Father/Daughter MCCRPG - Hive of the Overmind - Part 1

A New Mutation Forms

I've done a lot of adventure recaps on the Living 4 Crits blog post, but this series is going to be special. I'm not writing any actual adventure summaries. I guess technically I'll be writing part of the blog portion, and doing all the editing, but for this monthly series my daughter (the infamous Judge Evie) will be in charge of doing the actual "recap" for the adventures. You see, this new campaign isn't just mine, it's "ours." 

She asked to write her parts out long hand.

Now that we've had a chance to thoroughly dig through the Mutant Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, Evie and I wanted to roll the game out in a campaign format. So we agreed to start running a monthly father/daughter, co-judged campaign for anyone interested at our Norwin Game Knights events. We'd have a fairly even split of game master duties: I'd take care of giving most of the scene overviews and adjudicating rules, and she'd take care of managing monsters and dishing out ad libbed craziness. 

I know I do a lot of gushing about my family on this blog, and I'm sorry if I drive any of you crazy, but I can't help it. Seriously, this was one of the coolest games I've ever played, and not just because of it being a shared event between me and my daughter. Mutant Crawl Classics was such a wonderful game to run at the club! Of our eight players, five were seasoned Dungeon Crawl Classics players. But our young group (ages nine to fourteen), were absolutely enthralled by the post-apocalyptic gonzo of MCCRPG. 

With all the Mutant Crawl Classics Kickstarter rewards flowing in right now, I really wanted to get cracking on the published adventures. So Evie and I have a plan. We kicked off the new campaign with +Julian Bernick's insectoid 0-level funnel, Hive of the Overmind, and we plan on moving through the rest of the published adventures one by one as the year progresses. I'm fairly confident that most of the players are along for the entire ride. By the end of the night, everyone was clamoring to roll up their mutations and pick out their pure strain human classes. 

So far we have a pretty interesting cast!

Judge Evie striking fear into Evan's heart.

The Initiates of the Dolphinquisition

• Carrie
• Oliver - Pure Strain Human
• Era - Pure Strain Human [Advances as Shaman]
• Ryan
• Ranno - Manimal (Toad) [Advances as Manimal]
• Dr. Snek - Mutant 
• Gavin
• Nike - Pure Strain Human
• Barf - Plantient [Advances as Planitent]
• Alex
• Guthric - Pure Strain Human [Advances as Rover]
• Cactilus - Plantient (Cactus)
• Ella
• Wallace - Mutant [Advances as Mutant]
• Milo - Pure Strain Human
• Nick
• Logan - Mutant
• Dominic - Mutant [Advances as Mutant]
• Evan
• Colossus - Mutant [Advances as Mutant]
• Berry - Mutant
• Alex (Fry Guy)
• Terra AD's Best Blower - Manimal (Lion)
• Nicky P. - Pure Strain Human [Advances as Healer]

Hive of the Overmind - Part 1

Recap by Guest Blogger, Evie Walls

Everyone started out in an ant hive where this giant bee came in came in combat with them. This world is Terra AD! As they destroyed the monster they continued on. After a few fights, Ryan's character discovers a stone hoe. One second later, Fry Guy [Alex #2] and Ryan are bidding and fighting over a stone hoe. As they are each fighting over the hoe it breaks, so does Ryan's character's skull.

A few rooms later everyone hears "help, I'm drowning!" 

Ryan sees a frog thing and immediately yells "those are my people!"

At the garbage room everyone started to explore. A lot of people got pretty cool things. Stone axes, paragon elixer, stim gum, but others were not so lucky Some people said "hello" to giant maggots, but others found plastic babies. Evan found a plastic baby, and slowly flipped it over. As soon as it said "mama" it was getting smashed into pieces by Evan.

In this process Cactilus dies a normal death from a giant maggot. 

A few moments later the party came across a mucous bridge. Everyone made it across... except for Berry. Berry was walking (in a sack) across the bridge and closed his eyes to remember being awesome. As he opened his eyes he was walling into lava.

Well we can say "bye" to him. Peace out!

A couple minutes later everyone is fighting giant swarms of ant-men larvae. A lot of characters took damage during this time including Ella's character who took a hit of 2. During this adventure Ryan is being very "punny!" Ha, ha!

Anyways, these large swarms aren't done yet.

Fry guy's character starts to throw his gum at the ant men larvae. As they eat it, the swarms start to form one giant monster. 

[Judge James' note: this whole encounter modification was definitely Evie's idea!]

This monster spits out goo acid that burns flesh with a 1d4 damage. While they are fighting this thing, the time ran out. Everyone leveled up and we were all ready for more next time. 

Campaign Crematorium 

• Dr. Snek - Dragged off edge of cliff by giant bee
• Nike - Eaten by garbage maggot
• Cactilus - Eaten by garbage maggot
• Logan - Bitten to death
• Berry - Tried to potato sack race across mucous bridge over lava