Dungeon Crawl Classics – Not In Kansas Anymore

Not In Kansas Anymore – Paul runs a weird one-shot funnel where we each generate characters from a different time!

Paul directs us to go make characters from “anything” in the Purple Sorcerer 0-level party generator! I choose “Trailer Park Shark Attack” and others pick options like “Space Dungeon”, “Dying Earth”, “1920s Earth”, and “Modern Earth.” We get a lovely list of 0-levels, some of the most notable are Stacey Thompson the Professional Screamer, Maynard the Meth Manufacturer, and Shad the Trailer Park Santa. Full list in the summary.

With my four, I was inspired by having recently read Carl Hiassen’s novel Strip Tease, so I modeled my four characters after the four primary movers from the book – A middle-school student (Erin), a guy with a chainsaw (Darryl), a guy who looks like Ving Rhames in a Santa suit (Shad), and a Florida man (Dilbeck).

Anyway, with no other preamble all our various characters suddenly appear and are beset by a handless wizard and some lizard men. (Seems like this could have been a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard reference in another world… Someone needed to workshop an adventure more!)

Turns out this is “Not In Kansas Anymore”, written for 1970s characters and in the “Gen Con 2016 Program Guide.” Did you know those were actual content products? I didn’t!

Tim gets the award for quickest death – “Three Coins” the majordomo is murdered in the first round. The fight against the lizard men is quick and violent; some PCs die; more die as we flee the rising lava. Meth begins to factor in heavily to the party’s tactics.

Wackiness ensues – a sample:

There is a motionless humanoid shrouded in shadows at the top of the stairs. Shad staggers up, yelling “Ho, ho, ho!” He finds that the stairway is trapped: a pressure plate causes spears to shoot out from the walls. Fortunately, Shad has the luck of the drunk and survives without a scratch. He finds that the “standing” person is someone already impaled and held upright by a spear.

Shad shakes the body, shouting “You’ve been naughty this year!” He takes a swig from his bottle of Ol’ Grandad.

We are then told by a prisoner “you must stop Glipkerio from freeing the ancient dragon Slagothorp.” That sounds like made up nonsense to us but we don’t have anything else to do. We find a dead dragon, which we think is good news, but it turns out there’s a young dragon too, which is bad news. Everyone decides to use the bullets they’ve been hoarding for their boomsticks to little effect. But then Batreau, an AirBnB owner back in the real world, has been exhibiting strange Scanners-like brain-exploding powers and he explodes the dragon’s brain. Yay?

Then it’s time to face off with the wizard and a bunch of lizard men – we get cool powers but die like flies. Erin my middle school student pretty much solos the wizard while everyone else is distracted, but finally gets murdered and the wizard disappears. Darryl manages to kill dragon #2 with his .357 Magnum and then the eight survivors from the original group of 20 cross-time weirdos get swept up by magical birds and end up in… Our normal DCC campaign, next time!