DCC Day 2026 Part 2

A Case of Mistaken Death

Below, you will find some spoilers for DCC adventure #109 Beneath the Isle of Serpents, just so you know, dear reader.

At this point, I don’t think any of us are going into a DCC game thinking, you know what? This is going to be a piece of cake. You expect to be challenged by lethal traps, dangerous surprises, gonzo monsters and a general air of lethality. But there’s one encounter in Beneath the Isle of the Serpents that has the potential to tip the scales so far from balanced that you could be looking at a one or two round TPK. It almost did in our third session of this adventure. There’s a giant, two-headed viper hiding to one side of a door in one room. It’s given a +6 to initiative to account for surprise. Then, once it probably gets the initiative, it’s got two bite attacks at a +8 to hit. That’s not the worst of it, once it inevitably hits, it’s got 3d6 damage for each bite! Now, please bear in mind that this is an adventure for 1st level DCC characters. Few, if any, will have hit points matching even an average roll of those damage dice. But then, there’s a DCC ad in the back of this adventure entitled “Fun & TPKs.” So, that’s what you’re up against, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong; I actually do enjoy knowing that the dungeon is genuinely scary, that characters can and will die, that the stakes are high. That makes their actions to overcome the dangers all the more significant. It creates an aura of tension that is hard to synthesise in any way other than the players knowing that their characters could be walking to their deaths. We had already had 2.5 deaths by the point they got to this encounter after all. But those deaths were a little more acceptable. The PCs had done everything they could to prevent them up to the point they didn’t, up to the point when I got luckier in my rolls than they did. Not only that, each death was poetic and emotional and caused by a hypnotised member of their own party. You couldn’t write a better death.

But this giant two-headed viper? It had the cards stacked in its favour by the stats, the map, the circumstances. Even then, despite that initiative bonus, it still went after three of the party members. The players got a little bit lucky with that, but it was all fair and square. So they attacked, two hits out of three and the snake was down two thirds of its hit points. But then it had its attacks; two heads = two attacks. It hit one PC with one attack, killed her outright, and then hit the second PC because it had a + frikkin’ 8 to hit, so, of course it did, and killed him outright too. Half the party was dead in a single round. And, you know, I’ll be honest here, I thought 3d6 damage for a single attack on a first level character? That’s insane, so I reduced it to 2d6 and it still killed ‘em both… The players looked upon the ruin of their party. Rember, dear reader, there were only two players in this adventure. One had only one of two PCs left and one had none. That last suriving PC was ready to run, but then remembered that the Wizard’s familiar was supposed to go on her turn. The dice were rolled and that dog ripped out at least one of the viper’s throats! We retconned the deaths and were able to finish out the dungeon.

And look, this was dramatic and all, they scraped through when they probably should have died, but it was so ridiculously overpowered as an encounter that we questioned how well this adventure could have been play-tested. Combine this with a couple of other strangenesses and errors and I am not sure, honestly, if I can recommend it without the Judge spending a fair bit of time preparing things and making a few necessary changes.

Mapping Errors

I love DCC maps. They’re almost always beautiful and functional and genuine pieces of art in their own right. That can be said for the maps in this adventure too, in fact. They are, perhaps, not quite as memorable or gnarly as an Doug Kovacs map from, say, Sailors on the Starless Sea, or the Mark Allen one from Hole in the Sky but they are functional and effective. You can compare for yourself:

But there is a very small problem with the dungeon map/key that left me scratching my head and cursing the adventure for wasting my time at the table. If you look closely, dear reader, you will see that Room 4-2 and Room 4-3 are labelled differently on the plan compared to the cross-section. Now, as the PCs explored Level 4, I was really just looking at the plan map so I didn’t notice this error. The problem is, it’s the plan map that’s wrong. 4-2 is where 4-3 should be and vice versa. This might seem like a small issue, and perhaps I’m making too big a deal of it, but when you only encounter it for the first time at the table? Confusion, frustration, struggle. It’s a waste of time and mental energy that could better be spent on building atmosphere, answering player questions or, like, role-playing.

And if this was the only map problem in the module, I might be a bit more forgiving, but I mentioned in the last DCC Day 2026 post, that the island map should have hexes to allow you to calculate how often to roll on the overland encounter table, but it doesn’t so, once again, the Judge is just left to guess at the table, when they are already juggling a lot.

I will say this is not the only potentially bad labelling in this adventure. On the cover, it defines it as an adventure for Level 1 PCs, but on the inside, it says it’s for Level 2 PCs. This could actually explain the extra lethality. Maybe my party were just too wee?

So

Here’s what happened at the end of the adventure (if you want to catch up, go check out my first post about it here.)

The party, now three-strong since Hilda the Wizard met up with them back on the beach, returned to the point they left off in the dungeon. They picked up some of the weapons and armour belonging to the Serpent-men and continued down the winding, narrow stairway until they discovered a secret door in the wall. Cleverly, they decided to treat it with some care, stepping to either side of it when it opened, thus avoiding the burning oil trap. There is a high probability that this trap was not going to ignite but, ignite it did, to no effect of course. They continued into an uncanny corridor that seemed to have been wrought in a strange way. It was as if the rock had been disintegrated to create this corridor and the pentagonal chamber beyond. In that chamber, by the way, was an Elder Thing. It had come here to observe the Serpent-men and the Cobra-men, apparently, but that does not particularly describe the reason for it to appear in the adventure, if I’m honest. It had a deleterious effect on a couple of the PCs. There’s a table to tell you what happens if you fail a Willpower save upon seeing this Cthulhu-Mythos-ass creature. Anyway, one of the PCs froze and one fled. I’m just glad none of them rolled “fight” because that would have surely been the end of the adventure. The other one found she was able to communicate with it in a rudimentary telepathic way. It was able to tell her there was another exit from its chamber to the surface, and that there was some sort of conflict between the Serpent-men and another sect who worshipped Sett. It then began packing up its things. Now that the PCs had uncovered its ingenious hiding place, it had no choice but to leave, apparently. So they left it to its business.

I have several questions about this encounter. The main one is just why? Why is it in this dungeon? It lends nothing to the otherwise decidedly snake-based vibe. If the PCs end up attacking either because the players think its a good idea or because they failed their save and rolled “fight” on the reaction table, they would be killed quicker than you could say “Beyond the Mountains of Madness.” Another why. Why is it watching the Serpent-men? Not really explained. Still whying. Why is is the trap protecting its lair so shitty? This unfathomable monstrosity has the power to disintegrate a lair for itself in the rock, and observe the inhabitants of the dungeon without their knowledge through the walls, but it can’t put a decent security system in? The trap is the kind of thing you might find in an incompetent bandit’s lair. Here’s a what. What use is the other exit? It’s difficult to climb and leads to a part of the island that is much more dangerous than the main entrance. Admittedly, the players did make use of the Elder Thing again later, though.

Once they descended the stairs they came to level 4. This is where I ran into the trouble with the mislabeled rooms and where they ran into decidedly more trouble with the Giant Two-headed Viper. Anyway, once we got past all that, they were able to explore the chamber where the viper was hiding. If you look at the map, you can see that the sluice they discovered beneath the grating on level 1 leads down to that room. There were humanoids manacled and hanging from the ceiling of that sluice. They had been unable to get to them from above. They were able to use the winch here to bring them all down. Some were already dead, but those that could be saved, they brought to the Elder Thing. It agreed to heal them as long as they covered their eyes. With a little healing, one of them even turned out to be an Elf who was happy to join the party and aid them in discovering the evil that imprisoned, enslaved and devoured them. This became our latest PC, replacing Helfgott the Cleric. The rest of the prisoners were sent back to the fishing boat with strict instructions not to let Kamay try to leave again on the off-chance he woke up.

Back to full strength, the party went to investigate the other room on this level. This proved to be the apartment of the leader of this breakaway sect. As at least one of the PCs had the Serpent-man language skill, they were able to discover a plot when they searched through her correspondence. Human and Demi-human adherents of the demonic god, Nehebkau, were worming their way into positions of power and influence across the nations in and bordering Thracia. What their ultimate goal was? Unclear, except that they were to sow chaos and division to leave opportunities open for the Serpent-men. They also found some loot in here, which was nice. Then they opened a hatch in the corridor and went down even deeper.

They skipped Level 5 at first and went down again to Level 6. This level proved to consist only a single tunnel which was collapsed on either end. Slaves were working to dig it out, guarded by a couple of Serpent-man. When the PCs attacked the slaves immediately revolted and with their help, the guards were quickly dispatched. The prisoners are started out in the adventure as a swarm. Only AoE attacks could do any more than a single point of damage, but a single point of damage was also enough to kill one member of the swarm of ten so they were only going to last so long. Still, they were happy to come along and help the PCs in their fight.

They returned to Level 5 and proceeded into the Temple of Nehebkau. This is the finale to this adventure and it didn’t disappoint. The setup coming from the room alone was cool. There are pools of magma dotting the floor and lava domes casting their eerie glow. On top of that, there are drips of acid coming from the roof, ready to burn anyone who goes prone. This happens a lot in the ensuing battle. The PCs entered from the north-west and there is a ritual happening in the southern part of the chamber, which is accessible only through a short passage not he east and west sides. The ritual involves the sect’s leader ritually murdering prisoners by pouring molten magma into their chest cavities. Yup. If she and her three flunkies get to finish it, a demonic Magma viper will be summoned. Added complication? Sure, there are also four Serpent-man guards stationed to stop anyone who tries to interfere.

The PCs ruthlessly sacrificed the prisoner swarm in a full frontal assault on the guards while they attempted to deal with the leader and the cultists. There were some dicey moments, like when one of them got hypnotised again, when they got down to the last sacrifice and just managed to defeat the last remaining cultist before they could kill her and when their swarm was reduced to just two members. But they persisted and played it clever, using the spells and abilities they had to their greatest advantage. Sleep was the best spell in their arsenal to be honest. There were a lot of fun moments provided not only by the rolls on the individual spell tables but also on the mercurial magic tables, grit tables and fumble tables. DCC is all about the tables, isn’t it? It brings new meaning to the word random. You are never quite sure what will happen, especially when you cast a spell. It might work just fine and achieve the goal you intended. It could even result in a far more powerful effect than you could have imagined. But it could also fizzle out and mean you can’t cast it again that day. Or worse…

Conclusion

This is the joy of playing DCC with PCs of more than 0-Level. The funnels are fun and all, but access to magic and other special abilities really elevates this game, if you ask me.

There were a couple of other beats once they defeated the cult leader and prevented the performance of the ritual but they were not worth mentioning, to be honest. They went back to the boat and returned to the mainland with all the freed prisoners that survived. It was a bitter-sweet ending, however, considering how many they lost along the way.

I think, if I were to run it again, I would prepare a few things. I’d pop some hexes on the map of the island to make the random encounter table useful. I’d probably remove the Elder Thing encounter and replace the Giant Two-headed Viper encounter with something a little less lethal. I’d also seed some more information about what’s going on in the dungeon, throughout the actual dungeon, because, as it stands, there’s no way the PCs could know that the finale ritual is actually going on. They just happen to stumble across it whenever they decide to show up at the Temple chamber.

In the end, though, we all enjoyed the adventure, despite its flaws. I would definitely consider running the main Caverns of Thracia campaign at some point too. Probably once this whole Editioning Business is behind us.