I must admit, when I first read the Beta Rules to Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG, I was a touch put off. There are several things that rubbed my modern gaming sensibilities the wrong way--race as class, sparse skill support, and the inevitable decline of wizards into, well to put it bluntly, hideous mutated freaks.
But the more I read it, the more I liked the flavor, and the more I understood what Goodman was trying to do here. I was especially intrigued by the Funnel. For the uninitiated, the Funnel involves letting each player run 3-4 characters, eventually "thinning the herd" due to the fragility of the 0-levelers, until each player has a suitable character (or characters) to choose a career and advance to first level.
Our group was going to be large, and given that there ended up being 9 of us, we had a horde of 32 characters ready to roll over whatever I set in front of them.
I wanted to capture something of Aaron Allston's Treasure Hunt along with a bit of Isle of the Ape, so I emailed the following intro to the group via email:
The Wreck of the Seaward Howl
Life has not been good lately.
You are all captives of Overseer Zharek,
travelling aboard the Seaward Howl for parts unknown. Some of you have
been onboard only a month or so; the not so fortunate, for the last three
months.
The Overseer could not be a crueler man.
Transgressions, both real and imagined are dealt with quickly and severely, and
few of you have escaped a daily lash. None among you knew your destination, but
if this was merely the lead up, then perhaps death is a better fate than what
actually awaits you at journeys end.
Over the course of the trip, you have left
cooler climes behind. The past two weeks, however, the voyage has slowed….those
of you whose forced labors brought you on deck saw the ship approach what
seemed to be an impenetrable bank of fog stretching for miles in front of the
three ship convoy.
A man in the garb of the order of the
Imperial Streth-- surely a sorcerer of some ability--stood with the
Overseer and his navigator, often in heated argument…and always taking copious
notes.
Over time, the ships crept into the fog bank,
moving slowly but decidedly towards an island cloaked within the fog. From a
distance, the Isle appeared to be a pile of jagged mountains sprinkled with
smoking volcanoes. At night, these cones gave the place a dim hellish glow.
And the weather was tricky. Surely Azi Dahaka
was toying with the Overseer. Still, at the sorcerer's direction, the
ships moved closer to shore, ever to the Overseer's visible agitation.
Azi Dahaka must have chuckled as the
inevitable sudden thunderstorm arose, its squalls pushing the Seaward Howl
inexorably forward...
The Seaward Howl was cast upon the
reefs and split. Flying into a rage, the Overseer cursed the sorcerer,
and ran his sword through the doomed enchanter piercing his skull from beneath
his chin to the back of his skull. As they fled the Howl, they tossed
his body into the sea. Pelagia take you all, the Overseer had
sworn, as he left you and your fellow captives to perish in the sea.
But the sea did not take you. Somehow a small
group of captives working on deck managed to free the rest, and as the storm
bashed the Howl against the rocks, one group made for shore.
Now you are washed ashore on this god
forsaken place, with what meager possessions have drifted ashore with you. The
place is hot and foul smelling and you are all on the edge of starvation and
dehydration. The storm is subsiding, but none of you feel any better…
No comments:
Post a Comment