Dungeon Crawl Classics #20: Shadow in Freeport (semi-final)

Dungeon Crawl Classics #20
Shadows in Freeport

The city of Freeport was first introduced in one of the very first d20 products, a module called "Death in Freeport" from Green Ronin, later followed up by "Terror in Freeport" and "Madness in Freeport". These modules were sort of horror-fantasy, being inspired by the Cthulhu (or Hastur) Mythos.

The tone of Freeport changed with the release of "Freeport: City of Adventure" from dark fantasy with bits of Lovecraftian horror to light hearted campy pirate themed fantasy. Sort of like Pirates of the Carribean (the movie, not the cologne), minus the serious bits and with Nintendo video game characters, including Pokemon (in CoA) and one of their Kongs (in "Black Sails over Freeport").

This adventure, Shadows In Freeport is a step back towards the original Freeport trilogy, at least in tone, if not in gameplay style. It's actually from Goodman Games, part of their Dungeon Crawl Classics line. It's actually more of a haunted house crawl than a proper dungeon (hough there is a rather stocked basement) but is mostly a dungeon crawl, while the original Freeport modules were a mix of that and roleplaying.

That said, there really isn't much tying it to Freeport, just some bits from the back story. It can be easily ported to any other city. Still, it being Freeport was part of the reason I bought it. I liked the original modules and own most Freeport products. But I also like haunted house modules.

I ended up liking the module quite a bit, but it's definitely more of a "splatter" sort of horror than ghostly or creepy horror. While it's not disgustingly graphic, it is fairly graphic in terms of describing gore, so it's not for the faint of heart.



The set up is pretty simple: basically children have been disappearing from Freeport and the townsfolk think it must be something in this house, which was the home of a long dead serial killer of children. Presumably the PCs will get involved for the sake of the children. (or money from the parents of the children).

(As an aside, this is where it actually different from Freeport as detailed in "CoA", as there is a dedicated group of government people for this sort of thing painfully called the "God Squad". See p33 of that book)

Anyway, it's essentially a 2 story mansion with a dungeon level. Presumably PCs will explore the first two levels, then do the dungeon. There's also some ground, but this is largely covered with brush and such, and so not really explorable. (Unless the DM wants to expand on it).


The ground level is pretty big. About 30 detailed areas and 15 pages. They find some children, but not in the condition that they probably expected. They also come across a party of thieves who unwisely decided to make this house a hiding spot. (Parts of thieves might be more accurate)

The upper floor (or the 1st, as the module confusingly, if Britishly, calls it) is just a tad smaller, 27 areas and 10 or so pages. In video game terms, there is a "subboss" (or "midboss") on this level, the son of the evil owner of the mansion.

The basement is where the finale takes places, and is 15 areas and 12 pages. Whether or not the PCs solve a puzzle has a big role on the ending, as they need to figure it out in order to get to the back guy to stop his diabolical plot.

(Personally, I prefer the use of puzzles for "bonus" areas, ie, where the PCs can get some good loot or a side quest, rather than being integral to the plot/dungeon crawl. Much like my jokes often don't make sense to the listener/reader but are plain (and funny) to me, what seems obvious to the creator of the puzzle might not seem so obvious to the players.)

It's pretty combat heavy, mostly vs undead (ghosts mostly) and demons/evil outsiders. So a cleric is a must, and a paladin or ten would also be handy. As well as perhaps some stuff from Goodman's own "Demon Hunter's Handbook" (whatever the exact title is, I always forget).



The module itself is about 40 pages long, the last 20 pages or so of the module are appendices detailing new monsters, magic, pre-rolled characters for players, and about 7 pages of player handouts (illustrations of scenes/rooms).

The monsters are probably all from the Green Ronin fiend books (at least they are listed in Section 15 of the OGL in this), but I'm not sure. Anyway, if you have those books, and are wondering, they are: the Daeobelinus (sort of an evil gnome outsider), Devil Lizard (actually more like an evil dinosaur), Feasting (an evil worm or giant maggot), Pwalg (sort of a living tumor, supposedly a growth off of the "Unspeakable One"), Radiant Boy (an evil kid), Revenent (a vengeful undead), and Vespertiliac (a hard to spell daemon).

The new magic all revolves around the Madness domain which is introduced here. Just that domain and 3 new spells for it, which involve driving someone crazy.

Some might consider the pregenerated character section a waste of space, because most players probably already have characters. But I find them to be useful if someone gets killed or if I need to come up with a NPC on a short notice. There are 8 of them here. 7 single classed: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, Bard, Ranger, Sorcerer, plus one Fighter/Wizard/Rogue. All 6th level.


The art is really quite good. It features a fair amount of illustrations from Jim Holloway, one of my all time favorite RPG artists. As mentioned, there are 7 pages of player handouts, and most of these are illustrations.



I really liked this module. The only real negative is that it used a core class from an 3rd party product for the major villain, but didn't include all the specifics and rules for that class (though he does have a stat block, so you can run him as is in combat).


Lastly, you can tell it's not a Green Ronin Freeport product because section 15 of the OGL is right. (Okay, cheap shot, Green Ronin has gotten a lot better about using section 15 properly..)

Dungeon Crawl Classics #0: Legends are made, not born

Dungeon Crawl Classics #0
Legends are Made, not Born

"It was a time of darkness and destruction, a time of dread...Humanity's history tells us such times produce heroes and heroines, dedicated to turning back the darkness"

As you might guess from the number of this, Dungeon Crawl Classics #0, "Legends are Made, not Born", this is something of a gimmicky adventure. But it's a pretty good gimmick.

Characters pretty much have started at 1st level in D&D since the beginning. But in AD&D, in I think the Greyhawk Adventure book, there were rules for 0th level characters. That is, characters who are still training to be members of that class.

This was mostly dropped in 2nd and 3rd edition (though there are rules for multiclassed 1st level characters, which can be tweaked to give you 0th level characters). But 3rd edition introduced non-adventuring character classes, or rather, classes for everyone, called NPC classes. The Commoner (for the average person), the Expert (for people who are good at things), the Aristocrat (for noble or rich types, who generally get some swordplay training and/or education), the Warrior (for common fighting types) and the Adept (for hedge wizards/wise woman types)

The NPCs classes aren't quite as good as PC classes, most notably, they tend not to have any special features, and their hit dice aren't quite as good. So they get rated 1 level lower than their PC counterparts. That is, a 2nd level NPC is basically the equivalent of a 1st level PC class combatant.

This adventure has the players as 1st level members of an NPC Class. It seems trouble is afoot in their village, and with no one else to stop it, it's up to them.



The Adventure Itself


On the surface, it's pretty simple. The town the PCs are from has long been under an extortion racket run by an ogre. Because the town is quite small and doesn't have any real fighters and the demands from the ogre were paltry (ale and sheep), they gave in. However, he lately sharply increased his demands, now wanting some townsfolk. At this they drew the line, but not before the Ogre kidnapped 2 of the citizens.

So a group of townsfolk gather to assault the Ogre's lair and rescue their friends. As mentioned, since the town is rather small and lacks any adventuring types, it has instead gathered a handful of daring regular folks.

There's basically 2 ways of entering the lair, the front way or the back way. Both has its advantages/disadvantages. If they do manage to take out the Ogre, they are only about halfway done. There was a reason the Ogre's behavior changed, which I won't go into, so as not to spoil things, but they will discover it as they explore the Ogre's Lair further.


The adventure itself is not all that combat heavy and is fairly short. There are also a fair number of traps and while there aren't puzzles per se, there is some stuff that involves thinking clearly, not rushing in. So while there may not be a lot of role-playing in it, it's not purely a hack & slash adventure, either.

It's not a long adventure (even by 32 page module standards), maybe 25 keyed locations, total, probably playable in about 3-4 hours. (I believe it was originally designed for a tournament game at a convention)


If you've ever played or run D&D, you'll know that low level adventures can be deadly, because characters often have single digit amounts of hit points, amounts which can generally be done in one blow. 3.x ameliorated this somewhat, by giving characters the maximum amount of hit points at first level.

However, NPC classes tend to have low hit dice (the number which gets rolled, or at 1st level, maximized), which brings the problem back to the fore. This issue has been addressed in this module. Most of the various baddies are crippled somehow, so a hit kill isn't impossible, it's unlikely.

Quite a bit of the module is on the pre-generated characters. Part of the reason the premise of the module works is the nature of the characters themselves. While not cheating per se, the characters have been tweaked a bit to make them more viable. For instance, there's one Commoner out of the 6 character classes, but to make up for that classes lack of hit points and attack ability, the character also happens to have a 18 strength and constitution and has the toughness feat, so he actually has 11 hit points (4 for a commoner, 4 constitution, 3 toughness).

Most of the other PCs have more normal stats. But some do have advantages - for instance, one of the Expert is supposed to be a apprentice wizard (who hasn't taught any magic). But as an expert, she has the "Use Magical Device" skill and a borrowed wand of magic missiles. The other Expert is a wannabe alchemist, and has a handful of alchemist stuff, like alchemist's fire and thunderstones and such.

Each PC also has a fairly detailed background/personality. Which is a nice touch, and the illustrations of the party are generally pretty consistent among the different artists.


The town and the surrounding area is given a couple pages of detail. Mostly the local tavern and a couple of shops and some prominent locals that the PCs might want to talk to, like the local retired adventurer (who lost an arm fighting the ogre years ago) and the local hippie/druid who is presumably too stoned to go with them, but can give them some magic berries..


Looks and Such


This has the same clean layout of all the Dungeon Crawl Classics, which is similar to that of the old TSR modules. The artwork is quite good, including a couple nice pieces by Jim Holloway, who gets to make some slightly comical illustrations of the PCs trying to fight the various monsters. I like all his work, but he's at his best when he is whimsical. I also liked the end illustrations of the party posing together (sort of) but I can't decipher his signature.

Unlike a lot of DCCs, this doesn't have any illustrated handouts. The dungeon maps are classic style, but the map of the town does look computer generated (Campaign Cartographer 2 would be my guess), but is functional.


Final Thoughts


I really liked this. Like I said, it is sort of gimmicky, but it's a clever gimmick that is well implemented, a solid A. While the adventure is fairly short and isn't easy to integrate into existing games (since it's for such weak characters) and is best suited for a one-shot or tournament (for which it apparently was originally designed), it would be a great starting point to a campaign (though some care would be needed crafting viable 1st level NPC classed PCs like the pregenerated ones). And you could simply use the town in your game, and the pregenerated PCs as interesting NPCs for players to run into.

(the quote at the top is from a song by Messiah, but is actually a sample from some movie or another)

A note....

Stiggybaby's is apparently back in business. They were going to go out of business, but then after a pretty good response to their going out of business ale, they didn't, but sorta went dead, but now are back.

I like 'em because some stuff is really really cheap, though their normal discount isn't. And they usually ship media mail and only charge what it costs (or they used, haven't bought from them in their comeback form). And one time, they actually shipped stuff to me without me actually paying for it yet. (I paid by money order, but they shipped before they possibly could have actually gotten it).

Shadows Over Freeport (close to final)

The city of Freeport was first introduced in one of the very first d20 products, a module called "Death in Freeport", later followed up by "Terror in Freeport" and "Madness in Freeport". These modules were sort of horror-fantasy, being inspired by the Cthulhu (or Hastur) Mythos.


The tone of Freeport changed with the release of "Freeport: City of Adventure" from dark fantasy with bits of Lovecraftian horror to light hearted campy pirate themed fantasy. Sort of like Pirates of the Carribean, minus the serious bits and with Nintendo video game characters, including Pokemon (in CoA) and one of their Kongs (in "Black Sails over Freeport").



Shadows In Freeport is a step back towards the original Freeport, at least in tone, if not in gamplay style. It's actually from Goodman Games, part of their Dungeon Crawl Classics line. It's actually more of a haunted house crawl than a proper dungeon (hough there is a rather stocked basement) but is mostly a dungeon crawl, while the original Freeport modules were a mix of that and roleplaying.

That said, there really isn't much tying it to Freeport, just some bits from the backstory. It can be easily ported to any other city. Still, it being Freeport was part of the reason I bought it. I liked the original modules and own most Freeport products. But I also like haunted house modules.

I ended up liking the module quite a bit, but it's definitely more of a "splatter" sort of horror than ghostly or creepy horror. While it's not disgustingly graphic, it is fairly graphic in terms of describing gore, so it's not for the faint of heart.



The set up is pretty simple: basically children have been disappearing from Freeport and the townsfolk think it must be something in this house, which was the home of a long dead serial killer of children. Presumably the PCs will get involved for the sake of the children. (or money from the parents of the children).

(As an aside, this is where it actually different from Freeport as detailed in "CoA", as there is a dedicated group of government people for this sort of thing painfully called the "God Squad". See p33 of that book)

Anyway, it's essentially a 2 story mansion with a dungeon level. Presumably PCs will explore the first two levels, then do the dungeon. There's also some ground, but this is largely covered with brush and such, and so not really explorable. (Unless the DM wants to expand on it).


The ground level is pretty big. About 30 detailed areas and 15 pages. They find some children, but not in the condition that they probably expected. They also come across a party of thieves who unwisely decided to make this house a hiding spot. (Parts of thieves might be more accurate)

The upper floor (or the 1st, as the module confusingly, if Britishly, calls it) is just a tad smaller, 27 areas and 10 or so pages.

The basement is where the finale takes places, and is 15 areas and 12 pages.

The module itself is about 40 pages long, the last 20 pages or so of the module are appendices detailing new monsters, magic, pre-rolled characters for players, and about 7 pages of player handouts (illustrations of scenes/rooms).

The monsters are probably all from the Green Ronin fiend books (at least they are listed in Section 15 of the OGL in this), but I'm not sure. Anyway, if you have those books, and are wondering, they are: the Daeobelinus (sort of an evil gnome outsider), Devil Lizard (actually more like an evil dinosaur), Feasting (an evil worm or giant maggot), Pwalg (sort of a living tumor, supposedly a growth off of the "Unspeakable One"), Radiant Boy (an evil kid), Revenent (a vengeful undead), and Vespertiliac (a hard to spell daemon).

The new magic all revolves around the Madness domain which is introduced here. Just that domain and 3 new spells for it, which involve driving someone crazy.

Some might consider the pregenerated character section a waste of space, because most players probably already have characters. But I find them to be useful if someone gets killed or if I need to come up with a NPC on a short notice. There are 8 of them here. 7 single classed: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, Bard, Ranger, Sorcerer, plus one Fighter/Wizard/Rogue. All 6th level.


The art is really quite good. It features a fair amount of illustrations from Jim Holloway, one of my all time favorite RPG artists.



I really liked this module. The only real negative is that it used a core class from an 3rd party product for the major villain, but didn't include all the specifics and rules for that class.