Play Report Aug 5 2025 - DCC Keep on the Borderlands Open Table (IRL)
Introduction
An energizing session at the game store! Word is starting to spread. A lot of people there for other games came by to ask about my game, and to ooh and ahh at how cursed the d7 is. Perfect opportunity to make a pitch to a captive audience.
I was pleasantly surprised that a couple of young adult players from a 5e campaign I ran at the store previously decided to try DCC when they heard I was running a new table. A third new player, guy around my age checking out RPG night for the first time, joined up spur of the moment! Another pleasant surprise.
I was happy with how I ran the combats. While the three tussles wound up being pretty one-sided in favor of the players, they did not take the victories for granted. They consistently looked beyond their sheets for advantage. Another win for me that night was balancing the narration with gameable information; I love my prep, but sometimes I fall a little too in love with it. In particular, when introducing the gnolls I wanted to add a pop of horror, but I kept things moving and didn't stall or ruin the mystery too early. Proud of those spooky gnolls too, now that I mention it!
Some things I'm hoping to improve on are the skills, luck, and deeds. Skills checks, I need to be more diligent about prompting the players to describe what they're doing and how it's in their wheelhouse; luck has been very stingily spent, even by our thieves; and we have only had one (albeit very effective) deed so far.
I also think I will explicitly implement a caller next session, as the tables have been large and lively. Was kind of relying on the dynamic of my established core of regulars, but with an open table things should be formalized. Everyone wanting to jump in and do something is a great problem to have, but it got tough getting through the actions to adjudicate at times. It will also be good to have this in practice should I get a table larger than six in the future.
Put out a couple more advertisements on Facebook and local Discord, so I'm looking forward to keeping this ball rolling!
Report
In attendance:
- Rudy, warrior and unlucky night watchman;
- Birdy, wizard and hard bargainer;
- Carrick, a cheerful corn farmer turned axe swinging warrior;
- Winnifred and
- Mylan, cunning thieves both
Another wagon full of new blood arrived at the Keep, bringing Carrick, Winnifred, and Mylan. At the Bloated Stoat tavern, the three joined with Rudy and Birdy, who were scheming their next moves. After the last venture into the Caves of Chaos, the party opted to let the heat die down there while they pursued some side projects. Manville, a mercenary, was hired, but not before Rudy’s carousing resulted in a proper tavern fracas.
The party set out north in search of a lost magician of the Keep, one Cedric the Blue. A lead took them north of the Keep into the Whispering Woods, where one Mad Hermit John was thought to be both a prime witness and suspect in Cedric’s disappearance.
A huntsman they met warned them to avoid the Mad Hermit, who was said to be a sorcerer with control over beasts. The huntsman shared his own encounter with a mountain lion that seemed to obey John. The band made their way towards where the huntsman said it happened.
The band encountered the Mad Hermit, who warned them to stay away and denied having met Cedric. From there, the situation quickly escalated to violence! The band slew John’s mountain lion, with Manville and Birdy landing decisive blows. Carrick shattered the hermit’s shin with a brutal kick, allowing them to take him hostage. They also took up some bear traps from the hermit’s grove.
They sacked his cottage and read the hermit’s papers. There they learned that John was no sorcerer at all—he had adopted the identity of a lost magician of his own, a comrade he had left to die some years ago in the Caves of Chaos. His diary also noted a shrine in the canyon that seemed to rest atop a much larger underground structure, and cryptic note that read “THEY HAVE TOO MANY SIDES.”
Mad Hermit John confessed to letting creatures and travelers fall into an eroding ravine a few miles away from his cottage so that he could collect the spoils. He offhandedly mentioned that an ogre came to the ravine from time to time to sort and select choice bones, which the band surmised to be the Bonepicker, the ogre they had tangled with the week prior.
A trip to the ravine revealed little stacks of skulls and bones, no doubt Bonepicker’s handiwork. Cedric's signet ring secreted in a hidden pocket of a discarded bag, as well as an unusual skull—roughly human, with teeth filed to wicked points. Some of the teeth had been replaced with equally sharp opaline prosthetics.
The band took shelter in the hermit's cabin that night, as the Keep was too far away to reach before dark. Around the witching hour, Rudy heard eerie shrieks coming from the woods. Mylan slipped out to check and found a band of eight female figures clad in animal hoods chanting in an unknown langage—headed west towards the cottage!
One of the figures broke off from the group and beat Mylan back to the cottage. Within the cottage, the band made ready for trouble with bow and blade. Mylan tried to hide in the dark bushes, but was spotted by the animal-hood. A silent and furious melee occurred, with Mylan getting the better of the hunter and taking her hood.
Now despairing, the hostage hermit told the band that these strange women were called gnolls, cannibal hunters who forgot they were human. The gnolls swept through here from time to time, looking for blood, and laired in the Caves of Chaos to the east.
After a restless few hours, the whooping subsided—the gnolls’ hunt taking them elsewhere. The band groggily hightailed it out at first light and cut the hermit loose, reasoning he was no longer a threat. They stopped only to pull a jade fang from the dead gnoll’s mouth on a bunch of Mylan’s, and to sell the lion’s pelt to the huntsman from the day prior.
Ulrike of Yarrow, Captain of the Watch, officially offered the band a sizable bounty for Bonepicker’s demise. She also shared a story about seeing a gnoll use witchcraft to steal the air from the lungs of some poor unfortunate.
The band gathered a number of stakes, shovels, and a sheep before setting back out to the ravine. On the way, they passed by the Mad Hermit’s cottage and found the dead gnoll had been carried away and the cottage was empty with the door ajar. Unsettled, the band continued on.
Winnifred, Rudy, and Carrick set about digging a wolf pit for the ogre. They worked hard and fast, but weren't able to dig a deep enough pit to hold Bonepicker for long. Birdy and Mylan set up the commandeered bear traps to stymie a potential attack from Bonepicker, while Rudy passed out homemade firebombs to his comrades. From there, the sheep was rolled to its doom down the ravine and set as bait.
Sure enough, old Bonepicker came to the ravine and fell for the trap, falling headlong into the punji spikes Birdy had used to line the bottom. The rest of the ogre’s short life was nothing but a whirlwind of spear, spell, and incendiaries as the band lobbed death after him into the pit!
The victorious band took the ogre’s ear and his oversized hip flask, a keg of fancy brandy purloined from some lord’s cellar. No doubt the Castellan would be pleased with their swift work. They returned triumphant to the Keep, though all the way home they felt the eyes of the gnolls on their backs…