Six Months in Hell - A Sinners Heat Check
As of this week, I will have spent 6 months in Hell.
This will be a sort of report/retrospective on my time playing in Spuk’s ongoing campaign, Sinners, which takes place in and around The Shrike, a module set in hell.
Sinners is the second campaign I’ve played in that takes place in Hell.
The first one was a mere 6 sessions that I played in a Descent into Avernus campaign back when I was just getting started with 5E. Hell is a neo-trad railroad.
Thankfully, Sinners does not suffer from this problem. In fact, it’s peak.
The Setup
Definitely check out Spuk’s quarterly writeup to see the GM’s perspective on prepping and running this campaign. I’ll just briefly say that the game began as an open table where players could bring in deceased characters from prior campaigns, notably Unsettled which was a big Cairn open table that had just wrapped up on the Terra server.
I had played once in Unsettled, but my lion tamer was not dead and so I saw no reason to drag him to hell. I was drawn to Sinners because I actually did own a copy of The Shrike and had skimmed through it before. Since I have the memory of a goldfish I retained none of the information from that first read. I did tell Spuk before I joined that I had glossed over the adventure a few months before he posted the open table, but he was chill about it. It really ended up not being a problem, because I remembered absolutely nothing.
I wasn’t able to join on the very first session, but I did jump in as early as session 2. My schedule is fairly unpredictable week to week between family, a baby, and work so an open table format generally suits me best as a player. Suffice it to say I’ve been there for some big campaign moments and also missed some hype stuff.
The campaign is an open sandbox and one that really hit its stride after a few weeks of regular gaming. The early days were fun but also a bit tough to get a feel for. The setting itself is quite grim, and not immediately inviting. I do find PC hunger to be a good motivator for early sessions, just as much, if not more, than being broke (often they go in tandem). However, this setting is pretty rife with cannibalism and lets just say you really don’t want to know where that ration came from.
I can get on board with grimdark fiction if there are some more savory elements to a setting but those early sessions definitely leaned more into the grim desolation. Weird little NPCs and fun interactions can be had, but you do need to look for them. I don't trust any of them to be quite honest. This is still hell.
For a special type of gamer, however, there is Peak to be found here. And there is a dead god impaled on it.
The System
Though the module is statted for OSE, we have been using Spuk’s slightly modified version of Grave, a Knave hack that emulates Soulslike gameplay. I’ve already written up my thoughts on how the system handles that genre. I can’t speak to how easy it was to convert the module over, but I do know that Spuk’s been tinkering with treasure and levelling from the get go. Typically the module would have you feed treasure into the Idols of Mammon to gain XP, which is a neat twist on the traditional gold-for-xp formula, but not one that works well for an open-table. Instead we’ve just stuck with the usual gold-for-xp levelling.
What this means for Grave is that you can actually soar through levels if you return to safety with a big enough haul. This being Hell, there aren’t many places you would consider safe. Death, however, is not final, but still carries risk of losing hard earned XP. In Grave, your character can resurrect as many times as their charisma modifier, which makes sense in the context of The Shrike, where Sinners regrow out of their “sin stone” - a black rock embedded somewhere in their bodies. In the early game, death was more concerning since you were likely to get one-shotted by basically anything that deals damage, and you could have just as easily not had any points in charisma. If you are out of "lives" your character turns hollow - just like Dark Souls!
Grave’s progression takes a lot of queues from Soulslikes. Hit a certain amount of “soul shards” (XP) and you get to level up, with the threshold getting higher and higher with subsequent ranks. There is actually no level cap, so theoretically you could become insanely powerful and mog everything you encounter. At this point my PC, Corliss, is pretty buff but by no means the strongest party member, that honor goes to Prometheus though as of last session Corliss is catching up.
What is unique about Grave is that levelling up presents a choice of either unlocking former memories or benefiting from stat progression or HP increases. Unfortunately, I am a gamer, so I never chose to have a backstory over getting gud.
My Character
The character I rolled up from the start was Corliss, a former graverobber who's sin was lying. Corliss doesn't know any of this though, because Sinners wake up on The Shrike with amnesia, and Corliss unfortunately has his Sinstone buried in his ass (rolled randomly), so he never got to read what it says. He also can never be comfortable sitting down.
This spawned a grindset in him. You see, Hell sucks if you are level 1. It's bleak, and the early game is full of things that will fuck up your day. If you get in a fight, you are probably eating shit. To survive hell - nay - thrive in it, you have to get hard. But it wasn't going to be easy. Because this is Hell.
Corliss witnessed an almost TPK in session 3. I say almost, because Corliss survived, because he ran.
I am glad Corliss survived, but I can't say I have any particular affection for this character. I am not consciously acting him out and most of his behavior is spawned out of me trying to keep him alive by any means necessary. He's done some messed up things, but only because D&D is a game about murder half the time. Also, this is Hell.
What I can say about Corliss is that his whole existence in this game is predicated on hoarding wealth so he can get FAT. However at the start of Sinners, there was fucking nowhere on The Shrike to spend money, so while Corliss got FAT from his treasure hauls, he severely lacked drip.
With nothing to spend his money on, Corliss facilitated the growth of the only market in this setting by aggressively expanding into settlements he did not particularly like by force. He did this in service of the new Archon of Iron, Sakar, who's whole deal is commoditizing Hell. This is a very gameable goal, so Corliss backed him.
By now Corliss has gotten very rich and very overpowered. He also found some magic items that made him even more swole, like gauntlets of giant's strength. Last session he drank a muscles potion to make himself even stronger and beat an eagle demon to death with a mace. Did I mention Sinners is peak?
The Setting
The Shrike is grim. It is a bleak depiction of hell and does not shy away from the more horrific aspects of eternal damnation. This is a world ruled by devils and arch-devils. Starting as a Sinner means you are the very bottom of the food chain. The big hook of this setting is that you can plug it into any campaign where a TPK has occurred and have the characters figure out how to make it out. Or in my case, you roll up an unfortunate soul and take it from there.
The world is full of striking imagery. Leo Hunt is very much pulling from Gustave Dore's renditions of Dante's Divine Comedy for The Shrike's atmosphere. Spuk shares a lot of the art (by Jantiff Illustration) with us and it wears that inspiration on its sleeve. There is also plenty of Souls-like stuff here as well. Some of it is ripped straight out of those games and it is not subtle. I do get to say "just like Dark Souls!" like a videogame journalist every time it comes up. Because it is factually correct that Dark Souls is the only good game that ever existed and all other media must be compared to it.
The Shrike's map is primarily made up of an island in an endless sea. The notable feature of this island is an immense spire, atop which is an impaled Nameless God. The blood of this god trickles down from the top and creates partials, humanoids formed out of idle materials and the god's blood. They are easily one of my favorite things about this setting. All are unique and very striking to picture. Our party has been collecting partial hirelings like they were Pokemon.
Players are Sinners by default, humans who awaken on the shores of The Shrike with no memory of their past lives and a black rock, called a sin stone, embedded somewhere in their body. Sinners have the unique ability to regenerate after death from their sin stone up to as many times as their charisma modifier. Downed party members can be easily retrieved if you just take the rock. They will regrow in a matter of hours. With a high charisma score you do end up with a character you can play for a long while.
Because Sinners have amnesia, PCs didn't feel very interesting in the early game. You are essentially a complete blank slate and don't have anything tying you to the world. The benefit of this is that PC knowledge and player knowledge are 1:1 from the very beginning, but for me at least I felt no attachment whatsoever to Corliss, despite him rolling a Grave Robber background, because it simply never came up.
The world at least does draw you in with it's vision of Hell as a prison colony where the jailers are just as trapped as the inmates. I especially like the power structures of The Shrike. This is a world run by devils and not all devils are equal. They are all subdivided into Courts, each headed by an Archon. Devils being devils, they are all too eager to go to war with each other or act maliciously. It is very easy to fall into their machinations, either by being forced into servitude or in a bargain of some form or another.
Devils also have their own cultural norms which are all gameable. For example, spend enough time around The Shrike and you will encounter black daggers called Athame. These are highly prized by the devils, and become more valuable if the dagger was used to slay a powerful devil. More prized than that are Black Ledgers which contain details of pacts made between devils and mortals. Black Ledgers have proven to be extremely valuable negotiating tools. They don’t mean much to a Sinner like me, so I’m all too happy to part with them in exchange for favors, or just as often my life.
It feels odd that gold is used as a measure of value in this adventure, because devil currency is far more interesting. Gold value is basically a meta layer to aid in XP calculation and to assign a quantifiable value to the currencies of The Shrike. I kind of wish the module had abandoned gold values entirely. Cursepearls, Nightblooms, Black Ledgers, Umbrae and Athame are far more intriguing and flavorful. They add texture to devil culture and are the glue that binds the Courts. Gaming the Courts has been the fuel of this campaign so far. Learning how all these currencies can be used is immensely satisfying and only feels that way because the introductory sessions felt so hostile and impermeable.
I want to come back to the topic of tone, because that can easily be the setting's biggest turn off for a lot of people. It is grim. Every Sinner you meet here is a cannibal or has engaged in cannibalism. Sometimes it scratches the upper limit of edginess that I am comfortable with, but so far it hasn't crossed any lines for me. There was that session where we just got enslaved for walking into a factory. It was fun to figure out how we would make it out of there, but that was definitely not something I was expecting to happen so easily. Then again, this is Hell.
The Shrike effectively conveys how awful a world run by devils is, but by giving it order it does become something that can be understood and therefore manipulated. You have agency over whether you accept your role in the system, climb the ranks within it, or burn it all down. You could Johnny Silverhand the Spire if you wanted to, but it won't be easy.
The Campaign
While this game did start off as an open table, it does not feel like one by now. It's not because any doors were closed to new players, but rather that a group of 3-4 regulars has formed. I would count myself as one of the regulars but with life being what it is I can't make it to every session. Still, I appreciate that the game stays on even when 2 players end up making it. I do think I might be the only one currently playing who was a player in the campaign's first month. Corliss was there for the old lore.
Every session picks up right where the last one left off. If you can't make the session, your character just isn't there for it. There is no retconning or weird justification for why the guy who was just there suddenly isn't. It's simple and clean. It lets the people who showed up actually play the game without the headache caused by someone's absence. Spuk is generous enough to let us use important items pertaining to quests even if the person carrying isn't present. I think that broadly this is the right structure for this campaign, since it is hard to see how a west marches style home-base would work in this setting. Having a cozy base in Hell just feels out of place. I also think starting where we left off means we actually get to build some momentum especially given that we congealed into a core group this many sessions in.
It does mean that anyone coming in after a while, or completely new to the campaign, will have a lot of context to catch up on. This isn't to discourage anyone who does want to jump in, but a lot has happened already and one of the joys of the campaign is learning how this setting operates. It is not the kind of game where you will catch up on everything in 5 minutes.
That said, for those of us who have stuck it through, there are some immense payoffs here. Yes, Hell is brutal. Most of our sessions are just figuring out how to not die on the way to some Devil Court. When we do find treasure, it's pure ecstasy followed by the dread that comes with the very real possibility of losing all that XP before reaching safety. Because we aren't ending in town each session, the journey back is often the most exciting part of the campaign. It's also stressful as fuck. This campaign does not provide low-cortisol gaming.
If there is something I feel is missing here it is the lack of downtime. The fictional context does chafe against it, but it does often feel like our characters very rarely catch a break. I get it, we are in hell, so it does feel a bit unreasonable to ask. That said, I am shocked by how much treasure there is to find here. You could feasibly leave a dungeon with enough money to buy a castle, but there is a real dearth of things to spend it on.
My campaign goal is literally creating markets to splurge my accrued gold. I have now become the party's capitalist in chief simply because the market is too small for a high net worth PCs. The devils seem all too happy to just sit on treasure. I wanna put my money to work! There just so happened to be a devil whose interests aligned with ours and so we became his agents.
For me, this is the juice of the campaign. Leaving our marks on hell. Is it fucked up that we made it capitalist? Sure. Is it making me rich and stronk? Yes.
This setting in particular does push players to abandon their morals. I find myself constantly justifying my actions with "We are in hell". While I don't think I crossed any lines beyond what would happen at most D&D tables, I did commit a lot of heinous acts in pursuit of my goal of self-enrichment and preservation.
Corliss' crimes against humanity include:
- Sacrificing my hireling to a furnace that wanted to eat me.
- Hostile corporate takeover of a slam poetry commune.
- Toppling a vat of hot oil onto a factory floor and throwing a torch to set it ablaze, killing everyone working the floor. (Prometheus shares the blame here)
- Stealing a prisoner's blood to fuel my evil lantern. He died.
- Eating a partial. (To be fair I did not know it was partial meat, but I did not ask either)
Many more crimes were committed towards devil-kind but they 100% deserved it.
My favorite aspect of the campaign is the risk reward of exploration, true to the classic D&D formula. With Grave's rendition of XP accumulation this is probably the closest I have felt to playing a TTRPG soulslike. Watching the big number drop to 0 on death is devastating. Gaining XP feels thrilling as a result in the same way that finding sweet loot in an extraction shooter does.
Though it isn't what I would call a megadungeon, The Shrike is absolutely feels like one large dungeoncrawl. The logistics game is strong here. We aren't playing B/X, but handling B/X treasure and figuring out how to get it out of some godforsaken Hell-pit is the juice for me. Settlements are few and far between so the return to safety is often just as, if not more tense than delving deeper. There is always a risk of bumping into a devil who is all too eager to ruin your day.
The thing is, we go 4-5 sessions on average without finding a smidge of gold, only to stumble on one room with enough loot to jump 5 levels. It's like wandering the entirety of the Empty Quarter, dying of thirst, only to get hit with a flash flood.
I also think that Grave's levelling is absolutely not tuned for this kind of adventure but in the most fun way possible. I joked last time that we are essentially in a Shonen anime (our hirelings are Pokémon). Corliss started out weak as shit and now has 20 strength. I do feel like we've approached end-game territory and I'm ready to fight God.
The joke here is that the implied goal of this adventure is to find a way out. We could have done that like 6 sessions ago. I don't wanna leave. I think the underlying feeling among the core players is maybe we should run the place. There probably isn't a whole lot more to this module that we haven't explored and if the end is nigh then that's cool too (Ocean D&D is being dangled in front of us every Wednesday), but it'll be fun to see where this all goes.