Running OSR adventures with the superior layout, but using DCC rules feels like the best of both worlds. Thank you so much for these recaps / DCC adventure reports!
17:40 when you started talking about the Virgin Queen, I totally vibed with. I read through the scenario (3 times now not including the video) and I always wondered why they needed to mention that. I might just change it a bit to remove that extra purity nonsense. And happy for the shout out. Greatly appreciated. I plan to run The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen soon actually so this came out at the right time. I do wish their was monster variety as you mentioned. I might ask the dcc reddit or discord for advice there too!
I mean, you mentioned it so you knew someone was going to comment... 😂 Classic adventure and fantasy stories have female characters who are paragons of purity, beauty, kindness etc because these are common feminine virtues held by most cultures, and definitely be western European derived cultures to be aspirational. I rarely hear people complain that male characters are expected to be brave, selfless, skillful and protective, which are traditional masculine virtues in the same vein. These archetypes exist in many cultures because they are useful virtues to aim towards for a multitude of reasons, sometimes social and sometimes biological. The BBEG queen and her pact with an infernal being in exchange for unnatural life is a counterpoint for the purity of the entombed queen. That whatever dark being she has her pact with is thirsting for her soul, and that he will inevitably have it, could be read as an illustration of the end of such impurity. In any case, good review, and I'll definitely pick this one up!
I pretty much agree with all of your takes, besides the lethality of the adventure, although two of the players were being very haphazard. I actually felt like it was fair, not too deadly, not a cake walk. I had 5 players with 3 characters each and I want to say about 8 or 9 died. One player lost all of his characters and then 2 replacements. Other than that, I totally agree about the puzzles. The only one that took them a while was the paintings on the walls, and I want to say the answer was book, so they had to touch the book in one of the paintings. Overall most of the combat was dealt with relatively easily, the hardest fight was the boss. They dealt with Yoros pretty easily, but the mobs from the tomb area just before the boss split the party, and they took a while figuring out they had to destroy the braziers. All-in-all everyone had a really good time. Like your group mine only had a single lawful character left by the time they found the shield and magical weapon (sword?). That character ended up sacrificing themself during the boss fight, so the group came away with almost zero treasure.
Yeah that is always the weird thing with funnels, the swing from cake walk to complete annihilation is not too far away haha. I truly rolled completely abysmally that session for the enemy npcs lol
When I ran this module, my group gathered around the closed sarcophagus to collectively beat the strength DC to reveal the wraith. The wraith won the initiative with its cursed sword. Its first strike was enough to kill a player, giving the sword an extra attack. The die was vengeful, & the the players were cut down all around the sarcophagus till none were left. The remaining survivors fled down the hallway & eventually defeating the wraith to attain its sword. Creeping down the hall, an enemy surprise attacked the players as they were huddled together killing one of them. Next to attack was the one with the wraith sword. He cut down the enemy with one hit, which the sword required an extra attack as the player was huddled with his friends. He had to swing again, cutting down & killing two of his comrades. It was a rough night, full of sorrow & tears. It was fkn EPIC! The 4 survivors are awaiting their level 1 adventure.
I just ran this recently and the module felt deadly enough to us. I suppose like you said, DCC can be swingy like that. 4 players, killed half of them overall even with the replacements and in the final fight the players began to seriously vocalize the fear of a TPK. They were really sweatin bullets lol. Parsing 700 words to find info for how to run a room is def annoying, the DCC module tax. I enjoyed the funnel over all, I think it's solid and worth running.
Question for you, I agree with what you're saying about some of the DCC adventure layouts, but they are still some of the slimmest adventures I have found in any system. Do you have some favorites (adventures) that are even more concise or lack a bunch of flowery / superfluous text?
In terms of DCC or just adventures in general? For adventures in general, I love the layout that Necrotic Gnome does such as for Winter's Daughter. Aberrant Reflections by Direct Sun also has an amazing layout. Both take advantage of just quick, concise descriptions, information laid out in bullet points, bolded words for important aspects and in the case of Aberrant Reflections, even color coding. I found that style makes it easy to run at the table and gave me enough information to take it from there for describing the locations to players. I did reviews on both of those if you want to check them out :)
@@wasabiburger3047 awesome, I definitely will. I've been on the hunt for more concise adventures. My brain just works much better with short descriptions or bullet point style rooms and stuff. And any system works. I'm more interested in ideas than stat blocks and don't mind converting.
I dont necessarily think you are wrong about the virgin queen trope. On the other hand, Queen Elizabeth the 1st was considered to be a great monarch, and yet she never married and likely died a virgin. So...
In defense about the virgin queen. I think honestly it would probably take a lot more to stay a Virgin. In the medieval times it wasn't all that easy. If anything she probably broke a lot of rules to be that way and had to have a will stronger then any noble to stay that way.
Running OSR adventures with the superior layout, but using DCC rules feels like the best of both worlds. Thank you so much for these recaps / DCC adventure reports!
17:40 when you started talking about the Virgin Queen, I totally vibed with. I read through the scenario (3 times now not including the video) and I always wondered why they needed to mention that. I might just change it a bit to remove that extra purity nonsense.
And happy for the shout out. Greatly appreciated. I plan to run The Veiled Vaults of the Onyx Queen soon actually so this came out at the right time. I do wish their was monster variety as you mentioned. I might ask the dcc reddit or discord for advice there too!
I would love to hear how it ends up going for you, buddy!
I mean, you mentioned it so you knew someone was going to comment... 😂
Classic adventure and fantasy stories have female characters who are paragons of purity, beauty, kindness etc because these are common feminine virtues held by most cultures, and definitely be western European derived cultures to be aspirational. I rarely hear people complain that male characters are expected to be brave, selfless, skillful and protective, which are traditional masculine virtues in the same vein.
These archetypes exist in many cultures because they are useful virtues to aim towards for a multitude of reasons, sometimes social and sometimes biological.
The BBEG queen and her pact with an infernal being in exchange for unnatural life is a counterpoint for the purity of the entombed queen. That whatever dark being she has her pact with is thirsting for her soul, and that he will inevitably have it, could be read as an illustration of the end of such impurity.
In any case, good review, and I'll definitely pick this one up!
Will you review Goodman-Games and Eric Bloat's "Evolved" powered by DCC? It comes out October 2024
Oh cool! I ran this adventure and really liked it, excited to see what your opinion is.
I pretty much agree with all of your takes, besides the lethality of the adventure, although two of the players were being very haphazard. I actually felt like it was fair, not too deadly, not a cake walk. I had 5 players with 3 characters each and I want to say about 8 or 9 died. One player lost all of his characters and then 2 replacements.
Other than that, I totally agree about the puzzles. The only one that took them a while was the paintings on the walls, and I want to say the answer was book, so they had to touch the book in one of the paintings.
Overall most of the combat was dealt with relatively easily, the hardest fight was the boss. They dealt with Yoros pretty easily, but the mobs from the tomb area just before the boss split the party, and they took a while figuring out they had to destroy the braziers.
All-in-all everyone had a really good time. Like your group mine only had a single lawful character left by the time they found the shield and magical weapon (sword?). That character ended up sacrificing themself during the boss fight, so the group came away with almost zero treasure.
Yeah that is always the weird thing with funnels, the swing from cake walk to complete annihilation is not too far away haha. I truly rolled completely abysmally that session for the enemy npcs lol
When I ran this module, my group gathered around the closed sarcophagus to collectively beat the strength DC to reveal the wraith. The wraith won the initiative with its cursed sword. Its first strike was enough to kill a player, giving the sword an extra attack. The die was vengeful, & the the players were cut down all around the sarcophagus till none were left. The remaining survivors fled down the hallway & eventually defeating the wraith to attain its sword. Creeping down the hall, an enemy surprise attacked the players as they were huddled together killing one of them. Next to attack was the one with the wraith sword. He cut down the enemy with one hit, which the sword required an extra attack as the player was huddled with his friends. He had to swing again, cutting down & killing two of his comrades. It was a rough night, full of sorrow & tears. It was fkn EPIC! The 4 survivors are awaiting their level 1 adventure.
That's fantastic! What a great course of events
"All pure and shit" has to be my favorite quote from this.
I just ran this recently and the module felt deadly enough to us. I suppose like you said, DCC can be swingy like that. 4 players, killed half of them overall even with the replacements and in the final fight the players began to seriously vocalize the fear of a TPK. They were really sweatin bullets lol. Parsing 700 words to find info for how to run a room is def annoying, the DCC module tax. I enjoyed the funnel over all, I think it's solid and worth running.
Question for you, I agree with what you're saying about some of the DCC adventure layouts, but they are still some of the slimmest adventures I have found in any system. Do you have some favorites (adventures) that are even more concise or lack a bunch of flowery / superfluous text?
In terms of DCC or just adventures in general? For adventures in general, I love the layout that Necrotic Gnome does such as for Winter's Daughter. Aberrant Reflections by Direct Sun also has an amazing layout.
Both take advantage of just quick, concise descriptions, information laid out in bullet points, bolded words for important aspects and in the case of Aberrant Reflections, even color coding.
I found that style makes it easy to run at the table and gave me enough information to take it from there for describing the locations to players.
I did reviews on both of those if you want to check them out :)
@@wasabiburger3047 awesome, I definitely will. I've been on the hunt for more concise adventures. My brain just works much better with short descriptions or bullet point style rooms and stuff.
And any system works. I'm more interested in ideas than stat blocks and don't mind converting.
I dont necessarily think you are wrong about the virgin queen trope. On the other hand, Queen Elizabeth the 1st was considered to be a great monarch, and yet she never married and likely died a virgin. So...
Looking forward to when you put out 'Hot 'n Heavy Halls of the Slut Lords'
But for real, less puritanical ideas of virtue in fantasy are long overdue.
You know I LOVE DCC- layouts are absolute trash though
In defense about the virgin queen. I think honestly it would probably take a lot more to stay a Virgin. In the medieval times it wasn't all that easy. If anything she probably broke a lot of rules to be that way and had to have a will stronger then any noble to stay that way.