Goodman Games

Hi all,

After many years away from D&D we decided to start playing again. We were 1E/2E D&D gamers, completely missed 3E (apparently we didn't miss much), and are getting up to speed with 3.5E (Yes I know, just in time for 4E to come out!).

We decided that we better start with a basic module to minimize rules, conversions, and confusion. So we started out playing the old AD&D N4 Treasure Hunt module as zero-level characters (updated for 3.5). This module facilitated us getting back into the swing of things by using 3.5 mechanics but not going totally overboard with detail to start off. Although we started with N4, the premise was to play a campaign of DCCs afterwards, have some fun, and test the theory of how "Classic" are the "Dungeon Crawl Classics."

All the party members who started N4 made it through the adventure alive and included the following characters:

Gargar: 1st Level Half-Orc Barbarian
Morgrim Hammerhand: 1st Level Dwarven Fighter
Mornar: 1st Level Human Sorcerer
Ephiantes: 1st Level Elven Wizard
Teklar: 1st Level Half-Elf Cleric
Merriton Hardcheese: 1st Level Halfling Rogue
Melisana: 1st Level Human Healer NPC (I borrowed this idea from the excellent Castle Whiterock posts on the forum)

By the end of N4 the party was sailing away from an island that a goddess had chosen to destroy. After a few days at sea, and with no idea where they were, I inserted the 1st level DCC "The Fate of the Vigilant" as an encounter. I changed the context of the module to weave it into DCC#1. With an inability to effectively fight off the goblin raids on the silver caravans, I had the miner's guild elect to send a shipment of silver by sea instead of by land. That information found its way into the hands of Lawrence Gannu and he set a plan in motion to intercept the shipment. The battle went poorly for Lorethel and his goblins and they abandoned their own ship for "The Vigilant." The party made surprisingly quick work of all the monsters on the ship including the Gnoll "Teeth-Taker." Jornal the First Mate did manage to bull rush Teklar over the side of the ship. Much hilarity ensued when Teklar began to drown and so did subsequent party members who jumped in the water to help! Jessa the half-elf did manage to con the party into letting her go free (although as soon as they reached Silverton she bolted and will reappear beside Gannu in the final battle). After discovering the silver cache on board the party realized "The Vigilant' had been boarded by another frigate intent on bringing the ship's cargo back to Silverton. The party returned with the new ship and were hired by the guild to put an end to the raiding of their silver caravans. After a few days rest at the inn (where they indirectly met Gannu) the party headed off to the mines.

After the experience with "The Fate of the Vigilant" I was worried that the encounters would be too weak for this party so I slowly increased the number of golbins throughout level one. The party made there way through the dungeon slowly and methodically. Ephiantes the elf found the secret door with the silver longsword and they used that secret room to rest and accumulate their treasure. The most interesting encounter of the first level was the battle with Rez-Zomar the Goblin Chief. Given the party strength I decided to really boost the goblins in this room. To Zomar and his two bodyguards I added an additional 8 goblins and 2 dire rats on leashes (yes, in hindsight this was too much but it made for an epic battle!).

When the party entered the room they were not at full strength nor did they have all their spells. They all had ranged weapons equipped and all missed with those attacks. That first round set the tone for the rest of the battle. The rolls for both the party and the goblins were dreadfully poor. The rolls were so bad for so long that at one point we all just started laughing uncontrollably! The battle went on, and on, and on, as the poor rolling continued. At one point Teklar went down with negative hit points and one of the goblin bodyguards put him out of his misery (WooHoo a kill!). Ephiantes was reduced to -1 hit points and slumped to the floor. With so much battle taking place he literally bled to death - no other party member could get there in time (Woohoo two kills!). I had two other players - Gargar and Morgrim - at -9 hit points but they managed to survive. In the end the only characters active were Melisana the NPC Healer with her longspear, Morgrim, and Mornar against a badly wounded Rez-Zomar. The dwarf put an end to the goblin with his dwarven waraxe.

So ended the first level of the the Idylls of the Rat King. I'd really appreciate any comments or suggestions you might have. We plan to play again in about 2 weeks or so.

So what was your group's verdict? Are DCCs "Classic" enough?

We think, as far as the first level of DCC#1, that the module certainly met our expectation. I anticipate populating the third level with more undead miners. We are going to play the sequel DCC#27 after this adventure - now that one looks to have a different dynamic and feel. I'm not sure they will be "ready" for the numerous quick ways to die in that adventure and anticipate going through a few characters. I'm surveying the other DCCs at the moment for a module to follow the two Rat King adventures, possibly #5, #19, or #50. Any suggestions?

Actually, my first suggestion would be to put another module (or two) between Idylls and Revenge of the Rat King. That way, it will be more of a surprise that their old nemesis has returned. Revenge is a neat adventure, by the way. It has some great descriptive text that makes the adventure come alive. Oh...make sure to use the Dundjinni maps for it too (provided that they'll be finished in time...Cisticola is still working on them).

There's a thought. Would you change the amount of experience the party would receive in order to have them at the recommended levels for DCC#27? Seems they would likely have exceeded levels 4-6 by then.

Hmmm...really? I haven't looked at the recommended XP. I don't use modules for my games (just for one-shots)...and if I did, I wouldn't give out much XP. I'm notoriously stingy. I like my campaigns to have a gritty, low magic feel.

Yeah, I'd trim down the XP some, fit in another low level adventure in between, and then send them through Revenge. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect to only be 4-6 after 2 adventures. Hell...my group played every week for 5 years, and they had just reached 10th.

Yeah, it's too bad there isn't another DCC that fits between Idylls and Revenge, or that follows after Revenge. The storyline kind of begs for more about the Rat King...

Gosh tacojohn4547, I know just what you mean. It seems that such a thing would be a good idea.

Hi there,

Here's the quick report as to our progress in DCC#1:

At this point there are four characters and an NPC:

Gargar, 2nd Level Half-Orc Barbarian
Morgrim, 2nd Level Dwarven Fighter
Merriton, 2nd Level Halfling Rogue
Mornar, 2nd Level Human Sorcerer
NPC: Melisana, 2nd Level Human Healer

When we finished last the party lost two characters in the battle against the goblin chief at the end of level one. The party decided to rest and recoup their healing and spells.

They headed down to level two. They sent Merriton first to scout and he managed to observe the goblins sleeping in the guardroom. He climbed silently back to the top and reported to the party. The party decided to head down and let the halfling deliver a coup de gras, followed by the rest of the party members. However, the halfling stepped on a piece of wood in the guardroom which let out a sharp "crack!" He found himself in the center of the room surrounded by the goblins and somehow managed to down 3 himself before he was joined by the other party members.

The group continued along the western and southern portions of the dungeon. They ran into one of the rooms with female goblin non-combatants and decided to put them all to the sword despite the pleading of the one Lawful Good party member. Each member of the group had a nice experience point deduction and alignment reprimands for their trouble

Other interesting events: The party found all the secret doors except #7. They had an fun encounter with The Torturer who "lifted tail" and ran away before being slain. I will likely have him appear in the final battle. Another interesting encounter came with The Jailer who, recognizing he was outnumbered, decided to parlay. He bought his way out of death by giving the party information about the dungeon and also by handing over his weapon. He summarily ran to room 5 and sought help from the wererats. The party had fun with G'zogah's hit and run tactics but finally put him to the sword after many quick strikes.

We finished our session on a fun note. The party entered room 22 and decided to have Merriton check the rubble pile in the center of the room. After a thorough investigation, Merri, standing on top of the mound exclaimed, "Well, there's nothing....hereeeeeeeeee" as the pile gave out underneath him and he slid, on his own, down to level 3!

We are going to play again in the middle of July.

Hi again,

At this point there are four characters and an NPC:

Gargar, 2nd Level Half-Orc Barbarian
Morgrim, 2nd Level Dwarven Fighter
Merriton, 2nd Level Halfling Rogue (separated from rest of party)
Mornar, 2nd Level Human Sorcerer
NPC: Melisana, 2nd Level Human Healer

The 3rd level was pretty standard fare. Not terribly exciting for a campaign post so I will abbreviate where possible.

At the end of our last session, Merriton the halfling rogue fell down the chute to level 3. I had the chute close off behind him to separate him from the rest of the party and make their lives difficult.

The party was not in good health and had used all their healing spells, so they decided to drink potions of healing and head down the elevator shaft to level 3 right away.

They dispatched the zombies relatively quickly and headed out through the mine shaft. They continued heading east hoping to find Merri. The party found him wounded and unconscious from his fall in a barrel in the storage room.

The party dispatched the zombie miners pretty quickly. Mornar the sorcerer rolled high on his initiative and blasted a number of them with a burning hands spell. The fighters made quick work of the remainder.

The battle with Narzy wasn’t quite as difficult for them as I thought. I upped the number of zombies too. Again, Mornar of the Burning Hands did his thing and Gargar and Morgrim chopped their way through to Narzy quicker than anticipated. With only a few HPs left Narzy decided to lift-tail but was killed by by Merri through an AoO as he tried to pass by.

I added to elements to this battle. First, I had Narzy reanimate the two player characters that died in the fight with the goblin chief on level 1 – just to freak out the party members. They were quite surprised to see their former adventurers attacking them! Also, I added an NPC wizard called Edric of Archbridge, who, at the beginning of the battle, was unconscious and bound at Narzy’s feet. Edric was the last surviving member of an adventuring party sent by the city of Archbridge to look into the caravan raiding. This rounds out the group a little as they were so limited from an arcane spell standpoint.

At the end of this level all party members advanced to 3rd level.

In terms of the final level, I will advance to the final battle rather than discussing the various coup de gras offered to wererats.

I made this final battle as fun and interesting as possible. The battle consisted of the following interesting characters.

Gannu the Rat King
2 Dire Rats
1 Goblin Cleric
1 Goblin Wizard (Hogah)
1 Wererat goblin
The Torturer (fled previous encounter)

To this motley crew I also added:

1 Wererat Goblin: This is Forebear the Smithy (+5 Str) – what can I say, the wererats infiltrated the town in numerous ways

2. Jessa Smiles (from DCC#29 Fate of the Vigilant). The party played through this in advance of DCC#1 and bolted as soon as they hit Silverton.

During the ensuing battle I managed to drop two characters to below 0 HPs but failed to kill any. The barbarian charged the wizard at the outset of the battle and was surrounded. He hit the wizard as he was casting a lightning bolt and ruined the spell - whew was he lucky! However, the barbarian took numerous rapier hits and went down quickly. With the exception for the first 2 rounds, the party was pretty much in control of this fight too.

The group found the magic circle. I had the circle teleport them to a destination just outside of Silverton. This seemed to make more sense to the overall plot.

SO ENDS THE IDYLLS OF THE RAT KING.

I plan to run the party through DCC#3 The Mysterious Tower followed by The Revenge of the Rat King.

In terms of an adventure hook, I plan on using the old "nobleman's son took his old adventuring gear and went off to be a hero" storyline. That should get the group involved and motivated to head to the ruins.

Any comments or suggestions gratefully received. Thanks for reading.

Hey! I just noticed that you used Fate of the Vigilant! Thanks! Sorry it turned out too easy, but I'm glad Jessa conned the party. She's one of my fave NPCs.

Did she finally meet justice in the Rat King encounter? Your write-up doesn't say.

Yes, she was a great NPC.

I wrote her up as a 3rd level thief and the consort of the Rat King.

She began the combat with her mimic slobber dagger. She entered the lists by slicing and hitting the Sorcerer Mornar - which took him out of the entire combat. So she did well. She met her fate at the end of a Healer's longspear!

I wouldn't say that it was easy, I think part of it comes from my inexperience as a 3.5 DM - I find (in comparison to earlier editions) I have to max out the HPs of the monsters or add more to make it engaging combats for the players. Suggestions?

I can see that. You've got a five-man team with races playing to the strengths of the food groups and a front-line fighter to spare, and if they're experienced they're not going to make rookie mistakes.

Most if not all DCC modules come with a section near the front called Scaling Information. I'd give that a look.

If you find yourself adding monsters to encounters frequently, think about levelling up the monsters as a change of pace. When the party sees the small group, they'll think, "Easy prey," and adding a few fighter, sorcerer, or rogue levels to a critter makes it much more dangerous and (if your party is new-ish to 3.X) it can be kinda scary.

I'd also think about ways to muck with them using terrain...that usually throws the stodgy types off a bit. I don't mean "turn it into an endless skill-check-fest," but change the maps around to include cover from pillars or ledges, darkness, or chokepoints, and maybe throw out one crucial skill check early. Maybe replace some monsters with traps...when a slugfest suddenly includes a flashy trap (like one that shoots lightning bolts) that tends to get people's attention.

If you know your players pretty well, you can throw out an encounter that's "borrowed" from a movie or book they like. That rolling boulder trap at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark? That prolonged lightsaber battle between Qui-gon and Darth Maul between the laser doors and the giant pit from Episode One*? Make them clockwork doors and a giant pit (or sarlaac-type monster) and you've got a D&D fight! The cavalry siege of that village in The 13th Warrior, with spiked embankments and burning buildings?
I wouldn't do this all the time, but every now and then as a nod to something you know they like it's kinda cool.

Hope some of that helps!

* This statement should not be taken as approval of Episode One as a whole, just that fight. Thank you.

AH! One thing I forgot!

I use (used?) the heck out of this link:

http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20e ... ulator.htm

The ELs in 3.X are based off four heroes, and you've got five solid heroes, so you can't run most encounters as-written.

You can use the tool provided in the link above to scale your encounters to your party's actual ECL value.

Hi again,

We finished off DCC 1 The Idylls of the Rat King. We are continuing our DCC campaign with DCC 3 The Mysterious Tower. Based on the above discussion, I used the scaling information to increase the difficulty of this adventure.

Our stalwart band of adventurers includes:

Gargar, 3rd Level Half-Orc Barbarian
Morgrim, 3rd Level Dwarven Fighter
Merriton, 3rd Level Halfling Rogue
Mornar, 3rd Level Human Sorcerer
Edric, 3rd Level Human Wizard
Melisana, 3rd Level Human Healer (NPC)

The adventurers were hailed as local heroes for their successful campaign against the goblins. They were approached by Orm, a local silver merchant in distress. Orm, an adventurer in his youth, came to the PCs for help. His son Locan took his old adventuring equipment and signet ring and headed off to the haunted tower to test his courage and seek his fortune (I adjusted the location of the tower to within a day’s ride of Silverton). Orm offered the PCs 500gp to return Locan to Silverton.

What ensued was nothing sort of a full-scale bloodbath!

The party arrived at night and camped outside the keep. They wanted to wait until morning to enter. At night they were attacked by 6 beetles. Merri took three of them out on his own with his new two-hand fighting feat (and some sweet rolls).

In the morning the courageous party entered the keep and took a good look at the tower. That prompted the appearance of the ghost (and a sound effect scream on my PC for fun). We about killed ourselves laughing as ALL the party members, in turn, failed their save and lifted-tail back to the camp-site!!!

After heading back in they explored the Orchard. I advanced the Assassin Vine to provide it three attacks per round. Rolling randomly, I had it pick Mornar up by the neck taking major damage, and entangle everyone else. Moving at half their rate, the Vine also grappled and constricted Gargar and Morgrim up off the ground. Mornar was constricted again in the next round and died! The rest of the party survived the encounter.

After mustering their courage, they decided to descend via the trap door in the officer’s building (The sinkholes were out as none of them brought rope!). The party took out the 2 otyughs with ease but did not find the secret door in the next room. The party then headed through the natural cave heading north. Here I added an alcove on either side of the tunnel. The 2 owlbears in that room heard the party coming and hid in the alcoves until the party had passed and then attacked!!! The owlbears with their full attack claw/claw/bite kicked some serious butt. One of the owlbears tore Edric to shreds in one round. He died and it wasn't pretty. After a pitched battle the party finished them off and headed south.

In the next room they found three owlbears. Down two characters, this wasn’t pretty either. Gargar, Melisana, and Merriton moved to the left and attacked. That left the dwarf, Morgrim, on his own. If it wasn’t for the healer, this would have been a TPK. Gargar and Morgrim were taking roughly 15-18 points of damage a round! Yikes. Fortunately, both Morgrim and Melisana both had Diehard as a feat and were able to survive the encounter, but luck was definitely a factor. Unfortunately for Merri, he was killed (and swallowed) by the bite attack of an owlbear. Poor Merri! The party wanted to lift-tail but couldn’t because the dwarf was at negative HP. This fight was a slugfest and every roll counted. Eventually they killed off the owlbears and retreated back to their campsite. The party, now consisting of Gargar, Morgrim, and Melisana, decided they needed to return to Silverton and recruit new members. These three party members raised to 4th level.

They party found a couple adventure-seekers in the Silver Cup Inn. They added the following to their party:

Cymoral, 3rd Level Elven Rogue
Garax, 3rd Level Half-Elf Wizard

With their new adventurers in tow, the party returned to the first level of the dungeon, killed off two remaining owlbears, and turned their attention to the crypt portion of the dungeon.

In the statue/coffin room I increased the number of skeletons to 20 and set their HP to 8 each. After the coffins moved to cover the exits, I had the skeletons arrive in 5 waves of 4 skeletons each. The party, seeing 4 skeletons moved to attack but never considered the sheer volume coming at them. They didn’t think to rush the door and fight in the hallway, or retreat to their hallway and fight the skeletons there. Morgrim, with his new cleave feat, dropped skeletons like they were going out of style. Everyone else either rolled poorly or was in HP trouble. Eventually, Garax was surrounded and killed by multiple skeletons. Gargar was raged and had been reduced to the point where he would have died if his rage ended. He managed to break free long enough to drink a potion. Cymoral, also surrounded and having taken numerous hits, was reduced to negative HPs. After a lengthy battle, the skeletons were destroyed. The party healed Cymoral and licked their wounds.

After dealing with Glorian, the group found the secret door they missed earlier and descended to the third level. I increased the strength of the acid for the wall of force room. After dropping the first level, the group moved together and dropped the second lever. The acid began pouring out! They were not quick to react to this development and began taking damage. They hummed and hawed, and took more damage, after a while they got the hint, but at this point Cymoral had taken too much damage and died. Melisana, on the shoulders of Gargar, found the hidden lever and saved the day. The part was now reduced back to Morgrim, Gargar, and Melisana.

I tweaked the key room so that each could be turned individually – the party only had three members! They managed to get through the gas room thanks to Gargar’s superior strength. The pit traps were something else again. Gargar, eager to jump the first pit, did so but landed in the second (hilarity ensued). All three adventurers fell for the second set of pit traps!!! They finally started using the longspear to poke around for pit traps after that.

We finished off our session with the chest room and the rust monsters. Gargar went for the full frontal bash method and took firetrap damage from the chest. They then decided to leave the chest and open the door. The rust monsters hit immediately and destroyed Morgrim’s scalemail +1. Gargar dropped his greataxe +1 (laster destroyed) and attacked with a club. The dwarf attacked with his warhammer +1 and that was destroyed. I thought at one point they were going to have to start thorwing rocks! Finally, they started using the wooden longsword and killed the rust monsters. The party advanced to 5th level. We finished our marathon session there.

The party now consists of:

Gargar, 5th Level Half-Orc Barbarian
Morgrim, 5th Level Dwarven Fighter
Melisana, 5th Level Human Healer

What carnage! I ended up killing off 5 characters that session. That was a first. Haha! I really didn’t think the module was that lethal either. I figured this would be more of a fun (as opposed to lethal) adventure before playing Revenge of the Rat King but I guess I was way off there! I think it was one part DM, and one part players. They didn't seem to coordinate their attacks well. Anyway, we had fun and a lot of laughs. We plan to play in a month or so.

Thanks for reading! All comments welcome!

Alas my friends, this will be the final posting of the famed Company of the Rat King.

In our last session, the remaining adventurers were all killed!

That's right, a TPK.

The three original characters that were left from our zero level N4 Treasure Hunt, DCC mini-adventure, and DCC1 all bit the dust against the mighty Djinni at the top of the wizards tower.

Somewhat ironically, Melisana - the NPC from the N4 Adventure, who made it so far and become a healer - was the last to die

The three of the characters talked to the Djinni for a bit before deciding to withdraw and discuss strategy. They had no magical power-ups of any kind. They decided to range attack the Djinni and then close. The barbarian GarGar went into his rage.

The Djinni entered whirlwind form and pelted the PCs with coins eventually lifting them up and throwing them in the direction of the door. The party landed only one hit and retreated. It's at this point that I decided the Djinni's best strategy was to hold them at the door, rather than giving them a foothold in the room. The party healed and GarGar opened the door, only to be hit by the Djinni's full attack. Ouch! After initiative, the Djinni went first and killed Gargar. The Morgrim, the trusty dwarf, stepped in and died quickly (+10 to hit without any armour will tend to do that, See Monster, Rust). Rather than lifting tail, Melisana decided to keep after the Djinni who was hurting at that point. Sadly, she took the Djinni's full attack and died.

So ends DCC3 the expedition to The Mysterious Tower.

It was literally just like that - bam, bam, bam and the remaining party members were dead.

This put a serious wrench into my plans to run DCC27 after this. I wanted some of the original party members to have a connection to the whole Rat King episode. Oops, that's not going to work! hah!

So we just quickly rolled up some 4th level characters with no connection to the first group (I started them off in Archbridge), but this will be the end of this post as the original cast of characters all met their demise.

We are going to begin Castle Whiterock in the coming months, after I've done enough background reading and minis hunting. I'm still undecided whether to set CW in FR or Greyhawk...

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Naaahh! The players will still 'get it', and it give you a chance to poke friendly fun at the original characters... "Other miserable so-called adventurers have tried before...!"

Hoody hoo! I think that's the first TPK I've heard about from the Mysterious Tower. Nice job.

I am about to start DCC#1 for a Pathfinder campaign. This is my first time back in the GM chair in a while and would appreciate any advice.

Questions:
1) The party is starting at first level with a monk, an arcane caster, a rogue, a guy with a big honking blade plus an NPC cleric. (Details are slowly trickling in from players). How much of a challenge is the first dungeon level for such a party? The goblins and dire rats don't look that scary, but is the expectation that they will nickel and dime the party of hp and spells before the big battle?

2) At what point should they advance to second level? Before going down to level 2? Should they be level 3 before the final battle?

3) For all the secret rooms. I think there is an assumption that all characters are searching for traps/doors at all times. So when they walk down the hall past the door, should I secretly roll "Perception" for each character or just the one with the best skill?

4) What should I be aware of in trying to make the adventure challenging but not deadly to a reasonable party?

I have not run this module but to answer #3 I would only roll every time if you are trying to speed up the game. Secret doors should be hard to find. I only roll for all the characters if the party says ahead of time that they are actively searching for secret doors at all times. Then I give them a negative on perception skills to detect ambushes. Hope that helps.