Dracula's Curse Playtest: Episode 101
Up until a couple years ago I'd never designed a sprawling megadungeon. At the time I'd also been playing Resident Evil 7, or had just finished it, and might have also been playing The Evil Within and one or more Castlevanias, Bloodstained, and/or Blasphemous. I can't remember, but it would certainly explain why the theme for my first attempt was going to be Dracula and his castle.
Initially the high concept was going to basically be to kill Dracula, because he's grown bored of (un)living after countless centuries, but by chance the A-lister party members consisted entirely of dwarves: the wife and kids all just happened to decide on that, and rolled high enough on the race table to pick it, so we decided that their goal is to get back their treasure that Dracula stole thousands of years ago.
It's a multigeneration grudge, I suppose.
Classes were more varied—paladin, druid, and rogue—and I let them start at 5th-level, as that sounds about right for invading the living, probably sinisterly sentient fortress of a 30th-level ancient big bad, and gave them 9k each to spend on gear (gotta spend money to make money) and hapless henchmen that surely won't survive the night, because of course they go in not just at night, but during a stormy night.
At the least they need some pack animals and porters, because I cleverly designed the encumbrance values in Dungeons & Delvers such that most characters can't carry all of their gear on their person without some sort of drawback (reduced Speed and a penalty to everything movement-based): I think fighters with Strength +2 can just barely get away with their default gear.
They blow the rest on masterwork weapons and armor, even a few moonsilver blades (counts as a silver weapon but doesn't dull or break like normal silver), and then a crap-ton of enhanced potions, oils, sunrods, and other alchemical sundries, and I let them each roll for a magic item because I figure by 5th-level they would have probably found something.
In the end the dwarf gets deep plate (plate armor that lets you breathe under water and renders you immune to water pressure, but you cannot swim at all), graverobber's boots (they help you find loot, but only in graveyards), and a walking eye (replaces your eye, can pop out and look around, but you only know what it saw if it makes it back into your socket).
Dracula's castle is easy to find: the locals know precisely where it is, and adventurers and would-be heroes go there all the time. The doors are even wide open, complete with a welcome sign. Come one, come all: take a literal stab at slaying Dracula!
They mostly get across the bridge, but just inside the barbican gate run afoul of something in the walls trying to stab them with spears. The A-listers tell the hired help to hang back while they investigate, and a few stabs later realize that, yep, there's certainly something in the walls trying to stab them. They just can't tell what, because the spears are popping out of arrow slits, and the room beyond is pitch black.
There are doors at the end but, after running and sometimes avoiding getting jabbed, they make it down the hall only to realize that the doors are stuck. While they take turns trying to kick the doors open—whilst attempting to avoid getting stabbed some more—they hear shouting from B-group: the bridge is quickly transforming into a swarm of bats, which even if they weren't flying away would still be unable to support any weight.
The hirelings and wagons all try and barge in, but about half fall to their deaths (along with all of the wagons). Things go from really bad to incredibly worse when the drawbridge starts to rise, a portcullis comes crashing down, and iron double doors slam shut, crushing a few more hirelings and slicing a horse in two.
This prompts even more hirelings to panic, rushing through the hall, where the donkey of all things gets stabbed and begins to bleed out. The paladin runs to grab it, pulls it to safety, and one mending potion later the donkey is back on his hooves. Oh well, I'll get it next time.
In a small hall they find a table with some woundwort on it. I'm channeling a mixture of assorted Metroidvanias and Resident Evil, so I'm not too surprised when, after I mention that there's also a candlestick on the table they light it, thinking something will happen. Maybe if one of them whipped it? Oh, yeah, whips aren't even in Dungeons & Delvers.
Yet.
Whip Advanced Melee Weapon; 1d4 slashing damage; Reach (15 feet)
Ta-da. There are some things you can spend skill points on to do more stuff with it (like disarm, trip, and wrap around stuff), which prompted me to reconsider skill points and using them to unlock special maneuvers, instead of taking fighter talents, but that's something for another post.
Anyway: one door is stuck, the other isn't, so they take the path of least resistance. This opens into another hall. While they file through I describe how one of the doors is rattling, which bursts open after a few minutes of arguing as to where they should go next. It opens to a balcony of sorts, but they only see some trees. The rogue goes to check it out, and is swarmed by a bunch of hat-wearing flying skulls for his trouble.
The druid, paladin, and mercenaries go to help, but another batch appear to keep them occupied. During the fight the rogue gets bowled over, one of the skulls snatches up his sword, a pair of suits of armor in the hall animate and start attacking, and then eventually the druid has enough of this shit and drops a holy water hand grenade (something the wife cooked up on her own using Alchemy).
It does the trick, without hurting anyone else to boot, but she's annoyed since they're pretty expensive to make (and most of the main party got hit pretty hard). At least the donkey carrying her portable alchemy kit didn't die.
Yet.
All that's left is to take out the armor, and when that's done they knock back a few potions, wait for the healing to kick in, and then decide to check out the door on the balcony. It leads to a tower, and once they're up close realize that there are spiders and webbing everywhere, billowing in great sheets.
The druid has the sense to ask the rogue to check for traps, and he does find one: it looks like a simple needle trap, and while they can't be positive, due to all the spiders they're are pretty sure there's venom involved.
Using weapons to turn the knob and push the door open, they discover that it's stuck: apparently there's lots of webbing on the inside, too. The druid tries lighting the webbing on fire, but it's surprisingly resistant, and resort to just kicking the door in. The interior is worse than they could imagine, webbing covering everything: walls, furniture, even corpses propped up around a web-shrouded table, all connected by hundreds of nearly invisible strands.
Once they step inside, thousands of spiders swarm into the mouths of the corpses, which then animate and attack. The spiders also swarm out whenever the zombies are struck or die. They don't cause too much damage, but also ignore armor DR due to their size. They're also venomous, which would be an issue if the entire party weren't fucking dwarves. What was an issue were the errant strands of webbing, which slowed them down and also sometimes caught their weapons.
We stopped for the night after they took out the zombies and searched the room (which . Everyone—including, I should specify, children—seemed to enjoy it, despite a lack of overwrought, cliched backgrounds, the frantic pace and loss of so much of their gear. Oh, and nameless NPCs, but this way they don't gotta pay. Ah, well, I think it's an appropriate start for a Dracula-slaying campaign.
They got just over 100 XP a pop, so only need just over 10,000 each until they're anywhere near strong enough to not immediately die once they run into Dracula. Luckily there are still about another 100 or so rooms scattered across four levels to go through.
Leave a Comment