Covid-19 restrictions were greatly relaxed here just before Christmas – meaning I got to celebrate with my whole family. On New Year’s Eve, a small group of my mates got together (first time since March for most of us) and caught up.
We also played a ‘modern’ Call of Cthulhu game – the PC’s were all characters from “Scooby Doo” and the adventure was U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (D&D), converted to the CoC 1980’s on the coast of Maine, USA. We had a lot of fun: by the end of the night Velma was badly wounded, Scooby was very paranoid, Shaggy extremely obsessive, and Fred confused. (I may have insanity and characters mixed up.) They didn’t actually meet the smugglers (which probably would have killed someone at that point), but found drugs and Canadian whiskey being smuggled down the coast, and the body of the house owner missing for twenty years! I’ll post the character sheets and adventure notes up on my resources page when I have some time.
Last weekend we managed to get together again. With five of my seven players available, we restarted my mega-dungeon. I summarised the previous session, and people tried to remember what their characters can do. It was a great restart (particularly the moment when the dragon arrived) and we are playing again tonight – I think with everyone!
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(10th Sunsebb): Coming out of the building they sight some morlocks. Lanliss, Bacon and Hardaz move to attack them, but they retreat into the ruins. As the group moves forward, they are fired on by bugbears with crossbows from the roofs of buildings on both sides of the street. Merxif begins to summon a tiger on top of a nearby building and Winter fires back. The dwarves and Lanliss move into the lower levels to fight the morlocks. The tiger appears, leaping into one group of bugbears as Summer flies over to attack the same group. Seldrel casts a fireball on the second group, knocking some of them unconscious and wounding the others. Seldrel notes a large black shape approaching from the east rapidly and yells out a warning in elvish about the approaching dragon. The first group of bugbears are now all dead or unconscious, and the last two of the second also see the dragon. They jump down from the back of the building and Merxif sends the tiger after them. The large black dragon swoops down and spits acid at Seldrel who has been flying just above the street. He’s badly wounded and dives down into the building they emerged from. Merxif reveals his dragon orb and suggests that the dragon is tired – it needs to go home and sleep. With the morlocks finished off, the rest of the group come out to see the dragon retreating back to the eastern lake!
Merxif heals Seldrel and they quickly head into the next building, with Lanliss scouting invisibly. There are two bugbears and some more morlocks. The morlocks attempt to ambush the dwarves as they enter only to have Lanliss appear behind them. The fight doesn’t last long. The rest of the building is searched. A ladder leads to the roof through a large hole, and there are signs the bugbears have been staying here recently. This block of the ruins clear, they decided to head to the west edge of the cavern, and search the buildings there.
Some snakes, a gelatinous cube, damaged statues and a few gargoyles are the inhabitants of the first set of buildings. While in good condition on the outside, the interiors are badly damaged with missing walls, rubble and many cobwebs, except for where the cube has obviously been. Behind these buildings a narrow path ascends the cliff and cave entrances can be seen. The first few are little more than shallow holes with signs of bats, rats and beetles. Higher up, two wider entrances show signs of use. Lanliss scouting ahead hears indistinct voices. Invisible, he finds six goblins waiting just inside the first cave. Prepared, the dwarves rush up and in to attack, followed by Lanliss, while the rest place themselves on the cliff path with a view inside. The goblins are tough like those from caves in the cliff to the north. Some more goblins come from further in the cave to fight, while two more and an ogre leave the other cave. Seldrel catches these on the path with a grease spell. He and Merxif hold them back, striking them as they fall and try to stand again. Winter is in a position to pick off wounded goblins with arrows, and Hardaz finishes off the Ogre.
Dragons of Lancasm 
The scooby adventure sounds like great fun. Is there an end point to the mega dungeon or will it go on as long as people want?
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There is an end-goal: the ghost of the Hold’s founder has set them a quest to “destroy the remains” of his grandson, who is meant to have died about 90 years ago and been buried under the mountain. There are rumours that he’s not truly dead. They have found three false tombs so far. I can, of course, keep writing more in until we all reach a point where we want to stop. They are 7th level now, and I plan to have things go on until they at least hit 12th. (They know they need a spell from a 9th cleric to pass a puzzle in one location.) With this group, as long as there’s still challenges I think they’ll be happy to keep exploring.
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Sounds like a good quest hook. I like that you can tailor it to your needs and it makes sense in-game, too, to have false tombs.
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