One Shot Two: Highway to Hell

After a devil invasion of Valhalla took their captain from them, two valkyries ride through Hell to get her back. Lucia (played by Jen) was a valkyrie paladin and Elia (played by Clint) was a valkyrie bard. They both had badass motorcycles.
==Overview==
Elia and Lucia were two valkyrie warriors who were on a fighting team together. Elia's bonds were: "This is not my first adventure with Lucia" and "Lucia is often the butt of my jokes". Lucia's bonds were: "Elia's misguided behavior endangers their very soul!" and "I respect the beliefs of Elia but hope they will someday see the true way. 
As they entered Hell they realized that their lives were on the line. In Valhalla they would resurrect automatically but in Hell they would die for real. 
The valkyries set off on their bikes through the portal to Hell left behind by the devils. Elia brought two shotguns, an electric guitar and a tough leather jacket. Lucia brought a long sword, scale armor and adventuring gear. They each began the journey with 2 obols. They arrived on the High Priority Corridor in Avernus, the Fiery Wasteland. 
They reached the coast of Archeron, the River of Metal. Kharon the boatman met them at the shore. He drove a barge with a long pole. He asked for a obol in return for passage over the molten river. Lucia convinced him that a necklace she had was valuable. Once on the other side, they drove off before Kharon knew he had been tricked.
They next encountered Erebus, the Field of Night. The light from the sky was cut off and they drove with only their headlights to guide them. Then from all sides they were attacked by flying imps. The valkyries fought off the imps and drove on.
They approached the Gates of Dis which open onto the Superhighway. The city of Dis was surrounded by high, thick iron walls. The gates opened down like a draw bridge. It was pulled down by chains attached to two flesh creatures with their eyes torn out. Above the gate was a large funeral bell and devil guards. Elia and Lucia rode their bikes up the chains to the top of the wall where they fought and killed the devil guards. After hitting the bell they realized that the bell triggered the flesh creatures to walk forward and pull down the gate. They jumped down to the other side of the wall and entered Dis, the Iron City.
In Dis, souls were tortured by chain devils. Lucia and Elia deemed that there were too many devils in the city for them to overpower but they were able to intimidate a devil into telling them that their captain was probably being held in the center of Hell as a prisoner of war.
The valkyries drove on through the city and encountered Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness. The river was cold and full of broken glass. The Superhighway crossed the river with a bridge. As they crossed the bridge, Elia was affected by the river and forgot where they had been. Lucia was able to snap her back into reality.
The Superhighway continued into Nebel, the Field of Fog. With visibility low they couldn't make out much around them but they were able to make a disgusting insect creature and maggot-like monsters with humanoid faces. The creatures did not attack so Elia and Lucia drove by.
Next they encountered the bridge over Phlegethon, the River of Fire. They crossed uneventfully.
The bridge ended on the coast of Nastrond, the Swamp of Snakes. The ground appeared to move and undulate and upon close inspection it was found to be fully composed of snakes. The valkyries were attacked by a huge serpent and a few smaller snakes. Elia was attacked by a smaller snake but was protected from its bite by her holy quest. Lucia drove her bike up the length of the serpent and did a hard brake on the top of the snake, tearing up its scales. They killed the snakes with their sword and shotguns.
The arrived at the coast of Kokytos, the River of Wailing. The river was full of souls yelling in pain. The riders drove over without incident.
The Superhighway went onward into Malebolge, the Ten Ditches. The region was made of ten successive circular ditches surrounding the center of Hell. Elia and Lucia drove on uneventfully.
Malebolge ended in a shear cliff. Past the cliff, the valkyries saw the heads and shoulders of many Collisapodes. The Collosapodes were chained to the cliffs in punishment for their role in killing Aroden. Lucia and Elia drove right past the Collosapodes and did cool motorcycle tricks to land safely back on the Superhighway below.
The Superhighway became a long bridge reaching over the surface of Tartarus, the Lake of Lava. The lake was dotted with islands of obsidian. The largest piece of obsidian was a huge cube bobbing and turning in the lava. The valkyries climbed to the top of the cube. The broke a small hole into the cube and only saw darkness within. Lucia looked closer and saw the eye of Rovagug. Rovagug swiped and her tried to attack her. She took massive damage but Elia fired shots into the cube and Rovagug recoiled. After the evil god pulled away from the hole, their captain emerged safely with some other prisoners of war. 
The valkyries turned around and drove straight out of Hell with their newly freed friends. Lucia was brought back to Valhalla fast enough that she did not pass away forever.
==GM Notes==
Most of the game worked well. Best encounter was definitely the gate of Dis because it has so many ways to approach it. This was my first time gming Dungeon World so it took some getting used to. I played ACDC's Back in Black during the game for atmosphere and I think it worked very well. The gate also has a built in theme song, Hell's Bells.
I ran nearly vanilla Dungeon World. I changed the style of leather armor to a leather jacket, bow and arrow to shotguns and added motorcycles. Mechanically I added two special moves for the setting that were available to all characters.
Motorcycle Trick
When you do a cool motorcycle stunt, roll + DEX or + WIS. On a 10+ you do it and it looks sweet! On a roll of 7-9, choose one:
* Your motorcycle gets damaged
* You run out of gas
* You end up in a dangerous spot
Run Over
When you drive straight into and over an enemy, roll + DEX or + WIS. On a 10+, you do 1d8 damage. On a 7-9, choose one:
* The enemy grabs onto your ride and is pulled along
* You draw unwelcome attention
* You do 1d4 damage to an ally instead
* The enemy attacks you
I printed out a bunch of Dungeon World sheets from a large pdf and they were great. I had the players level up right away when they hit the experience number and that worked well. Really pushing for more work with the bonds with experience as a reward would be good.
Having the Heaven propaganda picture of Asmodeus handy was nice.
I found a bunch of design problems with the adventure. First I did not prepare an especially serious or comedic Hell. The info that was already established was more comedic but I wanted to do serious bits. I had some comedic bits prepared and decided to just throw them out and stick with serious. I had some disgusting bits like the flesh creatures and the maggots with faces that got some really good reactions. More of that would have been good.
The thesis wasn't strong. In retrospect the thesis should have been that Hell is a necessary evil. It's evil because the devils and Asmodeus invade other planes, but it's necessary because bad people are legitimately punished when they are sent there. Rovagug and the Collosapodes are good examples of evil being punished. At the start the players should hate Hell. In the end they should respect Hell.
The geography and population of Hell could have supported the thesis stronger. Hell should show a process whereby souls enter Hell from the outer layer. Then the souls are brought closer and closer to the center until they get to maybe Malebolge where the souls have been tortured beyond the limits of a mortal soul and the soul becomes a devil. Then the devil goes outward from the center of Hell and develops more. By the outer layers they are fully developed devils. This process would show evil souls being tortured and the unfortunate consequences.
The obols fell completely flat. The players didn't feel like they needed to use them and I totally forgot about them except for the few places where I specifically put them in the encounter. They should have been more present and provided tough choices. e.g. pay an obol or take a risk.
Lots of areas ended up being boring. Because the adventure is so structured it feels weird to throw out content which I did a lot of for time constraints. There should be shorter encounters in the empty parts. Maybe npcs souls to talk to or attempt to free. 
The ending sucked in my eyes, like my past couple endings have. Lucia took lethal damage and should have died. I should have stuck with it and let her die but I hand waved it and said that she got back to Valhalla and was fine. The obsidian cube needs more definition.
In general the history of the invasion and the prisoners of war needs more definition. How many prisoners are there? How were they brought back? Why are they in the cube with Rovagug? Should they even be in the same cube as Rovagug? Maybe being in a cube next to the Rovagug one and guarded by Kerebus would be better.
I don't know if the Kharon encounter should have been handled differently or not. I like the player coming up with their own solution to problem. Something useful like the necklace existing should either be a roll or cost something though. And Kharon should have come back to punish them later because he was tricked. It's a bit weird because I want Kharon to be very powerful so if directly attacks the PCs they will lose. So for him to retaliate would be some sort of indirect challenge, maybe making a different encounter tougher. Elia had not chosen her quest at that point but eventually chose her quest to be Honor which I think should have prevented her from tricking Kharon, at least directly. Elia could have pulled the same trick.
The River of Forgetfulness worked pretty well. I posed the difficult choice of deciding whether to forget where they were going or where they had been.
Writing moves is hard. Using moves is also hard. I screwed up the mental attack on the bridge of forgetfulness. It should have been a narrative attack and then probably a Defy Danger move. Figuring out what should happen on a failed move is difficult. Often moves lead to more and more complications. Choosing to draw unwelcome attention sometimes means creating more enemies and adding them to the encounter on the fly.
I created all of the encounter numbers on the fly using the gm sheet and it went pretty well. With some more experience it would probably go even faster. Having very narratively different monsters goes a long way. It makes the encounters interesting and it gives the players more ideas for how to use their moves. Attacking a devil soldier is very different from attacking a giant serpent.
Clint said that this was the first time that combat was fun for him.
This was my first time drinking while gming and it was a good experience. It will take some skill to hit the sweet spot of getting creative juices flowing but still keeping it together enough to put on a good show.
I don't know if I realized coming in but the structure was totally a railroad again. I don't know how much that could change without making it a hex crawl. There could be a few choices of going around the different rings of Hell in different directions but that adds more time to each layer. Adding more meaningful choices within the layers would add some more engagement but maybe not as much as giving the players more agency over the structure. On the other hand, the railroad structure fits well with the valkyrie mindset of killing devils because they're evil.
Category:One Shots