This past session we did something a little different. Muse was already going to be missing and Thomas had to cancel more or less at the last minute. Unfortunately, I was out watching the Champions’ League final at a bar when I found out and I didn’t get home until almost right before we were going to start the session. I am cruel and heartless enough to have run might be the last session of our Lonely Coast campaign without one player (sorry Muse…nothing personal) but, apparently, I’m not cruel and heartless enough to do it if two players are missing. Or at least not enough to actually make that decision myself…so I left it up to the players in attendance. The majority didn’t want to continue (end?) the LC campaign without the others present. So now what?!?
Rachel suggested that we could just play a board game, like Descent, but as the conversation continued, we settled on still playing D&D. So everyone created a character and everyone (with one exception) used the Fifth Edition Character Sheet app which made certainly sped things up and my brain continued to be muddled and not settling on anything (it was because I was tired and hungry…honest…I only had two beers watching the game). By the time everyone had a character ready and I had had some dinner, my brain was working again…more or less.
During the earlier conversation, murders, the television show CSI, and Orc & Pie had come up and that all somehow seeped through my brain as murder and television shows. Once it got through to the other side of my head and actually made its way out, the Deadliest Link pilot show was born (rather rough around the edges).
Four contestants awoke in a darkened room and, as they opened their eyes, bright lights flashed and a disembodied voice enthusiastically shouted out, “Welcome to the Deadliest Link!” The last thing each contestant [i.e., the player characters] could remember was signing some waiver or contract. The voice explained, directing itself towards some unseen audience, that the rules of the game were quite simple. One of the contestants had murdered the baker [a body in baker’s clothing was lying, facedown, on the floor nearby with a knife in its back with a pie sitting on a pedestal just behind the body]. It was the contestants’ task to not only determine which of them had committed the murder but to also survive the Dungeon of Doom. By the end, only one of the contestants would leave alive as the Deadliest Link!
A section of one of the small room’s walls rose to reveal a door. Examining the body, it was found to be an orc. The knife in its back was a simple cooking utensil that any of the contestants could have used as the murder weapon. Moving to the door, they prepared to enter, presumably, the Dungeon of Doom. Before they could do so, however, the excitement of the event proved to be too much for one contestant [Todd’s character], a dragonborn. He turned and breathed fire at all of the other contestants!
Needless to say, this did not sit well with the other contestants or with the producers of the show. As soon as the remaining contestants had “dealt” with the dragonborn, gas seeped into the room and caused them to become unconscious. [Sorry Theo…I think Todd now has the record for the fastest character death in any game that I’ve run!]
When they woke, the prior intro largely repeated itself with some minor differences. There was no dragonborn contestant amongst the four. The baker was a dragonborn rather than an orc and had died from multiple wounds, including wounds that could have been made by each and every weapon that the current contestants were carrying. The final difference was that the “narrator” announced that the group had to successfully traverse the Dungeon of Double Doom! No, the producers were not at all pleased with how the first “take” of the show had gone.
And so the contestants entered the Dungeon of Double Doom.
[The Dungeon of Double Doom was a random dungeon that I grabbed from Donjon’s random dungeon generator. It turned out to have something of a flame type motif, most of the monsters were magma or steam mephitis. The rooms were bizarre shapes…gotta set that parameter different somehow. There were little bits of fluff that were included in the generated room descriptions that, of course, got a bit elaborated by yours truly…especially the apples as you’ll see.]
The contestants traveled through the dungeon and met and mostly defeated its various denizens. An family of mephitis occupied a good number of the rooms and seemed to share some cultural and personality characteristics of, well, mobsters. [I seem to slip into that mode as a default at times.] These various family members seemed to not only be concerned about their other family members but also about the apples that belonged to said family. Apples that had been found in one of the rooms early on and which the contestants had, indeed, taken.
The worth of these apples was not discovered until a little later on when said apples were used as weapons against the contestants by a pair of winged kobolds. The apples would explode in a small blast of flame shortly after their stems were pulled out. The apple-grenade wielding kobolds did quite a number on the contestants…enough that they had to hole up in a hallway to rest and recover.
Their rest, however, was interrupted as a stocky dwarf with flames for hair and beard [an azer]came into the hallway. He seemed less interested in fighting than he was in smoking whatever stuff he was smoking, eating some of the apples that the contestants had found, and taking a nap on their unconscious companions! After a bit of a rest of his own, this Azer set off to find some flaming waves on which to surf [or something like that…he was definitely a stoner/surfer type].
As the contestants continued through the Dungeon of Double Doom, some were lost to the inhabitants. As they were, new contestants would arrive to join in on the fun. [The Fifth Edition Character Sheet was a godsend for this as it makes it so quick to generate a full 1st level character in about 30 seconds. I believe that Todd went through at least three characters, including the dragonborn killed before the show every really started and RJ went through two.]
Not everything encountered was inhabitants. At a couple of spots, the contestants encountered “treasure points.” Or, at least, that is what the narrator called them. In fact, the narrator was continually making comments to the unseen audience about the progress of the contestants. More often than not, these comments were made in something of a whisper as though the narrator was afraid that the contestants might overhear. The contestants, of course, had no problem whatsoever in hearing the comments regardless of where they were or what they were doing. One contestant in particular [Rachel’s character] found it difficult to not respond back to the narrator but either the narrator could not hear those responses or elected to ignore them…not wanting to break that already paper-thin, hole-riddled “fourth wall.”
Eventually, the four contestants (be they original or third-generation entrants) made it to the Dungeon of Double Doom exit. A stairway led up to a medium-sized room with a very high ceiling. The narrator made some comments regarding their arrival and asked if the audience had thought that they had determined who the killer was before reiterating that only one could leave alive! Sections high up on the walls slide aside to reveal windows through which the audience could finally be seen and they looked like they were anticipating blood!
One of the contestants [Miles’ character]refused to participate and dropped his weapons. The narrator announced to the audience that they had a “dissenter” in the group and asked for their vote. A moment later a column of light briefly flashed down into the room and a fire giant appeared in its wake! [I opened my box of larger minis and, well, that was kind of on top and made sense given the flame motif so far.]
The crowd began to chant “El Fuego! El Fuego!” (presumably the giant’s name) and press up against the windows, those closest pounding their fists against the glass in unison to the chanting. Soon the dissenter was little more than a streak of blood and gore on the floor and on El Fuego’s massive hammer.
By the time only one contestant was left standing, another was killed by El Fuego for dissent and the last killed by the other contestant and the comments about the session were pretty positive.
I now also have an idea for a fluff structure for quick (or even planned) one-shots as necessary. I expect that the Deadliest Link will show up on a semi-regular basis. It does, however, need some obvious smoothing on those rough edges. I’ll likely drop the CSI/murder element and make things more like The Running Man (for a group) and add in various other game show type tropes. There should still probably be only one survivor so I can keep the Deadliest Link but. Any thoughts anyone out there might have for structuring would certainly be appreciated. 😉
[Beer Notes: If I recall correctly, we had four different beers this session. Stone’s most recent collaboration with Ecliptic and Wicked Weed, Points Unknown IPA was up first. It was good but I was expecting so much more so just a slightly above average rating from me. The next three beers were all thanks to RJ. These included Red Hare’s Gangway IPA and Orpheus’ Atalanta and Lyric Ale. The Gangway was pretty meh…not bad but really nothing special. Both of the Oprheus’ beers were pretty damn good. I’ve had the Atalanta (a slightly tart plum saison) before but the Lyric Ale (saison) was new to me. I’ve had three different beers from them now and I’ve been very happy with all three. I look forward to RJ finding more of them and sharing with us. 😉 ]
