The following are recaps of recent DCC session of a game I started in Chicago during late 2022. Its is a free table, come and go and you please, hex crawling, sword & sorcery pulp campaign. My plan was to start at a location with a dungeon and slowly work out from there. The campaign is picking up pace, my binder swells with maps, tables, notes and printed out adventures. It is going swimmingly! Enjoy reading about it, whatever little interest it may bring you.
Session 1
Party awoke in slug cult temple, a quick level-0 funnel and the party had their characters. This inaugural session had something like 9 people as it was a friend's birthday, so our "death funnel" was everyone's four level-0 characters awakening from under mind control. I had each player choose one character to play as, awakening in a moist stone slab, a fat beercan-sized slug sucking on their foreheads. The characters they had not chosen were still unconscious under slug control in the room. It was here that the first unexpected delight occurred, one player went around ripping slugs from foreheads. I gave each person a 2in6 chance of surviving, nearly half died from shock of having their consciousness torn from their skulls.
Alas they fought giant spellcasting slugs on floating glass disks, evaded slug controlled guards and seriously messed up their burgeoning headquarters, interrupting a profane sacrifice to the Slug Mother Jygaella by toppling her statue over the orgy pit. But they were confronted by the high priest taking the aspect of a thin, shadow slug demon, and were routed thru the passages deep into the earth revealing a milk pale, salty under-lake, where the slug cultists did not follow.
Session 2
The party considered options, decides to use found raft to cross water, hugging along walls to navigate in the pitch black of torch light. First encounter several Salamandermen Salt Mummies, wrapped in slimy blue kelp strips, their bulging eyes completely white and cold, a few gripping turquoise tipped spears. One member perished, they left their body in the lake to sink, it was taken by a giant, translucent tentacle.
The party encountered this creature later on an encounter roll as they neared the exit, probing them curiously with 6 tentacles of dazzling shapes and shifting colors. Distracting it with food, they lured its attention away long enough to find a massive stone lift (think elden ring) that ascended to the surface. There they gazed before them truly free, and found a harsh land.
Session 3
Newly free to their own devices, the party travel thru hexes westward. The land here is vast and open skied, think a cold semi-arid desert climate like that of Central Asia. My hex keeping was not as detailed at the time, but they came to some ruins occupied by 10 Goblins, 1 Ogre and 1 Snakeman.
The party handily dispatched the goblins thru surprise, then found an archaeologist cowering (snakeman in disguise duh) begging that they help them. They agreed then dug deeper and encountered the ogre, nearly succumbing to its mighty swings. During the battle the snakeman tried to get the drop on them and nearly killed a member with its poisonous bite. The ogre was slain and the snakeman fled. They looted, camped and moved on.
The goblin group here were from the gang occupying the keep from this most recent session, sent out to search for loot in ruins.
Session 4 & 5
These will be bunched together. A landmark was spotted in the distance to the south, they traveled to its location and found the three tall peaks to be surrounded by the headless bodies of people broken upon the ground as if thrown from high. Gazing at the highest peak revealed a long metal structure atop it (think radio beacon). Climbing the walls found them face-to-face with hairless chimps wearing the skulls of people. These apes were eager about ripping heads from necks, trying to do so whenever a PC was helpless - no one has died this way yet :/
Crawling up the peak was a dangerous and careful work. Fearsome encounters with the Trollrilla (a troll gorilla, why of course) claimed several lives but was slain atop a swinging rope bridge with an adamantine blade before plummeting into the ravine below. Later, that same blade wielded by the same warrior would kill the same Trollrilla, who had reformed back together in a twisted shape after being broken upon the rocks.
A map the party had found, depicts the great forest to the south and the crawling city of Goga in the bottom-left. Gowron's Peak lays to top near right.
Leaping over trap chutes to gator pits and climbing precariously across viny cliffs, the party came to a ritual soup chamber where high priest apes prepared the favorite meal of Gowron. The heads of men are boiled and stripped of flesh, the brain removed from the skull which is then given to a lesser ape. The brains are then collected for Gowron to be brought at his leisure. The party busted in, wizard casting summons but flubbing, causing a giant stag beetle to appear spliced into the cauldron, causing scalding skull soup to burn every ape a part of the ritual.
The party reached the throne room of Gowron, attended by dozens of his hooting subservient apes. Gowron himself is a giant mandrill, strong enough to rip a man apart alone, but is given greater intellect by the fiery jeweled circlet worn proudly across his brow.
The apes silence at his will, and he spoke in the tongues of people. He offered the PCs the chance to be his friends, ultimately a ruse, having an inkling that the PCs are interested in the antennae, Gowron tempts the PCs by promises of treasures from the sky. The party is unnerved by their situation, unsure if they could beat him in a fight they agree to Gowron's offer. Perhaps this was a strong arm on my part, but it was the situation they found themselves in. Atop the highest peak the beacon is lit, from the dark clouded mountains to the east came an ancient airship.
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