Bogbricks

Table of Contents

Where Your Table Is

This revision is written for a campaign already in progress. If you're running Bogbricks cold, ignore this section and start at the Overview — then read the Prologue's Two Things to Retrofit as ordinary prep rather than repair work.

• Ghost is still unturned, and that's the good news. He is the biggest card in the deck and he goes on the table in Scene 4. Everything in this revision is arranged to make that moment land: three Ghost inserts before it, an explicit rule for running him, and a reason for the party to be in the deep water in the first place. Protect the reveal. If they glimpsed a pale shape taking meat off the water in the first session, that was the tease working exactly as intended.
• Selina is a second conversation now, not a first. Scene 2 has been rewritten as the return visit — she's out of meat, she's decided the party might actually come back, and she'll say the one true thing she came here to say. Her motive was missing from the last draft; it's the line the whole triangle hangs on.
• The balcony ambush is optional. Scene 1 is now The Gaslamp Market. If the Scat Thugs already robbed them, skip straight to the Market half — the same raccoons are running the stalls, and they remember. If it never happened, run the whole thing; the theft still teaches the combat round.
• One thing is off the table. The Toolkit's better cold open — a crawler the party has just met waving hello and getting taken at the torso by something enormous — needed to happen in session 1 and didn't. Don't try to retrofit it onto a stranger; it only works on somebody they'd shaken hands with. The substitute is the Scene 4 reveal, played slow.
• Start the Tempo at 2. They've had a fight and made noise. See GM Tip: The Tempo Runs the Neighborhood.

What changed in this revision, in one breath: the neighborhood now has a stated theme (everything here is hungry, and food is money); Mad Driscoll is an unfinished Neighborhood Boss rather than a man with a grudge about a leg; Ghost has a voice; the drums are a mechanic; the non-violent solution is now the best play in the adventure instead of the worst; and the Boss fight pays off the sandbox in people rather than in difficulty modifiers.

Quick Reference

Every stat block in this scenario, reprinted for the table. The Game Master's Campaign Toolkit prints Surprise, Evade, and to-hit values as X+F, where F is the current Floor number (Rules for Survival, p. 34). They're resolved here for Floor 1. Move keeps its "+ S" exactly as printed.

Combat in one breath (see Combat, Rules for Survival p. 30): crawlers get two Actions a round; Mobs announce attacks and crawlers choose whether to spend an Action to Evade; a crawler's attack hits on 1d20 + Skill Rank + Stat Mod against the Mob's Evade; untrained Skills roll with Disadvantage but still add the Stat Mod (Checks Without Skill Ranks, p. 12). Debuffs are on p. 45.

Overview

Bogbricks is the first neighborhood five brand-new crawlers will see on Floor 1: New Orleans dragged into a swamp and left to rot beautifully. Red brick streets flood into brackish canals, gas lamps flicker over jazz drifting from nowhere in particular, and everything smells like something delicious is cooking — right up until you notice what else is in the smell. This is not Carl and Donut's Earth; it's a parallel branch with the same Collapse and the same eighteen-floor dungeon, and nobody famous is coming to save anyone.

Everything in Bogbricks is hungry. That's the whole neighborhood in three words, and it's the thing to keep in the front of your head all night. The Scat Thugs will trade an enchanted weapon for a sandwich and won't ask how old it is. The Gnawtria come for ankles because ankles are meat. Selina buys healing potions with cold cuts. The Riff Roughers keep a stew pot. The jazz hall reeks of garbage because garbage is dinner. And the alligator at the center of the plot has no motive more complicated than the one every other creature here has. Food is the currency, the motive, and the joke. Say it out loud at the table early — once the players get it, they start playing the neighborhood instead of fighting it.

The neighborhood's ruler sits behind a drum kit. The Hide-Hitter Crib Daddy, an oversized raccoon in a fedora and nothing else, keeps time for the whole district from his jazz-hall Boss Chamber. The tempo is not atmosphere — it's a dial, and it goes up. See GM Tip: The Tempo Runs the Neighborhood.

Underneath the music is the conflict that actually drives the place. A real, ordinary Mississippi Delta alligator named Ghost wandered into the World Dungeon and got handed a crawler number by mistake. He doesn't want a story arc; he wants to eat. Two people have built their remaining lives around him: Crawler Selina Poe, a marine biologist who will do anything to keep him alive, and Mad Driscoll, a Scat Thug folk hero who wants him dead.

Driscoll is the piece to get right, because he isn't a revenge plot — he's a succession crisis. The Toolkit says it in one throwaway line: he was supposed to be a Neighborhood Boss, but somebody changed his mind at the last minute and didn't finish him. Mad Driscoll is the unfinished boss. The Crib Daddy is the finished one, and he got the hall, the court, and — with females outnumbering males fifteen to one down here — every partner in the district. Driscoll hunts an alligator because he cannot hunt a raccoon. The leg is the excuse. The grudge is the job. Bring him into that jazz hall in Scene 6 and you are not adding a helpful NPC, you are walking the pretender back into court.

Three ways out of the Ghost problem, and each one costs something real: kill him for Driscoll's sword, save him for Selina's spear, or dose him with a Potion of Reptile Repose and use him. That third one is the best play in the adventure and it needs both Scene 2 and Scene 4 to assemble — see The Crate Plan.

Key NPCs at a Glance

Shaellian, Thornbound Wanderer (Guildmaster and Game Guide): A Level 50 High Elf who used to be a Sasquatch and regrets the trade. Forty-three cycles from an exit deal, openly resentful of the dungeon, the Syndicate, and most crawlers — but technically excellent, because a contract extension is worse. Advice comes out as harm reduction, never encouragement. Perks up, visibly, at any talk of explosives — and Mad Driscoll is the best bomb-maker on the floor. Shaellian wants his trap designs and will pay in real advice for them. Runs the Backbeat Guildhall, stays the party's Game Guide through Floor 3, and is reachable by chat. Book canon.

Pearl (Saferoom Protector): A Bopca Protector with a rag permanently over one shoulder, running the Dry Dock like a diner counter. Zero patience, dry as toast, answers in as few words as possible. What she wants: the shrimp shack had a hand-painted sign over the door before the Collapse and it's out there somewhere in the neighborhood; anyone who brings it back eats free and gets one honest answer about anything. She will not explain why she cares. GM invention — her examine text is the real Bopca Protector description from Book 1.

Selina Poe Deveraux (Crawler #9,329,440): Level 5 marine biologist, wiry, sun-weathered, permanently damp, magic spear and a net. She studied Ghost on the surface for two years and never named him out loud to a colleague. She followed him in. Her real motive, which she'll only say if pushed and only once: she is going to save something in her time, and this is the last available something. Owns an Enchanted Pet Carrier and an Enhanced Pet Biscuit meant for Ghost. Trades Potions of Healing for meat. Fights beside the party if they help her; turns on them if they help kill him; never fully forgives them if they use him.

Mad Driscoll, the Scat Hero (Level 6 NPC): Scarred, one-legged, master trapsmith, living legend, and the Neighborhood Boss nobody finished building. The job, the hall, and the entire female population of Bogbricks went to the Crib Daddy instead. He cannot say any of that out loud, so he says "the gator took my leg" a great deal, very loudly, to anyone who will listen. Helping him earns an enchanted longsword, optional Longsword training, and turns the Crib Daddy's own doormen against him. Turns on the party if they befriend Ghost. Play him at ninety percent swagger and ten percent something much worse underneath.

Ghost (Crawler #9,329,439): Level 7, Race: Alligator. A real animal off the Mississippi Delta with a crawler number and no concept of any of this. He is not a Mob, not a boss, and not an encounter — see Running Ghost in the Quick Reference. He is the biggest thing on this floor and the only character in the adventure who wants exactly one uncomplicated thing.

Hide-Hitter Crib Daddy (Neighborhood Boss, Level 7): An oversized raccoon in a blue fedora and a red tie, nothing else, drumming in a jazz hall full of Trash Princesses with a few Scat Thug hangers-on working the door. His drum kit doubles as a weapon rack. His musk carries Sepsis. He won the job Driscoll was built for and has never once had to think about it.

Prologue: Welcome to BogbricksAlready played

The party arrived, registered at the Backbeat Guildhall, met Shaellian, and found the Dry Dock. Menu, Health Bar, minimap, Mana pool, and the starter Heal Spell are all unlocked, and the Find a Tutorial Guild quest is complete. Loot boxes open at the Dry Dock and nowhere else.

Two Things to Retrofit

Shaellian and the explosives. Next time the party pings their Game Guide — and they will — have Shaellian bring it up unprompted. Somebody in this neighborhood is blowing holes in load-bearing brickwork with hand-built charges and Shaellian would very much like to know how. This is a standing offer: bring back a Driscoll trap design, or a description good enough to work from, and Shaellian answers one question honestly and completely instead of in harm-reduction sideways-speak. Cash it in for whatever the party most needs to know, including how the Boss fight actually works.

Pearl's sign. The first time they come back to the Dry Dock, Pearl is up a ladder looking at the blank rectangle of unfaded paint over the door where a sign used to be, and gets down without saying anything about it. If someone asks, she says "It was there." That's all. The sign is out in the neighborhood — put it wherever the party is least expecting scenery to matter, ideally half-sunk in Still Waters or nailed up in the Gaslamp Market as somebody's trade goods. See Key NPCs for what it buys.

Scene 1: The Gaslamp Market

The Theft

Let the player choose what they lost. Go to whoever's crawler is carrying the most personality and ask them which of their four possessions is currently in a raccoon's hand. It's a better scene than assigning it, and at Level 1 the answer tells you what that player cares about for the rest of the season.

A Weak group of 2–3 Scat Thugs did it. Three ways this goes, and all three are correct:

• Fight. They're on a balcony thirty feet up. Getting there means the pillars, which are the Romeo Render trap (Optional Scene): three rounds to climb, one to slide down, iron spikes into the hands each round on the pillar, no Skill Check. Print that rule now rather than improvising it — the whole point of the balcony is that the obvious answer hurts.
• Feed them. Any edible thing, offered up, ends it instantly. They will hand the item back and then try to sell it to the party again forty minutes later at the Market.
• Out-trap them. A crawler who disarms or negates one of their traps in spectacular fashion gets applause, a descent, and an excited conversation about trap theory — plus 1 free Rank in Detect Trap.

The Market

This is the neighborhood's economy and it runs on lunch. The Scat Thugs will trade anything on those counters for food, and they do not care how old it is. They cannot be paid in gold — nobody on Floor 1 has gold, a fact they have not yet been told and will not accept from a crawler. Rough exchange rates, adjust freely:

• Anything edible at all — safe passage, directions, gossip, and they'll point out one trap they set.
• A real meal (rations, Mana Toast, meat) — one piece of interesting garbage, or a random mundane weapon, or a low-tier potion.
• Several meals, or fresh meat — the good shelf. One item with a Silver Benefit, GM's choice, or a genuinely useful piece of information: where the deep water is, who the one-legged one is, which door upstairs is the loud one.
• Something they can eat that they have never seen before — this is the jackpot and it should be obvious when a player finds it. Whatever's behind the counter.

Pearl's sign can be hanging here as somebody's prize possession, priced absurdly, if you want the party to have to work for it.

Ask the Scat Thugs about the drums and they get shifty and change the subject to food. Ask about the one-legged one and half of them go quiet with respect and the other half laugh. Ask about the alligator and every one of them, without exception, stops talking.

Note: The first hit a crawler lands with any weapon completes Use a Weapon; the first Mob down completes Kill a Mob (with a bonus if it was done with feet). Award them in the AI's voice.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• A working sense of the combat round — two Actions, Mobs announce, crawlers choose to Evade
• The knowledge that untrained Skills roll with Disadvantage but still add the Stat Mod
• Food is money here, and they should stop eating their rations

The neighborhood opens up from here. Move to whichever of Scenes 2–4 the party heads toward.

Scene 2: Selina, AgainPartly played

Selina is a scientist and she is running out of the only thing she came here with, which is meat. Play her as competent, exhausted, and extremely careful about how much she asks for, because she has already worked out that the party can walk away.

What she wants, in order: meat, first and always — she'll pay Potions of Healing for it and she'll overpay. Then help getting Ghost into the Enchanted Pet Carrier, which she produces to make the point and which is very obviously too small until she demonstrates that it isn't. Then, if they've earned it, the truth.

Deliver this once and don't repeat it. If they push again, she deflects. This is the line that has to be in the room when they decide what to do with him.

Learning about Ghost. Crawlers who ask around — Selina, or the Scat Thugs if they've traded — make an Int Stat Check against an Escalating Difficulty. Reveal each fact whose Difficulty is met. Difficulty 8 — the "monster" everyone's talking about is a real alligator, not a Mob. Difficulty 12 — it has a crawler number, which shouldn't be possible. Difficulty 16 — a one-legged Scat Thug has sworn to kill it, half the neighborhood thinks he's a hero for it, and the other half will tell you, quietly, that he was supposed to be somebody much more important than that.

Standing in the water. This quarter is an ambush hunter's dream. A crawler who stands still in water feels something brush their leg; if they stay perfectly still, it moves on. If they do anything else, a Gobblin' Gator attacks, and the splash brings a Rayzer off the ceiling. Play the Gator's speed split hard — 10 + S on land, double in water. In the water it is the fastest thing in the room; two steps onto dry brick and it is the slowest, and it knows it, and it will not follow. The lesson is get out of the water, and it should be learnable in one round.

The party has already fought a Rayzer; the full block is in the Quick Reference if you need it again. Don't re-read the examine text — the AI doesn't repeat himself and neither should you.

Close the scene on this. Read it as they're leaving the water, after the last die has been picked up, and then start describing the next corridor without pausing.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• Escalating Difficulty — one roll, several thresholds, information distributed to whoever hits them
• Standing water in Bogbricks is never empty, and dry brick is a weapon
• A person they now owe something to, and the knowledge that she owns a box that fits an alligator

Move to whichever of Scene 3 or Scene 4 the party hasn't done.

Scene 3: Mad Driscoll's Hunt

Mad Driscoll wants Ghost dead and offers an enchanted longsword (two Silver-level bonuses — Randomized Magic Items, Atlas p. 26) for the party's help. Spend two hours with him and he also teaches one crawler 1 Rank in the Longsword Skill. Siding with him turns the Crib Daddy's doormen against the Boss in Scene 6 — and turns Selina hostile.

The hunt. Whether the party joins him or just walks the quarter, a Moderate group of Gnawtria charges out of a half-flooded path with a great squeal, going for ankles and faces. The noise rouses a Weak group of Rayzers from the riverbed. If Driscoll is with the party, he lays a trap mid-fight and 1d4 Gnawtria run straight into it — and he narrates his own trap out loud while it's happening, because of course he does.

Food beats fighting here too: a thrown ration buys one round from one Gnawtria. They come back. Raise the Tempo by 1 if this fight runs past three rounds.

The tunnels. After the fight, a crawler who investigates where the Gnawtria came from finds small holes that can be widened into tunnels big enough for an adult to crawl through. They spiral under the quarter and surface in dry spots, usually near saferooms — full of Gnawtria, but free of every other danger. Using the tunnels moves the party anywhere in Bogbricks without raising the Tempo. That is the reward: they get to arrive somewhere without the neighborhood knowing they're coming.

For Shaellian. A crawler who watches Driscoll build a trap and takes notes — an Int Check, or just saying they're paying attention — has something the Guildmaster wants. See Prologue: Two Things to Retrofit.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• Driscoll's offer, and a suspicion that the leg isn't really what this is about
• Armor Piercing ignores DR — the Gnawtria are the first Mob that punishes relying on gear
• A Mob's traps work for the party as easily as against them, and the tunnels are a way to move unheard

Move to whichever of Scene 2 or Scene 4 the party hasn't done — or, if they've decided, on to Scene 5.

Scene 4: The Sunken Chest

The chest is real and so is the guard: Rayzers and Gobblin' Gators lie in wait. A crawler diving for it takes the Drowning Debuff (1d6+1 at the end of each round) until their head is above water. Inside: a Potion of Reptile Repose, an enchanted flintlock pistol, and an enchanted eyepatch (each with one random Silver Benefit).

Ghost Surfaces

This is the moment. Run it slow. Every crawler who sees him gets the registry, and the achievement.

The Crate Plan

This is the best ending available in this adventure and the party has to build it themselves. Three things they may already have or can get:

• The Potion of Reptile Repose — from this chest. Lethargic and docile for up to 60 hours.
• The Enchanted Pet Carrier — Selina's, and she is not going to hand it over to people who won't say what they want it for.
• A way to get it into him — meat, Charisma, or Selina's Enhanced Pet Biscuit.

And the fact that makes it work, which is printed in the floor's own rules and which the party can learn from Shaellian, the Scat Thugs, or by paying attention: a Neighborhood Boss cannot leave his chamber. He has to stay in the room. Anything the party can carry into that room, he has to deal with.

So: dose a Level 7 apex predator, crate him, haul him across the neighborhood, and open the box in the jazz hall. The Crib Daddy's Downbeat is a 30 ft Sonic burst. A sonic blast is exactly what wakes a sleeping alligator.

Don't hint at this. Put the three pieces on the table and let them find it. If they get close — if somebody says "how big is that carrier, actually" — lean in. If they never find it, that's fine; the other endings work. But if they do find it, that's the story they tell about this campaign in two years.

What it costs. Selina hands over the carrier because she believes she is being helped. She is not stupid, and she finds out. Whatever the party does with Ghost in that hall, Selina watches them do it. Play the aftermath honestly (Epilogue) — she does not scream and she does not attack. She just stops talking to them, and that should be worse.

Mad Driscoll, if he learns about it, is delighted, right up until he understands the gator is coming out of the box alive.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• Drowning, and the fact that Debuffs keep ticking until the condition ends
• How Silver-level enchantments are rolled or chosen (Atlas, p. 26) — loot boxes still only open at the Dry Dock
• An animal in their heads that neither of the people fighting over him has ever actually met

Move to any unfinished part of the sandbox, or on to Scene 5: Tribute or Trouble.

Intermission: Crawler Advancement

Run this at the two-hour mark, wherever the party happens to be — the Dry Dock is ideal, but a quiet stretch of tunnel works. Each crawler attempts Skill Advancement Checks where applicable, then gains Rank 1 in one Skill they used untrained during the block. If a Skill reaches Rank 5, look up its Rank 5 Upgrade in Crawlers & Customization. No Stat points are spent until Floor 3.

This is also a good moment for the neighborhood's first broadcast. Read it flat and tired, like someone reading a memo they didn't write.

GM note: that voice is Cascadia. Your crawlers don't know that and won't for a long time. Don't name her. And note what it establishes — nobody is watching Floor 1 live, so nobody is coming to help, and the only thing at stake in the party's performance is whether they make the highlight reel Borant cuts afterward. That's the pressure on this floor. It is not fame. It is being edited.

Optional Scene: Bricks from Above

Use one or two of these if the party is ahead of pace, or drop one into any scene where they get cocky. Skip the whole thing if you're running long. Every one of them raises the Tempo by 1.

• Bricktop Barrage (Gaslamp District) — a tripwire or weight plate drops blue-painted bricks from the balconies. Anyone who doesn't clear the space risks being buried.
• Pothole Plot (Cypress Halls, Vibrant Walls) — a sturdy-looking floor gives way. A leg breaks if the crawler fails to catch themself; the noise brings Mobs if they don't climb out fast.
• Shadowfall (Cypress Halls, Gaslamp) — the wrong brick blows out every lantern. Scat Thugs attack in the dark for two rounds while gas fills the area; on the third round they withdraw and light it.
• Romeo Render (any balcony) — the pillars hide spikes that pop out under a hand. Three rounds to climb, one to slide down, damage each round on the pillar. This is also the rule for Scene 1's balcony.
• Early Rayzer (any saferoom exit) — a Rayzer bedded down on the doorstep gets stepped on; a second drops from the lintel in the pandemonium.
• The Paddle Thieves (Still Waters) — the party builds a raft out of the floating pallets and driftwood, which is genuinely clever and works. Then Gobblin' Gators tear the paddles out of their hands and swim off with them, leaving five Level 1 crawlers becalmed in deep water while Rayzers drop in from the ceiling. Let the good idea work first. That's what makes it funny.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out understanding that the neighborhood itself is a Mob — high places, low places, dark places and open water are all loaded.

Return to wherever the party was, or on to Scene 5: Tribute or Trouble.

Scene 5: Tribute or Trouble

The explosive deals 1d6 Bludgeoning to anyone who doesn't move away. As it goes off, a Moderate group of Riff Roughers rappel down on ropes, cutlasses in hand, knives in their teeth. One steps forward and demands gold in exchange for the party's lives.

The Door

Hundreds of identical doors line the upper walkway. Most are silent. One isn't.

Set the Tempo to 4 here, at the door, and run the monotone. This is the one time in the adventure the drums stop being music.

A crawler who plugs or covers their ears suffers no ill effects. A crawler who doesn't gains the Terrified Debuff. Don't warn them. Describe it, then wait for someone to say what they're doing.

Resting. The Dry Dock is a walk back through Gaslamp and it's still open — the party can absolutely go rest, open loot boxes, and come back, and they should if they're beaten up. Two things to say out loud when they consider it: the trip costs about four hours, and the drums do not stop for anyone. Tempo does not come down.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• Cones and Area attacks hit everyone in the shape — spread out
• The drums are a map, and the map is now shouting
• A decision about who they're bringing, and whether there's an alligator in the luggage

When they open that door, move to Scene 6: Boss Battle — The Jazz Hall.

The court is Trash Princesses; the Scat Thugs are doormen and hangers-on. This matters in the Driscoll branch below, and it's why the AI calls them his "troop."

Time stops for everyone but the beat. The Crib Daddy's image pops into view with a menu behind it; the crawlers' portraits and names appear as if they were items on it. Read this in your loudest AI voice:

How it plays. The Trash Princesses run interference — body-blocking, Seducing, Thunderclapping crawlers away from the stage — until the Crib Daddy takes real damage. Then they frenzy: attacking crawlers, and each other, because why waste a chance to thin out the breeding competition. At Tempo 4 they start frenzied.

Opening the Crate

If the party carried a sedated Level 7 alligator into a room the boss is not allowed to leave, give them the moment. Let them set the carrier down. Let somebody say something. Then:

Running it. Ghost wakes on the boss's first Sonic attack — or at the end of round two if the Crib Daddy is clever enough not to use it, in which case he was always going to lose. From then on Ghost acts at the top of each round, uncontrolled, and goes for whatever is closest, loudest, and meatiest. Statistically that is a Trash Princess, then another Trash Princess, then a raccoon with drumsticks. He removes one Mob per round without a roll. He does not distinguish between the party's enemies and the party. He will take a crawler who stands between him and the stage.

Do not fudge this. The plan is brilliant and the plan is stupid, and both halves have to be true at the table or it doesn't mean anything.

Fires when the party kills him after breaking his focus — the kit taken, Driscoll's musk, or an alligator in the room. Not on a straight slugging match.

Fires for Mad Driscoll. If the party is the reason he dies in this room — including by bringing him here — read it slowly.

Moving On

If it landed, they walked out with:

• Boss fights have a mechanism, not just a Health Bar — here it was the kit
• Every choice they made in the sandbox showed up in this room, as people, not as a difficulty setting
• The Neighborhood Map, and loot boxes that still only open at the Dry Dock

Move to the Epilogue.

Epilogue & Aftermath

With the Crib Daddy down, the drums stop for the first time since the party arrived — Tempo 0, everywhere in Bogbricks at once — and the silence is worse. Somewhere out in Gaslamp a Scat Thug drops something. The Boss drops a Neighborhood Map, revealing the rest of Bogbricks and its Mobs on the minimap, and completes the Defeat a Boss tutorial quest. Any Trash Princesses still alive scatter.

• Selina and Ghost survive: Selina stays a contact — she'll trade healing for meat for the rest of the floor, and Ghost surfaces at the worst possible moments to eat something the party was fighting.
• Mad Driscoll survives: the Scat Thugs treat the party as friends of the Scat Hero; Gaslamp traps are marked for them, the Market gives them the good shelf, and Driscoll starts telling a story about the jazz hall in which he did rather more of the work. Let him have it.
• They used Ghost: Selina is alive, and she does not attack them, and she does not shout. She takes the empty carrier back without a word and walks off into Still Waters looking for him. She'll still trade — she needs the meat — and she will never once meet their eyes again. Ghost, if he lived, does not care and never did.
• Nobody's side: Bogbricks is neutral ground. No allies, no enemies, every door still open, and a neighborhood that will deal with them on the merits next time. Say this out loud; it's a real outcome, not a failure state.
• Both are dead or hostile: the neighborhood's white dots go red. Bogbricks is done with them, and so are its people.

Threads that travel. Shaellian wants that trap design and will keep asking. Pearl's sign, if it's still out there, is still out there. And the AI has noticed them now — one line, dry, delivered as they take the stairs:

The floor rearranges itself and the way out of Bogbricks points toward Neighborhood 2, Serving Warrens. The party has a little over four days left on the clock.

Items

Potion of Reptile Repose: Inky blue. A reptile that drinks it is lethargic and docile for up to 60 hours. (Scene 4 chest.) One third of The Crate Plan.

Enchanted Pet Carrier and Enhanced Pet Biscuit: Selina's. The carrier is bigger inside than out and will hold a sedated alligator; the biscuit works on any Animal-type Mob in a pinch. The other two thirds of The Crate Plan — and she has to choose to hand them over.

Enchanted Longsword: Two Silver-level bonuses (Atlas, p. 26). Mad Driscoll's reward for helping kill Ghost; two hours of his time also buys 1 Rank in Longsword for one crawler.

Enchanted Flintlock Pistol and Enchanted Eyepatch: One random Silver Benefit each. (Scene 4 chest.)

Potions of Healing: Selina trades several for meat, and overpays.

Food: the neighborhood's actual currency. Rations, Mana Toast, anything out of a Food Box, anything the party is willing to stop eating. See GM Tip: Everything Here Is Hungry.

Pearl's sign: a hand-painted shrimp-shack board, out there somewhere. Buys free food at the Dry Dock and one honest answer.

Neighborhood Map: Boss drop. Reveals Bogbricks in full on the minimap.

Scavenge: patio chairs and ornate rockers on the Gaslamp balconies; endless orange construction barriers and traffic cones; floating boat planks and pallets in Still Waters (they do make a raft, and see The Paddle Thieves); signage of every kind.

Adapting This Adventure

Sandbox and Pacing

Scenes 2–4 are order-free and skippable, but Scenes 2 and 4 together are the ingredients for The Crate Plan, so if the party is circling, put the water in front of them. If they're meandering, that's the design — nudge with Shaellian's chat messages, the Ghost inserts, or the Tempo, not with walls. If they're racing, run the Optional Scene, pull a seed off the Toolkit's Bogbricks Grinding Complications table (p. 22 — the crawler firing a rifle over everyone's heads about ghosts in the water is a scene in itself), or let Mad Driscoll and Selina arrive at the same time and argue.

Tone

The novels run genuinely dark under the comedy — body horror, a running death toll, sharp reality-TV satire — with jokes layered over real stakes. The lever that makes this neighborhood hit harder is not more violence in the encounters; it's the Ghost inserts, the fact that nobody is watching Floor 1 live, and letting Mad Driscoll be sad in exactly one sentence. Everything else can stay funny.

What's Canon and What's Yours

The neighborhood, its Mobs, its traps, its quarters, its achievements, Selina, Mad Driscoll, Ghost, and the Hide-Hitter Crib Daddy are all from the Game Master's Campaign Toolkit (pp. 17–27). Shaellian is the Toolkit's sample Guildmaster, slotted in here.

GM inventions: the Backbeat Guildhall and the Dry Dock as named places; Pearl as an individual, and her missing sign; the Gaslamp Market as a location (the Toolkit gives the trade willingness and the gutted shopfronts, but not the scene); the Tempo track; The Crate Plan; the Ghost inserts; the Trash Princess and Shaellian examine blurbs; and the "First Blood Last Brain Cell," "Craft Services," and "Pack Mule of the Apocalypse" achievements. Reskin any of it freely.

Rulings made here that the Toolkit leaves open: Trash Princess Seduction has no to-hit in the source — it's run here as an auto-applying Cone with the free Int Check, capped once per combat per the in-fiction broadcast. Ghost has no stat block anywhere, deliberately; see Running Ghost. And the Toolkit's Boss examine text says "his troop of Scat Thugs" while the room description lists Trash Princesses — resolved here by giving him both, Princesses as court and Scat Thugs on the door, which also makes the Driscoll branch work.

Corrected from the source: the Riff Roughers demand gold on a floor whose own rules say crawlers don't get gold. Kept, and played as the joke it should always have been.

Shaellian's examine blurb makes an invented comparative claim about what a Thornbound Wanderer is. Replace it if the real class text turns up.

Canon Alignment Notes

Checked against the novels. These are epub editions with no fixed page numbers, so citations are by chapter.

Nobody is watching Floor 1. "Apparently the first level of the dungeon was off-limits to live viewers, so these stats wouldn't move until I descended to the second floor. However, Borant would release an edited highlights reel over the next day or so" (Book 1, Ch. 6). The Toolkit agrees: only Borant personnel and the press can view this floor. There are also no sponsors this early — "nobody sponsors a crawler earlier than the fourth floor now" (Book 1, Ch. 44). The broadcasts and the epilogue here are written to that: the pressure on Floor 1 is the edit, not the audience.

Game Guides. Mordecai: "When a dungeon first opens, I work in a guild such as this. Later on, after the third floor collapses, my room here is transported to a much-deeper level, and my form is changed again" (Book 1, Ch. 3). Shaellian runs the guildhall, doubles as Game Guide, and their role changes at Floor 3. Game Guides can't explain Race & Class Selection until the halfway point of Floor 2 (Book 1, Ch. 44). Nothing here contradicts that; Shaellian never travels with the party.

The AI's two registers. On first entering Floor 1 the welcome voice is "overly enthusiastic, almost like a game show host" (Book 1, Ch. 2); a Boss Battle makes the AI "louder than usual… like an announcer" (Book 1, Ch. 11). The Boss reveal follows the shape of that scene.

Cascadia. The periodic "Hello Crawlers" broadcasts are delivered by a Dungeon Admin named Cascadia — never named in Book 1 or Book 2. The "…kill, kill, kill" sign-off is hers, not the AI's. Performed here as an anonymous voice.

Bopca Protectors. Pearl's examine text is the general Bopca Protector description from Tally's introduction (Book 1, Ch. 9), with only the name, level, and role line changed. Her Level 47 is a GM pick (Tally is 63; Mordecai and Shaellian are 50).

Floor 1's theme. The novels' Floor 1 is a patchwork of unrelated neighborhoods — goblins, rat-kin, gnolls, scatterer bugs, a Hoarder Boss — so a swamp-jazz raccoon neighborhood next to Serving Warrens' rat-kin is exactly the format, not a departure from it.

Open Decisions

• Achievement rewards list box type only — fill contents from the loot tables or the Achievement Library.
• Andrew's crawler concept is still undecided; nothing here depends on it.
• Whether Ghost lives is genuinely open. Don't decide before the table does.

Plot Threads Seeded

• Whichever of Selina, Mad Driscoll, and Ghost survives — and how they feel about the party — carries into the rest of Floor 1. Selina-who-was-used is the most interesting version of her.
• Shaellian still wants a Driscoll trap design, and remains the party's Game Guide through Floor 3, reachable by chat.
• Pearl's sign is unfinished business the party can come back for.
• The edit. Whatever the party did in Bogbricks, the highlights package goes out tomorrow, and what Borant chose to keep is a thing the AI can mention later.
• The Cascadia broadcasts can seed a later reveal of who's actually been talking, if you want one.
• The Neighborhood Map gives the party a head start into Serving Warrens.

Sources: Rules for Survival, Crawlers & Customization, Atlas: Tutorial Floors, and the Game Master's Campaign Toolkit (Bogbricks writeup, pp. 17–27; sample Guildmaster Shaellian) — Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game; Dungeon Crawler Carl (Book 1) and Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Book 2) by Matt Dinniman for voice and mechanics alignment. Layout modeled on the Starter Set scenario Par for the Course; no text from it is reproduced here.