good fortune for the party. I rolled on the Birth Augur table and came up with Charmed House, for Armor Class, so all the PCs got a +1 to AC for the duration of the adventure. I think it was clear to the players that it could as easily have been a prophecy of doom, a penalty to something rather than a bonus.

     Feeling emboldened by Sigga's prophecy of good fortune, the party set out across the wilderness. On the first day, they sighted campfires in the woods to the east of the shoreline they were following, and they decided to investigate. It turned out to be an encampment of Kvenir, a reindeer-herding nomadic people of the area. The party decided to try to deal with them peacefully, and so traded mead for hospitality and warnings about the road ahead. The Kvenir welcomed them to their camp, especially in exchange for mead!

      As the party continued along the coast, they began to see signs that there was something big and nasty nearby - animals with impossibly large bites taken out of them, but the bite marks looked human (there was a hunter and a forester among the professions of the PCs). They determined that a frost giant was hunting in this region. They tried to avoid the frost giant's territory, but it found them, emerging from the woods hurling boulders at them. It seemed to be insane, perhaps sick or an outcast from its tribe.

     The battle with the frost giant went surprisingly well. Eldgrimur got off a Reduce spell early on, shrinking the giant to half its size (still bigger than even the Vikings in this party, but much more manageable!). The frost giant did get off a critical hit on Eitri the Alfur, breaking his arm, but the heroes defeated the giant. Gydhja was able to heal the broken arm by invoking Freyja (the new players seemed pretty impressed by DCC's "lay on hands" mechanics, which account for things like healing broken limbs - also, Keith role-played his prayers to Freyja really well!).  

     Here, though, the party diverged from their mission a little bit. It occurred to them that the giant might have a lair and treasure nearby, so they tracked his trail into the forest for a while. This led them to some strange hills that they soon realized were haugar (ancient burial mounds)! At this point, the PCs decided that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to divert so far from their mission, and prepared to head back to the coast. Unfortunately, they were set upon by draugar (undead wights from the burial mounds).

     The battle against the draugar was fierce, especially since Gudhrun's attempt to "turn unholy" did not have much effect. Some of the undead seemed to have a paralytic touch, like ghouls, and fortunately Gudhrun was able to heal Eldgrimur the Runecaster when he became paralyzed (this took a couple of tries - there was some Disapproval, and Gydhja rolled a result that required her to remove her armor and clothing to become closer to the goddess. Some hilarity ensued as the cleric stripped out of her armor and clothing in the icy cold wilderness to heal the wizard!). The draugar seemed to be a pretty serious threat, so Eitri cast a patron spell, Warhorn of Elfland, to call upon the aid of his Patron, the Vanic god Freyur. Freyur sent a small army of minor landvaettir ("land-wights," nature spirits) to help the Pcs defeat the unnatural draugar, but it was clear that Eitri now owed service to Freyur in the future.

     Continuing on their journey towards Vyborg, the party entered a mountain pass that was said to occasionally be the lair of an isormur, an "icewyrm" (frost dragon). Unfortunately, they saw signs that there were more frost giants about as well (perhaps the tribe from which the mad giant they had faced earlier had been cast out). They climbed some cliffs to avoid the frost giants, narrowly escaped a seductive fey water spirit in a frozen lake, and got most of the way through the mountain pass before some failed Luck checks meant that they had attracted the attention of the ice wyrm, a linnorm-like creature. It came barreling out of a burrow in the ice to attack them, and it had a Frightful Presence that sent them running back into the mountain pass . . . towards the frost giants!

     Eitri the Alfur was able to call upon his Patron, Freyur, again (we were all joking afterwards that this party owes a year and a day's service to the Vanir for all this help) and used Spellburn to achieve the highest result on Invoke Patron! The PCs all became champions of Vanaheimur, like avatars of the Vanir, for their battle with the dragon! Ragnhildur the Red Shieldmaiden went berserk (prompting me to quote the movie Erik the Viking - "It's no use going berserk against a dragon!") The fight was pretty epic, and Ragnhildur was pretty badly wounded, but a combination of sorceries brought down the beast - a Paralysis prayer from Gudhrun immobilized the monster (Keith rolled really well and I rolled a 1 for the save!), another blast on the Warhorn of Elfland brought more landvaettir warriors to attack the beast, and Spellburn on a Flaming Hands from Eldgrimur the Runecaster finished it off! The party was overjoyed at having defeated a dragon . . . and then they heard the approach of several frost giants, who heard the commotion of the battle and wanted to investigate!

     The party stood triumphant over the corpse of the dragon as the giants came into view, trying to look intimidating ("We just killed a frickin' dragon!") They said they wanted to intimidate the giants by calling out to them, so I called for a Personality roll, and it came up a natural 20! So I ruled that the attempted intimidation with the corpse of the dragon as a prop was enough to send the frost giants running for reinforcements. The party decided to claim trophies from the dragon to prove their claims (like, "I'm going to carve a new drinking horn from a horn or tooth of the dragon!") and they hurried down out of the mountains to get to Vyborg, where the king welcomed the dragonslayers to his hall and agreed to send healers back to Luleastadhir.

      The party decided that they would later go loot the dragon's lair, and take care of that tribe of frost giants, but it might have to wait until they had paid their debts to Freyur and the Vanir . . . so that would be another saga  . . .

      We ended the game at that point, but I always feel I've done my job well if they players start asking, "So wait, where can I get this core rulebook? How much does it cost? Are there any other books you'd recommend? What about that Steel and Fury supplement you had at the table?" I feel like I made some converts to DCC, which is always great. Keith was a big help with explaining the rules and talking up the game, too!

Hello everyone,

     On Saturday, May 27th, 2017, at Phoenix Comicon 2017, I ran Hole in the Sky as a Road Crew game for the Goodman Games World Tour 2017! Here's the report (SPOILERS if you're not familiar with the module!):

     I had three players, one of whom had played Sailors on the Starless Sea the night before and said something like, "I'm kind of hooked on this DCC thing!" So there's a success story right there! Each player had 4 0-level pregens to start. Things quickly went off the rails, which is always fun. Here was the lineup:

* Jacob: Drats the Trapper, Lorance the Caravan Guard, Crevan the Grave Digger, and Francis the Potato Farmer
* Ben: Barth the Dwarven Herder, Fred the Blacksmith, Bobby II the Urchin, and Julio the Elven Sage
* Colt: Raditz the Radish Farmer, Bobby the Caravan Guard, Ogre the Cobbler, and Dobby Jr. the Elven Chandler (apparently the player had lost an elf named Dobby in a game the night before, but wanted the Dobby family line to continue)

     The PCs came to the cliffside following their dreams of the Lady in Blue. Bobby II the Urchin, used to being hungry all the time, filled a sack with (unspoiled) food from the Lady in Blue's feast. There was a quick visit to the nearby fishing village, where Raditz, Bobby, Ogre, and Dobby Jr. bought fishing gear, determined to be able to feed themselves by fishing on the adventure. OK . . .

     At the appropriate hour, the PCs started out on the invisible bridge to the Hole in the Sky. Days passed, and the PCs squabbled over food (Bobby II refused to share his sack of food unless others had something to offer him).  When the storm came, Francis the Potato Farmer, Julio the Elven Sage, and Ogre the Cobbler were blow off to their deaths. Bobby II was almost blown off as well, but Fred the Blacksmith used a chain to rescue him (and the sack of food).

     When the sea-shrikes attacked, Lorance, Raditz, and Bobby were quickly killed. The other PCs decided to try to run while the shrikes feasted on their comrades. The PCs seemed afraid to fight them! They threw a goose to one of the shrikes to distract it. They did fight off the last few and escape, but this party's propensity for sacrificing their own to escape was well-established.

     Dobby Jr., who had become ill,  tried to steal food from Bobby II, starting another fight between characters. Several times it seemed the PCs were going to kill each other off, rather than any monsters or traps from the module getting them!

     When they finally reached the Hole in the Sky, Barth the Dwarven Herder and Fred the Blacksmith ganged up on Dobby Jr. the Elven Chandler and hurled him through the Hole first, to see if it was safe. Then they all entered the prison-world on the other side. They made their way through the misty bamboo jungle toward the structure in the distance.

     The party came across an abandoned campsite and a backpack containing a five day supply of rations. They decided to camp out so that the sick members of the party might have a chance to recover, but squabbled again over supplies. That night, their camp was attacked by an Arachnid Horror, , who killed Crevan the Grave Digger and Bobby II the Urchin. Some of the party fled rather than fight, but Drats the Trapper decided to stand and fight, and eventually ended up on the Horror's back. He decided to try to tame the creature for riding. He enlisted the aid of Barth the Dwarven Herder, and together they managed to rig up a bridle system for the Arachnid Horror (there were some natural 20s rolled here, and I rewarded their combination of craziness and lucky rolls).

     The party soon encountered a madman known as Ib the Mad. He might have been helpful, or even replaced one of the dead members of the party, but they decided to feed him to their Arachnid Horror. Ugh.

     Unfortunately, two of the three players had to leave early to catch a bus, so we had to end the game early. The remaining PCs were Drats the Trapper (rider of the Arachnid Horror), Barth the Dwarven Herder, Fred the Blacksmith, and Dobby Jr. the Elven Chandler. They rode off into the mists on the Arachnid Horror, apparently abandoning their quest on behalf of the Lady in Blue . . . And the way this party fought each other, my guess is that they would have killed each other off, one by one, until a single one remained . . .

Report from the Road: Sailors on the Starless Sea at Phoenix Comicon 2017

Hello everyone,

     On Friday, May 26th, 2017, at Phoenix Comicon 2017, I ran Sailors on the Starless Sea as a Road Crew game for the Goodman Games World Tour 2017! Here's the report (SPOILERS if you're not familiar with the module!):

I had four players, each with 4 pregen 0-level characters, so 16 characters went in . . . 3 came out. It was almost a TPK, but the party barely survived!

* Jacob: Purcilius Roy (Noble), Theodore (Costermonger), Richard (Cutpurse), and Liana Fireheart (Rutabaga Farmer)
* Ruben: Dorn (Armorer), Rusin (Parsnip Farmer), Halcen (Elven Artisan), and Maldom (Outlaw)
* Gregg: Gurstag (Dwarven Rat-catcher), Sceotend (Woodcutter), Lairgnen (Soldier), and Rolo Lockpick (Halfling Glovemake - insists "Lockpick" is simply his family name and has nothing to do with his personality)
* Duncan: Kulitas (Cutpurse), Scanlun (Minstrel), Nahiri (Dwarven Herder), and Lilith (Fortune-teller)

     On the road to the citadel, the party encountered the vine horrors. The creepiness of the scene really seemed to get to the players! Some characters retreated a safe distance while others rushed in to fight . . . badly. Gurstag the Rat-catcher was killed early on (his club, "Stumpy" was passed down through the party). One of the horrors was finished off by the Woodcutter, Sceotend, with his axe (he's not afraid of plants!), meanwhile, several characters from among the other players pooled resources to drench the horrors and their seeds in oil and set them alight. A duck was also killed and roasted in this encounter. R.I.P. Sir Duckington.

     The players were playing smart when they got to the citadel. They did not trust the portcullis, so they jammed it open with crowbars. They entered the courtyard and headed straight to the tower (they were determined to avoid the well!). Kulitas the Cutpurse borrowed another crowbar from another character and actually made the strength check to force the door! Lairgnen the Soldier stepped into the breach with his shield, blocking the doorway, while the others behind him set up a rope tripwire and ambush positions on either side of the door. They managed to taunt the champion of the beastmen into rushing out to attack them (Lairgnen backpedaled to let him come), then pulled taut the rope to trip him - the champion of the beastmen fell prone in front of the soldier while the other beastmen who had followed watched in horror! Rusin the Parsnip farmer fell in battle, but the others survived, mostly by playing it smart.

     Kulitas the Cutpurse donned the torc of the beastmen , and was the only one who dared search their foul lair for treasure. He gave Halcen the Elven Artisan an elven sword he found . . . after he had removed the gems set in the hilt. As the game went on, it seemed increasingly likely that Kulitas might end up as a Chaos-cultist of some sort!

     The party opened the portcullis all the way and jammed it open in case they needed to retreat in a hurry. Then they looked around the courtyard, continued to avoid the well, and decided to look at the ruined chapel. The fact that it had been scorched by flames and barred from the outside really seemed to freak the players out, so they chose not to mess with it, but rather to return to the tower and descend into the depths of the dungeon.

      They found the looted treasury and took the few coins that remained, but did not explore further. They found the mosaics and were creeped out. A few felt compelled to take skulls from the pool, but most did not, and they did not explore much here, either. Kulitas did take one of the cultist robes inscribed with sigils of chaos. They went down, down, down to the Starless Sea.

     On the shore of the Starless Sea, Lilith the Fortune-teller tried to decipher the carvings on the menhir and went mad, determined to sacrifice her party to the Chaos Leviathan in the water! Using the battle axe that had belonged to the champion of the beastmen, she slaughtered Kulitas (ending his career as chaos-cultist!), and when Rolo Lockpick the Halfling Glovemaker tried valiantly to stop her, she killed him too! She was finally taken down by Sceotend the Woodcutter.

     After this, the party successfully managed to summon the Longship over to take them to the Ziggurat, but faced with the Chaos Leviathan, they decided to fight! A couple of characters started rowing to get the ship away, but the tentacles were picking them off: They lost Theodore the Costermonger, Richard the Cutpurse, Dorn the Armorer, Halcen the Elven Artisan, Maldom the Outlaw, Sceotend the Woodcutter, Scanlun the Minstrel, and Nahiri the Dwarven Herder to the Chaos Leviathan! This is the one encounter where the players did not particularly play it smart, but they got lucky - the tentacles kept rolling very poorly to hit, and the PCs were getting lucky rolls and inflicting lots of damage to the Chaos Leviathan (they brought it down to about half its hit points). The surviving three characters reached the Ziggurat and leveled up. Purcilius Roy became a Cleric of Justicia, Liana Fireheart became a Wizard, and Lairgnen became a Warrior.

     I was glad that even though Ruben and Duncan were out of characters, they decided to stay at the table and follow the game! The 3 PCs fought their way to the top of the Ziggurat (Purcilis Roy had a series of amazing Turn Unholy checks to get rid of the chaos-cultist beastment!), and at the top, I let Duncan and Ruben play prisoners who were being sacrificed. The idea was that they could rejoin the game if they were freed. Well, a lot of them were sacrificed before they could be freed, but each came out with a couple of 0-levels who technically survived, but didn't actually play. Anyway, a series of lucky rolls allowed them to take out the shaman and his minions very quickly, triggering the collapse of the cavern, and they escaped in the Longship to fight another day!