Goodman Games

My friend, known as Nightwing on the board, and I used the Beta rules to take three characters through the adventure The Forgotten Sentinel from the DCC #29, The Adventure Begins.

We had a blast. He has a 5th level thief, converted from a 6th level assassin from Castles & Crusades, a 2nd level warrior, and a 1st level wizard. The wizard came from my gangs "funnel" adventure.

So, we converted two of the characters from Castles & Crusades, ran a 3.5 module, and used the DCC-RPG Beta rules. The whole thing worked swell!

I'll let Nightwing chime in with his thoughts.

Hello all. Like Jedi said we had a blast with this adventure.

My assassin/thief Hush (who I kinda modeled after Sam Fisher for you Splinter Cell gamers) is contacted by a noble man to investigate a scholar that he sent to learn more about a prophecy. The nobleman is the last living relative in line of kings in this abandoned city. Said Scholar had left some time before and had not been heard of for three weeks. If the scholar had went into business for himself I was to terminate him with extreme prejudice or rescue him. I except the job, I forget the terms but I do not work cheap fyi and embark for this city whose inhabitants, both humans and animals, all disappeared 200 years ago. All these vanishing are on one-year anniversary of the erection of the Sentinel, a 200-foot bronze statue that overlooked the harbor. Our missing Scholars last message indicating corridors and rooms underneath the Sentinel’s foundation and had set up a base camp there.

So I embark on my journey with my brother in arms Thunderlips (baby!) and Jerec the wizard. On the way we dispatched some giant lizards. We arrive at the city and find a ladder leading under the Sentinel's foundation. We found a room at the end of the ladder with a portrait of our lost scholar. Looking through the side rooms we run into some lovely dark skinned humanoids with gills dressed in purple hide armor and my team relieves them of their oxygen habit. Moving through a long hallway we are attacked by plant things that shoot fire out of their mouths. JediOre said I defeated them when we started gaming again this past Friday but I do not remember how. I guess the hours logged playing Super Mario brothers made me a fire breathing plant killer.

So we keep going. I am having Hush look under the doors to see if I can see anything. If there has light or movement ect whatever info I can gather. I hate going into things blind. Have a plan and back up the plan a thousand times I say. We enter another room and Hush is fired on by two more of these gill things with crossbows. They can see my torch so I make an easy target since they seem to be able to see in the dark. These two losers a crushed under the heel of my boots with little problems. I think Jerec tried to cast a spell here but failed a running theme for him this day sadly.

We come to a room that has shelves of wine bottles. Some of the bottles have the label “Scarlet Dragon” upon them. I take a couple. Never know when you might need some wine . I go back to another door that is a library. Before I entered I used my bag of marbles and rolled them under the door to see if I could draw anything or anyone out. Nothing. My plans thus far stink. I have Jerec look at the books and nothing perks his interest(Jerec better make himself useful soon or he will find his throat cut). There is a stairwell heading down and the smell of seawater is very strong.

I search the rest of this floor before heading down said stairwell. Before entering another room which I feel may have some more gilled friends I have Jerec attempt a rope trick which he promptly fails. My thought was to use the rope as a trip wire but it was moot point since the room was filled with globe and a map of an ancient kingdom with abandoned city prominently displayed painted the wall and no enemies to speak of.

On the wall of this room there is a saying to the effect of "Look to the words and wisdom of the Crimson Dragon" so on a leap and prayer I had Thunderlips drink some of the Red Dragon Wine thinking maybe it would show him something. Well he got a good buzz and thats about it. I decided to go back to the library and look for a book about a Red Dragon. Sure enough Jerec found a book just like that along with a nice poison dart inside. Which I am sure if he had been hit it would have been curtains for the wizard since he has like 4 hp total. Inside the trapped book is a crystal shard.

Down the stairs we go and the room below is flooded with seawater coming through the cracks in the wall. My Spidey sense tells me for sure that there is something in that water waiting for us. Sure enough when we wade into it four more of the purple-hide armored beings welcome us with open arms. I have Jerec the fool go back up the stairs since he is pretty much a one shot kill. Each one of my guys rolls a one. Thunderlips (baby!) damages his ax that takes away his bonuses (this does not please the master) and Hush gets dunked underwater where my purple friends hope to drown him. Well my opponent fumbles and Hush is able to fight them off. After a battle we kill the creatures and take minimal damage.

We entered a chamber that was flooded as well with pillars erected inside. There is a elevated platform at the end of the room and waiting for us is a female dark-skinned water-breather in green, shiny armor. I have my team back out into the hallway to think of a plan. As we do we hear water splashing. I have Jerec attempt to cast spiderclim. He fails and I am not surprised. Well at this point I employ the "get her" strategy from Ghostbusters and Hush and Thunderlips charge in splitting up. I am hoping one of my guys will draw the fire of this thing. Hush is ambushed and is taken down to 2 hp! As she turns to engage Thunderlips I am able to back attack with Hush. We kill here and move on. At this point I am pretty sure Hush is not coming home alive.

The circular corridor we come to is nice and dry. We come across a creature with tentacles coming out of its head. Its back is too us as he is working on some sort of puzzle with glass shards. I weigh my options. I think about giving Thunderlips my boots of elven kind for a sneak attack since Hush has a mere 2 hp but I decide that this is Hush's party he is the leader and its his job. So Hush goes nice and slow in for the back attack. Hush strikes. A clean blow but this creature is not some red shirt he is ready for a fight. My DM allowed me to do a mighty of arms with Hush even though he is not a warrior (I understand there is some debate going on about how this all works), I go for the creatures legs trying to get it off its feet. It stays upright but I have wounded it badly. Thunderlips throws some blows to add to the carnage. I decide to have Jerec take his trusty empty bag and try to get it over this things head. The dice are with me this time and Jerec finally does something right.

Over all I think this beta ruleset seems to agree with Nightwing's play style.

We had fun, even when I had to take a few breaks to "look up a rule." C&C/AD&D is second nature to me, the DCC-RPG rules are a bit different.

This is always "death" to a RPG. The more I have to break the action to look up a rule, the more I wish I was playing another game. This killed 4E for me.

I agree that C&C/OD&D are second nature to me (not so much with AD&D) and that makes them run smoother. I think that DCC is getting that way but not there yet. I find that I end up not using some of the more unusual rules because I forget that they are there until it's too late.

I estimate about three more sessions and I should be able to run the game, in beta version of course, 90% of the time without looking up anything but spells, fumbles, and critical tables.

Alright, so Jerec gets the bag over my new friends head. Let me preface this by saying that when I started playing these types of games jediore told me to play my people as I would and putting a bag over somethings face blinding it hopefully seemed like a great idea. I am always looking for tricks like that or using the environment around me against enemies. Just hacking away gets boring for me. So with my foe blinded he takes some swings at me and misses. With Hush in a crouched position I run my blade up into him sending him back to the black lagoon in which he came. Hush is down to 2 hp and lives against whatever this thing was. I was shocked. I thought Hush was finished. Jediore told me that covering up that things face and tentacles was good because those tentacles were bad news bears brother.

So this thing was working on a puzzle with the glass pieces on the door. The shape was a dragon head. Jediore gave me these pieces and instructed me to finish the puzzle. I knew the missing piece was the glass shard I found earlier. Sadly for me I am awful at puzzles so I thought Id be there all night as Jediore laughed. Luckily his nice wife helped me and did most the work unluckily for Jediore I am going to beat him to death in his sleep for making me do that instead of just doing a intelligence check. With the pieces aligned the door opens.


In the room ahead I find the missing scholar an a bed. Bones informs me "he's dead Jim" but really he died of stress from those things trying to get him. Poor fellows heart gave out. He has a necklace around his neck which Hush takes as proof the job is done. In his hand there is a prophecy that made about as much sense as our tax code and the adventure I assume will continue.......

I like this new game. I like the luck factor good or bad. There is a real sense of danger that I do not feel in the other RPGs. I like the fact that you can get specific in what you want to do to an enemy(disarm etc) but missing on all my spells was a drag. Losing that spell for the day was frustrating as well. In this game when you roll a one you could be in some serious trouble which makes things challenging which is good but bad at the time when it happens to you but you have to move on and get past it. In real combat not everything is going to go right 100% of the time.

So that's it for me if I missed anything I am sure Jediore will fill in the gaps. If anyone has any questions or comments please feel free to post it.

I wanted to give a shout out to Michael Ferguson, the author of The Forgotten Sentinel. This little adventure really played well.

Hey Finarvyn,

Would you mind moving this thread to "Actual Play Reports" since that seems to be a better fit for this thread.

Thanks.

Glad you guys enjoyed the adventure.

Will do.