Weekend Action Report: 11/16 - 11/18

Welcome to Happy Valley & In the “Shire of Woodlawn” this weekend 

First of all, I'm planning to run a Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign starting in February of 2019. The series of "one-shots" that I'm running all over the Baltimore Metro area has a two-fold purpose. I'm mastering the rule-set, which isn't too difficult, because DCC is a streamlined version of D&D 3.0; and I'm running the prologue for my DCC campaign.

The "campaign world" in DCC can be relatively small, because travel is supposed to be so exceedingly dangerous that few people travel more than a couple miles from home, ever. So I've placed my campaign in a verdant, jungle valley, in the midst of a civil war between local tribes. The Southern tribes recently gained the upper-hand by gaining military aid from their allies The Aquilonians (whose symbol is the Roman Eagle). The Aquilonians use amazing magical artifacts in war. Their ornithopters are seen flapping their way to and fro all across the valley, and their wizards have mighty Patrons that can easily disrupt the terrain and the natural weather patterns. In short, the Aquilonians are mighty and they are alien to the valley.

All of my Baltimore-area DCC events take place in this valley, which I call "Happy Valley." The name and the reference came from a background story in GDW's Twilight 2000 roleplaying game from the 1980's. For the history buffs, it's a bit of foreshadowing... bad things are coming to the valley, and in a short time, things are going to get deadly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Valley,_Vietnam).

At the FLGS...

Randalf the Brown, a first level Wizard has continued to vex me, and Stan the Wildling has started teaching me a few things about the unheroic PCs that, I’m certain, will pop up from time to time in my DCC campaign. Stan’s player, my good buddy, David Baker, explained to me that since Stan only has to survive an encounter to gain any XP, he’ll keep running for cover when things get crazy. 

I was running a couple folks through Frozen in Time, when Randalf the Brown, played by store owner Sean Montague, decided he was going to smash a magical rod into what he thought was a control panel... the resulting damage killed all but two of the other party members, and caused feedback, which after six rounds, led to the powerplant’s destruction. Sean tried to cast spider climb, and failed, but didn’t fumble. Next he spellburned down to 3’s in his physical stats and convinced his patron to teleport him out of Null-Zero’s ice station. That’s when David came in... 

David concocted a retroactive continuity loop, that was just plausible enough that I ruled it could have happened... enter David’s character Marcus, and Randalf’s salvation. Marcus helped Randalf back to Sweet Water Village (the Party’s home in Happy Valley), where the crazy wizard was able to rest up, while Sean jumped out of the game to manage the store.

Thus far in the campaign prologue, the PC’s have released the Chaos Lord, and the evil spirit Samhain... both these BBEGs are moving in the valley, and the players don’t know it yet. And Randalf the Brown has put the word out into the multiverse that he’s in the business of slaying dragons. The Dragon Queen has heard him, and she’s on her way. 

I'm in the process of creating D&D's Dragonlance - Queen of Dragons, Takhisis, as a Chaotic Patron for DCC Wizards.