Table of Contents
Where This Sits
Paradise Acres is an original neighborhood built to sit between the Goblin neighborhood Elsie and Madisen are leaving and the Starter Set's Par for the Course, which this table is running next. It uses two Toolkit Mobs (the Bad Llama and the Chilly Goat), the Atlas's own one-paragraph description of a Bad Llama Neighborhood, and a Boss of our own. It ends with the two of them walking a crowd of elderly people toward a saferoom, which is exactly where the next scenario opens.
- The Goblin Pass is a tattoo, and it gets them in and nothing else. In the novels it's a goblin skull the System brands onto the crawler when the pass is awarded — Carl's on his left inner forearm, Donut's over her shoulder blade — and it "cannot be hidden unless you purchase a coverup sleeve" and "will show through any armor you may wear." It removes automatic goblin hostility and allows free passage through goblin territory; it also makes fairy-class Mobs deal 20% more damage to the bearer (Book 1). It cannot be handed over, sold, or lost. The Bad Llamas read it the way the Goblins do, as far as their gate, because the Goblins are their best customers and anyone the Goblins let through is somebody's customer. Inside the park it's a discount on drugs and a lot of pointed looks. The Boss can't take it. What he can do is hire the arm it's on, and that is the neighborhood's real bargaining chip.
- Two crawlers, Level 4–5. The Adversary Power table (Toolkit p. 13) says a party of two treats one Mob as Weak, two as Moderate, three as Strong, four or more as Overwhelming. Every group below is sized to that column. Both of them are around 30 HP with little or no DR and no ranged Skill; the Llamas have a 30-foot fireball, so terrain matters more than usual.
- The theme is the mechanic. Everybody here is cooking something. The Llamas cook meth. The meth is cooked from the residents' prescriptions. The lab is cooled by Chilly Goats chained to the wall. The whole park runs on propane, and the Llamas breathe fire. Every one of those sentences is a lever, and the Boss fight is the room where they all pull at once. See GM Tip: The Lab Is the Fight.
- The Boss is Tuco. Not by name — his name is Tuco Guanaco, a strung-out mutated camelid in a velour tracksuit with a gold grille and a temper — but by shape: the affable, unpredictable, product-sampling kingpin who kills his own lieutenant mid-sentence to make a point. Play the stereotype as the dungeon's joke about the genre, in the AI's voice; the AI is the one who finds him funny.
- Mordecai is on the chat. He's their Game Guide, he knows what a Bad Llama is, and he has opinions about standing near propane.
- Nobody is watching Floor 1 live. The AI's talk of ratings is about the edit Borant cuts afterward. No Popularity, no sponsors.
Quick Reference
Every stat block in this scenario, resolved for Floor 1 (the Toolkit prints Surprise, Evade, and to-hit as X+F; F is the Floor number, folded in here) and sized for two crawlers. Move keeps its "+ S": S is the relevant movement Skill Rank, added when that Skill applies. Unopposed Skill Checks are Difficulty 12 here, Stat Checks 11, and social Checks are Opposed: 10 + the target's Stat Mod + 1.
Combat in one breath (Combat, Rules for Survival p. 30): two Actions a round; Mobs announce attacks and crawlers choose whether to spend an Action to Evade; an attack hits on 1d20 + Skill Rank + Stat Mod against the Mob's Evade; untrained Skills roll with Disadvantage but still add the Stat Mod (p. 12). Debuffs are on p. 45. Burning is 1d10+1 Fire at the end of each round until a Dex Stat Check vs 11 puts it out. Take Down is prone: attacks against you have Advantage until you spend your Step to stand.
This neighborhood's pressure points: Bad Llama spit is Fire, and everything in Paradise Acres is flammable — propane tanks on every lot, a lab full of fumes. Chilly Goats take double from Fire, so a Llama and a Goat on the same side is a Goat that's about to die by friendly fire. A Llama can be killed in one hit through the Bad Reflux pouch, but only in a round it's spitting, and only against a higher Evade. And the Boss's cooling is three chained Goats; take the cold away and the batch spoils, and he cares about the batch more than he cares about you.
Bad Llama
Mob; Large (5), Mutated
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 12 | 14 | 20 + S | 2 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 (+2) | 1 (+1) | 3 (+2) | 6 (+3) | 1 (+1) |
Lava Spit: 14 to hit, 1d8+3 Fire, 30ft range
On an Evade Major Fail or worse, the target gains the Burning Debuff.
Kick: 13 to hit, 1d6+2 Bludgeoning, 5ft range (GM addition — what a Llama does when it can't spit)
Notes: Bad Reflux — attacks can target the lava pouch in the Llama's throat during rounds when it uses Lava Spit, at +2 to the Llama's Evade (16). Any damage to the pouch ruptures it, killing the Llama and setting its corpse aflame. A burning corpse is a Fire source for anything that cares about Fire sources. Won't Spit Indoors — inside the Cook Trailer a Llama Kicks instead; it knows what the fumes do.
Chilly Goat
Mob; Petite (3), Fanged Goat
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 12 | 13 | 20 + S | 1 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 (+2) | 1 (+1) | 6 (+3) | 4 (+2) | 1 (+1) |
Horns: 13 to hit, 1d6+2 Piercing, 5ft range
Fangs: 12 to hit, 1d4+3 Piercing, 5ft range
Icy Aura: 12 to hit, 1d6+3 Ice, 15ft Burst radius, once every three rounds
Notes: Already Chilly — immune to Cold damage. Prefers Being Chilly — Fire deals ×2 damage. Chained (the three in the lab) — muzzled and shackled; no Horns, no Fangs, but the Aura still pulses every third round whether it wants to or not, and it hits everyone within 15ft, chains or no chains.
Tuco Guanaco, Kingpin of Paradise Acres
Neighborhood Boss; Large (5), Mutated
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 13 | 15 | 30 + S | 1 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 (+3) | 3 (+2) | 9 (+3) | 10 (+4) | 6 (+3) |
Crystal Spit: 15 to hit, 1d8+4 Fire, 30ft range
Product-laced and blue. On an Evade Major Fail or worse, the target gains the Burning Debuff. He will spit indoors. He does not care.
Tight! Tight! Tight!: 15 to hit, 2d6+3 Bludgeoning, 5ft range
A two-hoofed stomp, delivered while screaming. On an Evade Major Fail or worse, the target gains the Take Down Debuff.
Notes: Wired — he's on his own product and it shows. At the top of every round, roll 1d6 where the players can see it. On a 1 he loses it: his first Action is spent on the nearest Bad Llama (dead, one hoof), or screaming at the ceiling, or Crystal Spit at whoever spoke last, wherever he happens to be standing. On a 6 he takes a third Action this round. Anything else, he's merely Tuco. Product Over People — while any vat is boiling over (The Lab), he spends one Action every round trying to save the batch, and he takes no Fire damage doing it because he doesn't notice. The Comedown — once the batch is lost, Wired ends, he gains the Fatigued Debuff (−1 on everything, Move halved to 15), his attacks hit on 13, and his throat goes back to being a throat: Bad Reflux applies to him, at Evade 15 in spit rounds, and a rupture costs him 3 Health Bar slots and the Burning Debuff instead of killing him outright. Bound to the Lot — Floor 1 Boss; he will not leave the Cook Trailer's lot.
Nodoff
Bad Llama; Tuco's lieutenant. Same block as a Bad Llama, with a Cha of 3 (+2) and a mouth that won't stop.
Heavy-lidded, pink-eyed, wearing a Full Throttle promotional visor. He runs the Clubhouse, he talks too much, and in Scene 5 he says one thing too many. Opposed social Checks against him are Difficulty 13. He can be argued into almost anything except crossing Tuco, and he will tell you that himself, sadly, several times.
Team Hollyhock
Twenty-four residents of Hollyhock Manor, Level 1, and three staff. Non-combatants. No stat block.
They are scenery with names, and three of them are on a clock: Mrs. Okafor (insulin), Mr. Petrakis (heart), and Lenny (seizures), whose medication is in a rolling cart on Tuco's folding table. Dev says "a few hours" and means it. Rosie Q is one of the residents. She is the one humming.
Overview
Paradise Acres is what the dungeon built when somebody fed it the phrase "trailer park": a horseshoe of dee-luxe mobile homes around a gravel loop, a community clubhouse with a bingo board, a chain-link goat pen, and, at the far end, a double-wide with its walls knocked out and a plume coming off it that smells like cat piss and burnt sugar. Burger King wrappers and empty cans of Full Throttle blow across the lots. Every trailer has a propane tank. Every third one has a dog that isn't a dog.
The Bad Llamas run it. Six-foot anthropomorphic camelids in tracksuits and gold chains, purveyors of the most powerful drugs on the floor, who love good music and a good buzz and will spit a fireball at anyone who won't buy. The Goblins next door are their best customers; the Goblin checkpoint the party just walked through is, from the Llamas' side, a drive-through window.
Everybody here is cooking something, and that's the whole neighborhood in four words. The product is cooked in the double-wide from precursor the Llamas don't have to make, because two days ago a crowd of elderly humans wandered in from the hallways pushing a rolling pharmacy. Hollyhock Manor's residents are being held in the Clubhouse, alive and mostly unhurt, because to a Llama an old person with a prescription is a renewable resource. The batch is kept from boiling over by three Chilly Goats chained to the lab wall, whose Icy Aura is the only refrigeration on Floor 1. And the whole operation belongs to Tuco Guanaco, who samples every batch, loves his people, and kills them when they talk.
The party's job is simple and the neighborhood makes it complicated: get the residents out, get their medicine back, and get everyone to a saferoom before three of them die of the ordinary things old people die of. The medicine is on the Boss's table. The Boss's table is in the lab. The lab is a bomb.
Three plants for what comes next. Rosie Q is one of the residents, and she meets the party here. A dead crawler in the Rows is holding a note that Rosie has read and the party can't. And a man in cowboy boots is following the Hollyhock crowd and should be seen exactly once, at a distance, and not caught. None of it pays off tonight. All of it pays off in Par for the Course.
GM Tip: Three Boxes, Three Voices
Blue dotted boxes are you narrating the scene. Green AI boxes are the System AI — examine text, creature reveals, the Boss Battle announcement, achievements. Dry and bored by default; full game-show host for the Boss reveal. Amber SYS boxes are floor-wide broadcasts in a different, tired, administrative voice. Never mix two speakers inside one box. The Bad Llama and Chilly Goat examine text is the Toolkit's own, reproduced as written; Tuco's is ours.
Floor 1 is a tutorial floor. Untrained Skill Checks roll with Disadvantage but still add the Stat Mod; write down every Skill either of them attempts untrained and hand out 1 free Rank at the Intermission. No Stat points get spent until Floor 3.
GM Tip: Everything Here Burns
Fire is the neighborhood's currency and it spends both ways. Keep these in front of you all night:
- Propane tanks. One on every lot, most of them by the trailer's back step. Any Fire damage to a tank sets it off: 2d6 Fire in a 10ft Burst, no to-hit, Evade vs 13 for half. A tank is an object; hitting one deliberately is a 10. Llamas spit Fire. Llamas near propane are a hazard to everybody, and the players should work that out by round two of the first fight.
- Chilly Goats take double from Fire. A Llama's Lava Spit does 1d8+3; against a Goat that's 2d8+6, which kills one from full. The Goats know this and hate the Llamas for it. If the party can put a Goat between themselves and a Llama, or a Llama between themselves and a Goat, they should be rewarded for it.
- The lab is full of fumes. Any Fire inside the Cook Trailer flashes them. The Llamas won't spit in there. Tuco will. Madisen has a lighter on her sheet.
- Burning corpses count. A Llama killed through the pouch goes up like a torch and stays lit for the rest of the fight. That's a Fire source you can push things into.
The one thing this buys you: when a player asks "what happens if I light that," the answer in this neighborhood is always something, and it should feel like a discovery, not a GM being generous.
Key NPCs at a Glance
Tuco Guanaco (Neighborhood Boss, Level 7): Seven feet of mutated camelid in a maroon velour tracksuit, a gold grille, three chains, and a bloodshot look that never settles on anything for more than a second. Warm, generous, funny, and a hair-trigger away from stomping a friend to death for a joke that didn't land. He samples every batch — "quality control" — and it's why his spit is blue and his hands shake. What he wants: a mule with goblin ink. A crawler wearing a Goblin Pass walks through the Goblin checkpoint as a customer, not a supplier, and the Goblins' tax on his product goes away. He has wanted one since the day the neighborhood opened, and he'll trade almost anything for a run, including the medicine, right up until his die comes up 1. He has also heard that on deeper floors people move passes with a knife. He is wrong about that. He doesn't know he's wrong. Play him at 70% hospitality and 30% something the players should be genuinely afraid of, and let the Wired die decide which one they're getting.
Nodoff (Lieutenant): Tuco's number two, a sleepy-eyed Bad Llama who runs the Clubhouse and does most of the talking Tuco doesn't want to do. Loyal, dim, chatty, and doomed; he dies in Scene 5 for saying the wrong thing, and the party should have liked him a little by then. If they've made a deal with him, Tuco doesn't know about it, and Nodoff is about to tell him.
Dev (Hollyhock staff): A big, exhausted man in scrubs with a name tag, the one of the three staff who does the talking. He slipped out of the Clubhouse to find help and found the party. He knows every resident's name, medication, and dose, and he is the one who says "a few hours" and means it. He'll carry anyone, fight nothing, and never leave the residents again once he's back with them.
Rosie Q (Crawler #9,330,787): A resident. Green cardigan, torn skirt, silver hair in a makeshift bun, glasses on the end of her nose, and better posture than anyone else in the room. She's the one keeping the Clubhouse calm by humming, and she has read something she can't stop thinking about: a note in a dead crawler's hand, out in the Rows, that she only got halfway through before a Llama shoved her along. She is introduced here and spent in the next scenario. Let her be warm, let her ask a crawler about their favorite band if there's time, and do not let her remember what the note said. See Par for the Course, Prologue.
Mordecai (Game Guide): Their Guildmaster and Game Guide, reachable by chat through either of them. Blunt, tired, an ex-crawler. He knows exactly what a Bad Llama is and his first message on the subject is "don't stand near the propane." He has strong feelings about crawlers walking a crowd of civilians through a Mob neighborhood and he'll share them.
Grib (Goblin buyer): A Goblin in a puffer vest with a shopping list, waiting at the gate for his order. Optional. He knows the layout, the prices, and which trailer is the lab, and he'll say so for a very small bribe, because the Llamas have been late.
The man in cowboy boots: Seen once. Not named. Bootcut jeans, a UFO tattoo if anyone's close enough, ducking behind a trailer when the crowd moves. If the party chases him he's gone, and Mordecai can't see him on any map. He is Derrick Qu, and he is Par for the Course's problem.
Prologue: The Goblin Pass
The last Goblin checkpoint is a card table across the hallway with two bored Goblins behind it and a hand-lettered sign: INK ONLY. NO REFUNDS. One of them takes your arm without asking, turns it to the light, looks at the goblin skull the System burned into it, and lets go. "Llama side," he says, and jerks a thumb down the hall. "Don't buy the blue. And don't tell 'em we said that."
The hallway beyond changes. The lichen on the walls goes from green to a sick yellow-white. The air gets sweet, then sour, then both — burnt sugar and cat piss and something underneath it like a hot battery. Somewhere ahead a bass line thumps out of a car stereo, and a dog that is not a dog starts barking.
Tell them what the pass is, plainly, because the rest of the night turns on it. It's a tattoo: a goblin skull the System branded onto each of them wherever it landed, glowing faintly, showing through any sleeve or armor, and not coming off without a coverup sleeve they don't own. Goblins won't attack them while they wear it, Goblin merchants discount them, and fairy-class Mobs — none here, but someday — hit them 20% harder for it. It has just been read, not stamped, by a Goblin who is a customer of the people they're about to meet. What it means to a Bad Llama, they'll find out at the gate.
Mordecai, if they ping him or if he pings them, has three things to say and says them in order: Bad Llamas spit fire at thirty feet, so get close or get cover; there's a soft spot in the throat when they're spitting, and it's worth a swing at a worse number; and don't, under any circumstances, stand near the propane.
The hallway opens onto a gravel loop under a ceiling painted like a sky that never got finished. A wooden arch reads PARADISE ACRES — A COMMUNITY — LOT RENT DUE THE 1ST, and under it, in fresher paint, NO SOLICITORS NO COPS NO CROAKERS. Beyond the arch: a horseshoe of mobile homes, a clubhouse with a satellite dish, a chain-link pen with something white and horned moving inside it, and, at the far end, a double-wide with its side ripped open and a column of yellow smoke going up out of it like a signal.
A Goblin in a puffer vest is sitting on a cooler by the arch, checking a wristwatch that doesn't work. He looks up. "You're not my guy."
Moving On
Before moving on, make sure the players know:
- What the Goblin Pass is — a brand, not a card — and what it does and doesn't do
- That the Llamas breathe fire, and where the propane is
- That the smoke at the far end is the thing the whole neighborhood is about
Move to Scene 1: Lot Rent as soon as anyone walks under the arch.
Scene 1: Lot Rent
A screen door bangs open on the nearest trailer and a big man in scrubs comes down the steps at a dead run, arms full of somebody's cardigan, shouting "GO GO GO" at nobody. Behind him, filling the doorway, is a llama. Seven feet of fuzz in a track jacket, gold chain, and the throat under its jaw is glowing like a stove element. It sees you. It sees the goblin skull glowing on your arm.
"Yo," it says, in a voice like a wet cough. "You buying, or what."
A Weak group: one Bad Llama, and it isn't sure yet whether this is a fight. The ink buys the party one exchange. If they say they're buying, it names a price (anything shiny; gold if they have it) and, while they're paying, Dev has reached them and is talking fast. If they say they aren't, or they say anything about the man in scrubs, its throat flares and it spits.
Run the fight for the lesson. The Llama opens at range from the doorway. Its Lava Spit is 30 feet; the nearest cover is the trailer's own propane tank by the back step, which is the worst cover in the world. Let a player pick it and then let the Llama's next spit go wide and hit the tank. 2d6 Fire, 10ft Burst, Evade vs 13 for half — and it hits the Llama too if it's within 10 feet, which, from a doorway with a tank by the step, it usually is. Then say: its throat is glowing. If somebody swings at that, right now, it's a 16 instead of a 14, and if it connects, that's the end of the Llama. That is the Bad Reflux rule, and this is the scene where they learn it.
Bad Llama, Level 3
It may look fuzzy and cuddly, but if you try to pet it, you'll lose an arm in the process. It's a Bad Llama—kind of like a normal Llama, but bad!
Purveyors of some of the most powerful drugs in the dungeon, these adorable rapscallions love two things: good music and a good buzz. Their parties are pretty lit, but don't think they're all fuzz and games; if you see their throats glowing red, it means they're about to spit a fireball in your direction! Maybe you should just drop your money and make a break for it.
Bad Llama
Mob; Large (5), Mutated
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 12 | 14 | 20 + S | 2 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 (+2) | 1 (+1) | 3 (+2) | 6 (+3) | 1 (+1) |
Lava Spit: 14 to hit, 1d8+3 Fire, 30ft — Burning Debuff on an Evade Major Fail or worse
Kick: 13 to hit, 1d6+2 Bludgeoning, 5ft
Notes: Bad Reflux — the pouch, at Evade 16, in spit rounds; any damage kills it and lights the corpse. Won't Spit Indoors.
Achieve-
ment!
"You punched a llama in the throat while it was mid-fireball and it went off like a road flare. I'd say that was a calculated risk, but I've seen your Int score, so let's call it a lucky guess and move on."
Reward: You've received a Bronze Antacid Box!
First Llama killed through the pouch, by either of them, tonight. Contents: 1d10 gold, a Healing Potion (5 slots), and a roll of chalky tablets that cure the Burning Debuff when eaten, three times.
Dev
Whether the Llama is dead, paid, or fled, Dev is standing in front of them with the cardigan, breathing hard, and he does not stop talking until someone makes him.
"Okay. Okay. You're — you're not with them. Okay. I'm Dev, I'm — Hollyhock Manor, I'm staff, we've got twenty-four residents in that clubhouse, the llamas have had us two days, they took the med cart, they took the whole cart, and I've got Mrs. Okafor on insulin and Mr. Petrakis on a beta blocker and Lenny — Lenny has seizures, and we've got maybe a few hours before that stops being a sentence I get to say calmly." He holds up the cardigan like it explains something. "This is Rosie's. She sent me. She said somebody would come. She's — she's a little like that."
What Dev knows, and will tell them in any order they ask: the residents are in the Clubhouse, guarded, alive. The cart is in the double-wide at the end, on the big one's table; the big one is called Tuco, and the Llamas are afraid of him in a way that isn't about the fire. The white things in the pen are goats, and the Llamas take them into the double-wide in pairs and bring them back shivering. The one who runs the Clubhouse is named Nodoff and "you can talk to him, he'll talk to anybody, it just doesn't go anywhere." And there's a man who's been following the Hollyhock crowd since the stairs — cowboy boots, keeps his distance, ran when the Llamas came. Dev thinks he's a resident's family. Dev is not sure.
Dev will go wherever the party goes and carry whatever they hand him. He will not fight. If they tell him to wait, he waits exactly as long as it takes him to decide they've been gone too long.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- A Llama's range, its throat, and what propane is for
- Twenty-four people, three of them on a clock, and a cart to find
- Two names: Nodoff, who talks, and Tuco, who doesn't have to
Scene 2: The Rows
The trailers sit in two rows facing each other across the gravel, close enough that you could throw a beer from one porch to the next, and by the look of the porches people have. Clotheslines. Kiddie pools full of something green. A Camaro on blocks with the stereo going. Every back step has a white propane tank next to it like a lawn ornament. A curtain moves. Somewhere a dog that isn't a dog is chewing on something that used to be a dog.
The Rows are a Llama neighborhood at home: Llamas on porches, Llamas in lawn chairs, a Llama working on the Camaro. None of them attack on sight. Most of them want to sell the party something, and the ink gets a nod. Two things live here for the plot, and a fight lives here for the pacing.
The Dead Crawler
Between two trailers, face down in a kiddie pool, lava-scarred across the back and shoulders, is a crawler. Crawler #9,331,014, "Marcus Delgado." He came to buy, and by the look of him he tried to negotiate. In his right hand, clutched hard, is a folded piece of paper, soaked through with pool water and blood.
Crawler #9,331,014. "Marcus Delgado." Deceased.
Cause of death: didn't have exact change. Let that be a lesson.
If they take the note, it's illegible: the ink has run into the blood. An Unopposed Investigation or Perception Check at Difficulty 12 pulls out exactly one word, near the top, in block capitals: KONG. Nothing else survives. Elsie's Determine Value says the paper is nothing; a notebook page. Do not let them read more than that. Rosie read it two days ago, dry, on her way past, and got as far as the second line before a Llama shoved her along. The note is Par for the Course's, and it belongs in her head, not on the table.
Looting Marcus: 1d4 Misc. Junk, a fistful of small bills that are worth nothing down here, and a Bronze Loot Box he never got to open.
The Man in Cowboy Boots
Once, while they're in the Rows, somebody with Perception spots him: a lean man in bootcut jeans and cowboy boots, standing at the corner of a trailer three lots down, watching the Clubhouse. When he's noticed, he steps back out of sight. If they go after him: an Unopposed Tracking or Perception Check at 12 finds boot prints in the gravel that go behind the trailer and stop at the treeline, where the neighborhood's painted sky meets its painted horizon and there's a gap in the plywood. He's gone through it. Mordecai has nothing on any map. Let one of them get close enough to see a tattoo on his forearm — a flying saucer — and nothing else. Then drop it. He's not tonight's.
The Porch
Somewhere in the Rows, when the pacing wants it, a Moderate group of two Bad Llamas on a porch decide the ink doesn't cover the man in scrubs, or the way the party's been looking at the Clubhouse, or the fact that they didn't buy. It starts as a shakedown — "Lot rent. Everybody pays lot rent." — and becomes a fight when the party doesn't have lot rent.
The terrain is the point. Two Llamas at range, a porch with a tank at either end of it, a Camaro for cover, a clothesline full of tracksuits between the party and the porch. Sneaking up on the porch is an Opposed Hide in Shadows (or Stealth — Elsie has it) against the Llamas' Int +1: Difficulty 12, and it earns a Surprise round. A Llama that spits from its porch and misses hits its own trailer's tank about a third of the time; say so out loud the first time it happens. Two tanks and two Llamas is a fight the party can win without landing a blow if they play the geometry, and it's better if they discover that than if they're told.
If the porch fight goes badly, a Llama bolts for the double-wide to tell Tuco. If it gets there, Tuco knows they're coming, and Scene 5 opens with him already outside, waiting, in a good mood, which is worse.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- A word — KONG — that means nothing yet, and a dead man who thought it did
- Somebody in cowboy boots who isn't a Llama and isn't with them
- The Llamas' spit and the Llamas' own propane are the same weapon, and it doesn't care who's holding it
Move to whichever of Scene 3 or Scene 4 the party hasn't done.
Scene 3: The Clubhouse
The Clubhouse is a low prefab building with a satellite dish and a sign over the door that says COMMUNITY CENTER — BINGO TUES — POOL 8PM. Inside, twenty-some elderly people sit on folding chairs and on the pool table and along the wall under a bingo board that still says B-7, and the room is quieter than that many frightened people should be, because somebody near the back is humming. Two llamas are by the door. One of them is asleep on its feet. The other one has a visor on and is halfway through a story nobody asked for.
"— so I says to him, I says, Tuco, you can't just — oh. Hey." The visor turns toward you. "You're the ones with the ink. Cool, cool. You here for the tour? We don't do a tour."
Nodoff and one other Bad Llama (Moderate). Nodoff will talk to anyone about anything for as long as they'll let him, and he genuinely likes the old people; he calls them "the guests." He also will not cross Tuco, and he says so, sadly, every time it comes up. What he'll agree to and what he won't:
- The residents can leave. Nodoff doesn't think they're worth guarding. An Opposed Negotiation or Persuasion Check against his Cha +2 — Difficulty 13; Madisen's Negotiation 3 is the best roll in the party — gets him to "look, take 'em, they're eating all the Funyuns." Intimidate works too, at the same number, and he's easier to scare than to convince. On a Success the residents walk out the door behind Dev while Nodoff pretends to be asleep.
- The cart doesn't. "The cart's Tuco's. The cart stays. Boss's orders. I can't — I mean, I can't. You get it." No Check moves him on this; it's the scene's job to send the party to the lab.
- He'll tell them about the lab if they ask nicely, because he's proud of it: the goats keep the batch cold, three of them chained on the back wall, and "you don't light nothing in there, ever, I seen a guy light a cigarette in there once and — well. You didn't see the guy. That's the point."
- He'll tell them about Tuco if they let him: "He's great. He's the best. He's my — he's family, you know? Just don't — when he gets like that, you just kinda — you wait. It passes. Mostly it passes."
If it's a fight, it's two Llamas in a room with twenty-four civilians and a propane space heater in the corner, and every spit that misses a crawler hits a resident. The Llamas fight until one is dead, then the other runs for the double-wide. If Nodoff dies here, Scene 5 loses its best beat; if he lives, he's the one who escorts them in.
Achieve-
ment!
"You talked a drug dealer into releasing two dozen hostages by pointing out how much they were eating. No lawyers, no weapons, no plan. Honestly, the snack argument is stronger than most of what I hear in here."
Reward: You've received a Bronze Negotiator Box!
Residents freed without a fight. Contents: 1d10 gold and a laminated card that reads GUEST OF TUCO on one side and is blank on the other. Bad Llamas in Paradise Acres treat the holder as a customer, once.
Rosie
The humming is coming from an elderly woman in a green cardigan — the one Dev was carrying — sitting very straight on the edge of the pool table with a man's hand in both of hers. When the door opens she looks up and the humming stops and she says, to nobody, "See? I said." Then she gets down, dusts her skirt, and comes over.
"Hi there. It's me, Rosie. I know there are a lot of us to keep track of. Thank you for coming — Dev said you would, but Dev says a lot of things." She squints up at you through the glasses on the end of her nose. "Are you the ones with the little skulls on your arms? Nodoff hasn't shut up about them."
Play her warm, spacey, and steady; give her sentences that trail off; let her wipe something off somebody's cheek. If there's time and the players enjoy her, she asks a crawler about their favorite band, and nods as if she's learned something deep about their soul. Do not spend her. The band question, the secret about the Boss, and the cardigan reveal all belong to Par for the Course's Prologue, and that scenario is written to run whether or not she's met the party before. What she gives them here is one thing, unprompted, on the way out the door:
"There's a young man dead out there by the pools. I don't suppose you — no. Of course. Well. He had a note in his hand and I read the top of it while they were walking us past, and I've been trying to remember the rest ever since. It was important. It felt important. I'll have it in a minute. Stress really doesn't help my memory."
She doesn't have it in a minute. She won't have it tonight.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- Twenty-four people and three staff following them, and Rosie, who is going to keep talking
- The cart is in the lab; the lab has goats in it; nobody lights anything in there
- Nodoff alive and liking them, or dead and not
Dev takes the residents to the arch and waits there with Grib, who has been told to expect an order and is starting to suspect there won't be one. Move to Scene 4 if they haven't done it, or to Scene 5 if they have.
Scene 4: The Cold Lot
The chain-link pen sits at the elbow of the loop, next to the double-wide, and the ground around it is white. Not painted — frosted. Your breath shows. Inside the pen, five white goats the size of ponies stand in a knot with their heads down, and the frost radiates out from them in rings, and every few seconds one of them looks up and its mouth is full of teeth that goats do not have.
Three garden hoses, sheathed in duct tape and rimed with ice, run from the far side of the pen through a hole cut in the double-wide's wall. Where they go in, the wall is sweating.
Two Chilly Goats are loose in the lot outside the pen, on tethers long enough to reach the gate (Moderate). Three more are in the pen, which is locked with a padlock and a Llama's idea of a knot. The Goats attack anything that comes within the tether, and they attack the way the examine text says: horns, fangs, and, every third round, the cold.
Chilly Goat, Level 4
"The Chilly Goat's Bluff" is a phrase common throughout the Syndicate. It's a "polite" way of saying the person in front of you is most likely a cold and unfeeling fucking sociopath. Derivations and corruptions of the phrase appear in various forms throughout the galaxy (meaning your backwater planet built a whole legend around a cosmic misspelling). All of this to say, it's probably a good time to choose how you want to die. Impaled by horns? Ripped apart by fangs? Or frozen solid? If you ask nicely, maybe you can have all three.
Chilly Goat
Mob; Petite (3), Fanged Goat
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 12 | 13 | 20 + S | 1 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 (+2) | 1 (+1) | 6 (+3) | 4 (+2) | 1 (+1) |
Horns: 13 to hit, 1d6+2 Piercing, 5ft
Fangs: 12 to hit, 1d4+3 Piercing, 5ft
Icy Aura: 12 to hit, 1d6+3 Ice, 15ft Burst, once every three rounds
Notes: Already Chilly — immune to Cold. Prefers Being Chilly — Fire ×2.
The lesson is Fire. A Goat has 12 HP and takes double from Fire; a single Lava Spit kills one. The nearest Llama is the one on the Camaro in the Rows, thirty feet away, and if the fight makes noise it wanders over to watch and, when a crawler gets between it and a Goat, spits. The Goats know. When a Llama shows up, both loose Goats turn toward it, and a player who notices that has found the neighborhood's fault line: the Goats hate the Llamas, and the Llamas can kill them by accident. Madisen's Animal Handling (1) can't tame a Chilly Goat, but a Success at 12 gets one to stop attacking her and start looking at the Llama instead.
The hoses. Anyone who looks at them — no Check — sees that they run from the pen into the lab and that the lab wall is sweating around them. An Unopposed Investigation or Engineering-adjacent Check at 12, or just asking Dev, Nodoff, or Grib, gets the rest: the goats are the refrigeration. There's no ice on Floor 1; the Llamas discovered that a Chilly Goat's aura keeps a vat from boiling over, and they chain three of them to the lab's back wall, muzzled, and rotate them out when they go limp. The three in the pen are the shift that's off. The three inside are the shift that's on. Take the cold away and the batch boils. Say that last sentence in Nodoff's voice or Dev's, not yours, and say it once.
If the party frees the penned Goats here — padlock: Sleight of Hand at 14, or Str at 11 to break the chain, or a Llama's spit at the lock — they bolt through the Rows, and 1d4 Llamas on porches spend the next ten minutes chasing goats instead of watching the lab. That's a real advantage in Scene 5, and the AI will have something to say about it.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- The Icy Aura hits everyone in 15 feet, every third round, chains or not
- Fire kills a Goat from full, and the Llamas are the Fire
- Three goats on the lab's back wall are the only thing keeping the batch cold
Move to whichever of Scene 2 or Scene 3 the party hasn't done — or, if they've decided, on to Scene 5.
Intermission: Crawler Advancement
Run this at the two-hour mark, wherever the party happens to be. Each of them attempts Skill Advancement Checks where applicable, then gains Rank 1 in one Skill she used untrained during the block. If the table also awards the two-hour level (C&C p. 42), do it here. No Stat points are spent until Floor 3.
This is also the moment for the floor's broadcast. Read it flat and tired, like someone reading a memo they didn't write.
Hello Crawlers,
A reminder from Facilities that Bad Llama product is not food, is not a potion, and is not, whatever the coupon says, "redeemable at participating saferooms." Bopca Protectors have been instructed to stop accepting it. Some of them have been instructed twice.
A reminder from Legal that the First Floor is closed to live viewers, and that whatever two crawlers are currently doing in a trailer park with a crowd of senior citizens is therefore not, as the press pool keeps putting it, "must-see." It has been explained to the press pool that nothing on this floor is must-see. The press pool has asked for the goats' names.
That's it for now. Now get out there and kill, kill, kill.
GM note: that voice is Cascadia, a Dungeon Admin. Your crawlers don't know that and won't for a long time. Don't name her. The goats do not have names. If the players give them names, the press pool will use them.
Optional Scene: Neighborhood Mood
Use one or two of these if the party is ahead of pace, or drop one into any lot where they get cocky. Skip the whole thing if you're running long.
- Grib's order (the arch) — the Goblin in the puffer vest has been waiting forty minutes and would like to know if the party is "with management." For a small bribe or a real answer, he'll draw the lab's layout on the back of his shopping list: the door, the table, the vats, the goat rack. He's been inside. He didn't like it.
- The dog that isn't a dog (the Rows) — something chained under a trailer, mostly teeth, drags its chain toward whichever crawler has food. It is a Gnawtria on a leash. A ration thrown past it buys a lot; a hand extended toward it does not.
- Sampling (any lot) — a friendly Llama on a porch offers the inked a taste, on the house. A crawler who accepts makes a Con Stat Check at 11: on a Success she's Wired for ten minutes (+10 Move, Advantage on her next Check, and then Fatigued); on a fail, just Fatigued, and the Llama laughs for a while. The AI has an achievement for it and will not read it kindly.
- The coupon (the Camaro) — leaning on the car pops the trunk. Inside, among the wrappers, a coupon for a bag of meth, scribbled on by Llamas, "redeemable at a saferoom with a Bopca Protector" (Toolkit, p. 20). It is real. The broadcast at the Intermission is about it. Grunhilda, in the next scenario, will look at it for a long time.
- Lot rent (the Rows) — the Toolkit's tax-collector complication, Llama-flavored: two Llamas with a clipboard want a hundred gold "for the lot," and when the party doesn't have it, one of them looks at the skull on a crawler's arm for a long moment and says "or you could do a run for us." This is the first time the party learns what the ink is worth to a Llama, and it's cheaper to learn it here than at Tuco's table.
- The mothers (the Cold Lot) — the Toolkit's "Some of these poor Mobs' mothers show up" result, which for a Chilly Goat is a Chilly Goat twice the level with an Aura every round. Use it only if the party has been killing goats for fun.
Achieve-
ment!
"You accepted a free sample from a llama in a tracksuit. I want to be very clear that nothing about this decision was good, and that you are going to feel the next ten minutes for the rest of the day. On the bright side, you're now the only crawler on this floor who knows what the blue tastes like. Don't tell me. I don't want to know."
Reward: You've received a Bronze Aftertaste Box. It is empty. That's the reward.
Moving On
Return to wherever the party was, or on to Scene 5: The Sit-Down.
Scene 5: The Sit-Down
The double-wide's near wall is gone — cut out and propped up on jacks to make an awning — so the whole lab is a stage with the lot for a floor. Four steel vats on propane burners along the back, each one sweating and hissing. Three white goats chained and muzzled to the back wall, heads down, frost creeping out from their hooves across the linoleum and up the hoses that run into the vats. A folding table under the awning with a rolling steel cart beside it — a pharmacy cart, the kind with the little drawers, all of them open. And at the table, in a maroon velour tracksuit with a gold grille and three chains and a half-eaten Whopper, seven feet of llama with eyes like two red dots on a minimap.
"There they are!" He spreads his arms. "The tattoo people! Nodoff! Get 'em a chair. Get 'em two chairs. Sit. Sit sit sit. You hungry? You want a — no, you don't want a taste, I can see it, that's fine, that's fine, more for me." He takes a taste. His whole body shivers. "Okay. Okay. So. Let's talk about the ink."
Run this as a conversation with a die in it. Tuco wants the ink — or, since he can't have the ink, he wants the arm it's on, walking. He'll say so in the first minute and he'll say why: a crawler with a Goblin Pass goes through the Goblin checkpoint as a customer, not a supplier, and the Goblins' tax on his product goes away. One run. A duffel of the blue, through the checkpoint, into the hands of Grib's boss, and back. He is offering, in exchange, the cart. All of it. "Your old people, they got their pills, they go home, everybody's happy, I'm happy, Nodoff's happy, look at him." It's a real offer. He'd honor it. That's what makes it hard. And if the conversation goes badly he has a second idea about how to get the ink off the arm, which involves a knife, which he has heard works, and which does not.
Every time a crawler says something to him, roll the Wired die where the players can see it. On a 1 he snaps: at the crawler who spoke, at the ceiling, at Nodoff. On a 6 he's delighted and gives something away — a detail about the lab, a better price, a compliment that lands wrong. On anything else he's merely Tuco. Do this three or four times before anything happens. The players will learn what the die is for without being told.
What the party can try, and what it does:
- Take the deal. One run for the cart. Tuco hands over the cart himself and means it, and the duffel is heavy, and the Goblins at the checkpoint will read the ink and wave it through exactly as he says. The party leaves Paradise Acres with the residents, the medicine, a bag of drugs, a debt to a Llama, and a Neighborhood Boss alive behind them. That's a legitimate ending, and Par for the Course doesn't care. It just isn't the one with a Map in it, and what they do with the duffel afterward — deliver it, dump it in a kiddie pool, hand it to Mordecai — is a scene of its own.
- Counter. Opposed Negotiation or Persuasion against Tuco's Cha +3: Difficulty 14. A Success gets the cart with no run tonight, on the condition that the party "does him a favor sometime" — which is a hook, not a mechanic. A fail rolls the Wired die twice.
- Perform. Bad Llamas love good music. Madisen's Performance (2), Unopposed at 12: on a Success Tuco is transported — he sways, he cries a little, he says "that's beautiful, that's beautiful" — and the next Wired roll is at Advantage for the party (roll two, take the higher). On a Critical, he gives her the cart on the spot and asks for an encore, which is when Nodoff talks.
- Lie. Agree to the run with no intention of making it. An Opposed Deception Check against his Int +2 — Difficulty 13, untrained for both of them — and it holds right up until he asks to see the ink up close, which he does, because he's paranoid, because he's high, and he holds the arm a beat too long. On a fail the die is a 1 without rolling it, and the thing in his other hoof is a box cutter.
- Start it. They can. See Scene 6. Tuco gets a Surprise round unless they've made him laugh in the last minute.
Nodoff Talks
Whatever the party does, at the moment it's going best for them, Nodoff says the wrong thing. If they freed the residents through him, this is where he mentions it: "— oh, and boss, I let the guests go, they were eating all the —". If they didn't, he vouches for them: "They're cool, boss, I told 'em about the goats and everything, I told 'em about the —". Either way he doesn't finish.
Tuco doesn't turn around. He's still smiling at you. One hoof comes up off the floor and goes back down through Nodoff's visor, and the sound it makes is the sound a full trash bag makes. He wipes the hoof on the linoleum. He takes a taste. He shivers.
"Sorry. Sorry about that. He talks. He — talked." The smile doesn't move. "So. Where were we. The ink."
Roll the Wired die. If it's a 1, the fight starts now, on him. If it's anything else, he sits back down, and the fight starts when the party decides it does, and they should be given every chance to decide that outside the trailer, with the goats in mind. Nodoff's body is under the awning. His throat is not glowing. He was a Llama, and Bad Reflux doesn't work on the dead, but the corpse will burn like any other if something lights it.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- What the die means, and that it's on the table for the rest of the night
- The cart, or the reason they don't have it
- A room they've now seen: four vats, three goats, one awning, and a man who will spit in it
When it goes, move to Scene 6: Boss Battle — The Cook-Off.
Boss
Battle!
Scene 6: Boss Battle — The Cook-Off
Time stops for everyone but the hiss of the vats. Tuco's image pops into view with a menu behind it; the two crawlers' portraits and names appear on it as if they were items. Read this in your loudest AI voice:
B-B-B-Boss Battle!
You have discovered the lair of a Neighborhood Boss!
Ladies and gentlemen, guests of the community, put your hands together and keep them where he can see them, because tonight's headliner has a temper and a product line! Aaaand… here. we. go.
Tuco Guanaco. Level 7 Neighborhood Boss!
Kingpin of Paradise Acres, purveyor of the blue, and the only Mob on this floor who tests his own product every single batch, which is either dedication or the reason his hands do that. He loves his people. He loves them so much he's killed four of them this week for being disrespectful, which around here means "audible."
His spit is on fire and so is his lab. His goats keep the batch cold and his batch keeps him going. Take one of those away and he'll show you what the other one was for. Tight, tight, tight!
Tuco Guanaco
Neighborhood Boss; Large (5), Mutated
| Level | Surprise | Evade | Move | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 13 | 15 | 30 + S | 1 |
| Str | Int | Con | Dex | Cha |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 (+3) | 3 (+2) | 9 (+3) | 10 (+4) | 6 (+3) |
Crystal Spit: 15 to hit, 1d8+4 Fire, 30ft — Burning on an Evade Major Fail or worse. Indoors, it flashes the fumes.
Tight! Tight! Tight!: 15 to hit, 2d6+3 Bludgeoning, 5ft — Take Down on an Evade Major Fail or worse
Notes: Wired; Product Over People; The Comedown; Bound to the Lot — see Quick Reference for the full text.
GM Tip: The Lab Is the Fight
This Boss has no puzzle solution and no phase you have to script. He has a room, and the room has four moving parts that the party has already been shown. Be clear with yourself about each before the first round:
- The Goats are the cooling. Three chained on the back wall. Unchain one: a Str Stat Check at 11, or Madisen's Animal Handling at 12 (it doesn't bite her; it's muzzled). Kill one: 12 HP, DR 1, and it takes double from Fire, which matters below. Each Goat removed takes a third of the cold with it. With two gone, the batch boils: at the top of every round after that, one vat boils over — pick the one nearest the most crawlers — for 1d6+1 Acid in a 10ft Burst, no to-hit, Evade vs 13 for none. And Product Over People kicks in: Tuco spends an Action every round on the batch, screaming at it. Three vats gone and the batch is lost: the Comedown. Fatigued, hits on 13, and his throat is a target again.
- The fumes are the spark. The first time any Fire damage is dealt inside the trailer in a round, the vapor flashes: 2d6 Fire to everyone inside, Evade vs 13 for half, Burning on a Major Fail. It takes a round to build back up, so a flash can happen at most every other round. Llamas won't spit in here. Tuco will, and on a Wired 1 he will spit at whoever spoke last no matter where he's standing. A crawler standing outside the awning who makes him angry has just made him flash his own lab. Madisen's lighter is one Action. A Bad Reflux corpse, dragged in, is a flash every other round for free.
- The cook-off is the finisher. If the fumes flash while a vat is boiling over, or if a propane burner or the tank behind the trailer takes Fire damage, the whole lab goes: 4d6 Fire to everyone inside, Evade vs 13 for half, Burning to all, the roof comes down and everyone inside gains Take Down, every Llama inside dies, and Tuco loses 4 Health Bar slots on top of the damage. Once. Then it's a burning lot with a Boss standing in it.
- The cart burns with the lab. It's on the folding table under the awning. If the cook-off happens with the cart still inside, three residents die tonight of ordinary things. Getting it out is an Action to grab and a Move to clear the awning, and it's a rolling cart, so it's not subtle. That's the dilemma: the fastest way to kill him costs the thing they came for.
Tell them nothing. Every one of these was shown to them in Scenes 2 through 5 — the hoses, the goats, Nodoff's cigarette story, the tank by the step, the die. If they've been paying attention to how this neighborhood works, they already know the answer. If they haven't, the Wired die will teach it to them the hard way in about two rounds.
How it plays. Tuco and two Bad Llamas (Moderate) are in the lab when it starts; the Llamas Kick, because they know better than to spit in here. Tuco takes his Actions in this order unless the die says otherwise: Crystal Spit at range, Tight! Tight! Tight! at anyone who closes, and, once a vat is boiling, the batch. He starts every round with the die. He does not leave the lot: the gravel loop is the line, and a crawler on the far side of it is a crawler he screams at.
The retreat. If it goes wrong — two crawlers is a thin margin — they can back out across the gravel and he won't follow. Dev is at the arch with the residents. The cart is still on the table. Nobody has to say what that means.
The Comedown, when it comes, is the moment the fight turns. Play it as a crash, not a stagger: he sits down on the linoleum in the middle of his burning lab, and his throat stops glowing blue and starts glowing red like a Llama's, and he looks up at them with his grille full of Whopper and says something like "I was gonna let you go." Then he gets up slower than he should, and Bad Reflux is on the table, and two crawlers who learned the pouch trick in Scene 1 know exactly what to do.
When Tuco Falls
The AI announces the winners by name. Any Llamas left alive in Paradise Acres stop being a neighborhood and start being individuals, which for a Llama means running. Each crawler gets a bronze star beside their name for defeating a Neighborhood Boss, a Neighborhood Map, a Bronze Boss Box, and an achievement. The chained Goats, if any are still chained, go quiet, and the frost stops spreading.
Achieve-
ment!
"You killed a Neighborhood Boss who was, at the time, trying to save a pot of drugs from boiling over while his own lab was on fire around him. You didn't beat him. You gave him a choice, and he made it. That's either the smartest thing anyone's done on this floor or an accident, and I've watched the footage and I still can't tell."
Reward: You've received a Silver Kingpin Box!
Contents: 1d10 × 100 gold, a Good Healing Potion (6 slots), and Tuco's Grille (Items).
Achieve-
ment!
"You unchained three goats from a meth lab instead of killing them, in the middle of a Boss fight, with a llama spitting fire at you. That's not tactics. That's not even mercy. I genuinely don't have a word for it, and I have all of them."
Reward: You've received a Silver Livestock Box!
All three lab Goats freed alive. Contents: 1d10 × 100 gold and a Chilly Goat Bell — worn as an Accessory, the wearer is immune to Cold damage. The three Goats follow the party as far as the arch and then go wherever goats go.
Achieve-
ment!
"You blew up a meth lab. On purpose. With the Boss inside it. I want you to know that somewhere in the Borant press pool a very tired person just stood up and clapped, and then sat back down, because nobody's allowed to watch this floor. Their loss."
Reward: You've received a Gold Volatile Box!
The cook-off, triggered by the party rather than by Tuco's die. Contents: 1d6 × 1000 gold and a Fire-Retardant Track Jacket — Accessory, +2 DR against Fire, and it is maroon velour.
Achieve-
ment!
"You recovered a rolling cart full of prescription medication from a drug dealer and gave it back to the elderly people it belonged to. This is the single most law-abiding act I have witnessed in the dungeon, and I've been running it for a very, very long time. Don't make a habit of it."
Reward: You've received a Silver Caregiver Box!
The cart out of the lab intact and back in Dev's hands. Contents: 1d10 × 100 gold, two Healing Potions, and 1d6 Bandages. Nobody at Hollyhock dies tonight of an ordinary thing.
Moving On
If it landed, they walked out with:
- Boss fights have a mechanism, not just a Health Bar — here it was the room, and they'd been shown every part of it
- The fastest way and the right way were different, and they picked one
- The Neighborhood Map, and loot boxes that only open in a saferoom they haven't found yet
Move to the Epilogue.
Epilogue & Aftermath
Did you hear a ding? Each of them gains 1 level for defeating a Neighborhood Boss. The Map fills in Paradise Acres on the minimap: the loop, the lots, the pen, the gap in the plywood at the treeline where the man in cowboy boots went through. Loot boxes open at the next saferoom, and there isn't one here.
At the arch, Dev has the residents in two lines the way he'd have them at a fire drill, and Grib has given up and gone home, and Rosie is humming. If the cart came out, Dev takes it from whoever has it without a word and starts opening drawers, and Mrs. Okafor and Mr. Petrakis and Lenny get their names said in a very different voice than the one he used in Scene 1. If the cart didn't come out, he doesn't say anything for a while, and then he says "okay," and starts the lines moving, because there's nothing else to do.
Bronze Boss Box: each of them receives 1d10 × 100 gold, two Healing Potions, and a Silver-level magic item — a utility Spell for Elsie, a real weapon or a DR 1 piece of armor for Madisen, or roll on the Randomized Magic Items tables (Atlas, p. 26). The crawler who landed the killing blow finds a Full Throttle in theirs, ice-cold, with a barcode.
Two crawlers, two dozen senior citizens, one pharmacy cart, and goblin ink on their arms. Out of a trailer park. On foot.
The nearest saferoom is ahead. It's about a mile. I'd hurry. The neighborhood you're walking into has a golf course, and I'm not going to tell you what that means, but I am going to say it twice. It has a golf course.
Mordecai, when the chat comes back, says one thing: get them to the saferoom, don't stop, and if anybody in that crowd says the name of the next Boss, listen to them.
Items
The Goblin Pass: Not an item. A goblin-skull brand the System burned onto each of them when the pass was awarded — in Book 1 it lands on Carl's left inner forearm and on Donut's back over the shoulder blade, glows through fur and leather alike, and "cannot be hidden unless you purchase a coverup sleeve." Removes automatic goblin hostility; free passage through goblin-controlled territory; fairy-class Mobs deal 20% more damage to the bearer. Goblin merchants discount it (Core Rulebook). Bad Llamas in Paradise Acres treat the bearer as a customer as far as the gate and as a courier past it. It can't be traded, and the only way Tuco has heard of to take one off someone is wrong.
The Med Cart: A rolling steel pharmacy cart with a dozen little drawers, all open. Hollyhock's entire dispensary. To Tuco it's precursor. To Dev it's three people. Elsie's Determine Value says, correctly, that it's worth nothing to anyone else on this floor.
Tuco's Grille: Gold, fitted for a mouth that isn't a human's, and worn anyway. Accessory: +1 Charisma, and Intimidate Checks against anyone who sells anything are made with Advantage. It tastes like the blue.
Full Throttle: A can of energy drink, ice-cold no matter what, with a working barcode. Drink it as an Action: +10 Move and Advantage on your next Check, then Fatigued for an hour. There is a case of them in the Clubhouse and the residents have been drinking them for two days, which explains a lot about Rosie.
Chilly Goat Bell: Accessory; immune to Cold damage. Cold Chain.
Fire-Retardant Track Jacket: Accessory; +2 DR against Fire. Maroon velour. Yeah, Chemistry.
The meth coupon: Scribbled on by Llamas, "redeemable at a saferoom with a Bopca Protector" (Toolkit, p. 20). Real. The broadcast says the Bopcas have been told to stop honoring it. Grunhilda, in the next scenario, has been told twice.
Antacid tablets: Three; each eaten as an Action cures the Burning Debuff. Bad Reflux.
GUEST OF TUCO card: A Llama in Paradise Acres treats the holder as a customer, once. Worthless the moment Tuco is dead, which the card does not know.
Neighborhood Map: Boss drop. Reveals Paradise Acres on the minimap; grants a bonus hour of credit on any grind of five hours or more (Crawlers & Customization, p. 44).
Scavenge: propane tanks (they can be carried; they are exactly as dangerous as they look), a Camaro on blocks with a working stereo, lawn chairs, a satellite dish, a bingo board that says B-7, and enough velour to clothe a small army.
Adapting This Adventure
Sandbox and Pacing
Scenes 2–4 are order-free; Scene 5 is the gate to the Boss and should come last. A party that walks straight from the arch to the double-wide can be sitting across from Tuco in forty minutes, which is a legitimate way to play it — they just arrive without knowing what the goats are for, without Nodoff on their side, and with the residents still in the Clubhouse, which means the cart is the only thing on the table and a run is the only thing he wants from them. If they're dragging, cut the Cold Lot fight and let Dev explain the hoses. If they're fast, the Neighborhood Mood beats are five more scenes' worth.
Scaling
Written for two crawlers around Level 4–5. Values are resolved with F = 1 and groups are sized off the party-of-two column of the Adversary Power table. For three crawlers, add a Llama to the Porch and the Sit-Down, and give Tuco 11 × 4. For a full party of five, this neighborhood is a Toolkit neighborhood: Moderate is five Llamas, Tuco is 11 × 4 with DR 2 and Crystal Spit at 2d8+4, and the lab's flash is 3d6. If it's going badly for two, the levers are already in the room: a Wired 1 at the wrong moment flashes his own lab and does 2d6 to him and both Llamas, and you get to roll that die every round.
Tone
The joke is a prestige-TV meth drama staged by a dungeon that only half understood it: the kingpin is a llama, the lab is cooled by goats, the precursor is a nursing home's pill cart, and the lieutenant dies for talking, exactly on cue. Play the stereotypes as the dungeon's stereotypes — it built this place from a phrase — and let the AI be the one who finds it funny. Tuco is a real threat and Nodoff's death should land; the residents are real people and Dev's clock is real. The Full Throttle cans and the bingo board are there so the horror has something to be next to.
What's Canon and What's Ours
The Bad Llama and Chilly Goat stat blocks and examine text are the Game Master's Campaign Toolkit's, reproduced as written and resolved for Floor 1. The Bad Llama Neighborhood's one-paragraph description — trailer park, meth, Full Throttle, Burger King wrappers, "don't flaunt your wealth" — is from the Atlas (p. 12). The Goblin Pass is the novels' (Book 1: a brand, a forearm, a coverup sleeve, the fairy-class penalty) and the Core Rulebook's (no goblin hostility, the merchant discount). The meth coupon and the "Mobs' mothers" and tax-collector complications are the Toolkit's. Bad Llamas loving good music is the Toolkit's, and it's why Performance works on Tuco.
Ours: Paradise Acres as a place; Tuco Guanaco, his block, and the Wired / Product Over People / Comedown rules; Nodoff; Dev and team Hollyhock; the lab as an environment (goats as cooling, the fumes, the cook-off, the cart); the Llama's Kick and its refusal to spit indoors; the propane-tank rule; Marcus Delgado and the note's one legible word; Grib; all six achievements; the Intermission broadcast; the items other than the coupon. Rosie and Derrick are the Starter Set's and are only borrowed here.
Canon Alignment Notes
Checked against the novels. Epub editions with no fixed page numbers, so citations are by scene.
The Goblin Pass is a brand. When Carl opens his Silver Goblin Box after the goblin boss, the pass "flew and smacked up against my left inner forearm… like I was being branded," and the brand shows through his jacket. Its infobox: "It's a tattoo! On your forearm! Now you'll never get a good job! Note: Pass tattoos cannot be hidden unless you purchase a coverup sleeve. Will show through any armor you may wear. Removes automatic goblin hostility. Allows for free passage through goblin-controlled territory in the dungeon. Warning: holding a Goblin Pass will cause natural goblin enemies, such as fairy-class creatures, to deal 20% more damage against you." Donut's lands on her back over the right shoulder blade and she calls it "a disqualifying mark." Nothing in this scenario lets anyone hand a pass over, and Tuco's knife idea is written to be wrong.
The fairy-class penalty is real and it travels. On Floor 2 the Clurichauns' examine text warns "Mobs of this class inflict 20% more damage against you due to your goblin pass." Nothing in Paradise Acres is fairy-class. Something later will be.
Open Decisions
- Whether the party runs Tuco's product. Both outcomes are written and both lead into Par for the Course. Decide what a duffel of the blue does to their standing with the Goblins, with Mordecai, and with the AI, if they actually deliver it.
- How many residents die of ordinary things if the cart burns. Three are named; that's the number.
- Whether Nodoff's death is fixed. It's written as fixed. If the party has done something that genuinely earns him a reprieve, the Wired die can be the thing that decides it instead of the script.
- Box contents for the achievements are the GM's; roll them at the saferoom. The gold amounts are Floor 1 tiers.
Plot Threads Seeded
- Rosie has read half a note and can't stop thinking about it. That's Par for the Course's engine and it's already turning.
- The man in cowboy boots went through the plywood at the treeline and is ahead of them now.
- The Goblins next door just lost their supplier. Whether that makes them grateful, hostile, or open to a new arrangement is a scene for whoever comes back through.
- Team Hollyhock now knows the party's names, and two dozen elderly people with nothing to do but talk are going to tell everyone they meet.
- The press pool asked for the goats' names. If the players gave them names, the edit will use them, and the AI can mention it later.
Sources: Game Master's Campaign Toolkit (Bad Llama and Chilly Goat stat blocks and examine text, Adversary Power table, Grinding Complications, the meth coupon); Atlas: Tutorial Floors (Bad Llama Neighborhood, Floor 1 features, loot); Core Rulebook (Goblin Pass mechanics); Dungeon Crawler Carl (Book 1) by Matt Dinniman for the Goblin Pass as a brand; Rules for Survival (Difficulty, Debuffs, Area attacks, Social Interaction); Par for the Course (Rosie Q and Derrick Qu, borrowed for continuity) — Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game. Unofficial Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG (Renegade Game Studios) fan material for one table's use. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher. Not for resale.