RPGPundit Reviews: The God-Seed Awakens

This is a review of the DCC adventure module "The God-Seed Awakens", which is described as a "pulp adventure for the DCC RPG".  It's written by Paul Wolfe, and published by Mystic Bull Games. It is described as an adventure for 4-6 players of 3rd level, although I think with a bit of tweaking it can be used for a level range a bit further down or a bit further up from that.

The book itself is a softcover, with a very impressive colour cover of a suitably pulp-fantasy image; of what looks like an act of human sacrifice of sorts, some robed figures leading a woman to the edge of a precipice with a massive alien dragon-like creature apparently set to devour her. 

The interior has various pieces of impressive black and white art, mostly of the unusual creatures found in this module.  The book is about 50 pages long, if you count a couple of pages of ads at the back.

So the basic idea of this adventure is that a type of 'living seed' from beyond our dimension has begun to infiltrate this plane; it is part of a trans-dimensional world-tree, but rather than some benignant Yggdrasil or something, this tree is more like a weed that ultimately destroys any reality it gets its roots into. Meanwhile a pair of incredibly powerful beings from a previous world ruined by the god-seed had been brought along to this reality, originally subjugated to the purposes of the god-seed, but they managed to escape their captivity and now, though horribly altered by their experiences and potentially dangerous themselves, seek to destroy their former captor.

All of this is happening in an underworld area, and the adventure presumes that the PCs will head into those caves to investigate; some rumor tables are provided in an appendix to provide potential plot-hooks for the PCs to go.

As is my usual policy in these matters, I'm not going to go around giving away specific details, for the sake of "spoilers".  Instead, I'll try in very broad terms to talk about the good and bad points of god-seed as a module.

First, as a general preface it should be said that, in my opinion, this dungeon-adventure is quite weird.  If it was for any game other than DCC I'd say its Extremely Weird, maybe Too Weird, but DCC is (in my opinion) pretty much MADE for "weird".  And this adventure delivers in that sense.

One byproduct of this weirdness is that the author introduces a very significant number of creatures and entities, all of which are not really immediately relateable to standard fantasy elements, and all of which have fairly unusual names ("Shaloth", "Achari", the Tokar, Akavala, etc.).

In terms of good, I'd say that God-seed is incredibly original; I don't think I've seen an adventure quite like it, and if your players are getting a big bored of fighting orcs, this is certainly going to give them a view of a whole different set of fauna and challenges.

I should also note that this is the kind of adventure that will be HIGHLY lethal to a party that just charges forward and seeks out indiscriminate combat.  It's definitely set up to work for groups that focus on caution.

On the whole, I'd say this is an extremely creative module.  It won't suit every campaign, that's for sure. But if you're running a suitably gonzo DCC game, it'll be worthwhile for you to check out God-seed.

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