Actual Play Report – Demon Driven to the Maw

I just finished running Demon Driven to the Maw (DDttM) for a group of 3 players, using Cairn RPG, and I wanted to get my thoughts down fresh.

What is this?

The thief Jougal stole the famed Sky Marble from the king’s bedside. It’s the talk of the town. A drunkard at the tavern swears he saw Jougal headed towards Firnhirst castle in Edburg, a forlorn neighboring hamlet. Following the drunkard’s tip, you find a full blown party at Firnhirst Castle. Two smiling servants hold the door and beckon you to enter…

Before spoilers I’ll just say this is a great module and well-suited as a one-shot. It can easily result in TPK if you’re not careful, both as players and as GM. Well worth the $1 USD asking price. I would say $5 USD is more than fair!

It’s written for Cairn, but you could use any system with minimal effort.

Who are you?

Caryn Crumwaller, 23F Knight
Gruwid Tolmen, 55F Herbalist (RIP)
Cwinglid Candlewick, 27F Cook, and survivor of the previous one-shot, Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine.

What I find interesting about the setup, is you can lean into the following:

You’re either someone who wants the Sky Marble for themselves, someone who wants to capture Jougal for the bounty, or a comrade of Jougal who wishes to find him before the authorities do.

This resulted in a lot of interesting discussion from the players, deciding on their group’s “official” goal for the module, then I said if they wanted to, they can message me a “secret” goal of their players, which may be different. Fun!

(Spoilers)

The evening started fairly normally, no coat rooms were explored and they went straight into the grand hall, meeting random villagers until saying “Jougal” a tad loudly they were overheard by some green-frocked maidens who introduced themselves and suggested going somewhere quiet. The PC’s followed.

Along the way, one player started picking up Red Caps, and enjoyed the creepy staring contest that ensued.

Passing by Helel, the party were enticed to a bedroom by three Baobhan Sith, who then took off their human skins and attacked. Fantastic rolling by the players meant the Sith went down quickly, which was fortunate because otherwise the players were facing a TPK situation straight away.

After that, they noped out of a dance with Lum, and chose not to participate in a Sith orgy.

One player figured out the black candle’s trick, and in order to use two hands while staying invisible, they stuck the candle onto the top of their helmet! The Invisible Knight of the Black Candle was born.

A mistake I made – ruling that the Baobhan Sith could see the invisible player. I think this was a mistake, and took away the “cool” of the moment. In future I would rule only Helel can see invisible PCs, mainly for dramatic effect.

Speaking of Helel, one player loved the “The Master and Margarita” style interaction with Helel and dived into that roleplaying interaction after the bedroom antics were over.

He won his mental duel of wits against Helel, arguing Helel’s position was flawed from the start, and an amused Helel gave him a wish. The player beat the minister by not playing him to begin with.

Then, the “nightmare phase” started, and things moved quickly. I started describing the situation much more tersely and rapidly, indicating a whole lot was going on at the same time. The PCs knew they needed to get out now, they could see the fire and were being affected by the smoke.

A PC used Helel’s wish to have the Sky Marble in his hand, which Helel promptly granted, and now they had to escape!

The party fled through the great hall from the gallery (ignoring Elder Sibbald’s plees to find his daughter), running down the great table while everyone’s getting murdered around them by Red Caps and Sith, fighting an “end-boss” Baobhan Sith blocking their way at the end of the table. This Sith opened the belly of one PC (killing them outright), and they slew this Sith in return, her dismembered body tumbling to the floor below the table.

The PCs joined a group of villagers trying to get out of the chained door at the front, and failed to break it themselves (I gave them a 1/6 chance to do it).

This is where I chose to favour the players – I ruled that the minister, farmer, and knight had left Helel, gone to the gallery and grabbed the stone statue there, carried it down the hall to the front door, and battering rammed their way to freedom. Maybe Helel suggested that? Who knows!

While that was going on, the PC’s defended against one final Sith before turning and fleeing into the night, with everyone streaming out into the wilderness, villagers and Sith both, the castle on fire behind them.

How I ran this game online

I played this game using Foundry VTT‘s Cairn package, and I took the effort to setup doors/walls/lighting everywhere, to simulate a castle lit by torch/lanterns. It worked well, and as you can see I populated the map with a lot of NPCs.

To track the game, I used a Google Sheet to cover turns, and noted down the more significant events:

As a GM I felt sometimes like the game was lagging a bit during the middle, as the players weren’t sure what to do, but that only lasted for a short while. We took a short break and continued afresh, and the pace picked back up again.

Overall, I highly recommend DDttM, and Cairn worked well once again.

So for now, our group is back to 5e (Dragonlance / Vecna mashup), and I will wait for the next chance to run another one-shot with Cairn. I’ll keep using Cairn because our 5e group’s getting used to it – at least for fantasy games that is.

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