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Thursday, March 6

Chapter 23: Herald of the Yellow King

This is the second in the Ripples from Carcosa series of modules for Call of Cthulhu, "Herald of the Yellow King," written by Oscar Rios and (loosely) set in the Arcanis setting. You can read more about Arcanis at http://www.onaraonline.org. Please note: This adventure contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

• Dungeon Master: Michael Tresca (http://michael.tresca.net)
• Kham Val’Abebi (val rogue/psychic warrior) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://www.ninjarobotstudios.com)
• Ilmarė Galen (elf bard/fighter) played by Amber Tresca
• Vlad Martell (human fighter) played by Matt Hammer
• Nauris Drilian (human rogue/ranger) played by Mike Best

This adventure was originally created for Call of Cthulhu, so it’s always an interesting exercise in converting it over to a D20 system. For one, Call of Cthulhu has plenty of combat (at least as much if not more so than Dungeons & Dragons), but doesn’t deal with any details. So when insane villagers attack, they’re just assumed to attack from nowhere. When the monster fights the PCs on a bridge, you have no idea how wide the bridge is, etc. To rectify this, I built the various villages from the ground up with paper miniatures. This helped tremendously, especially in the first encounter.

What’s so refreshing about Call of Cthulhu adventures is that they’re not afraid of putting characters into dire moral quandaries, often with no means of getting out of it. There is no “right” choice in many cases.

I did a lot to beef up this module for a party of 4th through 7th-level characters. Wolves became winter wolves, villagers became 2nd-level commoners with the maniac template (from D20 Modern), and the Spawnling of Hastur became a Chuul (which nearly ate the entire party).

Isolated, with almost no healing magic, no means of reequipping themselves, and alone in the wilderness, we learned very quickly that our party isn’t just bad in dungeons…they can barely survive in the wilderness. With a relentless snowstorm dogging their every step, in a frozen land where losing your horse can be a death sentence, the party suddenly realized why it’s so important to have a warm fire and a roof over your head. In that regard, I think the adventure was definitely a success.

That, and they’ve lost a taste for beef stew. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA. [MORE]

Labels: arcanis

posted by Mike Tresca at 7:47 AM

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