Prince Chamring, Reanimator, Revisited

I ran FT0 Prince Chamring, Reanimator by Daniel Bishop twice in 2014, and hadn't given it too much thought since, as I got distracted by running D&D 5e both at home and at my FLGS. Wednesday, I found myself unexpectedly running it again.

Originally I'd planned on running a special Tales from the Floating vagabond Halloween adventure based somewhat loosely on Jason X (In Spaaaaace!!!!!) and had brought the book and my notebook to work to finish prep at lunch. I then forgot to bring it home with me.

Go me...

Since my options are a little limited based on what I've got on my shelf, I decided to run DCC instead. And as I was going for something Halloween appropriate, twisted fairy tales seemed a good way to go. So I grabbed it, some pregen zero level characters, and the quickstart rules, and headed off to game.



Without telling them what was up, I dropped the character sheets onto the table, and jumped right in. The bailiff had barely finished telling the characters what they'd been "volunteered" to do when the jester of the party started in. The bailiff motioned to the men at arms, and 2 crossbow bolts silenced the joker. "Anyone have anything else to say? No? Good. Get going."

Not even 2 minutes in, and the first character was down!

The party (all 27 of them, plus a cow and a lamb) took the wide passage to the castle. They came upon the large section of shattered wall, choked with bones and rose vines, and discovered the small crack in the adjacent tower, and also the trap door leading underground! Two dwarves jumped down the hole, ignoring the ladder. The second one fumbled his check, and landed on the first, killing him.

And then they split the party! Half explored below ground, discovering the ancient tomb. The other half visited Dr. Chapman's laboratory. As usual, I had a lot of fun playing Dr. Chapman, and at the end, when one character asked if there was anything Chapman needed, he gave that character a piece of blank paper that will become a scroll of Patron Bond (though he doesn't know it yet). Chapman gave his warnings, and his gifts, and sent the party on its way. One character tried to take the bottle with the imp. He ended up a mass of charred flesh. After that no one else tried to take anything.

In the tomb, the party encountered the hobyas, but only lost a single character in the encounter. They collected loot, and made their way to the chapel. A few offerings were made... And I just realized that I got distracted and forgot to to give out the blessings... ah well, next adventure.

The two halves of the party, met back up. The owner of the cow tried to bring it through the gap in the wall, which did not go well, either for the character or the cow. The party decided to head into the main section of the castle toward the tallest remaining tower. There they encountered the fairy princesses. One PC decided to head up the stairs while the rest of the group searched through the feast hall, rousing the dragon. The PC ran back down the steps, while the dragon leapt from the balcony down into the middle of the feast hall.

The fight was tough going, and several PCs dropped each round. Some ran. Sadly, bad initiative rolls meant that most of the PCs all got to go before the dragon pretty much every round.AC 19 is nothing to sneeze at, and for 0 level characters with crappy ability scores? Even harder. WHen one PC managed an 18, I let them know about burning luck. That was the final blow needed to kill the beast!

Deeper in the castle another PC died when they were playing around with the spinning wheel. The floorless room didn't slow them down for long, through when they asked the demon in the mirror how to get across, and he answered "You walk" they weren't amused.

No one tried to kiss Beauty, seeing what state she was in. They bundled her up, and brought her to the Prince. Remembering the words of Dr. Chapman, they just watched the bloody carnage, then looted the bodies before fleeing the undead horde.

Next week, we'll level up the surviving characters to level 1, then continue with our regularly scheduled 5e game. I think that the DCC game will get played at least semi-regularly going forward, because that was a lot of fun!