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)
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