Sailors on the Starless Sea Finale

[jozxyqk]

Spoilers obviously.

So for the end of the module, after the dragon boat arrives at the Ziggurat, is there any way for the characters to progress without choosing a course of action that is seemingly suicidal?

They can see that there is this ziggurat with a few dozen beastmen on it. It looks like there is no way off, and a huge, deadly chaos beast is lurking in the surrounding waters. Their fellow villagers are apparently being sacrificed by a few head baddies at the top.

Are the PCs expected to charge in and hope that something miraculous happens that will allow them to survive? As far as I can tell, from the PCs' perspective it would look like there is no possible way to save the villagers or to stop the ritual and also survive short of killing the entire force of beastmen and the leaders.

One of my hopes in changing to DCC was to play in a game where there are some fights that you cannot win, and must instead run away from. It seems to me that this, to all appearances, should be one of those instances and a smart player should run away.

Any perspectives?

[Raven_Crowking]

They can turn around, go home, and hope that life under the Chaos Lord isn't too bad.

One group I ran this for did just that.

[Rostranor]

There are a couple of options. My group had a two pronged approach. Strike Team Alpha had the cloaks from the pool room and attempted to walk up the ziggurat using the Chewbacca ploy of another character not truly being bound. If caught they were going to run full bent up the ramp and conduct a luck purge suicide strike. I also decided that the temple was flat on one side and ascended by switch backs. Strike Team Bravo attempted to climb undetected up the back side with ever increasing difficulty as described in the module for climbing the ramp. All the while I had Anvil of Crom playing in the background and used different sized books to represent the stepped temple.

It was awesome.

[Doug Kovacs]

I've run Sailors several times and never had anyone act the coward.

From the perspective of the villagers simply going to the keep at all is the largest shift in suicidalness in their lives. By the time they stand at the crossroads you are talking about they are on the verge of being something other than normal villagers. They have survived a lot of sh*t and there is no reason to think they might not survive this. This is how you become a first level adventurer....perhaps a hero but maybe not.
If you are a coward you go home and make money and children and hope you die in painless manner (As Daniel said,: under the reign of a Chaos Lord) . If you want to be an adventurer you walk right up to the line in front of death and tell death to <b>f*ck</b> off......for as long as you can at least.

You’re an adventurer: a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets. You seek gold and glory, winning it with sword and spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished. There are treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them.

[Raven_Crowking]

The group I ran this for at Wizard's Cache on Sunday last used the robes-and-prisoners gag to good effect.

The first group I ran this for shouted out a challenge as they jumped off the boat.

To give more details, the group that slunk out of the cavern actually consisted of the best characters of my brother, his son, and his son's girlfriend. They sent the lesser characters on the longboat. I was ready for some gnashing of teeth when the tidal wave wiped out the "good" characters, but the lesser characters (even with villager-slave reinforcements) got their rears handed to them royally, the Chaos Lord was reborn, there was no tidal wave, and the others slunk away. This was the third party they had assembled (after a TPK against beastmen and a near TPK in the icy tomb). The great thing about DCC is that, even though they lost, they had a lot of fun doing it.

[maxinstuff]

I would think the more important thing is to make sure the players know what the flavour of the game is up front.

If they go in knowing that encounters are not 'balanced' to be taken on head on, and that cunning will be necessary to their survival - they will do a lot better, and have a lot more fun.

Hitting the players with unexpected, impossible encounters (like a dozen beast men) in the first session without having this expectation set out clearly is asking for a tpk - and is not my idea of fun.

If you want to encourage a head on approach - make it tactically attractive. Maybe the beast men seem very pre-occupied with the ritual, and maybe there are less than a dozen, say a few more than there are player characters remaining. This way they have a clear chance to even the odds quickly by hitting hard and hitting first.

PC death is expected and a part of the game (especially the funnel), but surely it should be explained to the players in a way that puts the fear of it into them?