The Avenging Sun – Another Grim Dark Future Funnel

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to run another Grim Dark Future Funnel session, my DCC/WH40K(ish) mashup.  This was a going-away game for a member of the group who’s moving out of the area.

Charon B had been shrouded by warp storms for over 5,000 years until, one day, it suddenly wasn’t.  Long range auspex scans revealed the presence of an intact Imperator class titan – the legendary Avenging Sun.  The 7,540th Free Company, the Lupus Dei (their god being money, not the Emperor), set their sights upon retrieving the long lost titan.  If successful, this would be their greatest pay day yet.

The PCs made up the insertion team, who’s mission was to enter and clear out the interior of the titan, as well as place four teleporter beacons, which would allow squat technicians to teleport the entire titan into the hold of an orbiting super-freighter.  Covered by 5,000 years of debris and sediment, there were only two points of entry:  a hatch on the top leading into the titan’s temple, or a massive pipe sticking out of the side of debris pile.

The party commander choose to enter through the pipe, which turned out to be the barrel of the titan’s mighty Hellstorm cannon.  They discovered this entry point was protected by a group of Nurgle cultists, who were easily dispatched with only a few rocket mishaps (explosive friendly fire FTW!).  Fortunately they didn’t set off the live shell nestled in the gun’s breach.

Unfortunately, all the corpses started moving again.  Another fight ensued, and the players found that dispatching Nurgle zombies was much harder than dispatching Nurgle cultists.  Careful to destroy all the bodies this time, they entered the titan through the barrel’s gas vents.

They had another encounter with a powerful Nurgle warband on the titan’s bridge, which was dealt with in fairly quick order.  Unfortunately, we were running short of time, and I didn’t want to miss the big event, so I hand-waved clearing the rest of the titan to get on with things.

Here comes bad news.

While clearing the titan, cultists outside the titan had initiated a ritual, which culminated about the time the last teleport beacon was placed.  A colossal rift formed, belching forth a mighty daemon of Nurgle, easily as tall as a building.  The teleporters weren’t calibrated yet, so the team had to power up the old Imperator titan and go toe-to-toe with a mighty daemon for several minutes.

Titan and daemon going toe-to-toe…along with a giant bag of Cheetos.

It was a close fight, for the Avenging Sun was almost destroyed.  But the teleporters activated just in time to save them.  Most of the insertion team made it off the planet, to retire to lives of unbridled decadence and luxury…save one chap who thought they weren’t going to make it and decided to jump-pack off the titan at the last second.  He got left behind.  Oops.

Thanks to my buddy Randy for the pictures.  Cheers!

Edit:  I should also give thanks to Randy for providing many of the Nurgle minis used  in the game, including the very nice Mortarion daemon figure shown above.

Panzersaur

Something for a little game project.  My work is crude, but it’s effective enough for my purposes.

DCC/WH40K Mashup – The Grim Dark Future Funnel

A few weeks ago I ran a one-shot mashup of Dungeon Crawl Classics and Warhammer 40K (ish), which I called the Grim Dark Future Funnel.  The players rolled up a series of WH40K(ish) themed Level-0 characters who set about exploring a space hulk for salvage, xeno-tech and ancient relics.  The players had a strict time limit (in real time) to explore the ship before the Imperium blew it to pieces.

Not having time to map this stuff out properly, instead I just measured out inches for movement and range, and used templates for certain weapons, like grenades and flamers.  I improvised terrain using blocks of Styrofoam and a few other bits.

I allowed replacement characters to teleport straight into the space hulk, but I required a Luck roll to make sure they didn’t accidentally materialize inside another object…or person.

Highlights include the players deciding that firing automatic weapons into melee combat was an acceptable thing, accounting for a high number of funnel character deaths.  And the mad scramble to exit the ship before it blew up.  A handful of characters were oh so close to getting off the ship, but didn’t quite make it (sorry guys 🙂 ).

Here’s a link to the rules I came up with.  For small templates, use about a 1.5″ diameter, for large templates use maybe a 2″ diameter, and for flamer templates use a 12″ rule.  I bought some cheap 6″ rulers to measure movement, which is perfect for most character’s movement.  Psychic attacks are made using an opposed Personality check vs. the defender’s Will save.

• Grim Dark Future Funnel (PDF)