Review: Dungeon Crawl Classics "The Hole in the Sky"

This classic zero-level funnel serves its purpose of telling new DCC players they are about to get weird, but it could offer more player-choice.

Last night we played through the Dungeon Crawl Classics Zero-level funnel “The Hole in the Sky.”

Many laughs were to be had as our sad, unprepared and frankly rather insane, fantasy peasants were thrown from invisible bridges hundreds of feet in the air by warty-birds or consumed in the belly-fire of pumpkin monsters.

I was inspired to give this funnel a go specifically thanks to the energy and excitement of Jorphdan (“the ph is silent”) who in the past year or so seems to have really fallen in love with the system.

This is the second zero-level funnel I’ve ran, and the fourth I’ve seen. I’ve ran or played in a few DCC games now, so here are my thoughts.

The Bad:

1. I know it’s a funnel…but there ought to be some choices! The funnel really only has a single path to follow. It would have been interesting to have 2-3 paths or NPCs to negotiate with in the giant seed pod to give some options.

2. I know it’s a funnel, but holy flavor text Batman! We get it, The Lady in Blue introduces the idea of the “patron” and she. Is. Weird. Really, just the description and a line or two would have shown that, but instead she provides lines upon lines of exposition. It was hard to sort through and cut out the unnecessary exposition as some was important. But I found myself talking for minutes as a Judge and I don’t like to do that.

3. The Treasure Hoard - There’s really only one stash of treasure, and with its cool story implications it would be really unfortunate for characters to simply miss it all together. The frequent use in the text of “characters don’t see these unless they specifically say they are searching for it” is imo a really misplaced call back to the brutality of old school modules, and I found myself ignoring it to have a better time.

The Good:

1. More so than “Portal under the Stars” - “Hole in the Sky” sets up a truly wacky DCC hero on their path of being a DCC character. It is appropriately weird and there are moments of terror, heroism and stupidity that fit the tone of the game and immediately tell you from the start “this ain’t your normal dungeon crawl”

2. The Patron - She really comes across as a DCC patron from the start and references to her throughout make it work

3. The setting - Immidiately traveling to other worlds and dealing with mutated things, titans and gods again informs the player “I’m not in D&D Kansas anymore” and it uses the senses and emotions of the place to draw that out

4. The Wheel of Destiny - I loved this! It basically made it clear that the funnel was integral to DCC character creation, and tied player choice and Roleplaying into that process. By the end, and thanks to the patron and the wheel, every character really did feel like they had a reason to be a zany DCC hero.

Overall, I give this Zero-level adventure funnel a B. I’d recommend it, but if the Judge has time, I’d offer a few more choices, perhaps making some of the random encounters NPCs the players could parlay with.