LANCER: The Demon of Dogwater Gulch
A downloadable LANCER adventure
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch
A terraforming engine fallen from orbital debris above the arid planet Deepgrit has transformed Dogwater Gulch into a bountiful paradise, but a colossal monster terrorizing the canyon has the nearby town of Porthull gripped with fear. Claim the bounty on the beast’s head before someone else does, or before the monster finds you first.
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch is a one-shot adventure for one GM and 3 to 5 players designed as the perfect introduction to Lancer, featuring:
- A sandbox monster hunt in a race against the clock
- A climactic showdown combat that changes depending on the players’ actions, including a battle map and NPC tokens
- Advice for adapting the adventure for continued play
- Advice for running the adventure at higher license levels
This adventure was made as part of the Lancer One-Shot Module Jam.
For best results, ensure that your PDF reader is set to view the PDF as a book with side-by-side pages. Otherwise, use the "spreads" version of the PDF.
Credits and acknowledgements:
- Writing, Layout, & Cartography: Ben Torell (gordianblade.com)
- Editing: Tim B. (congas.blog)
- Cover Illustration: Owen M. Good (peoplemaking.games/@q_bit)
- Playtesters: Megan Carlquist, Owen M. Good, William Hatch, Chris Patterson, Jenn Riley, Logan "Locksteady" Smith, Brad Williams
- Combat Map: Lancer Map Creation Tool (interpoint-station.itch.io/lancer-map-creation-tool)
- Token Images: Retrograde Minis (retrogrademinis.com)
- Hex Map Assets: David Baumgart (dgbaumgart.com)
"Made by Humans" logo courtesy of Lone Archivist used under CC BY 4.0. This work is AI-Free. It does not include content or media that was AI or Machine Generated. Supporting this work means supporting real people.
The Demon of Dogwater Gulch is not an official Lancer product; it is a third party work, and is not affiliated with Massif Press. The Demon of Dogwater Gulch is published via the Lancer Third Party License.
Copyright © 2025 Ben Torell. Lancer is copyright Massif Press.
Purchase
In order to download this LANCER adventure you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this LANCER adventure at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community Copy
Claim a free copy of The Demon of Dogwater Gulch if you're unable to pay for it, for any reason, or if you were a participant in the Lancer One-Shot Module Jam.
I appreciate financial support, but it's more important to me that a price not get in the way of your enjoyment of the adventure. Please consider leaving a kind review!
For each full price sale during the first year of release, I will make an additional community copy available.
Development log
- Update 1.1.0Aug 22, 2025
- Tiny update 1.01Feb 04, 2025
- The Demon of Dogwater Gulch 1.0 is out!Jan 14, 2025
- Initial 0.8 Beta releasedJan 05, 2025
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Super comprehensive, and really well laid out! I love this little toolbox
Short and sweet and full of options for my players to pursue while hunting kaiju. This will be my future go-to one-shot for Lancer!
I ran it today at LL2 for group of 4, consisting 50:50 of new and returning players. They all loved it and hex crawl part was great, though I felt like it could've used some way to nerf limited use items and core powers, as with only one combat scene, players can just use them all at once and trivialize the combat significantly. I know hex crawl part is meant to do that, but it could go further.
Thanks for the comment, I'm glad they enjoyed it! Figuring out how to modulate the right level of challenge to burn through resources during the crawl is probably the most difficult part of running the adventure, as it's something each GM has to manage on the fly on a table by table basis, so I hear you there.
What pathway did they take through the gulch?
They went north, through grasslands and swamp, then turned around and through the orchard. The final confrontation ended up being around the river canyon.
At one point they concocted a plan to lure the rivals into a kill zone and get rid of them with artillery (they had a Barbarossa) to remove them without a direct fight. They started discussing their supposed plan to lure the Hulk on open channel to draw them in. but the other hunters just resorted to switching off their transponders and sneaking up on the party when they were preparing.
After they reduced the creature to 1 structure and 4 hp, it borrowed underground and started running away from the combat zone. The day was saved, by a Swallowtail with Lotus Projector, who managed to snipe it for those last few HP.
Once again thank you for this adventure. I'll sure borrow some of its ideas in my future campaigns.
For folks putting the maps in Foundry v10+, try these configurations (when a configuration is omitted, assume it is unchanged):
Dogwater Gulch Hex Map
Dogwater Gulch Combat Map
Thanks! I haven't run this in Foundry so I appreciate it!
This really helped me work out how to create challenges for my own game!
It was a pleasure to edit this! And if I ever run Lancer I know what I'm running now, haha.
Thanks so much! Your editing help was profoundly appreciated!