Ennie Awards 2022: ‘Wandering Through Demon-F*cked Cleveland’

Welcome to the table.

Let’s dive into this 2022 Ennie-nominated adventure Extraction from Demon-F*cked Cleveland in 1996 by Logan Dean. I have a soft spot in my heart for ‘zines and micro-publications because there is something nostalgic about them for me. They remind me of the stuff other art students handed out in school or random stuff we would find at coffee houses and in the back of comic shops that people would print and staple together at the library or their parents office.

Extraction from Demon-Fucked Cleveland 1996 is system agnostic. What that means is that there is not a rule set presented with the adventure. It could be played with anything from Pathfinder to Spirit of 77 and anything in between.

What is contained on this small six panel pamphlet (and when I say small I have pizza restaurant menus bigger than this thing ) is a fun adventure prompt in which a president’s plane goes down in a demon infested Cleveland, and the players must enter the demon infested zone via Lake Erie to rescue the president and get extracted.

There is a very basic hex map, a chart of tasks, challenges, and rewards, and some brief writeups on monsters and locations. My personal favorite part of this whole thing is the “Meatbrick,” who “…are just piles of flesh and guts from dead demons that crawl together into wet battering rams.” There is more to them but that bit of text is so visceral and says all you really need to know about these hostile demon creatures. 

There is an encounter chart that can be rolled on with a d10 every half an hour, or when the party enters a new hex of the hex map, and the whole thing only takes about four hours to play if you really take your time.

One of the coolest things about this is that it has no art and a really low production cost, but the adventure hook and plot works. It’s bold and fun, and if you are looking for a good one-shot, this is for sure one you should be checking out . If you are like me, you may end up building on the whole story and find yourself creating a larger adventure based around what is presented in the pamphlet.

You can pick up your own copy of Extraction from Demon-Fucked Cleveland in 1996 at this link.

Until next time, don’t forget to vote for the Ennies… at this link.