DM Report: Portal Under the Stars (SPOILERS)

[Gizrond]

A little late getting this out, but I work at a college and we have finals going on.

We started our DCC campaign at Pop Culture in Raymond, New Hampshire on Saturday, November 28th. The game went well and everyone really seemed to enjoy it. I ran the group through Portal Under the Stars. None of the players had any experience with DCC, but all six had a ton of RPG experience. Most of them were part of the regular Pathfinder Society group that meets at the store on Saturdays.

I pregenerated 24 0-levels on Purple Sorcerer and distributed them randomly. After a brief round of trading, each of the players had 4 0-level peasants and we were ready to begin. Being Pathfinder regulars, there was a lot of grumbling about the stat scores, but they were willing to give it a go.

I started Portal on the premise that the group was deep in the celebration of the Harvest Festival when Old Man Roberts whipped them into a drunken frenzy with his tales of ancient doors and metal men. They formed a peasant mob and set out to loot the ancient tomb. When they got there, they had sobered up a bit and now faced the door. After a peasant with the most hit points tried to pry a gem from the door and got blasted down to one hit point, the wizard’s apprentice in the group made an intelligence check and figured out the correlation between the constellations on the door and in the sky. The mob decided to gather brush for torches, slaughter some livestock, and have a cookout while they waited for the stars to match the door.

Once in the tomb, the caravan guard peeked in the door to the first room and spotted the spear statues. He backed out and asked one of the gongfarmers to peek in and verify what he saw. When Hodrick the gongfarmer leaned in the doorway to look, the caravan guard kicked him into the room, setting off the trap. Hodrick became the first casualty - death by spears. The mob looted the statues of every piece they could use and set off into the next room.

The statue room claimed the most victims. In spite of the giant pointing statue following their movements, one of the peasants had his dog herd a goat into the east door and then all hell broke loose. The first round killed two, the second killed three more. Then the wizard’s apprentice had the idea of hiding between the statue’s legs and by the end of the round, most of the remaining group was in a big cluster, hugging the statue’s legs. One of the players refused to see reason and continued to attack the statue and, while he was rolling extremely well on to hit and damage, just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t able to kill a giant granite statue. After losing two of his peasants, he reluctantly fled the room, grumbling about challenge ratings being too high or something. One small group fled to the burial chamber and spent a few rounds smashing skulls and looting bone piles. They did keep one skull as a trophy and stored it away in a barrel.

After the statue ran out of fuel, the surviving peasants made their way to the pool room. They tried for a bit to kill the crystal golems, but stopped once someone got punched to death and they realized the statues were only interested in the torches. One of the group pulled the woodcutter’s body from the statue room into the pool room and the golems gathered around it as it burned (he had a backpack full of wood). They pried about a dozen crystals from the bottom of the pool, but then one of the group suggested that they might be crystal golem eggs and everyone got out of the pool.

The mob made their way down the stairs to the strategy room. Once there, they played around with the figures, found the silver ones, and then the caravan guard opened the door and peeked in. He noticed the water dripping from the ceiling. Once the Warlord and the clay soldiers began moving, the peasant mob frantically slammed the door and used the tables to hold it shut. Half of the peasants ran back upstairs and started digging out the crystals from the pool. When the pool floor shifted, they climbed out and began digging them out with spears and shovels from around the edge. Eventually the floor collapsed and dumped the remaining water on the clay statues. I decided that about 25 of the statues were about to climb out of the pit before the water fell. The ones that did make it out began trying to smash down the door, along with the Warlord and surviving General. One of the peasants above had a sling, so he began sniping the clay statues while the others tried to rig a barrel and chain to use as a way to knock clay statues into the water.

At this point I decided the mob had gotten through too easily so far, so I had Ssisssuraaaaggg come in from his lair and attack the group at the pool from behind. He killed a dwarf jeweler outright and then the mob upstairs began to focus attention on him. After a little back and forth and doing a good amount of damage to him, they all held their actions to go all at once and attempt to throw Ssisssuraaaaggg off the ledge into the pool below. They were successful and he missed on a tail swipe to take a few with him. One of the peasants moved the flaming corpse to the edge of the pool and drew the crystal golems over, then he and a few other peasants pushed them over into the pool. This happened about the same time the clay statues broke through the door below.

Led by the caravan guard, four of the peasants attempted to use the tables from the strategy room to push the clay statues into the muddy pool, while the rest fanned out to engage them. The group above looked for things to throw down at the clay statues. The crystal golems made their way out of the muddy pool and went right after the Warlord, but he and the remaining general made short work of them. Ssisssuraaaaggg popped up out of the water and struck an Elven glassblower, killing him instantly. The sole remaining dwarf leaped onto Ssisssuraaaaggg and rolled a natural 20, finishing him off with a dagger. The peasant with the sling finally took out the Warlord, causing the other clay statues to melt into goo.

After that, there wasn’t much left but looting the secret chamber and gathering up the survivors to head back to town. By the end, 12 out of the original 24 had survived. The store closed at 11pm, but we stayed until about 12:45. Everyone agreed that it was a great time.