Scions of Punjar: Session 3

(Another short session) At the end of the last session the party was headed back to the city of Punjar. Armed with the knowledge that they would most likely be facing undead the group decided to hire, if possible, a cleric or paladin etc. They made their way through the streets of Punjar on a warm, humid and rainy afternoon, finally arriving at the Bazaar of the Gods – a small section of the city comprised of various tent shrines and ramshackle temples. Through the use of an urban skill challenge the party managed to find a small unassuming temple dedicated to the Raven Queen. The group was confronted by a scarred old man and and was able to hook up (skill challenge) with a shifter avenger who had been working and living at the temple who was more than interested in the idea of taking out undead.

They made their way to the mausoleum discovering that it was indeed the family crypt of the Dev’shir family. Upon entering the main room of the mausoleum, which served as a chapel, the party discovered two rooms on the east and west walls that each served as tombs. In these rooms they found about 16 undead each, standing in rows of 8 almost like an infantry, some skeletons and some recently dead – zombies. Much of the Dev’shir family ancestry had been risen as undead. After dispatching these undead tha party moved on to the double doors on the north wall of the chapel. It was here they noticed that the doors themselves had been craved like a gnarled trunk of a massive tree, with the branches extending out onto the walls. On the branches were bricks inlaid in the wall with the names of the members of the Dev’shir family – obviously a family tree. Upon closer inspection they found the branch noticed that belongs to Lady Dev’shir had 2 blank bricks underneath her name which looked out of place. The party figured out that this was a piece to what was becoming an interesting puzzle.

The party entered the double doors and found another tomb, noticing that one of the graves had been disturbed, spying a body lying in the corner of the room. While inspecting this an apparition, a young woman half-burned and wearing what appeared to be a dress made of flames, appeared behind them and began to attack, while screaming for them to stop disturbing her. Antioch’s character, the tiefling bard Talibah, stepped up with a diplomacy check and rolled high. The group learned that she was Dugesia, the daughter of Lady Dev’shir, and that she had been burned alive but could not remember how. They also learned that she has heard many voices in the tomb, one a familiar female voice. Talibah convinced her that the group was hunting the people that had disturbed her and Dugesia begged the group to place her body back into the tomb properly. Once this was done the tormented ghost of Dugesia Dev’shir faded away.

Jester stated that he believed that it was Lady Dev’shir herself that was behind all of this mess and led the party back to the Dev’shir manner. In the middle of what was a rainy night the party stormed into the Dev’shir manner, knocking out a startled butler in the process. Lady Dev’shir, lantern in hand, dashes down the stairs in response to the noise and sees the party she had initially hired. Telling them to calm down she invites the group into the dining room and pours herself a drink, everyone else too cautious to drink anything.

Confronted with the evidence of the mismatching bricks in the family tree she seems surprised but explains to the party that she had 2 daughters, Lakaisha and Dugesia. The firstborn Dugesia being the smart well-behaved daughter and Lakaisha the, well you know, the typical black sheep. In a fit of rage one day after learning that a marriage to a very unlikable minor noble has been arranged for her and the fact that Dugesia was being groomed to take the reigns of the Dev’shir estate Lakaisha murdered her sister. One day while Dugesia was grooming her favorite horse in the family stables Lakaisha locked her in and set it ablaze. Enraged by this the family quietly has her committed in another city miles away. This was the last Lady Dev’shir has heard of her only remaining daughter.

Convinced of this and only one option remaining, the party decided to set out for the abandoned windmill in the morning.

Scions of Punjar: Session 2

I was unable to run our biweekly Punjar game last week due to a pretty bad case of food poisoning, although I suppose I got what I asked for, ordering tacos at 2am at the local 24 hour hole-in-the-wall. We also got off to a late start, by about 2 hours, due to a really long and engaging discussion about 4th Edition, mechanics and game theory in relation to previous editions of D&D. It really is exciting to see people so enthusiastic about and interested in 4th Edition. Antioch and I were recently discussing how so many new people are stepping up to the plate and getting behind the screen, and how everything really is more “accessible and elegant”.

When we last left off the party entered the bandit lair in the abandoned iron mines and had taken out a group of orc guards and forced the last remaining orc of the group to surrender. Jester and Bart used their “persuasiveness” to learn that these orcs had taken up residence in the mines when the ore dried up and the humans left. The group of bandits entered the mines and offered them easy work and decent pay as guards in exchange for use of the mines, and they learned that the bandit leader was called Haledon. He also traded, in exchange for his life, the info that the bandits have been hired by some human witch to exhume bodies for her. The party let the orc go, and as soon as he walked over to a table to gather his things he began pulling on a rope hanging from the wall. The next thing the orc knew he had a kukri buried in his face.

The party then proceeded down a long uphill corridor that contained a mine cart track, obviously an area for transporting ore. Even though the group failed perception checks, most of the group rolled higher than the mine cart trap on initiative, moving out of the way as the flaming mine cart laden with spears and axe blades came rolling down the track. Amanda’s character was able to dodge the mine cart, however the cart exploded into flames as it rolled off the end of the track and hit the wall and she took some heavy fire damage. After this the party engaged an elite ranger and an elite rogue (the ones who had set the mine cart trap) and seemed to have a pretty easy time with this encounter mostly due to the bard and tempest fighter taking out the rogue pretty quick.

After this the party proceeded on and basically plowed through 2 different rooms that served as barracks that were full of bandits. These encounters were a lot of fun and took up much of the session. Before I go on I should note that Amanda begged me to let her change her doppelganger sorcerer for a deva druid, which was fine by me. I can totally picture a deva druid living out in the Great Black Swamp which surrounds Punjar. Anyways in these encounters the druid was able to do some decent damage to the weaker bandits with her Flame Seed attack as the bard and tempest fighter ganged up on the bigger guys. Amongst all this Bart the minotaur was wailing on any bandit brave enough to step up to the front lines. After looting all of the bodies and ransacking the rooms, including a couple of other empty rooms and stumbling upon a small – ok huge – treasure stash the group moved on.

Honestly, I think the only real complaint I or Antioch have about the Dungeon Crawl Classics so far is the treasure parcels. Back when I ran Forges of the Mountain King I handed the module over to Antioch and let him just totally redesign all of the the treasure in the module to sync with the treasure parcel list in the DMG. While this has been my favorite DCC so far the treasure handed out to the party seems more than a little too generous. One parcel to note, in the Cleric’s Chamber in the bandit lair, the party can stumble upon 55 platinum pieces after a DC 25 thievery check. I have decided not to fix it this time and just see how much money the party ends up with at the end of this adventure, and check it to their level to see if it’s unbalanced.

Moving on, the party stumbled upon said Ceric’s Chamber and explored it a little, and spied a man holding a flaming longsword watching them from the hall a bit ahead of them. When they spotted him he immediately turned around and entered another room, slamming a door behind him.

I think it was Bart who kicked the door in, finding Haledon, the finely dressed bandit leader, sitting at his desk, watching them and looking a bit defeated. Talibah the tiefling bard stepped up and Antioch rolled pretty high on his Diplomacy check.

They were able to find out more about the “witch” who had hired the bandits to exume bodies for her in Punjar’s vast graveyard, but that even he had not seen her, only communicating through her raven familiar. He knew that she was living in the old abandoned windmill, but has been too afraid to approach it. They learned that she was raising the bodies as undead minions and stashing them in various places around Punjar and that she was planning to attack someone within Punjar very soon. One of the main places she was stashing the undead was in some family tomb inside Punjar’s graveyard ward known as the City of the Dead. The party wondered if it was the same tomb they have been hired to investigate by the Dev’shirs.

Haledon tried to reason with them that he was just trying to make a living the same way they were and that their paths just happen to cross. There was no reason to fight as the party had taken out most of the band he had spent so much time and resources building. That didn’t really work too well with Jester and Bart however. Also, as a way to scale down on the raining of treasure I role played Haledon into guilt-tripping the party from taking his +2 flaming longsword, stating that it was a family heirloom and that they could even have the clothes on his back if they would only leave him his sword. It worked. 😉

Knowing that they would be facing a lot of undead the group agreed that the next place to go was back into Punjar and see if they might be able to hire a cleric or paladin to take along with them to the tomb. We lost Adrian for this and the rest of the adventure who was playing Bart due to personal reasons, so Josh and Antioch have been taking turns playing Bart. I’m still deciding if the best course of action is take take Bart out, replacing him with a cleric of the same level, or have the party hire a 1st level cleric NPC. We shall see.

*Update

I am considering making the search for the cleric as maybe an urban skill challenge, though Antioch’s bard has a high Streetwise score. Suggestions are welcome.

Scions of Punjar: Session 1

*Spoilers*

Cast:

Jester – Halfling Tempest Fighter
Talibah – Tiefling Bard
Bart – Minotaur Fighter
Ayla – Doppleganger Chaotic Sorcerer
Willy – Halfling Rogue

The premise of the hook for this adventure was that the current party was the same group who had been previously hired by Punjar’s Thieves Guild to take out someone called The Beggar King, and by eliminating him eliminating a threat to the entire city. This is when I ran Sellswords of Punjar a few months back. Since Players Handbook 2 previews are out I let the players in the group make new characters, as long as we assumed this was the same adventuring band from the previous adventure. Anyways, after dispatching the Beggar King rumor of the event spread and the group started bulding a reputation within Punjar, reaching one Lady Dev’shir, of a minor noble family within Punjar, who’s foppish son Elam had discovered a family heirloom ( a necklace) in a pawn shop – an heirloom that was known to be buried in the family tomb. Enraged by this and the fact that her son was visiting the pawn shops and therefore gambling again she sent him, alone, to a tavern known as the Laughing Manitcore within the Devil’s Thumb ward of Punjar, where the band of sellswords were known maintain as a base of operations.

As Elam entered the Laughing Manticore, early in the afternoon, he immediately spotted the party as they were the only ones in the place. Incredibly nervous at being in this part of town, Elam approached the group and stutteringly came right out with the proposal, that “Mother” was willing to hire them for a job, and pay a hefty sum to have it taken care of. Bart could smell Elam’s fear and jocularly put his arm around Elam, disturbing him more as Jester continued to throw large knives at a dart board on the wall. Part of the deal, Elam told them as beads of sweat poured from his forehead, was that they must escort him back home.

The Party met with Lady Dev’shir at the family estate where she further explained the job, the pay of 1,000 gp each, and gave the party directions to both the pawn shop and the Dev’shir family tomb. The party decided to investigate the pawn shop, hoping to find any leads as to who had sold the necklace.

The party entered Oskar’s Pawn shop and began to ask about the necklace, finding Oskar to be quite tight lipped. When diplomacy didn’t work Bart had to be held back from tearing up the place. It was Intimidate Skill Test time and he successfully made his intimidate checks and Oskar reluctantly informed them that he received it from a regular customer name Latimer, but did not know where Latimer acquired it. This is one of the best parts of the module to me so far – the listed Skill Tests for interacting with Oskar. I really like 4th Edition Skill Challenges, and despite what some grognards say, it does leave social role playing in tact. It actually makes it more challenging while making the character’s actual abilities a factor. So much for 4E’s loss of realism. Anyway Oskar also informed them that Latimer can usually be found at a tavern known as the Famished Froghemoth, and gave them a description of the half-orc. Because Talibah did roll some good numbers during her Diplomacy Skill Test, I did not have Oskar alert the Souk (ward) guard, and the party headed for the tavern – leaving the shop intact ;).

The party entered the bustling tavern and started to discreetly ask around about Latimer, well almost discreetly. Bart decided to intimidate one of the serving wenches (rolling really high) and she angrily told him that he was a regular gambler here, then not so politely told him to leave. All the while Talibah was sitting down near the hearth playing her flute. After a short while the group noticed a very suspicious looking tiefling with two thugs enter the place, obviously looking around for someone or something. Not long after that the front door opens and a half-orc matching Latimers description starts to walk in, eying the tiefling he gasps and turns right around, the three pursuing him out the door. The party quickly follows and initiative is rolled, the fight taking place in a back alley.

The two thugs are disposed and the party makes a deal with the tiefling – that he can have Latimer, they just want to question him first, and he accepts, knowing that continuing the fight would not be in his favor. Latimer is intimidated into spilling the beans: that he is a member of a group of bandits who have been holding up in an abandonded iron mine outside the city, where it is located, and that they have been hired by some spooky witch to exhume bodies from the City of the Dead ward. He doesn’t know why and doesn’t care, only happy to be pocketing shiny trinkets off the corpses he can sell for gambling money. Armed with the information they leave Latimer to his fate and head back to the Dev’shir estate.

Lady Dev’shir is only more infuriated by this information and the pay is raised to 1,200 gp each if the party can put a stop to whatever it is that’s going on. She urges them to go to the family tomb to make sure it is secure, however the party decides to head straight for the bandit’s lair. “Fish rot from the head down,” Talibah remarked.

The party made their way into the abandoned iron mine and snuck up on a group of orcs sitting around a table, playing a game of knucklebones. They took out all but one, including an orc cleric, and forced him onto surrendering, and this is where the session ended. It’s always best to end a session on a cliffhanger, even when it’s one as simple as that.

Overall I really like this module, and the group really liked it as well. Looking forward to the next session.

Review: Thrones of Punjar

This is more than a bit late, though in my defense I’ve been under the weather from a combination of a severe cold and term finals. Its become a kind of ritual where Red Jason goes to said FLGS, buys whatever Goodman Games merch is out, and dumps it on me so that I might analyze its contents for quality. Anywho, spoilers follow, so don’t read this if you want to play it.

Thrones of Punjar is the newest DCC in line after Sellswords of Punjar and Scions of Punjar. Obviously it helps to have played the other ones, but if you havent there are ways to shoehorn your characters into the current plot. As with all urban adventures I’ve read, the author pulls you aside for a bit to remind you that since the adventure takes place in a non-traditional dungeon setting, that the characters will be forced to exercise some measure of restraint.

The backstory behind Thrones of Punjar is pretty simple: an aboleth has wormed its way into the sewers, and as per a world-domination clause in the aberrant origin it has its sights set on the city above. Frankly since its living a sewer this is almost understandable. The adventure wins points from me since it includes an aboleth. It would get a few more if it had an illithid, but aberrations are few and far between so I’ll settle for what I can get.

The aboleth-whose-name-I-cannot-pronounce has spent most of his time enslaving people that decided it would be a good idea to go wandering in the sewers, and in general spending his time much like a less goofy-looking It. Eventually the aboleth pairs up with a noble who wants to use the cult surrounding the aboleth in order to bring shame to a rival nobility, which brings us to the start of the adventure.

The party can get drawn into the adventure through various ways. They can hear rumors about people vanishing and decide to take action themselves, but if experience has taught me anything its best to give them cold, hard incentive in the form of a treasure parcel and usher them out the door. These hooks involve a slumlord asking them to check out all the disappearances, but if you’re looking for a more traditional approah they can get hired by an ambassador to go rescue his daughter.

Finally, if all else fails then a religious NPC can have them go check out a “haunting”, holy water included.

The adventure covers the basics in that you get your typical dungeons to crawl around in, but there are lots of excellent opportunities to engage in social role-playing if thats your thing and the author even manages to find a way to squeeze in some variety between cultists and skum. The whole thing flows smoothly, but in case you get lost or miss a beat a handy flowchart in the back provides you with the most logical course of progression (though page numbers would have been appreciated).

This adventure, like many DCCs, has no shortage of elite and/or solo monsters. In practice these types of fights can be entertaining to a point, but quickly subside into mindless rolling without something else going on to spice things up. For example, the watery terrain from the crocodile battle in The Forgotten Portal added some tactical “depth” to the fight (har har). I would like to see combat encounters with more going on in order to avoid the 3rd Edition approach of surrounding a monster and beating it to death.

The main thing I like about this adventure aside from tentacled goodness is that it has a “hard” time limit: the party has two days to find the missing person before she gets killed. I find that in my games the group occasionally suffers from One-A-Day syndrome, where they go through all of one encounter before retiring for the…morning? Its like they get up, eat breakfast, have a 15 minute workout, and just dick around for the next 16 or so hours before they decide to get moving again. Well, that’s a (sometimes) slight exaggeration: they typically plow through two before tucking themselves in.

A hard time limit you basically says that you get a limited number of extended rests before its too late, in this case two. This encourages care, but also pushes the tension envelope quite a bit as they are forced to press on despite dwindling healing surges and daily powers.

The adventure also uses an optional Notoriety system that effects random encounters and also triggers special events: as the party does more stuff to draw attention to themselves, the more likely shit hits the fan or that the important NPCs take notice of them, which could be seen as a more subtle “find the matching key to the door” plot device.

You don’t have to use it and frankly if the party gets stuck I’d just move things along anyway: its not like World of WarCraft where they can bring up a menu that displays their Punjar Reputation score.

I’m looking forward to playing this, right after we manage to find some time to run Scions of Punjar between Scales of War and my own adventure path…I’m both overjoyed and seething with rage that for the first time in years I have more D&D than time, but I can only fault Goodman Games for providing more quality entertainment.

Harley Stroh (Goodman Games) Interview

I recently asked Harley Stroh, line editor and developer for Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics as well as author of the Master Dungeons series to take a few minutes from his busy schedule and answer a few questions. -Red Jason

You just got back from D&D Experience, it was amazing I’m sure….

So what exactly did you do at the convention?

We ran previews of our upcoming adventures, shared our newest releases, and had a chance to meet gamers from around the world. We met folks from Australia, Canada, the UK and all across the United States —- an amazing, diverse bunch. But mostly, we did what we do best: run exciting 4E adventures.

Goodman Games is pretty much in the thick of releasing a bunch of cool things with your name on it, you must be having a blast right now?

Absolutely. Having the chance to write for Goodman Games is a lifelong dream come true and with the new edition, the door has been cast open wide. There’s a world to explore and we’ve only just brushed the surface.

The products we’ve released, and the products we have coming up in the next 7 months are really exciting, to both write and play. Ultimately, we (the Goodman Games writers) are gamers — the products we release are the same adventures, settings and supplements we are hungry for in our own games.

So Mists of Madness looks quite enticing, can you give a little info about the plot?

I was doing research for my Age of Cthulhu adventure at the same time I was writing Mists so there is a fair bit of thematic overlap. The culmination of Mists isn’t true to the Cthulhu-mythos, but the overlap will be obvious to anyone with a passing familiarity with Lovecraft and his peers.

Where did the initial idea for this come from?

A few years ago I picked up the phenomenal H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s silent film: Call of Cthulhu. When I was working on Mists, I put the DVD on repeat and soaked in the atmosphere. From there, I mixed in a little nostalgia from Gygax’s Tomb of Horrors and the rest wrote itself.

I really think that the $2 module is a brilliant piece of marketing, helping introduce the DCC line to new players, in fact my first official experience behind the screen was running Jeff LaSala’s $2 The Transmuter’s Last Touch (3.5 edition) and I’ve been solely running Dungeon Crawl Classics for my gaming group ever since. What made you decide Mists of Madness was going to be the 4E $2 module?

Joseph Goodman calls the shots. He asked for a $2 adventure, and we jumped at the chance to write it. Mists was a natural fit — shorter than many of the other adventures we are publishing, but long enough to for an intense few sessions. And of course, it is set in the swamps just outside Punjar, a city close to my heart.

Then we have Curse of the Kingspire, the second of your Master Dungeons titles. For those that don’t know, what is the Master Dungeons line all about and how is it different than the Dungeon Crawl Classics line?

The Master Dungeon line is all about high adventure, exotic locations, and epic deed done by great heroes (regardless of level). If the DCCs draw their inspiration from heroes like Gray Mouser and Fafhrd, the Master Dungeons look to Elric and Beowulf. Master Dungeons take place on a grander stage than the DCCs, with a broader, more sweeping scope. When you’ve finish a MD adventure, the world should be a changed place.

I picked up Dragora’s Dungeon when it first came out and I totally agree with the EN World fan reviewer that said this would make a perfect sword and sorcery style Conan novel, you must have had a great time writing this one?

Absolutely. I’ve long believed that the key to writing a good adventure, true to the heart of D&D, is to go back to the source texts — Howard, Moorcock, Tolkien, Leiber: the greats that laid the foundation for the worlds of fantasy we enjoy today. The first two MDs reflect my admiration and love Howard and Moorcock, respectively.

And speaking of ‘sword and sorcery’, soon we will be seeing the release of The Adventures of Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan. How were the seeds of this project sown? This module will be closely based on the comic book series of the same name produced by Image Comics won’t it?

The chance to write Shadows of Mirahan was a dream come true, and like most of our good ideas, it came from Joseph Goodman. He and I are both big fans of Image’s Frazetta line, and adapting the comics to D&D was a natural fit. I had a lot of fun living into the world created by Jay Fotos, Nat Jones and Joshua Ortega — they did a phenomenal job bringing Frazetta’s visions to life. But we also worked hard to capture the raw, visceral violence of Frazetta’s Deather Dealer paintings, which meant coming up with some new rules that make 4E combat quick and brutal. Living up to Frank Frazetta’s artwork is an impossibly high standard, but we did our best and I think we did it justice.

It must feel great to be so closely connected with such pulp fantasy history and be able to bring that into the new edition…

I’ve had a love of pulp fantasy that stretches back to my childhood. Right now, at my writing desk, Tolkien, Moorcock, and Lieber are within reach, along with an old Gord of Greyhawk novel and some Mike Mignola Hellboy collections. In many ways, the advent of 4E blew the doors open wide — suddenly adventures and settings like Death Dealer and Punjar seem that much more vibrant, dangerous and real. For better or worse, we had all acquired a passing mastery of 3.5 — there was very little that could instill true fear into a player any longer. But 4E wiped that slate clean, and suddenly we’re in unknown territory again. Suddenly we’re adventuring again. We don’t know what’s around that next mountain pass, or in the heart of that fetid swamp … but with a good sword arm and a chain hauberk, we’re willing to find out.

So do you have a 4th Edition home game going right now? If so tell me about it…

Home game, yes. Home campaign, no. I abuse my poor players by forcing them to playtest all our upcoming adventures. It’s a good night when we have fewer than 2 TPKs. I’ve promised them the chance to play something that lasts more than 4 sessions, set in the slums of Punjar and they leaped at the chance. Of course, little did they know this is just another chance to playtest an upcoming product …

//H

The two dollar module is back!

The two dollar module is back! This 4E-compatible module sends the heroes to an ancient cave occupied by cultists dedicated to the Mists of Madness. Defended by ancient death traps and weird arcane seals, the caves conceal an antediluvian vault, the resting place of an archlich whose reign predates recorded history in the Known Realms. Undisturbed for untold eons, now the machinations of the cultists and their eladrin master threaten to awaken the archlich, to dire ends that none can predict. From Goodman Games.

Check it out! Click here

The Forgotten Portal Playtest & Review

Whelp, last night we sat down to both play The Forgotten Portal and tryout a few of the preview classes from Player’s Handbook 2. Red Jason can probably comment more about his experience as a bladeling invoker, so I’ll try to adhere strictly to the adventure bits, starting with the bad.

There are several typos where silver is written as sliver, and some of the treasure seemed a bit much in the early parts of the adventure. I’m generally pretty flexible on the whole treasure parcel system, but by the time they walked out of the caves they’d amassed almost 1,400 gp and a pair of +2 items. In hindsight there were only four of them, but without any kind of parcel list its difficult to figure out just how much loot I should remove without going through the entire adventure and documenting every cent like some kind of achaeologist accountant.
To put things in perspective since I am such a rules whore, 1,400 gp is the equivalent of the item parcels 5, 6, 7, and almost 8 for a level 4 party (DMG, pg 126).

Back to the adventure, we managed to just get out of the cavern before stopping, which had us plow through three encounters involving a few solo bouts and an extremely dangerous level 10 elite. At level four.
Red Jason ran into a similar problem in Forges of the Mountain King where a level 1 party had to face off against a couple level 8 zombies, but its really a simple fix to downgrade them to more manageable challenges: I just sheared off a few points from each defense and reduced the hit points by a percentage. More importantly, I did this all on the fly once I noticed it.
To summarize, I would more carefully consider the placement and difficulty of elite and solo monsters. They are already harder to hit than a normal monster, and the ramped up hit points can turn things into a slog-fest as the players try to gradually whittle through ten tons of hit points.
One of the players took issue with the at-will charge that inflicts a save-ends stun condition. Most monsters of the heroic tier have it last for a turn, or after a failed save, but the ghoul can actually do a kind of setup on a stun with its bite. I think its certainly incredibly dangerous given the nature of the fight, and probably would have reduced it to stunned with a dazed aftereffect, myself.
Finally, I would have preferred that the map was displayed right before the actual encounters are setup (aka, delve-format), but I suppose that by sticking it on the back cover you wont have any difficulties locating it. Still, I like the delve format because it helps you figure out precisely where things are meant to go. To be clear, this is really more of a nit-picky issue.

On the flipside, there isnt a lot of setup to The Forgotten Portal within the actual book, but its very easy for a DM to drop this into an established campaign. I mean, if you have a jungle in there somewhere, you’re good to go. I dont know all the workings of the world-as-written by Goodman Games, so we just picked a hook that everyone agreed on and I dropped them into the jungle right smack in front of the waterfall. This was fine because, hey, its just a playtest session.
After that its a mad trek through monster infested caverns before arriving at the village Teputzittoloc, after which point the party ventures into an ancient pyramid at the behest of the distraught villagers there. There’s more to it than that, but I dont want to spoil the plot beyond what I just did. The adventure was an enjoyable read (very much like a Conan story) and also easy to run. Very pulp, if thats your sort of thing.

As a kind of “acid test”, I didnt actually read much of it before hand just so I could see how hard it would be to run as a pickup sort of thing, and the ride was smooth almost the entire way. Granted, we only got through a few encounters, but I’m confident that if we continue it next week I wont need to study it before then.
All in all, Goodman Games does an excellent job of setting the stage and delivering as much solid adventure as they can. Red Jason was a bit put off by the initial price tag, but I think its safe to say that he certainly got what he paid for, even though we only got through about a quarter of the adventure. The first few encounters were fun and very easy to narrate. I like the aztec-theme of the adventure, which isnt something you see a whole lot. The names of monsters, NPCs, and what-have-you are very hard to pronounce (meaning that I basically cant), but it adds to the exotic flavor and makes for good times as the players try to do it themselves.

I like that the adventure has an implied time limit, in that if they can get there and back fast enough they can get a free ride out of the jungle. Not a lot of adventures have this kind of restriction, but its good because it helps usher the players forward and avoiding the one-encounter-a-day syndrome where they just take extended rests whenever they feel like because, well, they can. I think my group often underestimates their capabilities, and this helped them press forward even when they’d expended their action points and dailies.
Presumably if they for some reason fail, it’ll be an arduous trek through wilderness and Skill Challenges before they can find civilization again. Its mostly an in-character reason, since in reality a Skill Challenge is just extra XP…
…and speaking of XP I want to shift back to the encounters for a bit to laud the author on the encounter with frogs, of all things. Very engaging and required a lot of thinking from the group, since they could blind characters on a hit, and were free to leap about the incredibly-hard-to-climb pillars, just out of Reach. My only nit-pick here is that since the venom blinds them on a hit, that it might have worked better as a secondary attack or recharge power. Otherwise, very fun encounter. For me, anyway.

I can really see how things have changed in since Sellswords of Punjar (the only other DCC that I read). First, the book is a lot thicker and felt more durable. The adventure seems to have more background and is easier to read through. They dont go into as much depth as Pathfinder, which is a very good thing, instead giving you what I consider to be the right amount of background that although only the DM gets to know, doesnt occupy the lion’s share of the module. For a $16 adventure, I think its definitely worth the money.

2 Weeks Left for Open Call

Only two weeks left to submit ideas to Goodman Game’s Book of Rituals open call. They have posted the book’s cover art to give further inspiration to aspiring game designers.

Review: Dungeon Denizens

Following my recent habit of draining my bank account of money, I decided to pick up Blackdirge’s Dungeon Denizens. The last book I got from Goodman Games was pretty good considering that I didnt really like dragonborn, and I had some time on my hands today between me putting off doing homework and rushing through it at the last possible moment. I’m a massive wanker for crunch and a book about monsters should basically be wall to wall mechanics.

Compared to the actual Monster Manual, the price tag seems a bit steep at $25 considering that its less than half the size, black and white, and excepting the cover, the art leaves (quite) a bit to be desired

Before I get to the actual content I want to talk about the art. I heard someone describe the art as “retro”. To me retro is more often than not synonymous with “shitty”. I didnt think it was good art back in the day, and my standards have only increased laterally with my age. Par for the course it runs the gamut of crap to tolerable. As with Hero’s Handbook: Dragonborn I can sympathize that since this is probably a lower budget project that I shouldnt expect full-color works, but some of them are particularly crude (the klaklin comes to mind).
So, the art is all in all pretty ho-hum, but that only has an impact on the game if you suck at describing things and decide to destroy what reputation you might have by copping out and just showing the players the illustrations.

The book lays out monsters by origin and keyword, which is something that I was disappointed that Wizards didnt do. I like being able to have a thematic index for monsters, especially when I am running a thematic adventure. For example, I might want to have the characters go through the Feywild, and knowing at a glance what creatures have the fey origin would be pretty fucking handy.

Most of the book is occupied by monster stat blocks bordered by lots of text that serves to describe the creature as well as impart a bit of personality and history, and it more or less follows the format directly out of the Monster Manual. You get monster tactics, lore, and encounter groups clustered together for your convenience.
Some of the monsters, like the aphyss, seem like reskins muscling in on core territory. Some are classics like the barghest that didnt make the cut to 4th Edition, which is great if you dont want to wait. The downside is that you can expect Wizards to produce said classics in an official release, and it probably wont match up. That being said, most of the book has a lot of new stuff or at least expands upon existing creature categories: new beetles, new bats, and new golems. There are a few things that are completely different, like the floating polyp.

Dungeon Denizens is a pretty good book. I wouldnt say its completely worth the money unless you have somehow run through numerous level 1-30 campaigns and are in desperate need of new scenery, or just want to throw something completely ass-random at your jaded players so that they might actually experience some modicum of surprise.

Some of their powers come off as a bit overpowered/could use some work. For example, the coin golem’s Arcane Resistance is a big red flag that basically tells wizards and warlocks to fuck off while the stick-wielding beaters handle the problem. I would have made it a recharging ability that lets them force a reroll or something simple, not just ramping up their defenses automatically against all arcane attacks (especially by 5-10 points, yikes!), but then I’m not writing game supplements.