Shadow of the Dragon

[Netherstorm]

This is an actual play report of what will probably be a summer-long campaign of Dungeon Crawl Classics in New York. I'm hoping this thread will allow me to get answers to rules questions, advice on how to handle certain situations, and maybe even get some input on ideas and plot twists and stuff like that.

I ran a beta campaign last year, The Spell-Crypts of Thurfang Bormaug which I chronicled on the beta board here.

The game started out fun, but by session 7 or so there were a few problems. One problem was that there was an awful lot of page-flipping as we used the random charts. It was annoying and got in the way of the game.

But the main issue was simply that some players don't take to this 'old school' style of game.

I have run piles and piles of 4e. I love it. And running it in a game store means that I have had the great fortune of playing with many different people. Dozens, maybe even 100+ individuals have sat at my table. This has given me a lot of insight... patterns of behavior emerge.

I have seen two main types of player at the table over and over again:

"The Watcher": Dead silent, shy, doesn't want to roleplay. Is there, likes the game a lot, likes the social aspect.

"The Video Gamer": I don't know a better word for it. This guy hates rolling ones, gets mad when his character drops to 0 (which is nothing in 4e - it's almost impossible to truly die), hates it when their character falls down or "looks stupid", tries to 'maximize' his character, and thinks it's bad adventure design when their character doesn't "win" aka "beat the boss at the end of the level". On the flip side, they are also the most invested in your game, and they always thank you and are very grateful that you run the game.

There's other prominent types. There's the "player's girlfriend/wife", the "legit crazy person who drives other people out of the store", the "my turns take forever guy", and the "I play this game every week for 2 years and don't know any of the rules guy".

I'm not trying to be mean. I myself am a "can't stop making jokes guy" when I play. Almost all of them are very nice people and are fun to play with.

But what I learned was that "The Video Gamer" will hate Dungeon Crawl Classics. Zero level in DCC - you're weak. You're a plebian. You're going to die! And then at level one... you can't just run up to everything you encounter, hack it, and live. You will die. And when this happens, "The Video Gamer" gets mad and blames the game. Or they'll blame the DM. AKA, me!

So this year, I very carefully assembled my group of players. It's just three people. One is brand new to RPGs. The other two "get" what I try to do at the table: Tell a story together. Find the fun. If someone has a cool idea - we do it.

This campaign takes place south of The Vermilion Steppes from my Thurfang Bormaug Game. Our heroes are located on MM15 on the Aereth world map, west of the Valley of Xyr Muthal and south of the Citadel of Niraz.

The basic story is: The Dragon (who I rolled up on the dragon chart in the book) is looking for a sword from the previous campaign - Wormbrand Soulstriker. It was actually given to the dragon in that campaign, so apparently it's been stolen.

The Dragon has created a race of humanoids and has them rampaging across the land in search of the sword. The humanoids are like four-armed, 7 foot tall orcs who gain special powers when they eat different organs from a freshly-slain (or still living!) body. So, if they eat a brain, they have telekinesis or telepathy for a short while, that kind of thing. They can also jump far (like the hulk, but to a lesser degree) which makes travel easy for them.

Our heroes live in the pathetic town of Wretchford, where people are so sickly that poison ivy is a deadly threat.

My summary index is here.

The summary of the first session is on my site.. I should warn you that there is a lot of absurd, vulgar and stupid humor involved in Wretchford. It is here.

Basically:

- While we waited for Samantha to show up, Rameez and John messed around in Wretchford and went out into the woods. I rolled on my homemade random encounter chart... and rolled a 20! The Dragon! It was searching for the sword. John tried to ally himself with the dragon, but it created an earthquake (which is one of its' cool powers I rolled on the dragon chart) and flew away.

I had them survive. I didn't feel like having them roll up new characters so quickly!

- They went through the zero-level adventure Sailors on the Starless Sea. They enjoyed it. Poor Rameez, who is brand new to RPGs, lost all three of his characters. Three more were 'rescued' in the tower, and he took control of them.

- The ice chamber was quite an ordeal for them. They went in once and had to bail out. They came back later with a clever plan, dragged the corpse out, and looted the armor and axe. Rameez claimed the axe, which is made of meteoric iron, perfect for his astronomer!

- The effigy/chaos lord had its' hand cut off and fell into the starless sea... he will be back. I had indicated to the heroes that The Dragon had created the 'chaos lords' as an experiment long ago.

- When they dragged the body out of the ice tomb, John saw a twisting shadow in the form of the dead chaos lord (Felan, I believe). This was to foreshadow the curse. John's PC has a pregnant girlfriend. I plan to have her give birth to an evil baby chaos lord, basically a baby version of the thing on the cover of the module....

John wants to be a wizard and worship Bobugbubilz (demon lord of amphibians). In real life, he loves frogs, and he loves playing wizards. That's why I knew he would love this game. So for next time, my plan is to have Bobugbubilz summon him to a nearby cave and make a deal: John's girlfriend/wife will give birth in the cave, and the baby will be handed over to Bobugbubilz's demons. In exchange, john will be given patronage. Also, Bobugbubilz will wipe the wife's memory of the incident, and even change her appearance to John's liking.

Rameez has indicated that he wants to go to the dinosaur valley of Xyr Muthal. An NPC had mentioned that there was a woman there who had a sceptre that allowed her to command the dinosaurs. He wants it!

Sam will learn that her link with Shat Thawson means that when she sleeps, her astral form will appear where Shat Thawson is. She will try to help him survive the weird Realm of Etheria, where Dimensional Sailors ride flying skiffs looking for slaves and who knows what else.

The party also want to find another cow for Wretchford. Sam had a hilarious idea of finding a cow-woman and bringing her back to town. Yep.

They found a map to Mustertown, a hook for them to go through Perils of the Sunken City, but it sounds like they aren't taking the bait. So I'll prepare for the whole baby/frog cave, and the trip to the dinosaur valley. I'll probably plop Doom of the Savage Kings in there for future use. We play again in two weeks.

Also, I cooked up a soundtrack to play during the games. This thread helped me tremendously. Unfortunately it is hard to track down music from bands like Camel, so I ended up with mostly music from a few modern retro-rock bands.

DCC Soundtrack Vol 1

Iron Swan - The Sword
Mountains on Mars - Electric Wizard
March of the Lor - The Sword
Tombstone Shadow - Creedance Clearwater Revival
Wooden Pipe - Electric Wizard
Freya - The Sword
Devil's Bride - Electric Wizard
In A Gadda Da Vida (17 minute version!) - Iron Butterfly
Wheels of Satan - Serpent Throne
The Wall of Yawn - Sleep
Veil of the Black Witch - Serpent Throne

[Ravenheart87]

DCC Soundtrack Vol 1

Iron Swan - The Sword
Mountains on Mars - Electric Wizard
March of the Lor - The Sword
Tombstone Shadow - Creedance Clearwater Revival
Wooden Pipe - Electric Wizard
Freya - The Sword
Devil's Bride - Electric Wizard
In A Gadda Da Vida (17 minute version!) - Iron Butterfly
Wheels of Satan - Serpent Throne
The Wall of Yawn - Sleep
Veil of the Black Witch - Serpent Throne

Cool soundtrack. I would've added some Black Sabbath and Bal-Sagoth too.