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Crow's Keep - Final Sessions and Retrospective

Thoughts

I ran an open table Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign for a year to the day at my friendly local game store. We met nearly every Tuesday for 43 sessions in total. The campaign was a conscious effort on my part to blast through a big chunk of my RPG library and run a campaign that would both sate my appetite for OSR-style refereeing while delivering fast pulpy swashbuckling to a player base that may have only ever played 5e before, if at all. As mentioned in my Appendix N post awhile back, one of my key touchstones is motha fuckin Holy Diver by Dio, that became my north star. Coincidentally, the funnel occurred on Ozzy's dying day.

The campaign ended because I'm moving across the country. Once again, life is the deadliest monster a party faces. That said, I'm over the moon that the news came right around the time I was planning to wrap up this particular season of the campaign for a hiatus anyhow. I was able to give a session of ten players a rip-roaring dungeon crawl and boss fight to cap off the campaign. A rare luxury in my RPG career.

I feel I grew a lot as a game master. I made big strides in prepping effectively and the project management side of the hobby. I wasn't starting to feel spent until very recently, at which point I had to end the campaign anyway. Pacing myself has always been one of the hardest things for me, but this time I was able to stave off burnout for a very long time. How that happened, I'm not sure; I would wager it was deliberately keeping the scope of the campaign very tight (just a 20mi by 20mi region!) and having a rigid structure to follow every session (round robin downtime, rulings and errata corner, bookkeeping, play report). I just had to pour my prep into this vessel every week and the magic would happen. The play reports did fall off big time, as life and work got hectic.

Sessions ranged from 12 players at the largest, to one late session where I ran a duet with the player behind Bart. In general, we averaged about 6 players most of the time. A solid core of 4-5 players formed, which was great for keeping the campaign burning and buzz going at the store. After running for literally all group sizes, I can safely say that 6-8 players is where I feel the most powerful as a referee.

In total, we suffered 3 PC deaths outside of the funnel, including one in player-versus-player. It would have been 5, but I negotiated with a player who wanted to invoke the King of Elfland to save them, burning a whopping 26 ability points in exchange. A fair trade! The game was quite dangerous, but they were thorough in planning and played intelligently. RIP to Anders, eviscerated by a griffon; Zig, crushed by a bell; and Glenn, slain by a comrade. Boris also succumbed to lycanthropy in the middle of the final battle. I ran it by allowing him to test Will each turn or become frenzied, generally trusting him to act appropriately based on the result. Worked great!

Some things I'm very proud of:

Some things I wish I had done differently or better:

What makes me the happiest, though, is meeting so many friends and acquaintances through this game. Since moving to where I am now, I have often felt a bit isolated an lonely in the way that you do in your thirties–when you leave places and faces you've known well and awhile. Whenever I've felt like this I've gone to my LGS to catch some games float down the river of life with new friends. I feel such fondness and camarderie toward the dozens of people who've passed through Crow's Keep over the past year, or read my blog, or listened to me gab about it in person or online. I've made some real friends through this silly little game where you can make an orc in a pot or toss an evil berry into a giant hookah. I look forward to doing it all over again in Midwest. That is what this is all about, in the end. As the man said, "what is best in life? Chilling with the homies."

Report (covering May 26 2026 - Jul 21 2026)

By now, the Cult of the Eye was in retreat throughout the Borderlands. The kobolds were routed; the orcs no longer had a cauldron; the goblins were without a King, and the gnolls had quit Caves. All that remained were the bugbears and the Cult. The Ogre-whelming Force set about preparing the mortal blow to the forces of Chaos.

You know their names already: Aislinn Half-orc; Boris the Inventor; Bart the Butcher and his deputy Franklin; HBGB the halfling and his chaplain Ingham; the druid Kaledar of the Old Ways. They were joined by brave new arrivals to the borderlands joined them, such as the elves Toskvig and Otilia Honeycutt, the dwarves Godric and CC the Second, the warrior Theon.

The Ogre-whelming Force first purged one of the great curses afflicting the Borderlands. A great behemoth made of buildings had stalked about Emridy Meadows for decades. They traveled through its many shifting rooms to the chapel that formed its head, finding that forces of Chaos had descrated innocent dead in its sanctuary. Those damned spirits had brought the buildings into furious motion, but the Force stole their remains and administered their final rites.

Next, HBGB, Aislinn, and Bart conspired to capture one of the nightmarish bugbears to study them for weaknesses. They set a trap for the monsters in the form of a lonely camp in the dark woods. Their number grew imperceptibly, with an fourth interloper joining them by the campsite. A furious struggle followed, spanning the waking world and that of dreams. They dragged the bugbear through the veil of sleep and took it for questioning, learning much before they destroyed it with the light of day. It did teach them a spell to travel to the land of bugbears before it perished, however...

Seeking more loot to fund their campaigns, the Force went back to their roots with a good old-fashioned ogre bounty: Thudcrumper and his three horrible nephews Horseboiler, Pincushion, and Attila. Aislinn scaled the wall and tossed fuliginberries into Thudcrumper's hookah. In the ensuing confusion, the band killed off the ogres one-by-one along the winding stone stairway in the tower lair. HBGB claimed a magic short sword that could store illusions in its blade. It was used by the ogres as a toothpick.

The band then sought a rematch with the surviving orc chieftain, Gutripper. Despite his immense size and two-handed hammer that grew deadlier with every strike, he was no match for the assembled Force. They slew him and his halberdiers with great prejudice, sundering the orcs once and for all!

Bart found the time to unwind on his own and go a-hunting and a-drinking. During his booze-fueled misadventures, he found buried treasure and killed a catoblepas in a swampy district of Emridy Meadows. He took the stinking pelt with him when he returned to the public house, relating his brush with death to any who would listen.

To ensure the flow of coin for the mercenaries required to take the Caves, the band investigated trouble at a silver mine. There they found a mad band of bandits afflicted with an unnatural thirst and obsessing over a tin crown. The leader of the bandits had proclaimed himself Rat King, but he commanded no army, and was easily dispatched by the Force.

The band returned at last to the Caves of Chaos for the final confrontation–to storm the shrine and slay the priestess who laired within. HBGB had prepared an incendiary cart for use against the cult, and they had brought along several knights and men-at-arms from the Keep. In the bone-strewn courtyard Shrine where they had fought the General Richter, they found his spear–the Eyebiter–standing where it had fallen from the black knight's grasp months ago. Theon moved to claim it and the bones coalesced into a salamander, the burning dead!

The band screened the beast away from the cart and beat into submission, then breached the doors. They were confronted with the Cult's berserker, Old Bearskin, who was revealed to have been lycanthrope! Boris was bitten by the werebear, and seemed sure to succumb to the affliction. With no monkshood or miracles available, the Ogre-whelming Force deployed the incendiary cart to devastating effect against the reinforcing cultists, then grimly pressed on deeper into the complex. There they found an imprisoned gorgon, who nearly petrified CC when the latter removed the black bag from the gorgon's head. Unwilling to take chances, the band took her head and used it to petrify the cult's torturer. After dispatching bronze-clad zombie guards, the Force descended into the frigid bowels of the complex.

The rooms below seemed unfathomably ancient, and the air was heavy and cold. Much of the complex seemed to have been sheared by some great tremor or impact. Unstable footing led to a few near misses as the Force explored the complex.

Many of the rooms were filled with jars of ash, painted to depict three-eyed humanlike figures studying the stars and wielding magic for dark ends. Imbibing the ash had psychedelic effects and seemed to enhance the focus and power of the elves' magic. Another jar was found to contain a substance like the philosopher's stone, turning anything into gold. In a cell-like room, the band found a three-eyed monk much like those depicted on the jars, frozen solid. They figured best to let sleeping Theophages lie and moved on.

An broken orrery occupied a central dome, depicting the world and the elements. Rooms beyond corresponded to elements and the stars. Under the sign of the Wolf, Theon offered the sinister toy pig to the abstract concept of War, which smiled upon the band. They were filled with a great vitality and morale, ready for whatever came next.

In a room of statues under the sign of the Lion, only Godric dared to claim a magic sphere from a stone warrior queen. A golden basilisk and a lion with ruby eyes were left behind.

Under the sign of the Worm lay a hall of fame to the wicked sorcerers of history: Sezrekan, Rolfr, Necrotis. The band trifled not with the plaques detailing their vile deeds.

Beyond the sign of the Goat lay the doors to the deepest recesses of the complex. Beyond those doors lay their fate, and the band took the opportunity to say their prayers and steel themselves for the final conflict.

In a great basilica, the veiled Evil Priestess waited for them. Four wicked axes with Chaos stars for heads orbited around her as she floated above the dais, and she was attended by the salamanderized remains of the minotaur that was once Rogahn. The rafters seemed filled with candles, which the party realized were bats made of elemental flame. They were ready, though, for Kaledar and Ingham held the minotaur at bay as the band advanced!

As the fire bats descended, several members of the force caught fire at their touch. Boris's lycanthropy took hold as he and Theon pushed forward, causing the dwarf lashed out indiscriminately! HBGB, Godric, and CC took the high ground to pepper the field with arrows, while Toskvig and Otilia weaved magic to counter the priestess. The priestess proved to be a deadly pyromancy however, bathing the temple in cursed fire. It was fortunate that Theon had made the offering, for they would have otherwise been annihilated.

Acting on a hunch, Godric fired an arrow at the priestess's forehead. It found its mark–a third eye–revealing the priestess to be an ancient survivor of the strange figures that had occupied the complex. Otilia called upon the King of Elfland to turn back time, aiding CC the Second in pouring the philosopher's paste upon the priestess. One of her arms then turned to gold, rendering it heavy and useless.

In the end, it was humble Franklin, Bart's retainer, who struck the final blow. As the priestess thrashed about trying to call down a storm of fire upon her enemies, he stole up and cracked her in the temple with his cudgel. After all she had wrought, Chaos's own cardinal was brought down by a humble ostler.

With the priestess dead, the Cult would surely disband and leave the Caves, unable to continue their mysterious labors here. Beyond the altar in the basilica lay a great door with the symbol of the Cult: an eye with four pupils: red, yellow, blue, and black. The band knew that something grave and terrible lay beyond the doors, but they could rest easy knowing those who tried to open it were at last undone. All that remained was to return home and claim their well-deserved gold and glory!

Literature Review

Some thoughts on the books and blogs I used:

#b2 #crow's keep #dcc #play reports #retrospective