Play Report & Review: Titan Cliffs
Background
Titan Cliffs is written by Jim Hall of Brooklet Games (itch.io, patreon, and storefront). The module is available as a stand alone, system agnostic PDF on drivethrurpg or with OSE stats in KNOCK #3, which is where I found it.
It’s
a small, self contained module about a group of cultists attempting to
reanimate a buried Titan. The adventure takes place within the
dungeon-like interior of the magical mecha.
I’m running this using my own system, Brighter Worlds, in part as a playtest. Brighter Worlds (PDF, SRD) is a hack of Cairn, Electric Bastionland, and Macchiato Monsters.
Without going into too much detail if you imagine Cairn, but with
modular classes and a more whimsical tone you’re most of the way there.
I’ll include the Brighter Worlds conversions I used for the stats at the bottom.
Characters
You may remember most of these characters from their previous adventures in The Fangwitch’s Falls.
Granny Hexwhistle
A Witch
on a flying broom with a small frog that sweats hallucinogen as her
familiar. Slowly accumulating more arcane power with which to terrorize
innocent bystanders. All-around bad person.
Jierdan Havarian
A Grimblade
with a giant, floating (and possibly sentient) obsidian zweihander
named Lilicore. He’s able to cast spells by hitting people with said
sword.
Tibbius Sacrum
A skeletal Bag of Bones
who delights in comic relief, pranks, and occasionally flipping the
“horror switch” and turning from spoopy to spooky. He is accompanied by
an undead skeletal river bear, and an undead fish skeleton he stores in
his ribcage.
Pele
A Cleric of Small Gods
with a small, divine, volcano headed golem (the God of Magmatic
Renewal) riding around on his shoulders. She can change the nature of
the world by speaking with her god’s voice.
The Session
Drawn
by rumors of local apocalyptic cult activity, the party approach an
area where a massive stone figure is visible, partly buried in the
ground. Its huge open mouth spews a thick fog, while a lighthouse
perches on large stone hand nearby.
|
My signature post it note "fog of war" ready to go. |
The
party decides to visit the lighthouse first, hoping to glean some
information on the situation. Inside they find Sable, a pernickety
wizard, who holds a deep grudge with the local cult. She worries they
will awaken the Titan, which in turn will send her tower tumbling.
GM’s Note:
The module does an interesting thing here, where a die is rolled to see
how she feels about the cult. The result determines what degree of
support, or sabotage, she will offer the party.
She
offers them an invisibility spell to help them, with the understanding
that they will prevent the Titan from awakening, or at least stop it
from destroying her lighthouse.
GM’s Note:
I quickly ad-libbed an invisibility spell, which previously had not
existed for Brighter Worlds. Thinking it’d be fun to put a twist on what
is otherwise, IMHO, a pretty boring spell I added a limitation to it.
It made you, and anyone touching you, invisible as long as you held your
breath.
Silly
me, I’d forgotten that one of my players is playing a skeleton who
explicitly doesn’t breathe. Whoops! We decided to roll with it for the
duration of the session, but reworked the spell into a more restrictive
ritual afterwards.
Tibbius gladly accepts the spell, which he promptly casts, and then spends nearly the rest of the session fully invisible. To extend the abuse
clever use of the spell, they take further advantage of Tibbius’
skeletal state by detaching his arms to remain “in contact”, and
therefore invisible, even while physically separated.
Thus
prepared, and privately planning to reanimate the Titan for their own
use, they enter the mouth of the Titan. Inside is an empty, dark room
with a ladder descending into further darkness. Down the ladder and
through a hallway, they enter a torch-lit circular room. The room is
dominated by a magical circle filled with arcane runes, and pierced
through with a large silver shaft bursting through the wall at an angle.
Granny
Hexwhistle examines the circle for a few moments and is able to discern
that it is designed to collect arcane energy, although the damage is
diminishing its effectiveness. The party decides to leave through the
door labeled with the image of a helmet, and manages to shrug off the
poison trap that sprays across the group.
GM’s Note: I usually run very close to the ICI Doctrine where traps and secrets are heavily telegraphed. In this case, however, the players made it clear that they were deliberately
taking no precautions and moving quickly, therefore: poison sprayed as
they opened the door. Lucky bastards rolled well though, so no lessons
were learned.
Through
the door is a dark staircase, and halfway down the invisible Tibbius
nearly trips over a figure lying injured on the stairs. After some
invisible skeleton hijinks, the party becomes acquainted with Taba, an
adventurer who had previously been investigating the cult but broke her
leg on the stairs and has been stuck. The party helps her splint her
leg, although she declines the extremely suspicious blood rituals Granny
offered to fully heal it, and shares that she’d learned the cult
leader, Gazuk, is deathly afraid of rats. Now mobile, and somewhat put
off by the party’s (typical, by this point) unhinged behavior, she exits
the Titan and leaves the party to finish their task.
At
the bottom of the stairs is a criss-crossing intersection of pipes and
conduits, among which two spider automata are drinking a strange fluid
leaking from one of the pipes. After the most cursory of attempts at
diplomacy, the party smashes the spiders to bits, and Granny Hexwhistle
decides to sample the liquid. Of course. She grows a foot taller and
declares this a victory.
GM’s Note: Props to the module for including the effect which occurs when someone drinks the fluid. In my experience players will always drink the fluid, no matter what or where it comes from.
Climbing
up a ladder, they find a room in which a single cultist stands
motionless while wearing a strange, steampunk-esque helmet and goggles
which connect to the walls via a number of tubes. Tibbius opens
“negotiations” by drop kicking the paralyzed cultist across the room.
The
cultist finds himself on the ground, being attacked by a party of
apparent lunatics all speaking to an invisible friend. Despite this, he
keeps his loyalty to his leader and refuses to divulge any information,
at which point the party promptly kills him.
Pele dons the helmet the cultist was wearing and finds herself looking at the sky, and fully immobile until Jierdan frees her.
This
is where the obligatory Granny Hexwhistle war crimes begin, although
it’s really more Tibbius’ fault this time around. Tibbius has the
brilliant plan to reanimate the murdered cultist to act as an
infiltrator, but is stymied by the fact that his ability only reanimates
the skeleton, the flesh will simply slough off.
Granny
comes up with the solution: they will take some spikes (harvested from
the witchspawn in Fangwitch’s Falls) and use them to pin the flesh to the skeleton beneath.
Horrifying
abomination in tow, they continue their exploration of the Titan’s
inner workings. Returning down the ladder, they leave the pipe
intersection by following the newest looking pipe until it runs directly
into a wall. On close examination the wall looks like it’s been built
much more recently than its surroundings. The party collectively decides
that this couldn’t possibly be meaningful, promptly ignores it, and
continues on their way.
GM’s Note: Guess that secret room will stay secret.
Around
the corner the party enters what appears to be the living quarters of
the cult. Bunk beds, chests, and the remains of a meal on a large table.
Granny, who’s been on the lookout for rats since talking to Taba,
manages to snag a rodent who had been picking on the leftovers with use
of her Staring Contest spell.
Continuing
through the quarters, the party finds the reason the rooms have been
mostly deserted thus far, every cultist in the place is gathered
together with Gazuk, their leader, in a large chamber containing a huge
metallic heart!
GM’s Note:
Here’s a place where random chance worked out in a serendipitous way.
I’d rolled way more “no encounter” results than I expected, leading to
tons of empty rooms. And then in this final room, I rolled the maximum
number of cultists that could be there. Everything makes sense!
The
party watches as the cult attempts to restart the Titan’s heart through
a combination of compressions (by way of a battering ram) and shocks
(by way of a lighting bolt spell). Rather than rushing in, the party
makes a careful plan which involves Granny spending 10 minutes
performing the Summon Swarm ritual to use her captured rat to create a
horrible swarm of the things.
Just
as the heart is resuscitated and the cult begins to celebrate, the
party sends in their reanimated cultist flanked by a swarm of rats to
interrupt the festivities. A horrible mess of a fight ensues, with
spells, blades, and rats being thrown about, all against a backdrop of
the floor moving wildly as the Titan begins to pick itself up.
GM’s Note: This timing was genuinely coincidental, despite how cinematic it turned out.
Outnumbered
by the cult, the situation begins to turn against the party until Pele
makes a dramatic move. Speaking with the power of her god, she attempts
to flash boil the Titan’s blood within the largest artery leading into
the heart to destroy it, and hopefully interrupt the revival. This
succeeds, but in a way that creates a huge explosion impacting her,
along with a number of nearby cultists. Pele is taken down by a
face-full of boiling Titan blood, but her sacrifice allows Jierdan to
defeat the (mildly panicking) Gazuk with a combo of blade and spell. The
loss of their leader breaks the spirit of the remaining cultists, who
flee for the exit as the half stood Titan begins to collapse.
The
party makes it out alive before things truly fall apart (dragging
Pele’s unconscious form with them before she bleeds out), in time to see
their “good friend” Sable’s tower smashed to pieces across the ground.
They console themselves that this couldn’t possibly be their fault, and
make the decision to not go check on her before heading on to more adventures.
Thoughts on the Module
This
module was a lot of fun to run, and I was able to do so with very
little prep (just jotting down the stat conversions below). There’s lots
of opportunity for shenanigans, and I think most groups will jump at
the chance to try and take control of a giant fantasy mecha (even if my
group entirely forgot their plans to do so in favor of ruining the
cult’s day).
I would
have had a complaint about the room encounters all turning up empty,
leading to a somewhat austere interior, but it ended up working out and
honestly that’s not something entirely within the control of a module
like this to begin with.
Places where I think things could be improved is that I wish the interior did a bit more to emphasize the feeling of being inside
a Titan. Aside from the occasional “lub dub” noise of the heart
beating, this mostly felt like a (quite fun) normal dungeon crawl.
Second,
this is by no means unique to this module, but I dislike when enemies
are tagged as being “fanatically loyal” or “always hostile” because it
cuts out so much potential interaction and politics. Obviously this is
something I can adjust myself as a GM, but I’d prefer modules were
written with more flexibility in mind (see my play report of Lair of the Gobbler for a module that does this really well).
Overall
though, neither of those issues actually got in the way of what was a
very fun session. I will highly recommend giving this a shot if you need
a small crawl on short notice, especially if you’ve already got Knock
#3 on your shelf.
Brighter Worlds Conversion
Room Specific Changes
Room 2: Poison Spray deals 1d10 damage and deprives on Critical Damage for 1 day or until treated.
Room 5: Grimoire contains incoherent scrawling about the titan, along with the following spells and rituals:
- Finger Flare - Make finger guns and fire a bright, but harmless, magical flare.
- Augury
- Toss bones, draw cards, or otherwise cast lots to immediately divine
the outcome of a specific action. There is a 3 in 6 chance of a
meaningful answer of weal, woe, or uncertain. If the roll fails it is
always uncertain. Increase the chance of a meaningful answer by 1 in 6
for each of: burning an offering, taking 10 minutes, involving a living
creature.
- Summon Swarm
– [vermin] Kill an insect, rat, or other vermin with your bare hands.
Summon a swarm of the sacrificed creature with total mass equal to a
cow. You can control the direction the swarm moves in for ten minutes,
but afterwards the swarm will act on its own.
Room 6: Lightning deals 1d12 damage.
Room 12: Scroll of Lighting Bolt: Launch a 1d10 damage electrical bolt that impairs the next Save or Attack the target makes on Critical Damage.
Bestiary
Spider Automaton
3 Grit, 1 Armor, d6/d6/d6, Bite (d6)
- Automata: Unharmed by gas, fire, and mind altering spells.
- Abilities
- Nothing
- Nothing
- Flaming Blood: Deal 1d8 damage to attacker upon recieving Critical Damage (DEX Save to avoid).
- Rush: Move at four times speed. +1 Armor while doing so.
- Acid Spray: 1d6, damages equipment on Direct Damage, take 1d6 damage next round on Critical Damage.
- Web: Spit nylon web (1d6 blast, damage to DEX, trapped on Critical Damage)
Cultist
3 Grit, d6/d6/d6, Quarterstaff or Crossbow (d6)
- Fanatical: Cannot be persuaded, intimidated, or charmed.
- Rarely make Morale Saves, enhanced when they do.
Gazuk
5 Grit, 1 Armor, d8/d6/d8, Mace (d8)
- Grimoire Contains:
- Freezing Missile
– Fire a d8 magical dart, Critical Damage freezes the target in place
for a turn. Concentrate to hold them longer, they can break out by
beating you in a STR vs WIL Save.
- Cause Fear – Force Morale Saves for NPCs. PCs make a WIL Save or are impaired on any aggressive actions until the next round.
- Silence – Anyone attempting to cast a spell in your presence must beat you in a WIL Save.
- Lightning Bolt – Launch a 1d10 damage electrical bolt that impairs the next Save or Attack the target makes on Critical Damage.
Select a repo
Gazuk
5 Grit, 1 Armor, d8/d6/d8, Mace (d8)