The Dungeon Reality Show: Half-Time Showdown, Part 1

As I more or less coherently described here, Friday night was a “let’s test some Players Handbook 2 classes” session.  Yan, Mike and Franky showed up with a level 2 Sorcerer, Invoker and Shaman.

While fishing for concepts  for the adventure, I had the idea to use a shtick I had tried once before.  I decided to make the adventure about a Fantasy Reality Show.  Last time, I used the Kobold Hall adventure and cast it as an American Gladiator type of obstacle course.  We had a blast!

This week, I decided to try something I had been thinking about for a long time, which was mixing D&D 4e with Games Workshop’s Bloodbowl game of Fantasy Football (American).

See the previous post to follow my creative process to create the 3 scene adventure.

Introduction

When all players were there, I set the table for Mike, who had never played the Dungeon Reality Show concept:

While temporary out of money, Usul the Elven Invoker and his fellow adventurers,  Big Pif the Dwarven Shaman and Slavek Blud the Dragonborn Sorcerer went to a special tavern for broke heroes.  There, they were allowed to eat and drink for free as long as they spun a good tale about their adventures.

Oh and there’s also the matter of signing the bill, even though it was free.

Said bill was in fact an infernal contract that bound those who sign it to be willing participants of “THE CRAWL” the Astral Sea’s most famous entertainment show! Of course, by willing participants I mean ‘participate in that show or star in the next “Can you breathe Lava?” special.

So as our heroes left the tavern, they found themselves standing at the edge of a huge grassy field surrounded by bleachers packed tight with Astrals screaming avidly at the dozen or so shambling undead trying to catch a spiky ball and bash each other’s skulls.

A halfling sporting a wicked pair of sideburns came to them, speaking in some sort of rod with a spongy knob at the top He asked them if they were ready to perform in the show of their lives.

Confused, the PCs stood there..

“It’s quite simple. You guys are the half-time show.  You must climb on the stage we’ll set up in the middle of this field and you must entertain the crowd… Win them over and you’ll be ready for the next challenge.  Fail and… Well lets just not think about that now shall we?”

And then a huge stone stage fell on the middle of the field, crushing quite a few zombie and skeleton players who…

“Okay people, we start in 5, bring our participants to makeup and arrange sponsorships

So the PCs were handed 2 Destruct-O-Rama Staff of Ruin (+1) and a Runelok suit of Dwarven Chainmail.

“Remember, our chronomancers are standing-by.  Once during the event, you can plug the product we gave you and they’ll tweak time to allow you an extra flashy maneuver” (i.e. get a free Action Point)

Get off my stage!

I set down a Blood Bowl board (it’s a gridded map representing a grassy football field that’s about 28X16 squares big).  I added a 8X4 stage with a Dungeon tile and I added stairs to it.  On the stage were 4 stacks of Marshall “Thunder Generators”which could be used to address the crowd (and could be triggered to blast nearby targets).

So the scene was a Skill Challenge (12 successes before 3 failures) where the PCs had to sway the crowd and give a good show.  The skill challenge could be only started once the party was on stage.  I didn’t make a list of primary skills, planning to let players improvise. I decided to allow attack rolls to be used as successes as the remaining players (14 zombie and Skeleton minions), provided that the attacks were flashy enough to be entertaining.

Which ended up being all that the players did, but that’s all right, it was fun as hell.

I forgot to mention that during the ‘show’ I had the minions closest to the ‘Ball’ (A Kruthik Hatchling) try to grab it and make a run for the goal line (or tackle the one with the ball).

Oh yeah, and if the ball were ever to “die”, the skill challenge was an automatic failure.

So the first person that went on the stage was Slavek Blud, Dragonborn Sorcerer that climbed on the stage, electrified  2 undead minions with his lightning breath, pole-vaulted over two more minions with his staff and blasted them with Tempest Breath!

Yup, that Dragonborn’s got a severe case of Halitosis.

Then, the Shaman got on stage and used the Marshall Stacks to get the crowd to help him summon his bear spirit! Which then promptly shredded a poor ball player in pieces.

When the Invoker got on stage, invoked the Power of AC/DC and struck with his Thunder of Judgement power to blast a few more undead !

I won’t give you a play by play as this would make the whole post 3000 words long.  But suffice it to say that the skill challenge remained solely focused on blasting minions with powers.  Whenever they had a failure (i.e. attack missing all targets) enough new minions would rise again from the football field to replace all the destroyed ones so far. Hence the PCs kept using attack powers because the minions (Zombie Rotters and Decrepit Skeletons) were a constant threat to the PCs as their HP were continuously being chipped at.

(In Hindsight, I shouldn’t have left the skeletons with their bows, much less use them)

One of the rules of the challenge was that whenever they had a success, they could trade it to cancel a failure (thus making the 3 strikes your out aspect of it less painful). Additionally, whenever a character scored a success, they could also recharge one encounter power.

Sadly, the party took one risk too many with 2 failures and failed the challenge at 11 successes.  At that point, there was a few minions left and one Boneshard Skeleton, sent by a malcontent fan who wanted the PCs off the stage.

I’ll re-visit the Skill Challenge in part 2 with further tweaks to make it better.

Game Over, Cleanup at the 40 yard line.

As written, failing the skill challenged brought out the Adventure’s bosses: The Bonechewing Zomboni!

Based on the Gelatinous Cube (see stats here) the Zomboni was this large mechanical snow-blower/roller-compactor  hybrid construct powered by some necromantic engine.  The trick to defeating it was to stay away from it, weather it’s decent ranged attack and stay out of it’s engulfing roller (of course, the players had no way to know that).

Sadly, having to deal with the Boneshard Skeleton and the Zomboni proved to be too much. When the machine finally got close enough to the party, it blasted them with its Ghoulish Blast, paralyzing the Invoker and eating him as well as the sorcerer.

Both the Sorcerer and the Invoker managed to escape the belly of this machine.  However, at this time, all healing powers had been spent and the Shaman died shortly after that.  The encounter was going straight for a TPK.  Given that they managed to have 11 successes in the last scene’s challenge I told the players that the crowd roared to have their lives spared.  And so the Zomboni was pulled out of the field.

It was only 8h00 PM and the adventure was already finished.

Me: “So you guys want to reset everything and play Scene 2, a Bloodbowl game against a team of Kobolds?”

Players: “sure”

Part 2 will cover that scene and the tweaks I’d do to the adventure to make it better.