I will almost never be on the cutting-edge of TTRPG play: I prefer that others undertake the effort of sorting out chaff. However, my FLGS requested GMing for Free RPG Day, and I thought it might be a way to meet local nerds not beholden to the 5E behemoth. I requested and received the DCC teaser for their upcoming kickstarter to finance the re-release or remake of the Castle Whiterock megadungeon. I had no knowledge of the original Whiterock, but I have run more than fifty sessions of Dungeon Crawl Classics across three different short campaigns. The short adventure "Dying Light" does not seem to have any direct connection to the megadungeon, strangely.
I got the module five days prior and read through it twice, the second time writing up two pages of my own shorthand to condense the fourteen or so pages. (I also painted a couple miniatures for the session.) Like any good (annoying) recipe user, I changed some of the ingredients. Mostly this was to provide more signposts and telegraphs for the players about the danger they were in for.
Six players joined the table, though never more than five at once. Three were DCC virgins; two of the others brought their own Zocchi dice. They were good players, thoughtful about the clues provided, game for the challenges (and character deaths/doom), and role-players of the in-game quirks (their PCs' unusual gear, the dungeon detritus, the odd DCC table result). The game was distracted often by store patrons' interruptions, three player departures, and a four-alarm fire in the vicinity (the door to the store was open to the four-lane road out front). The session ran for three hours and twenty minutes.
As the GM, I made several errors. I completely forgot the elf's mercurial magic, forgot (and forgot to look at my notes for) the dialog snippets I'd prepped for the most communicative NPC, left out a couple of mostly flavorful bits of dungeon dressing, probably adjudicated a player idea poorly, and broke the fourth wall about the central puzzle. I thought my additions were good, though: incorporating a sliver of the backstory into one of the PC's one-sentence bios; providing a low leverage opening encounter that helped the players piece together the sinister goings-on; telegraphing some of the traps; adding several scent clues. My subtractions were good, too, I think, shaving any "boxed text" to the barebones and dispensing with ponderous player-facing backstory.
Overall, as is fairly common with DCC, the adventure relies too much on combat, especially for a putative one-shot. There are three encounters that require fighting, and two that probably don't, but could. The centerpiece puzzle is far too much like the really anti-immersion ones that have plagued mainstream published D&D since at least "White Plume Mountain." The map is rather linear, but that's fine for an abbreviated adventure. There is one dead-end time waster, and a very secret door that even when learned about is supposed to be hard to find, but must be passed through to complete the adventure.
The opening trap is little nonsensical, but leads to a very good first encounter. The first real room is a trap, a social mini-game, a bit of exploration, and a potential conflict. The players get a chance to poison themselves (and mine gladly did so), be suspicious, but interrogate an NPC lightly, and roleplay their characters. The results of the poisoning are a wonderful table, and very DCC. The second scene is solid. It's got horror, a chance to show off investigation chops, and potentially a revelation that the characters may be doomed.
The third encounter is another reveal, hidden minor magic, and two info dumps (one hidden), including a player handout that runs pretty long. The information is mostly non-actionable. It's a clarification of the backstory, but not helpful to solving the centerpiece puzzle, even if carefully read. The fourth encounter is a simple combat with another info dump (the 2nd player handout), and a very hidden magic item, which has only the most abstract clues about in the room and the rest of the dungeon. The fifth encounter is an unsolvable puzzle, a double trap, a potential but avoidable combat, and the slim chance of social play. My players spent some time offering up a pair of solutions to the insoluble challenge, which made play drag a bit. The trap set off the first moment of PvP, but I allowed a peaceful resolution.
The sixth encounter is a combat encounter combined with a "brainteaser" that can't be solved until the literal gatekeeper gives up the necessary clues. (I just dispensed with the monsters as we had already lost two players, and another one needed to leave for work.) The referee is instructed to hold onto the clue doggerel until the players do one of a pair of very specific requests. The gatekeeper more-or-less says, nonsensically, "No you mustn't release ancient evil, but here is a poem puzzle to solve to do so." Barring some zany spell table result, the climactic encounter and adventure conclusion is unreachable for first level characters if the puzzle remains unsolved.
The final battle is fairly interesting, with stages, a differentiated battlefield, player choices, and a monster with hypnotizing powers. Of the four remaining PCs in my session, half lay dead on the floor when the "boss" went down (both had consumed luck in the fight, so neither were revivifiable).
The creepiness of the opening encounter is commendable, as is the dread built upon the PCs' poisoning and the second "scene," but I can't recommend the mini-module overall. Maybe with a major rewrite of the brainteaser and the information to get the players through that, but that would be quite a bit of work. Still, it was mostly a fun time, thanks to a few wacky dice results and especially due to the creativity of the players. We won't soon forget Steve Stealin (both big killing blows), "Everything's Tea" Talmun, and Borbon "Tacklin'" Blackhill. R.I.P., Conan® the Gravedigger and Absalom the Flamin' Elf. At least you weren't transformed into a moth.
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| Steve leaps from rubble to backstab "the toughest part of the centipede." |
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