demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
I dunno if you dug around the link, Knightfall, but since my reviews are all out of order and RPG.net has an awful search function, mind if I post them in this thread?
Round Three: 10 more modules... DCC style!
- Thread starter Knightfall
- Start date
Knightfall
World of Kulan DM
Go ahead...
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
Sure thing!
DCC #3: The Mysterious Tower
This adventure was written by Joseph Goodman himself! So one would assume that this would probably be a pretty good archetypical example of a Dungeon Crawl Classics module. And The Mysterious Tower does deliver.
Many years ago, there was a wizard (his name was never given) who loved two things more than anything else: walls of force and levers. In order to protect his wizard’s tower, he combined the two, creating a powerful spell that would create a permanent wall of force that could not be penetrated by any means, only to be deactivated by a lever. Only problem was, he cast the spell before determining the correct dimensions—the spell’s area was mere inches too short to encompass the relevant lever. The wizard went mad trying to devise a way out, and even his spirit is now trapped in the tower.
There is a series of ruins surrounding the tower, however. This series of caves contains a family of owlbears, catacombs sacred to the long-gone god of humility, various traps and tricks and lastly the lever that deactivates the force field and would let adventurers enter the tower and plumb its riches.
Enter the PCs. No hook is given, just “hey! A mysterious tower! Let’s try to get in!”
What I liked: The tone of The Mysterious Tower isn’t one I’ve encountered much. Joseph Goodman’s writing style is full of little asides for the DM and has a general tone of informality. It’s chummy. It also has a taste for the classics, with encounters like two NPCs, one of which always tells the truth and the other always lies. And a rip-off of the “only a penitent man shall pass” trap from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The encounters themselves are generally pretty straight-forward. There’s plenty of variety in the monster palette, unlike Idylls of the Rat King, but the monsters present make some ecological sense.
Lastly, I like that the module assumes that it will end by the PCs claiming the tower as their stronghold. PCs with land and armies of followers are something that 1st Edition assumed would happen eventually, but is all-but-forgotten in 3.X and 4th Edition. The wizard’s bedroom is full of magical (but hard to transport) furniture, and there’s a discussion of how to disable the lever so that the PCs don’t get trapped inside the tower too. And the suggestion that one of the wizard’s heirs might come to reclaim his birthright…
What I didn’t like: Although I liked the chummy tone used throughout The Mysterious Tower, I can see it grating some people. What grated me was the prevalence of traps on which Disable Device doesn’t work. I understand the rationale—in AD&D, getting past traps was something that tested player ingenuity as much as their character’s skill rolls—but it strikes me as cheap and unrewarding to PCs who’ve invested highly in Disable Device. I’d rather have a trap with a ridiculously high DC than none at all.
The owlbear family also strikes me as having the potential to murder entire parties. There’s the potential for 3rd level PCs to fight three or four owlbears at once, which is a recipe for rolling new characters. I can see that encounter ending poorly for a lot of groups.
I’d like it if there were more concrete story-hooks than “look! A mysterious tower! Let’s explore it!” If I were to drop a tower protected by an impenetrable force field into one of my games, most of the people I run games for would likely give up and look for adventure elsewhere than assume there was an entrance deep below. In my experience, most players need more incentive than curiosity.
Is it worth the $2? Yes. The Mysterious Tower is a more lighthearted module with plenty of opportunities to reward player ingenuity and to give them a stronghold.
DCC #3: The Mysterious Tower
This adventure was written by Joseph Goodman himself! So one would assume that this would probably be a pretty good archetypical example of a Dungeon Crawl Classics module. And The Mysterious Tower does deliver.
Many years ago, there was a wizard (his name was never given) who loved two things more than anything else: walls of force and levers. In order to protect his wizard’s tower, he combined the two, creating a powerful spell that would create a permanent wall of force that could not be penetrated by any means, only to be deactivated by a lever. Only problem was, he cast the spell before determining the correct dimensions—the spell’s area was mere inches too short to encompass the relevant lever. The wizard went mad trying to devise a way out, and even his spirit is now trapped in the tower.
There is a series of ruins surrounding the tower, however. This series of caves contains a family of owlbears, catacombs sacred to the long-gone god of humility, various traps and tricks and lastly the lever that deactivates the force field and would let adventurers enter the tower and plumb its riches.
Enter the PCs. No hook is given, just “hey! A mysterious tower! Let’s try to get in!”
What I liked: The tone of The Mysterious Tower isn’t one I’ve encountered much. Joseph Goodman’s writing style is full of little asides for the DM and has a general tone of informality. It’s chummy. It also has a taste for the classics, with encounters like two NPCs, one of which always tells the truth and the other always lies. And a rip-off of the “only a penitent man shall pass” trap from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The encounters themselves are generally pretty straight-forward. There’s plenty of variety in the monster palette, unlike Idylls of the Rat King, but the monsters present make some ecological sense.
Lastly, I like that the module assumes that it will end by the PCs claiming the tower as their stronghold. PCs with land and armies of followers are something that 1st Edition assumed would happen eventually, but is all-but-forgotten in 3.X and 4th Edition. The wizard’s bedroom is full of magical (but hard to transport) furniture, and there’s a discussion of how to disable the lever so that the PCs don’t get trapped inside the tower too. And the suggestion that one of the wizard’s heirs might come to reclaim his birthright…
What I didn’t like: Although I liked the chummy tone used throughout The Mysterious Tower, I can see it grating some people. What grated me was the prevalence of traps on which Disable Device doesn’t work. I understand the rationale—in AD&D, getting past traps was something that tested player ingenuity as much as their character’s skill rolls—but it strikes me as cheap and unrewarding to PCs who’ve invested highly in Disable Device. I’d rather have a trap with a ridiculously high DC than none at all.
The owlbear family also strikes me as having the potential to murder entire parties. There’s the potential for 3rd level PCs to fight three or four owlbears at once, which is a recipe for rolling new characters. I can see that encounter ending poorly for a lot of groups.
I’d like it if there were more concrete story-hooks than “look! A mysterious tower! Let’s explore it!” If I were to drop a tower protected by an impenetrable force field into one of my games, most of the people I run games for would likely give up and look for adventure elsewhere than assume there was an entrance deep below. In my experience, most players need more incentive than curiosity.
Is it worth the $2? Yes. The Mysterious Tower is a more lighthearted module with plenty of opportunities to reward player ingenuity and to give them a stronghold.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #15: Lost Tomb of the Sphinx Queen
An adventure for 14th-15th level characters.
Thousands of years ago, the sphinxes were the dominant race on the planet, or at least over a significant chunk of it. Tasked by the gods to bring wisdom and learning to the mortal races, the sphinxes did so, and great monuments were built in their honor. But the immortal queen of the sphinxes, Ankharet the Blessed, slowly fell towards evil, impelled by her Shadowcrown. She began to prey on both men and sphinx alike, and eventually slew her draconic consort and framed the Empire of the Nagas for his death. The sphinx Khubsheth, gifted with prophecy, convinced his consort (and Ankharet’s half-dragon daughter) Meraph of this treachery, and they led a rebellion that destroyed the empire and imprisoned Ankharet inside a pyramid. As Ankharet could not be slain by any sphinx, they had to wait until mortal heroes proved themselves worthy of killing their wicked queen, and so settled down to wait.
Millennia later, the PCs are those prophesied heroes. Khubsheth has waited for them and attacks them on sight, for only his life’s blood can open the tomb. Meraph is now Ankharet’s final guardian, although millennia of guilt and isolation have taken a hefty toll on her sanity. The tomb itself is a massive museum of the wonders (and dangers) of the sphinx empire, designed to ensure that the slayers of Ankharet learn the lessons of the past and reward the learned with the empire’s greatest treasures.
What I liked: Sphinxes, man. I love sphinxes, and it’s cool to see a module that not only gives them some time in the limelight, but also a place in the world. As such, you could expect this dungeon to be full of riddles and puzzles, which it is. And they’re actually the sorts of riddles one could be expected to figure out. The fact that there are hints given for associated characters is a nice touch, although I’d only give out those hints to PCs who made Intelligence or Knowledge checks in an attempt to decipher it.
This dungeon also has more of a tragic feeling than most I’ve seen. The sphinx empire is dead, and its last remnants are willing and eager to die to impel the PCs towards their destiny. But it’s not all sphinxes—nor is it all constructs and undead, which is a trap a lot of people designing Lost Tomb-type adventures fall into. And those treasures of the sphinx empire I mentioned? They’re all really neat. Utilitarian and flavorful, I wish more magic items unique to the DCC line were like them.
What I disliked: Some of the puzzle traps, while flavorful, didn’t do it for me. The room filling with sand and full of earth elemental lions? It was alright, but I wish a Disable Device check could do something against the sand pouring into the room. The Journey to the Afterlife trap, though, annoys me muchly. In this room, the PCs find a boat, sitting in a river of acid. Only the hull of the boat is acid-proof, for some reason, and the ship is light enough that if the PCs pile in, it will sink. Unless! There’s a scroll in the prow of the ship with the details of the history of the Sphinx Empire, and if a PC reads it continuously, the ship will stay afloat and sail towards the key they need. Of course, there’s also a monstrous serpent living in the acid (and a flaming eagle, but I understand that symbolism less) to attack the PCs as they sail. So my question is: what 15th level player character in their right mind wouldn’t just use spells or magic items to fly over the river of acid to get the key? Especially since one of the other keys acts as a carpet of flying. And there’s a labyrinth, which I have never seen play well in all of my years as a DM.
There’s also some (to be expected, sadly) rules-weirdness going on in this adventure. Like the encounter with the lamia—the authors do not seem to be aware that mind-controlling spells are hostile actions, and so would break invisibility. There are also references to flying dazed creatures falling instantly (which would depend on its maneuverability).
Was it worth the $2? Yes. I’d tweak the traps a bit, but the flavor is fantastic and a lot of the fights look fun. I highly enjoyed Lost Tomb of the Sphinx Queen.
An adventure for 14th-15th level characters.
Thousands of years ago, the sphinxes were the dominant race on the planet, or at least over a significant chunk of it. Tasked by the gods to bring wisdom and learning to the mortal races, the sphinxes did so, and great monuments were built in their honor. But the immortal queen of the sphinxes, Ankharet the Blessed, slowly fell towards evil, impelled by her Shadowcrown. She began to prey on both men and sphinx alike, and eventually slew her draconic consort and framed the Empire of the Nagas for his death. The sphinx Khubsheth, gifted with prophecy, convinced his consort (and Ankharet’s half-dragon daughter) Meraph of this treachery, and they led a rebellion that destroyed the empire and imprisoned Ankharet inside a pyramid. As Ankharet could not be slain by any sphinx, they had to wait until mortal heroes proved themselves worthy of killing their wicked queen, and so settled down to wait.
Millennia later, the PCs are those prophesied heroes. Khubsheth has waited for them and attacks them on sight, for only his life’s blood can open the tomb. Meraph is now Ankharet’s final guardian, although millennia of guilt and isolation have taken a hefty toll on her sanity. The tomb itself is a massive museum of the wonders (and dangers) of the sphinx empire, designed to ensure that the slayers of Ankharet learn the lessons of the past and reward the learned with the empire’s greatest treasures.
What I liked: Sphinxes, man. I love sphinxes, and it’s cool to see a module that not only gives them some time in the limelight, but also a place in the world. As such, you could expect this dungeon to be full of riddles and puzzles, which it is. And they’re actually the sorts of riddles one could be expected to figure out. The fact that there are hints given for associated characters is a nice touch, although I’d only give out those hints to PCs who made Intelligence or Knowledge checks in an attempt to decipher it.
This dungeon also has more of a tragic feeling than most I’ve seen. The sphinx empire is dead, and its last remnants are willing and eager to die to impel the PCs towards their destiny. But it’s not all sphinxes—nor is it all constructs and undead, which is a trap a lot of people designing Lost Tomb-type adventures fall into. And those treasures of the sphinx empire I mentioned? They’re all really neat. Utilitarian and flavorful, I wish more magic items unique to the DCC line were like them.
What I disliked: Some of the puzzle traps, while flavorful, didn’t do it for me. The room filling with sand and full of earth elemental lions? It was alright, but I wish a Disable Device check could do something against the sand pouring into the room. The Journey to the Afterlife trap, though, annoys me muchly. In this room, the PCs find a boat, sitting in a river of acid. Only the hull of the boat is acid-proof, for some reason, and the ship is light enough that if the PCs pile in, it will sink. Unless! There’s a scroll in the prow of the ship with the details of the history of the Sphinx Empire, and if a PC reads it continuously, the ship will stay afloat and sail towards the key they need. Of course, there’s also a monstrous serpent living in the acid (and a flaming eagle, but I understand that symbolism less) to attack the PCs as they sail. So my question is: what 15th level player character in their right mind wouldn’t just use spells or magic items to fly over the river of acid to get the key? Especially since one of the other keys acts as a carpet of flying. And there’s a labyrinth, which I have never seen play well in all of my years as a DM.
There’s also some (to be expected, sadly) rules-weirdness going on in this adventure. Like the encounter with the lamia—the authors do not seem to be aware that mind-controlling spells are hostile actions, and so would break invisibility. There are also references to flying dazed creatures falling instantly (which would depend on its maneuverability).
Was it worth the $2? Yes. I’d tweak the traps a bit, but the flavor is fantastic and a lot of the fights look fun. I highly enjoyed Lost Tomb of the Sphinx Queen.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #17: Legacy of the Savage Kings
An adventure for 4th-6th level characters.
Ah, Harley Stroh. We meet again, although this is his first adventure in order. Mr. Stroh also wrote Iron Crypt of the Heretics and Into the Wilds. Apparently, he’s a fan favorite.
This adventure seems sort of like a template for Into the Wilds, in that it’s set in a sandbox-potential wilderness area with multiple smaller dungeons thematically linked and an evil sorceress for a villain. This time around, that villain is Kyleth the Witch-Queen, and she’s come to the creatively-named Great Swamp in order to mine it. The Great Swamp was host to a battle between a barbarian king and the glabrezu prince Obitu-Que, and where the demon’s body fell grew sick with magical taint. This tainted earth, referred to as Blight, makes for cruel weapons, so Kyleth has been sent by her paramour, the orc (?) warlord The Mountain King, to extract the Blight ore and turn it into swords for his troops.
Kyleth is a clever witch-queen, and knows the source of the Blight. She’s also figured out that if the demon’s remains are returned to the mine (referred to as the Maw), they might cancel each other out and cut off the taint. Don’t ask me why. The skull of Obitu-Que is still in the area, worshipped as a god by a tribe of lizardfolk inside the tomb of the barbarian who slew him. In order to prevent the Blight from spreading, the PCs must retrieve Obitu-Que’s skull and cast it back into the Maw.
What I liked: Kyleth the Witch-Queen is a fantastic villain. She’s cruel and cunning, and her backstory (in which she gained her sorcery fending off the unwanted advances of the Mountain King, culminating in her convincing the Mountain King to treat her as an equal and put out his own eye as a sign of their pact) is awesome. It’s too bad she’s not really the Big Bad of the module, because it’s clear that Harley Stroh cares more about her plot than the rest of it.
There’s a shrine in the lizardfolk lair that is very similar to one in Into the Wilds (perhaps a Stroh trademark?). The idea is that if the PCs leave a monetary offering, they’ll gain a small blessing. Steal from the shrine, and the PC becomes cursed. This shrine is rather darker than the one in Into the Wilds, depicting the Three Fates of Men: Starvation, Disease and Violence. There’s also a feat that several NPC spellcasters possess—Craft Fetish, which creates a one-use magic item that grants the user a luck bonus to one roll. They’re cheap and easy to make, making them favorites of hedge wizards and adepts. These touches help to make Legacy of the Savage Kings feel more mysterious and magical—they’re less fireball and more folkloric.
Oh, and the leader of the kobolds is named Torgo. Nice touch.
What I disliked: The intro to Legacy of the Savage Kings states that some encounters are intentionally of overwhelming difficulty—this in order to encourage guile, stealth and strategy rather than just hacking and slashing. It, uh, doesn’t work. For example, the first encounter in the module is with a CR 9 black dragon. There’s no running from him. He can’t use his breath weapon due to his Blight-sickened state, but if he gets a full attack on a PC, that PC (who might be 4th level!) is a dead man. He’s described as being “half-dead and nearly blind”, but this isn’t reflected in his stats at all. If he was suitably crippled (50% miss chance due to near-blindness and could only make a single action a round), this encounter would properly foreshadow Blight’s dangers and be memorable. As is, it’s a massacre.
There’s a lot of stuff in Legacy of the Savage Kings that doesn’t really work well within the d20 System rules. The skull of Obitu-Que, for instance, has a weird domination effect that requires a warm-up period of three rounds, during which the person it’s trying to dominate takes damage and hallucinates. There are multiple effects with a duration of 20 minus the relevant ability score, which is how ability checks worked in 1st Edition, but no longer. And the final encounter with the Lizard King is just bizarre. The statblocks also (and by now, this should no longer surprise) are in need of a good editing, with iterative natural attacks, multiple sources of armor stacking, needless multiclassing, bad CRs, and other sins. No wonder Goodman Games hired Blackdirge on as an editor!
Was it worth the $2? I really, really wanted to like Legacy of the Savage Kings, but in the end I was forced to surrender to the ever rising bile and say that it wasn’t worth it. The Witch Queen is a good baddie, though.
An adventure for 4th-6th level characters.
Ah, Harley Stroh. We meet again, although this is his first adventure in order. Mr. Stroh also wrote Iron Crypt of the Heretics and Into the Wilds. Apparently, he’s a fan favorite.
This adventure seems sort of like a template for Into the Wilds, in that it’s set in a sandbox-potential wilderness area with multiple smaller dungeons thematically linked and an evil sorceress for a villain. This time around, that villain is Kyleth the Witch-Queen, and she’s come to the creatively-named Great Swamp in order to mine it. The Great Swamp was host to a battle between a barbarian king and the glabrezu prince Obitu-Que, and where the demon’s body fell grew sick with magical taint. This tainted earth, referred to as Blight, makes for cruel weapons, so Kyleth has been sent by her paramour, the orc (?) warlord The Mountain King, to extract the Blight ore and turn it into swords for his troops.
Kyleth is a clever witch-queen, and knows the source of the Blight. She’s also figured out that if the demon’s remains are returned to the mine (referred to as the Maw), they might cancel each other out and cut off the taint. Don’t ask me why. The skull of Obitu-Que is still in the area, worshipped as a god by a tribe of lizardfolk inside the tomb of the barbarian who slew him. In order to prevent the Blight from spreading, the PCs must retrieve Obitu-Que’s skull and cast it back into the Maw.
What I liked: Kyleth the Witch-Queen is a fantastic villain. She’s cruel and cunning, and her backstory (in which she gained her sorcery fending off the unwanted advances of the Mountain King, culminating in her convincing the Mountain King to treat her as an equal and put out his own eye as a sign of their pact) is awesome. It’s too bad she’s not really the Big Bad of the module, because it’s clear that Harley Stroh cares more about her plot than the rest of it.
There’s a shrine in the lizardfolk lair that is very similar to one in Into the Wilds (perhaps a Stroh trademark?). The idea is that if the PCs leave a monetary offering, they’ll gain a small blessing. Steal from the shrine, and the PC becomes cursed. This shrine is rather darker than the one in Into the Wilds, depicting the Three Fates of Men: Starvation, Disease and Violence. There’s also a feat that several NPC spellcasters possess—Craft Fetish, which creates a one-use magic item that grants the user a luck bonus to one roll. They’re cheap and easy to make, making them favorites of hedge wizards and adepts. These touches help to make Legacy of the Savage Kings feel more mysterious and magical—they’re less fireball and more folkloric.
Oh, and the leader of the kobolds is named Torgo. Nice touch.
What I disliked: The intro to Legacy of the Savage Kings states that some encounters are intentionally of overwhelming difficulty—this in order to encourage guile, stealth and strategy rather than just hacking and slashing. It, uh, doesn’t work. For example, the first encounter in the module is with a CR 9 black dragon. There’s no running from him. He can’t use his breath weapon due to his Blight-sickened state, but if he gets a full attack on a PC, that PC (who might be 4th level!) is a dead man. He’s described as being “half-dead and nearly blind”, but this isn’t reflected in his stats at all. If he was suitably crippled (50% miss chance due to near-blindness and could only make a single action a round), this encounter would properly foreshadow Blight’s dangers and be memorable. As is, it’s a massacre.
There’s a lot of stuff in Legacy of the Savage Kings that doesn’t really work well within the d20 System rules. The skull of Obitu-Que, for instance, has a weird domination effect that requires a warm-up period of three rounds, during which the person it’s trying to dominate takes damage and hallucinates. There are multiple effects with a duration of 20 minus the relevant ability score, which is how ability checks worked in 1st Edition, but no longer. And the final encounter with the Lizard King is just bizarre. The statblocks also (and by now, this should no longer surprise) are in need of a good editing, with iterative natural attacks, multiple sources of armor stacking, needless multiclassing, bad CRs, and other sins. No wonder Goodman Games hired Blackdirge on as an editor!
Was it worth the $2? I really, really wanted to like Legacy of the Savage Kings, but in the end I was forced to surrender to the ever rising bile and say that it wasn’t worth it. The Witch Queen is a good baddie, though.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #20: Shadows in Freeport
An adventure for 6th-8th level characters.
The city of Freeport is one of the triumphs of the OGL. It’s Green Ronin’s pet city, but they’ve opened it up for anyone to use. Better, the latest gazetteer of the city, The Pirates Guide to Freeport, is completely system neutral. Freeport is fantasy pirates plus Lovecraftian horror, and that’s the sort of thing I can get behind.
Shadows in Freeport emphasizes the horror much more than the pirates. Fifty years ago, there was a terrible old man named Alexander Cresh. He was a cutthroat business man who loved to literally cut throats, especially those of children. He paved a road to Hell with the blood of the young, and was lynched by an angry mob for his crimes. Now, children are disappearing again. Cresh has risen as a revenant, and he’s back up to his old tricks. He plans on opening a permanent gate to the lower planes using sixty-six sacrifices, and has been warming up by sending his fiendish minions to nab kids off the street and torture them to death.
The PCs have been hired to find the missing kids, only to find out that they are for the most part too late. Cresh’s son, the grotesque Fatty Blue, has risen as a ghost, and acts as mob boss to the gangs of tortured child ghosts, who are more likely to attack the only people who can help them than grant the PCs aid. Demons and undead stalk the grounds of Cresh Manor, protecting their dark master and looking for victims to practice their trade.
What I liked: Shadows in Freeport is grim with a capital G. It’s clearly the sort of adventure that Legends of the Ripper wanted to be when it grew up, with blood and guts and gore aplenty. They’re used with a somewhat defter hand than in Legends of the Ripper, contributing to a unified source of mood. Shadows in Freeport gives the option of using Unearthed Arcana’s sanity rules, a modification of those found in Call of Cthulhu d20.
I liked the character of Fatty Blue. The son of a child murderer and monster, Fatty Blue is a consummate bully, only made worse now that he’s dead. He lords over the other undead children with his superior skills and power, and he’s got levels in barbarian—what better way to model the tantrum of a spiteful child? He’s a parasitic hanger-on of a greater evil, and in that respect (and physical build) reminds me somewhat of Pokey from Earthbound. Probably not an intentional reference, but I’ll run with it.
What I disliked: Cresh Manor seems somewhat thematically sloppy. Demons, daemons and devils all have a run of the grounds, and they traditionally can’t stand each other. There’s also pwalgs, delightfully grotesque creatures spawned from the effluvia of the Unspeakable One, Freeport’s resident Great Old One (who’s basically Hastur). Why? I’m not exactly sure. Likewise, the undead are all over the place—ghost children are good, and I can buy the bodak, but wraiths? Allips? I’d like an explanation for my variety, please. Combat isn’t very scary in D&D, so having a haunted house full of hacking and slashing somewhat reduces its impact, Sanity rules or no Sanity rules. Cage of Delirium used handouts deftly, and had lots of encounters solely for atmospheric purposes. Pathfinder’s The Skinsaw Murders used a very clever trap-based haunting system to simultaneously deliver exposition, challenge characters, and spook the players. There’s a few choice bits (the handout that just reads “thegatetohellwillopenthegatetohellwillopen” forever is creepy), but it’s mostly just fighting with grislier set dressing.
Speaking of thematics, Shadows in Freeport doesn’t feel very, well, Freeport-y to me. It could be set anywhere with absolutely no problem. There’s a gang hiding in the manor (bad idea) that pays lip service to the idea that Freeport is a rough and crime filled town, but the “concerned citizens” hook (and the motivation of doing a good deed and saving some kids) doesn’t really fit. I’d have rather gotten a sense of “well, we all might be a bunch of greedy bastards, but whatever’s taking all of the kids is even worse!”
Cresh himself also annoys me. He’s a revenant, which are traditionally undead that seek unerringly their killers to get revenge. There’s no real revenge aspect to Cresh at all. He is opening an eternal portal to hell, which is what he was going to do anyway if he hadn’t been lynched. And haven’t we gotten enough “opening a permanent link between our world and the Abyss/Hell” plots? It was the main motivation in both Dungeon Interludes and Citadel of the Demon Prince. And there’s weird stuff with him having a vulnerability to slashing weapons, which would make sense if it was Cresh-specific, but apparently is inherent to all of this interpretation of revenants. It would have been better to make him a ghost, or a dread undead from Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary.
Was it worth the $2? I’m leaning towards “no.” As far as DCC horror adventures go, Shadows in Freeport is miles ahead of Legends of the Ripper, but it has miles to go before reaching the level of Cage of Delirium.
An adventure for 6th-8th level characters.
The city of Freeport is one of the triumphs of the OGL. It’s Green Ronin’s pet city, but they’ve opened it up for anyone to use. Better, the latest gazetteer of the city, The Pirates Guide to Freeport, is completely system neutral. Freeport is fantasy pirates plus Lovecraftian horror, and that’s the sort of thing I can get behind.
Shadows in Freeport emphasizes the horror much more than the pirates. Fifty years ago, there was a terrible old man named Alexander Cresh. He was a cutthroat business man who loved to literally cut throats, especially those of children. He paved a road to Hell with the blood of the young, and was lynched by an angry mob for his crimes. Now, children are disappearing again. Cresh has risen as a revenant, and he’s back up to his old tricks. He plans on opening a permanent gate to the lower planes using sixty-six sacrifices, and has been warming up by sending his fiendish minions to nab kids off the street and torture them to death.
The PCs have been hired to find the missing kids, only to find out that they are for the most part too late. Cresh’s son, the grotesque Fatty Blue, has risen as a ghost, and acts as mob boss to the gangs of tortured child ghosts, who are more likely to attack the only people who can help them than grant the PCs aid. Demons and undead stalk the grounds of Cresh Manor, protecting their dark master and looking for victims to practice their trade.
What I liked: Shadows in Freeport is grim with a capital G. It’s clearly the sort of adventure that Legends of the Ripper wanted to be when it grew up, with blood and guts and gore aplenty. They’re used with a somewhat defter hand than in Legends of the Ripper, contributing to a unified source of mood. Shadows in Freeport gives the option of using Unearthed Arcana’s sanity rules, a modification of those found in Call of Cthulhu d20.
I liked the character of Fatty Blue. The son of a child murderer and monster, Fatty Blue is a consummate bully, only made worse now that he’s dead. He lords over the other undead children with his superior skills and power, and he’s got levels in barbarian—what better way to model the tantrum of a spiteful child? He’s a parasitic hanger-on of a greater evil, and in that respect (and physical build) reminds me somewhat of Pokey from Earthbound. Probably not an intentional reference, but I’ll run with it.
What I disliked: Cresh Manor seems somewhat thematically sloppy. Demons, daemons and devils all have a run of the grounds, and they traditionally can’t stand each other. There’s also pwalgs, delightfully grotesque creatures spawned from the effluvia of the Unspeakable One, Freeport’s resident Great Old One (who’s basically Hastur). Why? I’m not exactly sure. Likewise, the undead are all over the place—ghost children are good, and I can buy the bodak, but wraiths? Allips? I’d like an explanation for my variety, please. Combat isn’t very scary in D&D, so having a haunted house full of hacking and slashing somewhat reduces its impact, Sanity rules or no Sanity rules. Cage of Delirium used handouts deftly, and had lots of encounters solely for atmospheric purposes. Pathfinder’s The Skinsaw Murders used a very clever trap-based haunting system to simultaneously deliver exposition, challenge characters, and spook the players. There’s a few choice bits (the handout that just reads “thegatetohellwillopenthegatetohellwillopen” forever is creepy), but it’s mostly just fighting with grislier set dressing.
Speaking of thematics, Shadows in Freeport doesn’t feel very, well, Freeport-y to me. It could be set anywhere with absolutely no problem. There’s a gang hiding in the manor (bad idea) that pays lip service to the idea that Freeport is a rough and crime filled town, but the “concerned citizens” hook (and the motivation of doing a good deed and saving some kids) doesn’t really fit. I’d have rather gotten a sense of “well, we all might be a bunch of greedy bastards, but whatever’s taking all of the kids is even worse!”
Cresh himself also annoys me. He’s a revenant, which are traditionally undead that seek unerringly their killers to get revenge. There’s no real revenge aspect to Cresh at all. He is opening an eternal portal to hell, which is what he was going to do anyway if he hadn’t been lynched. And haven’t we gotten enough “opening a permanent link between our world and the Abyss/Hell” plots? It was the main motivation in both Dungeon Interludes and Citadel of the Demon Prince. And there’s weird stuff with him having a vulnerability to slashing weapons, which would make sense if it was Cresh-specific, but apparently is inherent to all of this interpretation of revenants. It would have been better to make him a ghost, or a dread undead from Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary.
Was it worth the $2? I’m leaning towards “no.” As far as DCC horror adventures go, Shadows in Freeport is miles ahead of Legends of the Ripper, but it has miles to go before reaching the level of Cage of Delirium.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #26: The Scaly God
An adventure for 4th-6th level characters.
I can’t help but be struck by the similarities in the plots of The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord. Both adventures feature as primary adversaries a tribe of troglodytes lairing deep within the earth, under the control of an intelligent, spellcasting reptilian monster.
The party has been dispatched to the wilderness fort of Whitefang, which defends the caravan route between two cities from the depredations of humanoids. Unfortunately, reports have come in that Whitefang has been sacked, and these reports are accurate. The keep is now in the hands of a gang of bugbears and goblins, but the evidence suggests that they weren’t the responsible party for the raid. There’re too many three-toed, reptilian footprints about, the weapons that killed the men were rough-hewn stone rather than forged metal, and there’s a huge blue scale in the ruins. Not to mention that the bugbears hardly seem capable of blowing off the tops of the keep’s towers…
The culprits are a tribe of mountain troglodytes lairing nearby. Their cunning shaman, Ssutsre, has made an alliance with the young blue dragon Rathulagon, and convinced his tribe that the dragon is in fact their lizard-god Lagos in the flesh. The trogs, emboldened by their divine patron, raided Whitefang for food and metal weapons, and plan to use its absence to make further raids in the region and establish themselves as the dominant power. Of course, now there’s a gang of adventurers after them, but the troglodytes are well defended, and their caves are also home to a host of other monsters and natural hazards.
What I liked: Do you like the Tome of Horrors? You should—it’s a fantastic resource for all sorts of monsters from 1e that didn’t make the cut in Wizards of the Coast products. I have some issues with their design philosophy, but I admire the book’s thoroughness of scope and status as Open Gaming License fodder. The Scaly God makes full use of the Tome of Horrors, including encounters with old-school monsters like ascomoids, phycomids, aurumvorax, mites and pesties, mantari, gas spores and decapus. The original monsters also feel like they stepped right out of first edition, especially the impaler (it’s a reverse piercer—a mollusk disguised as a stalagmite that jumps up and stabs at adventurers).
The Whitefang Keep encounter area is a pitch-perfect Against the Humanoids scenario. The bugbears and goblins have neat tactics (although I think the pepper grenade is a bit broken) and react intelligently to intrusion. It strikes me as a great night’s gaming. It’s short enough to run in a single night, and the encounters are designed such that most parties won’t have to rest until they clear out the keep. The Scaly God overall has a lot of relatively easy encounters, but they’re pointedly designed to create a delving mood and to allow more encounters in a day—and there’s also some very difficult encounters as well, like the aurumvorax.
What I disliked: In comparison to the excellent Whitefang Keep, the bulk of the adventure takes place in the troglodyte caves, which don’t tickle my fancy in the same way. Although the trogs themselves have clever tactics and feel like a living, breathing tribe, it’s sort of weird that there’s so many deadly monsters lairing in their vicinity. An effort is made to explain the interactions with some of them, like the mite tribe that live nearby and the monstrous fungi that grow in their garden, but why aren’t the troglodytes attacked by the impalers every time they try to leave the mountain? Do they skirmish with the decapus, or does it leave them alone?
There’s some wonkiness with the stat blocks as well. The bugbears are listed as having only leather armor and morningstars, but their ACs include the shields they carry in the basic SRD stat block. The impalers apparently went through changes in editing that weren’t caught—the New Monsters entry lists them as 1 HD aberrations, but in the text they’re 2 HD magical beasts… that have the Base Attack Bonus of 1 HD aberrations.
The wandering monster tables are also a little weird, especially in Whitefang Keep. The text indicates that the humanoids would have organized responses to intrusion, which seems at odds with monsters just wandering around. It’s extra weird on the 2nd floor—the first three rooms are all combat heavy, so the only places that the party would be lingering around would be later rooms… the random encounter table for which is populated by the monsters from the first three rooms! They should already be dead by that point!
Was it worth the $2? The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord are both for the same level range and both feature troglodytes as antagonists. Of the two, buy The Slithering Overlord. But if you want to see some old friends used in an adventure again and want a short but excellent vs. goblinoids scenario, The Scaly God is a worthwhile investment.
An adventure for 4th-6th level characters.
I can’t help but be struck by the similarities in the plots of The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord. Both adventures feature as primary adversaries a tribe of troglodytes lairing deep within the earth, under the control of an intelligent, spellcasting reptilian monster.
The party has been dispatched to the wilderness fort of Whitefang, which defends the caravan route between two cities from the depredations of humanoids. Unfortunately, reports have come in that Whitefang has been sacked, and these reports are accurate. The keep is now in the hands of a gang of bugbears and goblins, but the evidence suggests that they weren’t the responsible party for the raid. There’re too many three-toed, reptilian footprints about, the weapons that killed the men were rough-hewn stone rather than forged metal, and there’s a huge blue scale in the ruins. Not to mention that the bugbears hardly seem capable of blowing off the tops of the keep’s towers…
The culprits are a tribe of mountain troglodytes lairing nearby. Their cunning shaman, Ssutsre, has made an alliance with the young blue dragon Rathulagon, and convinced his tribe that the dragon is in fact their lizard-god Lagos in the flesh. The trogs, emboldened by their divine patron, raided Whitefang for food and metal weapons, and plan to use its absence to make further raids in the region and establish themselves as the dominant power. Of course, now there’s a gang of adventurers after them, but the troglodytes are well defended, and their caves are also home to a host of other monsters and natural hazards.
What I liked: Do you like the Tome of Horrors? You should—it’s a fantastic resource for all sorts of monsters from 1e that didn’t make the cut in Wizards of the Coast products. I have some issues with their design philosophy, but I admire the book’s thoroughness of scope and status as Open Gaming License fodder. The Scaly God makes full use of the Tome of Horrors, including encounters with old-school monsters like ascomoids, phycomids, aurumvorax, mites and pesties, mantari, gas spores and decapus. The original monsters also feel like they stepped right out of first edition, especially the impaler (it’s a reverse piercer—a mollusk disguised as a stalagmite that jumps up and stabs at adventurers).
The Whitefang Keep encounter area is a pitch-perfect Against the Humanoids scenario. The bugbears and goblins have neat tactics (although I think the pepper grenade is a bit broken) and react intelligently to intrusion. It strikes me as a great night’s gaming. It’s short enough to run in a single night, and the encounters are designed such that most parties won’t have to rest until they clear out the keep. The Scaly God overall has a lot of relatively easy encounters, but they’re pointedly designed to create a delving mood and to allow more encounters in a day—and there’s also some very difficult encounters as well, like the aurumvorax.
What I disliked: In comparison to the excellent Whitefang Keep, the bulk of the adventure takes place in the troglodyte caves, which don’t tickle my fancy in the same way. Although the trogs themselves have clever tactics and feel like a living, breathing tribe, it’s sort of weird that there’s so many deadly monsters lairing in their vicinity. An effort is made to explain the interactions with some of them, like the mite tribe that live nearby and the monstrous fungi that grow in their garden, but why aren’t the troglodytes attacked by the impalers every time they try to leave the mountain? Do they skirmish with the decapus, or does it leave them alone?
There’s some wonkiness with the stat blocks as well. The bugbears are listed as having only leather armor and morningstars, but their ACs include the shields they carry in the basic SRD stat block. The impalers apparently went through changes in editing that weren’t caught—the New Monsters entry lists them as 1 HD aberrations, but in the text they’re 2 HD magical beasts… that have the Base Attack Bonus of 1 HD aberrations.
The wandering monster tables are also a little weird, especially in Whitefang Keep. The text indicates that the humanoids would have organized responses to intrusion, which seems at odds with monsters just wandering around. It’s extra weird on the 2nd floor—the first three rooms are all combat heavy, so the only places that the party would be lingering around would be later rooms… the random encounter table for which is populated by the monsters from the first three rooms! They should already be dead by that point!
Was it worth the $2? The Scaly God and The Slithering Overlord are both for the same level range and both feature troglodytes as antagonists. Of the two, buy The Slithering Overlord. But if you want to see some old friends used in an adventure again and want a short but excellent vs. goblinoids scenario, The Scaly God is a worthwhile investment.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #34: Cage of Delirium
An adventure for 6th-8th level characters.
Cage of Delirium was an interesting experiment for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. It was apparently inspired by the Midnight Syndicate album “Gates of Delirium”, and that CD was enclosed in the print version with suggestions for playing specific tracks during specific encounters. Unfortunately, they didn’t work out a licensing agreement so you got the mp3s when you bought the PDF.
The adventure takes place in the burnt-out wreckage of Haverthold Asylum, which was once a good hospital for the treatment of the insane, but ended in a riot of fire and madness. As the PCs investigate the ruins, they encounter a number of ghosts and other undead, some violent and dangerous, but others pitiful and tragic. By speaking to the ghosts, observing the phantoms and piecing together case histories of the patients, the PCs can learn the story of the asylum’s violent end and dispel its evils.
The story of Haverthold Asylum is the story of its founder, Renald Stethenfield, and his twin sons, Luc and Marc. Renald’s wife died giving birth to Marc, and Luc had to be pulled from his mother’s corpse. Luc was never quite right, being prone to violence and self-destructive behavior, and Renald reluctantly committed the boy to his own asylum. Marc, on the other hand, was a model doctor, encouraging a lovely young inmate named Leena Dushea to come out of her shell, then marrying her once she was discharged from the asylum. Renald’s experiments in the treatment of mental illness took a dark turn later in his life, and it was this guilt that killed him at an early age. Marc took over the running of Haverthold Asylum, ceased the grim experiments, and tried to cure his twin brother.
This was a mistake. Luc Stethenfield had spent his time as an inmate building an army of the mad, and eventually overpowered and replaced his brother—since they were identical, no one was the wiser. Luc used his position of authority to torture the inmates in the name of “scientific progress”, and had Leena recommitted when she figured out the switch—and went back into catatonia after realizing she was pregnant. Eventually, Leena attacked Luc before leaping to her death, driving the wrongly imprisoned Marc insane. Marc escaped and opened the asylum doors to create a mad army of his own, and the asylum died ablaze, the twins clutching at each other’s throats to the last.
What I liked: Cage of Delirium is story heavy, and it’s a darn good story. Madness, revenge, ghosts. It’s conveyed to the PCs well through the use of the helpful ghosts, handouts and patient files—the patient files I especially like, because each doctor has different handwriting. This switch in handwriting serves as an early clue to the replacement of Marc by Luc Stethenfield. The helpful ghosts are well done, only conveying information if their own task has been set right. It makes for an interestingly non-linear experience, with the PCs running back and forth through the asylum to do research and meet with troubled spirits.
The monsters are creatively utilized in Cage of Delirium—unlike my complaint with The Haunted Lighthouse before, it’s clear what undead are the result of what tragedy. Allips are the inmates, shadows are Luc Stethenfield’s goons, wights his favored lieutenants, ghosts are the most plot important and (generally) harmless. F. Wesley Schnieder also does a good job reskinning monsters to make them fit better—there’s a possessed object template to make animated objects more ghostly, and unique creatures that turn up in this module are highly modified, undead pyrohydras or bone devils.
What I disliked: One of the lost souls that the PCs can help to free the asylum is the Ash Ghost, who shows up as a random encounter. It’s given an EL in its spot on the random encounter table, and I kept expecting to see its stat block. None was given. I then double-checked the information on the Ash Ghost, and saw that he is “non aggressive and disappears if attacked”. Oh bother. Should have caught that in editing.
The PDF lacks the soundtrack. I get the feeling that said soundtrack would do wonders for the atmosphere of Cage of Delirium. Fortunately, "Gates of Delirium" isn’t exclusive to this module—it was released independently several years before. So it shouldn’t be hard to track down.
Was it worth the $2? Although it feels a bit incomplete without the CD, Cage of Delirium is a wonderfully atmospheric little ghost story, and I recommend it highly.
An adventure for 6th-8th level characters.
Cage of Delirium was an interesting experiment for the Dungeon Crawl Classics line. It was apparently inspired by the Midnight Syndicate album “Gates of Delirium”, and that CD was enclosed in the print version with suggestions for playing specific tracks during specific encounters. Unfortunately, they didn’t work out a licensing agreement so you got the mp3s when you bought the PDF.
The adventure takes place in the burnt-out wreckage of Haverthold Asylum, which was once a good hospital for the treatment of the insane, but ended in a riot of fire and madness. As the PCs investigate the ruins, they encounter a number of ghosts and other undead, some violent and dangerous, but others pitiful and tragic. By speaking to the ghosts, observing the phantoms and piecing together case histories of the patients, the PCs can learn the story of the asylum’s violent end and dispel its evils.
The story of Haverthold Asylum is the story of its founder, Renald Stethenfield, and his twin sons, Luc and Marc. Renald’s wife died giving birth to Marc, and Luc had to be pulled from his mother’s corpse. Luc was never quite right, being prone to violence and self-destructive behavior, and Renald reluctantly committed the boy to his own asylum. Marc, on the other hand, was a model doctor, encouraging a lovely young inmate named Leena Dushea to come out of her shell, then marrying her once she was discharged from the asylum. Renald’s experiments in the treatment of mental illness took a dark turn later in his life, and it was this guilt that killed him at an early age. Marc took over the running of Haverthold Asylum, ceased the grim experiments, and tried to cure his twin brother.
This was a mistake. Luc Stethenfield had spent his time as an inmate building an army of the mad, and eventually overpowered and replaced his brother—since they were identical, no one was the wiser. Luc used his position of authority to torture the inmates in the name of “scientific progress”, and had Leena recommitted when she figured out the switch—and went back into catatonia after realizing she was pregnant. Eventually, Leena attacked Luc before leaping to her death, driving the wrongly imprisoned Marc insane. Marc escaped and opened the asylum doors to create a mad army of his own, and the asylum died ablaze, the twins clutching at each other’s throats to the last.
What I liked: Cage of Delirium is story heavy, and it’s a darn good story. Madness, revenge, ghosts. It’s conveyed to the PCs well through the use of the helpful ghosts, handouts and patient files—the patient files I especially like, because each doctor has different handwriting. This switch in handwriting serves as an early clue to the replacement of Marc by Luc Stethenfield. The helpful ghosts are well done, only conveying information if their own task has been set right. It makes for an interestingly non-linear experience, with the PCs running back and forth through the asylum to do research and meet with troubled spirits.
The monsters are creatively utilized in Cage of Delirium—unlike my complaint with The Haunted Lighthouse before, it’s clear what undead are the result of what tragedy. Allips are the inmates, shadows are Luc Stethenfield’s goons, wights his favored lieutenants, ghosts are the most plot important and (generally) harmless. F. Wesley Schnieder also does a good job reskinning monsters to make them fit better—there’s a possessed object template to make animated objects more ghostly, and unique creatures that turn up in this module are highly modified, undead pyrohydras or bone devils.
What I disliked: One of the lost souls that the PCs can help to free the asylum is the Ash Ghost, who shows up as a random encounter. It’s given an EL in its spot on the random encounter table, and I kept expecting to see its stat block. None was given. I then double-checked the information on the Ash Ghost, and saw that he is “non aggressive and disappears if attacked”. Oh bother. Should have caught that in editing.
The PDF lacks the soundtrack. I get the feeling that said soundtrack would do wonders for the atmosphere of Cage of Delirium. Fortunately, "Gates of Delirium" isn’t exclusive to this module—it was released independently several years before. So it shouldn’t be hard to track down.
Was it worth the $2? Although it feels a bit incomplete without the CD, Cage of Delirium is a wonderfully atmospheric little ghost story, and I recommend it highly.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #40: The Devil in the Mists
An adventure for 7th-9th level characters
The Devil in the Mists is the rare sequel in the DCC canon, being a follow-up to The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove, which I loved. The premise is, when the PCs emerge from beneath Smuggler’s Cove, their work turns out to have been for naught. Fairhaven has been wiped out, not by armies of locathath but by a strange blue mist. This mist, the so-called Mist of Merengar, after the old nobleman whose mysterious disappearance coincided with its first appearance (after building Fairhaven’s lighthouse and the manor down the hill from it), has been an occasional annoyance, but now the Mist has grown to lethal proportions.
Investigating the source of the Mist of Merengar leads the PCs into Fairhaven’s sewers, which have been taken over by opportunistic sahuagin (now that the local locathath have been killed or driven off, there’s no stopping them from moving in) who worship an “angel” named Sareth’turel and his blue mists. After slaying their high priestess, the PCs discover the source of the Mist—a portal to a prison plane, which the PCs (of course) get sucked into. Sareth’turel is the captive of honor in this plane, a bone devil whose opportunism and treachery earned him the ire of his infernal patron. In order to escape the prison, prevent Sareth’turel from escaping, and prevent the Mist of Merengar from expanding beyond Fairhaven’s borders, the PCs will need to overcome a small army of devils, solve puzzles and riddles, battle Lord Merengar’s unholy revenant itself and destroy the Leviathan of Dark Mists, a great heathen idol capable of pumping out enough of the Mist of Merengar to engulf the whole world.
What I liked: The numerous shout-outs to The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove were such that they could be ignored if The Devil in the Mists were to be run as a stand-alone, but enough so that they would enhance the experience as a whole. Finding out what happened to poor Lord Gregor Merengar, for instance, was a treat, and his undead gladiator form is both pitiful and fierce, making for a good combat challenge with a good story behind it, which I always approve of.
I also approve of the heathen idols as a monster to build a plot around. Great looming constructs built in a parody of angelic form, leaking mist that drives people mad? Good stuff right there.
What I disliked: A major theme in The Devil in the Mists is repetition. All of the fights with sahuagin feel pretty much the same. There are four sections of dungeon, and to get from one to another, the PCs have to collect three or four gem keys and place them in the proper place on a statue. Immediately before the climactic battle with Sareth’turel, a bone devil, the party fights… another bone devil! And there’s a lot of weird mechanical decisions to be found here—the heathen idol’s confusion gas has a Strength-based DC, and all of the sahuagin are wearing tons of armor and have no listed Swim bonus (so they walk along the ocean’s bottom, then?)
The Mists of Merengar themselves annoy me. I’m fine with the mist being a refined version of the mist of a heathen idol—I believe a town could tear itself apart if everyone in it suddenly became confused. But there’s no indication of that given in the text; it sounds more as if they were all poisoned or suffocated by the Mists, which is impossible in the actual context of the adventure. Worse, the sewers have little pockets of mist which do Strength and Constitution damage, which fits with the background, but doesn’t grok with the confusion effect. Lastly, and perhaps worst, is that that the entire point of The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove was to save this nice little town—but when the PCs get back from that adventure, Fairhaven is already dead, with no way for them to do anything about it. It feels like a cheap gut-punch, and I don’t like it.
Was it worth the $2? The Devil in the Mists, like all too many sequels before it, fails to live up to its superior predecessor.
An adventure for 7th-9th level characters
The Devil in the Mists is the rare sequel in the DCC canon, being a follow-up to The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove, which I loved. The premise is, when the PCs emerge from beneath Smuggler’s Cove, their work turns out to have been for naught. Fairhaven has been wiped out, not by armies of locathath but by a strange blue mist. This mist, the so-called Mist of Merengar, after the old nobleman whose mysterious disappearance coincided with its first appearance (after building Fairhaven’s lighthouse and the manor down the hill from it), has been an occasional annoyance, but now the Mist has grown to lethal proportions.
Investigating the source of the Mist of Merengar leads the PCs into Fairhaven’s sewers, which have been taken over by opportunistic sahuagin (now that the local locathath have been killed or driven off, there’s no stopping them from moving in) who worship an “angel” named Sareth’turel and his blue mists. After slaying their high priestess, the PCs discover the source of the Mist—a portal to a prison plane, which the PCs (of course) get sucked into. Sareth’turel is the captive of honor in this plane, a bone devil whose opportunism and treachery earned him the ire of his infernal patron. In order to escape the prison, prevent Sareth’turel from escaping, and prevent the Mist of Merengar from expanding beyond Fairhaven’s borders, the PCs will need to overcome a small army of devils, solve puzzles and riddles, battle Lord Merengar’s unholy revenant itself and destroy the Leviathan of Dark Mists, a great heathen idol capable of pumping out enough of the Mist of Merengar to engulf the whole world.
What I liked: The numerous shout-outs to The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove were such that they could be ignored if The Devil in the Mists were to be run as a stand-alone, but enough so that they would enhance the experience as a whole. Finding out what happened to poor Lord Gregor Merengar, for instance, was a treat, and his undead gladiator form is both pitiful and fierce, making for a good combat challenge with a good story behind it, which I always approve of.
I also approve of the heathen idols as a monster to build a plot around. Great looming constructs built in a parody of angelic form, leaking mist that drives people mad? Good stuff right there.
What I disliked: A major theme in The Devil in the Mists is repetition. All of the fights with sahuagin feel pretty much the same. There are four sections of dungeon, and to get from one to another, the PCs have to collect three or four gem keys and place them in the proper place on a statue. Immediately before the climactic battle with Sareth’turel, a bone devil, the party fights… another bone devil! And there’s a lot of weird mechanical decisions to be found here—the heathen idol’s confusion gas has a Strength-based DC, and all of the sahuagin are wearing tons of armor and have no listed Swim bonus (so they walk along the ocean’s bottom, then?)
The Mists of Merengar themselves annoy me. I’m fine with the mist being a refined version of the mist of a heathen idol—I believe a town could tear itself apart if everyone in it suddenly became confused. But there’s no indication of that given in the text; it sounds more as if they were all poisoned or suffocated by the Mists, which is impossible in the actual context of the adventure. Worse, the sewers have little pockets of mist which do Strength and Constitution damage, which fits with the background, but doesn’t grok with the confusion effect. Lastly, and perhaps worst, is that that the entire point of The Secret of Smuggler’s Cove was to save this nice little town—but when the PCs get back from that adventure, Fairhaven is already dead, with no way for them to do anything about it. It feels like a cheap gut-punch, and I don’t like it.
Was it worth the $2? The Devil in the Mists, like all too many sequels before it, fails to live up to its superior predecessor.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
DCC #43: The Curse of the Barrens
An adventure for 3rd-5th level characters.
Deep in the heart of a glacier in the Saint’s Blood Mountains lies an urn containing the ashes of Ocasta, an evil god slain and cremated by his own followers. This urn, unfortunately, has cracked and sprung a leak, tainting the waters of the river that flows from the glacier to bring sickness and cannibal madness to the descendants of the tribes that killed Ocasta. The druidic leader of the Tanen Tulwe Danne (aka the Raven People) went to the glacier to learn the source of the scourge on her people and found it occupied by wicked skarphe’inn (icy fish people) and skjoldulfr (icy fey), who promised to lift the curse in exchange for the fertility idol of their rivals, the Elthen Heldenu Danne (aka the Wolf People).
The Raven and Wolf People are now at war, the skarphe’inn now have the magical fertility idol to boost their own numbers, and the people of the Danne are still tainted with disease. Which is where the PCs come in. The Ambroshea Trading Company wants the PCs to find out why their trade with the natives has been disrupted, and that’ll entail breaking a siege on a wilderness fort, exploring a ghost town and delving deep into the heart of the glacier itself.
What I liked: The abandoned Raven People village is a masterful set-piece, combining exposition, suspense and a good mix of encounters. The last remaining Raven, the druid Snowleopard, has gone mad due to her efforts to save her people failing, and she’s carving a story pole to explain to future generations why the town died. All the while, the ghouls and ghasts of those who succumbed to their cannibal urges lurk in the shadows and bury themselves in their huts, afraid of Snowleopard and her undead bane spear, waiting for her to die so they can emerge and terrorize the countryside.
The two new monsters, the skarphe’inn and the skjoldulfr, are both well designed and work well together. I also like that the random encounter table takes into account average PC level, and has remarks on the attitudes of the creatures encountered (most animals, for example, are hostile only if provoked).
What I disliked: Unfortunately, the glacier dungeon, which should be the highlight and climax of The Curse of the Barrens, is rather dull. Most of the encounters boil down to a straight up brawl with either icy fish people, icy fey, or both. Both of them are good new monsters—but they’re not so good that fight after fight with them won’t get dull. Most of the variety comes from optional encounters many PCs will never find.
Take a look at the first paragraph. Notice all of those complicated, tongue-twisting names? I left a bunch out, including an entire pantheon of gods and the name of that abandoned village. The background for DMs is particularly bewildering, as it references every and all of them, rapid-fire, without necessarily explaining what they are referring to. I pride myself on my ability to keep track of fantasy gibberish, but even I got lost a few times.
Was it worth the $2? I feel ambivalent towards The Curse of the Barrens, leaning negative. I’d gladly steal the new monsters and the abandoned village for my home games, but I certainly wouldn’t run it as is.
An adventure for 3rd-5th level characters.
Deep in the heart of a glacier in the Saint’s Blood Mountains lies an urn containing the ashes of Ocasta, an evil god slain and cremated by his own followers. This urn, unfortunately, has cracked and sprung a leak, tainting the waters of the river that flows from the glacier to bring sickness and cannibal madness to the descendants of the tribes that killed Ocasta. The druidic leader of the Tanen Tulwe Danne (aka the Raven People) went to the glacier to learn the source of the scourge on her people and found it occupied by wicked skarphe’inn (icy fish people) and skjoldulfr (icy fey), who promised to lift the curse in exchange for the fertility idol of their rivals, the Elthen Heldenu Danne (aka the Wolf People).
The Raven and Wolf People are now at war, the skarphe’inn now have the magical fertility idol to boost their own numbers, and the people of the Danne are still tainted with disease. Which is where the PCs come in. The Ambroshea Trading Company wants the PCs to find out why their trade with the natives has been disrupted, and that’ll entail breaking a siege on a wilderness fort, exploring a ghost town and delving deep into the heart of the glacier itself.
What I liked: The abandoned Raven People village is a masterful set-piece, combining exposition, suspense and a good mix of encounters. The last remaining Raven, the druid Snowleopard, has gone mad due to her efforts to save her people failing, and she’s carving a story pole to explain to future generations why the town died. All the while, the ghouls and ghasts of those who succumbed to their cannibal urges lurk in the shadows and bury themselves in their huts, afraid of Snowleopard and her undead bane spear, waiting for her to die so they can emerge and terrorize the countryside.
The two new monsters, the skarphe’inn and the skjoldulfr, are both well designed and work well together. I also like that the random encounter table takes into account average PC level, and has remarks on the attitudes of the creatures encountered (most animals, for example, are hostile only if provoked).
What I disliked: Unfortunately, the glacier dungeon, which should be the highlight and climax of The Curse of the Barrens, is rather dull. Most of the encounters boil down to a straight up brawl with either icy fish people, icy fey, or both. Both of them are good new monsters—but they’re not so good that fight after fight with them won’t get dull. Most of the variety comes from optional encounters many PCs will never find.
Take a look at the first paragraph. Notice all of those complicated, tongue-twisting names? I left a bunch out, including an entire pantheon of gods and the name of that abandoned village. The background for DMs is particularly bewildering, as it references every and all of them, rapid-fire, without necessarily explaining what they are referring to. I pride myself on my ability to keep track of fantasy gibberish, but even I got lost a few times.
Was it worth the $2? I feel ambivalent towards The Curse of the Barrens, leaning negative. I’d gladly steal the new monsters and the abandoned village for my home games, but I certainly wouldn’t run it as is.
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