Mega-Dungeon Map Time!

I started this earlier in the week, got about half way finished and the program crashed and the file was corrupt.  So I lost it.  But I will not be stopped!  So I started again, this time saving it in two different places.

This is a basic map.  No features, not even the doors have been added yet.  I'm not going to get too fancy with it.  I think the only things I'll add are the doors and room numbers.

I plan on doing this dungeon like I used to make them in the way back.  Meaning, I'm not going to worry about the ecological system.  I'm just going to make random stuff up and pick a room to put it in.  I won't be doing the blink dog on one room and Beelzebub in the next, but who knows.

However, I will be taking a lesson from the minimalist dungeon engineers.  I'll use a few descriptive sentences and move onto the next room.  It will set the scene and then I can just let my brain groove into whatever I like.  So two groups going into the same room may have two completely different experiences.  The other thing I'll be adding is the random room.  My plan is to write up a one hundred random room table and when a party enters that room it will up to the dice to decide what's in there.

Oh, I should add, this is level one. 

Random Dungeon Room Filler & Sleep Deprived Dungeon & Pictures of Feet

d12 Random Dungeon Filler

1-3 Creature

4  Trap

5  Treasure

6-7  Empty

8  Corpse

9  Event

10-11  Room Feature

12 Roll 2x

Adventure of the Randomly Rolled Dungeon

    This adventure was randomly rolled with the table above.  Why?  Because I have nothing else to do on a Saturday night when Ivy is the middle of a coupon frenzy.  I'm using the Blood & Treasure RPG for the system.  Now your probably wondering how I drew such an amazing map and did all the artwork in a single night.  Well it wasn't easy.  My secret, ice tea.  Now back to our not so normal program. 

1. (rolled 12 - roll 2x) (rolled 4 - trap and 1 - creature)

     The players descend the stairs and at the bottom a giant beetle devours the lower half of some poor smuck.  By the look of his tattered pants you and shitty shoes it is easy to deduct he must have been a henchmen.  The beetle's eyes glow red as it stops eating and scurries towards the players.  Fire Beetle (HD: 1, HP: 5, AC: 16, Dam: 2d4 (bite), MV: 30)

     There is a backpack deeper into the recess of area 1.  It was carried by poor Gilly Rumbutter whose plump body has been devoured by the beetle.  Only his stubby little legs remain.  Being a careful sot, with his possessions, not where he went, Gilly trapped his backpack with a powder.  If someone opens the pack without being careful a small packet of powder will erupt into the victim's face blinding him or her for an hour.  Inside the backpack are 6 torches, mallet, 4 iron spikes, 14 days of iron rations and a pint of hard cider.

2. (rolled 3 - creature)

     There is a mound in the center of this room with several large larva eggs.  They are round enough for a human to hug and tall enough to touch a the knee.  Nearly half look to have been broken.  The whole larva pulsate with a mild warmth.  

     Once the players enter the room or investigate the cavern ceiling they will see the movement above.  The beetles above are silent except when they attack.  They will release a loud whistling and click noise.  This allows them to perform basic strategic maneuvers.  These bombardier beetles will begin their attacks by releasing a acidic vapor from their back ends (1d6 damage, Fort save nullifies damage) then descend and engage.  3 Bombardier Beetles (HD: 2, HP: 10 each,  AC: 16, Dam: 1d4 (bite), 1d6 (acid spray), MV: 30) 

  

3. (rolled 9 - event)

     When the players enter the area the ground will shake and chunks from overhead will fall (make Reflex save or suffer 1d4 damage).  Once the earthquake passes there will be cracks above along with debris on the floor reducing move to half.

     The top eastern passageway was sealed long ago.  Should the players decide to excavate the tunnel they will find three dead goblin corpses with picks still in their hand. 

4. (rolled 11 - room feature)

     This room looks to have once been a grand setting, but the recent earthquakes has nearly buried it.  The floor is covered with a white limestone.  Each stone seems to have been shaved perfectly to fit with the rest.  And upon each tile of limestone is a small etching depicting the everyday life of a goblin.  

     If the players decide they want to give digging a go roll a d12 every so often ignoring all rolls except a 9 which will cause another earthquake.  If they can avoid another earthquake they can dig to the south and find The Chair of The Verge.  The Verge is a not so famous chieftain who liked fancy chairs.  The chair is broken, but it is decorated with over 100 cheap gems (each not worth more that 1 or 2sp).  The tiles are the real treasure.  Each tile can be sold at market for at least 10-20 sp.  Each stone weights 10lbs.  

Conclusion

     Who knows.  It's late here and I'm sleepy and the dog keeps biting my foot.  No I don't have a picture of that.

First Dungeons and a Thank You to Mom

First dungeons.  The discovery that got me started in developing dungeons was a graph paper tablet I found in my mother's supply closet at her office.  I'd never seen one before.  Didn't know they existed.  Holy crap, I just found gold.  I asked if I could have it and she said of course.  Armed with a ruler and pencil I drew dungeon map after dungeon map. 

After I finished a few dozen maps I chose the maps with the best personality and started room descriptions.  There was no logic or theme to the dungeons, just rooms with monsters and loot.  Blink dogs next to a room of ogres next to a hallway of Type 2 demons with an alcove where Beelzebub lounged.  Didn’t matter how ridiculous it was, it was cool.  I was doing it.  I was making dungeons.

With map mapped, descriptions described, I thought I was ready but it didn’t feel right.  Back into my mother’s supply closet I went.  Good god all mighty, a box of manila folders.  She said take them.  So I borrowed her stapler and stapled my map to the inside of the folder.  There was room on the other side.  So I made up a wandering monster table on her electric typewriter and stapled it there. I set the folder on its side and wa-la, I had a cardboard screen just like those TSR modules.

I walked the school halls with my homemade modules waiting for a study hall to break them out.  I had one dungeon called the Taps Six Dungeon.  It got kinda famous in my school.  Everyone wanted to go through it.  They wanted to know what the name meant.  I just smiled and said there is only one way to find out.  Actually, it didn’t mean a damn thing. I just thought it was a cool name.

So thanks to the supply closet at my mom’s office, my career in developing dungeons then eventually world building started.  And being that it's Mother’s Day, I want to give a huge thanks to you mom, for allowing me to raid your office closet, and understanding and allowing me to indulge in this weird hobby I really love.

Saturday Night Random Dungeon

It's going to be a quiet night here at the Manor.  Sitting around watching a little TV and listening to some iTunes while I mapped out a dungeon.  I am going to use Mythmere's Adventure Design Deskbook and the Ultimate Toolbox to create the dungeon and background.  Then I may use Mythmere's second volume of the Adventure Design Deskbook to create some critters.  I think I have other generators around that I will use to create NPCs and whatnot.  So this will be a completely randomly generated dungeon.  It will either be cool or a hot mess.

And I wanted to thank everyone for participating in the Show Me Your Dice Marathon.  A lot of gamers exposed their dice for all to see.  Not a bad turn out for being the opening days of Gen Con.

Dungeons Revisited

Tell me if you have heard this one before? A party of adventurers goes into a dungeon/ruin/temple/tower/mine/cave and kill everything and tale all the treasure. So you have heard that one.

Now there is an empty dungeon/ruin/temple/mine/cave and I am assuming that since most of us are not in a Michael Bay film where everything gets blown up at the end, these adventuring spots remain intact. If you hated your old neighbors the new ones may be worse.

1 - The dungeon remains empty. Normal animals will not because of the stench of death inside.

2 - Small wildlife starts using the ground level as shelter.

3 - A large wildlife creature makes a home. There is a 25% it is accompanied by a mate.

4 - The adventurers missed a few of the lesser denizens. Having no one to protect them they leave, but not before setting traps everywhere.

5 - An old boss returns after the party has slaughtered everyone else. He refortifies the area with better doors, locks and more guards.

6 - The primordial thing that the critters were keeping happy has now awakened and it's hungry.

7 - The place is now haunted with the spirits of those the adventurers slaughtered.

8 - Bandits set up camp. They store their stolen goods here until they can sell them off.

9 - A tribe of critters move in. They redecorate the whole setting. Even expand the old place to make more room for all of them. And there are a lot of them.

10 - A real nasty s.o.b. decides this is where he will develop his stronghold and from here he will rule the world.

11 - The lord of the land has given permission for the place to be rebuilt. Hundreds of people flock to the area looking for work.

12 - Due to time and condition the place collapses.

So if you have a campaign that you plan to run for a while and there are all these places dotting the landscape just because one party clears out everything might not mean it's done. The temple on the mountain can be used again. The GM will just need to figure out who decided who moved in. Monsters tend not to be too picky where they squat.

First Homemade Dungeons

When I first started making my own dungeons it was pretty exciting. It was the first time I realized I could 'do it'. Make my own thing. Back then we didn't know the adventures sucked and frankly we didn't care. We were rolling dice (any that rolled off the table did not count), spilling pop on the carpet and too poor to buy pizza. It wasn't uncommon to play a marathon session until the DM passed out. There were no cell phones, texting, video games, and no personal laptops to distract us from the game. It was what we waited all week to do.

My first dungeons consisted of a Manila folder with a graph paper map taped to the inside and some random tables taped to the other side. The maps were basic. Boxes connected by hallways. Once in a while I would go nuts and make a slanted hallway. Pits were often a common feature. Usually I would roll a d6 and that's how many pits I would put in. Throw in as least one place where there was a secret door. It didn't matter that it made sense. It just mattered that it was there.

Room descriptions were basically who lived there, one feature of the room, maybe there was a table or chair, then the treasure, where it was located and if it was trapped.

Populating the rooms was done by hit dice usually. I'd go through and pick out all the 5-7HD creatures and start picking out which ones I wanted in which room. These were very static dungeons. The creatures just stayed in their rooms waiting for the PCs to arrive and take their treasure. There was no parlaying with them you just rolled to hit. Back then everyone had every special ability, AC, HD, and damage memorized. Even though I was making my own adventure it never occurred to me to make my own monsters.

After populating the dungeon I would use the treasure type given with the monsters and roll to see what they had. So there you have a bunch of ogres sitting on a pile of gold with 2-8 potions. I'd roll on the DM Guide tables to see what powers the potions had and if there was a magic item roll to see what it was. Another thing that never occurred to me at the time was if an ogre had a +2 club in his treasure it just sat in a chest or on the pile never to be used by the ogre. Don't know why, but of course eventually that changed. The location of the treasure was in a locked chest. And none of the monsters ever had the key. Not sure how they looked at all the pretty shinies.

And lastly experience points were handed out in great gobs, if the characters survived. Back then PCs only had one gear and that was forward. Retreat was not an option. Kill and take the treasure was all we knew.

On a side note one of the most important things I learned was to have a cool dungeon title name. Even if it was like every other dungeon out there if it had a cool name people wanted to go through it. I would reserve seats when I would DM my Taps Six Dungeon. The title meant nothing really, but everyone wanted to go through it to find out what it was all about. It was about kill them all and take their treasure.

When the Player's Come Knocking

The party is thundering through the dungeon corridors trying to be quiet. Oh they believe they are quiet. Hell, the thief made his move silently roll, but with nearly a ton of metal armor, weapons and the hundreds or thousands of coins they are dragging along being quiet in a confined room/corridor is not an easy feat. And when the party starts beating on one of the dungeon denizens then the gig is up.

When writing adventures there is a lot of encounters where the creatures are surprised. They wait in stasis for the players to activate them so to speak. If there is a group of bandits that get monkey stomped in one room and the there are a bunch more in the next three things should happen. The bandits join the frey, the bandits set up an ambush to surprise the players as they come in or grab their family photo albums and get the hell out of there.

Player's make a lot of noise. They can't help themselves. So as GMs out there, how do you handle the noise factor of your players? When they are bashing in a door does it alert a portion of the dungeon creatures? Does it make them scurry to the noise? Set up an ambuch? Or do you keep the critter in stasis? I know a lot of it depends on the type of creatures that populate you place, but most of the critters have some sort of intelligence and mobility, what do they do when they players come knocking?

5. Dungeon Room

5. The Bone Room

As the players near the room the stonework in the hall becomes paved with bones. The open room's floor, ceiling and walls are made of bone. Jagged, broken off bones jut out in every direction making travel through here dangerous. The ceiling dips and the floor swells making some areas in the room narrow enough in height that only a halfling could pass without stooping.

Hidden among the bones are two bone demons (or Babaus, pg.213 OSRIC). It is virtually impossible to distinguish the demons among the bones. The demons have rigged a trap for the players, as they walk towards the corridor in the east wall a section of the bone ceiling will collapse on one or more of them (4d6 damage and for every 6 rolled a limb is pinned). The demons will attack after the trap is sprung.

The demons do not want to kill the players, but to subdue them. Baiyatus (see room 6.) needs more souls to carve a permanent gate for his demons to enter into this world. The secret door in the eastern wall is concealled behind a movable bone door that blends in with the surroundings.

Any treasure has been given to Baiyatus, but among bones and only a Detect Magic spell would be able to find it is a wand made of bone. It is a Wand of Reincarnate with 2 charges.

3-4 Dungeon Rooms

3. Doors of Darkness
A rusted iron spike is propping open the left door of the double doors. These doors are covered in the same white limestone, but most of the limestone has broken off and lies in piles on the floor. Most of the hellstone beneath is exposed. Beyond the door is darkness. Natural light does not penetrate it. If a magical light source is used they players will see an empty room (see room 4.)

4. The Pool in the Pit
There is a Hallucinatory Terrain spell cast in this room. The illusion of the floor hides the pool beneath. There is a 10’ drop before the 50’ deep pool begins. The water is ice cold. A character must make a save vs. paralyze or he will take 1d6-1 points of damage/round.

At the bottom of the pool are several dozen skeletons. Only the magical items have survived the years within the frigid water. The list of intact items includes a suit of +2 chainmail, a belt of +1 strength, a cloak of +1 protection, two +1 swords and the Sword of Berringer (see new Magic Item section) rings of Haste and Magic Missile (see new Magic Item section), and a total of 1400sp and 210gp.

To the west a section of the room is platform with large tapestries covering the walls. The tapestries are tattered and faded. They are faded images depict horrific images of tortured spirits. If a player stands before these tapestries for an extended period of time a save vs. fear must be made. If the player fails the images in the tapestries begin to move. For each player that fails his save a wraith will be created from the tapestries.

If a player tries to burn or cut the tapestries the images will shriek alerting everyone from room 5 to room 12. The tapestries can only be destroyed by holy water (which acts like fire).

Dungeon Map

I've been focusing on developing adventures during the past few weeks. This corner of the blogosphere has become one long episode of "The Housewives of the OSR". So I'm sticking to rolling dice, making stuff up and adventuring with friends on Monday nights.

The map above was developed by none other than
Mr. Rob S. Conley. He said I came up with the idea of this map and I thought he had either way I think its a very cool map. The dungeon room entries 1 and 2 are for this map. I plan to have it linked on the side of my blog and post the a room or a couple of rooms at a time until its done.

Please feel free to swipe this map and make your own adventure with it. It would be interesting to see what others would come up with. Have a great Monday.

Review: Engineering Dungeons

Engineering Dungeons is a 28 page supplement published by Troll Lord Games for Castles & Crusades can easily be used for any fantasy system. There are no stat blocks or system specific mechanics that need converting. I originally bought it on Amazon and did not read the description. I bought it for the title alone. From the title I thought it was going to be a philosophical approach towards constructing dungeons. I thought I would get a lecture on different approaches, stereotypes and the various ecologies. Something like a college seminar with a tweed clad professor discussing the historical significance of the construction of dungeons. Nope. It's a tech school. From the first pages they slam a hammer and saw in your hand and tell you to start building. No talk. Just do.

Engineering Dungeons is full of tables. I'm not kidding. Full of them. One of the first tables you will see is why the dungeon was originally constructed and who built it. Then you go from table to table. Roll and roll some more.

Here is an example of what I rolled of the who, the why and the where. I'll highlight the things I rolled. Giants dug out a massive coal mine six centuries ago to forge their massive weapons six centuries ago. Now the massive fortification is ruins. No one is sure where the single entrance of the mine is. Scholars say it is hidden on the outside of the ruins.

The next set of tables let you built your dungeon such as traps, lock difficulty and treasure. There are tables for NPCs and dragons and many other possible inhabitants. The randomness makes some interesting combinations.

There is no substitute for a GMs imagination, but Engineering Dungeons is a helpful addition to any fantasy gamer's bookshelf. If you are GM who builds their own dungeons this supplement is for you. I think the $9.95 price tag for the PDF is too high, but the $9.95 price tag for the printed version is spot on.

Castles & Crusades and the Benefits of One Session Adventures

I finally get a day off to do some writing and I've done nothing. Here I have all this time on my hands and I haven't written except for the few blogs I commented on. I passed the time by listened to the latest RPG Circus, which was pretty good and watched an episode of Big Bang Theory which I'd seen at least three times before. What I should be working on is the Castles & Crusades adventure I've been writing and planning for a month or more now. I'm blogging to get my creative juices flowing and my fingers moving.

The first leg of the adventure is written. Just need to do some edits and waiting for a few art pieces. The second leg is laid out and the writing begun, but this is where I am stalled. The third leg, the climax is outlined just waiting to be written. The goal is to build three connecting adventures where each part can be played in a single session. A single session to me is a three hour time period. That's about what I try to limit my sessions to unless we are in the middle of a grand daddy of a brawl.

There has been a resurgence of 'mega-dungeons'. And I love the thought of a sprawling dungeon that has hundreds of levels and thousands of rooms, but in my game, it's not practical and it gets boring after a while. It's like a movie where every scene there is a fight or some kind of violence going on. It may be powerful and thoughtful in the beginning, but after a while you grow numb. Please don't think I am bashing mega-dungeons because I am not. In my writer's mind's eye, when I imagine the depths and countless passages and rooms and horrible creatures hunting one another it is awesome to think about.

A while back I bought a few books from a d20 game called Dungeon World. It is basically a game that is one entire dungeon. This may not be the greatest example since the game itself is not good. It reminds me of the old TSR modules where rooms and monsters are static, waiting for the players to arrive to activate them. I can't imagine trying to detail the interaction between the rooms and levels of a mega dungeon. I know Fight On! was putting out different levels of a big dungeon, not sure if it qualifies for a mega-dungeon. How big does a dungeon need to be to qualify as a mega dungeon? It all sounds fun, but tedious after a while and then the players start the dreaded grind. Meaning, the players aren't paying attention to details, they just repeat a checklist of actions.

My preference for now, which could change by Thursday, is the smaller scale adventures with a good story line. Or at least I hope a good story line. It allows me as a GM (or CK if you prefer) to develop back stories for the characters and the campaign. To help the players develop their characters with details and choices made early on. It gives the players short term goals to achieve and keeps them engaged. It allows the player's the shape the world in small areas, as simple as saving a village, but no less important for those villagers who are now an ally of the characters which may become important later on.

Hope my rambling made some sort of sense. My fingers are loosened up and I'm ready to get to work on part 2. The first part of the adventure I hope to have up by this weekend.

A Dungeon Construction

It's the day before gaming night and due to real life commitments you have nothing planned. You could grab a dungeon from off the shelf, but that would take a lot of tweaking to suit the level of your characters not to mention having to change the stats to the system you are using. You could use one of the many random dungeon creators out there and wing it, but the same problems still comes into play. The players are expecting some kind of dungeon crawl. They spent last session researching an abandon fortification. They heard through a few well placed rumors that the army payroll for that post was never found. The carrot has been dangled, a sketch of a background is there, the type of 'dungeon', and last session some of the research said the place is haunted by the soldiers.

Maybe you're not in too bad of shape. You read over the game notes and find the map you drew. You said it was a fortification built into the side of a cliff. You trace over the map you drew them so you can give them the rough sketch for a player's map. A prop. It takes a few minutes to sketch out a dozen rooms. Hmm, not too bad, it's got some personality. You can see the story in the architecture, the shapes and design.

You have an hour before dinner and after that you have to take the wife out or she'll threaten harm on your tender areas. Better get a move on.

You calculated it will take three days travel to reach the dungeon. Two days will be spent going through a wild forest. You think about making a random encounter table, but decide to go with a few planned random encounters. The party will run into a few giant wolves as they enter the forest just to knock the rust off their dice. Later in the day they have a chance to spot a trail where it's obvious a patrol recently went though. It's an orc hunting party. The party can follow the tracks that led away from their destination. In this case the party has a good chance of gaining surprise. If an orc is kept alive he may tell the party his tribe has moved into the forest because of the noises. He can explain no further. Should the party continue on their way, later that night you can have the orcs attack the party's camp. Why waste a perfectly good orc hunting party. The next day in the forest they see sign of something very large has uprooted trees and left craters of footprints. A giant. At night tease the party with the ground vibrating. There'll be no sleep for them.

On the third day the party reaches the hills where the fortification is waiting. You're feeling generous and lower the difficulty level to find the place. Just to add some atmosphere there will be a bad rain storm making the terrain slick. Excellent. You figure to keep the dungeon as straight forward as possible at this point. You'll need to look through your monster manual to find an undead creature that would be a suitable challenge for the players to represent the restless soldiers. Shadows, they'll fit perfect. It will give the cleric something he can turn, something for the fighters to hack and the magic users to blast. In one section you decide to throw in a pack of Shadow Mastiffs. It adds some variety and will keep the players from getting too cocky. You populate the rooms then move onto who the boss. You thumb through the manual and reach the wraith. Hmm, the level drain worries you, but the party will just need to be more strategic than bull rushing every encounter. But, being a kind and generous master of the dungeon you make a note in the forest encounters to give one of the orcs a +1 bow with a few magical arrows so they can fight from a distance.

Now to put that chest of gold somewhere. Putting it in the wraith room is just too easy. You notice a mark on your map you didn't like and erased. That could be a good hiding place. The soldiers threw the bags of gold in holes. Anyone who can see in the dark or tosses a light down there will see them easily it will just be a matter of looking in there. You decide to put a few Shadows in there standing guard. Let the players figure out why they are standing guard in the crapper.

No dungeon would be finished without a trap. Let's take that original chest full of the gold and put it in the wraith room. Put a lock on it for the thief to feel useful. No needle trap in the lock that is too cliché. Maybe a fireball blows out the top when it's opened. Nah. Let's throw a teleport trap in there. The player gets a save, but if he fails he gets sent to a cell. The cell is at an undisclosed space. There are six dead bodies in the cell with the player. You could place the cell south of the dog pens, but maybe it could be used as another adventure seed. You note a few possibilities. Inside the chest are a handful of non-magical weapons to give it weight should the players decide to take it home without opening it. The teleport works once a week.

So there you have it. Let's break it down.
2 Random Encounters : If you need another encounter you can always throw in more orcs or that giant.
12 Rooms : A dozen room in the fort.
3 Monster Types : The monsters go with the theme and there is enough variety to keep the players interested.
1 Trap : Not only is it a trap, but a possible adventure continuation.
1 Twist : The treasure being in the crapper instead of the chest. Just slight enough to keep the players guessing.

And that's it. Within an hour you've come up with adventure that should keep your players challenged through the evening. It could easily stretch into a second evening and on to other adventures. The wife is calling. Dinner is done. You look over your quick dungeon. It's rough, but definitely doable. Tomorrow you'll have time before the game to smooth out some of the rough edges. The dungeon will be in part two.

First Dungeons & A Thank You To Mom

Rob over at Bat in the Attic wrote about first dungeons. That got me thinking about my first dungeons. The discovery that got me started in developing dungeons was a graph paper tablet in my mother's supply closet at her office. Holy crap, I just found gold. I asked if I could have it and before she said yes. Armed with a ruler and pencil I carving out dungeon map after dungeon map.

After I finished a few dozen maps I chose the maps with the best personality and started room descriptions. There was no logic or theme to the dungeons. Just rooms with monsters and loot. Blink dogs next to a room of ogres next to a hallway of Type 2 demons with an alcove where Beelzebub lounged. Didn’t matter how ridiculous it was, it was cool. I was doing it. I was making dungeons. And it was my first real writing gig. It was exciting.

With map done, descriptions described I was ready. But it didn’t feel right. Back into my mother’s supply closet I went. Good god all mighty a box of manila folders. I fricking rule! She said take them. So I borrowed her stapler and stapled my map to one side on the inside of the folder. There was room on the other side. So I made up a wandering monster table and stapled it there. I set the folder on its side and wa-la I had a cardboard screen just like those TSR modules.

I walked the halls with my homemade modules waiting for a study hall to break them out. I had one dungeon called the Taps Six Dungeon. It got kinda famous in my school. Everyone wanted to go through it. They wanted to know what the name meant. I just smiled and said there is only one way to find out. Actually, it didn’t mean a damn thing. I just thought it was a cool name.

So thanks to the supply closet at my mother’s office I started my career in developing dungeons then world building. And being that it will be Mother’s Day soon I want to give a huge thank you to my mother for allowing me to raid her closet and being understanding and allowing me to indulge myself on this weird hobby I really love.