Adventure Review: DCC Free RPG Day 2021, Tomb of the Savage Kings (Level 2)

 

 

A decent adventure for a one-shot, but doesn't live up to its title. 

There's a trio of "savage kings" mods put out by Goodman, starting with DCC #17: Legacy of the Savage Kings and continuing in DCC #66.5: Doom of the Savage Kings. Both of those mods are excellent, and the marketing in Tomb suggests more of the same. 

Unfortunately, the connection ends at the title. The previous two mods take place in temperate areas, swamps, fens, and forests, while Tomb transports the action to an Egyptian themed setting. It's a homage to the many Mummy movies, and gets the adventurers in as rescuers of a kidnapped heiress.

The lack of connection to the other Savage Kings mods makes it an awkward fit for campaign play. I bought it thinking I could link the three, but it didn't make sense to drop Tomb into my setting. It isn't a big deal, as the lore is pretty minor anyway. A shame. A mod with this title should naturally fit after DCC #66.5. (You could use this and not DCC #66.5 in your campaign, but the other mod is superior). It also includes some game breaking elements (like PCs being lost in the past permanently) that don't work that well for campaign play.

It's more serviceable as a one-shot--the players get the hook, and they're off for the tomb. There's a bit of intrigue; they're hired by Zita to find her sister, Isobel, who joined an adventurer named Ardeth in robbing the tomb. But the story isn't quite true: Ardeth doesn't exist, and Isobel was actually kidnapped by the mummy awakened by Zita's own tomb-robbing. Zita can't deal with it, so wants the PCs to help. 

The players have a chance to learn this backstory through a halfling companion, Wemble, who helped Zita's original mission and joins them on the trip. There are some clues to suggest Wemble isn't being forthright. But in my experience, it's easy for him to fade into the background and the PCs to not pick up on any of it. Even if they do, not much changes. It feels more intrigue for the sake of intrigue rather than something gameable. 

The tomb itself is solid, although I would have liked to have more combats early on. The combats are very easy until the final boss encounter, which is hard and will take a while. I don't like that for a one-shot, because then the players don't have the best grasp of their abilities going into the finale. 

It also gets negative marks for useability. When they enter the main hall, there are these panels with a bunch of pictures and hieroglyphs. They decipher the pictures, read the hieroglyphs, and learn the Tomb's history.  There's a nice picture of the walls in the book, but no handout. And it's spread over two pages and very printer unfriendly. I ended up combining the walls and inverting the colors manually to end up with something serviceable. The Judge will also want to print out the text of the hieroglyphs as a handout. If you don't, the PCs are relying on your (much less fun) descriptions, and there's a lot of information, so you'll end up describing it multiple times...

This adventure really needs a rival adventuring party, who knows about Whemble and can reveal that intrigue, robbing the tomb for their own purposes. Think "The Mummy (1999)" with Whemble cast as Beni. It would add some more roleplaying and combat opportunities. 

This took three hours for me to run; 2 for the main tomb, and 1 for the final combat.

This is $6.99 at the Goodman Games website.

My Experience: I ran this for one con game.

Link: https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dcc-rpg-tomb-of-the-savage-kings-free-rpg-day-2021-pdf/

Price: $6.99 (PDF)

Adventure Review: DCC #79.5, Tower of the Black Pearl (Level 1)

Tower of the Black Pearl is one of the best starter DCC mods. Pick this up if you're introducing players to the system or want to run a public game, like at a convention. 

I'll start with the premise: there's this tower far off-shore, which is only accessible one night every 10 years, and that night is tonight! There's a pearl of great value inside, but other pirates are on the hunt. The players make their way out there, then have to deal with a series of challenges: the pirates (combat or roleplaying) and some puzzles (a rotten staircase, a trapped room which will flood and drown you all). They'll finally make it to the room with the pearl where they extract it...flooding the entire tower behind them and forcing them to race to the surface. 

Then, the usability: it's very easy to pick up and play--the entire thing is about 20 pages, including art and handouts, and in a large size font. That helps the GM scan at the table. The whole thing takes ~20 minutes to read through. And it's fairly linear, so you can do a good job from a single read through. It'll have a similar length each time you run it; in my experience, 3-4 hours. You'll have no trouble getting this to the table. 

Then, as an introduction to the DCC system: it starts with an easy combat encounter (all starter mods should do this!) so the players have a chance to acclimate themselves and learn how their characters work before making consequential decisions. There's a nice mix of combat, puzzles, and roleplaying. The players will need creative solutions to the puzzles at the end (how to get the pearl from all the snakes?) and have important choices to make along the way (backstab the pirates, or side with them?). I'm not sure it would do well as part of a campaign. The candles, which provide a way to snuff out every lawful hero in existence, have too much potential to derail things. But it's fantastic as a one shot.

New DMs, be advised: the biggest challenge is not the pirates, and not the water trap--it's those damn stairs. Most everyone tries to make the jump, most everyone falls, and then ends up with broken bones or dead characters. 

This is $6.99 at the Goodman Games website.

My Experience: I ran this for several convention games.

Link: https://goodman-games.com/store/product/dungeon-crawl-classics-79-5-tower-of-the-black-pearl-pdf/

Price: $6.99 (PDF)