Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull by Joseph Goodman is a role playing game supplement published by Goodman Games for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
The supplement is available as a 24-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $6.99 and can also be bought in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed although it was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page the front matter, a tiny portion of a page the Open Game License and one is an ad.
The first page of content is an inside cover and is a player handout.
The first adventure is the Thirteenth Skull which is for 4th level characters. The characters witness an execution that goes slightly strange; the person executed turns out to look identical to the duke ordering it, the executioner has a silver skull for a head and flies away on a pterodactyl, talking the duke’s daughter with him.
The first duke made a deal with a literal devil, in which they will be reborn at some point in the future. That point is now. The characters have legends they can hear before venturing into the ducal crypt, finding a hidden area. There is a powerful magic item that allows travel to other planes; the daughter is being kept on a plane of Hell.
Now, there’s a warning that it is very unlikely for the duke’s daughter to survive. The final encounter has a devil that can easily kill her, if she gets hit by an attack. However, there is no map of this area to judge any relative distances, such as the distances between the characters, devil and daughter. And in this encounter, those distances are really important.
The second adventure, The Balance Blade, is an adventure for level 2 characters and it’s stated to be best used as a convention game. In fact, it is probably only usable as a convention game. A wizard’s patron asks them to recover a stolen blade, but this is a setup from start to finish. The party also needs to be balanced between skills and alignments, or things could fall apart. This would be very difficult to work into a campaign, and is potentially campaign-ending for one character anyway, not just through death.
The final part of the supplement is Seven Strange Skulls, which describes seven new magic items on a skull theme.
Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull in Review
The PDF is bookmarked but only has a few major sections linked. Navigation is poor. The text maintains a two-column format and appeared to be mostly free of errors. There are a number of black and white illustrations, including maps, which look as if they are custom. Presentation is good.
Both adventures in this supplement have flaws. With the first, it’s not surprising that the duke’s daughter usually dies; there simply isn’t enough information as-is for characters to know how to save her, or even necessarily know how much danger she’s in. The second adventure is too forced and railroaded to be of general use, especially as it involves one character being duped. The article on the seven skull-based magic items is, however, interesting, and perhaps the best part of the supplement. Dungeon Crawl Classics #71: The 13th Skull is a flawed collection of material and it can be found by clicking here.
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