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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 9505812" data-attributes="member: 467">Over Nov 1 - Nov 3 at Carnage on the Mountain in Killington VT, I ran a 3 session con-campaign that was my take on a Barrier Peaks style adventure using Shadowdark.I created a total of 12 4th level pre-gens using Shadowdarklings dot net. I was lucky enough to have the same 5 players for each of the 3 sessions (continuity always improves these things) as well as a straggler 6th player in the final session. Two PCs died and one betrayed the party throughout the adventures, and I allowed the PCs to level up for the final session.The premise of the Arcland is thus: it is a blasted wasteland where electrical storms emerge from the ground rather than the sky, and sometimes those storms are accompanied by the opening of a "Well" -- a tunnel down into the strange world of arcane machinery and strange mutants and robots. This is not the result of a long buried alien spaceship crash, though. Rather, the technomagically enhanced Hollow Earth civilization long ago set their machine to reach for the surface, but became corrupt over time.When it was discovered that Arcane Crystals could be looted from the Wells, the Arcland became a gold rush and the rough and tumble town of Arcverge appeared. Controlled y the Artificers Guild, who did the buying of the Arcane Crystals for their own endeavors, Arcverge was also home to other factions. Various "Gate Gangs" similar to thieves guilds controlled access to certain Wells, charging fees to enter and taxes on what was retrieved. There were also to Osterions, a cult that sought to severely limit access to the lands below for their own mysterious reasons.The PCs arrive and make an Artificer contact who they call Wheels based on his, well, wheels instead of legs. Wheels gives them the rundown of which Gate Gangs to trust and which to avoid, and ultimately the PCs contract with Wheels and decide to go on their first delve. It is full of weirdness and wonder and they successfully pull a bunch of Arcane Crystals from below. They do make a negative impression on a couple factions in the process, and this will come back to haunt them.Note: I knew the lore and setup and factions of the game, but due to educational and professional responsibilities I had not really had a lot of time to prep for Carnage. I am a light prep pantser anyway, but I needed a little more meat for dungeon crawling. So I turned to Shadowdark's dungeon generation rules and flavored everything with the technomagical theme I wanted for the game. I also made sure every creature or obstacle was weird and unique. no goblins here, or stock enemies of any kind.So it was that a couple random rolls and how I interpreted them turned the whole thing on its head with session 2. This was much more of a puzzle dungeon than the first, which had more of a tradition ruin vibe. In session 2, they discovered a room full of cryogenically frozen Hollow Earthers (100 of them, in fact). Again, this came out of some weird die results and my own weird interpretation of them.One of the PCs happened to be a Grave Warden (NOT a necromancer!) and asked if they could speak with dead. it was a philosophical question, and I debated it, but finally went with "Sure" because a) saying Yes is fun, and b) I did say they were frozen, not hibernating. The short conversation they had with the poor soul caused one thing to lead to another and what do you know, tey ended up thawing the fellow out.To make a long story short: this individual turned out to be essentially Khan, and would try and use the Osterians to help him wake the 99 other Hollow Earth super soldiers in their nigh indestructible nanomachine suits. The PCs were forced to align themselves with an insane AI, which they accidentally uploaded into a robotic Purple Worm, and ultimately had to fight "Khan" with Horizon Zero Dawn style cobbled together electrical weapons (that was the "nigh" part of "nigh invulnerable) to defeat him and save Arcverge and the wider world.I really love Shadowdark.</blockquote>

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