Eric couldn’t make it to finish up Doom of the Savage Kings, so I asked Rachel and Renee if they would pick up the characters who died in Frozen in Time and play in an idea I had, playing their dead characters in a Hell Funnel.

Good times.

As with all Dungeon Crawl Classics games I run, I start AP threads remembering the dead, in this case, the dead were already dead but now their souls have become part the infernal flora of hell.

*Rest in Hell*

Elsen the Watchman of King’s Landing, killed by stirge-like apprentices in a wizard’s tower, just off the River Styx.

*Welcome to Hell*

I monologued for maybe too long to set the tone. It might’ve been the longest exposition I’ve ever given to start off a game but hell’s tricky.

The characters found themselves in a 20 by 20 cube, a cage made of iron ribs, on jagged wheels, being pulled by a beast of burden that seemed to be made of the bodies of dozens of sinners, slammed together into a vaguely oxen-like shape, if you were around when oxen were created but don’t really remember or care about the particulars.

There were three comets in the sky, one much lower than the others. The comets stand out specially because the sky seemed to suck light. One was low on the horizon, probably about to crash into the ground.

Everything hurts. Time is odd and difficult to manage. It feels like coming out of a fever dream, the rhythmic creaking of the wheels. The desert sands are bone white. The last thing you remember is dying.

That kinda shit.

*The Devils*

When the comet crashed, the devils flying around the cage grew agitated and began to argue in Infernal, which sounds like a mixture of every ugly word in every language and vomiting. They packed up the items the characters had on them when they died and began to leave.

Maze the Thief tried to beg them to let them out before they left. I reckoned that begging a jailer is a skilled roll for a thief. The roll failed and the devils laughed. One spoke common.

“To the west are the mountains, Asmodeus. You could take your chances with him. To the north is Dis; you won’t make it there. To the east are the Drowned Swamps. To the south is the Styx.”

And with that the demons flew away with all of their stuff.

*The Iron Ribs Cage*

It turns out the cage was a Frost Giant an the lock, its head, still talked. I knew the lock talked when I had envisioned the encounter. I really had no idea how or if they were going to get out of the cage cube. Renee’s character, Nanny Millhouse Cromwell was a blacksmith, so I made a personality roll to talk an iron cage into opening for them a skilled roll, due to her familiarity with iron.

A stretch? It is in hell. Wtf.

She talked the lock into opening and she rolled so well that the lock asked to be unscrewed from the cage, to come with them and perhaps lock up something else somewhere.

After a brief discussion, it was decided that any opportunity to see the Styx in-game should be taken. South they went.

*Prep?*

I didn’t do much prep. I jotted down some ideas for what was in each cardinal direction and daydreamed some ideas of what encounters are like in hell. It felt like prep I would’ve done when I was 14 and winging it, high on Mountain Dew and youth.

*The Ferryman*

On the Styx was a ferryman, some patches of scalp and hair still clung to its scalp and it was going through a bag, tossing items aside that it didn’t want. In the hold of its barge were a dozen or so souls, newly arrived, just like the PC’s. They were begging.

They overhead the ferryman talk to a cultist in the hold because he spoke Infernal but the ferryman was unswayed. On the ground around it were ceremonial knives, coins, tiny polished stones, boots, flowers – things people might’ve been buried with. It pulled a long noose out of the bag.

The barge was held to shore by a longer noose rope

After Mave the Thief did some sneaking and got his hands on a few knives – one silver and one bronze. They decided to untie the noose and try to get on the boat and into the Styx’s rough current before the ferryman could catch them.

There was rope swinging and stabbing and derring-do. Nanny fell into the Styx and failed her Stamina roll, getting amnesia, no longer remembering dying at all, no longer aware that she was in hell (I figured if she was in the Styx longer she’d lose more and more memory).

The ferryman was stabbed off the rope.

They found themselves on a barge, floating on a fetid, oily river with treacherous currents.

Mave picked up the ferryman’s pole and made a solid Int roll to navigate the river; that turned out to be a big, big deal.

*The Souls*

Nanny asked for her love. Mave assured her that her love was fine. “She’s fine because she isn’t here. We’re in hell, actually in Hell.”

Mave found the key to the hold in a bag of silver and freed the other souls. Renee rolled up 3 more characters to add to her funneling.

The ship went down the river for four years, it seemed. No one really talked for those years, too scared to upset a shipmate. It felt like an awkward four years on a boat. The river branched off, one area was a calm cove and the other was rough. When one of the souls suggested that a calm cove in hell must be a trick, Mave aggreed and turned into the white water.

*The Tower and Charon*

They came upon a broken, charred tower that was easy enough to dock at. When people stepped off of the boat, Mave felt a churning in her gut, as if something was wrong. It was her first biological feeling in a long time.

Renee’s new characters, all with pretty posh stats, went ashore to see this tower. It had no doorway but had several oblong oval windows.

There was a stretched skin of an abusive wizard, who said his apprentices must’ve cursed themselves with his magic. He had a long conversation with Elsen the Watchmen, who Renee decided had been from King’s Landing.

When the apprentices buzzed into the tower, Renee’s two characters who were at the foot of the tower, casually turned their back on him and walked back to their own barge.

Elsen died, trying to lead the, Anophelii-inspired, stirge-like apprentices back to the ship. George R. R. Martin would’ve been proud as Elsen of King’s Landing’s blood was sucked dry and he was dragged into the tower to be fashioned into a throw rug to go over the wizard-skin. Renee seemed relieved that her excuse to make Game of Thrones jokes was off the table.

Meanwhile, back on the boat, a ship came out of the mist for Mave. She knew it came for her. Charon walked off of his ship from a plank and boarded Mave’s recently stolen ship.

Charon took the bag of silver that the key was in.

J: Renee, did you take the bag of silver?

R: I didn’t say I did, so I guess I didn’t.

J: Asshole Judging is in effect! The silver is still in the front of the boat. Charon takes it.

Charon explained to Mave that she owned him silver for each of the souls she had transported across the river. She offered the silver knife she had stolen and Charon took that and complimented her river skills.

Charon: Would you like to be unmaksed? (showing a sharpened hooked thumb-bone)
Mave: No, I will remain masked.

After explaining that Mave was to charge one silver for each eye of each passenger, Charon walked away.

“The first eye is mine. The rest is yours.”

Renee: 50%, you won’t find a better deal in all of Hell.

XP

Cage – 2
Ferryman – 3
River Styx – 2
Tower – 3

That was fun and a great way to stay sideways connected to the ongoing game but not moving on without a player. If I could’ve gone back and done a bit more prep, I would’ve had a random encounter table for each direction and a loose map for my own use and inspiration.

I’m excited to find out what life is like for a group of damned souls moving with the Styx’s current, with a anointed ferry-woman leading the way.

From this thread on the G+ group. You are drunk and you know that if you go home now, all will be well. You will go to bed, have some odd dreams and wake up with a headache, having never seen the darkest alleys this town has in its shadows, nor will you have sipped from its sweetest fountains. If you don’t go home – you keep drinking, tell me what you have on you and what you left back in your room and make a Stamina Check and a Luck Check, DC 5! No matter what the dice say, something fun is about to happen. Maybe dangerous, maybe embarrassing, maybe lovely.

“Hold up! One more drink couldn’t hurt. Right?”

Succeed on both. You wake up back in your room with a lovely local and have given them a good, lusty story about the joys of spending the night with an adventurer. They are waking up and you have no idea what their name is.

Failed Stamina, Successful Luck. You wake up vomiting in the bed of (NPC the character would actually really like). You are going to be so sick and don’t remember anything about the person whose bed you are in other than that you remember a vague feeling that they might help turn you life around. Take -1d to all rolls until you rest for 2d20 turns.

Successful Stamina, Failed Luck. You wake up in your own bed, in the company of a lovely local who will likely always remember this lusty evening spent with an adventurer. There is a knock at the door. Someone is angry about your evening plans and is about to make your life difficult.

Failed both! You wake up in a tangle of slumbering bodies covered in bite marks, bruises and ritual scarring in the shadow of an altar to a chtonic deity. What the fuck happened last night? You remember nothing. You have 1 hit point. Take -1d to all rolls until you rest for 2d20 turns.

In Frozen in Time, a PC found a katana dating from the Eternal Shogunate of the Lich Shogun. It was listed as +1.

Inspired by the katana dating from the Eternal Shogunate of the Lich Shogun, here are rules for awakening swords.

When items sit in a ruin for a long time, especially when they are removed from their original context they fade and shrivel in power. To restore the item’s puissance they have to be awakened, usually through a short ritual that connects the item with its original purpose.

How to wake up an item can be discovered via a Cleric’s Detect Magic spell of 16 or higher or a DC 20 INT skill roll (+1d if you have a relevant library at hand).

Katana of the Eternal Shogunate of the Lich Shogun

I have to keep this secret because it is in game. Sorry.

Awaken

REDACTED

Powers

Once the sword is awakened, it will REDACTED

Silver Sword of the Lich-Queen

These bastard swords are made from a metal that no one on the Prime Material Plane can recognize, having been forged in dragon-fire, crafted from the bones of a dead god.

Awaken

To awaken the blade from its dormant state, the wielder must deal the killing blow to either a Githzarai or an Illithid.

Powers

Once it is awakened the blade will glow a ghostly silver. It will allow the wielder to cut extra-planar’s ties to target’s home plane, stranding them on the plane where the sword took their hit points down to less than half. Silver Swords of the Lich Queen do double damage and +1d to-hit against any manacles, chains or other devices used to tether any creature against their will. If the blade is gently laid in a pool of water, it will point to the nearest gate to the astral plane, Illithid or Githzarai, as per the wielder’s request.

Once the blade is awakened, Githyanki will seek out it (3d30 months for the first Githyanki Silver Retrieval Platoon to hone in on the blade’s whereabouts.) likely killing the wielder and anyone who dares defend the foul thief.

The act of leaving everything you know behind in order to face chaos, death and blood carves a space out of the world, A seed that sprouts slowly and subtly but grows more concrete as adventures are scarred and beaten in the ruins, tombs and towers where they gain their gold and experience. This magic starts as something subtle, barely remembered dreams, shapes of adventures to come. Time and survival carve out a piece of dream-space where future delves can be planned and past adventures can be memorialized in a room-sized pocket dimensional demi-plane: the Tavern Between Dreams.

Judge Notes

During those first levels, they have vague dreams of symbols that represent the modules that could come next, perhaps if there is more than one to choose from, you allow them to choose a vague symbol representing an adventure to come. The dreams become more clear, more lucid over time. There is a table for the group to sit around, a tome to write down their intentions when they wish to break the laws of creation (DCCRPG, 306).

Eventually, someone is there, a castellan, a servant, sometimes referred to as a tavern-keeper. The Tavern-Keeper serves drinks and offers an understanding ear. Whether the Tavern-Keeper is a soulless construct, a ghost or some kind of gestalt soul of all of the adventurers who died on the way is unknown.

Levels

1st: Experiences in the space are vague and misty, INT check DC 10 to see if you remember anything but a single symbol or image upon waking.

2nd: It is all a faraway dream but growing more tangible while you are there, INT check DC 5 to see if you remember anything more than a single image or symbol upon waking.

3rd: A vivid and clear waking dream, the table and the tome with its quill are solid, you remember everything upon waking.

4th: The tavern-keeper is present, acting as if it was always there.

5th: Grottos for trophies and memorial statues representing those who have died are present. All trophies are dream-objects representing great deeds. Scrolls recording the band’s adventures are present. Real world items that were being held while falling asleep can be stored here.

6th: Party members can invite an ally to join them here for a lucid dream. Oaths made here are unusually binding.

7th: Friends and loved ones can offer a token while in the Tavern Between Dreams, this token can be used to contact them through dreams.

8th: Messengers arrive who can send and receive missives to mortals through dreams.

9th: The messengers within the tavern-space can petition greater powers (demons, devils, elemental lords, beast lords, archmages, liches, etc.).

10th: The Tavern Between Dreams anchors itself into the waking world, becoming a pocket plane with a door that can open whenever 3 or more members of the band are within sight of one another.

Essentially, this whole thing is a corny reason to deposit the group from one DCC module to another with a thin in-game magical excuse, giving the group an arcane place that grows with their characters in which they can celebrate their victories and raise their cups to the victorious dead.

I have an idea for a Total Party Kill 0-level funnel. Please respond to the below question and help me develop it a bit.

Thank you!

Your group was prepared and had a solid plan but a few bad rolls and some unlucky decisions led to a total party kill. You are the first half-hour into the game.

The Judge doesn’t seem worried.

“Tell me which of your characters went to heaven and which went to hell?”

Hell

Your characters’ souls are stuck in a barbed iron cube cage, 30 x 30. Winged devils wheel in the black-clouded skies overhead and the white salt plains stretch out to the Devil-God’s body, stretched across the horizon like a mountain range. Whatever lumbering beast of burden is pulling the cage might haveve been human; you aren’t sure.

The Devils take whatever they can carry (including many of the items the PC’s were carrying when they died) to avoid a coming storm. You over-hear them say something about making it to Marrow-town, by flying towards the Devil-God’s feet for half a day, before the storm hits.

You are 0-level, no matter what level you were in life. Your experiences are in the items the devils are carrying with them to Marrow-town.

Local flora takes the shape of bodies stretched out as if in the midst of a painful spasm. Local fauna look like they might be made of people’s souls molded to look like a devil’s memory of the real world’s predators, prey and domesticated animals.

The winged devils are specks on the horizon. Your cage’s beast of burden has wondered back into the area, chewing on a cactus that looks like a screaming thing. The wind is picking up. Thunder and lightning are growing closer.

What do you do?

Paladin in Hell by David C. Southerland

Wrote this up as a post on the DCCRPG G+ Community but wanted it on the blog too.

Tonight we played Frozen in Time as a 0 level funnel.

If you don’t know what a funnel is, it breaks down like so. Players have four 0-level characters with vocations like beekeeper, blacksmith, elven glassblower, slave, wainwright, etc. They go through a dungeon adventure with 1-4 hit points and those who survive become the player characters.

First thing’s first…

Rest in Peace

Nannie Milhaus Cromwell the smith, femoral artery pierced by Bore Bugs

Delbret the Beepkeeper, skull crushed like a grape by a robot’s pincer-hands, skull cavity licked thoroughly by Carl the Pig (not a nickname, an actual pig)

Highlights

Hugo trading for a grappling hook and a Holy Symbol of the Whale God just outside the caves with the locals who came to watch the crazy foreigners go into the haunted glacier.

Players winning the yeti over with food when fire didn’t work.

Groat the Slave, in the midst of the battle with the robot, praying over his strange shaped rock to the Chaos Gods for aid – no response.

Players wrapping the robot up in a chain, winning a big Strength test and holding it down for a while. Once 5 PC’s were holding the chain, I asked them to make a Strength roll vs the robot, with the highest Strength modifier and the players rolling a d30 vs the Robot’s d20. They won and held it down for a bit.

Then was a funky moment where Groat gumbled, Eric rolled on the fumble table and rolled a 16+ but with the robot subdued, it made more sense for a really bad fumble to mean cutting the chain and with the group’s blessing, that is what I did.

Then Groat picked up the katana of the Enteral Shogunate of the Lich Shogun, fumbling and cutting the chain that was holding down the robot.

Group killing the robot just before it could kill Groat.

Llaras fitting into the Petal Knight’s full plate armor after making the roll of a 17 on a Luck check.

E: Llaras would like to wear the armor. Does it fit?

J: I dunno. Make a luck roll!

Thoughts

There are a whole lot of slow, even nearly harmless rooms but that ramps up the tension for those rooms where there is a whole lot at stake. Fun times for my first time as a DCCRPG Judge!

I’m reading Dungeon Crawl Classics, preparing to take on the role of Judge this Sunday.  I really like the modules, love how compact they are. 20 or so pages feels like the most I’d want an adventure to be and their form factor is just right. DCC has me thinking up first adventure 0-level funnel ideas, situations where people first set aside their place in the world, their born vocations in order to deal with the chaos, sorcery, blood and maybe glory that can be found in adventuring.

9 Gates

The adventure is about the party getting through the dangerous shanty town outside the city’s walls. They hope to get in to the city proper through one of its well guarded gates, set their previous vocations aside and join a warriors’, wizards’ or thieves’ guild.

True Monsters

Tax collectors, expecting no trouble this far from the 100 Dukes’ War, are coming to take the town’s grain storage, leaving the party’s village all to starve.

The Greedy and the Dead

The caravan the players are traveling with is in shambles after bandits were driven off in the night but the greedy bastards will be back once night falls on this oasis; the morning light is showing a pyramid that no one had noticed before.

Between Starvation and the Snake God

In which a dangerous cult takes root during a long siege as starvation causes desperation.

Wizard’s Wake

The town’s local hedge wizard dies, face down in his own vomit, but not before mumbling something about his former adventuring band will be back to take what he owes them from his tower, his mausoleum and the town he calls home.

I need to take a look at punitive delving again.