Halls of the Nephilim

Wasted in the second adventure from Tim Snider (of The Savage Afterworld) for his Country Meat-Grinder Classics line. You can read my review of the first adventure, The Hellson Horror, here. Wasted is a 15 page, 1st level adventure for DCC RPG. For those unfamiliar with Country Meat-Grinder Classics, it's a "hicksploitation" horror setting. You can use it as it's own setting, 1930's Appalachia cut off from "proper" society, or use it with little to no change in Shudder Mountains, Weird Frontiers, or my own Portsmaw setting. 

The plot centers around an annual village celebration. Unfortunately for the village, a mysterious contamination has decimated corn crops, causing those that eat it to turn violent. Like shiner, Patrick Dalton, swiped some of the contaminated corn before it could be destroyed. The corn, mixed with shine formula, has created doomshine. This toxic brew kills and re-animates those that drink. Dalton found he could controls these un-dead and has dubbed himself the Doombrewer. He now plans to take over the town with his brew and rule with an un-dead army.

The adventure has a great set-up and fun plot. There are a few different kinds of encounters. The party fight contaminated deer, un-dead townsfolk, the Doombrewer, and a horrific boss monster (that I won't spoil). In addition, there are several activities they can participate in before things go to hell. Tim's created some simple but fun rules carnival/festival events. Who knew I needed rules for a greased pig contest? Finally there is a new "liquid courage" rule that really fits the setting and gives some pseudo healing options for the primarily non-magical (at least as far as pc's go) setting. These work for Country Meat-Grinder Classics, but would fit really well in a standard DCC game.

If you can't tell, I really like this adventure. Unfortunately for folks that didn't order it yesterday, it is currently sold out. Tim periodically restocks his Etsy shop so check in every now and then if you want your own print copy. You can grab the pdf here.

The Hellson Horror is the first in (hopefully) Tim Snider's new line of "hicksploitation" DCC adventures. His vision of Country Meat-Grinder Classics is 1930's Appalachian-like area cut off from "proper" civilization and in a perpetual backwoods tech, knowledge, and society. Guns and cars/trucks exist but aren't reliable.  Folk magic and superstition are common, but powerful stuff is the stuff or demonic bargains and dark witches. That being said, this can definitely be adapted to The Shudder Mountains, Weird Frontiers, or my Portsmaw setting. 

This adventure is for a group of 2nd level characters. Years ago a wealthy family came to the aid of starving locals. Unfortunately this depleted what they had and they couldn't keep up. The matron of the family made an infernal bargain and all were saved. Unfortunately a year ago the payment came due and now they most feed folks to a monstrous creature. The party get involved with their cousin Vinny goes missing on a hunting trip.

Tim has done a fantastic job with this one. I love the Hellsons and he's done a great job coming up with creepy features for the family. With just a sentence or two per family member, he's made them all fall unique. The devil-sows and Hawgziller are great foes too. Finally, as someone that grew up in Appalachia, I appreciate his use of polecat. 

If you want to add a taste of Appalachia to your game, grab a copy here. Below I've listed a few things I'd do to customize the adventure to some compatible settings. 

You can read my overview of the Con itself here.

I ran five four hour sessions at Con on the Cob. I had a lot of fun and started losing my voice by the last session. Here's a breakdown of the sessions I ran.

Thursday

The Return of Reverend Pancake (Dark Places & Demogorgons)

Source

A group of teens in southern Ohio decide to get revenge on some bullying jocks. Unfortunately one of the jocks accidentally resurrects a puritanical zombie preacher (statted for DCC here). The premise behind this session and the setting were based on my hometown. The highlights of the session were when the nerd built a hard pretzel cannon (because he thought pretzels were the best source of salt) and the karate kid said they needed to get a boombox with Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes to Midnight because undead are weak against "pure metal."

Friday

After School Special (Vigilante City)
For this session I used premade VC characters and the pamphlet adventure Ninja Beat'Em Up!. I had a group of seven vigilantes but they were definitely challenged by the massive number of ninjas (though it probably helped that I was rolling like shit). One thing I noticed while running is that the super-soldier, mutant, and true vigilante seemed to be doing the most in the game (the first two because of their powers and the third because she kept critting). Still everyone had fun. I think if I run it again (and I'd like to), I'll make sure that all characters are non-powered.

Road Crew: The Arwich Grinder (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
A naked large man collapses and dies in an inn in the village of Arwich while grasping the bonnet of a local teen. Brave townsfolk must brave the weather and investigate, owing their lives to the family. This is a Lovecraftian funnel that I've ran before (notes here). However, this time it didn't go as expected at all! While some were injured, no characters died in this funnel. Not only that, but they took all of the cult family members alive to be tried, and killed Junior and the Sending of Sliggeth. It was an amazing session, but no one was ground but the horrific monstrosities. My friend from Columbus, Robert, played in this session too, which made it extra fun.

Saturday

Road Crew: Leopard Women of Venus (Dungeon Crawl Classics)
The Humanoid Coalition recruited grunts from the various human tribes on Venus for an importation mission. The setting is coming to Kickstarter soon and you can read more about it here. I loved it and wanted to show it off. Josh gave me his notes from the after hours GenCon session of Leopard Women of Venus game he ran and I used those and my pre-Kickstarter zine to run the session. Most of the group was made up of the red meat eating, gun-toting, God-loving Otram. The most memorable character was little Billy. He was a displaced human school kid whom the Otram adopted. Billy gained a shotgun during the adventure and used it to take out quite a few foes, before his unfortunate death by animated Martian pudding.

Road Crew: Glow-H-I-O The Museum at the End of Time (Mutant Crawl Classics)
My original plan was to run an original funnel for my new Ohio-based MCC setting. I didn't get it finished though, so I ran The Museum at the End of Time instead. I had another large group (seven players total). We had some experienced MCC and DCC players, a couple that had never played the systems, and one player than had never played a tabletop rpg before. I have to say this was my favorite session of the whole con. Everyone got into character as their primitive tribesman. There were some interesting deaths and and I even had one character who ascended to godhood and became the Star Child.

Swag
I also wanted to show off the non-Cob Crate swag I picked up. I grabbed four of these Grimtooth D6'
s. I love the character, want to use him more, and it also seemed fitting after the recent passing of Rick Loomis. I also grabbed several fan-made Critical Role buttons, because I'm a critter and I liked them. I didn't get all of the characters, but I grabbed my favorites (and a cool Zombae button).

Meth Gators have been in the news lately. While drugs would be too diluted to actually affect gators, it's a great monster idea. Feel free to add meth-gators to  your Country Crawl Classics and Umerica games. Don't be surprised if a version of this ends up in a Lone Bards zine in the future.


Meth-Gator

Init +1, Atk Bite +4 melee (3d4); AC 18; HD 4d8; MV 30' or Swim 40'; Act 1d20/1d14; SP camouflage, exploding heart, hyper aware; SV Fort +5, Ref +2, Will -3; AL N

Meth-gators are masters of camouflage and receive a +10 bonus to all attempts at hiding. The drugs coursing through their system also make them hyper aware, giving them a +5 bonus to spotting intruders in their swampy domains. However, the drugs coursing through their system has negative effects. If a meth-gator fumbles on an attack it's heart violently explodes, leaving those within a 15 radius splattered in gator gore.

I had a nice chat the other day with Jarrett Crade, the twisted mastermind behind Country Crawl Classics. Towards the end of the conversation he mentioned noticing my copy was damaged and asked if I'd like a fresh copy. Today I received my new copy AND a copy of a probably related item, Flammable Hospital. I say they are probably related because they were made by a lot of the same mad folk and one of the endings from CCC has your characters arriving at Flammable Hospital.

So what is Flammable Hospital? Well it's a hospital that's constantly on fire. It's also a treatise/memoir on the act of writing and getting high legally. Finally, its a 12 page zine (counting inside covers) of a bizarre TV soap opera meets wtf charts and tables. There's a name chart, a couple of character creation charts, one zero level, and another variable. There's an extremely bizarre random events chart, and some other just weird tables and such. There is a map of the hospital and a list of the the departments.

Honestly, I'm not 100% what to make of Flammable Hospital. What is it? It's an exercise in zine madness. I love it though. It's just so weird and I really appreciate Jarrett sending me a copy.

CCC feels like Adventure Time if you gave it some dip, backwoods hooch, and forced it to listen to Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings for three days straight. Or if you combined Redneck Zombies and Smokey and the Bandit, but decided to have Tom Waits do the soundtrack. Oh and add some Idiocracy and Brawndo the Thirst Mutilator into the mix for good measure.

The zine contains character generation (including occupations and equipment). There's a new feature called the misery die. This lowers your characters rolls but will eventually reward your character with increased lucky when you pass the misery around.

There is a running CCC on the fly section which lets you run a game of Country Crawl Classics anywhere and anytime (though I don't recommend doing doing Sunday school). The charts are all entertaining and had me laughing.  There is a funnel adventure that includes cannibals and space vampires. There are also several new critters to face, the fearsome being Elvis AI! Country Crawl Classics can easily be used for a hillbilly Umerican game if that's an idea that interests you.

Okay this zine is no where near politically correct or polite. Michael Curtis gave Appalachian culture a respectful representation in The Chained Coffin. You're not going to find that here. This plays on all of the negative stereotypes of country folk and is a bleak game. Thing is, even though I’m proud of my Appalachian upbringing, I’ve witnessed the darker side that inspired this first hand. That’s why I don’t find this offensive. The topics are presented in an absurd way. Honestly, I can't wait to run it for my friends. I might even come up with some new content for it.

You can read about Mama Rose and her daughters here. At the Judge’s discretion, if they tell a character’s fortune have the player roll a d17 and add or subtract their luck modifier and consult the table below.

Mama Rose 

Everyone in Portsmaw knows Mama Rose. The jolly Rubenesque seer is an active part of the town's nightlife. She and her children (blood and adopted) are more than celebrants of life's pleasures though, they are mouth pieces of the Three Fates.

Traveling near the Oh'yio, the party hears the cries of a distressed child. Looking out into the river, they see a young child stranded on a sand barge in the middle of the river. The water is slowly rising and if the party does nothing it will drown. The child was placed their by the cruel fey Gallia (who lurks beneath the water). In addition to the wicked faerie, there are several hungry catfish (the size of a large dogs) swimming in the water that will attack them if they attempt to swim to the child.

One of the things I'm working on for Portsmaw is a d16 encounter list. As I make them, I'll post them on here.

This encounter is inspired by a story my friend John told me. Apparently somewhere in the county there's a preacher named Reverend Pancake that was buried and has a pretty apocalyptic epitaph (which is paraphrased below).

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A small forgotten graveyard is found in clearing in the dark heart of the woods. While most of the grave markers are bare. There is a large marker in the center of the clearing. Though it can't be made out without wiping away the grime and vegetation that has grown over it, there is an inscription that reads "Though you lay my body beneath the soil I will rise again to lead an army of souls of the dead to reclaim the land from the wicked and undeserving of life. - Reverend Pancake" After the party is finished reading the inscription a bolt of lightning strikes the ground near the stone. The character with the lowest Luck score needs to roll a reflex saving throw or take 1d6 lightning damage as it arcs. The ground begins to shake and the next round Reverend Pancake bursts from his grave ready to take back the land. The next round his zombie followers burst forth from their graves. They target elves and wizards first.

Reverend Pancake (1): Init +2; Atk: Staff of the Pure +4 melee (1d6 + 1d4 to wizards, elves, and other spellcasters); AC 13; HD 5d6; MV 30'; Act 1d20; SP un-dead; SV Fort +4, Ref +0, Will +4; AL C

Though un-dead, he cannot be turned by clerics. In addition he does not need to eat, drink, or breath. He is also immune to sleep, charm, and hold spells, as well as other mental effects and cold damage.

Risen Zealots (Zombies) (2d3): See DCC RPG; p. 431

Staff of the Pure - This magical staff was designed to kill non-divine casters. The wielder gains a +1 bonus to hit and the staff does an extra 1d4 damage to anyone who can cast spells not gifted from the gods.

Source

Wanting to start a DCC game in Portsmaw? Here is a list of occupations for rolling up zero-level characters.

A few notes, non-humans are more rare than they are in the standard game (which is why they show up less on the list). I'm working on a goblin class. Note even at zero-level, Goblins have infravision 60' and small size (as Halfling).

Portsmaw Occupation Chart
(Format: roll - occupation - trained weapon - trade good)

Pumpkinhead by Ed Justin
Pumpkinhead (Type III Demon)

Init +4, Atk claw +8 melee (1d6+1 damage); AC 19; HD 8d12+6; MV 35'; Act 2d20; SP infravision, darkness (+12 check), immune to weapons of less than +2 enchantment or natural attacks from creatures of 5 HD or less; half damage from fire, acid, cold, electricity, and gas, Crit Threat range 18-20);  SV Fort +10, Ref +6, Will +10; AL C

These twisted demons are only invoked by those who truly want revenge. The witch that summons it must have some blood from the summoner who will slowly take on Pumpkinhead-like qualities as the demon does its mission. During this time the summoner will also begin to feel the agony of the creature's victims. It is thought that only the willing death of the summoner will stop the creature. This causes the demon to die and the summoner to take the demon's place. If someone else kills the summoner the creature will seek to complete it's original task the next time it is summoned.

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I'm going to use some take on this for Portsmaw.

You can grab your Corn Whiskey Western Themed D6's from Black Oak Workshop here.

Portsmaw is often on my mind. I know I just need to set and write it. The setting is pretty fleshed out in my head. The thing I keep getting caught up on is what system I want to write it for. Originally it was an April A-Z Blog Challenge idea and was created for Swords & Wizardry Light. I liked the idea that anyone could use it with free rules. Earlier this year I toyed with doing that and 5th edition D&D. I think both could do it justice.

However, since Origins my mind has went in yet another direction. I think the weirdness I envision for Portsmaw would be great for Dungeon Crawl Classics. There's also a precedent for this. The Chained Coffin by Michael Curtis was a big inspiration. My thoughts are Portsmaw will be a standalone setting, but could also be placed right beside the Shudder Mountains and fit perfectly.

Thoughts and comments?

Well Origins 2018 has come and gone and I had a great time.

Wednesday
 I skipped because I had a work conference that day.

Thursday

I ran into Eric from Bloat Games early Thursday morning.


My first con purchase was some moonshine d6's. I thought they'd be perfect for Portsmaw! They are from Black Oak Workshop. I got the second set because I spent more than $10 at the booth (and had the con coupon).


 My first game of the con was DCC Lankhmar with Michael Curtis. I was super stoked for this. Though I don't know too much about Lankhmar, I love DCC and Michael Curtis is one of my favorite adventure writers. I had a lot of fun and will have playtest credits when the adventure is released. I also met Jason Hobbs of Hobbs and Friends of the OSR.


I spent most of my money at the  Goodman Games booth. This is what i picked up. I got the Grimtooth adventures because Trapsylvania is supposed to come to Kickstarter soon. Primate Tales is one that I've been looking forward to. Expect a review soon.


I was able to get my copy signed by the chief editor and writers. Brett Brooks even did a sketch in it for me.



I ran into Egg Embry. I didn't get a pic because my phone was dead, but it was cool to meet him in person. I skipped my learn to play Shadowrun session because it was later than I realized.

Friday
My feet really hurt Friday and I couldn't get parking within a mile so I decided to rest. I missed learning to play Through the Breach and the Kobold Midnight Massacre. I was disappointed, but I need to recuperate.

Saturday

Goodman Games had their Free RPG Day swag and were giving it out free. I have a DCC quickstart, but this one has a new adventure.


I am no master painter, but I'm happy with the two minis I did at the "paint and take." The first is supposed to be a goliath and the second is a pulpy masked hero.


The other players of my 9 am Survive This!! - Zombies session were a no show but I did have a great conversation with Eric Bloat. I also snagged the new Dark Places & Demogorgons book. Expect a review soon.
I picked up these cards from Crit Games. While they aren't a must have, they are going to be super helpful in my next 5e game.


 I ran into my old character, Kyle.




I ended Saturday night with Dark Places & Demogorgons. One the way to the session I ran into my gaming fam from back home. It was great. I didn't have much time to talk, but I got hugs and that means a lot to me.  So, the session got real dark, real fast. One player straight up murdered a bully with a crowbar. However, we kind of rewound it and ultimately it was a blast. My skateboarder shanked a chupacabra twice while riding his board. It was totally tubular!
Sunday

Sunday I just hit the exhibit hall with my son. He played in the Battletech pods. He couldn't make his mech move, but I could hear him laughing the whole time so it was worth it. He got a bunch of dice, because he wants to be a dice collector (his words). I want to give a shoutout to  Black Oak Workshop. Grayson go three oversized dice from them and the owner asked if he had a dice bag. When Grayson said no, he just gave him one for free. It was a super kind gesture and I really appreciate it.

This past April I decided to create a fantasy setting based on the place I grew up (while borrowing elements from the rest of Appalachia too). I had planned to compile that work and unfortunately as of today haven't. However, I think it's a worthwhile project idea and today I'm going to start work on a Portsmaw setting book. Though the project will be easy to adapt to any D&D-esque game, I'm writing it for Swords & Wizardry Light anContinual Light. This is what I'm looking to include.

• History of the Oh'yio River Valley 
• Information about the lizardolk tribes that dwelt their before the coming of the goodly races.
• Who's who of folks (good and ornery) in the valley (with stats of course).
• Detailed overview of city of Portsmaw
• Descriptions of surrounding communities and landmarks (Rotway, McDermott, Blood Gravel).
• New class: the bootlegger 
• New alternate class: preacher (for local clerics)
• New monsters (including the sorghum ooze, giant catfish, axe grinder) as well unique entities (Boss Tide, Xira, Jasper, the Mothman).
• Magic items (including Johan's apple seeds and Hearthfire).

It's going to take a while, but I'm sure the end result will be fun.

Rob Scallion released another banjo rock cover the other day and as always it makes me think of the Shudder Mountains. It also reminded me of my neglected Portsmaw setting.


I might slow down on my Light City work for a bit and give Portsmaw more attention. Well first I have a special release I'm working on for Friday the 13th/Halloween, but when it's ready, I'll hope on a boat and return to Portsmaw.

Thank y'all for stopping by and getting to know Portsmaw for the April A-Z. This thing has really been a labor of love.  I'm not done with the setting yet.  My next step is to flesh a few things out and compile the setting into a document. My gaming brother, +David Coppoletti wants to team up with me to do art for the pdf. Dave has a great style and considering he spent many years living in the area that inspired the setting, I'm super excited and think it's going to turn out great. To learn more about Dave and see some of his art, check out this interview I did with him last year.