Music of the Spheres is Chaos: Session 1 Report
The party consists of a dwarf, a fighter, a cleric of Amun Tor, a halfling, and two elves. They have worked their way up from level one so they are quite attached to their characters.
Early on in MotSiC there are three scrolls which give clues about the adventure site and situation. To lead the party in, I left the first of three scrolls on Faustfvor, one of the final villains in another Harley Stroh adventure: Beyond the Black Gate. The players go to eat in Punjar, which has been their base of operations for some time, before the first encounter. A group of assassins seeking the scroll seal off the tavern with magic and start putting NPCs to sleep. (Unfair NPC prejudice here, but it made the encounter easy for me with less rolling and not having to worry about the patron actions so I can't complain.)
The fight went smoothly. The boss has the ability to counterspell multiple times per round and gets a 1d24+5 to their roll. One of the elves casts magic missile and gets a 25. The counterspell fails and this boss is annihilated in one blast. The other assassins fight to the death but are easily killed. Our dwarf loses an eye on a crit, but that is healed by the cleric of Amun Tor on a good roll. The box carried by their leader is opened with a roll of exactly 25 so no poison is released and they find the second scroll.
To avoid the long hike, which is not described in the module, I have Sylle Ru offer to portal them close by to the mountaintop monastery described in the scrolls. Yes, he's something of a villain from Doom of the Savage Kings, yet another Harley Stroh adventure. I've had him help the party to further his own needs for a while now. I wanted to skip parts that were not written in MotSiC and jump to the next part that has details available.
Several ruined huts sit outside the monastery with one in tact. The party goes into that hut, the dwarf smelling gold on the box clutched by a frozen corpse. Moving the box releases several little blue spheres, which the party does not know are frozen spider eggs at this point. The dwarf is still alone, and calling out to the party the cleric casts Second Sight, telling the dwarf that it is safe to walk across the floor. I rolled a 1 on 1d4 for the 25% failure change on Second Sight: it is not safe at all. 13 spiders come at the dwarf. They are tiny so they all get attacks.
Luckily the Dwarf has the best AC in the game at 22. The spiders need a 19 to hit. I let the players roll. Four nineteens come up! The dwarf dies due to stamina loss. There is no save vs their stamina drain.
Then one of the elves invokes their patron, the King of Elfland. With some luck from the halfling, they get the roll they need to go back in time, warning the dwarf that it is NOT safe to leave the room. They carefully extract the dwarf with the box, finding the third scroll inside. With the knowledge of all scrolls, they head to the monastery.
I hate time travel bull$#!^ in my games, since it's more powerful than a lvl 9 wish in D&D, but I love most things about DCC so I deal with it. As stated in the main rulebook, a roll of 20-23 or 28-29 allows the elf to go back in time and warn the party about the results of their actions. The elf can invoke patron for the King of Elfland up to four times a day, so I imagine lots of time travel will undo the party mistakes. Takes away from the tension, but the elf does need to use halfling luck most of the time to get the result he wants, so perhaps that will run out. I just hope the adventure isn't a total cakewalk due to time travel.
Overall I like MotSiC. The art is wonderful. They must have spent a lot on it since there is art on most pages, and the players have a great handout book of images of various rooms and areas. I would say for many parties, the adventure would be quite challenging. I'm looking forward to the next part and plan to update this subreddit again.