Friday Fantasy: The 13th Skull

Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull begins in grim, if slightly bonkers fashion. The Player Characters are present at a public execution. The thirteenth Duke Magnussen has condemned a man to death for the prophecies he has made across the city, calling for the death of the duke’s daughter lest the city be beset by a great disaster. As father and daughter watch the condemned man and his executioner climb the scaffolding, both hooded, one by a burlap sack, the other by a black leather executioner’s hood, and the executioner’s axe falls upon the neck of the condemned, everything seems to go wrong. The decapitated head has the face of the Duke himself and the executioner pulls off his hood to reveal a grinning silver skull. As the grinning metallic visage turns to face the Duke, a great winged lizard flaps down out of the sky to snatch up the Duke’s daughter, before the Silver Skulled executioner leaps on its back and leaps into the sky, heading for the Duke’s mountaintop keep. The city is in uproar and the Duke is determined to get his daughter back and will pay any souls brave enough to do so handsomely for it. The Silver Skull and its beast of burden was last seen entering a mountain cave said to be connected to Duke Magnussen XIII’s family crypts, which is why the brave Player Characters find themselves standing before a stout oak door, ready to venture into the Magnussen mausoleum, rescue the Duke’s daughter, and in the process, discover some dark family secrets.

This is as much set-up as there is for Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull, the fifth scenario to be published by Goodman Games for use with the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Designed by Joseph Goodman for a group of six to ten Fourth Level Player Characters, it is an important scenario for four reasons. One is that it is the fifth scenario to be written for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game and the fourth to be written for Player Characters who are not Zero level, and the fourth is that it is the first scenario for Fourth Level Player Characters. It is a short affair, designed to be played in a single session or so, so it can be used as a convention scenario. Alternatively, it can be played in a more leisurely fashion and be played through in two sessions rather than the single session. Either way, it is nasty, deadly affair. The eponymous scenario though, is not the only content in The 13th Skull. There is also a second scenario, ‘The Balance Blade’, designed for Second Level Player Characters and a companion piece, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, both by Daniel J. Bishop.

The Player Characters have the opportunity to learn a rumour or two before they enter the crypts, which can either given out at the start of the adventure or roleplayed for if running the scenario as part of a campaign. The rumours revolve around suggestions that the first Duke Magnussen made a pact with something—though nobody knows what—and that family is somehow connected to the Silver Skull. Once inside the crypts, the scenario proceeds in rather linear fashion. There is really only one direction and that is down. After a dark and deadly encounter with lurking shadows that are a pleasingly creepy twist upon the classic Dungeons & Dragons version of the monsters, the Player Characters will descend to the main stage for the scenario where most of the action will take place.

The grand set piece for ‘The 13th Skull’ is an enormous cave, split in two by a river that flows out of the mountain via a waterfall and which contains both ‘The Stinking Pit of Hell’, a literal hellhole, and a fifty-foot-wide column whose base has been worn thin by the rushing waters, atop which is a magical circle containing the resting place of the Silver Skull. On either side of the river there is a circle of skulls, a pile of corpses, and access to a room containing a book containing pages that will transport the reader to different planes of existence. There is a sense of momentum to the scenario as the Player Characters explore the cave and move from one encounter to another, ultimately to attempt two tasks. One is to defeat and destroy the Silver Skull, and since this takes place atop a column in the middle of the river with a pit to Hell also in the middle of the river, if the Player Characters defeat it, they really are lined up to throw it off the top and into Hellhole, more or less, below. The other is find the Duke’s daughter and rescue her. This is incredibly difficult to achieve—and intentionally so. The Barbed Devil holding her ready for sacrifice has an area attack likely to kill given that she is Zero Level NPC. To that end, there is advice and playtest reports throughout The 13th Skull and what they make clear is the difficulty of saving the daughter and that few of the playtest groups succeeded. If their characters do manage to save the daughter, then they and their players should definitely feel a sense of achievement and their characters will be rewarded by the Duke. If not, he will castigate them for their failure and they will be dismissed without any reward, bar the fantastical magical items that they might have found below the crypts. Ultimately, ‘The 13th Skull’ feels more like a convention or tournament scenario, although in the case of the latter, a table of possible scores would have been useful.

The second scenario in The 13th Skull is ‘The Balance Blade’. It is designed for Second Level Player Characters and is again intended to be played in a single four-hour session. It has particular requirements in the form of a Wizard Player Character with a patron, and a mix of Alignments in the party, as well as index cards and coloured stickers to use in the adventure. In addition, a Thief is an absolute must. The adventure is littered with traps that will kill—or effectively kill—a Player Character if a Saving Throw is failed.

The set-up is that the wizard’s patron asks to retrieve a weapon called The Balance Blade from The Tomb of the Last Colossus, the resting place of the last of a race of cosmic colossi. The scenario is even more linear than ‘The 13th Skull’ and it only works as a convention scenario, as the last two encounters in the scenario are designed to trigger inter-party conflict. The penultimate scene is one which will be viewed differently depending upon the Alignment of the Player Characters. Lawful Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed, Neutral Player Characters will see a lonely woman sitting on a bed with a child, and Chaotic Player Characters will see a succubus sitting on a bed with a strange spider-like creature—and none of this will change. The illusion will be maintained until the woman/woman and child/succubus and strange spider-like creature are dead. So, if a Chaotic Player Character attacks the succubus and strange spider-like creature, the Neutral Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character attacking a woman and child, and the Lawful Player Character will see the Chaotic Player Character (and possibly the Neutral Player Character as well) attacking the woman, but will never, ever see the child. It is a challenging scene to run, one that really is designed to mess around with the perceptions of the characters and their players.

The last scene and thus the scenario ends with betrayal upon the part of the Wizard’s patron and then upon the part of the Wizard as he turns on the other Player Characters. The Wizard and his player have no choice in this and the scenario will end in the Wizard’s death no matter what his player decides to do. His player may well have some fun with his Wizard battling his fellow Player Characters, wielding the powerful blade of the title and the extra power granted to him by his patron, a la Elric and Stormbringer. For the other players and their characters, it is a distinctly underwhelming climax and an underwhelming scenario as a whole. As with the first scenario, there are some remarks about the playtest results and they are probably more interesting then the scenario itself.

The third and final entry in The 13th Skull is not another scenario, but an article vaguely connected to the eponymous scenario. ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ describes seven weird and magical skulls, two of them with their tables that use the thirty-sided die beloved of Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Crystal Skull of the Alien Juggernaut is the skull of a gigantic creature from another world that gives off a glow and a bonus to spellcasting, but has a chance of exploding when it gives this bonus. Grandmother’s Skull is the skull of a matrilineal ancestor which grants various spell effects to the wearer if sacrifices are made to it in the household shrine it also requires. Of course, the spirit in the skull will have demands of her own which a player and his character will find out if the former rolls a one! The Living Skull of the Emerald Enchanter is a weirdly legged skull with a nasty poisonous bite created in conjunction with the Emerald Enchanter, so would be an entertaining callback for any Judge who has run and player who has roleplayed Dungeon Crawl Classics #69: The Emerald Enchanter. Overall, these skulls are entertaining and fun to add to any game.

Physically, The 13th Skull is a very nicely done book. The maps are good—for both adventures—and the artwork is excellent.

Despite the additions of ‘The Balance Blade’ and ‘Seven Strange Skulls’, The 13th Skull is not a satisfying anthology of scenarios for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Both scenarios are effectively convention or even tournament scenarios, but not presented as such, because otherwise, they are difficult to use in campaign play. ‘The 13th Skull’ is the better of the two scenarios because it is easier to use, it is linear, but not to the point of a railroad, and it has room for player and character agency. ‘The Balance Blade’ has none of these in comparison. Whereas, in comparison, ‘Seven Strange Skulls’ is actually fun and entertaining. Ultimately, The 13th Skull is the first poor release for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. If The 13th Skull was presented as a pair of tournament scenarios and supported as such, that would have been more truthful and made the scenarios easier to use.