Idylls of the Rat King DCC#1, Alignment Fear

Idylls of the Rat King is the first in the Dungeon Crawl Classics  series from Goodman Games. It was first released in 2003 for use  with D&D 3.0. It has been relesed two more times and updated to  D&D 3.5.  The version pictured above is the first printing  released for the earlier edition.

The module is designed for a party of four to six characters or  are between levels one and three. The party mixture will need to  be diverse and it would be best if the group contained a rogue as well as a good aligned cleric. The equipment will not be as  important provided someone remembers that silvered weapons are  always a good thing to have if you don't have magic weapons.

Since the line of adventures is Dungeon Crawl Classics it is  appropriate that the focus of this adventure is a dungeon and  there is little else that the module requires the payers to do  other than to find the dungeon and work it. The dungeon here is an  abandoned silver mine. It features four levels for the players to  explore. These levels have a fine mix of monsters to kill, secret  doors to find and some traps. In its attempt to pay homage to the  old dungeons from back in the day it does not fail. Please do not  look to this for in depth role playing or problem solving though.

The DCC series has grown to be a collection of over 50 titles at  the time of this writing. There has even been a sequel to this  module added into the mix. This is not going to make anyone's top 10 lists as far as best modules but it got the ball rolling on  what has grown to be a popular and interesting series. I was lucky  enough to pick up the first twelve in a lot a number of years  ago. I am glad I got them and have picked up a few more here and  there. I plan to eventually make a point of finishing off the  series.

Adventure Summary from inside the module:

The characters have arrived in the small mining town of Silverton  two days after a group of wererat goblin bandits attacked a  caravan carrying silver to the city of Archbridge, to the north.  The goblin tribe has taken up residence in an abandoned silver  mine to the northwest of town and has been conducting these daring  raids against the caravans for several months, crippling  Silverton’s silver trade. These wererat goblins are under the  leadership of a powerful human wererat bard named Lawrence Gannu,  who is exacting his family’s revenge on the town of Silverton for  killing his grandfather and cursing his then-infant father and  grandmother before exiling them to the southern city of Soulgrave  many years ago. With help from the desperate townsfolk, the  characters have found their way to the entrance of the abandoned  Gannu family silver mine.


Spell:

Alignment Fear

Level: Fifth
Range: None
Duration: Special
Ares of Effect: 3" Radius
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 2 Segments
Saving Throw: None

When this spell is cast the magic user causes those of alignments  other than theirs to flee in panic. Those who are of the same  alignment or in the caster party are unaffected. After running for  a period of time the victims will then spend time hiding as well.   The greater the variance from the casters alignment the longer they  will run and hide for.

For each place the victim is removed from the casters alignment  they will be affected for one round per level of the caster. The  number of places removed will be used by moving clockwise or  counterclockwise on the alignment chart (using whichever means the  least number of spaces). Those of a Neutral alignment will only be  affected by one place unless the caster is neutral in which case  they are unaffected. The maximum number of spaces will always be  four.

LG    NG    CG
LN    N    CN
LE    NE    CE

Those affected by the spell will spend one round per level of the  caster running in fear. They will then spend the remainder of the  the time affected hiding. While hiding they will be as quiet as  they possibly can doing nothing in fear of alerting the caster to  their location.

Disclaimer: The spells that you will see, for how ever long the  write ups last, were all written up or conceived of back in the  80's so the terminology may not appropriate for anything other  than 1e and depending on how well I did back then it may be  slightly off for that as well. If there is any duplication of  spells that exist now it is most likely I wrote mine first :)  Please feel free to comment on them but try not to be too hard on  me. If anyone wishes to use these in anything they print please  let me know in advance and all I ask is proper credit.