Saturday, July 8, 2017

Family Game Knights - Attack of the Frawgs, Part 2


Exploring the Chained Coffin


Welcome to Family Game Knights, our regular tour through of the Shudder Mountains and  The Chained Coffin box set.  

For those uninitiated with the Chained Coffin, creative lead +Michael Curtis and the rest of the Goodman Games crew have created a wonderful and vibrant fantasy campaign setting based on Appalachian myth and legend.  During this journey, we'll be dipping into all of the adventures written specifically for the Shudder Mountains, as well as tossing in a few other favorites as well, thus turning this into a fantastic, ongoing campaign!  Special thanks to the DCCRPG G+ community for so many wonderful adventure suggestions.  

Here are our previously yarns:


The Adventuring Party


  • Jen
    • Wize Wizard McBride - Cleric
  • Evie
    • Jeffff - Warrior (she plans to add another "f" after each gained level)
  • Carrie
    • P. Specs - Thief
    • Andy
      • Waldon, Friend of the Frawgs - Thief
    • Jeremy
      • Sir Huey, Keeper of the Sacred Door - Warrior
    • Emily
      • Farwyn - Elf


    Attack of the Frawgs, Part Two


    [Judge's Note:  For our second session of +Stephen Newton's Attack of the Frawgs, I made a modification to the background story on the fly.  The original adventure refers to a froggie deity known as Truloq as being the dark god of the Frawgs, but I changed this a bit.  I wanted to inject some Patron coolness into the game, so I made the entity Bobugbubilz from the DCC rulebook.  Easy swap!]

    At the conclusion of our last event, the party was about halfway through their quest to uncover the dark, amphibian evils plaguing Dead Goblin Lake.  Making their way counterclockwise around the lake, their next encounter occurred right at the edge of the water.  A pair of giant crabs were having a quick lunch of dead, waterlogged human.  

    Tasty!  

    The party peppered the giant crabs with arrows, quickly killing them.  Easy enough.  I should also mention that the crabs exploded when they were killed.  

    Caution!  

    The Wize Wizard McBride was pretty interested in what was on the corpse so she sent her own corpse (as in, Brock the Tomb Ghoul) to play fetch.  But as soon as Brock entered the water, five more crabs appeared, and started devouring the poor ghoul.  The rest of the party resumed their archery practice, but the Wize Wizard McBride didn't want to lose his undead friend.  The Cleric charged into the water to help Brock, but the two just ended up getting pinched.  If the crab snips weren't bad enough, the fact that each of the crabs exploded upon death didn't help.  

    The Wize Wizard McBride was able to survive the encounter.  Brock didn't.  All the Cleric was able to salvage of his friend was the head and torso.  The crabs had eaten the rest.  The rest of the party defeated the crabs while the Wize Wizard McBride debated summoning Cthulhu to aid in restoring Brock.  

    [Judge's Note:  Fans of the original Attack of the Frawgs won't remember exploding crabs.  The original adventure was written as a 0-level funnel, and at this point in our campaign we have a few 2nd level characters while the rest are 1st level.  So I added a few challenges.  For the Giant Crabs I gave them an AC boost to 14 (instead of 12), and added 5 more lurking beneath the water (for a total of 7.)  Also, when a crab died, I'd inflict 1d3 damage upon all characters locked up in melee with the defeated crustacean.  This minor modification sure kept a lot of the party at bay, desperate to avoid hand-to-hand combat.  Fun!]

    Sadly, the dead corpse didn't seem to have enough swag to make the entire battle worth fighting.  A sling, a beaver pelt, and a dagger...

    ... wait... a dagger!?!  That's exactly what Waldon was missing, after losing his!  So maybe the battle was worth it?

    Continuing to the northern edge of the lake, the party came upon some infected, mucous covered waters with a dead body floating in the middle.  Waldon grabbed some rope and fished for the corpse of what they would discover to be a frog-humanoid ...

    ... a FRAWG!

    The Frawg was easily the size of a human, and in its satchel was a fishbone artifact, similar to the one they found in the brewery earlier in the day.  While searching around the scummy waters, the party was attacked by a living Frawg scout, but it was dispatched quickly.  

    So many Frawgz!

    It was about this time that Waldon decided to play with the fish bone.  Doing so, he made contact with an entity from the "other side."  

    "Ribbit," the entity said.
    "Ribbit, ribbit," Waldon replied.

    With that exchange the two became connected somehow, and Waldon agreed to aid the entity and swear allegiance and fealty to Bobugbubilz, the amphibi-demon.  As a gift, Bobugbulbilz gave Waldon the power to invoke some frog magic, specifically a spell that would let him take on frog traits.  

    Eventually the team came to a dead end along the lake path... a waterfall.  Using his stealthy skills, Waldon crept behind the water, and found more Frawgs.  But instead of making a sneak attack or getting the rest of the party and charging in for froggy blood, Waldon made the decision to call upon his new patron magic... and gain some frog legs.  

    As soon as the Frawg noticed Waldon's amphibian traits, he felt a kinship and the two started to chat.  Turns out that the Frawgs really just wanted to be left alone to transform Dead Goblin Lake into a scummy, mucous-covered, infection-laden breeding pool for more of Frawg-kind.  That's it.  They didn't want the humans there, but that's only because humans are so terrible, and don't take care of nature.  The Frawg introduced Waldon to the rest of the family: the Frawg Queen and a few of their siblings.  

    That's when the Frawg made a deal with Waldon: chase off the adventurers trying to kill the Frawgs, and they would give him a Periapt of Bobugbubilz and make him a "Friend of the Frawgs."  

    Deal!  

    So Waldon went outside and made a big production of scaring off the rest of his adventuring party (who was already in on the deal.)  When he returned to the Frawgs, he was given the periapt, the title of "Friend of the Frawgs," and a Frawg egg to raise on his own.  

    [Judge's Note:  We need to get Andy a frog puppet.]

    The humans who had originally asked the party for help were pretty upset that their lost friends were already dead, and that the amphibious monsters were not able to be defeated. Sadly, they all picked up and left for another part of the Shudder Mountains to call home.  

    Success?

    [Judge's Note:  I'm thrilled that the party found an alternate means to complete an adventure, rather than just combat.  That last scene with the Frawgs could've been a pretty cool battle, but instead the party (well, Waldon at least) gained a new source of allies, and possibly an interesting companion in the Frawg egg.]

    So, with Attack of the Frawgs wrapped up, we have some important questions to answer!


    • What will hatch out of Waldon's new egg?
    • Will the Wize Wizard McBride be able to restore unlife to poor Brock the Tomb Ghoul?
    • Will Jeffff earn another "f" on his name soon?
    • And most importantly, what should be our next adventure!?!


    A Fine Selection of Quotes from the Table



    "We should be eating the crabs, the crabs shouldn't be eating us." - Emily had a point.

    "Hey Siri, can Ghouls die?" - Carrie wanted to help her grieving mother out.

    "You defilers of the pond!  I will smite you with the power of Bobugbubilz." - Waldon chases off the PC's.  

    Campaign Crematorium


    • Brock the Tomb Ghoul, destroyed by Giant Exploding Crabs.  What a sad moment during the game! 

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