Waldish Gazette

Session 0: Portal Under the Stars

Last Friday I ran the first session for my DCC campaign "Adventures in Waldesland", using the level zero adventure "Portal Under the Stars" located within the core rulebook. I had three players each with four level zero characters. Level zero characters are almost entirely random, with everything but their name and gender rolled for (and heck, my players rolled up a few names too). I could have easily just made a bunch of pregens and doled them out on game day, but since there were players meeting for the first time, we took the time to roll them up and get to know each other better. It also created a stronger sense of ownership over the characters, and was good fun seeing what mismatched miscreants they would end up with.

In no particular order, the wannabe adventurers from Muddle consisted of the following:

I had initially written an extended, almost-narrative account of the adventure, which contained a lot of detail from Portal Under the Stars. Now I don't believe length is necessarily a sin, nor brevity inherently a virtue, but I decided not to post that for several reasons. Partially because I think I'd struggle to keep it up, especially as the campaign moves to my much more amorphous original adventures and dungeons (its much easier to write based on the skeleton of substantially more detailed published content). But also I wanted to provide commentary on the players' antics, and thoughts on the rules, which would make a long post even longer. There is such a thing as too much.

This post may benefit from being familiar with Portal Under Stars (it can be found for free [officially] online), but I hope I can get across the gist. The adventure starts with the light of the Empty Star shining through a rectangular portal framed by a structure of three stones, revealing a hallway and door. The players stepped from earth onto flagstones, up to a locked door that had strange star-like inscriptions. They took no notice of the stars out of character and in character, and decided to force open the door with Ompalius' crowbar. The poor Cooper succeeded but received a blast of pure light that melted his face, bearing the dubious honour of being the adventure's first victim.

Suitably chastened, they encountered the "Iron Men" of Old Man Roberts' tale. Four iron soldier statues bearing spears in a throwing position. The trap was rather obvious, and was resolved by Gomli the Dwarf charging into the room using Ompalius' barrel as impromptu armour. With a shocking intelligence of 3 (!!!), this was wholly in character. Unsurprisingly, the statues sprung into mechanical action; two spears skewered the barrel and the dwarf behind it. The players however were able to arm themselves with the thrown spears, and lifted the scale mail on the statues for themselves.

The next room was a huge hall with the large granite statue of the barbarian wizard that built this dungeon, hand outstretched pointing at the party. There were doors on all sides of the room. Approaching towards the left door, the statue ominously turned to follow their movements. Now here is where I diverged from the adventure as written, inspired by someone else's playthrough (unfortunately I cannot remember whose). The statue is supposed to fling fireballs at whoever tries to leave the room. The adventure recommends two ways of dealing with this. One is impossible, namely knowing the true name of the barbarian wizard and uttering it to the statue (there's no way to know this, thanks Portal!). The other is a bit strange, breaking the doors off the hinges and using them as a shield (since opening the door triggers the statue, this is presumably for trying to enter another door).

Instead, like the other GM, I added a potentially missed hole at the end of the statue's pointer finger. This and its turning alerted the party to a potential trap. Using his grappling hook, Orbstein scaled the statue and stuffed the hole with the party's ten foot pole. When they opened the leftmost door, the hand glowed brightly, and then exploded, sending the charred remains of the pole flying towards the adventurers! Acashius the beggar narrowly avoided being impaled by burning some luck. While it was a satisfying work around for the players, I do have mixed feelings. By making this central trap so avoidable, I did end up scaling down some of the lethality. On the one hand, I had a smaller party of twelve instead of the expected 15, but its clear that the statue is intended to take some lives, possessing only five charges for balance.

Perhaps there was an opportunity for carnage in the throne room that came next, with the demon snake Ssisssuraaaaggg (horned and ringed in crimson) emerging from behind the throne and lunging at the party. Well, not really. The players rolled well for initiative, and rather than be stuck in the doorway, rushed into the room and fanned out, making good use of their superior numbers. Veldabec sunk his spear deep into the serpent's side. Aeslin's crit, while dealing a measly three damage, stunned the snake. Zelthura and Sigovian battered the snake with their clubs, easily avoiding its fangs. Scavolius stabbed the snake in the eye with his short sword and another critical, killing the creature. It disintegrated into ash and Aeslin pocketed its remaining horn. A single quick and triumphant round. I don't think much else could have happened with two criticals in a round, but I do think Ssisssuraaaaggg has a rather pathetic stat block (+0 initiative, with one +0 attack dealing 1d4-1 damage), even for a funnel.

Finding nothing else of interest in the throne room, they backed out back into the main hall and took the next door, right across from the entrance hallway. Here was revealed another large hall, with a 3 foot deep pool of water flanked by five stone pillars on each side. The floor of the pool was painted black, and encrusted with heaps of shining crystals. The party noticed that they were not alone, sharing the chamber with six shuffling crystalline statues, that began to approach. To the party's credit, they held their ground but did not immediately attack, waiting to see what these creatures would do. They ignored most of the group, except those who wielded a lit torch and candle. Basking in the warmth of the light, the crystal statues (actually the encased enemies of the barbarian wizard) stood still nearby. In Portal, they will fight to defend themselves, but otherwise just want to be near a light source.

On closer inspection of the room, the party noticed a door in the top-right corner leading to a spiral staircase going down, and Geoffrey the Jeweler appraised the crystals in the pool to be worth 10 silver pieces apiece. Other than the arms and armour found earlier, this was the first sign of real treasure. Wary of triggering the crystal statues, Orbstein jumped into the pool and began prying out the crystals. When they showed no signs of aggression, he took to it with gusto. After ten crystals, the pool began showing obvious signs of being drained. At fifty, the floor buckled. Orbstein, enthralled with greed, showed no signs of stopping and was actually joined by Acashius. At a hundred, the pool floor collapsed into the chamber below.

Acashius fell hard and no amount of luck could save him from a broken neck. Orbstein threw his grappling hook in a desperate hail Mary, and was saved by a natural twenty. I'll take a brief aside to discuss another gripe with this adventure. It loooves reflex saves for half damage. Now normally, this is a reasonable dungeon staple, particularly for 3rd editions of D&D and onwards. However, level 0 adventurers typically have 1-4 HP. Most trap damage is 1d8 or higher. Do you see the issue? Even when the players passed their saves, they would still die at half damage. Without the statue, there wasn't enough traps to make this a problem for my game, but it's something I'm going to keep in mind for future.

The fallen floor revealed a clay army hidden beneath, now soggy and damaged from the rubble and water above. The clay warlord at its head, seated on a throne topped by a light-emitting orb, raised his arm and the army jerked into action. The players were outnumbered around almost 9 to 1. They dragged Orbstein up, and did some quick thinking. The candle and torch were placed nearby to the stair doors, positioning the crystal statues in front. When the clay soldiers made their way up the stairs and attacked the intruders, they went straight into a scuffle with the crystal statues, who were assisted by the party's spears.

Palantites was given an Elven shortbow (the Elf possessing subpar agility), and Alvor was given a sling. The adventurers believed that the orb was powering the clay army, and tried to dislodge it from its place atop the throne. A lucky shot by Palantites eventually sent it tumbling backwards, but the army continued to fight. They then changed their target to the warlord himself, who remained seated. His seven generals tried to block their shots with their own bodies, but did so too late. A good slingshot by Alvor caved the warlord's head, and with that the army froze, returning to being inert, liquefying clay.

Having taken no losses, they wandered down the staircase into a strategy room that adjoined the clay army's hall, using hammers to destroy the statues, just to be safe. They wandered behind the throne, revealing the fallen orb and another hallway. They collected the orb, and found the dungeon's treasure room, which they thoroughly looted. The treasure room is supposed to be hidden by a secret door, the only one in the dungeon. I didn't want to risk the players missing out on the dungeon's main treasure and so did away with the secrecy.

The treasure room also contained the corpse of the barbarian wizard, located in a crystal dome on a floor inscribed with a pentacle, and a table with a concave depression, suspiciously orb-sized... The players didn't miss the hint and placed the orb on the table. Peering into it they could see stars, as well as the frozen body of the barbarian wizard stuck drifting in space. Suddenly, a goat's head appeared, and quickly recruited the players to find the second half of the rulership rod, which they had found in the treasure room. They were told they had to burn with living fire wood from a dryad's tree, in a copper brazier also located within the room. Loaded with treasure, the corpses of their comrades, and a mysterious quest, they emerged from out of the portal into Konkers Valley, and returned back to Muddle.

With nine surviving characters, the players had plenty to choose from to make their level one character. One chose Aeslin the Elf, another chose Veldabec the Halfling, the third Alvor the Human as a Warrior. In a show of surprising generosity, they pooled up the loot (other than arms and armour), and divided it into 15 shares. Each member of the party received one share, including those who spurned further adventure, and those that died, with their families and loved ones receiving the proceeds. Three shares were set aside for a large and lavish funeral for Ompalius, Gomli and Acashius, which really just proved to be an excuse for the village of Muddle to throw a feast in their honour. It left the three adventurers in good stead with the village, knowing they could always count on simple food and a warm bed in Muddle.

My players greatly enjoyed the experience of controlling multiple level zero characters, as well as the funnel. The DCC rules were functional, and I'm looking forward to seeing how its magic and class mechanics shake out. As you may have noticed, I had some small issues with Portal, but it doesn't take away from my player's enjoyment, and the ease of running it. It was quite quick, with the adventure finished in the space of two hours. I consider myself partly at fault for weakening its lethality, but the charming care the players took of the characters they discarded made me pleased so few perished. I'm still glad I chose it, the lore behind Portal will prove quite relevant for Konkers Valley.

Next time the players will begin as level one heroes in the town of Konkers Rest, with the valley opening itself up to a pointcrawl. Speaking of which, I have to keep working on it... To all those who've spent the time to read this, thank you! Hope your campaigns and adventures go well. If you have the opportunity, consider taking part in Campaign 26!