Bloodocalypse: Session 1

Last Friday I ran the first session of my Bloodocalypse campaign, following some intensive days of working on campaign notes and house rules to get it to be what I want. While the campaign world is not complete, it was ready for the first play session.

For those of you that don't remember/care, Bloodocalypse is the working title for my Gonzo Science-Fantasy campaign I am designing for DCC RPG. A world of barbarians and laser guns.

Things seemed to go great. The group got together and rolled up zero level PCs on the new tables I designed. I created a couple different groups of humans with different racial occupations to help establish the themes of the game. We also used the alternate luck rule I came up with - where PCs are allowed to risk their luck if they start with a 9-12 luck score, which could result in the changing of their luck. This had some very unexpected results.

Out of the 4 characters who risked luck, only one got a positive modifier out of it, the others ended up with negative modifiers. However the unexpected result is that the random events that happened when they were younger, ended up resulting in them having a backstory and there for a stronger personality.

For example, one of John's characters was a vat farmer - they use the old vat technology to grow foodstuffs, that taste horrible. His character had decided he wants to make a name for himself, and went wandering into the Pit when he was young. He decided he would use his personality to get out, and used Personality to pray to the gods for help. It failed. Something attacked him and he woke up near the stairs of the Pit with a hole in his head and no memories of what happened since then. Throughout the funnel he was called "Brain slug guy", and continued to talk to the voice in his head that he thought was god.

The character did not survive the funnel, having a -2 to your AC from a 4 luck with "Charmed House" lucky sign is a bad thing. However he had a blast with the character, and the negative luck "event" gave him something to role-play.

I don't want to get into many details of the session, because I plan to write it up at some point. The general idea is that there characters were chosen by acolytes of the Blood God to be sacrifices in the arena. They fought their way to victory and have earned gold and glory in the process.

This week we plan to have two more players at the table, so we'll be seeing where things go from there.