cross-posted for visibility
I was listening to the Fear of a Black Dragon episode for DCC’s #67 Sailors on the Starless Sea and planned on running it as a Funnel World one-shot this week. Then I thought, I wonder if I could skin SSS with Ray Otus’ Sinister Solstice? Some hours later, I made an adventure starter for this hybrid idea.
Some assumptions and changes I made to the original sources:
– This adventure starter assumes the GM is familiar with DCC Sailors on the Starless Sea funnel adventure, YMMV.
– I jump start the villagers to be already sneaking into Kringle’s Keep via a collapsed wall, rather than give them the option of how to enter the keep. This is a time saving measure.
– The beastmen have been re-skinned as ice elves, slaving away under the direction of the Clockwork Knight (replacing the Champion ambush).
– I kept the Well of Souls and gave it a custom move since it seemed to fit for both sources.
– The Tar Ooze almost became a Christmas Pudding, but since this is for a one-shot I decided not to include this side room to help w/ pacing.
– The goodies normally found in the Courtyard and Chapel should be left out in the Courtyard as part of many long tables where ice elves are making things.
– However the villagers make it past the Clockwork Knight, once underground they find a Hall of Wreaths, where the pool of water w/ floating skulls is replaced with a trough of iridescent coals, which will function the same as the skulls did.
– The golden censor w/ incense can be found in the Hall of Wreaths also, to help keep things more obvious for pacing to the end of the story.
– The Dragon Ship is skinned as a mystical wooden sleigh, and the Leviathan lives in an eerily creaking icy sea.
– The island becomes a Temple of Krampus, with Lord Kringle (an ice elf shaman) performing the ritual sacrifice of the villagers. Villagers should be pushed off a ledge into an icy water pit to be drowned one by one.
– If Lord Kringle throws the effigy into the water then the Krampus appears to torture, tease, and drown everyone.
I will run this on Thursday, so any comments/suggestions for a one-shot run of this are welcome.
On a side note – the comments on the Gauntlet’s page for Fear of the Black Dragon are worth looking at for ideas of other OSR adventures that would be great for Dungeon World.
Really cool. Just added some feedback, but nice work and thanks for sharing!
Jeremy Strandberg thanks for your comments – your edits were helpful! Credit really goes to Ray Otus for the fun ideas in his Sinister Solstice. I’m looking forward to running this!