The People of the Pit (Dungeon Crawl Classics #68)

Virgin sacrifices. Exploding intestine monsters.Ululating cultists. 200 foot long tentacles.

So far, ‘The People of the Pit’ is, through and through, a Sword & Sorcery ROMP!

I’ve not DM’d for over 5 years, but since moving abroad I’ve been looking into playing online with a couple of mates. Currently we’re playing the Dungeons and Dragons ‘retroclone’ Dungeon Crawl Classics; a leaner system, than 3^rd and 4^th ed. D&D more suited to a Skype based game. I’m guessing. I’ve never actually played 3.5 or 4^th ed. online.

The first level group (5 characters shared between 2 players) consists of;

Berelious the Round (Wizard with a healthy 18 Constitution.)

Tyran (Warrior with greatmace)

Spruce (0 level woodcutter turned warrior)

Tonvik (0 level moneylender, now Cleric of Zanko: God of Banking)

Clayton (Wheat Farmer turned thief...a charmer with a Personality score of 3).

So far, for an adventure that is supposed to be for 8-10 level 1 characters, they’re doing fine for a group of 6 (they just rescued a second Cleric from one of the rooms). Their success so far is due in no small part due to Berelious using Spellburn and rolling such an amazing result on his Animal Summoning Spell that, where we expected to see a dire rat or maybe a wolf to appear, he actually summoned...

Two 15-foot, 200lb bats. With bite attacks of 1d8+4 (so, the equivalent of being twatted with a longsword by a man with 18 Strength). All cultists the group has come across so far have been murdered. And then when their tentacle-guts burst out and attack, they’re murdered as well. I almost felt sorry for the baddies. The bats are getting fatter with every combat.

We really enjoyed the randomness of this result, but I had to remind them; fate can bite them just as easily.