Here's the scoop, in case you want to run an Xmas Delve during the holidays.
The characters have been sent to the North Pole to eliminate the terrible evil that had beset the land. There are terrifying reports of friendly creatures turned into evil hellish fiends who poison the land. At the heart of this dark twisting of a pristine snowy landscape is a terrible entity calling itself Dark Kringle.
In typical Delve fashion, I threw together some dungeon tiles (in this case, Ruins of the Wild and Arcane Towers), slapped the PC's down on one end and some appropo figurines on the other.
Because of time constraints on a weeknight, we only planned for two encounters. It was all in good fun, and we wasted a lot of time rolling around on the floor with various DND/Santa/Xmas cross-related puns.
Here's the creatures I renamed and more or less used as is, pulled off the DND Compendium:
- Dark Little Helpers (reskinned Cled Warrior) x5
- Dark Kringle's Guardian Reindeer (reskinned Green Dragon Wyrmling with obvious changes to attack names and speed) x1
- Spider Fir (reskinned Spider Cactus) spread throughout the landscape
- Dark Kringle (reskinned Tembo) x1
- Dark Roof Climber (reskinned Aarakocra Warrior) x5
- Sniper Moose (reskinned Spitting Cobra) x2
- more Spider Firs
My wife's character (Christine, our co-host from Episode 3) lost the pretty pony her character received as a child. It never existed. Dun dun dunn.....
At the beginning of the second encounter, my 10-year old daughter called out to Dark Kringle, "Why are you doing this!?" (She wasn't serious. I think.) In my scariest, ho ho ho-iest voice, I replied that all the boys and girls had been to naughty, and that he had had it up to here with all the naughtiness.
We weren't sure that our daughter still believed in Santa before the Delve. I think I might have pushed her over the edge.
During combat the players and Kringle, played by the 2x2 Blood Slaad figurine, would go back and force with classic one-liners, like "You've been a very naughty little character!" and "No presents for you!"
Our good friend Ian, who co-hosted Episode 5 and played a runepriest, spent most of the second encounter blinded by the Sniper Moose's spittle, with hilarious consequences.
The party eventually defeated Dark Kringle, and he fell to his doom down the bottomless pit, inexplicably placed in the middle of Santa's workshop. Why was there a bottomless pit in the middle of Santa's workshop? So that shit can fall down it, ofcourse!
As he fell, he shouted, "No no no nooooooooo..."
After the battle was over, I explained that they found the real Santa trapped in the tallest tower of Santa's workshop (why does Santa's workshop have a tallest tower?), and that upon freeing him all of the North Pole was returned to its pristine white snowy non-evil state, and that Christmas was saved forever!
Or was it...
