Story Background
All the players begin in the hamlet of Whitehill, where they live. The hamlet contains roughly 100 people. The majority of the village are miners that work a local copper deposit. The village subsists off small gardens, local game, and water/fish from the nearby river. For defense, the town has a handful of militia (locals who have little to no training with weaponry) and two soldiers.
The town consists of a provisioner that mostly supplies mining equipment, a shoemaker, and a shoddy rooming house for village newcomers or the occasional traveler.
Recently - the miners did not return from their day's work. Two men were dispatched to the mine to find out what happened. These men did not return. The two soldiers were then sent to the mines. They also did not return.
The self-appointed mayor decided they had no choice but to send four of their militia north to the closest imperial garrison, a week's travel, to seek aid. A day or two after the militia departed, people began disappearing from their homes during the night. The hamlet would awaken to find empty houses. After a few days, the village decided that they could not wait for aid to arrive and nominated 9 locals to go to the mine and find out what happened.
There are rumors that a wizard lived in the caves and, perhaps, they could enlist his aid in halting whatever evil had come to Whitehill.
Preparation
I was doing a lot of work on my world to prepare for last night's get-together. I had worked out a world map with continents, regions, countries, and cities (incomplete, shrunk, black-white version attached).
- Worldmap copy.png (234.81 KiB) Viewed 4074 times
I printed off several Level 0 character sheets (there's one version where there are three per page, arranged vertically). I also printed the DCC Index of Tables (just in case), "Useful Charts for the 0-level DCCRPG Enthusiast" and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Reference Sheet reference guide for character creation.
I used Photoshop to throw some reference numbers on my village, noting locations and such, and my cave system (GM eyes-only document), noting encounters and a pitfall or two. Before I left my house to go to our group's get-together, I grabbed my Zocchi dice (the only ones I could find locally are translucent and I hate them with a passion) and an AD&D monster manual I had found at Half-Price Books.
Character Creation
Each player made three characters through the funnel. My first chose her occupations. The other two randomly decided them. Player 1 and 2 had no issues with character creation and Player 1 remarked she liked the randomness of it. Player 2 has played D&D -a lot- so he was indifferent to the process. Player 3 did not like rolling for generation. He prefers systems like White Wolf's Storyteller system. He later remarked he would keep playing because he was interested in the story
We ended up with:
Player 1
Brutis the Blacksmith
Aria the Wizard's Apprentice
Norm the Shaman
Player 2
Abner the Shaman
Kenric the Elven Falconer
Ansgar the Rice Farmer
Player 3
Fnard the Elven Forester
Dront the Halfing Haberdasher
Hebe the Rootabaga Farmer
Gameplay
The players immediately trek to the mines to find out what happened. The elves and the halfling have infravision, but the other characters are unable to see in the pitch black mine. The halfling leads them to a side chamber off the main entrance where they locate some lanterns. The side chamber was used by the miners to store equipment and some bedding. In addition to the lanterns, they find five dessicated corpses... nothing more than yellowed flesh over bones.
Dront decides they need to burn the corpses and is proceeding to do so when Norm drags one of the corpses by the foot. The skin peels off and out jumps a hairy spider which runs between Norm's legs. Fnard, Dront, and Hebe quickly douse three of the corpses with lantern oil and set them on fire. The other companions make short work of the hairy spider and notice another making its way out of a separate corpse. The attempt to kill it while it is making its escape from the corpse of the miner, but ultimately slay it when it jumps from the corpse.
They proceed back to the main tunnel and move deeper into the mine. Fnard and Dront are leading the pack and do not notice a disturbance in the ground in front of them. They move forward and the ground collapses. Dront manages to grab ahold of a ledge as he falls, but Fnard falls 30 feet to his death. The other characters use their rope and grappling hook to recover Fnard's belongings and they continue down the tunnel.
They come to a T intersection, and follow heavy bootprints to the left. The find a perfect stone door with engraving where a key might fit. The door is immovable. They begin trekking down the other tunnel.
This is where we stopped because one of my players had to work early in the morning.
Feedback
Overall I received positive reviews from my players. Player 3 was the most outspoken about character creation. As I said he did not care for it. Player 1 and 2 enjoyed character creation because it was extremely simple and quick. Other systems we have played have dragged on for hours.
I'll post more once the group really gets into the meat of the game and, assuming some survive, make level 1.