Adventure Report Mini – The Portal Under the Stars

System: Dungeon Crawl Classics!
Adventure: The Portal Under the Stars
Players: Jim, Graham
GM: Me (Feirsteax)
Session length: 3h ish

Dungeon Crawl Classics

I love Dungeon Crawl Classics. It was one of my first introductions to a style of adventure gaming unburdened by the assumptions that pervaded the other games I was playing at the time.

Things are looser in DCC. “Game balance” isn’t really a big deal. A wizard can make a lucky roll and blow up half the dungeon. The modules are amazing and multitudinous. They tend to be shorter, sweeter, wackier affairs than the D&D and Pathfinder adventures I’d read up to then.

I’ve since found other rulesets that are more elegant and a lot slimmer. But I still hold a deep fondness for DCC.

The Portal Under the Stars

Last week I ran the introductory “Level 0 funnel” adventure, The Portal Under the Stars, for two friends. I've run this adventure 4 or 5 times now and it's always so much fun. The players both owned copies of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook for years, but neither had played it yet. It was a great introduction and it fit neatly into about three hours.

I’m not going to do a full session report for this one. Instead, I’m just focusing on one aspect. This time I’m reflecting on how lenient I tend to be as a GM (or Judge, in DCC terminology).

One of my traits as a GM is to drop lots of clues and reward curiosity and proactivity when it comes to traps and puzzles. After the most recent session, I began to question myself. Am I being too lenient, and robbing the players of the fun of a truly perilous dungeon?

Doug Kovacs's phenomenal artwork for the bundled adventure in the DCC RPG Core Rulebook, The Portal Under the Stars

Here are all the instances where I strayed outside the lines of the adventure text and provided my own clues or bonuses to the party:

• The entrance door in 1-1 glowed and became hot as a PC tried to pry crystals out of it. The door is a trap that causes 1d8 fire damage to anyone who tries to force it open.
• The iron spearmen in 1-2 twitched slightly when a PC entered the room. They then threw their spears after a few more rounds after the PCs all ducked.
• The flamethrowing war-wizard statue in 1-3 was disarmed after one of the PCs removed the massive grimoire from its side.
• A PC made a successful Luck check to listen at the door leading to 1-4. He heard the demon-snake slithering and hissing.
• The clay soldiers in 1-8 reacted with confusion because one of the PCs was wearing one of the masks from 1-5. This led to a general brawl amongst the clay soldiers, buying the PCs time to make their way over to the warlord.

By the end of the session, only two of the initial eight characters were dead. To be fair, they were also quite cautious and clever. Both players made sure to take the armour off the iron spearmen in 1-2 and they successfully retrieved the chainmail in 1-5.

But looking back, it seems I made five rulings in the players' favour. Some of these I wouldn't remove, such as the clue to the trap in area 1-1. But I wonder if I made the statue in 1-3 too easy to deal with. I want the players to feel the thrill of the consequences of their own actions. A few PCs crisped by a giant statue is just what this session was missing!

 

 

Don’t forget to burn your Luck,

Feirsteax