Dungeon Crawl Classics Playtest

This is from Trails in the Sky not DCC. It can be hard to tell them apart.

This weekend I focused on getting further in Trails in the Sky and working on a Call of Cthulhu adventure for my friend's 'zine. I also worked on pulling together the online Stars Without Number games I am planning on starting next month. 

On Saturday night, my regular group play tested a DCC module one of our members is working on.I will now attempt to summarize that insanity. I have written this from the perspective of my characters. They are unreliable sources of information.

It was a funnel game, and there were 6 players, so there were a lot of characters. My four characters were Kenny Rogers, a Gambler; Jeremiah Johnson, a Trapper; Osarb, a Mendicant; and Delta Burke, a Healer. Our characters started on the world of Osarb (no relation), which was just coming out of an ice age. As inhabitants of the town of Halbrinx, we were tasked with preparing the annual sacrifice. This was neither as dark, or as exciting, as it seems as the sacrifice was ceremonial only; an effigy.

Scott drew this at home, so we have no idea how long it took. I assume this is what he has been doing since GenCon.

As the party was setting up the effigy, Osarb, drunk as always, knocked it over. It was through this encounter that we learned that having a 4 in Agility is not helpful. While Osarb was apologizing, the rest of the party managed to finish the effigy. Just as we were getting set to call out to the rest of the village, we heard a buzzing sound from the nearby trees. Jeremiah Johnson used his folksy woods knowledge to identify it as a bee. This was a timely identification, because a giant bee attacked immediately afterwards.

A slave, who I will call Chris LeDoux, attempted to mount the bee and ride it. This did not work. Jeremiah Johnson leapt into action and attacked the bee with his sling. Sadly, his shot went wide and hit Osarb in the back of the head, killing him instantly. Delta Burke was able to make quick work of the bee with her club. In this encounter, we learned that missile fire is dangerous due to the firing into melee rules. When I say "we learned", I mean... well, you'll see.

After dispatching the giant bee, we heard an even louder buzzing sound coming from the woods. Some of the group, who seemed to be pretty smart at the time, built up the fire to smoke the bees. This worked, and we were not attacked by the bees. Instead the fire melted some of the snow and caused an avalanche instead. After being chased down the mountain, we discovered that the avalanche had unearthed a mine entrance. We did the wise thing and entered without preparation.  

The first level of the dungeon. This one was kind of a group project.

After making our way through the partially obstructed opening, we found ourselves in a large chamber (middle left). There were two skeletons against the wall and a lone rail running through the center of the room. As we followed the rail into a tunnel, we noticed glints of silver in the walls. The tunnel opened into a circular room (center) with several exits, a hole in the floor, and some kind of spiky cylinder.

After some investigation, most of us were sure that the cylinder was a bread maker. Chris LeDoux was not convinced; he was sure it was some sort of automatic slave beating device. Despite our grumbling bellies, we did not turn it on.

After following a side passage, we found a chamber with a desk and a cabinet (middle bottom). When Delta Burke touched the desk, a hologram of a lizard man appeared. The lizard man said some stuff about delivery schedules and then disappeared. While Jeremiah Johnson spouted weird skeleton lore, Dick Grayson found a vial of pink goo in the desk. A search of the cabinet netted the party two electro-whips. 

Exactly like that.

As we explored this area of the mine further, Kenny Rogers and Delta Burke began to get lost in each others' eyes. They were so absorbed in each other that they did not notice some of what happened until some good dropped down from the ceiling onto the lead members of the party. Kenny Rogers dove to the rescue, over the objections of pretty much the whole group, and plunged his torch into the goo. Surprisingly, this did not light the coated characters on fire and kill them. Big Government took care of that when he one-shotted Hamlet Machine with his electro-whip though. After some confusion about pulling the trapped characters out of the goo, we were able to defeat it. Jeremiah Johnson put what remained of the goo in his flask.

Our adventures soon brought us to a room full of bats (right chamber in the middle bottom). As the young orphan Dickens entered, he disappeared. Delta Burke, her maternal instincts awoken by budding romance, rushed into the room to save him. As soon as she stepped through the entrance, she was jerked up into the air by some unseen force towards a giant lobster-thing on a ledge. Smarty ran into the room and threw a lit vial of oil up onto the ledge so we could see. The oil ignited a methane gas explosion that killed Legal Eyes. Kenny Rogers rushed to his beloved's side, but was unable to scale the ledge in time. Delta Burke was torn to ribbons by lobster claws, in a shower of gore, before his eyes. Kenny let out a scream of anguish and rushed the lobstrosity (sorry, Mr. King) with his club. Jeremiah Johnson, blinded by grief of his own, accidentally killed Kenny with a sling stone to the back of the head. As the rest of the party finished off the cave fisher, little orphan Dicken's head was crushed by another one of the monsters on the other side of the room. Dickens died young, alone, and in the dark.

After some more exploration, and a seemingly empty underground lake, we came to a tunnel that ended in a small, low, fissure. We wisely decided to not leave it alone and stuck a pitchfork in it. Rats came boiling out. Short Pound, our faithful dwarf whatever, was eaten alive before we could kill the rats. Jeremiah Jameson, who had thought the dwarf's name was Short Round until his death, hung his head in shame at the fortune cookie jokes he had made. We decided to return to the center chamber and descend to the second level.

 

The second level of the dungeon seen at top. Yes, it's a digestive system.

As we lowered ourselves on a rope, Holy Water, our "lucky" halfling Mariner plunged to his/her death. On the lower level we found a giant mechanical drill and some untapped veins of silver. At this point, Jeremiah Johnson suggested returning to the surface with the riches we had already found. Despite his misgivings, the group pressed on. To the south we found a large cavern that seemed to have once had a natural lake in it. There were pillars running the length of the room. After discovering that the air was bad a floor level, we built a rope bridge over the tops of the pillars to get past the dry lake bed. 

On the far side of the lake we found a chamber with a dwarf skeleton. After the inevitable fight with the skeleton, we cleared away some rocks to find the final door. As we opened it, fog spilled out.

This last chamber had several large cylinders in it that contained vicious attack snake people. Smarty was killed by the snake people. Jeremiah Johnson wound up his legendary sling and let loose his deadly missile... right into the back of Nameless, the dwarf's head. Nameless collapsed to the floor dead at his friends' feet.

Big Government, recognizing Jeremiah Johnson as the true threat, cut him down with one crack of his electro-whip. Sadly, this distraction cost the group another valuable member as Nameless, the halfling fell before the snake men could be defeated.

The heroes returned victorious.