Since time immemorial you and your people have toiled in the shadow of the cyclopean ruins. Of mysterious origins and the source of many a superstition, they have always been considered a secret best left unknown by the folk of your hamlet.
But now something stirs beneath the crumbling blocks. Beastmen howl in the night and your fellow villagers are snatched from their beds. With no heroes to defend you, who will rise to stand against the encircling darkness? The secrets of Chaos are yours to unearth, but at what cost to sanity or soul?
An introductory adventure for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, Sailors on the Starless Sea pits a mob of 0-level adventurers against the legacy of the Chaos Lords and their corrupted hordes. Delving beneath the crumbling ruins, the characters discover ancient crypts, a starless sea, and an ancient ziggurat, where death and treasure await in equal measure!
Learn more about the adventure and Dungeon Crawl Classics here. Generate your own squad of peasants here.
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SO MUCH DEATH! Damned but happy Caleb is deeply disturbing though.
Alright I’m convinced. I have to buy this.
Great episode.
I am a little surprised noone has ported the peasant mob rules into a Russian infantry simulator and designed WW2 dungeons yet.
Are there rules for animals leveling up if they survive the dungeon? They should totally have rules for alternating goose career paths like WarGoose or Ranger Companion.
What an unrealistic cover.
There’s no way the PCs would ever be that well equipped.
Huh… so this is how Darkest Dungeon would be as a tabletop game. XD This is really entertaining.
This was a great listen! The peasant mob as a source of player characters is practically a guarantee for hilarity and it certainly sounded like you guys had a ton of fun with the concept. You should definitely all do it again sometime (next week). This really seems like a good palate cleanser in-between games, and I’m tempted to get it and run it for my own gang.
Also, I’d so love to see what a Caleb-run homebrew scenario in this system would look like. Something even MORE Darkest Dungeon-esque?
Great game & after hearing about this game here and reading a few of the better/top reviews on amazon, bought the game & it is just damn lovely. It’s highly recommended & just completely mad on some of the randomness (being a mage in this is tough with random spells which can go horribly bad/good), plus there’s a lot of depth on things like priests healing the wrong alignment (only 3 choices, lawful/neutral/chaotic) & actions all having the critical success/failure. The level 1 color spray spell is one of the more entertaining spells when you look at the possibilities you can roll.
Found the core book at a decent price on Amazon when the game stores nearby didn’t have it, probably the best bet on finding it. I do want to try to put in a light out of combat sanity mechanic as the level 0-1 characters are dealing with anyone dying or things they’re not yet skilled at like looting a dead body.
After looking at the rules though I like the idea of the dice progression at times with the odd dice, it seems better to just roll a d20 or d30 depending on if 20 or 30 is higher (and reroll if you go higher than the die you should be rolling).
The glorious return of the mistakes were made tag!
I had the exact same thought as Caleb when Miss Cleo came back from the dead for one last hour of beast action. I’m not sure how a caricature of an 800-number psychic would react to knowing that she only had one hour to live, but it’s something I’d pay money to hear Aaron role play.
What a wonderful clusterfuck this was! From Caleb dressing up the goose to Tom’s constant animosity toward the wind, this game was a fantastic listen the whole way through. The tidal wave after the boss fight was perhaps my favorite bit. It isn’t enough that they survived a fight with something called The Chaos Lord, oh no. The scenario designer figured they’d cull the ranks one more time.
Please do this again!
My personal favorite was Caleb’s “Throw more writing utensils! IT’S THEIR ONLY WEAKNESS!!”
Tom’s gravedigger voice is my new favorite Tom voice.
We already have another DCC funnel adventure recorded. Next time, the hapless peasants shall have to deal with Perils of the Sunken City: http://purplesorcerer.com/sc1.php
Give the people what they want, Ross. Post the next DCC meatgrinder 🙂
Also while I’m all for an all wizard group for this system for the near Magicka (Steam PC game) levels of crazy, hopefully one person will at least go with the cleric choice as the magic for them & their gods/avatars can just get crazy as well.
And I love the cover & interior art for the DCC book & many of the adventures I’ve seen. With the cover for the Sailors on the Starless Sea, the adventurers look far from a bunch of dirty peasants hitting the chaos lord with what they found (sticks tied together, dead beastmen, quill pens, etc.).
Going to have to listen to this perilous peasant party again 🙂
I’m not sure what was the best weapon of the game: the Skull Arrow or the Quill. I’m going to have to go with Skull Arrow for the narrative fulfillment it represented and its role achieving catharsis for Crikey.
this was somehow less absurd than I’d anticipated from the description
Convert here, I posted a map for my first attempt at writing a funnel.
In the forum, because you know, I forgot to add that detail.
Also, if anyone is interested in testing out DCC, the beta -rules are still available for free: http://www.goodman-games.com/downloads/DCCRPGBeta060811.pdf
I played DCC at gencon and was dismayed how arbitrary it was. The GM relished in the whole nature of it, and I simply despised it. Maybe if I didn’t only have the one char like here, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad.
Come to think of it, Anne should run the next DCC game.
She has game mastering chops.
Got me at the delusional half ling mercenary