DCC #35A:
Halls of the Minotaur (2006)
by Harley Stroh
Published by Goodman Games
0-level funnel
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| Halls of the Minotaur |
We knew we were royally fucked one
minute into the game, in round one of our first encounter. Two PCs had just
gone down in combat, and it was clear we were both outnumbered and outclassed by our
enemies. We had miscalculated the odds, and were on a suicide mission right from
the first step. One of my characters had a Strength of 3, and another was a
hobbit haberdasher with a pair of sharp scissors; our opponents had real
weapons, including crossbows, and they were dug in in an ambush among the
bushes. Then it happened. In the face of certain death, you might as well give
it your best shot, and go all out. We rushed them out of sheer desperation and hacked
at them until they went down and we won. Then we won and won again while
expecting the worst, usually at terrible costs, but we got better and won some
more. And we killed the minotaur.
This combination of overwhelming
odds and reckless heroism is the addictive idea Goodman Games had hit on with
what would eventually become the DCC “funnel” concept, pitching a handful of
zero-level nobodies into the meat grinder and seeing what comes out at the
other end: ideally, a few battered heroes, and lots of bloody paste. The play style
is one way to achieve an approximation of the low-level D&D experience
under 3rd edition rules, and it has been canonised in the DCC RPG as
an element of the character creation process. DCC’s power level is a kind of
compromise between the 3e and old D&D approach – the characters are fragile,
but there are mechanisms and extra abilities to compensate for that weakness,
including a post-battle body recovery rule (essentially a saving throw against actually
buying the farm). In this review, I am looking at one of the early examples of
these “grinder” modules; it was originally made for 3.5, while we played it at
a convention DCC game, with six players running three zero-level characters
each. The review will also contrast how the module reads vs. how it was run by
our GM.
As mentioned above, Halls of the Minotaur pits a bunch of hapless villagers against a
marauding minotaur and its underlings. The action begins in a monster-infested
forest, before it moves into a dungeon dug into a steep cliff, then a citadel
on top of the cliff. Most of the keyed encounters begin as combat encounters –
you move into a new area, fight a group of monsters (and if you are careless,
deadly reinforcements), then you can check out the local details. Setpiece
combats in cool locations – at a forest ambush site, before a demonic idol
flanked by braziers, on a rope bridge, etc. – serve as the key attraction. The
module has an element of infiltration/stealth that can make the combat
situations (the preparedness and grouping of enemies) easier or harder, and the
PCs will need all the advantages they can wrest from their environment. There
is also an element of non-linearity that is almost real and feels real
for about half of the adventure, but turns out to be largely illusory (there
are a few branches and alternate routes early on, but the true way
through most of the place is one way only, and the rest are blocked off by
increasingly contrived ways).
As a typical feature of the early
DCC modules, the room descriptions often give you the kind of wacky,
imaginative room ideas you’d get in the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks – say, a
dragon’s head rising out of an underground river, or a throne room concealing a
deadly ambush, or fighting your way through the dungeon to emerge in a castle
on top of the cliff – but they are somehow never actually as wild and out there
when you interact with them. Likewise, the environment has layers of history
and some really decent visuals, but again, it doesn’t amount to much, since it
is a series of kobold battles in a fancier than average dungeon environment.
Or is it? This was an adventure
that had gained a lot in the telling. Around the table – and remember, this was
a casual convention pickup game – it felt real. Fairly standard areas took on a
character they didn’t have in the text I read later. The desperation of the
action – whose unfairness had turned us into crafty, vicious little
opportunists – imbued the game with authenticity and a sense of working against
time. Little touches to make the environment more mysterious – like turning some
fairly standard kobolds into strange beastmen, or refining standard encounters into indecipherable
enigmas – gave it a touch of fantasy that had gone beyond the standard D&D
playbook. That is to say, a good GM can do much with the material even with a
fairly light touch; but also, this is a module with more untapped potential
than it seems to have on first sight. It really did play better than it reads –
had I come across it when I was still trying to find gems in DCC’s 3.5 module
library in vain, I might not have seen the gem in the rough.
Which is not to say Halls of the Minotaur is a great module. It is a decentish one
with typical design issues of its time and publisher. It always feels like the
encounters are overwritten – much boxed text and followup writing are expended
to say relatively little (developments in the old-school scene since 2006 have
been massive in this respect). The 3.5 stat blocks are cumbersome, using
mechanically complex methods to express interesting, but relatively simple
ideas. I have already mentioned the other stuff. It is 12-16 decent pages
lurking in a 32-page package (although with a Doug Kovacs cover and great
illustrations by Stefan Poag). However, if you don’t mind giving it a thorough
read and some thought to adapt it for yourself, the good stuff is more than
enough to carry a fun, action-packed adventure.
The module credits its playtesters.
Rating: *** / *****
