Hive of the Mud-Men is a Low-Fantasy Gaming adventure for Argosa. I ran this for DCC (session 1) and Shadowdark (session 2), adapting on the fly for most things. I have converted this to Shadowdark, so DCC was a matter of filling in the gaps mechanics-wise.
Play Time: Two sessions, 3 hours each.
General Thoughts: As you’ve probably noticed, I’m a Pickpocket Press fan. Steve Grodzicki’s work is clean, sparse, there’s not 4 pages of needless drivel “setting the stage.” They’re trim, lean, runnable with little prep. This was no different.
The ooze-men were replaced with vile blobs of slug-like, faceless vomit and “fluids” of various sorts that were invading the world via a botched interplanar portal. So instead of “mud” I used dried, calcified fluids like vomit and urine. It was revolting, but as Stephen King says, “if I can’t do horror I’ll go for the gross-out.”
I ran this with session #1 being DCC and session #2 being Shadowdark. I run a West Marches game, so the Shadowdark crew decided to scoop the reward from the DCC group – I don’t think that was their explicit intent, but it was the result.
It was a relatively bloodless session. I kept forgetting the slime-men had a daub ability, but that was on me as a GM to remember, not a design fault of the adventure. The group was able to navigate very carefully, avoiding alerting ooze-men until they’d reached the hive. I placed an emphasis on player ability here – while I used skill checks for stealth, I only called for those when a player was in a precarious spot where the slime-men would be alarmed – they have no hearing or sight, and the party was carrying large flasks of scented oils and spices in an attempt to disorient or confuse the slime-beings. While the jar of jalapenos didn’t come into play this session, I’m hoping it does some other adventure.
I have a pretty strong aversion to gunpowder and detonator-type explosives in my fantasy games. Pathfinder 1 caused a lot of mental grief for me with gunslingers, and I’m hesitant to include any kind of fireworks, gunpowder, TNT, etc. in any low-fantasy game I run. Warhammer Fantasy includes all kinds of black powder, but I’m just not cool with it in my home games. Because of this, I replaced the backpack explosives with obelisks of Ramlaat, black stone cylinders engraved with the sigil of Ramlaat, the Chaos god of warfare and carnage. The obelisks were activated with a Charisma check, which led to one adventurer almost being left behind while trying desperately to activate the stone.
I did up the reward to 1,000 gold coins, which may have been overly generous, but the group just spent it all on Carousing anyways, so any potential game balance crisis was averted when the players decided to fund a gigantic revel. It also led to the introduction of the mysterious Order of the New Sun, a black-robed order of mage-nuns. Where did these nuns obtain a bunch of Ramlaat-enchanted siege weapons? Birdona, the matron of the Order, has expressed interest in magic of various sorts – I think that Pickpocket Press gives just enough detail for NPCs that I can place them and run the ball downfield, which is key for playability without rigidity.
Available on DriveThruRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/238558/adventure-framework-35-hive-of-the-mudmen?affiliate_id=14013
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