Mutant Spawn of the Toadmother

An interview with Andy Edmonds

Andy Edmonds is back with another adventure: Mutant Spawn of the Toadmother, which is another Castle Whiterock tie-in adventure. Its a DCC funnel/ 5e level-1 adventure all about the horrific servants everyone’s favorite demonic frog god: Bobugbubilz. If you want to check out the quality of Andy’s previous work, check out some publisher previews over on DriveThruRPG. You can pick these up as add-ons with the current campaign. This is one of the more appealing looking projects (in my humble opinion) and I think that’s reflected in its current funding success! So I took a little time to talk with Andy and find out more.

So I know we’re level-1 for 5e and level-0 for DCC and we’re sure to be threatened by horrific toad monsters, but tell me more about the premise!

In the city of Cillamar, home base for excursions into Castle Whiterock, there is a neighborhood called the Warrens. Named for the waves of refugees from the Warlands that have settled there, it’s a neighborhood built in the ruins left by an ancient dragon attack. As you can imagine, the district receives more policing than protection from the city’s Lantern Watch and attracts a less principled element.

Driven by screams in the night and unexplained disappearances, the community unites to defend themselves and rescue their friends and family. That’s when it all goes horribly wrong. Think dark fantasy survival horror in the tradition of C.H.U.D., The Descent, or Aliens—except you only have a pitchfork and some cheese dip.

How deep are we delving into the spelunking and cave diving aspect? I’ve love seeing adventures that have a real sense of verticality to them.

The trail of blood and echo of screams lead to the entrance of an underground cavern system populated with ever-increasing horrors. As they descend, the characters will need to squeeze through jagged crevices, dive into dark, mysterious holes, plunge into waterlogged sumps, and scale treacherous cliffs to escape with their lives... I mean, rescue their friends. I’ve cooked up some climbing, spelunking, and cave diving mechanics to keep the tension cranked to the limit. There will be plenty of monsters to fight (or flee from), but just traversing the space is fraught with danger.

Knowing you and your past adventures, you’re including a devious puzzle in here somewhere. Can you share much without spoiling it? If not, share something about another favorite area of yours.

I love my puzzles! And there are a couple of them in Mutant Spawn of the Toadmother. It was a bit of a challenge to find places where brain-teasers made sense in the middle of a depth-crawl, but I have my ways. In one, after fleeing (there’s a lot of fleeing in this thing) from an overwhelming encounter (seriously, you’d better be ready to flee), the PCs find themselves standing in a foot of water, sealed in a caved-in chamber. The entrance is caved in, as is the exit. The only thing in the room aside from piles of large stones and a foot of brackish water is the remains of an enormous felled tree. Oh, and a faint, but undeniable breeze, coming from somewhere.

And you’re doing a cross-collab bonus with The Madness of Metronax, right? What are folks getting if they back both projects?

Jordy Williams, the genius behind Wizards with Laser Rifles, creator of the Silam zines, and I are teaming up to highlight each other’s adventures. His, The Madness of Metronax, is an adventure filled with magical giant ants controlled by a maniacal ant wizard. It’s going to be unreal! We thought that giant magical ants and giant mutant toads were a good fit, so if you back both of our campaigns, you’ll get a cool sheet of stickers featuring artwork from both of our adventures. Looking at what we have so far, art-wise, these stickers will be insane!

Thanks for sharing! Anything else that you want people to know about?

Thank you, Stefan, for the opportunity to ramble about my demonic toad baby! This whole project owes so much, I owe so much, to you and the TTRPG community, especially Joseph Goodman and Goodman Games. Being a small part of the epic Castle Whiterock mega dungeon has been overwhelming and has pushed me to up my game considerably.

The campaign is still running, and we have stretch goals planned far beyond what I’m guessing we can achieve. I reveal a new one each time we beat the last one. As of now, we are working toward a second sheet of stickers, two more new monster encounters (bringing the total to 14), and my favorite, a “Bobugbubilz in My Copliot” bumper sticker. So please back the campaign and help us reach these and the five other, yet-to-be-revealed stretch goals!

Back Mutant Spawn of the Toadmother on Backerkit.

What Castle Whiterock projects are you backing and what made them stand out to you?

What Else’s Going On?

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