If you are a member of this campaign, you should not read this.

Welp, no one got stung ¯_(ツ)_/¯. The group rolled to go second on initiative, but, because the centipedes were only able to move halfway towards them, the party was the first to get off a round of attacks. I still like side-based initiative overall because it’s fast and engaging, but it does create situations where one side has a big upper-hand. They’ve also looted some pretty good heavy armor, with Everet wearing banded mail and Pif and Marcellus with chain mail. Everet has 18 AC and Spine, with a +2 Agility modifier, has 17, which I think is very good for level 1. However, one thing I really like about DCC is that there is a downside to heavy armor: reduced movement speed and more severe fumbles. Two party members broke their weapon on a fumble tonight, though they were able to quickly loot more.

Speaking of things I love about DCC, how about that spider from room 1-2, the first mini-boss of Arden Vul? I was actually a little annoyed when the spider succeeded on its morale check, thinking it would just cause the combat to drag on pointlessly. I love how wrong I was - the unpredictability of combat in DCC is really exciting for me.

Still, Everet was healed up very quickly by Marcellus. Lay on Hands is very good, in my view. I introduced a few changes and clarifications to curb its effectiveness, namely that Clerics who heal others of different alignments take one automatic disapproval, and disapproval is only reduced by one per day in the morning (instead of being completely reset). I felt the need to do this because I want the party’s most important resource (HP) to have some amount of scarcity to enable the resource-management strategy aspect of the game.

In the dust-covered chalice room, I had the party find a 1,000gp gem because I miscalculated a treasure amount the party found earlier by about 1,000gp and I wanted to make up for that. They were extremely paranoid about it and were convinced it was either cursed or a trap, and only pocketed it after a thorough investigation. They’ve played in campaigns run by me in the past, so I can’t blame ‘em.

On a different note, I feel like burning oil flasks are pretty good. I typically make the thrower roll a ranged attack roll, and if it’s a miss I have the flask end up in a random location, so this could backfire on the group some day. The party also started closing doors on monsters frequently, which was effective. Because we use side-based initiative, they would all attack, and then close the door as the last action before the monster’s turn. I think I’m going to have to houserule that, if someone wants to close a door, they’ll have to do it before anyone on their side makes non-ranged attacks through it.

Their reaction to the two entrances to lower levels of the dungeon this session confirmed my initial guess about them being a very “clear one level at a time, from top to bottom” style of party. This should help me with knowing what to prep ahead of time. They’re going to need to choose a path down early next session if they wish to continue. They just have a few rooms left on Level 1 - The Basement, their current level. They looted about 2,300gp of treasure in total this session, which should be enough to get them halfway to level 2. Being six sessions in, that does feel like a very slow progression, at least compared to what we’re all used to. Still, I think I’m OK with it.

They seemed to be very much in a “kick in the door” mood this session, as they missed out on the healing properties of the deceptively gross-looking liquid in the pool and the zombie porter. The porter in particular would’ve been very useful to the group, especially considering that they’ve almost completely maxed out their carrying capacity. I hope the group will hire some porters when they get to town, but I’ll let them make that decision, of course.

Speaking of encumbrance, there was some amount of consternation and mild frustration today when Treasurer Earl was attempting to record who was taking what coinage and treasure. I still really like tracking encumbrance because of the expedition-like feel it creates and the non-linear decision making it fosters. However, I expect there will continue to be growing pains around this sort of bookkeeping, as the group isn’t used to this at all (we’ve never tracked encumbrance, not even a little, before this campaign). As time goes on, I’m sure they’ll develop speedier and less annoying ways to handle treasure acquisition (like hirelings or pack animals).

Before the campaign started, I definitely expected there to be multiple deaths after six sessions had completed. There have been two lingering injuries on PC’s, true, but no deaths. Though, all it would take is one or two failed Lay on Hands rolls (currently at roughly 50/50 odds for Pif and Marcellus) and those PC’s would’ve died. In DCC, characters at zero HP die if they are not healed before their next turn.

I have no current desire to change the difficulty of anything to try to increase the lethality of the campaign. It just feels too early to do that. Still, I will need to watch how things develop over the next four or five sessions to ensure Point 4 from the Muster game structure can be achieved.

I have a confession to make. I made another mistake. In the Arden Vul books, treasure is listed as its own category at the end of the room key sections. This is normally fine, but it can get confusing if an NPC who only sometimes is encountered in a room has a bunch of stuff on their person. In this case, I accidentally gave the party some treasure (a 500gp gem and 9 scrolls) after they searched the room. Later, after thinking about it, I realized that it makes more sense that the mad hermit and denizen of the room, Lankios, carried that stuff with him when he left the room. Whoops. I don’t see this as a big deal, because scrolls aren’t that great in DCC (the spell can still fail), and the extra gold isn’t that much after you split it between six PC’s.

In other (good) news, this was the first session where all five players attended from start to finish! Woo! I think moving it to Sunday because of Thanksgiving probably has something to do with it, but I also hope that everyone is truly continuing to have fun (as they have been saying to me so far).

In-between this and last session, I completed the prep of the final three-quarters of Level 3 - The Halls of Thoth. It is a massive level (the biggest, in fact), so I’m glad to have that done. If I can complete Level 4 - The Forum of Set and Sub Levels 3, 5, and 15, I believe I will be prepped for several (4-5?) months worth of playing, at least. The group seems hesitant to descend to lower levels before clearing everything above them, but I think they might decide to pop into the Forum of Set if they learn that it’s a protected non-combat zone. I recently finished prepping non-combat areas of Levels 5 and 6 for the same reason.

The party was able to clear 15 rooms today. If this continues, according to my rough math, clearing 70% of the rooms in Arden Vul will take us about one year and ten months if we play every week. That seems like a perfectly acceptable duration for a campaign, but if it goes longer, I won’t mind so long as we’re all having fun.