They Came to Umerica

Three weeks ago I picked up a new player via the Dungeon Crawl Classics World Tour 2014 program and running games at Fan Expo Toronto. Combines with some of my existing players expressing a wish to get their hands on firearms, or playing mutant characters, and the appearance of a funnel adventure in Crawling Under a Broken Moon #3, I embarked a new set of adventurers upon the path to glory, gold, and an untimely death.

Two weeks ago, I ran the first part of The Mall Maul from CUaBM#3, a bit of awesome sauce that, frankly, I mangled in the translation. This was due to a lack of prep on my part; although I read the adventure thoroughly, I should have prepared some flavour text ahead of time. Perhaps I should also have photocopied the map onto graph paper, and used coloured pencils to indicate main thoroughfares (mall walkways), service walkways, etc. I don’t spend enough time in malls to have done the setting justice.

For those of you not getting Crawling Under a Broken Moon, the setting is post-Apocalyptic Umerica – think Thundarr the Barbarian meets Mad Max meets Gamma World meets Dungeon Crawl Classics and you won’t be that far off. In the funnel adventure, the PCs are filling a tribute truck to buy off some raiders – when they hit 200 “tribute truck” points, they get 10 XP and level up.

There was some bitching about this from some quarters. I have been running the game where, when the 0-level PCs hit 10 XP, they level. This led to overly cautious play, where every item to PCs started with had to be considered as to whether or not it could count as tribute, and the players simply refused to explore the stranger areas of the mall until they were absolutely sure that there was nothing left in the mall proper. Each step of the way was handled with the sort of mind-numbing thoroughness that only comes with not having made driven home a time limit before the raiders arrive.

By the second week, for part 2 of The Maul Maul, I was a little better prepared. One thing that helped was a list of random items, effectively dungeon dressing for the mall. We had ended with the defeat of the main Malllock nest, and the tribute truck still not close to full. The second half of the mall is cooler than the first, but it is also harder to describe. Again, better prep in this area would have served me well. In any event, they hit the food court, filled the truck, levelled, and we ended it there.

Some notes:

• If I was doing this over, I would prep descriptions better, and perhaps scour the Internet for applicable visuals.
• Instead of dealing with TT values, I would simply have granted 1 XP per 20 TT found, and give the players a rough idea of how full the truck seemed to be.
• I would have copied and coloured the map to give me visual cues as an aid in describing places.
• A list of random junk on the first session, to aid in descriptions, would have helped.
• I had to make calls about leveling using Crawling Under a Broken Moon. Are mutants a race class? Can they take another class? I ruled that they could use half-levels, or they could use race-as-class. There was some pretty vocal bitching about this. Tough. When options are added, if you don’t like them, don’t use them, but don’t drag the game into a bitching match about the options you would use if you were running the game, unless you are actually prepared to do so.

Part 3 got off to a better start, as the players determined that they had cleared out the mall. There was a lot of talk about them keeping the stuff they had gotten for the tribute truck, or just keeping the tribute truck, but in the end the fact that they liked the local priest of Kizz got them to take his advice and leave their Podunk little town and head east towards Denethix….the raiders work for the wizard Dundee the Crocodile Lord, and in this part of Umerica, known as the Land of One Thousand Towers, the best you can hope for from any wizard is that they ignore you.

Along the way to Denethix, they meet two caravan guards, and go to rescue a merchant in the lair of several sick lion-like humanoids known as Moktars. This leads them to a cave atop a nearby mountain, which promises the possibility of loot. They decide to go to the closest (very poor) village and get some help – a new batch of 0-levels for everyone. All have a group of 4 PCs (mixed 1^st and 0-level), and head back up the mountain.

When last we left off, Suicidal Steve the 0-level Elf was hit in the head with a trap made of a swinging pipe. So far, no inhabitants of the newly-opened dungeon have reared their head, but the signs (literal signs on doors) indicate that there may be some useful technology around somewhere.

And that is where we pick up tonight……

(In case it is unclear, I am adapting Patrick Wetmore's excellent Anomalous Subsurface Environment to Dungeon Crawl Classics. This is a good fit, especially for the post-Apocalyptic environment of Crawling Under a Broken Moon. ASE also contains the means, via Michael Curtis, to connect the world of CUaBM with one's regular game, so that this new chapter is just the long way 'round to going "home" to where the regular PCs are. I think that's cool.)