Yall ready to crawl? Cause Xcrawl is here! Today we're talking Murder Mountain Smackdown. A fine way to start your Xcrawl career if ever there was one. I was in a playtest of this a year or so ago in an online game ran by Brendan LaSalle himself. It was an awesome time. After reading through it, I think it's a great one to run too. Due to the nature of the game, I think Xcrawl adventures have these showcase rooms that are worthy of those TV highlights, but they can also be a pretty complicated to run. But this adventure doesn't suffer from that. Smooth as freshly driven snow. Alighty folks, spoilers ahead! You've been warned.

Adventure Overview

So the PCs have all signed up for a unique Xcrawl experience and even got matching t-shirts! However, unbeknownst to pretty much everyone except for DJ Hard Knoxx, he's surreptitiously enlisted (read: tricked an interdimensional being known as the Cosmic Voyager to be his main attraction. The t-shirts have magic symbols on them that make the Cosmic Voyager believe that the PCs are perfectly willing to leave this world and go to the next one. Depending on rolls related to this, it may mean ancient Hubris, Umerica, Terra AD, the Purple Planet, Weird Frontiers, even even Punjar 50k! When the Cosmic Voyager interacts with the PCs, they have a brief time to interact with it and learn more of its nature. But its an interdimensional creature so its perfectly okay if its a bit of a "WTF was that" thing.

Anyway, the show starts with the DJ providing the rules of Xcrawl to everyone and sending them on their way. They are first presented with the opportunity to fight a blind but crazy strong creature for bonus gear. Note: This is exactly as I framed it. Just an opportunity. It can be entirely avoided. I like it! Also, its an easy room to cut if you are wanting to shorten an adventure. Next, we have our first moment with the Cosmic Voyager.

Our next area offers the PCs their choice of three icy staircases to climb. The PCs will probably split the party across at least two of the staircases, but I don't see the advantage in splitting up, or at least I don't as written. I don't think the module outright states this, but the ice grommits from an unused staircase should head over to one that is in use. After this, we have a big ice rink with more ice grmmits to fight, but nothing complex. The PCs want to skate their way to the center, grab a fancy hockey trophy (known as the Hatin' Cup) into the ICE CASTLE at the other end of the rink. A weird monk presents them with a riddle as their reward! If they solve the riddle, they get a temporary blessing. But either way, they are ushered onto the next area.

After another visit from the Cosmic Voyager, the PCs hop aboard a train car to get up the rest of the mountain. When I was in the playtest, there was no train, but some elements from this section are still present in the published form. I love seeing how things change and stay the same from playtesting to publication! Note: This whole seciton is a big shout-out to the Warehosue Yeti. If you know, you know.

Anyway, this part is literally on rails but the PCs can control the speed of the train cars, and they can also decouple train cars from each other. You pair that with the fiendish axe murders who jump aboard, equipment caches that can be quickly grabbed as the train rides by, the yeti fort and warehouse, and the ravine that they gotta jump, and they will not be bored! It sounds like a wild ride! Back prior to the train, it was scaling the mountain by hand and foot. But this is probably much better for television. :)

After the train ride, the PCs can chill in the breakroom for a moment where they'll all get some Mojo and a bit of healing. The PCs next journey light the bonfire, but they must first fight the Frostinator! This is a weird beast. Good Xcrawl lore, but its a combat that can be skipped if you're needing to abbreviate things due to time constraints. Once the PCs light the bonfire, the Cosmic Voyager descends and questions them as to their ceremony. This is a pivotal moment that, should the Cosmic Voyager figure out that it has been tricked, may result in DJ Hard Knoxx's head exploding. Or maybe a PC gets immolated. Or taken to another world. It all depends on the players though.

Before one final area, the PCs have an opportunity to be interviewed for television. This is a great time to get some roleplay in and teach the Grandstanding rules to new players. The judge is encourage to hand out Mojo and straight Luck too. But we have our last encounter, which might be oddly effected if the Cosmic Voyager blew up peoples' heads. But the PCs must fight Ezrafield Blankenchque, a Chaos Rockstar, who really should not have been allowed in here but DJ Hard Knoxx did not do his homework to discover the true nature of this demon. This is an awesome and very cinematic feeling fight. Plus, any time that there's an alternative way to defeat a monster by activating the holy water filled sprinkler system then you've got my number.

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Conclusion

The adventure ends with the surviving PCs getting their chance at becoming real Xcrawlers. But DJ Hard Knoxx (should he survive) is not going to be running any legal Xcrawls after how poorly things went here. All in all, this is a really solid way to start an Xcrawl campaign. It seeds some strong elements and gives a couple opportunities for NPCs to come back in future adventures. I dig the funnel that's in the core book, but this one feels a more "cinematic" to me. Having just been released its easily available in print, but you can always add it to your DTRPG library if you want the PDF.

What’s your favorite Xcrawl adventure so far?

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