Many followers of the blog know that the Sunken City campaign from the actual play podcast wrapped up a couple of months ago. Our online group is flush with excellent GMs and the guys gave me a break from early September until now. We had some Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, and Dungeonslayers at the table during the break. Then I warmed up with a Tomb of Horrors holiday campaign that went 4 sessions.
Now I feel rested and energized and ready to get back behind the screen. Polling the group showed they were ready for more DCC! Initially I was going to start the whole thing off with a 0-level funnel idea I had (and got partially through writing), but then I realized The Chained Coffin box was going to be showing up at my house any day! I pitched a campaign based on that boxed set and the idea was well received!
Shudder Mountain
While the boxed set is called The Chained Coffin, the mini-campaign setting is actually focused on a region called the Shudder Mountains. The vast majority of writing for everything in this set is Michael Curtis. The man was a machine turning out words for this setting! Steve Bean wrote a 1st level adventure included with the set. An owner of the boxed set gets a regional map, a 0-level funnel, 1st level adventure, 3rd level adventure, 5th level adventure, an almanac, and a companion guide.
The easiest way to describe the Shudder Mountains is to think of the forgotten hollows of Appalachia West Virginia. Hollows, creeks, forested, rugged land. Parts well isolated from “modern” times. Throw in some superstition and DCCify it a bit and you have a great place to start a campaign in!
Cool Stuff – Spoiler free
I have of course started prepping for the campaign (we start playing next week!). This is how more campaign settings should be written (mini or not). There is just enough information to save me a lot of work in coming up with, while leaving a tremendous amount of opportunities for me to expand on.
The history of the Shudder Mountain region stretches back a great many centuries. With two ancient races – one somewhat traditional for some fantasy worlds and the other definitely Appendix N style. This offers up a plethora of possibilities for the Judge to expand on either ancient civilization in their game.
I have several ideas already floating around in my head based on this history. Some to older modules (even some Forgotten Realms stuff I think) and some to some products from Goodman Games. All of this off what was essentially a pretty short read.
All of this feed into why the people of Shudder Mountains are they way they are. Many of these things make the region quite unique and interesting. There are lots of new things to toy with as a Judge to keep the players on their toes.
Campaign Start
I can tell my players are excited as I think all of them have already posted their 0-level characters to our G+ Community group. Usually a good sign! In a lot of ways I wish I had started the campaign tonight (as I write this), but it was my first week back to work after a long holiday break and I thought I’d be pretty tired already!
I will be launching the campaign with the 0-level from the boxed set. Looks to be much shorter than the 0-level I started them with, but potentially way more lethal! From there I will probably fall back to my listening to the players to see what “lead” they want to investigate. We shall see!
Actual Play Podcast?
At this point I am leaning towards releasing actual play episodes of this campaign. I have setup the computer I use for our G+ Hangout/Roll20 sessions for recording. Feedback has been positive on the release of episodes from the last campaign. And some have commented that hearing a campaign from the start would be even better.
‘The Conclusion’ is the 30th episode of a Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG actual play podcast. Additional information can be found at http://irontavern.com/podcast.