Alright, in this post, we’ll try to finish the dungeon featured in the Rick and Morty D&D Game: The Lost Dungeon of Rickedness. When we last left off our heroes, they had just resolved a conflict between people with asses and people without asses. Like that Dr. Seuss book on crack. And now, we continue onwards.
[Scene Roll: 0]
Scene interrupt time.
- Event Focus: 39, move towards a thread.
- Thread Focus: 6, Keth and Ari’s rivalry
- Event Meaning: 72 & 33, Arrive Lies
So this tells me that Keth figured out Ari’s lies of not knowing about the Countdown timer. I can probably guess that he figured it out… Then dragged it out in the open for everyone else to hear.
[Q: Does Grutok give a crap about his fellow Orcs? I ask this because he didn’t seem to mind when they all died but given how he didn’t know the conflict could be avoided, it’s a good question to ask. Purpose: To Conflict. A: 40, Surge Counter goes to 1]
Surprisingly no. In fact, Grutok tries to calm Keth down and presents him with the possibility that even if Ari did confess to knowing about the timer, the zealot Orcs would have not believed her anyways.
[Persuasion vs. Insight: Grutok’s Persuasion of 4 vs. Keth’s Insight of 13]
Yeah, no, Keth is aggravated here, and it’s not helped by his trauma at killing the adventurers. Lyan tries restrain him but he breaks out (they rolled conflicting Athletics and Keth won out 17 to 16). Before conflict ensues, Kiir puts Keth to sleep. Going to ask the GM Emulator a question I would ask the GM:
[Q: If he were to concentrate it on a single person, would casting sleep be considered a Cantrip? Purpose: To Conflict. Odds: Unlikely. A: 88, Surge making it 90 (which unmodified is a 100)]
Double twist time, so we’re going to have the first event going off being done with Mythic and the second being done with Ursa Minor.
- Event Focus: 67, PC Negative
- PC Focus: 1, Ari
- Event Meaning: 33 & 13, Stop War
Hmmm… This is a conundrum, since stopping this conflict (i.e. War) would be positive… Let’s see what Ursa Minor says.
- Incident Check: 13, Obstacle
- Incident Type: 2, at least one PC faces a serious peril or a disastrous setback.
- Trihex Check: 632, 144, 636. Traveling undead boundary.
Hmmm… Alright, so here’s how this will work.
First, Kiir puts the sleep on Keth. It knocks him out. The And part is that this becomes a new Cantrip for Kiir called Kiir’s Knock Out. Next, the whole stopping war thing. It’s negative to Ari because she knows that at this point, there’s going to be no avoiding it and when Keth wakes up, she’ll have to decide whether she accepts him in spite of being an Orc or give into her hatred.
Meanwhile, they get followed by even more zombies. Ten to be exact. Lyan kicks things off by turning the Undead and causing seven of the ten to flee. Kiir zaps the remaining with Magic Missile and Tommy assists with a flamethrower. Grutok flies into a rage and attacks one of the Zombies. Flerp deals the killing blow to them.
It took a while, though, as the zombies came back to life, but everyone gave it their all and killed the zombies. They gain 145 experience points from that and they go to the next room, carrying the unconscious Keth with them. Chaos Factor goes up by one, Turmoil is unaltered because we already had our conflict.
[Scene Roll: 9]
No scene interrupt. As the crowd goes in, the cheering from an audience wakes Keth up. Tommy explains that they just walked onto the set of the dungeon’s greatest (and only) hit show, the Spawn Sword Ship Hour. The Bugbear who is hosting this, Clarg, introduces herself to them.
[Q: Does Tommy know her? Purpose: To Knowledge. Odds: Somewhat Likely. A: 79, Surge Counter goes up to 1]
He does. Tommy and Clarg go way back and were study partners at the same university. So, of course, Tommy insists they take part. They decide to do so, just to get the stress out of their system.
The gimmick of this room is that it plays out like an infomercial. Clarg will present a product and the group have to put on their best performances. I’m gonna at least get some roleplaying involved to give myself advantages if possible.
So, the item she presents us with is what I can only imagine to be a sausage-based instrument. Keth with the highest in Performance has me intrigued because of that whole conflict he had last room. I want to theorize that he was the one who played the instrument, having unlocked a latent talent in himself that had a lot to do with his inner angst. Everyone was pretty captivated by the performance. They’re paid handsomely in 150 gold pieces. This is actually the first time they got treasure that wasn’t a magical item so now the question comes in splitting it, since it doesn’t split evenly with an odd number of people.
I would say that, as an apology for what happened back at the countdown room, Ari backs away and gives her cut of the money to Keth.
[Q: I’m guessing the Sidekicks get paid too? Purpose: To Knowledge. Odds: Likely. A: 49, Surge bringing it up to 51, counter bumping up to 2]
The whims of fate are letting the sidekicks eat tonight! … Except that even splitting it eight ways causes some remainders. So, sorry Gobbys.
I don’t think this act of kindness will be enough to resolve the Orc Conflict thread, though. It has to be a genuine move to save a life and not like “hey, I know we can’t split evenly so you can have my share”. There’s the possibility that we won’t even see the completion of this Thread, but we’ll try regardless.
However, the bigger reward would be the item itself.
[Q: Will the Host let us walk away with the item? Purpose: To Conflict. A: 32, Surge Counter brings it down to 30, SC goes up to 2]
No, she won’t, but Greeble sneaks away with it and so we get ourselves the sausage flute. Scene ends with the conflict being resolved for the time being, so Chaos goes down by 1. However, what Greeble did was suspicious, so Turmoil goes up to 2. I find it funny that Chaos, Surge, and Turmoil are all set to 2.
[Scene Roll: 2]
Scene interrupt!
- Event Focus: 17, NPC Action
- NPC Focus: [42 means a single NPC] 1, the Colonel
- Event Meaning: 24 & 11, Desert Emotions
As our heroes enter the next room, they encounter the Colonel, the man responsible for Meatface’s insanity. Meatface hasn’t gotten a lot of focus since the Orc/Goblin conflict (especially since Keth and Ari took the center stage) so it’s nice that Mythic threw him a bone for this.
So, generating our Colonel, I know two details:
- He knows how to curse people.
- His curses involve driving people mad.
With that in mind, I narrowed down the options: a Baalzebul Tiefling Necromancer, as the Necromancer knows the spell Bestow Curse and the Baalzebul Tiefling knows Crown of Madness.
It seems he’s gonna do a large-scale Crown of Madness on the cast, so they must pass a Wisdom Save of 16. Meatface has advantage because he already has the curse on him and so applying another on him would be hard.
Of the people who rolled Wisdom Saves, the following failed:
- Tommy Two-Butts
- Flerp
- Greeble
- Kiir
Immediately, the four lose all sense of emotion and stare blankly to the Colonel. Now we get to see what sort of witty thing he says:
- NPC Mood: (Hostile) 11, Withdrawn
- NPC Bearing: 8 & 5, partiality
- NPC Focus: 90, power
He stays his ground and gloats about how powerful he is in contrast to the failures that stand before him. However, he notices Meatface ready to smash his face in. At the same time, a cultist is mourning his wasted time with the cult he joined. Just as he’s about to vomit, he suddenly notices a few platinum pieces that add up to a thousand gold.
[Q: Does he quit the cult because of this? Purpose: To Endings. Odds: Very Likely. A: 71 (SC bumping it up to 75 and, due to not being a modified yes, goes up to 3)]
He decides to hightail it out of the cult with the money in hand. This distraction is what is needed for Meatface to attack with advantage. He makes a nice cut onto the Colonel’s face as the other stable heroes roll Initiative.
However, the Colonel rolled a Natural 20 and so he’ll fire off a Hellish Rebuke as his reaction. He succeeds in burning Meatface and, while the fire is hot, unleashed a ray of sickness onto Meatface, nearly downing him. However, the rest of the party goes forth to lay down a smackdown onto him… Then the Colonel reveals his trump card:
The Circle of Death. This, thankfully, was a low roll but it downed Meatface. However, he heals some of the damage inflicted onto him. However, with some quick thinking, the group was able to take down the Colonel. As he lays dying, the Colonel imparts some dying words:
- NPC Mood: (Hated) 9, Withdrawn
- NPC Bearing: 6 & 8, telling
- NPC Focus: 15, history
He will tell Meatface the location of the Temple of the Golden Chicken, the one place where his curse can finally be undone.
[Q: Is he lying? Purpose: To Endings. Odds: Has to be. A: 72 (after odds but before the SC, the result was 66, but the answer is a non-modified Yes, so the SC goes up to 4)]
- Event Focus: 66, PC Negative
- NPC Focus: Okay, it has to be Meatface.
- Event Meaning: 87 & 17, Work Hard The Spiritual
Okay, so there’s something that he’s omitting. You need to be one with the chicken in order to be free from the curse. Basically, you need to worship it. The Colonel dies and the group gains 555 XP for the kill. The group decide to take a short rest while they hear the sounds of what would be vomiting if it didn’t trigger the Markdown mechanic like what that one cultist had.
And the Markdown has it so that the cultists level up to a CR of 1. I managed to do this using this handy tool, though it only gives me the average damage per round, meaning that every hit they’ll deal 19 damage, no need to roll dice. This will be fun. I’ll say Chaos definitely goes up by one while Turmoil goes up by 2.
[Scene Roll: 3]
So, an altered scene happens. Normally, the Cultists would be incapacitated but because the drunken vomiting didn’t happen, they’re sober and are ready to throw down.
And their 19 points of damage show just how dangerous scaling up monsters could truly be! Luckily, the group manages to make short work of the crew, but not before the Cultists manage to down Grutok and Greeble. It kinda had me going there, but they pulled through in the end, earning a crisp 240 XP.
Now, the question of whether to long rest this is a hard one, since only a few characters are low on resources like Hit Dice and Spell Slots. However, I’m gonna try and risk a few more rooms. If someone is close to death or they level, however, I’m long resting. Chaos goes down by 1.
[Scene Roll: 3]
The next scene has the crew notice a rowboat that is conveniently sized to fit all of them. They get on and enjoy a spooky trip down the river of pancreatic juice. During their small row, they encounter a pirate animatronic who asks them to solve his riddle.
I decided to roll the party’s intelligence and Grutok rolled a Natural 20. The way I can see this play out is that the Pirate introduces himself as Captain A-Hole (emphasis on the A) and that he tells his riddle of how a pirate placed five hundred pounds of gold into a barrel, then placed something else that made it lose five hundred pounds. Grutok is confused and so he asks “Uh, A-Hole?”
To which the Captain says it’s the correct answer and coughs up a portable hole. The party is amazed at Grutok’s ability to think through the puzzle but he is just super confused as to how saying “A-Hole” was the right answer.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t knock Grutok’s intelligence since it is a 12, so slightly above average. Just thought the idea of accidentally getting the answer right would be funny. The ride ends with everyone pleasantly surprised by how fun it was. A little scary, but after going through some emotional crap and almost dying to cultists dealing nineteen auto-damage should they hit, I think they deserve it.
Enough so that the Chaos Factor is reduced to 1 once more.
[Scene Roll: 10]
Random event time!
- Event Focus: 29, Introduce a New NPC
- Event Meaning: 21 & 33, Release Lies
Hmmm… So it’s an NPC that knows Zone of Truth, a spell that allows one to release lies.
A Bronze Dragonborn approaches the party, a quite jovial fellow if I do say so myself given Bronze Dragons are talkative.
[Q: What is he doing here? A: 12 & 63. Increase Power]
So, believe it or not, but the dungeon is actually kinda weak in the eyes of this Dragonborn. So, he’s trying to figure out how to make it more challenging for the adventurers… Then he finds that the problem is that the crew is coming with twice the number of members than the dungeon was there for. Because he’s a nice guy about it, he won’t immediately attack the party, but rather go further into the dungeon to reinforce the numbers. This means we’ll be getting a difficulty spike and thus twice the non-named enemies, with named enemies getting back up in the form of cloned PCs. He runs off without any fuss as the party just wonder what the hell just happened.
Chaos and Turmoil go up by one.
[Scene Roll: 1]
We’re in the end game now. The final ten rooms (well, less than that because of how the map is and with shortcuts) are well within the party’s reach and the difficulty spike has commenced. The alteration is that, instead of a giant head, it’s just more spiders. There’s a long, grueling battle with the spiders, however, once we kill the queen, I have the spiders make Wisdom Saves. Rather than have them all make it, I decided to roll a bunch and then divide it evenly into 7, the number of remaining spiders.
The end result is a 12 which means the Spiders run off and the crew are left to lick their wounds for the day. During the long rest, though, an incident occurs.
- Incident Type: 16, Obstacle
- Incident Subtype: 8, an existing NPC acts according to stated goals. It’s going to be the Bronze Dragonborn
- Trihex: 611, 433, 542; suggesting message rich
In the middle of the night, Lyan can overhear the Bronze Dragonborn talking with someone who seems to have a lot of money. I will assume it has to do with the party and how the number of enemies has tripled. Very suspicious.
I think we can jump them. Lyan’s gonna wake the group up. Because this counts as a new scene, I’ll roll.
[Scene Roll: 2]
Brace yourselves!
- Event Focus: 58, PC Negative
- PC Focus: 6, Grutok
- Event Meaning: 76 & 99, Mistrust Anger
They were expecting us to get the drop on them. The rich man he was talking with suddenly puts a Crown of Madness on Grutok and has him attack Meatface, dealing two nasty crits in a row. The Bronze Dragonborn then swiftly cuts down Meatface. Everyone goes on the offensive to take him out with Lyan healing Meatface.
Thankfully, Flerp was able to take down the Dragonborn while everyone else focused on the rich man. It took some short work, but he managed to go down too. Now the group rests up while I lower the Chaos (they had it mostly under control) and increase the Turmoil (they did kill two very important people in the dungeon).
[Scene Roll: 7]
So, they enter this nice little bar with cute animatronics that feed them food. This doesn’t seem so bad, they think. But then they start asking around and find that something known as the Slaughterfest will begin. They’re briefed on the challenge: to destroy the animatronics.
[Q: Will the Slaughterfest commence shortly? Purpose: To Conflict. A: 77, surge bumping it up to 85]
Yes, in fact, it begins now, with a bonus…
- Event Focus: 87, NPC Negative
- NPC Focus: (59 being many NPCs) 8, Adoring Fans
- Event Meaning: 41 & 9, Expose Evil
So, how the group finds out about the Slaughterfest is that one of the patrons, a long-time fan of the Spawn Sword Ship Show, is slaughtered by one of the animatronics. The group realizes this is their next challenge and so, initiative.
It was a rather difficult battle with three characters falling down, but eventually, the animatronics all got sacked thanks in part to Kiir’s use of magic spells. Everyone celebrates the defeat of the animatronics and the end of the Slaughterfest. The group gains 355 EXP for this and they level up. I think they deserve a long rest. When they emerge from the Slaughterfest, the Chaos Factor is reduced.
[Scene Roll: 2]
Our group then enters what is practically a treasury where it seems like its treasure is ripe for the taking. This is another one of those rooms where the impact is better if this was played normally, but I’ll improvise by having the group make Wisdom Saves.
And, I kid you not, two natural 20’s and two natural 1’s in a row! I think this might mean that, perhaps the three who succeeded will tell the others that the treasure room might not be all that it’s cracked up to be. Especially since the three are either long time residents of the dungeon (Tommy and Grutok) or is too insane to consider treasure (Meatface).
Together, they rolled a 14 and managed to persuade the group to not take the treasure, though Keth seems insistent on taking the treasure, because of course the Rogue is interested in the money. So, Meatface and Grutok hold him down, since for all they know, it could be a trap.
However, three people bust in the room and ready themselves to attack the group. Unfortunately, these three are commoners and so, with one Burning Hands, the six commoners go down, but each of them had 1,000 gold pieces on them…
Yeeeaaaah, this is sus, even out of character. I’m going to have Tommy and Grutok roll History, with the goblins assisting. With a 16 from Tommy, Tommy recalls how this room tests your greed. He up and says that should they leave the room with the treasure they took, then they’ll lose every treasure they had.
A voice known as Gygax Rick informs the group that they’ve passed the test, grumbling about how they essentially cheated. Rick gives them all 1,000 gold pieces as the group goes to the next room, Chaos remaining at 1.
[Scene Roll: 3]
They enter a shop where they see a shopkeeper with magical items. Coincidentally enough, they offer the treasures from the previous room, but at prices no one can afford them on. However, Meatface manages to haggle a price out of them, all 1,000 gold pieces from the previous room for all four items. All of them seem pretty powerful, such as winged boots for the head, a tiara of fireball, and two items that grant +5 to either Saving Throws or Ability Checks. These four go to the core four, with Meatface and the others coming up empty.
Next room.
[Scene Roll: 0]
Scene interrupt.
- Event Focus: 32, Introduce a new NPC
- Event Meaning: 27 & 11, Praise Emotions
So, Praise definitely means we’re dealing with a priest, but emotions is tricky. My best guess is the following:
The party enters the room where it’s a butterfly exhibit. It’s peaceful and serene, and in the middle of it all is a spider-like priest named Choldrith. He invites the party over to say the night. This would be nice and all, but the party had rested up before hand, this spider looks too creepy to trust, and it seems the voice that is Gygax Rick brought up how he didn’t make this room.
Unfortunately, Choldrith makes a convincing argument about how he isn’t like other spider people, since otherwise he would have devoured all the butterflies in the room. Convinced, they stay, but on the edge. Chaos goes to 2 and Turmoil goes up to 6.
[Scene Roll: 0]
Another scene interrupt.
- Event Focus: 52, Move away from a thread
- Thread Focus: 1, Revenge on the Orcs
- Event Meaning: 30 & 90, Break Failure
Okay… This is a little interesting. So, we know that the arc we want to hit is Ari letting go of her hatred towards Orcs and this move away is actually really helpful. The problem is figuring out what breaking a failure means. For further insight, Ursa Minor’s turn:
- Incident Check: 14, Obstacle
- Incident Type: 4, at least one PC’s goal becomes more laborious
- Trihex Check: 652, 662, 414. Welcoming will just.
Okay, okay, I get it now.
Ari finds it difficult to continue her quest to kill the Orcs who ruined her life as she had bonded with two Orcs; the half-orc Keth and the full-blooded Orc Grutok. She notices Choldrith spying on her and is understandably concerned about what he’s up to. Choldrith brings up how the sanctuary is meant to allow people to let out their emotions and so he asks her to bring up every last detail regarding her hatred regarding Orcs.
And so, she does, and she finds herself finding it harder and harder to hate them, not helped by Choldrith basically sweet-talking her. And just when Ari is about to feel at peace, Choldrith whispers out: “praise be to Lolth.” With a Wisdom Save of 12 against his Persuasion of 13, Ari mumbles out “praise be to Lolth” as well…
And the two go to work trying to make converts. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have given Ari the +5 Skills item.
The only people who aren’t sweet-talked into serving Lolth are Lyan and Greeble. The moment Lyan hears the name “Lolth”, she lets off with a Word of Radiance. It doesn’t effect Choldrith and she and Greeble find themselves surrounded by upstart Lolth cultists. He webs Lyan and Greeble up and decides to begin his indoctrination onto the two of them. They resist, but they are unfortunately knocked out.
[Q: Would this count as a TPK? Purpose: To Endings. A: 30]
Surprisingly enough, no! My idea is that Gygax Rick intervenes and his presence is enough to scare Choldrith away. However, because we nearly got one, I’ll bump the Chaos up by 2. Gygax Rick tells them to go to the next room, all while he calls them out on falling for the easiest trap in the world. However, as they leave, they end up getting 282 gold from butterflies.
[Scene Roll: 3]
So, this is an altered scene. Normally, the room would be full of fun skeletons who want to do a jam session, but here, they’re just skeletons ready to kill. Though a lucky Turn Undead from Lyan and a well placed crossbow bolt from Tommy are enough to turn them away and turn them into 110 experience for each of them. Chaos goes down by 1.
[Scene Roll: 1]
Another altered scene. So, again, normally there’d be a nice Owlbear in the room, but this time… There’s just no Owlbear. Just an empty room with two potions of healing and a ring of protection. Chaos Factor goes down once more.
[Scene Roll: 6]
The group end up at the end of the dungeon. As the group explore the room, they find an old portrait of a family that look eerily similar to Keth, Lyan, Ari, and Kiir (albeit most of Kiir in the picture is torn off), with two new characters, a dog and some old man. Oddly enough, everyone in the picture looked human.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shake as two young green dragons rise from the stones that make up the floor. In the chaos, Gygax Rick falls over from where the dragons were, unconscious.
And so, the final battle commences. The heroes tried to damage the dragons, but unfortunately, two heads were better than one. Two large sprays of poison breath killed the goblins and Keth, as well as knock out most of the party. The only two people who were immune to the attack were Kiir and Gygax. Grutok was too far back in the room to be hit.
Meatface, Tommy, and Lyan die of their injuries while Ari gets back with a natural 20… Only to get knocked down again. It took a lot of trials and tribulations, but eventually, the two dragons were killed, earning everyone 865 XP because Rick probably ended up using revivify on all of them.
And so, they leave the dungeon, having made new friends and gained fantastical treasures. And, honestly, there’s still a lot of loose ends to cover that, if the DM wrote plot threads like I had, would definitely expand into a gonzo campaign trying to solve all of them.
However, I think I’ll leave it be. This was more about trying out the module rather than make a whole new campaign. I’ll be doing a post-mortem on the module so be on the look out for that. Until then, Bon Voyage, Gamers.
Solo RPG Voyages 