This is a detailed Session Report of a run through Goodman Games’ DCC#59: Mists of Madness. This is the companion session report that accompanies the recent review of the adventure in my last post (and is also posted on RPG Geek.
CAUTION: This report includes spoilers! If you plan to play a PC in this adventure, you should NOT read this review. If you are planning on DMing this module, then by all means, read on!
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I started the players at level 2 and told them that their PCs already know each other and have been adventuring together for a year or so. I let them generate their own PCs for this module.
Player:PC Name:PC Description
Jeremy: Puyet Grigri, female ½ orc barbarian (striker)
John: Lukan Silverwood, male elf cleric (leader)
Allen: Joe the Swordmage, male genasi swordmage (defender)
Alex: Kulrath, male human rogue (striker)
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Introduction (~25 min)
The adventure provides several simple hooks to get the players involved: I chose to use one of them: The party is gambling in a local tavern and the rogue (Kulrath) is winning a lot of coin and various trinkets. He gambles late into the night and, in the end, has won a large bag of goodies. When he awakes the next morning, he discovers that the skin on his right hand and lower forearm has become green and mottled, and his fingers have become webbed like a frog, having grown fleshy membranes between them during the night.
Kulrath has become subject to the Curse of Skoulos. Side Note: One of the things I liked about the module when I flipped through it in the store was the curse table. Every hour or extended rest, an afflicted PC must roll a saving throw against the curse. If the PC fails the throw, he rolls a d12 and suffers the effects of the curse listed on the table next to the die roll he made. The cool thing is that some of these effects are beneficial to the PC or his allies.
Kulrath touches his hand and realizes that he still retains feeling through the skin, like he did through his normal skin. He decides to go to the cleric (Lukan) for advice. He upends his bag of winnings, dumping everything onto the floor in Lukan’s room. Lukan, based on his heal check, cannot tell much about the skin, but knows that the transformation and webbing is not due to an infection. Kulrath becomes more agitated and Joe the Swordmage and Grigri come to Lukan’s room to see what is going on. Grigri notices that one of the totems in Kulrath’s winnings appears to be cursed.
Concluding that the hand affliction is due to the cursed totem, but not remembering from whom Kulrath won the totem, the group decides to split up and try to find out any information from the townsfolk. Based on their streetwise skill checks, the group hears a few bits of useful information, which mostly boils down to this:
1. Old Skoulos the Undying was a sorcerer-king that has a tomb in the black swamp
2. The swamp folk, who have bred with the frog-things, practice unholy rituals
3. Malakai the Mad has been trained in dark arts and worships bad things
Putting together all of the information they learned from the locals, they decide to set out for the tomb. They approach the swamp and see the top of a spire in the distance.
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Encounter 1: Player Beginning (~35 min)
As they get to the edge of the swamp, they stumble into encounter 1 (player beginning). As written, the encounter is a level 1 (EL1), 500 XP battle, which consists of 4 swamp crocodiles.
As the group approaches the edge, the party sees makeshift fallen-tree bridges stretching across the bog at various places leading into the swamp. They hear distant drums and Kulrath and Joe notice that there are 4 large forms floating in the water, just below the waterline. Joe the Swordmage decides to walk across one of the rickety bridges, gets near the middle and is attacked by one of the crocodiles. A battle ensues.
**In the image above you get to see my solution to a lack of crocodile miniatures, which led to the use of plastic beetles and lizards in place of actual crocs. I think they worked out pretty well.
A horrible initiative roll by the DM, in combination with a couple of backdoor criticals allowed the party to make quick work of the four level 2 crocs. The flow of this battle caused me to mentally re-evaluate the next two encounters and make a note to add a couple of extra creatures. I had the option of extending the crocodile encounter, simply by virtue of just adding a couple of more crocs at the water’s edge. In the interest of time, I chose to forgo the extra crocs and move along. I think that this first encounter would have been more difficult had the party actually been first level, but if they had the fifth PC, maybe it would have been comparable to how it actually played out for us.
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Area S-1: The Ruined Moathouse (~8 min)
The players take a short rest to replenish their encounter powers and heal up. They then make their way to the next area. The ruined moathouse consists of a ruined wall and gatehouse that has been slowly sinking into the swamp for many years. The group hears the drumming louder as they approach the gatehouse and blue mist begins to swirl at their feet. They see a black spire looming in the background.
The party discerns that they can either 1) climb the wall, 2) walk under the gate-arch, or 3) go around the corner of the wall and see if there is another way into the area beyond. While it is foggy and they cannot see much of the courtyard beyond the gate/wall, they hear the drumming much louder as they approach the gate.
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Area S-2, Encounter 2: The Gate of Hopping Doom (~70 min)
This was written as an EL2 encounter worth 625 XP. Given the ease with which the party dispatched the crocodiles, I added some extra frogs to this encounter; it was written with 5 total and I had the party fight 8 total, which brought the total XP up to 1000.
As Kulrath starts to climb over the wall, the other players pass beneath the sunken gatehouse. Kulrath suddenly sees a large, sticky frog tongue flop over the side, smack into the wall right next to him, and then retract back up to its owner on top of the gatehouse. Kulrath peers above the top of the wall and sees several giant frogs atop the gatehouse.
As Joe, Lukan, and Grigri pass beneath the gate, the frogs try, with sticky tongues, to grab them through holes in the roof of the gatehouse. Grigri and Joe the Swordmage attempt to grab the tongues and ride them up to the top of the gatehouse. Joe succeeds in grabbing the tongue and is transported to the top of the gatehouse and right into the mouth of one of the giant frogs! Grigri did not succeed, but, upon hearing Joe yell, decides not to attempt it again.
As Lukan and Grigri get to the other side of the gatehouse, they see a largish grassy courtyard. Toward the far end of the courtyard an evil rite is being performed, complete with dancing worshippers and a sacrificial ritual in progress. Turning back to the battle, Lukan gives Grigri a boost up and she quickly pounds on a frog on top of the gatehouse. Lukan goes to an area where the wall has sunken far into the ground and climb up to the top of the gatehouse. Once all of the party members were atop the gatehouse, they were able to dispose of the frogs effectively.
**In the picture below, you will see the frogs at the gatehouse attacking the players, all of the minis represent frogs, I just didn’t have enough!
This encounter was a lot of fun to run. Just the idea of the frogs grabbing payers with their tongues was entertaining. And the surprised Joe the Swordmage being transported into a frog mouth when he grabbed on and took a ride was extremely amusing. The frogs have great leaping abilities, allowing them to shift 4 squares and giving the players a hard time controlling the battlefield. The frogs have very low defenses, making them easy to hit, but they also didn’t have very high HP. This is a bit disconcerting since they are categorized as brutes, which should have high HP by definition. In hindsight, I would probably tweak the encounter to add more HP to each individual frog, rather than adding new opponents for the party to overcome. Theoretically, this would shorten the length of the battle while, at the same time, allowing the frogs to stay alive long enough to effectively challenge the players.
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Area S-4, Encounter 3: Overgrown Courtyard (~45 min)
As written, this is an EL3 encounter worth 722 XP. This encounter consists of the Priestess (Ursula the Befouled), her companion (Hiatha the Half-Ogre), and a bunch of human cultists (12 minions). I added 2 extra minions to the encounter, so that brings the XP available to 784. Other than those changes, I ran the encounter as written.
After killing the frogs, a quick search of the gatehouse turns up 22 silver arrows and a potion of healing. The party then sees that there is a young female elf on the sacrificial table across the courtyard. As they advance toward the ritual site, they notice that the drumming is picking up pace and the dancing is more frantic. The party rushes to interrupt the ritual.
The battle began swiftly, thanks to Kulrath throwing a dagger at the half-ogre, causing it to drop its bone drumsticks and charge Grigri. Grigri commenced to battle the half-ogre on her own and fought hard, taking and dealing a lot of damage. She was injured and became bloodied, but ultimately won the fight and felled the big ogre. Meanwhile, Ursula was diligently attempting to complete the ritual, and only broke her concentration when her companion and their minions seemed to be losing the battle. She then tried to curse the party members, but failed miserably.
When she finally got around to performing a substantial attack, I rolled badly (a natural 1, D’oh) and she went down soon after. Right before she was slain, Ursula did finally succeed in cursing Lukan. Shortly thereafter, Lukan became beset with flies, which lay eggs under his skin causing extreme itching and irritation. After the next short rest, the hatchlings could be seen moving under his skin at the infestation site.
This chain of bad luck rolls made the priestess seem very weak and, with the knowledge of hindsight, I would have played her very differently. I played her as the adventure describes, with her being more interested in completing the ritual than fighting the party. By the time she got around to joining the battle, Joe the Swordmage had taken out most of the minions and so one of her encounter powers was completely useless (it bolstered her minion followers). Her inattention to the battle works well with the story, but makes this level 3 encounter relatively easy – this one should probably be rated lower based on the tactics of the principle target.
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Area S-6, Encounter 4: Perilous Shades (~40 min)
The Party discovers that the sacrifice victim is indeed dead and they perform proper funeral rites, including a flaming pyre. They then turn their attention to the ramshackle scaffolding that leads to an opening in the wall of rock making up the black spire. As they climb the scaffolding, they find themselves enveloped in an acrid blue mist that burns the lungs (but does no HP damage and has no disease track). Upon reaching the opening and entering the cave, they find themselves in a narrow hall that widens into a larger cavern.
Set in the middle of the cavern is a large censer, glowing with eerie light and secreting foul blue fumes into the room. The smoky fumes fall to the ground and cover the floor, creating a 2 foot thick blanket of fog on the floor and creating weird cascading shadows along the walls.
Lukan and Joe the Swordmage determine that the censor is a warder of some type. They know that it is magical, but the extent of its powers eludes them. Kulrath sets off to search the room. As he walked near the censer, a faint, sparkly, shadowy, blue aura sucked off of him and melted into the shadowy corners. The rest of the party saw this and noticed that he no longer cast a shadow. Kulrath, feeling no different and not noticing that his shadow detached, goes about his business and finds a backpack in one corner and a secret door in another corner of the cavern. He returns to the group to show them what he’s found, and they are looking at him with surprise on their faces.
The group concludes that moving past the censor causes their shadows to detach. Unable to determine if their shadows are malevolent, and noting that Kulrath’s shadow form did not immediately attack him, they decide to go past the censor one at a time. Kulrath decides that he is going to stand very close to where Joe the Swordmage is passing by and attack Joe’s shadow as soon as it detaches. Upon hearing this plan, Grigri and Lukan decide to step back and brace themselves for battle. As Joe passes by the censor, his shadow begins to melt off of him and Kulrath attempts to stab it with a dagger.
The ensuing battle, while interesting and packed with possibilities, was not given its full glory because we were running short on time. I ran the encounter slightly different than the adventure recommended, but I had to make a choice to run it differently or not-at-all. My changes included the following:
1) Instead of having all shadows detach as soon as the fog hit them, I had the shadows detach only when the PC walked by the censor.
2) The module says that the shadows should come looking for their mortal counterparts 1d12 minutes after the time of detachment and recommends having them show up at a time that would be… inopportune for the party. My change had the shadows acting as benign beings (unless attacked) which would simply fade away and the PCs would have no shadow. Since this was intended as a one-shot with characters we weren’t likely to revisit, I didn’t have to worry about how they would get their shadows back. If it had been part of my regular campaign this would also have worked since I could have made it a whole new quest for them to find and keep their shadows. Also note that the rogue thought not having a shadow would be great and should add a bonus to his stealth check (cheeky, but creative, bastard!).
3) The adventure recommends running the shades with all the powers of the PC from which it had detached plus some small changes to their defenses (increases) and a teleportation movement power; I axed those and ran the shade with attributes identical to the PC.
4) I only had the shades attack a PC that had already attacked it. Two of the party members abstained from the fight, so when their shades detached, they were not attacked.
All of this to save time. In actuality, I was hoping that no-one would succeed on the perception roll and therefore would not notice the detachment or lack of casting shadows until after they had left the room. They did, however, and so I ran a full encounter.
After Kulrath and Joe defeated their shades (and, notably, did not regain their shadows), kulrath showed the group the secret door he found and they went through the backback he found. The backpack contained various coinage and gems, two silvered daggers, and a scrollcase. Inside the scrollcase they found an ancient parchment note alluding to all manner of horrible curse effects and a look inside the mind of Malakai the Mad. The group pushed on through the secret door (area S-8) and descended 40 feet down a wide, square spiral staircase.
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Area S-9, Encounter 5: False Tomb (~20 min)
As the party gets to the bottom of the stairs, they push into a room with a low ceiling. After they pass a certain point, the pathway behind them becomes blocked by a sliding rock wall. The find themselves in a room looking at two large animal/demon heads on the far wall. In this area the PCs have to find a way to open one of two portals (the demon heads) as the ceiling begins to descend and threaten to crush them.
Despite its flaw, this encounter played relatively well and was a lot of fun to run the players through. I am a DM that likes to have some mystery, puzzles, and traps in the games that I run, allowing for players to have to actually think rather than just hack and slash. I originally thought this room offered just that opportunity and I played it pretty much exactly as written. And as it was playing out, I stumbled upon an unsavory snag in the writing that I missed (how, I don’t know) upon my first reading.
This encounter is an EL1 trap/puzzle encounter worth 500 XP. The flaw in the encounter is that there is no opportunity for the rogue (or anyone else in the party) to detect any trap in the room, disarm any trap elements, or even act in a way that makes thievery, stealth, or perception worth any value. The encounter is also not written in the standard trap stat block format, so along with the rogue’s skills being useless, there are no countermeasures available for any other PC to attempt. In other words, this is a railroad encounter masquerading as a puzzle/trap encounter.
The whole point of the room is to force the players to quickly pick one of the portals to go through. It works by the nature of the ceiling descending (and taking only 4 rounds to do so) as soon as anyone picks or uses a key on the portal locks. I think the intention was to create an extremely tense experience in which the players must quickly find a way to open one of the portals and get through before being smashed. Unfortunately it left my players feeling like they had no choices, no options, and no way to counteract the things put into motion.
I think the intention was genuine and this may work well in a different group. The problem is that my DMing style usually includes a large dose of “what do you do?” in it, where I give my players a lot of leeway in determining their own actions and the possibilities are wide open. This encounter has the illusion of offering that, while in actuality, it forced their hands and didn’t work well with my group.
To be fair, if I had realized this on my first reading, I would have adjusted this to fit my playing style. This wasn’t really a puzzle, it was just: find a key to the lock (or pick it), when you attempt picking or using the key on a lock, the ceiling starts to descend and you must quickly exit the room. It’s fine to make a trap that the players may not detect, but designing it so that it is unknowable from the outset is not my style, but it is how this room is written.
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Area S-9b, Encounter 6: Path of Air (~15 min)
After going through the portal, the players find themselves looking at a 20 foot drop into a deep room. Flat-topped stalagmites, are visible at various places throughout the room, forming a path across the room. Upon close inspection, the party sees thin, shallow cuts running across the dungeon floor at 5-foot intervals. Lukan also notices that there are corresponding slits in the ceiling, which he recognized as Scything blade guides.
The party commences using their perception (for timing the blades) and athletics (to jump to the stalagmites) skills to cross the chasm. Lukan, feeling he is unable to perform such physical feats, decides to climb down and cross the room by foot. As he descends, a swarm of rats comes out of the corner to attack. The group works together to defeat them and haul Lukan up to the top of the Stalagmite. Eventually, they make it across the room and move on.
This was relatively easy, as it should be since it was only worth 175 XP. It felt like it took an inordinate amount of time for what it was.
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Area S-10, Encounter 7: The Greedy Maw (~5 min)
This encounter houses the second flaw in the writing of the adventure. This is listed as an EL3 trap encounter worth 750 XP. My question upon first reading it was, “What for?!?”
The players approach a room with a floor mosaic of a snarling demon with an open maw. Most of the PCs see a giant, valuable sapphire floating above the demon, while the player with the most accumulated curse effects (or barring that, with the lowest will defense) sees a huge powerful magic sword floating above the demon maw (Handouts B & C in the back of the module show drawings of this scene so that you can show the players what they are seeing). The player that sees the sword also hears whispering voices tempting him with power if he wields the sword.
The gem and sword are illusions designed to get a greedy PC to move within 5 feet of the demon mosaic. When someone does go within 5 feet, the maw is triggered and becomes a roaring, sucking void attempting to swallow everything in the room! Any character within 20 feet must make a DC 25 strength check to avoid being drawn into the maw. PCs drawn into the void get teleported, without their weapons and equipment, to area S-11b.
Now, back to my original question: Why is this encounter worth 750 XP? There is no test here. Yes, they have to make a DC 25 strength check, but so what? If they don’t make it, they get to continue on in the adventure. If they do make it, there is nowhere for them to go anyway, and they have to re-trigger the maw and go through. That’s right, remember when they entered area S-9 and the rock wall slid into place, blocking their egress? That thing is still in place – they can’t go backwards. So basically this is an unavoidable teleportation mechanism that gives you 750 bonus XP if you roll a strength check over DC 25? It’s out of place and mostly pointless. I get the cinematic quality of it and I think that has its place, but make this a non-encounter and let it dress up the story without having to be a challenge. This is NOT an EL3 encounter, plain and simple.
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Area S-11b: Treachery’s Revenge
The party, having been sucked into the Maw in area S-10, find themselves teleported to this room. It’s simply a long hallway with a portal at one end. When the characters step through the portal, they find themselves in Skoulos’ Tomb.
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Area S-12, Encounter 8: The Undying Throne
I described this final encounter in detail in my review of this adventure, found in my last post on this very blog! Both the review in my previous post and this session report are also posted at the RPG Geek Website!
Unfortunately, due to time constraints, my players didn’t actually go through the encounter. Instead, in the interest of time, I narrated the events for them. They were pretty burnt out by the time they reached this last encounter. The prior two major encounters (S-9 and S-9b) playing out somewhat stilted and railroad-y, and did not allow them to play in their natural way, which really weighed down the session here toward the end. By the time they walked into this room, they were ready to be done. One player also had to leave in no more than 15 minutes, so we wouldn’t have had time to finish the encounter had we truly started it.
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Final Analysis:
In the end, the PCs would have received a total of 4109 XP for the encounters they participated in (this includes the 750 for area S-10, but not the 450 for area S-12). Divided up, they would each receive ~1027 XP. If they had started at first level, this would be enough to level them up, but since they started at 2nd level, this only brings them about half of the 2250 they need to reach 3rd level.
There were some problems with the way the adventure played out, and some things that I hadn’t properly prepared for, but overall it was a great deal of fun. For me, a session has to be really, really bad for it to not bring me vast amounts of enjoyment, so my thoughts/feelings about the adventure are tempered by my own positive attitude about gaming.
The session took 263 minutes = 4 hours and 23 minutes
In the end, I think this adventure actually went down in rating after running it. I rated it a 7/10 after reading it, but now that I have run it I am downgrading it just a bit to a 6.5/10. Still a great deal given the price and production value, but given the amount of changes I would make if I ran it again, it no longer rates a 7.
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A special thanks goes out to my awesome players for allowing me to run games for them every chance I get!
That’s all for now, until next time, I wish you good gaming!
~DM Samuel
