Holiday Themed RPG Adventure Series #1: Shadow of the Krampus
The first in 4 seasonal role playing game adventures for a variety of games systems.
It’s the Holiday Season and It’s Time for sharing Holiday Themed Adventures!
Ever since I started writing this Substack, I’ve made sure to include holiday themed role playing game adventures during this time of year. I currently have four adventures from past years that I’ll be sharing as the first few entries in a series of adventures this year. These adventures use four different role playing game systems: Shadow of the Demon Lord, Feng Shui, Savage Worlds, and my own adapation of Mörk Borg called Jul Borg. I’ll be sharing these over the next week and a half.
After I share these four adventures, I’ll post an entirely new adventure that I’m busy outlining. I’ll also be revising the Feng Shui adventure to be a little more complete. When I first wrote it, I designed it for a short demonstration of the rules set and so it is very much focused on a single encounter and is more like a tactical encounter and less like a full adventure..so this year I will will be publishing the revised version in the post before I post the new adventure.
Today’s adventure is one that I’ve run many times since I first drafted it in 2016. I wanted to share the podcast that was done back in in 2017, when the Don’t Split the Podcast network ran the adventure and streamed it for four episodes, but it looks like the files for that particular run disappeared when the service they were on went out of business. I checked the Wayback Machine to no avail, but I have emailed the hosts of the show to see if they have copies that they will let me post later. Since the stream has spoilers, I feel okay having that run in another post. Though I have to admit that it’s pretty cool that someone streamed a podcast running and adventure I wrote.
Why Create an Adventure Called “Shadow of the Krampus?”
While there are many great role playing games out there, I was inspired to write this adventure when I read through and first ran Robert J. Schwalb’s dark fantasy roleplaying game Shadow of the Demon Lord. The game has an ideal setting and mechanics for one of the scarier of Santa’s companions, and if you read into some of Rob’s sourcebooks the game also has a nice twist regarding the nature of the Demon Lord that I played with in this adventure.
By the time I had written this adventure I’d written a number of seasonal adventures over the years, including one featuring Cthulhu Claus (based on my wife Jody Lindke’s illustrations for a 2012 Kickstarter we ran together) or the V’sori (evil aliens in the Necessary Evil setting for Savage Worlds). That adventure is Superheroes and Santa Claus fighting off an alien invasion. I am very proud of the Shadow of the Krampus adventure because I think it combines the mythology surrounding St. Nicholas with the particular Grim Dark religious elements of Shadow of the Demon Lord very well.
While Krampus might be a bit played out for some, in large part to having overstayed his welcome in more than a couple of movies, I’m still a big fan of the character and I have the pleasure of knowing an artist who participated in Krampuslaufen long before it was trendy to do so and Bill Rude’s Krampus costume is amazing as is the fact that he can get even small children to pose with his horrifying costume.
Bill Rude is a talented artist and you can look at a variety of his projects over at his 7 Hells: The Retro Art of Bill Rude website.
Adventure Background
In this mini-adventure, the PCs are passing through the town of Nesbitt-Hill during one of their other adventures. You can use the map below to represent the portion of the foothills of the Iron Peaks immediately south of the Zauberspitz with Nesbitt-Hill being the northern-most community on the map and Tower number 3 representing the once great Beacon Fortress.
Shadow of the Krampus is a Novice (though not a “just now Novice”) adventure for Shadow of the Demon Lord with a post-Christmas theme.
The town of Nesbitt-Hill is a vital stop for wanderers and miners who brave the dangers of the Iron Peaks in search of adventure or riches. For years the town has been a peaceful refuge, seemingly immune from the spread of the Demon Lord’s Shadow. For even as the Shadow has spread, the town of Nesbitt-Hill remains a spark of light and happiness in an otherwise dark and desperate world.
But that changed last night. Historically, the Winter Solstice has been a time of celebration when the townsfolk of Nesbitt-Hill memorialize the the Solstice King and his champion Krampus. For it is this duo who has protected the town since the Battle of Zauberspitz where the Solstice King and Krampus defeated a horde of the Demon Lord’s servants, or at least that is what the stories say. The stories also say that Krampus steals children who misbehave and returns them at the Spring Equinox after the darkness has been purged from the children’s souls. If it is true that Krampus takes children and eventually brings them back, why is it that Krampus has taken no children for twenty years? Why does Mistress Oetzel swear she saw Krampus take adults this Winter Solstice? And why were these adults among the most generous citizens of Nesbitt-Hill? Has Krampus returned, but as a servant of the Demon Lord? Or is something else afoot?
With the exception of the map depicting the area of the Iron Peaks, which I refer to as the Gronwald, an area that lies in the shadow of the Zauberspitz, all of the maps were drawn by Dyson Logos and were taken from his Commercial Maps webpage. According to the page, Dyson has released these images under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. If I have used any images that are not covered by this license, I will be happy to remove them.
The cover image of “Shadow of the Krampus?” was illustrated by Bill Rude, who was kind enough to give me permission to use it. Once again, I implore you to please visit his website and consider purchasing some of his art.
The other image is the “survival map” from Robert J Schwalb’s playing aids page for Shadow of the Demon Lord. I am using it with the intention of it being fair use, but if Mr. Schwalb deems my use inappropriate I will be happy to remove it. This adventure requires the use of the Shadow of the Demon Lord rule book since all monster statistics, with the exception of Krampus, are located within the pages of that “vile” tome. Krampus was designed using rules from the Of Monstrous Mien supplement. It is highly recommended that you also own Hunger in the Void and Terrible Beauty to add details around the edges of this adventure. Hunger deals with the nature of the Demon Lord and Terrible Beauty will allow you to incorporate some “creepy fae” elements.
The cartoon illustrations in the module are the work of my talented wife Jody Lindke. I included “rpg humor” cartoons because they remind me of the cartoons in the old AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide.
I hope you enjoy the adventure.
With gaming, as with movies, the question is whether an overt Christmas theme is needed to make it a Christmas adventure. Tomorrow I'm playing in a one-shot where we're elves (or something) working to make sure the Claus family business runs smoothly. That's a bit on-the-nose for my tastes. A favourite adventure of Christmas past had us playing Judges in Megacity One as the holiday shopping got underway. But then, I'll accept Uncharted or Knives Out as Christmas Day movies.