I'm volunteering to run games on Thursday and, besides demos of Quarterback Blitz and For Glory!, I'll also be running DCC from 6 or 7pm to midnight.
Not sure which module I'm running yet, probably Sailors on the Starless Sea or Frozen in Time or maybe even the Tower Out of Time, something short, but if you plan on being there, let me know and tell me what you'd like to play and I'll take that into consideration as well.
I might even have some VOID/Void Hunters material to show for those who are interested...
DCC at Quakecon, Dallas July 17th...
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Maxwell Luther
- Wild-Eyed Zealot
- Posts: 104
- Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:38 am
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Maxwell Luther
- Wild-Eyed Zealot
- Posts: 104
- Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:38 am
Re: DCC at Quakecon, Dallas July 17th...
So I ran Sailors On the Starless Sea at 10pm last Thursday at Quakecon. I had 4 players, so I let them make 2 level 1 characters each. I had every one of them download and install the Crawler's Companion, and they found it very cool and useful, especially as none of them had dice.
This is my third time running SotSS and this run was incredibly entertaining if short (about two hours start to finish). I didn't manage to get any pictures because a. the room we were in was very dark and b. when I run the game, I get very animated and try to get the players animated so I can feed off the energy of the group, so I rarely remember to do little things like take pictures when I'm busy growling, shouting and hopping up and down while counting down from 5 if players take too much time to make a decision. It's all about the action in my demos and that leaves little time for visual documentation. But here is a short rundown of how it all went down...
HERE BE SPOILERS!!!
To start off the game, I made sure that they understood the correct mindset for DCC by reading the back cover to them. They spent some time talking to folks in the village (I let them take it slow early on to get them used to using the rules), but I soon hustled them on to the main adventure site.
A. The Vine Horrors
The group was understandably cautious for the most part (which is understandable considering the emphasis I put on how doomed the average character is during chargen), but the wizard, reasoning that he would be best suited to determining what the bodies were entangled in, decided to march right up and closely examine them. That went about as well you'd expect, but he got lucky and survived two rounds with the buggers while his party lit torches, knocked crossbows or hid. Eventually, after lots of long ranged fire, the dwarf charged in and butchered one while they doused the other one in oil and set it ablaze, causing it to explode, and showering them with burning sap.
The wizard, being a twisted little monkey, decided to fill a sack with some of the seed goo to use on a corpse later. Just in case.
C. The Gatehouse
The thief, acting as a scout, crossed the rickety boards first and checked out the portcullis. Deeming it safe, he motioned for the others to cross, but no one wanted to be the second one across. Eventually, they hit upon the idea of tying a rope around an old tree and shooting a crossbow bolt attached to the other end of the rope across and through the lower part of the portcullis grating. A good idea, so I let them cross with little difficulty. After all, I like to reward smart thinking (almost as much as I love to punish dumb ideas) and the fun stuff was inside the castle. I didn't want to lose any of them just yet.
Of course, they had the wizard in the back when the portcullis slammed down and I thought that would be the end of him, but darned if I didn't roll a 1! I ruled that it got stuck halfway down, due to neglect.
D. Courtyard
Now, I run this module pretty much BtB, but I do add one little feature to the castle interior, and that is a set of stone stairs leading from the courtyard straight up to the top of the gatehouse, where I've armed the beastmen with bows in addition to their spears. I do this because I like to provide a more multi-level tactical approach to this encounter and allow them to potentially come at the beastmen in H from another direction. Invariably, one or two of them will race up the stairs to engage the beastmen, and I give the Beastmen a height advantage with their spears by allowing them to attack first against characters charging up against them. In this case, the beastman with the cockroach head managed to mortally wound a warrior on the stairs before getting taken down by ranged fire along with his buddy, fly-head (whose head exploded messily when his body hit the flagstones below).
The party turned the Warrior over and he had luckily survived. Apparently, the spear only went between his arm and side, leaving him with a nasty cut, but not impaling him as it seemed below.
F. The Well
Is it just my demos or is it just a standard thing for at least one party member to suggest sending the halfling down the well in the bucket? Every. Danged. Time.
Well, the halfling (for the first time ever) refused and, after the wizard nearly toppled into the spooky thing, the well became a non-event. Nobody wanted to mess with it after I started making moaning noises and kept on making them as they tried to decide what to do.
E. The Charnel Ruins
This group really didn't want to mess about with the interior of this place and probably wouldn't have even stepped foot inside if it hadn't been for the greedy halfling looking to pull gems out of the clearly evil fountain's mouth. He, of course got flame-slapped by the tar which then engaged the rest of the party. They managed to beat it down enough that I ruled it would retreat back into the mouth of the fountain. They stopped the wizard from smearing the hapless halfling with Vine Horror seed goo and turned him over. He lived.
And immediately went back to prying gems out of the fountain.
After what was left of the tar ooze popped out and pimp-slapped him down again, it seriously injured several other party members, killing the wizard and a warrior, before they finished off it off and retreated from the ruin, alive but scorched. They closed and barred the doors.
H. Tower of the Beast
This was pretty much the last encounter of the night for reasons that will soon become hilariously clear.
While trying to figure out a way to get inside, the dwarf said 'screw it' and charged the doors with her shoulder. Natural 20. She breaks through the rotted wood and ends up slamming into a beastman in the middle of the room.
Now, at this point, I'm expecting a charge to her aid, but no. Everyone sits outside the door and leaves her to it, preparing ranged fire and oil while she takes on 6 beastmen. Alone. The only one helping her in the slightest was the Cleric, who used Word of Command to get the beastmen fighting each other, buying the dwarf a little more time.
Now, by this point, someone else had joined the table and I handed them a 0-Level mob from the pile I keep handy. I told him that his characters were all roped to the wall on the far side of the tower and, as soon as the PCs freed them, he could join the party. To that end, the halfling and thief though they'd sneak around the melee and free the peasants while the beastmen were beating down on the dwarf. Unfortunately for them, I had left the beastman champion in hiding to the side of the door to ambush the rest of the party after they entered. The halfling barely survived the attack, the axe embedding in the door frame just close enough to his scalp to give him a new haircut.
The thief, thinking he would be able to get past this, didn't count on the fact that the beastmen had finished off the dwarf (who sadly caught the whiff of gold coming from down the stairs before she passed out) and had now turned their attention to the rest of the party. He was immediately attacked by a ram-head with huge saucer eyes. He leaped of the stairs onto the ram-man to stab him but was easily throw off and to the ground.
Most of the rest of the party started taking shots at the rest of the manimals charging out of the tower, or faced them head on in melee, but the remaining warrior decided to try and shoot the ropes holding the peasants to the wall instead, using a mighty deed. It took three shots, but he eventually succeeded at freeing one. I told the peasant player he could free one other peasant each round.
The halfling managed to avoid another blow from the champion and let loose with insane rage on the creature, rolling to hit with both his short swords and scoring a critical on one. He stabbed the pair into the beast then scissored it apart in a shower of gore. His cries of triumph were then cut short as the frog-headed beastmen leaped at him, kicking his head into the wall, dropping him to the floor and out of the fight. The rest of the party quickly followed, until only the cleric was left to fend off 4 savage beastmen. Just as he went down, the peasants were all free.
I told the peasant player that, considering the desperation of the situation and the fact that the peasants could finally see a slim chance of freedom, I would allow them to run, pick up the weapons of the fallen and charge the beastmen as one action with no penalty. And charge they did! In one round, the scruffy level 0's did what an entire party of Level 1's failed to do: they absolutely butchered those beastmen. There was no help from me, the guy's dice (my physical ones, not the app ones) were on fire and every hit delivered maximum damage, more in the case of one critical.
After the carnage, they rolled over the downed characters, and most of them made it, but were severely beaten and demoralized. We decided the adventure would end there as the characters retreated to the village to lick their wounds and have another go later.
Summary
Everyone had a blast, more so towards the end when they really started to grok the mindset and attitude of DCC vs. D&D. The last battle in particular got their blood pumping, what with PCs going down like wheat, me bellowing various animal noises for the beastmen (they laughed particularly hard at my elephant-man charge) and then, when the peasants laid into the beastmen, there was much cheering. In the end, folks wanted to know where they could get the game afterwards so, by my reckoning, it was a good demo...
This is my third time running SotSS and this run was incredibly entertaining if short (about two hours start to finish). I didn't manage to get any pictures because a. the room we were in was very dark and b. when I run the game, I get very animated and try to get the players animated so I can feed off the energy of the group, so I rarely remember to do little things like take pictures when I'm busy growling, shouting and hopping up and down while counting down from 5 if players take too much time to make a decision. It's all about the action in my demos and that leaves little time for visual documentation. But here is a short rundown of how it all went down...
HERE BE SPOILERS!!!
To start off the game, I made sure that they understood the correct mindset for DCC by reading the back cover to them. They spent some time talking to folks in the village (I let them take it slow early on to get them used to using the rules), but I soon hustled them on to the main adventure site.
A. The Vine Horrors
The group was understandably cautious for the most part (which is understandable considering the emphasis I put on how doomed the average character is during chargen), but the wizard, reasoning that he would be best suited to determining what the bodies were entangled in, decided to march right up and closely examine them. That went about as well you'd expect, but he got lucky and survived two rounds with the buggers while his party lit torches, knocked crossbows or hid. Eventually, after lots of long ranged fire, the dwarf charged in and butchered one while they doused the other one in oil and set it ablaze, causing it to explode, and showering them with burning sap.
The wizard, being a twisted little monkey, decided to fill a sack with some of the seed goo to use on a corpse later. Just in case.
C. The Gatehouse
The thief, acting as a scout, crossed the rickety boards first and checked out the portcullis. Deeming it safe, he motioned for the others to cross, but no one wanted to be the second one across. Eventually, they hit upon the idea of tying a rope around an old tree and shooting a crossbow bolt attached to the other end of the rope across and through the lower part of the portcullis grating. A good idea, so I let them cross with little difficulty. After all, I like to reward smart thinking (almost as much as I love to punish dumb ideas) and the fun stuff was inside the castle. I didn't want to lose any of them just yet.
Of course, they had the wizard in the back when the portcullis slammed down and I thought that would be the end of him, but darned if I didn't roll a 1! I ruled that it got stuck halfway down, due to neglect.
D. Courtyard
Now, I run this module pretty much BtB, but I do add one little feature to the castle interior, and that is a set of stone stairs leading from the courtyard straight up to the top of the gatehouse, where I've armed the beastmen with bows in addition to their spears. I do this because I like to provide a more multi-level tactical approach to this encounter and allow them to potentially come at the beastmen in H from another direction. Invariably, one or two of them will race up the stairs to engage the beastmen, and I give the Beastmen a height advantage with their spears by allowing them to attack first against characters charging up against them. In this case, the beastman with the cockroach head managed to mortally wound a warrior on the stairs before getting taken down by ranged fire along with his buddy, fly-head (whose head exploded messily when his body hit the flagstones below).
The party turned the Warrior over and he had luckily survived. Apparently, the spear only went between his arm and side, leaving him with a nasty cut, but not impaling him as it seemed below.
F. The Well
Is it just my demos or is it just a standard thing for at least one party member to suggest sending the halfling down the well in the bucket? Every. Danged. Time.
Well, the halfling (for the first time ever) refused and, after the wizard nearly toppled into the spooky thing, the well became a non-event. Nobody wanted to mess with it after I started making moaning noises and kept on making them as they tried to decide what to do.
E. The Charnel Ruins
This group really didn't want to mess about with the interior of this place and probably wouldn't have even stepped foot inside if it hadn't been for the greedy halfling looking to pull gems out of the clearly evil fountain's mouth. He, of course got flame-slapped by the tar which then engaged the rest of the party. They managed to beat it down enough that I ruled it would retreat back into the mouth of the fountain. They stopped the wizard from smearing the hapless halfling with Vine Horror seed goo and turned him over. He lived.
And immediately went back to prying gems out of the fountain.
After what was left of the tar ooze popped out and pimp-slapped him down again, it seriously injured several other party members, killing the wizard and a warrior, before they finished off it off and retreated from the ruin, alive but scorched. They closed and barred the doors.
H. Tower of the Beast
This was pretty much the last encounter of the night for reasons that will soon become hilariously clear.
While trying to figure out a way to get inside, the dwarf said 'screw it' and charged the doors with her shoulder. Natural 20. She breaks through the rotted wood and ends up slamming into a beastman in the middle of the room.
Now, at this point, I'm expecting a charge to her aid, but no. Everyone sits outside the door and leaves her to it, preparing ranged fire and oil while she takes on 6 beastmen. Alone. The only one helping her in the slightest was the Cleric, who used Word of Command to get the beastmen fighting each other, buying the dwarf a little more time.
Now, by this point, someone else had joined the table and I handed them a 0-Level mob from the pile I keep handy. I told him that his characters were all roped to the wall on the far side of the tower and, as soon as the PCs freed them, he could join the party. To that end, the halfling and thief though they'd sneak around the melee and free the peasants while the beastmen were beating down on the dwarf. Unfortunately for them, I had left the beastman champion in hiding to the side of the door to ambush the rest of the party after they entered. The halfling barely survived the attack, the axe embedding in the door frame just close enough to his scalp to give him a new haircut.
The thief, thinking he would be able to get past this, didn't count on the fact that the beastmen had finished off the dwarf (who sadly caught the whiff of gold coming from down the stairs before she passed out) and had now turned their attention to the rest of the party. He was immediately attacked by a ram-head with huge saucer eyes. He leaped of the stairs onto the ram-man to stab him but was easily throw off and to the ground.
Most of the rest of the party started taking shots at the rest of the manimals charging out of the tower, or faced them head on in melee, but the remaining warrior decided to try and shoot the ropes holding the peasants to the wall instead, using a mighty deed. It took three shots, but he eventually succeeded at freeing one. I told the peasant player he could free one other peasant each round.
The halfling managed to avoid another blow from the champion and let loose with insane rage on the creature, rolling to hit with both his short swords and scoring a critical on one. He stabbed the pair into the beast then scissored it apart in a shower of gore. His cries of triumph were then cut short as the frog-headed beastmen leaped at him, kicking his head into the wall, dropping him to the floor and out of the fight. The rest of the party quickly followed, until only the cleric was left to fend off 4 savage beastmen. Just as he went down, the peasants were all free.
I told the peasant player that, considering the desperation of the situation and the fact that the peasants could finally see a slim chance of freedom, I would allow them to run, pick up the weapons of the fallen and charge the beastmen as one action with no penalty. And charge they did! In one round, the scruffy level 0's did what an entire party of Level 1's failed to do: they absolutely butchered those beastmen. There was no help from me, the guy's dice (my physical ones, not the app ones) were on fire and every hit delivered maximum damage, more in the case of one critical.
After the carnage, they rolled over the downed characters, and most of them made it, but were severely beaten and demoralized. We decided the adventure would end there as the characters retreated to the village to lick their wounds and have another go later.
Summary
Everyone had a blast, more so towards the end when they really started to grok the mindset and attitude of DCC vs. D&D. The last battle in particular got their blood pumping, what with PCs going down like wheat, me bellowing various animal noises for the beastmen (they laughed particularly hard at my elephant-man charge) and then, when the peasants laid into the beastmen, there was much cheering. In the end, folks wanted to know where they could get the game afterwards so, by my reckoning, it was a good demo...