Randomly heard
Rainbow and immediately thought it sounded a great deal like some things from OK Computer.
Then listen to I Believe In You. Also from their experimental album “Spirit of Eden”. I bet the whole album is good.
Read on wikiped, Radiohead members (or just one?) stated they were influenced by Talk Talk. And apparently a lot of bands were.
*** BSOLO and XSOLO modules sound perfect. 1 PC, solo play,... sure it's old basic D&D rules, I can make that work. https://wizards-tower.com/2016/08/ghost-of-lion-castle-a-dd-solo-adventure/
Blizzard Pass by Zeb Cook and Maze of the Riddling Minotaur by Jeff Grub come to mind, as does the Advanced D&D adventure Midnight on Dagger Alley by Merle Rasmussen. Many of these featured either invisible ink or “magic viewer” gimmicks, however.
While both invisible ink and a (red plasticene) magic viewer both sound like interesting and novel ways to keep players from “cheating” in a solo adventure and enhance the sense of discovery, they don’t seem to have helped in preserving the physical longevity of the individual books.
I also suspect the difficulty and transferring those modules to PDF will make seeing them reissued for digital sale unlikely. Too bad, considering Zeb Cook and Jeff Grub are both RPG legends.
He has some interesting takes. Many of these written when 3.5e came out, and he didn't like the changes. But he loved 3.0e.
Anyway, interesting reads regardless... and it seems like a lot of the OD&D and OSR ppl thought the same sort of thing. Or read his blog and ... yeah.
These links about what made old AD&D so good, via Dan. He says things like "narrative of a good novel and a good dnd module is the opposite. He likes the players having choice (and thigns being very hidden) and maybe never getting from G1 to G2 to G3, etc. Not sure I agree there, but I do agree that older DnD was better when it was about the mythology and bringing stories to life. He got upset with 3.5e being more about power balance between players, when it was much less a worry before (he says).https://www.superdan.net/gaming/grtdnd/grtdnd1.html
His interesting mathematics analysis of D20 being auto hits: https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2025/02/why-did-natural-20s-become-automatic.html
He has many links to many of his sites here: https://www.blogger.com/profile/00705402326320853684
Module he commented on, haven't really heard of before, levels 10-14, interesting:
Comic versions
https://media.wizards.com/images/dnd/cartoons/toon_G2Full.jpg
https://media.wizards.com/images/dnd/cartoons/toon_G1R1Full.jpg
More https://dnd.wizards.com/media-gallery
Note, the kid is playing 5e characters, but using some 1E ideas from the original modules.
So far, this has some of the best info: https://merricb.com/2024/01/07/add-review-the-glacial-rift-of-the-frost-giant-jarl/
WOW, check out this summary of monsters and loot items: https://www.adventurelookup.com/adventures/g1-2-3-against-the-giants
Wonder if this text written out G1-G2-G3 campaign has some good ideas... probably, too long to read right this second: https://rpggeek.com/thread/1517067/toms-against-the-giants-campaign-ic-thread-ch-1-st/page/8
Next time
Change
Slide down to carrion crawlers (natural trap). Bones of orcs all over. Make it seem like orc bones to life… then… meat on bones…
Carrion crawlers! Five of em! Two max health, 3 low hp.
They r hungry.. gonna finish bone meat. Now yall r there.
-‘’————— below is reaults Above is Next time
The kid went around and had avoided the big room 11, went in dungeon area and recruited 120 orcs. Well, with all those orcs, the big giant fight later in room 11 was kinda too easy. I think he had fun though, but man it took forever... 2 days of our time. I made a cameo drow priestess appearance at the very end for a split second.
He found the crazy Waythe giant slaying sword that detects enemies.
Yesterday we had him rest and finish mopping up the upper floors, which were abandoned. Except for the dire wolves. He went out there, and the giant that kept the wolves was back (looking to loot the whole place now that the orc army was gone). He thought the 4 measly party members would be easy pickings... nope. But funnily enough, the party took more damage (I critted 3 times) in this little skirmish than they had in the whole super room 11 giant fight. No orc meatshields, and the kid didn't barbarian rage so took full dmg.
Next will be the leftover dungeon area... carrion crawlers. Then G2!
5e DnD in mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rb1txxtnGc Has good ones to consider.
More obvious ones below
UPDATE - This one totally works! NICE.
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
---
Sounds like the dndcombat.com is gone/doesn't work, retired till Dnd 6e the guy says. One cost $8000 per year so he gave up (the site doesn't work for me at least):
https://www.enworld.org/threads/dndcombat-com-retired-will-stay-down.693098/page-3
So, back to simple calculations. Trying to figure out orcs vs. hill giants isn't too hard using avg dice rolls. We estimated in our head (used decent math) then set up a smaller skirmish, 15 orcs (2 had range) vs. two hill giants. Orcs were not able to completely surround them. And 1/3 of the orcs had clubs for 1d4 dmg. 6 orcs were left, but it actually was pretty close and could have maybe swung the other way.
This is all in prep for how the fight is going to go in G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief/ Against the Giants. Since the kid recruited like 100 or 125 orcs from the dungeon area... now he has a pretty good chance against the room 11 gazillion giants.
But I still wanna calc some more to see if we really are close or if it's going to be too easy. Of course morale could change things and ... backstabbing orcs near the end could change things.
Maybe a Spreadsheet with a macro or something is the way to go.
well hold up, this one works. But to do monster vs. monster... you have to make a character then edit it to be monster stats. I did a fighter level 1, then modified to be orc stats. Seems to be working, but I gotta re-add fake-orc-2, fake-orc-3, etc. Slow but it kinda works. WAIT, there is a dern increase count, so this totally works! NICE.
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
UPDATE, RESULTS FROM BATTLE in Rm11 of G1 with the Orc Army:
The 120ish orcs made it a little too easy. I think it was still fun, but there were like 30 orcs left, and the party had basically never been threatened. To spice it up, I had 2 stone giants come up from the dungeon area to surprise the party from behind at the very end. Due to some other reasons, I also had a drow sneak around and insect plague the remaining 30 orcs at the very end. It was a super long fight... not sure it was extremely fun for me the DM until those changes at the end.
Erst / Erstwhile - in the past
ere - before
hither - here
thither - there
Good to use these in some dnd games.
I think I will give
Wand of lightning bolts. I'll edit it a little:
This wand has 9 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the lightning bolt spell (save DC 15) from it. For 1 charge, you cast the 3rd-level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot level by one for each additional charge you expend. If runs out, might destroy.
regains 1d6 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn
~~~so with 9 charges, you can cast a level 6 (11d6) twice [38.5 avg dmg], and still have 1 charge left to not destroy it.
Axe of giant slaying. +2 to hit vs giants, and extra 1d8 (or extra 1d10???) vs. giants.
1d12+1d8 = 2 to 20 dmg.
Compare to the 3d6 flame sword, we're only doing it 3 fights per day.
3d6 = 18 dmg. But against everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2ocEXTc5Gs&list=LL&index=1&t=302s&pp=gAQBiAQB0gcJCb4JAYcqIYzv
CSM1 - Fog of War is the name of it. Only 100 print ever made. Art looks like 1980, but made around 2012 or 2014. Related to Center Stage miniatures. And .. Pacesetter Games & Simulations in Michigan. By Bill Bars.
I might try these solo adventures- https://pacesettergames.com/collections/solo-adventures
Other modules are
http://www.nerdovore.com/2015/09/the-proper-pronunciation-of-drow.html
Well, I guess I was accidentally right this whole time, originally saying it with a long O sound like snow, grow, etc.
Personally I will use the idea that different languages/regions inside of dnd say it like that or like the ow/cow way. Keeps it interesting.
Even Writers for modules… the two guys now at Goodman games… Chris Doyle the bald smiley fellow says it like cow and Rick Maffei the NY accent calm speaker guy says it like snow. Maffei makes it a point in this video I think, “50 greatest classic adventures of all time: adventures 35- 31” on yt, at time maybe time 30:00 or around there. Found it the episode before (39-36) when talking about g3 (against the giants) at time 42:50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVMZm0bChVE
Ok not this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yUmwdXI1Ho
Historically-
It is apparently from Scottish then old English, dark elves hiding from the sun, attacking people from under bridges or caves. Root word is Dtrow, related to the word troll.
Quote from the top blogger link…
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1970) states:
Best damn reviews are by Chris Doyle and Rick Maffei via Goodman Games (acct) on yt, two episodes
1. “Our top 10 classic adventure modules — talkimg TSR” top 10 classic adventure modules — talkimg TSR https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GDe1jUH7AmU
2. “Our top 10 … adv series” or something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDe1jUH7AmU
3. Top 50… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kK3m2OSTniA
On number 1:
Eye of the Serpent. **good for one dm and one player** Roc puts u on mtn.
N1 Cult of reptile god (kinda like village of Hommlet but better).
On number 2:
Against the giants
Egypt desert themed series
On num 3,
3.5e had “the red hand of doom” lotsa NPCs levels 6-12. Their fav WotC 3.5e module.
NIGHT’s dark Terror … lvls 2-4. Suoer cool goblins, variety.
Broken down, it involved specifically two interval training sessions per week, along with one hour of “base pace,” which focused on a fun activity like low to moderate-intensity sports, cycling, or hiking. At peak training load, participants were training 5–6 hours per week, while during the maintenance period of the latter 14 months, that was dropped to about 4 hours, and included the removal of one of the two interval training sessions.
https://www.sciencealert.com/softgel-capsules-draw-concerns-over-toxic-shells-heres-what-to-know
Well of course... these damn gel coverings can't just be a normal simple natural thing that isn't terrible. Why the heck can't they just use normal stuff?
Bad news:
To make the capsule shell soft and pliable, manufacturers often use plasticisers – chemicals called phthalates. While these help with flexibility and durability, they're also linked to a range of health concerns.
Phthalates are known as endocrine disruptors – substances that can interfere with hormone systems. Studies, particularly in animals, suggest they can affect reproductive development, fertility and hormone balance.
The "good" news is... maybe it's not a ton of exposure compared to typical shit around the house:
One difficulty in assessing phthalate safety is that there isn't just one type. Phthalates are a large family of chemicals, each with different properties and risks. Not all are used in softgels, and many of the highest exposures come from other everyday sources such as vinyl flooring, shower curtains, perfumes and air fresheners.
But while phthalates in softgel capsules may not be the biggest contributor to our overall exposure, they're still worth paying attention to – especially for people who take many supplements daily.
Btw, checkout all these cool alt,hill,giant types. And how did I get a copy of a statblock with the cool “crushing leap” where the hill giant falls on you prone, and dc17 to escape..acts like a grapple, big dmg. My version did 6d6+8 or something , but the version on Emptyhexes does 5d10+6, via the HILL GIANT STORKOKK. https://www.emptyhexes.com/monster-mondays/hill-giants
Maybe try alt stone giants here, https://www.emptyhexes.com/monster-mondays/stone-giants
Btw, GREAT writeups... read that troll section at least: https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2015/12/ogrestrolls-giants-i-actually-like-5e.html
And https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-oldest-of-old-school-part-iii-g1.html
And cartoon walkthru: here
These funny cartoons/comic strip versions of adventures are from https://mockman.com/?s=giants, but I can't find the right one there.
-=-=-=-
More suggestions: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/advice-resources-etc-for-running-against-the-giants-for-the-first-time.772424/
====older info below====
Btw, i think it leads into Drow and the 3 Underdark modules.
https://nerdsonearth.com/2022/11/against-the-giants-one-of-the-absolute-all-time-best-dd-adventures/
As I look at both the 1e and 5e (in tales of the yawning portal) versions, I will make notes on changes that catch my eye. I'll be running it as close to 1e as possible, but with 5e stats, etc. so let's see how this goes.
The other first thing to determine is where does the kid start? He's got four 10th level (11th?) chars in 5e after beating Strahd.
TRIVIA: The word Jarl (ruler of area but under a king, etc.) is related to the English word Earl.
LEVEL RECOMMENDATIONS for 1e:
G3 FIREGIANT AREA: A party of 3 or 4 highly experienced characters of 9th or higher level can expect a reasonable chance if they use theirknowledge and cunning to best advantage. No character below 6th level should adventure in the Hall of the Fire Giant King Characters under 9th level should be accompanied by a numberofhigher level characters. The optimum mix depends upon the class of the characters involved. A party of 3 might be as well off as three or four times their number under certain circumstances. This writer still believes that a mixed group with clerics, fighters, magic-users, and thieves - with a dwarf, an elf, and perhaps a halfling or gnome and a ha/f-e/f - will be the most successful overall if their average level is 9th and there are 8 to 10 in the party. Of course, this assumes that each member will be armed with several magic items useful against giants and fire.
DIFFERENCES I FOUND:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/5880/rules-on-treasure-carrying
Best answers were
A. Give em a teleport wand that only teleports treasure type stuff (things not for bag of holding)
B. Once in a while, hard to carry big treasure (wont fit bag holding… maybe too big for tport wand)… make it part of challenge to avoid monsters aka increases difficulty to move sneaky or get away from fight or perform.
This says start with ELRIC OF MELNIBONE
And this guy also says start there, his list is at time 8:40 - ytub
Wikip has sort option of chronological or published - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock_bibliography#Elric_of_Melnibon%C3%A9
The Night Land
The house on the Borderland (w h Hogson) —> sounds like D&D’s famous “Keep on the Borderlands “ … and i am just now realizing… Little House on the Prairie. Heh
Zothique (Clark Ashton)
… about humans in super distant future
The Dying Earth - Jack Vance.
Thundarr the Barbarian.
See yt guy: “Limnal Spaces” “shadow of the Torturer”… reviews books. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K-T_7e6bFA0&pp=ygUkTGltbmFsIHNwcWNlcyBzaGFkb3cgb2YgdGhlIHRvcnR1cmVy
By Raven crow king
Table S for swarms.
Im watching yt goodman games “check penalties and stat recovery— rules as written" yt
Raven Crow King's site with the full list: https://ravencrowking.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-joy-of-swams.html
Good stuff. Like
On a 2, swarm gets under your feet and trips u if fail Dc 10 reflex.
...
On a 9, part of the swarm gets under your armor/clothes and you take dmg each round till....
Yeah, this just sounds fun:
https://deathtrap-games.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-solo-roleplayers-network.html
Same guy who impressed me with: https://deathtrap-games.blogspot.com/2024/02/lets-talk-adventures-dcc-68-people-of.html
I love how anger rhymes with danger.
And why doesn’t the dictionary give the pronunciation as “danj-rous” at least as optional? “Dane-jer-ous” works too but you know….
We can’t find a J+R word officially. But Dragon “jragun” and Graduation “gra ju a tion” and Schedule “sked-jule” are fun words… two with the jr sound.
—-
I've thought before that maybe Reckless was related to Reckon, but apparently not. Read up on some really well-written and funny stuff here on those words plus rack, wrack, wreck, etc.
https://sesquiotic.com/2025/02/18/reckless-wreck-wrack-rack-reckon/
"By the way, reckon comes from an old Germanic word for calculating. If you’ve ever been to a restaurant in Germany or Austria, you probably know that die Rechnung is the bill, and if Rechnung seems similar to reckoning, it is; they’re parallel descendants of the same original morphemes."It's been a fun ride! DCC is so satisfying so quickly... I think in 2.5 sessions we got from the beginning to practically the very end (not including the new side-quest with the vine horror creation dungeon, which we accidentally skipped but maybe can do on the way out).
I was Judge/DM, my 1st time doing a DCC as a Judge (btw, spoilers ahead, don't read if you would play as a player character!):
The kid was controlling 16 PCs. It's a lot, but at level 0 you have basically no special abilities so manageable with 4 characters per init roll, etc.
He did not trust the road to the old keep at all, since there were so many dangerous things happening in the village (ppl missing, abducted, whatever). So he went off trail, approached through the woods. This bypassed the 2 vinehorrors on the road. He got near the keep, avoided the front door still not trusting the obvious entrance, so went around left. It lead him to the "avalanche" area... was this way actually safer?! He had one dwarf, eventually rolled to try to figure out best way/safety aspect of the rocks... low roll, just knows what all of them knew... it's potentially dangerous. But the kid on his own had already decided to use a 50 ft rope and grappling hook to try to get up there. Rolled well enough, got it hooked on a huge rock about 3/4 of the way up. When he tugged on it very hard to test it's safety levels, bam, the rock tumbled and started a landslide/avalanche... very dangerous if you are standing on the rocks at the bottom. Half the party was far enough away no biggie, half were amongst the rubble and would need to move quick to get outta there. The dwarf was the one guy who got stuck and was killed, we figured he felt responsible for the others and was pushing folks out of the way till the last second then died heroically saving his friends.
The uncovered the entrance to the tomb of you know who. Getting down in there, the fire trap at the door blasted out and I think killed one of their party immediately. Feeling the cold air, stuck a hand in and in pain withdrew it, realizing it was not a normal cold. Based on the drawing in the module, it seemed like the body was near enough the door that he could prod it with the 10 foot pole. The unnaturally cold forming frost on the pole immediately, but while they stood outside the door no person took damage. He poked around very carefully, finally with 2 or 3 poles was able to knock the big axe from the body's hands, onto the ground. With the grappling hook + rope + poles finally retrieved the axe. Nice, weapons are so precious at level 0, and this one extends your crit range by 1. Then he tried using similar tactics to get the armor, but rolled poorly a few times and ended up destroying sections of the armor... finally gave up on it and moved on (didn't want someone to die in the cold for armor).
Moving carefully into the grounds of hte keep, I gave him some hints about the well (somebody almost died looking in, watch out!) and using rope + it's pulley as a winch + crowbars to open up the secret cache. Got healing powder x10 (Sage and Wizard Apprentice and Parstip farmer spelled it and figured out it was something good), a long bow (don't roll a 1, or the thing kills you with like a 1d4+1 or something nuts, lol how the hell would that happen, kinda extreme, I think I'll do 1HP of dmg max), and something else maybe a sword.
Inspected the also super deadly top right Sinkhole... he got the premonition of hollow underneath and stayed clear and safe per the module's advice.
All this time, I'd sometimes have him roll to see if he spotted the two Portcullis beastmen up on the battlements who were still lurking and probably spying on them. I couldn't tell by the way the keep map was drawn how the heck they or anybody is supposed to get up there from the outside, ah ha -> logically in days long gone, there were surely wooden steps, etc. The kid didn't spot the beastmen for a very very long time, not until he was about to go into the bottom right tower door, but before we talk about that, back to the courtyard:
So yeah, he went around to the right (east?) side and saw the one standing building with all the demonic gargoyles, etc. Opened the door, retrieved a couple of items far from the black pool + statue, being ultra careful the whole time. Noticed there were more loot items he wanted right next to the pool. Still not trusting anything, sent in the goose (the kid really hates for animals to die, but this is DCC, he sucked it up). The goose walked in, prodded by a 10 foot pole... whoosh, the Tar Ooze came alive and swatted at it! Rolled ultra low, the goose got the heck out of there alive! The party was all keyed up, so they nuked it from afar before it could do any actual damage. For fun, it burst into flames a couple of times on the ground (I had NO idea this would foreshadow the final boss, but we'll talk about that a little later), but nobody and no goose was harmed. He got the loot and got out.
Next would be the tower door, bottom right. Finally spotted just a tiny glimpse of something with fur and snarling up top as the beastmen ran into the tower to warn their friends and prepare for a fight. Tried the door, locked. He got a weird feeling, and once again decided to go the long route. He went back southwest (?bottom left on map) to inspect things. Using the ever-important grappling hook + rope, managed to scramble up the left/west side and get on top of things. Walked over, to the bottom right on the map to go inside the tower. OK, this isn't the standard play per the module, so would the beastman-leader get the jump on them? I figured maybe he'd just go first on init to make it somewhere in the middle, no surprise round. Interestingly though, leader+bird-beastman were on one side of the doorway waiting, while the other 4(?) were on the right side. The party went in ready to fight, leader-beastman got a hit and a kill right off the bat... but beyond that the party did great and was able to kill more and when the beastmen ran due to their leader falling he picked off all but one which ran off the map.
The scene was grisly, blood and hides and human hides all over. He was not in the mood to search for loot, kept moving (saved him from a RotGrub attack and likely 1 more fatality).
Carefully down the stairs, even the gold on the steps making the party leery. Found the empty loot room... what's up with that?
Further down, got one glowing skull but wasn't in the mood to swim in murky water especially after seeing the tentacle creature on the wall mosaics. Will he find this super powerful magic ring in the other hidden room?? Meanwhile, I'm reading ahead and trying to figure out how the HECK is he going to survive the leviathan and 25 beastmen + the boss all at once. I think he needs this ring. So as he goes further in... the black sea underground!
Before I can give any real hints to the secret room with the ring, he is in awe over this Starless Sea under the earth, the standing stone, the dragon-headed ship slowly approaching. Practically got chills. Describing the scene, the standing stone, he was like WAIT, I'VE SEEN THIS! Pointing to the handout picture of the hallway murals/mosaics. Yep, there is something very bad in that water.
Ok, fast forward to he inspects the minor stream, finds the room, finds the RING! Nice.
Back to the standing stone... two of his guys are looking at the swirling runes, one loses his mind and immediately attacks his nearby friend! Luckily he misses, the others restrain him till he regains his senses. Dropping his weapon he frantically warns not to look at the stone or you'll go mad like he did!
The mercenary of the group, unphased, wants to head up the found stairs on the stone to see what is up top. Spots the candle. Another guy joins him, they light the candle and the boat draws near. All this while he had been thinking the boat is loaded with enemies and is a trap(?). Gets all the worked out, everybody boards, moves along the water.
Creeped out, the party sits atop the ghostly ship, the oars once again moving of their own accord. Then the water moves strangely, something is under the water, something big. One tentacle then another shoots forth, grabbing the stern of the ship! Almost immediately the kid puts 2+ 2 together and realizes it's a sacrifice it wants, based on the hallway mosaics. He knows what he must do, sadly sending the goose once again to save human lives, the tentacle lashes out and in the blink of an eye pulls the goose under. The boat is released, and their journey continues.
I think at this point he is only down 3 or 4 guys.
The island draws near, the ziggurat looms. A vile ritual of some sort is happening (so like the kid's Gnoll scenario he made on his own a few weeks back for the one shot). The end game is near, but there is a horde of beastmen around the island. How in the heck? He spots the "demon" up top... it's only and effigy but he doesn't know. Then he realizes the ring could do major damage if he spell burns and luck burns like crazy. OK, time to do it!
With some found robes as disguises (hopefully they'll work long enough?), he approaches quietly from behind. The beastmen are too distracted, they don't care or notice. The sage is wearing the ring... he gets within range, summoning forth all his might and soul (then carefully calculated math in case the kid only rolls a 2, and he DOES roll a 2 OMG close call), he uses the once daily Scorching Ray to Max effect! Booom - Whooosh... flames engulf 20 of the 22 beastmen down low, then the ray itself hits the demon effigy, it explodes in an only slightly suspicious way. It seems the heroes have won, or have they?
Finally the party regroups and prepares to rush up the ziggurat, seeing the 3 shaman pushing the weakened and chained villagers to the summit. The 2 remaining beastmen, somehow only taking 1 HP of damage (we rolled separate dmg rolls 11 times for the 22 monsters for the scorching ray burst) retreat up the ziggurat to join with the remaining monsters.
In a cool reveal, the hidden miniboss shaman holds high the head and armor of the damaged effigy. He is yelling at the shaman in beast language to hurry up and get the sacrifices up there. The kid realizes he can't catch them but has to try. Some long range weapon attacks, some luck burning to hoist halflings up 10 feet to skip a level on the ziggurat, some drinking of the Black Lotus Oil to get 10ish temp HP and attach the grappling hook+rope to allow others to skip a level... he even takes out one of the beastmen shaman with some ranged attacks, but is it enough?! Can he make it up there?! Can he at least kill the miniboss shaman at the top!?
The 3 shaman + humans arrive at the summit, the miniboss throws in the effigy and the fire roars then dies down darkening the cavern... and the humans are pushed in... but only 4 of the 7... the other humans are fighting back, holding the linked chain and it's not quite over just yet. But the shaman and miniboss will surely push them all in within moments. The kid makes some final ranged attack against the miniboss shaman... scores a hit... but alas, he falls face first into the pit and with the added weight and the 2 remaining shaman pushing them, all the humans are yanked into the pit. The ritual is complete!
A demon-beastman-chaoslord emerges... he jumps down unerringly two levels to attack one of the halflings dead. Now half the party is halfway up the ziggurat, the other half is spread across the bottom and some nearer the ship. Kid decides to try another spell from the ring, magic missile... can't take any chances. Spell burn, luck burn, bam, the demon drops! Oh wait, weirdly it turns into magma leaving the armor and weapon, but we'll get back to that later.
The last 2 beastmen were dispatched, the last two shaman had tried to jump down but stumbled the DC check and were prone. One had been killed by a halfling before the demon arrived. There is still one there, there is one halfling alive... and then the rest of the party here and there as described. But wait, ... there is a low rumbling which builds into a deafening thunder as the earth quakes, the ceiling roof starts to fall apart (the kid had much earlier wondering if he could someone use the sinkhole to further cave in the roof and destroy the beastmen + ziggurat... not a bad idea), the huge waves rock the boat and splash against the ziggurat! The kid realizes this is it, it's time to get the heck out. But that magical armor + weapon sure is tasty. Might have to try at it with one or two guys who are nearby.
And that's where we left off, the cliffhanger. Woo, what a ride!!!
UPDATED for June 9th: The kid beat the main boss but lost two characters, including one of his favs, the mercenary. But the rest made it to the boat and got out! Now they are on a beach next to the ocean, and he wants to do the side quest (the extra vine horror bit).
UPDATE- Exlored the Summoning Pits… the vines, the bodies on chains, and the floating devil sword! Fun stuff.
My favorite part was when the kid used a bag of flour to cover part of the rune circle around the devil sword. First he threw a rock at it, and the rock exploded (heat + internal water = explode per the book). So then he was NOT gonna touch it... which was about to lead to a stalemate, b/c the book wants you to get into it (you don't burn up). But his creative option was perfect, just like a Supernatural episode with the salt circles... a break in the circle is all it takes. So boom, he's got a little opening, and now the telepathic sword can start talking to him.
I ran it like: A mischievous voice enters your head, saying something like "Come on, you know you need my power to deal with this place, it's deadly. Don't be a chicken." And the conversation continued, till finally the kid opened up a bigger area and pulled the sword out with his ever-important grappling hook. Fought against the will of the devil and did OK.
EXTRAS:
I haven't read it yet, but this description/write up from a similar running should be good: https://www.reddit.com/r/dccrpg/comments/1l63pre/just_finished_sailors_of_the_starless_sea_with_my/
Ppl recommend Chanters in the Dark as the natural next adventure. In a boat underground. https://www.reddit.com/r/dccrpg/comments/zwg5sl/chanters_in_the_dark/
Sailors ends in a boat, chanters begins on one... It's a great follow up. Have a good idea how to move the players around the city, or to draw them in. Other than that, it's a good flow
Compare to this run by the RPGreanimators, really good clean run with 1 judge and 3 players. They had a LOT of casualties on the avalanche at the keep and then again when actually fighting the Leviathan's tentacles in the sea: yt part one and yt part 2 .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_ySLca4rc
Great descriptions and analysis of this box set version of the game.
By the way, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Ashton_Smith
Clark Ashton Smith was a huge influence on Vance it would see, among others, quoting wikip:
Most of Smith's weird fiction falls into four series set variously in Hyperborea, Poseidonis, Averoigne and Zothique. Hyperborea, which is a lost continent of the Miocene period, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are much the same, with a magical culture characterized by bizarreness, cruelty, death and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's version of pre-modern France, comparable to James Branch Cabell's Poictesme. Zothique exists millions of years in the future. It is "the last continent of earth, when the sun is dim and tarnished". These tales have been compared to the Dying Earth sequence of Jack Vance.
BTW, see this for lead up adventures ideas (v. nice): reddit
Check out AD&D review, hadn't seen his blog before: https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2022/05/24/review-dark-tower-add-1e-3pp-summa-coom-laude/
And I'll be getting my DCC version copy soon enough: https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-dark-tower-3-volume-slipcased-set-pdf/
Starting to prepare. Book comes in tomorrow midday.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dccrpg/comments/onrydv/advice_for_running_sailors_on_the_starless_sea/
- Getting below the surface level of the keep can be a gameplay bottleneck. For a convention game, err on the side of letting a plan to get through or past the large number of beastmen work so you can get to more of the adventure's wilder stuff.
- Does anyone have advice for OP regarding how to manage the big brawl on the ziggurat? I'd like to hear advice on it as well.
- My 4 players had only 7 PCs between them when they finaly approached the ziggurat per boat (they decided to fight the leviathan). Handling all beastmen at once would have been impossible, so i had the beastmen stand in groups of 4 on/around the ziggurats path to the very top. If they were sneaky, they were able to only fight 1 or 2 groups of 4 beastmen at once as to not wipe the party immediately. Being level 0 means that they often die from one hit from the beastmen, so if you group fight all 22 beastmen at once they will probably fail the quest (theres still 20HP boss man afterwards).
- If your players come with 9-12 PCs into the fight, you can probably make 3-4 beastmen groups of 5-7 without it beeing a problem.
- How'd it go to the OP?
- Sorry of the late check in, It went great! I had 3 players who were all new to DCC, and we had a great session. They were able to placate the chaos leviathan with the censure, and then picked off a lot of the beastmen on the ziggurat with bows from a distance as the longboat approached, enabling them to fight their way to the top and tackle the chaos lord.
I don't know when I'll be able to run DCC in a public setting again, because with what's been going on with the delta variant. My fiancée and I have been kinda going back into isolation mode with our 8 month old, but I still plan on running it online every so often with my friends.The only thing I would change is to have a couple more players, but that's out of my hands.
The second day of the microcon I didn't have any players for DCC, so I had the opportunity to play Car Wars for the first time, which was awesome.
- Via Captain Corajus, yt, he gave it a perfect 20 out of 20 rating, first time ever (3 yrs ago), that's pretty impressive. I think it was his first play of DCC also, as a player.
Well I gotta say, the kid made a hell of a map, encounter, and boss.
Working in reverse, let's review:
Xavian was the leader, a really tough melee guy. Made all the more difficult with two mostly hidden snake-priests giving him protection from energy - cold & heat. But also he had magical armor (I think) that protected from Radiant. Also had a pounce (legendary) where he'd just move + single attack. He did massive dmg if you failed a poison save. And of course the kid rolled so many 20s it was insane... he rolled two back to back. Once he crit on a single hit for 35 damage on my Sorc (over 1/3 of his health, even with his 19 CON amulet).
Xavian stats were roughly: 246 HP, 22 STR, ... had 3 attacks, melee +12 or +14(?) to hit, probably did 15 avg per attack, but he might have done 30 dmg with poison save fail per attack maybe... I remember he could switch weapons freely (special ability). AC was sometimes like 23 - 24.
The Dwarf cleric was the hero... he held Bless the entire dern fight, the extra 1d4 for att roles AND saves against poison. Everything here did poison so we rolled saves constantly. And vs. boss had to roll 3 times for 3 attacks, often. The Dwarf also did a bunch of good mega heals, 3 in total (two were the non-spells for 60, and one was the level 5 cure wounds. He never got to do sunbeam.)
Before the leader showed his face, I was able to Otiluke's Freezing Sphere a billion guys... did so much dmg it was great. Did so much I was afraid the fight might be too easy. Oh no, not even close to easy - my Ranger took like 219 or so dmg (he only has 100 hp) through the final fight. Let's see, healed him for 50 once, 40 once, 20 once... and he ate at least 20 HP of goodberries (only had 40 HP of goodberries to share, used 'em all) between rooms.
At the end,
So yeah, walking up the stairs to the main area (where the priestess and priest ran)... there was this magical dark veil. You have to step through it, and so wham, you are instantly within 30-60 feet of many bad guys. My guys got surrounded, was a worry. But then Otiluke's freezing sphere cast with safe spell completely stomped them. Good damn thing, too b/c it was a tough fight... everybody in the party fairly low on HP more often than not. Lotsa fun!
These Brits are too good at RP/voice acting/funnies. Might also teach you some tricks on how to play or how to DM/Judge/GM. Although Zacker is a little abrasive sometimes, he's very talented as a Judge/DM, and it's all in good fun.
NOTE: Zackerthehacker.com is Also the DCC Judge on “the dark orb”.
The videos of them playing DCC:
