DCC and Operation Unfathomable

SPOILERS ABOUND!

SPOILERS ABOUND!

SPOILERS ABOUND!

Every summer I get together with a group of long time friends for a gaming weekend. We mostly play board games, but for a few years I was able to run a DCC game with the same PCs.

I started with the Hubris! campaign setting and ran the funnel and L1 scenarios there, and then had a great time playing Fever Swamp. However I really struggled trying to tie the sessions together and then Covid came and ended it anyway.

This year I ran the DCC version of Operation Unfathomable (OU) with a full table of 9 players and it. Was. Awesome.

We had a mix of L1 and L2 PCs plus one player ran a coterie of 0L. But more importantly I had the players help me run the game in a very AD&D way.

One player served as Caller, another as Mapper, then one each for Time Tracker and Quartermaster. It was so much fun to have all the assistance at the table and just be able to have everything tracked without my effort. (I will do another blog post on this shortly.)

Crazy thing is that it took us five hours in real time to play five hours in game time. We didn’t get very far into the dungeon but now we are well into it. And we can pick up right where we left off…

Session Record – Episode 1 – Summer 2024

We had 4 L2, 4 L1, and 4 L0 PCs, so 12 PCs for 9 players in all.

Prologue – We read the player introduction and then I brought the party to the 1000’ ladder to begin their descent. We then went around the table and each player introduced their PC (or PCs for one player) and then they got to either ask a question or roll on the rumor chart. Most rolled on the chart, but a couple asked questions, specifically around visions and the chaos. I tried to give as many clues as possible, including showing the cleric Ned a vision of Shaggath-Ka lying injured in his cave (and I showed him the picture).

We also had a great moment when the Chaos Cleric tried to contact his deity for help, but rolled a 1, and ended up interacting with Ned’s Law deity instead. Laughs ensued.

Room 1 – The players then arrived at the first cave from the climb and set about getting organized. I asked the Quartermaster to hand out the magic items, and then asked the Caller to organize the marching order. I wasn’t super concerned about the exact order, just more looking for who was in the front, middle, and rear.

The Mapper immediately realized that the player map is wrong and great gnashing of player teeth followed. With inventory managed, mapping ready, but without searching the first room, they set off into the dungeon. We weren’t sure this was actually going to happen.

Room 2 – They fell right into proper paranoid dungeon crawlers and spent a lot of time moving through the pill bug husks, but of course the mind bats attacked! They were actually hard to hit, but the mind bats rolled poorly and did no damage. Eventually the party was able to kill them with no damage to themselves. It was good to get some dice rolled and have everyone figure out how to work together a bit.

Hell’s Back Road & Room 3a – The party moves into the large tunnel and spent some time interacting with the giant skeleton. They eventually cast a spell and drove off the flying prawns and were a little disappointed to find nothing of value on the giant, but they spent the time and collected the 200 gp worth of miscellaneous coin and headed “east.”

About 120’ Later – Despite GMing for almost 45 years, I don’t have a lot of experience with “proper” dungeon crawling, with time tracking, random encounters, etc (at least not as an adult), so to alleviate the pressure I rolled up just a few encounters to help me focus ahead of time. I’m all for letting the dice do the talking but I need something to sink my teeth into until I’m comfortable with the dungeon itself.

The first encounter I rolled up, which ended up being the centerpiece encounter for the whole session, was a combination of Merchant Riding Glutton-Newt and Bewildered Martian Ape. I had given all the warnings to the players that – a) not every encounter is combat-focused, and b) there is no balance and some encounters are very dangerous. Great example for both of these.

They hid out and waited until the newt-riding merchant and his guardian had passed, then came out to raise a hand in peace. The merchant stopped and they spent a long moment beginning negotiations for possible potion purchase. They had literally just collected 200 gp in loose coin and were glad to make a trade.

However, suddenly this terrible and furious sound came barreling down the hallway and everyone turned to find this giant four-armed white ape barreling down toward the group. We cleared the middle of the table, set up minis, and rolled initiative.

There were a lot of great moments that I won’t be able to describe in detail, but I’ll cover a few key actions:

• In the first round, the Merchant’s Guardian fumbled and ended up hurting the newt!
• Both wizards cast Spider Climb and got up onto the walls – and since one of the 0L had identified as “wizard’s apprentice” their player asked if they could try to mimic the other wizards and try the same spell. I said yes but with a d16 – they still rolled 14 total and everyone cheered as the apprentice got their first whiff of magic.
• Everyone lined up to take swings at the Ape, and it was taking and giving some damage, but then Rob said, “I thought you said it had four arms – why is it only attacking once?” Of course everyone booed at Rob but I thanked him and discovered that yes, the Ape had 4d20 action dice, not just 1d20 as I’d been rolling. I didn’t retcon all the of the attacks, but suddenly the panicked Ape became much more dangerous. (Good learning moment for me and honestly if I had been swinging that much damage up front many PCs would have died. I’m fine with how it went.)
• Ned the cleric used his healing powers successfully on the glutton-newt, and that was key in later negotiations. Nice move, Ned.
• The group finally got organized enough to kill the Ape. Everyone worried about what it was running from. (Nothing but they didn’t know that.)

Once combat was over, negotiations began once again, and this time, between the guardian fumbling and Ned’s healing powers, the players had a lot of leverage. After some back and forth, the PCs were able to get 5 potions basically for the price of 3. It seemed fair.

Fungal Bloom + Beetle Ghosts – They spent a long time navigating these relatively harmless encounters and were weirded out by ghost beetles watching a be(etle)-heading.

Lava Demi-Gods – The party had just passed the fungal blooms when they heard the lava beings Hrrk & Krrgh coming toward them. They pulled into a full retreat back to a side passage and were able to escape any damage with some deft hiding. They saw the encounter for what it was and acted appropriately, I thought.

Detritus – After the party passed the third pile of Dungeon Detritus, and I asked for the third time if they wanted to examine it, they decided, “Well, the DM keeps asking us about it so we might as well look into it.” They spent the time and found some fire beetle bombs. They reluctantly thanked me.

Bottomless Pit – Turns out, after some nice die rolling, Reggie the Rag (L2 Thief) can read Ancient Beetle, so he was able to figure out what all the signs surrounding this deep black pit were about. They threw in some coin and carried on. They all agreed, better safe than sorry.

Room 3b – They found the scarred remains of black oozes, tested them, determined they were dangerous, and so just moved around them.

60’ Later – At this point, we’d been playing for about 5 hours, both in real-time and in-game, and a couple people had to take care of stuff, so I needed to find a good place to finish up. I looked through the encounters – I didn’t have time for another combat – and so thought Cave Lightning would be fun and distinct enough to end on until 2025.

So I set the scene, the smell of ozone, and here comes the lighting – everyone make a Reflex check… then I look down to see it’s a DC 2. Ugh, so look, “just don’t roll a 1.” Everyone rolls, I check around the table and see just thumbs up. No 1s…

Except Dan AKA Ned the L1 Cleric AKA Dan the Caller, sitting right across from me, is staring down at the 1 in front of him. “You told me not to roll a 1 so I rolled a 1.” I laugh. “Well, okay – roll again for saving throw…” He rolls… a 1. Okay then. I rolled 17 damage which is way more than he has as L1 Cleric.

So the Cave Lighting (Erol the Wizard says, “Why the hell is cave lighting a thing?”) comes and goes, everyone sounds off, except there, where Ned was just a minute ago, is just a pair of smoking boots.

<End session>