Family Adventures with Dungeon Crawl Classics, Part 1: The Session Report

My family went through a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG funnel back in February, and we decided to continue their adventures as level 1 characters. One of the outcomes from the family debriefing was that short sessions were better than long ones, and so we decided to proceed in two-hour increments. After reviewing some of the appropriate first-level modules I picked up through Humble Bundle, I decided on "The Old God's Return," which is 2013 Holiday Module by Michael Curtis. The adventure starts off during a cold winter solstice celebration, which seemed appropriate in mid-March when we started this module that, from the prologue, "can be completed in a single session." It ended up taking us four, but I have no regrets about the timeboxed session duration: everyone was able to maintain their attention much better, and breaking in the middle of a fight meant we could come back for a cliffhanger. The only tenuous division was between the last two session, where the party had started the fight against the Big Bad, and it certainly looked like they were all going to perish... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

(This remainder of this post contains numerous spoilers from "The Old God's Return.")

Our heroes include: my wife as the fighter Chioggia and then, played by the boys and in descending age order: Mord, the Wizard; Seth, the Thief; Joe, the Cleric; and Luck, another Fighter. 

The party arrived as guests of honor to the Winter Solstice celebration as guests of honor, as it was the anniversary of their having cleansed the "The Portal Under the Stars." This gave some background for how they had gone their separate ways to learn their first-level skills and spent their treasure. The party was interrupted by an attack of tontuu—strange, ice-cold, dwarf-like creatures who are the emissaries of the titular Old God. Mord unleashed burning hands onto one of them, revealing in the process that his mercurial form of this spell summoned otherworldly attention. While the magic did its job of crisping up a tontuu or two, the whole party felt as if someone, or something, was watching them. This seemed to freak out my wife, who is generally uncomfortable in not knowing the line between rules and story in tabletop roleplaying games. Indeed, here is a case where the mercurial magic gives no specific indication of the rules, but I started hatching a plot around it.

Joe the Cleric, being Lawful, decided to turn the evil creatures. He rolled an astronomical result that scattered the remaining tontuu, which gave him a strong feeling of efficacy.

The party accepted the blessing of the town's priest, gaining points of "sovereign fire" to be used during the adventure. In retrospect, this was a strike against the module, since this introduced yet another thing for the novice players to have to manage. I'm sure it would not have been a problem for veteran players, but I should have noticed this complication when reviewing first-level dungeons.

The party borrowed horses and chased down the the source of evil that was plaguing the region: a floating glacier that, unknown to them, contained the ruins of an ancient temple. The temple was dedicated to Tjaptar, a long-forgotten god who was using the tontuu to capture the children's souls he needed to grow in power. Classic Old God stuff, that. In order to reach the floating structure, Luck burned half of his sovereign fire points to adopt a fiery form, charge the one tontuu guard he could see, and then lower a rope ladder for the others to climb up. The youngest son was very excited about being featured here, and he still sometimes talks about the time his character flew in the air and punched out a bad guy.

The party climbed to the flat surface at the top of the floating glacier, where they could see the lone structure in the center: the nearly-buried top level of a ziggurat. They wisely had Seth scout the area before heading in, but unfortunately, Seth's player rolled poorly, and he walked right into an ambush. Three tontuu hurled spears at him, taking him down. Seth already had a low stamina, and although Joe healed him before he died, he lost a precious stamina point, dropping his max HP even lower. The party survived the ambush, and this ended the first session.

The next session had them descending into the temple. There were a few exciting moments in this middle chapter of their adventure. At one point, facing a pile of rubble, Seth's player made a series of successful checks to climb over and scout the other side, which allowed the party to set up an ambush of their own. This was especially helpful since both Chioggia and Luck were much better with their bows than with their swords, so a round of free missile attacks was appreciated by the fighters. During the battle, Mord cast flaming hands again, and this time, an otherworldly eye opened upon his forehead, peering through him into the temple.

During a battle with a particularly nasty creature, my wife fumbled an attack, giving her a -2 to her next roll. She really does not like dice, and so this was extra disheartening. However, her next roll was an 18, which was exactly what she needed to hit the beast, and she did maximum damage to it. When the creature was down to one hit point remaining, Luck's player rolled a natural 20, critically punching it in the face, again to much fanfare.

Joe the Cleric was unable to complete a single spell or healing ability, and he ended the session with a disapproval rating of four. That means that, on any future attempt, he had a 20% chance of something like critical failure and, potentially, the loss of his abilities.

In the penultimate session, the party unwittingly unleashed a dangerous monster from its icy prison, an frozen insectoid creature animated by the power of a nearby sorcerer. Chioggia charged across the room to defend the rest of the party, rolled a natural 20, and knocked one of the thing's pincers clean off.

This was also the session that began the epic showdown against Tjaptar. It began with Seth climbing a tree (yes, the temple was filled with strange underground conifers) to see what was coming up. Tjaptar  was aware of his presence and cast his "wood wyrding" spell, in keeping with the module's tactical notes. Seth had only three hit points, and when the arrows in his quiver grew spikes that shot through his chest, he fell to the ground with none left. Joe once again got to him just in time, selflessly burning two Luck to cast a healing spell to keep Seth alive. This made Seth lose yet another Stamina, disappointing his player. All these holes in his chest make him look like a short-termer.

There were two other creatures in the room with Tjaptar, one being a tough tontuu that kept two party members occupied by the doorway. The other was turned by Joe, which was hit by a timely critical hit by Luck; the fleeing of this creature let the rest of the party focus on the Big Bad. However, Tjaptar had already destroyed Joe's mace—his only weapon—with his wood wyrding, and Chioggia and Luck had dropped their bows and arrows in fear that what happened to Seth would happen to them. Mord blasted the tontuu with flaming hands, expecting to fell it, but its extra hit points further dropped the morale of the party.  Seth leaped up and landed a critical hit on the creature, but a poor roll on the critical table, combined with his low luck score, meant that he actually missed, which was a catastrophic twist. As the timer rang indicating the end of our two-hour session, the party was left without much hope.

About a month later, we were able to finish the adventure. This was in the second week of May, so the wintery theme had long since lost its meteorological synergy. Despite fear of a TPK, the players were eager to see how the adventure would conclude.

Chioggia and Mord faced the tontuu while the others engaged Tjaptar. Mord let loose another flaming hands, and this time, he got the most fearful result from his mercurial magic: the extradimensional being appearing before him. I was as surprised as anyone, and I realized at that moment that I had a rough plan for what to do if this happened, but I had not done the legwork. It turned out that, in "The Portal Under the Stars," it was Mord who had picked up the horn of the serpent guardian, Ssissurag. He still carried it with him, though he knew not what he could do with it. I made Ssissurag itself appear and offer Mord a bargain: the power of venom to defeat the tontuu in exchange for doing the serpent's will. Mord, being chaotic and fearing the destruction of the party and the success of the Old god, agreed. Ssissurag struck out, biting the tontuu and defeating it. In truth, it only had a few hit points remaining, but this was an excellent conclusion to Mord's personal story.

Meanwhile, the Old God was blasting the rest of the party mercilessly with a freezing blast, which was his inversion of flaming hands. Joe tried to heal himself and failed, raising that disapproval rating to five, and in the following round, he was finally able to successfully heal himself. The player was excited to play a cleric, but it was never clear to me that he understood all of his options and their implications. Indeed, several times we had to hold up the action to review his various skills and abilities. With the party losing hit points faster than they could injure Tjaptar, and after reviewing all his options, Joe decided to cast Word of Command, despite a 25% chance of disapproval from his deity. The player rolled an amazing 19 and commanded the Old God to "run," while gesturing away from the party. Tjaptar failed his Will save, and so after Joe's repeated pleas to his deity for help, the divine power finally flowed through him, and Tjaptar turned tail and fled into the trees. The party took some free attacks of opportunity, including Luck's landing a mighty blow. 

Chioggia grabbed his bow off the ground, lined up the shot, burned a point of sovereign fire to imbue the arrow with fiery magic, and let fly. The roll was a natural 20, and the critical table indicated that the target moved into the blow, taking an extra 1d8 damage. Chioggia's explosive arrow destroyed the Old God!...

But of course, this triggered the collapse of the ancient temple. That's just how these things go. The party climbed out of the temple, to the top of the disintegrating glacier. At this point, everyone had the five remaining sovereign fire points required to fly down to the ground except Luck: he had used five to be the one to fly up, and he had used one in an earlier battle to imbue his sword with flame. Luck tried to climb down the side of the glacier, but he failed his roll. His last chance was to make a Reflex save to jump to a chunk of descending ice, and he made it. The party had survived and saved the region.

That completes the story of my family's adventure in "The Old God's Return." Part 2 includes a reflection on the experience, a critique of the system, and some ideas for where we may go next with our tabletop RPG journey. You can read Part 2 here.